It could be worse

Today I was due to make a trip to St Asaph with Mark Clavier for a meeting arranged for him with the Bishop. The appointment offered was at eleven, requiring a very early start: do-able, but impracticable, and the proposal, planned since before his arrival was not revisited by us in the light of current facts. Currently Mark's wife works away a few days a week, and that he does the school run with his son. Hardly an onerous duty, as the lad is in the Bishop of Llandaff school on Mark's way into work, but something of a problem, as it would mean dropping him outside school a good hour before it opened. So, we had to cancel. 

Getting interviews with Bishops is not an easy matter these days, as they are required to occupy so many different managerial roles in relation to church and societal activities. Perhaps I was lucky in accessing Bishops in my travelling days with USPG, but I don't recall it being quite as hard to obtain a rendezvous at at sensible time of day as it now seems to be.  This will take an age to re-schedule. Ah well life has a habit of messing up well intended plans.

After a quiet morning at home instead, I went early into the CBS office to get to grips with the final frontier in debt chasing. We're now tackling the past four years of losses due to equipment not returned when some business has unexpectedly closed, or equipment damaged beyond repair, but still unpaid for. It's a matter of first gathering the information, and then preparing the relevant documentation for the collection agency. 

Some doing business in the city use all sorts of strategies to avoid having to pay the debts they've accumulated, declaring one company bankrupt, and then opening a new one to continue trading with, and often failing to notify their suppliers properly, thus making it harder to register a claim with company liquidators. Even when things are done legally and above board, we can find ourselves recovering only 20% of what is due. It's what happens in a recession, and everyone trading is impacted by such failures. We think it's bad, but it could be so much worse. There are still companies that are doing well despite the strain. Small businesses may fall out but the big ones sustain the economic momentum.

Above is yet another snapshot of progress on one of the few big construction projects in Cardiff at the moment, right outside St David's shopping centre. The South Wales based Admiral insurance company's new HQ continues to grow at a pace. The skeletal framework now envelops the core lift shafts, and at ground level the procession of vehicles pouring concrete to complete the re-enforced concrete pillars as now begun at ground floor level. 

When the hundreds of staff move in next year, there'll be lots of empty office space to fill in and around central Cardiff and office rents will drop unless there is an unexpected surge in demand from new companies. Extra local office workers in the city centre will boost the retail economy, but without new business it's just more of the same - effective stagnation. I keep on thinking how much the entire South Wales economy needs the Severn Barrage to be built to secure the future, as iron and coal did from the 1800 to 1970.