Business Plans ...

Some years ago, in times of plenty, a government scheme to promote entrepreneurial activity in the rather unentrepreneurial region of England which is the post-industrial North- East, sub-contracted to a huge bureaucratic entity composed of the great and the good, and with an inspired strapline acknowledging the key to enterprise ... Passionate About ... passion being the spark sadly missing from the process, which was typically reductionist .... the trap of mistaking the word for the thing described perhaps ... anyway ... a small social enterprise deludly attempting to redesign public services as if the customer was important (many of them having evolved to meet the needs of the folks working in them, not least the rather over endowed tiers of management ... promoted politically as a way to maintain a high wage economy ... a supported employment scheme in effect) ... found itself helping would-be entrepreneurs by encouraging them and knocking out business plans at £1k a time ... of course other businesses soon spotted the scheme and it became discredited ... but in the meantime we learned about business plans and met some interesting folks, some of whom are running their businesses to this day, though thanks not to the plan or our encouragement, but to their own confidence and good luck ...

All of which colourful context leads to the revelation that most business plans bear no resemblance to what happens and that banks and sensible advisors often reject the plans of  businesses which turn out to be very successful ... and vice versa ...

So, the two parallel projects in Stanhope will require business plans from someone who has experience in producing plausible versions, whilst filing them under F for fiction ... which is not to say that business acumen is unnecessary ... on the contrary ... and this is where modesty and teamwork come in handy ...

Meanwhile a daughter arrives through Spring snow with faithful collie ... fostering children and describing the dilemmas facing the social workers, beset by budget pressures, family attachment, children's safety ... who would do that job? Fewer and fewer folks is the answer ...

Later, a discussion with neighbour on the need for new models of social care ...  let's see how things pan out with the council tomorrow ...