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21 Feb 2005 : Column 84W—continued
British Passports
Mr. George Osborne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many British passports have been reported lost or stolen (a) in the UK and (b) abroad in each year since 1997. [204447]
Mr. Browne: The UK Passport Service did not routinely collect information on the number of lost and stolen passports prior to 1999. Up until the introduction in December 2003 of a new comprehensive system for the reporting and recording of lost and stolen passports, only the total number of these passports was recorded.
The information shown in the table for 1999 to 2003 cannot therefore be broken down between the UK and abroad. Also it is mainly based on information
21 Feb 2005 : Column 85W
contained in applications for replacement passports. It may not therefore show the true number of passports lost and stolen in these years.
In 2004 of the total number of 306,406 lost and stolen passports reported under the UK Passport Service's improved reporting and recording arrangements, 49,802 were reported lost/stolen abroad, and 256,604 were reported lost/stolen in the UK.
Number of lost and stolen passports
As a percentage of total passports issued
1997 Not available —
1999 62,364 1.11
2000 114,624 2.08
Sir Gerald Kaufman: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will reply to the letter dated 30 December 2004 from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton, with regard to Mr. Dwight Swanson. [215101]
Mr. Charles Clarke: I wrote to my right hon. Friend on 10 February.
Departmental Costs
Mr. George Osborne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the costs of cleaning the Department were in each year since 1997. [213777]
Fiona Mactaggart: The cost of cleaning the Department is not centrally recorded. Cleaning usually forms part of a wider facilities management contract and separating out the cleaning element of these contracts for the Home Office estate could be done only at disproportionate cost. However, the cost of cleaning the Central London estate in 2003–04 was £1,097,606.
Mr. George Osborne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much has been spent on (a) provision of parking spaces for civil servants and (b) parking tickets and penalties incurred by civil servants in the Department in each year since 1997. [213804]
Fiona Mactaggart: Information on the cost of parking spaces at Home Office buildings is not recorded centrally and could be estimated only at disproportionate cost. The Home Office does not reimburse staff for any parking tickets or penalties they may incur while on official business. Staff are personally responsible for meeting the costs of any such fines.
Deportation Orders
Jeremy Corbyn: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many deportation orders against British prison inmates who were also Irish nationals there have been since 2000. [214695]
Mr. Browne: The numbers of deportation orders enforced against British prison inmates who are also Irish nationals are as follows:
These figures are provisional, based on management information and are not National Statistics.
European Public Bodies
Mr. Hayes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the(a) budget, (b) role and (c) staffing levels of the European Agency for the Management of Operational Co-operation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union; when this body was agreed in Council; whether this body was notified to Parliament; under what legal treaty base it will operate; where it will be based; and whether its staff will enjoy diplomatic immunity. [215207]
Mr. Browne: The provisional budget for the European Agency for the Management of Operational Co-operation at the External Borders of the member states of the European Union was set out in the legislative financial statement annexed to the first version of the Agency Regulation (14766/03). The initial estimate for the years 2005–09 is as follows: 2005—€6,157 million; 2006—€9.754 million; 2007—€15,754 million; 2008—€15.754 million; and 2009—€8.754 million. But the final figures are still being discussed as part of the negotiations on the new financial perspective which begins in 2007. As the UK has been excluded from participation in adoption of the Agency Regulation, we will not be making a financial contribution to the Agency through the EU budget—we receive an automatic rebate on measures in which we do not participate. UK contributions will only be made when we request to participate in specific activities undertaken by the Agency.
The role of the Agency will be to provide effective co-ordination of member states joint actions at the EU external borders. Article 2 of the final version of the Agency Regulation (2007/2004) outlines the Agency's main tasks:
1. The Agency shall perform the following tasks:
(a) co-ordinate operational co-operation between member states in the field of management of external borders;
(b) assist member states on training of national border guards, including the establishment of common training standards;
(c) carry out risk analyses;
(d) follow up on the development of research relevant for the control and surveillance of external borders;
(e) assist member states in circumstances requiring increased technical and operational assistance at external borders;
(f) provide member states with the necessary support in organising joint return operations."
The UK fully supports the aims and objectives of the Agency.
The staffing levels of the Agency will be set once the Executive Director, Deputy Executive Director and the Management Board are in place—it will be their responsibility to decide what the staffing levels should be (within the limits of the provisional budget).
The Agency Regulation was adopted by the Council on 26 October 2004, was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 25 November 2004 and came into force on 26 November 2004. The Agency itself should be operational by May 2005.
Parliament was kept fully informed of negotiations on the Border Agency Regulation through the usual European Parliamentary Scrutiny mechanisms. It cleared scrutiny in the European Scrutiny Committee [Commons] on 25 February 2004 and in the European Union Committee [Lords]on 2 March 2004.
The Agency will operate under a joint legal treaty base—Articles 62(2)(a) and 66 of the Treaty establishing the European Community.
No decision has yet been taken on where the Agency will be based. Five member states (Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia and Malta) submitted bids to host the Agency. The UK supports the Polish bid. The Agency will still become operational by May 2005, even if no decision has been taken on its permanent location by then.
Permanent staff of the Agency will have the same status as the staff of the other EU institutions (e.g. including the Commission). This is in accordance with the existing Staff Regulations and conditions of employment of officials of the European Communities, as set out in Article 17 of the Border Agency Regulation.
Mr. Steinberg: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many fixed penalty notices were issued during the last week of October and the first week of November 2004 for (a) letting off or throwing fireworks in any highway, street, throughfare or public place, (b) possession of fireworks in a public place by those under the age of 18 years and (c) breaching the curfew time for the use of fireworks. [214368]
Ms Blears: The available information, relating to the four offences connected with fireworks for which penalty notices for disorder can be given, is contained in the table:
Penalty notices for disorder issued for firework offences in England and Wales between 25 October and 7 November 2004—provisional figures
Fireworks offence for which PND issued
Issued between 25–31 October inclusive
Issued between 1–7 November inclusive
Throwing fireworks in a thoroughfare 18 36
Breach of fireworks curfew 3 4
Possession of a Category 4 firework 2 3
Possession by under 18 of adult firework — —
Total PNDs issued for firework offences 23 47

