News and Opinion in Black and White

Talk about immoral, dickensian management practices. I suppose we all like having our own little secrets, but think about it, what do you like more, a secret or a fairer salary.

This all came about because, despite having equal rights in Britain women still get paid less than men. OK full disclosure is good for this, but it makes everyone accountable for the wages they earn, man or woman. If full disclosure becomes compulsary, which I think it should, then this will be one weapon less that big businesses have over its workforce. Im sure the first couple of weeks may be a bit uncomfortable for some people but after the novelty has worn off things will go back to normal and the full salary disclosure law will only be used when it is meant to be ie at annual salary re-negotiations by giving the employee ammunition against their manager.

Bring it on

…I didn’t. Where did this attitiude come from? I got shafted on my pay deal so it’s correct that you get shafted as well. Complete nonsense but it’s the exactly the type of mentailty big companies want us to have. Make it socially unacceptable to complain about your low pay rise. How did we get so brainwashed?

Of course the argument against is “if you don’t like it you can leave”. A completely immoral stance to have. A job is not a shop you go into where, if you dont like the staff you leave. In a job you invest what, 25% of your waking life in making sure you do a good job. You make friends with the people you work with, you make friends with the people you deal with outside of the company, you get to know your job intimately. And the answer is, if you don’t like it you can leave? Complete nonsense, unless your manager is the owner you have just as much right to work for that company as him or her.

Obviously big business promote this idea that its “Capitalism”, a free market economy. If people don’t like the pay deal they can leave, well NOT if you take your social responsibilities seriously as an employer. I have nothing against capitalism, but just because its capitalist, doesnt mean its acceptable that social responsibility and peoples emotions come a distant second.

As the saying goes, united we stand, divided we fall, lets support each other instead of peddling the wishes of corporations by saying it every man for himself. As big businesses know, the key to succes is co-operation.

Gordon Brown’s government are really up against it at the moment. The latest 48 hour stirke buy the lowest paid public sector workers is completely correct though. These people are the hardest hit by current inflation. The price of wide screen tvs maybe coming down but the price of essentials are sky rocketing. Given that lower paid workers spend a larger portion of their income on essentails they get hit the hardest which is why they should not be effected by the current “tough attitiude” against inflation. There is no reson why the least well off should pay the biggest price, given the minor effect they have on the economy as a whole. Gordon Brown’s government should should some moral principle. Time after time they are making stupid decsions which punish the least well off. Whether they do it soley to raise money or if it’s simply a matter of not realising the actual effects of their policies, either way it’s imcompetence.

This one has got me completely stumped. I honestly don’t see the problem. It’s as simple as this, Google Adwords is by far the best advertising programme out there and it has a monopoly not because the company is so big but because the programme is the best and is run with solid fundamentals that encourage the development of the internet.

Lets take a look at Amazon’s affiliate programme for example. Affiliates only get paid when people buy things from Amazon not when affiliates refer people to Amazon’s website. This is fundamentally wrong. It is saying to affiliates that you have to bring people to our site and also get them to buy something. In other words it is giving the affiliates responsibilty of converting the visitors into buyers on a website they have no control over. It is not up to the affiliate to convert visitors into buyers, that is 100% the job off the shop owner, in this case Amazon.

Google know this which is why websites get paid for creating traffic for other sites and not for converting visitors into sales. If websites converted enough visitors into buyers then they would start their own online shop and not advertise other companies online shops.

Until a company comes up with an advertising system that uses the same honest and fair fundamentals as Google Adwords then Google Adwords will continue to be the Number 1. Not because Google is the biggest but because Google is the best.

Ill be honest, I dont really understand the renewed interest, unless there is a chance the board will be replaced as Carl Icahn wants. Its on the table that it’s possible that Microsoft will buy only the search part of the Yahoo! business. This suprises me. As I’ve said before, if Microsoft can get their act together with their own search techonology they they wont need to buy Yahoo! search. At a price of 1 billion dollars for Yahoo! search it must be a better use of funds to keep that money and spend it on research instead.

From Yahoo!’s point of view they should really be saying where they are going to take the business in the future, this is the only way that they can reasonably say that Mircosoft’s offer is too low. Too low, why? what are you going to do in the next 5 years to increase the share value above Microsofts current bid. I haven’t heard anything, Yahoo! are not doing themselves any favours keeping quiet about future plans. It could be that the press is biased to the Icahn and Microsoft side of the story? Maybe Yahoo! have got plans but they are not sharing it?

