A happy post today. Le Tour is in Annecy today, one of the most beautiful cities I have ever lived and I even considered moving there when I left Amsterdam four years ago. You can share the views of Annecy by watcing Eurosport or ITV4 when thLe Tour is shown today.

Annecy is a town of Art and History, Annecy is acclaimed for its beauty, its natural heritage and its quality of life. Indeed, the capital town of the Haute-Savoie region boasts an exceptional environment: it is situated on the edge of the clearest lake in Europe and set in the foothills of the Aravis and Bauges alpine mountain ranges, not far from the Swiss and Italian borders.
This attractive location contributes to its economic vitality, today focused on cutting edge technologies, notably in the sphere of animated film. The town is also a major tourist attraction: Annecy has preserved a historic town centre, the Old Town, extremely popular with visitors, and has successfully developed a variety of outdoor leisure activities for every season.
A university town, Annecy is also renowned for its superb cultural landscape with the International Animated Film Festival in June, and the Lake Festival in August, together with the many sports events hosted in the town all year round.

From about 4am I have been listening to people talk about the total eclipse in Asia this morning and I was waiting for a particular answer and it never happened. If somebody had asked me what I had seen during a total eclipse it woyuld not be solar flares or anything like that, it would be nothing because everything had gone dark.

And are the reports on swine flu getting on your nerves. The newsreader on the BBC this morning just randomly threw in the figure that 30 people had now died in the UK since its outbreak. OK, every death is sad but how long has swine flu been about. It went into remission during the MP expenses scandal but has now returned. Next time they come out with these random statistics don’t you think they should compare it with the number of people who have died with normal flu, by violent crime or by drunken drivers during the same time so we can get this all in proportion.

A few of the things I hear on the news amaze me, but over the last few days some of the reports have left me totally confused.

The focus of these reports has been on the current financial situation we are being told we are living in. A reporter was giving her take on the post-Christmas sales and though accepting that these sales happen every year, credit crunch or not, she did say something very strange. She reported that shoppers were taking a different attitude to the sales than usual, they were deciding what they were going shopping for and then finding out where it was going to be the best deal before actually buying it. Now I am sorry but what is strange about that, that is the way I always shop; what do other people do? The statement conjures up visions of people walking into shops at random, picking something up and then buying it.

One reported did come out with a good point though, all the crowds for the sales congregated at the expensive stores, such as those in London’s Bond Street, where items are still very expensive at half price whereas as the general high street stores, who were also having sales, were “business as usual”, so there is still money out there. Even the stores that were closing down were not attracting the sales crush.

And have you noticed the number of reports on the current financial situation, forecasting the number of stores that are going to close, the cost of housing, unemployment and so on, that are being published daily. Who are writing them and who are publishing them, here in Britain most institutions that would be involved in these reports have been closed for the last week and will be for the next week.

The number of stores going into administration increases daily, but I heard this morning of one that also went into administration this time last year and another has been in administration three times in the last five years. I suppose they find it easier to get the publicity that way then paying for advertising.

Due to the government wanting Doctor’s and hospitals to reach false targets that show that all patients wishing to be seen, for whatever reason, are seen in a short time. OK, that is great if you are in A&E and want to be seen before you bleed to death but what if you want to make an appointment to have a review of your current medication. Why can’t you ring up a week or ten days in advance and make the appointment, you can then book time off work, arrange transport if necessary and get anything else sorted out you need to, but no, you have to ring in the morning to see if they have a free slot for you. This means that everybody is phoning the surgery as soon as it opens so you can’t get through anyway. When you do manage to speak to the receptionist there might not be any slots left and you have to take another day off work and remake all your arrangements.

Five months ago I went to hospital and the consultant told me to make an appointment for six months time, and also gave me a form to have a blood test one month before I came back to see him. I went to the reception and they told me they would send me the appointment. Well they did, two weeks notice so I called to attempt to get it moved as I had to have time to have a blood test done and then get the results back. She could not do it but was going to see the consultant about the blood test.

A few years ago you could walk up to a reception desk with a note from the consultant stating that they wanted to see you in six months time and the appointment could be made there and then.

The Patients Charter is not for patients or nursing staff it is for governments who want to massage statistics which we all know are untrue and cause inconvenience to all.

The last week has been very cold, particularly early in the morning at the rail station where I start my daily commute. There is a waiting room to sit in whilst waiting for your train and it is quite warm, well it is if you do not sit right next to the door. Well, the same person does every morning, and you hear him have a little grumble to himself every time that somebody walks in.

Why does he sit there? If he can make it to the waiting room, a few yards further into the room to where you do not get affected by the door opening all the time would not hurt.

Christmas shopping has hit frenzy mode and town centres are full of people buying gifts and cards or unsuspecting recipients. Now I am not a very good “shopper” or so I have been told. I decide what I want before I go shopping and where I plan to get it from. If what I want is not where I expect to find it I sometimes have a reserve spot where to find it or, if not, it just does not get bought.

Another thing that can quickly halt any shopping trip I embark on is people standing in shop doorways or in the middle of the pavement having conversations. They are totally oblivious to the fact that others have to treat them as a traffic roundabout. With the outbreak of community policepersons or wardens walking the streets I think they should be allowed to give tickets and fines out to people who are just “in the way”, as they can do it for most other things these days.

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.