Brief:

Due to the uncertainty of Brexit, this article talks about the Halt of production by Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). This halt in productions effect thousands of staff across the UK from Castle Bromwich, Solihull, and Wolverhampton (go wolves), it is said that the shut down will occur over Easter, JLR stated that the halt will in fact take place and have called it a Brexit matter, it was also stated that more certainty around Brexit is needed and that if a no-deal Brexit were to occur it would cost more that 1.2bn pounds in profit each year. Mike Graham union Unite’s  convenor  said “We knew we had to take reactive action to mitigate the potential effect of a bad Brexit or no-deal Brexit.” Also stating that as well as the week halt in production 4,500 jobs will be cut from UK workforce.

Opinions:

There are at lot of mixed feelings about this article because I do see where JLR are coming from, there is so much uncertainty about Brexit and from a business stand point they are trying to protect the company from something that is out of their control. On the other hand as it is out of their control they are just prematurely messing with peoples lives by cutting the amount of jobs and for halting production for a week.

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Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the article and let me know if you agree or disagree. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-47845057

Brief:

This article talks about wanting to enforce a new code of practice for tech companies mainly social media sites, this code of practice is being brought forward by The Department for Digital Culture, and Sport or DCMS for short, and the Home Office, yet there are criticism that these plans will threaten people freedom of speech. It is said that senior management of these companies would be held liable for the breaches of this new code of practice, one of these repercussions being the ability to fine the company as well as having ISP to block the site for this rule break. The main goal of the new code of practice is to prevent ‘Online Harms’ such as issues that are already laws such as “spreading terrorist content, child sex abuse, so-called revenge pornography, hate crimes, harassment and the sale of illegal goods. But it also covers harmful behaviour that has a less clear legal definition such as cyber-bullying, trolling and the spread of fake news and disinformation.” As well as preventing self-harm and suicide. This article talks about a young fourteen-year-old girl from the UK who committed suicide because she was depressed and also because of the content she was following on Instagram.

Opinions:

Now there are definitely two sides to this story on one hand people are saying it threatens freedom of speech and the other where they are saying it is protecting people on the internet, now it is a keep move but I agree with both, yes this code of practice could threaten freedom of speech in a minor way, yet if by thinking this code of practice will silence you so much then what is being spoken really should have any place on the internet, or in the real world. This code of practice is being put in place to protect people on the internet, there are already law in place preventing terrorist propaganda, child pornography, “revenge pornography”, hate crimes and the sale of illegal goods, yet there is nothing to protect young children being exposed to all the pro-suicide and pro-self-harm content on the internet, there is also nothing protecting them from cyber-bulling which has a knock on affect of making them feel like they have to resort to suicide. The video available in this article was extremely hard to watch, it was very graphic and emotional. The young 14-year-old Molly was in a place where she felt she had nothing else to live for and committed suicide, with her parents finding her the next morning. This law should be passed, no parent should have to outlive their child.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47826946

Brief:

This article is talking about how different factories are stockpiling goods due to the uncertainty of Brexit, at a very high rate. Research done by HIS found that for the third month in a row the stock increase hit an all time high. This article also talks about the PMI which stands for the Purchasing Managers’ Index and how it rose from 52.1 in February to 55.1 in March, as well as in the Eurozone how it fell from 47.5 to 49.3. This article finishes off with a quote from Christ Williamson saying;

“Concerns over trade wars, tariffs, rising political uncertainty, Brexit and – perhaps most importantly – deteriorating forecasts for the economic environment both at home and in export markets, were widely reported to have dampened business activity and confidence.”

Opinions:

I did not really enjoy reading this article as it just shows the mess and confusion of Brexit, all of this article was showing what the uncertainty of Brexit was doing for companies in and outside of the UK.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47772782

Brief:

This article speaks of a very important topic that isn’t in the news are much as it should be. In this article they talk about the gender wage gap for big companies in the UK, because of The Equality and Human Rights Commission or EHRC for short, big companies in the UK more than 250 employees by law have to publish their gender pay gap figures, and enforcement action would be taken against those that fail to do so.  This article also gives different figures of the sectors where men get paid more, as well as the companies with the highest pay gaps.

