The Showmen's Guild of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been in existence for over 100 years, and is the primary trade organisation of the professional funfair industry in the UK. One of their remits is to protect the interests of its members. Unfortunately my direct experience of late has been that not only does the organisation fall short in this remit, but it is actively engaged in working against members.

One of the many companies who offers funfair rides for hire, makes a big song and dance about how Guild Ruling (a subject to complicated to easily explain here) means that anyone engaging a member of the Showmen's Guild to provide rides or attractions at their corporate event, will find themselves unable to ever use anyone other than the member they first use to supply their attractions. I know from direct experience that this has led to some Guild members losing work when the companies they were supplying to became worried and cancelled their bookings. The information contained in this operators website was actually accurate, up until around 3 years ago when the rules were changed to specifically exempt corporate events from many of the rules and regulations that the Guild require their member to adhere to. Unfortunately the company hasn't taken any notice of this and still insists on spreading misinformation.

I decided to contact Central Office, based in Staines, which is the Guild's primary office with full time staff operating on behalf of the Guild. I explained the problem and asked for assistance only to be told that the Guild were not responsible for policing websites. I wonder how long an organisation such as Asda would allow websites to spread misinformation about them before they had there lawyers step in and put things right.

After exchanging numerous emails with Central Office staff, I decided to take things into my own hands, I contacted trading standards who agreed with my reasoning that companies cannot state facts which are wrong. They told me they would sort it out pretty quickly. Job done I thought and put it out of my mind.

The next day however trading standards rang me back to tell me they would not be taking the matter any further. Upon inquiring why I was informed that they had contacted Central Office, explained what I had told them and received the reply that Central Office had no idea what I was talking about and the rules were the same as they had always been! I had purchased the ammunition, loaded the gun, pointed it and all the Guild had to do was say fire, yet their take on looking after Guild members was to choose to allow this non Guild operator to continue stealing work away from its members with its campaign of disinformation. I was disappointed that they felt they could do nothing to help, I was absolutely disgusted that they actively worked against me when I had laid all of the ground work for them.

The most galling fact of this story, is the fact that the Guild is possibly one of the most expensive trade organisations to belong to, and quite possibly one of the most outdated and useless to boot. I do know that Guild officials when in London on Guild business usually have a good time out on the town, perhaps they might consider staying in one night and actually putting some policies into place for the benefit of the members. If they are not going to police websites on behalf of their members, then I think they will rapidly cease to be relevant organisation in a world that is rapidly moving towards an internet business model.

I was tempted to compare their usefulness to a chocolate fireguard, but a chocolate fireguard results in a puddle of molten chocolate which can be quite tasty, which is a damn site more use than a misinformed, obstructive and adversarial trade body that we seem to have. Whilst writing this I did have it in my mind that I could receive a rap over the knuckles, but then again, it isn't the Guilds job to police websites is it?

|

With the level of work we are now receiving it is getting harder to find time to write for my blog. However every now and them something happens which I have to write about, either out of sheer frustration, or just occasionally incredulity.

We recently supplied a ferris wheel to a major educational establishment. Now I labour under the misconception that anyone in charge of such establishments would tend to be a reasonably intelligent individual. An episode recently shattered this illusion. When erecting a ferris wheel, you fold the structure into place until you basically have 2 giant wheels about 6ft apart. You then add seats at the ends of the spokes to these wheels thereby completing the ride. At one of our latest events, the guy onsite, William, rang to tell me we had a problem. Upon inquiring as to what exactly was up, William told me that a delegation from the college had approached and informed him that they were not happy with the wheel as it was clearly unsafe. Now the ride in particular, like all of our attractions, undergoes a regular safety check, and is inspected annually by an independent engineer, so I know the ride had a clean bill of health.

"What exactly is the problem?", I inquired of William,
"Well", says he, "We have the ride erected, but have yet to fasten the seats into place, the gentleman in charge of the college has pointed out that the ride has no seats on it, and he cannot allow his students to cling on to the structure as it is in motion, as if they fall of near the top they could be killed!!!!!"
William politely pointed out the seats which were going to be added shortly and the gentleman was placated, I, meanwhile was rolling about laughing at the surreality of it all, surely no one in their right mind would ever think we were expecting people to cling to a structure that was 48ft high and be rotated at high speed.

