Focus: Sucking up to the city
The News Review:
- Focus: Sucking up to the city
- Now red tape and tax are set to go global
- Seeking Safety in Home Security Systems
- Article from: Sunday Herald Sun
- TV Review: Sesame Street travels the world
- UK is ‘losing battle of ideas’ with al-Qaeda
Focus: Sucking up to the city
Times Online – Oct 22, 2006
Brown also took on board criticism of the high cost of doing business in the City — exacerbated by stamp duty on share purchases — and about the need for better transport and planning. Michael Snyder of the Corporation of London said Brown’s meeting had offered the City the opportunity to get its concerns across. “We’ve got to attract the world’s talent pool but we’ve also got to develop home-grown talent,” he said. “People also need to know where they are going to be in terms of taxation. The approach of Revenue & Customs is quite aggressive now. ” The chancellor, whose brainchild was the merger of the old Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise, appeared to acknowledge that the new organisation’s methods were causing problems. Some City businesses claim that the Inland Revenue’s relationship-based approach has been replaced by a Customs & Excise culture, in which the instinct is to kick down the door in a dawn raid.
Now red tape and tax are set to go global
Times Online – Oct 22, 2006
For American businessmen with whom I spoke the big worry is competition policy. Ever since the EU prevented the merger of two American companies, GE and Honeywell, and the EU decided to be tougher on Microsoft than US anti-trust enforcers, Americans have been as unsettled by European competition policy as Britons have been unsettled by the extradition of the NatWest Three and the arrest of Sportingbet’s Peter Dicks in New York. Some American chief executives say the EU uses competition law to prevent American companies from competing vigorously with home-grown firms. Never mind that most of the complaints against Microsoft, and now against Intel, have come from American companies challenging the tactics of rivals they believe to be “dominant” under EU law. American firms are also finding that doing business in a globalised world subjects them to the merger policies of many nations. Indeed, one expert in mergers and acquisitions tells me that when a deal is struck he sets up a giant board with a column for each of the nations that have anti-trust statutes and which have to clear the transaction of any company that operates on a transnational basis, for which every country charges a fee. Then there is food.
Seeking Safety in Home Security Systems
New York Times – Oct 22, 2006
But from where the Lombardos sit, the world is an increasingly scary place. So last month, they replaced their old home security system with the latest model. Times are changing, Ms. Lombardo said recently as she watched installers rip out her 1980s-vintage system and put in new wireless gadgetry that governs devices like alarm sirens and security contacts on doors and windows, all of which can be controlled via the Internet from anywhere in the world… At Meenan Security Services, which installed the Lombardos’ new system, sales have gone up about 60 percent in the past decade, said Frank Mallimo, a supervisor. He said that the company’s nine divisions across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania were installing about 100 new or upgraded systems a month. Revenue for dealers in New Jersey has grown 2 to 3 percent a year during the past decade, said Casey Guagenti, president of the New Jersey Burglar and Fire Alarm Association, which represents 250 businesses. Manufacturers like Napco Security Systems, in Amityville, N. , are growing, too, according to Richard Soloway, the company’s president. He said that business had grown at least 2 percent in each of the last 20 years at Napco, which sells security systems to 8,000 dealers worldwide.
Article from: Sunday Herald Sun
NEWS.com.au – Oct 22, 2006
And the characters featured in an American book released this week have one thing in common — they don’t exist. The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived aims to explain "how characters of myth, legends, television and the movies have shaped our society, changed our behaviour and set the course of history". Topping the list is a home-grown American character, the Marlboro Man (pictured left) — the macho cowboy who emerged in the 1950s as an advertising creation to help sell cigarettes. But its maker, Philip Morris, is unlikely to be pleased, as the book points out that Marlboro Man’s biggest influence on society has been to cause the death of millions from cancer. At number two is Big Brother from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the face of government control, while at three is King Arthur, who the book’s three authors say embodies for many the ideal monarch or leader. Santa Claus is in at number four because he "makes us believe we are entitled to goodies just for living in an affluent society and governs our entire economy for the last quarter of the year". Shakespeare scores twice in the top 10, with Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, while Sherlock Holmes and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are also there.
TV Review: Sesame Street travels the world
Pittsburgh Post Gazette – Oct 22, 2006
” It seems like an easy translation: Dub the Muppet segments into the native language and create a few scenes with local child and adult actors. The new “Independent Lens” documentary “The World According to Sesame Street” (9 p. Tuesday, PBS) proves it’s not that easy at all. Filmmakers Linda Goldstein Knowlton and Linda Hawkins Costigan follow producers from Sesame Workshop, which makes the American “Sesame Street” and works with producers worldwide on local productions.
UK is ‘losing battle of ideas’ with al-Qaeda
Irish Independent – Oct 22, 2006
He spoke out at an emergency meeting of ministers and security officials amid an ever-growing threat from home-grown Islamist terror groups. He called for an urgent but controversial step-change in the propaganda war and said al-Qaeda’s so-called “single extremist narrative” was proving ever more attractive to young British Muslims. The UK government needed to do much more to win the “battle of ideas”, Mr Reid said. The meeting came as ministers – including Jack Straw, Ruth Kelly and Phil Woolas – started to take a much more aggressive stance against radical Islam. Ministers have said that 30 terror plots are being investigated and that 1,500 young Muslims – many more than previously estimated – are suspects.