Tag Archives: London

How to set up your London Virtual Office

Virtual office makes a better service for your customers. Here’s how.

A London Virtual Office service offers many benefits and can be extremely comprehensive in terms of what it offers. From Mail Forwarding to Telephone Answering, it really does cater to the many needs of a small business owner. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how you can set up your very own Virtual Office: Continue reading

5 reasons why London is the best city in the world to have a business address

5 reasons why London is the best city in the world to have a business address

We quite simply cant get enough of our fantastic city of London. There are so many great perks about having London as your business’s mailing address – but we felt that we would give you five reasons as to why we feel London is quite simply the place to be Continue reading

Bafta 2009 at the Southbank Centre

The British Academy Television Awards 2009 have taken place in London’s Royal Festival Hall to celebrate the very best in TV. Here the full list of winners and nominees:

Best Actor
Stephen Dillane – The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall (C4) – WINNER!
Jason Isaacs – The Curse of Steptoe (BBC Four)
Ken Stott – Hancock and Joan (BBC Four)
Ben Whishaw – Criminal Justice (BBC One)

Best Actress
June Brown – EastEnders (BBC One)
Anna Maxwell Martin – Poppy Shakespeare (C4) – WINNER!
Maxine Peake – Hancock and Joan (BBC Four)
Andrea Riseborough – Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley (BBC Four)

Best Entertainment Performance
Stephen Fry – QI (BBC Two)
Harry Hill – Harry Hill’s TV Burp (ITV1) – WINNER!
Anthony McPartlin & Declan Donnelly – I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (ITV1)
Jonathan Ross – Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (BBC One)

Best Comedy Performance
Rob Brydon – Gavin & Stacey (BBC Three)
Sharon Horgan – Pulling (BBC Three)
David Mitchell – Peep Show (C4) – WINNER!
Claire Skinner – Outnumbered (BBC One)

Best Single Drama
Einstein and Eddington (BBC Two/Company Pictures)
Hancock and Joan (BBC Four/World Productions)
The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall (C4/TalkbackTHAMES)
White Girl (BBC Two/Tiger Aspect Productions) – WINNER!

Best Drama Series
Doctor Who (BBC One/BBC Productions)
Shameless (C4/Company Pictures)
Spooks (BBC One/Kudos Film and Television)
Wallander (BBC One/Left Bank Pictures) – WINNER!

Best Drama Serial
Criminal Justice (BBC One/BBC Productions) – WINNER!
Dead Set (C4/A Zeppotron Production)
The Devil’s Whore (C4/Company Pictures & Power)
House of Saddam (BBC Two/BBC Productions & HBO)

Best Continuing Drama
The Bill (ITV1/TalkbackTHAMES) – WINNER!
Casualty (BBC One/BBC Productions)
EastEnders (BBC One/BBC Productions)
Emmerdale (ITV1/ITV Studios)

Best International
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (More4/MTV Networks)
Dexter (ITV1/John Goldwyn Productions)
Mad Men (BBC Four/AMC) – WINNER!
The Wire (FX/Blown Down Productions/HBO/FX)

Best Factual Series
Amazon with Bruce Parry (BBC Two/Indus Films & Endeavour Productions) – WINNER!
Blood Sweat and T-Shirts (BBC Three/Ricochet)
The Family (C4/Firefly Films)
Ross Kemp in Afghanistan (SKY1/Tiger Aspect )

Best Specialist Factual
Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery (BBC Four/BBC Productions)
Life in Cold Blood (BBC One/BBC Productions) – WINNER!
Lost Land of the Jaguar (BBC One/BBC Productions)
Stephen Fry & the Gutenberg Press: The Machine That Made Us (BBC Four/Wavelength Films)

Best Single Documentary
A Boy Called Alex (C4/Walker George Films)
Chosen (True Stories) (C4/True Vision Productions) – WINNER!
The Fallen (BBC Two/Minnow Films)
Thriller in Manila (More4/Darlow Smithson Productions)

Best Features
The Apprentice (BBC One/TalkbackTHAMES)
Celebrity MasterChef (BBC One/Shine Limited)
The Choir: Boys Don’t Sing (BBC Two/Twenty Twenty Television) – WINNER!
Top Gear (BBC Two/BBC Productions)

