Fixing the Frontline: Ron Taylor on the Social Care Crisis and the Power of EQ

From caring for his grandfather in the 1980s to managing 13 care homes across the north of Scotland today, this Unmuted episode guest delivers a masterclass in how EQ has been the vital core of delivering successful care.

Ron Taylor is the Managing Director of the award-winning Parkland Care Homes and with over 30 years in this sector he pulls no punches regarding the “heinous” financial pressures it faces including a staggering 15% pay gap between social care workers and the NHS.

He shares his thoughts on why the social care sector is the "lost cousin" of the NHS, how fixing "bed blocking" requires a total rethink of care funding and his manifesto for the government, including a £15/hour minimum wage for social care workers.

Beyond the politics, we explore Ron’s unique leadership philosophy: why he recruits for Emotional Intelligence (EQ) over IQ, and how "servant leadership" allows his frontline managers to focus on what matters most—the residents.

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#socialcarecrisis #socialcarefunding #parklandcarehomes #caremanifesto #careleadership

Music: 'Spirit of Fire' - fiftysounds.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:14

Ron Taylor, managing director of award-winning Parklands care homes, says it's time to fix social care.

Speaker 0:21

But I often quantify it like this. In in Scotland there are twelve thousand NHS hospital beds, there are thirty-nine thousand care beds. So the reach is about three to one. But yet nobody seems to realise that the social care function is pivotal to the success of the NHS.

Speaker 1 0:39

We talk about leveling up the playing field.

Speaker 0:41

So we as a sector are disproportionately affected by the increase in national insurance contributions. And it's affected us, I mean, it's it's costing us an extra probably £80,000 a month in national insurance, which is absolutely heinous, particularly if we look across the road here. There's an NHS care home and they're exempt.

Speaker 1 1:00

The economic realities of care.

Speaker 1:02

It's very motive. I mean, cash and the care don't go up well together. And we we we're a business. You know, we've got to make sure that there's more coming in than there is going out. It's as simple as that. I mean, a lot of people call it a profit motive. They see profit as a dirty word, call it a surplus, call it what you like. We've just got to make sure that you know we can balance the books. Otherwise, we'd be just as well standing on the street giving away tenors.

Speaker 1 1:23

How care has changed over the past decade.

Speaker 1:26

Also, I'd have to say, over the last ten years, I think care homes have become community clinical hospitals in the cheap.

Speaker 1 1:32

And how the recruitment of carers is changing.

Speaker 1:35

We recruit on EQ rather than IQ. It's very important that we look at people. I mean, so many people come to us and you know the wave, I've got an SDQ level three. You think, well, that's all very well, but do you have the other skills, the soft skills necessary? Patience, understanding, empathy, listening, all these other things that we hold dear.

Speaker 1 1:57

Hello, I'm Gary Robinson. In recent years, hundreds of care homes have closed across the country, reducing capacity and making it much harder for families to access care. The government's decision to end the recruitment of overseas care workers combined with a massive hike in employer national insurance costs has put further pressure on an already stretched sector. A recent report highlights a significant pay gap between social care workers and their NHS counterparts. And the findings reveal a 15% pay gap that's equivalent to around £3,800 a year between frontline social care workers in Scotland and NHS Ban 3 employees doing similar work. Parkland's managing director, Ron Taylor, says it's time to rethink how social care is supported. He's set out four key commitments he would like the government and potential candidates in forthcoming elections to endorse, and they are reform care funding to match the true cost of delivering complex care, pay frontline social care workers a minimum wage of £15 an hour, ensure social care pay awards keep pace with NHS pay, and enable international recruitment for social care, especially in remote and rural areas. In this unmuted podcast, I explore Ron's rationale further. I was keen to understand Ron as a leader and how he became so committed to such a pressurized, sometimes underfunded but much needed sector.

