RFT Express

Is the EU Falling Apart?

2012-01-13T16:27:00.000-08:00

Investors, banks, financial institutions, hedge funds and rating agencies, are all warning governments that austerity packages without a growth plan are self defeating. Something I have been advocating or some time. Unfortunately the UK Conservative led coalition, are too stubborn to do anything about it, preferring to model its tactics on 30 year old ideas.

They are now talking about doing a ‘U’ turn on child benefit, which was totally unfair and very heavily waited in favour of the rich, they have already done a ‘U’ turn on pensions, a ‘U’ turn on the fuel duty they had planned for January of this year, and are planning to force businesses to close with a 5.6% rise in business rates this summer. Their handling of the university fees was amateurish and ill conceived. The N.H.S. reforms were designed to push the N.H.S. into privatisation, although they are now doing another ‘U’ turn.

The coalition is expected to leave the country in more debt when they have finished bankrupting it, leaving a projected £1.3 trillion deficit according to the Office of fair trading.

It is widely assumed that most of Europe as well as the UK are now slipping
back into recession, and possibly a world wide depression.

France and Austria have had their AAA rating downgraded due to their banks lending to countries which may default, and because both France and Austria have high deficits, with no plan for growth or effective austerity packages. France and Austria were two of the six countries with AAA rating, who were expected to be able to borrow at low rates in order to help other struggling EU countries.

China was expected to help the EU, but with falling exports and increasing
inflation, this now seems unlikely. Chinas reserves have fallen, but they do hold a lot of foreign currency. There is a great deal of optimism that the City of London will join Hong Kong as an offshore centre where the Chinese currency, the Renminbi, can be traded. Talks between the Treasury and the Chinese have been making good progress. If this does happen it will be good for jobs in the City and will give a lot more prestige to London.
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Tags: Will the Euro collapse : EU in Crisis : EU Problems : Will EU Fail? : Austerity for Years : Austerity - The Answer : UK
Isolated : EU and UK Econony:

Austerity: The Answer

2012-01-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

Austerity for Years: The Answer

The current UK Coalition government still has no idea how to get growth into the economy. The Conservative solution to this type of crisis is as always, reduce jobs, reduce earnings, and increase taxation.

Their latest hair-brained scheme is to increase Business rates by 5.6% in the spring, as more and more businesses go bankrupt the coalition is of the opinion that any growth is good .Growth in bankruptcies is not good for business, for jobs or the economy.This self defeating increase in Business Rates will put more
business into receivership, more people out of work, will reduce the overall tax take, and increase the welfare bill. Good planning and fore-sight if your intention is to bring the country to it's knees, not so good for the country though. The coalition had to do a 'U Turn' this month and reverse the planned increase in fuel tax by 4p a litre. Both these tax increases would have pushed inflation back up again in the 2nd quarter, now that the VAT rise is no longer factored into the inflation equation.

How to Create Jobs

The first thing the coalition should do is to stop the practice of putting people out of work. IT COSTS MORE MONEY TO KEEP A PERSON OUT OF WORK, THAN IT DOES TO KEEP THEM IN WORK.The coalition have set up 'enterprise zones' to encourage companies to move into these zones and regenerate them. A tentative step in the right direction, and had they backed it with more money, it would have created jobs short term.
The 'zones ' are areas of high unemployment, and a lack of investment. Short term this is good for the 'zone' but long term does very little. The 'enterprise zone' attracts people, and companies from outside the area who are prepared to travel, or move home to work. Not all the jobs created come from the enterprise zones. After the money runs out a lot of companies will close or relocate, and the area invariable degenerates again. So apart from moving people about, the long term prospects are improved very little. For the enterprise zones to work, the investment has to be long term.There needs to be a co-ordinated policy to regenerate areas, and create meaningful employment and training. There needs to be town centre regeneration, and an
incentive for small businesses to start up, with the aid of a mentor.

Virtually every town centre has a high proportion of empty shops and offices, which are slowly falling into dis-repair. These could be let rent free to start up businesses, and rate free for the first 2 years. This doesn't
cost anybody any money, because nobody currently or in the fore-seeable future is going to take then on. It gives new start up businesses a chance to show what they can do. In addition the government could subsidise new start ups, by giving newcompanies a grant for every person they take on who is currently unemployed.

The grant could be paid weekly and be the equivalent to what the government now pay an unemployed person. No extra cost to the government, and gains to the government would be the tax and national insurance that ex-unemployed person pays. This scheme could also be extended to the self employed one man start ups as well. So far the ideas put forward are pretty straight forward, and in the main don't actually cost the tax payer or the government anything. The scheme could also be used for industrial premises, and manufacturing busineses.

Two further measures should be put in place to complete the packages. Firstly finance, the coalition
recently announced that they would guarantee business loans. This could be modified slightly to include a low rate of interest, and the banks could waive their prohibitive arrangement fees, which are added to the loan and are currently taken out after the interest has been paid, and before the capital is repaid. The coalition could take the lead in this by encouraging the banks the tax payer bailed out to take part.Secondly training should be made available, free of charge to prospective start ups, and a mentor should be on hand to advise when needed. The mentor could be supplied by the lending bank, or by the local Chamber of Commerce.

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Tags: Will the Euro collapse? : What is a Coalition Government? : Correct Me

Sharing: Winners and Losers

2011-12-20T10:45:00.000-08:00

Sharing.

Telling other people you like a web page , blog or article, has been made a lot easier with the ‘Add This ‘ bar seen on many sites. It is a lot easier and quicker than posting a comment on a site or blog. The chief difference is that with a share you don’t get a link back to your site as you do with a comment.
There is no reason why you can’t do both.

Statistics from the ‘Add This’ site gathered from its’ ‘Add this widget’ like the one on every page on our site show a dramatic increase in sharing withFacebook coming out on top with 52.1% of the total ‘shares’. There is an ‘Add This’ bar at the bottom of this blog.

The ‘Add this bar’ is now on over 11 million different domains with 1.2 billion users having a choice of around 350 sharing sites from which to share articles, blogs, and web pages.

Twitter shares grew by nearly 577% during 2011, and is now responsible
for 13.5% of all shares. Tumblr was another high flyer with a 1300% increase, and still growing. Stumblupon created a 320% viral lift while Google +1 grew by 373% than levelled off.[ Google are starting to put +1s on their search engine results]. Email, print and favorites make up 14.4% of all shares.

Those losing ground were Digg which declined by 48%, and Myspace fell by 57%.

As expected mobile devices used for sharing grew 6 fold

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Tags: Successisnowhere : The Recession series : The Twitter series

Austerity or Years to Come

2011-12-19T07:27:00.000-08:00

Correct me if I am wrong.

We may not be in recession right now, but it certainly feels like it. We have all suffered since the coalition took power, and they will continue to inflict pain, because this the government of high taxation, and high unemployment, hasn't any idea how to get the economy going. The Coalition say they will not spend their way out of this mess, but in actual fact they are spending their way into it. Debt if the growth forecasts are to be believed will be higher in 2015 when this government has gone, than when it took over. The growth figures are so highly optimistic they are not even credible.

So what is the real problem?

The real problem is that the government are still spending more than they receive in tax revenue. Unemployment is at a 17 year high, meaning that the government will have to spend more on the benefits bill. The governments answer is more cuts which will put more people out of work, and increase government expenditure.
The proposed increase in fuel duty of 4p per litre, would have fuelled inflation,
and pushed prices higher, as well as pushing more businesses into liquidation.
More people out of work, means more benefits to be paid out, less tax revenue, higher prices, higher inflation, and further tax rises and government borrowing.

So the problem is clear

And the answer is also clear, get more people into work, get more tax revenue, the debt comes down and people in work can spend more than those on benefits.
The government keep telling us that they have spent £xxx billions on long term schemes to get the country on its feet in 5 to 10 years time. Government and Local Authorities can do something if they wanted to, instead of wallowing in self pity, blaming the last Government, The Banking Crises, the EU, the Financial Crisis, the Recession, Strikes, the Unions, Bad Weather, and anything else they can think of. This government is now saying the problems stem from the last government who allegedly brought us out of recession too quickly.

So how important is it for the government to keep people in work?

Without the working man, or woman a terrible thing happens: Nothing If there is such a thing as the average working person, the government will take a minimum of 40% of their earnings in tax. Starting with income tax and national insurance, both of which go up the more a person works. Then there is poll tax, tax on their utility bills, gas electricity and water. There is tax on virtually everything you buy, tax in the form of duty on your entertainment, and of coarse tax in the form of duty on petrol. That is after you have paid tax on the purchase of your car, and tax on the insurance. If you have money left over and put in the bank, you are taxed again. You pay tax when you buy a house in the form of stamp duty, tax on your house insurance, capital gains tax when you sell your home, and so it goes on, sometimes even tax on your pension. When you die they even tax you on that.

It is obvious that the government should be more interested in keeping people in work, instead of paying them to be off work. The government will tell you it is up to the private sector to create jobs, and pull the country up by its boot
straps. They will point to their promised investment into infrastructure sometime in the future; they will point to the money that have promised for the so called enterprise areas, all too little too late. Cameron and Osborne announced at the Conservative conference £3 trillion for infrastructure investment with details to be given in November. No mention of £3trillion in November, just more unemployment.

The Solution.
In the next post

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Tags: Will the Euro collapse? : What is a Coalition Government? : Correct Me:

2011-12-14T05:08:00.000-08:00

Wake Up GB

Yet another Depressing Headline, Unemployment up again: this time to a 17 year high of 2.6 m. with over 1 million young people out of work.

This Government inherited a debt of £156bn, they have reduced
this to just over £120bn, but will have to borrow a further £156bn, to pay the benefits bill as a direct result of their policies of putting people out of work.

The latest estimates are that with growth predicted at 0.9% the government
will leave a debt for the country to pay in 2015 of £1.3trillion.

The recession which is coming will last for up to 10 years, the continued
decline we have suffered over the last 12 months will further exasperate
the recession.

Will Cameron Resign?

Cameron went to the EU summit last week to try and protect the City
of London Financial Centre, partially because the UK economy depends
so much on the revenues earned. He failed to get the protection, and
used his veto over the closer amalgamation of the sovereign states in
the EU. He had every intention of saying “No” to the treaty, and although all the other countries agreed to sign up to the proposals,
some are now having second thoughts.

France was not all pleased about Cameron, and his request for protection
for the City of London. France will still receive agricultural monetary
support from the EU for their inefficient farming policy. France is
under notice that its credit rating could be reduced by 50%, they would
have expected th UK joining the new treaty, as they know Cameron would
be the first in line to pump cash into the failing states. He lent to
Ireland when they didn’t need it, and he gave money to the IMF
so they can help the failing states.

Sarkozy threatened that the UK would pay dearly over the veto being
applied, other French sources wanted the UK to carry on paying in to
the EU, but not receive a rebate back again.

Will Clegg be P.M.?

The Lib Dems and Nick Clegg are positioning themselves for Nick Clegg
to take over from David Cameron as Prime Minister. It is obvious to
everybody that Cameron’s attitude to the EU and his lack of diplomacy,
has caused irreparable damage, and Cameron is the wrong person to put
it right. A change of leader may help, a change of government would
be better, but the Lib Dems may feel that the electorate still feel
they were betrayed by them, and not re-elect them.

Treaty to be signed in March 2012

Since writing this article it has been announced that several EU countries
are uneasy about signing up to the treaty, before the small print has
been agreed. The treaty was supposed stop the EU countries going into
debt in the future, unfortunately the EU has not addressed the current
state of sovereign debt in member countries.

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Tags: Uk isolated ; Sarkozy threat : EU problems latest News : EU in Crisis : EU and UK Economies : The Economy : Unemployment Rising

Millions of Children and Adults Survive in Absolute Poverty .

2011-10-14T09:24:00.000-07:00

Unemployment has rocketed up in the three months to August by a phenomenal 110,000, reaching 2.57 million, the highest figure for 17 years. This figure includes 992,000 young people, the so called lost generation.

