Website reviews

I'm going to enjoy slagging off a few websites at http://www.reviewcentre.com/, especially next.co.uk who have about the most user hostile website I have ever used.

Let me just say that any website that doesn't use passwords by trying to do things its own way is off to a very bad start indeed. Mandatory dates of birth when they aren't selling age related goods and all I want to do is just pay by credit card is also questionable under the data protection act, 3rd principle.

"Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which they are processed". The wide definition of processing should be borne in mind when considering the Third Principle. In complying with this Principle, data controllers should seek to identify the minimum amount of information that is required in order properly to fulfil their purpose and this will be a question of fact in each case. If it is necessary to hold additional information about certain individuals, such information should only be collected and recorded in those cases."

So if I can buy age related goods on amazon.co.uk without telling them my actual date of birth, merely that I am old enough why do I need to hand over material for ID theft when I buy on next and they don't sell age related goods?




Craig

basic search engine failure

Why is it that 14 years after search engines took off, and millions of pounds of research later that in 2008 you still can't do something as basic and necessary as typing in your postcode to find out where the nearest chemist is that opens on a Sunday?

Even the NHS don't publish this info online, yet somehow they manage to give it to their contact centre staff. Staff who require to know your name, address and date of birth to answer a query.

How is this data collection justifiable when the information should be freely available online?

You can't search for post offices open on a Sunday either!

Craig

Better business regulation

I've submitted a few ideas to the better regulation website. If you want to cut red tape in business and improve productivity, why don't you do likewise?

Craig

The three rules of test driven development

A useful first step in proving the functionality of software, websites etc. Now all we need is a link up to ensure that the unit tests ensure what is being tested is actually what the end-user (as opposed to the customer) actually wants to use.

Craig

Tesco, every little helps

Every Friday night when I get back from work about 11pm, the shops have long since closed. The local shops all have lights out, the businesses all have lights out and the only store with lights on is the local Tesco.

Every light on, plain as day, just as if the store was open and full of customers. Yet, the store has been shut for an hour. No dimmer switch, not even just some of them on. Even the staff canteen lights are on long after the staff have left.

Tesco, you are constantly going on about how green you are and isn't it wonderful that your store in Wick is powered by renewable energy and how we'll get green points if we reuse our carrier bags and all that stuff. I actually reuse my carrier bags, I use them instead of bin bags meaning that I don't need to buy use-once bin bags. Back to the point though. Do you not think you might save on the 4.13m tonnes of carbon you eject into the atmosphere every year if you did one simple thing?

TURN OFF THE LIGHTS WHEN THE STORE IS SHUT

You know, like every one else is told to do. Or is your store security more important than the environment?

Remember Tesco, every little helps.

Craig

Scottish IT consultation with Enterprise minister

At an industry consultation earlier this week, ScotlandIS Members, including myself, met with the Enterprise Minister, Jim Mather. Issues raised included the increasing difficulty in accessing public sector contracts, the contribution the industry can make in helping to grow the economy, and the skills challenges the industry faces.

For more details including the White Paper prepared for the Industry Consultation see the page on the ScotlandIS site.

Craig

Paddington Tandoori

Paddington tandoori
Gloucester terrace, London

Avoid. Cash only, mandatory tip and no VAT receipt. Eat elsewhere.

Why do so many businesses rip off consumers with mandatory charges and incompetent billing?

Paypal's contender for most irritating and misleading information on the Internet

If you have a Paypal account linked to a bank account (i.e. so that you can withdraw money) then you are greeted with this abomination every time you attempt to pay by a credit card:

---

It's the default option to pay by bank account and you can't change it. However, I wonder if enough people wrote to customercare@paypal.com and asked them to change this spurious policy they might change their mind. When I want to spend my money, I'd like the option of specifying which account is debited by default, especially if I ever pay by mobile phone the contortions you have to go to to change the payment method from the default are a major pain. As someone with a bit of e-commerce experience (E-commerce lead for Scotland's tourism portal and Project Manager for Tesco.com grocery) I'd like to think that the laughable reasons Paypal gives could do with a bit of comment.

Paypal's text:

Before deciding to fund your payment with a debit or credit card, consider the benefits of paying with your bank account.

