Hello, I'm John Kitson, and this is my blog.

It’s amazing how being away for a couple of weeks can change your perspective. We’ve just come back from a fantastic couple of weeks in Scotland and a few things have struck me since I’ve been back. First, it’s amazing how quickly children adapt to life without TV – the youngest learnt to ride a bike, and the eldest two have become scrabble addicts. Second, we’re having some building work done – and before we went away we were starting to get to the “is it worth it and will it ever finish stage”. Well, it isn’t finished, but the progress was great. We can now see exactly what it will be like when it is and all the old feelings of excitement and anticipation came back.

‘I wanna be elected’ sang Alice Cooper

You may ‘wanna be elected’ but it can’t be easy when you hear conversations along the lines of ‘they’re all the same’, ‘not much difference between them’, ‘difficult to tell them apart these days’.  Leaves you wondering what it is that makes people choose?…. but they do.  Decisions made on a whole raft of things from the rational to gut feeling. But I wonder if customers … the people who buy insurance products and services… sometimes feel ‘they’re all the same’ when they think about insurers?  How would we perform in the equivalent of a ‘ ‘Prime Minister Debate’?  Would customers feel ‘they’re all the same’ because they feel we treat them ‘all the same’?  Does the owner of body repair business feel we understand what his business really needs or is he seen as ‘another garage’?

Wow, how good is this!  53 years old and I’ve actually been asked to write a piece for Janice’s Blog!

My name is Alan Drury and I work with the Broker Trading Teams across the North West of England, Nottingham and Northern Ireland.  I’ve operated in most markets in the UK but now ‘almost’ feel an honorary Northerner having lived in the North West since 1993.   I actually still like Eastenders though rather than “The Street” as my PA calls it..! It helps me keep in touch with my Essex roots.

Paul:    Yes, I’ll do a guest blog, but only if I can do a special one.

Brigid: Paul, what do you mean, ‘a special one’, special like the Canadian Hockey Team? (Brigid Murphy)

Paul:    No, although they were impressive.