Elf yourself!

Ever wondered what Rebecca Benneyworth, John Stokdyk and the rest of the AWEB team would look like if they were elves? Well, now you don't have to! Check out our elf dance!

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/03XqzIz4V21ST3G9

At the risk of sounding like a cheerleader...

Go HTC Desire! I just got mine this week (free with my Orange contract, which is £17.50 a month) and I think it's brilliant. I am an Apple fan and desperately wanted an iPhone but I just couldn't afford it. The contracts on those are extortionate and the price for just the handset was more than I could pay.

However, the HTC Desire does everything you've listed above and more, for about half the price of an iPhone and in many cases you can get it for free with pretty decent contract terms like I did. It looks much like an iPhone too if you're bothered about that kind of thing.

I had a Blackberry before this and I find it much more user friendly than the Blackberry.

One of the biggest endorsements I can give you for the HTC Desire is that all the IT geeks I know have it - and they are usually very demanding of their gadgets!

Good luck with your phone hunt.

Tax evasion/avoidance

We've collected a few more views on this in an article today:

https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/topic/tax/government-launches-900m-tax-e...

It seems that quite a few people are upset with what they perceive as the conflation of tax avoiders with tax evaders. Lots of people seem keen to uphold this distinction and say avoiders shouldn't be punished in the same way.

I'm not sure what I think. On the one hand, we don't want to be guilty of "killing the goose that lays the golden egg" as one entrepreneur put it to me recently - by which I mean driving away high net worth individuals from the UK by penalising them harshly for arranging their tax affairs legally to minimise their liabilities. However, on the other hand the argument for getting everyone to pay their "fair share" is also compelling. I'm not a tax expert but I think working out what a "fair share" is quite a big problem!

Me too!

Yes, same here. Not sure what's causing it. Will ask our production team to look into it...

Haha!

Well if nothing else you've given me some good belly laughs, so thank you! Did I ask a silly question? Is there nothing anyone wants to know about the Bribery Act? How about fraud questions in general?

Work experience

Thanks for your question. I think it depends on the level of the person you're taking on. If they're more mature it might be easier than if you're getting someone who is still at school/college. Either way, they do require a lot of supervision and it is time consuming having to explain what they have to do (sometimes it's easier just to do the job yourself)!

However, in the past when I've had work experience people, I've found that it helps to create a little 'welcome pack' of documents for them to help them settle in, which contains things like lists of the files they might need and where on the server to find them, relevant passwords, etc. I also put in basic 'how to' guides which are relevant to the jobs I'll be asking them to do, such as 'how to research an article' or 'how to write a news piece'. Depending on what you need them to do, you might find this helps and you can then re-use it for each work experience you get.

When I know I'm getting a work experience person in, I like to create a specific list of duties for them in advance of their arrival so they're not sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Then, if they're really good, I might come up with other tasks when they're here, but at least they've got some basic things to work on to start off with.

Also, it's important to be security conscious when you're getting someone in. Not sure how big your office set up is, but it's worth setting them up with their own access code for your systems and restricting the settings so they can only access what you need them to see, rather than having free reign over all your data.

AccountingWEB anonymous

I seem to remember there being a thread a while ago where people were discussing their addictions to AccountingWEB and someone suggested setting up an 'AccountingWEB anonymous' self help group for those whose lives were being taken over by it! :-)

It sounds like you have a good system for coping with it - checking at set periods each day. I imagine if you work by yourself, it's sort of like being in a crowded online office where you can shout questions across the desks. I'm glad to hear it's been useful to you!

Stink!

Hahaha! I shouldn't laugh but that did tickle me. It was mean of your partner not to warn you. This is a very delicate subject and I can't really see a way for you to address this without upsetting the client. In my previous job I had a colleague with a rather distinctive 'aroma', shall we say, to the point where it became a problem for everyone around her in the summer months. Our boss took all the female staff into a room and said 'right, which one of you is going to tell her? I can't do it because I'm a man'! Needless to say, no one volunteered. When it came to Christmas time, one of my colleagues drew this woman's name from the secret santa hat and had to buy her a gift. They got her a set of soaps and shower gels. I think she must have taken the hint because we didn't smell the whiff again after that...until the set had run out!

Thanks

Duly noted.

We're still here!

Thanks for letting us know. We'll look into it. In the meantime, if you do spot anything unusual, please do drop us a line on [email protected]