Speaker 3:31

My father died when I was very young. I was only six months old when he died. He was an architect working up at uh Dunray, and he also was a goalkeeper for Queen of the South in Dumfries. And he took a very bad knock on Saturday. Um, went to see a doctor and they um diagnosed it as a very bad bruising. Um but so he went from on the Sunday he went from um Dumfries up to Wick, and on the Tuesday morning he dropped down dead at the age of 29. Clearly, the his kidneys had been bleeding, and I think the whole process had um started. So my poor mother was devastated and absolutely you know out of the blue. She had three children under two, myself, a twin brother, and an older brother. Um and then she came back to stay with her parents, and my grandfather was a distillery manager. And yeah, my my grandfather became a father I never had. I became very close to him. Um I started fishing. My passion in life is salmon fishing and through him, etc., and all sorts of bits and pieces in his life. So yeah, he was very important. But and you know, as um I grew older and he aged, I became very aware that you know he needed extra help, for example, and that's the way I did it. And my grandmother was very much alive as well at the same time. So, what sort of care did you provide for your grandfather? Um when I when I finished university, it became clear that my grandfather was um quite debilitated, and I think I think part of the problem was um he he he actually missed me a lot at a week at university, and I think um although you know and you know even in those days, I mean he he wrote me a letter every week, um, etc. And we had a couple of phone calls, and but it was becoming quite clear that um I think early dementia had set in and he needed help. So I decided when I left university that I'd go back and care for him on a full-time basis, uh, which I did. Uh I did that for nine months until he passed, um, and did things I never thought I would have to do, but I mean you just do even to the point of looking um uh uh uh uh into social services, what help was available, etc. And there was none. And you know, this is in 1983, 84, it was incredible. Um here we are in a different world now, but uh then there wasn't anything, so and was was dementia seen as a diagnosis back then? No, um he just it was you know he's he's he's getting a bit forgetful, he's getting a bit old, etc. Nobody realized that what was going on. Um and the the the the his dementia manifested itself in in all sorts of ways, and my grandmother could cope as well. Now, at the same time, my mother, um when my father died when she came back up to to Bucky, and she bought a news agent. Why she bought a news agent I don't know, but that became a lifestyle for myself and my two brothers and her for the next 30 years. So she was more or less occupied full-time in running the shop. So I was sort of left to um um help my grandmother cope with my grandfather, and indeed help my grandfather as well. So I was spinning a few few plates at a time.

Speaker 1 6:27

Uh I read the the article from the interview in the Herald up here in Scotland, and I think with regard to your grandfather and care, I think the word challenging was used. Yeah. What what in particular did you find challenging about caring for your grandfather?

Speaker 6:43

You know, it it's funny, I he's somebody I respected immensely, but you know, we we had to cross boundaries and I had to do sort of intimate personal care for him. Um and it you know, it's something I wanted to do, but you know, and uh it did change my relationship a bit because it was undoubtedly full-time, my grandmother couldn't cope. Um, so I cared for him, I bathed him, um, he became incontinent, etc. And you know, there wasn't any facilities in those days. You know, if you look at it now in terms of uh uh infection control, etc., Lord, there was nothing in there uh when we did it, etc. There was just a a a grey sheet in the bed, it was incredible, um, very badly designed, etc. But that's that's how the market was at the time, and that's it.

Speaker 1 7:27

So so you were 21, you were at university. Um where was your life heading before you went into care then? What were your plans?

Speaker 7:34

Um well clearly I just started the the what they call it, the Milk Round at University. I was going for interviews with various jobs, and I had um um a couple of jobs lined up, one with Unigate and one with um I can't remember who it was, um, on the graduate trainee programme. But I I shelved that I I you know I I decided that my role was to help him. He had helped me in so many ways throughout my life, in my formative years, etc. I I one thing I wanted to do was put something back and give him the care that he needed at the time. It's funny that somebody, when you see him like your respect and love, it said become very vulnerable. You want to make sure they're okay. And I think that to my mind sowed the seed, not only for the last nine months before my grandfather died, but for the formative three, four years before that, when my grandparents became old, you know, and then they stopped driving, etc. Somebody had to go and get the messages, somebody had to pay the bills, that sort of stuff. I did that sort of stuff for them as well. How people manage today, I don't know, but in those days it was quite difficult. So I took care of everything. And were your siblings involved with the care or did it fall on your shoulders? Um, no, I have two other brothers, and they they weren't really interested at all. They didn't have the relationship that I had with my grandfather, and they seemed quite happy to um let for me to step in and and and take over. Which they did.

Speaker 1 8:51

Which seems to be a pattern across all families, really, doesn't it? Isn't there is somebody in the family that takes the lead and the responsibility.

Speaker 8:59

Well, in those days, as I say, this is the early 1980s. It was expected that the daughter in the family would care, but because my mother had the shop, she didn't have the time, or she spent what time she could to give me some time off. Um but it was it was there was a lot of plate spinning at the same time.

