Coach Hire London: See the Capital in your own time

Stuart

Now that air travel is so affordable many people skip straight to budget airline websites to get tickets to their holiday destinations. In many ways this is an understandable trend: a whole host of popular cities across Europe can be reached via air for fifty pounds or less. But this trend has meant that few of us consider the benefits of travelling by train, boat or coach any more. Coach travel in particular can be just as affordable as flying with any one of the budget airlines. This is principally due to the lack of hidden costs: when you opt for luxury coach hire, minibus hire or coach hire london you need not factor in the extortionate price of your taxi ride to the airport or your car parking costs if you drive. Nor will you need to dig deep to check in luggage or get duped into shelling out for duty free goods that you’d never ordinarily buy on the ground.

In the eco-friendly stakes, coach travel comes out on top against flying too, especially when the coach is carrying its full capacity of passengers. In fact, coach hire is an excellent solution for groups travelling together because the cost, space, and provisions can all be split in communal fashion. This may conjure memories of school visits or time spent in the Girl Guides or Scouts. But coaches come in many and varied shapes and sizes these days: the most basic style of minibus or small coach will suffice for a school or college sports team heading off to local fixtures together. Meanwhile, a roomy vehicle with curtains, reclining seats, climate control and entertainment will cater to a special party or premiership football team’s needs.

Perhaps where luxury coach hire contrasts most distinctly with other modes of travel is in its adaptability to the individual: where trains, planes and boats must observe particular timetables and routes, the coach can be taken along the path chosen by its hiring driver. So, if you have a holiday in mind that takes in a string of locations and sights, why not journey from one to the next in the coach? Or, if you’re in a touring band playing concert venues countrywide, minibus hire will be pretty much obligatory and far from unpleasant: the best thing about coach hire london is that you get to experience all of the landscapes and cityscapes you pass on the road.

Please visit https://www.goldenboy.co.uk/

Powerpoint presentations that empower employees

Emma

For a certain generation, the mention of powerpoint presentations conjures memories of GCSE IT classes; of those days spent, aged fifteen or sixteen, completing simple and apparently banal tasks on software barely understood by the teachers. This generation probably remembers making sales presentations for fictitious companies for whom posters and other marketing material were also produced using programs such as Corel Draw and Publisher. Market research, meanwhile, was recorded using Access. Altogether, these kinds of information technology classes felt like jumping through a series of hoops. Powerpoint design often seemed twee and irrelevant in those days and pupils soon tired of its basic visual effects consisting of dissolves, fade-in and out and of various styles and sizes of font.

This same generation is now discovering that Powerpoint presentations do in fact have a wider use. Beyond the classroom they can have a real impact in the workplace. In fact, some employees’ career progress is dependent upon their ability to communicate ideas to audiences large and small and Powerpoint design skills greatly aid such communication. Especially in fields such as sales, marketing, banking and advertising but also in public sector jobs such as the police, the NHS and teaching, conducting a meeting with the assistance of Powerpoint will often mean conducting a successful meeting. When we talk about the success of a presentation we mean one that instantly captures the imagination of the audience. A good presentation should succeed in boiling its content down to the most simple of formulations, whether they are visually or textually based. It should also expand on its points in a memorable way that sustains the attention won at the start.

This may sound easy, but it depends on having a nuanced technical understanding of how Powerpoint works. This means gaining an awareness of how to make a presentation in the first place – from deciding what material must be emphasised, what tone should be adopted, whether to use images, texts, graphs or a combination of these – as well as an awareness of how a presentation will be received. Employees using powerpoint presentations will feel empowered when they have mastered the skill of giving a good presentation. Powerpoint design does not require artistic or technological genius, but rather a clear-headed approach to communication. Indeed, the most effective sales presentations often demand little in the way of creative expertise: anyone can get ahead using Powerpoint provided they put themselves in the shoes of their audience and turn basic skills to their advantage.

Please visit https://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/

Purchasing School Clothes Online

Stuart

Buying school uniforms is a regular chore that traditionally occurs towards the end of the long summer break, though you may need to buy school clothes at any time. Whilst an online London schoolwear supplier can save you time and money, are there enough reasons to opt for this rather than the more normal method of rushing round the shops yourself – children in tow?

The pros usually outweigh the cons, but many people will need some convincing. After all, getting it wrong can be a real inconvenience, and if you’ve left it to the last day or two then you won’t have a lot of time to set things right.

1) It’s cheaper. Buying online is almost always cheaper, mainly because internet retailers don’t have the overheads – staff, premises, utilities – that high-street shops have to pay. They can keep their stock in a warehouse and post it to clients. But given the lower costs, the quality is just the same – they come from the same wholesalers.

