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By Alan, on March 13th, 2012
 A spending watchdog has recently highlighted that the government have wasted millions of pounds due to a failed efficiency drive that has been taking place for the last seven years.
Back-office functions for the government were intended to be shared in an effort to save over £150 million. This sharing method is commonly used in private companies to reduce costs by up to 20 percent.
The National Audit Office has highlighted, however, that the savings have not been seen at all, in fact it has been inordinately expensive to achieve the £150 million cost savings. Estimates by the Office state that the government have spent around £1.5 billion in order to save the money.
There have been many problems associated with the sharing of back-office functions. Many of these are to do with security clearance as some governmental departments do not have sufficient access to the Whitehall computing system for sharing to go ahead.
An example of this has been how the coastguard agency was unable to share the functions because it does not have access to the restricted computer system for the Department for Transport.
The Department for Transport overall has spent nearly £130 million more on establishing the efficiency measures than they have actually saved. The NAO have said they feel it is going to be very difficult for the government to break even on this efficiency scheme.
It is feared that this could just be the tip of the iceberg with regard to the failed efficiency drive. Currently the NAO have only managed to report on two of the departments involved in the efficiency scheme.
There are three other efficiency schemes that have not yet been assessed and it is expected that there efficiency savings might be even less than the currently assessed departments.
By Alan, on March 12th, 2012
G4S, the security company, was recently hoping to complete a merger with ISS, a Danish cleaning business. The merger was supposed to be worth over £5 billion and the collapse of negotiations have significantly affected the company’s pre-tax profits. Profits have declined despite an increase in business from emerging markets.
G4S is a company that provide many security services, such as cash guarding and prison security. This year they are responsible for much of the security that is taking place around the London Olympics. It is estimated that the failure of the merger has cost the company around £50 million in a one-off cost. Had the merger gone ahead it would have been one of the biggest deals organised in 2011.
Despite the company seeing a near four percent increase in revenues when compared with last year, it is expected that the failure of the merger is going to cost the company around 20 percent of its pre-tax profits.
The chief executive of the group, Nick Buckles has commented, “Despite the poor state of the economy we have still managed to achieve a good amount of growth and despite the failure of this merger we still have confidence that 2012 will be a very good year for us. We have recently shown how confident we are of having a good year by issuing an eight percent dividend.”
The company has seen a good amount of organic growth this year and much of this has been in the developing world. About this Mr Buckles continued, “We estimate that around one third of all our profits are currently coming from the developing world and this is something that is probably going to increase in the future.”
G4S operates in over 125 countries and is currently expanding its footprint in emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China.
By Alan, on March 9th, 2012
 Michael O’Leary, the Chief Executive of Ryanair, has recently run into some trouble with the Advertising Standards Authority, for the second time in a month.
The Authority have stated that an advertising campaign he launched last year implied that the travel agents Thomas Cook, were about to enter administration, when this was not the case.
In the last five years over 20 reprimands have been given by the ASA to Ryanair. The latest advert appeared in several newspapers last November and added fire to the criticism about the financial hardships being faced by Thomas Cook.
The advertisements directly implied that Thomas Cook was about to stop trading and described the airline as being in a great deal of trouble. It actually claimed that the airline had debts of around £1 billion and that those who booked flights with the company might not actually be going anywhere. Ryanair stated that they would be keeping passengers flying because they were trading very successfully.
15 complaints were received from members of the public about the advertising campaign and the ASA came to the conclusion that Ryan Air were giving the false oppression that the tour operator was about to go out of business.
A spokesperson from the ASA has stated, “We considered all of the adverts that were part of the campaign and they were clearly implying that booking with Thomas Cook was too much of a risk. We have concluded that these adverts are too misleading.”
Just last month, Ryanair also got into trouble over publishing adverts that showed women in their underwear as they were regarded as being too sexually suggestive. In this case the ASA concluded that the adverts were likely to be very offensive to most people. About the advertising campaign, Ryanair has not been able to be reached for comment.
By Alan, on March 9th, 2012
 City Broker Tullett Prebon plans to cut eighty jobs as the result of rising staff costs and a changing market.
Two months ago, the broker cut 80 jobs for the same reason and announced this week that it would have to do another round of cuts that will be focused on back-office jobs in America, Europe and Asia.