Speaker 1 9:15

So so the first first home was in Bucky in '93. Right. What opportunity led to that purchase?

Speaker 9:23

So I um um it's funny, I was approached my my grandfather passed, and then I applied for a job, and I got a job with Moray Enterprise Trust um as chief executive and because of his skills and a degree in business management, so um I was well suited to the role. Um so I was doing that for for about four or five months, and then um I was also very friendly with some local GPs, and they approached me one day and said, Look, have you ever thought of opening a K home? Um because you know they were obviously involved with my grandfather and the medical uh interface, etc. I thought, well, and you know I haven't thought about it, but I don't have a health background, but I have practical experience. So we sat down and I wrote a plan. It was called Growing Old and Bucky, um, and there were four GPs and myself. We formed a company, um, literally in a park across the road, and so we just called it park plans. It wasn't we didn't spend any money in any sort of fancy advertising campaign on anything. Um and and we applied for planning consent. It it was very difficult because it was outside the local boundary and it wasn't as as easy as one would have thought. It was a very contentious application because a lot of people thought that because the GPs were involved, this was a new private hospital, and the local community hospital was going to close. Because it was a concept that people were old but not ill, it was quite hard to get around, particularly in small rural communities in the northeast of Scotland, where the the uh female in the family was expected to live after the mum or dad, and they did in some other European companies, it's still countries, it's still very much like that.

Speaker 1 10:55

And what what drove that for you, Ron? Was it did you see it initially as an entrepreneurial opportunity, or was care at the forefront of your mind in that first project?

Speaker 11:07

A bit of both. My wife also um came from Bucky, um, and we were very keen to settle there. So one of the fun things I see now, a lot of people don't particularly like to live in small rural communities, but if you come from that area and you're educated, your school was there, etc., a lot of people want to come back. Uh my wife and I decided that we would want to come back and live in the area and enjoy the um the outdoor side of life, etc. Um, so I I was looking for something that would keep me gainfully employed in that area. Um it once we'd sat down with the GPs and looked at what they thought the community needed. We looked at the numbers because they had all the various statistics in their medical centre, it was quite obvious that there was quite a big demand for this. Um so I wrote the plan, sourced the funding for it, and we built our first one in 1993. We bought some land off the it was the local MP, um Hamish Watt, who was an SNP MP at the time, and I said, Hamish, um, we can't give you the market value for this land, but if we get um space to build on your land, it's like the golden ticket. Other people will then come and be able to get some land off it as well. But this is a community facility, it should go through planning, and it did uh quite easily, uh, and then we got consent. And on the back of that, um uh Hamish sold some of his land for a brand new Tesco as well. So he benefited. I mean, and I and I take my hat off to him at the time, he could see the the bigger picture and about how we could have we could help him achieve his objectives as well. What what what were the crucial things that you learned in in those early years? I think we well Parkinson was a 30-bit decay. Why 30 beds? I don't know. We just thought 30 beds would be a nice number. Um actually it should have been 40. Um 30 beds meant that the the cost, the unit costs of you know, like a somebody like a cook, uh manager, laundry, etc., had we had 40 beds, we could the unit cost would have been lower um at the time. So it wasn't as plain sealing as we thought. We needed to stay full all the time to make any margin off it. Um and you know, if we had two empty beds, that's quite a high proportion of the number of beds that we had, so we had to fill them quite quickly. And also at the time, the local authorities had just opened up the market. So this is the new concept for the private sector to come in and offer a provision of old-age services for the community, and and you know, so the the the the price benchmarking wasn't as high as it could have been.

Speaker 1 13:38

So here we are, what 30 years on plus, um, 13 homes. Was there ever a stage when you got to maybe home five or six where you want where you got a little bit nervous and went, whoa, this is getting a little bit big than I'd ever expected, a little bit bigger than my ambitions were initially?

Speaker 13:56

Not at all. I always thought that you know it would be at least 10 homes in my mind. Um, and we'd sit down, we'd look at the area. You know, it's it's funny when we opened Parklands, the GPs um were heavily involved at the time. It was quite clear that other people in other areas were were also looking at how they could develop the services. So I felt there was a huge opportunity to do that to scale up, but at the same time, how do we do it? How could we do it? Do we have the resources? It's all very well sounded like me going and saying, Well, we've identified land, let's build. But do we have the internal resources to cope with this expansion? And that was the trickier question as well. In many cases, we didn't.

