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The UK and Ireland are the worst places to live in Europe – while France is the best, says a new study. Brits have fewer holidays and pay more for goods than almost all other similar countries. Food and diesel prices are the highest and booze and fags cost above average.

In the hard facts league … only Ireland ranks below UK UK spending on health and education has plummeted and now ranks alongside Poland, the Quality of Life Index showed.

Brits get the third fewest hours of sunshine a year – better than only Ireland and Holland. Life expectancy is BELOW the European average of 79.3. uSwitch.com, which organised the index, compared 16 factors in ten countries.

Spokeswoman Ann Robinson said: “Last year Brits were miserable but rich.

France topped the index for the second year in a row. Spain came second followed by Denmark.

Not quite the British Empire anymore, I’m afraid.

LSW finds Murdoch-watching irresistible. Whether we like it or not, Murdoch and his acolytes set the media agenda and others follow.

However, maybe, just maybe the pendulum is swinging. It’s becoming rather ‘device-driven’ with the revolution in music (iTunes), books (iBooks) and now we have to ask what’s going on at the hush-hush unit being set up for News Corporation under the aegis of the Wall Street Journal.

[The iBooks app]

 

The Guardian (www.theguardian.co.uk) has picked up a supposedly ‘hush-hush’ memo circulating in the WSJ:

The WSJ Managing Director has announced a project he refers to it being “crucial to our success as a company.”

An editor-in-chief and a managing editor have been appointed. That suggests a separate news entity – a print paper just possibly, but more likely an online news outlet.

The Guardian continues: “Perhaps we should link this news to the departure of Pete Picton, editor of The Sun’s various websites. Editor Dominic Mohan evidently told staff yesterday that Picton is off to News Corporation in New York, where he will be “helping to launch a new digital project”.

According to paidContent, the project is understood to be a national US newspaper title that will serve only tablets (such as iPads). Is it possible that News Corp is going to launch two outlets – one populist and the other more serious (and business-oriented) – in the near future?

That sounds feasible. After all, Rupert Murdoch famously said in August that iPad was a game-changer for news media. Clearly, as you would expect of him, he wants to be a player in that new game.”

[news source: The Guardian, UK]

Google has unveiled changes to the way it presents search results in what it described as one of the most significant updates in its 12-year history.

The new approach is intended to help users find results more quickly, though some search experts said that indirect changes to how users conduct their searches could also have a wider impact on the many businesses that advertise on Google or rely on traffic from the search engine.

The new feature, called Google Instant, displays full search results as users type in queries, without waiting for them to finish typing or to hit “enter”. “It’s searching before you type – we’re predicting what query you’re likely to do and giving you results for that,” said Marissa Mayer, Google’s head of search products and user experience.

He and other analysts said that search users could be drawn to the top results that Google returns as they type their queries, giving extra prominence to companies whose websites come out high in search results. By putting greater emphasis on the top results, the change could have important implications for any business that uses so-called search engine optimisation to try to gain prominence in search results, Mr Sterling said.

Some analysts also predicted that the Google Instant would change the way that search engine users interact with advertising, since adverts will also appear linked to Google’s predictions about what a user is interested in.

The iconic CRM programme – the one that every Marketing Director wants copied is the Tesco ClubCard.

So, when Tesco announce a GBP150 million re-launch, the marketing world starts to sit up and drool in anticipation of another Case Study chapter being written.

What have they done?

The company has announced that the mystery of the Tesco ‘Clubcard 2′ campaign has been exposed as an extension of its loyalty scheme. Clubcard holders can now gain double points on all products sold in its stores and online, rather than limited to certain categories.

When the loyalty-card scheme was re-launched, the ‘double up’ offer was limited to categories including clothing (in-store only), cosmetics, skincare and fragrance (in-store only) and wine and champagne (purchase either in-store or on its wine website).

The change is what was hinted at in a teaser campaign that appeared earlier this week in an outdoor advertising campaign: ‘Clubcard 2 – coming to a store near your soon.’

From Monday, Tesco Clubcard holders will receive double Clubcard points – two points for every £1 they spend across the store and online.

In the three months since May more than 1.5 million customers doubled up their vouchers with the most popular categories being clothing and wine.

The marketing world awaits – margins down or turnover up enough to compensate? Financial Directors must be having apoplexy at the thought of a legion on marketers wanting to double customer discounts.

Source: Sports Intelligence.com

The best-attended domestic sports league in the world is — no surprise here — the National Football League, which averaged a massive 67,509 fans per game in 2009. Next up was the German Bundesliga, with a very healthy 42,499.

The Australian Football League, with teams in just six or seven cities (is Geelong a city?), was not that far behind, with 37,790 fans per game.

That’s better than the English Premier League, which despite its worldwide marketing prowess, massive television audience, and globally famous clubs, finished in fourth place with an average of 34,158.

Major League Baseball was fifth, at 30,338, and was actually the leader in total attendance, pulling more than 73 million fans through the gates. Of course, each MLB team plays 162 games per season, most of any league in the world.

In sixth place, and probably a surprise to many reading this, is the Canadian Football League at 28,572 fans per game. Canadian football, for those unaware, is similar to American football, with slightly different rules, such as 12 players instead of 11 and three downs instead of four.

The top 10 is rounded out with Spain’s La Liga (28,474) , the Japanese pro baseball league (25,926), the Italian Serie A (25,282) and cricket’s Indian Premier League.

