The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed today that his Budget Report Statement to the House of Commons will occur on Wednesday the 24th March 2010 at 12.30 pm.
Barclays has become the first bank in Europe to launch commercial contactless debit cards to its business customers. From March, all Barclays Business customers receiving new or re-issued cards will find that they come with contactless technology as standard. This enables them to pay for low value transactions by holding the card over a reader, without the need to enter a PIN or insert the card into a terminal.
Over six million people in the UK already have a contactless-enabled Barclays VISA debit card or Barclaycard credit card since the bank became the first in the UK to begin rolling-out the technology to its personal customers in 2007. The maximum limit for contactless card transactions increased recently from £10 to £15 in line with demand from retailers and customers, widening the appeal of the technology.
Brian Cunnington, Head of Debit Cards for Barclays said: “We work with a large number of small and medium businesses in the UK so we have a good understanding of their day-to-day banking needs. Introducing contactless-enabled debit cards to this group of customers will provide a practical alternative to other payments such as cash and cheques and will help to make managing their money a little more convenient by making it easier to keep records of small expenses, traditionally paid for by cash.
Marc O’Brien, Managing Director, Visa UK added: said: “Barclays and Barclaycard have been leading the industry with the roll-out of contactless payment technology and we are seeing usage increase rapidly as customers realise the benefit of being able to pay for transactions quickly, securely and conveniently. We firmly believe that contactless is the future of payment technology. 2010 looks set to be a major year - we expect millions more customers will be issued with contactless-enabled cards with many more retailers beginning to accept the technology in their outlets.
Barclays has produced a video, available to view on www.barclays.co.uk/video, explaining what contactless is, why Barclays is leading the industry in its roll-out of contactless cards and how and where contactless can be used.
Housing Minister John Healey has hailed the start of the biggest council house building programme in nearly two decades as work began today on the first of over two thousand new homes to help tackle waiting list pressures.
Mr Healey saw work get underway today in Tyneside on the first new site for Government funded council housing in the country. Many more sites across the country will follow in the coming weeks as the £141 million council housing drive, which is set to create over five thousand construction jobs, gets underway.
This is part of an extra £1.5 billion in the Housing Pledge Mr Healey made in June to build an additional 20,000 much needed affordable homes. As well as getting councils building homes again, this power of Government investment is getting housebuilding work restarted on stalled sites during the recession, and helping Housing Associations build more affordable homes - creating 45,000 extra jobs and nearly 3000 new apprenticeships in the industry.
Nearly £600,000 Government funding for Brancepeth Road, Hebburn has helped to get these first fifteen homes underway. Two more sites in Hebburn and South Shields will also start shortly as part of a drive across South Tyneside to create new homes designed for older tenants. The new homes will help ensure that tenants are provided with housing best suited to them and help reduce waiting list pressure in the area.
The minister also said that there was more funding to come for councils, with the second round of council house funding set for announcement later this month.
Housing minister John Healey said:
“The first spade is in the ground today and marks the beginning of the biggest council house building programme for nearly two decades. Many more sites across the country will be up and running in the coming weeks, and in a matter of days I will give the green light to funding for further council house building.
“Today Tyneside shows how the power of Government investment is tackling the shortage of affordable housing and also creating new jobs and supporting the construction industry when it needs it most.
“Alongside the extra leeway I am giving councils to manage their waiting lists according to local pressures, the new building started today will help councils tackle the housing needs of their communities.”
Pat Ritchie, regional director of the Homes and Communities Agency, said:
“We are delighted that the three developments in South Tyneside can now move forward to deliver quality, affordable supported housing for the elderly.
“This significant investment will provide purpose-built bungalows to help meet the high demand for properties suitable for elderly residents, which in turn will increase the availability of family homes in the South Tyneside area - stimulating the local housing market and supporting the wider regeneration programme.”
Councillor Bill Brady, South Tyneside Council’s Lead Member for Housing Futures, said:
“We are very proud that South Tyneside is the first place in the country to see construction work start on new council houses under this programme. We worked very hard to secure Government funding, and the fruits of these efforts will soon be there for all to see.
“Our Borough is in need of more older people’s accommodation, and we have a very high demand for affordable two-bedroom bungalows. Thanks to this programme, we can now look forward to the sight of 27 such properties taking shape on three sites in South Tyneside. These properties will be available for social rent and will form part of our efforts to deliver more affordable homes for people in South Tyneside, which is one of our top priorities.”
