Antony on the road (2)

Tuesday

Breakfast courtesy of the Thames Valley Economic Partnership (http://www.businessinberkshire.co.uk/tvep/index.html) where the keynote speakers were John Whitely, the Bank of England’s agent for central and southern England, and Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways.

John Whitely gave a very downbeat assessment of the current situation, backed up a formidable array of alarming looking graphs, and concluded that there was a “very high degree of uncertainty in unprecedented times”.

Willie Walsh was Willie Walsh and said exactly what you would expect him to say (http://www.thamesvalley.co.uk/public_panel/economic_outlook.php)
regarding BA’s response to the economic downturn and the requirement for a third runway at Heathrow.

Fair play then to the guy from Imago (http://www.imagogroupplc.com/3D%20Telepresence/3DTelePresence.htm), a business that provide 3D telepresence facilities who stood up and proudly pointed out that they were over 100% ahead of their budget in the first few months of their business year. Clearly a SMART business and a good riposte to all the gloom and doom that had otherwise prevailed during the morning.