So That's Why They Call It Great Britain

We're just editing So That's Why They Call It Great Britain.






















This is not the finished cover, and it will change completely. In fact, we're struggling with it slightly. To tell the truth, we're hopelessly late with the whole book, for a variety of reasons. But it's a very interesting read and tells how Britons have been behind everything from loo roll to the electric light, with lots of stuff in between. For instance, did you know (because we didn't) that the fax machine was first dreamed up by a Scottish clockmaker in 1843 - or that the first jet engine was patented in Nuneaton in 1791?
It's the kind of book that demands masses of fact-checking, and where you know that you will still miss stuff or receive letters from people pointing out that the Chinese invented the telephone 4,000 years ago, but it is fascinating stuff. Out soon.

Meanwhile, the Booksellers' Association wants the Government to think again about raising the Uniform Business Rate by 5% from April, according to the Bookseller.
They've teamed up with the British Retail Consortium's campaign to get the man who sold our gold at a record low to see sense.
Well, good luck with that.
It takes a special kind of genius to put up taxes on business as the country enters the worst recession in a century and jobless totals soar; but then Gordon is a special kind of genius. How on earth this can have any effect other than to close down shops and cost jobs I don't know.
If I could change one thing about British politics, it would be to introduce a rule that, in order to become an MP, you have to have run a business. If Gordon Brown had ever been in charge of an independent bookshop 'attempting to negotiate lower lease terms and... save costs and improve cashflow' he might perhaps think twice about extracting more money to waste on huge government IT systems that don't work, say, or shovelling hundreds of thousands of pounds in to the grubby hands of Home Secretaries who 'live in their sister's back bedroom'.
I won't hold my breath.

Finally, just checked our statcounter. It's always a surprise to find anyone reading these ramblings, but it turns out we have regular visitors from, among other places, Japan, India (Hyderabad, Calcutta and Bombay), several former Soviet Union countries, Australia (multiple places), the USA (multiple places) and across Europe. Hello to you all!

Posted by Dan