At the last election I was fairly ambivalent as to which party I supported, which is unusual for me.  But I was pretty certain that I did not want the Conservatives to win!

• I was sure that the Osborne form of sado-masochistic economic policy in which we bow to the rich and famous in the naive belief that what is good for them will also be good for the rest of us, was straight wrong.
• I was sure that the extreme right wing hiding in the bushes under the Cameron PR veneer of a rehabilitated ‘Conservative brand’, were a real and present danger.
• In fact almost every  one of their policies from schools to immigration, and from banks to Europe rang alarm bells…

The trouble was that I didn’t know how to vote against the Conservatives in my own constituency because the anti conservative vote was evenly split, and the inevitable then happened.  The Conservatives won with a minority of the vote because the anti-conservative vote was split.  Clearly AV would have solved my dilemma…….. but it becomes even more interesting if you follow through the logic.

Under an AV system all parties would understand that choosing policies that alienate large numbers of voters would not be a successful strategy, so it is very likely that extremists within all parties will loose strength. And I would maintain that anything that strengthens the middle ground of politics against the extremist fringes, is very likely to be good for he country.

First time buyers should be made a protected species they are so rare. The Banks have tightened mortgage lending so much that the average loan to value ratio is now below 60%, completely stalling the property market.

Last year only 194,600 first time buyers managed to get a loan, which is about 30% of the level 10years ago and the latest figures for Dec 2010 show that the year on year decline is not only continuing, but is accelerating.

As we re-adjust to a new rental model of living, the rental market is becoming more competitive with a reported 4.4 tenants vying for each property that becomes available. Since house building has stopped and we were already short of sufficient dwellings, it looks like we have all the conditions for the next bubble.

I have always wondered why businesses are so keen on mobile Apps.  They spend significant sums of money developing a bit of software that will only run on a single phone platform – iPhone, Android,  Symbian etc. and then each application has to be fine tuned for individual phone or iPads. It’s a nightmare.

Why not make a mini browser version of the application and run that on any Smart phone using the built in web browser.  After all that was the whole point of developing the html programming language in the first place, so as to make applications platform independent? Up until recently the techie response has always been that the phone apps run much quicker and more smoothly and the web versions are clunky.  This is certainly true, but I am not sure whether it has more to do with the fact that companies are prepared to provide far larger Budgets for brand new state of the art Apps, than they will provide for the provision of mini browser developments….

Now we have HTML5 rapidly becoming a new standard. The HTML5 standard is not yet finalised but the outstanding issues are mainly in areas around the handling of sound, video and data caching. It is very likely that this will get over all the technical differences that differentiate the browser performance from the App. And how common are HTML5 enabled browsers?  So far they includes the latest versions of IE9, Chrome, Firefox and Safari which means that most Smart phones are already compliant.

Writing an HTML5 version of your website for a mobile phone requires most of the same considerations as writing an App:

• Design for a small screen and with easy data input
• Enable the special controls available in each phone (GPS, touch screen controls etc)
• Manage the data caching to cope with intermittent signals etc (not standard in all HTML5 implementations)
• Manage the data communications with the master web server using Jason queries to keep data transfers efficient

But once it is done, it should work on most phones with only minor tweaks.

Let’s get back to delivering a greater degree of cross platform compatibility.

I have been an Outlook user for many years and have got used to its idiosyncracies. As it has improved over that time I have even got to like it and certainly beome dependant on it as my most used app. But I have only just discovered ‘search folders’.

Search folders are a tool that enables you to search all your other folders and present threads of emails all in one place. It does not move the emails the way that some rules would, it merely organises the presentation. In my case, we have multiple projects with a partner company  and using this facility enables me to ‘see’ each project with that partner alone.

How to set it up

• In Outlook go to the Mail folder.
• Click on the down arrow next to the ‘New’ button on the tool bar.
• choose the ‘New Search Folder’ on the drop down menu
• Select ‘mail from and to specific people’.
• Click on the ‘choose’ button
• put the domain name in the box
• click on ‘OK’ to save

It may take some time for Outlook to create the new folder..

One of the main lessons that economists claim we have learnt from the 1930 crash and the subsequent depression that lasted most of the decade (and arguably contributed to the war that followed), was that the beggar thy neighbour policy of competitive currency devaluations was a major cause and should never be repeated.

How is it that the Eurosceptics in their smug gloating over the problems of the Euro, have completely ignored (or are ignorant of) this lesson.  Just because England is not in a fixed currency regime with Europe, does not mean that the rest of the world will give us Carte Blanche to get out of our problems by making theirs worse.

I was recently sent the results of a survey by T-Mobile (see bottom of the post) which says that most people will turn to their spouse for advise rather than any professional advisor.

Personally I think this is an entirely rational response.

When I see Bank advertising that one should go to their Bank Manager for help with life’s problems, it makes me want to report them to the to the Advertising Standards body for being misleading.  We all know that the Bank Manager has a very clear agenda controlled by the Bank and it is carefully designed to benefit the Bank irrespective of the interests of the customer.

Most professionals can be identified by the way in which their terms and conditions carefully absolve them from any responsibility under any circumstances.

Anybody with any savings knows that the financial services industry has been great at delivering fantastical fees to itself, but very poor at delivering any benefit to savers.

If people now are very cautious about entering the shark infested waters where advise come with fees attached that the average person can never aspire too, that is probably to the good.

Research attributed to T-Mobile (I cannot vouch for this)

Small business owners are more likely to trust their spouses over accountants or bank managers to give open business advice, a new report has discovered.

The research found that over half of the UK’s small business bosses will turn to their husband, wife or partner at the first instance to receive honest and straight-talking business advice.

According to the national survey of 2,000 small company owners, 51% preferred to talk to their spouse or partner than accountants at 22%. Only 3% said they would prefer to approach trade bodies or other local businesses and a mere 2% said they would expect candid advice from their bank manager.

Martin Lyne, director of SME marketing at T-Mobile, who conducted the survey, said: “80% of the small businesses we polled stated they take advice from people who will give them the truth and will tell it to them straight. As a supplier, we need to take a straight talking approach, offering small business owners uncomplicated products and services that simply help them get on with what they do best. The last thing we want to do is waste their time.”

The survey also revealed that the trend was greatest in the north, with nearly six out of 10 small business owners in Liverpool and Newcastle (58%) turning to their wives and husbands over accountants. Furthermore, Londoners were the least trusting of bank managers, with only 1% turning to them for clear guidance.

Judi James, one of the UK’s leading behavioral experts, said: “This research from T-Mobile highlights how highly we value those who get to the point and give it to us straight when discussing business issues.

It’s understandable that we tend to turn to our partners for this honest and clear advice – they have the same goals as us and understand the complexities of the possible answers to our problems. Unlike other advisors, they have no hidden agenda and aren’t trying to impress us to secure a contract.”

British banks have lendings of £7bn which is about 5 times the British GDP; and that is far worse than the ratio that precipitated the banking crisis that is devastating the Irish economy.

The risk is that at some time in the next few months or years there will be another British Banking crisis, probably precipitated by the market deciding that British asset values are about to collapse and that the Bank balance sheets are vulnerable to attack – after all nothing has changed since the last banking crisis.  The difference this time round will be that the government will not be able to bail out the banks.

So then it will be up to an EU and IMF to devise a $ and € support package, and they will insist that we do not use competitive devaluations to export our way out of trouble.

Are the banks and government doing enough to avoid this outcome? I really doubt it!