The start of construction today is a major milestone in a wide ranging package of measures to support councils to meet the housing needs of their communities.
In addition to the £141million funding which, when match-funded by councils, is expected to build over 2,000 council homes, Mr Healey also recently launched the first-ever national crackdown on tenancy cheats, to recover up to 10,000 council and housing association homes from fraudulent subletting over this and next year, and release them to those in real need.
He has also given councils more flexibility in how they manage their waiting lists. He also called on councils to do more to tackle the myths and misunderstandings about housing waiting lists, so local people can have confidence that the system is fair.
And he has launched plans to dismantle the current council housing finance system and replace it with a clearer, more transparent system. Under the revised system, councils will keep all their own rents and revenue to finance their housing services, in exchange for a one-off allocation of housing debt.
The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, introduced a temporary lower rate of VAT in last year’s pre budget report.
There was some speculation that he might have extended this reduction beyond the original term. However, in today’s pre-budget report statement to the House of Commons, he said:
I can confirm that VAT will return to 17.5 per cent on January 1 as planned.
Mr Speaker, I have no other changes in VAT to announce.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced that the MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team won the $40,000 cash prize in the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that required participants to locate 10 large, red balloons that had been placed at undisclosed locations across the United States. The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) team received the prize for being the first to identify the locations of all 10 balloons.
The winning team completed the challenge in under 9 hours by harnessing the internet to broadcast the fact that they were passing on all the prize money to those who help them win the challenge. They announced the MLM scheme on their challenge website as follows:
The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team is interested in studying information flow in social networks, so if we win, we’re giving all the money away to the people who help us find the balloons!
The website outlined an incentive scheme, which resembled principles similar to those of multi-level marketing (MLM) also known as ‘network marketing’.
The site acted as a central location for sign-ups, affiliate team management, social network sharing mechanisms and as a place to report sightings. In essence, it not only rewarded the ‘balloon spotters’ but also rewarded those who referred the spotter to sign up with the team. Furthermore, the ‘referrers of the referrers’ were rewarded three levels deep into ‘the downline chain’. Their web sites sums this up as follows:
We’re giving $2000 per balloon to the first person to send us the correct coordinates, but that’s not all — we’re also giving $1000 to the person who invited them. Then we’re giving $500 whoever invited the inviter, and $250 to whoever invited them, and so on… (see how it works).
The Challenge has captured the imagination of people around the world, is rich with scientific intrigue, and, we hope, is part of a growing ‘renaissance of wonder’ throughout the nation,” said DARPA director, Dr. Regina E. Dugan. DARPA salutes the MIT team for successfully completing this complex task less than 9 hours after balloon launch.
DARPA announced the Network Challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of the ARPANet, pre-cursor to today’s Internet, to explore how broad-scope problems can be tackled using social networking tools. The Challenge explores basic research issues such as mobilization, collaboration, and trust in diverse social networking constructs and could serve to fuel innovation across a wide spectrum of applications.
DARPA plans to meet with teams to review the approaches and strategies used to build networks, collect information, and participate in the Challenge.
DARPA is the central research and development organization for the USA Department of Defense (DoD). The Agency manages and directs research and development projects for DoD and pursues research and technology where the risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances in support of military missions.
With DARPA showing an interest in using social networks for defence, it might not be too long before you receive a text message from the government ‘urging’ you to point your I-phone 32 degrees north and start capturing with the video recorder.
British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) Economic Forecast - December 2009
Ahead of the Chancellor’s Pre-Budget Report, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has today published its latest Economic Forecast. The business group, which calls itself “the National Voice of Local Business”, has made downward revisions to its GDP expectations for 2009 and 2010, but is more optimistic about the number of job losses the country will experience, reducing its prediction for peak unemployment to below 3 million.
The main features of the BCC forecast include:
Unemployment will continue to rise over the next 6 to 9 months but at a much slower pace. Our new forecast is for unemployment to increase from 2.46 million to a peak of 2.7 million, or 8.6% of the workforce, in mid-2010. In September we forecast a jobless peak of 3 million.
We are now forecasting a large decline in UK GDP of 4.6% in 2009, followed by positive growth of 1% in 2010 and 2.3% in 2011. In our September forecast, we predicted a 4.3% GDP fall in 2009, followed by increases of 1.1% in 2010 and 1.9% in 2011.