A friend of mine, Tommy, had a word for people like this, "Educated Idiots" he called them.

|

As I type this I am just about finishing for the day, tomorrow its finishing the load up and off to Tamworth for a Bar job. This job is a little smaller than our last event, but we are launching our new Shooters Bar at the event. We will be offering a range of Shots, Bombs and Shotails (like a cocktail, but built in a shot glass). We have also managed to squeeze almost the entire bar into our Citroen Dispatch, which surprsed me greatly, although to be truthful you would be hard pressed to fit an additional sheet of paper in, its packed like a jigsaw puzzle. The only things we couldn't fit in were the crates of sprits. I am sourcing a large roofbox to carry these last few items.

One thing which has surprised me is the attitude of a local brewery we contacted. We had originally intended to standardise on Carslberg as our main draught lager, and obviously use there other products as well. We had a visit from a rep who spent an hour telling me of what he was going to do for us, as he left he promised to not only email their price list and details to me, but to also send it in the post. Well that was the last we heard from him. A lady from the firm contacted me a few weeks after to aks if we were happy with their service, so I told her what I thought, to which she replied that she would forward the information to me. That was the last I heard from her!!

The upshot is that we are now using Carling products, and we are picking bar work up quicker than I expected. Admittedly we are still not using product regularly like a public house would, but surely in today's economic climate I would expect the brewery to be looking at cultivating sales to new outlets.

|

Have a read of this amusing story posted on an Orange website . Quite amusing, right up until you read that the Pandas are being carried back to China by Fedex, poor bloody Pandas, if they are lucky they will turn up in Siberia, or Tanganyika, or any where but China, if they are unlucky they will never be seen again, and to add insult to injury, when the Chinese government ring Fedex to ask where they are, they will no doubt be informed by Fedex customer services that the address is wrong and the delivery driver can't find anywhere called China.

Read my last experience of Fedex here! An amusing little anecdote unless you are me, well guess what, I was stupid enough to use the same Australian printing company AGAIN, who used Fedex AGAIN, who have managed not to deliver my parcel 2 days in a row AGAIN, and who have informed me that its because I have supplied the wrong address AGAIN, thing is the address I have given them is the correct one AGAIN, the same one that is successfully delivered to by every other parcel company in the English speaking world, except for Securicor who employ the same morons that Fedex do.

On a lighter note, we are trialling the use of Skype on our mobile bars website to allow people to contact us free of charge using the Skype service. The intention is that if it is successful we will roll it out on the other websites in our portfolio, (take note Fedex, I assume you don't have access to mobile phones with which to ring and ask me for directions to my address, well now you can use either Skype, email or snail mail giving you 3 more opportunities to find out where I am located).

Clicking the button


should automatically send a call out from your Skype system to ours, assuming of course that you have Skype installed, and as long as amember of staff is available to answer it we will take your call. Obviously the button will need to read online to indicate that the service is available at that particular time.

For the past 5 or 6 years I have used Windows Mobile smart phones. I was due to swap my phone in about a month ago and decided I was sick of the little quirks present in every Windows phone I have used, so following the mass hysteria generated by the Iphone I duly swapped allegiances. BIG mistake, I have been trying to use the phone for about a month and am now reduced to carrying 2 phones, one for making calls with and the other for sending emails, it turns out that the Orange Iphone is unable to reliably send emails from an Orange email account! So I have a very pretty but totally useful for business use phone. Orange technical support have tried a number of times to sort something out but can't, Apple support have had a couple of goes but can't, their latest suggestion was for me to take a morning off work, and drive 40 miles to my nearest Apple store to see if they are able to make it work, customer service per excellence. The frustrating thing is I am stuck with this bloody phone for 2 years now, I think my next stop will be trading standards as I don't think a modern smart phone that cannot send emails is fit for the purpose of which it was sold to me.

On a more upbeat note, we have finally come to the end of the ridiculous workload we had for December, and have a little more relaxed schedule for a few weeks. The Chocolate Experience business should benefit from additional SEO work, and our new mobile bar company Tempus Bars is now up and running, so that can have some serious SEO work applied.

