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Jetts Fitness – Brilliant Basics, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and Net Promoter Score®
Written by James Charles with Elaine Jobson
We caught up with TRP customer, Customer Engagement Academy Honorary Vice-President and Jetts Fitness CEO, Elaine Jobson to talk about the company culture she has created across the award-winning chain's 250+ franchise sites.
Introduction to Elaine and Jetts
A senior figure with a vast amount of experience gained across the global health and fitness industry, Elaine has spent the past 20+ years in executive roles in Asia, Europe, South Africa and now Australia; where she is currently the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Jetts. Having led Virgin Active to the honour of Deloitte 'Best Company to Work for in South Africa' during her time with the organisation, Elaine is a passionate advocate of company culture as a source of competitive advantage. Outside of her day-to-day role at Jetts, Elaine runs her own blog (culturehacker.com.au) and is an accomplished educational speaker.
We are incredibly grateful to Elaine for sharing her time and expertise with us to produce this blog post for the Customer Engagement Academy.
Jetts is a 24/7 franchise gym operator with over 250 locations across Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom and Thailand. Founded in 2007 by Brendon and Cristy Levenson, Jetts' mission is to deliver accessible, contract-free fitness to the masses, so they can 'Workout on Your Terms'.
With 24/7 openings no longer a unique selling point, Jetts focus on differentiation through people – with passionate, fitness qualified teams delivering exceptional member experiences.
The inspiration for writing this blog post with Elaine was an interview she did with Julian Carle of Synergen Group as part of his Synergen Leadership Podcast. A great listen which I would highly recommend, I was particularly intrigued by Elaine's explanation of her use of Abraham Harold Maslow's (1943) Hierarchy of Needs with her staff and members – it really struck a chord and was something I thought would be valuable to share with you.
Before her move to Jetts, Elaine worked at Virgin Active in South Africa; starting as National Operations Manager in 2008 before becoming Chief Operating Officer (COO) in 2009. The company had just taken over a failing chain of gyms in the country, run into the ground by the previous owners. Poor leadership had had a significant impact on employee morale and there was a culture of distrust in management stemming from the way they had previously been treated. Elaine was brought in to turn this around and would go on to help the organisation win the Deloitte 'Best Company to Work for in South Africa' award mentioned earlier in this article.
In the very early days after the takeover, one of Elaine's maintenance team was working with a screwdriver to fix a piece of equipment, when he slipped and gave himself a cut to the arm which would require stitches. Unaware of the workings of the South African health system, and hailing from a country with quality free healthcare for all, Elaine sent the injured party off to the nearest hospital to be patched up. With no medical insurance, an incredible 2 days waiting in the hospital passed before he was seen and by that time septicemia had developed, resulting in below the elbow amputation. When she heard the news, Elaine was understandably shocked. How had this been allowed to happen?
Speaking to the man's colleagues, Elaine discovered that this was commonplace in the country and they lived in fear of illness and injury as they too didn't have access to medical assistance. Unlike many other companies in South Africa, the previous owners had not implemented 'Medical Aid' – a South-African medical insurance scheme. They had failed to even provide for their employees at the very basic level. This was astonishing to Elaine; something she had never witnessed before. She immediately called the Board of Directors in the UK who signed off the funds to implement Medical Aid for all employees. Something had to change, and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs was the model to help Elaine achieve it.
For those of you unfamiliar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, it is a widely applied model in the field of human psychology. Represented visually as a pyramid figure, it aims to show the layers of human needs in the order they are required – one building on top of the foundation created by the other below it. The idea is that the base of the pyramid, 'Physiological Needs' (food, water, shelter etc), must be in place before we can move on to the next level and so on and so on until we reach the pinnacle of 'Self Actualisation' (achieving your full potential).[i]
Elaine has adapted and simplified the original model to better fit Jetts, condensing Maslow's 5 stages into 3 – built on a foundation of company vision, purpose, and values; which Elaine believes should permeate through everything Jetts does.
Let's take a look at each stage in turn.
Product – Meet Expectations
While Elaine's example from her time in South Africa is extreme, the point it makes is relevant across the globe. Your employees and your members need to feel safe, comfortable and secure. At Jetts, Elaine calls this the Brilliant Basics, and, as per Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, if you aren't nailing these nothing else you do matters.
Employees need to feel secure in their job so that they know they are going to get paid on time at the end of the month, so they can, in turn, feed themselves, maintain a roof over their head and pay their bills.
All new starters at Jetts go through a comprehensive orientation and induction designed to make them feel comfortable in their surroundings and equip them with everything they need to succeed in their role. Fully understanding their job description helps employees know what is of expected of them so that they can confidently go about their work with a clear sense of direction and purpose, knowing what they need to do to continue being employed in that role. Basics such as where to find kit and who to ask if you have a question help newbies feel at ease. Being given a uniform that matches those of their colleagues from day one helps with integration into the team and instils a sense of belonging.
Members have a very similar process. A comprehensive induction covers as much as possible that they might need to know about their new club. The classic how to work equipment and group exercise schedule will be covered, but also things such as how to make a complaint should something not be quite right, where fire exits are located, and who to ask if you have a question about something.
The club environment itself should be safe and welcoming so, for example, general cleanliness and ensuring that equipment is in full working order are absolutely integral checklist items.
"You can do anything you want to try and delight your members, but if you don't nail the basics it doesn't count for me. There is no silver bullet – you need to work hard to ensure the operational aspects of the business are firing on all cylinders to meet expectations before you can start to think about exceeding them. At Jetts, we've gone down to the level of creating a specific process to ensure toilet roll doesn't run out at 3 in the morning, because that is just the way it has to be."
Elaine Jobson – CEO, Jetts Fitness
Jetts measure their success here by looking at the loyalty shift of members from Detractors to Passives in their Insight Net Promoter Score® customer feedback system.
Service – Exceed Expectations
Once you have got the basics right and are meeting expectations you can start to look at exceeding them. Jetts put a focus on personal relationships and a strong sense of community for both employees and members to achieve this.
"It is vital that we provide our teams with the same experience that we expect them to provide to our members. We have a strategy for exceeding our teams expectations that involves things such as giving them a day off on their birthday, allowing them to earn time off vouchers for great work, awarding a special shirt pin at 2 years, 5 years and 10 years of service, giving access to discounts on sportswear, assigning them an annual self-development budget, inviting everyone along to our annual national conference, giving them an annual 'Jettsiversary' gift and card and setting them up with a 'Lovelife' personal goal setting plan.
In addition to the above, there are also unexpected wow moments that are created to acknowledge special achievements or moments in their life. We have something called the 'Lovelife' award that is given to team members when they have a significant life event happen, like buying their first home or adopting a puppy!"
Elaine Jobson – CEO, Jetts Fitness.
Jetts have a W.A.R strategy to ensure they exceed members' expectations! That's Weapons, Anecdotes, and Relationships by the way!
Jetts' weapons are the tools they have at their disposal to engage members. Think PT, programming, social media etc.
Anecdotes are the opportunities to create a story for the member – like remembering their birthday and presenting them with a cake at their following visit. Anything that creates a memorable moment that a member feels compelled to share with others.
Relationships is about making sure Jetts know whereabouts on their journey with them a member currently is, so they can support them in a timely and relevant way.
For example, research conducted in partnership with TRP helped Jetts uncover the value that their membership base gained from staff giving them praise for their achievements, which motivated them to keep going to achieve more. Based on these findings, Jetts now provide all of their teams with training to approach members on the gym-floor and identify when they have improved their performance; whether that be an increase in the weight they are lifting or that they are attending the club more often, amongst other things.
"When a team member provides members with feedback that praises their improvements then the member is wowed."
Jetts measure success here by looking at the loyalty shift of members from Passives to Promoters in their Insight Net Promoter Score® customer feedback system, coupled with attendance rates.
Brand – Crazy in Love
At TRP we call them Raving Fans, Jetts call them 'Crazy in Love' – whatever you call your brand advocates, you want as many as possible and this is where they are made!
Across both employees and members, this level sees the pursuit of a deeper relationship with the company through participation and contribution.
The ultimate goal for every member of the team at Jetts is to reach 'Loveland'.
"Loveland is a special place which only the very best teams can reach. To get them there we focus on the need to contribute and participate in making Jetts a great place to work. Twice a year we create a scorecard called a Health Check, this goes to our business owners and provides them with a ranking on how they are doing on the key metrics for our people; like average length of stay, internal Net Promoter Score®, engagement levels etc. The goal of each owner is to move their people into Loveland, this means that they have stayed with the company for 2 years or more and score highly in Net Promoter Score® and engagement."
To achieve their goal of getting their staff into Loveland, Jetts' business owners are encouraged to empower them with opportunities to contribute towards the wider picture of the club or company as a whole. They do this by facilitating their participation in new and challenging activities outside of their day-to-day such as learning more about the financial management of the club or perhaps mentoring new starters.
Elaine's goal is for Jetts to be the most loved gym in Australia. To achieve this, she knows she needs to create a tribe of 'Super Promoters' by delivering exceptional experiences across over 250 clubs.
"When a member has been with a gym for a long time, they are in danger of being taken for granted. To ensure that we don't do this at Jetts we constantly monitor our members' usage levels and ensure they are still engaging with us and visiting the gym on a regular basis."
Jetts recognise that many members at this stage of their journey with them are looking for a deeper connection. They want to participate and have their say in the running of their club. Consulting long-standing members on aspects such as group exercise programming or the new design of a club when going through refurbishment really cements their place as a valued part of the Jetts community whilst also giving the company invaluable feedback which enables them to make more effective decisions. Jetts are able to scale this and extend it to their full membership base through the utilisation of TRP's customer feedback software, Insight – which uses the user-friendly Net Promoter Score® approach to periodically engage with their members for them, gathering actionable feedback and identifying trends within this.
"Any activity that involves members in this stage and encourages them to challenge themselves with something new works well to retain engagement levels and move them into being Crazy in Love."
To be considered 'Crazy in Love' a member needs to have been with their club for more than 12 months and give a Net Promoter Score® of 9 or 10 out of 10.
To enter Loveland, an employee needs to have been with Jetts for over 2 years and give a Net Promoter Score® of 8 out of 10 or above.
The most important lesson from talking with Elaine must be those Brilliant Basics. No matter how big or small your club is, whether you are a budget chain or premium full-service, wherever you are in the world – if your foundations aren't solid, whatever you build on top of them doesn't mean a thing.
Empower Your Members to Contribute to the Future Direction of Your Club
Ongoing, Actionable Net Promoter Score Customer Feedback from Insight
Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.
[i] https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


We will be holding an Easter Fayre at Cedar Grange on 27 April to help raise money for our residents' amenities funds.
We would like to use any monies raised to take our residents on trips out and also arrange some extra activities in the home. All friends and families of our residents are encouraged to come along and join in the fun.
We will be holding raffles, a cake sale and a 'name the teddy' tombola too. There will be a raffle and also a bric-a-brac stall selling all sorts of wonderful items. We would also like to invite you to book a table to sell your own products and join us in helping to raise funds for this worthy cause.
We will be charging a £5 fee for each table and are also asking for donations for our raffles too so please dig deep. We really want our residents to go on more outings and have more brilliant activities to enjoy. Your contributions will be most welcome. Help us by spreading the word.
To find out more about this event and other events and activities at Cedar Grange, please call our home: 01566 773049.


