baldysblog.co.uk

Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Whilst “knocking” the Conservatives, Labour and LibDems and damning all politicians as total fools is understandable in some ways, is not the answer although it does highlight the real problem which is a lack of commercial enterprise in Britain.

Since when did becoming Prime Minister or being “In the Government” represent the apex of British Society ? Oh certainly in the minds of all politicians throughout the ages and especially as long before today, they pocketed back handers of one sort or another, they were the most important in the land but historically very few were. All political parties represent and always did, a specific sectional interest in society whether of property, trade or labour (working people).

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With the War going on in Afghanistan, a British Government seemingly unable to make a case for our involvement in it. An American President unable to decide whether to piss or get off the pot with regard to the same, the distrust generated by the Lisbon Treaty and the general poor economic picture, there is shall we say, a certain lack of self confidence abroad in this Country.

One often comes across heated debates in the “Comments” sections of the Media about whether British “greatness” was wasted by Blair acting as Bush’s poodle over Iraq. The doom-sayers who believe that if we are not fully integrated into the EU, we “stand no chance…” of what I’m not sure but these people certainly lack the courage to even contemplate standing alone. However, it set my mind to thinking about just what makes a Country “Great” so, some thoughts.

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With Barclays and HSB publishing their half year profits neither of which took Government money to re-capitalize themselves but never the less have benefited from the effects of “Quantitative Easing”, there is a predictable outcry in the Media which to say the least, seems to me rather misplaced.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs, it is obvious that Banks need to rebuild their balance sheets it is also obvious from the results of Barclays and HSB that their retail banking is still in trouble which would be predictable and it is only their funny money dealers who are making profits.

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With regard to our Service Personnel, I was just looking on the BBC web site and ‘reader’s comments’ which overwhelmingly, support bigger and better payouts to injured Service Personnel and so forth. This is set against the background of the MOD appealing two cases of injury payments made to Service Personnel which were subsequently increased by the Courts.

Let me make it clear, I am not on the side of the Government, nor I am on the side of the “breaking the Service Covenant” mob, both are seriously wrong in coming up with an appropriate ’solution’, neither are on the side of the Angels let alone our lads, lassies and their families.

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Of late the Chancellor Mr Darling and Bumble Brown have been banging on about the Banks needing to lend money to get the economy moving again. Whilst I hold no torch for Bankers as such but feel that we need to be sensible here and not ask them to try and participate in political decisions or fund Government Policies it is not what they do.

Yes, we the taxpayer have put a lot of money into “rescuing the banks” but we didn’t do it for them, we did it for our own economic reasons. If there is one lesson that needs to be learned it is that they were allowed to get far too big, so big that we couldn’t allow them to fail, that has still not been addressed and it really needs to be.

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Over the past more than a decade and via various methods of payment, I have purchased goods over the Internet both personally and on behalf of ‘corporate clients’. Over the years I have seen the landscape ‘move’ as it were until we have chip and pin + CV numbers.

In all honesty I suspect that because it becomes a normal activity, buying over the Internet, it becomes all too easy to get a bit blasé and today, I was confronted with such a situation and although I do not yet know how this will all turn out, I thought that I might share this as far as it goes thus far because we are all responsible for reducing credit card fraud.

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Without being over optimistic and regardless of where the “cuts” come which might be better termed “redistribution”, the current situation may well prove the shot in the arm that this Country needs and oddly this fits rather well with the current Global Recession.

Whilst obviously Government spending must be reined in I believe we are looking at more than that, we are looking at a total realignment of the concept and basis of Central Government itself and a shifting of power away from the centre and it being devolved back to the individual citizen.

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The knee jerk reaction of Labour to produce mountains of ill considered legislation is unabated by the shameful mess they have left the UKs finances in. Do we get an apology, some attempt at displaying a degree of humility ?

Not on your life, all we get is possibly the most arrogant and thick skinned MP in Westminster producing yet even more red tape to strangle the very businesses that we need to get us out of recession. Her latest foray is to force firms of 250 employees or more to publish equal pay lists but this appears to be a document telling businesses to be nice and if they don’t, legislation will follow in 2013…

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I have written before about the deplorable Bob Quick over the Damien Green Affair and Mrs Quick’s wedding car hire service run from their home:- http://baldysblog.co.uk/2008/12/21/an-early-retirement-decision/

His latest cock up was to walk into Downing Street for a meeting and clearly on show, a detailed A4 summary sheet of an on-going anti-terror operation which was photographed by the crowd of press photographers and transmitted around the world before you could say “Bob Quick”. The man should have been fired last time, finally the creep has resigned but this ‘blog’ is not about these events, it is about Public Service Pensions.

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I must admit that I am not a great sports fan these days. Gone are the days that I would always watch Match of the Day, most F1 Races and Tennis which I only could really start enjoying once Tim Henman was knocked out as he inevitably was.

But this past weekend, three sporting events gave me cause to sit and ponder exactly why I had lost interest in watching sport on TV and I came to an interesting discovery…

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