Posts tagged UK
10 million active Twitter users in the UK
A year ago Twitter set up an office in the UK. One year on they’ve announced some pretty impressive figures. There are now 10 million active users here in the UK. One in six people. That’s good going. And it fits with my anecdotal observations that I’ve been seeing a growing number of friends dip their feet into Twitter’s waters.
I should add that Twitter is undoubtedly my favourite social network. It’s where I find my most interesting articles and stumble into great conversations.
"If we can’t change the Beeb, we can’t change the country"
Fascinating rant by Boris Johnson in The Telegraph, arguing that the BBC needs a new Tory director-general if we are going to see our economic situation turn around:
We now have the twin problems of dealing with the debt, and recovering competitiveness – and neither of those is easy when the BBC is the chief mirror in which we view ourselves. If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are more likely to see the taxpayer as the solution to every economic ill.
If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are less likely to understand and sympathise with the difficulties of business; you are less likely to celebrate enterprise. I have sometimes wondered why BBC London never carries stories about dynamic start-ups or amazing London exports – and then concluded gloomily that it just not in the nature of that show. It’s not in their DNA. Fully 75 per cent of the London economy is private sector – and yet it is almost completely ignored by our state broadcaster.
Too soon to write the Coalition off
David Laws, writing in the FT:
The coalition still has the potential to be one of the great reforming governments of the postwar era. The changes we are making in education, welfare and pensions are radical and right. The country will judge us over our full term and not on the basis of a turbulent few weeks of “here today, gone tomorrow” headlines. But after five years, we must show we have made the right decisions on the economy and got Britain back on track. That must be the coalition’s overriding obsession in the year ahead.
This whole piece takes a very positive, even bullish stance, on the Coalition government. And Law’s - the Liberal Democrat MP - is right at least about one thing: that it’ll be the whole five years that gets judged come the general election in 2015, not these awful few weeks the Coalition have been having.
It does seem crazy to me that so quickly into a five year plan, it is being decided that its not working. It’s as if people are surprised that making cuts really doesn’t feel good. Of course they don’t! This was always going to be an incredibly tough few years for the UK - regardless of who was in government.
I don’t think the government have been getting all the decisions right, but I do still broadly agree with their overarching plan of reducing public spending and getting control of the deficit. And we do need our public services to be run more efficiently if they’re to be sustainable. That said, the priority has to shift towards getting our economy growing again. The best way to overcome the mess we’re in economically is to have both decreasing costs and increasing growth. If it’s only the former, we’ll never get out of this mess.
The Coalition will be judged come 2015 on how it does on the growth front between now and then. The reduced public spending is known and certain. The growth isn’t. Get the economy growing again and Labour’s lead in the polls will evaporate very quickly whilst ever Ed Miliband is at the helm.
2015 is a long three years away. Whatever we may think of the Coalition, it’s far too early to write it off or think that the plan has failed. For better or worse, they’re going to stick with Plan A (whilst placing renewed emphasis on growth) and hope things turn around before the general election. Anyone who loves the UK will hope for that the plan does work. But, of course, it’s in the Labour Party’s interests that it doesn’t.
Unemployment down by 35,000, Employment up by 53,000
Office for National Statistics:
The employment rate for those aged from 16 to 64 was 70.4 per cent, up 0.1 on the quarter. There were 29.17 million people in employment aged 16 and over, up 53,000 on the quarter.
The unemployment rate was 8.3 per cent of the economically active population, down 0.1 on the quarter. There were 2.65 million unemployed people, down 35,000 on the quarter. This is the first quarterly fall in unemployment since the three months to May 2011.
The inactivity rate for those aged from 16 to 64 was 23.1 per cent, down 0.1 on the quarter. There were 9.27 million economically inactive people aged from 16 to 64, down 25,000 on the quarter.
Some good news at last. And better figures than were expected.
Polling on the strikes
UK Polling Report provides a breakdown of the polling on today’s strike action.
Osborne and Balls: Their differences (and similarities) in economic approach
Stephanie Flanders, BBC economics editor:
Mr Balls thinks a short-term fiscal stimulus would pay for itself, at least over a few years, and would not seriously jeopardise the government’s standing in financial markets. So, incidentally, do some right-wing critics of the chancellor, who are lobbying for immediate tax cuts. But many in the city would still agree with Mr Osborne, that the short-term benefit for the economy of any stimulus would be small, and the long-term costs for the government’s credibility rather large.
It’s up to you to decide which is right. There are plenty of clever people on each side. But when it comes to the gloomy reality facing the UK over the next few years, I’m afraid the chancellor and his opponent are more or less agreed.
The whole article is a helpful look at both the differences and areas of agreement between the chancellor George Osborne and the shadow-chancellor Ed Balls.
Apple jumps the line to become UK’s no. 2 online retail site
Darrell Etherington at GigaOm:
Apple rose to second place from eighth the previous quarter, thanks to a five-fold increase in traffic between August and October.
Apple was second only to Amazon.co.uk, and beat out Argos, which has been at the top of the list along with Amazon’s U.K site since Hitwise began its rankings. In October 2011, the Apple site accounted for 1 in ever 250 visits made by U.K. browsers.
