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Going out at 8pm???  A couple of beers these days and I'm ready for home by 10 and asleep by 10.30

Used to work with the Harriers and the original GR3s were retired in the early 1990's when the Harrier II GR5 arrived and took over. The GR5's had a few probs (couldn't drop bombs if I remember rightly without the wings breaking, or so the techies used to say) and soon got upgraded to GR7's.

In the mid naughties they were upgraded to GR9's before getting the treasury axe prematurely in 2010, which also sadly killed off the Fleet Air Arm strike force who were using RAF airframes as there old sea harriers really were a bit long in the tooth.

Apparently we sold off the Airframes to the USMC who are breaking them up for parts to for their AV8B force  

The Tonkas though to be fair have had a pretty spectacular and long career and must have been involved in more operations over more years than any other RAF aircraft. The first batch were getting retired from service from expired airframe hours while the last batch were still coming off the production lines! 

They are a fabulous (and noisy) aircraft though, but will be sad when they do go.

Top gun tanker driver Richardson, breathing in and trying to look thin

Yup was gutted by the lack of F35, which was the main reason we went to Farnborough

I think airshows are a bit dull in comparison to years gone by. You see fewer and fewer fast jets, and agree you can feel the lack of major American presence. It's still nice to see the vintage fleet though, and anything with a Merlin engine is a winner 

As an ex RAF bod, when I joined up in 87, we still had Lightening's, Phantoms, Tornado GR1s and the new shiny ADV, Vulcans, and Falklands era Harrier GR3's. Plus a multitude of bases and overseas postings. Airshows and Base open days used to be amazing and very noisy!

Then the cold war officially ended and the military has downsized continually now to it's current token force strength, with some terrible decisions (IMHO), such as scrapping the Harrier fleet, scrapping the Nimrod fleet and replacement, and giving us 2 carriers we can't afford to use and haven't got any planes for

Whoops, sliding into a rahhh, so better check myself 

Would you believe it, actually had someone trying to catch us out again 

So bad new is these ropey Charity Magazine scams are alive and well.

Latest one: Child Protection UK Ltd (company number 5346299)

Very polite and professional young lady asking for me. Confirming that the recent campaign of childrens education books I was interested in participating in has been a great success and do I have a school in particular I would like to send some books to.

Here we go again, pretty much the same patter I had about 5 or 6 years ago, looks like nothing has changed! Keep her talking get the company number, company name, get googling. As expected lots of forum results of people worried about being scammed and chased for money.

Keeping it all nice and polite, express a little confusion over previous contact as I can't remember. But we spoke to you back in September and you expressed an interest.

Really? I don't remember. "Well it was on Sep 12th at 10.32". Ahh fantastic, in that case can you send me a recording of the call you made?

"Well you haven't made a commitment, this is just to inform you of the campaign..." back peddle back peddle...

So I wont be receiving an invoice then will I?

Then some friendly banter that we are fully aware of charity mag scams, obviously profuse denial that they are the same, and shock and horror that this practice goes on, making it harder for reputable companies to succeed.... yawn, even the same rebuffs from 5 or 6 years ago, must be using the same script

Allegedly I'm off the contact list, time will tell. No doubt we'll get an invoice, in which case I shall publish it on the thread 

So it seems the McDonald's marketing machine has decided a new approach to try and stem the tide of falling worldwide sales and recent controversy about low staff wages.

In the USA, it has been running a new TV commercial based around roadside signs, tugging at heartstrings as they display different messages, particularly in support of different tragedies, or local events.

Unfortunately it seems to have sparked a bit of a social media backlash 

So what do you think, good old fashioned sentimental marketing or marketing fail?

update - update - <video has now been pulled by McDonalds>

Leading on from the FSB's report that the majority of businesses are poised for growth this year, Startup Britain and the Centre for Entrepreneurs think tank has confirmed 2014 was a record breaking year for new startups.

581,173 businesses were registered with Companies House, beating the previous record of 526,446 businesses recorded in 2013, and 484,224 in 2012. 

Top performers on the entrepreneurial map according to post code include Greater London with 184,671 businesses registered, spearheading entrepreneurial growth in Britain, followed by Birmingham with 18,337 and Manchester with 13,054. A clear upward trend in the number of businesses starting up outside of London is positive news for the health of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Britain.

“Starting a business is easier, quicker and cheaper than ever thanks to new technology,” said serial entrepreneur Luke Johnson, Chairman of the Centre for Entrepreneurs.

“Entrepreneurs have higher profiles than in the past and are seen as role models. Traditional jobs for life have largely disappeared, as have occupational pensions.”

Startup Britain Report

Below is startup hotspot map for the last 12 months.

No surprises on the top 3 cities, but good to see a nice spread of new businesses across the UK.

Be interesting to see how long this growth curve continues. Be also nice to see a breakdown of lifestyle businesses, growing businesses and those that fold after 12 months.

But overall the picture seems promising, doesn't it? 

Sometimes you suddenly realise what social media was invented for. Especially when Brits take to the twitter waves in true British style to ridicule the American Fox News muppet who has clearly never been to the UK.

Steve Emerson, Fox News Terrorism Expert/Pundit/Clown claimed:

"In Britain, it's not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don't go in...

...Parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police that actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn't dress according to Muslim, religious Muslim attire," he proclaimed, without giving examples. 

Full story on The Telegraph website

Some of the tweets have been great  Here's my favourites

I think for a new business one of the key things is expectation versus budget.

The bigger the budget, the more realistic the expectation and reality of leads being generated. 

As someone else has already remarked, your site looks pretty slick, so you look professional. Having a good landing page is key to generating leads. Even offline marketing now is still dependent on some form of online presence as savvy consumers perform their own due diligence.

A well optimised site is a vital starting place, something we didn't look at back in 2005 and retrospectively bolted on SEO as a post activity, something you can no longer get away with.

A short cut to generating leads for us was PPC, and turned out to be a highly effective form of marketing. It either works or it doesn't. You can make changes to a campaign and see almost instantly if it has worked or made things worse. You can set and work out exactly the cost you are prepared to pay for a lead or conversion.

In this new Google rules the world, PPC has arguably become even more important, particularly for new businesses. You can see which keywords and phrases are the most profitable for you and then concentrate SEO resource to try and win these organically if possible.

Then there is the brave new world of social media. Keep up the approach you are using. The human voice, become known across multiple communities, forums, google plus etc as the go to guy. Help in discussions, share opinions, but whenever a relevant discussion/debate to your industry arises, rise above self promotion like everyone else and let your opinion and expertise from debate soft sell you.

From there people will naturally start to refer to you as you will stand out. Not a quick fix, that's what PPC is for, but curating a positive and genuine online persona will stand the test of time, absorbing occasional bumps in the road which will naturally happen.

Best of luck 

Fantastic! Made me smile, especially as I visualised the slow reacting laptop  If it was me, it would start downloading Microsoft updates, hang, bluescreen then explode in a puff of smoke.

Welcome aboard Bert