Our meeting with Margot James

Yesterday saw us have a meeting with Margot James who as some may know is the MP for Stourbridge.

The purpose of our meeting was to personally inform and advise of our Connect WM business model, as well as the continuing trials and tribulations which we face as a private enterprise.

Never really having done this approach before we were unsure what to expect either as a response during or in regards to action after the meeting.

We also took the opportunity to also explain about our forthcoming ‘Connect Business Exhibition’ being held on the 10th October 2012.

Our meeting was held during one of the regular surgery meetings which Margot undertakes for her Stourbridge constituency.

Our meeting covered the many aspects and problems which we and many other local businesses face as a result of the local economic situation. In asking a blunt question where we ourselves can go for advice and assistance we were given details of business operations and organisations which we have already spoken with and to a certain extent had nil assistance and/or advice.

Upon being asked is there a lack of businesses taking upon many services we explained that it is unfortunate that there was a business trend and often a result of necessity and education as well as advisement from many funded business organisations for services to be accessed as FREE.

Upon explaining this there seemed no real alternative of assistance forthcoming, however, being fully aware that this was a constituency surgery meeting and that others were waiting to be seen we did not wish to pursue much further other than to explain more about the reasons why we were developing the Connect WM business model.

Not only limited to the local area but UK wide, there seems to be too much of a trend towards FREE, we fail to see how this (FREE) will drive economic growth – we understand the sentiment and what the goal is, but it’s how its interpreted by the end-user which is contributing to the problem.

As we said to Margot “You get nothing for FREE”

Margot, unfortunately, advised that although in the area on the day of our ‘Connect Business Exhibition’ she was unable to attend as she was attending the 3-day conservative conference being held down the road at the NIA - We did see if she could sneak out to pay us a visit, it was a “No can do”

Margot advised that she will be attending our further events to support Connect WM which by the way we’ve also approached thus far 190 councillors / MP’s / candidates throughout the region.