March 2012 Blog Posts (17)

What a glorious day! A cloudless blue sky, bright sunshine and gentle breeze with spring flowers brightening up the place – pity we have to work for a living, rather than just sitting in the garden with a Pimm's and a good Kindle...

You can be fairly sure that the weather won't last until Easter - but let's make the most of it for now. It's all systems go on the networking scene as ever. Isn't…

Volunteers, interns, youngsters on work experience .... a great source of free labour, no need to worry about paying them the National Minimum Wage, right?

Wrong! There is considerable confusion among employers about when they do and don’t need to pay people they take on for “work experience” purposes.

Various schemes exist to help young people without any…

Comparison sites are failing to provide consumers with the best deal and should be strictly regulated, Which? has said.

The Financial Services Authority warned comparison sites they must hold the correct permissions for their activities in June last year.

A Which? investigation has now established that most of the 11 most popular sites were using pre-selected…

Really enjoyed meeting Richard Branson as the official photographer at the O2 on Sunday - he's so inspiring and loving his environmental projects and his amazing business advice can't wait to work with him again.

Its been a busy month so far as met Bob Geldof at the Progressive Property Event I was shooting at a couple of weekends ago and was also greatly inspired by his work in Africa along with his business…

Interest-only mortgages have taken another step towards extinction with Nationwide and now Coventry Building Society demanding that new borrowers have 50pc equity in their home if they want to avoid making capital repayments.

Both, which previously lent on an interest-only basis to borrowers with 25pc equity or deposit, sited the need to "manage application levels" following similar moves from competitors. The…

The Chancellor George Osborne will today raise Stamp Duty on the country's highest priced properties as part of a tax raid on the wealthy.

The top-end property market is booming at present, with a huge surge in the amount of homes sold so far this year compared to 2011.

New figures have revealed sales of homes valued at £5m or more in London have jumped by 98% this year,…

Are you a start up or a small business keeping manual bookkeeping records?  Here's why you should consider the alternatives.

There are three reasons why you should consider using a software package or a cloud based solution to maintain your accounting records from the very beginning of the life of your business.  A very simple example, payment of a supplier invoice from the company bank account, will help…

Once again I'm using my super Dragon Naturally Speaking software to dictate this newsmail while the words magically appear on screen – spooky! Apparently there's a free Dragon iPhone app for those well heeled enough to afford such fruit-based tech. One day, maybe...

Plenty going on as usual down here in the NiS bunker, with…

Pregnancy is a wonderful experience for most mothers. Unfortunately for some, the end of pregnancy can bring on a range of emotions which contribute to or cause post-natal (postpartum) depression! Emotions include ‘insecurity, diminished self-esteem, feelings of inferiority (the baby is more important), lack of freedom and sudden dependence on others’.

When I was pregnant with my daughter Jessica, I experienced many of these emotions - and whilst…

Just under half of borrowers, 49%, have not reviewed their mortgage since base was cut to 0.5% three years ago, according to recent research.

Despite base rate being a record-low since March 2009, 42% of fixed rate borrowers are still paying a rate of 5% or higher, with the average rate for fixed rate borrowers being 4.63%.

The average rate paid by tracker mortgage…

The government has formally launched NewBuy, its mortgage indemnity scheme that will offer borrowers 95% loan to value mortgages with taxpayers and builders as co-guarantors.

The scheme is only available on newly-built flats and houses up to a maximum value of £500,000 in England only.

Properties must also not be linked with any other scheme such as shared equity or shared…

Women across the generations are significantly undervaluing the level of protection that they need compared to men, taking out "worryingly low levels" of life cover to protect their families, one life provider has warned.

Its figures showed that men typically protect themselves with around 50% more life cover than women, with the gender gap becoming significantly wider the older people…

You’ve finally agreed on your new website design & structure. Your decisions have been supported by some good insight into what your customers are looking for & what your competition is doing. You’ve incorporated good practice in coding, so that it can be easily found by the search engines. Best of all it doesn’t seem to cost a huge amount but…

…have you considered the longer term…

If one of your employees was signed off sick by their doctor, and sent you a postcard from the Costa del Sol, I expect your hackles would rise. Like most employers, you would probably think somebody who was too sick to work should be too sick to go on holiday.

But it’s not quite that simple. For a start, somebody who is unfit to work due to stress or fatigue, or who is recuperating after surgery, may be perfectly capable of lying on a beach – in fact it may assist…

Nearly 850,000 customers will see their mortgage rate rise from 3.5% to 3.99% on 1 May 2012 when Halifax hikes its Standard Variable Rate.

This is now the second rate rise announcement by Halifax inside the last seven days as in addition, it has already been reported that thousands of other Halifax mortgage customers would also see their mortgage payments rise as well as it also said that it is raising the cap…

I’m sure you’d agree that the public image of any business is one of the most important things to get right to help get you more business.

Putting a face to your business with professional headshots will give your business that professional image.

If you use amateur headshots not only will photographs look awful, they could also give potential…