No – says Funding Circle – we want your house!

Well, for once I’m going to write about something to do with Serviceteam. Something that might be quite useful to someone for a change! Let’s put a little background out there about our company for framing purposes. We’ve been trading since November 2009 and have 3 years of accounts. We are a profitable company. We employ 15 people or so in the office, 1 outside London and have anywhere between 50 and 100 contractors on our database.

And we’re ready to expand. 25% of our business is coming from other businesses, 25% and climbing comes from existing customers which leaves 50% coming from new enquiries. And we now want to focus on expanding our B2B side and offering more and better services to our existing clients.

So, with this in mind we’ve been looking for some funding and I guess this is the start of our journey. First off we have written a business plan (I would publish it but it’s confidential! and it’s probably not that interesting) and we are confident that with the right funding we can double the turnover of the company inside 2 years, employ another 10 people in the office and take on 10 permanent tradespeople. Last month after 3 years of trading we managed to get an overdraft from HSBC, which is no mean feat,  so we were feeling very confident. But not confident enough to go to them for a loan, however!

So, we thought we might try Funding Circle, a peer-to-business lender and one of these new companies that has already lent out £10Million so far, so small beer but we thought they maybe more sympathetic than a bank. Well, we were wrong there!

Without going into the long and short of it, they asked us for some information and we provided everything that they required (which was surprisngly not very much), we never had a conversation with anyone there, everything was done on email. No-one came to see us, no-one asked us to come and see them and they didn’t ask for our business plan- and this on a loan that’s likely to cost you 10% in interest. After several weeks we got a rejection email from a template!

This was pretty disappointing. No-one took the time to really investigate our business and no-one took the time to even write a personal email. And with their vetting process I wouldn’t be investing any money in a Funding Circle company anytime soon! And these guys are getting Government funding. It is not hard to see why there is a funding problem in the UK.

Here is a copy of the rejection email.

Thank you for your application to Funding Circle.
Unfortunately your company does not meet the current credit criteria required to allow your loan to be listed on the Funding Circle platform.
Due to the minimal profitability, lack of serviceability, no land and or buildings on the balance sheet, minimal net tangible worth and new stewardship.
At Funding Circle, we are committed to helping small businesses and in the future we will expand our criterion for businesses that we can accept. In the meantime, we work with a broker who helps businesses access non-bank finance including grants and loans secured on invoices or assets. We also work with a pension led funder who may be able to help you secure the funding you seek by facilitating an investment into your business from any pension assets that you have. If you and/or any business partners have pension funds collectively worth more than £50,000 this is an option that could work for you. Please do let us know if you would like to be introduced.
We wish you all the best with your business.

So basically, they said that they don’t lend money to businesses without land, property, assets or a pension pot to act as collateral. But they can brokerage a loan if you have a high value invoice. Great, well that’s useful then.  The invoice leveraging is called factoring and even a high street bank will lend you money on that. And we haven’t been in charge for long enough at three years so we are under ‘new stewardship’. ‘Lack of Serviceability’, well I’m not sure what that means to be honest but it’s a template email I suppose. Well I’m glad we didn’t have to pay any money for this ringing endorsement of our business!

So, for the moment it seems we are stuck for investment like a lot of other companies in the UK. Ready to grow with a good business case but only likely to get some money lent if we don’t need the money. I’ll keep you posted on what happens next…

I don’t know what he was complaining about…

This story had me rolling about. It just goes to show that some people are living in a different reality to the rest of us. I shall post the story below and you can find the rest on the BBC news website. They should have arrested him and put him up at Her Majesty’s pleasure for a few week. It would have given him some time to re-adjust to reality. Can you imagine what his neighbours and the local shopkeepers have to put up with? He must be a nightmare to deal with. Anyway, the story:

A man has been warned after he dialled 999 to complain about a prostitute’s looks after meeting her.

West Midlands Police said they were contacted by the caller who said he “wished to report her for breaching the Sale of Goods Act”.

The force said the call was received at about 19:30 BST on Tuesday complaining that the woman was not as attractive as she had claimed.

Officers have now sent the man a letter warning him about wasting police time.

West Midlands Police said the man had claimed he met the woman in a hotel car park.

“The caller claimed that the woman had made out she was better looking than she actually was and he wished to report her for breaching the Sale of Goods Act,” a spokesperson for the force said.

“When he raised this issue with the woman concerned, she allegedly took his car keys, ran away from the car and threw them back at him, prompting him to call police.”

‘It was unbelievable’
During the call, the man can be heard to say: “I’ve arranged a meeting with her, but beforehand I’ve asked her for an honest description, otherwise when I get there I’m not going to use her services.

“Basically she has misdescribed herself, misrepresented herself totally.

“She was angry because she obviously thinks I owe her a living or something.”

Sgt Jerome Moran, based at Solihull police station, called the man back to offer some advice.

He said: “It was unbelievable – he genuinely believed he had done nothing wrong and that the woman should have been investigated by police for misrepresentation.

“I told him that she’d not committed any offences and that it was his actions, in soliciting for sex, that were in fact illegal.”

Despite the man refusing to give his details, police were able to identify him and have sent him a letter warning him about his actions.

The Sale of Goods Act 1979 gives consumers legal rights, stipulating goods which are sold must be of satisfactory quality, be fit for purpose and must match the seller’s description.

I cam across this blog this morning and I haven’t done any work since! It’s a good read though. Try it.

The real face of Google, the child catcher form Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

‘Google will know more about you than your wife does. Everything across your screens will be integrated and tracked… it collects information you provide, data from your usage, device information and location’ Larry Dignan, ZDnet.com

Google have been in the news again with these ridiculous Google glass glasses. I for one, will not be buying a pair. Not from Google anyway. And they’ve been mentioned in this Prism leak by former CIA worker Edward Snowden. I’ve been thinking about this company for some time now. Our business and many others have a terrifying relationship with this company where we are effectively caught in a trap by them. I kind of think of Google as the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, promising sweets to the naiive, only once you get into the vehicle it becomes a trap and you’re sold onto slavery. You just can’t get out!

From a business perspective, here is a company where you can spend £20,000 per month but still never get any dialogue with anyone. There are no phone numbers. They won’t answer your emails. They won’t send anyone to see you regardless of how much you spend and you can’t visit them. They don’t pay any tax to any government in the World. They make the rules and then change them retrospectively. They have made it impossible to market on the index without paying a significant percentage of your revenue to them. They use their own moral compass which they use to demonize their users and customers who don’t agree with their policies. How on earth has a company like this allowed to infiltrate our lives to this extent?

And from a personal, search users perspective, has anyone looked at the search results in the index this week? They are laughable. This isn’t even a good search engine anymore. Not unless you are looking for paid advertising. Search for a statistic and most of the information for data comes from Wikipedia. Search for a service and you’ll get another directory. And yet people still people use it, too lazy to think of the consequences of performing searches on this engine and whether it is actually delivering any quality.

Well have a read of this:

‘In late May 2012, Google announced that they will no longer be maintaining a strict separation between search results and advertising…..rankings will be determined primarily by which advertisers place the highest “bid,” though the announcement does not elaborate on this process. The transition will be complete in the fall of 2012. ‘

Has anyone even noticed this? Does anyone really know what it means? OK, well I’ll tell you. It means that even the search results at Google, the organic search results that appear under the subtlety shaded top 3 spots are now up for grabs. It means that Google can serve you up data that someone has paid them to display to you – and you won’t be able to tell.

And that’s not all. They are collecting every piece of data from you and every search you have ever made from every device and location you have ever made it ans stamping it with a date and time. And they are storing this on a file with your name, address, telephone number, bank account details and personal correspondence (yes, if you use Gmail they are tracking your emails). They never delete this information and they never will (even if they say they did, who would check it? And who could enforce it? The governments can’t even get them to charge VAT or pay tax!)

So, have a think about that. Because you may think that you don’t have anything to hide. Well, I strongly suspect that everyone has or at least they would be uncomfortable for something to be revealed. And that doesn’t mean criminal activities. If you are having an affair Google knows. If you’re searching for some wonky old porn (not illegal porn!), Google knows. If you are having house problems, financial problems, emotional problems, depression problems, child problems – whatever, all of this is recorded and stored and searchable. Would you be comfortable with your employer knowing about a mental health issue? Would you be comfortable with the police knowing about it? Would you be comfortable with your family having access to your search history? Or correspondence between one friend being revealed to another friend? Or your dad getting a copy of your instant message conversations?

How would they find out you ask? Well, how about a whistle-blower? If history tells us anything it’s that nothing is ever secure and someone determined will get this information out one day. And when they do they will publish it – sometimes just for the hell of it like Julian Assange. Sometimes they’ll publish for some other wonky reason, like religion. They’ll call it the day of reckoning or something where everyone will account for their online sins.

But the thing is, it will be out there and it will never go away. They will make the whole thing available online just like Assange did with the American Military and everyone will be able to look through it. And I can assure you  that everyone will! A dossier of your life – your real life, your innermost secrets available for anyone to read anytime.

