Archive for December, 2009
Stylish business: Belfast Telegraph
The Stormont Gate House is stylish and ornate. There is, perhaps, no more fitting place to locate a showroom for a professional interior design practice that services clients with taste and, it needs to be added, sufficient disposable wealth.
JTPY Design has occupied the Stormont Gate House for just over a year, taking advantage of the [...]
Savers pay for banks’ mistakes: Belfast Telegraph
Savers are paying the price for banks’ colossal mistakes. In most cases, banks’ customers are actually losing money holding funds in a savings account.
Research just published by MoneyNet reveals that eight out of ten savings accounts are paying less in interest than the current rate of inflation.
Take First Trust. A saver with less than [...]
Saving ethically: MoneyTalks: Belfast Telegraph
The crisis in global banking has sparked a big increase in consumer interest in investing ethically. That, at least, seems the obvious conclusion to be drawn from a jump in the amount of money invested ethically in the last year, despite the most severe recession in a lifetime.
Across the UK, sales of ethical products in [...]
Saving the public finances: Belfast Telegraph
It is a graphic illustration of how dire the national finances are that one of the most competitive savings product in the UK at the moment is offered by the Government. Normally the security of a Government-backed scheme means that it does not need to match commercial rates: but these are not normal times.
National Savings [...]
Questions of Cash: ‘Why is it so difficult to make a balance transfer?’: The Independent
Q. In October I phoned Virgin to request two balance transfers to be made, one to my Capital One credit card and one for £187 to my Santander - Abbey Zero - card. Ten minutes later I rang Virgin again to cancel the Santander transfer. The man I spoke to said he could see the [...]
Ireland in crisis: Public Finance
Crisis creates opportunities. But whether those opportunities are used for good or bad ends depends on who holds the power – and also on the perspective of what actually is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
It is, alas, self-evident that things cannot go on as they are in terms of public sector spending. The scale of the banking [...]
Mutual competition by the parties: Co-operative News
Crisis creates opportunities. But whether those opportunities are used for good or bad ends depends on who holds the power – and also on the perspective of what actually is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
It is, alas, self-evident that things cannot go on as they are in terms of public sector spending. The scale of the banking [...]
Building a collective shelter for building societies: Co-operative News
I wonder how many subscribers to Co-operative News are also readers of the Financial Times. Not enough is my guess.
It is not, though, my purpose here to increase the circulation of the FT – which, in any case, is doing pretty well without my assistance. Rather it is to spread knowledge of a recent idea [...]
A mutual free press: Co-operative News
You win some, you lose some. The announcement of the arrangements for the sale of the state-rescued Northern Rock makes it look very unlikely that any part of it will be remutualised – to the frustration of many Co-op Party-sponsored MPs.
Rather surprisingly, a different approach is being taken by the government in the Irish Republic, [...]
The end of the Big 4 stranglehold?: Belfast Telegraph
The global economic crisis could have a massive impact on the banking market in Northern Ireland. While the Big Four – Ulster Bank, Bank of Ireland, First Trust and Northern Bank – may all survive in Northern Ireland, it is far from certain that they will remain the ‘Big Four’ over the coming years.
Last week’s [...]