Mrs. Futrell Fraser's Classroom 10th-grade classroom at Calloway County High School (Murray, KY). Chromebooks.
There were eight donors to this project including all of you that subscribe to WeatherTalk. Thank you, subscribers!
This is Mrs. Futrell Fraser's Classroom 10th-grade classroom at Calloway County High School (Murray, KY).
I have recently started using Accucess with a few of my students. I have two computers in my room and rotate student use.
This is a program that will allow a student to work on essential skills to help them improve in both reading and mathematics. Without technology to access this website and others like it, it is not possible to individualize instruction enough for students to make these gains.
With Accucess, students take a placement test and then lessons are automatically generated to help in their learning.
It would take countless hours of testing and calculating along with reams of paper for me to do this without the technology.
If each student in the class had a Chromebook, they could all use this program daily, and I would see the gap between typical students and students with disabilities shrink!
Donations of Chromebooks for students to use research-based educational programs on the Internet, such as Accucess will give my students the opportunity to begin to catch up with their peers.
In addition, many of them would like to attend a technical college after graduation. With your donation of Chromebooks, my kids have a chance at realizing their dreams of higher education and a successful career.
Newer PostMrs. Well's 10th-grade classroom at Calloway County High School (Murray, KY). Chromebooks.


The Art of Teaching the Arts examines how seven "principles of artful teaching" influence the curricular and instructional choices that high school arts teachers make. Each program in the workshop includes examples of teaching in dance, music, theatre, and visual art.
Subsequent programs will examine each principle in depth.


Home » Events » DPHS to Honor Beverly Sels at "Picnic Mexicano," Our June Scholarship Fundraiser Event, on Wednesday, June 26, at 6 P.M.
DPHS to Honor Beverly Sels at "Picnic Mexicano," Our June Scholarship Fundraiser Event, on Wednesday, June 26, at 6 P.M.
Lucy was the founder of Lucy's El Patio Cafe in Capistrano Beach. She started the restaurant in 1951 and it is the longest continually run business in the city. Lucy cooked for hundreds of men working at the Cotton Ranch and then went into the restaurant business in 1937. According to a May 31st Dana Point News article by David Bro entitled "El Patio Cafe still cooking after 76 years," Lucy's recipes are still being used to prepare dishes at the popular restaurant now run by her son Jack since 1989. OC Register subscribers may view the article online here: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/saunderson-510758-lucy-patio.html.
Lucy passed away on April 8, 2000, and her services at San Juan Capistrano Basilica filled the church inside and had nearly as many people outside to pay their respects. Lucy's family requested the Society's participation with them in establishing a scholarship fund in her memory. Donations were made for a Lucy Chavarrias-Saunderson / Dana Point-Capistrano Beach Historical Society Scholarship to be awarded at the end of each school year, beginning in 2001.
Doris I. Walker was the DPHS Founders Day honoree, History Advisor and Program Chair who arranged interesting monthly meetings for the Dana Point Historical Society over many years. Just two months ago, on April 16, Doris's sons Brett and Blair Walker joined our City Council and other dignitaries in dedicating a sculpture to Doris, commemorating the stories she has written for us. Following the November 2011 memorial service in her and husband Jack Smith's honor, the Society decided to rename our already existing second scholarship as the Doris I. Walker Scholarship, given in her name for the first time last year.
Joining us in remembering past DPHS President Beverly Sels will be her husband, Glenn. He will speak about Beverly's involvement in the Society and her love for community participation. In addition, Jack Saunderson and Blair Walker will comment about their mothers' legacies in the Dana Point area.
This year, the $1,000 Doris I. Walker Scholarship has been awarded to Sarah Anne Martino of Dana Hills High School and the $1,000 Lucy Chavarrias-Saunderson Scholarship has been awarded to Melissa Chmelik of San Clemente High School.
A change in venue and style has been announced for this year's scholarship fundraiser dinner. Jack Saunderson, son of scholarship namesake Lucy Chavarrias-Saunderson, will be preparing a Mexican-themed picnic for the attendees. This year's picnic will take place at Lantern Bay Park, on Park Lantern Street, the entrance of which is located Doheny Beach. Look for the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Hotel sign. "Picnic Mexicano" will include a variety of your favorite Mexican dishes, along with soft drinks and dessert. Beer and wine will also be available.
Parking is available in the lots past the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Hotel entrance, up the hill. Our picnic area is on the left-hand side just past the parking lots and has plenty of tables as well as restrooms across the street.
Tickets are $25 with advance purchase or $30 at the door (get the form in this newsletter on Page 2 or print it now from our website: Registration Form. Tickets for children under 12 are $10. Advance purchase reservations must be received by June 21. Please volunteer to help at this event by calling Vice President for Programs Ann Shultz at the museum office, 949-248-8121 (message) or email her at connollyshultz@yahoo.com.


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Share this Story: John Robson: Unity through division won't help Alberta unite the right
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John Robson: Unity through division won't help Alberta unite the right
Adding a third conservative option to the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties would make a second New Democratic Party government more likely.
John Robson
algary Herald
There are any number of ways a proposal to unite the right in Alberta — by splitting it further — could fail. The most likely is also the most obvious: by adding a third conservative option to the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties, as suggested by a new grassroots organization, votes on the right would be further divided, making a second New Democratic Party government easier to obtain.
Nonetheless, there is considerable precedent for new parties helping divided movements put old squabbles behind them. And it's always beneficial for parties to think about why they want to win power, instead of just how.
John Robson: Unity through division won't help Alberta unite the right Back to video
The Reform Party's long internecine battle with the federal Progressive Conservatives offers a cautionary tale. Though intended as a means to refocus conservatism on Western Canadian values, it enabled prime minister Jean Chrétien's Liberals to dominate federal politics for a decade. It wasn't until unity was finally achieved that Conservatives were able once again to compete successfully for power, and whatever the federal Conservatives might be about to do following their 2015 defeat, splintering into original constituent elements is clearly not on the list.
There are two ways to unite a party: from below or from above. It might seem there's only one, since in the end, only an agreement by those in charge can affect a formal merger. But it is one thing to merge through deals among ambitious insiders, and another to respond to pressure from ordinary members of both parties in a spirit of genuine compromise.
The merger that produced the federal Conservative party was an example of the latter, driven by deep grassroots frustration at the stranglehold on power of the federal Liberals. It took a long time for Progressive Conservatives to overcome their resentment at Reform upstarts, and for Reformers to cool their anger at entrenched PC insiders. Resolving the quarrel required both parties to make the painful decision to put aside leaders who embodied their tribal intransigence. In the end, Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay handled the transition with tact and compromise, in an authentic spirit of reconciliation that welled up from below.
The very name Progressive Conservative is the visible reminder of an earlier merger, in 1942, of populist Progressives and establishment Conservatives (who were originally "Liberal-Conservatives" under Sir John A. Macdonald). The former head of the Manitoba Progressive Party was the first leader of the new federal entity. Once again, fear that Canada faced perpetual domination by the smug Liberals of prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King helped overcome resistance.
The NDP is the result of a similar effort to gain strength by uniting movements with comparable DNA. Formally the successor to the agrarian populist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), founded in 1932, it resulted from a 1961 merger of the CCF with the political wing of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). It was not easy to overcome the abiding differences and mutual suspicions between Tommy Douglas-style evangelical farmers and urban assembly-line workers, who held distinct views on everything from balanced budgets to the demon rum. But they shared a desire for a louder voice and greater influence in Ottawa: over nine elections from 1933 to 1962, the Prairie-based CCF had won just seven seats in central Canada. While pressures remain within the NDP — most recently between the Utopian Leap faction and more practical-minded moderates — fragmenting into its CCF and CLC components is not viewed as a desirable option.
The frustration and impatience of Alberta's right-wingers are certainly understandable. The division and bickering between Wildrose and the PCs made possible the historic victory of the provincial NDP. If those Albertans wanting smaller, more responsive and more fiscally sensible government could unite behind either party, they would very probably win the next election. But for now, they are stuck in a sterile confrontation, nurturing rather than overcoming grievances that echo the Reform vs. PC quarrel.
If the prospect of a three-way split doesn't inspire the rival leaders to resolve the squabbles that divide them, it may drive the grassroots to replace the most unyielding among them and encourage the rest to make peace under a single banner. Anyone for the Wildrose Conservative Alliance? In the process, they might go so far as to draft manifestos and debate program differences, or even discuss principles before plunging into tactics.
If so, the tortuous process of uniting Alberta conservatives could create a party that not only can win, but deserves to.


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Q: Is it possible to convert a Linux box to LVM after the fact? My Linux server uses LVM because I replace the machine a year ago and installed from scratch.  LVM has been a life saver and I love its flexibility.  My Linux laptop, however, was last fully installed three years ago, and thus uses straight partitions.
Is it possible -- without a reinstall -- to convert an existing system to LVM?  If so, what tools can do this job?
I expect that any filesystems to be shared with Windows on a dual-boot system cannot be LVM. If I am wrong, please let me know, but I would be surprised.

A: I recently wrote blocks (née lvmify) which does this conversion in-place. It takes a single partition, shrinks the filesystem if necessary, moves the start of the filesystem to the end of the partition, and copies an LVM superblock (preconfigured with the right PV/LV/VG) in its place. If you have multiple partitions, merging the newly created volume groups is done with vgmerge. It can't work on mounted filesystems.

