About Me

Family man, founder @indycube, @bevanfoundation trustee, director @cardiffpound, @barrytownunited fan, ex @cardiffcityfc fan & political observer. #Welsh #BarryIs #WalesIs

These are my views.

Follow me on Twitter via @markjhooper

6 thoughts on “About Me”

  1. Dear Mr Hooper
    You say “The reason is, I’m convinced Wales will be one of the countries at the forefront of the new economic model that is shaping up, but it won’t be an easy transition” OK firstly Wales is a one party state- very unhealthy. We rely on the Barnett formula to stay afloat. We have an annual budget deficit of £15 billion PA – growing. There is NO long term plan to reduce this deficit to nil. True independence is a pipe dream. The WG even abandoned support for trade and inward investment after scraping the WDA. Here’s the dichotomy. The world (as in Sapiens) has to move to a new non growth economic model to survive. Wales on the other hand has to develop a real growth policy to prosper in the (relative) short term. So why your conviction and demonstrate how it can come about? Feel free to email me as any post here may be missed.

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    • Hi Christopher

      Thanks for your comments – I appreciate them. I would email you, but don’t have your email address. Mine is mark(at)Indycube.cymru

      Wales one party state – yep, I agree, this is key to our inability as a Country to develop. All the current parties seem to lack the verve and guts to even consider a path less trodden. As NASA might say, we have a problem….

      Whilst the Barnett formula stays, Wales stays poor. Just enough to keep us afloat, not enough to float us. We do need to consider what our public sector needs to be, and how much that will cost to fund – I think we could do more with less, but it would require a fundamental and brave series of decisions (see my blog nine month alarm call). I also think the focus on inward investment, misses the opportunity for us to support indigenous wealth creators – we do just that in Indycube. I see this as key to growing our tax yield, and developing locally sustainable economies where people can feel fulfilled – it isn’t all about £. Certainly better than our workers efforts being spent by profiteering investors in some far flung tax haven.

      If we could sort out both sides of this equation, I’d suggest the ‘pipe dream’ could be realised, but there’s significant work to get on with before that is even a consideration, and I’m not arguing for that, yet…

      I think the conversation about a non-growth world is the tip of the iceberg. The more I think about things, the more I’m convinced, we’re approaching a very chaotic worldscape – where the fundamentals of the world economy as we know it are there to be knocked down.

      Why could Wales be the place to make the most of these changes? Because the people I meet day to day give me confidence in them. May sound trite, but hey….

      My work takes me across Wales – so if you wanted to meet for a coffee, or even a beer, just let me know. These debates need to be had….

      Cheers,

      Mark

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  2. Hello Mark –

    Not too sure where the FSB affiliation comes in but I sat on branch and regional committee for nigh on twenty years so power on.

    Re: Wales and Welsh business. This is going to sound really twee – but bear with me to the end. The world is energy efficiency mad (no bad thing) with legislation, peer pressure, green lobby and environmental groups, UN, UK and EU all declaring we have to become more energy efficient – that’s good.

    A proven technology delivering consistent 20% – 35% (yes I’ll say that again 20% – 35%) energy savings when figures much lower than this are mooted as acceptable is gaining attention internationally and we are successfully delivering it to Wales and the rest of the UK.

    How successful? Well the Royal Bank of Scotland selected us as WINNERS of their Gogarburn Challenge ahead of 100 other notable submissions at their world wide data centre in Edinburgh to run a project – they do not do this on a whim – they fully research technology first.

    How successful? One of the biggest (if not, the biggest) facility management companies in the UK is collaborating with us in exploring the potential for their 15,000 plus clientèle – again hard nosed scientific research gained their attention to the technology.

    We have had media coverage (international exposure online in some languages I do not recognise) direct press releases by RBS, articles in the Wales press and technical papers have appeared in – well technical papers from Japan to India to the Good Ole US of A.

    That we are a Wales based company (Tredomen Technical and Innovation Centre – Ystrad Mynach) you would have thought the Welsh Assembly would have been delighted to support a real, living, breathing, Wales based success story – you guessed it….. not on your nelly.

    While the rest of the world has looked with open eyes allowing the technology to be judged our only response from WAG has been – to put in bluntly – come back when you are successful and we may deign to support you. Re: Business Support Wales: No chance.

    As for your comment about being based in Wales but servicing clients outside Wales – snap……….

    I look forward to following your blog as you succinctly put into words the avalanche of news re:(a) investment in foreign companies (b) investments that go belly up and as this figure runs into tens of millions – the Ebbw Vale fiasco will be there some time in the future.

    Allan……

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      • Hi Mark.

        Happy too but not via Linked In. It is not in our interest to publish too much information on social media, so will send you details by e-mail if that is okay by you. A brief look at our website will give an indication but even here we keep it to the bare minimum, we have good reason to be cautious as the potential is really quite phenomenal as every, house, school, university, hospital, bank, hotel, museum, airport – any building with a heating system will save between 20% – 35% off their annual carbon emissions and equivalent amounts of cost savings to boot.

        Allan.

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