Forms, forms and more forms

The World Bank Group ranks Australia the second easiest country in the world in which to start up a new business.  Leighton Jenkins believes we could make it even simpler.

In June 2011 the World Bank published an economic ranking table for countries based on how easy it is to do business there.

A high ranking on the ease of doing business index means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. This index averages the country’s percentile rankings on 10 topics, made up of a variety of indicators, giving equal weight to each topic.

Walmart, Carbon, and Lessons for Woolworths

The recent announcement by Walmart to reduce its carbon footprint has thrown down the challenge to other global retailers such as the UK’s Tesco and Australia’s Woolworths. Until this announcement all three essentially had drawn an imaginary wall around their business and set targets that were, a) related to their direct property and operations, b) therefore under their direct control. A diagram from the Tesco site shows this quite clearly.

Death to Dead Water

When you turn on your hot water tap at home how long does it take to become warm? It is typical in a kitchen for 2-3 litres to flow before it becomes warm, let alone hot. This water in the pipes between the outlet and the water heater is called “dead water”.