Speaker 1 14:33

There was a piece I read again um while doing the research, and and again, in terms of Scotland, um, there's a there's a lot of well-deserved funding that goes into the NHS, and quite rightly so. However, it does appear from time to time that social care is a little bit on the back foot. If you agree with that, is there a reason why, in your view?

Speaker 14:59

I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think then social care has been the the the lost cousin, the lost brother of the of the entire process. I mean it is great that there's new money coming into the NHS. But I often quantify it like this in in Scotland there are 12,000 NHS hospital beds, there are 39,000 care beds, so the ratio is about three to one, but yet nobody seems to realise that the the social care function is pivotal to the success of the NHS with delayed discharge, blocked beds, etc. And I think if you know somebody you know come up with it, we would have joined up thinking to say that look, if we tackle social care and pay them the same that we that the uh the NHS pays, it will make a hell of a difference to the sector. And indeed the NHS as well, it would free up, I think it would close the circle far better than it is at the moment.

Speaker 1 15:50

And and delayed discharges in Scotland again, it's estimated that it costs the government about 150 million, or the taxpayer rather, 150 million in delayed discharges. Why why do you think that that the social care sector, somebody like yourself, isn't getting a s quote unquote a seat at the table?

Speaker 16:11

Yeah. I think the um the NHS that seem to think that you know what they were trying to promote is home care, domiciliary care, and that's great. I often say, look, the best bed's your own bed, stay there, stay in your own home for as long as you can. But we focus on small rural communities in the northeast of Scotland, and it's quite obvious that you know I often say our strapline is our family caring for yours. On occasion, there are people who can't manage at home on their own, and we have lots of anecdotal evidence of somebody being found at the bottom of a stair behind a door and a toilet, etc., who quite clearly should have had a care package, but the facilities are not there for it. I think if and it's funny, Wes Street and came up with this idea about a month ago, they wanted community hubs. Well, that's what we've been doing for the last 20 years, where there's one uh care home, one medical practice, one pharmacy, and it could work a lot better. I think also I'd have to say, over the last 10 years, I think care homes have become community clinical hospitals in the cheap. Some of the things we're doing now we never did 20 years ago, but we're not being recognised for it. And I think if somebody within the NHS just had sat down and had a wee bit of joined up thinking to say, you know, let's tackle the the delayed discharge by by um uh asking the market to provide some more care beds, um, that would make one hell of a difference of the three boot.

Speaker 1 17:30

Do you think it's a uh there's a political undercurrent in the sense that it's popular to say we fund the NHS? Yes. Maybe not necessarily more than the social care sector, but you know, to to fund the NHS and to pump a lot of money into the NHS for any political party, I suppose, is a big flag-waving opportunity.

Speaker 17:50

Yeah.

Speaker 1 17:51

Do you feel that that's part of the political.

Speaker 17:57

I mean, uh cash and the care don't go well together. And we we we're a business, and we've got to make sure that there's more coming in than there is going out. It's as simple as that. I mean, a lot of people call it a profit motive, they see profit as a dirty word, call it a surplus, call it what you like. We've just got to be sure that you know we can balance the books. Otherwise, we'd be just as well standing on the street giving away tenors. But I think equally, if we look at how the NHS fund themselves, they pay themselves and indeed their own care homes significantly more than than than than we get paid. And I think if there's a sort of uh leveling up of um resources that it would make a hell of a difference, I think. I'm very confident the way we've positioned our company, uh our brand reputation is very strong, we deliver very good care. You can see by the you know the number of awards that we've um uh won in in our boardroom today. Um we are very good at what we do, and I think now the NHSL recognising that and helping us to sort of joint partnership to improve the level of care for people who need it. Do you find yourself lobbying a lot for this sort of stuff? Yes, I do all the time, um, to various people in the NHS, politicians, etc., to say, look, if you were to do that and do this, it would make life better for everybody. But you know, the sad thing is a lot of the politicians up there, you know, I I I get the same response, we hear what you say, but we don't have the um the uh resources to do anything about it. There's no money, as they say. But uh you know, I I could come back and say, Well, I think there is enough money in the NHS, it's justn't badly spent on occasion, and if you redirect it this way, the it would be to everybody's mutual benefit. And I think it will come, but not yet.

