I'm not long back from the Insolvency conference with a variety of speakers and topics, mostly corporate and European stuff right enough, but safe to say we are all doomed!Europe seemed to be the main topic for discussion, together with retail in the UK.

Theo Paphitis from Dragon's Den did a talk on the retail environment in the UK and was unusually positive. He managed over an hour with no graphs, statistics and not a single number which was refreshing.

He was kind enough to join us for drinks and seemed fairly relaxed on the issue (Retail, not drinks) The focus of his talk was running successful businesses and the key in his opinion was customer relations and treating individuals well and adapting the market. Quite interesting when looking through a large number of posts on the forum about how individuals are treated by various firms. They could learn a lot.

So what did I learn from the conference? 2 things. Firstly when travelling with Ryanair, if you forget your boarding pass and need the check in girl to print it, it will cost you £60. £4 more than the flight itself. Secondly when planning your trip, do not under any circumstances, put white smelly foot powder in your boots as you are asked to remove boots at security and a large amount of white powder falling out of your boots, followed by 3m of white footprints, does not get you through security very quickly. Thankfully I narrowly avoided the Marigold/Midnight Express treatment.

Mark