Paying with your bank account is instant and your payment will be completed immediately, as easy as paying with cash

My response: Indeed, however since paying with cash isn't an online option this is rather a bogus comparison, no? Paying with a credit or debit card of course is also instant as paypal gets an authorisation code when I pay with a credit or debit card, therefore the vendor can dispatch the goods immediately. No different to paying with a debit or credit card in a shop, as opposed to handing over my banking details there. Furthermore, if I could pay with cash online it wouldn't be as easy because then I wouldn't benefit from any Paypal or credit card protection would I?

Paypal statement:

Paypal keeps your bank account information safe and secure through military-grade encryption and 100% coverage of any unauthorised use.

My response: I hope you're not implying that my other info, such as my card details, isn't held to the same exacting standards? Which military-grade encryption would that happen to be by the way, Ancient Roman Army encryption of letter transposition or 256 bit AES? 100% coverage of any unauthorised use eh, you mean just like all the credit cards I have?

Paypal statemet:

Easy - use the same bank account for making payments and withdrawals

My response: This isn't easy at all. I want to make withdrawals to my bank account so that I can spend the money. I want to make payments from a credit card so not only do I benefit from up to 7 weeks interest free credit and have a few weeks notice of any fraud hitting my actual bank account when the payment is due, I also don't want to use my business bank account for payments because being a business bank account it is charged per transaction fees whereas my credit card is not. So, using the same account for payments and withdrawals isn't easy at all, in fact you trying to make me use the same account for both is a major pain in the arse.


Let me now redo the screen to say what Paypal is probably wanting to write

Dear Customer, please pay using direct payment because it costs us less in fees.

Which does strike me as rather odd, especially since I can go onto numerous websites and legally download MP3s for as little as 79p. Clearly these sites not only have to cover the artists' licensing costs and their own profits but also any credit card processing charges which let's face it must be pretty minuscule. Indeed, companies such as Protx offer flat rate transactions of 10p for high volume users and the kind reader is referred to realbusiness or even an article I wrote for further info on credit card charges and the options available.

So come on Paypal, come clean with customers and give us some choice instead of bogus excuses please. After all, it's our money.

thanks
Craig

p.s. I wonder if Paypal presents the same bogus arguments when you try to pay with one of their own branded credit cards?

All-hotels.com, no VAT

Be careful booking through all-hotels.com if you are a business. The prices may appear cheap, but they don't issue VAT invoices, this then means you don't get the usual 15% discount over the published rates. 15% = 100*(1-100/117.5) in case you were wondering.

There seems something rather odd about paying to stay in a hotel and there being no VAT due. Where did it go and who collected it?

Craig

review of The Ganges, Paddington

Great food, lousy service.

the service really let down the fine efforts of the chef, be warned.

first of all, when I was asking about the menu, the waiter wandered off.
The main course was served while I was still eating the starter.
The empty plates from the starter were left on the table when I was eating the main course.
There was no fresh cutlery brought for the main course.
I wasnt asked at any point if the meal was ok or if I enjoyed it.
Receipt isnt a proper VAT bill, it has to show the amount of actual VAT paid, not just a total.
Service for the dessert and bill were slow.

Great food badly let down by shoddy service - just as well the service isn't included.

See what other diners thought by looking at the reviews at the following link:

Nokia N95 MAC Address

How to get the WLAN MAC Address for a Nokia N95 or Nokia E61
Enter this *#62209526#
Corresponds to this *#MAC WLAN#

Might be even more useful if it was in the phone's help.

Why I don't tip in restaurants

I haven't written a long blog in a while so I thought it was time to post this missive now that I've been living in London for 7 weeks.

I last tipped in a restaurant in December and I eat out 4 nights a week. So strictly speaking I do tip, when there's exceptional service and I want to say thanks (the last time was at Benedicts of Belfast) but so far I've been pretty unimpressed with London. Yet, some restaurants demand a 10% tip, there's no way to remove it from the bill and the service is pretty average.

