The Guardian dosen’t make much money from me any more. It’s a long time since I last bought a copy. I used to have it delivered, but when I moved house in 2007, I couldn’t find a local newsagent who delivered, and so I stopped. My main newspaper reading time was over breakfast, so picking up a copy later in the day didn’t really work for me. I used to pay The Guardian for an ad-free version of their website, but they stopped offering that service some years ago now. I paid for their tablet app for a while, but didn’t really get on with it, much preferring The Times app.

I carried on reading The Guardian via the website for a long time after I stopped buying it. But, over time, almost all of the writers I cared to read retired, took redundancy, or moved into management roles in which they rarely write. At the same time, they started giving writers of amusing features by-lines on actual news stories which they seemed woefully under-qualified to cover. They also reduced the pagination by cutting sections I enjoyed, and churned out ever-more frustratingly ill-informed comment pieces. And so, these days, I rarely even read The Guardian.

Oh, and they also pissed me off by cancelling a Guardian Masterclass at the last minute, after I’d paid for non-refundable travel to London. I know these things happen sometimes, but it was frustrating, and I was sorely disappointed at the lack of understanding and compassion on the part of the company.

Despite my frustration with it, and the fact that I rarely even engage with it, I still care for The Guardian, and would still very much like to see it find a profitable and successful place in the world. As a result, I was interested to read Ken Doctor’s discussion of The Guardian‘s new “known” business strategy, published in February over at Newsonomics. It’s a fairly unique approach in the newspaper industry, and I wonder to what extent it can succeed.

The Everything Store, by Brad Stone, is appropriately subtitled Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. I understand that the veracity of the content of this book has been challenged, particularly by Amazon, and I have no way of assessing where the truth lies. With that in mind, I can only comment on the book as it stands.

The Everything Store is so named as Bezos expressed a desire to use the internet to build a store with limitless stock, where one could purchase anything. On reading this, I was immediately struck by the similarity to Harrod’s motto and goal – omnia omnibus ubique – but this is an aspect that is not discussed at all in the book, more’s the pity. I think it would have made a fascinating comparison – the modern retail behemoth and the Victorian equivalent, sharing much the same goals but approaching the problem in totally different ways. But I digress.

Stone’s book gives a comprehensive account of how the company has developed, from it’s small beginnings as a low volume book store, to it’s current world-leading status. It isn’t shy about discussing the financial difficulties Amazon has faced, and indeed still faces. It is difficult to turn a profit on narrow margins, and even more so when one is selling below cost price. It also doesn’t shy away from discussing some of the questionable ethics employed by Amazon, and appears to do so in an even handed manner that is genuinely enlightening.

One particularly good example is the discussion of Bezos’s simultaneous exploitation of and protest against patent law. A lesser author would present this as rank hypocrisy; Stone presents the facts and explains Bezos’s motivation as he understands it. He then allows the reader to determine whether Bezos is acting with reprehensible hypocrisy, or acting in the most logical way possible given the circumstances. I still haven’t quite made up my mind.

The book also gives a comprehensive pen portrait of Bezos as an individual. He is clearly exceptionally driven, possibly to the point of fault, much like his CEO contemporary Steve Jobs. By the end of the book, I was a little tired of reading descriptions of his laugh, but perhaps it is such a dominant feature of his personality that it bears repeating ad nauseam.

To my mind, the book fell down a little when discussing contemporaries and other Amazon executives. The balance between detail and length doesn’t feel quite right in these passages. We are told about many of their childhoods, for example, even though they play a relatively minor role in the story. It feels as though Stone wants to share the detailed background research he has done, rather than concentrating on crafting the broader story and characterisation.

I also found the timeline difficult to follow in some passages. Stone will often abberate from the main timeline to tell the story of how a particular feature or policy developed over time. This means that there is a fair amount of jumping around, and if one doesn’t fully concentrate, it’s easy to get lost.

