The Apprentice: About time too and all!!

Well thank goodness sense has at last prevailed!!! I just couldn’t bare to blog about The Apprentice over the last two weeks as it has been too painful. I am sure that this has been the worse set of candidates yet (I’m sure I’ve said that before). I have felt that Sir Allan made some wrong decisions and the conduct of some of the candidates absolutely appaulling.

Lee McQueen was on of my favourites (not because of the name!!) until last weeks uncalled for outburst on Sara. He was not the only one, I felt like she was outcast based on race, that her ideas because they were more cultural were dismissed and that she as a person was being dismissed as a second class citizen, called lazy for no other reason than she was of asian decent. That was how it made me feel and speaking to my Apprentice buddy Diva, she felt the same. Helena showed her vindictive side yet again and Raef, who has been endearing himself to me week after week, really showed why he stands out from the rest. The previous week Claire for me did not deserve to win and Lucinda showed her complete and utter talent for management. Lindi took the heat for really what Jen should have taken the heat for and Michael yet again proved that he is not ready for real decision making. Jenny yet again showed her complete inability to be humane and Kevin showed that selling really isn’t his skill as he was completely blinded by Jenny.

All that said Sir Allan made the right decisions this week. Jenny has feasted in the boardroom on the plight of others colding using derogative about another team member to make her escape. This week…. at long last… Sir Allan caught her full on and expelled her from the boardroom. Jen tried to fight by discrediting others, she should have extolled her own merits, she may have stayed, but like Lindi she too is only a sales person.

This week a number of people showed their true colours, Nick complimented Lucinda and Sara (at last some recognition for them), Claire proved again that she is a problem team member, Raef stood out as one of the most decent apprentice’s, Lee showed that he is very excitable and not always able to hold his swearing in check, Michael proved what a sleaze bag he really is and that he is actually a mouse for all of his bolshy arrogance and Alex is once again attempting to wait out till the end.

What a nightmare!!!

I think that we are close to having the cream of this crop left on the show but Michael needs to go and I still feel that Helena is missing some vital skills. It is possible that Claire is a diamond in the rough but she needs some serious work. Lucinda might not be as forthright as she needs to be to get the job and the same goes for Sara, that leaves Raef and Lee… at time point I’d take Raef extended dictionary and all at this stage.

Roll on next week…..

The Apprentice: Poor, poor, poor

Yet another shambles, with candidates setting each other up to fail and the crux of the task being left to flounder. What a mess and what a bunch of horrible people! (A little judgemental I know)

Tonight, my dislike of Claire increased as she did it again, bullying Simon and being her usual horrible self, two faced self. The apologies just did not do it for me. I truly believed that she would be a great candidate when I first saw her and I thought that she might make a great Apprentice. Unless she does something pretty spectacular in the coming weeks I think that she might just be out on her ear. The thing is I think that she might actually be a good project leader, she seems to have a decent business brain, but her interpersonal skills really let her down. You have to get people on board to manage a team effectively, but she spends so much time undermining and back stabbing her team members that she has already lost the plot.  It was interesting to see the look on Michaels face when she returned to the house.

Poor Simon, he really didn’t have much of a chance, from the time that he put himself forward that had already decided that they would not support him effectively… and they didn’t. His style of management left a lot to be desired however, he was a man fighting to be heard. He knew that he had a team that didn’t believe in him and that treated him like the village idiot. He just wanted a little respect as PM and they were not willing to give it to him.

Interestingly, those in Simon’s team were very willing to take anyone as a scape goat and as soon as Claire became a possibility you saw both Jenny and Alex jump on her, to her horror! What goes around….

Helene this week completely and utterly fell off her pedastool, I was looking forward to seeing her as a PM and knew that she would be quite good at organsing the team. However, and it’s a big however, she became very Jennyesq when dealing with Lucinda. What is it about Lucinda that the girls go out of their way put her in a predicament that sets her up to be fired. Jenny did it the first week and Helene most definitely did it this week.

Lucinda made is very clear that she is a technophobe, painstakingly clear. (Now what a technophobe is doing looking to work for a man who runs a number of technology companies I’ll never know!). From what I have seen Lucinda can sell or at least get the general public interested, she’s got all the humanism’s going and yet every week she is placed in her area of weakness. They talk to her in the most terrible ways and whilst she might come across as lazy (which I don’t actually think she is by the way) no one is maximising her or her skill set.

