Could Oxford declare UDI?

Back at last!

I'm out of the land of year-end accounts and tax comps, I've waved goodbye to my auditors and I'm gazing out of the window at what I confidently expected to be glorious sunshine. I mean we've had that all week with me too busy to enjoy it, so why wouldn't it be sunny now?

Practical application of Murphy's Law, I guess. If the rain wasn't enough to shatter the idyll, the Delice de France lorry which has just parked outside my office, with its rattly engine reaching cacophonous proportions, is shattering most other things.

No doubt the neighbours will blame Blenheim, but this is really nothing to do with us. I suspect some online database for sociopathic lorry drivers has listed this end of Woodstock as a great place to park a lorry while running the engine.... Which does get me thinking - I can actually think of several places where I would quite like to place such a lorry myself.

Last week, we were privileged to join the celebrations of some of Oxfordshire's best businesses at the Oxford Business Awards. While it is by definition a narrow segment of local businesses (businesses in decline not tending to win awards) it was a truly uplifting experience. The local economy as far as I can tell was very quick to "rightsize" itself when recession started to bite and has then confidently motored on. There is a slightly unreal feel to the local economy at the moment. Looked at on a micro level, it is difficult at present to find any obvious problems in the businesses with which we deal. The local economy seems quite vibrant (and this is not simply the consequence of She Who Must Be Obeyed's single handed campaign to drive up GDP). There is less transactional activity out there (acquisitions, etc) but most businesses we see are trading comfortably.

Yet how can that be? As a nation, we are toying with bankruptcy with unheard-of debt levels. £2.2 trillion anyone? That is just what the government thinks too. The OECD thinks it could be 50% worse. Even more scary, neither figure factors in the costs of:

• unfunded pension liabilities (not just the lovely public sector final salary schemes but everyone's state pension)
• all our liabilities under private finance initiatives
• nuclear decommissioning and (my personal favourite)
• the impact of demographic shifts - our population is aging meaning less tax payers and more pensioners

Does national debt matter to us as individuals and businesses? Well, last year 15p of our income tax went on interest payments alone....

Wednesday was Cost of Government Day - each of us has worked from 1 January until Wednesday to pay for the government's spending programme. Will we make it to the summer holidays next year?

We all have children here; indeed we employ a lot of young students here. I'm only 40 and yet I already know that the burden of this debt will outlast my working life. So in that context, Oxford businesses cannot really be in a bubble of immunity unless it can radically outperform the rest of the UK economy - at the expense of the rest of the UK economy I suspect.

Looking around me at the Oxford Business Awards last week, I feel like having a sneaky bet on them doing just that. There is a lot of entrepreneurial and intellectual power here, combined with a lot of long term wealth - especially at the universities. We are well positioned geograpically and, on the basis of what I saw last week, we possess a lot of belief in the future. If I have one conviction, it is that there is nowhere else I would rather be for the next few years.

Have a great weekend (and pray for more sunshine).

PS Yes, we saw Famous, Rich and Homeless on Wednesday. I would like to claim that the whole thing was a devilish plot by Lord Blandford, Love Productions and the BBC to ensure maximum publicity for a very moving, important and deserving cause. But I can't. However, I AM grateful that this will be the end result of his behaviour.

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Triathlon time

Exceedingly wet triathlon! I think I missed my target time by one minute, but I am sure our wave started late so fingers crossed for the official time. Which I sadly do not have yet as the IT gremlin is working hard here at Blenheim today...

Even in the rain, people's spirits were buoyant. The group of people who do triathlon are such a lovely bunch. Full of good wishes, encouragement and bonhomie, they are an amazing group!

Sadly, Roger whupped me by nearly 20 minutes... There's always next time!

Brilliant news! As I write this, I get my official time. 1 hour 59 minutes! I am so pleased!

Good luck to all tomorrow's competitors, especially my mentor Troels and Amber, daughter of our Head of Ops, in her first event.

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Stepping up to my mark

This is as close to live blogging as I'll ever get. I'm sat in the Operations Room at Blenheim Palace. My triathlon starts at 11:40. It is raining quite hard and has been for some time.

My bike and wet suit is, well, wet. That'll be pleasant to put on!