Time for a rare relaxing evening in front of the TV, and some catching up of the various novels I am part way through reading.

|

We travel up and down the M1 motorway on an almost daily basis. For as long as I can remember, a large 15 mile section of it has been plauged by roadworks. Whenever we travel along that section I keep a keen eye out to see exactly what is being done. On the last 5 trips I didn't manage to spot a single person on the stretch, and put this down to the fact that the journeys were all early morning or late at night. Anyhow the other day I travelled the road in the middle of the morning, and guess what, I spotted people. 14 of them in total which equates to less then one worker per mile! Although I do use the word worker in the loosest sense of the word, as out of 14 people spotted, 4 of them were sat eating or drinking tea, 5 of them were sat reading newspapers, 2 of them were stretched out in the back of a minibus apparantly sleeping and the remaining 3 were walking, where to I know not, but judging by their fellow roadworkers I would say that they were either going to put the kettle on, or else to buy a newspaper.

I need to found out if the company contracted to carry the work out is paid by the day, if it is I intended to buy a large number of shares in the company as I cannot see them completeing the work in my lifetime and should imagine if they have a number of similar jobs on the go then they will be employed for life.

|

Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong. DONALD PORTER

One of our many lines is pre packaged tubs of candy floss and popcorn which we sell quite a lot of. The product itself is quite inexpensive, however it is very bulky and consequently expensive to post to our customers. Because of this we try many different parcel companies, always trying to find the best and most cost effective form of transporting our product to our customer. Recently we came across a new company we hadn't used, this is called INTERLINK. They were able to beat all of our existing couriers by a comfortable margin, especially where multiple boxes going to the same address was concerned. The reason they are so cheap is because they are no bloody good.

On Thursday we booked a set of parcels in to be collected and delivered overnight to an address in North Wales. Unfortunately the parcel was not collected on Thursday. Now this is something which happens frequently with every firm we have ever used. I consequently went on to Interlinks website to register this problem. There is however no telephone contact number, you have to fill in an email form. I duly did this and received the answer that my query was being passed to the relevant department. That was on Friday morning, by Saturday I had still heard nothing and so repeated the process, receiving another confirmation that the relevant department would contact me. We are now on Monday, some 5 days after the parcel was due to be collected and it is still sitting on my office floor, so I have again tried to contact Interlink, guess what, the relevant department is going to get in touch with me!

The parcel has now been booked in with another delivery firm, so I will see how they do, in the meantime I have requested a refund from Interlink and am now timing exactly how long they are going to take from my initial email to when they actually contact me, as I think they are on course to set some kind of customer service record. I don't as the title of this piece states, expect Interlink to be perfect, but I do expect customer services to get in touch with me in under a week, especially when the product they are selling is overnight delivery!

Contrast this with my experience of another customer service department. We purchased a DELL laptop for my daughter for Christmas. A few days ago she told me that it was not charging up. Upon examination, where she had repeatedly pulled the charging plug out by the cable instead of the plug, the strain relief had come apart and a wire pulled out of the plug. I visited Dells website to order a new charger, however the array of possible options left me a little confused. So rather that ordering the wrong product I contacted their live chat helpline. A very friendly young lady based in the States contacted me within seconds, and after a few minutes debate informed we that as the product wasn't very old they would replace it for me free of charge. Not only that but it would be delivered overnight. Right enough the next morning it rolled up before lunch. About an hour later I received a phone call from customer services at Dell UK to check that I had received the charger and that it as working correctly.

Guess which of the 2 companies above I am more likely to use again.

|

I have negelected this blog a little this month, not deliberately, but simply due to the schedule of work. In the last couple of weeks we have been to Durham (5 times), Liverpool, Lincoln, Leeds (3 times), Manchester, Stoke, Glasgow (twice), Cornwall (twice), Newmarket, West Bromwich, Birmingham, Cambridge, Tamworth, Luton, Yeovil, Stoke, Colne, Stockton, Gainsborough, Wakefield and London (twice).

In fact in June we have some 40 odd events, with only 2 of the days on the calander that don't contain an event. Most of these have run smoothly, but we had a little trouble on the way back from the second Cornwall trip, which once again demonstrated the mutual support network that is in place amongst the fairground community. During the ride home a tyre valve on the van began to leak and we had to make ever more frequent stops to re inflate it. Eventually we were forced to pull over on the hard shoulder to change the bloody thing. The van (a modern transit) had a jack handle that unfolded a number of times until it was about 8 ft in length. Unfortunately the extra leverage from this length meant that I managed to snap it in half, with the result that the back wheel wasn't high enough to change, but was far eough off the ground to leave me stranded, with no tools to try and lower the jack back down. Eventually I managed to hammer some chocks under the errant wheel, which gave me enough grip to drive off the jack.

