Having the right advice ion these circumstances is vital, especially since, if you need to make a personal injury claim, and have ongoing losses, a strong claim, and acute financial needs, you may be able to get some interim damages whilst the case is subject to final resolution.

Fortunately and notwithstanding the bad press which many injury lawyers get, the UK has more than it’s fair share of excellent, professional and highly efficient personal injury lawyers who provide a no win no fee service.

Among the foremost of these specialist lawyers are First Personal Injury, who can help you get accident compensation if you have been left struggling to work. This practice is a fully authorised and regulated firm of solicitors which specialises in personal injury claims of all kinds and which obtains results for thousands of injured individuals who are in difficult financial circumstances. If in doubt, give them a call to find out more.

Things are not looking great for the UK economy, but we’re certainly not alone, and it’s always important to keep a sense of perspective. The majority of people alive today have never really experienced generally tough times, and maybe it’s not such a bad thing in an age where the individual and consumerism seem to have had damaging effects on relationships and family.

Things have got pretty bad in Ireland, although again they are not alone either, if you look at countries like Greece and the rapid deterioration in Spain and elsewhere.

As regards Ireland, the Irish Times published some data last week which makes for quite interesting reading :-

• household incomes 5% down on where they were in 2009
• Average household income dropped to just over 22,000 euros.
• Many of the poorest still being cushioned to a degree by social welfare but with GDP down by nearly 20%, not clear how the country can continue to pay such social welfare
• The gap between the richest and poorest continues to increase to it’s highest recorded level since current measurement techniques began

Reasons to be optimistic – probably not unfortunately !

We all know that credit rating is important, and that there are some obvious ways in which to damage or destroy your credit rating, such as with bankruptcy or County Court Judgments.

There are a number of factors in a credit score, some may not be as obvious as the others, so here is a list of a few more :-

• Being late in paying credit card bills, finance arrangements, utility bills or mortgage payments.
• Regularly using almost all the credit available on your cards.
• A brief credit history or lack of credit history.
• Seeking lots of different types of credit in a short amount of time.

Whilst many small businesses will have and use credit cards as an easy way of making everyday payments, perhaps typically for petrol and other expenses such as hotel rooms for business trips, it seems that an increasing number of small businesses are using the cards as an alternative to bank loans.

Common sense suggests that using a credit card in this way, unless the business can be sure of paying off the balance before interest or a significant amount of interest is added, cannot be a sensible move. It indicates the level of desperation for small businesses trying to stay afloat. It also perhaps indicates that banks are not taking a more sympathetic approach to small business loans. In all, this is simply storing up trouble for later, which seems to be endemic at the moment with even Government’s passing the parcel with debts, bailing each other out such that whilst we all know that there is considerable pain out there, the pain isn’t being felt. Sooner or later the reality must bite because one of the other big issues at the moment is the continuing uncertainty.

As regards the credit card issues, in a survey by Hilton-Baird Financial Solutions, the following results were obtained :-

• Credit cards are 1 of the top 2 external sources of finance for small business with 42% using them.
• 25% of those questioned are currently using asset finance.

The impact and power of google and facebook seem to be becoming ever more pervasive. We all know that google is a fantastic tool for research but it now seems that even the Bank Of England finds it indispensable. Apparently, the bank now uses google as a diagnostic prediction tool for predicting trends in unemployment and house prices.

It seems that the bank’s method is to test search volumes for keywords including such items as  “estate agent”, “mortgage”, “unemployed” and “jobseekers allowance” and to then correlate this with actual figures. It seems that there is a high degree of correlation.

A recent survey from consumer watchdog specialists “Which ?” confirms what many people suspect. Data protection is becoming such an onerous task in the digital age that even the largest organisation handling the most sensitive personal and financial; data are struggling with compliance. There is no doubt that most banks take data protection seriously and it is not suggested that breaches are deliberate, but this is a problem which is not going to go away.

The main findings of the Which ? survey were :-

• In the year ending August 2010, 515 viable complaints were sent to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) about alleged data protection breaches by  8 top UK banks and  and building societies.
• Research suggests that only 13% of consumers have heard of the ICO which means that the possible number of serious breaches by banks and building societies could be much higher.
• Barclays Bank was the bank most complained about, with 116 complaints but was not significantly ahead of some others, since Lloyds TSB was the subject of 114 complaints and Santander had 103.
• Breaches complained of varied quite significantly, many related to banks failure to release data about customers when lawfully requested by them, inaccuracy of data about customers, security failures and the most worrying, disclosure of a customer’s data to a third party.
• Complaints against other organisations, including local authorities and HMRC are reducing but those relating to financial services are increasing.
• In response to the above findings the banks pointed out that whilst all complaints arte regrettable, there are some 140,000,000 personal bank accounts in the UK and so the number of complaints is relatively small in this context.