The blog of Steve Root

  • Laughing Horse? It's a comedy club a friend was performing at…

    How do you spell “hungry horse” in 4 letters?

    M T G G

    Now you know why I’m not a comedian, but when my Nan told me that joke I thought it was very funny. Well, actually, she had to explain that another name for horse was gee-gee which is why I remembered it so I guess I didn’t find it funny.

    Still, the reason for the bad joke was a weekend or two ago Rhonda and I went to London for the evening to see a comedy show. It began as a west end musical but the phone line of the show said they’d sold out for every Saturday. Then I remembered my friend Richard. I’ve known Richard for many years, first as a talented script writer, more recently as an Actor and Comidian. True, I’d seen more of him on TV in recent years than face to face but I’d never seen his comedy. From his myspace page I found out he was going to be at a comedy club that same weekend so I booked to go and see him. All of this was a bit of a surprise to Rhonda, this was a romantic weekend away complete with posh hotel. Best of all, I discovered comedy clubs are cheaper than west end shows.

    This particular gig was organised by the Laughing Horse comedy club “Upstairs at the Old Goat Tavern” not far off… was it Oxford Street? I’m terrible with London places. Anyway, the upstairs room was about 8m long by 4m wide and comfortably seated all 20 or so of the audience. Intimate? Yes, giving me the feeling it would be very good or very bad.

    It turned out to be very good. Richard told me afterwards that this sort of venue is great for testing out material before using it in bigger clubs. There were about 8 performers and a compare who was funny in his own right. I felt that the performances were lined up in order of ability, best last. Although, that may be simply the audience had warmed up more as the evening went on. Come to think of it, there may be a correlation between the amount of Ale drunk and how funny I remember people being.

    Best of all, Richard was funny. When I booked I hadn’t considered the possibility of him being rubbish and then having to be honest with him afterwards. Rhonda enjoyed it too, we’ll definately go again.

  • VAT Rate changes – more work for the printing industry, more non revenue generating office work for me

    Great*, The VAT Rate has changed from 17.5% to 15%.

    *Great as in, I’m not sure if I like it or not!

    I think that may actually help the economy but for a different reason to what Alistair Darling may expect…. it means that all of our printed price lists will be out of date in less than a week so will have to be reprinted – anyone want to by shares in a printing business?

    For my business that’s not too bad because we print our own price lists as we need them. Several of our suppliers though provide price books – one of which only changed their prices in October and normally they plan at least 6 months before the next price change.

    So, what happens? Well, I imagine they will announce a price increase for the 1st December which just happens to be in line with the reduction in VAT. If they don’t it means paper and ink sales will suddenly increase next month, graphic designers will have the fun job of updating each individual price.

    I get the fun job of updating all of our computer code – the chances are high that somewhere is a hard coded calculation on VAT so every price update I do from now will need to be checked, even if I automated the update routine. Seriously, I doubt that every product in sainsbury’s or Tesco’s will fall by the VAT difference – why should they change the price on the shelf? They’ll leave it the same and make a little more profit.

    Our customers will benefit, the guidance on the HMRC web site is that we can credit and reinvoice at the new rate any products that we have not delivered before 1st December. They’ll get a refund if they’ve paid already or owe less when the job is finished. I still have to go through each sales order though, yet more time lost in paperwork. Hey ho, at least we’ve had a really good November and maybe the thought of cheaper prices will encourage more people to go out shopping.

    Anyway, in case you are wondering what the difference actually means;
    117.50 including VAT = 100 excluding VAT = 115.00 at the 15% VAT RATE
    100 including VAT = 85.11 excluding VAT = 97.87 at the 15% VAT RATE
    So, for every 100 you’ll save 2.12p using the new rate.

    To work it out using a calculator to get the excluding VAT rate, divide by 1.175.
    To add VAT at 15% multiply the ex VAT price by 1.15

  • Staying Alive (Alexander Fullerton)

    Wow! This was a big surprise. The setting is a town in France where the author himself meets with an old lady. She, it is revealed, was the inspiration of the heroine in his earlier 3 books (and there are 3 earlier books which I’ll now start looking out for). Rosie was a special agent during the war and this story is about her first mission, the one mission the author couldn’t have written about because his source didn’t know about it. Best of all, there is a twist at the end which I’ll not tell you lest I spoil it.

    I tend to like books where a history is revealed. In this book we hear not only of Rosie’s struggles to survive as an undercover agent but also of what happened to her after the war, right up to the present day or in this case, right up to the reason she is talking to an author in a small French town, attending a re-union of the few remaining resistance and special operations staff that still survive after 60 years.

    Rootie Rating 4 out of 5, time to go and find the other 3 books in this series.

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