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Remembering George Moscone
By Josh Getlin
Thirty years ago this week, on the morning that San Francisco Mayor George R. Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot to death, I sat at my desk in City Hall and locked eyes with the killer.
My boss, the mayor, was about to make a new appointment to the Board of Supervisors, a move that would finally give him the majority he needed to push through a flurry of city reforms. But at 10:30 a.m., the man he was going to replace on the board, former Supervisor Dan White, suddenly appeared in the hall near my desk. He stared nervously at me, nodded tersely and walked toward the mayor's office, two doors down. His visit -- and his demand to meet alone with Moscone -- were unexpected. As I worked on a news release announcing White's successor, I thought I heard fireworks or a car backfiring outside. But I didn't think twice about it.
Minutes later, all hell broke loose.
White -- who had quit his job 17 days earlier and was turned down by Moscone when he tried to get it back -- shot the mayor four times, twice in the head as he lay on the floor of his private back office. Standing astride the body, he reloaded his .38-caliber revolver and then raced down a long hallway toward the supervisors' chambers. There he demanded to meet with Milk, the city's first openly gay elected official. Neither had much use for the other: White had voted against the city's first gay-rights ordinance, and Milk had lobbied Moscone not to reappoint him. Nobody in the supervisors' offices knew anything yet about Moscone's death, so Milk readily agreed to meet with his colleague. When the two were alone, White shot Milk five times and then fled the building. He later surrendered to police.
In the shock and horror at the mayor's office, some aides collapsed in grief. Others were frozen in silence. The phone in the press office began ringing incessantly, but I couldn't bring myself to answer it. I could barely speak. For those of us who loved George Moscone, his senseless death was impossible to believe. A sunny, compassionate man who had just turned 49, he left behind a wife and four kids. The city was already reeling from the deaths of more than 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana, a week before. (Jim Jones' cult had been based in San Francisco, and many of the dead were from the Bay Area.) Now the city had lost its first modern, progressive mayor.
No one who lived through that morning at City Hall would be surprised that people remain fascinated by the story years later. But how these murders have been remembered is surprising, and saddening, to those of us who saw the story unfold behind the scenes. The mayor who was at the center of events on Nov. 27, 1978 -- and whose leadership helped make San Francisco the model of diversity and inclusion it is today -- has been largely forgotten.
This week, the city is once again hosting ceremonies marking the killings, and Milk's story will, for many, be a primary focus. Although he was known chiefly in California circles at the time of his death, he has become a national martyr for gay liberation. His courageous story has inspired books, an opera and an Oscar-winning documentary. "Milk," a new feature film starring Sean Penn that opens this week, dramatizes it once more.
White has also earned his place in the history books. The disgruntled politician who killed two defenseless public officials has been the subject of a nonfiction book, a stage drama and a TV movie. His 1979 trial for murder became a fiasco when a jury found him guilty only of voluntary manslaughter. Although White admitted to the killings -- and had slipped into City Hall through a window so he could elude metal detectors -- he spent only a little more than five years in custody. His legal team sold the jury on a diminished-capacity defense, the now-famous "Twinkie" defense, arguing that stress, sleepless nights, dark mood swings and junk food caused him to snap. He killed himself two years after his release.
But there is precious little recollection of George Moscone.
His family has chosen to mourn its loss in private, and he's had few historical cheerleaders. The definitive book about his richly evocative life and times has yet to be written. Today, Moscone is remembered largely for a downtown convention center that he helped construct and that bears his name. If you ask many San Franciscans what he accomplished as mayor, you'll get puzzled looks.
Three decades ago, however, his impact was unmistakable.
In the years leading up to Moscone's 1975 election, San Francisco was run by a tight-knit coalition of labor unions, downtown business leaders and old-line Democratic Party officials. All that changed when Moscone, a native son and former state senator, won a hard-fought mayoral election on a platform of inclusion.
Overnight, he opened up City Hall to people who had been excluded from power, including gays, blacks, women, Latinos, Asians, grass-roots activists and liberal Democrats. He appointed scores of them, including Milk, to powerful boards and commissions.
The mayor campaigned against racial and gender bias in Police Department hiring, he pushed for curbs on runaway downtown development, he kept the San Francisco Giants from leaving town and he promoted greater public access to the city's waterfront. Earlier, as majority leader of the state Senate, he helped create California's school lunch program; he also passed a bill reducing penalties for simple possession of marijuana and a landmark law legalizing sexual behavior among consenting adults.
To his supporters, Moscone was a man who welcomed and embraced change. But many San Franciscans were alarmed. They deplored the emergence of new groups, especially gays, and felt their power slipping away. Despite its freewheeling image, San Francisco was bitterly divided, and the mayor's daunting task was to push through changes while respecting sensitivities on the other side. It was then -- and remains today -- a tough job for any politician. Harvey Milk gets a lot of attention because he was fighting for a cause out on the edges -- provocative, visible and angry. Moscone gets less credit because he worked quietly within the system, trying to bring divergent groups together.
Some, like White, could not handle change. He had been elected from a largely white, working-class district, and his campaign urged voters to "Unite and Fight" against the city's new political landscape. In a fiery election pamphlet, he declared: "I am not going to be forced out of San Francisco by splinter groups of radicals, social deviates and incorrigibles."
A former cop, White was dogmatic and insecure, ill-suited for the give-and-take of politics. When he abruptly quit his job, saying he couldn't make ends meet on the $9,600 salary, Moscone saw a golden opportunity: With a new appointee who was loyal to him, he'd finally have a 6-5 majority on the 11-member board that had rejected many of his proposals by one vote. When White asked for his job back, the mayor said no. And that's what brought the killer to City Hall. On the day Harvey Milk became a martyr, George Moscone was the main target.
Thirty years later, Moscone remains an enigma to all but a handful of us who knew him. But this year, and every year, we mourn the loss of our friend who did so much to shape the modern face of San Francisco. And we continue to hope that history will one day give him his proper due.
Josh Getlin, a former Times staff writer, was a deputy press secretary and speechwriter for the late Mayor George R. Moscone.
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Letters to the Editor: Why exactly do we let Iowa caucus-goers vote first?
Starting the primaries in Iowa makes no sense when having larger states vote first would tell us much more about the electorate.
Letters to the Editor: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are better than their recent tiff
The media played up the recent post-debate contretemps between Warren and Sanders. They'll get over this, and the rest of us should too.
Letters to the Editor: Vladimir Putin is acting like Republican lawmakers in America
In shoring up power under the guise of passing government reforms, Vladimir Putin is taking a page from GOP legislators after Democrats were elected.
Q&A: Pete Buttigieg on the monumental task of cleaning up Trump's mess
In a meeting with the L.A. Times editorial board, Mayor Pete Buttigieg talks about Iran, climate change and if America is ready for a gay president.
Editorial: Ghosts of Rampart are hovering over LAPD's latest gang scandal
LAPD data falsification allegations echo Rampart scandal and raise concerns about policing culture.
Letters to the Editor: The Olympics are for sports, not political protests
Freedom of expression is important, but it does not give athletes the right to throw political issues in people's faces during the Olympics.
Letters to the Editor: Christians don't love Trump, they just fear the Democrats
President Trump is standing up for Christians who have been afraid to express their faith in public.
Op-Ed: Trump can't comprehend 'presidential,' and the republic is paying the price
The president's low character is dragging down Republicans, Democrats and our constitutional system.
Editorial: Should California force cities to house homeless people?
Gov. Gavin Newsom's homelessness task force wants to mandate that cities house or shelter homeless people. It might work.


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Princess cancels 2nd Regal Princess sailing
Princess Cruises cancelled a second cruise on the Regal Princess following further assessment of the damage to the vessel after it touched bottom on Feb. 18 in Huatulco, Mexico.
"We deeply regret that it is now necessary to cancel the March 1 South America voyage departing from San Juan," Princess said. "The time required to make the necessary repairs is, unfortunately, longer than we had originally hoped."
Princess will give passengers on that voyage a full refund, including air fare, and will provide passengers with a future cruise credit equal to 25% of the cruise fare paid for the sailing.
The ship will go into dry dock Feb. 23 where repairs will be undertaken and Princess said that the next scheduled sailing, a 12-day South America itinerary between Lima, Peru, and San Juan, will operate as planned on March 13.
To contact the reporter who wrote this article, send e-mail to Johanna Jainchill at [email protected].
https://www.travelweekly.com/Cruise-Travel/Princess-cancels-2nd-Regal-Princess-sailing


Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria… where are you?
A study recently published in the journal Nature Geoscience study reveals a number of findings that are revolutionizing what was known about the behavior of tectonic plates.
The research, conducted by scientists at the University Of Chicago (USA) was to examine in detail the collision of Eurasian with Indian tectonic plates, which started some 60 million years ago and is still in slow motion, and is even responsible for many phenomena, and the appearance of the Himalayas.
Experts utilized numerous data sources in order to figure out the original site of the two continental places before they started 'crashing' into each other.
"What we found is that half of the mass that was there 60 million years ago is missing from the earth's surface today, "said Miquela Ingalls, a graduate student in geophysical sciences who led the project as part of her doctoral work.
It was a totally unexpected findings researchers concluded.
After considering nearly all other possibilities the land mass might be accounted for, experts concluded that such a humongous mass discrepancy could only be scientifically explained if the 'missing chunk' had gone back into the Earth's Mantle, something experts considered as IMPOSSIBLE on such scale.
This new theory could clarify some phenomena that baffled scientists in the distant past, as the presence of lead and uranium in volcanic lava.
These elements are present in the earth's crust but are very rare in the mantle; the possibility that the earth surface is absorbed by the interior of the planet explains why these may be present in the magma.
"We really have significant amounts of crust that have disappeared from the crustal reservoir, and the only place that it can go is into the mantle," said David Rowley, a professor in geophysical sciences who is one of Ingalls' advisors and a collaborator on the project.


