ING Direct Acquires ShareBuilder

So, I’ve been with Sharebuilder for months now as they’re the cheapest no frills trading site. And was kind of excited when I received an email that they’ve been acquired by ING Direct.

Great! I thought…

They did a good job announcing it to the world in the above press release, but did they stop and think about current customers? NO.

Does this mean I can use ING now? How can I login? WHAT’S THE PLAN? Where’s the transparency?

I feel left in the dark. Sharebuilder wants me to be excited, but for what? I don’t see it yet. And uncertainty pissed customers off because, well, we expect the worst when nobody is telling us everything. In other words, when will the costs go up…

According to The Telegraph, Gordon Brown, the UK’s new Prime Minister, has had enough of paying the Ministry of Defense’s 1,000 PR practitioners an average annual salary of £39 thousand ($80 thousand—yes, I’m in the wrong country) to foster public support—or lack thereof—for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they can’t seem to figure out who these 1,000 practitioners are:

Yet in a striking admission, an internal Ministry of Defence (MoD) document reveals that senior officials have “no clear idea” of who they are, whether they are making an impact, or their actual cost to the country.

The document, The Defence Communications Strategy, also contains what is believed to be the first official admission by the Government that there is little or no support for the war in Iraq among the British public.

It looks as though Brown is trying to clean house but is a bit lost at the moment. However, he is taking the lead and trying to create change in a country where public opinion of its previous PM, Tony Blair, took a severe nose dive on issues like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even further for his alliance with the Bush administration on these and other sensitive international issues. In the meantime, Brown is listening to his people who are demanding change. Now let’s just wait and see if he can pull it off.

Missing: MoD’s army of 1,000 press officers [via Strumpette]