Wonderful Wefinda weekly news (Week ended 07 January 2011)

UK Manufacturing on a high
According to Markit, UK manufacturing finished 2010 on a high with orders and exports charging forward and leading the British economy. By contrast the service and construction industries slipped back slightly in December on the back of bad weather and pre-Christmas slow down in general activity.

SMEs lag behind in pension stakes
According to research by the Association of Consulting Actuaries, two thirds of small businesses don’t offer their employees a pension scheme with most being put off by the cost. With all employers having to offer their staff a pension scheme by 2016 SMEs face a huge catch up exercise to comply with the new legislation. The new schemes will mean employees contributing at least 4% of their pay to the pension scheme with the employer adding 3% and the government a further 1%.

Changing your company car?
The energy saving trust is reminding businesses that they may qualify for a grant of up to £5,000 if they change their company cars for ultra low carbon (electric) cars. Electric cars also come with added benefits such as no vehicle excise duty payable, 100% capital write down, no fuel duty on the electricity used to charge them, no employers class 1A NI contributions. Even better, drivers won’t be subject to benefit in kind until 2015. More details available on www.energysavingtrust.org.uk

Watch out - Scam invoices are about
With the return to work after the long Christmas and New Year break combined with the postal backlog before Christmas due to the snow, accounts departments may feel overwhelmed with invoices to pay. Scammers have already hit one group of clients of “Community Care” asking for payment for advertisements. The general rule is, don’t pay invoices unless they have been signed off by the recipient of the products/services and be wary of requests to pay alternate bank accounts or post cheques to different addresses.

So, what do we have to look forward to?
In Parliament this week we have questions on Work & Pensions as well as Business, Innovation & Skills. The Treasury Select Committee continues its look at competition and choice in banking whilst the Work and Pensions committee looks at providers and contracting arrangements.

The Bank of England’s monetary policy committee meets on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss interest rates. With the comments coming out from various sources in December indicating that rates may well go up this year, this meeting is of interest to all.

And finally
We are all aware of the risks of eating at our desks, with crumbs in the keyboard and drinks spilt causing machines to crash. We should have sympathy then for the pilot of a United Airlines pilot whose coffee caused a more major problem. Landing on the radio, the spilt coffee caused a major distress alert to be automatically issued, meaning the plane from Chicago to Frankfurt had to divert to Toronto and adding a day to passengers' journeys.