In addition this, the IFS said that in 2010, nearly 1 in 5 UK children were living in poverty, a total of 2.5 million children and 2.1 million working-age parents were living in "absolute" poverty.

This is expected to rise to an additional 600,000 children being forced into “absolute” poverty, before the government’s planned introduction of the Universal Credit scheme in 2013. The IFS is forecasting that absolute child poverty will fall by 100,000 to three million in 2014 and 2015. The increase in Gas and Electric over the last few years, will have a lot of families making a choice this winter, Eat or Heat. The increased prices to domestic customers comes at the time of falling wholesale prices. The energy companies were caught out by “Which” when they contacted the six biggest companies asking them for their cheapest rates. About a third of the time “Which” Was quoted a higher figure than the energy companies cheapest rate.

According to a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, falling incomes will mean the biggest 3 year drop for middle-income families since the 1974-77, following the oil crisis which included a sterling crisis and an IMF bail-out as well as industrial unrest during John Major’s premiership with the Conservatives in power.

There is more optimism for middle earners, with incomes rising slowly after 2013 - although it is projected that 2015 income levels will still be below where they were six years earlier.

The prospects remain uncertain for the poorest in 2015 - with the IFS predicting that the number of working-age adults in absolute poverty will remain at 2.5m for parents and will rise to 4.1m for working-age adults without children. The figure for children is expected to increase to 1 child in every 4 suffering from poverty.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said benefits changes would tackle poverty by "making work pay". Yes maybe it will, the only problem is that the Coalition are creating higher unemployment, to make it much more difficult to get even a low paid job , or part time job.[Definition of JOB: Just Over Broke].

If you do get a job, be warned, the coalition have altered the rules concerning unfair dismissal, and using a tribunal. If you are harassed, abused or bullied at work, you have to endure it for 2 years before you can take it to a tribunal, and then you have to pay up front fees to have your case heard. The Conservative led Coalition is also trying to get rid of the Human Rights act.
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About RFT Express Couriers :Corporate Social Responsibilty

2011-10-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

About RFT Express Couriers :Corporate Social Responsibilty

Read the article on how RFT undertake it's Corpodate Social Responsibilty.
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Conservative Conference

2011-10-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

There was very little coming out of the Conservative party conference which could inspire the business world. David Cameron wanted business to reach out to new markets in merging countries, he called for the entrepreneuring spirit, but unfortunately the party members were not agreeing. He did say on carbon emissions that the UK WOULD NOT CUT CARBON EMMISSIONS FASTER THAN OTHER COUNTRIES. There was a lot of dissent amongst the so called party faithful, apparently a poll showed 68% wanted to leave the EEC. Most party members were of the mindset that they had lost the election [because they didn’t get a working majority], while the hierarchy were of the opinion they won the election. Party members were not pleased with the suggestion that they scrap the Human Rights act, and the promise that David Cameron would invest £23trillion to get the economy growing, went down like a lead balloon.

Moodys the credit agency has down graded 12 UK banks and building societies, due to the recommendations for ring fencing consumer banking from the riskier investment banking. Cameron had said previously that if banks were failing they should be left to fail. It is this knowledge that we are the only EU country to stop supporting our banks, which triggered the downgrades. This will make it harder, and more costly for our banks to borrow, which in turn will mean less business loans, higher interest rates and higher charges.

Chancellor George Osborne said that the downgrade was a response to the government's move away from guaranteeing Britain's biggest banks and what he called the "too big to fail" problem.

"People ask me, how are you going to avoid Britain and the British taxpayer bailing out British banks in the future?," he told the BBC. "This government is taking steps to do that. Therefore, credit rating agencies and others will say; 'actually, these banks will have to show that they can pay their way in the world'.

"I'm confident that British banks are well capitalised - they are liquid, they are not experiencing the same problems that some of the banks in the Eurozone are experiencing at the moment."

There is still a suspicion that Greece will default, which will be catastrophic for the UK as well as the EU. Although UK banks aren’t heavily exposed to Greek debt, they are to Italy and Spain, which have been downgraded by the Fitch agency.

"Of greater concern to Fitch is the small but no longer negligible tail risk that a further worsening of the Eurozone debt crisis and volatility in the value of Italian government bonds will further erode confidence in the banking system," Fitch said in a statement.

"In such a scenario, concerns about the banks would start to weigh on the sovereign credit profile and a vicious cycle of deteriorating sovereign and bank credit quality could emerge."

The Bank of England have increase ‘Quantitative Easing’ from the original £200bn to £275bn.

In March 2009 George Osborne warned that the Bank of England’s strategy of quantitative easing is a “leap in the dark”.

George Osborne, the then Shadow Chancellor described the decision to effectively print more money as a “last resort”, necessary because of the “complete failure” of Labour’s other measures to tackle the recession.

He told BBC News, "I don't think anyone should be pleased that we have reached this point. It is an admission of failure and carries considerable risk.”

Yesterday George Osborne said "Well, the Bank of England has made an independent judgement that it's right to commence quantitative easing, and that's their independent judgement; but I agree with it and that's why I authorised quantitative easing to proceed.”

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RFT Express announced today the acquisition of The Yorkshire Courier and Couriers for Yorkshire,

2011-06-30T13:54:00.000-07:00

RFT Express Couriers specialise in the delivery of Hanging Garments primarily in the UK and Europe, using long wheel base panel vans capable of carrying up to 2,000 garments a time. We collect from manufacturers and deliver to central warehouses
and distribution centres.

It doesn’t stop there; the major share of the distribution network is multi-dropping to shops and stores, primarily in the UK, and increasingly in Europe. We have also seen an increase in the collection of bespoke garments from multi national manufacturers in Eastern Europe, delivering to their UK stores and their clients. This matches the growth in the UK ‘Bespoke Garment Hire’ industry.

Our core business has always pallet deliveries, principally in the print and machine part sectors. In 2006 RFT Express re-branded with the introduction of the “M1 Shuttle”. To help RFT Express with the anticipated expansion this innovative solution to the single pallet delivery, The Yorkshire Courier was appointed as the preferred contractor.

The Yorkshire Courier: Integrated into the RFT Express Family

The Yorkshire Courier was founded in 1999, focusing on high volume national and international clients, with multiple depots acrossthe UK and Europe. Their goal was to achieve a success rate of
at least 75% of their vehicles having a return load. Apart from the benefit of reducing carbon emissions, the return load strategy was an important function in maintaining their very competitive price of £1 a mile from base to anywhere in the UK and Europe. They still maintain the same pricing structure today, £1 a mile from base to the whole of the UK and the EEEC.

In 2006 The Yorkshire Courier was the preferred contractor to operate the innovative M1 Shuttle on behalf of RFT Express. With the slogan “Save Money-Save The Planet” the M1 Shuttle was oversubscribed within weeks of it being launched.

It was at this point we agreed to take on Couriers for Yorkshire as a subcontractor for the M1 Shuttle.

Couriers in Yorkshire: Integrated into the RFT Express Family

Couriers Yorkshire will now take over full responsibility for the running, and expansion the “M1 Shuttle”.
With the acquisition of The Yorkshire Courier and Couriers in
Yorkshire comes an increased client base, and a larger pool of
vehicles. This will help to take some of the pressure of the RFT
Express Bulk Parcel deliveries and cut costs for our clients.

More Benefits for RFT and our Clients.

With the increased expertise on all levels that these two companies bring to RFT Express will help to sustain the planned growth of RFT Express. In return both companies will benefit from increased resources and the strong RFT Express brand.

Clients will benefit from reduced costs, and quicker response times, which is important during the ‘recovery’ phase the country is going through.

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Tags : The Yorkshire Courier, RFT Express , £1 a mile, RFT Express Bulk Parcel, Couriers
in Yorkshire, M1 Shuttle, RFT Express Hanging Garments,

RFT : Right First Time

2011-05-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

RFT : Right First Time

RFT: Right First Time, RFT: Rich Format text. RFT: Request For tender. What does RFT actually mean? At RFT Express we adopt the ‘Right First Time’ concept.RFT. Right First Time was the strategy used by the Japanese car manufacturers when they first entered the world markets.”The idea that goods or services should not need to be inspected for quality, because the objective is to build in quality and ensure the product or service is of a high quality the first time.”RFT Express has modified the Japanese definition to fit the present day demands of business, our definition is: - “Services should be of the highest quality at all stages, and each stage should add value to the service in order to achieve “Right First Time” which is embedded in our name.We have taken this concept further by adding the requirement to continually review, improve, and adapt before circumstances deem the improvement as “Best Practices”.

Don' Lose out on the Job Front

2011-05-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

In today’s economic climate you could be losing out on that job you are applying for, simply because of something you have said or done online. You can start to build a more positive image of yourself quite easily, and the sooner the start, the better your image will be.

Large companies and recruitment agencies will check out prospective applicants online, and immediately reject 30% o the applicants because of what they have discovered about them.

3 out of every 10 letters you send applying for a job, could end up in the recycling bin without being read.

The article What you say on line tells you the most effective way of building a more positive image of yourself, whether it is just to get a job, or as a prelude to you starting your own business.

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UK Growth Down

2011-01-26T09:07:00.000-08:00

RFT did forecast, on the 7th January, that inflation would rise to 4% or 5%, the Governor of the Bank Of England has now said that we can expect inflation to go up to 4% or 5% in the coming months, before falling back in 2012. The Bank governor noted that UK wages were stagnant and, coupled with high inflation; this had led to the longest decline in the real value of take-home pay in the UK since the 1920s.

Unemployment has also risen, with the private sector, which the coalition were relying on to push the economy in the right direction, only managing to create part time jobs.

Since the coalition has been in power, the recovery has gradually dropped off to a current -0.5%. [This they blamed on the cold weather, which was so cold it increased consumer spending!] But they insist they won’t be blown of course.

Mr Balls, who was given the shadow chancellor's role after Alan Johnson quit last week, said the 0.7% growth in the previous quarter was down to Labour's economic policies. He said: "We are seeing the first signs of what the Conservative-led government's decisions are having on the economy. "The fact is cuts which go too far and too fast will damage our economy. And shrinking growth and rising unemployment is not only bad news for families but will actually make it more difficult to get the deficit down.

"As the head of the CBI said only yesterday, this government has no plan for growth and it is taking political decisions regardless of the damage they will cause to job creation and business. Simply slamming on the brakes is not a credible economic policy."

During PMQ David Cameron was called ‘arrogant’ for his indifference to the suffering of the UK’s population, caused by his policies. He reiterated that they won’t be blown of course.

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Why did Labour Lose

2010-11-30T06:57:00.000-08:00

This time it was the turn of the Labour party to lose, Gordon Brown didn’t have the ability to fight the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats party, and the Labour party all at the same time. Why did they throw the election away? They were on the right track to pull the country round, they had brought the deficit down, the Coalition's Office of Budget Responsibility confirmed it. It would appear that they simply wanted to get rid of Gordon Brown, there was plenty of contenders for his post when he resigned, why didn't they stand against him when he was elected un-opposed?

Gordon Brown stood no chance of getting labour back in power, he just couldn't fight his own party, the conservatives and the Lib Dems all at once.

The American style electioneering which the UK switched to, worked against Gordon Brown as was expected. As with America, if you throw enough money about you can buy the top post.

At RFT we had a competition with a prize of £100 for the first driver, or contractor to spot a hoarding with a Labour advert on it during the run up to the elections. Nobody won the £100.

Since then the Labour Government has been in opposition, the problem is , they have been in government for so long, they have forgotten what an opposition party is supposed to do.

