Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

i take it that you didn't like my answers - but i wouldn't expect you to as they don't coincide with your view of how the world should be let alone how it is in real life ..... shame you cannot share the same fate as the author of utopia, though he did not deserve that

it never ceases to amaze me that you choose to continue to live in what you regard as a total cesspit of corruption and vile political practices and rampaging greed throughout all levels of society and everything else which you find so despicable ...... i'ld vote for you to emigrate to north korea, but am surprised you don't choose to live in france with its currant (sic!) fruitcake socialist loonies at the helm and confiscatory tax system

The old reactionary has written and wants to hang on to his perks and advantages gained at the expense of others.

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Your card :

This one sums up the hazy one who doesn't realise he hasn't the necessary qualifications.

Just got in from taking the dog for a walk.

Near the car park we use, a guy, who runs a 'Bacon Sandwich Van' in the mornings, has taken a lease from the council on an old disused public toilet. He has ripped all the insides out, popped in a front door with two large side windows, anti car ramming posts, made a bit of a kitchen behind a counter, flagged a large patio to the front, put tables and chairs inside and benches outside and turned the toilet into a Cafe. In fact, there is now a 'unisex toilet inside and he keeps it clean, bog-rolled and supplied with warm water.

But......

It is mostly deserted at all times of day. He must be losing tons of money but seems 'quite determined to make it a success'. He charges 80p for a Nescafe coffee, as an example, and his other prices are equally as dirt cheap. The place is clean and the staff he uses, when he's not there, are very nice ladies.

One of them told me she is a 'volunteer'. In other words, she doesn't get paid anything at all.

My take on it, is that he pays the ladies 'cash in hand' but gets their sympathy to explain as to why he can't pay them a proper wage and in a proper manner. It seems to be a bit of a hobby for the ladies and seems a nice way of getting them out of the house. As a businessman, he doesn't seem to have the first idea how to make money fromthis enterprise and should have dumped the scheme a couple of years ago. He must be losing quite a lot of money. Eventually, he will most certainly just HAVE to pack it in.

Anyhow, the relevance?

It takes all sorts. But no one above mentioned 'volunteers'.

So there you are. Isn't that nice. :-)

Blair was, is, and always will be a Tory

Fred and Stan

What will you muppet's be posting next . Brown was,is and always will be a Tory

You two must have been rather dumb if you couldn't tell the difference between a tory PM and a Labour PM

exec - how strange ... it sounds as though he has set the place up properly, but where has he gone wrong? ..... bad location sounds the most obvious

It is cheaper than the 8$ I paid in Paris.

I suppose he could charge a £1 for the tolet facilities.

Good luck to him.


Where is it?

Location - "an old disused public toilet" to the locals will always be just that perhaps. Depends on the market he is trying to attract, is it just passing trade for example? Personally I would rather pay £1.50 for a latte, which is still a cheap price, than pay 80p for a Nescafe. Volunteers is a nice word, but is he trying to run a charity shop or run a viable business?

The area is of historical significance and is an old Danes Camp and is a great place to walk dogs. There is a large central area surrounded by deep ditches and there are lots of short grassy areas and lots of trees with good terrain under them too. Lotsof rabbits too. It is lightly maintained by the local council. The parish council with the local council's help, have installed lots of play equipment for the kids too. The site is large and it has an aura of mystique and magic about it. This all makes it very popular for a 'good walk' and is probably why the the public toilet was originally built and which no doubt got closed later, like they all get closed, namely because of 'cottaging'.

Lots of people take their dogs for a walk here and come by car to do so, leaving their cars on the nearby rough limestone chipped ground, which serves as a sorta car park for the dog walker vistors. You actually do have to go out of your way to pay the cafe a visit and don't pass it on your way from the car to the place where you enter the Danes Camp/park.

There are various ways the guy could make money from his cafe. The two most obvious are:

1. Do it up, get it running profitably and then sell it on, thereby making a capital gain and at an asking price, which is a factor of 'X' times his net profit, plus a further amount for the assets and stock.

