WWWalker's UK Business
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British Standards Institute | Society of Indexers | The Indexer: Web Indexing Prize | Digital Publications Indexing (eBooks) | MACREX Book Indexing Software | Government Publishing and Copyright Reform and Libraries | Astronomy | IT Industry Innovations | Energy | Business | Transport | Defence Contracting | Vodafone | COVID-19 | GFC | EU Brexit / Politics / Energy | Great Opportunity to Invest in UK with Australian Expertise | Computer Illiteracy | BBC Proms for First Time in Melbourne Australia | Royal Mail and UK Post Office | British Leyland Cars / MG Rover Group | Legal | Real Estate / Council Housing | Job Hunting | Past British Empire and now the Commonwealth: 50+ Territories
BSI publishes ISO including ISO:999 the standard on indexing. ANZSI has 2 people on working group revising ISO:999 in October 2016.
In 1998, we visited an indexer and some relatives in Kent. We felt right at home as my grandmother is from London. London is a bustling city. I visited Buckingham Palace's gate, Westminster and Greenwich. I went in the Tube which I loved and popped up at Covent Garden and went to a cheap stage show. The Victoria and Albert Museum was very good. UK loves the arts.
I felt England's St Pauls was less glitzy than Rome's St Peters and the locals appreciated intelligence compared to Australia where people push intelligent people out of the way and don't give credit for smart people. The Guardian , a UK paper, had high quality editorials compared to average quality in the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age. I also like the BBC Website for online news.
UK is very dear to visit from Australia so I could only stay a few days. UK know they are popular so they bump the price up to cash in on tourism.
I subedited The Indexer in 1996-98 when I was Webmaster of the Australian Society of Indexers (AusSI). I wrote several editorials on the AusSI Web Indexing Prize I created
to help promote Web indexing in Australia and worldwide . The editor of The Indexer always let me write up a summary of entrants and the details of the winner.
The Indexer still has strong links to Web indexing as evidenced in the March 2012 issue . I feel my efforts in 1998 proved fruitful via The Indexer's publicity and education in Web indexing.
Web indexing all folded in September 2016 when shift was made from Web indexing to digital publications when American Society for Indexing renamed their Web and Electronic Indexing SIG as Digital Publications Indexing SIG old site when I was Webmaster via a poll of members. SI now have Publishing Technology Group of Society of Indexers (PTG) which focuses on ebook indexing. PTG collaborates with new ASI Digital Publications Indexing SIG. There are several members of SI in the ASI Digital Publications Indexing SIG.
Since ISC/CSI Online Indexing Conference in Canada in June 2022 which I attended where I heard MACREX talk by Do Mi Stauber the MACREX rep from USA, I started using MACREX book indexing software for free from UK.
Hilary Calvert (UK) wrote, maintains and supports MACREX. I also knew Drusilla Calvert Hilary's wife who also wrote and supported MACREX till she passed away. Gale Rhoades MACREX support in USA also passed away so Do Mi Stauber took over Gale's support role.
MACREX is tricky to use at first but is a powerful useful Windows/MSDOS indexing tool. It does not have a fully Windows GUI but still has DOS interface so knowledge of menus, keystrokes and function keys is vital.
I found MACREX support via email to Do Mi Stauber:
Google Group mailing list
Evernote blog and forum
Instructure Canvas chat
UK libraries lose a quarter of staff as hundreds close 3/16 - got to modernise and use wifi to attract patrons and offer more ebooks
BBC Data Unit - Libraries CSV open data from FOI
https://github.com/BBC-Data-Unit/libraries/blob/master/library_closures_BBC.csv
https://github.com/BBC-Data-Unit/libraries/blob/master/LibrariesBookBorrowing.csv
https://github.com/BBC-Data-Unit/libraries/blob/master/LibrariesWithWiFiPoints.csv England only
share of new wifi hotspots - [Greater London 25%, East 5%, South East 12%, South West 16%] = 58%, [East Midlands 11%, West Midlands 8%, North West 12%] = 31%, [North East 2%, Yorkshire and the Humber 6%] = 8% = around 60% in south 1/3 of country
population of England only: [Greater London 15%, East 11%, South East 16%, South West 10%] = 53%, [East Midlands 9%, West Midlands 11%, North West 13%] = 32%, [North East 5%, Yorkshire and the Humber 10%] = 15% = total 53M
new wifi hotspots per M pop: Greater London 97% , East 29%, South East 45%, South West 93% , East Midlands 76% , West Midlands 47%, North West 53%, North East 22%, Yorkshire and the Humber 37% - gaps in East, South East (next to London) and North East (no industry)
Population of the countries of the United Kingdom
Counties of England
London boroughs
Home Counties - surrounding London
Companies House
Cabinet Office - ITIL standard
Wikipedia founder hired by UK Government to open up UK academic research and capitalise on government intellectual property SMH 3 May 2012
Wikipedia founder to help in UK government's research scheme Guardian 1 May 2012
Publishers Association - UK
UK Parliament Hears Authors and Publishers Discuss Copyright and Value of Reading 7 Mar 2012
David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science - Conservative UK politician affecting copyright issues in UK universities in 2012
Open free access to academic research - David Willetts, Guardian, 1 May 2012
David Willetts in Guardian
Wellcome Trust - open access medical research publisher
Academic journals open access at Wellcome Trust Guardian 11 April 2012
In 2008, I was sacked by a scientific publisher for setting up an internal Wiki to improve group collaboration and efficiency because I did not get permission to set it up from a scientist in Brisbane and he saw it as a time-waster which is a load of rubbish. Chaotic collaboration is OK. People do make money out of it and the greedy types who keep information to themselves are blocking this reform. It just shows you Britian is smarter than Australians re use of Wiki-style collaboration tools.