I've been here from 8am due to phone problems (now sorted - thank you Giles at Connect 2!). But many of our team have been in since 5am. Fed with bacon sandwiches, they have been hard at work in the rain, preparing for a massive influx of visitors, participants and pure race spectators. We have a wonderful team this year; many very local people, many of those are younger relatives of current Blenheim staff.

What is particularly pleasing is how many of our staff have stepped up to take on new responsibilities. No wonder our customer satisfaction scores are so strong this year!

When people step up to the mark, it makes life so much easier all around.

I am now hanging on for Roger, our property director, who will beat me in today's race (my latest excuse in advance is that I would clearly be mad to cycle flat out in these conditions!). Soon it will be time to step up to my mark too, alongside nearly 6,000 others this weekend. Why do people do this voluntarily?!

I'll let you know how we get on. Even over the course of this blog, my nerve levels are getting worse. I'll be a nervous wreck by the time the start klaxon sounds!

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That's why I suddenly quite like Mondays

What on earth possessed me to enter another @+;%£ triathlon?

I am thoroughly depressed, staring out of my office window at the rain drops which are forecast to accompany me through the whole race. Arguably this will not make a great difference to the lake swim (one piece of unexpected good news is that the lake is a record-breaking 22 degrees centigrade! Wonderful, I am now going to fry in my thermally efficient wet suit).

The weather makes a mockery of my latest acquisition - a magic triathlon quick drying top - if it dries in this weather it will have merited its price tag.

My real fear is now the bike ride; with the rain across our narrow estate roads, one or two fast corners may well become treacherous.

Can you tell that I am obsessed by this thing?

Anyway, my auditors have pretty much left site but also left me with a shopping list of documents needed. Specifically all the documents that a competent FD would have written through the year (or at worst the week before the auditors arrived) but somehow never got around to because he was blogging instead.

My computer has started misbehaving, clearly in league with my newly arrived Sky HD box (which has the worst standard definition images I have ever seen).

Monday cannot come quickly enough.

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It's about how well you finish

Sorry for skipping a couple of postings. For once, I really am beset by trials and tribulations and since no-one actually reads this I figured it wouldn't matter if I kept quiet.

It turns out that some people actually do read this so now I feel even more beset by trials.

I have a very nice group of auditors in at the moment (I mean it, like many FDs I started off with audit training - with KPMG up in Liverpool). Bizarrely in the world of accountancy, they are still called that.

Q: Why did the auditor cross the road?
A: Because he crossed it last year.

Boom boom.

Another favourite but I always use this against myself

Q: What does an accountant use as a contraceptive?
A: His personality

This is my frantic time of the year. The summer trustees' meeting looms large. I have endless sets of accounts to prepare with the aid of my trusty abacus as well as a bunch of tax comps. I have to drag long forgotten concepts from the depths of my soul (consolidation of unit trusts anyone?). So this would be the time of year when you wouldn't want commercial problems, or any big events or in fact anything else to happen at all.

Which rather begs the question of why I am competing in the Blenheim Triathlon this Saturday.

No, I haven't a clue either. Dragged along kicking and screaming by my training conscience (his name is Troels Henrikssen), we enjoyed a great final lake practice in scorching sunshine in North Oxford. No-one really wanted to get out, it was that nice. I even swam in a (moderately) straight line. Nothing can stop me - with the possible exception of the heavy rain now forecast for Saturday.

As previously mentioned, we have a fair contingent representing Blenheim Palace in the competition. I was amused to see an email from John (our CEO) explaining to a trustee that he was not competing as he was needed to run the event on the day! Don't worry, John, I'll cover for you next year!

We are trialling a new "Park then Pay" arrangement for this event - something our site is not well set up to do but is now essential for this event as a lot of the traffic comes in one mad early rush. If you do experience it, please let me know what you think.

We're wishing all competitors a great race, with the exception of Roger File my training partner (and our property director) who I wish to finish only a respectably small number of minutes ahead of me.

My main strategy for achieving this relatively modest goal is to get out of the water and up to transition ahead of him. Then I'll remove the handily-designed quick release front wheel from his bicycle.....

Just kidding, Roger. What I like about triathlon is that because you go off in waves 20 minutes apart, no-one watching has a clue what my time is. All I have to do is finish strongly and everyone will think I have posted a great time!

Which is roughly the way I approach these wretched accounts and the trustees' meeting. I am glad they cannot all see me now. I will sleep well when both things are over!

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