Best Current Affairs
Saving Africa’s Witch Children (Dispatches) (C4/A Red Rebel Films and Oxford Scientific Films) – WINNER!
Mum Loves Drugs, Not Me (Dispatches) (C4/True Vision Productions)
Omagh: What The Police Were Never Told (Panorama) (BBC One/BBC Productions)
Ross Kemp: A Kenya Special (SKY 1/Tiger Aspect Productions)

Best News Coverage
Channel 4 News (C4/ITN)
News At Ten – Chinese Earthquake (ITV1/ITN) – WINNER!
Sky News – Canoe Man (Sky News/Sky News)
Sky News – Mumbai (Sky News/Sky News)

Best Sport
Cheltenham Gold Cup – Denman v Kauto Star (C4/Highflyer Digital)
ITV1 F1: Brazilian Grand Prix 2008 (ITV1/North One Television) – WINNER!
Olympics 2008 (BBC One/BBC Sport)
Wimbledon 2008 – The Men’s Final (BBC One/BBC Sports )

Best Interactivity
Bryony Makes A Zombie Movie (BBC Three Online & TV/Hat Trick Productions)
Embarrassing Bodies Online (www.channel4.com/bodies/Maverick Television) – WINNER!
Merlin (BBC One/BBC Productions)
Olympics 2008 (BBC One/BBC Sport)

Best Entertainment Programme
Friday/Sunday Night Project (C4/Princess Productions)
Harry Hill’s TV Burp (ITV1/Avalon Television)
QI (BBC One/TalkbackTHAMES)
X Factor (ITV1/TalkbackTHAMES) – WINNER!

Best Comedy Programme
Harry and Paul (BBC One/Tiger Aspect Productions) – WINNER!
The Peter Serafinowicz Show (BBC Two/Objective Productions)
Star Stories (C4/Objective Productions)
That Mitchell and Webb Look (BBC Two/BBC Productions)

Best Situation Comedy
The Inbetweeners (E4/BWark Productions)
The IT Crowd (C4/Talkback Productions) – WINNER!
Outnumbered (BBC One/Hat Trick Productions)
Peep Show (C4/Objective Productions)

Philips Audience Award
The Apprentice
Coronation Street
Outnumbered
Skins – WINNER!
Wallander
X Factor

From Second to First Life: the virtual office wins

Second Life is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003 and is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid” (Wikipedia definition)

Why do I tell you this? Because some people are still scared by the word virtual, but virtual does not mean unreliable, it only refers to another level of perception. And second life and real life are not so far apart , they are deeply linked by the coin: in the virtual world you use real money! Second Life is infact a huge new potential marketplace with its 1.2 million “residents” who spend $500,000 every day, real money! Many of us already use the Internet, which is a virtual world of its own, as a place of business. Perhaps virtual worlds like Second life are the next step.

Second Life is not the only place where you can have a virtual office for a real business. In London you can have one too. In this way you can reduce costs, reach more clients and work comfortably from your own home. You can do everything online: create your account, add to your services, receive your messages, all in just a few clicks!

A virtual office? 5 reasons why

5 good reasons to set up a virtual office.

1- No rental costs

You don’t need to have dedicated office space. Work from home or on the train in between meetings. Get moving and get your business off the ground while a receptionist fields your calls at your virtual office.

2- No Start-up costs

You don’t have to worry about office supplies; computers, desks, printers etc. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Focus on the business and don’t worry on whether or not all these purchases are a wise investment.

3- Staff benefits? What benefits?

You don’t have to worry about full-time or part-time benefits, sick leave, health insurance or holidays. These are all just unnecessary complications. Starting up you need to concentrate on making cash, not on your staff’s work-escapism.

4- Flexibility

There is a wealth of options, packages, and offers to chose from. You can find the service that best suits your needs, whether they include 24 hour telephone answering, or meeting rooms in central London.

5- Professionalism

Give your potential clients the right impression with a prestigious office address and receptionists who answer every call in a timely manner and in your company name. No one wants to hear you are actually just working out of your shed.

