The Ugly World

 Yuk, the world can be an ugly place and our political class are displaying their "class" once again.  What with their reaction to the Peter Mandleson and Epstein stuff going on but also their awful attack dog approach to anything.  We see them but they seem hardly to know we exist and the majority of us look on with utter contempt at these hapless low life failed human beings and wonder how did they get where they are and how do they not have any sense of humanity or self awareness about their actions and their behaviour?

The very people baying for blood when they were in opposition have behaved far worse but see no reason they should resign over their failings and failures and yet only a few years ago were looking for resignations over cake eating.  Make it make sense someone.

But that is what people wanted and voted in.  How long it has to go on for who knows?  It's just increased our distrust of politicians and the MSM.  The MSM don't appear to be reporting anything they don't think we should be allowed to know.  Shame on them.  They wonder why their viewing / listening figures are plummeting all the while feeding us lies and non reporting on important stuff that is going on.   They all need to "Read the room" as they say, Smell the coffee but they see nothing wrong in their own behaviour and actions, nothing to see here they say.  Two tier reporting to go with two tier law and order and two tier governance - laws for thee but not for me.  

It's a mess, we all knew it would be just not how long and deep it went though.  I hope it all comes out and those responsible are disgraced and pilloried. 

Naturally Cautious

 I am that.  It maybe perhaps that I have been fire fighting for most of my career sorting out other people's business problems and trying to get my customers and my own people to understand risk and manage it.  

I am normally risk averse and so watching money go out of the business on advertising and whilst getting some responses, not getting sales is setting off alarm bells everywhere.  It's no where near a problem at the moment and whilst I have committed to put some cash into the business it still sets my spidery senses off.  By that I mean that I can see the outcomes clearly and the expected outcome in my mind is to close the business (pessimistic view) and start trading in earnest (the optimistic view).  The good old plan for the best, prepare for the worst scenario.

So that's where I am now.  I've a month or thereabouts to see where it is going.  The iterative process on the marketing and advertising is taking a little longer than I expected but you have to go through logically and patiently wait for each small change to work its way through.  The algorithm needs to work out what you are doing and how it presents to users.  So I think I have three more weeks to experiment before I have tried everything possible to make a go of it or decide to close it down.  That then fits my 6 month trial of the business and I've given it every chance to succeed.  

My view is still that it needs these few weeks or trial and error although that's not fair as it isn't an error if the sales action just isn't there.  That would mean that the market doesn't exist for the App and whilst it may be amazing and all that.  If the public aren't buying it, then it is market driven.

Sentiment says it should do well but reality shows potentially that it may not be so.  

Slowly Slowly Catchy Monkey

 Patience my dear boy, patience.  It hasn't even been a month since I set out on this exercise to see if I have an App that's any good or is pants!  January has been about 6 months long and in reality I only set off on this business exercise three weeks ago yesterday. So expecting results to magically appear is a bit optimistic.  

It's been an iterative process and so you have to make a change based on the data you have and then wait 24 hours.  Then make a tweak here and there.  The early results were encouraging but not scientific.  The last two days have been much better in terms of hits.

It's a numbers game and I still haven't sold anything but I am getting the downloads.  It's a far different world than I thought it would be and I'm learning loads about Apple App Store.  I am also documenting each step so I know why something has been done and the rationale behind it.  

It just takes time and patience and I am not the best at that even though this is a logical progression built on data and following a plan!  It should be right up my street but, of course, it's just me wanting to get somewhere too fast! 

Clear - No Problems

 So the Dentist checked this morning and all is clear and the mark they saw is no longer there.  A big relief and so that was pleasing I must say.

I thanked her for checking it and find it in the first place it was appreciated I have to say.  The thing is I have always found is to show your appreciation and thank people for doing whatever service it is they do for you.  Thank You and Please are very powerful I find and I hope that in saying that to them,  they had a good day.  I was very pleased as you can imagine.

