Business Diary: June 29

BEER flow monitoring company Brulines is growing its petrol arm with the help of a former Morrisons and Asda man.

Phil Maud, managing director of its petrol forecourt operations,

spent eight years at Morrisons as director of petrol forecourts,

and was national operations manager for forecourts at Asda before that.

Mr Maud said the petrol division has found a good home at Brulines, alongside its traditional beer flow monitoring services, which analyses how much beer pub landlords are serving.

"We see a lot of similarities between the two liquids," he said, "but one is a lot more pleasurable to drink."

Spoken like a true Yorkshireman.

Udder disdain

Rebel shareholders in Cattles are making their feelings known to management in no uncertain terms.

In a rare glimpse of humour in what has been a sad tale of accounting scandals, penniless shareholders and an embattled board, the rebel investors have adopted this symbol of a dead cow to show what they feel about the handling of the Cattles debacle. It sums the story up.

Barry Dearing, leader of the rebels, has set up this cattlesshares.co.uk web address to pool together other disgruntled investors and a number of them are expected to descend on the company's AGM tomorrow to call for the resignation of key directors.

It is yet to be seen whether they will be sporting dead cow banners, but the board are in for a rough ride.

Chips dodge the chop

Here's a heart-warming story – for chip lovers at least.

A potato entrepreneur has come to the rescue of a Potato Council website facing the chop. William Chase, the founder of Tyrrells Crisps, has offered the cash needed to keep www.lovechips.co.uk open.

Cabinet office minister Francis Maude has decided that three quarters of the government's 820 websites are surplus to requirements and could save the nation 100m per year. "Potato growers are always the last in line when it comes to handing out help," Mr Chase said. "Everyone is against them including the current dry weather."

Taxman's pound of flesh

He may have been a dab hand at writing sonnets, but Shakespeare seems to have found tax matters rather taxing.

All business people live in fear of a stern note from the taxman. Well, York-based chartered accountants UHY Calvert Smith have carried out research which shows that the Bard's own accountancy skills left something to be desired.

UHY Calvert Smith, who are one of the supporters of Sprite Productions' production of As You Like It at Ripley Castle, found that, in 1598, Shakespeare was a tax defaulter to the tune of 13s 4d.

According to the experts at UHY Calvert Smith, that is the equivalent of 110 in today's money with inflation. Although not a princely sum, it seems Shakespeare didn't hurry to get his finances in order. The tax default was still outstanding in 1600. It seems the debt was passed on to the Bishop of Winchester who owned the notorious Clink in Southwark, where tax defaulters and heretics were dispatched.

Although Shakespeare remained at liberty to keep on writing, the York accountants believe it stands as a cautionary tale for all those who believe that only little people pay taxes.

Recession 2 England 0

You know who to blame if the UK suffers a double-dip recession – England's woeful footballers.

According to Howard Archer, the chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, Germany's thumping of England is bad news for UK consumer confidence.

Mr Archer said: "I feel a downgrade of my Q3 UK GDP forecast coming on!"

He added: "It is particularly bad news for those of us who work for companies with a German office. All my emails from our Frankfurt office are going straight to my junk mail with immediate effect and I am sure this will be a common feature across UK companies with German operations. No doubt England shirts, flags and general England World Cup merchandise are now being consigned to the reduced price baskets.

"But there could be a significant boost from the match for any potential suppliers of goal line technology/cameras among UK companies. Although knowing our luck, German companies have probably cornered the market for that as well."