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Ministry's figures need analysis (updated)
so says Eric Crampton in this morning's Press here in Christchurch. And he is right. The figures in question are the Ministry of Health's estimates on the health costs of smoking - $1.9 billion. Eric writes,
You could be forgiven for thinking that the health system could save $1.9 billion if tobacco had never existed. That's what the Ministry of Health says smoking costs the public health system.
But, you'd be wrong.
Not that the ministry would correct your error. Eric goes on to make the real point about the ministry's numbers,
The ministry's latest estimate of the cost of smoking has nothing to do with the costs that smokers impose on taxpayers or the costs that could be avoided if smoking were to disappear.
Rather, it's a politically convenient number whose promotion has much to do with gaining voter support for anti-tobacco initiatives and nothing to do with real economic costs.
Interestingly the ministry's number
[...] was much higher than the previous estimate of $350 million dollars - a figure produced not by the Big Tobacco lobby but rather by Des O'Dea in a report commissioned by anti-tobacco crusaders Action on Smoking and Health.
So, you may ask, how did the ministry get their figure?
After sorting the population by age, gender, income, ethnicity and smoking status, they then compared the costs of providing health services to smokers as compared to nonsmokers for each group.
The excess costs of the smoking group were tallied up to produce the $1.9b figure.
But there are problems with such an approach. Eric deal with two of the big ones.
It's easiest to think of smoking as bringing forward a whole lot of end-of-life costs.
Smokers die earlier than nonsmokers.
We know that.
And the costs to the health budget of somebody who is dying are rather higher than the costs of somebody who is healthy.
But everybody dies sometime and most of us will incur end-of-life costs that will be paid for by the public health system.
Suppose that a smoker will die at age 65 and a nonsmoker will die at 75. Comparing 65-year-old smokers to 65-year-old nonsmokers and calling the difference the cost of smoking then rather biases upwards the measured costs of smoking.
We ought to be comparing the health costs of a smoker dying at age 65 with the health costs of a nonsmoker dying at age 75.
And, perversely, the deadlier cigarettes are, the greater will be this bias. The younger smokers are when they die of smoking-related illnesses, the greater will be the measured cost difference between smokers and non- smokers because a smaller proportion of comparable nonsmokers would be incurring end-of-life costs.
The figures assume that in the absence of smoking, smokers would never have imposed end-of-life costs on the health system. But for their smoking, all smokers in this scenario would have died of a sudden, and cheap, heart attack and would only have had average health costs up to that point. That's clearly nonsense, but the $1.9b figure only makes sense if it's true.
Further, we might well expect that there are differences between smokers and nonsmokers beyond those accounted for by income, gender, ethnicity and age.
Imagine a 45-year-old white female of average income who happens also to be an active jogger, moderate drinker and health food enthusiast. Is she more or less likely to be a smoker than a 45-year-old white female of average income who happens also to avoid the gym, drink too much and never touch a vegetable?
On average, we'd expect that folks who are more health conscious on other margins are also less likely to smoke.
But the ministry's method, which doesn't correct for those other health-related behaviours, necessarily lumps all of the differences between smokers and non- smokers into the cost of smoking rather than into the cost of having a generally unhealthy lifestyle that includes smoking.
It's only if smokers and nonsmokers are otherwise identical, on average, in their health-related behaviours - after correcting for income, gender and ethnicity - that the ministry's figure holds up. But that's also pretty clearly nonsense.
So the ministry may not be telling us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the turth. Anyone surprised? As Eric notes we should
[...] be as sceptical of numbers coming from the Ministry of Health as you would be of numbers produced by the tobacco industry. Neither is a disinterested party.
Well said Crampo.
Update: Eric writes more on the matter here.
Second report of the 2025 Taskforce
The NBR reports that
Current government policies show no sign of delivering the growth rates New Zealand needs to close the large income gap with Australia, according to the second report of the 2025 Taskforce.
Like someone needed to be told this? The NBR article continues,
The broad recommendations - in what is a very in depth and detailed document – are:
• Cutting both government spending and tax rates
• Government withdrawal from most commercial activity to allow the private sector to drive value for money and innovation in those areas – including health and education services
• Proper cost-benefit analyses of government infrastructure projects
• More focused research and development in the public and private sector, including better governance of research and development in tertiary institutions and full contestability for government research and development funding
• Better quality regulation - more "fundamental review" of the Resource Management Act, restoration of the youth minimum wage, and a less restrictive hazardous substances and new organisms regime.
• More openness to foreign investment
• Better processes for scrutiny of regulations along the lines of the Regulatory Responsibility Bill.
The NBR reports Don Brash as saying,
"We were criticised last year for saying that smaller government was essential to closing the gap, but we stand by that statement. International evidence provides no reason to believe we can close the gap without significantly reducing the share of government spending in the economy, allowing tax rates to be lowered further. The state should withdraw from commercial activity to allow the private sector wider scope to generate the high levels of growth that are needed"
That isn't saying much, I think most economists would basically agree that the government is involved in areas where it shouldn't be and reducing the government's business footprint and size in general would help simulate growth. The other points noted above also don't look all that radical. But the government will nevertheless ignore the report.
The 2025 Taskforce report is available here.
Posted by Paul Walker at 6:13 pm 1 comment:
America's economic policy mix is a threat to the world
Or so says Philippe Legrain over at VoxEU.org. Legrain argues,
While the debate over global imbalances often focuses on China, this column argues that the biggest threat to the world economy comes from the other side of the seesaw – the US.
He continues,
Yet because it has a current-account surplus, China is widely perceived to be a drag on the global economy. This is misleadingly simplistic.
Its imports grew by 24% in the 12 months to September, creating jobs and growth elsewhere.
Its trade surplus is shrinking.
And, lest critics forget, even Chinese exports have their benefits. Assembled from parts made in other countries, they provide cheap inputs for businesses everywhere. They spur companies outside China to innovate and become more competitive. And they increase consumers' welfare – why else would people buy them?
Legrain wants the US to look at its own polices before complaining about other countries.
For the most part, the alternative to cheap Chinese imports is not goods "made in the USA" but goods made in other emerging economies. Reshaping the US economy to cater more to the needs of emerging economies would do far more to boost US exports. Above all, trying to force the renminbi up with protectionist threats – as the US Congress demands and many respectable and ostensibly liberal commentators now seem to advocate – is to invite a trade war that would beggar us all.
Instead of threatening others, the US should put its own house in order. The Federal Reserve helped cause the mess we are in and is now sowing the seeds for the next crisis. Having wrecked the US economy by encouraging a huge debt-fuelled bubble to inflate, the Fed now finds itself unable to ensure recovery. Even with near-zero interest rates, indebted consumers don't want to borrow and fragile banks don't want to lend. Businesses that could generate growth are either starved of credit or too uncertain about the future to invest. As the Fed pumps out ever more money, banks invest it in higher-yielding Treasuries, pocketing easy profits and paying out ill-deserved bonuses, while much of it leaks out overseas. The net result? Hardly any additional US growth.
Since the monetary transmission mechanism is broken, injecting ever more money into the system does not get the wheels of the economy spinning faster. It floods the engine. A better way to stimulate the US economy would be fiscal measures that promote its restructuring and enhance its productive potential – for instance, investment in its dilapidated infrastructure, cuts in payroll tax and retraining subsidies to get people into work and, in the absence of a carbon tax, measures to promote venture capital in the clean-tech industries of the future.
Current US policy is not just ineffectual, it is also dangerous. Banks that ought to fold are kept on life support. Homeowners who ought to default and move to where the jobs are cling on to their depreciated houses in depressed areas. Bubble-prone investors believe in a Bernanke put. Money gushes out of the US and into emerging economies that don't need it and can't cope with it. This is economic vandalism.
The strategic rationale for printing money – sorry, "quantitative easing" – may be to force Beijing's hand on the renminbi. Yet protected by capital controls, adept at sterilising monetary inflows and loath to give in to US pressure, China is unlikely to move much. Carrots – such as a bigger role at the IMF and the opportunity to convert some of its dollar reserves into special drawing rights (SDRs) – might work better than sticks. The victims are instead the Eurozone, Japan, Australia and other advanced economies whose currencies are soaring, as well as emerging economies such as Brazil and Thailand that cannot do much to stem the tide of US cash.
More from EconStories.tv
Hayek and Keynes Battle at The Economist's Buttonwood Gathering:
On October 25th, an audience of financial managers and CEOs, politicians, central bankers and Nobel Prize-winning economists at The Economist's Buttonwood Gathering were treated to an unusual experience: a live rap battle between John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek.
Following a presentation by Nassim Taleb, the lights went down in the auditorium and Fear the Boom and Bust blasted onto the screen. This video picks up at the end of that special presentation, where Keynes and Hayek stepped onto the stage to give a preview of the next EconStories music video.
In the final new video, which will be completed in the months ahead, expect many more lyrics and an all new beat.
Lastly, Russ Roberts and John Papola took the stage with John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of The Economist for a brief Q&A about the origins of FTBB and the resurgence of Hayek in the global debate over the economy.
Free trade and globalisation: more than "just stuff"
So writes Donald J. Boudreaux in this article Free Trade and Globalization: More than "Just Stuff" . Boudreaux concludes by saying,
The fear that globalization makes the world less interesting culturally is baseless. The effect of free trade is twofold: first, it gives us more prosperity and, second, this prosperity creates diversity and dynamism. Both of these effects are good reasons for opposing the antediluvians who would obstruct international trade.
Something to keep in mind is that when you are wealthy, the wealth due in part to trade and globalisation, you can afford to develop art and culture. But it goes further than this:
Learning and rich culture require wealth—what the above mentioned critics would call "more stuff"—for their growth and sustenance. They also require exposure and openness to different cultures. Such wealth and exposure are promoted by trade, which enables an extensive and productive market-directed division of labor.
The wealth, freedom, and diverse experiences of a commercial culture liberate artists and educators both to be more creative and to cater to the demands of the general population. In a poor society in which only a small elite has wealth and leisure, artists and educators cater only to the elite's desires. Art forms disliked by elites, as well as knowledge not useful to them, do not thrive. But as trade creates greater and more-widespread wealth, the range of tastes and opportunities that are available to support and influence art and education grows. With the elites no longer being the exclusive supporters of art, the artist who previously found no support for his musical compositions or his poetry might now find sufficient support from the middle classes. Likewise for the teacher who, earlier, found no market for his knowledge.
This trade-fueled process results not only in a more literate society, but also in immense cultural enrichment. Culture takes on many more dimensions: not only orchestral music, but also rock'n'roll, rhythm'n'blues, and rap; not only portraiture and landscapes, but also Andy Warhol soup cans and abstract paintings; novels not only by Virginia Wolff, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner, but also by Nora Roberts, J.K. Rowling, and Clive Cussler. Movies cater to high tastes, dull tastes, and vulgar tastes. Likewise for music, theater, television, dance, photography, and—more recently—websites and blogs.
Yes globalisation helps even blogs. Imagine if you could only read the blogs from any one country or region, how much would we miss out on? Here in New Zealand we would miss Don Boudreaux for a start. So there is more to globalisation than just "stuff".
Institutions and economic performance: what can be explained?
And the answer seems to be, not much. At least this is the outcome of a new working paper by Simon John Commander London Business School; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) and Zlatko Nikoloski, University College London. The abstract for their paper, Institutions and Economic Performance: What Can Be Explained?, reads:
Institutions are now widely believed to be important in explaining performance. In this paper, we analyze whether commonly used measures of institutions have any significant, measurable impact on performance, whether of countries or firms. We look at three 'levels' of institutions and associated conjectures. The first concerns whether the political system affects performance. The second concerns whether the business and investment environment affects the performance of countries and the third concerns whether perceived business constraints directly affect the performance of firms. In all instances, we find little evidence of a robust link between widely used measures of institutions and our indicators of performance. We consider why this might be the case and argue that mis-measurement, mis-specification, complexity and non-linearity are all relevant factors.
In the conclusion to the paper Commander and Nikoloski write:
Our paper has taken a close look at this proposition by focusing on three, related questions. The first concerned whether the type of political system, and its associated institutions, tends to affect performance. The simple conjecture, drawn from a significant literature, was that democracy in particular has features that should be encouraging for performance, even if that underlying relationship was not linear. This was addressed using several sets of country level measures of political institutions and through use of leading edge GMM estimation. The second concerned the impact of institutions connected to the investment and business environment on the performance of countries, irrespective of their political configuration. In particular, this part of the analysis focused on a widely cited measure of the business environment that covers 175 countries; the World Bank's Doing Business. The third question was to ask whether the evidence could robustly support the broad proposition that the performance of firms' could be materially influenced by the business environment. This required, above all, econometric implementation able to address the pervasive problems of endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity.
The results reported in the paper are ambiguous, if not hostile, to the default proposition of institutions affecting performance. In the case of political institutions, none of the explanatory variables was significant. For country level analysis we were limited by an absence of an adequate number of observations on time. But the analysis that we were able to implement indicates that no robust conclusions can be drawn. In the case of firm level analysis, using a large two-period dataset on twenty six transition countries – countries whose initial conditions comprised largely similar institutional formats – we were unable to find any strong relationship between revenues and the institutional constraints. Country effects that captured other sources of cross-country heterogeneity were found to matter for performance.
Finally, the paper addressed why these exercises have yielded a relatively meagre harvest, at least when held up against the prevailing orthodoxy. Put simply, it would appear that issues of measurement – including bias arising from subjective evaluation – misspecification, complexity and non-linearity are all relevant.
There is, I would say, a broad consensus that institutions do matter for economic performance, and its hard to see why they wouldn't. May be we just don't have good measures of those parts of the institutional frame work that do matter for performance.
John Quiggin of Crooked Timber and the author of Zombie Economics talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about ideas in economics that should stay dead and buried. Quiggin argues that many economic theories such as the Great Moderation, the efficient markets hypothesis and others have been discredited by recent events and should be relegated to the graveyard. Roberts challenges some of Quiggin's claims and wonders whether proposed alternatives might do even worse than the policies Quiggin is criticizing. Much of the conversation focuses on the role of government in the financial sector and how that might be improved going forward.
Jeff Miron and John Taylor on the stimulus package in the US
In the current issue of The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy an article by Jeffrey Miron makes The Case Against the Fiscal Stimulus. He concludes by saying:
A few weeks after President Obama's victory in the 2008 election, adviser Rahm Emanuel quipped that "[y]ou never want a serious crisis to go to waste . . . [because it] provides the
opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." Emanuel was correct: The situation in which the new Administration found itself constituted an unusual political dynamic that, properly used, would have allowed the Obama Administration both to stimulate the economy and make it more productive over the long haul.
The Administration should have endorsed a stimulus package based on a repeal of the corporate income tax and reductions in employment taxes. This policy would have accomplished its stated goals, and the budgetary implications would have been less negative than those of the package ultimately adopted because this alternative plan would have enhanced rather than detracted from economic efficiency. This approach would also have been difficult for Republicans to oppose.
Yet the Administration did not take this approach, presumably because its true goals were not just economic stimulus. Instead, the Administration wanted to reward its constituencies (unions, environmentalists, public education) and increase the size and scope of government. This tactic is consistent with the Administration's policies in general. Across the board, it has taken a big government, redistributionist approach, whether regarding housing, unions, health, the auto industry, trade, antitrust,or financial regulation. The Administration's view appears to be that government is better than individuals at deciding how taxpayers get to spend their money and that government should engineer large transfers from richer to poorer.
Whether the Administration's stimulus package will be successful is still to be determined. If the extra spending ends up being productive, then the impact of the stimulus might be positive on net. My own prediction, however, is that the programs adopted will generate large distortions and substantial waste, with minor stimulus impact. This is a pity because much better alternatives were available.
In other words politics bets economics every time. Payback to those who supported you in your battle to get power is important if you wish to keep power. Obama has one more election to fight and he needs the support of the unions, the environmentalists and the public education sector to win it, hence he has to give them something to keep them on side. The actual effects on the economy may well be of lesser importance.
Note that over at the Economics One blog, John Taylor gives More Evidence on Why the Stimulus Didn't Work. Taylor and John Cogan have been looking at the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
It is necessary to know that that
change in GDP =(government purchases multiplier) times (change in government purchases).
Taylor writes,
But few have focused on the second term in the above multiplier formula: the change in government purchases due to ARRA. John Cogan and I have been tracking data on the changes in government purchases since ARRA was passed, using a new data series provided by the Commerce Department. We just finished a working paper reporting the details of our findings, which provide additional evidence that the stimulus has not worked and, just as important, on why it has not worked.
Despite the gigantic $862 billion stimulus package, the change in government purchases due to ARRA has been immaterial to the economic recovery: government purchases increased by only 2 percent of the $862 billion package ($18 billion). Infrastructure was even less at $2.4 billion. There has been almost no change in government purchases for the multiplier to multiply. It's no wonder people don't think the stimulus worked. And the size of the multiplier is largely irrelevant!
The dog that didn't bark in the night or the stimulus that didn't stimulate.
Incentives matter: Rolling Stones file
High marginal taxes do matter:
The Stones are famously tax-averse. I broach the subject with Keith [Richards] in Camp X-Ray, as he calls his backstage lair. There is incense in the air and Ronnie Wood drifts in and out--it is, in other words, a perfect venue for such a discussion. "The whole business thing is predicated a lot on the tax laws," says Keith, Marlboro in one hand, vodka and juice in the other. "It's why we rehearse in Canada and not in the U.S. A lot of our astute moves have been basically keeping up with tax laws, where to go, where not to put it. Whether to sit on it or not. We left England because we'd be paying 98 cents on the dollar. We left, and they lost out. No taxes at all. I don't want to screw anybody out of anything, least of all the governments that I work with. We put 30% in holding until we sort it out." No wonder Keith chooses to live not in London, or even New York City, but in Weston, Conn.
(HT: Greg Mankiw)
Labels: Incentives matter