A: The easiest way to move a linux system to LVM is to use a external disk (USB, eSATA) and a CD-ROM based system like grml to move away all data from the PC to the external disk, then re-partition the PC with LVM. Finally copy everything back and configure and re-install grub to the MBR.
This procedure is slightly involved, but you always have the data on the external drive and the CD-ROM to boot your system.
As you correctly expect, Windows is not able to access any LVM volumes.

A: http://serialized.net/2006/04/migrating-live-filesystems-to-lvm/ has an interesting way of migrating a live fs.  Add it as part of a RAID-1 group, which the OS will then mirror to the other device (which could be an LVM logical volume).  It's a bit dated, so I don't know if that would still work.

A: Yes, this can be done.
Yes, you can use it for a dual-boot windows system, provided you make Windows the first partition, and it's a primary partition (not an extended inside a logical).  My instructions here do not cover this situation, which requires you have some experience dealing with dual booting.  If you're after a dual-boot windows/linux setup, don't follow any advice below this point.

I'll go one better: with only a few exceptions, you should be able to migrate your entire laptop live, provided you use an external drive with enough capacity.
Warning!  This proceedure is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!  It assumes you have intimate knowledge of the partitioning process, you have a separate /boot partition, and you know a botched attempt can leave you with a brain-damaged installation THAT WON'T BOOT!  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
You'll need:

*

*/boot located on a separate partition.  If you have a combined root filesystem (everyting is stuffed into / ) then this won't work.

*The ability to boot from a USB hard drive.

*an external drive large enough to hold all of the data and programs on your existing system.  Be sure to run a "du /" and wait for the end result, to get a real feel for the kind of space you'll need.

General Procedure (forgive me for lack of a few commands, I'm writing this very quickly):

*

*Attach the external drive and locate its device name.  Let's pretend that you see it as /dev/sdb.

*Create a two partitions on your external drive.  In our example, this will show up as /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb2.

parted /dev/sdb

*Format the first partition as ext2 or ext3, and labeled "boot".  Format the second partition on the external drive as type "Linux LVM".

*Get the newly minted LVM volume recognized by the system using

pvscan ; vgscan

*Carve off a large-enough chunk of the external LVM volume to hold the entire laptop's hard drive.  If in doubt, just use all of the space available.

*Format your LVM-based volume as ext3 or whatever filesystem tickles your fancy.

mke3fs /dev/ExternalUSBVolume/ExternalRoot

*For each non-special file system mount, create a directory on your external disk and copy (with attributes) all of your files in each mount to that disk.  Ignore copies of mountpoints like /proc, etc. as these are "special".

*create the special mountpoints by hand, so that they exist on your external drive.  Do not populate them, just make sure the names and permissions match.

*(Very carefully) use your bootloader to install a boot image on your external drive, into the /boot partition.  This process is a bit complex so I'll leave it to you to find the info elsewhere.  It's also dangerous if you botch it - you could end up trying to overwrite your bootloader on your laptop drive.  Be careful.

*Reboot your laptop.  When it is going through the POST, be sure to specify the external drive as your boot drive.  At this point in time, you should have a (more-or-less) near-replica of your laptop's drive.  (to the other admins out there: yes, I know, the log files and others are not in a 100% copied state, but that's not the emphasis here...it's on getting the data and tools moved over...)

*Once you can boot from the external drive, you can then use it to wipe your laptop drive.  At this point, you're "living out of" your external drive.  Keep this in mind.

*Then use a partition editor - gparted or whatever - to delete the original laptop partitions (bye-bye data...), then mark your newly-minted area as "LVM".  Go through the process of getting your LVM volume recognized, partitioned, formatted, etc.

*Using LVM's mirroring process, mirror your live system (which is currently on the external drive) back to the laptop drive.  Take a lunch break (or two) for this as it will take time.

*Remount the live filesystem, moving the / filesystem from the external drive to your laptop LVM volume.

*Re-run your bootloader installation process.  This is critical as the current ramdisk will not have the right settings and will not know you've moved things around.  Failing to do this will result in an unbootable system and a visit to a rescue disk.  If all else fails, you can boot from your external drive again (nothing lost...)

*Reboot the laptop without the external drive attached, and specifying the laptop's internal drive instead.  It should boot fine.  Note anything that feels or looks hurt or broken (there shouldn't be anything), and fix it.

*Sit back and enjoy a beverage for a job well done.

A: Starting from the bottom: no, windows cannot read LVM logical volumes (partitions).
If you have a spare disk that can be used as temporary storage the it's just a matter of booting from a live CD, copying the data to the temporary location, creating one or more LVs and putting the data back. It's impractical (but possible) to do an in-place conversion to LVM; you basically have to shrink the old partition and resize the the LV multiple times (and the final LV would be fragmented)

A: You have a several year old installation on a laptop. It is a losing proposition to convert it to LVM. Backup your data, reinstall, and copy your data back. You will have a clean system with new software, and your data.
If you can't do this because you don't know where your data is, you have a big problem and this is your chance to solve it.

A: You will probably have to backup the data to another drive or partition (or iso?), create the LVM container, and then restore the data to the container.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Local athletes qualify for national JO track and field
Uploaded: Wed, Jul 14, 2010, 3:53 pm 2
The competition was as hot as the weather, but a handful of local track and field athletes survived both during the Region 16 Junior Olympics last weekend at Modesto Junior College. For those who finished among the top three in their respective events, their reward is a trip to the upcoming 44th annual USATF National Junior Olympics in Sacramento.
Five local athletes and a handful of relay teams made the grade in Modesto, and next will compete at the National JOs on July 27-Aug. 1 at Hughes Stadium on the campus of Sacramento City College.
The USATF Junior Olympic Track & Field Championships is the most visible youth athletic development program in the world. Many of today's Olympic stars began their track and field careers competing at this meet.
Entry for this championship is based on athlete performances at preliminary, Association, and Regional levels of the 2010 USATF Junior Olympic Program. Competition takes place in five two-year age divisions, with athletes generally falling between the ages of 8 and 18.
Heading for Sacramento will be Aishah Ahmad of the East Palo Alto Greyhounds, Madeline Price of the Menlo IGreyhounds Track Club of Menlo Park, Brandon Bains and Dijohn Williams of the East Palo Alto Greyhounds and Menlo-Atherton High senior Jason McGhee of the ISC International Empire TC.
Also qualifying was the East Palo Alto Greyhounds' Midget Girls' 400 relay team, the Greyhounds' 4x800 relay team for Midget Boys, the Palo Alto Lightning Youth Girls' 4x800 relay and the ISC International 400 and 4x400 relays in Young Men.
Ahmad earned a trip to Sacramento in a pair of events after she placed second in the Midget Girls' 200 in 26.59 and ran on 400 relay team that finished second in 52.06 and included Rashawn Ford, Jenae Pennywell and Nalani Williams.
Price finished third in the Intermediate Girls' 400 in 58.55 to earn her ticket to the National JOs.
In Midget Boys, Bains cleared 4-2 to finish third in the high jump. Also qualifying was the East Palo Alto Greyhounds' 4x800 relay team that finished second and featured Samir Arora, Jordan Bains, Jovon Johnson and Jordan Mims.
In Intermediate Boys, Williams clocked 54.09 to finish third in the 400 meters to qualify for Sacramento.
In the Young Men's division, McGhee clocked a fast 1:54.19 to finish second in the 800, an event where he competed at the CIF State Meet last month for the Bears. McGhee also ran on leg on the winning 4x400 relay that clocked 3:23.47 and ran on the third-place 400 relay squad that finished in 43.50. The mile relay team included Jesse Arenas, Andrew Chapman, Jason McGhee and Juquelle Thompson.
In other Midget Girls' events, Ahmad was fourth in the 100 in 13.07; Ford took fourth in the 200 in 27.11 and fifth in the 400 in 1:02.84. Caice Lanovaz of Joy's Jackrabbits was seventh in the long jump at 13-8 3/4.
In Youth Girls, Alexandria Cell of the Palo Alto Lightning TC was seventh in the 400 (1:03.85), seventh in the 800 (2:27.72) and ran a leg on the 4x800 team that qualified for JOS in 11:12.23 and included sister Olivia Cell, Kastania Dahlen and Sion Walls.
In Bantam Boys, Nicholas Anderson of the EPA Greyhounds was fourth in the long jump at 12-8.
In Midget Boys, Dennis Mandudzo of the Palo Alto Lightning was fourth in the 3,000 in 11:21.38 and eighth in the 1,500 in 5:23.37 while the EPA Greyhounds' 400 relay team finished fourth in 55.22 and included Brandon Bains, Jordan Bains, Jovon Johnson and Jordan Mims. The team's 4x400 relay also was fourth, with Arora replacing Brandon Bains on the opening leg.
In Youth Boys, Keaton Shiveley of the Menlo IGreyhounds was sixth in the 3,000 in 10:41.83.
In Intermediate Boys, Dijohn Williams was fourth in the 200 (23.54) and Max Parker of the Menlo IGreyhounds was fourth in the 400 in 54.87.
-- Keith Peters
Uploaded: Wed, Jul 14, 2010, 3:53 pm
Jennifer l Bains
on Jul 15, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Jennifer l Bains, East Palo Alto
Great Job! It is wonderful being apart of kids going to the JO. Thanks for adding this in the Palo Alto Online it a pleasure having the children recognized
on Jul 16, 2010 at 10:27 am
kima, Midtown
you guys forgot keyshawn ashford who is going in the boys 100 meters he run for PENinsula


