Digital Media Publishing

I’ve just posted about the savings crisis in the UK, and how it underlies core problems in the UK economy at present.

And then I just found this on Insurance Daily - One in five motorists drive without insurance.

Again, it’s a study from Moneysupermarket, and again it underlies the financial problems affecting the whole of the UK.

The irony is that car insurance is one of those areas where consumers traditionally fight for the cheapest deal, and that insurers are often happy to try and scrape the barrel for them. The result is cheap car insurance, but with poor service.

So it’s pretty frightening that in a product area where consumers are generally used to getting a heap deal, that consumers would even begin to shun these.

A sign of the times, or an inflated claim?

Probably a bit of both, but either way, it’s a another worrying signal on how badly the current financial crisis is developing.

Finance Markets reports on a savings crisis in Britain, as a report by MoneySupermarket.com suggests people are saving far less than in previous years.

It’s a very real concern, not simply in economic terms or for the banks, but also for savers themselves - simply put, there is little incentive to save at present, and much of the savings market seems to be going overseas to offshore banking services rather than staying within the UK.

The irony remains that the very banks that caused this economic crisis are the ones benefiting the most and directly from government bail outs, while the ordinary consumer is being hit on all sides:

- low interest rates on savings
- rising unemployment
- increasing property repossession
- wage cuts & freezes

No wonder people are put off from saving when there are far bigger personal finance concerns in play.

We are in an economic crisis, the biggest since the Great Depression of the 1930’s - we can expect that we face further problems across the board, and that the drop in savings is a very real economic canary on what could follow.

An interesting report from the BBC details how Mozilla is currently developing graphical standards with Khronos for 3-D browser gaming.

What’s especially interesting is that the development is taking place among companies for setting web standards, rather than private gaming companies such as Blizzard, whom I would have thought would have been jumping at the chance to be involved.

Does that constitute a weakness or a strength? On the one hand, keeping close to browser standards would allow a wider potential platform for developers to work with across the board - but the danger is that developers are already far ahead in the game and that the issue of web-based standards for gaming is one of catch up rather than leadership.

This is probably why there’s little excitement in my favourite gaming forum, as until such advances in browser-based games make for mainstream reality, it’s going to be a subject that keeps the techies talking, while everyone else remains glued to their consoles.