Why All The Double Dip Recession Talk?

I got a tweet from friend and photographer Peter Raymond this morning linking to the Left Foot Forward blog which, as you might gather from the name, is a left of centre political comment blog. The article it linked to was full of doom and gloom. Headlined "Early signs suggest that Osborne's gamble is not paying off" the article went on to highlight the new survey that suggests that house prices will fall (not that bad if you are a first time buyer),business confidence is declining, inflation is well above target and the surge in exports has not materialised (despite acknowledging that exports are 11.7% up in the quarter to 30 June compared with the same quarter last year). And yet, as I have my daily look at my friend Mark Jones from Workhouse Marketing's blog, he is headlining here with the news that his business is showing 10% growth. We have seen good growth here at Instanta and the CESA stats reported the same for the catering industry. On the Today programme this morning there were reports of booming sales for Pendragon, the UK's biggest car seller and Inter Continental Hotels profits up by 22%. I am not claiming that everything in the world of business is rosy but, by only reporting the negatives, Left Foot Forward is doing a disservice to business confidence. If people shout loud enough for a double dip recession they will get one and all for the pleasure of being able to blame the Government.

Getting into Twitter and still enjoying following Cheggers (above). Whilst his funniest lines are few and far between it is good to follow someone who is so clearly upbeat in his views on life and making plenty of very positive comments. Perhaps he should blog for Left Foot Forward. He did raise a smile today with one of today's Tweets "Wife says I’m gullible & financially useless. Can't wait to see her face when I tell her I've won the Nigerian lottery"




Only a few days to the start of the Premiership season. I'll be seeing four of the teams' first performances as I'm off to see Blackburn Rovers play Everton on Saturday and then Liverpool v Arsenal on Sunday. This should put me in good stead for our annual entry in to the Guardian's Pick The Score competition. Perhaps I can offer a massive prize this year like £1,000 for the winner. As I will be retiring before the end of the season I'll leave our new owners to sort that one out! (Only kidding Chris). Seriously, if you would like to be invited to join in (it's totally free) and see if you are the Mystic Meg of the football forecasting world, get in touch with me or Craig and we will send you an invitation. If you were in our league (Instanta Sports) last season you should automatically be included again this year.



In another type of league, now that Craig is preparing a daily performance table for our sales team, he can't do any work for the sales people phoning him up every ten minutes to ask if there are any more sales. I never knew we had such a competitive workforce. I should have done it years ago and we could have had a trophy.

After all the publicity about the Newport video the other week, it was great to see the response from Goldie Lookin Chain. "You're not from Newport".

No Comment

I'm itching to comment on today's election results and the current standing of the parties but, as Marion and I no longer own shares in Instanta, I don't feel justified in putting forward political opinions on the blog. What a pity as I could rattle on for ages on the subject. I can say that I stayed up late to watch the results come in and I found the whole thing fascinating. As I write, David Cameron has announced that he will be making an announcement soon and I look forward to hearing what he has to say. The sooner we have something positive the better and we at Instanta can all carry on busting the recession as we have been doing for some time.



Good luck to all the players in the Guardian Pick The Score competition which finishes with Sunday's Premier League matches. There's no question who is going to win our Instantasports league. Max Vidal has walked away and is in an unassailable position (and might even win the Guardian's top prize). I am still vying with Jenny for second place although it will take a miracle for me to catch her and both Tony Lowe from our stores and Mike Chubbs for our machine shop have a chance to overtake me. The Instanta team has been fairly poor in the team events and we are languishing at 408th. It's a great competition and it's free to enter. Give it a try next season.

It's nice to be appreciated but it doesn't happen too often.We are always striving to provide excellent service and send out most of our boilers and most of our spare parts on the day that they are ordered. Tony Lowe in our spares department just showed me a fax from a satisfied customer "Tap Received 7/5. What excellent service- unusual to find today! Many thanks" . Well may thanks to you customer. It's always good to be praised.



We haven't managed to get our regular Orange Wednesday cinema trip for a few weeks although we did go to the cinema on Saturday to see The Ghost. It was a good film although I honestly don't think that it merited the rave reviews that it got in the papers. Next week I quite fancy seeing the new Chris Morris film Four Lions. I'm not 100% sure about the subject matter (a comedy about suicide bombers)but I do admire Morris' stuff. I also quite fancy The Disappearance of Alice Creed. However, as Southport's Vue tends to favour blockbusters, neither is showing and we'll probably be stuck with Hot Tub Time Machine.

I'll close this week with someone who didn't take the election too seriously.

Delusions And Bad Dreams

Our cinema trip for Orange Wednesday this week was Shutter Island. I was not expecting much as the reviews had not been that great but the film which is all about delusions and bad dreams was very good and we both enjoyed it very much. It has been suggested that the film pays homage to Hitchcock and there were certainly a number of very Hitchcock like scenes (even the unconvincing backdrops looked intentional).



Speaking of bad dreams, for the last few nights I've had a recurrent one in which I am being circled by a vulture. It's quite horrific. I'm not quite dead but the vulture keeps swooping down to take a peck at me.I don't often get bad dreams but this one just won't go away. Maybe there's a hidden meaning in there somewhere but I just can't think what it is.



I have gone from a leading position in our Guardian pick the score league to trailing in third place. Jenny and Max have flown ahead of me with Max standing at 30th in the whole country. I really must ask him for some tips as my football bets have all been losers for the last two months. Fortunately I have been sensible and have not bet more than my weekly £20 allowance.