VIDEO
The Computer Chronicles - High Tech Scotland Part 2 (1996) - gaming, smart home, incubators, software companies, debugging tool, Cray, parallel processing (Uni of Edinburgh ), AI, mining transport scheduling, defence logistics, traffic congestion analysis, green laser, optical computers, remote control software
UK and Ireland
ENIC (Energy Networks Innovation Conference) 1/21 free online conference into renewable energy and net zero target available on demand till 18/1/21
UK is phasing out petrol and diesel cars and replacing them with EV (electric vehicle) by 2030
UK use wind and solar PV power
nuclear generators
energy regulator in UK
green energy introduction
VIDEO
Energy price cap: Households face annual bills of more than £3,500 from October 2022
supply
demand
gas subsidy too little too late
19M with no insulation
households seriously stretched or defaulting to pay huge gas bills by cutting food or buying second hand clothes or not using gas as much as possible
gas to electricity heating conversion calculations and figures 10/22
UK has to rapidly replace all its gas heaters with electricity storage heaters to cut costs of gas energy - so many on gas 80% of houses (way too many, old, cheap style of housing)
80% on gas of 24M houses in UK * 1000 pounds per house to refit for electricity storage heating = 24Bn pounds way less than 45Bn subsidy for gas energy in UK
figures
Energy Market
Steelworks Investor
GFG Alliance bought Arrium Steelworks in Whyalla South Australia and saved town from extinction in August 2017.
GFG Alliance also rebuilt UK steel industry using renewable energy.
Chairman Gupta is from India where his family had a bicycle factory.
Addison Lee London minicabs Chairman John Griffin - inspiring interview - use SatLab GNSS receiver for GPS
rail
Crossrail - extension of Tube railway tunnel in London over budget and due in 9/19
NetworkRail Rail Freight
HS2
high speed rail from London to Manchester that was cut at Manchester end to save cost overrun 12/23
Uber
AUKUS Australia, UK and USA defence agreement to build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia
AUKMIN - Australia-United Kingdom Ministerial Consultations - defence, security, intelligence
UK Ministry of Defence Contracts
In July 2022, ADSTAR 2022 hybrid conference in Sydney Australia had UK MoD people present or via Zoom.
In September 2021, when Australia cancelled French built Future Submarine Project, Australia, UK and USA formed AUKUS alliance to build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia. This lost Australia $5Bn AUD in cancellation fee. UK build and operate nuclear powered submarines so will contribute with USA to building Australian nuclear-powered submarines and collaborate with Australian submarine shipyards in Osborne, Adelaide, Australia.
I use Vodafone in Australia which is a very poor quality carrier - cheap and nasty. They lost 300,000 customers in Australia in 2011 due to poor quality service. Vodafone is based in the UK and has a huge customer base in the UK where people are text and mobile mad. By 2012, Vodafone had lost 550,000, they have such poor service. Telstra and Optus are much better as they invest in equipment.
In January 2022 PM Johnson had secret party at Downing Street for staffers while everyone else had to stay at home under lockdown. This lying caused downfall of him as PM in July 2022.
From March 2020 onwards, due to COVID-19 UK had high death rate and several lockdowns which killed economy. UK Government spent millions getting NHS and vaccinations going and propping up economy with furlough (paid leave to stay at home).