Overall, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was engaging, balanced, and informative. The story is told with a degree of page-turning drive that isn’t typical of business books. I’d highly recommend it.

The Everything Store is available now from amazon.co.uk in hardback and on Kindle.

Wendy said I should post this today, as she was thought it looked very pretty!

One of my Wagamama favourites… though I usually prefer the miniature version plus a macchiato!

Ryanair, despite its recent promises to improve, remains the airline people love to hate. But, as Europe’s most profitable airline, it’s a model that seems to work.

In a brilliantly titled blog post at FlightFox, Grace McClure compares the highly successful Ryanair model with that of US carrier Southwest Airlines. Southwest also sells itself as a budget carrier, but has considerably greater costs and substantially lower profits. The slight tone of outrage that pervades the descriptions of Ryanair’s business model only serves to make this article all the more enjoyable.

It’s a highly recommended Weekend Read.

Today, Wendy and I enjoyed a lovely sunny day in Durham with my sister and family.

“Economically, socially and politically, the north of England is becoming another country.” So says The Economist. But can anything be done to prevent the divergence of the nation’s fortunes? This brilliant article gives a sobering analysis of the facts.

A few weeks ago, I decided that I should read a book by Andy McNab. After all, he’s an author that sells books by the pallet-load, generally to positive reviews. Red Notice is the first book in a (relatively) new series, and with it being on offer, I thought this would be as good a place to start as any.

The experience was one that I did not enjoy. The plot involved the ‘hijacking’ of a Eurostar train as it passed through the Channel Tunnel. Of course, both an SAS man and his girlfriend were on board. This plot managed to be both desperately implausible throughout and yet also somehow thoroughly predictable. In addition, as I understand to be typical of this genre, a man who is close to death several times over the course of the novel is regularly able to “bounce back” within minutes, running and shooting with the best of them.

There is a an astoundingly badly written subplot about a pregnancy, which is diagnosed in a rather unusual fashion:

“There’s nothing quite like morning sickness on a woman’s breath. It’s unmistakable.”

Not only is this somewhat medically unlikely, it’s also notable that the sex of the baby has been determined at this early stage – far earlier, in fact, than the sex of the baby can be determined. From the timeline of the book, it’s clear that this pregnancy is well within its first trimester.

Similarly, there are some amusing internal inconsistencies sprinkled throughout: a car mysteriously changes from a Jaguar to a BMW in less than a page; the geography of where people are at any one time seems inconsistent (though it is so difficult to follow at times that it is hard to tell for sure).

There are also some passages laden with unnecessary military jargon, which is often used to cover a lack of detail in the narrative. It’s almost as if he’s trying to set up a “Chekov’s gun” scenario, but without the foresight to know specifically what “Chekov’s gun” will be. My personal favourite example:

“The Slime carefully unpacked their geeky stuff from its protective aluminium boxes.”

The dialogue varies throughout from Hollywood-esque catchphrase to speaking in perfectly formed sentences. An ideal example of the former is this cringeworthy passage:

“Unless they were asleep, they were dead. And from what he’d seen of these guys, he knew they wouldn’t be sleeping.”

An example of the latter is when a character reportedly angrily yells at the top of his voice:

“I’ve got an important event tonight and I need my dinner jacket.”

On the positive side, this book does have pace. It also has a stab at discussing some of the governmental politics of SAS work, and even touches on the questionable ethics at times. Unfortunately, these elements are harmed by a lack of any depth or real substance, and a frustratingly frequent repeat of what I assume to be the shallow political views of the author (best summarised as: the SAS are professionals, politicians should let them do what they want).

All things considered, this isn’t a book I’d recommend. There’s nothing especially creative about it, and it lacks any air of authenticity. The writing and dialogue is so poor as to border on comedy. I suggest giving it a miss.

Red Notice is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

This was the view as I left a meeting this morning… It was a challenge to convince myself that I really did have to head back to the office!

With thanks to @nsmehta1234 for photographic skill!