We were now faced with the prospect of paying a tyre fitter an extortianate rate to change a wheel for us. Just as I picked the phone up to call Dick Turpin out, my wife pointed out what appeared to be fairground vehicles, in the distance across the fields at the side of the M5 motorway. I rang my mate William, who was a native of these parts and gave him details of where I was. Luckily he knew the yards I could see and told me who the residents would be, one of which happened to have a daughter married to an operator in my native North East who attends occasional events with us, small world.

We drove into the yard and within ten minutes had the spare wheel fitted and were on our way home, loverly jubberly.

After writing this short piece, I will probably be silent again for a while as the second half of this month will see us in Twickenham, Oxford, Exeter, Yarm, London (3 times), Cambridge, Grantham, Kingswood, Nottingham, Durham, Kimbolton and Manchester!

|

A few days ago, at just after 6 in the morning, my phone rang. It turned out to be my Mother in Law telling me that their alsation dog had died through the night and would I bury him, just what I wanted to do first thing in the morning. Anyway I got dressed and went round, found my gloves, the hole was dug and I approached the dog box to retrieve the body. A leg was sticking out of the side of the box, and I thought "Great, the dog is going to be as stiff as a board and I'll struggle to get him out the bloody box". I bent down and stuck my head in the box to assess the situation, when the bloody dog sat up and looked me straight in the eye! Lucky he did for another few minutes would have seen him buried alive. My Mother in Law exclaimed that she had checked him twice and he wasn't moving, God help my Father in Law if he falls asleep at the wrong time, we'll be digging a bigger hole.

Anyway, it turned out to be a temporary reprieve, I buried the dog for real two days later.

|

Health & Safety Indian Style

Take a look at the clip below;


Isn't that great, imagine the look on the faces of the Health and Safety Gestapo in this country if you tried something like that. Although you could argue that it is helping save the environment.

|

I'm still a little drowsy sat here writing this due to returning from an event in Slough around 5 this morning (a bit like buses coming all at once, that was our second Slough event in under a week), anyway I have just found out that at an upcoming event, not one we are in charge of, the local constabulary have asked for a number of free ride tickets. Now this is not in itself an unusual occurrence, free ride tickets are regularly dispensed to various deserving groups. The "deserving group" in this affair, happen to be the local yob element. Basically if you are someone who likes to mug old ladies, or break into other peoples homes, and you promise to be good for a week, you will be "rewarded" by being given tickets to go to the fair for free. If you are a law abiding youth, who perhaps comes from a disadvantaged family, you probably won't be able to afford to go to the fair, so it's tough.

My advice would be to mug the next old person you see (person rather than little old lady, see we are now politically correct), or perhaps go and smash someones windows, then when you are arrested (although to be fair you would probably get arrested quicker parking on double yellow lines), you can promise to be good and go to the fair for free.

Personally I think flogging those who don't behave and rewarding those who do would be a better system.

Last Wednesday I spent with Arthur's wife, Lisa, finishing off a first aid course (we should all be trained up pretty soon), my other half was at an event near London, and Arthur was in Derby providing attractions to a company pitching for 8 family fundays, if we get the job it should provide an interesting logistics challenge as they are all on the same weekend! Anyway the course was run very professionally, but in a lighthearted way which made it enjoyable. We learnt a lot of stuff which could possibly save someones life so its well worth while. During one exercise we were shown an image of an injury victim and had to state the required treatment, I happened to draw an image of a rather attractive young lady who had fallen down a flight of stairs cutting her leg. My recommended course of treatment, immediate application of vigorous mouth to mouth resuscitation, met with a stern look from the instructor and a whack across the back of the head from Lisa, but I think that you cannot be too careful with injuries and she may have developed breathing difficulties.

