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Where London works

Friday, July 04, 2008

(Click for legibility)

Courtesy of Focus on London, again, plus a little light data mining, a breakdown of employment by borough.

That the City and Westminster lead is not a huge surprise, but I do not think I would have guessed all of Camden (Holborn / Covent Garden), Tower Hamlets (Docklands), Hillingdon (Heathrow), Islington (City borders) , Southwark (South Bank). Sweet home Croydonia comes in at eighth, courtesy of my own ward of Fairfield.

At the other end of the scale, there are just 45,081 jobs in Barking & Dagenham, compared to 561603 in Westminster. However, the ward with the fewest jobs is Fieldway in Croydon - 524. There are 185430 in St James....

Time for one more gratuitous map:

Red - 250000+ employees
Orange - 100,000-250,000
Yellow - 70,000-99,999
Pale yellow - less than 69,999

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Infantilising the population

Thursday, May 29, 2008
Taking prissiness to new highs, certain Danish supermarkets are refusing to stock fizzy drink bottles that have been boosted from half a litre to 600 mililitres, because ''It is the wrong signal to send'.

The signal in this case is in connection with the 'obesity' battle, so perhaps the retailer will also stop stocking sugar, sweets, cakes, alcohol or just about anything other than brown rice and tofu.

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Further portents of the Apocalypse

Friday, May 16, 2008
The great British costermonger, celebrated in verse and prose, is renowned for wit, banter and downright salesmanship.

So, consider, if you will, how disappointing I found this effort, overheard in Surrey St market yesterday:

"Pound a bowl, pound a bowl, pound a bowl, pound a bowl, pound a bowl"

The woman was out of earshot a little after that. However, there was no attempt to name the fruit, extol its quality, taste etc etc, and in this innumerate times one might further note that fruit is being sold by volume, not weight.

The vendor was not in the first flush of youth either, so no excuse there, and plenty of other market traders make a somewhat more impressive pitch.

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The country that won the lottery - so to speak - and blew it

Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Cat calls and jeers for the leaders of Indonesia:

"Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said yesterday that Indonesia was considering quitting OPEC because it is no longer a net oil exporter....The country is Southeast Asia’s only OPEC member. But it has to import oil because of decades of declining investment in exploration and extraction because of corruption and a weak legal system that makes oil companies wary of doing business there". Source

Meanwhile, "Oil set a new record high of $122 a barrel on Tuesday, the latest spurt in an advance that has seen prices double over the past 12 months". Source

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Those who cannot remember history....

Tuesday, April 08, 2008
A rather splendid, subtitled, video of an Italian manager making a rare old hash of his motivational speech.

Alas embedding has been disabled but click through, it is worth it.

With thanks to ANSA for telling me all about it.

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And if we had been asked about the theft of Northern Rock....

Wednesday, April 02, 2008
"The results of a Zogby Interactive poll...show 68% of those surveyed were opposed to federal bailouts for ailing Wall Street financial firms holding soured mortgage portfolios....A majority, 54%, said they also did not support government assistance for the tens of thousands of Americans who are facing foreclosure on their homes. A minority, 43%, of those polled said the government should help distressed homeowners who could lose their properties to foreclosure".

As to "the 25% of those canvassed believ[ing] that the government should help financial firms struggling to manage hefty losses", I am reminded of this classic from Catch 22:

"Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism".

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What a way to make a living.

Monday, March 17, 2008
Lord Bell, or Tim to his mates, takes the Conservative whip in the Lords, but does seem prepared to offer succour to conservatism's ideological foes: he is advising the deeply odious Lukashenko, president of Belarus on public relations.

Just to make Bell's job just that little bit harder, Lukashenko is an election-rigging dictator, an anti-semite, a fan of Hitler and all in all one of the world's premier abusers of human rights.

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Petition o' the day, or slumming it with Asda

Thursday, March 13, 2008
A petition has appeared at Attention Whore Central supposedly emanating from the CEO of Asda, one Andy Bond. Technically he terms himself 'CEO of Asda of Asda', a title not known to Burke's or the Almanach de Gotha, I believe.

Anyway, the publicity stunt petition is to reduce VAT on fruit juice and the like. Is Asda, and ultimately, Walmart so useless at lobbying that they have to fall back on this sort of nonsenses, or is this, as I suspect, just some idiocy that Bond - if it is he - can brag about in the Asda Gazette or whatever the staff newsletter is called?

Meanwhile, the petition has already racked up quite a few signatures, with the internal comms team perhaps having e-mailed head office that not signing would not be a career move.

