Second, I predict that bankers – who came up with CDOs and the other pieces of financial rocket science that caused the banking crisis in the first place – will find an elegant way around any new regulations. Third, institutional shareholders should be the ones to rein in any excesses, but of course they’ve got their snouts in the same trough. Just as with BA (see below), someone with sufficient clout and independence should be asking: “does this income generating mechanism benefit our customers?” Neither shareholders nor employees deserve rewards if the truthful answer is “um…no, not really.”

The kids aren’t all right

It is a sadness to see youth unemployment rising by the day. Sixteen year-old school leavers who don’t get into the world of work early tend to drift away from it. If they’re still not working or training at eighteen, they’re in serious danger of a life on benefits. It’s similarly bad for graduates. The more marginal degrees are attracting no takers; it’s a waste having graduates filling Sainsbury’s shelves (unless they’re on the graduate trainee scheme). The knock-on effect is unpleasant, too. Pubs and clubs that specialise in the 18-24 age group are experiencing “truly horrendous” trading according to their trade press. Since that same age group is full of printwear fans it’s not a happy thought…

…but there’s a solution

This is a quote from Lord Sugar to a couple of diffident teenaged job seekers on an ITV news feature:

“I understand completely. I had no confidence at all but all it takes is for you to get out of your comfort zone in front of someone important, who doesn’t then think you’re a total muppet and your confidence will grow.”

It worked. Now all we need is time for the million unemployed kids in front of someone important.

Punching their weight?

Saw a recruitment ad for Punch Taverns, which featured the line “come and share in our success".

That would be the same Punch Taverns that's selling off pubs by the barrow load, which at the time of writing has a market valuation of some £780 million but debts of £4.6 billion and which, in the past year, was valued at under £200 million. It would also be the Punch Taverns which is regularly castigated in the pages of the industry’s trade magazines and currently faces a rent strike by some aggrieved tenants who are referring to the company as Publican Enemy No 1. With success like that, who needs failure?

Boxing their weight

The Beatles are back with their boxed set of re-mastered albums and selling them like hot cakes. Lest you be tempted to dig into their lyric banks for inspired printwear messages, be informed that the Beatles take the issues of intellectual property rights most seriously. So if anyone asks for a “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” T-shirt, make sure his name’s McCartney.

BA bah!

Now let me see if I’ve got this right. BA are to charge a reservation fee for their already expensive seats. Not only that, they’re charging it each way. More impressive still, in their wisdom, they have decided that to confirm a particular seat on a long-haul flight should cost twice as much as on a short-haul flight. Why? The ‘work’ involved is identical. Imagine if BT’s standing charges were twice as much “because you phone long distance a lot”. It is nothing short of opportunism and they are clearly doing it because other airlines do. This wide-eyed idealist thinks that, instead of trying to gouge more revenue out of the customers they’ve got, they should be boasting that they don’t charge such extras and so pick up more customers.

Show and tell

The story of Lauren Luke is uplifting. A self-styled “ordinary lass” from South Shields, she is rapidly becoming world famous (and rich) thanks to her online makeup tutorials. Some 56 million visits to her YouTube posting tell their own story. But there’s a broader message: women, especially young women, really trust her brand because they’ve seen live on screen what she achieves. There is a basic truth that people are loyal to those who teach them something they value. They also appreciate someone who tells it like it is, which is the Luke style. There could well be a sales route in this for printwear. Men in particular and women to some extent are often not good at colour co-ordination. Show clients the infinite possibilities and you get them interested and loyal to you as supplier – they perceive a USP they can’t get elsewhere. You might even end up world famous, like Lauren.

Oil’s well

Sheikh Yamani, former head of OPEC is famous for two things: having that humorous name and saying, in relation to the Oil Age, that the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. Deutsche Bank appears to agree with him. The crystal ball gazers in Frankfurt are saying that electric cars are set to have an impact on the demand for oil. However, don’t get too excited. The price will, they say, go back up above $150pb by 2016 and some reduction in capacity will kick in if and when oil companies find Deutsche’s predictions bearing fruit, so they stop going five miles deep for the stuff. Still, it’s a nice thought that one of the biggest variables for business planning will eventually be a plus not a minus. It should also be good news for the supply and price of polyester.

Do you want to know a secret?

Actually, The Secret, a book by Rhonda Byrne. She argues that you can achieve anything by imagining it. While I’m all in favour of a positive mindset, especially when selling, this takes the principle too far. More importantly, if people take this sort of thing seriously and apply it to their working life disappointment, not to mention disastrous results, is the predictable outcome. Apparently quite a number of young educated people have bought the idea. “I don’t need talent, skills, training, preparation, hard work or determination, I’m imagining myself successful.” See? Baloney. Can we therefore have a review of the power of positive thinking? It’s one of the ingredients of success, but not a substitute for the boring hard graft. Most of the elements of the credit crunch – sub-prime lending, bankers buying securitised debt instruments they didn’t understand, giving said instruments a AAA rating, 125% mortgages – can be attributed to overdoing the positive thinking. By contrast, Liverpool Football Club, when in their pomp, used to start a season aiming for 40 points, the tally that avoids relegation. Nothing positive about that, but check out the trophies. When we climb out of the recession we will need more Liverpool thinking and less of the imagination.

The World Cup

It has been estimated that as many as 120 Premier League players could be involved in the finals in South Africa, assuming no big surprises in the play-offs. There’s a fair amount of bragging rights in this and that’s the stuff of selling printwear. There are plenty of Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish fans of Premier League clubs and this would give them some involvement. Sorry, was I rubbing it in?

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