Getting Going - Maybe I Ought To Just Forget About It?

 I promised myself that I would set to and get these accounts done.  Have I?  No, of course not.  I've done some other accounts but not the ones I should have and I've then been distracted my my Ad campaign on the App and then Facebook stole my attention and now I'm feeling a little guilty about not having even gotten started and it's half way through the afternoon and I really cannot be arsed to do anything.

I think that I will not even attempt it right now - I can perhaps go for it tomorrow but I must first get this dentist visit over and done with.  Perhaps that is distracting me but I'm not sure quite why unless it is in the back of my mind stuff.  They noticed a white mark  on my gum where a tooth was pulled many years ago now.  Tomorrow I need to go back and see if it is still there.  If it is, then I'll need a biopsy on it.  That won't happen tomorrow and may not happen at all of course but having been bitten once by cancer, you find that everything is cancer and everything is terminal!  

That's the legacy of my cancer diagnosis and treatment.  Every ache or pain, every strange noise or the fibrillating of your heart, cough, sore throat and so on is, until proven otherwise, cancer and will kill you.  That doesn't go away and such things bring home regularly that mindset.  Of course you can rationalise that it cannot be, that you look after yourself and so on but there is always that niggle and little voice to remind you.  Even if they do see the mark on my gums, they will have to refer me and then biopsy it and diagnose it.  I think it isn't likely to be anything like that although my mind thinks differently.  

It was a crazy extraction as the tooth splintered as it was being removed and I had some bone and/or tooth fragments for a while afterwards. It was probably 14 or 15 years ago and I recall it being after it had snowed heavily and it was knee deep and I walked there after checking they were open.  I had to wrap my face and cheek because of the wind and snow flurries and walk home it took about 30 minutes when it was really a 10 minute walk.  

Oh well, let's see.  At least the Dentist spotted it and we are following up but it does churn away inside of you.  

Audience Participation

 I hate participation especially if I have paid good money to go and see something.  Pantomime is different of course.  No I mean concerts particularly.  I saw an artist complaining that their audience didn't sing along and I've never been a fan of this.  You pay a huge amount of money to hear a band play and the lead singer sing and they can't be arsed to do the chorus sticking the microphone towards the audience and I hate it.

I came to listen to them sing, end of.  The number of times someone behind me or to the side of me sings flat, doesn't know the words or is just making some sort of fill in noise is dreadful.  It spoils the whole thing and at one venue I had to ask that one person who sang loud and flat and wanted to talk their way through the rest of the performance be removed or let me be seated elsewhere.  It was atrocious and in the quiet bits where a sole was happening etc you could hear this drunken idiot above the music.

So that's my rant.  If you want me to help you sing your song, pay me!  I've paid to hear you and the band perform it isn't for me to provide your backing band or help you when you've forgotten the words to the chorus!  They charge a small fortune these days to attend a convert and you wouldn't do it during a classical concert! Rant over LOL! 

There's None So Blind

 I hate to say it but I despair at the "Blinkered Philistine Pig Ignorance" (Monty Python Architect Sketch) of the people you see on the TV, YouTube, Podcasts etc.  In complete denial even when faced with facts presented to them that are their very own facts! 

Last night they were all getting irate that someone had the temerity to point out acknowledged facts so much so that they were huffing and puffing and trying to interrupt the chaps who's turn it was to speak and not just one of them either.  Presented with facts gets these people angry and they then twist and weasel their way and think that we cannot see them or hear them or see their body language. I hope they are running scared but I doubt it.  I don't think they realise what is coming for them.  People are rightly fed up and the vast majority see through all of this and are demanding change.

It still, however, surprises me (perhaps it shouldn't) that people I thought were a bit brighter don't see it either.  Defending the indefensible and prattling on about stuff that a child would realise isn't true or even partly true.  I think because it doesn't happen to them (yet) they cannot see the societal change that has happened certainly in the past ten years but arguably longer and as it hasn't really affected them they continue on their socialist liberal value system.  We are poorer now than we were in the 90s and it perhaps is that boil the Frog approach, they just don't see or perhaps are not affected by these changes.

