Tag: business

Another End For Another Beginning

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

After nearly five months of tears, tantrums and a few satisfied pizza lovers, the day has finally come. I can be quite a sentimental person. I enjoy ending things because more often than not it means I’m about to start something new but it doesn’t mean I don’t experience at least a pang of sadness at the letting go of something. I couple of regulars made a point of ordering tonight which was appreciated. Unfortunately I didn’t repay the compliment by being over an hour late for one and forgetting to put extra mushrooms on his pizza. I’m sure he’ll forgive me. I’ll find out at Easter if we open then. We’re probably going to be the annoying company which only bothers to open in the really busy and good times. That will drive everyone else nuts. There’s a part of me that takes pleasure in that although I’m certain I would hate it if it was the other way round. All is open though, who knows what I’ll be doing and where next Easter. I may have even finished this by then.

There have been many lesson over these five months and certainly the stress I used to experience in the early days doesn’t seem to be such a thing anymore. Stress is probably not how I would describe in entirely, of course my friends would, but I would suggest there was a bit more anger involved as that ambled about without any sense of urgency. There was definitely something of the Gordon Ramsay about me. Now I just get on with it, if I’m late I’m late and if I’m on time I’m on time. Well more or less. Also in five months, let’s be honest you just get better at things.

It seems longer than five months. We are Lockdown Pizzas because we were born in lockdown. Cheesy bastard. Early April to be precise. Time must have been going slow these last few months then. We only started making them for some fun, everywhere else was closed and we had all the ovens with the bakery. We dreamt of making a thousand pound a night minimum as people would be desperate for something tasty in lockdown. We never made that of course but we did scare all the other takeaways into re-opening. What began as a few weeks of fun became a five month old trip. It was a crash course. Thankfully not a car crash.

And now we call time. As was always going to be and as could only be. It has been emotional. It has been intense. Goodnight sweet pizzas. Good morning something else.

Time For The Leathers

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Something exciting has happened today. Well not really but we bought a scooter for the pizza takeaway. In reality after the initial excitement of starting up and being the only takeaway here open, we have quietened done a bit. Apparently though this seems to be a common thread for all the takeaways in the village. The rumour is everyone heard we were doing well and decided to open again too but now we’re all just fighting over the scraps and surviving. Even the local caravan site has started selling pizzas, interestingly enough with similar prices to ours but a fraction cheaper. They do though put hardly any filling on and charge quite a lot for extras which we don’t bother charging for at all. It’s interesting this business thing, I can see why people allow it to take over their whole life. It doesn’t mine and I only intend on doing it until the end of the summer once these mythical tourists disappear but still it’s an interesting little experiment. I’m all about the experiences. I’ve dropped the anti-capitalist and become an entrepreneurial money maker, or at least attempting to become a money maker. I’m still not sure I’m taking it quite seriously enough to go full madman and that’s why it’s all a bit of fun. I want to make it a collective but my non-anarchic friends are refusing to countenance such a thing. Can’t quite make it a collective of one and I suspect they would have even more to say if I actually tried.

Anyway the important thing and the reason I started this piece was that we have bought a scooter. My friend who does the deliveries is not keen on it unfortunately and is refusing to drive around the village on it, he’s a car man. That means it’ll be down to me to put our logo on it and become that comedy idiot looking silly on a scooter. I can’t wait. I find scooters ridiculous, probably just as my mate does, but I’m always fine with looking silly. Secretly I’ve always wanted a motorbike and have resisted this far as I suspect I would probably have killed myself but I’m older now and arguably slightly more mature. If I resist my more ridiculous instincts I should be fine but certainly I see this as the first step on the road to buying a motorbike. A cool one mind, not some racer, something that looks a bit beat up and simple. My ego is picturing the intellectuals motorbike whatever the hell that is. I’m also happy to start at the bottom though, and by the time I’m ready for my midlife crisis I should just be good enough to drive an actual real life motorbike. In the meantime I can’t wait to make that ridiculous noise scooters make. Ah village life.

