Blogs

I've been going through the entries for the BMJ/BMF Young Merchant Achiever Award this week, looking at the submissions, at the achievements and at the testimonials.

The four horsemen of the Apocalypse - aka Chris Smith, Ed Miliband, David Cameron and Eric Pickles - are bestriding the flooded plains. What amounts to a new sea is settling in on the Somerset Levels. There are landslips everywhere. The Tory heartland of the Thames Valley is under two foot of water. The West…

There's a lot to like about social media - Twitter, Facebook etc. There's also a lot not to like - the online abuse of JK Rowling and a radiator salesman who just happens to have the same name as one of the BBC's newest, least experienced, football commentators spring to mind.

There's a bit of a hoo-hah in my local area over some development that has been granted permission with a smaller percentage of 'affordable' housing than was initially thought.

My first reaction was: hey, haven't we heard this before? My second reaction, on realising that yes, we have had something very similar before, was: what the actual (insert expletive of choice here)?

Way back in the mists of time, before t'internet took over our lives, when 'blog' was just a funny-sounding word, I wrote an Editor's Comment about the fact that Travis Perkins, then the country's 3rd largest builders merchant, had resigned from its own industry organisation.

A lot of words have been printed about the Green Deal and ECO schemes. Many of them derogatory (and many of those in this very blog).

Controlling the volume and flow of water to reduce the risk of flooding has for a long time been the main focus of surface water management. By comparison, the need to treat pollutants in surface water has been given a lesser priority.

It's impossible not to notice that the annual campaign to get us to spend more than we should in the shops over the holiday season is well under way. The mince pie mountains and the piles of puddings (of the Christmas variety) are well in evidence.

Although we are only just entering the start of November, the Christmas hard sell has started in the supermarkets-Mince pie anyone? Is there anything in a similar vein that might be appropriate for Builders Merchants, time for a bit of a deep think maybe?