I don't expect London to be cheap, but working in Whitehall, I can pop up the road from Downing Street and the Palace of Westminster and eat near the corner of Whitehall and Trafalgar Square at the Wetherspoons "Lord Moon of the Mall" for about a tenner including a drink. That's about as central as you can get, a stone's throw from where all the distances to London are measured and a few minutes walk from both the centre of government, theatreland, The Mall and The Strand. A decent (if somewhat basic) meal, a pint of beer and about a tenner. You pay at the bar so there's no tip added to the bill either.

Yet eat at a restaurant, even in more outlying areas such as Aldgate, Pimlico, Bayswater and so on and you'll usually pay over £20 for a meal for one in a restaurant for much the same meal. Eat in a pub, even a good one with "5 pints" on the website fancyapint.com and you get decent food, a drink and it's still around £10-£12. There's clearly a rip off market amongst restaurants who seem to think it's par for the course to whack on at least a 50% premium then look surprised when I don't want to pay the mandatory 10% surcharge on on top of that just because someone has carried a few plates 6 feet from the service hatch to my table then asked me if the meal was OK, cue reference to the "Maharaja Indian Restaurant", Queensway London which indulges in this nefarious practice.

Then you get the bill and have to ask for a VAT receipt. Usually this is some sort of semi-scribbled effort that if you're lucky has the total and the VAT number. Sorry, not good enough. Because goods are rated at different levels, in order to accurately know what the VAT amount is, you can't just guess that 17.5% was added on to the net amount. The receipt actually has to show the amount of VAT paid, just like the receipts I get when I shop in major supermarkets. So even if I was thinking of giving a tip for outstanding plate carrying to my table, the amount of tip I was going to leave has more than been eroded by the fact that the said restaurant is incapable of producing a proper VAT receipt with their VAT number on it, the total VAT paid and the total of the bill. There goes their "tip" - off to the VATman because of incompetency.

So if I get a square meal like I do in Benedicts of Belfast (the sort of food where people come from miles around to eat there) or even basic food such as Wetherspoons and pay £12 then I figure for a restaurant in an expensive area it's going to be around £15 including VAT, assuming I get a correct VAT receipt. I know it's economic to run a restaurant on that basis, the Lord Moon of the Mall in Whitehall shows it can be done for much less.

Any restaurant wanting £20 for the same and especially those with no VAT receipt have just used up my budget and gone over by a fiver. The tip has already been spent on overpriced food.

So that's what I don't tip (in London at least). It's so completely different in the US, where eating in restaurants is much cheaper, the portions are much bigger, the service better and you actually feel tipping is worthwhile and the server deserves it rather than in London where it's a surcharge on top of a rip off.

Comments?

Credit Card Rip Off

Why is it that Easyjet rip me off with a £4.95 minimum credit card fee when I buy something on their site yet I can buy a downloaded MP3 on most UK websites for 79p for no credit card charge at all?

Anyone else feel this is a rip off?

Scotland's bridges are all toll free

The BBC reports that as of just over an hour ago Scotland no longer has any bridge tolls

It took a Labour government to sit on this suggestion for nearly 10 years and an SNP government less than 10 months to make it a reality. See my proposal for banning bridge tolls as they simply penalised the communities they serve.

This suggestion was made to the Labour government in November 1997. SNP, time for change. If only all governments were this effective.

siliconglen.com, Scotland's Internet portal, for sale

I have owned and maintained the content on this site since 1999 and I would like to sell the site, contents, related domains, ongoing traffic etc so that I can work on other projects. The site is profitable, and ranks of the first page of Google results for a wide variety of Scottish business and cultural search terms. I did a list of some of the placements back in 2006 although they will have changed since then. However, more than that, siliconglen is the name synonymous with the Scottish IT sector in the way that Silicon Valley is for the US. The domain alone has a lot of potential for a trade body, a government body, business group, tourism site or a publisher to make into a genuine portal for Scotland. The term is widely used in the media and due to the name and search engine placement receives enquiries from the media and organisations interested in the region and wanting to invest here.

Serious enquiries only please to craig@siliconglen.com

many thanks

Craig

Ageism is illegal. So why do the media make it such a focus?

On 1st October 2006, the UK enacted a law to make ageism illegal. This is only for employment but nonetheless, despite privacy concerns, many employment related websites still ask for it or some equivalent field such as "career start" under the guise of data de-duplication. Today being data privacy day it might be a good time to remind them to get their unique numbers another way.

