It would seem that Fujitsu doesn’t need to bid as it’s being handed the contract on a plate.

Car parking companies in the UK are close to being sanctioned theft.

If Putin wants no NATO then all he has to do is get his poodle, Trump, to invade Greenland …

“If they invade Greenland, they invade Nato,” says Svane. “So that’s where it stops. Article 5 would have to be triggered. And if a Nato country invades Nato then there’s no Nato.”

“He’s saying it’s legitimate for us to take this piece of land,” he says. “If we take him really seriously this is a bad omen for the whole of the Western alliance.”

I think the US will be fighting the rest of the world and itself at the same time.

I looked into a static caravan to rent out about ten years ago. Very quickly established, from one of the better operators, that when you add up their fees for this and that there are significant costs. The fine print usually states caravans must be no more than 10 years old and site has first option on buying back. The latter is where you lose a lot of money. As said that was one of the better sites.

It’s a mixed bag causing two divides.

The first affecting the business with the savings to be had on reduced office space requirements weighed up against perceived lower productivity.

The second, workers enjoying reduced travel costs and convenience but offset the home stops being a home and loneliness.

It’s basic Tory strategy.

Here’s a little explanation as to the differences with US chocolate.

The bit about Butyric Acid explains why US chocolate tastes literally like vomit; it’s the component in vomit that gives it the distinctive taste and smell.

When Hershey’s products came to the UK they initially had to be relabelled to reflect the extremely low cocoa content and be called “chocolate flavored candy bar”.

Ironically, the article references Cadbury.

Whenever I hear Kraft I instantly think of a block of cooking fat. With Cadbury it’s the same block of fat but brown.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Since its takeover by Kraft/Mondelez their chocolate has become poorer quality. As soon as the Cadbury name was being licenced to various other diversified food products (ice cream, cakes etc.) it was a sign of what was to come. Sad. Still not as bad as Hershey’s though.

There was a time, not long ago, that this type of sensitive contract would have been awarded to China. To top it off they’d buy them out when they realised China doesn’t make a good supplier to the UK government.

“I have zero evidence for this…”

Says it all really.

The Japanese branch of the Taliban.

There seems to be a race to the bottom when it comes to pay across all industries. These are wages from almost 30 years ago for a middle level IT person. In 1994 a typical high end IT manager for a national corporation was around £70k+.

Edit: I just remembered that in 1996 the company I worked for paid £1k per day for an external contractor to provide Unix and IP networking consultancy services to one staff member. That went on for five days per week for about a month at least. That staff member was on about £40k.

Here’s a reminder of what the water companies have been doing to get into this mess.

Wages have been driven down to such low levels. Pay more then they’ll have a better chance of filling those vacancies. There was a time that one parent could support a household, now it requires two and then it barely covers the bills.

The very companies that do not want to pay a fair and decent wage yet happily throw money at the directors will wonder why they’ve gone bust when their customers no longer have surplus income to buy their goods. Pubs are a good example.

It’ll be interesting to know the level of impact of turning arable land over to solar farms.

I got the name wrong instead of The New York Bagel Co.

Whether they are any good by comparison to a top end Bagel product I don’t honestly know. But out of those available generally at UK supermarkets they are the nicest.

Here in the UK the perception of the value of own-label products is mixed where some are cheap but rubbish quality (Waitrose Essential Bagels) and others that are as good quality as the big brands (Tesco Bagel v American Bagel Co.. The New York Bakery Co.) but way cheaper.

However, there does seem to be something happening where good value own-label products are disappearing through more shelf space being given to big brands and displacing own-label equivalents.

I use sensitive toothpaste and I usually buy the stuff several tubes at once. The big brand is Sensodyne which is good but at £5.75/75ml (Tesco) is expensive. The Tesco brand which was as good was way cheaper at around £1 making it far better value for money.

But here’s the issue, the big brands can’t compete with the quality and value of own-label products on pricing. Across three of the largest supermarkets (Aldi, Lidl, Tesco) the own-label sensitive toothpaste has disappeared with more shelf space being allocated to Sensodyne. All recently at the same time.

The clue might be France.

Closing corporate tax loop holes will help a fair bit. I doubt much has changed since this article in 2012.