We’re here at last in our new offices in the West Country of England. Nearby is the Elizabethan Quay and the kind of architecture you only see in films.

We have lots of plans going forward including a new site, Sideways Health, which we hope to launch next week +. This could develop into a mega health site on the one domain, which will be a departure for us.

There’s also our private subscription retail information site to roll out next month, which will probably be the flagship of the business in coming months.

It’s been a tough grind over the past two and a half years, but we’re now beginning to mature as a business, partially breaking clear of the old SEO plus advertising model into a cluster-attack mode that makes us less dependent on one factor staying the same, while insulating us from the swings and roundabouts of internet business.

The year ahead is going to be a hard one for everybody, with the American economy having “fallen off a cliff” at the turn of the year, and Britain set for an even bigger fall.

To counteract this, we’ve switched to retrench mode, clearing away all debts, diversifying our interests and cutting costs sharply. We’re confident it will do the trick even if another dotcom crash is imminent.

How are you doing?

The Americanization of Devon, England continues apace. Here in sleepy Exeter we’ve long had a MacDonald’s, more recently a Starbucks, and this month a sparky transatlantic style shopping mall. All we need to complete the process is an Apple store.

You’ll never guess what I disovered this morning while walking through the new shop zone? …

Well waddayaknow! I wonder if Steve Jobs will open it in person. Exeter’s geek community can hardly wait.

The upshot of all this is that we’re going to get iPhone availablility on our doorstep before Christmas. In my mind’s eye I can see the long line of people snaking down Princesshay and right out of town as we queue for a limited supply of these must-have gizmos.

Maybe there’ll be the iPod Touch too — great for web browsing, we’re told. And, of course, that other agonizing decision : to become a Macboy — or not.

I’ve used Windows PCs for years because life is too short for chopping and changing operating systems. Yet, almost my first serious computer was the earliest Apple, the Lisa. I already had the IBM PC in my office where I worked as a marketing manager for British Telecom. Those were the days when you had to input strings of code to do anything with it, and the WP was Wordstar, which operated solely from the keyboard.

Then the Apple Lisa arrived complete with built-in dot-matrix printer. I don’t think it was called a Macintosh in those days, but it had the very first use of “windows” as a feature, plus icons operated by a mouse.

Microsoft soon purloined these ideas, of course, launching its now dominant OS, Windows.

However, I got there first. I launched a series of publications for BT using a system of icons and a kind of window-like presentation. It was all in print, of course, but I did actually steal Apple’s clothes before Bill Gates did.

I think a statue should be erected somewhere, don’t you? Maybe outside the new Apple store.

England strikes back.

Syntagma tries always to bring you the best one-liners around. The master, in my view, was Winston Churchill. #

Here are a few choice quotes from him :

1. This is for Gordon Brown.
We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

2. For Brown and the European Union.
If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.

3. For George Bush.
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.

4. For Tony Blair.
Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

5. For blog network owners.
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

6. For George Bush’s successor.
The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

7. Consolation for Americans.
Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

8. For everyone.
Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.”
Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”

In a post on the 4th of July, I claimed that U.S. vistors to Syntagma outnumbered Brits by 4 to 1. How wrong could I be!

That figure was one set in stone some time ago. Such statistics tend to stick in the mind to be repeated over and over.

I’ve just checked again and that ratio is now a staggering 89 to 1.

Even on our most British site — Royal Anecdotes – it’s now 24 to 1.

Thank you America. You’re the tops.