In my twin roles of Quality guru and tin robot tycoon, I’m in a unique position to settle the debate as to whether China will unseat Japan as the manufacturing powerhouse of the global economy. In terms of sheer volume, there is no debate: China is already big boss. But quality? If you want a wobbly [...]
Category Archives: Business
Why Quality is important and why we need more of it
January 5, 2010 – 3:04 pm
A bunch of people out there believe that doing things better is the answer to our economic woes. I can’t argue with that, so I’ve recently joined the Chartered Quality Institute as its External Affairs spokesman, because I firmly believe that until and unless we get to grips with the wholly unnecessary and avoidable malaise which has [...]
News Corp is losing money because no news is bad news
August 8, 2009 – 5:26 pm
Last week, News Corp, owners of the Wall St Journal, New York Post, (London) Times, Sunday Times, The Sun, News of the World, the Australian, BSkyB Television, Fox, Star TV Asia and others reported a 10.7% decline in revenue to $7.67 billion (almost $800 million) and quarterly net losses of $203 million. Bad as it [...]
Next week, all UK mobile numbers will be fair game for spammers, scammers and buggers – not a lot of people know that
July 10, 2009 – 9:27 am
. . .and that’s the problem. The Directory of Mobile Phone numbers goes live next week. All numbers, including those belonging to children, will be potentially open to cold calling and the general abuse that unscrupulous telesales people subject us to. Unless you particularly wish to be cold called, deluged with text offers and – [...]
Kicking National Express was a good call from Labour
July 5, 2009 – 4:18 pm
On the National Express, there’s a jolly hostess, selling crisps and tea. She’ll provide you with drinks and theatrical winks for a sky-high fee. We’re going where the air is free. Tomorrow belongs to me. Lyrics from ‘National Express,’ by The Divine Comedy. Surely some mistake? Privatised train operators are supposed to make a profit [...]
An open letter to Gordon Brown, saviour of the world's banks, apart from Iceland, the UK and . . .
March 17, 2009 – 12:52 am
As Gordon and Alastair puff out their chests and iron their M+S Let’s Pretend We’re Businessmen suits (made in Indonesia) to host the G20 Global Summit on the global economy, a letter from Steven Katirai, whose Google search reveals him as a capital markets consultant based in the North East of England, has been doing the rounds [...]
Is Sir Jams Crosby is about to leap aboard another gravy train?
February 23, 2009 – 7:28 pm
Just when you thought it was safe to get back on the buses, one of the undead emerges to cause a train wreck. File this one under ‘you couldn’t make it up’ . . . . . By John J Kelly As we know from our unhealthy obsession with The Godfather, when Roman generals failed their [...]
Unless we kill them now, Zombie banks will roam the earth, eating our future and boring us witless
February 22, 2009 – 3:26 pm
The financial system as a whole is rotten. Predicated on the now-doghoused dogma that markets know best and light-touch regulation is all that’s needed to produce the best of all possible worlds, the regulatory structure failed to prevent banks, insurers and investment funds from acting recklessly. During the good times, investors as well as [...]
Some good news at last – News Corp lost £4.4 billion last quarter
February 9, 2009 – 11:09 am
Cheer up – the recession (depression, according to Gordon Brown’s most recent Freudian slip of the tongue) has some green shoots. You wouldn’t have noticed unless you were looking hard – the company in question is hellbent on global media domination and now owns the Dow Jones Wall Street Journal- but on Thursday, 5 February [...]