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Blimey, fingers crossed I never have to talk to them! Always a good test of a company, how they stand up when there's an issue or problem. Sounds like they get a fail 

Remember to factor in little things like admin, bookkeeping, marketing, waffling on forums etc. It's surprising how the hours soon start to clock up.

It looks like the UK Government has recognised the importance of small business and is giving incentives for home based businesses.

According the .gov site, 2.9 million home-based businesses in the UK contribute £300 billion to the economy. Pretty impressive 

Here are the new measures announced by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

• new legislation will make it easier for people to run a business from a rented home. The law will be changed so that landlords can be assured that agreeing to this will not undermine their residential tenancy agreement. A new model tenancy agreement will also be made available shortly
• updated planning guidance makes it clear that planning permission should not normally be needed to run a business from your home
• new business rates guidance clarifies that in the majority of circumstances home based businesses will not attract business rates

www.gov.uk news

Sounds like good news, if not spectacular. Any thoughts? 

I've got an Adobe creative cloud account, but never had any problems apart from Photoshop killing my laptop  What's happened?

Originally Posted by Joylinford

“Yes, I also got mail from Squidoo regarding this. Bad news.”

So are you a regular Squidoo user? Why the bad news, if you're content was good enough quality, then it should be moved over to Hubpages. Or are you not impressed with Hubpages?

Had a few meetings in Edinburgh over the last few months, so have been watching with interest the final touches to the new Tram service, and then it's launch. On the face of it as a visitor it seems a really good service, direct from the airport to the city centre.

But it has been a horrendously expensive project for the tax payer, that was fraught with problems and spiralling costs. Speaking to locals, there doesn't seem to be many people with a good word to say for it, and none of the trams I saw were particularly busy, even during rush hour. But it is a brand new service, so maybe it will take a while to bed in. Will confess to using a taxi, which was just laziness.

Going up again in a couple of weeks, so looking forward to trying it out, and see if it's got any busier.

But to get to Edinburgh, I wouldn't dream of using the train. I fly.

The cheapest return ticket to Edinburgh is £132 if I'm flexible with times, otherwise it's £270. That will take me just under 5 hours 

Or I can fly from Birmingham Airport, and including parking will cost £145 return (with an extra bag) and takes 1 hour 20 mins.  If the train was a lot cheaper, then maybe it's worth the longer journey and do some work on the way. But current prices doesn't make any sense.

Going to London is more practical on the Train. If I book a couple of weeks in advance, I can get a return ticket for £42 from Warwick to Marylebone, which I think is a pretty good price, and gets me into London for 09.30.

I drove into London last time, accidentally wondered into a congestion charge zone without realising so got stung for that, the NCP carpark cost more than my car, and by the time you add in fuel, I should have just stuck with the train

The train service to London has definitely got better over the years, and cost wise seems pretty reasonable, although trains are always very busy, which is maybe why they can keep prices down compared to less busy routes.

Recently took the family to London for a weekend, travelled off peak, and a family train ticket was ridiculously cheap. Coupled with a good old Premier Inn Family £79 room, opposite the London Eye, made for a really cheap break.

I guess a lot of the argument will be down to your location and the services available. That's at least one advantage being in the Midlands, surrounded by a good road and rail network, both North and South.

Wondered where this thread went, it unstickied itself when we migrated the forum.

So what you listening too now?

That reminds me of a thread I haven't seen in a while, What Are You Listening To Now?

A favourite haunt of hdm who used to offer some good music choices. Shall sticky the thread and see if it resurrects itself

But inspiration wise, can't go wrong with Queen, ACDC, Iron Maiden, Guns N Roses, see a theme?

Or if doing some coding, then Enya, or anything mellow

Rail fares or debates about our railways are never far from the headlines, and today seems to be a fine example with rail fares predicted to rise again.

It was interesting listening to both arguments on the breakfast news. Apparently Rail Companies only take 3% profit from ticket sales, versus between 8 - 15% for some bus operators.

As business owners, would you be happy with a 3% margins? But then the counter argument is that's a lot of 3%'s.

Most people agree Rail investment was terminal decline when it was State owned, and Private companies have breathed life and huge investment into the Rail network.

But in a cash strapped world, should the government provide more subsidies to bring the price down on ticket prices? Some interesting arguments floating around, such as the more people that use trains means less congestion, road damage and strain on the road network, versus the sharp increase in rail passengers has led to overcrowding on some services, and consumer complaints. I doubt many of them will be impressed with increased ticket prices.

Are you reliant on rail travel for business purposes, or do you steer clear of railways where you can?

If you are a regular rail traveller, do you think things are getting better or worse? What does anyone think about rail fares and investment in our railways?

Read with interest on Search Engine Land that Squidoo will soon be no more as the best of it's content and all traffic will be directed to former rival Hubpages.

Struggled to get on with Squidoo personally, never really got to grips with the whole "lenses" thing, but a lot of people swore by it, and to be fair we get a quite a bit of traffic from Squidoo where we have obviously been mentioned in various articles. Always been a fan of Seth Godwin though, he does write some amazing content and come out with some great one liners.

As for Hubpages, other than having an occasional glance, I've never really given it a go and first impressions were articles appeared spammy and low quality.

So do we have any regular squidoo's, or are they called squids? Does anyone use either platform for marketing, and have you seen any results?

It seems in recent times, it's harder and harder if you want to write content to market your services, with the demise of article networks, guest blogging networks under threat, and now content hubs merging. Maybe it's Googles master plan to get us all onto Google Plus