PIRC Corporate Governance & Responsible Investment Journalism Awards 2013

On Wednesday evening I went to the PIRC awards at the Design Museum on the south bank of London.

The winning journalists were Tom Bergin from Reuters (2nd left) who won the Corporate Governance Award for stories on tax dodging by Google. 

While Rob Davies (3rd from left) from the Daily Mail won the SRI award for his work on polluting mining giant Glencore (now who would think there was good in the Daily Mail?).

I suppose that I should ask PIRC MD, Alan MacDougall (on right of photo) why there isn't an award for CG or RI Blogging?  Or is this a contradiction in terms? :)  Must ask Tom P (who was poorly last week and missed the event).

A professional report on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Baidu, scholarship search engines

Scholarship searches: A professional report on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Baidu, scholarship search engines

I have published a professional report entitled Scholarship searches: A professional report on scholarship searches, how to find money for college, and how to rate and use scholarship search engines In writing this report, it is clear that millions of students are still conducting scholarship searches using antiquated scholarship search engines that have not kept pace with technology. Worst yet, the inferior scholarship search engines do not keep pace with, and cannot even locate quality scholarship content!! What is a student, mom, or mother to do? Well, I am here tom help.

Therefore, my latest detailed Scholarship Search Engine report addresses ways to rate Scholarship Search Engines, reduce wasted time in using ineffective scholarship search engines, while providing tips for the effective use of scholarship search engines in finding quality content that reflects scholarships, grants, and financial-aid.

We rate scholarship search engines a similar way that we rate scholarship search servics: We rate scholarship search sngines by the ability of these scholarship search engines to find, and index, quality scholarship content.

More than 95 percent of all scholarship applicants conduct scholarship searches via scholarship search engines via either desktop devices or mobile devices. The other 5% have parents that are extremely rich. This article is aimed at the 95% of Americans, and Europeans, who use search engines to find scholarships, grants, and financial-aid. Thank you for reading this article and please do not hesitate to submit your suggestions or replies via our Scholarship Watch blog.

This article continues on the NAAS.ORG website. This article continues with tables, sample search engine terms, and grade reports for search engines, etc.....
A professional report on scholarship searches, how to find money for college, and how to rate and use scholarship search engines.

Yes Google is evil..so are Amazon, Starbucks and all such tax thieves

I was at a pension trustee meeting a little while ago where I was criticised for bringing up our share holding in companies who don't pay their fair share in taxes. I was told that it was the duty of such companies to reduce their exposure to all taxes.

I disagreed and while I didn't express my true views that these companies are spongers who steal from the old and the sick. I did point out that we expect companies we invest in to be well managed, aware of risk and run with integrity.

There is a balancing act to be made by companies on minimising their taxes while recognising they have a duty to pay towards in public services and infrastructure they rely on to run their company in the UK.

The negative publicity and financial damage to the brand if they misbehave is also immense. 

If they get this balance wrong then the CEO and the Board are simply incompetent as well as immoral and not fit and proper people to run the company.

Street Map squeezed out by Google monopoly?