2) It’s faster. At least, it’s faster to order – it just takes a few clicks of the mouse. There’s no need to drag your children around several shops to find what you need. It will take at least a day to post them to you – more if you don’t pay for faster delivery. If you’re really working up to the wire, it might be better to buy in person. But even then, a good London schoolwear supplier will deliver to the school itself, so your child will have what they need.

3) If the clothes don’t fit it’s not a disaster. You’ll need to measure your kids up carefully, but you can use existing well-fitting clothes as a guide for that too. If you get the school clothes and for some reason they don’t fit properly, you can send them back and have them exchanged. Unless it’s the day before school starts again, this shouldn’t be any trouble.

4) You can buy everything you need. Not only are all the regular brands for school uniforms on offer, but you can also get bags, stationary, shoes, calculators, gym kit – everything they’ll need for the new term. That makes for a stress-free end to the holidays.

A good online London schoolwear supplier can make shopping for school clothes speedy, cheap and almost painless. You’re not tied to particular times of day, so if you work you won’t have to take time off. And, you can buy a lot more than just school uniforms: you’re ready for the school year in one fell swoop.

Please visit http://www.uniform4kids.com/ for further information.

Minibus Hire in London – The ideal way to see the sights…

Jo

It’s a disappointing fact that getting away anywhere means at least some degree of travel. And travel is a time-consuming, tiring and expensive undertaking. But while it will always take a certain amount of time to get from A to B, there are ways that you can reduce the cost and make your journey a more relaxing experience. Minibus hire is one means of accessing economies of scale, allowing a dozen or more people to make a journey with one or two drivers, rather than travelling in separate cars and paying for fuel for each of them. A step up the ladder, luxury coach hire enables you to take a bigger group of people away on holiday, handing over the responsibilities for driving to experienced professionals. Although this comes with a cost attached, you should find that you more than offset this through the numbers of people involved. A coach can take thirty, forty or even fifty people; a car might manage four or five at a push. The other alternative is public transport, but this is prohibitively expensive and inflexible – especially when you are hoping to take a whole group of people away somewhere. Coach hire London is the ideal solution to the issues of cost and tiredness.

Luxury coach hire brings almost all the advantages of self-drive, but without the disadvantages. If you’re getting away on holiday there’s a fair chance you’ll desperately need your break. The nature of yearly holidays is that life and work tend to shape themselves around them, and by the time you get there you’ll be exhausted. But to reach your much-needed holiday, you’ll first have to drive – perhaps for many hours. Coach hire in London gets around this problem. Not only that, but the coaches are well equipped with comfortable seats, refreshments and often TV and DVD players – these are not like the dusty, grimy coaches of yesteryear. On the smaller scale, if you’d still like to drive yourself and a handful of other people, then minibus hire could be the most sensible option. This is still flexible and cheap, but does not commit you to paying for a driver and taking a large group away. It can be a great idea for sports teams and office parties, where there are too many for a single car but not enough for a whole coach.

Please visit https://www.goldenboy.co.uk/

School Clothes that are Stress-free to order

Emma

School days are some of the most crucial days of a child’s life. Having gotten the right start at home in a loving and praising environment the next stage in a young person’s development is his or her learning. The shift from the family home to the classroom can be hard; involving exposure to new thoughts that ask for significant periods of concentration to grasp and, perhaps most challenging of all, encounters with new people. These people will for the largest part be other children and although some of our strongest friendships are formed at school, the preceding phase of mingling and getting acquainted with one another can be a difficult time. School uniforms make this stage easier for small ones: they can focus on their classmates’ personalities and positive qualities rather than their physical aspect and, all-importantly, be comfortable in their school clothes during breaks. Children may object occasionally at having to leave regular clothes for the weekends but once provided with a long-lasting, breathable and simple uniform from a London schoolwear supplier – like everyone else’s – they are sure to stop complaining.

Indeed, school uniforms are all about simplicity and function: they allow children to forget what they look like and value discovery, creativity, play and friendship. Uniforms also give teachers a helping hand: studies have shown a significant correlation between adherence to school uniform regulations and good discipline. And we all know that a well-behaved class tends to be a high-achieving class. Reasons for this correlation are doubtless multiple but among them stands the idea that respect for one’s own dress sense breeds respect for others and respect for teachers. In such a respecting environment a child can be more productive. In brief, uniforms typically make school days simpler and more enjoyable.

Parents of school-age children will naturally appreciate a school with strict rules about uniform. Initially mothers and fathers may dread the expense and time it will take to find all the right garments but once they discover London schoolwear supplier who take orders for school uniforms online and deliver school clothes to the door they need worry no more.