Yes it’s a competition but to stay in the competition you need to stay out of the boardroom which means winning the task which means working together and playing to every one’s strengths.  It seems to me that in this season of The Apprentice that important fact seems to have been forgotten. The focus seems to be “Set people up to be fired” before you’ve even started the task furthermore reached the boardroom.

I am finding this session, very poor indeed, poor candidated, poor attitude and even poor decisions by Sir Allen. What a shame.

The Apprentice: Shambles and Shameless

This weeks apprentice really did make me think. Two questions came to mind

1: How did the boys forget the successes of the previous week so quickly?

2: Why is it that people forget that what they say on reality TV is all recorded and then edited?

OK so lets look at it, in week three the boys most certainly had the horse before the cart as they researched pricing, negotiated and got on with the job (well some more than others). This week it all went out of the window as Ian failed to manage the team and Kevin really didn’t have a clue about food! Simon had great ideas but failed to be heard and Mr McQueen decided to address himself in the third person. It seems that this week Raef after proving himself last week as PM faded into the background and Michael who hasn’t really made any kind of positive impact on anyone!!

They were lost really lost and made a pigs ear out of something that should have been quite easy. Simplicity was the key and it was lost on the boys

The girls had a more ambitious plan but working together seemed to be their downfall. Whilst it should never be forgotten that this is a competition winning a task is a team effort. It makes no sense attempting to oust a contestant before you’ve even finished the task as I felt Claire was attempting to do. Work together, win the task, then you don’t have to focus on planning your escape from the board room!

Sadly, Claire has spent time on camera saying that Shara was a good team manager in the board room and the minute she got out of the boardroom she did a complete turn around. She seems to have no shame in being forward in undermining others and quick to smile on one side of her face and scowl on the other.

The girls didn’t have a better idea than the boys, they make some fundamental mistakes but more so they learned the lessons of not negotiating effectively from last week, kept their costs down and got it together.

Right now this appears to be the poorest group of candidates that Sir Alan has had to choose from since the series started. I am sure that we will see what the next episode brings, but I’m having to ask myself is it really worth watching?

The Apprentice: What??? Shariz! no way

What the hell is going on?

Jenny is a nightmare on legs, she does not listen, she makes things us and as Margaret says “she can’t see sideways”. In fact the wrong people where in the boardroom, if any on it should have been Lindi and that Jennifer who says that she is says she’s “the best sales person in europe”. As a Corporate Sales Account Manager and Sales Manager I have never seen so many so called Sales people miss buying signals and

They what was Sir Alan thinking, he got it wrong, very, very wrong and we are going to see Jenny fall I am sure in a collosal way which will hopefully completely open Sir Alan’s eyes. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a television programme and Shariz may not make great ratings unlike the personalities of Jenny and Lucinda so it was inevitable that she would go. But he got it wrong.

I hope that Shariz get’s snapped up by other companies as she showed a level of organisation and common sense that seemed to be lacking in the others. I would have loved to have seen her as a project manager.

The Apprentice: Episode 1… hmm interesting!

There is no doubt that the right choice was made this week in firing Nicolas in the board room, he made some whooping mistakes and could see the trees for the degree’s. Nicolas took the wrong tack in the board room and paid for it. Completely misunderstanding the man Sir Alan Sugar… what a noonar!

What a complete palarva the whole thing was really. There aren’t any real leaders at this stage that stand out for me. Both teams were a bit of a mess and noone really seemed to know how best to go about this task. I will say however that I did think that the girls eventually were abit more organised and I loved the fact that they kept their eye on the money and knew how much they needed to achieve in order to succeed. Its often missed in business as entrepreneurs get excited about the idea of what they are selling and forget that the numbers have to back up everything that they do and influence decisions and choices. So well done for that girls. Just remember you can never sell something effectively without knowing the cost price, sell price and margin that you are working with… trying to sell without knowing that kind of information is suicide.

It’s quite sad that there are those in our society that still feel that because one speaks slightly more mothbally than others that they are the educated and those not able to match their diction are of a lower intellect and have a reduced exposure to the real wonders of this world. WHAT!!!  It’s quite sad that an accent determines in many minds the intelligence of others. SAD!!!

Is Raef our new Tre? What was very interesting was that he said that he was not phased in situations where other “mortals” would quake. Funny that hey, he seemed to most definitely quake in his boots when put forward for Project Manager and when he returned to the house after the board room he told the boys that it was a very scary experience. We shall see in the weeks to come whether or not Raef has nerves of steel… or not!