Now, if that doesn’t make you stop to using Google this minute and switch to Bing, I don’t know what will! Tomorrow I’ll give you a step by step guide of how to swap your search engine, give you some great alternatives and tell you why you should remove Chrome and stay away from Firefox! I’m turning into a crusader!

Hats off to Pimlico Plumbers.

Peter Jones meets.. I don’t normally watch this show because I’m kind of bored with that whole Dragon’s Den thing. But there isn’t a lot of good TV on Sunday evenings and when I saw that Charlie Mullins was on it, it piqued my interest as obviously we come across Pimlico quite a lot in our business.

In fact, a good former member of staff works there. Hi Neeha! Anyway, she says he’s a nice guy and he’s certainly a very good business man’ so I tuned in. He came across very well and so did Pimlico Plumbers – so good I felt like ringing them for a quote for my own boiler! By all accounts there were so many hits on the Pimlico Plumbers website it crashed. It just shows the power of public perception and PR. Lots of businesses could learn something from Charlie Mullins and Pimlico Plumbers – that certainly includes our own.

So, we shall tip our hat to Charlie this morning and congratulate him for getting an hour long promotional programme on BBC1 on Sunday evening prime time viewing! Who needs Max Clifford, now…

I just wanted to look at something beautiful.

Regular readers of this blog (wake-up mum that means you!) OK, that should probably read regular reader, then. Anyway, mum, you might remember that I wrote an entry on the blog about the 10 things I love most about Sydney, Australia a few months ago. And at the end of the entry I said that I was going to write ’10 things I hate about Sydney’ later in the week to cheer me up after coming home.

Well, I never did because I couldn’t come up with 10 things I didn’t like about Sydney that week, much less 10 things that I hated. And several months later, sat it the office in London at the end of May while it’s raining outside, I can’t think of 10 things now either. Other than that in Sydney, the pedestrian crossings take ages to come on and don’t last long enough to get across the road without running. It’s a car culture you see.

So, that’s one. The one thing I don’t like about Sydney. Just thought I’d clear that up.

The Great Gatsby – it’s a very good film

I went off to see The Great Gatsby’ last night at Cineworld on the Fulham Road – I’ve just bought a new unlimited pass for £19 per month – watch 2 films a month and I’m ahead of the game! A right result.

I thought it was excellent, really entertaining. It looks great – sumptuous, surreal, decadent and indulgent – just like the decade it portrays (that’s enough of my attempt at film critique, I promise!) and although I had to watch it in 3D in this instance it worked really well. And the soundtrack was really good too, this Jay Zed fellow did it. I thought he was a rapper like that 50 pence guy – what do I know? There’s an excellent song that goes  ‘Will you still love me when I am no longer young, or ‘Young and beautiful’ by Lana Del Ray and it’s ‘haunting’ as they say (I’m getting carried away again). A big film always has at least one really big song and this is the one, it will do wonders for the film.

Leonardo Dicaprio was great. I was looking through a list of his films on IMDB and this guy has got the eye. He hasn’t really ever been in a duff film and although he’s a big star, he’s actually a very good actor. I was watching Blood Diamond again the other night after talking about it with a friend and because it’s such a good story you don’t really notice that Leo was very, very good in it. Which reminds me that I remember another friend from Zimbabwe (I’m soooo popular, two friends now!) saying that even Leo’s accent was spot on.

In fact, thinking about it, I’ve enjoyed pretty much every film he’s been in, especially Django Unchained. So, I think I’m a new Leonardo Dicaprio fan, he’s right up there in my opinion and I’m looking forward to his new film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ even though I didn’t enjoy the book. Anyway, this film is so good I might consider watching Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Australia’… go and watch The Great Gatsby in the cinema while you have the chance.

Tornado rips up town of Moore, Oklahoma

It is incredibly sad news about the tornado in Oklahoma, especially the children in the school in the suburb of Moore. A very severe tornado with wind speeds of up to 200mph has battered the town – the same suburb was hit by a tornado in 1999, when the storm produced the highest winds ever recorded near the Earth’s surface – 302mph.

So, it begs the question, what has been learned since 1999? And with this part of the country almost certain to get more tornados more often as the climate changes, what is going to be done to prevent these things happening in the future?

It seems that According to Larry Tanner, a structural engineer at the Wind Engineering Research Center in Texas Tech University, the average US home simply has no chance of survival if it’s in the path of a tornado.

“The strongest winds that most homes can withstand are around 90 mph,” said Tanner. “After that, they all pretty much get blown to pieces.”

However, the average wind speed generated by a tornado in the USA is between 130mph to 160mph, say the National Weather Service.
And wind speeds that reach 90mph are at the very low end of the scale when it comes to tornadoes, according to Tanner. In fact, The Federal Emergency Management Agency says that since 1953 57% of all catastrophic losses covered by insurance were due to tornadoes.

So, why is it that 60 years later houses and schools are still being so easily destroyed by tornados? Well, maybe the reason is that the average US home is reckoned to have a lifespan of around 50 years, and the chances of it being hit by a tornado in that time are incredibly small. So, the current building standards in the US simply aren’t designed to withstand a tornado impact. It’s a question of money or more specifically insurance.

And this is where the government now has to step in and ensure that any new houses that are built in these areas are completely tornado proof or at the very least have an underground or in-house tornado shelter.

And it is possible to build a tornado proof house. In fact, of all place the Phillipines has some of the strongest homes in the world, on average 8 times stronger than a home in the US and capable of withstanding the 35 or so typhoons that hit the Phillipines every year with minimal damage to infrastructure.

The USA has to make the investment now to prevent more deaths from climate catastrophes in the future. It’s as simple as that.

It’s life but not as we know it…

I came across this and I won’t be having chicken nuggets again for – well probably just a few days actually. But it’s still pretty grim….mechanically separated chicken…

This is really nice video footage of the moon rising in New Zealand. Sent in by a friend who’s always on the lookout for good stuff on the interweb. It’s by a chap called Mark Gee. He has some other great videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/markgfilm?feature=watch

Another satisfied customer….

This made me laugh. There’s a site out there called freeindex.co.uk and it’s a very good site if you’re looking for a tradesperson. Nice list of companies, ratings and you can ask for a quote. A bit like Rated People but it’s free for the tradespeople to get leads, although probably not in the same volume. And it’s a very nice looking site, too. Anyway, we have an alert on that site for electricians and plumbing, so if someone needs an electrician within London we get an email with the details of the job.

One came in last week and it made us all laugh. I wonder how many electricians responded to this request?

‘I have already been priced for this job by my electrician, but then it was re priced later and asked that I do extra work on top. I found this unprofessional and declined on the work, so now I’d like the job re priced.

Please do not reply if you charge by the hour. I do not pay this way, estimate for wiring only, as installation has been done already.

One light plus 2 gang dimmer switch.

Needs connecting from existing wire and replaced a metre away, plus dimmer switch. I have drilled out all necessary holes, fed cable through. It’s ready to go.

The dimmer switch will be used for the kitchen spots as well, but I’m still designing the feature for it, so wiring and hooking up to the dimmer will take place another time another price.

Please also be aware, I know my stuff, I’ve have worked in the trade for 20 years previous.

If I am happy with the work there is plenty more. LEDs, spot light, wall lights, ceiling speaker, the list goes on.

I’m happy to pay cash, but will require proper invoices for all work completed.

I am a professional and I have very high standards. I do not allow shoddy work. If you do not take pride in your work, you need not apply, If you are a cowboy, don’t apply, if you don’t clean up after yourself, do not apply. I will make you tea and biscuits but I take no prisoners. I’m a woman, but don’t let that fool you.

Please don’t take offence, been there, done it, so I’m not taking any chances. You also have to remove your shoes in my apartment. Thank you.’

A quiet drink on a Sunday afternoon with the English Defence League

I know you’re not supposed to laugh at these terrorist stories but this is like a sequel to ‘Four Lions’. You can read the full story here, well the Sun’s version of it anyway (I saw it in The Standard BTW, I don’t read The Sun unless I’m in a cafe – honestly!).

Anyway, the jist of it is this;

• Islamist ‘terror’ gang plan to take out those cosmopolitan guys attending an English Defence League rally.
• Evidently looking to save a few pennies on the whole escapade they purchase ‘single day’ insurance for a borrowed Renault but enter in the wrong registration details.
• They arrive late for the rally which is poorly attended anyway because the main speaker doesn’t turn up, so everyone goes home early.
• On the way back the car gets stopped for no insurance by Plod.
• Plod impounds the car but doesn’t check the boot which contains the terrorists swag of bombs, guns, a taped terror message and a letter stating what they intend to do at the rally.
• Laughably, plod gives the terrorists a lift to the station – that must have been a fun ride for them.
• The canny terrorists then ring up the cops the next day to ask if they can have their bag back from the boot of the car!
• Plod finds bag containing the weapons, tapes and the note which also slags off the Queen and using their training diagnose a terrorist plot
• Plod ‘foils’ terrorist ‘outrage’ by arresting the ‘suspects’

I don’t think Sherlock Holmes will be called in to solve this one. This has all the makings of a very good West End farce. The incompetence of all three parties involved – the EDL’s failure to get a decent rally going, the sheer stupidity of the terrorists and the usual incompetence of the police. I’d write it myself but people would think it’s too far fetched.