Britain’s fiscal position is unsustainable in the medium-term. Public borrowing is forecast to total £175bn in 2009-10 and £188bn in 2010-11, before easing to £169bn in 2011-12. Public debt is set to increase to dangerous levels, in excess of 90% of GDP. This debt can only be reduced through fiscal tightening, such as spending cuts and tax increases.
Despite a £200bn Quantitative Easing programme, growth in money supply and bank lending has been disappointingly weak. Given the risk of a double-dip recession, additional monetary stimulus and measures to boost lending are needed to sustain a recovery.
Commenting, David Frost, Director General of the BCC said:
We need a thriving business sector to drive the UK’s recovery, so it’s vital that the Chancellor’s PBR avoids new business taxes, higher National Insurance contributions, or any measures that might damage investment, growth and job creation.
Given the perilous state of the public finances, we cannot afford any sacred cows when it comes to making spending cuts - no matter how politically desirable it may be.
Reform of the public sector must be the cornerstone of a credible plan to reduce spending. Freezing public sector pay and reforming pensions must be part of that plan, and action in these areas should start now.
BCC Chief Economist, David Kern, added:
The UK economy is probably now growing again but a relapse in activity is a real danger. Preventing a double-dip recession must be the main priority. In the next two or three quarters, the recovery will be driven by the stock cycle and by the cumulative impact of huge injections of monetary and fiscal stimulus. However, these factors are temporary. A sustained recovery requires steady medium-term growth in investment, net exports and consumer spending.
Unfortunately, the UK economy must make difficult adjustments in the next few years, which will limit the pace of recovery. In particular, the need to significantly cut the budget deficit, strengthen the banking sector, and reduce excessive personal debt will inevitably limit growth.
While our forecast envisages a gradual improvement over the next few years, the pace of UK growth is likely to be relatively weak by pre-recession standards. Over the next 4 or 5 years, growth of GDP is likely to average just under 2% per annum, considerably less than the 2.7% average in the period between 2003 and 2007.
Due to greater labour market flexibility, falls in employment and increases in unemployment during the current downturn, are much smaller than in previous recessions. However, with employment falling much less than output, productivity will register a big drop off. Unless Britain’s labour market remains flexible during the recovery period, falling productivity will damage our medium-term growth prospects.
The risks facing Britain’s growth potential will be exacerbated further by huge declines in capital investment. Unless investment cuts are halted and reversed, industry will find it difficult to increase output once the recession ends and demand starts rising more rapidly.
Trying to cut the fiscal deficit significantly before the economy starts growing at a more normal pace would be a mistake that could unleash a new recession. Nevertheless, it is increasingly urgent to present a credible plan for curbing the deficit. This must spell out the proposed measures and include a clear timetable. Postponing the presentation of a credible plan for restoring stability could threaten the UK’s international credit rating, with dangerous consequences for our economy.
An international consortium’s breaking of a binding contract has led Corus, Europe’s second largest steel producer, to partially implement the proposal announced in May 2009 of mothballing some of the facilities belonging to the Teesside Cast Products (TCP) business in northeast England.
TCP’s Redcar Blast Furnace, Lackenby steelmaking and the South Bank Coke Ovens will be mothballed at the end of January 2010. Corus intends to keep open a number of operations, including the Redcar Wharf, Redcar Coke Ovens and some of the power generating capacity.
The partial mothballing will result in the loss of about 1,700 jobs, around 600 fewer than envisaged earlier this year.
Corus will continue to have a substantial presence in the Teesside area, employing more than 2,000 people at operations in Hartlepool, Skinningrove, the Teesside Beam Mill and Teesside Technology Centre.
The decision to partially mothball TCP follows strenuous efforts by Corus over the past eight months to secure a long-term future for the plant after the failure of four international slab buyers to fulfil their obligations under a 10-year contract that they signed with Corus in 2004. This contract committed the consortium to buying about 80% of the plant’s production for ten years.
Since the consortium broke this legally-binding agreement, from which it made an estimated $800m profit, Corus has been diverting internal orders to TCP. The company has also been securing external orders on an ad hoc basis in a bid to keep the plant open while an alternative future for the plant was sought. This has cost the company about £130m. Operating a 3 million tonnes per year merchant slab plant is not sustainable without a long-term strategic partner.
Chief executive Kirby Adams said: “We are acutely aware that this will be devastating news for our employees, our contractors, their families and the local community. We extend our sincere gratitude to all of them, as well as to the management team and the trade unions on Teesside, who have all worked night and day to try and avoid this outcome.