Terry Smith is the chief executive of Tullett Prebon and he has said that the broker has taken actions to build its flexibility and reduce costs, but as business costs continue to increase with regulatory changes and electronic platform developments they have no other choice but to cut back again.
The broker saw a drop in profits last year and reported flat revenues for last year with the firm blaming high costs that come associated with broker pay. The company stated that the high pay costs are a result of the challenging market and that there have been a lot of costs tied into attempting to rebuild their brokerage firm in America.
When mid-session trading was reported, Tullett’s shares were three percent lower after the company already reported a flat share price for 2010. Final profit before tax was also lower in 2011, coming in at £136m instead of £149m in 2010.
Smith noted that there is not much hope that the market will become any easier in the coming months, but that due to the volatility of the market there will be some periods of heightened activity throughout 2012, and there will be some periods of low activity.
Tullett is not the only company to reduce its costs by cutting staff members, as last month Icap reported that it also was reacting to the turmoil of the eurozone crisis and the unclear economic outlook across the globe.
By admin, on March 6th, 2012
The modern workplace, whether it is a factory or an office, is not immune to risks and dangers. Employees are vulnerable to a variety of on-the-job injuries and illnesses and employers are required to see to it that their employees receive immediate care if they are injured whilst at work, or become gravely ill while on the business premises.
Government health regulations require employers to have emergency plans and trained staff to ensure their employees’ health and safety at work. Implementing first aid training requirements is the best way for an employer to protect himself and his employees in the event of an emergency.
First aid requirements and training
Employers have certain minimum first aid responsibilities: to keep a properly-stocked first aid kit; to designate a trained employee who will take charge in an emergency situation; and to provide information detailing the first aid plans and arrangements to all their employees.
You can become qualified in first aid by completing the proper training and will receive a certificate of completion and competency upon finishing the course. First aid training includes, CPR and AED training. In first aid training, you learn to recognize and cope with a variety of emergencies, including burns, cuts and scrapes, sudden and unknown illnesses, head, neck and back injuries, and other emergencies such as heat stroke or hypothermia. CPR classes are offered for adults and for children and infants. Both types of CPR classes teach you how to prevent, recognize and respond properly to cardiac and breathing emergencies. Training in the use of AEDs, or automatic external defibrillators, is also highly recommended and useful.
In addition to these standard classes in first aid, you can also train in a range of specialty classes such as disease transmission prevention, injury management, administering emergency oxygen and epinephrine auto-injector use.
After completing a first aid course, it is recommended that you keep your skills up-to-date by attending an annual refresher course. Keeping your skills and your certifications current benefits both you and any person you provide aid to in the future.
Legal obligations
When your employer provides you with first aid training, the expectation is that you will use your skills while on duty. This expectation is called a “duty to act”. If an emergency occurs when you are not on duty, and you go ahead and intervene to help someone, you are under the protection of the “Good Samaritan Law”. In either case, it is unlikely that anyone will take legal action against you for using your first aid training at work. If you are concerned about possible liabilities, seek your own legal advice or talk to your employer’s to see what their insurance policies cover.
Employers who do not have their staff trained and certified in first aid can expose themselves to legal action by any employees who are injured or are taken ill at work and not attended to.
Article for health-safety.net
By Alan, on March 4th, 2012
 Another great debate is powering up in the United Kingdom; and this one concerns the pros and and cons of wind energy.
According to The Guardian’s recent reports, a large block of MP’s is opposing government subsidies to companies investing in wind turbines. The argument is that taxpayers are shelling out for development of an energy source that is “inefficient and intermittent”.
The Guardian reported that 101 MP’s signed a letter sent to David Cameron in which they demanded a significant reduction in the amount of money spent on encouraging and developing wind power technology in the UK.
In response to equivocation in the political arena, big energy companies like GE (General Electric) and others have indicated that they’re putting investments on hold until politicians make a decision on how much support the companies can expect from the government.
As an example, GE managing director Magued Eldaief said that his company’s proposed £10m wind power investment in the UK was going to have to wait until there is some kind of “political certainty” to back the investment, in terms of support for the development and expansion of wind-sourced energy – and that includes government subsidies, of course.
The world’s biggest manufacturer of wind turbines, Vestas, says that their planned wind turbine factory in Kent that would create about 2,000 new jobs will also have to wait until their potential customers are confident they will have orders for their product. Other companies including Mitsubishi, Siemens and Gamesa have also indicated they’re waiting to see how the political winds blow.