The Maunsell Sea Forts, England

My friend sent me a link for this site and the pictures really are off the charts. It’s about abandoned places. Have a look for yourself.

This really is quite amazing and certainly worth 5 minutes of your lunchtime break!

It’s all about customer feedback!

A friend emailed me this. How apt! Not for Serviceteam, of course – they work in a bank!

Yet again my mum has provided me with some content for this blog on a quiet Monday morning. The states is full of the Boston terrorists story but there isn’t much going on here so I thought I’d throw these up. Very amusing, well done mum.

Nasty Boris Bike accident on Grays Inn Road

This is really sad and it’s literally a few hundreds yards up the road form our office. There are police and fir engines still at the scene. It seems a man has been seriously injured on a Boris Bike and a big lorry has been involved. I’ve just been out to see because the traffic is backed up along Gray’s Inn Road and there is a lot of beeping.

The Boris bike is lying just around the corner of the intersection of Gray’s In Road and Theobalds Road and there is a big waste lorry with it’s hazards on, so I suspect this is the lorry from the incident. It seems that he has hit the cyclist on his left while coming around the corner, but I’m just speculating because this is how most nasty accidents with cyclist occur. They get trapped on the inside of a turning vehicle. I know this, I cycle to work everyday.

I hope this guy is alright, no-one wants to see anyone get hurt, but from a selfish point of view it makes me nervous when I’m getting on my bike to go home in a couple of hours!

Bogus beggar, beggars belief.

My mum sent me this in. She is always on the internet scouring for interesting stories. Well, it saves me a job. This is about a bogus beggar in New York and it’s quite amusing – have a look. And I’ve found another one, although this guy doesn’t really sound like he’s shuffling with a full deck when he come’s ‘out of character’. Of course, it will make you think twice about giving money to people on the street. I’m not sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing!

Little Runa Begum

This is the saddest story I’ve read in a long time. And looking at the pictures I need to have a long lie down. It certainly makes you glad that you were born in the UK and puts everything into perspective. It’s beyond the pale that anyone should have to go through this in this day and age, let alone a child. And it’s tragic that it looks like it’s gone to far to save Runa. The doctors think she’s probably already brain damaged and blind. And it may have been different if the problem had been addressed earlier but for a lack of money.

But it makes me wonder what all these charities are doing if they didn’t spot this case? And then I got to thinking about how much of the money that people give to charity actually gets through to the people they are meant to be helping.  I think a lot of these super-charities spend most of the money on advertising and the ‘Charity Muggers’ that you slalom up and down the High Street.  The Americans have a great site called Charity Navigator but I couldn’t find an equivalent for the UK. It informs donors how effectively the money they give is being spent and who the bad charities are that are only helping themselves.

Anyway, World Vision came out well on them, so I decided to join up and sponsor a little Bangladeshi girl. It’s only £22.80 a month and I’ll be getting some pictures of her and her family next week. I’ll share my experiences of it all on here and then we’ll all see whether it’s been worth and it maybe you can weigh in!

Oblivion – sorry Tom, it’s not that good

I went to watch Oblivion last night at Cineworld. I’m a big Tom Cruise fan so generally I’ll go and see anything with him in and I like Science Fiction films. A double whammy, then?

Well, not so. I don’t want to give the plot away to those who want to watch it so I’ll have to make some generalizations, much like thew film. It looks great, really excellent, seamless CGI and not too in your face. The film looks lovely on the big screen. Tom Cruise is very good, underplaying the role. The problem is with the plot – it’s a rehash of some very decent Science Fiction films we’ve had over the last few decades, but still manages to make a mess of it.

If you watch it yourself, spot where it’s stolen from ‘Moon’, ‘The Matrix’, ‘Terminator’, ‘Independence Day’, ‘Planet of the Apes’ and probably a few more. And it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Also, I don’t like the lead woman Olga Kurylenko, maybe it’s not her fault, but she was dull. And casting Morgan Freeman in his role was lame – yes, he’s got gravitas but he only ever plays himself and I’m going to start avoiding the films he’s appearing in soon.

So, much as I like Tom Cruise, I’m going to have to give it 5 out of 10 stars. Sorry Tom.
.

Time to switch to the vegetarian option, I think.

This made me laugh today. Asda have recalled their tins of ‘Smart price’ corned beef. Looking at the tin, I cannot imagine anyone actually purchasing this product and those that do probably really don’t care what’s in it anyway. It sends shivers down my spine! I can’t think that Asda will have many returns because surely you’d be too embarrassed to admit that you purchased it in the first place!

By all accounts it has some horse meat and some horse painkillers in it. I’m surprised they found any beef in it at all. I was a student once but I can’t remember every stooping this low – and I used to eat Frey Bentos pies! You need to ask yourself some big questions about where your life is going if you’re putting this on your dinner menu. You may need to consider counselling. And if someone else is cooking this up for you, you need to get out now!

Trident is just too expensive

David Cameron stated today that he is determined to keep the Trident nuclear deterrent but I’m not so sure this is a good idea. Never mind the the morals, I don’t think we can afford it. But it was a smart time to bring the whole thing up again after North Korea stepped up the threats of nuclear attack against the USA. He sounded like Tony Blair with this statement “Last year North Korea unveiled a long-range ballistic missile which it claims can reach the whole of the United States. If this became a reality it would also affect the whole of Europe, including the UK.”

That’s cost us £20 Billion then. In fact, in 2009, Greenpeace estimated the 30 year lifetime costs of the proposal would be about £97 billion. Now, that’s a lot of cash. So, what to do? Well, if we do need to keep some nukes around for the nutcases why does the UK always have to carry the bill? Why can’t we get some help towards the cost of it all from the EU? Or anyone else who wants in, like the Japanese and South Koreans? In fact, why don’t we go the whole hog and suggest that the the UK, the USA, France and any other NATO allies put all their nukes in the basket and anyone who wants protection from them has to cough up say $5 Billion a year. We could have nice little industry going here.

David if you want to talk to me about it, my number is on the website. Assuming he doesn’t, the government have already coughed up for a think tank to come up with some options. Surely, given the state of the economy and the fact that Trident is now coming out of the Armed Forces budget (who don’t have enough resources left to defend Southampton should anyone want to invade it), we should be looking at options 2,3 and 4 as a matter of urgency?

I shall reproduce a shortened form of the findings here, by the way  CASD stands for Continuous At-Sea Deterrence.

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British defence and security think tank, released a paper in July 2010 assessing “four possible options for maintaining both an effective nuclear deterrent and also reducing costs in light of anticipated budget restrictions.” These proposals were motivated by the fact that funding for the Trident renewal programme must now come from the core MoD budget.

The paper outlined four options consistent with the purposes of cost reduction:

1. A ‘Normally-CASD’ Submarine Force: “Under this option, the UK would maintain Trident missiles and submarines, and CASD [Continuous At-Sea Deterrence] would be maintained as normal operating practice. But the MoD would accept an increased risk of short interruptions in CASD in the event of unforeseen, and low-probability, mishaps or accidents.
2. A ‘CASD-Capable’ Submarine Force: “Under this option, the attempt to maintain CASD in normal circumstances would be abandoned, and replaced by an assumption that it would only be necessary to have the ability to reconstitute CASD if required, and then to maintain it for a significant (though not indefinite) period…In order to maintain a credible reconstitution capability, it would be necessary to maintain submarine patrols. But these would not necessarily have to be on a continuous basis.”
3. A ‘Dual-Capable’ Submarine Force: “This would maintain the plan to build new submarines, but with only four missile tubes (compared with the twelve currently planned) and with an explicit design mandate that asked designers to allow them also to perform conventional roles…It would not be possible, however, for potential adversaries to detect whether or not a particular boat was nuclear-armed when it went on patrol. Such an arrangement could, in time, combine increased survivability for the nuclear force while also holding out the possibility of further reductions in the size and readiness of the nuclear deterrent.”
4. A Non-Deployed Strategic Force: “A more radical option would be to abandon a submarine-based nuclear deterrent altogether, relying instead on a non-deployed arsenal to provide deterrence of future nuclear attacks…The key to an effective UK nuclear deterrent based on this option would be guaranteed, but not prompt, retaliation.” Although concluding that “such an option is probably too radical to be politically acceptable at present…It should not be ruled out as a longer-term option, however, perhaps as part of a multilateral agreement to move to lower states of nuclear readiness.”

The paper concludes that “given the opportunity costs for conventional capabilities that current plans for Trident renewal are due to incur over the next decade…there is now a growing case for a re-examination of whether there are less expensive means of pursuing this objective. A key element of such a review is likely to be a reconsideration of the need to maintain a commitment to CASD in strategic circumstances that are now very different from those in which it was first introduced.”

Very good burgers at the Crown & Greyhound

Struggling for things to do with the bitter weather we’re having, I drove over to Dulwich Village with the family for a look about on Bank Holiday Monday. I haven’t been for years and was hoping to get a walk around the park, but it was blowing a gale worthy of arctic conditions and so we sacked it off and decided to go for a pub lunch instead.  Dulwich village is still beautiful and so is the Crown & greyhound. Shabby chic, I suppose you’d call it but it has all it’s Victorian features with very high ceilings and it’s very large. We sat out the back in conservatory which was nicely heated considering it’s all glass and it was so cold outside.

