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What a mess. The Chancellor has just announced that the annual increase in business rates, which was set at 5pc last September and fell due on April 1, will be partially deferred.

Alistair Darling has said that businesses need now only pay a 2pc increase, with the rest falling due over the next two years.

What most people will miss in reporting the announcement is that the relief is not automatic and actually …

Source: Business Listings

World leaders lugging a financial crisis in their suitcases to the G20 summit probably don’t have …

Source: Business Listings

I’ve written enough times - before the finance ministers’ summit for instance - that we can expect little in the way of tangible economic agreements out of the G20. This would be expecting too much (knowing what today’s bunch of politicians are and aren’t capable of). The world’s financial system has collapsed; the very foundations of both it and the precepts that underpin global capitalism have come under question. These kind of disturbances cannot be undone or repaired overnight.

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Source: Business Listings

Since everyone else is doing it in the run-up to this week’s G20 meeting, I’m thinking of organizing a protest march. I’m fed up with parents who give their offspring ridiculous names, unnecessary technological complexity and the entire process of ageing, after, say, 35, and it’s time to take a stand.

Oh, and my demonstration  will also target protesters - particularly those who make a great, gigantic, disrupt…

Source: Business Listings

The relationship between state and society in Singapore is governed by micromanagement, with many people looking to government for advice on how to live their lives and ministers regularly telling people what to do.

In that very spirit, the health minister, Khaw Boon Wan, has urged overweight Singaporeans to get fit if they want to improve their job prospects in these tough times.

“If you are a little bit overweight, please think about slimming down,” he was quoted as sayin…

Source: Business Listings

Odd story in today’s Sunday Times suggesting that Sir James Dyson’s plan for a design and engineering academy in Bath was trumped by the “glitz” of a separate bid by entreprepeneur Peter Jones for an academy teaching enterprise.

The story is sourced to someone at the soon-to-be-defunct Learning & Skills Council, which may indicate the motive for the leak against John De…

Source: Business Listings

Given that the vast majority of governments around the world have reacted to the financial crisis with varying degrees of economic nationalism and protectionism (as the World Bank has noted), observers of sound mind would expect no significant global deal to come out of next week’s G20 summit.

For some r…

Source: Business Listings

Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, has today told staff it will conduct a review of its European operations, in a move which could lead to job cuts.

While Dow Jones, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, said it was too early to provide details of what the review would include, sources close to Dow Jones said the aim was to “increase productivity and efficiency”.

It is understood that one aspect of the review could be moving Dow Jones’s London …

Source: Business Listings

I had a sneak preview of the Wallace & Gromit exhibition at the Science Museum this morning and can thoroughly recommend it as a fun and inspirational family treat.

Sitting next to the existing Dan Dare & the birth of hi-tech Britain exhibition, dear old Wallace is being held up as the archetypal British inventor.

<img width=”400″ src=”http://fast1.onesite.com/blogs.telegraph.co.uk/user/richard_tyler/walla…

Source: Business Listings

Amid the gloom and doom, we all deserve some entertainment. Many of us have held on to pay-TV contracts and are buying more computer games as more evenings are spent at home.

However, it appears live music is one of the luxuries we cannot live without.

According to new research on the global music industry from theview, the music and entertainment website, the global revenues of the live music sector grew in 2008 as the value of global recorded music sales co…

Source: Business Listings