It’s a debate about the future survival of newspapers. Rupert Murdoch believes peope will eventually pay to read the news online. I resist doing that, for now…but Imight get behind a paywall if the journalism there was as good as this.
Rebuilding Parkersburg after the tornado http://bit.ly/clCjcv
In the latest issue of Business First there’s a story about Kirdford in Sussex – the village was at risk of losing its local shop, so volunteers banded together to sell £10 shares to buy it, raised £200k, blagged free bits and bobs while local builders chucked in their time for nothing, and came up [...]
Interesting to see that Labour supporters – even Polly Toynbee – are reverting to type in opposition. The reaction of some to yesterday’s cuts announcement is astonishing, given that Alastair Darling himself pledged a future Labour government would halve the deficit in 4 years. They talk of class warfare, rich Tories (and Lib Dems too?) [...]
Watching James Caan on Newsnight was amusing. Paxo thought he was going to get a robust spot of Tory-support to balance the slightly creepy Liam Byrne for Labour. Instead Caan said the 1% NI increase would make precious little difference to employers taking on new staff. And of course he’s right. It will be irritating [...]
The election battle lines are being drawn, initially around the issue of the proposed abolition by the Tories of part of Labour’s NI increase in 2011. One hopes for broader philosophical debate about the future of the country as the campaigns progress, but this is not a bad one to start with.
Where I get frustrated [...]
Tim Price is in stellar form with his latest despatch from the frontlines of our staggering economy, this one from Davos.
Below is your starter for ten…go to http://tiny.cc/gnt7V for the full Monty.
Mixed reviews for new release
(Davos, Canton of Graubünden, Switzerland – February 1.)
With their customary flourish, western governments unveiled their widely anticipated new vapour-ware product [...]
Spending the week in Madrid, in probably the worst possible weather in which to visit this wonderful city. Nonetheless, it has been a veritable eye-opener. As a tourist I have taken the opportunity to learn about the history of Spain, the absolute horror of the Civil War and the grandeur of the country’s past. But [...]
After sending out an email to the world wishing everone a happy new year (you can see its contents in the post immediately preceding this one) I got a mild reproof from a couple of folk who thought me unnecessarily downbeat. (By my Eeyore-ish standards I thought I was being positively Panglossian.) My reprovers point [...]
Bloodied but hopefully unbowed, businesses who made it through 2009 are contemplating the coming twelve months with the usual mix of optimism and dread. An election looms. Will it make a difference? Are businesses sufficiently bored with gloom and misery to be more adventurous in the coming year, regardless of how [...]
I am as cynical as most about the hijacking of social media/viral marketing by corporations who try – and usually fail – to do something really clever. They always end up looking like men in suits trying to be cool by wearing trainers as well.
But this took my breath away. The version you will see [...]
Isn’t it tempting, now and again, to believe that some companies actually build mendacity into their customer service complaints system?
Of course, I would not for one moment suggest that BT is a rotten, dirty, low-down lying bunch of scumbags. Nothing could be further from the truth as legions of satisfied customers will attest.
But twice in [...]
Welcome to the new Business First web site. All the features contained in the magazine are now available on this site together with a lot more content that might not otherwise make it into the paper version of Business First but that still deserves an airing.
So do please check back on a regular basis, or [...]
Now that Greed is Bad, to misquote the great Gordon Gecko, open season has been declared on anybody not wearing a hair shirt to atone for their sins. Most notable amongst them – Goldman Sachs, the new hate figure of Wall Street, the “…great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its [...]
Just saw this press release….
THE CITY’S FAVOURITE SHIRTMAKER, CHARLES TYRWHITT ’DEFIANTLY’ OPENS NEW STORE IN THE CITY – 30TH JULY 2009
The City of London’s Favourite Shirt Maker, Charles Tyrwhitt, is ’defiantly’ opening a new retail store in The City of London on Thursday, 30th July 2009.
The store will be located at 29 [...]
…my blog will appear here when the mood, usually a dark one, takes me.