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text:
Spinelli Website
http://www.jerryspinelli.com/newbery_002.htm
Jerry Spinelli is the author of more than two dozen books, including "Maniac Magee," the story of a 12-year-old orphan, which won the coveted Newbery Medal in 1991. His latest book is "Smiles to Go" (see review at right).
Spinelli, 67, lives in Wayne, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. When he was in 11th grade, his love of sports led to his first published work: a poem about a football victory that appeared in his hometown newspaper. It was submitted without his knowledge by his father, who knew the paper's sports editor.
Around that time, Spinelli said, "it dawned on me that I probably was not going to be a major league baseball player." Instead he decided to become a writer, although "nobody told me how hard it was going to be."
Spinelli talked to The Post's Sandra G. Boodman about life as a writer, a profession he shares with his wife, Eileen Spinelli.
What were you doing before your first book was published?
"Mostly collecting rejection slips. I was an editor of a magazine for design engineers. I wanted a job that I could forget about at 5 p.m. I wrote 'Maniac Magee' and my first book, 'Space Station Seventh Grade,' on my lunch hour. My first book was published in 1982 when I was 40, and I left my job after four or five of my books were published to concentrate on writing. It was tough at first, but things changed after 'Maniac Magee' won the Newbery."
What is your writing day like?
"Around 10 a.m. I walk up the stairs to work in my office. The hours between 10 and noon are my hard-core writing time. Sometimes that's all the time I put in. I use a computer now, but I was one of the last to do that. I used to write longhand. Usually it takes me about nine to 12 months to write a book.
"The afternoons are when we live. My wife and I venture forth and go to the movies. There's no traffic, and sometimes we're the
"There are three sources: memory, everyday life and my imagination. People tend to think that because I have six kids and 16 grandchildren that's where they come from. But I'm not slinking around behind the sofa watching them.
"I explore memories of my own childhood. Even if I don't remember the event well, I remember the feeling. My favorite characters tend to be girls, especially Stargirl [the heroine and title of one of his most popular books]."
How can kids be better writers?
"Read, of course, which is something I never did as a kid. Write about what you care about. I would underline the word 'care.' It sounds very simple, but it's not. It's about trying to touch the reader, and it's going to show. If you don't care about what you're writing about, how is anyone else going to?"
Biography Jerry Spinelli
Born Norristown, PA, US
Current Home Phoenixville, PA, US
When I was growing up, the first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. That lasted till I was about ten. Then I wanted to be a baseball player. Preferably shortstop for the New York Yankees.
I played Little League in junior high and high school. I only hit two home runs in my career, but I had no equal when it came to standing at shortstop and chattering to my pitcher: "C'mon, baby, hum the pea." Unfortunately, when I stood at the plate, so many peas were hummed past me for strikes that I decided to let somebody else become shortstop for the Yankees.
It was about that time that our high school football team won a heart-stopping game against one of the best teams in the country. While the rest of the town was tooting horns and celebrating, I went home and wrote a poem about the game. A few days later the poem was published in the local newspaper, and suddenly I had something new to become: a writer.
Little did I know that twenty-five years would pass before a book of mine would be published.
Not that I wasn't trying. In the years after college I wrote four novels, but nobody wanted them. They were adult novels. So was number five, or so I thought. However, because it was about a thirteen-year-old boy, adult book publishers didn't even want to see it. But children's publishers did — and that's how, by accident, I became an author of books for kids.
Life is full of happy accidents.
Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project. I thought I was simply growing up in Norristown, Pennsylvania; looking back now I can see that I was also gathering material that would one day find its way into my books.
John Ribble's blazing fastball. Dovey Wilmouth, so beautiful a fleet of boys pedaled past her house ten times a day. Mrs. Seeton's whistle calling her kids in to dinner. The day my black snake disappeared. The creek, the tracks, the dump, the red hills. My days did not pass through, but stayed, filling the shelves of my memory. They became the library where today I do my research.
I also get material from my own kids. Along the way I married another children's writer, Eileen Spinelli, and from our six kids have come a number of stories. Jeffrey and Molly, who are always fighting, have been especially helpful.
Ideas also come from everyday life. And from the newspapers. One day, for example, I read a story about a girl who competed on her high school wrestling team. A year later bookstores carried a new book with my name on it: There's a Girl in My Hammerlock.
So there you are. I never became a cowboy or baseball player, and now I'm beginning to wonder if I ever really became a writer. I find that I hesitate to put that label on myself, to define myself by what I do for a living. After all, I also pick berries and touch ponies and skim flat stones over water and marvel at the stars and breathe deeply and grin from ear to ear and save the best part for last. I've always done these things. Which is to say, I never had to become anything. Or anyone. I always, already, was.
Call me a berry-picking, pony-touching star-marveler.
Well, I've been writing since I was sixteen. At first, I wrote mostly short stories and poetry. The first thing I ever had published was a poem about a football game. It was printed in my local newspaper.
What is your favorite book that you've written?
I guess that would be my first published book, Space Station Seventh Grade.
What inspired you to write Maniac Magee?
Actually, there was no particular inspiration – it was time to start a new book, and I thought I'd like to write a book about a kid who was a hero to other kids. That was the starting point. Then I shopped around in my notes and in my head for any ideas that seemed to fit into that original idea.
Will Maniac Magee appear in another book?
I don't have any plans for a sequel, but right now Maniac makes a one-sentence appearance in the early stages of a book that came out before Maniac Magee, called Dump Days.
How many books have you written?
At last count, I've written twenty books, but only sixteen are published. My first four books were not published because nobody wanted them. They were adult books, not kids' books. Now I don't really write for adults or kids – I don't write for kids, I write about them. I think you need to do that, otherwise you end up preaching down. You need to listen not so much to the audience but to the story itself.
Have any of your books ever been turned down by a publisher? What are their titles?
My first four books were never published. Let's see if I can remember their titles. One was called The Shoe, one was The End of the Golden Bears, and another one was called The Corn Goddess. I forget what the other one was called – mercifully.
What was your first book, and how long did it take you to write it?
Let's see – it took about six months to write. I had written three chapters when I got an agent. It took my agent about a year to find the first publisher.
What college did you go to? What did you major in?
I went to Gettysburg College, where the famous Civil War battle was fought. I majored in English. I would've liked to major in writing, but they didn't offer a major in that.
Did you think you would of win one of the Newbery Medals?
No, I can't say that I expected it. It's not something you expect. It's like a gift that's given to you. You don't try to win it.
Where is the one place you want to go the most?
I guess I've already been to the place on the top of my list – that was Egypt. I went to see the pyramids in Egypt, and I even walked in one. I also rode a camel for about twenty seconds! I'd also like to go to Norway. I've always wanted to see the fjords.
Did you ever know someone like Maniac Magee?
To some extent Maniac resembles myself, particularly in reference to his attitude to folks of different races getting along. And his athletic abilities were inspired by an old friend of mine that I grew up with. Basically he's a patchwork of memories and imagination.
What are some of the new books you're working on?
I'm not working on anything right now – I've given myself a sabbatical. I'm doing live chats, and answering mail, and editing manuscripts and speaking at schools. I'm taking a vacation. But there are a couple of books in the works at my publishers' that will be coming out soon. One is a sequel to Tooter Pepperday. It's a chapter book called Blue Ribbon Blues. That should be out next year. My next book will be out in the fall. It's a middle grade novel called Wringer.
Did you ever run away from home and if you did, where did you go?
No, I'm afraid I wasn't the type to run away. As a matter of fact, I got a little uneasy one night when I camped out in the backyard!
Chocolate almond ice cream. Unfortunately, in the interests of health, I can't be eating it all the time!
Were you raised by a black family like the kid in Maniac Magee?
No, but I did play with a lot of African-American kids, and that was part of my inspiration for the theme of the book.
What made you grow up to be a writer?
I seem to have a natural tendency to want to share my own observations and feelings with other people, and writing seems to be the way I'm best equipped to do that.
I started writing when I was sixteen, and I'm fifty-six now, so I guess I've been writing for forty years.
What book was a total breakthrough for you?
Well, I guess I would just say that the first book I had published, Space Station Seventh Grade, was the biggest breakthrough for me. It was just such a thrill after all those years, and having written four books that were unpublished. I was as happy about that first book being published as I was about winning the Newbery Medal.
What book was hardest for you to write?
Maybe my second book, Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush. That book was inspired by two of our kids, Molly and Jeffrey, who were always fighting. It was difficult because I sometimes had a hard time figuring out how I was going to tell the story, since the chapters alternate back and forth from the point of view of the boy and the girl. It was hard to figure out how to keep the story moving when it was being told from two different point of views.
Besides yourself, who is your favorite author?
My favorite author now is Eileen Spinelli, who happens to live in my house here. She's my wife. I'm lucky enough to be the first one to read her books. My favorite of her books is Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch.
When I was growing up, I didn't have much choice of favorite authors because I didn't read very much. But I did like an author named Clair Bee. He was a famous college basketball coach. He wrote a series of books about a high school athlete called Chip Hilton. I also had a subscription to Bugs Bunny comic books.
Now I tell kids to read a lot, though. I think that's why Maniac carries a book wherever he goes. It's my way of making up for not reading very much when I was growing up.
Have you ever wanted to change your career?
Not lately, since I've found an audience for my work. When I was the age of most of my readers I wanted to be a baseball player.
Are you going to write any more books in the School Daze series?
No, I think the School Daze series is over now. At least that's what my editors at Scholastic tell me!
What are your current pets, if any?
Sorry to say, I don't have any right now. For the first time in six or seven years, I'm petless. My rat died recently, and about a month ago my chinchilla, Chichi, died. So I don't have any office mates at the moment.
What interests you besides writing?
Oh, well, let's see. Astronomy, travel, and country music.


text:
\section{Introduction}
Since the middle of last century physicists have been  pursuing the idea of unifying the four fundamental interactions, the strong, the weak, the electromagnetic and the gravitational interactions. The framework of Quantum Field Theory (QFT) unified the first three of them in the so-called Standard Model. Including gravity remains an unsolved problem in a QFT context \footnote{Going beyond conventional QFT, string theory provides us with a theory unifying the interaction of matter and gravity. Likewise loop quantum gravity uses concepts beyond conventional QFT.}. Difficulties appear when one tries to formulate a quantum version of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. The naive quantization leads to a perturbatively non-renormalizable theory which cannot be simply included in the unified model of all interactions. The idea of asymptotic safety introduced by Weinberg \cite{weinberg} is an attempt to formulate a non-perturbative QFT of gravity.  It assumes that the renormalization group flow in the bare coupling constant space leads to a non-trivial finite-dimensional ultraviolet fixed point around which a new perturbative expansion can be constructed which leads to a  predictive quantum theory of gravity. The so-called Exact Renormalization Group program \cite{RG, RG2, RG3, RG4, RG5} has tried to establish the existence of such a fixed point with a fair amount of success, but relies in the end, despite the name,
on truncation of the renormalization group equations.
Thus it would be  reassuring if other non-perturbative
QFT approaches
could confirm the exact renormalization group results.

