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Originally Posted by Garde

“Kind of disagree with you, like i said though, i am pretty unique ”

That's one word for it!

Google Page1 for Grumpy Clive 

Royal Mail has come in for a lot of flak over the years, some of it justified, some of it not.

But why doesn't Royal Mail advertise the locations of their sorting and collection offices? Even better, advertise a local number so you can call them.

Instead, going to the Royal Mail website and trying to track down your local office will lead you to the page:

"Where is my local delivery office?" which gives the answer as "Call us on 0845 6050767 and we’ll give you the address of the Delivery Office nearest to you."

To be fair, as automated systems go, it's pretty good, and will indeed give you the location of your local office and opening hours. But why not display them on their website?

We actually display the locations of most of the sorting offices, but we get so many calls and emails from irate members of the public because their local office won't answer the phone, or they are unhappy with the service. To balance it, we also get some positive responses, normally down to a particular member of staff going above and beyond.

When we were in Henley in Arden, I went to our local sorting office a few times, and by and large they seemed pretty efficient and helpful. It was the opening hours which always used to be a bug bear, I think they used to shut at lunch time.

I wonder now they are privatised and now need to compete as a commercial organisation whether customer service will be higher up the agenda, or if we will simply see fewer and fewer local sorting offices as they get centralised to reduce costs?

What does anyone else think? Have any good or bad experiences? Have you seen things improve or decline recently?

Hold on a couple of years Ray, and you can have a Google Car 

Google has been playing around with self driving car technology for many years, fitting it to a variety of standard family saloons. With the wealth of data they have collected, they have taken it to the next stage and designed their own driver-less car from the ground up.

Here is an artists impression, which could be a city concept car from any mainstream car manufacturer.

The difference is, Google is building them, and they look remarkably similar.

From Googles Blog: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

"We’re planning to build about a hundred prototype vehicles, and later this summer, our safety drivers will start testing early versions of these vehicles that have manual controls. If all goes well, we’d like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years. We’re going to learn a lot from this experience, and if the technology develops as we hope, we’ll work with partners to bring this technology into the world safely."

This is pretty amazing and I think a pivotal moment in car evolution. 

Google has started from the drawing board, with no car manufacturing or industry experience, experimented and developed a brand new vehicle around the required technology, rather than trying to retro fit technology into a current design.

A purpose built self driving car, with no steering wheel or pedals, I assume is electric, so environmentally friendly, with no doubt patented Google technology. 

It seems a far cry from the new search engine in 1999, and shows how far they have come, their ambitions, and how more powerful they will become.

With access to resources some car manufacturers can only dream of, it will be very interesting to see how the car industry as a whole responds. Many manufacturers are already experimenting or making plans for production self driving cars, but these are conventional models with new technology added rather than cars designed and built from scratch.

Even if Google just licenses it's technology, it should quickly make back anything it invested over the last few years in R&D, assuming we don't have Google dealerships cropping up all over the place!

Whatever happens or however the major manufacturers respond, I think it will be good news for everyone as innovation like this will become fiercely competitive. This will push the boundaries and overcome the many challenges, legal as well as technical, pus will push the prices down for you and me 

Some niggling part of me though does think we are slowly morphing into a Google planet... 

What do you think of the prospect of being transported round in driver-less cars? Any views, good or bad? How long before someone mentions insurance

Originally Posted by Garde

“Now i've heard it all - a van thats not designed to carry tools ”

A camper? 

I love this story. 

A law firm in Michigan, Seikaly & Stewart, is suing its former SEO provider — but not for a lack of ranking success. Rather the firm is getting sued for allegedly using “spammy” techniques violating Google’s guidelines - Search Engine Land

Fantastic, SEO companies become accountable for their actions! So next time you are expected to sign an SEO contract, make sure you add a clause in there that says they have to repay you if they use any tactics, now or in the future that are likely to get you penalised by Google, and repair any damage 

I guess this could set an interesting precedent if they win. Be interesting to see how the SEO industry reacts to this, particularly the genuine professional agencies (yes their are some).

Maybe old school guarantees or warranties will translate into the world of digital marketing?  

No doubt it's being used to service our National Debt, at least the bit that remains after the cost of recovery 

Well the original thread started as "Political Party or marketing master class?". With the events of the last week, it looks like the answer is both!

I see Tony Blair has come out with his anti UKIP and anti EU protest parties guns blazing...

UKIP 'not the answer' to 21st Century issues says Blair - BBC

He said Britain's future lay in being "outward looking and open-minded", not "closed-minded, anti-EU and anti-immigrant", suggesting such views were "reactionary and regressive".

"Attitudes that are closed-minded, anti-immigrant, anti-EU, 'stop the world I want to get off', those attitudes don't result in economic prosperity or power and influence in the world.

Not being a Blair fan, but he does raise a good point, some of the anti immigrant and insular nation comments getting bandied around or quoted by news agencies are starting to sound aggressive, drawing some scary parallels with modern history. The BNP vote got wiped out in the recent elections, which means people either stopped voting, or changed their allegiance, thinking they would do better under the flag of UKIP rather than Nick Griffin.

It will be interesting to see what analysis is made of the new UKIP manifesto when it is launched, as opposed the previous one which Farage himself apparently called "486 pages of drivel". Hopefully it will show some serious thought into some of the key areas of the UK, tax, NHS, business etc.

The reality is though, ignoring some of the idiots who have tried align themselves under the UKIP banner, Farage himself speaks a lot of sense and says things a lot of people are thinking but frightened to say. In this day and age, politics only seems to be about leaders personalities rather than manifestos  Maybe he could run for Tory leader? 

As China's economic, military and political influence and importance increases, it's interesting to see they are publicly stating they want to reduce pollution, and are planning to remove 6 million cars that do not meet exhaust emission standards. (BBC News)

The fact that the Chinese leadership even acknowledge pollution is an issue is a start, although it looks more like a case of responding to internal damage done to the nations resources rather than a greater global concious.

Interesting start though, and The Telegraph is reporting that India's new PM Narendra Modi vows to tackle pollution, although it seems he has a monumental task ahead reversing years of corruption in similar environmental clean up projects and changing the mindset of the average Indian.

So as the once developing world overtakes the old world, maybe there is hope for worldwide change and global environmental impact?

Or is it too little too late and MadMax awaits our grand kids?

HMRC has managed to raise a staggering £23.9bn in additional tax by concentrating on Tax Avoidance and investigations. 

According to BBC News "HMRC said of the total amount it had raised, more than £8bn came from large business, £1bn from criminals and £2.7bn from tackling avoidance schemes in courts."

£23.9bn extra tax! That's pretty impressive and shows how effective previously big business was from avoiding tax (or how incompetent the system was).

Be interesting to know the full story. I wonder how much money was spent on investigations and legal proceedings to recover the money?