The menu looked good, gastropub yes but not at all chainy. I really wanted a beef burger and so I ordered one with pulled pork, still thinking it would be an ordinary bit of meat in a big oversized floury bun with a run of the mill tomato and lettuce combination. I couldn’t have been more wrong, I was amazed at how good it was. The bun was fantastic and fitted around the high quality meat perfectly. It was and cooked very well, too. It was right up there with some of the best burgers I’ve had in the very trendy new burger bars like Honest Burger and Meat Liquor. The chips were really good too.  It’s not cheap, for a pub anyway - the burger was £12.50 or so, but this is Dulwich Village, div’n you know. In fact, all the adults had burgers with different toppings but we all agreed that they were great.

They do need more waiting staff, however. Our girl was very good and very friendly but she was rushed off her feet because there was a big group in the corner keeping her busy and so the service was slow even by cold war Soviet standards. Maybe, it could have been the kitchen’s fault too. Who knows, but it wasn’t a drama because we didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Nonetheless, I didn’t let that detract from the whole experience and I will definitely go back (probably in a big group!) for that burger!

‘My God! Where have you traveled from?’ – ‘Holborn.’

We mostly like to talk about the weather in the UK. We’re well known for it because it’s always varied – cloudy, rainy, drizzling, overcast, grey, snowing, windy, gale force windy, sleeting, cold, quite cold, very cold or b*****d cold with occasional outbreaks of sun. But this month has been absolutely chronic. Even in London, which is a heat sink and usually warmer than the rest of the island, it’s bitterly cold. I’ve just been on a meeting in the West End and it looks like that old footage of Moscow in the Soviet era where everything is grey – the buildings, the streets, the sky and the people – and we’re all miserable too.

I was so cold by the time I got to the meeting that I couldn’t write anything for the first half an hour and my body spent the rest of the time trying to get my core temperature up to a level where I could function. Just as soon as I’d stopped trembling, the meeting ended and I was back out on the street!

Having lived here, with some welcome long breaks, for 40 years, I am quite used to the temperature and don’t usually make a fuss of the cold weather. But March 2013 is different. Has anyone looked to see whether the Jet Stream has packed up? Because it’s like being in Iceland here – 1 degree C not taking into account the wind which is blowing at 30 kph.

And the forecast is grim. In Scotland and the North at least, this kind of weather cold continue until late April! If you don’t believe me look at the 16 to 30 day forecast! So, just  like Phil Connors in Groundhog day, I’ll give you a winter prediction: It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.

Welcome to the UK.

The EU train maybe leaving the rails..

by Steve Macrie

I don’t know much about banking – some people might argue that I don’t know much about anything, but surely this Cyprus situation is a grave mistake. It seems to me that regardless of how they have got themselves into this mess, the EU has made a commitment to them. So, they either let them go or they keep dishing out the euros. This business of swiping 10% from all the Cypriot banks is a massive error for Europe. I can understand that the Germans have had enough and that opposition politicians are telling grave stories of Russian Billionaires pocketing taxpayers money. But what did they expect to happen when they strong armed the Cypriots into coming up with 6.7 Billion euros to secure the next round of funding?  They don’t have any money – that’s the whole point! And when it looked like they were going to do something foolish like tax deposit money, they should have stepped in. What did they think would happen to those banks? A run on them, of course! Anyone can see that – and I’m only in marketing!

Now, the Cypriot government has refused the Germans and they’ve gone off cap in hand to the Russians. The euro is starting to look like a shambles again and the European Union has let one of it’s members go begging to another state. What does that say? Well, to me it says that after all the talk, the EU is still a collection of different countries – not member states. We’re all in it together until it starts to go sour and then you’re on your own, pal.

I think the train is about to leave the rails. Buckle up, because this is going to be a major train wreck.

Nearly 1/2 kg of junk mail in a week!

by Steve Macrie

As the rest of the family are in the Cotswolds this week, I’ve been at home by myself. And as i normally go out of the back door with my bike I haven’t been picking up the junk mail that arrives daily in the hall. Realizing that the wife is returning with me on Monday I was forced to do some house tidying. Which is when I realized just how much jink mail we’re getting.

I realize that this is a very ‘middle-aged man with not enough to do’ kind of thing but I took a picture of it and then i weighed it out the kitchen scales – good quality digital one’s too, mind. The picture above shows 6 days worth of junk mail which weighed 416 grams. If we say for arguments sake that’s a week’s worth, that makes 21.6kg of junk mail per year for just one property in London! (that’s 48 lbs for our American friends).

What a tremendous waste of paper.

Sydney – one hell of a city!

by Steve Macrie

I’ve been in Sydney, Australia for 3 weeks again this year. It’s my third time in three years and I love the place. It gets harder to leave everytime. So, today I am going to list the 10 things I love about the place and tomorrow I’m going to list the 10 things that I hate. That way I’ll balance it out and won’t feel as bad about coming back to London! I hope. Now, remember this is a list written by someone from the UK – so I’m going to take the political stability and democracy as read – this is a fun list.

So here goes – the top 10 things I love about Sydney:

1. Has to be the weather, which by and large is beautiful. Shorts, T-shirts and flip flops in the evenings. In the UK we get to do this for maybe 2 weeks a year if we’re lucky!

2. The harbour. I’ve been a lot of places but I just can’t think of any stretch of water that compares with this harbour. It’s simply stunning and I never get bored crossing it in a ferry to get to town.

3. The Opera house and the harbour bridge. I love them. I’m lucky enough to be in Point Piper and I can look out of the window and see them everyday. They are iconic structures and they’re beautiful. It’s like having a flat over the houses of Parliament!

4. The beaches. Is there anywhere like this city in the world? Everywhere you go has a beach. Sometimes it feels like every road you walk down has a beach at the bottom of it!

5. No-one does any work! Compared to London, no-one is doing any work here. At 5pm it’s like the Flintstone’s whistle! It’s about working to live here and enjoying life. Makes everything so much more relaxed.

6. Space and a lack of people. It never feels crowded in Sydney. Of course, some parts of it are built up but compared to London, it’s like living in a field! Case in point is the beaches. Even at the weekend they are busy but not overcrowded. I’m sure the Sydneysiders think they are but that’s because they fundamentally don’t understand what overcrowding means. We do in London. And if we had any beaches, you wouldn’t have enough room to put some much as a towel down on a sunny day – look at Brighton!

7. Pure Blonde beer. I love it and I always look out for it in the UK but I rarely come across it. Really crisp taste perfect for warm evenings after a hard day at the beach.

8. The healthy outdoor lifestyle. Most people look very fit and tanned here. I’ve never seen so many people jogging – and it’s not like London doesn’t have it’s fair share of joggers. People run in their lunch hour here and some even run to the swimming pool, have a swim and the run back to the office! The real plums run in their googles, I’m told.

9. The swimming pools. I’m a big swimming fan but in the UK I only ever get to swim indoors and once in a blue moon at Tooting Lido in August when the water temperature has finally got over 1 degree Celsius. Here they have the most fantastic outdoor swimming pools. There is Redleaf pool next to me in Double Bay, which is a sea swimming pool but my favourite ‘proper’ pools are the North Sydney pool under the harbour bridge and the Andrew ‘Boy’ Charlton pool in Woolloomooloo that looks over the harbour. So great it’s off the charts.

10. Australians and Sydneysiders. Controversial, especially coming from London as Australians don’t have a great reputation there, where they’re generally hears to begin conversatiosn with ‘In Australia’ – but maybe they are just the one’s we get! Apart from a policeman who was right up himself and very condescending (but he was a policeman!) I haven’t met anyone who hasn’t been friendly and helpful. I do travel around a lot with a 3 year old and they tend to bring the best out it people, but I have always been offered a chair on the bus, train or ferry without hesitation, every single time I have got on. People often offer help with the stroller, too. And that’s a real credit to the people of the city – a good bunch! Generally people smile a lot here, and in Point Piper at least, people say ‘Good Morning’ to complete strangers as they pass! That is not like London!

So, that’s 10 great things love about this city and I could have put a lot more because Sydney is simply a wonderful place. Tomorrows list won’t be as easy – but if I don’t write it, I’ll overstay my Visa!

Looking worried – you would be with that story!

By Steve Macrie

This is the most bizarre celebrity crime story we’ve had since O.J. Simpson. I hears the news last week but didn’t realize it was actually Oscar Pistorius, on eof the World’s most famous athletes. Now, I’m not going to pass judgement on whether he’s guilty or not, because they’ve appointed 12 people to that already!

And I fully concede that South Africa isn’t like London and maybe you need 5 guns around for safety reasons. But after reading his initial affidavit about how the accident occured – I won’t be expecting to see him running around Crystal Palace any time soon.

I have reproduced it for your reading pleasure.

‘By about 2200 on February 13 we were in our bedroom. She was doing yoga exercises and I was in bed watching television. My prosthetic legs were off. We were deeply in love and I could not be happier.

