Australians call Brits Poms. More appropriately spelt, it would be POHMs: Prisoners of Her Majesty. They think we're a whiny, cynical and sarcastic nation of complainers which, of course, we are and this is no better demonstrated that the refreshingly honest new book by John O’Farrell: An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain, or Sixty…
After four years of anticipation, the football (or soccer) World Cup starts today in South Africa. As a result, there will be random quotes and notes thrown into the blog relating to football rather than banking. Many are humourous and come from the excellent book: "tell him he's Pele". Here's a few of my favourites…
My second book of reading for the holidays is "Slurls: They Called Their Website What?!" by Andy Geldman. This is a collection of the weird and wonderful names firms gave their websites. In reality, these names reflect their company well. Online, they kinda fail because we forget that the name on the sign may translate…
As mentioned yesterday, the Sumerians invented writing, accounting, money, credit and debt. 1500 years later, interest on debt was causing a lot of issues. For example, Aristotle wrote: “The most hated sort (of wealth getting) and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself and not from the natural…
I've talked many times about the Ancient Sumerians creating money for sex, but they also created money for debt. Back then – 5,000 years ago – barley was the main measure of value and was alloted to Smerians according to age, gender and position in society. For example, men received sixty litres of barley a…
I spent the day yesterday discussing BPO, Business Process Outsourcing, an area I haven’t touched on for a while. BPO is a logical extension of Business Process Re-engineering, Business Process Improvement and Business Transformation, and are major contracts of faith as the outsourcee is cutting out a major part of their business. Not a platform,…
Marketing Magazine has published its annual list of the 100 most powerful marketers in Britain. The list is filled with eminent names from fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) such as Phil Thomas at Reckitt Benckiser – the firm that sells Colgate, Cillit Bang and Dettol – to Jill McDonald of McDonalds (is that just coincidence?)….
After the downgrade of Greece led to the Greek crisis and the Germans worried about bailing them out, the crisis continues with the downgrade of Spain at the end of last week by Fitch. In fact, it looks like many European countries are worried, with the PIGS now the PIIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece…
