Our usual useful and informative meeting, ably chaired by Keith Rawlings in the absence of Steve Baker, who was represented by his partner Tessa. The Five Minutes was by me (Simon Kennedy, Auditel), who presented a “Get Things Done” flowchart for prioritising tasks. In essence, if it is not Important and Urgent, why are you doing it? The general feedback was that, for those in self-employment, the Important could be replaced with “Making Money”, to arrive at “If it is not Making Money and Urgent, why are you doing it?”

The Ten minute was a brave presentation by Lisa Mason from NatWest of the 2009 Results for RBS. Highlights included an improvement in losses from £24.3 bn (2008) to a mere £3.6 bn in 2009, and a reduction in Risk through reduction in assets. Clearly good value for our investment of £54 billion, and Lisa told us that RBS are on plan for repaying this in a 3 to 5 year timescale – we currently own 84% of RBS. Because we all like Lisa no-one mentioned the B word…shows what a friendly bunch we are.

We finished off with the usual round of One minuters and referrals, with about 10 high-quaility referrals being passed.