I have received death threats before. I have also been a victim of violence and burglaries before. For that reason I kept my firearm – a 9 mm Parabellum – underneath my bed when I went to bed at night.

During the early morning hours of 14 February 2013 I woke up, went onto the balcony to bring the fan in and closed the sliding doors, the blinds and the curtains. I heard a noise in the bathroom and realised someone was in the bathroom.

I felt a sense of terror rushing over me. There were no burglar bars across the bathroom window and I knew contractors who worked at my house had left the ladders outside. Although I did not have my prosthetics legs on, I have mobility on my stumps.

I believed someone had entered my house. I was too scared to switch a light on. I grabbed my 9 mm pistol from underneath my bed.
– On my way to the bathroom I screamed words to the effect for him/them to get out of my house and for Reeva to phone the police. It was pitch dark in the bedroom and I thought Reeva was in bed.

I noticed that the bathroom window was open. I realised that the intruder/s was/were in the toilet because the toilet door was closed and I did not see anyone in the bathroom. I heard movement inside the toilet. The toilet is inside the bathroom and has a separate door.

It filled me with horror and fear of an intruder or intruders being inside the toilet. I thought he or they must have entered through the unprotected window.

As I did not have my prosthetic legs on and felt extremely vulnerable, I knew I had to protect Reeva and myself. I believed that when the intruder/s came out of the toilet, we would be in grave danger. I felt trapped as my bedroom door was locked and I have limited mobility on my stumps.

I fired shots at the toilet door and shouted to Reeva to call the police. She did not respond and I moved backwards out of the bathroom, keeping my eyes on the bathroom entrance.

Everything was pitch dark in the bedroom and I was still too scared to switch on the light. Reeva was not responding. When I reached the bed, I realized that Reeva was not in the bed. That is when it dawned on me that it could have been Reeva who was in the toilet.

I returned to the bathroom calling her name. I tried to open the toilet door but it was locked. I rushed back into the bedroom and opened the sliding door exiting on to the balcony and screamed for help.
I put on my prosthetic legs, ran back to the bathroom and tried to kick the toilet door open. I think I must have then turned on the light. I went back into the bedroom and grabbed my cricket bat to bash open the toilet door. A panel or panels broke off and I found the key on the floor and unlocked and opened the door. Reeva was slumped over but alive.

I battled to get her out of the toilet and pulled her into the bathroom. I phoned Johan Stander, who was involved in the administration of the estate and asked him to phone the ambulance. I phoned Netcare and asked for help. I went downstairs to open the front door.
– I returned to the bathroom and picked Reeva up as I had been told not to wait for the paramedics, but to take her to the hospital. I carried her downstairs in order to take her to the hospital. On my way down, Stander arrived. A doctor who lives in the complex also arrived. Downstairs, I tried to render the assistance to Reeva that I could, but she died in my arms.

I am absolutely mortified by the events and the devastating loss of my beloved Reeva.

With the benefit of hindsight, I believe that Reeva went to the toilet when I went out on the balcony to bring the fan in. I cannot bear to think of the suffering that I have caused her and her family, knowing how much she was loved.

I also know that the events of that tragic night were as I had described them and that in due course I have no doubt the police and the expert investigators will bear this out.

I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated murder because I had no intention to kill my girlfriend.’

I can’t help myself – what a load of cobblers.

Does anybody like iTunes?

By Steve Macrie

I was reading this article on Yahoo News this morning about how Apple is going to have a devastating  impact on the home console market. Two people called Gabe Newel who is a co-founder of some company called Valve Software co-founder of Valve Software and Nat Brown, who was one of the first engineers on Microsoft’s Xbox project (he must be credible then), have issued warnings about Apple’s potential threat.

It’s a nice bit of publicity for them but it’s one of the silliest articles I’ve read in some time and complete sensationalism. By all accounts Apple will wipe the floor with the XBox, The Wii and the Playstation because small developers can create games cheaply and earn a percentage of each game’s sales, thus everyone will ditch the console as they’ll have a lot more choice of cheap games to play on Apple TV.

What a load of tosh.  Little games are for little devices, but the main TV is for console games with big, immersive graphics and gameplay. Those games need a massive amount of development and Hollywood sized budgets – at least in the near future. And the day Apple gets a foothold in that market is when everyone will be paying twice as much for half the performance.

Yahoo! have allowed a silly, sensationalist article on there and it will get some headlines because it mentions Apple. But I think Apple has had it’s day. I’m certainly not going to be buying any more of their products? Why? Because, I am sick to death of iTunes and Apple controlling everything I want to do with their (my) devices.

For example.

The iPad. I’m on holiday and I want to load 3 DVDs of Nanny McPhee for my daughter onto her iPad for the flights. What a complete nightmare. Converting the files, putting them on flash disk because I didn’t have time to do it at work, I got home and couldn’t do it because I don’t have my iTunes account on my home computer. And Apple wanted £7 each to download the films from the iTunes store – even though you can get them for a £1 on ebay on DVD and sent to the house! And I already have them on DVD! What kind of entertainment device is that? Don’t get me started on Flash – and I still can’t make folders on it to categorize my home videos- this device is toilet. I’m putting it on ebay when I get home.

Apple TV? Don’t get me started. My sister-in-law has a hard drive with some films on and needed a media device to play them. I went into the Apple Shop on George Street in Sydney to ask how this would work. Basically, it wouldn’t is the answer – everything has to go through iTunes. So, I purchased a Phillips media player for $70 AUS and it works perfectly.

The iPhone? The last one I’ll be purchasing. I can’t do anything without iTunes. I connected it to my PC the other day to get some photos off it and now half my music collection had disappeared from it. Probably because I didn’t buy them from iTunes!

Apple squeeze their customers for every drop of revenue – they have to to keep that share price. But the Evil Empire has had it’s day. As Princess Leia says ‘The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.’ Just swap ‘Star Systems’ for ‘Customers’!

‘Lincoln’ – like watching paint dry

By Steve Macrie

I’m not really surprised that ‘Lincoln’ only picked up one Bafta, last night. I watched it on the plane last week and quite frankly, it’s boring. Yes, everyone acts really well in it and Daniel Day-Lewis is very good, but it is just not interesting. It’s one of those films that you feel you should see but you can’t really be bothered.

This is exactly the right feeling! And I don’t think it’s the subject matter either. It’s set during the American civil war and I’m sure they could have got some mileage out of that.

It’s a film that has been elevated by self important people working in the film industry as an ‘important piece of work’ and that’s as good a reason as I’ve ever heard not to watch a film! He used to make good films that Spielberg…

No, he’s not a banker – his nose isn’t long enough!

By Steve Macrie

I’ve been watching some programs about this new scam by the banks that has come to light over the last few weeks and I’m glad to see that the Financial Services Authority has finally got around to making a decision on it. The stories of what the banks have been doing to some small businesses is horrifying. It is unbelievable that they would be allowed to get away with this for so long or that anyone would be evil enough to sell this type of product to a small business knowing what the likely consequences would be.

So what have they done now? Well, some small businesses who went to their bank for a loan were tricked or pressurized into taking a product called an ‘Interest Rate Swap Agreement’. This is a complex and risky product that  hedges the borrower from the risk of interest rates going up and is viewed by many experts as completely unnecessary for most small businesses. Taking the product was in almost all cases made a condition of the loan they needed being granted, and the business owners were given very little time to make a decision – the banks were using high pressure sales tactics on them. The FSA has revealed that more than 90% of interest rate swaps were probably mis-sold to small businesses.

The result has been absolute carnage for the 28,000 businesses coerced into signing the agreement. As interest rates fell, it was basically like a spread bet and the more it fell the more the company owed. There are many cases of small business having to pay several hundred thousand pounds to the bank. The banks put astronomical exit fees into the terms and conditions and now hundreds of companies have gone bankrupt. Some companies that  have survived have had to let staff go to make these payments others have had to downsize their businesses – many of them export businesses. As if our manufacturing industry isn’t crippled enough!

Who is responsible? I’m afraid it’s the usual suspects: Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS. The biggest and most well known banks on the high street. There are others: Allied Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks, the Co-Operative Bank, and Santander UK. Names to remember when you are looking for a banking service, I think.

What is likely to happen? Well, on the back of the PPI scandal where the banks have been forced to pay out over £10bn for swindling their customers, it looks like they are in for another £1.5bn. But this is just for paying back the money they cheated out of their customers. They should really get a similar amount in fines.

You can read more about this story on the BBC and Yahoo! If you want to make the list of most hated professions, go and work for a bank! A poll in our office makes the list:

1. Traffic wardens
2. British Telecom employees
3. No win no fee lawyers
4. Taxi drivers
5. Bouncers
6. Bank workers
7. Motorcycle couriers
8. Bus drivers
9. Tube drivers
10.Estate agents

I am so bored…

By Steve Macrie

Just like everyone else in the country, I am currently doing the 5:2 diet. I read this rather thin book on it in about 2 hours last week – I got it free on a borrowed download from Amazon because I’m a prime member – there is a recession on you know!

