Record visitors at the ROG

Pleased to report that the Museum attracted 16,000 visitors in one day just at the Royal Observatory last weekend - the previous record being somewhere nearer 10,000 mark I think. Whilst the majority of people come to stand on the meridian line, the International Year of Astronomy, new planetarium shows and the Harrison/Flamsteed exhibitions all draw the crowds when conditions are right. Credit to the Gallery staff who manage to keep things running when there's that many people coming through what is decidedly not a large area!

Update: The exact recorded figure was 16,308. Total visitor figures across all the sites last week were up 23% from this time last year.

Music for the evening

Over the past couple of weeks there've been a number of occasions where I have been separated from my computer, and consequently my music collection (although I have a small mp3 player on my phone, an ipod it is not), so I thought I'd give this new-fangled program I'd heard about called Spotify - and it's actually rather good. Its interface is simple enough for my parents to figure out how to install and use it, and the selection of songs you can play on it is good and getting wider all the time (I found it quite useful for searching for "Cars" by Gary Numan - isn't it so frustrating when you have a song in your head but can't place the track?).

Of course, once upon a time I had the time and interest to be up with these sorts of things, but sadly I reckon I'm probably talking about something that everybody already knows about. No worry, the news today tells me that Spotify have just launched an app for the iPhone. So maybe that's news to you?

A thought on "local" banking for local businesses

On the drive back to Greenwich this evening, I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 (it happens occasionally when I fancy a change from Pendulum and Feeder) about how you might go about setting up your own bank. It raised a number of interesting challenges and ideas about conventional (and unconventional) banking and the ways in which various bright sparks have reacted to the banking crisis.

I shan't discuss the full ins and outs of it, but one item that cropped up was Essex County Council's scheme to offer temporary support to local small businesses (in conjunction with Santander) in the form of overdraft facilities and loans. The representative from the council explained that local businesses needed cash to support themselves through the recession, the council had a considerable amount of cash raised through day to day business and that safeguarding local businesses was a priority (I guess their logic goes something along the lines of "less business=fewer jobs= fewer employees= less revenue for us"), so the idea of creating access to cash where normal banks were unwilling was put into action.

It sounded like a simple and effective way of ensuring that small, strong local businesses stay open through the recession. 87% of Greenwich's businesses employ fewer than 10 people, so you would assume that helping these small local enterprises would be a priority for the council to ensure that local businesses can survive until the recession is over.

On the contrary, a quick visit to the Greenwich Council Business page greets me with the headline: "Planning for emergencies: Is your workplace ready for an emergency? Find out how planning could help minimise the risk of disruption." Within this article is a great number of noble words on how to draw up strategies for your business should civil disorder or those pesky terrorists get in the way of trading in the normal way, but unfortunately it doesn't have any guidance on what to do if you wake up one morning and find your customers have gone. Or if your bank is sending you vaguely threatening correspondence demanding all of its money back in full within a short period of time. (Or, oddly enough, what to do if your workforce is struck down with pandemic flu).

Having said that, it seems that an action plan "concentrating on the "must do" rather than "nice to do" activities of your business" may help avert you from catastrophe. But ONLY if you test your plan, as it sagely notes that "An untested emergency plan is A RECIPE FOR DISASTER!!!" (...I might have taken some artistic licence with the caps).

I think the point that I'm attempting to make with this gentle ribbing is that is likely to take more than doling out common sense to reduce the risk of business failure when times are hard. It takes swift and decisive action and a commitment to ensuring that all available action can be taken to try and encourage small businesses to flourish. I hope that if I ever get the chance offer that assistance on the council that I am able to offer more than just words.

Just a quick one...

Once again, my apologies for the lack of posting, I promise I'm doing my best to research some meaty topics for presentation and discussion. Work and home seem to be doing their best to conspire against me at the moment... still, at least things are busy!

In the meantime, I'll just briefly mention a couple of things. The first is AM Gareth Bacon's residents' survey of the Olympics in Greenwich. I shall be very interested to see the results of the survey and find out what people think - though in my (small) experience of conducting surveys it will likely only be those with the strongest opinions who will respond. For my part, as I might have already mentioned a while ago, I support holding the Equestrian events in Greenwich Park - with the caveat that care and detailed planning ensure that disruption throughout the Games is minimised.

On the other hand, I do recongnise a lot of the concerns of those who strongly oppose the park events (and to a seemingly lesser extent the shooting events on Woolwich common). It's just that having balanced the positives against the negatives, it is my considered opinion that the benefits of raising the profile of the borough, bringing new faces into the area and being able to show the world the beauty of our heritage outweigh concerns about legacies, congestion and so on.

For a full rundown of the arguments for and against, I recommend the following:

Seb Coe puts the case for the events in this article.

Nogoe2012 provides detailed opinion on why the events should not be held in the park here.

Secondly, the use of public transport in Greenwich, or rather the surveying of it. The Council are currently running a poll on their website which aims to find out more about peoples' transport habits in the borough. Thing is, the third party polling software they're using doesn't seem to be displaying the results very helpfully. Which is quite amusing given how easy it is to set up free polls on tools like Blogger and Facebook, or even just embedding a freeware tool onto your own website. I wonder how much of our money a year the council pays Vovici? To be charitable I'm sure it's a minor glitch, but does it really make financial sense to outsource such small widgets?

We apologise for the interruption...

Events have conspired against me these last 3 weeks or so to prevent me from posting - work, festivals and latterly illness.

Doc reckons "I might have swine flu, but probably not, but take some Tamiflu anyway". I have to say I was recovering quite nicely til I took the medicine - now it's made me feel sick, although apparently that will pass. In the meantime that means no going out, no work, no seeing people for the next 5 days. Brilliant.