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Guess who won, were you surprised?? 

So there we go, a party leader stronger than before, a coup by his MP's which has spectacularly backfired which now leaves them isolated and looking foolish.

The good ship Labour has now has lurched dramatically to the left. The centre ground is now disappearing over the horizon, with a Liberal rowing boat chasing after it. The SS Iron Lady is holding fast on a centre right course with a UKIP Lifejacket floating round in circles.

Question is, will Captain Corbyn and his merry band of party members make any MP's walk the plank? 

Not being one to send people to other forums, but in this case the wholesaleforum.com would prob be a good fit.

What a pain! Its hard work when its on private property. Councils probably right as the actual landlord is the one who needs to deal with it, if they are available.

Assume you don't know who the owner of the vehicle is. 

Is the vehicle secure? If you can get into it, push it on the public road. Then, as long as it's unlocked, then the police/council will have to deal with it as it can be classed as being dangerous, ie kids can play in it.

If the vehicle is locked, I'd be tempted to use www.removemycar.co.uk and you should get about £50 for your trouble. 

I don't know if you have seen this, you will get a more official and correct response.

Someone has left a car on my land, what should I do? - Ask the Police

Now back in the day, when I was a spotty youth based at RAF Lyneham as a transport driver, one of our multitude of jobs was to drive the inflight catering wagons. I used to love it, because you would spend the shift working in the inflight kitchen. On night shifts it was normally quiet, and to keep boredom at bay, you'd normally help the cooks out preparing and packaging the grub. 

As a thank you, they used to let you help yourself out of the huge walk in fridges, and you could tuck into whatever you fancied. So I used to go for the Officer and VIP meals and feast on shark steaks, lobster and and loads of other things I'd never had before, plus you could eat your own body weight in rubbish and chocolate. The inflight cooks were also masters of dry ice bombs, but that's another story 

It was a good lesson in life, always keep the chef sweet, and they'll look after you 

...as they revealed they are victims of the largest cyber breach in internet history, but have kept it quiet for 2 years!

Yahoos announcement:

We have confirmed, based on a recent investigation, that a copy of certain user account information was stolen from our network in late 2014 by what we believe is a state-sponsored actor. The account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.  The ongoing investigation suggests that stolen information did not include unprotected passwords, payment card data, or bank account information; payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system that the investigation has found to be affected.

Account Security Issue - Yahoo

It's incredible, how could this go unnoticed for 2 years?

Then the cynical side of me noticed the story on the beeb about Verizon buying Yahoo in July for £3.7bn. Now a deal that size would have taken a long time to negotiate and finalise. Maybe, a year, 18 month. Maybe a month or two after some techie realised what had happened? 

Obviously just my unfounded cynical speculation...

Verizon told the BBC it had learned of the hack "within the last two days" and said it had "limited information".

It added: "Until then, we are not in position to further comment."

BBC News - Yahoo 'state' hackers stole data from 500 million users

Cold calls are a fact of life. We don't do it, but a lot of businesses do. Done correctly, it can be a very effective marketing tool and lead generator.

But unfortunately it looks like ExtraEnergy (extraenergy.com) are in to auto-dialer, automatically blasting out multitudes of phone calls simultaneously for the poor call centre drones. They can only answer so many, so if the phone goes dead when you answer it, then the call centre bod has connected to someone else, and your sales pitch has been saved for another time. Probably about 20 minutes later!

Over 2 working days, they have phoned us 7 times. Each time from 08000 314502, which if you phone you get a nice polite message telling you have been called from Extra Energy.

Finally on the 7th attempt, there was someone on the line and Clive got a high speed sales pitch about how much we would save from our electricity. Naturally Clive tried to take him off script and politely ask why they keep phoning us, to which the response was about how important it was for us to save money. Go away...

It's very slick, and makes maximum use of call centre resources using these automated systems, but it's a shame no one stops to think how annoyed people get from receiving phone calls when there is no one there. It actually worries a lot of people, especially older or more vulnerable folk.

If you are a residential user then you can try and limit them by registering on the Telephone Preference Service, which companies are supposed to observe and can be fined if they call you.

Press release from the FSB today.

Business confidence falls into negative territory for the first time in 4 years

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) Q3 Small Business Index (SBI) found business confidence has dropped into negative territory (-2.9) for the first time since 2012. Despite this, the survey found many positive signs of small businesses proving resilient and getting on with the job in hand, in spite of a fragile economic outlook in the longer-term, spurred by political uncertainty caused by the outcome of the EU referendum. Many firms may have ‘priced-in’ the impact of the EU referendum result in advance of the vote, with others now looking for immediate growth opportunities in the wake of the result.

The share of small businesses aspiring to grow over the next 12 months also ticked up this quarter, now at 55 per cent, the highest level since the end of 2015. On the flip side, the share of businesses expecting to downsize, close or hand on the business fell to 11 per cent. This is despite a rise in those who report a weakening of the domestic economy in the future.

Mike Cherry, FSB National Chairman said: “There is no doubt that the political shock of the Brexit result has taken place at a time of weakening business confidence.  For the first time in four years, confidence is in negative territory.  This persistent downward trend in UK business confidence reflects underlying issues that predate the Brexit decision.

"Small firms are resilient and will survive the current fragile economic outlook, but to avoid an economic slowdown this data should be a wake-call for our elected politicians.  The UK small business community seek key domestic policy decisions if we are to grow, to invest, to export and to create jobs. We look to the party conferences and upcoming Autumn Statement to green-light infrastructure projects at local and national level, to simplify the tax system and to help reduce the costs of doing business."

Source: FSB News

As business owners, do you agree with the FSB's findings and sentiment? Is small business more pessimistic about the future now we are post Brexit? The FSB's finding are from 1,035 surveyed businesses, so maybe the sample was too small or biased regionally?

Any thoughts?

It must be hard work being a show biz couple 

So Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have managed to stay married for a whole 2 years before filing for divorce. That ends 3 marriages for Jolie while Pitt is playing catch-up after only 2 failed attempts.

At least he hasn't got to worry about the school run, as Jolie is seeking custody of the six kids

I did chuckle when I saw this on the beeb, from Madame Tussauds 

Meanwhile, back on planet earth....

Aha we really are on the same page

I understand that the loss of a loved one motivates some people to set up foundations or new charities in the name of their loved one, to keep their name and memory alive. The fundraising these people can be awe inspiring, and it's amazing what a life changing event can do to someone who probably thought very little of fund raising previously.

But applying a business ethos, I completely agree there is little point in having multiple mini charities for the same cause. It would be more efficient to pool resources and concentrate all energy and focus on raising funds, than re-inventing the wheel and creating a duplicate organisation, and all the faff and hassle that no doubt goes with forming and running a charity.

Maybe established charities should have a franchise model approach. So you start a local group, but it's named in the name of your loved one, but supported and administered by the parent organisation. eg: Bob Smith of Warwick Guide Dogs? 

Or maybe they already do this 

The CMA sent shockwaves round the review site community, with some high profile ones getting a warning and forced to make changes.

There was a war in peace consultation, but they released some user friendly guidelines. In a nutshell Don't:

collect reviews only from customers you know are satisfied (unless these are clearly labelled as testimonials), or offer incentives for positive reviews

do’s and don’ts for online review sites - GOV.UK

The whole review versus a testimonial is what has caught a lot of people out. Plus do you send the same review incentive to a customer who you know is going to cause you agro and public earache. If the answer is an obvious no (as it would be with most businesses) then you are breaking the new guidelines. 

But as they will be no doubt policed by the same team that monitors the EU Cookie law that we are all supposed to have on our sites, I wouldn't worry about it to much