The business secretary, Lord Mandelson, has unveiled a £20bn package to support small businesses during the recession, by boosting the availability of credit from the banking sector. The package means that the government will provide £10bn of working capital to customers with a turnover of less than £500m (a measure which could cover all but the largest 350 companies in the UK), and £1.3bn of loans for companies (particularly those in sectors which are seen to be vital in rebuilding the economy) with a turnover of up to £25m (Financial Times). In return for a fee the state will insure banks against companies defaulting on loan repayments (BBC).
One cause of this package was banks’ reluctance to lend to businesses, as they were afraid that, as the economy sinks deeper into recession, more companies would find it difficult to meet debt obligations (The Guardian).
As with a recent previous programme to help smaller business, Mandelson believes that this package will help steer businesses through this economic downturn into a stronger position once this climate is over (The Telegraph). However, many feel that £20bn is not enough to get the banks lending sufficient funds to help businesses get access to much needed cash, with members of the Conserative party stating that the figure should be £50 billion instead.
Friday, 16 January 2009
Government to guarantee £20billion loans to small businesses
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Monday, 12 January 2009
Rhodri’s 10km Run For the Alzheimer’s Society
Plum Communications’ own Marketing Manager, Rhodri Lloyd, is to run in the forthcoming Bupa Great Manchester Run 2009 on Sunday 17th May 2009, on behalf of the Alzheimer’s Society. Rhodri, a recent University of Manchester graduate who joined Plum 4 months ago, aims to raise £300 in the process of running the 10km race for the charity, in memory of his grandfather who died from Alzheimer’s in 2003. To find out more about Rhodri’s cause and to sponsor him, please visit his Justgiving page. For further information on how his training and fundraising is going please feel free to visit his Facebook group.
He is not the first member of the Plum staff to run for charity in recent years. As reported on in a previous blog, Customer services manager Suzanne Cain ran the Bupa Great North Run in 2007, raising a total of £600 for Leukaemia Care over the 13.1 mile course.
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Thursday, 8 January 2009
£35 million to be invested in creating 23,000 jobs in the North West
Whilst speaking to business leaders at Salford's Lowry arts centre during, as part of the Labour Cabinet’s tour around the UK, Lord Peter Mandelson has today approved a £35m programme to support new businesses in the North West, with the aim of creating 23,000 jobs over the next five years, as reported by the MEN. The start-up programme will be run through Business Link Northwest, the region's business support gateway. The programme’s funding is coming from the Northwest Regional Development Agency (£26.6m) and the European Regional Development Fund (£8.4m). The programme aims to create some 12,700 new businesses and 23,000 jobs in the North West.
According to the BBC Mandelson said, “We cannot and must not fail now to invest in our future…We will not repeat the mistakes made in previous recessions of retrenchment - stop-go policies in public investment have reduced Britain's competitiveness over many decades”.
The MEN added that he said, “This new funding will help entrepreneurs in the north west to get new enterprises off the ground and access the support they need to grow and flourish. Nurturing and protecting start-ups and young businesses through this downturn will lead us into the upturn that will follow”.
Therefore Mandelson has made a clear message regarding his views on how to turn the current economic downturn into an upturn: We need to invest in the future, rather than sit back and wait for the economic downturn to end.
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UK consumers receive an average broadband internet speed of 3.6Mb/s
Ofcom has today brought out the results of its latest consumer research regarding broadband internet speeds in the UK. The report has shown that despite UK consumers having a possible average maximum possible broadband speed of 4.3Mb/s, in reality UK consumer receive an average broadband speed of 3.6Mb/s. The research was carried out over a 30 day period, with approximately 7,000 tests run through monitoring units connected to around 1,500 homes’ broadband routers, resulting in over 10 million separate tests of a range of suppliers’ services. The full report can be views here.
Such a speed is seen as sufficient for many internet applications, such as audio and video applications. However, such a speed is significantly lower than well advertised headline speeds. For example, 60% of UK broadband consumers are subscribed to ‘up to 8Mb/s packages’, but 20% of these receive a speed of less than 2Mb/s and only 45% receive the advertised headline speed.