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Student Wake up Call

2010-11-22T06:47:00.000-08:00

The recent UK student protest with the attack on Conservative headquarters, did nothing to promote their cause.
The people in charge of the country, the cabinet, the ex Thatcher advisors, and the 35 companies who run this country, are nearly all multi-millionaires, and have no idea of the hardship they are causing.
When they see images such as was shown on TV with protestors throwing missiles from the roof of Millbank House, they don't see the cream of the county's brains protesting, they see a bunch of lawless upstarts bent on revenge.
This sort of protest doesn't work on multmillionaires, it just increases their desire to put all students down. This sort of protest has never worked in this country, especially against Thatcherite advisors and governments. You can remember what happened with the Poll tax revolt, and the miners revolt.
It is time the students woke up and acted in a coherent, co-ordinated fashion. The multi-millionaires just laughed at the student protest, it helped their cause, and there was probably discussion how to further anger students into undermining their cause.
Think like a millionaire, and you can protest on their terms effectively. You should not be just protesting against your tuition fees, at the rate this government is going a University degree won't be worth the paper it is written on, why? because there will be no jobs for you!!!!
The Green Party in Ireland are going to resign enmasse to force a general election in January 2011. How many students have emailed their MP suggesting the same thing? How many students have emailed the opposition party, to ask what they are going to do about it, that is if there is an opposition party. How many prospective law students have bothered researched the law in the light of a court forcing a labour MP out of Parliament, allegedly for printing untruths about his opponent. Case: Nick Clegg and his written undertaking not to increase tuition fees, is that an untruth, or mis-representation

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ConDems latest ::.Forced Labour .::

2010-11-13T05:43:00.000-08:00

The coalition are continuing with their 'Poor Bashing'. Their latest target are the unemployed, and those on incapacity benefit, by quote "Forcing them to Work, for their own good", very magnanimous of them! They are proposing using the 'carrot and the stick approach' without the carrot. A spokesman, on the politics show [[07-1-10] denied that they were treating people like prisoners, and forcing them to work as “a chain gang” on the streets. They did say they were forcing these people to work, street cleaning etc. for their own good.[To get them used to work, and getting out of bed], and they would be paid about £1.60 an hour.

If the ConDems start off on a small scale and force 750,000 to do 'Forced Work', the local authorities will have to sack all their street cleaners, gardeners, office staff, office cleaners to take advantage of this forced free workers. Of course this means there will be another 75,000 people out of work!

You may remember that we announced the Coalition were axing job creation schemes when they first came to power. They proudly announced that over the last 3 months that figures were available, that they had created 178,000 jobs, but failed to announce that 143,000 were part time jobs, and only 35,000 were full time. At this rate it will take 35 years to find jobs for the 500,000 civil servants they are discarding, as long as none of the other unemployed get there first.

You may remember when they pulled the plug on the Sheffield Forgemaster £80 million loan.The giant factory secured a £80million loan from the Labour Government, to make Sheffield Forgemasters a world leader in forging high tech giant steel reactor cores, currently only available from Japan. With 80% of this production being exported, and an expanded workforce, Sheffield Forgemasters felt the deal was good value money. They received a phone call confirming the loan had been withdrawn, just minutes before Danny Alexander announced it in Parliament. The biggest customer for these was China, this week the G20 summit tried to encourage China to to buy our goods, to help us get out of the mess. China's reply was, when we are ready.

You may remember those famous quotes the Prime Minister and deputy Minister made at the time they cut funding Forge Masters.

David Cameron said "There was a suspicion that while some of these decisions might have been good decisions, not all of them were good decisions and not all of them were good value for money." while Nick Clegg said “The truth is that this loan was promised by the outgoing Labour Government as a calculated ploy to win support in Sheffield just ahead of the election, when they knew all along that there simply wasn't the money to keep to that pledge in first place.”

You might think that with the Lib dems taking a Labour candidate to court for making untrue statements, that Labour should go to court and have the Pm and his deputy removed from parliament!
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Google Street Car Harvesting Criticized

2010-11-08T04:06:00.000-08:00

Google's Street Car Views, have been harversting emails, passwords and wi-fi addresses. Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, said the firm was "profoundly sorry for mistakenly collecting payload data in the UK".

Google said it happened as the result of code written by one of its engineers being mistakenly incorporated in the Street View software.
"Since we announced our mistake in May we have co-operated closely with the Information Commissioner's Office [ICO] and worked to improve our internal controls," said Mr Fleischer."We are in the process of confirming that there are no outstanding legal obligations upon us to retain the data, and will then ensure that it is quickly and safely deleted."
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) originally declared that “Google’s Street View” was ‘Not an Infringement of UK privacy Laws’. It was Canada’s condemnation of Google by Jennifer Stoddart the Privacy Commissioner, who said "This incident was a serious violation of Canadian's privacy rights", which provoked the UK Information Commissioner to make a “U” turn on the original ruling which said that no data breach had occurred.

The new ruling is that there was a "significant breach" of the Data Protection Act when Google collected personal data via its Street View cars, the UK's Information Commissioner has ruled.
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Google to challenge FaceBook

2010-11-07T06:50:00.000-08:00

Google is set to go head to head with FaceBook when it launches Google Games later this year. Google spent $1.6bn on 40 acquisitions during the first 3 quarters of 2010.

“Acquisitions will also remain an important component of our strategy and use of capital,and we expect our current pace of acquisitions to continue," Google said, and with $33bn in the kitty, who can blame them? Google’s net profits for the last quarter to the end of September were $2.17bn, up by 32%.

It is also reported that Google made a $100m investment in Zynga, who are responsible for the ‘Farmville’ and ‘Mafia Wars’ games on Facebook. These two games help FaceBook’s ‘stickiness’ with it’s 500m plus visitors. Zynga is expected to be the centre piece of Google games.

Google also made the news when it announced it was suing the US government, for being unfairly excluded from a $58m deal to revamp e-mail systems at the Department of the Interior.

Vic Farron RFT Express.

Cameron causes split in party

2010-10-31T02:48:00.000-07:00

David Cameron was “Grandstanding” when he announced that he had a letter signed by 12 EU countries recommending a 2.9% increase in the Budget, instead of the 6% they were asking for. He had previously said he wanted the Budget reduced, or at least a freeze. His grab for publicity was condemned by all parties. According to Paul Nuttall of UKIP, “He said that he would cut the budget, or at least freeze the budget, now he's talking about a 2.9% increase at best - it's crazy”

Labour - and Eurosceptics in Mr Cameron's own party - have questioned whether it was much of an achievement.

Shadow foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said: "David Cameron's grandstanding has been a complete failure. European governments decided on 2.9% in August so he has achieved absolutely nothing."He's tried to swing his handbag but simply ended up clobbering himself in the face." As Cameron said previously “There was a suspicion that while some of these decisions might have been good decisions, not all of them were good decisions”

Conservative MP Bill Cash, chair of the Commons European Scrutiny Committee, said prime ministers always claimed success when they returned from EU summits, but the 2.9% increase was what the Council of Ministers had originally agreed - and British MPs had already voted to reject a higher increase.

Conservative peer Lord Tebbit said: "He would do better to go down fighting than to surrender in some Vichy-style arrangement, pretending to hold on to sovereignty by agreeing to what Europe demands."

David Cameron said he had “succeeded spectacularly”.

Full Article

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Coalition Out Of Touch

2010-10-30T03:10:00.000-07:00

George Osborne is expecting the private sector to generate jobs, in order to reboot the economy. He points to the last quarter figures available, June to August saying that 178,000 jobs were created. What he doesn’t say is that 143,000 were only part time jobs. Of the 35,000 full time jobs created in a quarter, it will take, at that rate, 35 years to find full time jobs for the 500,000 the government is laying off from civil service. Never mind anybody else.

Ian Duncan Smith the former Tory Leader, now the Work and Pensions Secretary, suggested unemployed people in Merthyr Tydfil should “get on a bus" to find work.

The former Tory leader claimed people were unaware they could take a one-hour bus journey to Cardiff for work. Labour politicians and unions said it echoed 1980s Tory minister Lord Tebbit's "get on your bike" comments. "That generation of Conservatives thought unemployment was the fault of the unemployed and with every action and utterance from this Government, it is clear that they are the true inheritors of that tradition.

The Condms keep claiming the Budget, and the Spending Review are fair. But they won't say who to! They claim they inherited the highrst deficit in living memory, I reported on the 17^th June 2010 that the O.B.R. confirmed that the budget deficit was £23 bn lower that in the previous quarter, due to the measures put in place by the labour party.

IT WAS THE DISGUSTING SPECTACLE OF CONDEM MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT LAUGHING AND CHEERING WHEN CUTS WERE ANNOUNCED WHICH WOULD AFFECT THE POOREST PEOPLE IN THE COUNTRY, WHICH OFFENDED THE BRITISH PUBLIC.

The spending review was interrupted with shouts from the labour opposition when they suggested that this is what the ConDems had become MP’s for.
It was a sickening sight to see the ConDems showing their contempt for the British Public on television to the whole world .
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UK Spending Review: Welfare

2010-10-22T03:12:00.000-07:00

George Osborne went for the juggular, when he hammered the poorest and most vulnerable UK citizens.

He hacked £18bn from the welfare budget, and along with 28% cut to local councils, a lot of the services provided free for the incapacitated and the old will be axed.

He claimed his budget review was fair, but economist say diferrent. The Instiute of Fiscal Studies, an independent organisation, included all the cuts in their calculations, and came to the conclusion that it was the poorest who have been hit the hardest, and with cuts in local services, they will suffer even more.

The Condems massaged the figures for the schools budget, saying they had increased it by 0.1%. When you take into account the fact that the schools population is set to grow at 0.7%, the actual figure is a reduction of 0.6%.

Nick Clegg and David Cameron met the public in a televised meeting, to promote their idea of fairness. Both were uncomfortable with the hostile reception they got, and the fact that the audience continually complained they were hitting the poor, the ill and the old, as well as children the hardest. David cameron was furious, and several times went so red in the face with annoyance that he was being question by the public, that he looked as though he could burst a blood vessel.

He repeated several times the old lie about having to do this, the alternative of doing nothing would store debt up and be worse off. It has never been a case of slash and burn, or do nothing. They used the cuts labour had planned and costed, and added some more.

Nick Clegg repeated several times that it was fair, and that the general public should not believe the Labour Government, the Instiute of Fiscal Studies and other economist who had been supplied with the figures from the treasury. They used all the figures and not been selective.
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UK Budget 2010

2010-10-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

On Sunday George Osborn said on television, that 35 of the top companies in the UK [not necessarily UK owned], had seen, and approved the budget cuts, saying they will be good for creating jobs. The same companies who forced this government to back down on the announced rise on employers N.I. contributions. Of course it is only right that these companies know in advance of parliament, what the cabinet is planning. The budget didn’t propose anything about creating jobs, just about cutting them; about 1 million job cuts were announced this week.

The ConDems did leak a document to the newspapers, before announcing it in parliament concerning the closing of certain “quangos”. Hoping to get the better of Labour by doing this, the papers simply took the copy they had printed in March of this year when Labour announced the abolishment of the same quangos, and substituted the word Coalition for the word Labour in their copy.

We all saw Danny Alexander posing for photos, with the budget document opened to enable reporters to photograph it.
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Latest Coalition Cuts

2010-10-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

The ConDems are planning massive cuts to the funding of UK Universities.

Planned cuts from the current £3.9 billion the government currently subsidise the Universities to a only £7 million will leave the students having to pay alot more for their education. the current ceiling that Universities can charge students is £3290 a year, this is to be scrapped and Universities can charge ht ever they wish.

Lord Browne , former boss of BP feels that this give more power to the students. The Universities will be able to double, treble or even quadruple their fees, this will according to Lord Browne will take power away from the Universities, and give power to the studentys. The students will have the power to say, no I can't afford to go to university, I wasn't aware that at present, they didn't have this power.

Lord Browne, has calulated that a student will make 400% profit from paying the extra tuition fees. Only the important science, or medical courses will have a small piece of the £7million, the other courses wil get nothing.

