Life leads us down a winding path on occasion. I was never the most social of animals, us Norfolk folk are renowned for our reticence. However I did not really expect I would end up quite so isolated behind this screen.
Our business has been very demanding and entirely isolated me from the world at large. I am one of many folk that work from home. Not in the modern fashionable sense of the phrase, here at KB we really WORK. It’s long hours, hard, heavy and responsible work that’s thankfully relentless. It might well appear a simple task from the outside but trust me it’s NOT!
The down side of working from home is the fact I live at work. That means there is never a moment to switch off. My lovely Catherine typically works from 9am until 8pm and a lot of hours at weekends too. We have been married nearly 30 years now and apart from travelling for work have never had a night away from home. Last autumn we took a day off and went for a drive and ended up at the pub. That’s the first day out in years. What a catch I was!
I chose this path but honestly I did not realise it would be so all consuming and costly on a personal level. For sure we made a few bob but I have no pension to fall back on so we will have to work until the last and then hope our beloved Richard and Sarah can support us because sure as shit stinks the government won’t be there for us.
Most days I feel very out of it, stuck behind this fugging screen. I almost never get to see anyone and the minute I step away something always seems to happen that pulls me back. If I do go out for a bit there is always a steaming pile to clear up when I get back. So, the only social contact I get is when one of my four lovely mates come here to see me. That’s always a red letter day for me and lifts my mood for days. However most of the time I just want to go and crawl into a hole.
In this miserable day and age I fear I am not alone in feeling this way. In the words of the wonderful late Bob Hoskins “It’s good to talk” or, in my case write. To that end I feel obligated to get out and do my little bit for others that just might be in the same boat.
For several years now I have been supporting the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride who have to date raised over $30 million USD for schemes supporting mens mental health. Suicide is a huge killer of men, particularly younger ones. Male suicide if THREE HUNDRED PERCENT above that of women.
I have been really thrilled to be able to partake in this wonderful event even though my lack of social skills mean it’s not the jamboree I might aspire too. However the one thing that is REALLY exciting to me is just how wonderful some of my lovely supporters are. I have received lots of sponsorship for the ride from folk I barely know and most likely have never met. The generosity of some of you is simply amazing and I humbly offer my thanks to ya’ll.
I won’t name individuals, that would be crass. Enough to say I salute you gentle-folk for supporting your fellow man in such a generous way despite all the doom and gloom out there. For me it’s just wonderful to be a part of something that get’s me out of the house for a day. Our little jaunt around Bury St Edmunds last Sunday has so far raised over £15,000. Donations are still welcome up until 5 June so please visit my fundraising page, i’m so close to my goal of a lowly £400, PLEASE DIG DEEP! www.gentlemansride.com/fundraiser/GrahamPotter148253
To have a brief look around the ride and see what the local TV news had to say…
I don’t get out much but from what little I do see, in some parts I understand times are hard. I do know we are all being f****d by our immoral, corrupt and feckless leaders. In fact let me correct that, they are no leaders at all are they? So, it’s good to know there are some folk who are doing their bit to help out those most in need.
One aspect of modern society that leads me down a dark path of depression is the widespread proliferation of misandry (look it up) in the media in all it’s shades. I know the ladies got a rough deal in the past from some quarters. I also know a lot of other folk in society got the shitty end of the stick. Seems to me that’s human nature, it’s not right, but it’s our nature and there is not much hope for our race. As agent Smith so eloquently put it…..
“Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for you to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern… a virus
So, hoping you all went and looked up the meaning of that M… word can anyone tell me why we don’t hear it more often? I would like to hear from anyone who actually knew what it meant or has heard it in common parlance. My thought is this…. In todays PC, puritan, self righteous poor old me, ‘my life is so hard‘ culture where we cannot speak our minds and everyone is a delicate and beautiful snowflake and harsh or true words leave folk reaching for a bottle of pills or an automatic rifle I think the act of taking offence has become the de-facto position for many. It appears to me many loud mouth people are actively looking for a chance to be offended which gives a great opportunity to be the object of others sympathies. Being a victim can bring a moment of fame, and quite likely a little fortune to boot.
