Sigh. Where do I start? Last year I euthanised a small business I'd been failing to run for nearly a decade. The reason was that, for the business to work, I needed customers who were themselves businesses, and businesspeople in Coffs Harbour are incredibly thick. Really jaw-droppingly dim and mindless. (No exceptions: did I mention it took me 10 years to spot the obvious fact that I was on a hiding to nothing?)

I went to business networking breakfasts, chambers of commerce, training courses, business coaches, thinking I must be missing something; a town can't be run by morons! I met nobody who'd had an original thought in their lives, or read a book about anything but how to be "successful". I worked for a very important and highly-paid man who favoured a smart tie with his short-sleeved business shirts, two-finger-typing in all-capitals, squinting lest he be caught wearing his reading glasses - thereby diminishing his masculine dominance of the office, and whose only punctuation was the exclamation mark, preferably deployed in groups of three or more. I worked for another who replied to email by printing it out, scrawling over it in red felt-tipped pen, and express posting it to me.

I worked for consultants, advisers, snake oil peddlers, and tea leaf readers; the only clients I ever had who performed any useful function were community groups who could only afford to pay very little or nothing for my services. You might as well look for the secret to a vibrant and viable city in your sock drawer as in the local business community; they are only interested in scamming and in turn being scammed. These people thrive only because they are able to draw on the value created by the productive members of society, who in a town that runs on tourism and urban sprawl, are mostly underpaid children.