In 2011, Blackrock and Bank of Scotland had to be bailed out by the Bank of England. In 2012, LIBOR risky dealings by RBS led to it being fined 300M pounds when caught by the regulator (FSA).
UK business decline since Brexit in 2016 due to blockage of trade to EU by SME due to high overheads and 3 months of delays sitting in warehouses and having to setup an EU base to service EU customers or losing customers to EU suppliers who are easier to deal with by EU; only part of UK that has EU access is Northern Ireland with Northern Ireland Protocol
Brexit happened in 1 Feb 2021 9am AEST
Northern Ireland Protocol
allow Northern Ireland to trade with Republic of Ireland (EU) with no hard border effectively allowing access to EU single market that other parts (England, Scotland, Wales) of UK have no access to any more
NI Business Info
Living in country guides 4/21
Advice for UK nationals living abroad, including residency, health and benefits, and specific advice for people following the UK's departure from the EU.
House of Commons of the United Kingdom
2 main parties Conservatives (right) and Labour (left)
other opposition (cross bench): many minor parties (SNP, Lib Dem plus many splinter groups from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland all left) and independents
abstentionists (don't vote)
650 seats, >= 326 for majority
67% participation rate in 2019 election - not compulsory like Australia
Rishi Sunak PM
billionaire
first Indian migrant PM
only candidate after Liz Truss resigned
Liz Truss PM
resigned 10/22
changed Chancellor from Kwatang (right) to Hunt (centre) 10/22
new Chancellor reversed all her mini budget (right) 10/22
9/22 mini budget (right) led to
pound sinking, Bank of England pouring in cash by buying gilts (bonds), pension funds nearly crashing, interest rates rising, 45p tax break cancelled as it was funded by borrowing
attempt to get stagnation of economy moving by pouring money into business sector but it spooked market due to high levels of debt
huge subsidy of gas energy bills due to very high gas energy prices
gas to electricity heating conversion calculations and figures 10/22
sworn in in 9/22 just before Queen Elizabeth II died at 96
Boris Johnson PM
forced to resign 7/22 over lying and integrity over handling COVID-19 lockdowns, leadership contest in Conservatives/Tories to get new leader by 9/22
won 80 seat Conservative majority in Dec 2019 election
Boris Johnson became PM after Theresa May stepped down over stalemate with Parliament over Brexit terms but he can't get Brexit through Parliament either because of all the division amongst the politicians and the unwillingness to have no deal Brexit in which UK leaves EU with no special terms to smooth the transition 10/19
Scottish Parliament is against Brexit
Scottish High Court found Johnson proroguing Parliament illegal and had it reconvened 10/19
Labour Party is against having a general election in December 2019 to resolve deadlock for fear a no-deal Brexit would be rammed through to detriment of UK's economy
struggling electorates
Leigh near Manchester - switched for first time from Labour to Conservatives in 2019 due to high unemployment and business closures
Wigan near Manchester - ex industrial area with high unemployment - Labour MP crossed floor to vote for Brexit of Johnson 10/19
Boris Johnson UK Foreign Minister resigned due to Brexit self-doubt stuffing it up 7/18
EU Brexit explanation
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson Lowy Institute Lecture in Sydney Australia 7/17 (audio and video)
Brexit caused currency to devalue
Britain's young people will suffer most from an EU divorce 6/16
Brexit: why did old voters choose to leave the EU 6/16
69% over 65s voted to leave EU
conservatives killed finance for Britain's economy to save their retirement funds
devaluation harmed the young people's finance and rent which doubled
79% of under 26s wanted to stay in EU and grow finance
young UK backpackers in Brisbane had to convert their pounds to AUD before Brexit to save money during devaluation 8/16
unskilled people wanted to leave, skilled people wanted to remain
72% of English wanted to leave, 36% of Scottish wanted to leave
DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) Northern Ireland (ex Ian Paisley) (myDUP )
UK general election 8/6/17 called by Theresa May 4/17
Theresa May new PM with new cabinet post-Brexit 7/16
leave EU won - UK leaving EU within 2 years 6/16
EU Referendum 23 June 2016
Government responds to public desire for EU facts - 23 June 2016 referendum re remaining in EU
2016 Brexit watch - poll re exit of EU by Britain
Since 1972, UK is part of the EU except for Euro so they can rise above or starve outside the current meltdown in 2012. In 2016, UK left the EU.
Pros
Australians are honoured as quality workers in UK, so if I created a branch in the UK, I could lift the standards!
Sir Richard Branson who started Virgin Australia and brought diversity to the airline industry in Australia is a great inspiration for me.
The Queen is a great entrepreneur in her own way.
