The recent panic buying of petrol across the UK brings back memories of early 2020. Back then supermarket shelves we’re emptied of pasta and concern mounted about a national bottom-wiping crisis as...

Hello, me again! Not for the first time George has taken off and left me holding the fort, keeping everyone in line and writing this week’s Garrulous Jay. It’s a dog’s life! At this time of year the...

If you’re reading this in an email you’re using a service provided by Mailchimp, the email marketing company that was last week sold by its two co-founders for $12bn. It would be easy for an...

Last Saturday evening two women with an combined age of 37 contested the US Women’s Open Tennis Final. Prior to the tournament they had an aggregate world ranking of 223. By the time the trophies...

The government’s much-vaunted plan for health and social care reform announced this week raises as many questions as it provides answers. As is so often the case the devil lies in the detail. The...

This week I received an email from Igloo Energy informing me that their tariff will be increasing by 14% for a typical dual fuel household. Not the first such letter reminding me that prices are...

There are many valuable lessons to be relearnt from Nike founder Phil Knight’s fascinating memoir, Shoe Dog, about the first 18 years of his business… There’s the resilience, passion and...

“If you want to boil a frog”, the saying goes, “put it in a saucepan of cold water and heat it slowly”. Dropping our amphibian friend directly into boiling water won’t work as it’ll jump straight...

Rishi Sunak has problem. The 2019 Conservative Party Manifesto states, “we will keep the triple lock” on the UK State Pension. This commits the government to increasing the State Pension every year...

When Hannah Roberts, the BMX Freestyle World Champion, finished her first round in the Olympics Final she threw her bike aside in a gesture that appeared to be equal parts relief and triumphalism....

My week away on Colonsay in The Western Isles gave me the opportunity that comes with every holiday to recharge my batteries and take a break from the day-to-day freneticism of running my business....

Hello! George is on holiday at the moment, so he’s asked me to step in and write this week’s edition of The Garrulous Jay. For those of you who don’t know me I’m Dudley and, along with my cockerpoo...

On Sunday evening England got lucky. If Italy had managed to retain possession of the ball until the final whistle Gareth Southgate would have been unable to bring on substitutes Marcus Rashford and...

At around 10.00pm on the 26th June 1996 a football player with one previous penalty miss for Crystal Palace three seasons previously, made the long walk from the halfway line at Wembley to take the...

BrewDog is a business whose success owes much to a carefully cultivated image of controversy and rebellion. This is evident in the name of their best-known beer, Punk IPA, and in the fourth element...

On Wednesday I did something for the first time in 2021: I had a haircut… I had wanted to darken the doors of 6 Upper Goat Lane in Norwich for some months, but when I called Flint Hair in March to...

Mission accomplished! The Norfolk Fellaton completed their nine day Odyssey from Land’s End to John O’Groats at 4.50pm on Sunday and, after succumbing to a virulent case of FOMO, their team sponsor...

“Five pounds of four-star, please!” Readers of a certain age may remember making such a request of a garage attendant, or at least hearing their parents doing so. I can recall sitting in the back of...