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Archives for June 2009

Wrong number

Declan Curry | 18:49 UK time, Tuesday, 16 June 2009

I'm the last person to complain about other people making mistakes, or giving out dodgy information.

If you've - er - enjoyed my reports on TV, radio or online over the years you'll know that I've had more than my fair share of them.

I once missed the start of my own programme, by lingering too long over a last-minute script change.

I also forgot the name of a guest while introducing him at the start of a live interview, and had to ask him to remind me who he was and why I was talking to him.

I laugh about it now (in a high-pitched, nervous way) but at the time it was taken very seriously. Rightly so.

We don't like mistakes, and we do everything in our power to prevent them.

Our aim is always to bring you relevant information that correct every time. Even though we all face deadlines, we value accuracy over speed. That's as it should be.

But sometimes errors are made - both by us, and by the people we ask for information. When we do get it wrong, it's important we put it right quickly, and with an appropriate sense of apology.

So - here goes.

We brought you a report yesterday on the cost of calling government helplines if you've only got a mobile phone.

These are helplines that you would call when you need to make your first claim for unemployment benefit if you lose your job, or if you're a parent tracking down your child benefit that's been cancelled by an administrative blunder, or if you need to apply for a crisis loan if you find yourself in a financial emergency.

But the very helplines that are meant to assist you could end up making your money troubles worse, if you call from a mobile.

Those 0845 and 0800 numbers could cost you for every minute you're on the line. If you're put on hold this could add up as the minutes soon whizz by.

Why would you ever call these numbers from a mobile? Well, according to Ofcom, in 2008 11% of households didn't have a landline at all - they only had mobile phones.

If you're strapped for cash and need to make the choice between one and the other, many opt for the mobile phone instead. It's more useful and practical.

Telling you this story is one thing.

But you've told us you also want practical advice. Tips that make life cheaper or easier. So we compiled a few, including the very obvious point that it's much cheaper to call these numbers from a fixed landline than from a mobile.

That is true.

But how much cheaper?

We went straight to BT to ask. It referred us to an old news announcement which proclaimed that "BT had offered ... cheer to 14 million customers by becoming the first UK telephone company to make calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers free."

That looked fairly straight up-and-down to us, so we broadcast that as part of our report.

Unfortunately it's not quite true - as a flood of emails from you pointed out. Many of you have been charged for calls from your BT phone to these very numbers.

That's because they're not "free" for everyone.

What BT has done is include these numbers in its existing call packages.

So if you're on a deal that gives you free calls anytime, your calls to 0845 and 0870 numbers are free, any time of the day or night.

But if you are on a deal that only gives you free calls at evenings and weekends, then 0845 and 0870 numbers will only be free at evenings and weekends too.

And if your calling package is for free calls at weekends only, then 0845 and 0870 calls will only be free at weekends.

To be fair to BT, even though their headline and the first part of the news announcement proclaimed "free" calls, the detail showing they were not exactly free was in the later paragraphs.

So - we're sorry to have confused you. And we're grateful to you for pointing our mistake out so quickly.

Hiring Sir Alan

Declan Curry | 12:50 UK time, Monday, 8 June 2009

He's famous for saying, "you're fired".

But should he have been hired?

As you'll have seen elsewhere, . He's not going to be a minister. He says himself he's not going to be involved in devising policy. He sees his role as tub-thumper-in-chief for entrepreneurs, in the corridors of Whitehall.

Throughout his career, he's always been a man who excites strong views. But the opinions about him doing this job are especially tart.

I asked this question on this morning - is Sir Alan the right person to tell Government about enterprise?

, who you might remember from her own recent appearance on Working Lunch, says Sir Alan has "grass roots experience, fire in his belly and a gut instinct". He is, she says, "perfect for it".

(If there was a club for entrepreneurs with firm opinions on life and business, both Sylvia and Sir Alan would qualify for life membership.)

"Katiemoffat" wrote that it's easy to be "sniffy" about his credentials, but "he's done it and he lives and breathes enterprise."

And UKBI - a body which supports business incubation and innovation - tweeted me to say it was a step in the right direction. "We need more real business people advising on real measures to grow small and medium sized businesses."

But not everyone agrees that Sir Alan is a sweet appointment.

"Mikejulietbravo" called it a publicity stunt. "DavidWorsfold" wrote that Sir Alan is "just celebrity window dressing". "Simeonides" holds the opinion that Sir Alan "has nothing to teach business".