text:
José González Announces Fall 2015 Tour Dates
Sofia Grady July 27th, 2015 - 6:25 PM
In support of his newest album release and following a sold out North America tour alongside a series of festival performances, José González, the indie folk singer-songwriter and guitarist from Gothenburg, Sweden, will be embarking on a U.S. tour this fall with his full band. The tour will include performances from the Atlantic to the Pacific, starting in Hollywood, Florida on September 28th, and ending in San Francisco, California on October 18th with an appearance at the Treasure Island Music Festival.
Earlier this year, González released his first solo album in seven years entitled Vestiges & Claws and received nothing but rave reviews.
"His messages are as contemplatively captivating as the musical details that he accentuates" –Paste
"His approach to songwriting has appeal in light of the stridency and self-righteousness of modern discourse" –Pitchfork
"González's songs are slight little creations, with minimal words encapsulating big ideas and breezy pop melodies disguising weighty notions about life's endlessly refracting illusions" –NPR
"His voice is a singular instrument, warm and textured." –Billboard
Recently, González has performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, appeared at various music festivals including Lowlands, Open'er, Sasquatch! and Primavera and released a new video for his single "Open Book". He also recorded a stripped-down session for World Café's "Sense of Place" series in Stockholm that will air on WXPN on July 30th at 2 PM. Listen here: http://www.xpn.org
Pre-sale tickets, album and merchandise bundles will all be available on July 28th at 10 AM on http://jose-gonzalez.com/tour-dates/ and general tickets will go on sale July 31st.
José González Fall 2015 Tour Dates
September 28: Hollywood, FL – ArtsPark Amphitheatre
September 29: St. Petersburg, FL – State Theatre
September 30: Orlando, FL – The Social
October 1: Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse
October 2: New Orleans, LA – Republic New Orleans
October 2-4: Austin, TX – Austin City Limits
October 4: Little Rock, AR – Juanita's Café & Bar
October 5: Louisville, KY – Headliners Music Hall
October 6: Nashville, TN – Mercy Lounge
October 7: Columbia, MO – The Blue Note
October 8: Kansas City, MO – Uptown
October 9: Oklahoma City, OK – ACM @ UCO Performance Lab
October 9-11: Austin, TX – Austin City Limits
October 12: Albuquerque, NM – Sunshine Theatre
October 13: Tucson, AZ – Rialto Theatre
October 14: Mesa, AZ – Mesa Arts Center (Piper)
October 15: Solana Beach, CA – Belly Up Tavern
October 17: North Fork, CA – Bandit Town
October 17&18: San Francisco, CA – Treasure Island Music Festival
Sofia Grady
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mxdwn