I have found the claims of many of the contestants (“I’m the best sales person in europe!”) are a little over the top and some just a little crazy, but hey I suppose when  you are fighting on TV for a job with a six figure salary with one of the UK’s most successful businessmen I suppose you’ll say just about anything.

Well let’s see where next weeks takes us… and what Lucinda has got on!

The Apprentice: 2008… It’s Back

Well would you believe it? The Apprentice is back!!

The Apprentice is  one of my favourite programmes and in the past has been a source of much blogging for me. The first episode of 2008’s The Apprentice airs on BBC1 at 9pm Wednesday, March 26 with a line up of candidates (characters) from all over the country.  After viewing the girls and the boys it is really is going to be an interesting one. There are definitely some rottweilers in there but sadly it also looks like, yet again, we’ve a few who are along for the media ride.  I also think that we are in for a bit of a laugh judging by some of this years contestants. We also have some self confessed ruthless people who are proud to admit that they are manipulative and will do anything to get what they want. We’ve one or two who almost sound like they are trying to convince themselves of their abilities.

Well we will see, if this years Apprentice is worth watching soon enough and I shall be commenting as we go along!

but we shall have to wait and see.

Vocation, vocation, vocation

At last!!! The television programme that David has been working on for most of this year is due to debut this morning on Channel 4 at 9.30am. This has been a life long dream for Dave and at the beginning of this year he clearly stated that one of his goals was to be on TV and here we are.

Proud is an understatement.. Well Done Dave you rock!!

Meet the Natives.

I know that a number of people have gotten themselves into a tizzy over this programme and the often negative portrayal of black people as backwards, however, I must say that this programme is amazing. And if you have any understanding of irony then you will know why.

In March this year, a British TV company invited a small tribe called the Kastam, from the tiny South Pacific island of Tanna, to send a delegation to England, a country none of its people had ever visited before. Here they observed and experience life in the UK and although they may have been seen as the natives, the natives where really us the british people.

I’ve truly enjoyed watching this programme because these five men reminded me of what we seem to have lost in the western world… love, peace, respect and purity. I’ve been amazed as these five have been a stark contrast to our relative society. They respect animals without placing them above human beings, they have no understanding of homeless as in Tanna it just is not possible, they truly care for humankind and want the best for us all, they have a community spirit that is infectious, they have a simplicity that once you see it you just can’t help craving.

Meet the Natives has been a reminder for me of how life really should be. Do the people on Tanna have their issues? I am sure they do, but their inbuilt determination for equality, community, peace and love made our fast life society, that often disregards humanity, look very undesirable in comparision.

I truly hope that there isn’t as mass exodus to Tanna for a holiday resort by the british people, but I do hope that this programme caused many of us to stop and re-think our self-serving lives.

Northern Rock and the Knee Jerks

I know that I don’t have lots of money in a Northern Rock bank account by come on now… How knee jerk can you get?

A bank that is not in trouble decides, that the markets it usually trades with to raise funds is too volatile to use. So to protect itself it asks the Bank of England to give it an overdraft just in case.

The bank doesn’t use the overdraft and it’s business as usual

The media hypes the whole thing up

The Knee Jerks go and take there money out of the bank

The bank has never touched customers savings to loan money and therefore the savings are all in the bank

The Bank of England declares itself guarantor for the bank

The goverment of the UK declares itself guarantor for the bank.

The Knee Jerks queue for hours to take their money out of the bank

The Knee Jerks flood the website to take their money out of the bank and can’t understand why the website doesn’t work.

The website of the bank not build for mass hysteria can’t cope with the traffic and so doesn’t work properly.

What a palarva… somebody save us from the Knee Jerks

Filming again

Well, Dave is off again to Glasgow filming for Channel 4 again. It’s wonderful to see how his dream to be on television has turned into a reality and just goes to show that how when you verbalize what you want to achieve things start to happen. I’ve watched my husband really grow over the last year, focusing in on what he wants to achieve and putting himself in the right place to ensure that when the opportunity arrives he is able to receive it.

Dave says that filming is tiring, but that the satisfaction and enjoyment he gets from it is immense. I always knew that he was right for TV as he really is an excellent presenter and I hope that this experience sets the platform for more such work. When you are doing what you love and enjoy it, it adds value to every aspect of your life and so me and the kids are lapping up the value of a satisfied and happy husband and father.

So Dave as you face the camera again we hope you have a fab time!