2. Just run it as a profitable business enterprise.

However, hardly anyone visits the cafe. It echoes inside and is quite cold and miserable too. He is quite clearly running at a loss, most all of the time. He will even have to be throwing out unused bread, tea cakes and cakes, thereby compounding his losses even further.

It's one of those "It seemed like a good idea at the time" jobbies. This is all very well, but hardly anyone ever goes and spends any money there. It is always empty of customers. He is a gentle kind of a guy too and you couldn't even imagine him knocking out drugs from the place. He and his ladies are all so nice. It is clearly and blatantly a 'pig in a poke business disaster'.

And I strongly suspect he pays/doesn't pay the ladies how I previously described. Namely as 'volunteers'. ie. Not at all or a little bit of cash under the counter, financed by his morning bacon van business.

You actually do have to go out of your way to pay the cafe a visit and don't pass it on your way from the car to the place where you enter the Danes Camp/park.

that's the first and major problem and the ambience sounds horrible, though that could be remedied.
he clearly has a lot of hard PR work to do if he isn't to lose out
most assuredly he needs to make it warm and comfortable as if he can get customers in first time, he needs to ensure that they tell their friends how good it is and not that it is a miserable and chilly dump

home-made soup and proper coffee and always popular and give huge nett return
he could/should stand in the car park offering free tasters - but the place still needs to be made warm and inviting

The actual venue is unlikely to be the problem. In London, I can think of several ex toilets that are successful businesses. It probably has more to with location and maybe how it looks on the outside. Things like homemade soup, pasta dishes etc will draw people in eventually.

Open it in the summer time and flog ice cream.

Always amazed me how holiday coastal areas could make a living for a year on a three month season.

I suppose some may have had restaurants in more salubrious areas for the rest of the year.

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Just had the vision of Manuel on an old ice cream bicycle cart with a cornet in his hand.

Now I know why he cycles in the summer time.

Give the punters what they want, and put up some signs to advertise the attraction.

surely that must be a photoshop job, but love it

The car park is well off the road.

When looking at the evidence on the verges around the car park, which are just within slinging distance of an average open rear vehicle window, I have often thought how it might well be an 'unofficial' dogging area.

On Google Maps look up "Ironstone Railway Trust, Northampton" and you will see the car park for this, which is 'J'-shaped.

The Cafe/Toilet thingy building is just off the bottom of the 'J' at the 7 o'clock position and set just in and hidden a bit in the trees.

You enter the Danes Camp area also at the bottom of the 'J' but at the '5:30' clock position. As you look to the RHS of the car park on the map you can see the Danes Camp and all the trails. I trust you can get an idea how absoutely brilliant it is for walking dogs....

....and what a rubbishingly bad site for any kind of a cafe!

More lies from Labour.

He says his understanding is that MI6 obtained authorisation from the Labour government of the time for its action.

Jack Straw was the Labour Foreign Secretary in 2004 when the rendition took place. In an interview on BBC Radio 4 last year he said: "We were opposed to unlawful rendition. We were opposed to any use of torture or similar methods. Not only did we not agree with it, we were not complicit in it and nor did we turn a blind eye to it."

He added: "No foreign secretary can know all the details of what its intelligence agencies are doing at any one time."

His office told the BBC Mr Straw had nothing further to add in the light of the current allegations.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17651797

i'll now surprise you all .....
have just been listening to how Eastcoast Rail is running very well, as confirmed by the passengers, and profitably - all since it was returned to public ownership
it is therefore pretty appalling that the gov't now wants to re-privatise it when the the last bunch (or was it 2) made such a mess of it

as they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it

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that IS NOT to say that when the whole rail operation was originally in public ownership it was run well and efficiently, for it most assuredly was not
it was dire, inefficient, dirty and losing money hand over fist and forever fighting off strikes by Bob Crowe's predecessor and his merry men

I would prefer it to be in private ownership even if it was not much of an improvement. I am opposed to the government running any commercial enterprises. Without the profit motive businesses do not innovate.

It's not about Private or Public you right wing idiots, it's about competent or useless/corrupt and or cronified management... And no guesses which we keep on ending up with in this Country.