Please visit https://www.uniform4kids.com/ for further information

Offices to Rent in North London – If you move fast

Emma

In the markets for commercial property, London is showing signs of heating up. There has been rumour of a new property bubble, born out of the ashes of the last, with politicians and senior economists equally keen not to exaggerate the problem. The last boom deflated with the credit crunch, that saw values in parts of the capital drop by as much as 50 percent. The low interest rates and quantitative easing brought in to fix this, as well as the weak pound, meant that investment has returned – and the time scale for new development meant that bottlenecks further increased demand. There has been great interest from outside the UK, with Asian investors looking for deals here. A shop for sale in London can be a goldmine in the right hands – either for your own business or to rent out. Shops to let in North London have seen steadily rising rents in recent times. And although this might seem like a problem, it perversely gives rise to new opportunities for those prepared to move quickly.

The dynamic of ever-increasing rents has not met with unanimous approval. Although it is seen as a sign of a recovering economy, the reality on the ground can be quite different. Traders who have worked for years in the same street are seeing their rents rising beyond what they can afford, as the property market speeds ahead of the retail sector of the economy. The result: the price of their wares rises, and both shoppers and vendors move online looking for cheaper alternatives. Gaps are appearing once again as traders find it too expensive to stay.

Some sectors are immune from these trends. An eatery or a coffee shop for sale in London has a better chance of making things work – you can’t buy the coffee-drinking experience online. So some shops to rent in North London can buck the trend, whilst others will simply swallow the higher prices and see their margins squeezed (or the difference passed on to customers). The thing to remember is that commercial property London is not a homogeneous picture: different sectors and areas act very differently. The news might be driven by the price of grade A office space in the Square Mile; the reality on the ground for retail is quite different. Opportunities still exist for buyers and sellers, landlords and tenants; it’s just a question of finding the right shop and timing.

Please visit http://www.claridges-commercial.co.uk

Duplicate Payments – A Concern for your Organisation?

Jo

To err is human, even for humans who work in the accounts group. Sooner or later, someone is going to make a mistake paying an invoice, and it will cost you. That’s obvious: it’s just the law of averages. The question is, how often will it happen and what will the overall cost be to your company? Intuitively, you might think it’s minimal, but the reality is quite different. Industry estimates calculate that one in every thousand transactions is an overpayment. There are many different reasons this can occur, but the most frequent is duplicate payments – where, by accident or dishonest design, the same invoice is paid twice. One in a thousand may not seem like a lot, but it all adds up. And if you’re a business that relies on very large volumes of minor transactions – high numbers of low-margin payments – then you could be in a lot of trouble. Recovery audit software will highlight where this is happening and help you claim back the money paid, assuming you act quickly. An accounts payable audit shows you who still owes you money that, due to oversight or problems in your accounting systems, has never been collected.

The larger your company, the greater this problem is likely to be – and not just because it means a larger number of transactions to go wrong. When you are making and receiving a lot of payments, it gets harder and harder to pinpoint the incorrect ones. These could be due to genuine misunderstanding, or occasionally fraud. If a supplier is sending the same invoice every month, it gets easier to send in a repeat which slips under the radar: the source of many duplicate payments. Of course, the same thing can happen through forgetfulness or accident. Either way, you’ll end up overpaying unless someone recognises it, and in a busy accounts department there’s no way that someone will be able to remember and verify all of your payments personally. That’s why recovery audit software can be so useful, usually paying for itself the first time you use it. And problems with your accounts cut both ways. You may be overpaying other people, and your customers and others could be underpaying you. These payments can become mislaid in the system, with nothing in place to chase them up. An accounts payable audit seeks out the offenders and ensures that they settle their bills.

Please visit https://www.fiscaltec.com/

Phono Preamp Products To Satisfy Nostalgic Music Lovers

Stuart

These days everybody plays the role of DJ, whether that means selecting which tracks to play as a driver ferrying friends around town or putting on a playlist as host of an event. But as we can tell from the norm of deejaying now revolving around music being played on MP3s, much of the DJ’s art has been forgotten in the post-vinyl age. Of course you can still buy records, indeed their larger format has been embraced anew by musicians who value album art. What is missing, however, is the correct equipment to play these records on. You may frequently pass charity shops whose baskets literally overflow with 7 inch and 10 inch discs of funk, soul, indie, pop and jazz. But when do we pass shops selling record players and their essential counterparts: speakers, phono stage, phono preamp and phono amp? The shameful answer is once in a month of Sundays.
As the hip hop legends De La Soul sang in ‘The Magic Number’: ‘Everybody wants to be a DJ/Everybody wants to be an MC/But being speakers are the best/And you don’t have to guess’. This 1980s trio knew the value of quality equipment but they also had the privilege of being surrounded by top suppliers and occupying prime territory in the music scene. In the twenty-first century, where many more of us are amateur DJs and do not know where to seek out our speakers and amplifiers, we feel quite at sea.

