I've been listening to a great podcast recently from a chap called Charlie North, who I've met and had a couple of business meetings with.
Charlie is a music and video producer, who is based in a village very close to where I live. If you like ambient / chillout music you'll love his work. Give him a try. You'll find him at thechilloutfactory.co.uk
I’ve seen a sign on a shop door that I’ll not be using again until it's removed. It reads “Polite Notice: No more than two youths are allowed in the shop at any one time.” In these Credit Crunchy times when a business, no matter how big or small it is, needs to do all it can to make a living it struck me that this was a great way to alienate customers and reduce income.
With 24 hour shopping in two local supermarkets I now have the choice to go somewhere else rather than a local convenience shop.
I have no knowledge of what’s happened at the shop in the past but I live in the real world and I’m aware that “some people” shoplift and that shop workers get abuse or worse are attacked which is wrong and needs to be dealt with, but to be selective just because a customer looks like a youth is not the right way. If this shop’s owners do have a problem then they need to improve their security system, employ more staff or provide better training.
I’d class my eldest son as a “youth”, he’s a great kid, he works very hard at school, he gets brilliant results, he’s not a threat to anybody and I’m very prod of him, but now if he and two mates want to go into Costcutter’s on Pogmoor Road, Barnsley they’re not welcome to spend his (my) cash.
This shop is saying we don’t trust youths being in our shop so sod off. Well fair enough, if my son and his friends are not good enough to use your shop, neither will I. Somerfield will now get an extra 40 - 60 quid a month more from me.
It’s not the youths that need to change, it’s old business practices, ideas and intolerance.
I've started to use twitter.com a lot more recently. If you're not sure what it is, the best description I've heard for Twitter is that it's a micro blogging application.
What I love about Twitter is that you can find people that have similar interests, jobs or needs as yourself and follow what they are getting up to. Already I've discovered some wonderful stuff and contacts.
Hello, well it's been some time since my last blog and lots of stuff has happened since then. Most of the 7 months my family has been dealing with the fact the my dad Trev "Titch" Markwell is no longer with us. He died at the end of November, 19 weeks after being diagnosed with a very rare form of stomach cancer called linitis plastica.
Surgery was not offered because there was no way of getting rid of the cancer. He'd already made his mind up early on that he didn't want chemo and after the doctors told us what he would go through he'd made totally the right choice.
I made the most of what time we had left. My brother got married two weeks after dad's diagnosis and that was a wonderful happy day for us all. Dad really gave the ball a kick at the evening reception. He could make friends with anybody and that night was no exception.
He was not in any pain when he died which we were all very happy about, I don't know how we would have coped if he had been. He passed away on Friday the 21st of November 2008 aged 72.
It's only been seven weeks since he died. It still doesn't appear to be real. I wanted to call him today to let him know that his car (that I now drive) passed it's MOT. Not bad for a 14 year old Volvo.