Anyway, for those sites and application forms that still request it, they claim that it is to ensure compliance with the new legislation. Funny that, before the legislation you didn't have to supply such information, now some agencies ask for it and cite the legislation as the reason. Furthermore, as I blogged in 2006 you are now forced to reveal your age for ID purposes when applying for a job.

So that's the background. Age when applying for a job should just be recorded for "checking purposes" and to ensure that recruiters are playing fairly. In that regard, it is no different to race, religion and other profiling characteristics that are illegal (and immoral) to discriminate on. Yet, the rest of society hasn't really caught up.

Let's take a typical news story from today where the people's ages have no relevance.

The original text:

By Andrew Hough and Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) - Five men were found guilty on Monday of kidnap and robbery in the country's biggest ever heist, a daring, 53 million pound raid on a cash depot in Kent.

The robbers, some dressed as policemen and most wearing prosthetic disguises, snatched the record haul after getting past tight security by kidnapping the depot's manager, his wife and son at gunpoint.

They were also helped by an "inside man", who not only provided details of the building's interior layout and security protocols, but also secretly filmed it using a tiny camera hidden on his belt.

Despite the elaborate planning, the gang was rounded up by police within days of the February 2006 raid at the Securitas Depot in Tonbridge, after detectives received a tip-off.

Stuart Royle, 49, Jetmir Bucpapa, 26, Lea Rusha, 35, Ermir Hysenaj, 28, and Roger Coutts, 30, were convicted at the Old Bailey of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to rob and conspiracy to possess firearms.

Another defendant, John Fowler, 59, was cleared of those charges while Keith Borer, 54, was found not guilty of handling stolen goods.

The text if we removed the profiling information and replaced it with ethnic origin (these are made up)

LONDON (Reuters) - Five men were found guilty on Monday of kidnap and robbery in the country's biggest ever heist, a daring, 53 million pound raid on a cash depot in Kent.

...

Stuart Royle, black, Jetmir Bucpapa, white, Lea Rusha, asian, Ermir Hysenaj, black , and Roger Coutts, white, were convicted at the Old Bailey of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to rob and conspiracy to possess firearms.

Another defendant, John Fowler, white, was cleared of those charges while Keith Borer, middle-eastern, was found not guilty of handling stolen goods.

Completely irrelevant, pointless and bordering on racist.


Maybe you could have an alternate version using other profiling information such as religion

LONDON (Reuters) - Five men were found guilty on Monday of kidnap and robbery in the country's biggest ever heist, a daring, 53 million pound raid on a cash depot in Kent.
...

Stuart Royle, catholic, Jetmir Bucpapa, muslim, Lea Rusha, protestant, Ermir Hysenaj, moslem, and Roger Coutts, athiest, were convicted at the Old Bailey of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to rob and conspiracy to possess firearms.

Another defendant, John Fowler, Jew, was cleared of those charges while Keith Borer, protestant, was found not guilty of handling stolen goods.

Again, fairly offensive, pointless and quite irrelevant.

So why do we continue to accept the pointless and irrelevant reporting of the number of birthdays someone has had when it has no relevance to the story? It is just as offensive and wrong as other profiling information that it is illegal to discriminate on.

Comments?

PRINCE2 + AGILE = Common sense?

An article on how Agile can sit alongside PRINCE2 and where DSDM Atern fits in.

In 2007, I put "used an Agile/PRINCE2 development strategy" on my CV. It's been quite the conversation starter at interviews. So I thought it would be of interest to blog about it here and gauge the reaction/feedback.

First off PRINCE2 is an acronym for "PRojects IN Controlled Environments" (version 2). PRINCE2 is a generic project management method for exercising control over a project's startup through to closure (SU1 to DP5 for all you who enjoy punch card like references). It's a generic project management method that had its origins in IT but which now makes no reference to IT and could be used from anything from building a ship to planning your summer holiday. Whether you would want to use it on the latter is entirely up to you. The same flexibility of choice is not however accorded to the large number of public (and increasingly private) sector projects that use it since it is seen as the de-facto project management method and its use is frequently mandated, despite there being other methods that may be more relevant for the task in hand. There have also been a large number of complex and extensive government IT project failures recently many of which would have used PRINCE2 and which highlight that even a refined method such as PRINCE2 can run aground on large scale, long running projects that are subject to considerable change.