Locally we have had massive failures in our Water infrastructure depriving some areas for days on end and weeks of problems.  As a consumer we have seen around 30% increase in the past few years.  Food has almost doubled by my estimation in 5 or 6 years looking at my monthly expenditure,  Power bills probably doubled or tripled and people are silent or consider it OK.  It isn't sustainable and yet these smug arse politicians, regulators and businesses just spit in our faces and we don't do anything about it.  The reckoning will come I am sure, it needs to come quickly though and things need to be resolved.   

International Joke Festival

 I happened to catch the news this morning and beloved leader was commenting on how his meeting with China had gone.  I was expecting him to come out with something tangible given that China just about produce everything these days and talk about some huge trade deals but it sounded like our great leader had swapped his sweets with a lad in the playground only to find that the bag had broken and he'd lost the contents.  It was, to coin one of my oft used phrases "Utter Bollocks!"  He sounds pathetic and totally out of his depth in situations like this but I guess he will be flying home to some pretty heavy stuff.

Everywhere you look the sheer incompetence and fish out of water politicians are just screwing things up on a massive scale.  They have ideas that a twelve year old would find difficult to comprehend.  A five year old would make more sense too.  The level of stupidity is off the scale and the ideas factory is straight out of the Marxist play book with nothing thought through, no impact assessment and every time they turn around or come up with a policy it destroys people's livelihoods and businesses.  Where we need brave, strong leadership we have a rabble blown off course by every breeze.

A once great country is actually leaderless, rudderless and taking on water faster than it can be bailed out.  The economy is a Janet & John story and ideology out trumps proper fiscal management.  The way out to tackle our huge deficit appears to be to borrow more money until its paid off?  The only people who cannot appear to see all these problems are the very people nose diving us into third world status.  

Of course, it's not going to be easy to get out of the problems that successive governments have gotten us into - it's going to be horrendously tough as we look back at the wholesale destruction of our businesses and the wastelands caused through infantile dogma and rank stupidity.  Most people know that you cannot tax your way out of these problems and saying you are going for growth whilst punishing anyone who attempts to actually grow their business, better themselves etc is a disgusting stupid and pathetic.  How blind do you have to be to be told the serious impact that you are having on the economy only to double down and make it worse.  They hadn't even considered that their actions would have the massive impact they did because they hadn't thought about it.

A pox on all their houses! 

Right In Your Face - Do You Think We Don't Know?

 Today, The Labour Party published a clip of A Reform Candidate that was edited to the point of looking as if he was slating the very people he is a candidate for.  The very people who complained about how the BBC had done the same to President Trump I'd suggest.  The trend these days to use AI or to edit and put words into people's mouths has got to stop.

We all knew the pathological liar at school or work and no one took it seriously because they lied all the time but this IS serious.  These are allegedly our betters and they represent the country our current government and yet they stoop to lying and gas-lighting us and they, frankly, are not very good at it at all.  But no one will get sacked or lose their job over it and the BBC only had to fall on their swords after they were made to agree how unpleasant and thoroughly unprofessional it was and even then they sort of blamed us!  

What is it with people these days where lying and cheating are part of everything they say and everything they do.  I used to work with people of  similar attitude who when things started going wrong, instead of facing it head on and tackling the problem started a campaign of lying that dug them deeper and deeper into the sh1t.  I recall, being the Project Manager of a job that had taken a sudden and quite catastrophic turn for the worst I called the customer, told him there was a problem and that I would like to come and meet them.  I had to go into a big room with a AAA rated business, meet the sponsors and tell them that a major problem which no one could have foreseen had arisen and explain exactly what I was going to do about it.  I asked for a few days so I could work out a plan and get back to them "You've got 24 hours to solve this ...." well not quite LOL.