For sure a lot of folk have been hard done to and we have all suffered at the hands of our elected dictators and many others. So, in the interest of balance can I ask if, at this moment in time there is a more reviled section of society than the middle aged, overweight, smoking, beer drinking, petrol car driving, heterosexual, badly dresses English white man? Anyone listened to BBC radio 4’s Woman’s Hour recently?
Life is getting tough for many folk just now and us pudgy old (older) blokes need all the help we can get. I recon we have got a lot on our plates just now and nobody is going to protect our so called rights, regardless which of those is most important to you.
In the interest of communal responsibility and altruism I need all my good friends and loyal readers to help me out today by stumping up a little cash. It’s not for me of course but I am putting my arse on the line, well, actually in a really uncomfortable seat this coming Sunday in an attempt to raise some money for a very good cause.
So, after a Covid enforced hiatus it’s great news that The Distinguished Gentleman’s is back on again this coming Sunday 22 May. If you ride a bike, sign up today and get involved, trust me you will be glad you did.
This is a great worldwide event that raises money to help men around the world by funding research into prostate cancer as well as mental health programmes.
Once again this year I will be chuffing down into Suffolk to join the Bury St Edmunds ride, that’s a good run (over 150 miles) on an 80 odd year old bike with no suspension!
It would be wonderful if just a few of my friends here could sponsor my modest fundraising goal of £400. I recon us guys need all the help we can get!
Since Brexit became a reality our esteemed leaders have introduced some pointless draconian laws that make it (probably) easier to bring nuclear weapons into the Uk than it does plants. Therefore it’s no longer possible for KB to bring in the 1500-2000 plants a year we were doing for a long time. Therefore we have taken the action of withdrawing from tree sales entirely for the foreseeable future.
However after more than 30 years mucking about with bonsai I do have a LOT of stuff in my personal collection that litters the place up. Like most folk I can’t resist poking a cutting into a pot then putting it in the garden. I still have about a thousand plants myself. Most of those are not available for sale or swaps simply because I like having these things around me. But, in light of the short supply bonsai is in and the fact there are a couple of vintage Harley Davidsons I still need to add to my ‘other’ collection I just might need to let something go.
To that end here are a few very rough snaps of the butt end of my benches. These ‘could’ be available either now or later in the year. These will NOT be appearing on our website. If you are interested just drop me a line and do include the relevant image if you want details.
I know y’all missed me ranting and raving. So, apropos of nothing other than my own therapy here are my thoughts, revelations and reminiscences for the Easter holidays based on my year so far. Should pass a little time if you are stuck in a traffic cue or airport. No need to comment 😉
Funny world we are living in just now, perhaps not the most appropriate term but it’s my way of looking on the bright side, I think they call it irony. I spend most of my time dazed and confused, frustrated and angry and frankly entirely bewildered by a cacophony of noise from a world I barely want to inhabit anymore.
Anyone remember the first series of One Foot in the Grave? In it our beloved Victor, aged 60, is forced into early retirement from his job as a security guard when the office where he worked installs an automatic security system (which he describes as “being replaced by a box“). The series follows Meldrew as he tries to fill his new-found leisure with odd jobs and unusual idiosyncrasies, whilst trying to get a new job. However, he regularly finds himself mistreated, misunderstood or simply the victim of bad luck, and consequently leads to his complaining heartily. Remind you of anyone?
As usual it’s been a frantic year so far here at KB, we call it soil season. It’s the time of year when we have to hump massive weights around all day, day after day. It might make money but my dead God it’s hard. I didn’t come here to complain (“bollocks” I hear you cry). The year started well considering my tribulations late last year that I would rather not revisit. However things quickly went downhill. Turns out I managed to dislocate a rib. Who knew you could even do such a thing. In case you were wondering I didn’t crash a bike, get in a fight or fall off something. I was pruning a tree…… I shit you not. It’s taken four months, numerous trips to the osteopath and a boat load of painkillers and even now I have some bad days. At my most restrained I say “Fuck getting old, it sucks”.