If Im honest I believe Microsoft must want to buy the whole of the Yahoo! business. To me anyway, it just doesnt make sense that Microsoft would buy the Yahoo! search for a billion dollars, it just doesnt look like good value. Much better for Microsoft to buy the whole of the Yahoo! business and take over the millions of Email accounts that Yahoo! has and all the content that Yahoo! has and all those millions of viewing hours that the Yahoo! content has. Its content has many times more viewing hours than their search results. Just ask Google, they get what? 10 times as many searches as Yahoo! yet in total, people spend more hours looking at Yahoo! content than Google. Content is where the money and influence is and at the end of the day, that is what all companies want.

As for Microsoft saying to the BBC that they are no longer interested in Yahoo! because they are losing key staff. This is a blatant attempt by Microsoft to weaken Yahoo!’s position by syaing the company really isnt worth that much. In fact ill go one stage further about Mircosoft’s plans, they only thing they are interested in, is the information and the email accounts of Yahoo! users and the fringe benefits that go with Yahoo! are a bonus. 

This really is desperation and shows a total lack of vision. The search results from Live.com are absolutley shocking and until they get this sorted they will always be a bit player in the search engine market.

“I and many of your shareholders strongly believe that a combination between Yahoo and Microsoft would form a dynamic company and more importantly would be a force strong enough to compete with Google on the internet,” said Mr Icahn.  BBC News

 A force strong enough to compete? What force do you need? The internet is open to everyone and there are no barriers to entry. What force do you need? And to top it all Google supports the growth of Microsoft and Yahoo! because it doesn’t it discriminate against these companies in it’s search results.

 A force strong enough to compete, what is this guy talking about? A case in point, Facebook, a household name and only 2 years old.

 A force strong enough to compete with Google. Carl Icahn hasn’t got the first clue about the internet. Just so you know.

is without doubt Practical Performance Car in the UK. This is coming from someone that rates the following magazines, EVO Magazine (UK), Banzai (UK), Turbo & High Tec Performance (USA), Autosport (UK), Motorsport (UK), Car and Car Conversions (UK, when it was in existance). And from someone who doesn’t rate Max Power (UK), Japanese Performance (UK), Top Gear (UK), Import Tuner (USA), Super Street (USA).

Its still quite a new magazine so I just hope they can keep up the relentless pace of enthralling articles that they write at the moment. I think it will be difficult to continue to write so many insightful & amusing articles every month I just hope the automotive industry has enough areas to keep them going.

 With Practical Performance Car its not just the interesting subjects they cover, it’s not just how well written the articles are, it’s not just how they actually get their hands dirty on interesting projects, it’s not just that the articles are amusing and at times make you laugh out loud, it’s the clear enthusiasm of the writers in cars that really pulls everything together into a complete package

 Just so you know!

What exactly has Microsoft got to gain from purchasing Yahoo! The only thing I can see is econoimies of scale from combining the activities they carry out in parallel at the moment. Games, News, Chat etc etc. But this is not the problem for either Yahoo! or Microsoft. They do chat, games, news etc etc very well.

 The problem they have is sub standard search technology. A meger between Yahoo! and Microsoft is not going to solve their problem. This merger makes very little sense. Sure they will be more efficient but the problem is they don’t generate anywhere near the revenues they want.

 The worry for Yahoo! is that they don’t have a plan. Well, at least that I can see. Has anyone from Yahoo! identified their problems and how their going to solve them? I mean with a Microsoft bidding for them, now is surely the time to tell people what their future plans are and show how a Microsft takeover is such a bad idea. But I haven’t heard anything.

 If anything the ideal partnership would be for Google to take a controlling stake in Yahoo! and let the companies run seperately.  This would be a utopian situation for Google. Their problem is that people only spend a fraction of a time on their site compared with visitors to Yahoo! Google’s problem is they dont want to comprimise the users search experience. Run the two as is and show Google adwords on Yahoo!. Lets be honest here. Google adwords is decades ahead of Yahoo! in paid advertising both in terms of philosophy and execution. This would be a real cost saver for Yahoo! as they would no longer have to spend money on maintaing and developing their paid advetising programme.

There is talk about employers being forced to make peoples slaries openly available in an attempt to eliminate pay disparity between the men and women. Bring it on I say, it can only be a good thing for employees, not only for a motivational point of view but also from a fairness point of view. Sure it might lead to people chopping and changing their jobs more often to get better pay but that can only be a good thing. It’s puts the power back into the hands of the workers and not in the hands of the shareholders. Middle management may complain but they will gain as much as everyone else.

Keeping employees pay secret from their colleagues is a classic divide and conquer stratergy to keep workers pay down and I mean blue collar and white collar workers.

Let’s make this infomation public knowledge (for employees of the same company) sure it might cause a bit of offense at first but people will soon learn to live with it or even better, find a better paid job.

Power to the people