Business Diary: The worldwide web, as well as being full of indescribable amounts of rubbish, is helping to provide some useful insights into the current economic situation.
The worldwide web, as well as being full of indescribable amounts of rubbish, is helping to provide some useful insights into the current economic situation.
Thanks to one Business Diary correspondent, we came upon the propertysnake.co.uk website, which is acting as an antidote to a property television programme with a similar name and shows the house price crash is not a purely southern phenomenon.
According to the site, the biggest price cut in Scotland is on a four-bed flat in Edinburgh's apparently up-and-coming Ocean Drive in Leith, down 35% to £225,495 in the 293 days it has been for sale. Feeling a bit smug in the Highlands? Well, one house in Inverness has fallen in price from £174,000 to £120,000 since it went on to the market in October.
If instead you want tips on the stock market, take a look at the Heidi Klum index on stockerblog.blogspot.com. If you had bought shares in companies endorsed by the world's second-richest supermodel, which include Limited Brands (owner of Victoria's Secret underwear), McDonald's and Volkswagen, you would have outperformed the US market.
Its Heidi Klum index is down only 4% over the last six months, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 14%. Now that's a model portfolio.
Bludgeon your way through any recession
A particularly violent assessment of the credit crunch thrust its way into Business Diary's inbox this week entitled "Recession-proof businesses and brands: who'll beat, batter or bleed their way through a downturn?".
The author of the piece? The aptly monickered Chris Cleaver, managing director of consultancy firm Brandsmiths.
"It's a place for the big boys They smile at the cameras, but they're smiling assassins of anybody that gets in their way. They get what they want and are never shy of showing their strength and power. Sheer muscle will help them batter their way through any sort of recession," he (probably) growled.
Still, it sounds more comfortable than the initial assessment of Royal Bank of Scotland head of economics Stuart Porteous on the Bank of England's decision to keep interest rates on hold: "I can't think of a better example of what it means to be stuck between a hard and a rock place."
Cue a rapid retraction from the press office: "Please note clearly we meant a rock and a hard place and not a hard and a rock place."
No shortcuts on offer for oil firm directors
AS you lean back into the welcoming cushions of your settee enjoying the myriad delights of The Herald, spare a thought for two directors from Aberdeen oil services company Qserv, who are today beginning a mammoth journey from John o' Groats to Lands End.
It's hard to work out which of the pair is going to be more uncomfortable. Engineering director Mike Dreelan and a small group of enthusiasts are recreating an epic journey made 44 years ago by Jack Wakefield senior and junior on a 1912 Burrell Gold Medal steam engine.
It is a very impressive but extraordinarily uncomfortable-looking vehicle with little in the way of suspension to cushion the bumps of the 1000-odd mile journey.
However, his brother, Ciaran Dreelan, the company's well services director, doesn't seem to have landed an easier role - as he will be cycling the route.
The pair, who are raising money for the Starlight Children's foundation to help children in the Aberdeen area affected by serious or terminal illness, will be mirroring the route taken by the Wakefields, who completed it in just seven days.
The trip will see them pass through Inverness and Stirling, then on to Carlisle, Northwich, Bristol, Exeter, finishing at Lands End. So keep an eye out for the man on a steam engine and maybe chuck him a cushion.
Counting the falling' cost of motoring
Amid all the wailing about rising fuel prices, which is either the fault of the Chinese, faceless speculators or Gordon Brown, comes an interesting piece of research by that militant green group the RAC.
Marking the 20th anniversary of its motoring report, the organisation has revealed that in real terms the cost of motoring, and let me quote those long-haired tree-huggers, "has fallen significantly across 20 years".
It may be hard to believe this as you stand next to the rapidly turning digits on the petrol pump, but it is now 18% cheaper in real terms to buy and run a car, including fuel costs, than in 1988.
Taken alone, running costs, including service and repair costs, insurance, fuel, road tax and breakdown cover, has fallen 57%. Which might explain why the survey found that 51% of us reckon in 20 years' time gridlock on the roads will become the norm.
Till death do us part, in liquidation and health
In an interesting twist to the notion of being wedded to the job, a survey of 503 small business owners by Barclays found they intend to stick with their enterprise longer than they are likely to remain married.
The research reveals that a third (33%) expect to run their business for more than 25 years, longer than the average marriage at 24 years (or 11.6 years if you divorce your beloved rather than wait for them to die).
The survey doesn't explain how long they expect to remain married, but the research does show intriguing parallels between stability at home and in the office.
The respondents who had been in relationships for more than 20 years tended to employ their first recruits for nearly eight years - two and a half years longer than the national average.
Their longest-standing employees also remained employed for more than nine years - almost 50% longer that the national average of six and a half years.