CRM, or customer relationship management, is an umbrella term for all of the activities businesses utilize to manage their relationship with current and potential clients, and be more organized in their overall operational activities.
Regardless of the niche or the industry you're in, chances are, you deal with clients in one way or another, right? Whether you sell a product or provide services, your customers are probably the main source of your revenue.
To better keep track of them, and in turn, what you have to do as a business on a weekly basis, there are a lot of different ways you can organize your notes.
But generally speaking, a strong CRM system is the best way to facilitate better communication and maintain a better relationship with your clients.
If you deal with more than a handful of clients in your business, keeping track of them might get difficult at times.
After all, each of your clients has a different set of requirements and needs from you. In other words, CRM improves team communication when it comes to managing your clients. Ideally, everyone on the team should be on the same page in terms of your clients without having to reach out to the person in charge of the deal.
With the right CRM system present, information on each client is available and easy to find.
This is especially useful when someone is off and another employee has to temporarily take charge of the project. With a strong CRM system set up, they'd be able to get an overview of the client in one place and know how to react accordingly.
Once your whole team is on the same page in regards to client management information, everyone will know which task is completed, what still needs to be done, and what client needs what information.
A strong sense of communication within the team is the basis of any successful business. And a strong CRM system facilitates that change.
Speaking of communication, when running a business, you always need to be keeping an eye on your most vital resources - time and money.
As mentioned above, having the right communication tool can save you a lot of time when it comes to team management.
Firstly, everyone becomes much more productive when they don't have to search for specific information about a client or a task, because it's already there on the CRM. Everyone becomes more productive and isn't lacking any essential information.
Without a neatly organized pipeline, it can be hard to keep track of the specific prospects, and what stage they're in. This is particularly useful for your sales team as well.
If you're looking for efficient time-saving techniques to close deals faster, look no further than adapting CRM in your business. Searching through your full inbox or your paper notes is a waste of time and energy compared to simply looking up someone's name in your pipeline.
In business time is money. Make sure you're saving both whenever you can.
There are two ways for any business to scale up: either you acquire more clients or increase your rates.
Either route you take, you will most likely be increasing your workload, of course, while also increasing your revenue and thus, scaling up.
A CRM system can help you with just about everything from sales to social media so that you can do your tasks as efficiently as possible.
If you want to expand your business, you need to take a look at a couple of things - such as your brand image, current employees, expenses and costs, and more. So, consider the health of your business as a whole.
Before scaling up, you need to assess your current business and how well it's performing. And as you're progressing, you're creating new goals. Goals that have new requirements, need more employees, tracking everything, and so on.
If you're goal-oriented and set on fulfilling the new tasks set out for yourself, you're on the right track to scale up.
But when doing so, you need to make sure you don't get overwhelmed and that you're ready for the changes as they come.
With the right knowledge, this process can go a whole lot more efficiently.
But having the right CRM tool in your business environment can make the difference between organizing everything new as you scale up or being overwhelmed by them.
All in all, having the right CRM system empowers you as a business owner to better keep track of your team's performance as a whole, and for each of your employees to know what they're doing.
If you want to make sure your business is growing - you need a CRM system.


text:
FRC Smear Campaign Marches On With Daily Hate Mail
Wayne Besen September 01, 2012
The Family Research Council's disgraceful war on LGBT people and their families marches on, even as the group loudly protests being called a hate group. They have even fooled some gullible journalists, such as the Washington Post's Dana Milbank. Hey, Dana, take a gander at what FRC sent my family in the mail today. Is this hateful enough? Or, maybe they tricked you because they wear suits and have offices in DC. Here is part of the FRC letter:
The most dishonest part of this propaganda is the blatantly false notion that social science backs FRC's agenda. Maybe right wing political science is on Tony Perkins' side — but that's about it. When FRC's Perkins targets a minority group and makes broad, sweeping, and unsubstantiated claims about the deleterious effects of their marriages on society, the group is engaging in raw, unambiguous hate speech. It's really not debatable and takes one with a blind spot the size of Saturn not to see this garbage for what it truly is. I wonder what FRC defenders like Milbank would say if FRC's direct mail piece said the following:
"Allowing Jews to marry is unfair and harmful to children, traditional Christian couples, churches, society as a whole, and a threat to the freedom of speech and religion of anyone who disagrees with the Jewish movement."
The fact it's hate speech is pretty damn clear now, isn't it, Dana?
Dana Milbankdirect mailFRChate group
Born Again 'Ex-Gay' Michael Glatze Marries A Woman 5 views


text:
Westphalian ham (German: Westfälischer Schinken) is a ham produced from acorn-fed pigs raised in the forests of Westphalia, Germany. The resulting meat is dry cured and then smoked over a mixture of beechwood and juniper branches.

The hams are prepared for consumption solely by the process of smoking, which preserves them, and are typically eaten thinly sliced in their preserved state without additional cooking.

Westphalian ham is famed as a delicacy.

History
During his travels in Germany, Thomas Jefferson documented the production of Westphalian ham and aspects of the hogs used to produce it.

In the early 1900s, there were three varieties of Westphalia ham: kugel cut, boneless and rolled, and regulation ham.

In the early 1900s, significant quantities of Westphalian ham were being exported from Germany into the United States.

See also

 List of hams
 List of smoked foods
 Smoked ham

References

Further reading
 Sauerkraut Yankees: Pennsylvania Dutch Foods & Foodways - William Woys Weaver. pp. 44–45.
 Cassell's dictionary of cookery - Cassell, ltd. p. 1108.

Ham
Smoked meat
German cuisine

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
CEDAR-Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion
The CEDAR Forum on Difference
The CEDAR Forum on Difference is a blog focusing on contemporary issues of living with difference in a global society. Contributors include CEDAR network alumni, staff, and associates who have been part of the CEDAR experience and write from within their local contexts on issues of difference and public life. The forum serves to critique popular assumptions on religion and difference through the experience and insight of the CEDAR network. The views expressed in the CEDAR Forum on Difference are those of the individual authors and are intended both to generate discussion and to extend the CEDAR experience.
Difference and Its Demons, by Adam B. Seligman
Of all the many uncomfortable truths this election has forced us all to face, surely one of the most important is our discomfort with difference. This attitude was made clear in the months leading up to the elections, in much of the campaign rhetoric and the slogans repeated at many rallies. It was made clear…
What We See Is Not Necessarily Reality, by Adam B. Seligman
A few weeks ago, Christmas Day actually, which in 2015 was also a Friday and the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad to boot, found me at the Jingjue Mosque in central Nanjing, a city of 8 million inhabitants with a Muslim population of about 100,000. There were about 900 people in attendance filling the mosque…
Why Do Central Asians Join ISIS?, by John Heathershaw and David W. Montgomery
Why do Central Asians join ISIS? What little we know suggests that the non-religious reasons Central Asians join ISIS are more important than the religious factors often cited by analysts. For almost a year, the foremost question in the minds of security analysts of Central Asia has been why some Central Asians have joined "jihad"…
Who Says Syria's Calling? Why It Is Sometimes Better to Admit That We Just Do Not Know, by John Heathershaw and David W. Montgomery
The International Crisis Group's (ICG) latest report on the radicalization of Muslims in Central Asia, Syria Calling: Radicalization in Central Asia (20 Jan 2015), focuses specifically on the recruitment of Central Asians to Islamic State (IS) and the consequences of this phenomenon for the region's security. This short report repeats the ungrounded assumptions of earlier…
Yoga on the Road in Uganda, by Rahel Wasserfall
On Wednesday December 17th 2014, after an exhausting bus ride on bumpy, dusty, and unpaved roads, we finally reached Kyaka II. We were traveling to this refugee settlement in western Uganda as part of the Equator Peace Academy's (EPA) two-week program "Coping with Refugees in a Foreign Land," which was devoted to the refugee question.…
Living with Difference
The CEDAR Occasional Paper Series
The CEDAR Occasional Photo Essay Series
CEDAR—Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion is a nonprofit, educational organization registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible charity.
info@CEDARnetwork.org | Join Our Mailing List | Support Us


