The FAB blog spot

  This may be controversial , but it’s my contention that the current situation in Ukraine was brought on, in no small part, by the West’s navel gazing and self-flagellation.  The shenanigans of (among many other issues) Partygate; the wokerati’s obsession with political correctness and cancel culture; the Green agenda; Biden’s totally inept actions over the withdrawal from Afghanistan and his likewise total ineptitude as Leader of the Free World: all these factors must have been contributory to emboldening sociopath Putin to believe that there was no threat from the West if he decided to invade.   It wouldn’t surprise me if Russia was actually a major financier of that odious Marxist organisation BLM – the enemy within… The irony of his excuse for invasion speaks volumes to the self-delusional state the man works under: to say that his justification for the invasion was to rid Ukraine of the Nazis that were wreaking genocide on the people of Ukraine is ridiculous to the extreme.  

  If you don’t know how to use the software you’re trying to run your business with, you need to do one of three things: Get trained in the software to a level sufficient for you to be able to use it properly or Pay someone who IS trained to use it on your behalf.  Someone like, oh, I don’t know, maybe a qualified bookkeeper? or Muddle through until it comes to an HMRC/Companies House calendar milestone and then panic… I don’t care what the ads say, bookkeeping is not just a matter of getting access to an accounting package and getting on with it – that path leads to almost certain disaster.  Running the books for a business is not as easy as they make out, especially if you run payroll.  That’s why we (the bookkeepers) are here to help, assuming that you value our services and expertise. Just to explain, you’re not only paying us for the time we spend sorting out your business accounts etc – you also pay for the time we spent getting qualified. What’s more, when your paperw

I don’t know about you guys, but several of my clients are, shall we say, less than IT-savvy and, while they try to overcome their technical shortcomings, quite often they fail.  In these cases, where they need immediate support, you have the choice of downing tools and visiting them on-site, which is not always practical, if possible, or taking over their PC/laptop and observing at first hand what they are actually doing and, if necessary, showing them what to do so the next time they have to do it they have, at least, the knowledge (if not the aptitude) to do it themselves . Having been in IT for many years and having had to support remote users on more than several occasions (including overseas users from the USA to Israel), I have experimented and used many such remote access products including (among others) LogMeIn, TeamViewer and, my current fave, AnyDesk.   Being a cheapskate, as I was using the software less frequently than now, I opted for the non-commercial usage licences

Let's face it - there are lots of nasty people out there in the ether, all hell-bent on extracting your hard-earned money from you.  Most will try legal means to deceive you.  For example, a Nigerian prince or other member of a royal family seeking to transfer large sums of money out of the country, and they'll give you a share just as long as you give them some bank details... legal in so far as it needs you to agree to give them the details.  (By the way, if you ever consider doing this, step away from the keyboard).   Then there is the stealth kind that drops a virus on your device if you're not protected and then they can do several naughty things to you, like recording key depressions when you type the bank access code, or the password to the credit card account. These, among other reasons, are why purchasing and installing a decent antivirus suite is an imperative.  The freebies are ok, to a point, but those usually require unscheduled interaction which places the onu