Posts

It was never going to be a good year for Wonga, after the fake lawyers scandal so it's not surprising that profits have slumped.

According to Sky News, they will be down nearly £35 million compared to the previous year, which includes a £2.6 million compensation package to customers and yet undisclosed sum which will cover legal and regulatory costs, expected to be in the tens of millions 

Full story from Sky

Interesting to see they recruited former RSA Insurance Boss, Andy Haste to take over as Chairman to try and steady the ship and give back some credibility. I'll imagine he'll be earning all of that £500k salary!

With the economy starting to recover, super market price wars and peoples cash stretching a little further, maybe we have seen the peak of pay day loans?

Our man Jan is a bit busy this week, so another great cartoon from Tom Fishburne 

Just saw this as well...

Tesco mothballs £22m Cambridgeshire store costing 250 jobs

Tesco decided to shelve its soon-to-open £22m megastore in Chatteris just hours after a Tesco whistleblower exposed the retailer's £250m black hole..

Every little helps... 

It looks like the venerable RAF Tornado's are set to see combat action once again, this time striking Isis targets in Iraq, at the request of the Iraqi government.

MP's are due to vote on Military action but there is little doubt on the result, with Labour already confirming they will support military action.

At least this time we are responding to a governments request for help, which removes any legal arguments, plus it is unlikely politicians will be comfortable with having troops on the ground, other than special forces and military advisor's.

So what does everyone think, here we go again, or a justified military response to a genuine threat to security?

Now News Corp takes a swipe at Google, claiming some newspapers were in danger of going out of business due to Googles dominance, leading Google to respond back in ever growing war of words:

Google Blog: Dear Rupert

Full story from the BBC - Google responds to News Corp

I'm certainly in favour of a less dominant and aggressive Google, but there appears to be a lack of obvious competition and innovation in the European Search Engine market.

You are retro in every way 

Agree completely and also hear what Clives saying, some kids would otherwise go without a hot meal due to irresponsible parents, or poverty.

My beef is the fact it's another scheme (like the former healthy eating bonus for pregnant women) that isn't means tested, so becomes another massively expensive benefit the country has to shoulder, which after recent years was what I thought got us into this financial mess in the first place.

I've read other counter arguments that is more expensive to set up the wheels of bureaucracy to enable means testing, in other words it would cost more and goes to fewer people. I'm not convinced with that argument, and sure in this technological database world we live in, there is an efficient way of doing it!

As Kempres says, in the old days entitled kids got a meal ticket.

If a family is genuinely on benefits for whatever reason, then issue them with school dinner vouchers for their kids and a Supermarket voucher for the family shop, which can only be exchanged for fresh produce, not ready meals snacks or alcohol 

Long time no see Pamela, great to have you back 

Oh crikey! More trouble ahead....

According to the beeb: the chairman of the Parliamentary Business Committee, Adrian Bailey said his reaction to Tesco's error was one of "disbelief" and Tesco executives could be quizzed by MPs after its "stratospheric" error over profits.

Full BBC Story

Looks like they were between finance officers leaving no one with their finger on the financial pulse of the company. Whoops 

Looks like the new iPhone 6 is having some teething problems. Apparently the iPhone 6 is prpne to bending after a few days in your pocket and the latest software update iOS 8 is apparently very buggy and has been pulled by Apple while they instigate.

Anyone got an iPhone 6 yet? Be interesting to hear an owners view.

Still on my trusty iPhone 4 which is a good 3.5 years old now and still going strong. I was reluctant to move to an iPhone, but now can't manage without it!

Will need some convincing though that the new ones will be as reliable and last as long as my current old faithful!

Social Media scheduling is simply the automation of delivering social media content in advance, so it goes out a pre determined time.

It's a great tool, and there are various 3rd parties out there such as Klout that will do it for you for free.

But if you do schedule your content, don't make the mistake Apple did recently when scheduled a post from the late Joan Rivers endorsing their new iPhone product 

It seems a commercial deal was agreed shortly before her death and her social media manager scheduled some content far in advance to coincide with Apples product launch.

Cue an embarrassing endorsement from the grave! Could go into the marketing fail/marketing genius category, but I think in this case it is a genuine embarrassing cockup and the posts were very quickly pulled.

image credit: www.tmz.com

So scheduling your social media is a great marketing tool, but don't schedule too far ahead!