The IPL’s inclusion on this list is somewhat controversial, since methods for determining attendance at Indian grounds can be dubious. Cricket on the sub-continent dubious? Surely not.

           In the articles titled A British Break, we spoke about how the villages on England have become denuded of people and activity.

Here’s some UK press coverage which has come to light over this issue. All very depressing if you enjoy the British countryside.

“Historic Altrincham – eight miles from the throbbing city centre of Manchester and once considered “posh” – now has the highest rate of vacant retail units in the country.

Locals point out grimly that one of the few new shops to appear in recent months is a Pawn-Your-Gold store. The town, which has had a market since the 13th Century, is one of many devastated by the recession.

Shopkeepers struggle to make a living as customers’ confidence is shattered in a country where latest figures show that one in five households has NO ONE with a job.

But Altrincham – population 41,000 – is particularly badly hit because of an ever-widening North-South divide in the nation’s prosperity. It tops a league table of 50 ghost towns where the rate of empty shops is increasing. Only nine are south of the Midlands.

The main Grafton shopping centre is in administration. Scores of big name chains collapsed during the recession, including Woolworth and MFI. New shopping malls in cities have also sucked business from neighbouring towns.

Pound shop chains are among the few retailers who are spending money on new stores and looking for sites.”

[News source: Daily Telegraph and The Sun]

This is an ad in the British press showing the Sun’s new brand extension strategy – their own perfume.

More people would opt to cut back on food rather than give up their broadband connection if money became tight, according to a Sky News UK survey.

Broadband is now seen as crucial to home life – the Report goes on to say that more than half of people in work are already financially worse off than this time last year, and that is even before this year’s budget cuts have been implemented.

This is interesting stuff – over in Australia, the General Election result swung on the two Independent candidates, who were holding the balance of power, on the issue of the new National Broadband Network. They backed Labour and Julia Gillard because they had more faith in her ability to deliver.

Drive down a major road in Cape Town City and its close suburbs and you’ll see frenetic digging and kilometres of orange tubing for fibre optic cables being laid. Telkom has the capacity to go to 100mbps – the cables need to be laid!

So, it begs the question what companies are asking………”What does a super fast broadband mean to us?”

The ones that answer first, are the winners of to-morrow.

                                We all love our tech.

Yes, the iphones, ipads, blackberrys etc. However, let’s face it, this constant texting and checking of the emails at the dinner table and in restaurants is all a bit much.

CBS Money Watch reports it well: “It’s not polite to use a BlackBerry or iPhone at the table. Ever. It’s bad manners, because you are neglecting your dining partners. (I’d rather see people talk with their mouths full. At least then they’re engaged in the conversation.)

The corollary to that, however, is that it’s also impolite for the offended mealtime companions to give the BlackBerry addict a stern lecture. That just doubles the bad behavior.”

It now appears that in the US, there is a whole etiquette emerging on how to scold these serial offenders!

CBS continues: “That’s what I learned from Peter Post, director of the Emily Post Institute. I’d experienced two different cases of dinnertime thumbs-in-action, and I was looking for a way to express my annoyance without any breaches of etiquette. In one instance, a friend stopped by our house during a long road trip home. We grilled some steaks and fed him on our deck. At the table: my husband, our two kids, moi, my friend and his iPhone, which he couldn’t put down.

In that case, Post advises, I’m allowed to speak up, but I should take the soft approach. “Your goal is not to embarrass him or to cause a problem with your relationship; your goal is to be able to talk to him and have his attention on the table,” he says.”

Another trick they say is: making the device a topic of conversation. “Ask him, ‘Can you show me more about how that thing works? Do you ever run into situations where people get frustrated when you use it at the table?’” Questions like those are supposed to get my point across without the angry words I want to use: “Is that blasted thing more important than the dinner I just cooked for you?”

One last bit of advice from Post: If you have a friend who has a BlackBerry addiction, try to meet at restaurants that have no-device policies. That way you can say as you sit down, “This restaurant is serious about their no cell phone rules, so I’m going to turn mine off.” The friend, you hope, will follow suit.

All power to the people, I say.

The world on Communications has suddenly got a whole lot more interesting.

Google is taking on Skype and Apple wants to do the TV industry what it has done to telephony and music. Dominate it.

Google has unveiled a feature that will enable its Gmail users to call landlines and mobile phones from their e-mail inbox. The new feature broadens Google’s growing array of communication products and creates a potent rival to Skype, which is preparing for an initial public offering.

Google faces an entrenched adversary. Last year, Skype became the leading carrier of international voice calls. In the year to June 30, Skype’s registered users rose from 397m to 560m. Gmail has just over 200m users.

In a GMail promotion designed to attract new users, Skype calls to the US and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year. Calls to other countries will be as low as 2 cents per minute, and will not include a connection fee. The service will become available to US Gmail users in the coming days.

On the same side of the States, Apple has announced that it’s taking on the TV industry.

Breathing new life into its struggling Apple TV product, Apple says it will offer mainstream television show rentals.

The new 99 cent pricetag per TV show and deals for rentals from Disney’s ABC, News Corp’s Fox could come as soon as Wednesday at a just-scheduled a press event on its entertainment gadgets.

Wow! Can’t wait!! Who said that the customer wasn’t King!

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