We should very shortly be able to announce two new events in our portfolio of traditional funfairs, one is entirely our own affair, the other a joint venture under the Universal Funfairs brand we established with a Yorkshire operator for an event last season.

|

I read a news report this morning about a Polish registered car travelling the wrong way up a motorway, colliding with a Jaguar going in the correct direction and causing the death of 5 people. This isn't an isolated incident, about 3 years ago I was doing some agency driving in the winter months, when out of the early morning gloom on the A1M, a foreign registered lorry came hurtling towards me, luckily being early morning the road was pretty empty and there was plenty of room for evasive action. Unfortunately with the relaxation of cabotage rules, and the disparity in fuel prices between here and the continent making it profitable for european lorries to ply their trade over here, this isn't going to get better any time soon. Especially when you take into account the fact that fines for driving offenses are pretty much disregarded once the offended leaves these shores, and it is too much time and trouble to try and chase them for payment.

Its not just major offenses, but a vast multitude of minor ones as well, you drive a HGV about with no number plate on for any length of time and you are pretty sure to receive a fine for your crime. Yet you take note of just how many non British registered vehicles are tramping up and down the highways and byways of this nation without plates on their trailers, or quite often with different plates to the towing vehicle. They are pretty much disregarded by traffic officers, as they know the fixed penalty they issue will be ripped up once they are out of sight. Contrast this to the French system, where offenders are marched to the nearest cash point to withdraw the money for the fine. No doubt if we implement this system it will breach someones human rights.

|

With most of the reports coming in from the early season funfairs being favourable, it was with renewed optimism that everyone was looking forward to Easter, especially as the same holiday last year was wiped out by dreadful weather. Unfortunately as it has turned out, the bulk of the Easter fairs have seen a fairly poor level of business, so perhaps the credit crunch is having an effect after all.

We haven't bothered with any traditional funfairs this Easter, simply because of our corporate event commitments. Starting on 5th April we were in London that day (Sunday), London Monday, London Tuesday and London Wednesday, Chelmsford (about 20 miles form London) Thursday. We then theoretically had 2 days off before Easter Sunday when we were due to attend events in Blackburn and Cambridge. On Thursday evening I was contacted to provide an additional candy floss cart to an event in London (yet again). I tried to lay this event off simply because we were already spread pretty thin. Unfortunately I couldn't find another operator to take the event on so I had to do it myself. Problem was we didn't have a spare cart available (with 7 carts I expected to be able to meet all of our commitments, but I was proved wrong). This resulted in my 2 days off being spent building a new mini cart just to house one of our candy floss machines, the client told me that the room we were in had a low ceiling so I didn't get bother taking the roof to the cart with me (although once there it was apparent that there was adequate headroom), anyway I managed to build the basic cart, spray it and add some decoration in time for the event. This new cart is designed to fit into the rear of a small hatchback car we use occasionally, and is really only designed to accommodate a single item (candy floss, popcorn, ice cream etc). By the end of next week I should have managed to finish the decoration and final fitments and the cart can be added to our standard line up.



As it turned out the London job was quite pleasant, with me arriving back home about half eight this evening. As a bonus, the client turned out to have a very successful Asian wedding planning business and it looks like that one job has turned into a number of bookings, just goes to show that our original motto of try everything is still valid.

|

A finger is worth £30,000, 2 lives a mere £10,000

I noticed 2 items in the news recently. In one a man whose negligence led to the death of 2 people and the serious injury of a young child, was fined £10,000. In another, a company where an employee lost one of his fingers in an accident was fined £30,000, with the Health and Safety Executive declaring that "If a proper risk assessment had been carried out, this would never had happened!". To add further to the case, Maurice Agis, the so called "Artist" who had created the structure, has in the past created similar items that have done exactly the same thing, not once but twice previously. So how on earth does the loss of a finger result in a £30K fine and the deaths of 2 people in a mere £10K. I admit that I am quite attached to my own fingers, and would be rightly upset at losing one due to someone else's negligence, but surely negligence resulting in 2 deaths should incur a far higher charge. Perhaps if we ever have the misfortune to have someone injured on one of our attractions, we should promptly beat them to death to keep the costs down.

We spent last weekend in a Mini dealership in the North East providing ice cream and popcorn to possible purchasers of the new Mini convertible. I have never really looked at these cars, as by and large they are too small for what we need. However I must admit that on closer inspection they are quite a quirky motor, the top of the range Cooper S model boasting some 200+ horse power, which considering the size and weight of the car must make it something of an Exocet missile on the road. Anyway I mentioned to my 10 year old daughter that I would buy her one when she passes her test. "I don't really like them Dad," was her reply. Upon inquiring what she did like in the way of automobiles she gave me a quite concise list, "Aston Martin, Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini or Bentley!". Boy is she going to be disappointed.

