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I hate the ONS - the Office for National Statistics
I kid you not, they have written to me every month for the last 12 years since we started this business, asking for various bits of nonsensical information about staff and turnover. It's my fault for replying to them the first time they wrote, and in reality "asking" is a polite way of describing their various legally threatening demands for information.
Getting the message
Government waste drives me mad - you would have thought that maybe by the 70th letter they would have realised that I wasn't answering. And the reason I don't answer? Well if you run a small business you will know that every 2 or 3 years the Government also kindly sends a nasty VAT man to your office to try and trick you into paying more tax and digging around getting all the useless information that the ONS is busy asking for on a monthly basis.
I'm convinced my petty refusal to answer will help the VAT man and the ONS talk to each other and do some proper joined up Government thinking!
Changing perspectives
Does that all sound a bit bitter? Probably.
It's a wet and depressing start to the year. I just turned 43 and I'm feeling old. Everything creaks. I was over taken running round Hyde Park this morning by someone who looked like my dad; and the beard I grew over Christmas made the kids call me Papa Noel. My mid-life crisis isn't helped by moving our company into great new offices where we're surrounded by all these trendy young businesses. We have a communal café where the average age is mid-twenties and there doesn't seem to be any concept of elders or betters...
I take a small bit of comfort from some data I read over the weekend, from those useful folk at the ONS surprisingly. We're not only living longer but we're working longer as well. 43 is the new 33. I'm not actually that old; just coincidentally surrounded by some exceptionally young businesses.
A bit of cod-liver oil and a year's supply of Grecian 2000 and I'll feel as right as rain...
Ben Black