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


"A Family Supper," by Kazuo Ishiguro, is a story of uncertainty, nervousness, emotions, and loss of love in the family. The narrator, Ishiguro, is a Protagonist, was born in the Tokyo, Japan. He is returning home from California some two years after the death of his mother. After the WWII, Watanabe's despondency of the loss of the company leads him to take his life and his family members. The Protagonist's mother, who is believed by her husband to have lost hope in her life, commits a suicide as well. The Protagonist's father who lives with the loss of his wife and his friend and business partner, Watanabe, feels hopelessness that leads him to consider suicide as a relief from loneliness and guilt. "A Family Supper," by Kazuo Ishiguro explores the psychology of the desperate father, whose uncertainty about his life will be judged by the bond of love he shares with his son.
This story takes place in Japan after WWII. Kazuo Ishiguro returns his native home from California to visit his father and his sister, who lives in the Kamakura district. The garden creates an atmosphere of anxiety and worries: "Much of the garden had fallen into shadow" (466). The garden provides sensory background about her mother. Her worries, beliefs in ghosts, and disappointment on her son's behavior leads her to commit suicide as narrator agrees that "My relationship with my parents had become somewhat strained around the period" (465). It's a part of Japanese culture that people don't live a disgrace life. It's an honor to die. Suicide for the business partner and even for the air force pilots is glorified by the father. The description of the house contributes conflict and also reveals his father's character. The protagonist, while walking through his old home, remarks "I had forgotten how large the house was [...] but the rooms were all startlingly empty" (469). This parallels with the illustration of his father - the owner of the house - who closes himself off emotionally from the rest of the world, including his children; when the protagonist asks his sister if their father is overly upset concerning the fall of his company, she replies "Don't know. You can never tell with father" (468). The large, empty, cold rooms can be likened to the father, who appears statue of emotions and warmth. The Father foresees his future with no body at his home. He wants some one who take care him. He would feel happy if Ishiguro stays there: "If you wish to stay here, I mean in this house, you would be very welcome" (472). A model of battleship symbolizes glorious death and victory, love, and pride of real happiness. In every battle, an army tries to defeat their enemies. The bond of trust and love help them fulfill their dreams. The dreams and love, which their family depends on has been shattered by Ishiguro's behavior.
The story is written in first person prospective, allowing us to know and understand the thoughts of his father and himself. However, Ishiguro thoughts are never given for himself, but we can portray his character through the conversation and his actions as negligence and irresponsible son, who doesn't care about his family and the need of love, which his parents expect from him. At once, he can't recognize his mother's photograph: "Who is that old women in the white kimono" (470). On one side he says that she looks lot older, but on the other side he says, "It's dark. I can't see it very well" (470). The father is melancholic because his business has recently collapsed. Moreover, there are some family conflicts that are presented only indirectly: the father is prepared to forget his son's unspecified "behavior" (466) in the past and longs for that time when his business did not involve "foreigners" (466); the son (the narrator) recalls his father striking him when he was a boy; the sister contemplates immigration to America with her boyfriend. These conflicts are what the characters do not talk about. The father approves his partner's action for its particular ethic and its general bravery: he calls his partner "a man of principle and honor" (466); later, the father says he wishes that he had been a pilot during the war, because "in an airplane . . . there was always the final weapon" (470). Ishiguro's parents accepted their fault for sending him in the America. The son, who had been living in the America, has forgotten the custom and culture of Japan and doesn't approve of his father's values: "Perhaps I should have been more attentive father" (469). With the mother's death as background and the partner's suicide as foreground, death will be better decision for father to reunite and fulfill the bond of love.
Ishiguro's use of language plays a crucial role in expressing the central idea. The family in Ishiguro's story have become alienated. We see this alienation and lack of love in the imagery and symbolism. The darkness of night and the garden indicate their dark and broken relationship: "The light in the garden had grown very dim" (468). The metaphor show a father terrify and rigorous personality: "stony jaw and furious black eyebrows" (466). The simile conveys the generation gap and shattered relationship which creates many conflicts: "chattering like and old women" (466). The father is traditional and strict; he held himself responsible for his son's life and change in his attitude. The father admires his friend's sacrifice and his wife's respect and dedication by serving a fish. It creates quite nervousness for the narrator, who imagine that father may be trying to poison the family as he asks "Kikuko tells me Watanabe-San took his family with him" (471). His father lowers his eyes and nod. A model of battleship symbolizes his broken family. The father portrays his cracked family by spinning the battleship in his fingers, which is facing lots of storms and its survival may be impossible. Now the father doesn't see any light in the clusters of clouds refers the situation as "'These little gunboats here could have been better glued, don't you think'" (469). The narrator is unfortunate that he doesn't see any holes in his family relationship, which he claims as "It looks fine" (470).
The tone is emotional and formal. We see the father always in the sense of uncertainties, nervousness, and desire to have faithful relationship. The narrator is sloppy and never looks at his father's emotions. The father shows him that the bond of love between father and son is far behind the battleship. He illustrates his love by calling his friend "A man of principle and honor" (466). The father offers Ishiguro the opportunity to stay with him by showing "all startlingly empty" (469) rooms. He is desperate that his traumatized family can never be happy. The author beautifully conveys this message by lots of pauses and soft gently conversation. The isolation, the father will feel, leaves an option for him to commit suicide instead of living a disgraceful life. A life with no ambitions will definitely demolish.
Kazuo Ishiguro through his emotional feeling and imagery illustrates the need of love and bond of relationship we share in our lives. He proves that how important our elders need love and compassion. Relationship is not about isolation from the rest of the world. It's all about winning the hearts and minds of our elders. Never ever let them feel alone, as the mother never leaves her child alone. The pillars of love will definitely create strong and united families.
WriteWork contributors. "A family supper" WriteWork.com. WriteWork.com, 21 July, 2004. Web. 21 Apr. 2019.


When foreign investors partner up with Vietnamese companies, post-merger integration becomes a complex task, focused on cross-cultural understanding and the setting of mutual goods.
Three foreigners, all of whom were allegedly nominated by Thai Beverage, will join the Sabeco management board at the coming meeting.
Every evening, large groups of workers and friends gather for lager and snacks at a beer garden along Quang Trung Street in Hanoi.
Thai tycoons have been seeking business opportunities in Vietnam's beverage, retail and construction materials markets over the past five years in a bid to take advantage of the country's 95 million population and expanding middle class, according to experts.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) on December 18 sold all of its 343.6 million shares or a 53.6% stake of the Saigon Beer, Alcohol and Beverage Corporation (Sabeco), receiving an estimated VND110 trillion (US$4.89 billion).
Thai Beverage has emerged as the only investor that intends to buy more than 25 per cent of Vietnam's leading brewery Saigon Beer.
VOV.VN - A recently released study by the Vietnam Industry Research and Consultant (VIRAC) shows that beer production and consumption in Vietnam for 2014 reached an all-time record high of 3.1 billion litres with revenue of US$4.56 billion.