Lattice QFT is such a non-perturbative framework and it is
well suited to deal precisely with the situation where one
identifies fixed points, since these are where one wants
to reach continuum physics by scaling the lattice spacing to zero in a way which keeps physics fixed. It has been very successful providing us with results for
QCD which are not accessible via perturbation theory.
There exists a number of lattice QFT of gravity. One of
them, the so-called Dynamical Triangulation (DT) formalism
\cite{david,david2,adf,adf2,kkm,kkm2} has provided us with a ``proof of concept'', in the sense that it has shown us, in the case of two-dimensional
quantum gravity\cite{kazakov,ajm,ajm2,ajm3}, that  the continuum limit of the lattice theory of gravity coupled to conformal  field theories
agree with  the corresponding continuum theories. Of course there are no propagating gravitational degrees of freedom
in two dimensions, but the main issue with the lattice
regularization is whether or not diffeomorphism invariance
is recovered when the lattice spacing goes to zero. That
is the case in the DT formalism, and for the conformal
field theories living on the lattice one obtains
precisely the non-trivial critical scaling dimensions
obtained also in the continuum, i.e. scaling dimensions which
are different from the ones in flat spacetime (the so-called KPZ scaling \cite{kpz,kpz2,kpz3}). The DT formalism was extended to higher dimensional gravity \cite{3dDT,3dDT2,3dDT3,3dDT4,3dDT5,4dDT,4dDT2,4dDT3}, but there it was less successful\cite{firstorder,firstorder2}. It is not ruled out that the theory can provide us with a successful version of quantum gravity, but if so the formulation has to be more elaborate than the first models (see \cite{recentDT,recentDT2,recentDT3,recentDT4} for recent attempts). However, there is one modification of DT which seems to work in the sense that lattice theory might have a non-trivial continuum limit, the so-called Causal Dynamical Triangulations model (CDT). The model is more constraint than the DT models because one assumes global hyperbolicity, i.e.\ the existence of a global time foliation.

The CDT model of four-dimensional quantum gravity is realized by considering  piecewise linear simplicial discretizations of space-time. The simplicial building blocks can be glued together, satisfying the basic topological constraints of  global hyperbolicity (as mentioned) and a simplicial manifold structure. The quantum model is now defined using the Feynman path integral formalism, summing over all such geometries with a suitable action to be defined below. The spatial Universe with a fixed topology evolves in proper time. Geometric states at a fixed value of the (discrete) time are triangulated, using regular three-dimensional simplices (tetrahedra) glued along triangular faces in all possible ways, consistent with topology. The common length of the edges of spatial links is assumed to be $a_s$. Tetrahedra are the bases of four-dimensional $\{4,1\}$ and $\{1,4\}$ simplices with four vertices at time $t$ connected by time links to a vertex at $t\pm 1$. All time edges are assumed to have a universal length $a_t$. To construct a  four-dimensional manifold one needs two additional types of four-simplices: $\{3,2\}$ and $\{2,3\}$
(having three vertices at time $t$ and two vertices at $t \pm 1$). The structure described above permits for every configuration the analytic continuation between imaginary $a_t$ (Lorentzian signature) and real $a_t$ (Euclidean signature). Even after Wick rotation the orientation of the time axis is remembered. The spatial and time links may have a different length, and are related by $\alpha a_s^2=a_t^2$. The quantum amplitude between the initial and final geometric states separated by the integer time $T$ is a weighted sum over all simplicial manifolds connecting the two states. In the Lorentzian formulation the weight is assumed to be given by a discretized version of the Hilbert-Einstein action.
\begin{equation}
    \mathcal{Z_{QG}} = \int\mathcal{D}_\mathcal{M}[g]e^{iS_{EH}[g]}
\end{equation}
where $[g]$ denotes an equivalent class of metrics  and $\mathcal{D_\mathcal{M}}$[g] is the integration measure over nonequivalent classes of metrics. A piecewise linear
manifold where we have specified the length of links defines a geometry without the need to introduce coordinates. In the CDT approach the integration over equivalent classes of metrics is thus replaced by a summation over all triangulations $\mathcal{T}$ satisfying the constraints. After a Wick rotation the amplitude becomes a partition function
\begin{equation}
\mathcal{Z_{CDT}} = \sum_\mathcal{T} e^{-S_R[\mathcal{T]}},
\end{equation}
where $S_R$ is a suitable form of the Einstein-Hilbert action on piecewise linear geometries. There exists such an action, which even has
a nice geometric interpretation, the so-called Regge  action $S_R$ for  piecewise linear geometries \cite{regge}. In our case it becomes
very simple because we have only two kinds of four-simplices which we glue together to form our piecewise linear four-manifold:
\begin{equation}
    S_R = -(K_0 +6 \Delta) \cdot N_0 + K _4 \cdot (N_{41} + N_{32}) + \Delta \cdot N_{41},
    \label{Action}
\end{equation}
where $N_0$ is the number of vertices in a triangulation $\mathcal{T}$, $N_{41}$ and $N_{32}$ are the numbers of $\{4,1\}$ plus $\{1,4\}$ and $\{3,2\}$ plus
$\{2,3\}$ simplices, respectively.
The action is parametrized by a set of three dimensionless bare coupling constants, $K_0$, related to the inverse gravitational constant, $K_4$ -- the dimensionless cosmological constant and $\Delta$ -- a function of the parameter $\alpha$, the ratio of the spatial and time edge lengths (for a detailed discussion we refer to \cite{physrep} and to the most recent review \cite{renate} and for the original literature to
\cite{origcdt,origcdt2}). The amplitude is defined for $K_4 > K_4^{\crit}$ and
the limit $K_4 \to K_4^{\crit}$ corresponds to a (discrete) infinite volume limit.
In this limit, the properties of the model depend on values of the two remaining coupling constants. The model was extensively studied in the case, where the spatial topology was assumed to be spherical ($S^3$) \cite{ours1,ours12,ours13,ours2,ours21,ours3,ours31}.
The model could not be solved analytically and the information about its properties was obtained using Monte Carlo simulations. It was found that the model has a surprisingly rich phase structure, with four different phases. The most interesting among the four phases is phase C, where the model dynamically develops a semiclassical background geometry which in some respect is like (Euclidean) de Sitter geometry, i.e.\ like the geometry of $S^4$. Both the semiclassical volume distribution and fluctuations around this distribution can be interpreted in terms of a minisuperspace model \cite{minisuperspace,minisuperspace2,minisuperspace3,minisuperspace4}. For increasing $K_0$ phase C is bounded by a first-order phase transition to phase A, where the time correlation between the consecutive slices is absent. For smaller $\Delta$ phase C has a phase transition to a so-called bifurcation phase, where one observes the appearance of local condensations of geometry around some vertices of the triangulation \cite{bifurcation,bifurcation2,bifurcation3,bifurcation4}. The phase transition is in this case of second or higher order. For still lower $\Delta$ the bifurcation phase is linked with the fourth phase, the so-called B phase, where one observes a spontaneous compactification of volume in the time direction, \jgs{such that} effectively all volume condenses in one time slice. The phase transition between the bifurcation phase and the B phase is also of second or higher order \cite{ours3}. The behavior of the model near continuous phase transitions is crucial if one wants to  define a {\it physical} large-volume limit (a careful discussion of this can be found in \cite{CDTRG}). In this respect phase C stands out, the reason being that only in this phase the large scale structure of the average geometry is ``observed'' (via the Monte Carlo simulations) to be four-dimensional, isotropic and homogeneous,  and one can define an infrared  semiclassical limit with a correct scaling of the physical volume \cite{ours2,minisuperspace}. Via phase C we thus want a renormalization group flow in the bare coupling constant space towards an UV fixed point (the asymptotic safety fixed point), while keeping physical observables fixed. The natural endpoint of such a flow would be a point in the phase diagram where several phases meet. In the early studies it was speculated that  there could be  a quadruple point, where all four phases meet. Unfortunately the numerical algorithm used was not efficient in this most physically interesting range in the coupling constant space. As a consequence it was not possible to analyze the model in this range.

The present article discusses a new formulation of the model, where the spatial topology is assumed to be that of a  three-torus ($T^3$) \cite{torus1,torus2,torus3}, rather than that of a three-sphere, which was the
topology used in all the former studies.
It was found that the four phases in this case are the same as in the spherical model, with the position of phase boundaries shifted a little~\footnote{This may be a finite-size effect. The diagram was determined by analyzing systems with only one volume.}. The additional, important
bonus in this  new formulation comes from the fact that the physically interesting region in the bare coupling constant space mentioned above
becomes numerically accessible with the standard algorithm used in the earlier studies. We could then observe that the speculative quadruple
point, maybe not surprisingly,   separates into two triple points,
connected by a phase transition line between phase C and the B phase, and not separated by the bifurcation phase (see Fig.~\ref{phasestructure}). An important point is that we now
have access to these triple points directly from phase C and it is thus possible to have a renormalization group flow from the infrared to the potential UV fixed point entirely in the ``physical'' C phase.
\begin{figure}[ht!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth]{phasestructure_160k.pdf}
\caption{The phase structure of CDT for a fixed number of time slices $T = 4$ and average lattice volume $\bar{N}_{41} = 160\mathrm{k}$. Blue color represents the bifurfaction
phase, black color the crumpled phase, green color the C phase and
orange color the A phase.}
\label{phasestructure}
\end{figure}

The phases of the model were identified for a system with $\bar N_{41} = 160\mathrm{k}$, analyzing the structure of geometry at the grid of points in the coupling constant plane shown in Fig.~\ref{phasestructure}, the different phases represented by dots with different colors. In the presented phase diagram the precise position of phase transitions was not determined. This requires a careful study of the infinite volume limit and scaling of the position of phase transition lines with the lattice volume. The most interesting region is the one separating phase C and B where we may observe two triple points.
The present paper is the first step in the analysis of this most physically interesting region. We will perform a detailed analysis of the behavior of the model at $K_0=4.0$ in the neighborhood of the phase transition line. We will try to determine the order of the phase transition at this point. We will show that the transition seems to be a first order transition. The results presented in this article show that the most interesting
region in the bare parameter space can successfully be analyzed using the standard Monte Carlo algorithm used in the earlier simulations.