Speaker 1 19:35

What I enjoyed about reading uh reading one your some of your past interviews um that you've done was your reflection on your leadership style, which I think you describe as servant leadership. Yes, which I'm a big fan of. Um it very fits it fits very well with my DNA. Do you think that style of leadership is um crucial for the sort of leadership that you're providing in the industry that you are?

Speaker 20:01

Yes, we we've set up the um the company, so each care home in its rural location is an autonomous business unit in itself. It's effectively a small business in that community. So the manager has lots of hats on um and and and does everything related to that. But what we have here, what I call head office, is the um Starfleet Command, as I call it. This is mission control. We have all our backup staff here, so there's no admin in any of the homes, all our HR, all our PR, all our finance function, it's all here. We do that for them. Our role is to serve the manager and serve the home and leave the manager to deliver the best care possible without any other distraction. Can you tell me about the four values? Yes, absolutely. In 1993, when we started, I was very clear that you know we needed to reflect what we do, and as we grew, uh it was very important that that message didn't become diluted in any way, and everybody who works for us knows exactly what we stand for. So we came up with four values in 1993, which are just as relevant today as they were in 1993. One is uh professionalism, you've got a good professional what you do, etc. That goes right down to your dress code, etc. Respect and trust with your fellow people in the care homes. Uh working together is very important and a good place to work, and that's it. So we use these four values and we use them on a regular weekly basis at staff meetings through the appraisal process. Uh everywhere it permeates the entire company, and they know exactly these are the ones that I hold dear right down and it it hits the mark very quickly.

Speaker 1 21:38

And at the heart of that is EQ, emotional intelligence. Yes. It's something that I think in the in the care sector, we sometimes it comes naturally, I think, because the sort of people that are drawn to care jobs tend to have high emotional intelligence. Um how in this world when we when Training really is about compliance and making sure that the practical needs of an organization, moving and handling medication, health and safety, etc., are all being met. How do you how do you keep EQ, emotional intelligence, at the forefront of what you do? And how do you how do you train for it?

Speaker 22:21

Well, it's a very good question. It is at the forefront of what we do. We we recruit an EQ rather than IQ. It's very important that we look at people. I mean, so many people come to us and you know the wave, I've got an SDQ level three. You think, well, that's all very well. But do you have the other skills, the soft skills necessary? Patience, understanding, empathy, listening, all these other things that we hold dear. Um and we we try and recruit that. And we do a lot of training as well. Our induction is very important. We do a 12-week induction with everybody at four weeks, eight weeks, and twelve weeks. So we really sort of um uh reinforce all the one our values, but also the the the EQ side of the business.

Speaker 1 24:54

While there is lots of evidence of of brilliant practice and and kindness within Parklands, um the occasional scandal in other organizations comes up, there's one that's come up here in the Highlands of Scotland, not a million miles away from here. How when something like that is exposed on the TV, an under-camera camera type of documentary, how much of an effect does that on, does that does that have on the sector? And and does uh you know a brilliant organisation like yours get get tarred with that as well?

Speaker 25:29

We are an organization of people. Um sometimes we get it wrong, we don't always get it right. But it I think it's a measure of our success, how quickly we put it right. Um but they by the grace of God go us. Um I couldn't really sit here and say, Well, today's a good day, but tomorrow it might be a different day. Who knows? I don't know. But we just try and reinforce what we do, how we do it, you know, and make it very clear to our value system that these are the standards we expect in a Parklands care home, and it works. It gives the staff confidence as well, that they can go about their their work um and knowing that we trust them to do a good job, etc. And that's very important.

Speaker 1 26:36

I just want to briefly look at the the future. Um, and one of the genius, I think it is, one of the genius um strategies that you are doing is that you're, and we've mentioned it earlier in the interview, is that you are expanding on the land that you already own. Yes, as opposed to in this tight economic climate, putting your hand in your pocket for another 14 million to build a care home. How is that how is that working out? Because I know that you've got you've got plans to expand maybe three more.

