SCOTS tech entrepreneur Chris van der Kuyl admits to being a bit of a fan of Elon Musk, the billionaire inventor, serial entrepreneur and chief executive of electric car company Tesla Motors. “He’s one of the most disruptive entrepreneurs around,” Mr van de Kuyl told a recent ScottishPower event on doing business in the digital age. The Dundee-born computer games geek particularly likes a newly released feature that allows Tesla owners to summon their cars using their mobile phones. “The car will open the garage door, drive to meet you and pick you up,” Mr van de Kuyl explained. Press the button again and it will drop you off, go back into the garage and shut the door. It sounds like sci-fi – but it’s here.” Could we perhaps be seeing Mr van de Kuyl on Top Gear sometime soon?
SOME light-hearted word play from derivatives dealer CMC Markets this week highlighted some of the ridiculous names that financial instruments have these days. In a market update entitled ‘We’d rather not have a bowl of CoCo bonds’, the company explained that stock market turmoil was forcing yield-hungry investors into some of the murkier areas on the corporate debt world. “Deutsche Bank’s contingent convertible (coco) bonds are one such asset,” said CMC analyst Jasper Lawler. “Because dried up liquidity means all investors can’t head for the door when there’s some stress, other assets like credit default swaps and equities are distorted by the need for hedging.” Of course – we thought that too!
EDINBURGH’S One World Shop is hoping to expand into Glasgow after raising £20,000 partly through crowdfunding for its move to larger premises in the capital’s Nicolson Square. It will be hoping for a sales boost from Fair Trade Fortnight which begins later this month and from staging events, first of which was a launch this week for Herald writer Iona Bain’s book ‘Spare Change’. Business development manager Rachel Farey also welcomed Ian Fraser, author of ‘Shredded’, to speak at the event and said she was relieved that the media – known for being partial to a drink or two – had not been put off by a slight drawback – being part of a church building, the shop is a teetotal venue.
‘REACH out’, ‘growthhacking’, ‘onboarding’, ‘curate’ and ‘circle back’ are the top five most annoying pieces of jargon, according to new analysis . ‘Synergy’, ‘empower’, ‘solutions’, ‘de-layer’ and ‘ecosystem’ also make the top ten. The litany of gobbledygook has been published by London-based Houston PR, which has built a free online ‘jargon removal tool’ using ‘a couple of bits of coconut tied together with string’ (irony). Just outside the top ten were ‘bandwidth’, ‘robust’ and ‘evangelist’. “So there we have it,” says Author Hamish Thompson . “Top tip, PR people: if you are writing to a correspondent or editor, announce that you are ‘reaching out’ at your peril.” Here here!
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here