Channelling energies with confidence

The chairman is keen to talk up his latest brainchild, the SmallBluePlanet television channel

"Confident" came back the unusual, though not wholly unexpected, reply when I asked the chairman of the insignificantly sized investment company SmallBluePlanet how he was, as we sat drinking pints of Olde Framlington's Braindrain in The Waltons the other day. "That's an unusual, though not wholly unexpected, reply," I said. "Have you noticed how everybody appears to be feeling confident these days? Either that or optimistic - and whenever that's the case, you just know there's something scary lurking round the corner. "Fund managers seem to have a spring in their step for the first time ...