Thursday, October 29, 2015

Heading south

In the last two blogs we travelled north - this time we head south.What began as a test of, could we run a marketing business away from base, turned into a marketing appraisal of opportunities offered by the location.

So from northern Britain we headed to one of the most southerly parts of Spain, an island location nearer to Africa than mainland Europe. A recent poll discovered that a big majority of British people do not consider themselves European at all. Continental Europe is also mainly the European Union which looms large in the current political agenda.  The EU is not yet a state although its seems its aspirations are to become one. It has a flag, national anthem, parliament, currency, but critically no common language. Well yes it does, in practice - English. And the English are probably the least enthusiastic about membership of the EU. In fact a referendum - a very European concept in itself - is promised next year.

Consider the results of the last two major elections in Britain.  The elections to the European Parliament in 2014 were won by UKIP -  a party with a key aim of leaving the EU - UKIP won 4.36 million votes and 24 MEPs; second were Labour with 4.02 million votes and 20 MEPs and third Conservatives with 3.79 million seats and 19 MEPs.  Interestingly the Scottish Nationalists had 389 thousand votes and 2 MEPs. Contrast this with the 2015 UK general election where UKIP polled 3.88 million votes and got one MP, the Scottish Nationalists with 1.45 million votes got 56 MPs!  A strange efect of the two different voting systems used.

The Spanish economy is the fourth largest in the Eurozone and was severely impacted by the recession of 2007-8 with a quarter of the work force unemployed, but this year has been recovering faster than other EU countries. There are large English communities in the south many of whom have set up small businesses. Applying the 'crane count' appraisal as a guide to economic activity, despite groups of unfinished buildings standing like concrete skeletons, the cranes are back and construction is picking up. Interestingly working in Spain is not much different to working in England, but in the sunshine. For me the Internet is the enabling technology essential to running our business.

So what did we learn from the 'taking the business on tour'. Simply put, with planning, an iBook, iPhone and Internet it all worked very well.


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