Lord Browne as well as most of the government gained their university degrees funded for them by the tax payer. the LibDems won there seats, by pledging to abolish universitive fees. The conservatives have stooped the school building programmes in order to fund their own type of "Free Schools" while also stopping the refurbishment of derelict school our children are going to. Unfortunately the condition of some schools, with leaking roofs and no heating, are not the concern of this government. If these children were animals, they would have rights, as human beings they have none.

I don't know how much Lord Browne was paid to suggest the government investment in university funding should be cut from £3.9 billion to just £7million, it probably took less than 1 hour to think of it and write it down.

I think that all MP's should work for free, that will save the country millions of pounds, my fee for this suggestion is a mere £2.5 million. read more

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Twitter Update

2010-09-26T02:42:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that just lately all your Twitter apps have changed. This is because Twiter is now using 'OATH' and the apps you have been using can no longer store your password. Tweetader is one that has changed, with a few additions, and unfortunately one facility they have dropped is the 'refress button'.
Twitter are rolling out a new home page to enable you to link to all your favourite social sites. I suspect that we will be having targeted ads on our home pages shortly, similar to those on Facebook.
I have updated the tweaks and techniques you can use to get more from Tweetadder and Twitter. the page is here. Hope you like it!

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You are about to lose ALL YOUR PRIVACY

2010-09-11T04:29:00.000-07:00

If you thought the last post gave you some cause for alarm, wait until you read what is being planned.
About 12 months ago Apple lost a court case prohibiting people unlocking their phones, and going with a cheaper tariff, and allowing people to run third party apps on their phones. At the same time, Apple were applying for a patent to collect and store customer information, in order to wipe the phone clean, and disable it in the event of it being stolen. Good news you may think: well think again.
Apple intend to fit a microphone to their cell phones, which will record and transmit data back to Apple as long as the phone is turned on. Apple will also have the ability to record what you say on your phone, and your surfing habits.
The phone will also take a photograh of the person using the phone without them realising, and it will take a photo of your surroundings.
Apple will know where you have been, where you are now, what stores you have beeen into, what you have said to your doctor or solicitor,what websites you have visited, they will also know what you have said on our phone, and if you put you phone on your bedside cabinet, well you can guess what will happen.
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Are we Losing all Our Privacy?

2010-09-11T03:28:00.000-07:00

Do you Care about surrendering you Privacy?

When you go into a small town or a large city, you are continually being tracked on CCTV.Big Brother [ the government] claims it is for our own good, and to be honest the police do make good use of this facility, in dealing with crime., as well as the security services. Big Brother claim if you are honest you have nothing to lose, except your privacy.
Your mobile phone is continually being tracked, every few seconds your phone sends a signal out saying ‘I can see 4 wi-fi networks with these signal strengths’, the response comes back ‘OK you are at the corner of High St. and Main St.’ leaving a traceable trail of where you have been. You can get a piece of free legal software from Locate which will trace and track a mobile phone. So where is your privacy now?

But you are honest with nothing to hide!
How would you like your ‘ex’ to know your every move?
What about your employer, when you phone in to work saying you are sick?
Does your company approve of its reps being tracked by its competitors?
What about your mother tracking you when you go for a night out?

You can read the first part of the article here

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Get More Faster

2010-08-15T04:52:00.000-07:00

Race to the top of Twitter

New release, PDF " Getting more from Twitter and Tweetadder". This dynamic download explains in simple terms a different way to build your Twitter list faster than you normally can when using Tweetadder.
I few tricks of the trade, enables you to take your Twitter experience to a higher level. Nothing 'blackhat' no breaking Twitter rules or Tweetadder rules.
Screenshots show the power of this system, and best of all it is COMPLETELY FREE. No API to download and configure, no software to download, just a smarter way of working.
Works on all your Twitter accounts.
Read the full article and get the download here

Vic Farron
Follow us on Twitter

Twitter +Tweetadder = lots more followers

2010-08-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

The post “Be a Guest Blogger” was widely read, and resulted in a massive increase in the number of people who subscribed to the feed and to an average of 200 extra people a day who followed us on Twitter.

The article “How to Use Twitter Effectively ” also had an equally successful reception. Both these blogs show the very effective method of using 3 different blog intro’s to the same article. Check them out on these blogs. On our site, on our server, and on Googles’ Blogspot.

The response from these has prompted me to write this article ‘Tweetadder and Twitter’. Your Tweets on twitter are available for anyone in the world to read [unless you have made them private], so why not make money out of them? I mentioned Tweetadder in my last post, if you haven’t downloaded the free trial yet, I strongly recommend you do it now. They are other versions of this on the internet, all more expensive [one I have seen is over $800 A MONTH]. Currently in excess of 600 people have downloaded the free trial from the article ‘How to Use Twitter Effectively’
Read the full article

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Twitter for Business

2010-08-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

Business twitter users have a great advantage over the majority of users. The primary focus for a business is a 2 pronged campaign. Firstly to drive visitors to your site, and secondly to brand your company name or, reinforce the brand. A company has the potential to create many Twitter accounts. Since we have been using twitter, we have seen a marked increase in the number of targeted visitors. The way 60% of our visitors found us was through Google, now Twitter is sending us about the same number of visitors as Google does, every day. Dell Computers has 100 staff doing nothing else but send out tweets, each one uses a different username, and the email is ‘username’ @del.com. Does that tell you anything?

What Twitter Won’t tell you.

After a couple of weeks you can grow your twitter followers by 400 to 500 a week. The problem is the 2,000 figure. As you are approaching the 2,000 figure, Twitter limits the number of Follows you can send out.[By any method] If you have for instance 1,800 followers you can only send out a maximum of 200 follows,[The problem 2,000 figure] which if you are working on the recommended 3 day cycle by the Tweetadder, is only 66 a day. As you get closer to the 2,000 figure it gets harder. You can try unfollowing some followers, but this tends to defeat the object. When you have reached the 2,000 mark Twitter restrict the ratio of follows to followers to 1.1 which slows down the growth for some considerable time. read the full article
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Tried Blogging Yet?

2010-07-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

You can promote your business, your Twitter account, or an event by blogging.RFT Express are giving you the opportunity to use our blogs to promote yourself. The shear power of blogging and the number of external backlinks you will get is phenominal.

How to Write Your Blog

You should write your blog, the same way you talk to people. Don’t try any selling techniques, your audience have seen all these before, and it will deter them from reading further.
Keep your blog simple and easy to read, the wording should be in English and words should be easy to understand, no abbreviations. Your blog will be displayed as a full page article on our site. A lot of visitors whose first language is not English will use the Language Translator on the page where your article appears. The translator is a computer programme, which uses basic language; long words, abbreviations, or words that are hardly used on the internet may be translated wrongly. Write the article first, check the spelling, and the number of words, then write the Title

Your blog should be 350 to 700 words approximately. The dotted line above is the average amount of words appearing in each blog. In addition to this, we will insert the link for your readers to read the full article, and of course your signature “your name @ twitter, or, your name @your company.com” This will give you a link on each blog.
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UK CoalitionSplit?

2010-07-28T03:57:00.000-07:00

The Conservatives have started to open the split between themselves and the Lib-Dems. Vince Cable the Business Secretary announced plans for a ‘Graduate tax’ for university students; this was later overruled by the Tories who preferred students to pay the Universities Direct. Tory ministers are said to prefer a system where some graduates pay more, generating more places for the rich and the overseas students, depriving working class students of places. Labour called this ‘shambolic’

The Conservatives distanced themselves from the Lib Dems after Nick Cleggs’ first, and probably last, P.M.s question time, when he said the Iraq war was illegal. Many Tories who voted for the Iraq war took it as a personal attack on them.

David Cameron belittled Britain, the country he is supposed to promote, when he told the Americans that Britain was a junior partner to America in 1940 in the war against Germany. In fact the Americans weren’t interested in helping Britain in 1940, It wasn’t until 1941 after Pearl Harbour was bombed, that the Americans joined

I will apologise to the British Public on behalf of David Cameron who can’t remember the tremendous sacrifices the British people made during that terrible war, or even when they made them. The British people fought for the freedom of this country and others, most of whom are grateful, and wouldn’t dream of belittling what their ancestors did for Britain. Cameron may not respect the memories of those who died in order that we might live in a free country, with freedom of speech, but the British people respect those memories with pride.

In a recent poll carried out for Newsnight 42% of Lib-Dem voters would not have voted for their party if they had known they would be part of a coalition. On the Conservative side only 14% said they would not have voted for their party if they had known of their leader’s intention to form a coalition.

60% of Tory voters felt their party had been weakened by the coalition with the Lib-Dems: They felt they no longer knew what their party stood for.

53% of the Lib-Dems felt their party had been weakened by the coalition with the Tories.

Lord Ashdown, when interviewed on Newsnight, suggested he would like to see the government "make haste a bit more slowly" and that it was sometimes wiser to test new policies out in pilot schemes before making decisions.

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Recession :: Was it Hard for You?

2010-07-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

You might have thought the recession was quite hard, think again.
There is a lot more to come, with companies following the government’s lead of Slash and Burn. Already a lot of supermarkets have put up their prices as they did in the recession. The fear of customers spending less has prompted price increases to generate extra profits. Fuel has gone up since the Emergency Budget, which will further increase prices.

600,000 public sector jobs are to go under the Coalition, some of these jobs will be filled by recruiting new, lower grade staff, and promoting them more slowly. At the same time it is expected increase of 2.5million extra jobs being created, with 1.95 million in the Private Sector. According to Channel 4 News A leaked Treasury document today suggested 1.3 million jobs will be lost as a result of the budget, by 2014/15. The Office of National Statistics showed an increase in the jobless total of 281,000 in the last 3 months, giving a total figure of people out of work at 2.38 million

Research by the Oxford Economics consultancy this month shows that 2.3m private sector jobs were dependent on state contracts in areas like IT, defence and hospitals. As public spending falls, those employees are in jeopardy.

Harriet Harmen the acting labour Leader attacked David Cameron over the leaked Treasury Document Cameron later said: "You don't seem to understand. Unemployment is going to be falling during this Parliament. We've published the full figures. But it's not now us publishing the figures. It's the OBR."[I think that’s called Passing the Buck]”

The head of the OBR, [Office of Budget Responsibility] Sir Alan Budd is to step down to enjoy his retirement, Reuters reported. [I suspect there will be more to come on this story]

We could be following in Ireland’s footsteps as they introduced their Austerity Package, with high inflation and 25% unemployed in Ireland, record house repossessions, and many companies struggling to fight off bankruptcy. And we still have the possibility of the debt crisis in the Euro Zone countries impacting on our economy, and our banking system.

As I said, “You might have thought the recession was quite hard, think again.”

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20 Income Streams From twitter

2010-07-08T04:28:00.000-07:00

Free Course : Put your twitter account on auto pilot to generate at least 20 income streams.

Anybody can follow these simple steps.

Had no success with your Twitter account?

I will show you how.

Over the weekend I will upload the page outlining the course; showing you how to produce several income streams by tapping into this enormous market. All on AUTO-PILOT. http://bit.ly/93UaAQ

Successisnowhere

2010-07-04T04:16:00.000-07:00

Successisnowhere

How would you interpret the title?

If you interpreted it as Success Is Now Here, that would indicate you are not prepared to let the present economic climate dampen your entrepreneurial skills, or your inability to acquire these skills. The next few years will be a challenge to some, and a stimulus to others, and a disaster to others, whether we dip into recession, or just bounce along above it.

It will be the incentive for the successful to increase their market share, or the time to acquire additional income streams, as the recession was the catalyst for many to expand; the following years will be the time to build on that success.

If you interpreted it as Success Is Nowhere, it could be a hard time over the next few years for you. What you need is P.M.A. [Positive Mental Attitude]

P.M.A. is the motivational force behind any successful venture. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will believe in you.

You can be successful, therefore you will be successful.