On paper, PRINCE2 is logical, reasonable and linear. However, as experience suggests - for example in the long series of failed UK Government IT projects where PRINCE2 is the mandated method - simply being logical, reasonable and linear, is not sufficient. It is not sufficient to make it the effective project management method business and public sector organisations really need."
From PRINCE2 problems by Business Transition Technologies

PRINCE2 is based around project control. Control is clearly a Good Thing, however being a generic method with no reference to IT, the closest IT development method would be the waterfall method, which is very well lampooned on the Waterfall2006 site. It is just these shortcomings of the waterfall method which seem to cause the biggest problems with PRINCE2 projects, especially those which due to their complexity and length of development are prone to large amounts of change. PRINCE2 also does not account for software projects comprising multiple versions and how these are handled, nor for website development and deployment which can be an almost continuous process.

Change is inevitable in projects. In response to this Agile development methods arose to deal with this change more effectively, particularly from a software engineering perspective and unlike PRINCE2, cover in detail the more day to day activities such as sprint planning, daily meeting structure etc. Agile does not have comprehensive cover for project management, however the Agile DSDM development method was developed with PRINCE in mind, as detailed in the paper using DSDM with PRINCE2 [PDF]. Thus the combination of Agile and PRINCE2 is not as contradictory as it might at first seem. One is a development method for managing change, the other is a project management method for exercising control, so the two compliment one another and should result in a management method for control in a changing environment. One can see from this white paper on integrating DSDM into a PRINCE2 environment [PDF] that at the actual delivery level the focus is much more on the agile processes rather than PRINCE2.

Alistair Cockburn (no relation) and others have produced a set of agile management methods however this has grown out of the agile community and consists of a set of principles rather than the sort of detailed how-to that would make it easy to sell to the PRINCE2 diehards.

The most complete agile project management method I have come across is DSDM Atern which is described as follows:

What is DSDM Atern?

Atern is an agile project delivery framework that delivers the right solution at the right time.

Importantly, Atern harnesses the knowledge, experience and creativity of end users. It uses an iterative lifecycle to evolve the most appropriate solution to satisfy project objectives.

Using planned, visible timeboxes with clearly-specified outcomes control is exercised throughout by the project manager and the team members themselves.

Roles are clearly defined and work is divided into timeboxes with immoveable deadlines and agreed outcomes.

Atern Agility
Atern’s agile approach avoids the cumbersome rigidity of ‘big design up-front’ without the inevitable risks of ‘no design up front’.

Since it is worth spending some early time examining the structure of the overall solution before building any components, Atern advocates that projects should do just ‘enough design up front’.

Atern flexibility
Atern can be used to complement other project management disciplines such as PRINCE2 ™ and PMI without duplication of effort.

The description of DSDM Atern on amazon.co.uk explains further:

Atern is the leading, proven, agile approach providing the governance and rigour along with the agility and flexibility organisations demand today. It is also ideal as a wrapper for more limited agile approaches to ensure that the whole project lifecycle is addressed. Atern is a proven 'battle hardened approach' and has been responsible for the successful delivery of innumerable projects around the world. Its provenance across both IT and non-IT contexts goes back to 1994 with substantial productivity gains independently verified by the UK Software Metrics Association.

Making PRINCE2 Agile

So it seems to me that you could use PRINCE2 for the high level governance of a project, Atern for the structure of how the project development is to be organised and prioritised and scrum techniques for the day to day elements of effectively organising the software engineer's time and daily priorities. Although for a true DSDM Atern approach, PRINCE2 isn't needed at all - whilst it is possible to combine DSDM and PRINCE2, DSDM Atern by itself is actually enough and also embodies from the outset the Agile principles which are completely absent from PRINCE2. The particular challenge for Atern lies in integrating Atern projects within a waterfall corporate culture and of DSDM takeup and experience generally, which is unfortunately quite low.

