Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

We’re all used to the price of computers and electronic items generally dropping in price over the years but it happens to some surprising items outside that arena too.

One major example I spotted lately was the Encyclopedia Britannica. Way back in 1981 that cost £600 for the full set yet now you can pick up the 2007 equivalent for £450. Granted, that’s on an offer at the moment but even without that offer it’s still only £745 (although, oddly, the 2010 edition is only £712!). That gets you a LOT of books: the 32000 pages spread over 32 volumes add up to over four feet of shelf space and weigh in at over 60 kilos.

Yeah, I know, people tend to look towards DVD or online versions of these things these days and, yes, I know that the paper one will date a whole lot but I still quite like having the books sitting there to leaf through. Besides, in reality, knowledge doesn’t really date that quickly. Sure, the likes of the Haiti disaster won’t be in even the 2010 edition but then it’s not so much the immediate information that you want in an encyclopedia but the more historic stuff and that doesn’t change terribly quickly.

Now, if only I could find a corner in the house to fit them in…

Most people are still in search of their ideal holiday spot I’m sure. But what is “ideal” anyway?

Obviously it should take into account your interests and those of the group which you’re travelling with. But is it enough to consider each of those individually? What if there was a single spot that took account of all possible interests?

Argueably, orlando vacations would be very close to allowing for all possible interests. Granted, not quite in a single spot but in a fairly compact region you can take in theme parks, beaches, wildlife, museums and just about everything else that you can imagine.

Does that make it “ideal” though? Not for everyone certainly but it is very close to ideal for an awful lot of people.

Although they can be annoying, it does seem to be a good sign that the people trying to sell you credit cards are back in the shopping centres again and those annoying teatime calls trying to do the same have restarted too.

I imagine that there are all kinds of grand things that the economists are saying these days about when we should be starting to get out of this recession but I think the banks trying to push more credit onto us must be amongst the clearest and most easily understood sign of them all. Not only does that show that the banks have money to lend once more but it also shows that they’re at least prepared to consider lending it too. You might think I said the same thing twice in the last sentence but I didn’t. They always did have money to lend, what they wouldn’t do was actually lend it.

Moreover, this isn’t like them lending via mortgages (which also seems to have restarted, going by the number of “sold” signs going up lately). With a mortgage they have some security (ie they can take the house off you). With a credit card, they are taking a real risk that they could lose the money so overall it’s more encouraging to see people trying to sell you credit cards than it is to see more mortgages being approved.

Now, I’ll grant you that they are probably going to offer you a lower limit than you might have expected in the past, if they offer you a card at all that is. However, that they are trying to actively sell credit cards now seems a very clear sign that an upturn is on the way.

One of the biggest problems in getting out of France is the sheer quantity of post and email that continues to generate.

This wasn’t so bad when we were actually working in the hotel as we were online daily and keeping on top of everything that came in but now that we’re away from that we don’t have nearly so much time to devote to that as it seems to need. For instance, in the past week I needed to go through dozens of pieces of post and thousands of emails only to find a mere handful that were relevant and needed action taken on them.

Despite France having quite a strict no-spamming law, the quantity of junk email coming from France far exceeds that from anywhere else in the world and almost all of it seems to contravene the French law. The reason why that should be is quite simple: French ISPs require anonymous logins to their mail servers so anyone can send anything and, of course, they do.

The Vanessa George affair showed the major weakness of the CRB system ie that you’ll get an “all clear” if you haven’t been caught yet.

However, the various schools are required to have the CRB check done on anyone who comes into contact with children. Thus last year our offer of assistance to go along and help with the supervision on a couple of school outings was turned down.

Ironically, this year we are allowed to go along even though all we’ve done is to put the form in for the CRB check to be done. How come? Well, there’s such a backlog of checks to be done that they have to operate essentially as they’ve always done and assess whether or not a given parent is a risk to the children. That seems to be close to offering the best of both worlds in using the CRB as a backup to the judgement of the teachers.

So all being well, we’ll be off to seen round the airport by the time you read this.