When I write tomorrow's blog I have to say happy birthday to someone here in the office for Saturday. Unfortunately I don't have a photo (apart from ones that the person doesn't like).I have been promised one for tomorrow but if it doesn't arrive I might have to resort to using the unpopular ones.

Football's going downhill isn't it? I am grateful to the Guardian for pointing me towards this parody (at least I hope it's a parody) from a page 3 stunner. Please, please, please do not watch this if easily offended.

Too busy to blog

It's been so busy this week with all the developments following the takeover that I didn't get a chance to write the blog yesterday. But I've just managed to take a quick break to catch up on some of the important things like blogging and completing my predictions for the Guardian Pick the Score Competition.

I've fallen behind in the league recently. I'd like to put it down to the distractions here at work but that would be a bit of a fib. It's really down to lousy forecasting. Mind you whilst my Pick the Scores predictions have been poor I actually managed to win my 8 team accumulator on Betfair last Saturday. It was an extremely cautious one but it paid off and has taken my kitty to almost £900 which is not bad as I started the year at only £100.



Tomorrow Liverpool are entertaining our neighbours Everton at Anfield. It's a 12.45 kick off and I just hope that we can move away from the poisonous atmosphere that has ruined the derby games in recent years. I can remember when reds and blues could go to the game together and enjoy a bit of banter. I would love that to happen tomorrow but somehow I just don't see it.



Marion and I actually found the time to go to Orange Wednesday this week. We went to see Avatar. We felt that with all the fuss we really had to go and see it but I am sorry to say that we just didn't see what all the fuss was about. Yes it is spectacular and yes it is good to look at and very colourful but I have to admit to nodding off a couple of times as it runs for almost three hours and it is little more than an old fashioned cowboys and Indians movie with the cowboys (the humans) as the baddies. If it had been about an hour shorter it would have been OK.

Being at Anfield tomorrow means that I won't be able to watch the wonderful Gillette Soccer Saturday. With pundits like Dean Windass, the show just goes from strength to strength.

Jenny Buckley Our Very Own Football Pundit

I've written about our interest in the Guardian's Pick The Score competition. This is the third season that we've been doing it here and it's always a source of fierce rivalry. We have to predict the outcome of the Premiership matches every week and I offer a small prize to the first second and third in the league at the end of the season. In 2008 I pipped Jenny Wright by one point on the last day of the season.In 2009 Store man Tony Lowe ran away with the title and this year Service Coordinator Max Vidal has taken a convincing 12 point lead just past the half way point in the season. But today I have to take my hat off to Office Manager Jenny who this week predicted the correct score in no less than six Premiership matches. That is an amazing achievement which has propelled her up our league and left her in seventh position for the week in the whole country. Well done Jenny. No extra prizes but can you give me a few tips for my bet on Betfair this week?



Just got an email from son Paul. While he is on his honeymoon his company CPL Productions are recording A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN a new programme that he has been heavily involved in.England’s Number One fan and Gavin & Stacey star James Corden will referee proceedings. The brand new format will involve former England footballer and Sky Sports presenter Jamie Redknapp and one other (to be named)as team captains and Paul has managed to get our names on the list to go to one of the recordings. I'm really looking forward to it. His "The Colour of Money" last year was not a huge hit but I reckon that this one has all the makings of a successful panel show.



I don't want to temp fate by saying this a day early but Max tells me that this month's warranty calls are likely to be less than 50% of the number that we recorded in January 2009. And considering that there are more boilers under guarantee today than there were last year I think that's a pretty good result. Well done to everyone in the factory for getting the job right. If we could eliminate a couple of niggles that continue to crop up every couple of months (components that we don't make and that we are sure are the best available) we could get the figure down even lower. Nick told me that he was going to buy me and Marion dinner on the day that we go a month with no warranty calls at all and I intend to hold him to that in the not too distant future.

As I write, poor Marion looks like she is at death's doorstep. She is absolutely full of a cold that she just can't shake off. I keep telling her to go home and try and get better but she won't listen and keeps on taking the tablets.She doesn't want to be ill on the big day in just two weeks.Jenny has been just the same as Marion all week too and she has managed to come in as well. A big thank you to them both.

Being what is known to salespeople as an "early adopter" I always like to get the latest technology. I want one of these now.

The Sun Has Got His Hat On

I know, I know. It's hardly earth shattering news that the sun is shining today here in Southport but after several dreary, wet and dull weeks it feels like it is. So here is Instanta with not a cloud in sight. I had to photograph it as goodness knows when we will get another day like this this year.



Let's hope it's tomorrow as we've been invited to join some friends for a wedding anniversary celebration and plan to have a trip to the Trough of Bowland followed by a night at The Ashton near Lancaster. It got a great review in the Guardian so we are looking forward to it.



I spent all morning discussing our pensions. It's not easy at 55 is it? Especially with interest rates as low as they are at the moment. We talked over all the options and came up with............nothing!




If you are in our Guardian Pick The Score League, don't forget that, after a week off it's back this week. Usually when this happens there's someone who forgets.It's early days yet and nobody has broken clear of the pack just yet.


Channel Four is devoting an hour to Derren Brown's explanation of his lottery trick tonight. An hour! Here it is in under a minute. Have a good weekend.