Come Sunday we are off to London for 4 days of events, followed by another in Chelmsford for the new client we picked up a couple of weeks ago. Once that is out of the way, I can finish the refurbishment work on our Helter Skelter just in time for its annual MOT, then its off to Northallerton May Fair, one of the handful of traditional funfairs we still attend.

|

I know that some people will use any excuse for a celebration, but I have just found out that our cousins across the pond in the good ole US of A, actually celebrate National Cotton Candy Day on 7th December! What a great excuse for a party.

Speaking of cotton candy, or candy floss as it is more popularly known here (the australians call it fairy floss), we are putting some effort into upgrading our online store. Located at CANDY FLOSS STORE we have seen a steady but unspectacular stream of sales through this outlet. We are now looking at expanding and promoting the store to increase this side of our business.

I am just about to jump in the bath as we are off to London again this evening, followed by Chelmsford tomorrow, London again Thursday, a day off Friday (although day off refers to me doing work other than actually operating equipment), Saturday will see us in Blackburn and London yet again. I think looking at it London now accounts for some 40% of our overall business.

We have also just been approved as preferred suppliers to a company operating some 49 sites throughout the UK, so that should develop into a nice steady stream of work.

|

Look at this link, Medical Candy Floss Breakthrough. It seems that humble candy floss could herald a breakthrough treatment for burns victims requiring skin grafts.

|

The safety initiative we launched recently has been extremely well received within the events industry. Admittedly it has increased our workload somewhat, especially on the paperwork side, I am just finishing the safety documents for an event we are attending with a single cart, and it runs to 84 pages! Luckily virtually everyone accepts our documents in PDF format so we can adhere to our environmental policy as well as our safety policy.

Safety has been in the news recently with the story about the prosecution of Brouhaha International and Maurice Agis over the Dreamscape disaster at Chester Le Streets Riverside Park in 2007. This was when a giant inflatable sculpture blew away in the wind tragically killing two women and injuring some 13 other people. Now this was a tragedy by any measure, and the funfair industry has felt the backlash of it with the canceling of a number of long established events which were usually held in the same park. One of which happened to be an event we supply attractions to, so we felt the effects directly.

THe thing which is annoying, is the fact that we are now preparing and presenting 84 pages of safety data for a single Ice Cream cart at an event indoors. Not only that but we are having to adhere to the guidelines and strictures contained in those 84 pages, for something which is pretty safe by any standards. So why the hell was a structure the size of a football field, which was made to contain dozens of people at a time not subject to similarly stringent safety regs. To be honest its something that has annoyed me ever since we started working in the corporate events arena. We regularly come across inflatable structures that aren't anchored down, that are powered using petrol generators which are refilled whilst they are running. Many inflatables are delivered in the back of a transit van, plugged in to the power using 13amp household plugs which are not meant to be used outdoors, inflated, then the guy delivering it cheerily waves goodbye and rolls up 6 hours later to collect it. How does he know the people he has left it with are competent to operate it. What happens if it rains on his non waterproof plugs, and one day someone is going to be filling the petrol generator when it bursts into flames, I have a vision of the blower used to keep the structure inflated, sucking these flames inside the structure and giving us a low budget remake of towering inferno.

Why when the funfair industry is being regulated ever more stringently (even though we have one of the best safety records of any industry) does other industries seem to have little or no regulation at all. We have hired numerous inflatables from companies to complement our own when we have busy periods, and only once have we been handed a safety document. Even then it was a case of "Sign this mate so we aren't blamed for any accidents", rather than a genuine attempt to ensure we were capable operators. The end results of allowing amateurs to operate at outdoor events is exactly what we seen at Chester Le Street, the local authority answer to the catalogue of cock ups, is to prevent funfairs operating at the venue, even though they have been doing so without mishap for generations. Perhaps if one of these endless risk assessments we are forever filling in was applied to the Dreamscape structure, someone might have realised that it wasn't safe in the wind.

The motto we have adopted with the first of our new range of safety policies is "Safety Is No Accident".

|