Interestingly, the subsidies in question constitute only a fraction of the cost to taxpayers. According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, about £20 per year is added to the average fuel bill to pay for renewable energy development.
However, less than half of that is allocated to wind power, and the rest to fossil fuels. In addition, tax breaks to oil companies amount to far more than wind subsidies – about £3.63b as opposed to £0.7b from April 2010 to April 2011.
If nothing else, the jobs created by development of renewable energy in the form of wind power are at risk – something for voters to think about when forming an opinion on the subsidy question.
By Alan, on March 2nd, 2012
 The National Audit Office has recently released a statement saying that the amount of tax yielded through new investigation methods was £4 billion in the five years between 2006 and 2011.
During the same time the revenue office has managed to save money by reducing the number of staff it employs. Technology is being employed more than ever to investigate people who are evading tax.
The enforcement and compliance program, that is run by the revenue office cost nearly £400 million between 2011 and 2012. It is estimated that over the next three years, this increased yield is going to grow to nearly £9 billion. The NAO has said that the revenue office is unlikely to achieve this goal.
At the end of 2008, the revenue office cut nearly 3400 jobs and also managed to improve its productivity significantly. It estimates that its productivity has increased by nearly 36 percent since it made the job cuts.
The head of the NAO is Amyas Morse who has said, “The efficiency programme that the revenue officer has conducted seems to work very well. They have strengthened their position and this seems to be continually improving. We also think that the Department could be more efficient by improving their overall understanding of how individual projects impact their work. They should also work with staff to improve their understanding of the new systems that have been implemented.”
The NAO have also pointed out how the revenue office has not adequately measured how the job cuts have affected their customer service. They’ve also not looked at how customer service has been affected by the increased anti-tax evasion services that they have launched. Experts in the field have said that the customer service they have received from the revenue office has declined significantly in recent years.
By Alan, on February 27th, 2012
 Crisis management for fraud service launched UKFraud.co.uk (www.ukfraud.co.uk) the fraud prevention consultancy has just launched a new Fraud Crisis Management Service (FCMS) that will support those organisations which experience sudden changes in the size and type of fraud losses they are currently experiencing.
This new service will help businesses to ensure that all aspects of fraud are dealt with promptly and also reviewed, allowing plans to be put into place to defeat further fraudsters, be they commercial, internal, financial or cybercriminal in their attacks.
The service will incorporate all aspects of techniques and technology that are required to review thoroughly the impact that fraud and the related losses have on a business. It will also review the detailed processes, management, organisational and ownership issues that could be preventing counter measures from being fully effective.
The new service allows businesses or departments that identify fraud problems to:
- Address strategic, systemic and policy decisions that inhibit the organisation from stopping, finding or measuring fraud.
- Identify system and process weaknesses in the fraud and risk controls.
- Establish stronger reactive and proactive system controls.
- Determine the best preventative and deterrent measures to take, with the behavioural cues in place to deter the opportunist fraudster.
- Diagnose which fraud detection and cybercrime protection tools are not working as they should be, or that should be introduced.
- Ensure that the business has full investigative measures and tools in place to combat the fraud that it is experiencing.
- Identify adequate and effective data-sharing tools and improvements within a proper and legal data protection framework.
- Enhance the effectiveness of the fraud, finance and IT teams managing investigations for the organisation.
- Determine how advanced behavioural methods can be applied in practice throughout the company’s systems, technology, documentation and processes.
The types of fraud covered under the service include all types of ‘first party fraud’ i.e. ‘customer or claimant’ fraud as well as attacks from internal staff, staff collusion and supply chain fraud.
Commenting on the FCMS launch, Bill Trueman CEO of UKFraud said, “Many organisations either have no formal fraud plan in place or what they do have is inadequate. It is often the case, that the board will see a massive rise in fraud before they realise that it is much more than an accounting error or a market trend.
“Without urgent action, such organisations will become bigger and bigger victims of the fraudsters. This will in turn significantly impact the ‘bottom line’ and ultimately cost jobs.
Whilst there are, of course many things that they can do to stem the losses, the earlier that businesses accept that there may be a problem, the sooner they can diagnose the issues and implement a crisis management plan to reverse the losses. It is all very easy to inadvertently attract the fraudsters to attack you; but far harder to deter them once they are engaged in a ‘full-frontal’ attack. The risks are even greater for internet trading businesses where cybercrime is becoming rife.
