Today I was going to rant on about why on earth do Eurostar think moving their departure place in London is going to help people in the North of England.  But I will leave that for a while, because something that really annoys me happened this morning.  In fact, there was a radio programme about it yesterday.  It’s about being honest, the programme was about situations where you find a wallet or purse in the street with a lot of money in it, what would you do.  Most people do actually look inside the wallet and try to return it to the owner, either via the police or directly.

This morning I was in the local store and went to buy a newspaper and magazine.  And the price totalled £2.03.  I handed over £2.20 and got 97p in change.  I told the shop assistant and offered the money back, and she got quite annoyed and she couldn’t comprehend what was going on, because she’d obviously typed in the amount I had given incorrectly, so as the machine says give him back 97p she give me back 97p.  I only wanted 17p, all I was trying to do was explain she’d given me the wrong change and that she given me too much change.  But she wouldn’t have it.  I was made to look a criminal for being honest.  Maybe the fact that, being honest was such a surprise to her she didn’t know how to cope with it, there wasn’t a thank you were involved, but to be honest I didn’t expect one.  Now, what would you do, if somebody found your wallet or purse and handed it back to you, and in the case of one person I heard yesterday who was standing near an ATM waiting in line.  The person in front, using the machine, suddenly just stormed off and went back to their car and the money was dangling out of the machine.  And when he tried to call him over and hand the money to the person they just snatched it and walked off.  Yet again, the honest person being treated like a thief.

Anyway back to Eurostar.  They have spent, I believe, £800 million, moving the departure place of Eurostar from Waterloo to St Pancras in London.  They have done it for a variety of reasons, but one they kept mentioning this morning was so that it was more accessible to people from the North of England, and therefore they would now use the service to go to Paris and Brussels.  If I wanted to catch Eurostar, it would cost me about four hours in time, and over £200 if I wanted to get to London before 11 o’clock, just to get to the departure station.  While trying to get to this departure station I would pass the three international airports.  All of which could get me to Paris for approximately £50 return.  The programme showed a lady who used Eurostar and lived in the north of England, and the fact that she liked doing it was because you have plenty of time to sit down and to get on with some work in comfort while travelling, which is fair enough, but if it’s going to take you seven hours by train to get to Paris by train or one hour by plane to Paris, then you got six extra hours to sit down and get on with the work.

I admit I do like travelling by train, and I can see the convenience of going directly into the centre of Paris, because trying to get from Charles de Gaulle airport to the centre of Paris is a nightmare.  But the extra time and the extra cost, it would add to my trip it is just not feasible, mood, totally not with the trip to London and from London to Paris taking approximately 7 hours and then with the loss of an hour.  That would be like  a working day to get there.  Getting around France by train is great, and I would always do that, because the scenery is fantastic that trains are brilliant work.  Now, I honestly think, if they hope to get more people from the North of England, they ought to think about it that little bit more like making a better train links and cheaper fares from the North to St Pancras.

Let me set the scene, I have a very small registered Limited company in the UK. It is so small I am the only one in it so basically I am self-employed. It is, in my opinion better to be a registered Ltd company to get work.

Imagine my surprise when a letter came to the company addressed to somebody else as the owner of the company. I saw this as a mailing list mistake but decide to telephone the sender of the letter and tell them of the error and ask them where they got there mailing lists from. They just said it was a mess up in their mailing list production setup and had a lot of complaints and don’t worry.

A week later another letter came for this person so I telephoned the company who sent it and they were helpful and by use of reference numbers told me where they got the list from. I then went to that company and they basically told me to get lost, they were not divulging company information.

A bit concerned I did a search on the Internet and found two people on LinkedIn stating they were owners of my company, a company in Gloucestershire (UK) apparantly trading under my company name, and numerous other cases in Asia.

I decided to seek legal advice about this as I wanted to cover my self against identity theft if these were not just innocent mistakes, which in the back of my mind I thought they were. I was given the standard advice to combat identity theft and inform the authorities that the signatories for my accounts and other business dealings had not changed and there were to be no changes in the foreseeable future. The only problem I was warned about was something called “Passing-off” where one of the other companies obtains contracts using my company name or they mess up so badly that they ruin my company name.

I have notidced that the majority of these companies have used my company name as the first word in their name, added a second name such as communications, languages, writers etc. and then abbreviated their name back to using the first word for trading purposes.

So is it identity theft or not? Can I do anything to stop them abbreviating their company name? Was there any malicious intent? Is John Andrew Smith stealing the identity of Andrew Smith if he decides to drop his first name?

Who knows? but identity theft is serious and a few years ago I would not have considered any of this a problem.