Read the full article

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ConDem Coalition

2010-06-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

Ian Duncan Smith following the ConDems [sorry for the typo] policy of half truths, when he said the life expectancy for men was 89 and for women 90. He was accused of fiddling the figures in an attempt to soften the idea of “Work till you Drop” The actual government figures from the National Statistics Office are 77 for a man and 82 for a woman. The chances are for people doing a heavy job retiring at 70 are that if they do survive to pension age, they won’t enjoy it for long.

France was paralysed by strikes when it was suggested that their retirement age should be increased from 60 to 62yrs.

Vince Cable said that claimants may see their payments dwindle or dry up after a fixed period to enable the £193billion to be used to give relief to other government departments.

David Cameron has been shamed into following Gordon Browns’ example of giving up his right to a PMs pension of £66,000 p.a. Read The Full article

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Post budget Review

2010-06-25T00:56:00.000-07:00

George Osborne's emergency budget is an indication of the pain this government intends to inflict on the British Public. More will come in the Autumn.
As expected the conservatives have hit the low paid workers hard, and are still showing their old hostility towards single parents. The rich, the bankers, and the large companies came off better than they had hoped for, small companies will be hit hard by the higher VAT, and the increased insurance premium.
All investment in job creation shemes have been scrapped, they expect that as the public sector shrinks, the private sector will take up the slack.
The top 4 UK banks concentrate their lending on high earning commercial mortgages, with only 3% of their lending going to help businesses take up the slack in the economy.
For the first time in 2 years one member of the Bank of England has recommended an interest rate rise.
With unemployment, and inflation rising, it would appear that the Conservatives are relying on the few workers we have left to foot the tax increases.
The government initially tried to copy the Canadian example of regenerating the UK, until everybody told the Government that the Canadian example wouldn't work.
Their flagship "Free Schools" copied from the Swedish, is another example they are quoting. The trouble is the Swedish example didn't work in Sweden.
They are now trying to copy the German example of "Austerity Packages", but in truth they are probably copying the example set by Japan in the 90's. Cuts without job stimulation : this caused 10 years of stagnant growth.
The Lib Dems which the Conservatives bought for just 22 ministerial positions, are now just there for window dressing, having sold out their electorate for a supposed power. Read More

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The Truth about Pre Budget Cuts

2010-06-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

Nick Clegg :: “The truth is that this loan was promised by the outgoing Labour Government as a calculated ploy to win support in Sheffield just ahead of the election, when they knew all along that there simply wasn't the money to keep to that pledge in first place.” What is he talking about?.. The Sheffield Forgemaster £80mill loan to produce giant reactor cores, 80% going for export, more jobs. [Made Labour look good]

Cameron::”There was a suspicion that while some of these decisions might have been good decisions, not all of them were good decisions and not all of them were good value for money.

Cameron:: “I will protect frontline services” “I will not dismantle the NHS”

Alexander:: “new North Tees and Hartlepool hospital cancelled”. [Made Labour look good]

Alexander :: “ I have found another £1bill black hole”

Treasury :: “ Unable to say what it is”

Cameron : “ Free Schools - any body can set them up” 720 groups express an interest. Cost £25mill to £30 mill each school. Total money available £50 mill in first year. There was a suspicion that while some of these decisions might have been good decisions, not all of them were good decisions and not all of them were good value for money... Read the Full Article

Vic Farron RFT Express.

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OBR confirm deficit £23 Billion less than expected.

2010-06-17T02:17:00.000-07:00

The OBR confirmed that the deficit the coalition faces is £23 Billion less than expected, due to the policy measures put in place by Alistair Darling, making the justification for heavy cuts in public spending and higher taxes less credible. It also confirmed that household income was relatively strong through the recession as weaker salaries were supported by tax changes such as the temporary cut in VAT.

The current chancellor George Osborne appears to be still committed to finding £85 Billion in order to balance the books by the end of the current coalition term.[A commitment he made in January 2010] Of the £85 Billion approximately £68 Billion will be in cuts, and £17 Billion in tax rises. There is speculation that due to the structural deficit increasing this year by an estimated £12 Billion, he will increase tax rises an extra £2.4 Billion.

The Coalition has often referred to the Canadian model in the 90’s and the reductions they made to their deficit. Fortunately sufficient knowledgeable people have convinced them that this would not work. Possible they have been looking at what Japan did in the 90’s. This led to 10 years of stagnant growth.

The Times in a light hearted analogy between The World Cup and politics, suggesting ‘England team now would hardly have a slower centre-half pairing if Cameron and Clegg swapped with Terry and Carragher (would the Government suffer notably?)’.

Vic Farron RFT Express. Read the Full Article

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Hydrogen car :: Equivalent to 300 M.P.G.

2010-06-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

The UK's first Hydrogen fuelled car from Riverspeed. They insist this is not a prototype, with Leicester agreeing to take the first 30 cars prior to it being available to the public.
The two seat vehicle was designed by a small team of British motorsport engineers and was built at Silverstone. It has a maximum cruising speed of 50 mph and a range on one tank
of hydrogen of at least 200 miles. With a body made of lightweight composites it weighs
only 350kg and thanks to novel design principles is able to do the equivalent of 300 miles
per gallon. Hydrogen produces nothing but a few drops of water from the exhaust,
although to achieve true “zero emission” credentials the fuel must be produced from
renewable energy sources.
Riversimple will generate revenue in a very different way to other car companies;

instead of selling a car as a product, we will sell mobility as a service. Customers will
pay a fixed monthly and per mile charge, getting the flexible mobility that owning a car
provides, without the burdens; tax, fuel costs, insurance and vehicle depreciation. This
sale of service model motivates Riversimple to build cars with a long operating life (up
to 20 years) that are highly economical to use, since we receive revenue throughout
the life of the car and also pay the costs throughout.
Vic Farron RFT Express
Read More

Cameron blames Labour for the debt crises

2010-06-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

Cameron blames Labour for the debt crises, and which he claims was even worse than he thought. Alistair Darling told the BBC this was nonsense, the only thing that had changed was that when Cameron took over, we were borrowing £11 billion less than was forecast in March. How can £11 billion reduction in one month be worse than he thought?

Read More

Rule Changes to Stabilise Coalition?

2010-06-10T06:37:00.000-07:00

David Cameron is planning to change the rules on how an election is called, in order to quote ‘to help the stability of his coalition government’. This is what the conservatives say is fair government.
The deal agreed between the conservatives and the lib-dems is for a fixed 5 year term for the present government, and it can’t be dissolved without the support of 55% of the MPs. Conveniently the coalition doesn’t have 55% of the MP’s needed, so they cannot dissolve parliament. And coincidentally the lib-dems along with all the other MPs doesn’t have 55% either. So the conservatives can get rid of the lib-dems anytime they want, and nobody can do anything about it.

That’s open, fair government, designed to rekindle trust in MPs, well at least David Cameron thinks absolute power is fair to him.
Read more

Scammers Hit UK Again

2010-05-15T00:31:00.000-07:00

The latest scam to hit the UK with a vengeance is being operated using mobile phones. It started about 3 weeks ago with a simple text message from a supposed legal company, asking if you have had an accident in the last two years. The text message invites you to reply ‘NO’ to stop future messages.
The mobile numbers are randomly generated by computer, and by texting ‘No’ it confirms to the scammers your number is live, enabling them to build a list for future scam campaigns. When they have extracted sufficient cash from the list, the list is then sold on to other scammers. Read More.. Vic Farron

UK Democracy is Dead

2010-05-15T00:19:00.000-07:00

The UK has a new government voted in democratically by the citizens of the UK. What a laugh !
The Conservative voters, voted for the Conservative Policies: They didn’t get those policies they voted for.
The Lib.Dem. Voters, voted for the LIB. Dem. Policies: They didn’t get those policies they voted for.
The Labour Voters, voted for the Labour Policies: They didn’t get those policies they voted for.

The Conservatives and the Lib. Dems. ditched their manifestos in the selfish pursuit of power. The two leaders have dictated to the UK what they will get. At least Gordon Brown stuck to his election promises, and didn’t compromise his integrity.

That’s Dictatorship spelt Democracy

One of the first things the UK voters have to suffer is that the new Government will pass a bill giving them a 5 year fixed term. That is 5 years of policies that the majority of the country don’t want. There isn’t one voter in the country that elected their MP to pass this law. Is this being power crazy, or just the fact that they expect the country to rebel against not getting the policies they voted for.

That’s 5 years of Dictatorship spelt Democracy.

Every MP was voted in because of his party promoting fair change. What is fair about telling the electorate what they intend to do, then in the pursuit of absolute power, compromise themselves by ditching policies and agreeing to support each other to force changes beneficial to themselves.

Is 5 years of absolute power Fair?
Read the full article Vic Farron

Is This Your family

2010-05-02T01:44:00.000-07:00

I was reading the part of the budget again concerning the increase in fuel duty. You may remember I did predict that as the world came out of recession the price of fuel would start to rise again. Although the oil companies increase the price of fuel more than the government increase the tax, we all pay the price in increased delivery costs, and of course when the duty is increased, or the oil companies put the price up, the private motorist also has to pay the increased VAT as well.
As part of a promotional email campaign 8 Years ago, I wrote several articles ‘The Average UK Family’ which charted a hypothetical day in the life of an average family, and how RFT Express with the contracts and deliveries we were making at the time, contributed to their standard of living. Sadly a lot of the companies we were delivering for have fallen by the wayside during the recession.
What the article does show, is that everything you own, use, wear or eat has been transported by road, by several vehicles. The house you live in came by road, your place of work, every piece of equipment, every machine, was transported by road.
I have reproduced one of the articles, I know several important decision makers in government read the blog, this could be a gently reminder of how increased fuel duty impacts on everyone.
Read the full article

Talking People – Not Politics

2010-04-20T01:37:00.000-07:00

We all know that whichever party is in power after the election, life is going to get a lot harder with tax rises of one sort or another and cuts in services. There are a lot of people out there who have lost their jobs, and have little hope of finding employment for some time. They are claiming benefits to which they are entitled through the National Insurance contributions they have paid in the past.
I have talked to a lot of people who have always worked, and lost their jobs. They feel many emotions, anger at losing their jobs through no fault of their own, frustration at the lack of available jobs, despair that they cannot support their families to the standard they have been accustomed to, worry that there is a possibility that they may lose their home, and probably most of all they feel they have lost their dignity and self respect.
Now I am not going to talk politics, BUT, during the sixties and seventies they were a couple of schemes that appeared to remedy the above situation, and help industry expand. The government of the day, faced with mounting payments for the unemployed, and lack of growth in industry, brought out a scheme where they would pay companies to employ those workers who were on the dole. This gave companies both large and small a real incentive to expand and create more jobs. The scheme was very simple; the government used the money they would have to pay for the basic unemployment benefits, and gave it to the company for up to a year to help pay the wages of any one they employed, who had been out of work for a certain length of time.
This gave an incentive to companies to expand, most of all it gave the unemployed person a real job, and gave them their self respect back again. The cost so far to the British taxpayer, the same as keeping that person unemployed, except that now the government would make money from the previously unemployed on their National insurance contributions, and their income tax.
Read the article

Vic Farron RFT Express

New:: Article Directory and PDF Library

2010-04-16T09:11:00.001-07:00

Launched a few days ago the New Article Directory has proved an overwhelming success, giving visitors better access to all the articles, with interest from as far away as China, Japan, and Taiwan.
The PDF Library covers the RFT articles and UK Gov., as well as the VOSA and RoSPA sites
Google announced on Friday that it would take speed into account when ranking websites. That means that websites will have to remove a lot of the pictures, or make them smaller and of a poorer quality. RFT Express will have to remove the Google translation bar, as this is slow to load and holds the site up from loading until the server has contacted Google. The same goes for the scrolling text.
One alternative is to pay out a fortune for a very fast server, based in the US [ Google take into account where your server is based] RFT Express has a lot of foreign visitors, so we are still going to leave the old translator on the blog, this loads quicker but it is old technology.
The advantage to it is that once you have translated the blog, if you use the links on the site it will automatically translate every page you go to, and it will translate automatically the next site you go to [provided you use the links on the site.] I went on to facebook, and RFT Express Parcels, and Yorkshire Courier, and they all translated ok. I also followed the link on UK Pensions, and this translated the Direct Gov site, and each link I followed on there.
RFT understand that the take-over of Readers Digest has been completed, and a statement will be issued this week. It is expected that Readers Digest will no longer be available in print, but will be published on line.
We have the election coming up in a few weeks; I have always stayed clear of writing about politics, religion and race, so you will be spared that.
Nationwide Building Society has caused a great stir this week, as from 05/06/10 they are banning their customers with cash cards from drawing less that £100 from the counter. You can read the full story by Paul Lewis of the BBC You might wonder whose money it is, the Building Society or the customers !!!
The Halifax tried this some time ago, the way people reacted was not what the Halifax wanted. Customers wanting less than £100 with their cash cards, on being told they couldn’t have their money, simply drew out the £100, then when the clerk asked politely if there was anything else they could do for them, the customers simply said yes, I would like to put the extra money I have had to draw out back in to my cash card account.

