Category: Industry Mole

Comedian Rufus Hound said 2016 was the answer to the question: what’s the worst that can happen? It can feel like that. The words ‘President Trump’ still sit oddly on the tongue. Every time I see him, I wonder, as somebody said of John Major, “If you were a self-made man, would you make yourself like that?” Presumably, the Pentagon people aren’t dumb enough to give him the real nuclear codes.

I don’t want to be the next Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or Alan Sugar. Just thought I’d put that out there because, after attending a seminar the other day, I learned something – but what I learned was the exact opposite of the lesson the seminar was supposed to teach us.

What would your ideal finance director be like? It’s not a question I ever asked myself until the other day when I got a PDF on the topic from one of those double-barrelled super accountants.

In my younger, more impressionable days, I was an avid reader of books that promised to tell me how I could manage my business better. I was a particular fan – and this will date me – of Tom Peters, the outspoken American business guru and author of such bestsellers as ‘In Search Of Excellence’, ‘Liberation Management’ and ‘Thriving On Chaos’.

News of the fire spread through Drupa’s exhibition halls like, well, wildfire really. Turned out it was not in the exhibition centre itself – so none of the 300,000 visitors tramping through the halls in search of enlightenment, excitement or a coffee were in any danger – but in a building full of migrants nearby.