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The best studies can change the prevailing narrative on a topic and show off the authors' and firms' special and essential expertise. And that, of course, produces leads.
To display their expertise and attract the attention of potential clients, many B2B companies spend heavily on research studies. IBM makes big investments in C-suite surveys. Accenture, Deloitte and other consulting and IT services firms have collectively ponied up millions over the years on researching trends and writing reports. Even big law firms increasingly publish studies to demonstrate their knowledge and entice new clients into the fold.
There's a good reason for this: The best studies can change the prevailing narrative on a topic and show off the authors' and firms' special and essential expertise. And that, of course, produces leads. Yet too many such studies don't do the job they're intended to. Despite all the money spent on them, these studies go to market and generate little press or client interest. Or they produce headlines for a few days and are soon forgotten.
Why does this happen? A big reason is because B2B firms don't always explore the right issues, either probing the same territory covered by other, longer-established studies, or failing to address issues more relevant to their prospective audience. Often, the research questions don't enable the firm to display its expertise as they don't reflect its core service offerings. Sometimes, firms make all three mistakes in one study. That kind of study is a waste of time and money.
From our experience, the best thought leadership studies are designed to address issues that meet three tests:
- There is "white space" on the topic: issues that haven't been researched before or have been but still lack deep and novel insights.
- They are client hot buttons: issues on which clients are dying for insights.
- They are company sweet spots: areas in which the firm has deep expertise and service offerings.
When your study topics pass those tests, they're on target.
Yet we've seen too many studies that don't meet all three tests, and even some that don't meet any. That generally happens when a firm undertakes research just to show its target customers that it understands the most strategic issues in their sector. We can identify with the impulse to reflect the clients' concerns, but that's not enough to guide the design of a thought leadership study.
Consider a supply chain consulting firm that wants to grow beyond consumer packaged goods and retail. Believing its expertise also applies to industrial goods, the firm decides to survey heavy equipment manufacturers on all their biggest strategic challenges. The firm's aim is to show it understands the sector's most fundamental issues – many of which (perhaps even most) may have little to do with the supply chain. By ignoring or giving little space in the survey to the topic that is its sweet spot – supply chain design and operations – the study is likely to uncover strategic issues that have been covered by others with deeper expertise and experience. What's more, it won't allow the firm to show off the expertise it does have and for which it is known: the supply chain.
Most likely, the study's readers, industrial equipment manufacturers, already will know about the issues the study addresses, and if they're struggling with them, they'll turn to firms known for their expertise in their sector, not a supply chain consultant.
And the supply chain firm just sent the money it spent on the study down the drain.
Too many thought leadership studies fit into this "Let's show them that we know them" category. Instead, the attitude needs to be "Let's show them what we know on the issues they would hire us to solve."
That requires designing thought leadership studies to meet all three tests of market white space, client hot button and firm sweet spot. Here's how to do that well.
Meeting the Three Tests
Market white space is a topic that hasn't been explored before (but is a client issue), or hasn't been explored adequately enough to produce a solution. The best way to find white space is to begin by conducting secondary research that looks at what competitors have published on the topic in a recent period (the last 2-3 years), and what non-competitors competing for mindshare in that space have published.
List the key findings of each study. Then draw up a list of issues they didn't explore, well or at all. When we did this for Tata Consultancy Services' seven Global Trend Studies series on digital topics since 2011 (one of which is here), we found white space even though competitors had conducted studies on each topic (artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, social media, and more). We also looked at studies from firms TCS didn't compete against — from business schools, research firms, and other players — given that those studies nonetheless competed for mindshare.
Our white space analysis helped TCS focus its research on issues where insights were scarce: e.g., how the best users of technology were different from the worst; the operational and financial impact of those technology initiatives on the business, and how technologies were used in key business functions such as sales, marketing, service and R&D. By zooming in on these and other "white space" areas, TCS thought leaders gathered and analyzed data that produced big insights — big enough to impress a number of top-tier business publications (including Fortune magazine here) and Harvard Business Review (see this article and this article). In fact, TCS recently credited these studies as a factor in being ranked by Brand Finance (a brand valuation firm) as having the third most valuable global brand in the IT services industry this year.
All to say that knowing what aspects of a topic other entities have explored is crucial. That will show you where the white space is (if there is any). But your study will still need to meet the other two tests before you start investing.
After white space comes client hot buttons. These are the issues on which your clients are dying for insights. Good ways to identify hot buttons include doing content analysis of topics reported in key trade publications, speeches at industry conferences, and social media topics that are trending in the sector.
As for your sweet spots, your ability to draw upon a deep well of expertise is a big advantage in thought leadership research. We've seen some B2B firms use research to put a stake in a new market, but without the resources to follow through. They figure they'll work that out after they generate the business. However, this rarely works, in our experience. A thought leadership research study should come after a firm has decided to enter a new market and assembled some of the expertise it will need to serve that market.
Good things tend to happen when research studies score well on these three tests. With the market dying for insights on a topic, competitors not offering much, and your firm possessing deep knowledge on the issue, the research is off to a great start because you're starting with the right topic.
If your firm wants to become a premier and reliable authority on a topic, you should consider launching a regular series of studies, designing the research so that you can plot trends over time and create insightful frameworks that build on prior frameworks. I'll examine all that in a future post.
Originally published 02/23/17


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Amazon's End Of Summer Sale, which starts today, sees an "impressive" and "great on-the-go" pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones in the firing line of a huge discount.
While Prime Day offered discounts on older pairs of Bose headphones, here we have a deal on a newer model. The Bose QuietComfort 35 II, which have only just got a newer sibling in the Noise Cancelling Headphone 700s, have now been reduced to just £259* – £70 less than the price we reviewed them at.
Bose QuietComfort 35 II noise-cancelling headphones
£330 £259 at Amazon
Impressive wireless, noise-cancelling smart headphones that are great on-the-go. At this price, they make for excellent companions.
These Boses surface bags of sonic detail, boast impressive noise-cancellation and have Google Assistant integration for hands-free voice control. They certainly live up to the 'comfort' part of their name, and you can't argue with their battery life (20 hours with a wireless connection, or 40 hours of just noise-cancellation).
*However, while this is a generous discount offered by Amazon, do be aware that the Boses can actually be picked up for even less at Exceptional AV, which at the time of writing lists them at an even juicier £233, free delivery included.
Save 20% on Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K in Amazon Summer Sale
Amazon Summer Sale: save 25% on LG 4K TVs

subset: commoncrawl


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I'm going to move my system to another room and have more flexibilty in component location. I have two amps, both Perreaux pmf1150b's powering Magnepan mgIII's. What is better: having the each amp near each speaker with short speaker cables and long interconnects to the preamp -or- shorter interconnects and long speaker cables to each speaker?
Dip in and out HERE


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Specially cast brass nameplates had been applied to the "Simplex" locomotive built by Motor Rail Ltd of Bedford (as their works number 8874) for the War Department in 1944. The 20 hp locomotive had been fitted with a wooden body when it was bought by the LCLR for use at its original site in Humberston near Grimsby, where it was named "Major", regularly operating passenger services until closure in 1985. When the line relocated to the Skegness Water Leisure Park and reopened in 2009, it was chosen to haul the inaugural trains.
The late Major "Tubby" Robins took on the role of President of the LCLR's Historic Vehicles Trust, which was set up to preserve First World War trench railway vehicles, and offered a home for them to be restored and displayed in the Museum of Army Transport in Beverley, nearly 35 years ago.
The Trust had nameplates cast and presented one to "Tubby". It was displayed at his funeral last year.