“This is the last thing we wanted and we feel deeply about what is happening. Sadly, it has become unavoidable, through no fault of our people on Teesside.”
Corus will work with government agencies to do everything it can to ensure that the employees affected get access to the support and assistance available they need during this difficult time.
Further Information
Corus is Europe’s second largest steel producer. With main steelmaking operations primarily in the UK and the Netherlands, Corus supplies steel and related services to the construction, automotive, packaging, mechanical engineering and other markets worldwide. Corus is a subsidiary of Tata Steel, one of the world’s top ten steel producers. The combined enterprise has an aggregate crude steel capacity of more than 28 million tonnes and approximately 80,000 employees across four continents.
News Source: Broken contract leads to mothball of Teesside plant - http://www.corusgroup.com/en/news/news/2009_tcp_mothball
Teesside Cast Products (TCP) is an international seller and exporter of steel. It produces steel in the shape of slabs. These steel slabs can be rolled to make plate or sections and is commonly used in construction, bridge and ship building.
TCP also specialises in slab for the strip market to be rolled to a thin gauge and used to make items such as car bodies or panels for domestic appliances.
The Teesside Site, around 3,000 acres, consists of three main areas:
Redcar where ironmaking processes take place
Lackenby for steel and section making
South Bank where coke is made
Ironmaking started in Teesside during the 16th Century at Rievaulx Abbey. In 1837 the Middlesbrough Ironworks was opened.
Processors could become smart enough to let PCs use “vision” to interact with people.
Researchers from Intel Labs demonstrated an experimental, 48-core Intel processor, or “single-chip cloud computer,” that rethinks many of the approaches used in today’s designs for laptops, PCs and servers. This futuristic chip boasts about 10 to 20 times the processing engines inside today’s most popular Intel® Core-branded processors.
The long-term research goal is to add incredible scaling features to future computers that spur entirely new software applications and human-machine interfaces. The company plans to engage industry and academia next year by sharing 100 or more of these experimental chips for hands-on research in developing new software applications and programming models.
While Intel will integrate key features in a new line of Core-branded chips early next year and introduce six- and eight-core processors later in 2010, this prototype contains 48 fully programmable Intel processing cores, the most ever on a single silicon chip. It also includes a high-speed on-chip network for sharing information along with newly invented power management techniques that allow all 48 cores to operate extremely energy efficiently at as little as 25 watts, or at 125 watts when running at maximum performance (about as much as today’s Intel processors and just two standard household light bulbs).
Intel plans to gain a better understanding of how to schedule and coordinate the many cores of this experimental chip for its future mainstream chips. For example, future laptops with processing capability of this magnitude could have “vision” in the same way a human can see objects and motion as it happens and with high accuracy.
Imagine, for example, someday interacting with a computer for a virtual dance lesson or on-line shopping that uses a future laptop’s 3-D camera and display to show you a “mirror” of yourself wearing the clothes you are interested in. Twirl and turn and watch how the fabric drapes and how the color complements your skin tone.
This kind of interaction could eliminate the need of keyboards, remote controls or joysticks for gaming. Some researchers believe computers may even be able to read brain waves, so simply thinking about a command, such as dictating words, would happen without speaking.
Intel Labs has nicknamed this test chip a “single-chip cloud computer” because it resembles the organization of datacenters used to create a “cloud” of computing resources over the Internet, a notion of delivering such services as online banking, social networking and online stores to millions of users.
Cloud datacenters are comprised of tens to thousands of computers connected by a physically cabled network, distributing large tasks and massive datasets in parallel. Intel’s new experimental research chip uses a similar approach, yet all the computers and networks are integrated on a single piece of Intel 45nm, high-k metal-gate silicon about the size of a postage stamp, dramatically reducing the amount of physical computers needed to create a cloud datacenter.
“With a chip like this, you could imagine a cloud datacenter of the future which will be an order of magnitude more energy efficient than what exists today, saving significant resources on space and power costs,” said Justin Rattner, head of Intel Labs and Intel’s Chief Technology Officer. “Over time, I expect these advanced concepts to find their way into mainstream devices, just as advanced automotive technology such as electronic engine control, air bags and anti-lock braking eventually found their way into all cars.”
Cores Allow Software to Intelligently Direct Data for Efficiency
The concept chip features a high-speed network between cores to efficiently share information and data. This technique gives significant improvement in communication performance and energy efficiency over today’s datacenter model, since data packets only have to move millimeters on chip instead of tens of meters to another computer system.
