No, I'm not saying that, because both of those statements are ridiculous.

Young Enterprise gives teenagers a chance to see what it's like to run a real business and have a taste of looking after money, selling stuff, making decisions, working in a team etc and as cod'ead pointed out, to correct some of the misapprehensions that people might get by thinking that The Apprentice is anything like real life. So I think it's a valuable thing to be done by schools and people like Robinson who volunteer to help out are to be applauded.

Hello!
Me over here in the corner
Third generation to run the business
Yep, I lost it too

Sorry. That was insensitive of me.

I did some work with Young Enterprise in a few schools in Swindon when i was with Intel, was pretty good fun - we set up a network with laptops etc and the kids had to work together using email and stuff to simulate a real world business environment.

My uncles took over a firm that my grandfather had been running until he retired – a totally messed it up. That despite private educations and getting further money from their father to try to help out when they made a mess. One was an accountant – I never have worked out what the other did.

My mother has always rather resented that, since she she never had such monies herself and, in his will, they still all got the same.

Families, eh?

It's no wonder people nowadays build businesses up and sell them on, rather than pass them down, really, which it could be said is contributing to the dominance of corporate firms rather than small independents.

But that's for a different thread