The Big D Show

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Donald Trump is great. Well he’s not, he’s awful, but his press conferences certainly are. I skimmed through last nights reality television take on politics and regretted the fact it was so late and I couldn’t just sit there and watch the full film length episode in it’s entirety. In fact I think there may be another one on tonight but in about ten minutes as I write these exact words which means by the time I write the last words I’ll have probably missed the first half hour. To describe it as a car crash does a disservice to similes. It is more of a motorway pileup and one that despite being on an incredibly serious, life and death topic, is gleefully compelling viewing. My favourite bit is when he does the slightly camp pointing gesture with his podgy little hands while describing the recipient as a disgrace and describing their question as disgraceful in turn. I wonder what adjective he’ll use tonight. Shameless would be great and not just because he would undoubtedly miss the irony in the accusation. He spends over an hour blindly arguing with reporters. Even as I write this now, I’m unsure if I imagined it. Even Boris Johnson’s buffoonery cannot compete.

I think to all discerning people it is pretty clear Trump is a charlatan. He is a renowned conman who made his name in what has gone down as the tackiest decade for businessmen, think of the yuppie if you’re in any doubt. He runs the country as if he’s head of a mafia family demanding people recognise his absolute authority. Again missing the point that those with absolute authorities very rarely have to tell people of it, especially while arguing with reporters. What is clear from watching these reality shows he’s currently staring in is that he’s not used to people challenging him and he can’t deal with it when they do, especially when god forbid a woman does it. The man manages to both maintain his composure and have a breakdown all in the same moment, repeatedly. A well known Pseudoephedrine dependency, yes that would be a large component of amphetamines, perhaps makes it more explicable but never forgivable, although certainly more entertaining.

But that’s it isn’t it. The man is such unadulterated entertainment and you know I can admit I’ll miss him a little when he’s gone. I don’t get caught up on hating him and ranting about him like many do but let’s be honest he’s not a cause of the worlds ills he’s merely a symptom. The same system that brought us Barack Obama also brought Donald Trump. By getting caught up in this obsession with identity all we do is fail to realise he is there to distract us, he’s the ultimate magician. Don’t look at the hand he’s waving around, it’s the other one down his side you need to keep an eye on. Puff, a cloud of smoke, and out steps his challenger but it’s pretty clear Joe Biden is never going to defeat him in an election. When they go head to head in a debate The Donald is going to annihilate him and no matter how badly he handles this virus nothing will change that. The Democrats seem to be more interested in having one of their own run than anyone who could actual defeat him and enact change. They seem intent on mirroring the British Labour party who prefer to sabotage their own elections than allow an actual left winger to get into power and change things. Get rid of Big D and you’ll change the face, certainly the soundbite but not the politics. Don’t be naive. Without him what are we going to feel self-righteous about then. And who else can hold a room in the most abhorrent and compelling way that keeps us coming back for more and more and more. Speaking of which, I can probably catch the second half if I hurry.

Take Down Thy Fence

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Goodbye my lover…sung an annoying whiny man once. Today marks the end of a relationship nobody knew they cared about until after the Brexit referendum two years ago, or was it three, it might have been three. It all feels like a complete blur politics wise these last few years. Actually as I say that it might have been 2016, which would be four years ago because Trump was 2016 and certainly there were parallels of fear over the two. Social commentators the world over spent hours refusing to admit they had zero understanding of how society thought outside of their own narrow little universes.

We have spent the last three and a half years, let’s settle on that; arguing, hating, blowing up bridges, digging deeper trenches, building barriers and getting nowhere, and we’re in a much worse position than had we just stopped hating each other for five minutes and worked together. Tomorrow our relationship with the EU will be exactly the same as it is today, it’s just we won’t be able to influence decisions. Despite officially leaving it won’t be until the end of the year that we either sign a rushed and half-cooked trade deal or we just crash out with no deal at all. Boris was going to Get Brexit Done but it’s become clearer that nobody except the puppet master Dominic Cummings really has any clue what that actually means.