The bizarre contradiction of our times is that we have more choice than ever as consumers: the internet allows us to look worldwide for our purchases. This abundance of choice confuses us, however – if we really are musical amateurs we simply do not know which audio company to type into our search engine. Shopping for sound is an arduous task: at least with other material goods like clothes or homeware it is possible to base your choice on a photo. Unless you know exactly what you are doing, this is impossible: these are arcane devices.

Here are some tips: vinyl is all about the richness of sound. The job of a phono preamp is to bring the unique warmth of the record to your ears with minimum interference. A real balanced output is what you are after in a phono stage and an authentic reproduction of sound that cuts out crackles and privileges the beat is what every DJ or private audiophile deserves. The phono amp should contribute to better sound than digital media.

Please visit http://www.whestaudio.co.uk/ for further info.

ICT infrastructure requires another investment push

Jo

Next generation access refers to the higher speeds at which we can connect to the internet, and researchers have revealed that 8% of UK households now benefit from a super high speed of connection. But, while this super high speed news may sound brilliantly progressive, we really should be aiming to spread this rate of access beyond just a twelfth of properties. Because if we compare the rate of connection at the highest rate – 30Mbps or higher – with the UK average of 9Mbps, it is easy to see that the improvements in connectivity are far from inclusive. Indeed, it is especially important in a climate of economic recovery that a reliable and fast connection to the internet does not become the preserve of the wealthy: news articles reporting on the higher speeds being accessed in the UK have also taken time to note that ‘In the current economic climate, spending an extra £10 a month to get faster broadband is simply not a priority for most households’. And this is certainly true in regions where ICT infrastructure leaves much to be desired. Now is really the time then to look properly into the problem of how Britain can avoid creating a new category of social inequality based on technical computer skills and access to information. Investment in community broadband is happening too reluctantly.

Philosophers and theorists have been talking recently about how our economy is shifting from an economy of production and consumption to an economy of contribution. Put simply, this means that the future might see fewer global corporations responsible for the goods the rest of us rely upon and a greater number of the general population might also be producers and consumers of a wider range of specialised services and goods. Obviously, things might not work out this way but, if we can look forward to greater independence and the crumbling of a rigid top-down economic model, we can be sure that the internet will have a big role to play.

Internet users with next generation access are in a really advantageous position at the moment: there is so much open source software available in locations where ICT infrastructure is established that we can use to educate ourselves, produce artwork, write music, and even develop our own products. However, we must not get too inspired about all of this, at the risk of forgetting about the under-developed countries and even the poorly connected areas of wealthy nations who have an unreliable or non-existent level of internet access. Improving community broadband is an urgent issue.

Please visit http://www.broadbandvantage.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.broadbandvantage.co.uk/

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Powerpoint presentation design – more than a bunch of slides

Emma

Powerpoint Presentations are very simple to put together, but excellent Powerpoint design is extremely hard. Pushed for time, most of us will sling together a bunch of slides based on our talk, perhaps illustrating some key points. The versatility of Powerpoint makes this easy – too easy. Thanks to the user-friendliness of the programme, you can very quickly build up slides with text, images, audio and video, transitioning to each other with a range of special effects. But that’s not enough. Good sales presentations are more than window-dressing, and if you don’t know what you’re doing your audience will find out pretty soon.

Bad Powerpoint design simply repeats what the audience hears in your spoken presentation. Good design has a narrative: a story that moves through the presentation and that is communicated with conciseness and clarity. The visuals matter, but only in pointing to this primary aim. People take in information in different ways, so don’t assume that the slides are an optional extra to the talk you write. In many cases these snapshots will be most or all of what a viewer/listener takes away.

This isn’t something that just anyone can do – at least not without training. If you work in a business of any size, you’ll already understand that. Although you can put together your own copy, it’s far more effective to hire a copywriter to do it for you. Anyone can write; not everyone can copywrite (although in smaller organisations they may try). Powerpoint is the same. The problem is that the ease of using the software means there are a lot of dilettantes out there, with the obvious results. Creating a really killer slideshow is actually quite an art; it’s just that creating a mediocre slideshow is within anyone’s reach – just as writing a bad sales pitch or website landing page is something anyone can do.

If your Powerpoint design is letting you down, there are companies who can either do it for you or train someone within your organisation so that they can create high-quality sales presentations. Great powerpoint presentations don’t just happen by themselves; they are crafted, just like any other worthwhile product – copy, artwork, software, a website. As in anything like this, the proof of the pudding should be in the eating, and very quickly. Return on investment is the only meaningful measure of success when hiring a service like this, and you should see it almost immediately in the form of successful bids and convincing presentations.

Please visit http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/

http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/

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