This is just intended as an overview to illustrate that PRINCE2 and Agile are not necessarily contradictory and that is possible to combine elements of both successfully, particularly when it comes to the managing a stage part of PRINCE2 - Agile turns this into many small stages comprising stable components of work suitable for release. However, what remains a mystery to me is why government departments have been so reluctant in the face of the number of IT failures I have blogged about to promote an agile implementation of PRINCE2 and how it can best be delivered for complex IT projects running into billions of pounds. DSDM Atern isn't necessarily suitable for all projects, but certainy for iteratively deployed projects which are happy to embrace change, it should be considered as a more suitable alternative to PRINCE2.

This whole sense approach to software development from project governance to day to day management would seem to be the holy grail for minimising such failures. Perhaps it is time to encourage those who mandate PRINCE2 to understand this in order to minimise further wastage.

Further reading on DSDM is available on the DSDM website and for discussions with the authors of DSDM, I would recommend the DSDM group on LinkedIn.

Craig

Update: in June 2011 I wrote an update covering Agile and PRINCE2.

BarCamp Scotland 2008

BarCamp Scotland is on 1-2 Feb 2008. See the barcamp2008 page for more info or view the event on upcoming.org.

Incidentally, if you are less technically inclined and fancy some music and culture instead, there is the monthly Bothan at the Scottish Storytelling centre at 8:30pm on Friday 1st Feb. £3.

Details:
Bothan meets again this Friday (1st February 2008) at 8.30pm in the Scottish Storytelling Centre, High Street, Edinburgh, when popular singer Mary Macmillan (Uist) who won the Traditional Gold Medal at the Lochaber Mod last year, along with various Bothan instrumentalists, will entertain the company. Please come along and enjoy the music, songs and crack and catch up with news from the Gaelic world. The evening’s entertainment will only cost £3 – a real bargain at today’s prices!


I expect I must be about the only person in Scotland for whom both the above represents a potential diary clash :-)

Government consultation on income shifting

The UK government is currently consulting on income shifting. This is a consequence of losing the Arctic Systems case last year, the government didn't get its way so decides to change the law to suit its needs. Nice job if you can get it eh? Nonetheless, together with IR35 this is yet another tax on the self employed (e.g. IT contractors) many of whom have family members contributing to the success of the business but will be penalised if income shifting legislation is drawn up. The Professional Contractors group has a useful resource page on this for more information and is calling for people to sign the petition to scrap the proposed legislation.

Here is a summary of the Professional Contractors Group (PCG) position for more information. Incidentally, although Scotland has 10% of the UK population, 17% of the PCG membership is in Scotland, indicating that such legislation may have a disproportionate effect in Scotland versus the rest of the UK.

Introduction

The Government has issued draft legislation, intended for inclusion in the Finance Bill 2008, to place a new tax on what it calls “income shifting”. The result will be significant tax increases for hundreds of thousands of small family businesses.

At present, a business owned jointly by a married (and civil partner) couple can distribute profits equally to each: this allows them to use up their tax allowances efficiently, and can create a tax saving. This is a consequence of the independent taxation of spouses that was recognised and accepted by Parliament when it was introduced in the 1980s. Now the Government wishes to impose a tax increase on everyone who has set up a business in this way.

PCG believes that the proposals are unfair

• The Government seems to think there is something wrong with spouses setting up “non-commercial” arrangements and wants to penalise them: in the real world, married couples enter into financial arrangements on the basis of being married to each other and it is wholly inappropriate to expect them to enter into “commercial arrangements”.
• Profits are distributed as a return on risk: the Government fails to recognise that married couples are jointly exposed to the risk of their business failing, and is seeking to deny them a joint share in the rewards if they succeed.
• For years the Government advised people to set up businesses jointly when possible: now they are to be penalised for following the Government’s advice.
• The proposals clearly and directly discriminate against small business and in favour of big business: if a consultant is hired out by a large company, he will be paid for the work and the rest of the fee will go to the company as profit, which can then be distributed to shareholders in the usual manner. If a consultant took exactly the same contract with exactly the same client for exactly the same payment, but the consultancy happened to be one he owned with his wife, the dividends would be taxed more heavily than the dividends of the large company.

