Managment institute

I became a member of the chartered management institute today. This entitles me to put ACMI after my name. I'm looking to do a management diploma later in the year and this will entitle me to become a full member, and have an MBA after 2 years part time study.

The Last Guide to Smoke Free Scotland

The last guide to Scottish pubs for non smokers was published today. This marks the historic vote in the house of commons today when England votes to go smoke free. The Scottish Parliament has already passed legislation and from 26th March, Scotland will be smoke free, thus making my guide to Scottish pubs for non smokers redundant.

Dunblane, 10 years, ID cards.

It's been 10 years since I wrote about the Dunblane Primary shootings
http://tinyurl.com/emej3

10 years on, two things strike me. One is that after my father died 2 years ago and who I wrote about above, he is now buried near the garden of remembrance. The tragedy of 10 years ago is a regular reminder to us when we visit his grave. In the 10 years that have passed we have got
married and had a family. Our children, now about the age that the children were that day enjoy playing in the fountain set up in the garden of remembrance. We were told that this was no Diana memorial, it was supposed to be a place where children could play. How could I have
imagined that 10 years on my own family would become connected to this tragedy in such a way.

The other is the ongoing lack of a national gun register. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-2070882,00.html. One of the earliest promises by Tony Blair in 1997 after being elected, the Scottish forces set up a central database in 1998, two years after the shootings. 2006 and 10 years on from the tragedy "IT difficulties" in England and Wales have prevented it from being implemented and were as still only talking about having pilots. I can't understand why the Scottish forces can get their act together so quickly, yet despite personal support from the Prime Minister we are still waiting for a UK
wide solution nearly 10 years later. As someone who works as an IT consultant, I know it shouldn't take this long. The UK government is famous for its IT failures and this is just another in a long line (and we still have ID cards to look forward to)

Whilst Tony Blair did good to introduce the legislation banning guns, I think serious questions need to be asked this week about why something which ought to be simple and which could help prevent crime and further loss of innocent life should be taking so long and if it is Tony Blair
that should be asked at Prime Ministers Questions then so be it.

Let the pressure be put on the government, the memorial fountain we have is I hope the last one we ever need.

This Government appears to have little or no ability to carry out major IT projects, as the gun register has shown. The Lords are right to keep knocking back the Identity Cards Bill. It would be a misuse of the Parliament Act to override them, and a misuse of public funds. Will this be Tony Blair's Poll Tax?

The Definitive Scottish Search

Please give it a go. Scottish Search

Scottish Enterprise have a business plan?

Scottish enterprise problems. Perhaps someone could take them along to the Business Planning for Beginners course that they seem so keen for the rest of us to attend. Maybe when they are they there they could also go on the Beginners website design type courses that they are also keen for Scottish businesses to attend? The other option is layoffs (because they went so much over budget) a £108 million pound consultants bill and a website that falls a bit short of expectations.

Sign up to stop spam

Today I joined a group determined to fight spam through legal action. It has already been successful with one high profile victory. I also have my own spam petition campaign. The legal front is just one campaigning tool and I hope it will put a permanent end to those annoying calls I get on my mobile several times a week inviting me to upgrade my contract. My phone number is listed with the Telephone Preference Service but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Either the legal campaign will end these irritating calls, or I'll make a good bit of money claiming back the going rate of £300 per call for breaking "DIRECTIVE 2002/58/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL". Incidentally if anyone calls and pretends to be using the Data Protection Act to hide where they got your details from, a web search for "Norwich Pharmacal orders" will show that they cannot use this as a defence. The legal reference is "Norwich Pharmacal Co. v. Customs and Excise Comm’rs, [1974] A.C. 133"

Scotland IS

I joined ScotlandIS today. It's the main body for the Scottish Software sector and I attended an excellent day they ran recently on Agile Programming.

The Scots Magazine

My campaign stand up for Scottish culture in schools gets a mention in the letters page of the January Scots Magazine, the world's most widely-read Scottish interest publication.

www2006

The world's main conference on the web comes to Edinburgh in May. This is the first time it has been held in the UK.

Anti-spam campaign makes The Times

I made The Times today with my anti-spam campaign. Read the post.

Ending broken links

I am helping, with the aid of some innovative software a contractor wrote for me to end the frustration of broken links on the Internet.