It’s been a while since I sat down at my desk to vent but here goes……
Since Brexit our government has taken a draconian approach and completely crushed all our (possibly) new found freedoms into oblivion. I could say it’s a plot to take us back in but I think it’s more likely the result of being “governed” by feckless, unimaginative, brain dead, self-serving, power-grabbing, over-privileged public school twits getting their chains jerked by a narcissistic British left-wing socialist media who seek to govern the country by manipulating public opinion therefore dictating policy in government and ultimately who stays and who goes. Anyone who believes politicians have any answers has their head up their own wotsit IMHO.
I have asked everyone I know this simple question. Just tell me a single example in recent memory of when politicians made something better than it was before?
As a business owner I spend the bulk of my time on official bullshit. Complying with legislation and tax laws takes as much of my time as purchasing and marketing combined. We (2 of us) recently spent the whole day supplying information to my bank (of 20 years and who hold more than the value of my house on deposit) that we are in fact who we claim to be before they froze our account. Apparently, this is for compliance with some government diktat or other. I reckon they owe me £250 in the wages it cost me.
It’s a sad fact that there are only two tricks our f***wit leaders have to fix anything. The first is to chuck money at it. This never works because most of the money never gets to the coal face once every committee, quango and mid level administrative organisation has taken their taste. The other thing is legislation. The amount of legislation we face today makes me feel like a death camp inmate. The constant notices of new legislation compliance required, the relentless threat of fines and the sheer weight of oppressive legislation make me wonder daily if I would not be better delivering groceries.
You can’t legislate the ills of society. You certainly can’t legislate goodness into a morally bankrupt self-serving society and, above all you cannot legislate against criminal activity. Dohh! Criminals don’t give a shit and won’t obey however many laws you propagate. All that legislation does is oppress the law-abiding citizen and does nothing to stem illegal activity. As an example just look at Partygate. The criminals carry on whilst the masses are oppressed by arbitrary overbearing government rules.
There are two types of law in existence, those that are absolute like gravity or ageing and then there are the laws man makes to govern his own society for the common good. Those laws are arbitrary, random, subject to change and………abuse. The Covid ‘laws’ were a bunch of bullshit put in place to try and legislate what we used to call personal responsibility and consequence. If you believe in your own head that the ‘government should do something’ about this or that you are, in my opinion betting on a busted flush. The government is like a one-trick pony with memory loss.
Much like Martin Luther King Jr I too “have a dream” or at least I had one. I wanted a little family business, working from home, making our way in the world and not bothering anyone. All I wanted to do was pay my way in the world, do a good job and buy my daughter a house for her family. The core part of my dream since I fell into bonsai was to import my own trees both to own and sell. However since Brexit our esteemed leaders have introduced such stupid legislation restricting the movement of plants that my dream is dead. I spoke to a nearby nursery owner recently and the moment i made reference to DEFRA inspections he chucked up his lunch and passed out on the floor in a puddle of his own piss.
Words are simply insufficient to describe what has happened to us here but in a country run by politicians, of any colour, only failure can be assured. So let’s move on……
For two years now I have been predicting economic hardship. Today they are saying that inflation has reached 7%. I doubt that, it’s higher and for a year I have been predicting 10% at least. There is a reason for that. For sure Covid caused some waves. What it did do was turn off the economic machine and restarted it. Trouble is everyone woke up and some realised they had been working for nowt for far too long. As everything began to pick up there was a vacuum, a backlog that needed to be filled and before we got back on track demand increased to boot. That just means extra costs as demand outstrips supply.
All of my life I have seen prices of goods falling. When I was born my dad had a ten-year-old Triumph motorcycle which quickly gained a sidecar as newborns make lousy pillions. Cars were too expensive for most young single income families back when we didn’t get paid for breeding. My grandparents spent 20% of their income on food. I have said a million times, today we sell branch cutters and wire cheaper than they were back in the early nineties when Bonsai Mart started. Back then I bought a 3-bed semi with a garage and a big garden and off-road parking for 3 cars for £51k. A while back a great friend of mine who is well in his eighties was looking at a tree I had for sale at just over a grand. After a while he said “That’s more than I paid for my first house”. Thinking about it myself a bag of Akadama now costs more than I paid for my first bike. Relatively speaking we never had it so good.
