Editor's Blog

Politicians of all parties in the UK refer constantly ( unless they forget when making speeches) to "reducing the budget deficit". The budget deficit is the difference between the governments expenditure and revenue. The UK government currently spend around £730 to £750 Billion each year. Meantime, it has revenue of around £610 to £630 Billion annually. So there is a budget defici....

Amidst all the angst about the over-stated profits at Tesco, at least it can be said that Whistleblowing finally worked. A middle manager in the Tesco Finance Department  reported concerns to the company General Counsel. He appreciated the gravity of the issues raised and immediately brought the matter to the attention of the new CEO, Dave Lewis. Lewis, in turn, made public announcements as so....

Emirates NBD Bank has just upgraded the software on their ATMs to allow customers to purchase shares. In Spain, Portugal and Italy, ATM users can carry out up to 70 transactions, including buying tickets for football matches and paying taxes.( The latter facility is apparently used in some countries more than others). La Caixa Bank, despite already having some of the most sophisticated ATMs o....

The completely manipulative and cynical advertising by Visa in connection with the launch of "contactless" on all Transport for London services almost takes one's breath away. Four pages of hype in the London Evening Standard, though costing tens of thousands of £'s, is small beer to the mighty Visa. This is, of course, a total sell out by those responsible for London's transport ....

Some people feel the Scottish Independence Referendum has been a wonderful example of democracy in action. However, a legitimate question to ask is " independent to do what?" Are any countries truly independent today? I would venture to suggest that the answer is a resounding "NO".  Most significant countries are enmeshed in multiple alliances. EC, Nato, UN, WHO, G10 and IMF are jus....

John Carney ( no relation, it seems, to Mark Carney, the very wise Governor of the Bank of England), writing in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, produced a very ill-informed article in which he trumpeted that ATMs are soon to become "museum pieces" and that cash is a dying payment method. Now the WSJ often gets things wrong - more of that soon, perhaps - BUT this piece of idle specu....

I was listening to Farming Today this morning on BBC Radio 4. I usually do. It is the next best thing to waking up on a farm, with the bonus that there is no milking to be done. Part of this mornings coverage featured 150 farmers demonstrating outside a supermarket, protesting at the fact that the market price of an average lamb has gone down by £25 in the last few months. I must be a real....

So much rubbish is being talked about the EC authorities forcing Google  to implement a "right to forget". It seems still not to be widely appreciated how much of the so-called "news" we are exposed to has actually been put out by  vested interests seeking to further their own ends. Of course, we all know that the likes of Hello Magazine pay people to allow gain access to their house....

In the United States, cheque deposit at ATMs was made simple years ago with the passing of Check 21 in 2003. This law removed the need for millions of paper cheques to be freighted around the country. Instead,an electronic image of the cheque can be processed at ATMs. When Bank of America introduced ATM cheque imaging, their customers voted it the most important customer service improvement t....

The UK Payments Council clearly dislikes choice. For years, they tried to end Cheque Clearing in the UK, spending a small fortune striving to take the choice of using cheques away from the UK Public. Luckily, the Treasury Select Committee noticed what the PC was up to. Richard North, the lumbering Chair of the Council, got his bottom smacked and was told to stop being a silly boy. Cheques were....