Stand up for Scottish culture

My campaign stand up for Scottish culture in schools launched today and got a few mentions on the BBC site.

Independence Convention launched

The Independence Convention was launched today. Formed along similar lines to the Scottish Constitutional Convention, the Independence Convention is a non party political group for Scottish Independence. I am a signatory.

Supporting Scottish Culture

As seen on The BBC

First Minister's Questions

Brian Taylor asked First Minister Jack McConnell a question on newsnight tonight. He said

And now a question from Craig Cockburn "Tony Blair has been quite open about how long he wishes to remain PM. Do you have any views on how long you wish to remain First Minister?"

The answer he gave then completely contradicted what he printed in his autobiography Lucky Jack which was published the following week.

Which of the two answers is nearer the truth? Time, especially the 2007 elections, will tell.

Chinese Visit

A representative of China's Silicon Valley, Zhongguancun Haidian Science Park in Beijing, wrote to me about a planned business trip to Scotland for many of the major companies in the science park. I forwarded it onto the Scottish executive. No response.

First Prize in National Competition

I got a good sized cheque in the post today. It was for winning first prize in a national competition for entrepreneurs to come up with the best ways of improving going to the shops. I came up with a method which eliminates queues and solves a few other problems along the way. The ideas in the competition were reviewed by the management of one of Europe's largest shopping centres, who evidently know a thing or two about running a shopping centre. So, quite pleased about this and I'm free to sell it to anyone who is interested, if you are please mail me.

The scam of tax fee insurance

A letter to my MP, dated 1 Feb 2005

Hi

As the owner of a Ltd company, was surprised when my accountant recently wrote to me about "Tax Fee Insurance". This seems to be a new tax on honest businesses that file on time and have accounts in order and seems to be a new way for the inland revenue to scam honest businesses out of possibly thousands of pounds, just because they are unlucky in the Inland Revenue lottery.

How it works:
1. The inland revenue encourages people to do self assessment and file online. This puts the donkey work onto ordinary people, thereby freeing up resources in the Inland Revenue for random checks.

2. As a result, more random checks are done and the figures I have is that this is now about 1 business in 10.

3. As a result of an "Aspect" or "Full" enquiry randomly selected businesses are investigated once they have filled in their annual accounts, even though there may be no suspicion of anything wrong, it is simply a random audit.

4. My accountant, who prepares the accounts has to get involved.

5. My accountant then bills me for the time they spent talking to the Inland Revenue on my behalf. Accountants are not cheap and £100 an hour is at the lower end of what they charge.

6. Accountant then presents me with a bill for several hundred or possibly thousands of pounds which I have to pay, even though it was the Inland Revenue who requested the time and work.

7. I am then several hundred or thousand pounds out of pocket even though I have done nothing wrong and my books are in order.

8. To protect me from this scam a new industry has sprung up offering "tax fee protection insurance". Rates are often £100-£120 a year and based on fixed annual renewal dates. So if you join a scheme in May and the renewal date is November, you still pay the full whack even though it's for only 6 months cover.

Can I suggest that this is hardly the spirit of enterprise and is a wholly unwelcome financial burden on small companies which are doing nothing wrong. It's random taxation.

My view is that these random audits are no bad thing, but if the Inland Revenue needs to do them, the Inland Revenue should pay. Has anyone ever tried taking them to the small claims court for this? Perhaps I could adopt the same tactic and bill the Inland Revenue for excessive time spent form filling, excessive bureaucracy, and so on. After all why should the small business have to keep forking out for dealing with Inland Revenue issues? How is this fair?

Note: Subsequent to writing the above I had the question raised in the House of Commons.

Scotland Guide - 10 years old

The First Online Guide to Scotland is 10 years old today.

I appear to have acquired "Legendary" status because of it!

Some praise (shucks)

soc.culture.celtic

As was the case with many others, my first access to the internet was via a Freenet. I spent a good deal of time reading the soc.culture.scottish and the soc.culture.celtic Usenet groups.

I note that my submissions to the soc.culture.celtic faq are still up there, floating around the web for almost ten years now. Cool.

Craig Cockburn was then, and likely still is, one of the web's main Celtic and Scottish history/culture guru's, not to mention Scots Gaelic language.

Excerpt from The Campblog Archive