Category Archives: Public Sector

President Obama Speaks on the US Debt Ceiling Compromise

Posted on August 11, 2011 by MyOrbit-Team| Leave a comment

This afternoon, Congress approved a compromise to reduce the deficit and avert a default that would have devastated the economy. Speaking from the Rose Garden, President Obama thanked the American people for reaching out to their elected officials during the debate, and stressed that this compromise guarantees more than $2 trillion in deficit reduction, and will ensure that as a nation we live within our means, while still making key investments in things that lead to new jobs, like education and research. Continue reading →

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Posted in Economy, Geo-Americas, Innovation, Jobs & Careers, People, Public Sector

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UK HMRC at melting point with over £40 billion uncollected tax

Posted on September 11, 2010 by MyOrbit-Team| Leave a comment

This audio interview reveals a very difficult situation within the UK HMRC, which has the responsibility to collect taxes, with £40 billion uncollected tax due to bad software systems and under-staffing.

UK HMRC at melting point

There are a million pieces of unanswered post. It will be taking 3 months to answer them, which itself might increase the problem further if a person has to pay back taxes with interest.

The UK HMRC contact centers are severely under-staffed, and that fact comes out from numerous press reports of people having to wait for a long time just to be able to speak to a tax officer to understand any discrepency in the tax numbers they have with them vs what HMRC is asking from them.

The average tax payment due is about £1400 and about 1.4 million people will receive letters from HMRC by Christmas.

So if you are in the UK and frustrated with not having any response from the HMRC, now you understand that many others are facing the same, and that the staff at HMRC are stretched to the limits already.

As long as you keep the communication from your side intact, it should be okay.

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Posted in 5 Questions, Accounting & Finance, Geo-Europe, MyOrbit Blogs, People, Podcasts, Public Sector

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What Makes An Ad Stand Out?

Posted on December 21, 2009 by MyOrbit-Team| Leave a comment

uganda_aids_ad.jpg

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The above ad is from the AIDS prevention campaign being run in Uganda. It was shared by Perry Marshall over the weekend. It stands out from the usual ads, and has an immediate on the reader because of its ability to directly address the target audience — middle aged men with the income and propensity for procuring teenage sex.

What makes this ad stand out? Some reasons I can think of are:

1. It is dealing with morals/values, where its possible to act differently in private from what we  accept in public.

2. It uses just a few words and that too as questions, which you will tend to answer within yourself.

3. The few words are supported by a carefully chosen image, which really delivers the full impact of the ad.

4. It puts you on the defensive; very few ads can achieve that. It makes you respond internally. So you are likely to remember it for some time.

These days we see hundreds of ads every day on the Internet and in print media. Our mind has been slowly getting trained to separate the signal (content) from the noise (ads). In the early days of the web, 1997 to 2000, there were not that many ads, and the technology behind them had no capability to geo-target the audience.

The above ad is a great example of a powerful ad.
See how you can use its structure for your own business.
- Shankar

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Posted in Advertising, Healthcare & Medicine, MyOrbit Blogs, Personalization, Public Sector, Sales & Marketing

France Introduces New Carbon Tax To Cut Carbon Fuel Emissions

Posted on September 14, 2009 by MyOrbit-Team| Leave a comment

In a move to make people reduce their consumption from using oil and gas energy, France will impose a levy on oil, gas and coal consumption by households and businesses from next year.

This Green Carbon Tax will be 17 Euro per ton of Carbon emission. While Sweden and Finland already have such taxes, France is now the largest developed economy to implement such a carbon tax.

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Posted in Energy, Geo-Europe, MyOrbit Videos, Public Sector