\section{The phase structure of CDT}

As mentioned, the phase diagram of the CDT model with a toroidal spatial topology permits us to investigate the properties of the model in an important range of the bare coupling constants, previously inaccessible to numerical measurements. For systems with a spherical spatial topology a detailed analysis of the phase diagram was performed following two lines in the bare coupling constant space. These were the vertical line with varying $\Delta$ at $K_0 = 2.2$ and the horizontal line at $\Delta=0.6$. In the first case it was possible to analyze the phase transition between C and bifurcation phases and between the bifurcation and B phases. In the second case a transition between the C and A phases was studied (see \cite{AC} for recent results). The belief coming from the analysis of the spherical case was that if we decrease the value of  $\Delta$ for a fixed value of $K_0$ we necessarily move from C phase to the bifurcation phase and only, for still lower $\Delta$, to the B phase. However, changing to toroidal spatial topology we discovered that this is not the case, probably also in the   spherical topology.
There exists a range of bare coupling constants where C and B phases are directly neighboring. This happens close to the $\Delta = 0$ line in the range of $K_0$ between, approximately, 3.5 and 4.5. One may expect the existence of two triple points (instead of the previously conjectured quadruple point): one triple point where C, A and B phases meet, and a second triple point  where C, bifurcation and B phases meet.
Finding the precise location of the triple points may be numerically more difficult than analyzing the generic transition between phase C and B. As a first step in the detailed analysis we have chosen to determine the position and the order of the phase transition between C and B phases along a vertical line at $K_0=4.0$. This is approximately in the middle between the position of the two triple points. Since the characteristic behavior in the two phases corresponds to different symmetries of the configurations (we have translational symmetry in time in the C phase and a spontaneously breaking of  this symmetry in the B phase) we expect a relatively large hysteresis when we cross the phase boundary. We want to find methods which make the hysteresis effect as small as possible. We also expect relatively large finite size effects. An important  point in the analysis will be to check how the hysteresis behaves when the system size goes to infinity.\\

The analysis presented in the paper is based on a study of systems with a fixed time period $T=4$ and different (almost) fixed volumes $N_{41}$.
In the earlier studies, it was shown that reducing the period $T$ does not produce significant finite-size effects \cite{AC}. On the other hand, in particular in the C phase, the average volume per time slice for a fixed total volume gets relatively large, which is very important. In the Monte Carlo simulations we enforce the lattice volume $N_{41}$ to fluctuate around a chosen value $\bar{N}_{41}$, so that the measured $\langle N_{41} \rangle = \bar{N}_{41}$. This is realized by adding to the Regge action (\ref{Action}) a volume-fixing term
\begin{equation}
    S_R \to S_R + \epsilon (N_{41}-\bar{N}_{41})^2.
\end{equation}
In the thermalization process it is essential to fine-tune the value of $K_4$ in such a way that one gets stability of the system volume. This is realized by letting the value of $K_4$ dynamically change by small steps, until the required stable situation is realized. If a value of $K_4$ is too high, we observe that system volume stabilizes below the target value $\bar{N}_{41}$. Similarly, if we take it too small, the volume will be too large. Only for $K_4 \approx K_4^{\crit}(\bar{N}_{41})$ fluctuations of volume are centered around $\bar{N}_{41}$ with the width controlled by $\epsilon$. During the thermalization part of the Monte Carlo simulations the algorithm tries to find the optimal value of $K_4$ for a given fixed set of parameters $K_0$, $\Delta$ and $\bar{N}_{41}$. The whole process of  measurements is organized in the following way:
\begin{itemize}

\item We start a sequence of thermalization runs at a set of $\Delta$ values in the neighborhood of the expected position of the phase transition. The initial configuration of the system is taken to be the small hyper-cubic configuration discussed in  reference \cite{torus1}. We choose the target volume $\bar{N}_{41}$ and let the system size grow towards
$\bar{N}_{41}$ and adapt the $K_4$ value from the guessed initial value. The initial $K_4$ can be chosen either a little below or a little above the guessed critical value.

\item We find that on the grid of $\Delta$ values we can determine  ranges corresponding to the appearance of two different phases, with a relatively sudden jump between the phases. In general the jump is observed between two neighboring values on the grid of $\Delta$. The corresponding values of $K_4$ are markedly different in the two phases. Typically the value is smaller for the C phase than for the B phase. We can determine the phase of the system by the measured values  of the order parameters
(see later for definitions), which are very different in the
different phases.

\item The value of $\Delta$ where the phase transition is observed depends on the initial value of $K_4$ used in the thermalization process. As a consequence, we observe in general two values $\Delta^{\crit}_{low}(N_{41})$ and $\Delta^{\crit}_{high}(N_{41})$. Both values are determined with the accuracy depending on the grid of $\Delta$.

\item We repeat the analysis on a finer grid, which covers the range where we observed phase transitions. We found the most effective procedure is to restart the Monte Carlo evolution from the same small initial configuration as before, but using as the initial values of $K_4$ the ones determined for the C or the B phase from earlier runs in the neighborhood of the transitions, corresponding to $\Delta^{\crit}_{low}(N_{41})$  or $\Delta^{\crit}_{high}(N_{41})$ respectively.

\item A finer grid permits to determine the two positions of the phase transition with better accuracy. The different position of jumps between the two phases ({\it low} or {\it high}) can be interpreted as the hysteresis effect  in a process where we slowly increase the value of the $\Delta$ parameter or slowly decrease its value. {\it We observe  that the size of the hysteresis for a particular choice of $\bar N_{41}$ does not decrease within reasonable thermalization times. By taking a finer grid in $\Delta$ we can only determine the end points of a hysteresis curve with a better accuracy}. We illustrate the situation in Fig.\  \ref{hysteresis}. The lines shown were obtained from the measured values of $\Delta$ and $K_4$ for $\bar{N}_{41}=160\mathrm{k}$.

\item In the range of  $\Delta$ values between $\Delta^{\crit}_{low}(N_{41})$ and $\Delta^{\crit}_{high}(N_{41})$, depending on the initial value of $K_4$ a system ends either in the B or C phase. This can be interpreted as a range of parameters, where the two phases may coexist. The distribution of the values of the order parameters (to be defined below), characteristic for the two phases, is very narrow.
As a consequence, a tunnelling between the two phases is never observed after we have reached a
``stable'' ensemble of configurations \atg{in the thermalization stage}.
\end{itemize}

\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth]{hysteresisATG.pdf}
\caption{The plot illustrates the hysteresis measured during simulations for the target volume $\bar N_{41}=160\mathrm{k}$. The green and blue dots correspond to the location of the phase C side of the phase-transition,  while the red and black dots correspond to the location of the phase B side of the phase-transition. The same colors will be used in the next plots, where we compare  results for different volumes.}
\label{hysteresis}
\end{figure}

The thermalization path chosen above means in practice, that in the beginning, the system grows in a relatively random way from the initially small configuration to the desired target volume $\bar N_{41}$ and then the geometry evolves to a stable range in the configuration space. The first step can be interpreted as a step in the direction typical for the phase A, where correlations between the spatial configurations  in the consecutive time slices are small or absent. Only afterwards we reach the domains corresponding to the two phases we study.
As a consequence, we expect that the described method will be very well suited to the future analysis of the triple point involving the A phase.

The behavior of the pseudo-critical values $K_4^{\crit}(N_{41})$ is very similar to that of $\Delta^{\crit}(N_{41})$. This \jj{can be seen}  in Fig. \ref{deltak4}, where we show the values of $K_4^{\crit}(N_{41})$ plotted as a function of $\Delta^{\crit}(N_{41})$. On both sides of the hysteresis the dependence is approximately linear, which means that values of  \jgs{both pseudo-critical parameters ($K_4^{\crit}$ and $\Delta^{\crit}$) scale in the same way with the lattice volume $\bar N_{41}$}.
Extrapolating the
lines to a point where they cross permits to determine values for $K_4^{\mathrm{\crit}}$ and $\Delta^{\mathrm{\crit}}$ in the limit $\bar N_{41} \to \infty$. The fit \jj{gives} $K_4^{\mathrm{\crit}}(\infty) = 1.095 \pm 0.001$ and $\Delta^{\mathrm{\crit}}(\infty) = 0.022 \pm 0.002 $.
\atg{The errors on this and other plots are the estimated statistical errors and include the grid spacing for $\Delta$.}

\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth]{K4_Delta.pdf}
\caption{The pseudo-critical value $K^{\crit}_4(N_{41})$ as a function of $\Delta^{\crit}(N_{41})$. \jgs{The data points measured for increasing lattice volume $\bar N_{41}$ are going from left to right.} \atg{Center of the black ellipse corresponds to the estimated position of $(\Delta^{\mathrm{\crit}}(\infty)  \ , \ K_4^{\mathrm{\crit}}(\infty) )$
and its radii corresponds to the estimated uncertainties.} Colors of the fits follow the convention used in Fig.\ \ref{hysteresis}. }
\label{deltak4}
\end{figure}
Although the size of the hysteresis shrinks with volume $\bar N_{41}$, the plots indicate that the shrinking process is relatively slow and thus in order to get rid of the hysteresis one should use extremely large lattice volumes, not tractable numerically. The dependence of
 \jgs{$\Delta^{\crit}$
 on the lattice volume}, ranging between $\bar N_{41} = 40\mathrm{k}$ and $\bar N_{41} = 1600\mathrm{k}$ is presented in Fig.\ \ref{deltafita}.
As it was explained above, the plot contains \jgs{four}
sets of data corresponding to the \jgs{four different points describing the hysteresis (see Fig.~\ref{hysteresis}).}
\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth]{Delta_Volume.pdf}
\caption
\jgs{The pseudo-critical value $\Delta^{\crit}$ as a function of $\bar N_{41}$.  The solid lines are (one parameter) fits of formula (\ref{delta_v}) with fixed common values of $\gamma = 1.64$ and $\Delta^{\mathrm{\crit}}(\infty) = 0.022$. Colors of the fits follow the convention used in Fig.\ \ref{hysteresis}.}
\atg{
The dashed line shows a common fit of all data points to the scaling function (\ref{delta_v}) with enforced value of $\gamma = 1$ and $\Delta^{\crit}(\infty)=0.022$.}
}
\label{deltafita}
\end{figure}
The data points can be fitted with the curve
\begin{equation}
\Delta^{\crit}(\bar N_{41})= \Delta^{\crit}(\infty) - A \cdot \bar N_{41}^{-1/\gamma}.
\label{delta_v}
\end{equation}
The best fit for the combined sets of data \jgs{(with fixed $\Delta^{\crit}(\infty) = 0.022$ determined  above)} was obtained for \dn{$\gamma=1.64\pm 0.18$}.
\atg{
An alternative fit with $\gamma = 1$ (and the same value of $\Delta^{\crit}(\infty)$) is excluded as can be seen in Fig. \ref{deltafita} (the dashed line).}
The value $\gamma =1$ would be a strong evidence for a first order transition. \jgs{ The fits were based on data measured for
volumes ranging from $\bar N_{41} = \jj{40}\mathrm{k}$ to $\bar N_{41} = 720\mathrm{k}$.

