A collection of short stories and journalistic commentaries depicting my simple life
and how I fit in with the modern day universe of our times

THE R-WORD



In any of my more idle moments – of which there are quite many – I often find myself imagining what an editorial briefing at a National tabloid must be like…

“Okay we’re putting the McCann story on page 6 today. I’ve pencilled it in for page 9 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and then page 4 at the weekend. We’ve found a bloke who once sold Gerry a Kebab, so we should get at least 5 days out of that.

Now I’m in two minds whether to put Amy Winehouse before or after Britney. Amy’s had a tattoo coloured in, but Britney’s had a haircut. What do you think?

And who’s doing the ‘Asylum seekers are sponging scumbags and they’re taking all our jobs’ story today? We’ve got a nice photo of an Albanian with two jobs and no road tax on his Lada.

And how about running that story on Simon Cowell’s rapidly greying hair, rising waist-line and failing botox?

I think we’ll go with ‘House prices are about to crash again’ story today. We’ll save ‘Young people can’t get on to the property ladder’ until tomorrow.

The good news is we’ve got another picture of Kylie looking a bit thin, so we can run the ‘Is she ill again story’ ... again.

Have Jordan’s tits exploded yet? Doesn’t really matter, we’ll run a story on them anyway on page 16 alongside the woman who used to be fat and now she’s lost weight and her husband.

What? … What do you mean it’s exactly the same as last Monday’s paper? And your point is?”

Honestly, I really don’t think this is too much of an exaggeration. The tabloids very often latch on to a series of characters and themes and then just run them completely into the ground. It’s lazy and it’s easy, but let’s be honest… if they weren’t selling the papers, they’d have to come up with something else but until that day...

And just recently they’ve latched on to a ‘relatively new’ theme which they’ve been denied for several years recently…

The threat of another recession!

Now this is often great news for any tabloid editor. It presents him with endless opportunities and new angles for bad news stories. And boy, do the tabloids love bad news. It doesn’t matter that there isn’t actually a recession here yet. Just the threat of the next one looming is more than enough to have them thumbing through back issues from the early nineties for ideas on what they can make up next.

And it appears that the tabloid editors aren’t the only ones, 
delighted to have the threat of another recession to ‘work with’.

You see, up until late 2009 we’d had it pretty good for quite a few years. Inflation was low, the economy had been strong and job and business opportunities were quite plentiful.

Good news then, you might think? But not for a significant proportion of the population who have still failed to prosper it isn’t – because up until this current recession, they’ve had no bloody excuse!

For them, the threat of a recession is like a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. With a strong economy, it wasn’t easy to blame anyone else - but with a recession? Well nobody can expect them to do well in a recession, can they? Not much point in even starting anything if there’s going to be a recession is there?

You see, there’s nothing a loser likes more than the threat of any recession! They wallow in it… openly embrace it… totally immerse themselves in it… wearing it like a comfort blanket.

But the bad news for these people, of course, is that there’s no recession here any more, we are coming out of one, and even if there was it’s no excuse for not prospering. I started my current business right at the height of the last recession, and because I just ignored it and got on with it, it was fine. To be honest, I saw no tangible difference between boom times and recession.

For those that do though, I think it’s purely self fulfilling.

If you behave as though your business or enterprise is about to hit tough times, it sure as heck will do, because you’ll cut back on all the activity which makes it grow and flourish.

In even the worst of recessions, the amount of money being spent in the economy only falls by a very small overall percentage. And as an entrepreneur, there’s no reason for this to affect you adversely at all. Only if you let it.

What do I mean by that?

Well, we all need to adapt to changing market conditions. There’s no doubt that some business areas are more vulnerable to an economic downturn than others. But think about this now… while the newspapers are talking about another recession, but there isn’t one…

Is your area particularly vulnerable to recession? How would you need to adapt and change your approach to prosper in those conditions - there’s always a way. And most exciting of all…

Which business areas are actually going to thrive and prosper because of a recession… not in spite of it? All change… both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ brings opportunity with it. And some of the biggest fortunes in history have been made in economically challenging times. There’s always some serious money to be picked up… 

It’s just not always to be found in the same place! And you just need to figure out where it’s going next, and position yourself in front of the flow to become the next big news story.




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Its my own fault really, its all about what I see in the world, and how it all translates for me.

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