London is hosting the 2012 Olympic Games. A huge wifi network has been setup for London during the Olympic Games to allow people to communicate with friends and family while visiting London (£ 400M).
Many elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge have setup hitech incubators nearby to grow industry in Britain. Many of these produce open source software like Xen (competitor to VMWare) for virtualization. Bob Hawke and Tony Abbott, MPs from Australia, were Rhode Scholars in England.
Most of the social reformers like Wilberforce who stopped the Slave Trade were from Great Britain in the 19th Century. Since then things have steadily slid downwards.
Britain had some great preachers like John Stott and Martin Lloyd-Jones.
Cons
Workmanship in UK is in general quite low quality. The government seems to not care about high unemployment, dead economic sectors of its country or being more enterprising. There is a class structure that stunts the economy between haves and have nots. UK needs major social reforms to get up to speed like Australia.
UK tends to be very conservative compared to Australia, though they are wise money manages except for the GFC where they were caught out badly by exposure to risk when things went bad in 2008 in USA.
It is amazing UK won World War II as they always seem to be in a muddle with poor education and unwillingness to invest in business or growth and just expect government hand-outs to survive rather than doing some hard work and getting somewhere in life.
Everything in England seems to be about ripping people off and not giving them what they paid for.
England is a poor area compared to other parts of the world which shows in their meanness re money.
Britain needs a lot of prayer and hard work to get it back to its greater glory of 100 years ago in Queen Victoria's days.
Most English are computer illiterate and will not train themselves or get trained in computer technology. This makes dealing
with English very counterproductive re technology and requires much training and hand-holding of them to get the job over the line. Basically I lose money dealing
with England because of this lack of training and low educational standards of most of its population.
England needs to make education in IT a priority.
One major evidence of clueless IT companies in Britain is Vodafone who don't know how to fix their network in Australia so lose 300,000 customers in 2011.
Another foul up in May 2017 was British Airways booking system crashing due to only having one data centre and backups failing and 800 flights being cancelled on holiday weekend losing $620M off market value overnight. British Airways outsourced their booking and operations system to Indian IT subcontractors to save money in February 2016 destroying intellectual property edge they had by keeping it British. Britain is very similar to Australia in outsourcing IT to India and destroying local jobs. It stands to reason as Australia was a series of colonies of Britain pre 1901 so we are the same as Britain in many ways in our approach to business and entrepreneurialism losing our edge by not investing and copying everyone else rather than making our own decisions.
BBC Proms for First Time in Melbourne Australia
The famous BBC Proms classical music festival was performed in Melbourne Australia for first time in 13-16/4/16. ABC Classic FM broadcast it which I listened to each night and day.
The normal London Proms is still on in July-August 2016.
In Jan 2024, I found there were 2 companies who handle mail in UK:
In 2013, it took 3 weeks for a small screwdriver to be posted airmail from UK to Australia - hopeless service! UK company kept fobbing me off blaming Australia Post. This put me off dealing with UK for online orders as they are too slow.
VIDEO
British Leyland Cars | British Car Manufacturing | TV Eye | 1980 - collapse
MG Rover Group
VIDEO
Longbridge - end of days - 2021 - ex MG Rover factory now closed in 2005 with 1.4M pounds debt (50000 unsold cars) - Phoenix Venture Holdings (PVH) / Phoenix Consortium / Phoenix Four acquired MG Rover for 10 pounds in 2000 from BMW (1994-2000) with 500M pounds dowry payment from BMW then went into administration in April 2005 and ran off with 42M pounds and gave 6000 workers 3000 pounds each as redundancy payment short changing the workers due to incompetent management. There were Chinese owners SAIC in 2008-2016 who invested 50M pounds and reopened factory with 180 workers just assembling cars manufactured in China. In 2019 SAIC closed down plant and left small design team in London and moved plant to China. They sold more in China than UK so ignored UK to their peril. Old plant site was demolished and converted into residential and business park. Before SAIC, Tata (India) manufactured Rovers which were not accepted by UK public.
VIDEO
MG Rover Group - Rovers Billion Pound Blunder 2005
VIDEO
Collapse of MG Rover: Documentary - (Chinese Takeover, Phoenix 4, MG Racing) 3/14
VIDEO
The Last Days of Rover 1/09 (BBC) - lack of investment in new models, bad decisions, cutting corners
British Leyland / MG Rover were in Midlands UK, a working class area so very hard to retrain if they lose their jobs as on assembly line and only knew one skill - semi-skilled labour. It shows the danger of not diversifying the market or skills base of major manufacturer and not investing in new technology like robotics till too late when competitors have taken all the business.
