Opportunities and optimism in a recession

My dad was last week made redundant - not a direct result of the recession I should add, he worked for a printing factory that burned down and given the current economic situation wasn't worth rebuilding. He got a handsome pay off and was actually pretty pleased. He's started his own gardening business and within the week is fully booked - as soon as people knew he was a full time gardener they asked him if he could help out on their garden. So instead of driving round the M25 everyday to sit in front of a computer, he's now doing what he loves.

If you're after an Aylesbury gardener check out his website.

A friend of his has also lost his job - he was working in an admin role. It turns out he's a fully trained carpenter but did an office job. He made all the doors in our house - what if he starts to offer his skills to friend, family and beyond? Imagine everyone who has been made redundant looking at the skills they have and offering them as a small business. Then those small businesses start working with each other. An ideal world dream I guess, but there's definitely cause for optimism.

Talking of optimism, Leo Burnett has just released a firefox plug-in that replaces the word crisis with the word opportunity. A nice idea, except I ended up with some pretty awful sounding results when I googled 'crisis'. Get the add in here