Twenty Twenty Twenty (Deal or No Deal?)

With all the targets under discussion over in Poland, the number twenty does seem to appear with amazing regularity, as noted in this piece from the FT.

Talking about how to get the message across about global warming, especially now we are officially in a bad recession, the author makes a lot of good points, and there is little that one can disagree with.

Just love the concluding statement .... "The way to mobilise the masses is to recast the argument. Opportunity sells a lot better than do hair shirts."

And from the same publication, an interesting comment on the future of electric cars, or, perhaps the lack of one!

Update:
The deal in Poznan is finally agreed - see the Indy.

Looking through just what has been agreed, I can't really see anything much different to what was 'agreed' before. But it is interesting to note that Ireland has been offered 'concessions' in order to swing a second referendum vote on the Lisbon Treaty in its favour. Hmmm, the Irish get a second chance to vote on it and we still can't have even one?

And the EU deal is not enough, and too watered down, says OxFam.

Update - 15/12/08:
Hmmm. The Poznan 'deal' seems to have rather wound up Caroline Lucas! From today's Guardian letters.

And it looks like the 'deal' isn't going to do much to save the planet's remaining rain forests - reported in eGovMonitor.

Please define 'talent' for me

Talent wanted to compete globally

FT - Shift in climate for responsible companies

UK facing stringent renewables targets

This from the Financial Times (you need to register [free] to read the entire article) suggests that the EU targets that the UK will receive next week are going to be pretty tough to meet.

"officials in Brussels and Whitehall have told the Financial Times that Britain will have to increase its use of renewables as a share of all energy use from about 2 per cent to 13-14 per cent by the end of the next decade."

"Britain has the lowest renewables share of any major EU country: only Malta and Luxembourg have less."

Given that Tony Blair was warned that his agreement to the overall 20% target by 2020 was unachievable, this could get very interesting. "Mr Blair was warned by the former Department of Trade and Industry that the scheme was unachievable and costly, but he overruled ministers."

I wonder what the level of fines the UK is going to have to pay for failing to meet the targets will be?

Fundamentals? Or financial flows?

As oil approaches the $100 per barrel marker, decide for yourself. As reported in the FT.

Not that long ago $80 a barrel was considered damaging for the world economy, yet here we are seeing the $100 barrel around the corner.

And yet some of the big boys are already profiteering. On my journey across the south coast last Sunday I spotted diesel offered at a lowest price of 98.9p/litre, more commonly something like 101.9 to 102.9p/litre, but some Texaco garages had it priced at a staggering 108.9p/litre. I hope the greedy bastards go bust! (Fat chance!)

The sad thing is that it will ALL be at that level before long. And guess who benefits the most? All that extra tax goes straight into the government's coffers. More cash for additional quangos, targets and surveys then?

‘One person, one permit’ emissions plan

From FT.com, on an EU plan to allocate carbon permits on a per capita basis post Kyoto.

It looks like things are going to get very interesting!

Tax and spend, OK. But where's it going and what's the return?

The real battle is over services, not tax

To the author:

Forgive me, but I don't subscribe, so I don't have the benefit of the full article to comment upon. So maybe you have covered this.

Like any businessperson, or indeed any individual managing a budget, my greatest concern is what I get for my expenditure and, In the case of investment, how good the return is.

What appals me is the way government, and its hired but unaccountable mercenaries in the quango sector, can claim results based on expenditure with no measure at all of how well anything has performed in real terms.

As a parent I despair over what the money lavished upon health and education has actually resulted in. As a professional ad man and green advocate my jaw stands agape that entities such as WRAP can claim response rates for recycling as 'good' when they have blown bazzillions of public funds on campaigns that may look nice, tick boxes, meet agendas, etc, but may not actually result in as good, or even a better planet for the money.

My battle is to get this whole sorry mess back on track, for my kids' sake. It will take a long time, at least before any rectifying efforts bear fruit. And for that reason, I doubt any short-term oriented pol who does appreciate this truth will be in the least bit interested or motivated to do so.

They're not the only ones

I wish I had a sub for the FT.

I saw this:

NATIONAL NEWS: Start-up TV a switch-off for venture capitalists
...for a fourth series, its popular Dragon's Den reality format, in which wannabe...Tycoon, starring Peter Jones, a Dragon's Den judge.Production companies are...portrayed in these programmes."Dragon's Den belittles what it takes to be a...
Feb 12 2007, By Emiko Terazono, Financial Times

Having been through the wringer, I can say it's not that much of a turn-on for genuine entrepreneurs with good ideas, either!

I wrote, and the writer wrote backto see what I had to say:

I was sent the intro to your piece and dashed out to buy a copy of the paper, but maybe it was published another day.

However, even the small section I read struck a chord in one who has stood and still stands at the other side of the entrepreneur: business angel/VC relationship. With the dubious added extra benefit of being involved with such reality TV shows as well.

There's a lot of talk in high places these days about encouraging enterprise, especially the social variety.

As with anything, having a great idea is the easy part. Putting together a business plan that makes sense, and a team to execute it just notches up the grief factor to a whole new level. But once you get to funding....

Which is why a lot of people are seduced by such shows. With the added attraction of potential publicity, which any product or service can only gain from having, especially to a nationwide audience, for no more investment than some time, small change and some humiliation.

I thought I was smart, but perhaps I was too smart. I had no intention of some clown getting half my company for the price of their lunch tab at the Ivy, especially when I had no idea what the deal would be before deciding on the spot, and with no idea of their level of commitment. I just wanted profile. Sadly, they saw me coming a mile off. And now I realise my cunning plan would still be on the edit room floor.

So what we have is an endless supply of hapless, televisual 'Christians' being fed into... the Dragon's Den.

Great for ratings. Horrible for enterprise. Most with halfway decent ideas now wouldn't go near such shows (at the British Invention Show we were running away from their reps), and are tarring serious, sensible, decent investors with a very negative brush. And as far as the youth of the country is concerned, being a good businessperson now merely requires one being like Simon Cowell, only without the charm and the interesting lifestyle.

It's a disaster for getting together the key, complementary components that make up a great team to push something into the market and turn a profit.

If I had one critique from my experience of the more reasonable varieties of VC/funder, it is that they still expect things to be laid out for them in a manner they can recognise. Understandable, but there are a lot of creative people out there who are not that savvy with or temperamentally attuned to P&Ls, spreadsheets, forecasts etc. Or suits. It's a shame therefore that there is not more effort to establish a proactive and productive interface between these two disparate character traits, to facilitate the path to mutual reward.

There is more to life than just making money and showing how 'hard' you can be. And in my business experience, it's the guys who are very smart, and very nice as well, who really make things happen.

'A great person (ok, I'm PC-sensitive) makes others feel small. A truly great person makes others feel great'.

I'd rather work with the latter, as I know that if they make me feel great, together we'll make others feel great, and that is a quick route to success... and staying at the top.

I attach here a URL to just one thread of a posting to a show you may or may not have heard of - SKY's The Big Idea - where the subject of DD came up. You may be interested. I just looked and there is a brand new posting about DD. Not very encouraging.