Leyland P76
BMC ADO16 Austin 1100 and Morris 1100
BMC ADO17 Austin 1800
models
cars, 4WD
Austin
Jaguar
Land Rover
Leyland
MG
Mini
Morris
Princess
Riley
Rover
Triumph
Vanden Plas
Wolseley
trucks, buses
My brother had a Mini from 1980 onwards and in 1975 he had a Leyland P76, a Morris 1100 and Austin 1800 in Australia.
All the 4000 suppliers and 2 million staff of British Leyland and its suppliers went under when British Leyland collapsed in 1978 due to competition from overseas.
P76 had many faults like leaky windows. Manufacturing quality was poor and required recalls or repairs to make them roadworthy. P76 went out of business very quickly but was popular although ugly.
For my sister's wedding in 1974 in Bendigo she had 2 P76s for the wedding for bride and bridal party - my brother's yellow P76 and family friend's green P76.
social housing
ups and downs of getting a council house
alternative is private rental market or homelessness
30% has disease so need very specific housing
crowding so they need a bigger house than they can get
only 50% of demand is met
trying to switch to a better social housing flat is slow and difficult due to shortage and health needs of tenants (even less available)
social housing flats either get dirty from tenants or they are not maintained well by government leading to ill health or fighting
evictions leading to social housing demand
Bedroom tax tax for not using all bedrooms for accommodation of extra people e.g. 1 person in a 3 bedroom flat instead of 3 people in a 3 bedroom flat would pay bedroom tax on 2 bedrooms
evictions because of rent arrears or dirty houses
unfounded prejudice against immigrants by evicted white people (95% of housing goes to residents of UK)
housing benefit for rent - not all availed themselves of this causing eviction for rent arrears
unemployment or not enough income from zero-hours contracts leads to eviction for rent arrears
house is sold by landlord
immigrant has no financial support so loses job and housing and doesn't have enough money to return to their home country (often ex British colonies )
B&B till a proper flat is available if at all
children being put under UK Social Services if usually single parent cannot support them
return to home country by migrant to escape poverty and homelessness of UK without work or support
Portsmouth (YouTube)
London Borough of Hounslow (near Heathrow Airport) (YouTube)
National Fraud Initative
data matching to find fraudsters
subletting several houses by one person who has all properties illegally in their name to make a lot of money (e.g. 80000 pounds) which they have to repay to council who owns the property when they are caught
abandonment of property for sometimes 3 or more years without notice to housing association resulted in landlord taking action through court to possess property
woman used fraudulent identity to get benefits and rent and sublet council house
many Africans blatantly defrauded social housing
prosecution
job club for long-term unemployed
unemployed people join job club and get jobs via employment expert Hayley Taylor etc
successful and not a rip-off or put-down of jobseekers like in Australia
long-term unemployment is over 12 months
cases
Fairy Jobmother
A4e and Shaw Trust
The Job Centre
Great British Benefits Handout
British colonization of the Americas - quite staggering!
British Empire
Decolonisation of Africa
British Empire in World War II - Singapore
British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Asia Pacific
Marshall Islands
Fiji
Vanuatu
India
Sri Lanka
Bangladesh
Indonesia
Hong Kong
Australia
Singapore
Malaysia
Papua New Guinea
New Zealand
Mauritius
Seychelles
North, Central and South America
United States of America (13 states)
Canada
Caribbean (19)
Barbados
St Kitts
Antigua
Nevis
Providencia Island off Nicaragua
Barbuda
Bahamas
Dominica
Jamaica
Trinidad and Tobago
St Vincent and the Grenadines
Grenada
St Lucia
British Virgin Islands
Cayman Islands
Anguilla
Turks and Caicos Islands
Montserrat
British Windward Islands
Falklands
Belize (British Honduras)
Mosquito Coast (Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast)
British Guiana (Guyana)
Europe
Gibraltar
Ireland
Malta
Cyprus - Senator Nick Xenophon, Australia
Africa (handed back in the 1960s) (22)
Nigeria
Suez Canal Zone
Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)
Northern Rhodesia (Zambia)
British South Africa Company
Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar)
Eritrea (British Somaliland)
Gold Coast (Ghana)
South Cameroons (Cameroon)
Uganda
Nyasaland (Malawi)
Bechuanaland (Botswana)
Basutoland (Lesotho)
Sierra Leone
Gambia
South West Africa (Namibia)
Libya
Egypt
Sudan
Somalia
Kenya
South Africa
Swaziland (Eswatini)
Created 11 March 2012 12:11
WWWalker Web Development Pty Ltd