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Our friends in the North East

Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Very generously, the expropriators of Northern Rock have agreed to continue giving the Northern Rock Foundation large sums of money to spend as the trustees see fit:

"Tim Farron: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will ensure that the guaranteed funds for the Northern Rock Foundation will go to funding arts and heritage projects.

Angela Eagle: As part of the Government's decision to take Northern Rock plc into temporary public ownership, on 17 February the Treasury announced that the Northern Rock Foundation will receive from Northern Rock a minimum of £15 million a year in 2008, 2009 and 2010. The distribution of funds is a matter for the trustees of the Northern Rock Foundation.

A quick snoop around the Foundation's website makes it exceedingly clear that it is not going to be operating under straitened circumstances, relative to previous years:

"From 1997 to 2007, the Foundation received 5% of Northern Rock’s annual pre-tax profits, totalling more than 190 million. As part of the Government's decision in February 2008 to take the company into temporary public ownership, the Foundation will receive from Northern Rock a minimum of £15 million a year in 2008, 2009 and 2010".

And what is the NRF's remit?:

This: "Our current objectives are to tackle disadvantage and to improve quality of life in North East England and Cumbria. To achieve these objectives, we invest in charitable activities that help those most disadvantaged in society, and that make our area a place for everyone to enjoy and celebrate".

And more specifically:

Question 3. Where will you fund?

Answer. We offer funding exclusively for work that takes place in North East England (Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, County Durham and the Tees Valley ) and Cumbria . If your work takes place outside these areas, please do not apply.

Might even this government feel that funding such a Foundation is just not cricket?

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"....or in some contrivance to raise prices"

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The EU's Left, both traditional and tree-hugging varieties, has banded together in an attempt to raise the price of consumer goods:

"Put forward by Caroline Lucas (Greens/EFA, UK), Gyula Hegyi (PES, HU), Bernard Wojciechowski(IND/DEM, PL), Harlem Desir (PES, FR)and Hélène Flautre(Greens/EFA, FR), the written declaration calls upon the European Commission's DG Competition to investigate the impacts that concentration of the EU supermarket sector is having on small businesses, suppliers, workers and consumers and, in particular, to assess any abuses of buying power which may follow from such concentration".

And how much experience at the sharp end do these people have?

Lucas - Wonk for sundry modish causes.
Hegyi - Journalist
Wojciechowski - Teacher and former secret police informer
Desir - Wonk
Flautre - Maths teacher

So, no experience in retail, obviously. Let alone farming. Fortunately the Commissar for Competition is one of the more sensible ones - Neelie Kroes. Perhaps she will take the opportunity to tell them to stop wasting other people's time and money.

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Three cheers for economic liberals

Wading through the Northern Rock theft bill division list in Hansard, I spotted some unexpected names in the noes list:

Clare Short. I didn't think she bothered with Parliament these days, what with her lack of chums in the House. Equally, I would not have had her name marked for being opposed to stealing the commanding heights of the economy.

Frank Field - way to go Frank. Actually no - I got the wrong Field, as Umbongo pointed out in the comments. So Frank, along with Gisela Stuart, hang your heads in shame. No sign of a vote from the member for Vauxhall....

Pete Wishart - SNPer and formerly of sundry Caledonian beat combos.

More names later if I pin down any other rebels etc.

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The cow that scowls

Friday, February 01, 2008
French supermarket group Centres Leclerc (no relation to the tank) has come up with a rather crafty stunt designed to appeal to those Gauls exercised by fears over purchasing power: it is destocking six products it considers have had excessive price rises imposed by their producers. One of which is the cheese kind enough to supply me with a headline of sorts. Ajax, a cake and some anti-wrinkle creams have also been targeted in this stunt. The cow cheese people justify the 20% rise by noting that the wholesale price of milk has gone up 40%. Preliminary digging suggests that the Bel plant is in Dole, and a Centre Leclerc there or thereabouts, so there is scope for a reciprocal boycott.

Given that it is the supermarkets rather than the producers who are seen as villains (by some, not me) in these parts, I wonder whether Tesco ought to give this idea a whirl.

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Obscenity watch

Thursday, January 31, 2008
In a changing world there are few things one can rely on beyond death and taxation - but kneejerk reactions from trade unionists are one of them. Noting a BBC headline about Shell's 2007 results and its record profit, I just *knew* that there would be some economic illiterate ready to denounce them as being 'obscene' .

So drum roll, and up to the plate steps Tony Woodley of the T&G Unite:

"Unite's joint general secretary Tony Woodley described the level of profits in the oil industry as, "quite frankly obscene". "Shell shareholders are doing very nicely whilst the rest of us, the stakeholders, are paying the price and struggling."