Speaker 27:08

We have three sites that I'm very keen to develop, but we're um yeah, we're looking to develop over the next couple of years. Um but yes, we we we we we we looked at the the market and I think with the introduction of the national insurance contributions that really hit us hard. You know, I feel very strongly that 60% of our revenue goes in staff costs. So we as a sector are disproportionately affected by the increase in national insurance contributions, and it's affected us. I mean, it's it's costing us an extra probably £80,000 a month in national insurance, which is absolutely heinous, particularly if we look across the road here. Um there's an NHS K home and they're exempt, they don't pay it. So we're when we're competing in the same market, but we're not competing on a fair playing field, and that's just not right. I don't think the government thought it through not just the increase from 12.8 to 15 percent, but the threshold coming down from 9,000 down to 5,000 where you started paying national insurance. And I don't think it was ever designed for that. And that probably hit um I would think about 400 of our workforce who you know, through no fault of their own, were caught up in this. So we what we decided to do was well, we needed to look at marginal improvements in the homes to try and pay for this, and that's what we came up with from our existing sites. Let's build four rooms there, we you know, we'd like to build 12 rooms there, two rooms here, etc., to try and generate extra revenue to pay for these extra costs.

Speaker 1 28:46

Uh and of course, uh I would imagine that the at the forefront of your mind, Ron, is going to be affordability for individuals. Yes. And how do you get that balance between paying your bills and that affordability? Because there's going to be a threshold somewhere, I imagine.

Speaker 29:00

There is. It's very difficult. The sector as it's been set up, um, it's it's not going to change in the in the near future. But it's worked on the basis of um if you have assets of more than 32,500, you're therefore deemed to be paying privately. And I think that's morally and ethically wrong. You know, that people have worked hard throughout their lives, etc. Why would they be that are their assets going to be used? I've had this conversation with politicians, and they've made it quite clear: look, if we didn't do this, we'd have to tax, and we're not mindful to tax in the social care sector. It's going to cost a lot of money to get right, but I think we're just um mucking about with the the fringes at the edges. It's got to change. Um the way we're funded's got to change as well. Make it fairer for the entire sector.

Speaker 1 29:47

Have the government ever approached you for your I mean, I'm sure you lobby a lot, but have they ever approached you to sit down in front of a panel of senior politicians, including the first minister, not to get this case across?

Speaker 29:59

I've spoken to the Deputy First Minister who is based in Ross and Cromerty, um, uh Kate Forbes, um, a lovely lady who's very, very um aware of the concerns in the sector and is very you know much listening to what we do. But you know, in in in the cut and thrust of politics, there are other um issues needing attention, and I don't think social care is the highest thing in the agenda, sadly. But it will be because I think once the NHS grinds to a halt, and it will, they'll be trying to find out well, how do we get here? And you you can't help but think and say, Well, have you done this? If you started this 10 years ago, we wouldn't be in this position. Um, and you know you know, I often feel that 10 years ago we've probably come on further than NHS has. We're looking at a digital transformation of our homes, uh, digitizing everything, trying to get rid of paper completely, um, and putting in new ways to make sure that the level of care is as as good as it could be. And I think in that respect we've overtaken NHS. We're leaner, we're we're we're quicker, faster to implement stuff, and you know, we're we're listening to the coal fees and implementing from the coal fees very quickly.

Speaker 1 31:05

And in terms of succession planning, um, it's yourself and Elaine here. Yes, um, you have grown-up children who are doing other things completely independently. When it gets to the point, I know you have no plans to retire because you love this so much, but when you get to the point where you need to make a change at the top, does it worry you that if you had to sell the organization that uh that um that an organization without your values and your ethos and the way that you run things could possibly come in and take over the organisation?

Speaker 31:44

Um yes, um, but I know there's a very good management team. I I often think um my my other passion is football, I'm a season ticket holder at Man United. And I I look at what they've done with Ferguson. Ferrigson left Manchester United 13 years ago and they wiped out his backroom team completely. I think that's the biggest mistake that they ever made. And I have this conversation you know with our senior management at the moment. If we were to step down, if I were to step down or Elaine would have stepped down, would you remain? And the answer was yes. So, in terms of succession planning, I know there are good people who are just as uh competent and capable of taking over the running of the business than myself or Elaine at the same time. We've we're very conscious to make sure we do that uh and get the right people. Even now, you know, we're looking to change our senior management team to allow for success in planning, to give me and perhaps Elaine some more time off uh and and and allow them to come into the uh to taking over the running of the company. So it it's yeah we do think about it. Um yeah, you're right, selling's not on our agenda at the moment. I would hate to think that you know, wake up in the morning not having park ones there. It's it's you know, it's what I do in many ways. I think it defines what I do. Um, but you know, none of us are infallible. I've looked around um a good friend of mine, Jim Walker. So Jim Walker from Walker Shortbread died very suddenly at 80. None of us are here for him.

Speaker 1 33:09

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