Anyway the book advises you to join My Fitness Pal so you can count all your calories. I won’t tell you about the diet because the only thing less interesting than listening to people talk about their diet is listening to them talking about their problems. And their dreams, that’s double boring. Anyway, it’s free and so they have to fund it somehow and so there are adverts on it. One advert offers what looks like some very good advice on ”The 5 foods to never eat’ by the Trim Down Club.

This is the most ghastly infomercial ever made. It doesn’t have a fast forward button and it dosen’t let you know how long it is at any stage. It has a cheesy looking woman that you assume is the person on the voiceover for the video. However, as the American version has the same picture but a different voice, it’s a cynical ploy! It’s not that woman at all! Unbelieveable!

The infomercial goes on for over half an hour and basically plugs their diet club. It seems to go on for ever. And it turns out that the information is very easily and freely available anywhere on the internet with a quick search on Bing.

So, I’m going to give you back the half an hour they stole from my life. Here’s the list:

1. Orange juice (the concentrated kind)

2. Margarine

3. Wholewheat bread, oh and other breads, pasta, cakes and pastries (no sh*t!)

4. Processed soy

5. GM corn

Who eats corn on it’s own anyway? By the way, if you want to know why you shouldn’t be eating these foods just look for it on the net.

Lazee Carpets in Rochester, Kent

By Steve Macrie

I went down to see some friends in Rochester, Kent today. They have recently opened a carpet supply and fitting firm and they invited me down to have a look at how they’re getting on. Brilliantly is how! They’ve always been good carpet fitters – they’ve fitted carpet for me on many occasions. They’ve set up a warehouse and got some great business with the insurance companies. They’re already advertising on radio sponsoring the weather on KMFM Medway.

It’s just great to see them doing so well. They were telling me that they could expand by getting a shop in one of the local towns but they are lacking the funds to do so at the moment. Of course, they have been to see the bank who point blank refused them before they had even filled in an application form. They can’t even get an overdraft! So, much for George Osbourne’s Funding For Lending Scheme , which has been a complete disaster - as I predicted on this blog several months ago.

Osbourne is now banging on about setting up a small business investment bank, which I also discussed several months ago. This is an idea he has stolen from labour. Great George, but you’re all talk – but when are you going to open it!?

With any luck they won’t need any help from the banks or the government, which they aren’t likely to get. The only time you ever hear from anyone in the government is when, despite all odds and with no help whatsoever, you’ve made a little money. Then they want to put their hand in your pocket to wet their beaks. (I never miss an opportunity for a whinge!)

Anyway, it was good to see them and if you need some great carpet supplied and fitted at a great price in Chatham, Rochester or anywhere else in Kent for that matter, you could do a lot worse than visit Lazee Carpets.

The High Street – may not be as many of these left!

As I’ve already written several times on this blog about the problems facing HMV, it hasn’t come as any surprise that they’ve gone into administration. It’s already looking like a grim year for retailing with Jessops going into administration too. The high street has to adapt and quickly otherwise we’re going to have town centres full of coffee shops.

Look at these well known brands that aren’t with us anymore: Woolworths, JJB Sports, Jessops,  Blockbuster, Comet, HMV, Clinton Cards, Game and Borders.

I wonder which other high street retailers will go this year? I think WHSmith will go sooner or later. I’ve always found them really useful at train stations and airports, but this Christmas I was bought a Kindle. I’ve never really wanted one becasue I’m old and old fashioned, but I really like it. And for travelling, it doesn’t make any sense to lug several books in your hand luggage when you can store thousands on e-reader.

I spend a lot of money in WHSmith every time I go abroad and I’m lucky enough to go abroad several times a year. But, I’ll end up browsing their shelves and downloading the book I want from the airport lounge just like every other selfish consumer – there’s no loyalty in consumerism!

WHSmith’s problem is that on the high street they don’t specialize in anything – they’re a bit like Woolworths (look what happened to them) and pretty much everything they do provide can be bought on the internet. It will be tough for them but I like WHSmiths. I like the way they try and sell you other items even if you’ve only gone in for the paper – those discounted chocolate bars for example. And the staff always ask you. It can’t be easy to get shop staff to do that for every customer so they must have some  very good management. I hope they survive.

So who else? Waterstone’s? Argos? Both models look unsustainable in the long term.

It’s a bad time to be selling anything that comes in a box, that’s for sure. And long term maybe it might be that certain towns just don’t have a high-street full of chain shops – they might not have a high-street at all. The posher areas will have their nice boutique shops and the poorer one’s will have poundland. You might have to travel to go to a decent high street, but there will always be one somewhere.

It’s always sad when people lose their jobs, but industries change. You adapt or you die and that’s the way it’s always been. I suspect that’s what HMV were telling it’s smaller competitors when they were squeezing them off the high street in the 70s and 80s, and that’s what Amazon is telling HMV today.

by Steve Macrie

Again my mum has come up trumps with some funny pictures. These are for the builder of the year awards 2012. And no, Serviceteam has nothing to do with any of them!

by Steve Macrie

I’ve just been riding past the scene of the helicopter crash in Vauxhall on the Wandsworth Road. I say riding past, as near as I can get on my usual route into to work because the whole of Vauxhall has been closed off including bus and rail services. A helicopter hit the crane on the top of the St George’s Wharf building at around 8am and it seems two people have been killed, one critically injured and there are nine in hospital. It’s a very tall building for London at any rate – 591ft and 51 storeys.

It seems there are hundreds of police around and a lot of firemen. They were on the scene quickly but then it is in Central London! I here they’ve set up an incident room in Pret-A-Manger – that’s handy for them! There are even more photographers, reporters and news vans.

I’ve never been so close to a serious incident before but what I was surprised about was the scale of activity around these unfortunate events and how the media revels in it. I was listening to a newspaper reporter interviewing someone who hadn’t even seen the crash, they had just heard the bang and she was pumping him for tit-bits – looking for an angle for a human interest story no doubt. It won’t be a slow news day today, that’s for sure. I’m listening to the BBC News now and they really only have two paragraphs of information about the actual incident but they have been broadcasting from the scene for two hours!

Lance looking good at 41 – the drugs are paying off!

by Steve Macrie

I simply can’t wait for this interview. You have to hand it to Oprah Winfrey, she has her eye on the money. It’s going to be the one of the most watched interviews in history. Lance Armstrong is a dog, pure and simple. I’m not really talking about cheating in the Tour de France, at that time I suspect there were lots of people taking Performance Enhancing Drugs. It’s the way he turned on his own team mates and friends and threatened them that makes him such an unsavoury character.

I have no doubt that when he gets onto the Oprah Winfrey show he will be blubbing like Gazza in his quest for sincerity. I suspect that Oprah will be blubbing too and thus it begins – his march back to credibility and redemption. But this guy is a rat, pure and simple – he will say anything and do anything to get himself off the hook. There will always be some soft-hearted Christians to forgive him, especially in the States, but I think the majority of people will feel that his credibilty is truly shot. But in this day and age that doesn’t mean you won’t get paid for some sort of product endorsement!

He’sgot some front though. He’s written two books, (is it three?), made countless public statements, interviews and court battles in which he categorically denied doping and zealously protected his reputation by suing anyone and everyone. And those people are going to come for him now. In fact it’s already started. The New York Times has reported that he could face perjury charges if he confesses to using performance-enhancing drugs, because he made sworn testimony in a 2005 court case that he had never done so.

Former teammate Floyd Landis – who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for doping, has filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit accusing Armstrong of defrauding the US Postal Service, which sponsored the team to the tune of more than $30m (£18.7m).

The Sunday Times is already suing Armstrong for up to $1.6m over a libel payment to him in 2004 after the newspaper alleged he had cheated and a Texan insurance company is pursuing him for $11m over insured performance bonuses paid to the American after he claimed his fourth, fifth and sixth Tour de France victories.

Which makes me wonder why he’s come out and admitted it now. And I always wondered why the USADA were so keen to nail a fellow American in the first place. He must have made a lot of enemies. It promises to be a spectator spectacle almost as thrilling and intriguing as the Tour de France itself!

These council estates need to go

There is a big row at the moment about Child benefit cuts. Of course, no-one wants to lose a benefit no matter how much money you have but this cut has been in the post for a some time. It seems to me that the government needs to have a fundamental look at tax and benefits. I’m sure they probably are, but they need to go further and faste. I appreciate however, that they need to win the next election first!

The fundamental problem is that some people are taxed too much in the first place and some people aren’t taxed at all. Then we have a crazy situation where the government gives those people eligible tax credits of one description or another back! How much administration is that? Why not just take the right amount in the first place?

I’ve always been an advocate of making the tax in the UK simpler. Make income tax 20% for everyone. Make tax 20% for everything – VAT, corporation tax, alcohol, petrol, capital gains, inheritance – whatever – and scrap stamp duty and national insurance. Move the tax threshold to £10,000. Everyone knows where they stand then, it’s fair to everyone and it’s easier to administer.

Now, go back and have a look at benefits. They were set up as a safety net and not a way of life. Anyone who hasn’t claimed them so far gets 1 year on them to find a job and then they revoked. Now, because the working people are taxed less there is no advantage to stopping at home on benefits. Invest money into national child care for for children of all ages to be looked after by the state at school or pre-school from 8am until 6pm. It will also create jobs.

