Pete Like's Driving In His Car

Here's Northern Area Sales Manager Peter Brindle with his new Mazda 6TS2 which arrived yesterday. It's a lovely looking car but Pete says he has to put the seats down to get his golf clubs in. All I can say is "Well Peter. You chose it!"



We signed up to the 10:10 initiative that I mentioned on the blog yesterday and are going to do our best to cut our carbon footprint in 2010. You can do your bit by clicking here. Yesterday's Guardian was full of helpful tips including the wearing of thermal underwear and putting a brick in the loo cistern. But the best bit of advice was "share your newspapers". Now that's what I call magnanimous. A bit like a turkey voting for Christmas.



I just nipped out to the pictures to get the tickest for tonight's Orange Wednesday offering "Final Destination 3D". I'm really looking forward to it even if it is just the same old gory offering as the last one. 3d should make it far more interesting.



My head is spinning with figures as I have been preparing the forecast for next year. Hopefully we should do OK. I didn't know what pay level to put in as we usually agree an annual figure in line with inflation. But it seems that over 50% of companies have had no pay increase this year and those that have have averaged 1% or less. We'll have to see.


I'll close with a dedication to Peter.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Whenever I look at the strip of land adjoining our factory I feel like bursting into a chorus of "Wimaway" as it would be no surprise if there were a whole jungle full of wildlife living in it. Problem is that it's also a magnet for litter and God knows what else. The idea of the strip is to act as a buffer between industrial factory premises and residential property. Since Sefton council sold off all the industrial estates last year we have been trying to establish the ownership with all parties denying it was theirs. After paying for a Land Registry search we have now proved beyond reasonable doubt that it still the council's property so they are coming to talk to us today. We are prepared to take on the tidying of the plot if they are prepared to give it to us (there is no commercial value as it has a gas pipeline running through it) but we doubt that they will do this so they will waste ratepayers money tidying it (or not as has been the case for the past five years).



If you were running a business and almost everyone on your board jumped ship it would be a pretty sure sign that the company was in big trouble and administration was just around the corner. In these circumstances the only real option open to you would be to resign. When the same happens in the government what happens? Gordon Brown simply carries on regardless. I can see him holding cabinet meetings on his own soon.



It's the Instanta annual golf day next week and Craig Buckley is busy arranging the transport to the Duxbury golf club. When he discovered that the travel company had a fire engine amongst it's options, Craig was quite excited and keen to make the booking. Can you imagine the look on the golf club members faces if the Instanta golfers turned up in that with everyone squabbling over turns to ring the bell?



And so to today's offer in our month long series of daily deals. Today the price on our super WA5 wall mounted boiler reverts to its 2008 price of £399. This price will be valid for all orders placed before 11am on Thursday 4th June 2009(I am a bit late this morning so I have added an extra hour). To qualify, all orders must quote the reference blog offer 030609



I was delighted to read the news that Gareth Barry has gone to Man City. Nobody on the Kop could understand why anybody would want to sell Xavi Alonso in order to replace him with Barry (unless of course it was the difference in the price tags with Alonso worth £22m and Barry worth £12m). Not that any footballer is worth that much. But on the subject of millions and football, the Guardian has an incredible feature in today's edition which highlights the debts of the current Premiership teams. It makes very scary reading for any football fans.Some of the scariest figures were Stoke City's who had a wage bill of £11.9m and a turnover of £11.2m. Sound accounting? To read more of the figures and the accompanying article click here.

Instead of the fire engine for the golf, how about a dumper truck or a school bus? Which is better? There's only one way to find out.