Yep. I'm very happy to support small businesses, and the smaller and localer the better. I'm quite relaxed about chipping in a few quid wherever I can to help them out.
The only big company I regularly buy from these days is Ocado, even before this mess their service was good, but throughout it's been extremely impressive. As an ex IT guy I'm mightily impressed by the quality of their systems, and whoever's providing their cloud services has been bloody good at spinning up extra capacity when needed. I'd love to see one of their robot picking warehouses in action. They seem like a decent company to work for too, all the drivers I speak to are very happy indeed. I've heard "Best job I ever had" from more than one of the guys.
Some good innovations from smaller local businesses eg moving from B2B to ecommerce B2C, delivery services, product line changes etc. Ocado's IT didnt scale well with them having to close down their mobile app earlier on (I think they are multicloud BTW) but if you want to see their robots they are up on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdzwUB5gCUw The Cummins Debacle is all too familiar for neuveau Tories. Their ability to not think beyond the end of their nose is spectacular (remember
Fox and his buddy while minister of defence?). While Cummins could possiblyhave justified going for a family lockdown (debatable - as his wife DID have Covid - but then plenty of other people chose their lockdown location), going for a drive while in lockdown is just poor judgement. You don't want poor judges advising the PM. But then the government response to the entire Covid plague seems to have been in poor judgement so we shouldnt be surprised.
