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Wednesday 20 April 2011

Enter the dragon who escaped - with a bit of fun for you,

Do you watch Dragon's Den? Here's a reminder.

I do occasionally, but am not that keen. It's not as absurd as "Lord" Sugar's proving ground for illiterates - which I always see as a humiliating demonstration of the failure of British education - but I've never really taken to it.

Maybe it's the man who looks like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings. Maybe it's the loony values people ascribe to their loopy ideas. Or maybe it's just the sheer nastiness of that women with a face like a boot.

I don't know, but anyhow I had lunch today with Doug Richard who used to be on it, so before we met I looked him up on the internet. He is "economically conservative and socially liberal". I like that.

But I also found something that summed up the complete uselessness and waste perpetrated by governments when they try to help business.

In a report he worked on for the Tories he found the Labour Government had spent £12bn on support schemes for business,with absolutely zero evidence of any results; in fact he unearthed 3,000 schemes run by 2,000 public bodies.

His report was, of course, just a stratagem for the Tories to attack the then government Now that they're in they're pissing away money faster than even the great Bloated McToad did.

No worries, though. At least we have a Minister for Cycling. I wonder, does he cycle to work every day? Does he have staff? If so, why? What the hell do they do all day? Watch porn?

I hope to be doing something with Doug to help small businesses, unless one lunch put him off for life. It has been known to happen.


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