Mind Your Own Business

This blog tries to remain impartial, but in the light of recent news this is becoming increasingly hard. Lewisham Council struggles to find a measly 35 grand to blow up in smoke on November 6th by appealing to its citizens to cough up some dosh, whilst cutting services and jobs left right and centre. Meanwhile large companies like Vodafone manage to avoid 6bn in taxes, and bankers less than a mile away award themselves yet more bonuses.

Local blogger Deptford Visions has just listed the names of those companies whose CEOs recently wrote to the Telegraph in support of George Osborne's Comprehensive Spending Review and Public Spending Cuts. He refers to a post by political journalist Hangbitch who in turn refers to political website Liberal Conspiracy and human rights campaigner Osama Saeed.

To maintain neutrality, one could say that time will tell whether these 'business leaders' are right or wrong, and it may be simply co-incidence that one of the companies listed has just been awarded a major rail contract, that others have just won new contracts and another's has just been renewed, whilst a leaked email shows that many of these companies are far from optimistic about the future and are very unlikely to be able to replace lost jobs with new employment opportunities.

You may want to think about where you spend your money in future. Familiar names on the list include: Next, ASDA, Microsoft UK, Mothercare, Carphone Warehouse Group, TalkTalk Telecom Group, Alliance Boots, Marks & Spencer, Ocado, Kingfisher, SSL International, moneysupermarket.com, Britvic, Arup, ARM Holdings, GlaxoSmithKline, BT Group, Lovefilms.com, The Betting Group, Diageo, Harvey Nichols...