Brexit - Should we stay or should we go?

We usually try not to meddle in Politics, Religion, or even Sport (which if you are Welsh, is very difficult as they are all the same thing anyway) but June 23rd 2016 is probably the most important polling day for the UK, at least in your authors lifetime, and possibly in the last 120 years.

Our position here at Partfindermarine.com is clear.

We have to  agree with George Osborne ( in itself a first) in the video above. The UK needs to stay as core member of the EU and it needs to maintain it's position in Europe.

The alternative is just too scary for words, and unlike any other election - which could result in a "volte-face" and change of Government if things go wrong, there will be no way back in if we vote to leave, and then decide that was not the right decision after all.

Sadly the results look too close to call. This mornings polls show another increase in the " leave" camp. The decline of Sterling over the last few weeks, and the slow-down in all our businesses over the last two months are a pretty good indication of the direction in which we are headed and what will happen if we do vote to leave.

For an ( allegedly) unbiased opinion, try following this Twitterfeed

RMS St Helena, just when you thought it was all over.

Recently we featured the planned retirement of the last remaining Royal Mail Ship, the RMS St. Helena, due to the planned opening of the new airport in St. Helena which has been in the news this week with a much circulated video of a BA/Comair Boeing enjoying a "challenging put-down".

It now transpires that the venerable vessel will be operating all summer prior to retirement and the runway problems will be overcome, according to Governor Lisa Phillips ( no relation) who robustly defended the airport development.

Interesting to note that not one of the papers denigrating this "flagrant abuse" of taxpayers money mentioned the £285M total cost in relation to our alleged daily payment to the EU of £325M.

Quis Spammiet Ipsos Spammodes?

Our take on the Juvenal quote "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (who will guard the guards?) is very much on our minds this week after another level of "ghost referral spam" hit our site. Having beaten off "blasters' and Wordpress hackers last month it seems this new addition to the hackers armoury is there to upset Google and Google Analytics ( so we know how our site is performing) whilst trying to persuade us that we are breaking an "EU cookie law" which would result in a trojan upload to the system and another whole level of chaos and upset for us as well as our members.

Thanks to Carlos at Moz.com among others for some sensible help on how to eliminate this months system irritation.

LinkedIn Sold for $26B

Breaking news as we went to press on todays Newsletter was the surprise announcement that Redmond Wa. tech giant Microsoft has bought LinkedIn for $26B.

Our image shows the Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (centre) with the LI founder Reid Hoffman (right) and CEO Jeff Weiner (left). This is the most significant tactical purchase of a social media network and sets the stage for another round of huge takeovers and acquisitions.

In a note to Microsoft employees Nadella said "This deal brings together the world's leading professional cloud with the world's leading professional network. I have been learning about LinkedIn for some time while also reflecting on how networks can truly differentiate cloud services. It's clear to me that the LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business and an impressive network of more than 433 million professionals".

We cannot help but wonder which other platforms this deal brings into play. What do you think? Let us know here:

Server 3 - News & Goals ( no, not Euro 2016)

Our last issue announced the commissioning of our new server (server3) and we are delighted with it's performance over the last few weeks. We have made a number of changes to the front and back end of the system to improve search time and response times.

Why not login and check it out for yourselves?

We'd like to sign off this issue by sharing our goals and challenges for the rest of 2016.

We want to get our end-user member total up to 500 by the end of 2016, and we want to see over one million parts listed on the system by that time as well. Do you think we can do it?

You can help us, by updating your stock lists, by adding new listings or even by referring your friends and colleagues to our service. The more parts we add to the system the more users we will get. The more users we get the more our suppliers will benefit. It's a "virtuous circle".

Drop us a line here,  e-mail info@partfindermarine.com or Tweet us here and we'll be right with you.

Your Partfindermarine Team