Search results matching tag 'Alan Sugar'

Why Alan Sugar is clearly the right man to get us out of the recession

1704826 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:36:00 GMT

Alan Sugar surely can't believe his luck. He took his seat as Lord Sugar of E-m@ailer Plus yesterday and will soon be joining government as a business advisor.

Sugar's own business career has been, to say the least, patchy. He is a man who built his company up to a value of £1.2bn but then due to unreliable products and poor service sold it for a tenth of that value.

He was also a disastrous chairman of Tottenham Hotspur - an experience he himself described as a 'waste of my life'. He subsequently decided to speculate on the property market and has set up a company that sells ad space on screens near schools - all very ethical.

While no-one can doubt his work ethic, he has been accused of being sexist - certainly his attitude to Sex Discrimination Laws is rather old-fashioned. He said that in order to circumvent legislation prohibiting asking women whether they planned on gettng pregnant 'don't employ them.'He also famously said in 2005 that the iPod would be a flash in the pan product.

His behaviour on The Apprentice has been criticised by charity Kidscape for potentially encouraging bullying.

So all in all, he can be accused of having many of the qualities that have are revered in our own Dear Leader: disastrous with money, inept at management, a poor judge, sexist and a bully.

Except he looks a bit better on telly and the BBC is sympathetic toward him.

Re: Did Lee McQueen deserve to win The Apprentice?

254783 — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:18:03 GMT

The short answer is No. However, we only get to see a brief part of the overall tasks and it does make entertaining Tv for a change. He manged to kick into touch the lie on the CV and clearly McQueen did not see that onwe coming when the interviewer pulled out a fax from the university. I suppose having exposed the lie the candidate is then very under the cosh so would therefore make a good candidate. I've screamed at the TV, jumped up and down at some of the corporate hyperbabble being trotted out each week and FOCUS GROUPS !!!!!!!!!!! Happy to say I helped introduce them in the early 1970's at Foote Cone and Belding / Welbeck Public Relations and delighted that the misery of them is still being inflicted on sucessive generations. The joke being that the whole idea of a focus group is deeply flawed as nwe exposed at the time, but it does enable the agency to put one over the client as any recommedation can be laid at the door of the focus group and thererfore must be right!

Back to Sir Al's Apprentice, how about a squad of candidates taken from the 50/60's age group! Just imagine a group of oldies being lectured by the fuzzy one and the barbed retorts flying back over the board room table. Ageing sexual chemistry in the house, refined dinner parties instead of a bottle of chardonnay and a delivery pizza, To top it all the Sir Al watchdogs could be in this instance from the 20-30's age group. A complete reversal! Simply magic and remeber I thought of the idea Mark Burnett!

Brown has clearly got his priorities right

695124 — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 08:12:59 GMT

Who would have thought Prime Minister Brown would have appointed Sir Alan Sugar as business adviser to the Government before getting round to naming his Foreign Secretary and Chancellor? It is going to be fascinating to see how this one plays out. Any chance of the apprentice PM being fired?

The Apprentice is just like a bad pitch

695124 — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:08:59 GMT

Has anyone noticed the similarity between ‘Srralan’ and a really awful client, with the hapless candidates behaving like clueless agencies?

The Apprentice is compelling television, and the new series promises well. Sugar is nastier and even more reminiscent of an African dictator (check out his arriving at the last minute in a helicopter, and the height of his chair against those of his two long term colleagues). And clearly most of the latest crop of tyro business people has been picked to repel. It wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t so like the way some companies choose their agencies. Really inadequate brief. Last minute changes. Bullying and carping criticism. Useless feedback.

And the agencies (sorry - teams of would be Apprentices). Picking the wrong leaders. Talking and not listening. Either not doing the research or ignoring it. Lamentable relationships within the team. Blaming each other when it all ends in tears. And worst of all, hugging each other all the time.

Sometimes you can best see what best practice is by watching the absolutely worst case scenario (rather like those brilliant Video Arts films). Perhaps Srralan is doing us all a favour.