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Role of a PCC
APCC Bulletins
Association of Police and Crime Commissioners Bulletin Issue 14
WELCOME FROM THE APCC CHAIR
There is no doubt this winter is going to be a tough one for many people with the threat of the coronavirus hanging over us and curtailing how we socialise with family and friends or indeed with our work colleagues, who we may not physically see for many months.
Last week the Prime Minister announced a series of new measures as part of the Government's response to coronavirus; including fines of up to £10,000 in England for those who refuse to self-isolate when they test positive or are contacted by Test and Trace, and new 10pm curfew for pubs and hospitality venues. We have also seen a swathe of local restrictions in regions across England and Wales. We must all play our part in helping to control the rise in infections, particularly as we approach winter.
PCCs will continue to work with Chief Constables, partners, and local communities to make sure the right support and resources are in place and that the public understand the rules and indeed the consequences if they knowingly flout them. They will also play an active role in making sure the extra funding gets to the parts of policing that need it the most.
The important role PCCs have in supporting their communities was consolidated during my weekly call with the Policing Minister, Kit Malthouse, who reiterated his commitment to working closely with PCCs around Covid-19 issues and more widely.
This week, the APCC has published its 2020-2022 Business Plan, which sets out the organisation's priorities and key deliverables over the next two years. More information on this is available in the 'News Update' section below.
Finally, I know that you all share my shock and sadness at the senseless death of Sergeant Matiu Ratana in a Croydon Custody Centre, last Friday. It was another tragic reminder of the risks police officers take on a daily basis to keep communities safe. One glance at the hundreds of tributes from those who knew Matiu only adds to the feeling that he will have left a huge gap in the communities he served. Our thoughts are with his family, friends, and colleagues.
Paddy Tipping (APCC Chair and Police and Crime Commissioner for Nottinghamshire)
APCC Business Plan 2020-2022
The new APCC Business Plan sets out our priorities and key deliverables over the next two years.
Developed in close consultation with our membership and in discussion with partners, it is an ambitious plan reflecting the issues and priorities that we know are of greatest importance to our communities.
Our new delivery structure ensures we are better able to deliver against our key priorities: excellence in policing and safer communities, alongside providing a national voice for PCCs, victims and the public.
Download your copy here: https://bit.ly/2GevH7z
To find out more about the work of the APCC's various portfolios, please visit 'Our Work' webpages where you can find useful resources and contact information for our policy leads.
Survey shows overwhelming support for higher speeding fines and greater investment in road safety
The national APCC Roads Enforcement and Safety survey ended yesterday, receiving an impressive 66,266 responses, with more than half (56%) showing that they saw road traffic offences on a daily basis.
Full analysis of the responses is currently underway however some significant trends are already emerging. For instance, seven out of ten of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that fixed penalty notices for road traffic offences like speeding and failure to wear a seatbelt (currently £100) should be increased in line with other serious offences like driving while using a handheld mobile phone (currently £200). Also 88% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that some of the money raised through fixed penalty notices should be reinvested into enforcement and road safety measures to deny criminals the use of the roads.
The survey, the largest ever conducted by the APCC, will be used to influence a Department for Transport (DfT) consultation on roads policing which closes on Monday (October 5).
The full results can be found on the APCC website at www.apccs.police.uk.
Response to Modern Day Slavery Annual Report 2019-20
In September, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Dame Sara Thornton, published her Annual Report for 2019-2020. Read the full report here.
National APCC Lead on Modern Slavery, Mark Burns-Williamson OBE, noted that whilst there is encouraging engagement in response to this issue, modern slavery remains a very real and ongoing threat to our communities. Moreover, in order to build the necessary resilience to tackle this type of crime, it is right that the report focuses heavily on the need for collaboration between key stakeholders, businesses, organisations and the public.
Mark Burns-Williamson also chairs the National Anti-Trafficking and Modern Slavery Network which includes other PCCs and key stakeholders. The network has been made aware of the ongoing low rates of use of offences and prosecutions under the Modern Slavery Act, and it has been suggested that Local Criminal Justice Boards, chaired by PCCs, could effect more positive outcomes in this area.
Read the full APCC response here.
PCCS MAKING A DIFFERENCE
'Fighting Crime, Preventing Crime' survey launched by PCC Kim McGuinness
Yesterday (1 October) PCC Kim McGuiness launched a public survey, the findings of which will be used to inform the strategic policing priorities, aims and objectives in the next Northumbria Police and Crime Plan.
PCCs speak on behalf of the public to police forces, and as such it is essential that the public's views are reflected in these plans. People from all walks of life and from the different communities have been invited to complete the survey and highlight the issues which really matter to them.
Furthermore, to ensure wider engagement, PCC Kim McGuiness is awaiting the green light to take a bus to meet local people out in the open, touring the entire region and speaking to as many people as possible with social distancing maintained and face masks at the ready.
Police van becomes food delivery truck for just £1
Gloucestershire Food Bank has been provided with a new food delivery van by Gloucestershire Constabulary and the Office for the Police and Crime Commissioner.
The food bank has seen an enormous rise in demand during lockdown and accommodated drastic operating changes, including a switch from in-person pickups to contactless deliveries, completed by volunteers in their own cars.
Following a volunteering visit to the charity in 2019, Chief Constable Rod Hansen noted how the charity was struggling to get food to the people who needed it. That need only became more essential during 2020 as the pandemic took hold. Following a discussion with PCC Martin Surl, it was decided that a vehicle from the force's fleet would be sold to the food bank for a reasonable price - £1.
Partnership tackling serious and organised crime in Newport recognised with award
The Newport Serious and Organised Crime Partnership between Gwent Police, Newport City Council and the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent has been commended by PCC Jeff Cuthbert as part of the Gwent Police awards 2020.
The partnership brings together partners from policing, the public sector and third sector organisations to deliver interventions to vulnerable young people who are at risk from being drawn into serious and organised crime. Furthermore, the team are working with organisations such as the St Giles Trust, Crimestoppers and Barnardo's to deliver a programme that educates young people about the risk of serious and organised crime, and encourages them to report their concerns to all nine secondary schools in Newport.
Bedfordshire's VERU to head up first ever prison-community initiative for HMP Bedford
Bedfordshire's Violence and Exploitation Reduction Unit (VERU), funded by PCC Kathryn Holloway, is the flagship partnership for the county aimed at tackling the root causes of serious violence. The VERU has launched a new initiative working with HMP Bedford – a first of its kind.
The VERU Phoenix Project will be aimed at those under the age of 25, focusing on breaking the cycle of repeat offending by offering young adults a range of support services and educational opportunities which will help them to return to their communities and bring about a positive and lasting change.
The programme will involve a partnership approach from the VERU, HMP Bedford and the national charity, Young Enterprise (YE), which specialises in boosting employability and financial education skills.
LATEST NEWS FROM THE APCC...
APCC response to the Prime Minister's Covid-19 update
Govt's new package to support and enforce self-isolation
Government to double maximum penalty for assaulting an emergency worker
Alcohol Commission report
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It's expensive being poor. Families of inmates often live on the edge of insolvency.
I know a mother of two, married to a man doing time in the San Francisco jail, who is trapped between the domino effect of poverty and the desire to maintain her children's relationship with their father. The trouble began when her credit rating dropped due to late bill payments, which triggered the repossession of her car, which put her job at risk because public transit couldn't get her to work on-time.
Now she relies on loan centers that charge high interest rates or paying the rent on her dilapidated apartment late, all while trying to stave off eviction. She says she contemplates leaving San Francisco on a daily basis. To do so would improve her financial situation, but would reduce her children's already limited access to their father.
Depending if they can afford the time it takes to take transit to County Jail 5 in San Bruno for a weekly visit, or the unreasonable cost of a phone call, this family must literally choose between putting food on the table or connecting with their loved one.
Research shows that inmates who preserve ties with their families, especially their spouses and children, have a much better chance of staying out of jail once released. Keeping in touch is almost an impossible reality considering the jolting cost of making a $1 per minute in-state, long-distance or pre-paid collect call.
Until a cap on interstate calling rates was introduced earlier this year by the Federal Communications Commission, the telephone companies providing inmate phone services were largely unregulated. As a result, correctional facilities allowed inmate phone service providers to charge jacked-up calling rates in exchange for a cut of the revenue, paid to the facility in the form of a phone commission. Because these commissions are used to fund services for inmates, this decades-old practice created a paradoxical relationship between inmates, inmate phone service companies, prisons, and county jails.
In the San Francisco Sheriff Department's most recent contract with its phone service provider, Global Tel*Link (GTL), we broke this counterproductive cycle and changed the way we do business. We've dramatically reduced calling rates and surcharges for inmate phone calls, including a 70 percent reduction for a 15-minute collect or pre-paid collect, in-state, long-distance call, from $13.35 to $4.05, and a 32 percent reduction for a 15-minute debit, in-state, long-distance call, from $5.98 to $4.05.
Given the city's longtime dependence on phone commissions to fund rehabilitative programs, like Resolve to Stop the Violence and the One Family visitation program, reducing inmate calling rates endangers program stability while spotlighting an addiction that's shared by almost every prison and jail in the country: balancing incarceration budgets on the backs of people who can afford it least. According to the US Department of Justice, 80 percent of families who have a member incarcerated live at or below poverty levels.
Fortunately, our department recently won a settlement against GTL's predecessor, enabling us to fund programs for several years without taking a hit. But, in the long run, City Hall must realize that gouging poor people doesn't improve public safety. It punishes innocent children by limiting their communication with their family, subordinates the healing value of family reunification to profit, and strengthens the inter-generational resentment that is laced between impoverished communities and the justice system that is supposed to protect them.
Gratified with the unanimous support of our phone rate reform by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the San Francisco Sheriff's Department is proud to be one of the first county jail systems in the nation to dramatically reduce its telecom rates.
Our next policy reform will be the unregulated, exorbitant cost of inmate commissary fees and commissions.


