John's Labour blog 2013 - The Google Movie

Unbeknown to me until today I had apparently "agreed" with Google + to this "movie" made up automatically in some way by them of pictures from my blog in 2013!  Still it has nice memories (some sad) and even a catchy tune (of sorts).Enjoy!

PIRC Corporate Governance & Responsible Investment Journalism Awards 2013

On Wednesday evening I went to the PIRC awards at the Design Museum on the south bank of London.

The winning journalists were Tom Bergin from Reuters (2nd left) who won the Corporate Governance Award for stories on tax dodging by Google. 

While Rob Davies (3rd from left) from the Daily Mail won the SRI award for his work on polluting mining giant Glencore (now who would think there was good in the Daily Mail?).

I suppose that I should ask PIRC MD, Alan MacDougall (on right of photo) why there isn't an award for CG or RI Blogging?  Or is this a contradiction in terms? :)  Must ask Tom P (who was poorly last week and missed the event).

Yes Google is evil..so are Amazon, Starbucks and all such tax thieves

I was at a pension trustee meeting a little while ago where I was criticised for bringing up our share holding in companies who don't pay their fair share in taxes. I was told that it was the duty of such companies to reduce their exposure to all taxes.

I disagreed and while I didn't express my true views that these companies are spongers who steal from the old and the sick. I did point out that we expect companies we invest in to be well managed, aware of risk and run with integrity.

There is a balancing act to be made by companies on minimising their taxes while recognising they have a duty to pay towards in public services and infrastructure they rely on to run their company in the UK.

The negative publicity and financial damage to the brand if they misbehave is also immense. 

If they get this balance wrong then the CEO and the Board are simply incompetent as well as immoral and not fit and proper people to run the company.

Something wrong with this blog, blogger or Internet Explorer?

Now I know the miserablists (et al) will claim that there is indeed lots wrong with my blog but many apologies to those who have had "difficulty" opening John's Labour blog in recent weeks and months (it kept crashing or you lost the will to live while waiting for it to open).

I have tried various things and changed the template a little while ago but this clearly didn't work. It goes well with Chrome, but that is perhaps hardly surprising since blogger is run by the same firm (Google). Blogger "help" wasn't that helpful I am afraid.

I have now rolled back the template and removed all the individual changes to the layout. It seems to be running much better? Let me know if you are still having problems. 

Starbucks the Tax Thieves and Ripped-Off Britain

Check out the web site "Ripped-Off Britons".