Lions rugby

Tomorrow sees the British and Irish Lions test squad being announced. The last tour was in New Zealand, where I was fortunate enough to be fore the second and third tests. I hope the tests are more competitive this time, but I cannot predict which players will make the squad.

Legends such as Will Greenwood, Keith Wood and Stuart Barnes cannot agree. Is it because they are looking for different things, or that nobody has really set the tour alight so far?

I would pick Jenkins, Mears, Vickery, Shaw, O'Connell, Croft, Williams, Heaslip, Phillips, Jones, Monye, Roberts, O'Driscoll, Bowe and Byrne. Bench will be Sheridan, Rees, Wyn-Jones, Wallace, Ellis, O'Gara and Fitzgerald.

Shaw is streets ahead of the other locks due to his physicality and will not take a backward step against Botha at the front of the lineout. He also has a better handling and open play game. Ieuan Evans writing in today's Telegraph agrees, as an aside, he played with Shaw back on the 1997 tour to South Africa.

Croft I imagine will shade Wallace on the blindside, but this could go either way. Sheridan hasn't done enough, and has had two games in short succession, neither of which have proved he is on form, while Jenkins clearly is.

O'Gara will be on the bench, again I guess this will be a very close call, but there's really no other kicker other than O'Gara.

Gordon, Miliband, Mandelson, Twenty20

So, I woke up this morning with the feint hope that Gordon Brown would have fallen on his sword after his meeting with the Labour mob last night. As ever with our great leader, I am disappointed.

It seems that the conspirators are a little weak and divided. I wonder what the outcome would have been if they - Purnell, Flint et al - had spoken to each other.

Still, this morning on the Today programme, Miliband didn't really hide his assessment that Gordon isn't the best man to lead either the brothers or the country. He is about two years behind the rest of the country with that view.

Lord Mandelson is the glue holding the cabinet in place and Gordon as prime minister. I hope one unguarded comment from him will bring the whole house of cards - or charade, depending on your analogy - down.

One bit of good news, Australia are out of the Twenty20 world cup. Tempered by England's defeat to Holland last week. I didn't even know they played cricket in Holland.

Monday stuff

It's always a struggle getting into gear for Monday morning, but today was a bit easier - as there is only 10 working days until a week off. Catriona and I cannot wait, it seems much longer than three months since we were skiing in Val d'Isere. Well, Catriona was, I was not, as I broke my arm.

We both had a very relaxing weekend, watching Lions vs Cheetahs and England vs Argentina on Saturday, neither of which were worth much positive comment. Bluewater yesterday was tyically busy and full of society's dross. We did, however, find enough time to visit Lisa and James to check out their new kittens and watch Yasmina win The Apprentice. I hoped Lord Sugar, as I suppose we will soon have to call him, would pick her, although it seems the rest of the country would have picked Kate.

I also picked up a reconditioned platen-type hot foil blocking machine, which will allow further expansion into the presentation packaging market. I'm also working on fabricating a modification to our Zund flatbed digital diecutter, which will mean that corrugated sheets sit a lot flatter and can be cut a lot more accurately.

No netball with Catriona tonight, as the weather isn't particularly great I won't object to sorting the shopping out.

Wednesday update

This week just keeps getting tougher, to paraphrase MasterChef. Strictly speaking, it's not actually tougher, just busier. As if a day out visiting suppliers and checking out a new machine yesterday wasn't enough, I got back to plenty of orders, that as ever, seem to be urgent!

Bit of a long journey, heading from Crawley, to Corby, then to Colchester. I must have racked up about 350/400 miles, but got back by 3pm and was straight back into the office for some production and quoting.

But, the good news is that Tuesday wasn't wasted, as our new hot foil blocking and embossing machine is arriving on Saturday. This will significantly expand our capability, and means that we don't have to subcontract out a lot of work. Also arriving soon will be a sheet-to-sheet gluer/laminator and pressure roller. This is only a small version of the industrial specification one I'll be getting around the beginning of 2010. I can now offer customers requiring presentation packaging a fully in-house service.

When this is teamed with our Zund digital diecutter, we will have possibly the most flexible - and cost effective - method of short run production for high quality presentation packaging in the UK. You will be able to specify a box and artwork to your own requirements, and we can produce 1 or 1,000 units without the need for expensive diecut tooling.

Please email on jonathan@bectechpackaging.com if you need any more information about the products and services we can offer you.

Meanwhile, holiday is booked for 22 June for a week, but we have no idea where we will be going. I hope that I won't miss either of the first or second Lions tests on 20 and 27 June due to holiday. Leaving early tonight to catch the game between the Lions and Lions - yes, really - it looks like we have a strong team. I did also think that on Saturday, and we very nearly got turned over.

Thanks for visiting my blog. Looking at the date of my last post, I cannot believe it has been over five weeks. May was full of bbqs and spending lots of time outside over the two bank holidays, as well as plenty of work, just for a change.

I've been busy sorting out all the prices and wording for placing our products on ebay. I'm constantly amazed at some of the prices other packaging suppliers try to charge!

Due to our flexible manufacturing technique, we are able to significantly reduce our customers' packaging costs. For example, one of our competitors sell boxes for over 60 percent more than our prices, even before they add VAT at 15 percent!

I guess I have put approximately 15 different sizes of packaging boxes on ebay so far. I aim to put many more on in the next few weeks. Please visit our site at http://stores.ebay.co.uk/bectech-packaging for some great discounts on postal boxes.

I've also managed to find a new courier to deliver our goods. Over the next month I'll be looking at www.myhermes.co.uk to see how they compare against our existing couriers. They certainly compete on price alone.

Next up will be sorting out our stand-alone website at www.bectechpackaging.com, although I'm aiming to get everything running smoothly on ebay first before doing this.

Over the next year, I'm also aiming to increase the types of products and services to our customers. I am always being asked for short runs of high quality presentation packaging, display and point-of-sale/purchase products. Our facilities here are ideally suited to providing our customers with cost-effective solutions in these markets.

So far, sales have been going well, again keeping us busy at work. I am looking forward to a well deserved holiday from 22 June, as we're not skiing, I shouldn't come back with another broken arm. Not sure where we'll be going, I wouldn't mind going to the south of France again.