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SAAC Spotlight: Taylor Rappaport
Get to know the KU Student-Athlete Advisory Council (SAAC) representatives each week through our SAAC Spotlight series. This week's spotlight is Taylor Rappaport, a senior baseball player from Riverside, California. SAAC is composed of appointed representatives from each of KU's 18 varsity teams and helps promote communication between faculty, administrators, coaches and student-athletes. SAAC members meet monthly to discuss ideas and issues pertinent to KU Athletics, the Big 12 and the NCAA.
SAAC Spotlight: Taylor Rappaport
SAAC Position: Big 12 SAAC Representative
Class: Senior
Major: Sports Management
Team: Baseball
Hometown: Riverside, California
Why did you choose KU?
When I took my visit to KU I fell in love with the university. The campus is amazing, the athletic facilities are unreal and everyone I came in contact with made me feel so welcome.
How did you choose your major?
Sports have always been my main focus so it was a no brianer to study them in college.
What's your favorite class you've taken at KU and why?
Personnel Management in Sport. The class is taught by my favorite professor, Dr. Bernie Kish. Dr. Kish is an amazing man and leader to learn from and he made every day interesting. I enjoyed hearing all of his "nuggets" of advice.
Where is the best place to sit for lectures?
I always liked to sit next to the wall so I had something to rest my head against.
What advice would you give to incoming KU freshmen?
To not take any day for granted and to not be afraid to try new things and meet new people. We are so unbelievably blessed here at KU and it is foolish to not enjoy every minute of it.
What do you think is the prettiest place on campus?
I have always thought the view from the Campinile looking down on Potter lake and the football stadium was beautiful.
Most underrated place to study on campus?
Baseball lounge or breezeway in-between wagnon and Allen field house.
What leadership skills have you learned while being a student-athlete at KU?
I've learned that everyone leads in different ways and the importance of understanding how you lead. I also learned the importance of setting a good example and just being a good friend/teammate.
What's the most important thing you've learned from balancing the demands of being a Division I student-athlete and academics?
Probably that it is important to prioritize things in your life. You have to find what is really important to you and focus on that. Its easy to get distracted in college so being able to say no to things is also huge.
Popular Culture
Favorite TV show…
Sons of Anarchy
Favorite movie…
The Sandlot
Favorite book and/or magazine…
Mens Health magazine
Favorite singer or musical group…
Blink 182 or The Eagles
Favorite pro sports team…
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Favorite athlete…
Nolan Ryan
The athlete I would most like to compete against…
Bo Jackson
Favorite athletic memory…
Throwing a complete game against number one team in league in high school to clinch playoff spot.
Team you're most looking forward to competing against…
Pre-game/match superstition/Pre-game/match ritual…
Always put my left cleat on first and always stepped onto pitchers mound left foot first.
In 10 years, I would like to be…
A firefighter-paramedic back home living at the beach.
Most prized possession…
My truck, I call her the Bernice the Black Beauty
I would like to trade places for a day with…
The President
Best piece of advice you've received…
Never let anyone tell you whats possible and impossible. At the end of the day, you dictate how successful you will be.
If you could have dinner with any 3 people (alive or dead), who would they be?
George W. Bush, Nolan Ryan and Bo Jackson
Dream event (non-sport or sport-related) you would like to attend…
Game 7 of world series where a perfect game is thrown.
Who tweets too much on your team?
I don't have twitter but im going to assume Jeremy Kravetz
Pop or Soda?
Cats or Dogs?
Early Bird or Night Owl?
Early Bird


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A new business trend, if your business is not online you are actually not into the business. With more number of users on the internet than the number of cars on the road and planes in the sky, the business definition has changed in the 21st century.
Something interesting is happening in the new era. Companies that control the interface between the consumer and the provider of the goods or services are in an incredibly valuable position.


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Quality, Longevity and Sustainability
There's a reason cedar has been used for centuries as a building material. It's long lasting and it comes from a truly renewable resource. Compared to other building materials such as steel, concrete, plastic and aluminum, wood is the most energy conserving and the only material that's 100% reusable, recyclable, biodegradable and renewable. When properly produced and treated, cedar roofing has high insulation, high tolerance against the elements, lasts a long time and continues to look great year after year.
Sustainable Forestry
In addition to producing roofing and siding products from a renewable resource, Watkins Sawmills is proud to abide by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) Custody Guidelines. These embody a stringent set of regularly updated requirements for responsible harvesting that track forest fiber content throughout the harvesting and manufacturing of forest-based products. Learn more about these guidelines at http://www.pefccanada.org/
Sustainable Production
No wood is wasted at Watkins Sawmills. When we manufacture our cedar shingles, all scrap and unused wood is chipped and sold to pulp and paper mills. These scraps are repurposed into various products ranging from high-grade magazine paper to fine sawdust used to create power for pulp mills. Thanks to practices like these, along with our strong principles of sustainable forestry, cedar has the smallest impact on the environment when compared to all the other roofing alternatives. Furthermore; cedar is one the most carbon neutral roofing materials.


text: Powder coating is often referred to as powder paint, when in fact it has nothing in common with paint, except that both powder and paint provide color to metal. Powder coating is a dry powder applied using static electricity. Then, the part is placed in one of our specially designed ovens to cure, and once removed, the true color can be seen. Powder Craft™ is the only powder coating facility to utilize all 5000 colors and texture variations. If it's metal, we can powder coat it!


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Award-winning creator of Epistory, Fishing Cactus, is back with the latest edition to the Typing Chronicles franchise in Nanotale.
Nanotale heavily relies upon fast and accurate typing skills. As players venture to the edges of the world, solve mysterious puzzles, and go up against vicious enemies to save a dying planet they will have to draw upon their typing skills.
We are excited to announce that the Typing Chronicles franchise will be revived this year with Nanotale. After receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback from Epistory fans, we decided it's time to create a sequel worthy of the franchise. Featuring the same typing gameplay mechanics, Nanotale builds upon the strengths of its predecessor and includes more RPG elements, as requested by our community, to fully round-out the experience. We hope fans of the genre will support us during this incredible year ahead! Bruno Urbain, CEO of Fishing Cactus
Players assume the role of novice Archivist Rosalind. The story of Nanotale, a world on the brink of destruction as the heart of magic siphons its last hits, unfolds on Rosalind's journey. Collecting various samples and cataloging mysterious occurrences Rosalind attempts to unravel the secrets surrounding the dying Earth.
A full-fledged RPG experience has been created for players as they find and interact with other characters, solve puzzles, and unleash magic to defeat enemies. The game's unique mechanics that require only keyboard input from the players typing skills has full control over all aspects of gameplay.
Nanotale is scheduled for a Q3 2019 launch on Steam. The game will be localized into English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Polish with voice-overs in English. For more information visit the Nanotale website at nanotalegame.com.
Fishing Cactus (@FishingCactus Twitter) is an independent game developer that consists of 20 individuals. The developer is based in Mons, Belgium with a company goal to showcase their originality and ability to thrive in a nation without many game development companies. Fishing Cactus is the developer of the award winning game Epistory.