So how have prices gotten so low? Not simple but, advances in manufacturing and materials technology and the de-skilling of processes alongside automation have a great deal of bearing. However, again in my opinion, the primary factor is the reliance on cheap oil to allow manufacturing in the cheapest parts of the world, currently China, to be delivered to our shores in an almost criminally cheap way. That coupled with dumbass businesses that believe the only way to sell anything is to be the cheapest has led us all down a rabbit hole and now we are stuck fast and the ferret is on his way, it’s going to be a bloodbath. We have all been making hay in the glorious sunshine of cheap energy and it’s irresponsible use but now with a population of eight billion people those days are over folk.
Here’s an example. A couple of years ago I wanted to source copper wire. I know a guy with a factory ‘oop north that makes wire of all sorts. So being a patriotic fellow I decide to source what I need right here. It takes two months to figure out my guy can do what I need and another month to get a price. I need to buy 2000Kg minimum paid up front with a delivery time of at least two months. The price? £13 a kilo (£26,000 outlay). Plus the usual taxes and transport (30%). In China I can buy the same with a lead time of 30 days, no money up front and no minimum order at 30% of the UK sourced product. The cost of running a business in our country is simply not viable anymore with retail prices where they stand.
However that’s ALL changed now. For decades we have all been working on the basis of 10% inbound shipping. When I started we airfreighted tools out of Japan and incredibly the cost was only 5%. Today that cost is 50%. For years a 20 foot container from China to the UK has been around the £1200 to £2000 mark for small operators. Since Covid that has risen in many examples to £10-12K and I have heard of folks paying even more. So, today we have to work on the basis of 30+% inbound shipping wether that’s by road or sea. Many low cost products will simply disappear. I was recently talking to the boss of the biggest horticultural wholesaler in the south of the country who told me he was no longer going to be able to import the little plastic pots and trays so vital for the nursery growing industry in this country. Rising costs in China and import costs and charges mean that’s all over which potentially spells the end of the nursery production trade unless everyone pays more, a lot more.
As an aside I remember, as a kid, going to a local nursery. It was a bungalow down the road, the guy turned his living room and conservatory into a public shop where he sold plants and vegetables he grew in the extensive plot at the back. The front garden had parking for three cars (didn’t matter, we were always on our bikes or Shanks’s pony) and was full of weedy pots of random plants for sale. I actually bought my first bonsai raw material from there. The old guy looked a lot like a rustic BoJo crossed with a son of the soil. Blue ankle swinger dungarees with a massive leather belt around his middle, checked shirt and huge brown leather ankle boots with Blakey’s in the heels and a soppy great knitted bobble hat with tufts of coarse blond hair peeking out…… Oh and he was built like a brick outhouse with hands like battered pan lids. What a sweetheart he was too. I remember going there from time to time with my parents and grandparents. Mum got ‘taters weighed in a big Avery shop scale and tipped, soil and all, into her vinyl shopping bag. Whenever we bought bedding or vegetable plants they were pricked out of wooden seed trays and folded into damp newspaper. I doubt that old fella sold a plastic bag or tray in his life but he made his way in the world, living a simple life, taking what he needed and little more. There truly is honour in hard work.
So, after that charming saunter down memory lane lets get back to less idyllic times. The media are very keen to be blaming Putin and his bullshit for much of the world’s subsequent ills. Part of me has to say Duhh, WTF did you think was going to happen. We put ourselves at the mercy of a political system that has historically been at odds with our own values in the deluded belief that the leopard had changed it’s spots. Turns out (Putin) one can grin and bear a lot of bullshit in exchange for billions of dollars a day when it’s financing a political ideal. It’s all very well those ER idiots telling us to abandon oil today but truth is 90% of our country would starve to death within a month without it and if you think electricity is coming to the rescue go get yourself checked! Not developing home grown energy solutions might make a few deluded do-gooders feel better, what’s the acronym? NIMBY it’s coming from somewhere folks but buying energy, or anything for that matter will only impoverish our own country and empower others. In this case someone we perhaps ought not to have done.