The Apple juggernaut just keeps on rolling.
The FT's economics editor urges Mr Osborne to stick to plan A
Chris Giles:
The chancellor is right to reject the arguments of the Plan B brigade because the risk that investors would lose confidence in the deficit reduction plan far outweighs the likely small economic gains. On the National Institute’s own estimates, huge temporary tax cuts, sending borrowing to a new record of 12 per cent of gross domestic product, are required just to push the 2012 forecast growth rate up from about 1 per cent to 2 per cent. After that, borrowing would still have to be cut.
Not good news on the employment front
Highest level of unemployment since 1994 and youth unemployment has just crossed the one million mark.
Our children need time not stuff
We put too little store on family time and too much on material goods. Unicef paints a picture of a country that has got its priorities wrong - trading quality time with our children for “cupboards full of expensive toys that aren’t used”.
This is from a BBC News item that highlights the fact that the UK has come bottom in the European table when it comes to child well-bring.
I have so say that, when I watched this story on the news last night, I actually chuckled and said to my wife Rachel that we had yet another news article stating the bleeding obvious.
But then it struck me that, if this report is as bad as it seems, then what is obvious to me, clearly isn’t obvious to others. I’ve chosen to pursue a working life that maximises my time and involvement with my daughter Eloise. I want to be part of her life. I want to provide for her of course, but more than that I want to be there for her and with her. And this report clearly highlights that this isn’t normal.
Time will always be the more valuable investment in our kids than the things we buy for them. And I guess it’s always good to be reminded of that.
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Has Facebook reached its peak?
Inside Facebook:
The United States lost nearly 6 million users, falling from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the end of it. This is the first time the country has lost users in the past year. Canada also fell significantly, by 1.52 million down to 16.6 million, although it has been fluctuating around that number for the past year. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom, Norway and Russia all posted losses of more than 100,000.
Whilst Facebook is still growing as a whole, the nations that were the first to jump on board are starting to see a slowdown. Has Facebook maybe peaked for people in the US and the UK?
I’m very much still a user of Facebook, though not nearly as much nowadays. I cross-post my status updates from Twitter and share the links to my KERUFF posts but, other than that, I don’t use it much. There are a few people whose updates I follow but I have blocked huge numbers of my Facebook ‘friends’ from appearing in my feed.
For me, Twitter definitely has the larger proportion of my time. I discover much more interesting stuff through Twitter and it’s a much simpler approach.
I won’t be leaving Facebook behind any time soon, but these stats - though not yet a trend - don’t surprise me at all.
The UK economy grew by 0.5% in the first three months of the year
BBC News:
The UK economy grew by 0.5% in the first three months of the year.
The Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) first estimate of economic activity shows a recovery from the 0.5% contraction recorded for the last three months of 2010.
Pretty dreadful construction industry figures (down 4.7%) mean that the growth isn’t as high as projected (0.8%) but after being -0.5% last quarter, it’s reasonably good news -if not as good as hoped.
Obviously George Osborne will tell us this proves he’s making the right decisions and Ed Balls will tell us it’s far too slow and proves Osborne is making the wrong decisions.
UK mortgage lending up 21%
BBC News:
Mortgage lending rebounded in March when the amount lent in home loans rose by 21% compared with the previous month, lenders have said.
It’s about time mortgage lending started to pick up.
Huffington Post coming to the UK
The Huffington Post will launch a British edition this summer, its founder announced in London, in what could be the first of a raft of international versions of the blogging site.
Speaking at the Guardian Changing Media Summit alongside AOL’s chief executive, Tim Armstrong, Arianna Huffington showed off designs for the localised edition of the popular news and comment site, which was acquired by AOL for $315m last month.
I’ve never really visited the Huffington Post so, for now, I’m really not that bothered about a UK version. Should I be?
I can confirm that Apple’s UK iPad 2 pricing is unconfirmed!
It’s interesting that Apple hasn’t yet announced the pricing for the iPad 2 here in the UK. In the US they made the immediate announcement that the iPad pricing in the States would be identical to the iPad 1.
So why haven’t they said the same for here in the UK? Could they be considering actually dropping the price here?
I got in touch with Apple yesterday and they simply said that the pricing will be announced closer to the launch date (25th March). And that’s interesting because they’re not saying it’ll just be the same - which they easily could have done.
One of the reasons that I think the price may drop is the competition. The Motorola Xoom pricing seems better and more comparable to the iPad in the UK than the US due to the fact that Apple is charging UK users more for the iPad than in the US. Dropping the pricing would reduce the reasons for buying a Xoom even further.
It’s worth saying that whilst UK users do pay more than US users for Apple products, it is not to the extent that people often think. A straight $499 converted to pounds comes in at £308, a full £121 less than the £429 iPad 1 has been selling at. However, US pricing doesn’t include sales tax (which is different in each state) so the UK price has to have VAT added on. This would bring the price to £370. So on that basis, even factoring other costs for Apple to sell products in the UK, there is clearly scope for Apple to drop the price in the UK.
Ultimately, if I was to have a guess - and it is just a guess - I would suggest that Apple may look to sell the iPad 2 starting at £399.