PCG believes that the proposals are unworkable

• The proposed measure will make it impossible for businesses to self-assess their tax bills. How can they value every single contribution made to a business accurately and with confidence? Businesses will be left perpetually looking over their shoulder in fear of an aggressive investigation by HMRC, in which they will have to prove that they have done nothing wrong.
• The Government claims that the new rules will not cost businesses anything to administer, and not cost HMRC anything to enforce: this cannot possibly be the case for such a complex and subjective set of rules.

PCG believes that the proposals are inconsistent with other areas of law

• Spouses are entitled to equal shares in the value of a jointly-owned business in a divorce.
• Spouses are entitled to equal shares in the proceeds, under Capital Gains Tax rules, in the event that a jointly-owned business is sold.
• Under the proposals, spouses will not be entitled to equal shares in the profits of a jointly owned business while it is operational.

PCG believes that the proposals are not justified by the consultation paper

Ever since the independent taxation of spouses was introduced in the 1980s, it has been common practice for married couples who go into business to set up the business jointly; the consultation paper fails to show that anything has changed since then to justify the new rules.

Why Silicon Glen isn't Silicon Valley

I came across this interesting report from 2004 covering the Scottish investment scene and it goes a long way to explain why Scotland isn't home to as many successful startups as it deserves. Not much has changed in 4 years and to put some figures on it, we are apparently we are only working at 20% of our economy's potential:

A 1993 MORI poll in Scotland estimated that there were over 90,000 latent, or would-be, entrepreneurs and business owners in Scotland, who were frustrated in their ability to act on their aspirations by a range of factors, including the absence of role models, difficulties (actual and perceived) in accessing resources, particularly finance, and lack of knowledge about the process of business formation. Based on figures from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitoring (GEM) research programme around 5% of the Scottish adult population is actively engaged in business ownership or in activities being undertaken with a view to entering business ownership. This is around one half of the level experienced in the US and around one-third the level in other small open dynamic economies such as New Zealand.
Actually achieving this increased level of entrepreneurial activity will require a quantum shift in culture and attitudes in Scotland, which may only be achievable over a generation: as the experience of the business birth rate strategy in Scotland has demonstrated, this is not a ‘quick fix’ option. Specifically, access to finance is consistently cited as the prime obstacle to entrepreneurial activity in the GEM reports, and also in our research and contact with potential entrepreneurs. As it is, at present Scotland is working at perhaps 20% of its entrepreneurial potential.

Next time I have a decent idea, I'm off down to London. We have some of the brightest ideas in Scotland, some of the best graduates and even some of the world's largest banks. Yet we struggle at 20% of our potential. Why should I as an entrepreneur waste my time with a funding sector that isn't fit for purpose?

Our view is that the 90,000 “frustrated entrepreneurs” identified by a 1993 MORI poll (a figure consistent with the GEM data for Scotland a decade later) do not become active entrepreneurs largely because the funding landscape is not only too empty, but is also perceived as empty by those looking to enter it. While market participants respond (with some accuracy) that it is in fact not empty, and that sensible ideas well advised can usually find a funder, this accurate opinion is not helpful to an individual who is in full-time employment during normal working hours, has few or no contacts with the market, has little understanding of how it works, has little spare time to find out, and has a perception that entrepreneurial success relies on unique and specific skills that they may not have and may not be able to acquire.
A Darwinian approach to entrepreneurship would demand that these 90,000 aspiring entrepreneurs be left to live or die on their merits – let the fit survive and the rest remain in employment. Such Darwinism is, however, founded on the false premise (a) that this process will ‘weed out’ weak ideas and businesses, which is economically efficient, and (b) that entrepreneurship ought by definition to be hard and difficult, not least because today’s successful entrepreneurs and investors did indeed have to face harsh and difficult environments, and associate success with difficulty.
This Darwinian approach to the creation of an entrepreneurial economy is flawed, as can be seen from the failure of the Scottish economy to significantly raise the level of new business starts and the rate of formation and growth of high-potential companies over the past decade. A funding landscape that was visibly and obviously rich in sources of risk capital for businesses of every kind would remove a major constraint (real and perceived) on the formation of new entrepreneurial ventures. As such, it would provide an environment for the successful transformation of the culture of the Scottish economy into one in which entrepreneurial activity is seen as a legitimate career option and economic role.