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Following a report on Fintech published by the US Department of Treasury that encouraged the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to move forward with Fintech Charters, the OCC announced it has begun accepting applications for "national bank charters from non-depository financial technology companies engaged in the business of banking.
The Treasury report told the OCC to "further develop its special purpose national bank charter" and to "move forward with prudent and carefully considered applications for special purpose national bank charters."
The OCC Fintech Charter was first introduced by former Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry. The former public official was then lambasted (and sued) by both elected officials and traditional finance organizations. While the detractors cautioned against a Fintech Charter as increasing sector risk, the truth was never far from the surface as traditional finance firms feared competition and diminishing relevance in a Fintech fueled era of financial services.
Current Comptroller of the Currency Joseph M. Otting released a statement on the decision to proceed with the Fintech Charter;
"Over the past 150 years banks and the federal banking system have been the source of tremendous innovation that has improved banking services and made them more accessible to millions. The federal banking system must continue to evolve and embrace innovation to meet the changing customer needs and serve as a source of strength for the nation's economy. The decision to consider applications for special purpose national bank charters from innovative companies helps provide more choices to consumers and businesses, and creates greater opportunity for companies that want to provide banking services in America. Companies that provide banking services in innovative ways deserve the opportunity to pursue that business on a national scale as a federally chartered, regulated bank."
The OCC said its decision is consistent with bi-partisan government efforts at federal and state levels to promote economic opportunity and support innovation that can improve financial services to consumers, businesses, and communities. The decision was also documented in a policy statement and supplement to the OCC's Comptroller's Licensing Manual, published today.
In announcing the decision, the Licensing Manual Supplement states:
- Every application will be evaluated on its unique facts and circumstances.
- Fintech companies that apply and qualify for, and receive, special purpose national bank charters will be supervised like similarly situated national banks, to include capital, liquidity, and financial inclusion commitments as appropriate. Fintech companies will be expected to submit an acceptable contingency plan to address significant financial stress that could threaten the viability of the bank. The plan would outline strategies for restoring the bank's financial strength and options for selling, merging, or liquidating the bank in the event the recovery strategies are not effective.
- The expectations for promoting financial inclusion will depend on the company's business model and the types of planned products, services, and activities.
- New Fintech companies that become special purpose national banks will be subject to heightened supervision initially, similar to other de novo banks.
The OCC has the authority, expertise, processes, procedures, and resources necessary to supervise fintech companies that become national banks and to unwind a fintech company that becomes a national bank in the event that it fails.
- The OCC has statutory authority, regulations, and policies that govern its review and decision making with respect to chartering national banks, including special purpose national banks. That authority includes companies that engage in one of the core banking functions (paying checks, lending money, or taking deposits) and is described at 12 CFR 5.20(e)(1). That authority does not require the bank to take deposits within the meaning of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act and therefore would not require insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Additionally, qualifying Fintech companies also may apply for federal charters under the OCC's authority to charter full-service national banks and other special purpose banks, such as trust banks, banker's banks, and credit card banks.
Otting added that providing a path for Fintech companies to become national banks can make the federal banking system stronger by promoting economic growth and opportunity, modernization and innovation, and competition.
"It also provides consumers greater choice, can promote financial inclusion, and creates a more level playing field for financial services competition."


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Kenneth Ponders His Time as an Ona Intern
Kenneth joined us three months ago as our youngest ever intern. In this post, he writes about getting a sense of what being a software engineer at Ona is all about.
When I got an email from Ona inviting me for an interview, I couldn't believe my luck. Though I just finished a full-time course at Moringa School, I still very much considered myself fresh from high school and the idea of being in a work environment was surreal to me.
The interview was really great. The code test I did was projected to a larger screen for the interviewers to see. I did the interview in JavaScript which is a joy to write. Later on, I got an email saying I had been accepted for the internship. #Winning
Working at Ona
My first day at Ona was hardly forgettable. Mostly because I was at the office at 7:30 am (that's 1.5 hours before people get to the office). Ninety minutes is a long time: a football match takes ninety minutes.
Eventually, Rosalia got to the office and showed me to my desk where a MacBook Pro was awaiting me. However, Apple keyboards have their own keymapping so it took a while to know whether
Ctrl+C meant using
control or
Cmd. That was fun.
I was told I'd be working on Facebook Messenger bots and was paired with Njagi. Njagi, who I fancy was my code mentor and brogrammer (yes brogrammer!), had some ideological differences from myself:
- I was a sucker for GUI applications while he did almost everything over the terminal.
Kenneth: Is that Emacs you're using? Cool!
Njagi: Yeah! Do you know other Emacs users?
Kenneth: I know a guy who only used Vim.
I later came to know that Emacs and Vim users are mortal enemies, so I had made a terrible comparison. LOL.
- Njagi preferred spaces over tabs. 🙁
Even though, I haven't worked at many places, I have to admit developers at Ona are as excited to teach you something as they are to learn from you. Especially when you meet people like Mark: the voice of the weak. The weak in this case being fans of JavaScript and PHP. (But we all know JavaScript is not weak. Am I right?) Mark was also always happy. I mean always.
To help with learning, Ona's engineering team has a tech forum every fortnight to share interesting things they use either in their work or just stuff that would be great to know.
Outside of work, Ona is part of developer groups like NairobiLUG (LUG stands for Linux, Unix and GNU). I actually got to speak on the first NairobiLUG I attended where I talked about HTTP/2. The demo code is here. For my first ever presentation, it went pretty well. None of the attendees knew I actually code on Windows at home. That's some double agent stuff right there. 😉
The Actual Coding Experience
Time for a bad joke guys, 😀
What is the favourite programming language for devs at Ona?
It's C.
Ba Dum Tss!
Get it? Ona means "see" so the devs like using the language C…
Bad jokes aside, Ona majorly uses functional programming in their stack (Clojure, ClojureScript, Haskell, Python, JavaScript) except for their Android stack (Java) and the bots. Having only used OOP before it was interesting to use some functional programming principles on my Messenger bot work.
Test-driven development is highly valued at Ona. When I heard that we were going to test if our bot would be able to withstand a large number of users, I was amazed to learn stress tests would be used for that purpose. We used Tsung for the stress tests. Tsung is written in Erlang, but the tests are defined in XML. Here's an example of a stress test where a user visits a server every second for a whole minute:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--The DOCTYPE tag points to the version of Tsung your system will use-->
<!DOCTYPE tsung SYSTEM "/usr/local/Cellar/tsung/1.7.0/share/tsung/tsung-1.0.dtd" [] >
<!--Everything in Tsung happens between the tsung tags-->
<tsung loglevel="info">
<!--Clients in this case are the users-->
<client host="localhost" use_controller_vm="true" maxusers="20000"/>
<server host="localhost" port="3000" type="tcp"></server>
<arrivalphase phase="1" duration="1" unit="minute">
<users arrivalrate="1" unit="second"></users>
<session name="home" probability="100" type="ts_http">
<!--The http tag includes the route the users are visiting-->
<http url="/" method="GET"
version="1.1" content_type="application/json"
Seems like a lot of markup for a test right? And it doesn't even have added logic and data yet. But it is really not hard to set up, and chances are you never even have to use Erlang itself. I also had the chance to build Docker images for our projects and deploy them to Docker hub, which was genuinely fun.
Ordinarily you pay people to learn skills from them, but I can't put a price on the skills I gained while at Ona. A full 5-star experience as an intern here.


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Derek Green writes fiction, screenplays, feature journalism, and more. This is his website. On it, you'll find information about his books and stories, as well as his work as a journalist, travel writer, international business consultant, and many other topics.
A skilled speaker, Derek has delivered hundreds of seminars and presentations around the globe, and offers a series of popular workshops on storytelling and the craft of writing.
"There is only one plot—things are not as they seem." —Jim Thompson
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text: North Carolina Teachers of Tomorrow started with just two founders who took time to personally meet with and advise each customer individually. As we've grown over the years, we have expanded into a Nation program but we are still committed to that original vision of service and support. We continue this proud tradition today with our large, professional staff who constantly provide personalized guidance and support to all our teachers. Discover more about Teachers of Tomorrow and the leadership team.


