Recently by Mik Barton

You only get one chance to make a first impression. Or, in business terms, you can only launch once.

If it goes wrong, quite a bit of PR effort can be required to persuade dissatisfied customers to return.

Earlier this year we were advising a venue (not in the Midlands) of the merits of a 'soft' opening. There would be no fanfare, just a few invited guests and critical friends, a chance for the staff to iron out any unforeseen problems. This came back to me at the weekend when I was a customer at a new venue closer to home.

Having read Terry Grimley's preview of 'The Public' in the Birmingham Post, I took the kids along for the opening day. We arrived when West Bromwich's new gallery/venue was just an hour old.

To help us save the planet, what we need is lots of really heavy rubbish.

Go on. Start throwing it in the recycling bin. The more it weighs, the better.

That's nonsense of course - so why do we give our local councils recycling targets measured by the tonnes of waste collected?

As part of it's recent Climate Change Festival, Birmingham City Council challenged all residents "to increase the amount of waste they recycle over the coming months by at least 20 kg per person."

I was discussing the issue with someone who knows the waste management industry pretty thoroughly (someone who journalists writing about fortnightly bin collections would call 'an industry insider').

We've heard suggestions before that the London Olympics is going to suck money out of the regions.

Our own market square project for Kings Heath could be the sort of minor victim if, as one voice suggested at a recent meeting, all the Lottery money is going to pay for the spiralling Olympic costs. Without this it would have come our way for local regeneration projects of course (?)

There's also the suggestion I've heard that the massive construction projects in East London, as well as CrossRail etc, will increase the demand for labour and building materials so that the price for other UK projects (such as New Street Station?) are forced upwards.

If anyone has got any ideas whether either of these will actually materialise, please let me know.

But here's a new one on me. The global cost of steel is, I'm told, being forced up by the Beijing Olympics, now only a few months away.

All of us doing business in Birmingham are tied up, whether we like it or not, with the reputation of the city. We help create it and we are measured by it.

Your address is a part of your company image. That's presumably why big corporates like tall buildings (and why helicopter shots of Canary Wharf feature in the title sequence of 'The Apprentice' even though Sir Alan Sugar's office is miles away in Brentwood.

Or it's why traditional craft industries like to use pictures of country cottages and rural workshops in their literature.

I'm tempted to visit the High Street today just to see if shop assistants are busy ripping price labels off clothes - or perhaps they are busy at work with a biro changing all the figures?

It's the sort of idle curiosity that overtakes me after I spend a certain amount of time watching (and occasionally helping) my wife shop for the latest fashions.

Quite a few of the High Street chains have labels showing the price in both pounds and euro. When I spot a good exchange rate the devil in me has always wanted to go up to the checkout and demand to pay in the currency used by most people in the EU. (Of course, at the moment, there's fat chance of me spotting a favourable exchange rate)

I made my first trip this week to ExCeL, the pocket-sized, hard-to-reach rival to Birmingham's NEC.

As you might guess from that first sentence, yes - I am a little bit biased in my opinion. But I approached the experience with an open mind and an open wallet.

Worryingly, despite the grumbles I heard from both visitors and event organisers about the Docklands venue, I also heard that a parallel event is likely to be pulled from the NEC. This is even though, as I now know from practical experience, the journey between Birmingham and London (or vice-versa) is considerably more straightforward than the journey from most of London to eastern Docklands.

The reason for my visit: I was asked to share my wisdom with a queue of newly created and wannabe SMEs who had booked to hear about media relations. The event was a two-day show, but scared off by London hotel prices I decided to travel down each day. I went once by car, once by train.

How do you feel if you get a free gift of an electronic gadget, but then have to buy the batteries to make it work?

Do you remember the story of a radio station offering a free trip to watch the Champions League final in Athens? A winner was all ready to soak up the atmosphere in the Greek capital, only to find out he'd actually won the chance to watch the game on TV at a restaurant called Athens.

It was supposed to be a joke, they said. But Ofcom didn't find it that funny (they actually described it as a "serious breech") and so the result was a publicity stunt that generated bad publicity.

The following is another tale of a special offer that wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The amount at stake is only a few pounds, but the value of the lost goodwill to the business is, I would suggest, considerably more.

Has anyone worked out just how much the local elections will be costing Birmingham businesses?

Twice in two weeks many thousands of people will need to take time off or arrange (and pay for) childcare because schools are closed. Just think of the disruption that means for working parents and the companies that employ them.

It looks like my prediction that the Government would fail to spend millions of pounds allocated to green energy generation may turn out to be wrong. And I'm glad.

Energy Minister Malcom Wicks is about to announce changes to the Low Carbon Buildings Programme according to a forecast in The Times today. That follows my blog posting on how the Government's lack of generosity had meant homeowners abandoning the scheme.

OK, so one followed the other - but it may not be cause and effect yet (even though the Birmingham Post does get read in high places). More credit is probably due to Birmingham MP Lynne Jones and her grilling of the Secretary of State earlier this year.

If the Times is right, there could be £12m up for grabs to install solar panels and the like. If only someone could install a small-scale hydro generator before they open the floodgates that would save a few tonnes of carbon.

Even in the days when the distant view of Didcot cooling towers signified I had arrived home in Oxfordshire I don't think I ever described a power station as a beautiful sight.

But I love windmills.

Their modern, clean, sculptural form a top a mountain is capable of actually enhancing the landscape.

On our frequent family visits to Wales the kids' excitement at being the first to spy the windmills (announcing our arrival in Ceredigion) almost surpasses the challenge of being "first to see the sea".

Wind turbines though, like power stations, are not built for their beauty. They have an increasingly important job to do.

This week, on our return from a school holiday break, we stopped off at the Centre for Alternative Technology outside Machynlleth. Judging by the appearance of most visitors, the place is preaching to the already at least half converted - but it's still packed full of ideas of how to reduce your family carbon footprint even further.

We arrived by car - which was a bad start - but were at least able to feel smug about some of the ways we have adjusted our own home and lifestyle.

"I wish we could afford to install solar panels" was an uppermost thought yet again, just as it has been since my favourite skiing glaciers started to melt. Our friends, who live on a nearby hill, had also looked at the economics of installing their own turbine.

So imagine my frustration when I returned home to catch up on my MP Lynne Jones' campaign to unlock grants for green homeowners. My email in tray showed a Parliamentary question she tabled had only generated more hot air from the Government that is supposed to be helping us tackle climate change.

There is a scheme to provide grants for homeowners; it's called the Low Carbon Buildings Programme. The problem is that successive raising of hurdles and lowering of grants has meant hundreds of people dropping out of the scheme. You can only get 50% of the cost up to a maximum of £2,500 per building - even if you install solar panels, a wind turbine and a watermill in the local stream.

People have been put off to such an extent that of the £18.7m allocated only £6.7m has so far been spent. This leaves £12m still to pay out - and the scheme is due to end in June this year.

No wonder, as Lynne Jones points out, when it comes to renewable energy only Belgium, Cyprus and Malta in the EU are doing worse than us. Germany, with less wind than the UK, produces ten times as much energy from turbines.

Footnote....

Since I first posted this item about how I love windmills, I came across this video of high winds in Denmark. Just shows there's so much power to harness...