G20 summit: the protests & the police


Violence has broken out at a vigil being held by G20 protesters outside the Bank of England to mark the death of a man during violent demonstrations there yesterday.

To know more about the anger on the streets, have a look on

Sky News

Guardian.co.uk

BBC.co.uk

Will there ne blood again? Did police cause more trouble than they prevented?

Stay online to see all the news!

Special Offer: only £10 a month to have an office in London

Only 4 days to the end of our special offer that provides you with a virtual office in London for only £10 a month!
For only £10 a month you can have:

– Mail forwarding services

(A central London address you can use as a general mailing address)

– Fax forwarding number

(A fax number for you to use, all faxes are automatically sent to your e-mail inbox, NO extra cost per fax!)

Why do you need to sign?

* Save £s on our mail forwarding services
* NO Setup fees!
* Work from home but keep your address private by
using a virtual office address and our mail forwarding services.
* Impress your clients with a prestigious central London address.
* Sign up now and we’ll throw in a free fax forwarding number!

Bonus rates fall again for employee share schemes

The Treasury has announced another reduction in the bonus rates for the Save As You Earn (SAYE) sharesave scheme.

The scheme was set up to encourage more employees to own shares in their companies. Employers pay a proportion of an employee’s monthly earnings into a bank or building society for a period of 3, 5 or 7 years.

At the end of the period, the employee can take their savings and a tax-free bonus or they can use the cash to buy shares in their employers’ company, usually at a discount of 20 per cent below the share price as it stood at the start of the period. The Treasury said that the latest move was intended to keep the rates in line with other interest rates.

For three-year contracts, the new bonus rate is 0.6 times instead of 1.5 times the value of an employee’s monthly payments. This represents a cut in the interest from 2.67 per cent to 1.08 per cent.

For five-year contracts, the new bonus rate is 2.6 times instead of 4.8 times the value of an employee’s monthly payments, reducing the interest from 3.04 per cent to 1.67 per cent.

In the case of seven-year contracts, the new bonus rate is 5.6 times rather than 9.3 times the value of an employee’s monthly payments, with the rate of interest coming down from 3.20 per cent to 1.98 per cent.

To be always updated on all news about rates & tax please see the westbury’s website!

Heaviest snow in 20 years hits London!

Timesonline.co.uk reports: “The heaviest snowfall in 20 years has closed thousands of schools and caused transport chaos up the eastern side of Britain, with London and the surrounding areas the hardest hit.

Six million bus passengers were left in the lurch as all London’s bus services were halted because of dangerous driving conditions, and every Tube line except the Victoria line was at least partially suspended.

Many mainline commuter rail services were also cancelled or seriously delayed, and flights at London’s airports were decimated, with both of Heathrow’s runways shut, Luton and London City closed, and Gatwick and Stansted flights subject to delays and short-notice cancellations.”

All the Europe is freezing and the weather forecast for the rest of the week is not one of the best… Have a look at the BBC website for the latest update!

Recession Britain, it’s official: but don’t lose hope!

It’s a a hard Friday for the UK: it’s official we are in recession. Probably it’s not exactly news, but all the newspapers have opened today with new even darker predictions for the future.

The BBC.co.uk reports: “The UK is now in recession for the first time since 1991, official government figures have confirmed. … That means that the widely accepted definition of a recession – two consecutive quarters of falling economic growth – has been met”.

The Guardian.co.uk says: “Britain has officially entered recession for the first time since 1991, after the economy shrank at the fastest pace for nearly 30 years in the fourth quarter”.

The Timesonline.co.uk explains: “Britain is in the grip of its sharpest recession for three decades, grim official figures confirmed today. The economy suffered a brutal 1.5 per cent drop in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during the past three months, shrinking at its fastest quarterly pace since 1980”.

People in London feel the pressure: unemployment is accelerating sharply, with 1.92 million people now out of work, the housing market remains severely depressed and retail sales are weak. There are no ‘green shoots of recovery’, no light at the end of the tunnel. The average recession in the UK since 1955 has lasted for three quarters, but the past two recessions have lasted for five. But people don’t lose the hope and the will to do and work.