Twitter has announced the ‘Pay per Tweet’ for industry and people who want to pay to advertise their Tweets.
Businesses in the UK are showing more confidence in the economy, and starting to increase turnover.
The ash plume from the Icelandic volcano closed UK air space yesterday. A few planes landed and departed from Scottish and Northern Island airports today. This situation could continue for a few days yet.

Vic Farron RFT Express

2010-04-07T05:30:00.000-07:00

As Promised some time ago 41 Twitter Tools and Apps
Vic Farron RFT Express

Reduce Driving Costs Part 2

2010-03-21T03:25:00.000-07:00

I have been driving vans and wagons for the last 50 years, with only 1 endorsements for speeding [In a Sprinter] and no accidents. Times have changed a lot during that time, vehicles have got faster, roads are better, speed cameras have been invented, mobile phones and sat navs are the two inventions we can’t live without, or so we think. Seven or eight years ago I could drive to probably around 1000 different industrial estates around the country, with out even looking at a map. Nothing spectacular in that, every wagon driver and courier could do the same. About this time I was on 24 hour standby for a large printing firm, I would get a call to pick up a load, when I collected the load and asked for the address, if I was lucky they gave me the name of the firm I had to deliver to, more often than not all the night staff new was the initials of the firm, occasionally they knew the town. [This was all the information the night staff had on their work ticket.] Read the full article

Vic Farron RFT Express

Reduce Driving Costs

2010-03-21T03:19:00.000-07:00

The way you drive can affect your income. Couriers were renowned for using excessive speed, the attitude being, the sooner I get this job done- the sooner I can start on the next. Unfortunately in this day and age, this reasoning doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. For a start off you may not have another job to go to, and taking on too much work can result in excessive driving hours, something the new C.P.C. has been brought in to combat.
But let’s talk about saving money first. The government have been pushing manufactures to produce vehicles which are less harmful to the environment, and do more miles to the gallon/litre. Manufacturers have tackled this on several fronts, firstly vans are now more aerodynamic increasing efficiency, secondly by reducing weight, and thirdly most, if not all, new vans now have six gears.
The weight reductions mostly in the engines increases efficiency, in the short term at a future cost.
What influences your driving costs.... Read The Full Article

Vic Farron RFT Express

Meet My Co-Driver- The Half Dog

2010-03-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

I thought it was time to tell you a little about myself, and of course my half dog. The dog is not really a half a dog; it’s just that I have him for about half a week while my son works. I sometimes think my son bought the dog, a Border Collie because he thought I needed more exercise in my supposed retirement. Unfortunately because of pressure of work, my first contract run starts at 4-30 a.m. five days a week, and invariably I have to take up some of the excess work load that comes in, which tends to be every day. Tomorrow for instance on top of the first contract I have two other long distance deliveries, which if I don’t manage to combine the two loads, it will mean calling in the temp drivers and hiring another vehicle. All our vehicles are fully booked for tomorrow, and all the office staff are out on the road again. The subcontractors are taking a lot of the excess workload, but I am still ringing round trying to place loads. Unfortunately a lot of our high profile clients insist they have the same driver every time, which complicates things. Read the full article
Vic Farron

Reduce Driving Costs

2010-03-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

Readers Digest Latest

2010-03-07T05:54:00.000-08:00

I reported in my blog Readers Digest on the 18th February that Readers Digest had gone into administration, and that ‘Readers Digest [UK] is a profitable company, with a strong brand and should have no difficulties attracting bids.’
Only nine days later on the 27th February the administrator, Philip Sykes said ‘There is "significant interest" in Reader's Digest from potential buyers, he was "reasonably optimistic" and that negotiations with investors had begun’.
The American owners, Readers Digest Association are actively marketing advertising space in the May edition to media agencies. They also confirmed that the famous prize draw would continue, and that future campaigns would be reviewed. Reading between the lines, maybe the administrator could be considering a deal to include the parent company as well. The parent company Readers Digest Association filed for bankruptcy protection last year in the US.

Vic Farron RFT Express

Cyberbullying:What every parent and child should know

2010-02-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

What Every Parent Should Know:-
Cyberbullying is different to the normal school playground bullying, in that it happens in the privacy of the Childs home. I say ‘the privacy of home’ for the simple reason that a lot of parents still believe a child or young person is safe from bullying in their home.
Direct Gov on the Young People page describe Cyberbullying is when one person or a group of people try to threaten, tease or embarrass someone else by using a mobile phone or the internet. Cyberbullying is just as harmful as bullying in the real world. If you see it happening, report it. Don't ignore it.
The most common occurrences of bullying take place in the form of telephone calls or texts messages to your child’s mobile, through social sites, instant messaging, such as MSN, Video hosting sites such as Utube, web cams and gaming sites. This type of bullying is often compounded by other people deliberately, or unintentionally, resending emails, or commenting on videos.
Unfortunately this is not the only way your child could be under attack, or even you. Read the full article and make sure you email this article to a friend, and let them protect their children.
Vic Farron RFT Express

The Demise of Readers Digest UK

2010-02-18T12:38:00.000-08:00

Readers Digest announced that they had gone into administration yesterday. This move has been expected after rumours that Readers Digest had a shortfall in its UK Pension Fund of £125million. The American owners of Readers Digest, the Readers Digest Association agreed to pay a small percentage of the deficit, but was over-ruled by the regulator.
The administrator went on television, confirming that Readers Digest would carry on as usual until a buyer was found. It is understood that Readers Digest [UK] is a profitable company, with a strong brand and should have no difficulties attracting bids. The American readers digest was formed in 1922 and the UK version in 1938, and now has a circulation of over half a million. The 1000th edition was published in 2005.
B.T. announced on the 11th February that they would pay off its £9 billion pension deficit. Previously BT had agreed to pay an extra £525m into the scheme in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Now it has agreed to continue the process for a further 14 years, starting with £583m in 2012 and rising by 3% a year thereafter.
Vic Farron RFT Express

Google’s New Universal Search

2010-02-13T16:57:00.000-08:00

Google announce the first steps toward a universal search model, offering users a more integrated and comprehensive way to search online.

Google's vision for universal search is to ultimately search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time. Beginning today, Google will incorporate information from a variety of previously separate sources – including videos, images, news, maps, books, and websites – into a single set of results.

Google is also in the process of deploying a new technical infrastructure that will enable the search engine to handle the computationally intensive tasks required to produce universal search results. The company is also releasing the first stage of an upgraded ranking mechanism that automatically and objectively compares different types of information. As always, Google™ search results are ranked automatically by algorithms to deliver the best results to users anywhere in the world. You can read the more on this press release here.

WEB CEO is a one of the most important free Search Engine Optimisation programmes, the link to this free programme is available on our web site One of the segments of the WEB CEO programme is a tracking tool, [this is a paid for addition]. They track over 300,000 websites and have produced graphs from January 2009 to January 2010, showing where visitors have come from to these websites. As expected Google are still the main source of visitors, what is interesting is where the other visitors come from....
read the full article

Vic Farron, RFT Express

RFT Express Couriers: Save The Planet: Save Money: Article by Vic Farron

2010-02-04T09:31:00.000-08:00

RFT Express Couriers: Save The Planet: Save Money: Article by Vic Farron

UK Scam list

2010-02-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

According to the Office Of Fair Trading [OFT] 10% of Britons have fallen for scams, either email scams, telephone scams using high pressure sales techniques, selling non existent products, and postal scams. Email scams are the biggest culprit, with 73% of adults receiving one last year, with 2 million people losing more than £50 to scammers. The scammers circulate lists, between each other, of the names of people who have fallen for these scams.

The latest scam is an email supposedly from the Inland Revenue, claiming you are due a tax rebate, and asking you to supply your bank details. Most of these scams originate from abroad. Be vigilant, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably isn’t.

Vic farron RFT Express

Google search Tips

2010-01-23T13:14:00.000-08:00

Google Search engines are responsible for 85% of the on line searches, of this approximately 65% were for people wanting to buy something; the other 20% were classed as research.

We give you some tips on how to use Google as the professionals do, and find what you are looking for quicker.

Be Specific with Google Searches

1 Lets say you want to find a ‘Courier’ firm. If you enter the word :- ‘Couriers’ you will come up with millions of courier firms, and finding the one you want will take a long time

2 You can clarify your search by specifying an area:- ‘Yorkshire Couriers’, or narrow it down a little more by using the term ‘Yorkshire Parcel Couriers’

3 If you are looking for a specialised courier, most specialised couriers will have optimised their site for phrases people will type in for that particular specialised market, such as :- ‘ Hanging Garment Deliveries’. Or more specific:-‘Hanging Garment Deliveries UK and Europe’

The more specific your search is, the easier it is to find what you are looking for.

You can use the ‘This Or That’

All search terms are usually not case sensitive. This term is case sensitive, the ‘OR’ must be in uppercase.:- for example ‘hanging garment deliveries europe OR pallet deliveries uk and europe’

Similar Words

If you are searching for a specific word, and you want to include similar words or synonyms. Use ‘~’ between the words. :- for example ‘ Courires~transport’

Exclude Words

If you want to exclude words from the Google search use ‘-‘ between the words. :- for example ‘Couriers – Transport’

Site search

If you want to search a site, such as this one for a particular phrase, use site:www.rftexpresscouriers.co.uk:- for example “1p per mile” site:www.rftexpresscouriers.co.uk

Numerical Range search

To find results that contains any of a range of numbers. Use this ‘..’ search parameter for example :- Births 1967..2010 or laptop £200..£300

Calculator

You can type your expression direct into the Google search box. Example 35% of 17. More examples on http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html

Converter

Convert currency, GBP to US Dollars ,sizes from metric to inches, litres to gallons, Example 1 metre=?inches

Read the full article Vic farron Rftexpress

RFT Express News

2010-01-17T10:47:00.000-08:00

2009 was a good year for RFT Express Couriers, with a 34% increase in business during 2009, from the previous year. The majority of new accounts gained in 2009, have resulted in repeat business with 45% of the total number of new accounts resulted in being contract work. Contract work is regular runs repeated daily, weekly or monthly, which makes it easier to manage the increase. European runs contributed 25% of the total increase, with Italy now taking the number one spot from Germany.

For 2010 the target increase is 35% on the 2009 figures. RFT Express Couriers have identified 150 plus companies who will be able to benefit from RFT ‘s expertise in our niche market of ’Hanging garment deliveries UK and Europe.’

Google contributed a considerable amount of visitors, with this search term, coming at no 1&2 in most European searches, with enquiries from North Africa, and as far away as China.

Bing the Microsoft owned search engine didn’t list us in the UK searches on the first page, but they did put us at no 1 in the world search.

