A useful checklist: Don’t forget…
1. To set up ‘Out of Office’ emails and Answer phones – but try not to specify any actual closure dates…it’s inviting burglars!
2. Cancel your milk orders
3. Time your heating to come on for an hour each day – and avoid a burst pipe
4. Ask your cleaners to do some extra [...]

These days sending a Christmas card is not quite as simple as it used to be! Electronic or not electronic? Is it a waste of paper? Is it an environmental ‘no-no’ - or is it a bit stingy not to send one?!! What about designing it? How much will that cost? Personalisation?!
Why not send an [...]

There’s a new system available where you can report on both businesses and individuals you believe to be suspicious of unlawful activity pertaining to taxes.
It’s led to all sorts of criminal activity being quashed already. Just visit www.hmrc.gov.uk/tax-evasion

I’m just wondering why do I have to submit proposals, tenders and quotes to very strict timetables when the contractors often delay the results by months?

Last week the government launched a new web site - ‘Real Help Now’ - to help individuals and businesses weather the current economic storm. The site provides links to regional assistance but in reality it points straight to the usual support agencies - Business Link, Train to Gain, Job Centre Plus. It does detail some of [...]

Response to Redundancy, ESF, Joint Action Plan, ERAP, New Deal, Flexible New Deal… the list of documents, initiatives, and strategies for ways to drag us out of the recession and get back people into work seems endless. Whilst they will play a part in providing people with the right skills for the right job, we still need [...]

Recently DWP outlined future bidding opportunities for Welfare to Work programmes in a UK round of information events.
Â
By 2011 over 200 new outcome focused contracts will be awarded worth up to £5bn, including:
§    Flexible New Deal
§    JCP Support Contract
§    IDEAS
§    ESF 2007-2013
§    Progress to Work
§    Work for your Benefit
§    Invest to Save Pathfinders (AME-DEL)
§    Personalised [...]

One of the most controversial citrus fruit squeezers of the 20th century, Juicy Salif by Alessi is also one of the icons of design of the 1990’s, and it continues to be one of the most provocatively intelligent articles of the Alessi collection.
The squeezer was designed by Phillipe Starck his brief was to design a tray… It [...]