After 3 years those who haven’t gone back to work are starting to look workshy and tax payers will have little sympathy for these people. Now, you’ve isolated them, you can target them with more radical proposals to get them back to work. Things such as replacing their cash with food stamps, moving them into purpose built communal communities that are more cost effective to run instead of council housing and benefits. You’ve also solved the housing problem for working people by releasing hundreds of thousands of council owned properties back onto the private market. The property market is now more affordable for working families!

All done! David, give me a call if you need to talk!

The Falkland Islands – even colder than Hull

The Sun newspaper has taken upon itself to speak for the British people and Government by taking out a full page advert in an English language newspaper called ‘The Buenos Aires Herald’. It warns the Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to keep her “hands off” the Falklands.

Luckily, the paper only has a circulation of 50,000 and they are probably expats if it’s written in English. I can only think the real reason was to whip up some sentiment from it’s own readers and get a nice bit of press coverage. I don’t think it will be getting any over there – last time I went only the guide spoke English.

I just wonder why Kirchner has such a bee in her bonnet over this issue. Haven’t they got more pressing problems in Argentina? Just last year there were riots in the major cities over poverty. Surely, recovering the Falklands won’t solve that problem instantly – even if they do find oil. And there doesn’t seem any real possibility of Argentina being able to take them back, even from a crippled military power like the UK!

I wonder if shes ever been to the Falklands? It’s not high on my list of holiday destinations. If I want wind swept desolation I’ll go to Hull.

Dallas Campbell – lucky devil

Never mind what the ‘official’ television reviewers thought of Supersized Earth – I thought it was great. According to Keith Watson from the Metro;

‘It’s an insult to our intelligence and Supersized Earth was certainly that, carrying on as if all the ecological challenges facing Earth didn’t exist – many of which can be laid at the door at the rampant urbanisation that has stripped us of many natural resources.’

Blah, blah, blah. Well Keith, I don’t care and I don’t want to watch anymore boring documentaries on eco-warriors. Supersized Earth is a celebration of man’s achievements, his technology and a testament to his will to conquer nature and make a better life for himself. Progress and technology may well have some environmental consequences but progress and technology will eventually solve them.

In the meantime, we can enjoy watching great shows like this on our 50 inch flat screens, in the warm, gas heated cosiness of our urban homes. Lovely.  Which, I expect is how Keith watched the show, failing to appreciate that he is just as responsible as the rest of us for destroying the environment form the comfort of his armchair. Probably more responsible as he does it for a living.

Anyway, I thought it was shot beautifully and it looked great on HDTV.  Dallas Campbell is a bit wet but he was brave and that made it all the more fun when he had to abseil down the world’s tallest building or walk on chicken wire to cross one of the world’s highest bridge.  I hope they make another series soon and if you’ve missed it you should catch up with it on BBC iPlayer.

Once again my mum has come up trumps with some pictures of irresponsible parents with their children! Though what my mum is doing on the chive, I don’t know…

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil – of other police officers

Once again the Metropolitan police are in the dock. ‘Plebgate’  is about to explode over the police like a Krispy Kreme doughnut they are so fond of snacking on. Not only have they completely fabricated the incident in it’s entirety, made up stories about the eye witnesses and sent a fake email from a man pretending to be a witness who was actually a police officer, they then leaked the made up incident to the press. In this case the very gullible and untrustworthy Sun newspaper.

The Police federation then told lies about a meeting that took place between themselves and Andrew Mitchell in the hope that they would get him sacked and further their political aim of securing favourable conditions for the police themselves.

Can there be a bigger scandal than this in recent years? Not satisfied with the murder of Ian Tomlinson, they have now attempted to bring down a cabinet minister because they didn’t agree with his policies. It is quite simply astonishing.

It makes you extremely nervous for justice in the Capital if the police are as corrupt as this. If they are willing fabricate evidence against someone as powerful as Andrew Mitchell, what chance would ordinary citizens like us have against them? Would they think twice about planting drugs? Lying about an incident? Arresting someone for no reason? Using excessive force? Murder? I wouldn’t put anything past them now.

How can we ever trust them? Think I’m over-reacting? Read this from the BBC. And I should think that Ed Milliband will be sending a Mr Mitchell a very big ‘I’m sorry, I’m a clown’ card after this performance in Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Better have a couple of hundred in your wallet next time you get pulled over or you might get arrested for that bag of drugs they ‘found’ in your glovebox!

‘This is HSBC. I am your new Master now!’

I wrote on this blog back in March that I would be surprised to see HMV on the high street after Christmas and it looks like I was right. But you didn’t need to be Nostradamus to see this one coming. It’s always sad when a well known brand, employing thousands of people hits the deck. But they’ve had it coming a long time and it’s plain mismanagement by the directors of the company.

Not getting an online presence in their line of work until 2010 is utterly foolish. Just like Blockbuster, they have snapped defeat from the jaws of victory. Back in 2001 I met with the IT director of Blockbusters and I asked him what they were going to do about the internet. Even then you could see that it wouldn’t be long before everyone downloaded films instead of walking into the shop to rent one. He said he hadn’t thought about it! I expect that was the attitude of most people in these companies. ‘It’s someone else’s problem’. It is – right up until you’re looking for another job.

Here were two companies with incredibly strong brands, both in an ideal position with the right connections, credibility and budget to rent or sell TV shows and films to customers through the internet. Same model, different delivery method. And in all the time they were twiddling their thumbs, Netflix and Lovefilm – two start up companies, came up behind them and pulled their pants down.

The management teams in both companies over those periods should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. With HMV, the banks have proved just how inept they are at managing their core business (at least it used to be their core business before they got into gambling!) by continually lending money to a large company that really has no chance of survival, while simultaneously denying funds to just about every small business in the Country!

What astonishes me is that the grossly incompetent people managing HMV will ever work again. If they end up running a MacDonalds, please let me know which one to avoid.

The insatiable greed of the banks

I’ve been watching Dispatches tonight on Channel 4 tonight. Here’s a programme guaranteed to make your blood boil, it’s about the banks – again. There were the usual tales of woe with the banks ripping off and lying to their customers. It happens so often that no-one seems to about an eyelid. HSBC had a few mentions, so no surprises there then.

But the one that stood out for real crookery this evening was Natwest. I had a business account with them several years ago. Generally, I found them to lean to more towards gross incompetence rather than maliciousness. Their customer services were truly dreadful and I thought that no organisation anywhere would rival them –  and then I joined HSBC. They taught me you could be both inept and vicious at the same time. Anyway, it seem that Natwest are in the same league after all.

I was astonished to learn that both Natwest and Barclays were in league with a company called CPP. That they shared customers details with them (passwords, mother’s maiden name etc), that they deceived them by allowing this company to pretend that they were the bank and that they were getting up to 60% kickback from CPP to sell identity theft insurance. Insurance that the FSA says is ‘totally unnecessary’ because you are covered by the banks anyway.

I found some more stories on Money Saving Expert about people who refused to take the insurance and got signed up anyway! Because the people at the other end of the phone were not bank operatives (like they’re any better, anyway) but sales people on commission. Some wouldn’t take no for an answer it seems and signed you up anyway.

So, it looks like another round of payouts from the banks right on the back of the payments they made for conning everyone with that income protection insurance scam. If they were small companies they would be getting visits from Trading Standards with a weekly appearance on Watchdog.  But they’re not and so they’ll just pay out a few pounds and move on to the next method for scamming their customers. When will those eunuchs in the Government take these companies to task?

You’re wasting your time, mate – and blocking the door.

by Steve Macrie

I think they need some new PR guys at Starbucks. Yesterday they pledged to pay £10M a year in tax for the next two years and got taken down to Chinatown by the press. They’ve only paid £8.5M in corporation tax in 14 years of business, despite UK sales of £3Bn. Which makes their tax rate less than 1 percent! The thing is, that makes it unfair for any other business to compete with them because the UK tax payer effectively subsidises Starbucks. This is a crazy situation where the government and a multinational corporation are putting the squeeze on small businesses in the UK. No wonder they can afford to expand so rapidly and get the best high street locations. We’re paying for it!

So, the press urges people to boycott Starbucks. I would, but I don’t drink there anyway. It’s not a nice way to have coffee, in my book. Mostly their shops are overcrowded and whenever I go the tables are dirty and the floor needs a good mop. There are never any of those comfy seats available because there’s some clown sat in it for ten hours with a macbook and ‘beats by dr dre’ earphones coming out of his head – and the coffee is a rip off. When did coffee get more expensive than lager? So, I go to MacDonald’s for my coffee if I’m out – because I’m a cheapskate (the coffee is very good) and if I’m in the office I go to Andrew’s cafe downstairs where a frothy coffee (a latte?) is £1.

If I was working in the PR department at Starbucks I wouldn’t bother pledging anything to HMRC. Because, at the end of the day people may stamp their feet and cry ‘foul’, but they keep going into Starbucks to buy their coffee. In Britain we are the most apathetic people in the world. In France they would have smashed up every branch of Starbucks by now, the CEO of Starbucks would be soundly thrashed in public and they would have pledged half their profits to the Government (or probably a particular government official!) for the next 10 years! But then they don’t take any sh*t from anybody in France – least of all American multi-nationals.

