The Glass Box

The Sky is Falling! Don't Worry About It

Written by Alex Barrett Saturday, 12 May 2012 12:16

One of the oddest things about this whole unfolding tragedy that is quite likely to lead to the splintering of the Eurozone is the lack of any coherent exit strategy. The impending crisis was first ringing alarm bells in 2009, as the Dubai sovereign debt fund failed, bringing Greece into the spotlight as a similarly unsustainable economy.

In January 2010 the phrase "PIGS" representing the indebted Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain became a media catchphrase as having greater debt levels than they could possibly service given the economic conditions after the financial crash of 2007.

Like the big banks though, governments are too big to fail it seems. Rather than accept that a situation is unsustainable and cannot continue, immense efforts have gone into preserving the prevailing status quo that is the global monetary system.

What Micro Business Owners Can Learn From Politicians

Written by Alex Barrett Saturday, 05 May 2012 16:59

The last week’s media has, unsurprisingly, been dominated by politics and the local elections but most significant perhaps was the lack of interest in the whole scene. Here in Wick fewer than one in three of those eligible to vote actually made the effort to do so.

It is not unusual for council elections to have low turnout and Wick is not remarkable in having such a poor level of engagement between the politicians and the electorate. Yet we all feel that we have a right to commentate and complain about the activities undertaken by our elected representatives.

You may have seen the 1985 remake of Brewster’s Millions where Richard Pryor plays the part of the potential beneficiary Montague and spends a fortune running a campaign as New York Mayor under the ticket of None of The Above.

The campaign, in the movie, becomes hugely popular and results in a re-run of the election with the original candidates barred from running for the coveted role.

If there were a box on the ballot paper where voters could officially register their dissatisfaction with all of the candidates would the turnout at elections would increase dramatically?

In reality, I doubt it.

Big Government or Micro Business - We Are All Paddling Upstream

Written by Alex Barrett Saturday, 28 April 2012 10:58

It has been quite a difficult week for the British Government and the headlines have not really covered the half of it.

The domination of the media navel gazing in the Leveson Inquiry, what with Jeremy Hunt and both James and Rupert Murdoch providing plenty of opportunity for headlines has served to hide some issues that matter a lot more to business owners.

On Tuesday for example, the GEDI report was published. A bunch of eminent academics released “Entrepreneurial Profile of the UK in the Light of the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index”.

Like all statistical analyses the report looks at historical data, which in this case dates back to mid 2010 as the latest period of valid data for all the countries monitored.

Micro Business Works Better When It Thinks That Way

Written by Alex Barrett Saturday, 21 April 2012 18:11

The first shipments of the much talked about Raspberry Pi are going to be in eager programmers hands very soon now. I was considering purchasing one myself, particularly with the attractive price of under £30. Sadly though, it turns out that I would have to buy a television in order to use it. So, it looks as though I’ll be a late adopter of this particular innovation.

Actually, thinking about that, it could be a way to use an old analogue television (no longer useful for watching TV). I expect I could pick up a TV at a charity shop for pennies.

When I first became interested in computing in the late 1970s technology was very different to what we take for granted today and there is a nostalgic part of me that remembers the hands on tinkering and the sense of achievement from some very elemental programming of a simple device to draw a line on a screen.