Running a business in Britain, page 2
246 articles on what it actually takes to run a business in Britain: VAT, staff, rent, rates, tenants, stock and sites. From the studio that simulates it.
- A hotel with a departure time. A cruise ship is a hotel with a departure time. Everything unsold when the ropes come off is gone for good, and most of the profit is not in the fare.
- The first franchises, and the number that mattered. The first two rail franchises started in February 1996 on falling subsidy, leased trains and somebody else's track. One published figure decided how they were judged.
- A quay only earns with a ship on it. The cranes, the dredging and the payroll all run whether a ship turns up or not. What an empty berth really costs, and how a port loses a weekly service overnight.
- Two halls, one tenant, March 2000. The second hall was finished in the spring of 2000: power in, cooling running, nothing in the racks. The bill for an empty hall is almost the bill for a full one.
- Build the terminal, then find the traffic. The ground, the gantry and the train paths are all paid for before a single customer signs. How an inland terminal earns, and why one retailer usually decides its fate.
- The autumn nobody flew. The leases on four aircraft fall due on the first of every month. In the autumn of 2001 that was the only part of a regional airline that carried on exactly as before.
- One product, and you may not price it. You own the only way across the estuary and you still cannot put the price up without an inquiry. The oddest monopoly in British business, and how it usually ends.
- The July the regulars went outside. Half the regulars smoked and the beer garden was a yard with two barrels in it. From 1 July 2007, that was the whole business problem in one sentence.
- Paid for the space in the pipe. Shippers pay for the space in the pipe whether they use it or not, which makes this the steadiest revenue in Britain until the week a field starts to smell of fuel.
- Six days of an empty apron. The rosters for the week of 15 April 2010 were printed before anybody had heard of the volcano. Every one of those shifts was paid, and not one aircraft came.
- Nobody can leave you. Customers who cannot leave, a price you are not allowed to set, and one published leakage figure that decides how the next five years are going to go.
- Nine routes nobody will pay for. The council decides which rural routes it will pay for. The operator is the one whose name goes on the withdrawal notice in the village shelter, fifty-six days before the last bus.
- Buying forward and selling under a cap. A supplier buys next winter months ahead for customers who can leave in thirty days, then sells at a price Ofgem has already capped. The margin is pennies.
- Bidding against your own numbers. The bid team's own numbers were the most credible in the room, and to win they had to bid past them. How a rail franchise competition actually worked.
- Homes passed is not homes paying. You can pass three hundred homes in a week and sell nothing. The whole trade is the race between how fast you dig and how many of them ever order.
- When the main contractor goes under. Two months of applications, every pound of retention on four sites, and nobody left with the authority to sign a certificate. Monday, 15 January 2018.
- Selling kilowatts in a shed. Customers buy kilowatts and a promise, not computing. The binding constraint is never the money: it is the date the network operator offers for the connection.
- Six days of snow, nineteen thousand bins. Six days of snow cost the contractor nothing in revenue and everything in the one number the contract is written on. The 2018 catch-up from the depot side.