“The launch of the new FCMS solution, came from our own research which continues to find that many organisations would have liked to have had a service that could have cut the losses sooner. Most of our clients will have already worked hard to ‘shore-up’ the fraud loss situations they face and commonly they will either have enlisted help from their auditors or in the case of cybercrime sought it from an IT consultancy.
The chances are that they will have also come up with or have introduced theoretical models with no practical actions taken to help to stop the attack. Now with FCMS there is an alternative that might address the issues even at an earlier stage.”
By Alan, on February 22nd, 2012
 The union representing high-level civil servants has recently said that there needs to be a reduction in the deals occurring in Whitehall that reduce the amount of tax senior civil servants are paying.
This statement was made by the head of the union and he has stated that this practise is widespread in the government, especially in parts of it that are more commercially orientated.
The government previously issued assurances that money was not being paid in ways that can avoid tax but recent documents that were sent to the Guardian newspaper showed that around 25 staff employed in the civil service were having their salaries paid through limited companies.
This is a process that is most likely taking place to reduce the amount of tax these people have to pay. These figures showed that as well as an expense account around, £250,000 a year was being paid to these people on average.
Jonathan Baume from the First Division Association has commented, “We understand that this process cannot continue and we are working to become more transparent. It is obviously a very politically sensitive issue and if we are quite honest the current system is not working properly.
One of the only ways to solve the problems is for the government to raise the salaries of these civil servants. These deals are often established so that the amount of money these civil servants are being paid is disguised.”
Mr Baume issued these statements on BBC Radio 4 and he also stated, “We need to get a better idea of what is going on in these various departments and in the bodies that are related to them”.
The department responsible for the 25 people said that the people paid were not civil servants; this is despite them seeming to be working for the department for several years. They have however, commented that the pay is going to be reviewed in the near future by the Treasury.
A source from Whitehall has commented, “These arrangements are not something that can be defended but this is only a small example of what is happening in Whitehall. This is nothing but a scratch on the surface of what is really going on.”
The various staff who received the suspicious payouts were working in areas such as finance, strategy, medicine, and policy. The information was revealed by e-mails that were given to the Guardian and they actually discuss how damaging it might be if they were revealed to the public. The e-mails discuss how the department was looking for ways to avoid revealing the nature of the pay.
Last December, shadow Cabinet Office Minister, Gareth Thomas asked whether any staff in the health department were being paid through limited companies. In answer to the question, Simon Burns, the health minister stated that no civil servants were being paid in this manner. Mr Burns also commented, “It is against policy for civil servants to have their pay made to limited companies.
This does not however apply to people who are not civil servants. We have no intention about misleading anyone about pay and would be happy to make clarifications to anyone who seeks them.”
Mr Thomas commented, “The statement from the Department of Health is not enough and it is essential that Parliament are given correct answers about pay issues. I will be continuing to look at various tax arrangements that have been set up to reduce the tax liability of people involved with the civil service. The country is going through a time of financial crisis and it is important that everyone pays their fair share of tax.”
By admin, on February 18th, 2012
Note that this post has been written for UK residents. Readers from other countries should observe their own countries laws and regulations concerning gambling and gaming which can vary in different parts of the world.
WhichBingo.co.uk, the UK’s longest running online bingo portal, has scooped a second prestigious bingo industry award following a successful 2011. After being awarded with the EGR award for best Gaming Review Site, they have gone on to win the iGB award for Best Bingo Affiliate.
Online bingo has now established its self as one of the market leading products within the online gaming space. On facebook in particular, Bingo games have gained millions of loyal players, while pay-to-play sites have also flourished.
Unlike at traditional bingo halls, where the crowd is still very much an older, female orientated niche, online bingo websites enjoy a more varied mix of players which includes men and women of all ages.
At the time of writing, over 350 bingo sites can currently be played in the UK alone.
At the start of 2011, Which Bingo redesigned their entire website and have gone from strength to strength. Their business model revolves around getting online bingo players to the most appropriate game for them. The judging panel for the iGB award highlighted that Which Bingo particually stood out for its “vastly improved user experience”, as well as a impressive level of “brand power”.
In an article released on the Which Bingo site, the team stated that they won’t be simply sitting back. New features are planned throughout 2012.
Note that this post has been written for UK residents. Readers from other countries should observe their own countries laws and regulations concerning gambling and gaming which can vary in different parts of the world.
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