\jj{The} largest volume $\bar N_{41} = $1600k was used only for checking consistency with the extrapolation

 The analogous plot presenting the four
 \jgs{sets} of the pseudo-critical $K_4^{\crit}(\bar N_{41})$ values for the same range of volumes is shown in Fig. \ref{k4v}.
 The experimental points are again well fitted by the formula
\begin{equation}
K_4^{\crit}(\bar N_{41}) = K_4^{\crit}(\infty) - B \cdot \bar N_{41}^{-1/\gamma},
\label{k4_v}
\end{equation}
where the measured value of \dn{$\gamma= 1.62 \pm 0.25$} agrees well with the result obtained for $\Delta^{\crit}$. The fits are represented by curves with different colors, which \jgs{again} follow the convention used in Fig.\ \ref{hysteresis}. On the scale used in this plot the green and blue curves practically overlap.
\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth]{K4_Volume.pdf}
\caption{The pseudo-critical value $K_4^{\crit}$ as a function of $\bar N_{41}$. \jgs{The solid lines are (one parameter) fits of formula (\ref{k4_v}) with fixed common values of $\gamma = 1.62$ and $K_4^{\mathrm{\crit}}(\infty) = 1.095.$} Colors of the fits follow the convention used in Fig.\ \ref{hysteresis}. }
\label{k4v}
\end{figure}

\section{Order parameters}

To identify the phases of CDT with toroidal spatial topology we follow methods used in the previous studies. These are based on the analysis of  order parameters which have a  different behavior in the different phases. We use  order parameters which characterize both global and local properties of the simplicial manifolds. The global order parameters were called $\mathcal{O}_1$ and $\mathcal{O}_2$, where
\begin{equation}
\mathcal{O}_1 = \frac{N_0}{N_{41}},\quad \mathcal{O}_2 = \frac{N_{32}}{N_{41}}.
\end{equation}
In each phase the distributions of $N_0$ and $N_{32}$ are very narrow, and practically Gaussian. Phases B and C are characterized by very different average values for the two distributions.
The dependence of the order parameters $\mathcal{O}_1$ and $\mathcal{O}_2$ on $\bar{N}_{41}$ at the endpoints of the hysteresis is presented in Fig.\ \ref{op1_diff}. The colors follow the convention used in Fig.\ \ref{hysteresis}.
\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth]{OP1_V.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth]{OP2_V.pdf}
\caption{The order-parameters $\mathcal{O}_1$ and $\mathcal{O}_2$ as a function of $\bar{N}_{41}$  at the endpoints of the hysteresis. The colors correspond to the convention used in Fig.\ \ref{hysteresis}.}
\label{op1_diff}
\end{figure}

The data presented on the plots correspond for each $\bar N_{41}$ to the four values of the $\Delta^{\crit}(N_{41})$ points, following again the notation of Fig.\ \ref{hysteresis}. It is seen that although both pseudo-critical values $K_4^{\crit}(N_{41})$ and $\Delta^{\crit}(N_{41})$ become very close for increasing $\bar N_{41}$, {\it this is not the case for the order parameters, which in fact behave in a way similar to that characterizing the first order transition.} It means that a transition between the B and C phases becomes very rapid. On the other hand, due to the observed hysteresis,
the method used in this analysis chooses a position of measured values for the order parameters slightly away from the {\it true} transition point (located inside the hysteresis region) and thus in fact we were not able to perform stable simulations exactly at $K_4^{\crit}(N_{41})$ and $\Delta^{\crit}(N_{41})$ corresponding to such a transition point \footnote{We are currently working on the numerical algorithm which would enable tunneling between both sides of the hysteresis region in a single Monte Carlo run and thus enable to define a more precise position of the transition point.}.

A similar behavior is observed for the set of local order parameters $\mathcal{O}_3$ and $\mathcal{O}_4$ defined by
\begin{equation}
\mathcal{O}_3 = \sum_t (n_{t+1}- n_{t})^2,\quad \mathcal{O}_4 = \max o_p .
\end{equation}
Here $n_t$ is the number of
\jj{tetrahedra shared by $\{4,1\}$ and $\{1,4\}$ four-simplices with bases at time $t$}
and \dn{$\sum_t n_t=\sum_t \frac{1}{2}N_{41}(t)=\frac{1}{2}N_{41}$}. $\max o_p$ is the maximal order of a vertex in a triangulation. The typical behavior of these two order parameters is expected to be different in phases B and C. Phase B is characterized by having a
macroscopic fraction of the four-volume  concentrated at
a single spatial slice corresponding to some time $t$ (in the sense that almost all $\{4,1\}$ and $\{1,4\}$ four-simplices have four vertices at this spatial slice).
This  is accompanied by the appearance of two singular vertices located at times $t\pm 1$ and linked to a macroscopic number of four-simplices in a triangulation. As a consequence, in phase B \atg{$\frac{\mathcal{O}_3}{\bar{N}_{41}^{2}}$ and $\frac{\mathcal{O}_4 }{\bar{N}_{41}}$} should be of order one. In  phase C there is no such degeneracy and  for large $\bar N_{41}$ \atg{both $\frac{\mathcal{O}_3}{\bar{N}_{41}^{2}}$ and $\frac{\mathcal{O}_4 }{\bar{N}_{41}}$} should approach zero. The  behavior of these two order parameters is presented in Fig.\ \ref{op4_diff}.
\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth]{OP3_V.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth]{OP4_V.pdf}
\caption{The order-parameters $ \sfrac{ \mathcal {O}_3 }{\bar{N}_{41}^{2}}$ and $ \sfrac{\mathcal{O}_4 }{\bar{N}_{41}}$ as a function of $\bar{N}_{41}$ at the endpoints of the hysteresis. The colors correspond to the convention used in Fig. \ref{hysteresis}.}
\label{op4_diff}
\end{figure}

\section{Conclusion and Discussion}

In the present article we made a detailed study of the phase transition observed between the phase C and the phase B at the value of the dimensionless gravitational coupling
constant $K_0 = 4.0$. The transition appears to be located
close to $\Delta = 0$. The identification of this region, and the possibility that one can move all the way to the triple points of the phase diagram, staying entirely inside the ``physical'' C phase, is a good news for the renormalization group program started in \cite{CDTRG} (and
temporarily put on hold by the discovery of the bifurcation phase). The renormalization group analysis is probably the cleanest way to connect CDT lattice gravity approach to asymptotic safety. The analysis of the relevant coupling constant region was made possible by switching from spherical spatial topology to toroidal spatial topology. In this first study of the interesting region we positioned ourselves in the middle of the B-C phase transition line, between the two triple endpoints and from the analysis of the Monte Carlo data we conclude that the transition is most likely of first order. Since endpoints of phase transition lines often are of higher order, the triple points might well be of second order and one of them could then serve as a UV fixed point for a quantum theory of
gravity. We are actively pursuing this line of research.\\
Let us end by some remarks about our quantum gravity model,
viewed as a statistical system of four-dimensional geometries.
Despite the almost trivial action (\ref{Action}), the model
has an amazingly rich phase structure, with four different
phases, each characterized by very different dominating geometries. In addition, some of the phase transitions
have quite unusual characteristics. The transition
between phase B and the bifurcation phase is a second
order transition \cite{ours3}, but superficially, for a
finite volume, it looked like a first order transition. However,
analyzing the behavior as a function of the increasing lattice volume
the first order nature faded away. Moving towards larger values
of $K_0$, i.e.\ towards the region we have been investigating
in this article, the transition became more and more like a
first order transition. With the spherical spatial topology
used in \cite{ours3} one could not get to the region investigated in  the present article, but it is natural to conjecture that passing the triple point  moving from the bifurcation-B line to the C-B line, the transition changes from second order to first order. However, this first order
transition is still somewhat unusual. Firstly, it has kept the
characteristics of the second order bifurcation-B transition
that the finite size behavior of the pseudo-critical points,
given by eqs.\ (\ref{delta_v}) and (\ref{k4_v}) have non-trivial exponents $\gamma$. Secondly, the hysteresis gap goes to zero
with increasing volume, which is a non-standard behavior in
the case of a first order transition. However, the jumps
of the order parameters seem volume independent and that is
the main reason that we classify the transition as being
a first order transition. The  large finite size effects
we observe might be related to the global changes of dominant
configurations which take place between phase C and phase B,
and these global rearrangements might, for finite volumes, have
a different ``phase-space'' in the case of spherical and toroidal topologies. That might explain why our Monte Carlo
algorithm can access the B-C transition only in the case of
toroidal topology. The statistical theory of geometries
is a fascinating area which is almost unexplored for spacetime
dimensions larger than two.