Unbeknown to me the salesman had picked up the problem and went into the customer without asking me (it was my job responsibility not his) and I got a call from the customer who told me that this imbecile had gone into the customer and promised him all sorts of actions (none of which were possible) and lied his socks off.  He incurred the customer's wrath, was reported to his boss and me.  We then had to read him the riot act as he just went off and unilaterally did this when we were already in a bad situation so I had to fight on two fronts.  All because he lied and I don't do that, never have, never will, no matter how difficult it gets.  

So why do people think it is acceptable for the people in high power to lie and cheat?  They already know they are in deep trouble but to hit the bottom and keep digging and make it obvious to everyone that they are propagating lies is shocking.  

I also had to have a laugh at the Green Party who had all their posters and flyers and these portable stands printed with the incorrect spelling of the constituency name that they hope will vote for them.  Probably not a good start. In trying to correct this they put out a tweet (sorry, a X) which managed to spell it wrongly again! :-)  Such is the calibre of the people wanting the locals to vote for them. 

It All Take Time And I Have Never Been Good With That

 I tend to want everything to be done "Right now!" but it never happens like that.  Things take time and during all my treatments it always took what time it took no matter if I wanted it to end sooner.  Today it is like that as Apple are implementing some changes and so my Ads aren't working properly.  So I have to wait until their servers sort themselves out and awake from their slumbers.

It's an interesting problem for me as I want to get sufficient data to make decisions about the business and so it's like an egg timer as the sands are running out - let's call it the money in the business for now and they aren't being replenished quickly enough to make it viable but without having undertaken this exercise to run the Ads I won't know what is the right area to target and if the audience will purchase the App.  It's moving slowly but you have to test each iteration out and see what the results are so you can logically dismiss or improve each part of the campaign. 

I just have to be patient and wait and it's generally a day or two at a time.  It means extending this trial and hoping the money doesn't run out in the interim!  

Breaking The Work Habits

Everyday, there's this feeling that I should be "doing something" it is strange and it only really crossed my mind yesterday that it's missing the habit of getting up and going to work.  That ritual of waking up, getting ready and then heading off to work whether walking to the station (in all weathers) or jumping in the car and travelling to a customer's location or wherever I was working at the time.

More than that is the ritual of work itself all planned out and laid out in front of you and I, for one, normally knew what I was doing weeks in advance.  Train travel meant a switch off reading a book or a newspaper, grabbing some breakfast on the way in.  Only on a very few occasions was I bored and twiddling my thumbs.

So there's this feeling of being beholden to someone and I get the inner feeling that I should be doing something.  Currently I am working on this business App and I feel that I have to do my best to get a result one way or the other.  It's more that I have attempted everything possible to get it to work.  If it works great, if it fails well I've given it a try and can shut it down.  

Getting this out of the way would actually give me the break I feel I need and then there are only a few demands on my time and so I wouldn't feel this ghostly obligation to do things that no longer exist.  I need to claim my time back.

Toxic People

 I find the world of social media to be quite toxic and divisive and more so recently.  Twitter which I use to promote both my business and my Lodge is such a place.  It is contrived, abusive and full of the most awful content.  I couldn't quite work out why I was seeing some pretty unpleasant stuff until I realised that it had switched my viewing away from those people I had chosen to follow.   So now I have switched back it is a bit more palatable but yet again I have had to mute or un-follow people who are just downright nasty.

As I need these tools for advertising and promotion I am stuck with them but the bottom line is that you need to prune out the dead wood and diseased growth.  Better still, just narrow it down to only what you are prepared to watch or listen to.  So I was out with my pruners and got rid of the disrespectful and abusive people.  

I plan to review all of this social media activity as I hope that it will only be an occasional need to get involved and not a daily, nay, hourly activity as it seems to be now.  Ideally it would be great to reduce it right down to a few minutes a day or even a week.