The long and the short of this is you and I are going to have much less privilege than we have been fortunate enough to enjoy thus far. The relentless devaluation of the pound in your pocket is dictated by many factors. Not least being the time we abandoned the gold standard, sold our national gold reserves and started printing money, coupled with bad fiscal management, spiralling national debt and expenditure we can ill afford etc, means our great British pound now has about the same value as an old sticky sweet found in the corner of the pocket of a jacket rarely worn.
Above and beyond all of that in my experience is the simply incomprehensible burden of tax and charges levied on us all. It’s my considered opinion that the average guy working for a living, raising kids, running a car and paying a mortgage is losing up to 70% of his income in direct and indirect taxes. 20%, or 1/5 of everything you spend is tax. Income tax and NI accounts for an additional 20%. The cost of goods, imported or otherwise will have attracted a lot of tax before it ever gets offered for sale. Fuel is a big chunk of the cost of everything and that’s 50% odd tax and 20% of the cost of fuel is fucking VAT. So they are charging 20% tax on the 50% tax portion of your fill up.
Here’s an interesting factoid. We have all recently become familiar with the price of a barrel of oil. Brent Crude is measured in 42 (US) gallon (159 litres) barrels. Today 13 April 2022 that cost $105 or about £80. The end products from that oil make up about 2.6 gallons more than the original amount of oil, or about 44.6 gallons of end products from a 42 gallon barrel. Purely distilling the fuel yields about 11 gallons of gasoline per barrel depending on the oil source. However, cracking and advanced processing can actually yield a maximum return of about 42 gallons of fuel per 42 gallon barrel of crude. This includes Diesel, aviation fuel, kerosene and fuel oil out of the 42 gallon barrel. This is pretty ropy maths but that makes you average fuel 50p a litre excluding processing costs and delivery and the all important tax.
Our supply chains soak up a huge amount of money and every single time a product is moving or landing it’s getting taxed and charged up the wazoo. A factory gate price in China of £1 will translate into a shop price here of £4 to £10 and at that nobody except the chancellor is getting rich. As an example I thought I would share with you a bill that recently came across my desk. Bear in mind I already paid for the shipping fees, import VAT, import duty and associated charges. These are random fees imposed by the UK port. Add to that inland transport and handling. So my total factory gate product cost of £7000 cost me an additional £4200 (60%) to put on my doorstep. Every time we import, these random fees change. On occasions we get very little and other times we get the lot. What a fucking extortionate racket, were all getting fleeced.
Much is made of ‘trade deals’ by our esteemed leaders. This largely removes tariffs on goods known as duty. Politicians like to make a lot of fuss about how much they are doing. So, how much duty did I pay for this lot? £21.72. so let’s hope they get a deal done soon because that twenty spot will make all the difference won’t it?
In conclusion, this won’t be getting better so hang onto your wallets folk. Politicians, far from having the answers we need are actually the problem. But let’s face it most of us live like kings compared to our forbears and it’s still possible to make a living here with a lot of effort and imagination and for now at least Putin’s artillery isn’t falling on our heads, thank God, so we all need to be grateful for what we have because it could all be a lot worse and at least my glass is half full. Just need to prevent the government getting a longer straw!
Meanwhile here are a few pic’s from the garden.
Have a great Easter break folk!
Graham.
Untrained hornbeam awaiting its turn.
Humungous Chinese elm coming into leaf.
Old Chinese elm getting underway for another season.
Wild Privet Forest. FOR SALE. The largest yamadori group planting we have ever had, nearly 5ft wide.
From a private collection and available now. Email for price.