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Steven Caple Jr
Friday, Aug. 5, 2016
Creative Production Company DECON Signs Director Steven Caple Jr. For His First U.S. Commercial Representation
"We're so thrilled to be adding Steven to our roster, says Misha Louy, DECON partner/executive producer. He's the type of person that you meet and know is going to be a star. He's a composed professional, full of fresh creative ideas. He's magnetic and he's just getting started with his career....


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WINTER draws on (drum roll, cymbals, I thank you) and once again we are breathless with excitement as panto season is upon us.
Excuse me while I'm away to a darkened room with a bottle of whisky and a loaded revolver, I know what I have to do.
I know complaining about panto is akin to shooting Santa from his sleigh, or taking an axe to your Christmas tree, but it's not all pantos I'm against, just modern panto.
I'm as keen as the next man on your traditional panto, who can complain about a thigh-slapping principal boy winning the heart of his true love. As long, that is, as the principal boy, is a girl.
That's one of the problems with modern panto, they cast men in the role of principal boy, usually some outcast from a recently defunct boy band.
They can't do this to panto, to have a boy kiss a girl in the final scene is against nature. In its traditional form it is the only moment in a panto that you can rely upon the dads in the audience paying any attention whatsoever.
But that's not my main objection. My big problem with present-day panto is the tinkering with the plot and cast that the 'writers', for want of a better word, seem to feel they have a right to do.
Here are stories which can trace back their origins for centuries and now you get some jumped-up impresario who thinks he can improve on a plotline that has entertained millions.
They do this in a vain attempt to keep the adult audience engaged and in the foolish belief that it somehow makes panto 'relevant' to modern audiences.
And so my predictions for this year's panto season are as follows:
· Some character somewhere will do a 'yeah but, no, but' line a la Vicky Pollard of Little Britain
· Another one will do a Ricky Gervais-style dance routine, thinking that it's still current, and worse still, that it's funny when someone other than Gervais does it
· Someone will use the line 'Am I Bothered Though?' to utter silence as the youth of the audience and the age of their parents leaves them blissfully unaware of Catherine Tate
· Were it not for the eagle-eyed lawyers protecting the Harry Potter brand he would be swooping on his broomstick into every panto in the land as all pretence of a traditional plot flew out of the window
Hilarious no?
If you are one of those writers slaving over a last draft of your script save yourself the time, stick to the original plot and characters.
But then for many of the writers, tinkering with the plot is unavoidable because of the cast they have to accommodate.
And this brings me to the other affliction of modern-day panto.
Local radio DJs.
What it is that makes them think a few minutes of inconsequential twitter every day between the pop pap they play gives them any stage presence I'm not entirely sure, but there they are, top of the bill every Christmas.
And there's so many of them, panto writers are left with no option other than to invent characters with daft names like Razzmatazz, just so local DJ Zak Moron can slap on the greasepaint and puff a little more hot air into his already over-inflated ego.
I have a little experience of these characters and my theory is that somewhere back along the evolutionary tree, just after we came down from the trees, one particularly vain set of monkeys started fiddling with a record deck and stopped developing around about there.
But, Lord help us, at least local DJs have a day job and there are only so many hours a day they can take to the stage.
But they are not the worst thing to appear on the panto stage, oh no, not by a long chalk.
That title belongs firmly to former reality TV contestants.
How did that happen? A bunch of people who have excelled at revealing just how nasty, brutish and thick they really are, get to entertain our kids at Christmas.
You may as well stand outside Walton Prison and wait for the next inmate out and give him a pixie suit and invite him into your home.
The only consolation is that when these buffoons fail in a third-rate theatre, with half an audience, on a rainy January night, perhaps it might just penetrate their numb skulls as to just how talentless they really are.
WHY all the howls of indignation at the prospect of an all-Wales police force?
There are lots of reasons why you need local accountability of your police service – individual communities will have differing crime problems that they will want to raise with local commanders.
But who has suggested that an all-Wales force would change that? You will still have local divisions with senior officers who are answerable to the communities they police.
One senior officer I was talking to about this last week was all for the idea because he was a detective involved in cracking serious crime.
As far as he was concerned the regionalisation could not come soon enough.
He explained that while there are plenty of officers who can pound the beat, ther are fewer detectives who have the mental resources and the experience to deal with serious crime like murder, rape, armed robbery and drug dealing.
Big regional forces, he said, would have access to more of those specialised resources to deal with serious crimes.
As for the rest of the objections, all I can see so far is petty North-South rivalries. It's also true that an all-Wales force might involve fewer committees overseeing the force and perhaps that might explain some of the squeals of protest.
IT wasn't long before I was set right by a supermarket worker after I blamed them (supermarkets, not their workers) for society's ills last week.
One, Miss CJ, wrote in saying: "I have been working in Tesco for just over a year and a half now, I started off in the cafe and now I'm a semi-skilled baker earning £6.15 per hour, time and a half on a Sunday, plus on a bank holiday I'd get time and time and a half, which to me is a good wage.
"Prior to Tesco I was working in hotels earning around £4.50 an hour, no extra pay for working Sundays, bank holidays and Christmas time.
"I look back now and think how did I survive? The North Wales coast is an area in which a lot of jobs do pay the minimum wage, but thanks to Tesco I can take home a decent wage each month and gain more experience.
"I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels the same and could I just remind you that Tesco actually pay the most wage out of the supermarkets.
"I hope they do get to build a store in Prestatyn as this would help a lot of people who are on the minimum wage to gain more experience and have a better wage."


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This one came up last month. A lady called Sze Chu-ming appealed against her conviction by a magistrate for assault. The appeal succeeded.
So far so routine. As is customary these days the proceedings had taken a long time. The alleged offence took place in 2015. Justice delayed is justice denied. Don't hold your breath.
Now some odd things about this one. The alleged victim, one Cheung Lai-ching, is a member of a mysterious organisation called the Hong Kong Youth Care Association. This association does not seem to spend a great deal of time on youth, or indeed on care.
Its main activity is to set up banners and loudspeakers in selected spots to disrupt efforts by members and supporters of the Falun Gong to put their views before the public. The association was established in 2012, apparently for this specific purpose.
Readers in distant countries may need to be reminded that the Falun Gong is a therapeutic meditation practice which is banned in China. Falun Gong supporters claim that those of its members who are still in China are abused by the authorities. This is plausible, in the light of the way the authorities treat other people they disapprove of.
It is and has always been legal in Hong Kong, without giving rise to any harm or complaints, so claims that the Falun Gong is an "evil cult" appear without foundation.
Visitors to Hong Kong will from time to time be greeted in busy areas by displays and playlets illustrating the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners on the mainland. Nearby, indeed as close as possible, they will often also find the Youth Care Association people displaying hostile banners and trying to make so much noise that nobody can hear anything.
On some occasions, the resulting situation gets tense. This has happened before. A few years ago there was a major row about a schoolteacher who was filmed scolding the police in fruity terms for protecting the Youth Carers from indignant passers-by who wanted them to shut up.
However the case of the SAR v Sze shone a new light on this ongoing public order problem.
Ms Cheung, the alleged victim, had featured, the court was told, in 92 police reports in the last three years. In 38 of those cases Ms Cheung was the person who called the police. Records of most of the cases had been destroyed, presumably because they did not come to anything. Of the six survivors, five were complaints against Falun Gong members alleging nuisance, street obstruction and criminal damage.
The judge also noted that in previous trials his brother judges has found Ms Cheung an "unreliable witness" motivated by hostility to the Falun Gong. "Unreliable witness" is the courteous legal term for "liar".
So justice was served in the end. I am left, though, with a lot of questions. The first one, of course, is how did all this get past the original magistrate. Maybe some of the points raised on appeal were not put before him, but still. The judge hearing the appeal found that the evidence was insufficient.
It used to be said that it was better 100 guilty people should go free than one innocent person should be convicted. This quote is not much honoured in local magistrates' courts, I fear.
One also wonders what was going through the mind of the person who decided this prosecution should go ahead. The alleged injury was trivial, the evidence was flaky, and the situation was one of those public confrontations which often end in huffing, puffing and jostling. I take it from the mass disappearance of Ms Cheung's police records that most of her complaints came to nothing. Why was this one singled out?
Then there is the matter of Ms Cheung's enthusiasm for the emergency services. I think there should be some way of discouraging people from engaging in provocative behaviour and then calling the police with spurious complaints as a way of giving their adversaries a hard time. Wasting police time is an offence and some people would regard 38 calls to the 999 desk in three years as a good example of it.
Last month, we saw protests summarily banned on the grounds that they might provoke a violent response from bystanders. Are we perhaps encouraging violent bystanders too much, and doing to little to protect non-violent speakers?
Or are we now enjoying freedom of speech with Chinese characteristics?


