Mike Vickers' Blog

October 27, 2010

Linlithgow Business Association – A Strategy

Filed under: Linlithgow Business Association — derryvickers @ 2:41 pm

I believe that the LBA needs a business strategy to define its raison d’etre.

I suggests the headings to be covered are:

  1. Introduction
    1. Strategy span 2010 – 2020
  2. Business in Linlithgow
    1. Present Day
    2. Position change over last 20 years
  3. Current climate for business development
    1. Impact of Public Service cuts

                                         i.    Manpower

                                       ii.    Capital

  1. Impact to manpower in Linlithgow
  2. Availability to private organisations
    1. Manpower

                                         i.    Skills

                                       ii.    Need for training

  1. Capital
  2. Commercial v Social Enterprise
    1. Difference is where the Profits go
  3. Current Businesses
    1. Size
    2. Type
  4. Map of Current Locations
  5.  Other Plans & Proposal
    1. WL Local Plan
    2. Civic Trust
    3. Climate Challenge
    4. Wallace Lands
  6. Growth Opportunities
    1. Identify

                                         i.    Which type

                                       ii.    Location

  1. Spread of estimates

10. Constraints

  1. Planning Authority
  2. Capital
  3. Community
  4. Environmental Impact

11. The Strategy

I welcome all your comments and particularly where I might start to get the data on existing businesses in the town and surrounding areas.

PS Great to see how Microsoft Word goes over so well to WordPress – so much better than LinkedIn

October 3, 2010

An Evening to Remember

Filed under: Personal — derryvickers @ 8:23 pm

Why do all the best playwrights in the English language come from Ireland?  I can list Richard Sheridan, William Congreve, Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett. To these I could add James Joyce and WB Yeats.  Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule!

Anyway I have been all over Ireland, a country I love but not much in Dublin and one Saturday evening I was in Dublin – I had given an introduction to our practice management system for hearing aid dispenses as a part of a seminar to the Irish Society of Hearing Aid Audiologists and a lovely lady said what was I intending to do that evening and I said I didn’t know, so she said why not go to the Abbey Theatre and I thought that was great idea.  To me the Abbey epitomised the Irish Theatre and my love of Irish plays.  The hotel I was saying at was just round the corner and so I booked up. 

So to my great joy I had an unforgettable evening in the Abbey, in the front row with feet resting on the stage watching the Aristocrats by Brian Friel – one of the greatest modern Irish Dramatist.  The Aristocrats so reminded me of Chekhov but set in Ireland

To follow the evening off, I had a very pleasant day walking all round Dublin passing statues of Mollie Malone and James Joyce.

The Emperor

Filed under: Personal — derryvickers @ 7:51 pm

On Friday we went to see  the RSNO under Stephane Deneve.  The first two pieces were not outstanding but after the interval it was The Emperor with Paul  Lewis as pianist.  He blew the audience away and the RSNO was quite up to it – I am listening to Charles Munch with Claudio Arrau and this sounds no better – but it is from a collection of Munch unissued recordings.

My father never listened much to music but I can distinctly remembering him commenting on the Emperor that Beethoven was cocking a snoop at Napoleon; and watching Lewis play, this remark came back loud and clear – we were in cheap stall seats but we had a full view of him playing and his hands flashed from one end of the key board to the other and back.

I tend to forget that Beethoven wrote very great music.  He appears to have been overtaken as the World’s greatest in the late twentieth century by Mozart and that is probably that the late twentieth audience and mankind as a whole is far less romantic than the nineteenth but his turn is sure to return.

A great concert.

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