news blog from Liliana

Since the first mainland launch in March last year, 5,700 group-buying sites had sprouted, it said.An editorial on lingtuan.com said: “The group buying market is entering a cold winter … and it’s just beginning.” It cited a high level of poor service complaints as a reason for the closures.Citing an analyst, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported on Friday that a lack of investment, keen competition and poor management were also factors.Group buying site tuan800.com reported that September saw large scale layoffs by well-known Chinese sites Wowo and Tuanbao, which are clones of Chicago-based Groupon.It said Wowo may cut 70 pct of its workforce, while Tuanbao, known to have invested 500 million yuan ($78.35 million) in advertising, would cut its headcount by half.In August, Groupon said it was cutting some underperforming staff at Gaopeng, a Chinese joint venture with Tencent Holdings Ltd. Gaopeng, has a small slice of the Chinese group buying market, trailing more popular players such as Lashou, Meituan, Wuwutuan. ($1 = 6.382 yuan)

The reforms include sacking thousands of health administrators and putting family doctors in charge of spending 60 billion pounds of the NHS budget in a turnaround so large that the service’s chief executive says it can be seen “from outer space.”Doctors and health unions had urged peers to scrap the bill over fears that plans to boost access for private companies will destabilize the cradle-to-grave service.The government has already revised the plans once this summer, submitting more than a 1,000 amendments in a humiliating climb-down after failing to convince the medical profession its proposals were workable.