No, not a comment on the denizens of the beach at Clacton-upon-Sea on the August bank holiday, but an observation on the essential difference between the two great television competitions of our time: Lord Sugar’s ‘The Apprentice’ versus Gregg ‘n John’s ‘Masterchef’. As an aside, surely it would be better for a man named sugar [...]
We all know that most consumer parcel delivery companies are pretty disdainful of their customers (recipients and retailers). However my latest encounter with City Link shows them plunging to new depths. I’ll tell you the tale in a moment, but first why write about it here? I’ve long cared passionately about customer service, which in [...]
By Ben | January 13, 2010
As a follow-up to my recent post about Prof Charles Handy here, I was interested to come across this article in the Times last week that highlights the many entirely new jobs that will be created this century. As my wife reminded me recently, most of the jobs that will employ our children’s generation probably [...]
By Ben | December 15, 2009
As it is GazetMe’s purpose to enable our users to track their many achievements, here at GazetMe Towers we thought we’d start an occasional series of reports highlighting notable achievements by individuals across the country.
First up then we celebrate the achievements of Clare Robertson. Now fans of Woolworths and residents of Dorchester may already be familiar [...]
By Ben | November 5, 2009
A very good analysis of the shortcomings of public sector involvement in promoting entrepreneurship and venture capital in this week’s Schumpeter column in the Economist. Interestingly (but perhaps not that surprising) it is Israel which emerges as the most successful promoter of such initiatives:
“The Israeli government’s venture-capital fund, which was founded in 1992 with $100m [...]
By Ben | November 4, 2009
Attention software developers (and Microsoft that means you in particular): why is it that you feel you have to display every bit of functionality on screen every time we use your apps?
I’ve been thinking alot about functionality, information overload, and the notion of ‘rusting’ about which I blogged recently. To my mind, the classic Google [...]
By Ben | November 2, 2009
A thought-provoking interview this morning with Professor Victor Mayer-Schönberger on Radio 4’s Start the Week with Andrew Marr examined how we deal with the mass of personal information that we publish online: should more be done to build obsolescence into our personal data trail? This is an issue that I’ve written about before and to which [...]
By Ben | September 28, 2009
I’m always a little wary of self-help books, but one book that I’ve re-read recently (out of curiosity, not the need for a new job) deserves recommendation: Successful Interviews Every Time by Dr Rob Yeung should be studied by anyone engaged in job search. I first read this book about five years ago when I [...]
By Ben | September 16, 2009
Time for our quarterly look at unemployment with the news that in the three months to July the total number of jobless rose by a massive (and scary) 210,000, the equivalent of the entire population of an outer London borough.
Over to you Lord Sugar: ”Hounslow…you’re fired.”
By Ben | September 15, 2009
My book of the week is ‘Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature‘ by Mark Earls, a highly original take on marketing, consumerism, and the way we are influenced by business (or not as it happens). This book turned out to be so compelling that I placed on hold my two [...]
