The only substantial reason for running a company that I had was the fact I worked as a contract airline captain, my accountants Intega in Hertfordshire doing a sterling job of filing them with the revenue for countless years.
Then when the originator of the Go Aero challenge in California required teams to be incorporated ~ a condition that they sensibly dropped in their more recent challenge ~ it made eminent sense to continue filing.
Not least too, with its ongoing record of the loan afforded it by its director, Muggins, it was a means by which my own financial contribution might be reflected when Elon Musk came beating a path to my front door.
Then eventually after my patent agent presented me with a bill for £350 eighteen months after his auditors discovered from records that it had never actually been issued, I decided running a company ostensibly by myself that did little but accrue costs (not least for those annual filings)... I decided a reality check was due.
On top of this the current government in the UK is casting about for means to fund its own lavish spending plans and historically they have chosen businesses to foot the bill, especially smaller companies less able to pay it because they are unable to make the same noise. It has thus become steadily more onerous to set up and to operate a company of whichever sort, not least one making no money.
Every means of deriving government grants or funding of any sort however has to be predicated nowadays on some form of incorporation, principally because those making the decision will be unlikely to know little or anything about the technology behind whatever is being proposed; the UK bent on destroying the state education system, industrial base and apprenticeships that went with it. Chances of finding the lathes, milling machines or power pillar drills which I used in any school hereabouts? About nought to nil.
So for the record, on paper I've spent £80,739 to build a half-scale personal flying machine and to enter it in a competition in California in 2020; and then build three more different types that we were able to get airborne; then use the remnants on a series of maritime drones that may or may not see the light of day beyond pages in the illustrious boat design.net online.
Looked at it that way, it's not too bad, for BAE Systems would have spent that on a buffet whilst they were thinking about it. On the other hand I could have bought an apartment and rented it out: considered by the English as a lifetime achievement worthy if not of award, then at least an appearance on a home-improvement show.
Then again I doubt I'd be witnessing the 5,000-plus views that the blog is garnering ~ albeit bots feasting on a literary carcass ~ were I to get you exercised instead about installing new boilers and tenants behind with their rent.
It was George Orwell who said he had never met a landlord who did not hate his tenants, and like him I'd prefer to be remembered for words than for where I lived.
Ed. if you love someone, set them free from reading self-indulgent crap like this.