Over the Christmas / New Year break, we had the statisticians analyse our databases and records, as well as the web stats, to enable them to come up with cost savings. Part of the brief was to analyse the transport industry as a whole, and spot future trends within this sector, as well as the clothing manufacturing, wholesale, and retailing sector, as well as the print industry, and advise RFT how we could take advantage of these trends.

Read the full Statement

Vic Farron RFT Express

Free Microsoft Office 2010

2010-01-10T05:26:00.000-08:00

RFT Express promised exciting things for 2010, well if you are a Microsoft fan, here is something really exciting
Microsoft has released the beta version of the new Office 2010, and you can download this for free. Several versions are available, Home and business, Professional, and Professional Plus. Included are new versions of Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint, One note, Outlook, Publisher, Sharepoint Workspace, Communicator, and Info Path.
What is helpful is the fact that all these programmes ‘Talk to each other’, an ideal solution for the small to medium sized business, and students.
Additional downloads include:- Microsoft Visio 2010 and Project 2010.
Microsoft state they have had 2 million downloads in the first seven weeks. Prices for the US have now been published on their site.
More information and download link from Microsoft.

Open Office

Open Office is a totally free open source office suite a good alternative, check it out on RFT Express / Downloads

Twitter Rankings

You can now get your Twitter account graded courtesy of Hubspot. This is a free service provided by Hubspot, and will tell you how influential your twitter site is. Tip :- don’t bother trying to see what grade my twitter account is, I simply haven’t had the time to use it this year, this will alter as one of the blogs is now linked to twitter. The RFT Express facebook also picks up the my blog, or you can subscribe to the feed on the blog. As I said before we have been extremely busy during 2009, but many of the office applications have now been automated, and will give me more time to write.

For your convenience we have added a share button on this blog, and on every page on the website, please feel free to use it.

Vic Farron RFT Express couriers

2009 – The Year of Opportunity

2010-01-02T04:52:00.000-08:00

RFT Express wish all their Customers and Clients, Staff, Contract Couriers and Readers a Happy and Prosperous 2010.
It has been some time since I have managed to write a blog, due entirely to pressure of work, please accept my apologies for this.
The planned expansion during 2009, exceeded all parameters and goals we had set, and resulted in everybody taking to the road to fulfil our obligations to our customers and clients, including at times office staff. This was very much appreciated.
We expected the pressure to ease during the Christmas and New year break, when a lot of firms close for a the festive season, but true to form this wasn’t to be, with two new contracts starting, one two days before Christmas, and the other just after Christmas.
RFT had request for help from 4 major companies, to take up their extra work loads at Christmas, unfortunately we had to decline. These companies were experiencing a similar growth to that we had experienced since April, but had failed to plan for it.
Our planned expansion during 2009 came from two major sources, firstly new customers finding us on the internet. Our niche market, ‘Hanging Garment Deliveries UK and Europe’ was continually coming top in the organic searches on Google in the UK and all the European Google search engines. Our core business ‘Pallet Deliveries UK and Europe’ also featured high in these searches. The other major source for the increase came from recommendations from our customers and clients, for which we give them a special ‘Thank You.’
RFT Express have a lot of exciting plans for 2010, more news on these will follow shortly.
Vic Farron RFT Express Couriers.co.uk

New downloads- Site Upgrade

2009-10-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

Lots of new free downloads of Games, [including 4 Free TV Channels], Home and Office Free Downloads, Free Anti Virus, and Free Webmaster Downloads. Just scroll down to the bottom of the new menu. We have even put an ‘add me button’ so you can bookmark these programs to you favourite book-marking site, or email to a friend.
The site is in the process of being upgraded, unfortunately we have had another of those busy months, and I haven’t had time to upgrade all pages. There is still a lot more free downloads to add, but these may have to wait until the Christmas – New Year break.
My last post titled Success was well received, and the link to RFT has produced several enquiries for quotes to Europe from people who have used the link [Your Company Name Here] use RFT Express Couriers for all our UK & European Deliveries With one customer who used it at the bottom of their page, saying it was already showing in Google that they now deliver their goods in Europe.
I have recently optimised RFT Express for the search term ‘Hanging Garment Deliveries in UK and Europe’ and on most of the European Google search engines, RFT Express comes up at least once in each of the top three spots on page one. This helps those people who have used this link on their pages, as it should start showing their sites along with the RFT Express listing. It also comes up on the top Chinese search engine ‘Baidu’ as well as other search engines across the world.
It always helps to link to site with a Google Page Rank, RFT Express page rank varies between 1 and 2, which when you consider this site only went live 6 months ago, is fairly good. Unfortunately the search engines don’t take into account the visitors to the blogs. This blog alone is redistributed by Google blog search, Blogger, Weblogs, Blo.gs, Technorati, Feed Burner, Syndic8, NewsGator, My Yahoo, PubSub.Com, Blogdigger, BlogRolling, BlogStreet, Moreover, Weblogalot, Ice Rocket, News is free, Topic exchange, Spin3r, Blog line, Post rank, Sky grid, Collecta, and many more. Although the readers are in the thousands, Google don’t count these visits to the site, which is stopping the page rank going as high as it should be. But they do count the links both on the blogs and when readers bookmark them on the social sites. So take advantage of the social bookmarking sites provided with the ‘add me button’ and add links to your site.
If you aren’t getting increased new business regularly from your web site, you should read the articles on our site and start spreading your name around, and climb up the search engine positions.[Take advantage of the ‘Add Me Button’ it works for your business and for social contacts.]

Article by VicFarron Staff writer RFT Express

Success

2009-09-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

The last post Recession- How Everybody Can Profit From it created a lot of interest and raised a few of queries:
Why do we have such a large mailing list, and is it spam?
The answer is that we use our own lists, plus those of our partners. These lists are called ‘Double Opt In’. You may have come across these when you have subscribed to a newsletter. You fill a form out on a website subscribing, then you get an email asking you to confirm your subscription. This is called ‘Double Opt in’ If you have a jealous rival who is subscribing you to thousands of email lists, a ‘Double Opt in’ stops this, because the confirmation email goes to your email address, no confirmation means you are not subscribed.
Will I get lots of visitors to my site, who are not really interested in it?
The answer is No. Again going back to the email lists you subscribe to, because you were interested in a certain subject you subscribed to that list. When you place link on your site we automatically check it, and the key words related to your site, which allow us to include your link in emails to people who have shown an interested in your products or services.
Which is the best sort of link, text or image?
The choice is yours. The first thing you have to consider is if the colour of our image links will be complimentary to your sites general look and feel. A text link can appear in your general text, or at the bottom of the page. This link works for you extremely well. [Your Company Name Here] use RFT Express Couriers for all our UK & European Deliveries when you put your company name in it. This is ideal at the bottom of the page, and can increase your business. This tells your customers that you can also deliver in Europe; and it will also be picked up by the European search engines as well. It also blends in with your site theme automatically. If you want a different text link, email me.

Article by VicFarron Staff writer RFT Express

Recession- How Everybody Can Profit From It !!!!!!

2009-09-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

This is probably the most important post you have ever read. It is the final post in the popular Recession Series, and shows you how to get yourself, your company name, or brand in front of millions of people, and companies. Best of all it’s approved and encouraged by all the search engines, and it’s FREE. Links, content, and visitors determine where you are on page 1 of the search engines. We are going to explore the SNOWBALL affect of LINKS. Just like a snowball rolling down a mountain, the number of links keeps growing.
• If you are in business with a website, and want more links, and exposure, you can use all these methods. More links means more people can find you, and most important so can the search engines. AND IT HELPS YOUR RANKINGS.
• If you are selling on EBAY, and want more links, and exposure, you can use all these methods. More links means more people can find you, and most important so can the search engines

• If you are in business without a website, and want more links, and exposure, you can use all these methods.
• If you simply want to increase your exposure on your social Facebook or Myspace, you can use all these methods.

• If you are looking for a job, or thinking of starting a small business, you can use all these methods.

• If you are thinking of going into business, you can use all these methods. And get your site get off to a flying start.

• The most important way people find you or your site is through links.

Read the full article
This is the last in a series of articles taken from an E book due later in the year.

August Traditionally a Quiet Month

2009-08-31T12:36:00.000-07:00

August traditionally a quiet month, was absolutely horrendous. Although we had two drivers on holiday during the month, both on contract runs, there runs were easily covered. What we didn’t for see was the dramatic increase in business during August. Companies who during June and July we were delivering samples to the trade shows, and the private viewings for mail order companies and department stores, all picked up increased business which resulted in the run up to Christmas starting early. With the increased practice of department stores offering privileged customers the chance to preview new season lines, it looks as though competition in the retail sector is going to be fierce. Manufacturers who ran stocks down, the race is on to restock, which means a lot of companies being dependent on the lending criteria of the banks to survive. Companies with cash reserves are now in a much stronger position than those who were trading on credit.
European runs virtually doubled this month, with Germany still contributing the largest share. Although we expected this increase in mid September, to keep up with the increased demand it has been necessary for all staff to be out on the road, resulting in telephones not being answered quickly, and some customers not being able to get through at all, resulting in more email request for loads to be delivered. RFT Express apologises for this, and trusts our customers were not unduly inconvenienced. Three new vehicles were ordered for the expected increase and should be in service over the next few weeks.
The sudden upswing in business with our customers may not be replicated nationwide, but it does lend a little bit more weight to the theory that we may be in for a double headed recession, if we come out of recession too quickly. I can see some companies who ran stock levels too low, being unable refinance stock levels, resulting in more closures over the next few months. One BBC reporter quoted the financial institutions as operating the 3-6-3 policy. Borrow at 3%, lend at 6%, on the golf course by 3.00 p.m.
The next 4 to 6 weeks should give a clearer picture.

Free Viral Advertising

2009-08-30T04:22:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth post in the popular ‘recession’ series, following on from: The Recession-A Great Opportunity?, The Recession What An Opportunity?, Recession - Act Now
Up until the recession RFT Express was doing OK, the recession and the chance of acquiring struggling companies, was the spring board to bring forward our intention to expand our customer base. With companies closing down, many courier companies couldn’t survive if they lost one or more customers. Multinational courier and transport firms were closing non profitable sections of their businesses down, this left a big whole to fill in the UK and Europe markets . This phenomenon is typical of virtually all sectors in the market. The only way we could capitalise quickly on this was through our websites.
Why Use Google?
Google is the place to be noticed whether you have a website or not [on this page on our website you can find out how to get a web presence, without paying for it, and with no experience] We have several of these, and every month we get statistics from directories we who have replicated what they think is important on our site, and reproduce a mini site which gets us extra business, all for free. It’s a snowball effect which is generated by links on Google.
Before the internet was available to everyone, the only ways to generate business were through personal contacts, knocking on doors or paid advertising. There used to be a true saying :-‘without advertising a remarkable thing happens.....NOTHING!’ This is still true today, the only difference is the way you advertise.
Read the full article
This is the fourth in a series of articles taken from an E book due later in the year.
Vic Farron, staff writer for rftexpresscouriers.co.uk

The Recssion-Act Now

2009-08-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

The Recession – Now is the time to act!
This article is the third in the series, and follows on from The recession- a great opportunity? The recession-what an opportunity

The first article was an attempt to put you in the right frame of mind to succeed. If you don’t believe you can succeed, you won’t. The first article showed how easy it is to set up a small business, with little or no capital. With the current climate you have very little chance of borrowing from you bank, but it always worth a try. There are other ways of raising capital if you have to. There are grants available from many organisations. A search of the internet will reveal some of these, in additions some local authorities will help with premises, and business rate reductions. Your local Business Link and local Chamber of Commerce will help by pointing you in the right direction, and information can also be obtained from your local library. If everything else fails try friends and family, you never know, you might even end up with a partner.
Your bank is still the first place to try, even though they may not lend you any money, they do provide some support, and a lot of literature which can be helpful. You will need a business plan and a profit and loss forecast as well as a cash flow forecast, and a projection on turnover. Your research will give you some indication of what these figures should be. The second article dealt with forecasting your turnover and cash flow.
Read the full article.....
Vic Farron staff writer for RFT Express

UK EX-PATS Pension Rule Changes

2009-08-06T05:49:00.000-07:00

There have been one or two changes to the UK pension entitlement during the last 18 months, and with the number of requests for information we are receiving from people living abroad, it seems an appropriate time to outline the changes. . There is a link on our website, where you can get a figure for your pension entitlement, and a PDF download, in case the page isn’t always live,

Firstly if you are entitled to a pension, YOU WON’T GET IT UNLES YOU ASK FOR IT! Carry on reading.

