Waterfly

I can sit in Prêt and do business on the street with the people walking past.” So there he was again, signalling that a pandemic is only really over, when the billionaires return to our coffee shops.

what gauge do you want it cut to?”

WATERFLY SEES THE REFLECTION IN THE WATER. IT TAKES NOTE AS THE WATER SHIFTS. HERE’S THE LATEST GOSSIP FROM THE EDUCATION AND EMPLOYABILITY SECTORS

The

Overflowing Amazon

Is there no area Amazon will not seek to dominate? Following on from the book market, food retailers, clothing stores and homeware shops – and umpteen other things – Jeff Bezos has now landed on something not even Waterfly had thought of: hairdressing.

The conglomerate recently announced the opening of its first salon in Spitalfields market in east London. At the 1,500 sq ft Amazon Salon, machinelearning will analyse what products customers would prefer, and augmented reality technology will allow them to see what they would look like with different colours or hair styles before the cut. And, of course, during the cut, customers are offered entertainment provided by Amazon Fire tablets.

So how do people in the industry feel about it? Waterfly spoke with Ola Goldsmith, who runs her own salon and hair extension training academy Naked Weave: “It does feel like they are trying to take over,” she says. “The technology is really exciting and we all want the industry to develop, but it would be nice if it developed in a way that was accessible to independent businesses.”

For Goldsmith the real “worry” would come if Amazon were to open a franchise and swamp smaller salons who can’t afford to get access to the kinds of technology they were adopting. Thank goodness then that Bezos has shown throughout his career no appetite for expansion…

Jacob Risks It

The end of a pandemic can be a beautiful thing. Waterfly hears how its own publisher was given a lift home in June by none other than Lord Rami Ranger, following an event in central London. As the pair drove along, they espied the vivid figure of Jacob ReesMogg walking down St James’s Street. Ronel Lehmann remarked that “we must pull over” and was first to jump out the car. “Jacob, I haven’t seen you for eighteen months.” Rees-Mogg, seeing that Lehmann intended on bumping elbows, was insistent: “No, no, this is a special occasion, let’s shake hands properly.” Lehmann happily agreed to do so, and as he turned to the car said, “I believe you know my driver.” ReesMogg recognised Ranger – and the three laughed. Together again at last.

The name’s Bright, Kate Bright a lot of talk of a female James Bond – as if she didn’t already exist. Kate Bright, CEO and founder of UMBRA International, spent the first 15 years of her career working for three international families, with varying security needs. Now she’s on a mission to make it clear to women that the security business might be for them: “We’re trying to make it accessible to all, to create clear pathways to not just protective services, but corporate security and all the different angles, particularly cybersecurity. I advise young women and people from nonmilitary backgrounds that want to get into security to get onto a pathway like the government’s new initiative, the UK National Cyber Task Force. It would make me very proud for one of my young nieces and their friends to consider this as a legitimate career path in the future.” Daniel Craig beware.

And the Nightingales Sang

Waterfly was walking through Berkeley Square in the weeks before 19th July’s Freedom Day and did a double-take at the sight of Michel de Carvalho seated in Prêt a Manger. Waterfly recalled bumping into him at a party many moons ago, just after Carvalho, who is married to the Heineken heiress, had moved from Citibank to a corner office at Capital Generation Partners, the multi-family office of the Said family. He had said then: “I love working on Berkeley Square. There’s a real community here.

The Stamp of Approval

Some people think of the stamp duty calculation on their homes as straightforward. They couldn’t be more wrong. As property lawyers and conveyancers scrambled to file their SDLT returns before the end of the Stamp Duty holiday, many calculated the amount owed incorrectly causing PI insurance claims to rocket by 30 per cent. Now a company has developed SDLT Compass, a new tool which aims to make the whole thing easier. “About 90 per cent of property completions in this country are standard. If it’s what we call a complex or high-risk case it gets referred to a member of our tax analyst team who will give specialist advice on an agreed-fee basis,” managing director Chris Ward tells Waterfly. So just when Rishi Sunak wants to reintroduce the stamp duty threshold, this happens. Who’d be the Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Pulling Strings

The music industry conjures up images of spotlights, adoring fans, and late nights on the tour bus, but behind the scenes there is a world of technicians who keep the show running smoothly. John Armitage began repairing guitars in 1978. Since then, the job has taken him all over the world with groups such as Iron Maiden, King Crimson, and the Manic Street Preachers. Now he operates Guitar Hospital, which has workshops in London and Whitstable. It all began at 17 in New York when a guitar player requested a new nut – a piece of dense material that the strings rest on at the top of the neck. “I didn’t know what a nut was, but I headed down to Sam Ash (music shop) and said, ‘I need a nut for a Fender Strat’.” The man behind the counter asked him, “Do you want pre-cut, bone, carbon, brass, graphite,

Thoroughly confused, Armitage told the guitarist that the store had run out of the part he needed. Today he tells us a luthier with a good group can earn £100,000 a year – and it sounds civilised too. “It’s just me, a cup of tea, a radio, and a pile of guitars that need attention.”

Scent of Musk

Cryptocurrency is back in the news thanks to a recent jump in the price of Dogecoin – a currency that started as a joke, based on a widely circulated internet meme featuring a picture of a Shiba Inu dog. It is now worth $34 billion (£24.6 billion).

Dogecoin owes much of its success to Elon Musk, who has called it his “favourite cryptocurrency”. Musk recently published a tweet that included a painting of a dog on a mountain at night with the caption “Doge barking at the moon”. In the hours following Musk’s tweet, the price of Dogecoin jumped over 100 per cent.

But if high-risk investing isn’t your cup of tea, there are other, more stable ways to make money off the crypto phenomenon. On Indeed, 230 jobs with the keyword “cryptocurrency” appear in London alone: among them Crypto Investment Analyst, Cryptocurrency Digital Marketing Lead, and Crypto Threat Analyst. According to Glassdoor, a junior blockchain developer earns £50,000 a year on average. With increased responsibility and seniority, this number can go much higher. A United States recruitment firm lists a salary of up to $175,000 (£126,673). To the moon indeed.