Application software can use this network to quickly pass information directly between cooperating cores in a matter of a few microseconds, reducing the need to access data in slower off-chip system memory. Applications can also dynamically manage exactly which cores are to be used for a given task at a given time, matching the performance and energy needs to the demands of each.
Related tasks can be executed on nearby cores, even passing results directly from one to the next as in an assembly line to maximize overall performance. In addition, this software control is extended with the ability to manage voltage and clock speed. Cores can be turned on and off or change their performance levels, continuously adapting to use the minimum energy needed at a given moment.
Overcoming Software Challenges
Programming processors with multiple cores is a well-known challenge for the industry as computer and software makers move toward many-cores on a single silicon chip. The prototype allows popular and efficient parallel programming approaches used in cloud datacenter software to be applied on the chip. Researchers from Intel, HP and Yahoo’s Open Cirrus collaboration have already begun porting cloud applications to this 48 IA core chip using Hadoop, a Java software framework supporting data-intensive, distributed applications as demonstrated by Rattner today.
Intel plans to build 100 or more experimental chips for use by dozens of industrial and academic research collaborators around the world with the goal of developing new software applications and programming models for future many-core processors.
“Microsoft is partnering with Intel to explore new hardware and software architectures supporting next-generation client plus cloud applications,” said Dan Reed, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Extreme Computing. “Our early research with the single chip cloud computer prototype has already identified many opportunities in intelligent resource management, system software design, programming models and tools, and future application scenarios.”
This milestone represents the latest achievement from Intel’s Tera-scale Computing Research Program, aimed at breaking barriers to scaling future chips to 10s-100s of cores. It was co-created by Intel Labs at its Bangalore (India), Braunschweig (Germany) and Hillsboro, Ore. (U.S.) research centers.
Event: BUSINESS STARTUP, NOVEMBER 26 & 27, OLYMPIA LONDON
Business Startup is the UK’s biggest show for anyone starting or expanding a business. With over 200 exhibitors, 140 seminars, one-to-one advice and networking, it’s the perfect opportunity to find all the recession-defying tools and information to help your business thrive. What’s more, it’s completely FREE!
Stephen Farrow of Prysm Events who organise the show says, “This year there will be more speakers, more stands, more workshops, more advice, and more opportunities. Business Startup is the number-one place for any discerning entrepreneur.”
Business Startup veteran Levi Roots (who went from start-up to speaker in a matter of years) had this to say: “Business Startup is like coming home for me - it’s where it all started.” Levi will be speaking on Friday at the show.
Ex-Dragons’ Den panellist Richard Farleigh says, “I have invested in more than 70 companies in the UK. Some failed, some found success, but it would have helped my chances a lot better if I’d gone to the Business Startup Show.” Richard will also be speaking on Friday at the show.
Other speakers at this year’s event include: Richard Reed (Innocent Drinks), Julie Meyer (Dragons’ Den Online), Rachel Elnaugh, Doug Richard, Brent Hoberman (lastminute.com) and David Gold.
Midas Touch
The show also encompasses Midas Touch, an opportunity for visitors to pitch business ideas to potential investors.
Visitors are welcome to participate and watch as aspiring entrepreneurs barter ideas for equity in this emotionally-charged and in what the organisers describe as an often jaw-dropping event!
Speed Networking
Best described as a series of mini-meetings, Speed Networking puts entrepreneurs together for 2 minutes to talk, learn and exchange. Speed Networking has firmly secured itself as one of Business Startup’s most popular live attractions. Taking place on both days of the show, visitors are asked to book their places early to avoid disappointment.
One-2-One Advice
Business Startup also offers an unprecedented opportunity for entrepreneurs of all experiences to acquire free, personalised and objective advice from industry experts. This is a chance for visitors to weigh up their strengths and weaknesses. Spaces are limited, so visitors are asked to book their 15-minute sessions early.
For more information or to book a ticket, call 0117 930 4927 or visit online at bstartup.com.
In this edition... a report into the collapse of Lehman Brothers...has criticised the bank's management for using accounting tricks to hide its true level of debt.
Rwanda has huge ambitions to grow itself out of poverty and become a middle income country by the year 2010, to become an information technology and business hub for central and eastern Africa. Rwanda, poor though it still is, hopes to set an example that it is possible to do proper business here in Africa. Peter Day reports. Producer: Richard Berenger Ed […]
Consumer Credit Litigation Solicitors has been shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority; and, in other news, listeners complain about mystery debits on their bank accounts.
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