UK Gov. Plans for Greener Future

2009-07-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

The UK Government has announced that personal car travel produces 13 per cent of the UK's total greenhouse gas emissions. It also contributes to local air pollution and congestion. The type of car you own, the way you drive it and the fuel you use can make a big difference to your impact on the environment. They also confirm that the Scappage scheme is only temporary.
Buying a new car can reduce the carbon emissions, how long it takes for the reduction in carbon emissions, to out way the emissions discharged in the manufacture of these new cars hasn’t been taken into account. But at least this initiative is encouraging people to get into more debt, and helping to increase foreign car imports.
The Government state that around 20 per cent of the yearly emissions cuts between now and 2020 will be achieved by cleaning up the way people in the UK travel. By 2050, road and rail transport will be largely decarbonised and aviation and shipping will have become more efficient.
They have also announced new measurers detailing what kinds of electric and plug-in hybrid cars could qualify for the £2-£5,000 incentives expected to apply from 2011

Vic Farron RFT Express

The Recession – A Great Opportunity?

2009-07-19T05:11:00.000-07:00

Recession has gripped the world creating depression amongst the people. Fear of losing their jobs and homes, spreads doom and gloom every where. If you believe this; you are already halfway down the slippery slope to the bottom of the pit of despair. What you want is P.M.A.
Adversity brings out the best and worst in people; make sure it brings out the best in you. In business you plan ahead for all possible scenarios, or should do, fail to plan means you plan to fail. For the majority of people i.e. those not in business simply plan their finances as best they can, and because times have been good, the thought of losing their job has not entered the equation, hence the doom and gloom.
But all is not lost, you can usually find free debt counselling, this tends to delay the immediate problems and consequences, but doesn’t cure the problem. To a lot of people the idea of using a stranger to sort out their debt and their lives is an acknowledgement of failure.
You can do something about it yourself.
Losing your job doesn’t mean you are a failure, it means you have been given choices.
Read the full article
This is the first in a series of articles taken from an E book due later in the year.
Vic Farron, staff writer for rftexpresscouriers.co.uk

How to Lose A Customer in 1 Easy Stage, a True Story Based on Fact.

2009-07-12T07:38:00.000-07:00

It is with some shame that I recount my experience of last week.
On Thursday evening a neighbour came round, asking a favour. The neighbour works for a company we have been trying to get in with for some time. The neighbour wanted a pallet of hair products moving from Bradford in the Uk to somewhere in Holland. The Dutch customer was screaming wanting the delivery the next day, but the neighbour said the load had to be thoroughly rechecked, and wouldn’t be ready until Friday afternoon [presumably because the first load was not up to spec, or had been damaged in transit]... Read the full article
Vic Farron RFT Express staff writer.

New Digital Strategy for Britain

2009-07-08T15:29:00.000-07:00

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "Digital Britain is about giving the country the tools to succeed and lead the way in the economy of the future.The report shows how we will ensure we have a world-class digital and communications infrastructure, that we promote and protect talent and innovation in our creative industries, that we modernise our TV and radio frameworks and support local news.
The Government are investing in areas such as broadband access for every home and business and the move from analogue to digital technology will bring benefits across the board, driving growth, enabling businesses to thrive, and providing new opportunities and choices for households right across the country. It is an essential part of building Britain’s future
More news

June has been a funny old month

2009-07-08T15:27:00.000-07:00

June has been a funny old month, as the temperature went up, the visitors went down. I assume they were all outside soaking up the sun, and the drink.
With the death of Michael Jackson, a few ‘news sites’ which were associated with the entertainment business just crashed through the number of people trying to get on.
Talking of sites crashing, one of our sites www.yorkshirecourier.com has been crashing lately with, according to the server, too much traffic. I am assured the site will not crash again, but if it does, you should be able to find the information you want at www.rftexpresscouriers.co.uk

Free Downloads

The good news is we have added quite few new free software downloads, webmaster downloads, and some awesome free games sent in by our visitors. You can access these from http://www.rftexprescouriers.co.uk/ Providing the free software is our way of saying thank you to our visitors and clients. The downloads are proving very popular, with the majority of downloads being articles relating to the Courier industry. On the 18th June we had 835 visitors subscribing to our blog feed in one day.
The serious industry blogs are on the way, in the meantime here is a bit of fun to test your mind.

You are stood in a one roomed building with 4 sides. On each side there is a window. No matter which window you look out of, you are looking south. A bear walks passed one window and looks in at you. What colour is the bear? [Answer in the next blog]

If you think you know the colour mail me.

Article by Vic Farron http://www.rftexpresscouriers.co.uk/

One law for the rich, one for the poor.

2009-07-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

The UK government has announced new fixed penalty notices for failing to wear a seatbelt, or putting illegal plates on a vehicle have increased to £60, up from £30 at present. You could argue that having to wear a seat belt, could infringe your civil rights.
As for the illegal number plates, some are so confusing, that if you spotted one in a hit and run, you wouldn’t be able to tell the police the correct number. For years these illegal number plates have been a compulsory fail on an M.O.T. test, but the Government has always taken a soft approach to this. If they made this fine £6,000 instead of £60, it might stop this practice, as it is most people will gladly pay the fine, why not, it is less than you would pay for being caught by a speed camera., and no penalty points.
Better still a £6,000 fine, and the vehicle confiscated would be more appropriate. Check out what the Government say http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/DG_178975?cid=rss
Do you have an opinion on this?

Britain, a Nation of Animal lovers.

2009-07-08T15:25:00.000-07:00

All the world is of the opinion that the British think more about their pets than they do about people. The world is wrong, it is only the British Public who own, or have owned a family pet. A pet is a loyal companion, your children’s best mate, your protector and your comforter. That’s why we have the R.S.P.C.A., and the R.S.P.B. to protect our animals, and they do a better job of protecting our animals, than the authorities do of protecting our vulnerable children.
The UK Government allow you to have your pet put down if it is terminally ill or in extreme pain, when there is no chance of a cure, in fact they will prosecute you for causing your pet undue suffering if you don’t. Poor Granny in pain, with a terminal illness, bedridden, unable to feed, clothe or wash herself, with no quality of life, the Government says she must suffer a long, painful, lingering death.
It is understandable why the world are of the opinion that the British people, and the British Government think more of our pets, than of people. On the news yesterday it was reported that a Police Dog handler left two Alsatians in a Police car, outside a Police Station where they died. The Police chief said on radio that they had spent hundreds of thousands of pound building suitable accommodation for their animals, and said it would not happen again. The R.S.P.C.A were quick to take the animals for post mortem, at least we can satisfied that if there is a case to made, they will prosecute. There was no news about how many old people died of heat exhaustion.

Pre Pack Insolvency

2009-07-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

In my post on the 8th June headed ‘The changing role of the courier’ I mentioned pre-pack insolvency, the response from people who have been lucky enough to not to be a victim of this loophole, I will attempt to explain how it works. Principally it is the same as a normal insolvency, except that the current owners take the assets of the company, and agree to pay for them at a knock down price in the future.
Let’s assume you have a company with a large client base, plenty of assets and principally a good name, but with a cash flow problem, i.e. you can’t pay your bills when due. A lot of companies try and trade their way out of insolvency, which only compounds the problem, then take the route of ‘pre pack insolvency’. They call in their chartered accountant, show him the figures and suggest that they make an agreement to keep existing staff on, buy the company assets at a later date, and start trading again from the same address, same staff, same phone numbers, but with a very slight change to the company name. The accountant contacts the largest creditors, if they agree that they will accept payment in full or part at a later date, then the accountants set everything up, sends letters out to the other creditors, notifying them after the new company has started trading, that the old company has been liquidated. The new company trades with the same directors as before, the same cash flow policies, but now debt free totally or in part.
Most ‘Pre Pack insolvencies’ struggle, or are unable to get credit, ask yourself would you deal with a company who did this, with the consequences that they do go bankrupt before too long.
Article by Vic Farron www.rftexpresscouriers.co.uk

Is The UK Coming Out of Recession?

2009-07-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

During this week we have heard the Governor of the Bank of England , Mervin King announce that the UK could be coming out of recession due to the policies put in place by the Bank of England, and Quoting the fact that the Honda plant is re-opening. The following day the Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the same thing, this time quoting the measures he had put in place.
I think they read my post of the 28th April [some hope!!!!]Reproduced below.
Green Shoots Of Recovery?
April 22, 2009 04:14:00
Posted By vic farron
I am not a politician, but there is still the possibility that this article could still come back and bite me in the future. Never the less the information coming out of some companies does give rise to the need to convey the good news.
In RFT’s biggest sector, the print industry, some firms are reporting increase in sales, with firms who previously were shedding staff like a tree in autumn, are now scrambling about trying to find experienced temps, while other companies are reinstating shift working, for some departments, or at least considering this possibility .
Carry on reading......http://www.rftexpresscouriers.co.uk/courier%20info.htm

Staff Will Walk After Recession

2009-07-08T15:20:00.000-07:00

Some companies are using the recession to impose pay freezes or even pay cuts, as well as increasing workloads on staff to cover for redundancies. With some companies no longer allowing 'tea breaks', and forbidding workers to eat or drink while working.
Changing staggered meal breaks for different departments, into the full factory having the same half hour meal breaks, has meant that many workers are spending their meal breaks queuing for their full break period to get into canteens unable to accommodate so many extra people.
Pressure to work longer hours is also demoralizing staff, and reducing productivity. Companies adopting this Victorian style of dictatorship management, will find that when the recession is over, those once loyal and experienced staff, will register their disgust of the treatment metered out to them, by using their feet and walking into better companies.

RoSPA LAUNCHES NEW VERSION OF DRIVER PROFILER

2009-07-08T15:17:00.000-07:00

RoSPA has launched an improved version of an award-winning psychometric risk assessment tool to bring new benefits to organisations wishing to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of their employees’ driving. Driver Profiler 2 is an online software package that assesses the risks associated with an employee’s use of the road, enabling informed decisions to be taken about training that might be required Go to RFT Exress Courier info, scroll down to Try it online Here

SAFED Safe and Fuel Efficient Driving

2009-07-08T15:12:00.000-07:00

This guide is part of a series of publications produced by the Department for Transport to encourage safe
and fuel efficient driving under the Freight Best Practice programme. Go to RFT Express Courier info to Download PDF

Total UK CO2 emissions = 542.6 million tonnes for 2007

2009-07-08T14:47:00.000-07:00

Latest figures in the UK Transport and Climate Change data factsheets - 26 March 2009, show that in 2007 the UK produced over 540 million tonnes of CO2.
Transport producing 173.2 million tonnes of CO2.Of this 173 million tonnes, private cars were responsible for 44.3%, HGVs were responsible for 15.2%, and vans were responsible for 8.3%.The Government use a ‘basket’ of six Green House Gases consisting of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, sulphur hexafluoride, perfluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons.
The provisional data for 2008 show CO2 emissions to be 531.8 million tonnes.

Changing role of the courier

2009-06-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

The recession has brought changes to the courier industry, some good some bad. Recessions have always been a challenge and an opportunity to companies, depending on management.

In the courier industry, over manning by courier companies has largly not been a problem, with most companies employing their own staff and vehicles for prestige customers, and the excess workload has been covered by self employed couriers