vivweb01blog

I first published this mini-review in July of last year - since the employment situation has worsened significantly since then, I've recently updated it to reflect recent developments and the prospects for our economic recovery.  It's important for the sake of our economy and our children's futures that we address our poor productivity as a nation. We can only hope to do this if we make maximum use of our home-grown talent. It's important that we now include more of our older workers in our workforce, whether they have retired or not, and we can only tempt them out of their 'economic inactivity' by providing strong incentives. The following article will I hope provide some practical suggestions on how we might do this. UK Government has, somewhat belatedly, declared this as a priority - time will tell whether they (or indeed their successors!) are prepared to put their (i.e. our) money and resources where their mouths are... -------------------------------------...

There is little doubt that more and more of us are struggling to keep ourselves and our families fed at present. This unhappy situation has arisen because of a ‘perfect storm’ of adverse circumstances and events that have hit us all over the past couple of years, and which shows little sign of abating.  The pandemic is widely seen as the principal source of our recent decline in fortunes, but in reality our population demographics, Brexit, the Ukraine war, mistaken monetary policies and a decade of austerity introduced by the coalition government after the 2008 financial crisis, have all contributed. Food banks have been a lifeline for some of the least fortunate in society for many years.  Until relatively recently, however, the numbers really needing to use them were relatively small. Over the past year, however, the added financial pressure of sudden-onset and rampant inflation, and the rush by BofE  to raise interest rates in a vain attempt to restrain it, have pu...

Increasing numbers of   our ' celebs' nowadays are publishing their memoirs, sometimes quite early on in their careers.  Perhaps the most noteworthy of these recently was Prince Harry, whose book 'Spare' quickly reached the best seller list and is still going strong. While memoir writing isn't for all of us, anyone contemplating doing this at some stage in their lives needs to ensure they keep a personal diary on a regular basis. This ensures that they have an accurate and detailed record of their lives to call upon when compiling 'The Book'.  Keeping a diary does of course require quite a bit of self-discipline, but has many benefits apart from just generating a life record and is therefore well worth the effort. A couple of lines of text taking maybe 5 minutes a day will usually suffice to cover the key events for that day. It will also help cement our memories and enable us to recap usefully on what we have (or haven't !) done that day. Many of us may...

I’m asking this question as a follow-up to my recent blog on the whys and wherefores of Big Tech software upgrades, and whether they are fair to the consumer.  As a frequent blogger, I regularly check the internal Blogspot tracking system to see how frequently my blogs are being viewed. Although the internal system is useful and has always been reliable, it is by its nature only there to provide basic tracking. It doesn't therefore provide some of the more useful features available via Google Analytics, such as where viewers are located and what screens they have viewed most often. I have a Google Sites website which is connected to Analytics and this does seem to have been effectively tracked over the past couple of years. When I first opened my blogspot account, indexing on Google occurred pretty quickly (unlike the Google Sites website which took them 15 months !) and an Analytics Universal property was created automatically and did start registering some hits. However, al...

  I first put out a blog on this subject in February prior to the latest budget. The aim of this was to put forward the arguments for some radical changes in the tax system which I thought were necessary in order to remove disincentives and stimulate growth. Many of the arguments still stand.   The following is an update describing the effects of the March budget, and the likelihood (or otherwise) that they will have the desired effect. It also reflects changes over the summer. ****** There has been much argument following the recent budget about whether the pension tax changes, which were aimed primarily at retaining senior NHS medical staff, are justified at a time when many other workers and less well-off pensioners are struggling with continued and rapid cost-of-living increases. At first sight it does seem that the Chancellor might have been overly generous to well-off pensioners, and it’s easy to see why many are more sympathetic to the plight of others lower down...

Update: An Epitaph to Wagner ?.... So Prighozin is no more – as we forecast in the original post (see text below this update.) In some ways it’s surprising it took so long, given Putin’s initial reaction to the attempted coup in late June and his previous 'form'. One way or another,  the ‘Putin brand’ had to make it crystal clear that any opposition to its rule would attract the maximum penalty - or risk suffering a fatal loss of credibility. There’s little doubt about the ultimate instigator of the ‘accident’ that destroyed Prighozin’s private jet – the only questions are ‘who actually carried out the hit ?’ and ‘how ?’ The answer to the ‘how’ question now appears to favour an on-board bomb rather than an overt shoot-down. A surface to air missile would in any case have been too easy for outside agencies to detect and ascribe blame for, and thus much less ‘deniable’ than a bomb.  The ‘who’ question is a little more interesting – although Putin must have sanctioned the j...

Editors note: I first compiled this blog in late 2022 in the aftermath of  the ignominious fall of Trussonomics and before the 'advent' of AI. Many of the ideas are still very relevant today, so a revisit with recent developments in mind is probably appropriate.... Introduction This has been a momentous couple of weeks all told, with more than the usual quota of economic and political U-turns, and probably more to come. The ‘new’ regime’s primary task now has to be to restore some sense of stability and prevent the economic meltdown which still beckons…. I’ll take the optimistic viewpoint and assume that the new team (whoever they turn out to be) somehow manage to pull this off over the next few weeks. I sincerely hope my optimism is justified, for all our sakes. Assuming they do, what then do we need to do ‘post-crisis’ in the medium- and long-term to improve our economic and social prospects as a nation, and avoid getting ourselves into a similar mess in the future ? ...