I cannot lay hands on figures for Shell's revenue this financial year, but in 2006 it pulled in $318.8 billion, of which $26.3 billion was profit. I make that about 8%..... I did rather better than that with a few things I flogged on ebay, so I hate to think how Woodley would describe me.

We've been here before, of course, with Tesco.

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Virtue compelled, or clamping down on economic acts between consenting adults

Thursday, January 17, 2008
Let us say that one is an Israeli, not religious, and one who fancies making a bit of cash by working an extra day per week. Try that, and there will be trouble:

"According to the Work and Rest Hours Law, no Israeli employee may work on the day of rest that his or her religion dictates, unless he or she works in a specially designated list of occupations or workplaces. For Jews, that day of rest is Shabbat; for non-Jews, it is either Friday, Saturday or Sunday".

As some individuals have just found out, "In the event of a conviction, the court may impose a fine of up to NIS 12,900 (£1764) per worker, per day".

Now this is not a question of an employer coercing employees, but rather to all concerned agreeing to working a Saturday . One might add that compelling virtue on the part of shopkeepers but not shoppers is a little skewed.....

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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"

Friday, January 11, 2008
Or so it might appear to the TUC.

Brendan Barber has discovered the following:

"Financial services have been the powerhouse of the British economy in recent years. But we can't afford to be complacent. The finance sector relies heavily on high-level skills and unless we can meet this demand we will lose our world-leader status".

Could these financial services skills possibly be pressed into service by the private equity sector? I think they probably could, and what does Brendan think of private equity?

He doesn't like it. And he made the following rather impertinent demands last year:

  • to tell us what they stand for and whether they accept any responsibilities to their workforce or the wider community
  • to open the industry to greater transparency and disclosure, particularly of the rewards paid to, and the tax paid by, top private equity executives
  • to establish whether private equity can establish long term sustainability and not just fuel a short term - high risk bubble waiting to burst.
I made hay with this at the time.



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Say it ain't so...

The Beast of Redmond is rumoured to be intent on buying Swiss peripherals company Logitech.

I have used Logitech mice, keyboards etc exclusively for the last 10 years or so, as they have been consistently excellent (no, I have not been paid to write this) , well designed and reasonably priced. My experience with MS has been rather less happy.

I'm with the comment maker at El Reg who deems this 'Easily the worst news of 2008 so far', although I would make it merely the worst business / tech news.

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Offence taking for pleasure and profit

Thursday, December 20, 2007
I imagine that most of us have a visual shorthand for a number of countries and cities - Eiffel Tower for Paris, the Parthenon for Athens, the Little Mermaid for Copenhagen etc etc. Sticking my neck out, I suspect that Moscow would trigger this image:

The above being St Basil's cathedral, and a splendid looking building it is too. Anyway, Coca-Cola has got itself in trouble with adherents to Orthodoxy for "a marketing campaign showing the cross and onion-shaped church domes on outdoor refrigerators", which said orthodox consider blasphemous. C-C is standing firm, but there may well be litigation.

I do wonder quite what manner of visual shorthand the hapless Atlanta fizz merchants are supposed to use to indicate 'Russia' and 'Russian'.

Meanwhile Nizhny Novgorod means either upper - or lower - new town, if memory serves

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Erm, not *quite*

Wednesday, December 19, 2007
A screengrab from the BBC site's newsticker:

I have attempted to re-size it and have failed, but it says - get this - "Gordon Brown says the option of privatising Northern Rock has not been ruled out".

Now with added visibility, C/O the Dizzmeister:


Which also makes the point that this was a subbing error by the BBC. Friedmanite sleepers at their web operation, perhaps?

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Earth round, water wet, Pope Catholic and Iran a dubious investment prospect

Monday, December 10, 2007
I am quite extraordinarily grateful to the Fraser Institute (registration required) for making the following findings public:

"Colorado and Thailand....Qatar, Romania, and the United Kingdom rounded out the top five jurisdictions with the best scores in the Global Petroleum Survey 2007's All Inclusive Composite Index that ranked jurisdictions with the lowest barriers to investment.

Petroleum experts rate Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Russia and Iran as having the greatest barriers to investment, with many respondents emphatically stating that the risk and uncertainty brought on by government policies in these countries convinced them to stay away".

Astonishing, eh?

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The shortage of sensible domain names is beginning to bite...

Thursday, November 29, 2007
The World Economic Forum "has announced 39 visionary companies selected as Technology Pioneers 2008", which is nice.

However, note some of the names:

Garlik.com, 23andme.com, anecova.com, raindancetechnologies.com, resverlogix.com, fluxxion.com, ls9.com, imaginatik.com, kayak.com, polarrose.com and my 'favourite', qliktech.com.

Yup, they are all real.

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