\section{Acknowledgements}
DN would like to thank  Renate Roll the fruitful discussions and hospitality during his stay at Radboud University in Nijmegen. JGS acknowledges support from the grant UMO-2016/23/ST2/00289 from the National Science centre, Poland. JA acknowledges support from the Danish Research Council grant {\it Quantum Geometry}, grant 7014-00066B. AG and DN acknowledges support by the National Science Centre, Poland, under grant no. 2015/17/D/ST2/03479.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


The people of this country will soon have the opportunity to derail not only the Tories but the entire neoliberal project in Europe.
If in June we vote for Brexit the Tories will be thrown into chaos and Cameron's government, little more than a year old, would be dead in the water.
The entire EU will also be thrown into crisis. Nobody has ever left the EU – it would set an example that others could follow.
We should not line up with Cameron, the CBI and most of the ruling class and pretend the EU is progressive. It isn't. We must be honest about the real nature of the EU and vote to Leave.
The EU is an inherently neoliberal institution. Neoliberalism is written into the treaties that govern the Union's workings and which define European law.
The EU and the European Central Bank are the greatest driving forces of neoliberalism on the continent – a process which has massively accelerated since 2008. This built-in neoliberalism will threaten any future left government in Britain.
Any attempts at renationalisation of rail or the utilities will immediately fall foul of European laws which restrict state intervention in the economy.
The EU exists to prevent progressive change. Most of the left used to understand this, and which is why, during the referendum 1975 on membership of the EEC, a young Jeremy Corbyn supported half the Labour cabinet, led by Tony Benn, in calling for a vote to leave.
They understood that any serious programme of change would quickly come into conflict with Brussels.
The passionate embrace by Labour of first the EEC and then the EU was a product of the move to the right by the party. It marked the abandonment of the idea of serious progressive reform and the acceptance of neoliberalism.
Any future clash with the EU will be brutal. Look at what they did to Greece last year. Size will not protect us. In 2012 the EU and ECB orchestrated the ousting of the government of Italy, a member of the G8.
The EU is fundamentally undemocratic and it is not reformable.
It lacks any real democratic institutions. The European Parliament is a powerless talking shop. Real power lies with the unelected bureaucracy headed by the Commission which takes its orders from big national governments.
There are those on the left who argue that, though it is is flawed, we have to stay in the EU to reform it. They are silent on how we are to do this though. The fact is there is no way.
Some argue we must not line up with Ukip, the Tory right and racists in voting to leave.
Yet voting to remain in Europe is to vote for the current racist immigration controls which flow from the free movement of citizens within the Union, but exclusion of citizens from the rest of the world, a fact which hits hard immigrants from the Britain's former colonies.
At the walls of Fortress Europe the consequences are felt even more harshly.
Under the EU's aegis thousands have already died trying to cross the Mediterranean. In future those that do land will be deported straight back to where they came from. If the current plans are implemented.
As for the EU citizens currently resident in the UK, Cameron is already cracking down on them, with the agreement of Europe. His ability to do so any further, though, is limited by the fact that 1.3 millions Britons live on the continent.
The EU has kept the peace, we are also told. Yet since the creation of the EU in 1992 there has been a series of wars in the east of the continent, wars which the EU has been an active party to. It still runs Kosovo and Bosnia as colonial protectorates.
Membership of the EU has increasingly also become identical with that of Nato. Both are expansionist blocs which are increasingly coming into conflict with Russia. Their push ever eastwards is a force for instability and threatens ever greater conflict on the continent.
We will lose our rights if we vote to leave, it is said. But the rights we have, we fought for, mostly through trade unions. It is odd to hear them now saying that we have Europe to thank.
Talk of the EU as the protector of workers' rights reflects a gross ignorance of reality: the EU and ECB are forcing the removal of workers' rights, the assault in Greece, is an ominous pointer to the future.
Some of the talk of rights is also either due to misunderstanding or deliberate obfuscation. The European Court of Human Rights and its supporting convention pre-date and are separate from the EEC/EU and would not be affected by leaving it.
We have nothing to gain from continued membership of the EU. The 'left' arguments for remaining in it do not stand up.
The EU is an inherently neo-liberal institution, it is not democratic, and it is irreformable. It is not a bulwark against racism: Fortress Europe is generating racism.
It is a key driving force of neoliberalism across the continent and will be a block against any future progressive government in this country.
On 23 June we will have a chance to strike a blow against the EU and all its doings. Exit would strengthen people fighting back across the continent. It would send the powers that be – whether in London, Brussels or Berlin – into crisis.


text:
NHS: Pay:Written question - 70374
Asked by Catherine McKinnell
(Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Asked on: 13 April 2017
NHS: Pay
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to paragraph 27 of the NHS Pay Review Body: 30th Report, Cm9440, what assessment he has made of the (a) implications for his policies and (b) sustainability of the finding that the default strategy to deal with significant increases in patient demand within a slowly increasing budget is by expecting NHS staff to work more intensively, in more stressful working environments, for pay that continues to decrease in real terms.
Answered by: Mr Philip Dunne
Answered on: 25 April 2017
The dedication and sheer hard work of our National Health Service staff is absolutely crucial to delivering world-class care for patients. We know the entire health care team always put patients first and want to know they will have the right number of colleagues working alongside them in hospital or in the community.
NHS organisations spend around two thirds of their entire expenditure on pay – ensuring the NHS has the staff it relies crucially on, controlling pay and making every penny count for the benefit of patients. We are investing £21.9 billion in nominal case terms and £10 billion in real terms to fund the NHS's own plan for the future.
The inbuilt pressure of incremental pay for Agenda for Change staff is over £580 million a year, on top of annual pay awards.
We know pay restraint is challenging for staff, but a longitudinal study carried out by the Department on the earnings of Agenda for Change staff found that the total earnings of staff employed in the NHS in 2010 and still employed in 2015 increased by an average of between 1.7% and 2.9% per year, depending on staff group.
The average annual Consumer Price Index figure over the same period was 2.4%.
It is also important to point out that average earnings of NHS staff as a whole remains well above the national average salary for 2015 of £27,500 a year and has increased by more than annual pay awards.
The 2016 NHS Staff Survey shows that despite the challenges overall staff engagement continues to improve for the majority of Agenda for Change staff.
The Department's longitudinal study can be found at Annex B of its evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body 'Earnings change for Agenda for Change contracted employees 2010-2015 – a longitudinal study' :
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/information-for-the-nhsprb-pay-round-2017-to-2018


text:
Loudwater may refer to:

Loudwater, Buckinghamshire, a village near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
Loudwater, Hertfordshire, a village in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
An alternative name for the river Bruinen, part of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium

See also

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The border region between Portugal and Spain is home to some fabulous castles and wonderful rolling scenery.
It's also extremely unspoilt and the roads here are about as quiet as you'll find anywhere in Europe.
Most of the small towns and villages in this part of Portugal often look as if they've hardly changed in centuries and – standing on the granite battlements of their castles – it's easy to imagine yourself back in mediaeval times.
This ride originally involved just the ride from Belmonte to Sortelha (see below) but I've expanded it to provide the option of a longer circuit that also takes in Sabugal.
Belmonte and Sabugal are both attractive places but Sortelha is one of the stars of this region – and is distant enough from the main tourist trail that you may well get the place to yourself.
Cycling to Sortelha can involve a reasonable climb but it's well worth the effort. Perched on a hilltop overlooking the wild country of Portugal's northern borders is a castle that looks like it's straight from the pages of some historical romance or fantasy epic.
Best of all, you can wander the ramparts to your heart's content.
Just be prepared for the lack of safety barriers!
Total distance is about 65km (40 miles). Most of the terrain is fairly gentle. Heading towards Sabugal there's one climb but it's long and not that steep. Approaching Sortelha from the east (Sabugal) also avoids any real climbing.
It's also possible to do a shorter circuit (see the second map) that leaves out Sabugal. Total distance in this case is only 38km (about 24 miles). The downside is that the ascent to Sortelha is much steeper from the west. It's quite a stiff climb – but you do get the pleasure of coming back down it again!
The nearest big towns to Belmonte are Covilhã (22km south) and Guarda (25km north) where you can find a good range of accommodation, supermarkets etc.
Belmonte and Sabugal both provide some smaller shops, plus cafes, restaurants and a few accommodation options. Sortelha's cafes and restaurants are a bit more touristy but it also has a number of turismo rural venues offering rooms in its old houses that could make for an extremely atmospheric overnight stop.
The ride starts and ends outside the town hall in Belmonte, a pretty small town with a selection of fine old buildings and a restored Jewish quarter that was once one of the largest in Portugal.
Belmonte is also the birthplace of Pedro Álvares Cabral, the 'discoverer' of Brazil, who was born in the 13th century castle.
Apart from some attractive buildings and small squares, one of Belmonte's other charms is its position. It's a hilltop town with fantastic views west to the Serra de Estrela and east to the unspoilt and rolling rural landscape.
From the town hall, follow Rua Pedro Alvares Cabral south and then drop down to join the 'main' road at the roundabout. Turn right towards the Covilha road and then left on the N18-3 towards the railways station at Belmonte Gare.
Bear right at the next fork towards Carvalhal Formoso – going to the right of the hill ahead of you.
At the junction with the N233 (about 7km from Belmonte), turn left for Sabugal. It's all very rural and pretty around here – and you're unlikely to encounter much traffic at all.
You're following a small valley for the next 6km and the terrain is more or less flat. After the bridge, you'll be climbing for the next 13km or so (about 280m of ascent) through a mixture of farmland, olive groves and scrubby forest. The climbing is all quite steady though.
You've then got a run down for the next 6km to Sabugal, with its riverside setting and restored castle. There's not a huge amount to the town but it's all quite pleasant and the castle's high walls provide a good vantage point. Plus there are various options for lunch!
Sabugal also makes a good base for visiting the 16,000-hectare Serra da Malcata Nature Reserve, which lies to the south. There are only a limited number of sealed roads through the park but it's a beautiful area – home to wild boar, eagles etc. It's also on the way to Penamacor, another hilltop town with a picturesque but ruined castle.
Leaving Sabugal, return over the river, head back south again on the N233 and then take the first right. There's a slight climb to get to Sortelha – another 13km away – but it's all quite gentle and very quiet.
Turn left in Sortelha to get to the castle and original walled town. Allow lots of time for wandering the old town and the castle's fabulous walls – unless you've got vertigo, in which case you'll definitely want to stay at ground level.
Leaving Sortelha you're going to drop quickly – about 180m in 3km. If you're coming the other way, this is quite a testing climb with the toughest part at the top.
Coming down from Sortelha, you need to take a tight turn to the right about 2km after leaving the village. Drop down into the bottom of the valley and then take the next left.
This road winds through the countryside and around the base of some hills but stays pretty much on the level. You'll pass the village of Benada to your right.
After about 8.5km (from the tight right turn coming down from Sortelha), you turn right. At the hamlet of Olas, fork left and then stick on this road all the way back to Belmonte.


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For more information on the Green Team contact Anne Baker at abaker@republicservices.com or check out their webpage at http://fphe.org/green-team.html.
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