There're hundreds of dollars to save. What are you waiting for? Your parents may have washed everything in hot water, but that was back in the day before detergents were formulated to work in cold water. Now, just about all detergents, even if not labeled as such, work perfectly well in cold water. Hot water also fades your clothes and therefore significantly shortens their useful life.
Here's what it costs you to do laundry with hot water, warm water, and cold water.
Wash in cold water unless there is motor oil or some other really thick grease on your clothes. ALWAYS rinse in cold water. Anything else is seriously just a waste of your money.
If your washer has different settings (based on fabric type, perhaps), simply run a load and use your finger to test the water temperatures for the different settings. Then, in the future, let everyone in your household know that if they do laundry, to choose the setting that corresponds to the cold water.
Health tip: make the switch to a chlorine-free detergent. They've gotten better and better in effectiveness over the years, and hey, why put those kinds of chemicals on the clothes you and your family are going to be wearing for 16 hours at a time? Or, in the air of your laundry room as they get volatized?
Curious how much you could save by switching your wash temp? Let's take a look: First, let's assume that your water tank is set to 120 degrees. According to HECO the average family of four does 392 loads of laundry per year. If all of those loads are done using the Hot/Cold setting (which uses 3.4kWh per load) that amounts to 1,332.8kWh per year (392 loads x 3.4kWh per load) factor in the current energy rate ($.3438) and you'll be spending $458.22 per year on laundry. By switching to the Cold/Cold setting your annual energy usage drops to 156kWh (392 loads x .4kWh) factor in the cost of energy and you get an annual cost of $53.91, or $404.31 in savings!
Did you know that your washing machines uses virtually the same amount of energy regardless of how full you stack it? It's true. So to help reduce the amount of energy your home consumes, be sure to wash full loads instead of multiple smaller ones. You'll save not only energy and money, you'll save water as well!
Let's take a closer look at the potential savings from only washing full loads: According to HECO the average family of four does 392 loads of laundry per year. Let's assume that the washer setting for these loads is the Hot/Cold setting (which uses 3.4kWh with the hot water tank set to 120 degrees). That makes our baseline for savings (392 loads x 3.4kWh = 1,332.8kWh) factor in the cost per kWh ($.3438) and that's $458.22 per year. Now, let's also assume that by only washing full loads of laundry you can reduce your total number of loads by 25%. Your new loads per year becomes (392 loads x .75 = 294 loads of laundry per year). If you continue to use the same Hot/Cold setting outlined above, your new annual cost of laundry becomes (294 loads x 3.4kWh per load = 999.6kWh per year x $.3438 = $343.66 per year for laundry) or a savings of $114.56 in savings!
Your clothes dryer represents thousands of dollars in savings…just waiting to be had. If you have one of those utility meters with a spinning wheel in it, go watch it the next time someone is using the dryer…the site of that wheel spinning around like a wheel on a Tour de France bike should be enough to convince you that there must be a better way.
The first thing to do is embrace a really awesome clean tech innovation: solar powered clothes dryers. Brace yourself, I'm referring to clotheslines (and in-house clothes drying racks, for folks who don't have the outdoor option). The average family, switching to hanging clothes to dry, can save more than $363 per year. If you're in need of a either a drying rack or clothesline, you can snag one or both of them from the Pono Home Store!
A closer look at the savings associated with line-drying: According to HECO the average household dryer consumes 1,056 kilowatt hours per year, which when multiplied by the energy rate on Oahu ($.3438) comes out to $363.05 per year. Which is money you could be saving if you switch to a drying rack or dry line.
if your dryer has one. That will assure that when your clothes are dry, the dryer will turn itself off and not spend a bunch of extra electricity to continue drying your already dry clothes. If you don't have an auto dry setting, set the dry time to less than you'd expect it to need, and turn the buzzer on so you can check it when it's done. Turn it on for a few more minutes if need be. Make sure the setting you choose is for the appropriate fabric (otherwise you will damage your more sensitive clothes).
But, seriously…get a drying rack. Indoor, foldable drying racks take up little to no space and pay for themselves in no time. And use no energy whatsoever, and therefore, help you reduce your carbon footprint.
Be sure to clean out the lint from your dryer's lint screen between uses. This will help to ensure good airflow and keep your dryer working efficiently. Clogged lint can be a fire hazard in your home, as well as a general health challenge for people sensitive to dust, so do it for the earth, and do it for yourself.
You can save about 10% of the overall cost of running your dryer by making sure the lint screen, lint trap, and lint vent are cleaned out regularly. Check out this article from The Inspired Economist to learn how.
Let's take this one step further: So if by keeping your dryer lint free you can save 10% on its energy usage, and according to HECO the average dryer consumes 1,056kWh per year, your new annual usage by keeping the lint screen clear is (1,056kWh x .9 = 950.4kWh per year) factor in the cost per kWh ($.3438) and that's an annual operating cost of $326.75. Which when compared to the cost of not cleaning the lint screen ($363.05) means you'll be saving $36.30 per year!
While clotheslines and foldable drying racks can save you a ton of money, if you still want to use the dryer, there are ways to reduce the amount of money it'll cost you. Using the auto-dry setting will ensure that the dryer kicks off when clothes are dry. If your dryer doesn't have an auto-dry setting, try drying your clothes for less than a full cycle. We suggest roughly 40 minutes, odds are this should be long enough to completely dry all your clothes. If not, just pop them back in the dryer for another 10 minutes or so and repeat till they're dry. You can always add drying time, but you can't take it away.
Let's take a look at how much you could be saving every year by drying for less time: According to HECO the average family of four uses 1,056kWh per year for drying clothes. Let's assume that they're over drying their clothes every time, meaning they're drying them for a full hour (1.0hr) vs 40minutes (.67hr). By adopting the tip above the total power consumption for drying clothes per year becomes (1,056kWh x .67 = 707.52kWh per year) factor in the energy rate ($.3438) and the new cost per year for using the clothes dryer becomes (707.52kWh x $.3438 = $243.25) compare that to the original cost of over drying ($363.05) and that's a yearly savings of $119!
The following photos are courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons (clothes on a clothesline, clothes in a washer, dryer settings, lint screen and clothes in a dryer) and Pono Home.


The Aurora Bubbles are the creation of Jouko and Mari Lappalainen who run two of our most popular destinations, Nellim Wilderness Hotel and Muotka Maja Wilderness Lodge.
Essentially they consist of wooden bases topped with a magnificent perspex dome, through which, you can enjoy an incredible view of the arctic sky and, of course, any potential Auroras that may appear above you.
The bubbles are located in areas free from light pollution and so any view of the Aurora is unhindered. If the Lights do shine above you then it is possible to witness them from the comfort of the beds. Obviously we cannot guarantee a sighting of the Northern Lights but we can ensure that you experience an unforgettable night, in a unique room.
These brilliant bubbles began life as inflatable pods with clear roofs that could be put up in a remote location for guests to sleep in. However, for Jouko, these simply did not offer enough warmth and luxury for guests so he went back to the drawing board to create something that extra bit special.
He constructed more permanent structures of wood and perspex that would be situated not far from the hotel or lodge and offer a warm and cosy night's sleep in addition to an ideal view of the night sky. They are located far enough away from each hotel that guests can enjoy a private retreat, yet close enough so that the amenities of the hotel are within easy reach.
There are other locations which offer similar experiences, but the Aurora Bubbles at Nellim and Muotka offer the ideal combination of unique design, cosy interior and an ideal location in the Finnish wilds.
A wonderful place to sleep!
Each Aurora Bubble consists of a small porch in which to place coats and outdoor clothing (ensuring it's within quick grabbing distance should you wish to exit the bubble quickly to look directly at any Aurora that may appear!) as well as the main bedroom area and a discrete compostable toilet. The room is furnished in typical Nordic style with wooden cladding and Finnish soft furnishings. As well as electric heating, each bubble also has electric sockets.
Whilst the Aurora Bubbles do not have running water, you will still retain your hotel room for the evening so will have access to shower facilities.
Bubbles are typically booked by our guests for one night during their stay. Should you wish to enjoy this wonderful upgrade, you will have access to your bubble usually from around dinner time.
As your evenings are usually filled with Aurora hunting activities you will probably not head to your bubble until quite late in the evening but, should you be unlucky in your Aurora pursuits, you will be safe in the knowledge that you have the whole night to search the skies for a display from the warmth of your duvet.