Just in case anyone was tempted to ask me about “Black Friday” deals I thought, for once, I would get ahead of the game. If you know me you know what comes next so let me step aside for a moment. Here is an excerpt from an email I received this very morning from an outstanding UK producer and supplier.
“Our position of not jumping on the band wagon with Black Friday deals is not only because we don’t agree with the concept of fuelling consumerism to the detriment of our planet. It is because we don’t need to – we combine high quality, with great value for all our bird food products throughout the year.” Vine House Farm
I entirely concur with those sentiments but also let me add….you knew this was coming, my two penn’orth.
Personally I consider it offensive to be offered a ‘deal’. Let me, at length, explain.
Running a business these days costs a LOT of money. Even before one makes their first sale there will potentially have been many thousands of pounds spent. In modern Britain, just for a company to exist costs money, to actually have the audacity to trade will cost an eye watering amount. When a business gets a little bigger the amount of money needed every day, just to open the door, even before making a sale, is best NOT thought about. I believe they call that your ‘burn rate‘, costs not directly attributed to sales that have to be paid regardless of economic activity.
So, everyone has to make a (dirty word coming up) PROFIT. That’s not so your local friendly business owner can get rich, fuck off on a yacht and make a spectacle of himself in the Caribbean wearing a loud shirt and budgie smuggler. Profits pay wages and taxes and they pay those who choose to work as well as those who cannot or will not? Profits are a good thing, at least in the hands of honest and responsible folk.
So, I went out to buy a massive ‘dining’ table and a bunch of chairs. At the time my circumstances were straitened but I will never let a lack of ready cash dictate what I buy. Neither will I borrow money. Rather than buy cheap crap I will go without until I can afford what I want or need. I was in my own home and married about eight years before I got my first sofa and because I waited and bought well I still have it thirty years later.
So, the table? We went off to our local family owned furniture emporium, who were famous for their massive discounts, and pretty soon I found the monster table and chairs I was looking for. It was on offer at something stupid like 60% discount which made no difference to me, it was what we needed and I had the folding in my pocket so we loaded it up there and then. Fifteen years on I still have it.
Some time later we decided we needed some sort of sideboard, dresser thingy and so we headed back to the same store with a roll of Her Majesties finest paper currency. Once again we found what we needed pretty quick, I must be easy to please. Having agreed to buy said item the salesman, who knew me pretty well by then, thanks to multiple visits, told me that if I waited a week I could get the item at a……you guessed it…….60% discount. I told him he was a c**** and walked out never to return. A couple of years later they had a genuine sale because they went bankrupt. I’m old now and so have many examples of bullshit discounting. I would not like to insult anyone’s intelligence by doing the same.
A while back I saw one of the big DIY sheds offering an 80% discount on kitchens. Just think about that for a moment. This advertisement was on TV which is really expensive to do right? VAT is 20%. I can really only think of four possible explanations for this….
Their original prices were artificially stratospheric
They were going bankrupt
Their kitchens must be absolute shit
Their goods are radioactive or really unfashionable.
Seeing as they are still in business my intuition leads me to believe it was number 3. Is anyone REALLY taken in by this bullshit? I guess so as we keep seeing more and more of it every year.
I was recently offered a ‘deal’ on some power tools. That got me to thinking I could really use some of those. It took me about as long as it takes to read this sentence to find the exact same items at a better ‘regular’ price from a reputable retailer. Then, in the end, I went back to a small local firm I use and paid more from them because they are nice people to do business with.
One thing I have learned and will pass on willingly is that, often, just buying from the cheapest source is not the best deal. I like the old fashioned notion of customer loyalty, not because it will get me a better price but I like to be invested in the folk that I spend money with. Trust me folk IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT PRICE.
Sure we can all get a low price (no prizes for that) from some big faceless corporation (or somebody going broke). But, what happens when things go wrong? Then you enter the Twilight Zone of ‘customer service‘ where emails are not answered or mysteriously get lost, telephones and automated “Please choose from the following 45 options menu“, “sorry I did not understand that answer” “please hold“, listen to this intensely annoying shit music for the next 40 minutes, “You call is important to us, please continue to hold“, “All our operators are busy right now” because we are too cheap to employ enough folk to take care of you…… BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT. Anyone been there? They should call it “Fuck the customer services“.