Opinions:

I thought this article was very interesting, it is also a step in the right direction, it is important that news articles are released to really show people that the gender pay gap is a very real issue, it is also good that these big companies are named in the hopes that things will change for the employees that work at these companies. Personally, I like what the EHRC are doing because it really does bring this issue to light, as most of these companies cant blame the pay gap on less experience. This article stands out to me on a personal level as it is what my mother has to detail with on a daily basis, she has worked hard to be in a high position for the company she works for, yet there are people in the same company with less experience that are either payed the same or more than her.

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Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the article and let me know if you agree or disagree. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47822291

Brief:

I recently read an article that spoke about the FCA which is the Financial Conduct Authority being under government investigation due to their oversight of “LCF” London capital & finance after customers of the firm lost a lot of money in a bad investment. The article states that around 11,605 people invested a total of two hundred and thirty-six million pounds, with the majority of this being lost, with the belief that only around 20% will be recovered which is around forty-seven million. A statement from The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, John Glen stated;

“By ordering this investigation, we will better understand the circumstances around the collapse and make sure we are properly protecting those who invest their money in the future.”

One of those people that invested her money stated that her life savings have been wiped out, as the LCF enables the consumers to invest that money into a high-risk investment called mini-bonds. It was that the LCF was doing some irregular business as sever independent financial advisers had said that they warned the FCA back in 2015 of these irregularities. It is believed that it will take around two years just to get back around a fifth of the capital people invested with LCF.

Opinions:

Whilst reading this article I had a lot of mixed opinions and feelings. There were also a lot of questions that were raised in my head, the first was how would the FCA not pick up on all of the issues that everyone seemed to pick up on while they were looking into the company, the other question that was raised was, why on earth would you invest all this money and not do prior research to see if it actually a good investment, these two questions were the reason of the mixed opinions. First and quite obviously I had a lot of sympathy for the people that lost their money because based on the report it was a lot of money, yet this is also where the counter options kick in, there was one quote in the article that rather annoyed me a women named Amanda Cunningham was one of the people that lost money in this bad investment, she stated “Basically, it will mean that my son will not have money for his future,”. The reason this quote annoyed me was because she has completely shifted the blame on the LCF, now yes the company should not have allowed a risky investment, yet this woman as well as all these other people chose to put their money, Amanda putting her life savings into this risky investment, without doing any other research, if it were me and I were putting a lot of money into an investment I would do the research needed to ensure that the investment is a good one.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47773404

Brief:

I recently read this article that spoke of this “killers Car Seat”, in the article it spoke about this company that was selling a small fabric car seat which wasn’t up to the EU standard that these car seats need to be in order to be sold in the UK market. The seat was advertised to be able to seat newborns up until age three, yet when the seat was tested with a crash test dummy of a three year old child, it failed dramatically, with the seat falling apart and the dummy flying through the windscreen as the straps that secured the seat failed. This article also stated that the online retailers that were selling this product have now removed it from their sites, and how because of this situation these online retailers are increasing their efforts to stop products like this from being sold to the public.

Opinions:

Much like most people I am pretty disgusted with the manufactures of this seat, as it would have been known to them that this seat was not up to par. What makes this even more disgusting is that is was advertised for new-borns through to three-year-olds, this manufacture is essentially putting these young children’s lives at risk as it would not protect them in the case of a crash. Yet whilst reading this article it also put into perspective that users cannot always trust products that are sold online. However there was one aspect to this article that I did not agree with, the author from Which? seemed to blaming the online retailers for the “killer Seat” stating along the lines of the online retailers should do more to prevent these types of products;

“Parents will be horrified at the thought they could be unwittingly putting their child’s life at risk with one of these ‘killer’ car seats. Online marketplaces cannot continue to turn a blind eye to dangerous and illegal products being sold on their sites.” (Alex N, 2019)

I don’t feel the online retailers should be help accountable in any sense for this fault product, simply due to the number of products sold on these sights it is impossible for the sites, employees and algorithms, to catch all dangerous products. It is down to the users not to trust everything that is sold online, and to even do a bit of research about the product they want to buy. The only people that should be held accountable for this faulty and down right dangerous product should be the manufactures, I would even go to the point that they be reprimanded for this product.    

Leave a Comment:

Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the article and let me know if you agree or disagree. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47253546