We leave one trading block to gain the liberty the Americans and Chinese are very quickly going to take away before turning us into the meat within their squabbling sandwich. The only power on the world stage we have is The City of London, the financial centre which will very soon become the epicentre of British efforts at becoming a cold, wet and windy version of the Cayman Islands. There is already talk that the fishing rights to our waters will be sacrificed to allow the financial sector access to European markets. It may have been one of the major issues that was used to sell this power play but it looks delusional in hindsight that unelected bureaucrats like Cummings would stand up for a few fishermen when his mates in the City demanded a return on their investment.

The EU is not perfect and they have feasted on the carcass of countries which were never going to be able to match up to the requirements of membership. It was a great model; get them in and when they can’t keep up, call in the debts and sell them off. The Greeks for example may have brought it upon themselves but they were sold an illusion that would benefit only the minority at the top. Are those in power in the UK taking us out because they want to protect us from that? Or are they in fact the minority at the top who have simply seen an opportunity of even more personal riches in dollars and yuan than the euro can offer?

It doesn’t matter anymore though because tonight at eleven o’clock, or midnight Brussels time ironically, we will be leaving the EU. We have five more years at least of Boris and when the Labour Party lurches back to the centre; an opposition in name only. What comes next is anyone’s guess but before anything happens we all need to accept that the fight to stay is over for now. It is only in this acceptance that people will be able to make any genuine productive moves in the future. We also need to accept that this is not a black and white argument, that there are actual genuine benefits from leaving the EU. There may not be many but until we can see that they do exist we’ll never manage to reconnect with the leave voters. Too many barriers to cooperation have developed over these last few years. You may disagree with your neighbour but while that fence gets bigger the only person to benefit is the one selling you new planks of wood, incidentally he’s also the one leaving you both notes about the indiscretions of the other.

When Business Misses The Point

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Another example of people missing the point was raised in the Sunday newspapers today. Interestingly like young people who dream of having an interesting creative arts and sports filled career, this one also involves those in education; the University of Sunderland, which like most universities now operates within the corporate world, has decided to drop it’s humanities courses and rely solely on ‘career focused’ courses. One can assume therefore that they are under the assumption that there can be no career possibilities for those studying sociology, history or politics yet I’m quite sure there continue to be a raft of political positions opening up on a regular basis. Evidently though it seems those who actually want to get into politics are better off studying business or law and never the actual field they plan on moving into. Perhaps as a former politic student myself it would be worth pointing out that all politics courses do is educate you on the vast corruption and immoral behaviour required. Not exactly something to aspire to.

The point though with this move is that people continue to overlook the arts. How many of those involved in business will patronisingly belittle the arts and then wonder why they cannot find any decent artist to run the visual side of their advertising campaigns. Do people not realise that were it not for writers and poets the language they speak would be simplified to uninspiring simplicity, they would never be able to manipulate people into buying or believing new things. How about all those middle-aged balding Chief Executives squeezing into their old band t-shirts and seeing some overly priced tour of their favourite now-geriatric band from their youth. Just imagine if Roger Waters or Robert Plant had decided they should focus on a more sensible career and not become rock stars.

People forget about how much in their life is down to creativity. Everything around us whether it is art, music or ideas has such an affect not always upon our bank balance but certainly on how we enjoy and sense the world around us. Sociology, philosophy and politics create the societies we live in; the arts and music make them comfortable. Even the architects who design those beautiful buildings we’re all so fond of advertising to the tourists who spend money visiting our cities and monuments. It’s endless and just folly to overlook these vital glues that hold everything together. Maybe economics and business studies are the pragmatic drivers although thats a debatable concept, without some inspiration though even they would lack the creativity they require to push themselves forward. Like creates like after all, but in this case the first like seems to be born in an ever shrinking and ever under appreciated part of society. One which at this rate will disappear into the forgotten reams of the new grey, permanent growth of our future dystopian world.