My friend has a great story about waiting for a train in a regional train station in France. The train was late, then they announced the train would be even later and finally they announced the train wouldn’t be coming at all and the service was cancelled. The twenty or so potential passengers went to see the station master who shrugged his shoulders, ‘Qu’est-ce que je peux faire?’ So they all stood on the tracks and demanded a train be put in service. The police were called. They came and listened to the station master and then talked to the passengers. Then they went back to the station master and told him to go and get a train! So, the cops smoked their Gauloises, the passengers sat on the tracks and the train company went and commissioned a train to take them to their destination.

Awesome. I love that story. Can you imagine that happening in the UK? Not likely. We haven’t got any passion for anything here. Probably why we keep getting rolled over! Vive La France!

The plaque on Voyager – not as good as Google maps!

News today of Voyager 1 encountering a “magnetic highway” at the edge of the solar system. The spaceship’s daily radio reports sent back evidence that the Sun’s magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic fields. It’s called the magnetic highway because charged particles outside this region bounce around in all directions, as if trapped on local roads inside the bubble, or heliosphere.

Earlier this year it was hoped that Voyager had reached the so-called heliopause, which marks the boundary between our solar system and outer space. Seems neither of the craft are there yet and maybe another couple of years before they’re in interstellar space.

Anyway, whatever all that means, what it does highlight is what an amazing project this has been and continues to be. These spacecraft have been travelling for 35 years!  Here are some amazing facts about the two amazing machines.

Skylon – are you not excited!?

I’ve blogged before about this concept. Simply because it could be a ‘game changer’ as the Americans like to say. Except that this is a British project. The story is that Reaction Engines Ltd (REL) a company based on Oxfordshire have successfully completed a milestone test on their Sabre propulsion system and its been confirmed by the ESA (European Space Agency).

So what, I hear you day? Well, if I explain that this engine has the potential to power a space plane that could deliver passengers to any city in the world – from any other city in the world in 4 hours, surely you’re excited? And that doesn’t include the possibilities of lifting payloads into space at a fraction of the cost of a conventional rocket. It’s so exciting, I can’t believe it’s not headline news, especially as this is a British invention, a British project and hopefully with British funding.  Have a read of the full story on the BBC.

Obviously, it’s not built yet. But the reasons I’m so excited are the possibilities of this machine. It will transform the world to a greater extent than even the mobile phone. For example, imagine being able to get to Sydney from London in 4 hours. And not just because you can get on holiday quicker. Sydney, already a popular destination but still at the far end of the earth in respect to almost all major cities, now becomes a top 5 major metropolis. It has everything, it’s just the distance. The playboys and billionaires all buy property there and it rockets. Australia as a whole with it’s stable government, massive resources and excellent climate will attract even more investment,  and probably eventually equal the USA for wealth and give China a run for it’s money.

And then there are the possibilities of having a system that can deliver payloads into space at a tenth of the cost currently. If you can’t think of any advantages other than the cost, it means that you’ll see this industry grow buy at least a factor of 10 almost instantly. Simply because you can get 10 times more stuff into space for the amount you’re already spending. But there’s so much more. You can build space hotels  in orbit because it’s significantly cheaper to bring up materials from earth – you have a new industry right there. You can build space stations more quickly, more cheaply and much larger. They can be used as platforms to send people and probes to the planets, to asteroids and back to the Moon. The resources of those bodies become accessible – and now cheap as chips to get them back to earth.

In five minutes I’ve thought of 3 things and those cleverer than I must have a sackful of ideas about how this will transform the world. So, I for one, am hoping that those guys can get this engine to work. Because it is the superhighway to the future, today. The future that we should all be living from those 1950s cartoons!

Don’t get too greedy…

You know the last few weeks have been crazy on Google. I started noticing it maybe two months ago. Some of the sites I used to frequent by typing certain words into Google just weren’t there. I eventually found them in Bing of all places!

Recently I’ve noticed that I have to do more than one search in Google to find what I want. And I can’t remember really having to do that before. So I did some checks on where Serviceteam appears in for plumbing companies covering Clapham in London. The answer was nowhere, which was a bit of a surprise. I was also surprised by the low quality of the websites I found. Very poor designs, very amateurish with not much content explaining what they did. One was just an picture! And I thought to myself, ‘What on earth is going on?’ It never used to look like this. Is Google just serving any old knacker of a site in the search results, now?

And that got me thinking. I’m so used to using Google, as we all are, that I never really questioned what was going on. It’s just the defacto standard for search and you automatically think it’s the best. But having thought about it, there are few things that are starting to irritate me about their site – but then some people do say I’m an irritable person!

Firstly, there are too many adverts and they take up too much room on the page. The space for adverts has got much larger over the years and now when I search for something I am invariably scrolling down to the bottom of the page instantly. Why am I always looking for something at the bottom of the page? This doesn’t make any sense.

Secondly, I absolutely hate these silly local listings that pop up in the middle of the page. It just has the name of the company and their address on it. It doesn’t tell me about what they do, it just tells me where they are. I didn’t ask and I don’t want to know! If I need their address, I’ll ask for it.

And finally, when searching for services I was astonished at how many times Yell popped up. What’s the point if that? If ask Google for an electrician in Notting Hill, I don’t want it to give me a directory of electricians in Notting Hill, do I? Or I would have searched for it in Yell in the first place. (I probably wouldn’t have – unless I was still in 1997)

I know I’m always moaning about something, but I really think that Google needs to do better or maybe just go back a couple of steps to where they were. I think they’re getting too greedy with these adverts. Surely they can’t be making the search results so bad so that you click on the adverts!?

Pretty soon the whole first page will be adverts. At that point I will be using Bing. I suspect maybe a lot of people would feel the same and that will end with Google sitting on the shelf of duff companies that blew it. Right next to Yell.

My Mom sent me this video. It’s very good. You will never guess what it’s for before the end….

It just won’t work!

I’m sitting here this morning trying to log into my Netflix account on my Samsung television. For some reason it’s logged me out and now I’m struggling to remember the login and password. This is frustrating enough on a computer, but with just a remote control to scroll across the screen and pick numbers from the keyboard, it teeth-scrappingly irritating.

And this is what makes me wonder who programs these things. Because when I put the password in, it blanks out the characters with stars (******). And so now I can’t tell what characters I’ve entered, which invariably means that when I get a digit wrong I don’t know and as I have several passwords I don’t know whether I have the wrong one, or the the right one typed in wrongly.

It’s just sloppy programming here, isn’t it? Someone programmed it so that the password would be blanked out without really thinking about how it would be used. I mean, do they really think anyone will copy down the password for my Netflix account from my living room? Someone in my family – who watch it anyway? One of my friends who pop in under the pretence of a cup of tea and a chat, but really with the ulterior motive of stealing my TV passwords. Or maybe a neighbour with a telephoto lens. It is preposterous and so is the situation.

So, I was thinking about what else irritates me – from a technology perspective (or I’d be here all day). Well, passwords again, actually. How about the one in the router. Blanked out in my computer so even I can’t see it, if someone wants to use the wireless in the house, I have my head in a cupboard for 5 minutes reading out numbers to them. Crazy.

My boiler. Considering I work for a company that installs boiler and heating systems, I still have no idea how to program mine so that it switches on and off when I want it to. Invariably I twiddle the round knobs when it’s too hot or cold, but this ‘upsets it’ according to my wife. Why can’t it just talk to my laptop or iphone so I  can switch it on and off from anywhere with a straight forward user-friendly interface? I’d pay extra for that.

Dropbox. I don’t care what anyone says – that program loses files. And then everyone tries to persuade you that this can’t happen and you are going mad. This has been testing my sanity for months now and I’ve finally un-installed it. I feel better already. It’s probably saved me many thousands of pounds in therapy.

My laptop. You know once upon a time I used to program my BBC computer. And when I switched it on it used to make a satisfying beep and the the command line prompt would sit there flashing – immediately. These days when I switch on my computer it takes over THREE minutes to switch on. I know this because I have that Soluto software that tells me this. It tells me when it has switched on faster than usual and it tells me when it has booted up slower than usual. How this can happen from one day to the next with a computer, I simply have no idea, but I’m starting to believe that my laptop is actually alive. I suspect this because I almost have to thrash it to get it up in the morning. It’s  like getting a lazy teenager out of bed – I don’t know what it’s doing in the evenings but it has to stop.

Printers. Specifically, the network printer at work that hates me. For me, computers have a few things to do in life. Shuffle a few spreadsheets around, connect to the internet and print a few pieces of paper once in a while. Why this task seem to be beyond my computer after several decades of computer development, is beyond me. Everytime I come to print something it tells me that I haven’t installed somtething. Whether it’s the printer iteslf or something called a printer spool or some other nonsense. No-one in IT has a clue about it. I think it’s doing it on purpose. It’s insolence, pure and simple.

I’m sure there are several more, but I need to have a lie down.