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Welcome ANΩ Brothers!
Welcome to the website of the Alumni Association of Alpha Nu Omega (ANΩ), the University of Minnesota Duluth's oldest and only local fraternity which boasts the largest network of UMD Alumni. We invite you to explore our organization by viewing the many pages of information contained herein.
Alpha Nu Omega has been a part of the University of Minnesota Duluth for over 60 years. Through the years, ANΩ has helped student members get the most out of their college years through scholarship assistance, service projects, leadership opportunities and diverse social experiences. ANΩ is dedicated to helping individuals become the leaders of tomorrow.
The Alpha Nu Omega Alumni Association mission continues to embrace the principles set forth by the Fraternity founders over 60 years ago – service, leadership and academic achievement. Our scholarships honor our belief that academic achievement and student leadership are important attributes to college and lifetime success. With our continued efforts the legacy and history of Alpha Nu Omega will live in perpetuity through the upcoming generations of scholars who will be supported by and rewarded with Alpha Nu Omega Alumni Association Scholarships at UMD.
The lasting imprint Alpha Nu Omega has made at UMD will be acknowledged years from now as future members continue to share our bonds of brotherhood, our history and our dedication to academics, service and achievement.


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The Walt Disney Company has announced that ABC News President Ben Sherwood will replace Anne Sweeney as co-chairman, Disney Media Networks and president of the Disney/ABC Television Group.
Sweeney recently announced that she is leaving her position in February 2015 to pursue a career on the creative side of the entertainment industry.
In his role as ABC News President, Sherwood has successfully driving Good Morning America to the #1 spot in morning news programs, launched Fusion – the joint venture with Univision – and brokered a partnership with Yahoo to create the #1 news and information online network.
He was seen as the leading candidate to replace Sweeney.
"Ben is one of those unique executives who combine rich creative experience with great business acumen," said Bob Iger, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company. "He's also focused, strategic, and competitive, as evidenced by the success of GMA, the Yahoo deal that delivered ABC News online dominance, and his vision behind our new cable and digital joint venture, Fusion. These reasons, and many others, make Ben the ideal candidate to oversee the future of the Disney/ABC Television Group."
Sherwood is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and digital media entrepreneur. He was named president of ABC News in December 2010. He began his journalistic career in 1989 as an investigative associate producer for ABC News' PrimeTime Live. He left ABC in 1997 but returned in 2004 as an executive producer for Good Morning America.
He is the author of two best-selling novels, The Man Who Ate the 747 and The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud. His latest novel, The Survivors Club, is a non-fiction book that explores the science and secrets of who bounces back from everyday adversity and who doesn't.
His novel The Life of Death of Charlie St. Cloud was adapted into the film Charlie St. Cloud in 2010. The film starred Zac Efron.
Sherwood will begin his transition as Co-President, Disney/ABC Television Group effective immediately. He will continue to oversee ABC News until a successor is named.


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Article Title
Effect of sample size and method of sampling pig weights on the accuracy and precision of estimating the distribution of pig weights in a population
Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station contribution; no. 13-026-S; Report of progress (Kansas State University. Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service); 1074; Swine; Finishing pig; Standard deviation estimation; Sample size
Producers have adopted marketing strategies such as topping to help reduce economic losses from weight discounts, but they are still missing target weights and incurring discounts. We have previously determined the accuracy of sampling methods producers use to estimate the mean weight of the population. Although knowing the mean weight is important, understanding how much variation or dispersion exists in individual pig weights within a group can also enhance a producer's ability to determine the optimal time to top pigs. In statistics and probability theory, the amount of variation in a population is represented by the standard deviation; therefore, our objective is to determine the sample size and method that is optimal for estimating the standard deviation of BW for a group of pigs in a barn. Using a computer program developed in R (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria), we were able to generate 10,000 sample standard deviations for different sampling procedures on 3 different datasets. Using this program, we evaluated weighing: (1) a completely random sample of 10 to 200 pigs from the barn, (2) an increasing number of pigs per pen from 1 to 15 pigs and increasing the number of pens until all pens in the barn had been sampled, and (3) selecting the heaviest and lightest pig (determined visually) in each pen and subtracting the lightest weight from the heaviest weight and dividing by 6. For all 3 datasets, increasing the sample size of a completely random sample from 10 to 200 pigs decreased the range between the upper and lower confidence intervals (CI) when estimating the standard deviation; however, this occurred at a diminishing rate. For the barn with the most variation, increasing the number of pens sampled while keeping constant the total number of pigs sampled led to a reduction in range between the upper and lower CI by 7, 6, and 31% for Datasets A, B, and C, respectively. Sampling method 3 resulted in a reduction of the range between the upper and lower CI from 9 to 62% for the 3 datasets. These data indicated that the distribution of pig weights can be practically estimated by weighing the heaviest and lightest pigs in 15 pens.; Swine Day, Manhattan, KS, November 15, 2012
Recommended Citation
Paulk, C B.; Highland, G L.; Haydon, K D.; Tokach, Michael D.; Nelssen, Jim L.; Goodband, Robert D.; DeRouchey, Joel M.; and Dritz, Steven S.
"Effect of sample size and method of sampling pig weights on the accuracy and precision of estimating the distribution of pig weights in a population,"
Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Reports:
Vol. 0:


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Blog Tour for INSTANT GRATIFICATION by Lauren Blakely
INSTANT GRATIFICATION by Lauren Blakely Release Date: August 29th Cover Designer: Helen Williams
Add to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45441933-instant-gratification
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Blurb: I need a fake date. She needs my late-night expertise. Now, if we can just keep our hands off each other...
As the premier best-man-for hire in all of Manhattan, I promise discretion, so when I need a plus one for a couple of "I dos," I turn to my gorgeous, clever, witty best friend's sister. She's my good friend, too, and I lust after her completely. I mean, I TRUST her completely.
After all, just look how she's kept her lips sealed about the hot, multi-O night we spent together. Yes, just look at those sexy lips.
In any case, we only fell off the wagon once, and it was months ago. I'm sure we can make it through these weddings without banging each other in the limo.
Or can we?
INSTANT GRATIFICATION is a sexy, standalone romantic comedy!
Excerpt: From: MixologistExtraordinaire at gmail
To: LuckySpotGirl at gmail
Re: Confessions of a Bad Girl
I am the worst twin sister in the world. The absolute worst. How could I do this?
And by this, I mean engage in earth-shattering, toe-curling, bend-me-over-the-bed-and-take-me-hard sex with my brother's best friend. By the way, did I mention the sex was incredible?
Oh, wait. I did.
But I'm not surprised, because I've always liked his company. He's funny and clever, and he has this irreverent side that's fascinating and wildly entertaining.
But we were only supposed to go snowboarding.
It all seemed innocuous, right? A day on the slopes in January.
At the end of the final run, the sun had already set, and we headed into the ski lodge and made plans to meet for dinner.
I didn't even drink at dinner. Neither did he. We just talked the whole time, and there was candlelight. Stupid candlelight. And he was flirting, and he always flirts, but this time . . . this time we weren't in New York. We were far enough away I could forget everything that went wrong years ago.
About the Author: A #1 New York Times Bestselling, #1 Wall Street Journal Bestselling, and #1 Audible Bestselling author, Lauren Blakely is known for her contemporary romance style that's sweet, sexy and witty. Her heroines are strong and smart and her heroes have hearts of gold and fantastic funny bones. She lives on the West Coast with her family, including her smoking hot and hilarious husband and her two brilliant and kind teenagers. She has plotted entire novels while walking her dogs — she might have four dogs, or maybe five. If she's lucky, she'll soon have six dogs. With fourteen New York Times bestsellers, her titles have appeared on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestseller Lists more than 100 times, and she's sold more than 3 million books. In October she'll release Never Have I Ever.
She'd love to give you a free book today! Check out her web site to grab your free read: laurenblakely.com/one-free-book/
Connect w/Lauren: Website: http://www.laurenblakely.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LaurenBlakelyBooks Twitter: https://twitter.com/LaurenBlakely3 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurenblakelybooks/ Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/lauren-blakely Amazon: https://amzn.to/2YzfGNv Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6860216.Lauren_Blakely