Ofcom last month addressed this problem by ensuring all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) signed up to the Broadband Speeds Code of Practice, a new Code of Practice which ensures that consumers are provided with an accurate estimate of the maximum speed that they can expect when signing up to a service.
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Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Taxpayers targeted by fraudsters through fake e-mails
As it has been reported in various newspapers today, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) are warning taxpayers, in particular small business owners and the self-employed, of fake emails that are being sent out to taxpayers, stating that a tax rebate is owed and then asking for bank or credit card details so that money can be refunded to them (Metro) . These emails, which have been sent from addresses such as refundtax@hmrc.gov.uk and TaxRefund@hmrc.gov.uk, are being sent out just as the January 31st deadline for online self-assessment forms is approaching, when many taxpayers will be due a tax rebate. Taxpayers are then being asked to enter details online, or by calling a telephone line which appears to keep ringing with callers being charged up to £6 a minute.
The Financial Director explains that the emails promise the recipient a tax refund and consequently prompts them to the HMRC web site via a link. However, the link leads to a very convincing fake web site hosted in Denmark.
The emails are reported to read like this:
'Over the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of £99.23.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 3-6 days in order to process it.'
HMRC claim that taxpayers are forwarding 500 of these fake emails to the authorities every day, but fear that a much large number of emails have in face been sent out by fraudsters. The Metro reports that between April and November in 2008 more than 11,000 reports of fraudulent emails were made. HMRC officials fear that such emails will probably still be sent after the January 31 self-assessment deadline had passed. As part of their fight against fraudsters, HMRC have worked with police and had fake websites closed down in Austria, Mexico, US, Japan and Thailand.
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Monday, 22 December 2008
Seasons Greetings and a Prosperous New Year!
On behalf of Plum Communications I wish you…
Click on these links for some holiday funTrack and countdown to Santa
Light up a Christmas Tree as fast as possible (click on the North Pole Clock Tower)
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Ofcom is 5 years old
On 29th December Ofcom will be five years old, after being established on 29th December 2003. Ofcom was set up as a single regulatory body, taking over the duties of the five previous bodies - the Broadcasting Standards Commission, the Independent Television Commission, the Office of Telecommunications (Oftel), the Radio Authority, and the Radiocommunications Agency. Originally solely located in one office in London, Ofcom now has offices throughout the UK. Communications has come a long way in those 5 years, for example: 9 out of 10 people in the UK now have at least 1 digital TV, 60% have broadband internet compared to 7% in 2002, and the number of mobile connections has also risen by almost 50 per cent to reach 74 million. A list of Ofcom’s milestones from 2003-2006 can be found here, and a list of Ofcom’s milestones from 2007-08 can be found here.
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Friday, 19 December 2008
Customers need to be alerted about 'Dial Through Fraud'
We would like to remind customers about the re-emerging danger of ‘Dial Through Fraud’ (also known as PBX Hacking). ‘Dial Through Fraud’ occurs when fraudsters crack the protection codes needed to get into a company’s switchboard, and then dial outside lines at a company’s expense. Many companies have phone exchanges that let company employees ring in to the switchboard, and then by keying certain dialing codes, get an outside line to anywhere in the world. The company then pays the bill for the outgoing call. Therefore, anyone who cracks the protection around those codes can make unlimited calls at the company's expense.
Examples of this has appeared in The Guardian newspaper. In one case, a fraudster hacked into the telephone exchange of a firm in Kent and made international calls to the Philippines, Dubai, US and Italy, which led to call charges of £1,000. In a further case in Manchester, fraudsters used Voice over IP technology to hack into the telephone exchange, which meant in reality that their calls could have been made from anywhere in the world, and made international calls to 19 countries (including Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Sudan, Serbia and the Republic of Yemen), which led to call charges of £2,100. Therefore, it is essential that companies try and protect themselves from such fraud.