A lot depends on whether the business survives this next few months - I have a time limit of March to sort it out.  In sorting it out, I need to either close it or if I run it, it only need take up a few hours a week or it's not worth doing.  That is the upcoming decision and having done just about everything I can on it, the final outcome is now neither here nor there.

I've had enough of it all the truth be told and it either stands or falls based on the next few week's exercise.  And now, I don't mind one way or the other what the outcome is as I will have carried out all the possible routes to complete the product, market it and so on.  Given it every chance to live and thrive.

The chap who has made my life hell now reminds me that it isn't that important and whilst he probably doesn't realise it, his behaviour has made me not care less about it all now.  It will be what it will be and if it does all fold up then I can see my freedom ahead.

I've felt beholden to the idea and the company - it's a shame that he didn't fully commit but this happens more often than you might realise. I am trying to get away from the feeling that I must do something or that I am expected to do something it is strange as if it is some sort of work commitment that I am obliged to fulfil and yet no such contract or commitment exists.  I need to work on this as it is something that I cannot get used to.  I am meant to be retired but I am far from that and I am not enjoying my retirement as I am sorting out this business that I have been left with. 

Rodent Trouble! Again

Last year (or maybe the year before) over 40 mice in the house and I got a chap to come and fix the holes in the house and additionally do some pointing and tidying up at the same time.  Up until perhaps a week ago it seemed to have done the trick and no mice in my traps so much so that I moved the traps for a few days - I keep them active from around October to March.  I was pleased as there didn't appear to be any around.

Last week though I noticed the tell-tale signs of a few mouse droppings, set the traps and had two on two mornings.  Then we though we saw one in the living room so I set a trap and that went off within half an hour and this morning I was greeted by two and on resetting them a further one so it's looking as if we have a nest of them somewhere.  I dislike having to trap them and kill them but all the humane traps I've used do not seem humane at all and so I've gone back to the tried and tested method.  I'm not happy about it but there you are, needs must and having been ill through injecting a mouse dropping (I can't even tell you how awful that was I had to have an ambulance and crew out to me) I'm convinced that a swift dispatch is better in their terms and indeed mine.  

I cannot tell you how many times with the humane versions I found the mice dead.  If they weren't you needed to take them a number of miles away and release them into an environment they were unfamiliar with.  In one case a local cat got one of the released mice.  I was then told that moving a wild animal or relocating it was illegal!  You can't win can you?

So just another "thing to do" and an unwelcome return of a nuisance I thought I'd solved but, as I often say, we live in the country, when it's cold or food is available readily this is going to happen.

Hopefully it won't be up to the numbers of a year or two ago that was just mental and you'd get a short time with none and the next day you'd have about 4 or 5.

Concentration Or Rather The Lack Of It

 I hate being a Treasurer.  I find it one of the most difficult things because my programme and project logic is at odds with financial logic.  Whilst I grasp the concepts of a balance sheet it doesn't come naturally to me so things like in arrears and in advance payments and accruals somehow hit an invisible mental roadblock in me.

A task that an Accountant could take a few minutes doing takes me hours as I have to work out how I treat any entry that is out of the ordinary.  If it was straight income and expenses it would be easy of course because that is how most of us run our home accounts but because if the precise nature of the balance sheet and not always understanding whether an entry should or shouldn't be there is another thing.  

An advance payment made in the previous year for example was shown in the bank last year but needs to be accounted for in this year when that payment should rightly have been made.

Anyway, sat here for a few hours and all the figures are merging into one now so time for a rest and I will have to renew the efforts again tomorrow or maybe this afternoon if I feel up to it!  Such an annoying thing because really I shouldn't have problems grasping this at all but somehow my mind doesn't work the way it does on other problems that are not financial in nature albeit project accounting is no problem at all!!!

The harder I look at the figures the worse it gets and it is easier to just stop for a while and come back than making a rushed decision and then having to un-knit the work I've done.