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Lambert Commodities
Perspectives sur les financements des matières premières - Fev 2022
My take on the FT Commodity Global Summit in March 2022 - April 2022
A perspective on Trafigura's 2020 results - 09 Dec 2022
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A few thoughts on the ADQ/LDC partnership - 11 Nov 2020
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My take-aways from the FT Commodities Global Summit 2020 - 28-30 Sep 2020
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Q&A on the crisis and impact on commodities - 22 Apr 2020
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My take-aways from the FT Commodities Global Summit 2019 - 25-27 Mar 2019
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A conversation with TXF's Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Bell - Nov 2018
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An account of the FT Commodities Global Summit 2018 on 20 and 21st March
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Two Charts Worth Looking At to Understand Oil Prices Movements - January 2018
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My take-away from the FT Commodities Tokyo Summit - December 2017
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Révolution copernicienne du négoce des commodities - August 2017
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An Account of the 2017 FT Commodities Global Summit on 28 and 29th March
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A perspective on the "New Normal" - 2016
"New Normal" has become a common expression in the past few years. It has emerged as analysts, reflecting on the deep transformation the world economy is going through, are endeavouring to identify a sense of logic binding together the various changes, or evolutions triggered by the 2008 financial crisis.
Whether "crisis" describes what we are witnessing, is the crux of this debate. It is too soon to assert whether we have shifted to a new paradigm. What is certain is that we have not seen all the ripple effects of the great financial crisis (GFC). What is equally likely is that the world economic order is unlikely to revert to the pre GFC era. Forces unleashed in 2008 and beyond, through the multiple attempts to circumvent the potentially disastrous effects of the financial crisis, have altered the path and the dynamics of the world.
New paradigms are in the process of shaping up but are very difficult to precisely identify at this juncture. The "New Normal" for now is likely to be constituted of a long transition predicated on the deconstruction of an old economic order but, as if still exposed to multiple aftershocks, the reconstruction of a new one is fragile, awkward and potentially temporary in many of its manifestations.
This should not prevent us from trying to understand where we are heading, and reflect on the potential impacts this transition will have on our business, and beyond to personal lives.
Old Economic Order
The 2008 crisis has marked a major inflexion point that should not be underestimated. From 1945 to the first decade of the 21st century, the post WWII reconstruction dynamics led to an unparalleled era of prosperity. First, amid the former belligerents who wisely built a tight dialogue and established common foundations and rules to foster trade and cooperation at every level. Then in the later part of the 20th century, the engine of growth was powered by the developed economies' strength and interaction. In the 1990's the developing world, took over the relay of growth. Predicated upon the demand of the developed economies at first, and then, gradually, fostered by the emergence of new middle classes
, notably in Asia but also in South and Central America, developing countries morphed into "emerging markets". North-South trade was complemented by a growing flow of so-called South-South trade
: Emerging markets were taking over the helm of the world economy. Poverty receded, middle classes blossomed across all continents: The world's urbanisation was in motion.
Working classes travelled the world, discovered markets, cultures, studied abroad and learnt languages, thus enabling the building of a truly global economy. Geographic boundaries faded. Industrial supply chains, bolstered by both efficient logistic and seamless communication channels, lengthened, spreading their wings across continents both to benefit from more efficient costs and be ever closer to a more geographically diversified population of urbanised consumers.
With longer and more sophisticated supply chains, trade of semi-finished product flows accelerated; with millions of people escaping poverty, demand for cross-border products gathered momentum. The combination of both resulted in trade steadily growing faster than the world GDP
, notwithstanding the latter was turbocharged by the emerging market growth: a new world order was in the making, predicated on ever more exchange of goods and services. Nothing seemed to be able to challenge this. The virtuous growth circle was firmly set: developed countries pulling developing countries, themselves generating the formation of middle classes, thus becoming so-called emerging markets and turning themselves to other remaining lower income countries for cheap labour supply thus feeding the process.
However, if poverty receded by integrating more population into a globalised middle class, the bulk of this positive transfer occurred in the emerging countries. In the developed world, the middle-class income growth was slow at best and largely perceived as flat by the population. Revenue inequality rose to new heights across the "old" countries, from the US to Europe, thus building a silent yet growing frustration amid the populations.
A New disorder
Eight years after the crisis, and amid stagnating developed economies, this frustration is progressively turning into anger. Beyond economies lie populations; unhappy populations, jolted by stagnation of income, little perspective of improvement of their life standards, which translates into angry voters. Everywhere, voices are challenging the world order, the institutions that were personifying it and the dynamics that fostered globalisation. In numerous democracies, we are witnessing rejection of globalisation; trade agreements are challenged; laisser-faire and free circulation are disputed, and in many instances, protectionism is no longer seen as a danger but as part of the solution.
Trade is suddenly lagging world GDP growth, itself off its pre-crisis peak
. More worrisome is the widening discrepancies between the largest economies' performance. China has in a decade become the second largest economy in the world growing 2.5x faster than the United States
; Japan has been marred in "wealthy stagnation" for 20 years now; European countries are bound together in a model whose ability to react to the new challenges looks to many increasingly doubtful. On the other hand, and besides the semi-developed economies – and maybe India - the pull factor on the developing world seems to have lost its momentum. The virtuous circle is broken.
Trade needs a stable political environment to thrive. Trade fosters peace, but to do this, it requires a shared vision amongst economies that it should be prioritized and prevail over selfish interests. The geopolitical environment however, has never been so tense since cold-war times, a period that nobody would have expected to live through again. Feeble democracies, with their disgruntled inward looking populations and relatively weak leadership in some parts of the world; more assertive rulers in others, either fostering nationalism by turning their backs to globalisation or through affirmed regional hegemonic strategies and swelling military budgets on the other... It should therefore not be a surprise that 8 years after the great financial crisis, protectionism is back in fashion.
The criticality and endurance of trade
All this makes a bleak and rather uncertain world. Economic leaders are not merely spectators however. It is their strategic visions which translate into the decisions that have a genuine impact on everybody's life and, therefore shape the world future. Exploring a new market, investing in a new technology, fostering their business growth is directly responsible for jobs, wealth and, eventually for a peaceful world.
The current environment creates an incredible challenge in that respect. Schumpeter advocated a creative destruction to foster growth. However, when the environment itself is at stake, corporate leadership is tested more than ever to identify the safest paths, choose the right options to preserve and grow businesses.
For corporate leaders, "to do nothing" is not an option. They therefore need to understand and adapt to the new trade dynamics. Is trade collapsing? Is the world shrinking through reactivated boundaries? Not quite, but trade will follow new paths.
Relocalisation of large spans of the industry is already in motion, fostered by emerging robotics and relatively cheaper energy. This will contribute to reshape large parts of the world supply chains as we know them. Technologies like 3D printing will bring back many transformative processes closer to the consumers. Larger clusters of urbanised emerging middle classes will see their needs for safe and efficient supply burgeoning.
These deep changes will affect trade flows. Some of these flows will shrink but many others will thrive. Gradually we might witness the slowing down of semi-finished product trade (being gradually re-on shored). Conversely, commodity trade which represents some 25 pct. of trade flows
will continue to thrive in sync with the combination of the world demography which will put the world population at over 9 billion people in 2040
and the pursuit of global urbanisation
Financing trade
The financing of these trade flows will also be affected. Relocalised trade is the most likely to benefit from faster payments through decentralised ledger technologies and expose banks to new competition. Technologies will also affect longer haul trade by perfecting the control over goods in transit. This will be particularly interesting for the commodity industry which will remain intercontinental and a significant consumer of financing: banks will need more security over goods to optimize their large capital requirements and therefore it is paramount for bank practitioners to work with logistic suppliers to develop new solutions.
Trade finance will witness deep transformation in the next 5 years. Largely built to foster long haul trade amongst far away parties through letters of credits, the inception of regional clusters around large consuming areas will call for a vast simplification of risk protections and payment methods. The ability to know precisely where is what, in which shape or form, and what belongs to who, will greatly improve thanks to new solutions brought in by the development of "Internet of Things" technology. This knowledge should in turn foster more efficient payment and credit risk absorption capabilities, combining bank protection and insurance. Banks will have to overhaul their trade finance products, back-offices and processes to fence-off a new competition attracted by a business which requires less up-front investment and lighter overheads, notably through decentralised ledgers.
This is not to say that long supply chains will disappear: commodity supply chains for instance will still need to reach as far as needed to source strategic staples, oil, iron ore and other key raw materials. Such long-haul trade will still require more traditional trade finance instruments such as letters of credit, stand-by letters of credit and guarantees, combined with straight balance sheet financing and structuring capabilities. Commodity finance expertise will still be required with its must-have dedicated middle and back offices, a necessary evil to control the risks associated with this activity amid ever more demanding capital requirements.
One enduringly growing flow of trade will be made of services. In a world where communication is easy, where data are travelling at light speed across continents, services will continue to thrive. The bulk of job creation in the most developed countries will be service related, rather than linked to the production of goods. When measured in added-value terms, trade in services accounts for almost 50 pct. of world trade
. This is an area which by-and-large escapes the banking industry: how to re-intermediate the financing of service flows? Yet the sheer importance of services will require banks to invent a new "trade finance" if they do not want to be disenfranchised by non-banking more nimble players. Here probably lies the biggest challenge for an industry which re-intermediates nowadays most supply chains trading goods, whether to finance them or to support the embedded payment process.
Banks and trade
Trade finance is probably one of the oldest forms of banking and one with a pristine track record over centuries. Financing trade flows of goods has always been considered a very safe activity by all practioners, across all continents. When revisiting the prudential guideline surrounding credit activities in the early 2000's, the regulators asked a very simple question: "can you prove it?" Easier said than done and it took a great deal of joint effort (something that banks were not accustomed to – there was no such thing as a trade finance industry), support from multilateral organizations, such as the WTO to put forward a convincing answer to the Basel Committee. The GFC created a sense of urgency as tumbling trade required immediate attention. The impact of trade finance availability on trade flows was clearly established in the context of the crisis
