Duncan Bannatyne

Royal Mail hit business hard with strikes The recent strike action over pay and jobs at the Royal Mail is likely to cost the economy over £1 billion and many smaller businesses will bear the brunt. The reason for the dispute centres on a pay and flexible working deal made in 2007, and which has since unraveled. The union wants reassurances over job security while the Royal Mail wants more flexible hours alongside more automated processes.

Airline competition good news for consumers It seems that the competition between major airline operators is intensifying, perhaps as a result of losses sustained in the recession, and standards of comfort and convenience for customers are improving as a result.

A personal call for donations to support Haitian earthquake victims On the 12th January a huge earthquake struck Haiti causing enormous devastation to huge numbers of children and families. The situation is still unfolding and the numbers of people including children who have been killed and injured in the destruction is likely to be in the thousands.

Duncan Bannatyne: Why Non-Doms have an 'unfair' advantage in business Would you give your customers your products if they paid one of your competitors for them? Then why do we allow people to live in the UK, receive public sector services from the government, but pay for them in the form of taxes to another country?

Do you really need to patent your business idea or concept? In the Den, and broadcast last week, The Dragons were asked to invest in a product called Shopbox, which is a secure, temperature-controlled container for groceries that are ordered online, which then became the subject of a heated discussion on the subject of patents – and a very important lesson for anybody with an invention.