The time limits for delivering limited company accounts to Companies House has been reduced by one month at the same time penalties for late delivery have been increased.

For private Limited Companies and Limited Liability Companies (LLPs) with accounting periods that begin on or after 6 April 2008 will have to file accounts with Companies House within 9 months, instead of the prior 10-months. For public companies with the same accounting period start date the filing deadline has been reduced to 6 months instead of the previous 7.

Late filing penalties from 1 February 2009 have been changed to:

How late are the accounts delivered	Private Limited Companies and LLPs	Public Companies
No more that one month	£150	£750
More than one month but not more than 3 months	£375	£1,500
More than 3 months but not more than 6 months	£750	£3,000
More than 6 months	£1,500	£7,500

Double penalties

Where companies with an account period that began after 6 April 2008 or LLPs after 1 October 2008 failed to comply with the filing requirements in the previous financial year the above penalties will be double that shown in the table.

On a recent visit to Swanage in Dorset I visited a bakery for a coffee and cake and noticed that the owner had labelled the “Gingerbread Men” as “Gingerbread Persons”.

I asked the owner why he had named them this way and told me that the Trading Standards had told him he was not allowed to name them “Gingerbread Men”! What is this country coming to and shame on the people at the trading standards – They have gone one step too far in my opinion and this just shows how crazy things have got. This country wastes so much time and money on such petty things as this, rather than getting it right with the finances and letting the banking industry going into melt-down – shame on the Government too for allowing this charade to happen.

Gingerbread men will always be Gingerbread men because that is how they were first created and I urge bakers to revert to the traditions of the UK. Stand up against the time-wasting PC brigade! Businesses have much more important issues to deal with than having to comply with crazy politically correct rules set by people that have absolutely no idea and nothing else better to do!

The Bank of England has today dropped the UK bank base rate to 0.5% which sets a new record low for the UK economy.

With the economy at a stand-still the Bank of England has taken further steps to stimulate the UK economy and in addition Mervyn King is about to do quantitative easing and will initially pump £75 billion into the economy and then up to a further £75 billion making a total of £150 billion!

There are two ways in which a government can get an economy going, and once interest rates have been dropped to such a point that any further cuts will have little effect then the other option is to go for quantative easing, which is simply where money is pumped into the economy.

The way this works in practice is for the central bank (and in this case the Bank of England) buys up financial assets, which includes government and corporate bonds from the large banking and insurance institutions. Once these institutions have this extra “Cash” in their accounts they can then boost the money supply, which in turn will increase the amount of money that is in circulation in order to revive the economy.

There are two ways in which quantative easing works with the first being that, with the banks having more “Cash” in their pockets they will be more willing to lend to businesses and individuals, thus putting more money into the economy. The second way that this works is that the effect of quantative easing is a downward pressure on lending rates making it cheaper for businesses and individuals to borrow.

The downside of quantative easing, as with reducing interest rates, is that it could spark off inflation as it is there to encourage spending and this is the risk that the UK government is taking by making this step to boost the UK economy. However, the opposite risk of not pumping cash into the economy in this way is for the UK economy to go into a deflationary period like Japan did some 10 years ago, which is extremely damaging for businesses, property and the economy as a whole.

Of course it could be that the banks still hold-back on lending even with the extra cash on their balance sheets, which of course would mean that there will be no effect on the economy, which is what happened in Japan – so we wait to see what happens.

For those of you that have appealed against your bank charging you an excessive amount for bank charges for going overdrawn might soon be receiving a cheque in the post.

Today the Court of Appeal ruled that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) had the power to rule on bank charges and to investigate the charges levied by banks. However, this ruling is not final, as it looks like the eight banks that are fighting against the High Court ruling are going to take the case to the House of Lords. This appeal is despite Sir Anthony Clarke (Master of the Rolls) dismissing the banks’ appeal and has told the eight banks concerned that they should allow the OFT to decide whether their charges were fair or not, and as a consequence refund those customers where the charges are deemed unfair!

The British Bankers’ Association (BBA) commented that its members are still disputing the courts’ (both the High Court and Court of Appeal) decision.

The banks could be facing huge pay-outs to customers as a result of this decision which comes at a time when banks are already suffering badly due to the present economic crisis! In the end it looks like these payments will be funded by our own money anyway, that is taxpayer’s money.

The business has just made the biggest loss in UK history of £24.1 billion is the headline!

On top of making such a spectacular loss it has £325 billion of toxic assets, but all is not lost as the Government has just bailed the business out to the tune of £13 billion of taxpayer’s money, having already paid in £20 billion last year.

The great news about the toxic assets is that the business is only responsible for £19.5 billion of the total £325 billion, and that the business has been trading for some 282 years, so it is a well established company!

The business is looking to restructure, sell off parts and make up to 20,000 redundancies over the coming year to reduce costs by around £2.5 billion per annum.

The company trades as the Royal Bank of Scotland or (RBS) and also owns another large UK bank National Westminster Bank and recently purchased ABN Amro an American bank.

Obviously this post has been done with a bit of “Tongue and Cheek”, but it just goes to show the extent to which the UK Government is having to go in order to avert a bigger banking crisis than we already have.

I have also written it in this format to help demonstrate how obviously absurd it is that a business is able to make things go so spectacularly wrong and yet be allowed to survive in what is supposed to be a “Capitalist” economy!

No more “Boom and Bust” Gordon Brown said, what a joker. This Government needs to take stock and needs to call an election sooner rather than later.

Not only is it the bank chairman’s, like in this case Sir Philip Hampton, that should have their heads on the block, so too should the Government. The Government should accept their part of the problem and take responsibility for what has happened and stop passing on blame to the US.

The Bank of England have slashed another third off the interest rates in the UK!

Interest rates were cut in January to an all time low of just 1.5%, but this record has just been beaten with the rate being cut today to just 1%.

Problems in the economy with retailers struggling and with an ailing housing market have pushed the Bank of England to take further action on interest rate. There were discussions that the rates could be cut even more than this with business leaders expecting a lower than 1% rate like in America, but this did not happen and we wait to see what might happen in March 2009.

The American franchise chain Subway has announced that it plans on opening 600 new stores across the UK.

This is both an opportunity for those who have lost their jobs and who might be looking for a new business venture in setting up a franchise and good news for the UK economy, as it will create up to 7,000 new jobs.

If you have been made redundant you might think about using your redundancy money (if you received any that is) to set up in business. A good opportunity in this is to set up a franchise, as you are setting up a business which is a known quantity and one that the market already recognises, which not only means a higher likelihood on making it a success, but also the banks would look on this type of business more favourably.