"MTFlanders" slammed it as a "cosmetic decision" and asked why the Government didn't hire a business icon like Sir Terry Leahy. (Sir Terry is a member of the Prime Minister's Business Council.)

There are many other views - you can see them all .

And of course you can add your own comments here.

As a 80s teenager, my lasting impression of Sir Alan is of a man who made technology an affordable tool of the general public. There's an Amstrad PCW somewhere in my parent's attic. Unfortunately, there's also one of his Emailer phones, little used and unloved - then again, innovation will always produce success alongside failure.

He's also walking, talking proof that anyone with enough talent and self-belief can try to make their fortune, whatever their background.

The popularity of The Apprentice TV programme has rammed that message home for a new generation.

But he faces criticism from two groups that he may want to win over when he's "Enterprise Tsar".

The first is the business community. Some there think his most successful days as an entrepreneur were a long time ago. They think he crossed the line from commercial business to show business years ago. They ask - does he really represent what we in business think?

The second is from those who campaign for employees' rights. Sir Alan has been noticeably chilly on workplace issues like childcare. There has also been criticism about his own managerial manner, which is seen by some as overly abrasive. They ask - how can someone with these views work within a Government that has passed laws to give new mothers and fathers time off, that has extended the rights of part-time workers and which criticises bullying in the workplace?

Perhaps Sir Alan needs some more time in the Apprentice café to think all that over?

Making connections

Declan Curry | 13:05 UK time, Thursday, 4 June 2009

I do despair when people say, "oh business, that's so boring."

As you and I both know, business is all about money and the decisions we make about it.

It's the information we need to earn money, spend it and invest it.

It's about the choices that are made in the board room, at our office desks, at our kitchen tables - even those made around the cabinet table.

The fascinating thing is how those decisions intersect.

We told you yesterday that the to new workers. It's a final salary scheme, where your pension payout is usually a proportion of your last pay cheque before retirement.

The big plus of these schemes is that you know what you're going to get in your old age. The pension fund - or the employer that stands behind it - coughs up if the investments are not performing. It takes the risk.

Anyone who joins BP in the future will be offered an alternative scheme where the amount of pension you get in retirement in old age is linked to the performance of the investment. If shares or bonds don't earn as much as expected, you get less in your pension. You take the risk.

Many big companies have already closed their final salary schemes to new workers. BP is one of the last to do so.

Others have gone a stage further.

Barclays says this week it will close its final salary pension scheme to EXISTING workers. The money they've already saved is still there - but they can't add to it.

If they want to make further pension savings, they'll have to take out an alternative scheme where they, not the company, takes the savings risk.

So. What about those connections?

In other news this week, it was revealed that the bosses of Britain's biggest companies got an average pay rise of 7 percent last year.

Not bad in these credit crunched times, you might think.

You may think it's even more remarkable when you remember that the stock market value of top companies - as measured by the FTSE 100 index - is 26 percent lower today than it was a year ago.

Whatever performance targets are used to trigger the pay rises, it's clearly more than just a bald reading of the share price.

My ´óÏó´«Ã½ colleague Peter Allen - who I bump into every afternoon during his Drive programme on 5 Live - demanded to know why bosses can give themselves pay rises and bonuses, often in the teeth of opposition from their own shareholders, while they're cutting pension benefits to their workers.

As Gillian pointed out on Working Lunch yesterday, it's less about cutting benefits and more about reducing risks to the company.

Under the alternative schemes, the employer takes the risk of under-performance, not the company.

But retirement costs are an issue for our biggest companies. As another story we covered this week demonstrates.

General Motors.

One of the reasons is obviously that not enough Americans are buying American cars.

But that's partly because retirement and healthcare costs bump up the price of GM-made motors. On one estimate, they add $1,500 to the cost of American vehicles, relative to those made more cheaply by Asian rivals.

And that will become an increasingly important issue in countries like the USA and the UK.

We have a growing, ageing population - and a shrinking, younger one - at a time when retired people are not just living longer lives, but more demanding and exciting ones too.

This poses a major challenge to welfare systems based on the assumption that current workers pay for the costs of retired ones.

And the demographics are going the wrong way for a comfortable solution. As demonstrated at a BP refinery or a Barclays bank branch near you.

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