However place your order with a GOOD small business and the whole experience will be better. Small businesses generally do not have call centres, automated phone systems, live chat, app’s or any other tech’y bullshit. Buy from a firm with a landline number and a front door you can walk through and a hand you can shake. It’s worth the extra few quid and I think we will all feel a little better about ourselves having a bit less stuff and knowing our money is appreciated by people who don’t give it to shareholders and that just may become friends in the long run.
Talking of front doors, brings to mind the story of a good bonsai buddy of mine, sadly no longer with us. Smart as a whip, successful and wealthy my old mate was Norfolk through and through. Back then we all used Norwich Union for a great many financial services simply because they were based in Norfolk, as I recall they occupied about half of the fine city of Norwich. Anyhow, my buddy had an issue he needed to resolve and gave them a call which ended up in India or some such place. After a while it all started to get ugly so my short-tempered mate decided enough was enough, jumped into his truck and went to Norwich. Those were the days when you could just walk into a building without a cavity search. Now obviously we know this was not going to work but me ol’ mate stormed in the door demanding satisfaction. The bewildered staff, not forthcoming resulted in my guy going out to the car park to fetch the pick axe handle he always carried in the back of his truck. Eventually the police were called and satisfaction was NOT had.
I learned a lot from that, all of our insurance is handled by a local family-owned agent with a shop in the local high street. Should there ever be a problem the sight of my looming hulk over the counter will get some action. I can call my guy any time, directly and he knows me. I get prices better than I can find online, sound ‘inside’ advice, no telephone menus. Now that really is fucking “Simples”!
Kaizen Bonsai also deals with little family businesses all over the UK and beyond. Over the years we have built up good trading relationships and it’s nice to be taken care of by folk who know us and know what we need. Also as the years pass it’s nice to see other folks businesses grow and their families prosper, kids grow up etc’ and to know we helped in that does us a world of good.
Don’t get me wrong, i’m not against buying what we need at a decent price and I have made my living for decades now by haggling and stumping up that all important £ sterling to get what I want at the right price. I just hate being deceived and lied to by dishonest businesses and bullshitters.
Kaizen Bonsai have never had a ‘sale’. However I have, on rare occasions offered ‘discount‘ items. The discounts on those come in two forms.
I negotiated a special price from a supplier and passed on the saving.
I got so sick of looking at something I either sold it for what it cost or even at a loss.
Sometimes I suffer a lack of good judgement and buy stuff that is all wrong. On those occasions I have to ‘man-up’ and take the hit by which I mean I lose money. So if you see a discount on our website I suggest you feel really sorry for me whilst developing a wry smile at my expense. I firmly believe in personal responsibility.
The whole essence of a ‘SALE” is to get rid of excess stock, bale out of bad buying decisions, clear out seasonal stock and generally move stuff on to free up cash and make space. The very day business started buying in sale stock the integrity was lost and these days clever marketing of ‘events’ like Black Friday are symptomatic of a distinct lack of integrity and respect. I say “give me your best price EVERY day“. Show me some respect and value my business, not just because you want a good review, or because you want me to come and spend even more. The way a lot of business is conducted today is losing dignity and respect. It’s a dishonest approach to selling good folk stuff they probably don’t need and persuading those same hard-working folk to part with money they often do not have, via’ debt cards, easy finance options and the like. FOMO is a powerful thing.
So, if you genuinely need to get something and you find a good offer knock yourselves out. Personally, I’m not easily swayed into parting with my hard-earned and have spent the morning unsubscribing to every single email offering me a Black Friday ‘deal’. Every bit of Black Friday mail through my door went back into the post box “return to sender”. I know it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever, i’m just a dog howling at the moon but things have got to change, the way we are going is destroying every one of us.
So, I have wasted enough time on this and if you, dear reader, are insane enough to have read it there are Black Friday deals you are missing. I have to go sort this mess out now, video coming soon.