We recommend these ‘15 Top Tips’ to help guard your business against the risks of ‘Dial Through Fraud’:
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Friday, 12 December 2008
Voters vote 'No' on Manchester congestion fare
At noon today at the Manchester Central conference centre, returning officer Sir Neil McIntosh announced that the majority of voters had voted against the introduction of the congestion charge. Across the 10 regions of Greater Manchester, 1.94 million ballot packs have been sent out over the last 2 weeks. By 10pm last night 1,030,000 residents (53.2% of the electorate) turned out to vote. The scheme needed at least 7 boroughs to vote in favour of the scheme for it go-ahead, but as the following breakdown suggests (see the Middleton Guardian), this didn’t happen:
Borough | Yes Vote | No Vote | Rejected | Overall Outcome | Majority |
Manchester | 43,593 | 113,064 | 250 | NO | 69,471 |
Rochdale | 17,333 | 61,686 | 118 | NO | 44,353 |
Bolton | 20,529 | 76,910 | 167 | NO | 56,381 |
Bury | 16,563 | 64,001 | 94 | NO | 47,438 |
Oldham | 17,571 | 68,884 | 141 | NO | 51,313 |
Salford | 14,603 | 79,326 | 105 | NO | 64,723 |
Stockport | 24,090 | 103,706 | 169 | NO | 79,616 |
Tameside | 16,323 | 83,105 | 124 | NO | 66,782 |
Trafford | 20,445 | 83,568 | 142 | NO | 63,123 |
Wigan | 27,810 | 78,565 | 132 | NO | 50,755 |
TOTAL | 218,860 | 812,815 | 1,442 | NO | 593,955 |
The Times suggests that voters were not persuaded by the £1.5 billion Government funding for public transport, despite the fact that it would have created 10,000 extra jobs due to the construction of new tram lines and improved trains and buses. Many questioned the timing of the referendum, which would have seen drivers paying £5 a day (up to £1,200 a year) to get in and out of Manchester (here is a map of the proposed outer and inner rings), due to the current economic climate and the belief that building more roads is not financially possible or environmentally acceptable.
It appears that the vote was decided by whether you drove into Manchester, or took public transport into Manchester. Those who take public transport are more likely to vote in favour of additional public transport, as it would be more beneficial to them and across a year they wouldn’t pay as much as drivers. However, those who drive into Manchester would vote against it, as they would inevitably have to pay up to £5 a day just to go to work, a possible £1,200 a year, which for someone with a basic salary could be quite a financial burden. Similarly, those travelling from the most furthest out boroughs in Greater Manchester would prefer to drive over public transport, as it is a lot quicker.
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Review of Ofcom Telecoms Report Q2 2008
Ofcom have released their telecoms report for the second 3 months (April - June) in 2008. The report aims to highlight emerging trends in the UK telecoms sector, in order to generate a greater understanding of the sector amongst consumers and businesses alike. As stated on the Ofcom website, the main trends in fixed lines and calls, internet, and mobile phones, were as follows:<
Fixed
- BT’s market share of fixed calls and access revenues stayed at 59.7% in Q2 2008.
- Total call volumes declined by 3% down to 37 billion minutes during the period, some 9% lower that at the same stage in 2007.
- Total number of fixed lines and ISDN channels fell by 63,000 in Q2 2008.
Internet
- The total number of residential and SME broadband connections increased by almost 400,000 to 16.6 million in Q1 2008, with LLU connections account for most of this increase and BT’s retail market share being unchanged at 26.5%
Mobile
- Total mobile revenue across the four mobile operators declined by 1.6% during the quarter, driven by a fall in revenue from calls and other charges.
- Total volume of SMS and MMS messages increased by 4.8% during the quarter; but revenue in this area fell by 1.7% over this same period.
- Contract subscribers grew by 545,000 in Q2 2008 and there was also an increase of 65,000 in prepay subscribers.
- At 506 million minutes, international roaming call volumes in Q2 2008, some 7.7% higher than the 470 million minutes in Q2 2007.
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