, but the evidence regarding its low risk nature were yet to be gathered. When not a single bank was able to provide satisfactory evidence of the safe nature of their trade finance activities (at least as per the regulators' standards
) under the stewardship of the ICC, a trade registry was put together, collecting data from the main "trade finance" banks. The collective data gathering millions of trade transactions passed muster
: As the G20 was eminently concerned about the state of the world economy, the Basel Committee swiftly issued rather flexible guidelines around trade financing activities in a relatively short period.
However, and as banks became increasingly constrained with additional capital requirements, they engaged into ever deeper reviews of their lending activities, focusing their commitment on their most valuable customers and core-markets. More demanding vetting processes were put in place. The society-at-large concerns about corruption and financial crime led most international banks to cull large parts of their correspondent banking networks, notably in and with low income countries, as the cost to maintain such networks and the perception of a higher reputational risk became incompatible with the revenues generated. Furthermore, a tougher geopolitical environment led to the implementation and strict enforcement of sanctions against several countries, companies and individuals.
Trade was the prime victim of these decisions and to-date, it is estimated that, notwithstanding countries affected by financial sanctions, there is a trade finance gap (where supply does not meet demand) of $1.6 trillion
. This represent around 10 pct. of merchandise trade as calculated by the WTO
Unintended consequences of global regulation
The Great Financial Crisis was triggered by investment banks in the US which inundated the whole financial system with securitized US debts and mortgages which were wrongly analysed by rating agencies as triple A risks. Almost overnight, no bank was considered as a safe risk anymore as the world's most developed banks had bought into these structured assets and blended them into financial products sold to other banks and their customers. The massive liquidity gap was only quenched through massive public intervention. Once the most critical phase of the crisis was over, the whole concern of governments and regulators was to make the banking system safe again, ensuring such a systemic risk would never happen again.
Regulatory frameworks were overhauled, bank capital requirements against all forms of risk taking significantly increased
. The Basel guidelines became more sophisticated, in fact so sophisticated that only specialized modelling teams in large organisations can validly claim they have a thorough understanding of the Basel two, then three and soon four guidelines.
Besides, since the world economy growth has slowed down vs. pre GFC times, the pro-cyclicality of the Basel rules is more evident than ever: when risk deteriorates, capital requirements increase. Conversely, when risk improves, they should decrease, thus creating a virtuous circle (more lending when safer the environment). However, since the crisis, the overall risk level has remained at best stable. When considering the degradation of the geopolitical environment, it is not likely to improve any time soon.
The combination of more demanding capital requirements rules (all things being equal i.e. merely ensuring that banks should put aside more capital to conduct their risk-taking activities) on the one hand and of a worsen risk perception on the other has led the banking industry to a massive de-risking exercise, leading to tens of thousands of accounts closure, notably affecting small companies and low income countries debtors. As unintended as it may be, the banking industry's flight to quality under tighter constraints is de facto slowing down the world economic recovery.
We have probably reached a tipping point where the sole focus of regulation which was to make the banking industry safer and suppress any systemic risk stemming from the collapse of large institutions, is going to be questioned. Have we gone too far? Have we, for the sake of too much safety, compromised the growth momentum of the economy? Never before have we heard so many voices amid governments, openly challenging the Basel guidelines. The Dodd Frank act is now openly questioned by the new US administration. Even the sacrosanct fight for criminal crime and money laundering, which has led to the impounding of heavy constraints on each individual bank, is now entering a phase where the pooling of data and the creation of KYC (know your customer) repositories is no longer disregarded by the regulators.
The overhaul of the regulatory framework surrounding banking activities has certainly been a very positive outcome of the crisis. But as often, the pendulum towards a safer world has swung too far to the detriment of the dynamism of the world economy and financial inclusion. How long before and how far can the pendulum swing back? No one knows – and it is likely that the regulatory environment will remain much more stringent than pre-crisis anyway. But the sheer acknowledgment that too much regulation can become detrimental and a defeat to its purpose is a first and welcome step towards reason.
Alternative banking?
To-date, however, banks are still de-risking their balance sheets and trimming their cost base to compensate for the formidable increase in compliance costs they have to shoulder. A low interest rate environment has added more pressure on the sector, this has led to the burgeoning of non-bank lending, particularly to smaller companies. Many trade finance funds were created to take advantage of higher returns which, unlike in the banking industry, are not penalised by the Basel guidelines. This is not to say that funds are not regulated. They are tightly so to protect investors, but when it is almost impossible for a bank to keep a "risky" asset on its balance sheet because of the unbearable level of capital to maintain it and the negative profitability this entails, funds have a different philosophy and more manageable constraints. Investors, looking for alternative investments, support this move. Nevertheless, compared to the amount of de-risked assets by the banking sector, funds represent a mere drop in the ocean. This is entirely logical: Investing in investment grade rated assets is one thing, supporting a SME in its trade endeavours is another. How to assess the risk? How to manage it? Is a fund as equipped as bank to effectively do so?
A limited success for now, alternative funding of trade finance is probably going to last nevertheless: the banking industry, will remain, at least for the foreseeable future, under tight constraints for capital and therefore are likely to focus more of their activities on their immediate environment, trimming large international networks and repositioning their resources on their domestic or immediately regional markets (in line with the reshaping of trade
). In certain sectors, the reliance on banks to finance trade flows is simply overwhelming. Commodity supply chains for instance hinges on trading houses expertise, pivotal players between production and the end users, whose activities are almost entirely supported by banks. This over-dependence on the "new normal" has become a risky bet.
The need for alternative finance therefore is not going to wane anytime soon. However, to grow to a meaningful level, investors need to understand the nature of the risks they invest in. How? This question is critical. Trade assets are the focus of alternative funds and their investors, but with a very narrow perspective and expectation: high risk assets calling for high return prospects. Since funds have taken a space vacated by banks because of their incapacity to maintain such risk profile on their balance sheet, they have invested in the higher risk bracket of trade finance.
Trade finance however, is a much larger proposition, with a pristine track record. With lower risks, expectations should be driven down toward lower returns, providing investors understand the asset class better. They will not do so if not supported by the industry. Trade supply chains, if properly managed are relatively safe and financing them is often less risky than outright financing to individual companies. Delivering on a contract, with the expected quality of goods and timing is critical for any company, even if this requires stretching repayments of its debt on time.
Trade finance is an asset-class deserving dedicated modelling and rating, without which investors will never go beyond current alternative finance expectations and appetite. With banks reprioritizing their activities and less appetite for business, it will become critical to develop such a model and successfully diversify the sources of funding for a critical economic activity.
The economic political and geopolitical worlds as we knew them are undergoing major tectonic shifts. It is much too soon to foresee how the world will eventually shape-up. It is critical during this phase of transition which might last several years, to be alert and aware and let go of our "old normal" reflexes. New paradigms will gradually emerge and they are bound to shake our understanding of the world as we know it.
The ripple effect of the great financial crisis will linger. Behaviours are already changing, expectations of worried middle classes allied with a dawning new era of technical breakthroughs will deeply modify the scope of globalisation and affect the nature of trade and relations between countries. Banking will need to further adapt and regulators should accompany this process rather than slow it down by shifting their focus from preventing systemic risks largely taken care of by now, to encourage the financial sector to play its role of key intermediary in the economy more effectively. Liquidity is still largely abundant in the world and it is necessary in these uncertain times to channel it towards trade which has historically been the most effective booster for openness, wealth and stability.
The size of the "global middle class" will increase from 1.8 billion in 2009 to 3.2 billion by 2020 and 4.9 billion by 2030. The bulk of this growth will come from Asia: by 2030 Asia will represent 66% of the global middle-class population and 59% of middle-class consumption, compared to 28% and 23%, respectively in 2009 (http://oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/3681/An_emerging_middle_class.html#sthash.9eorDjxX.dpuf)
south-south trade grew from c.$700 billion in 2000 to $4.2 trillion in 2014, topping south-north trade which amounted to $3.6 trillion in 2014 – source WTO 2016 trade statistics
Between 1985 and 2007, trade volumes grew at twice the speed of GDP (source The Economist – WTO). In 2016, trade was expected to grow by 1.7% vs a 2.2% growth for the world GDP (sources WTO sept 2016)
From 2004 to 2007 on average, world GDP grew by 4.25%. From 2010 to 2015, it grew by 2.97% (source World Bank data)
For 2017, the IMF forecast a 2.3% growth for the US and a 6.5% growth for China i.e. a 2.8 factor. (http://www.imf.org/external/country/)
calculation of share of commodity trade varies widely (from 12 to 33pct.) depending upon the definition of commodities and the strength of the USD.
Sources UN https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/DataQuery/
By 2014, 63 per cent of countries were more than half urban and one-third was more than 75 per cent urban. By 2050 more than 80 per cent of countries in the world are projected to be at least half urban and just under 50 per cent will be at least 75 per cent urban. (https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2014-Report.pdf)
refer inter alia to "Off the Cliff and Back? Credit Conditions and International Trade During the Global Financial Crisis, Davin CHOR, Manova LINA" http://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2164&context=soe_research
seven years of data, a full disclosure on the specific recovery process and outcome of trade facilities
Sources WTO 2016 report: Merchandise trade amounted to $16.2 tn


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Basford United vs Matlock Town FC
Basford United1
Greenwich AvenueNorthern Premier League
Matlock Town FC0
Match Report
Basford United 1-0 Matlock Town
For the second time in three days, Matlock unluckily made an exit from a cup competition in which they were the better side.
This time on Monday, a makeshift line up suffered the same scoreline in the Integro Cup at Greenwich Avenue as a less injury affected side had done in the FA Trophy at St Neots on Saturday.
The main pre match talk was the Gladiators signing on 45 years old assistant manager Terry Fleming, the former Coventry City, Cambridge United and Lincoln City midfielder and he became the oldest player in the club's history to play a competitive fixture. At the other end of the scale seventeen years old Ethan Knowles made a full debut and Nathan Clarke and Alex Phillipson, aged sixteen and seventeen respectively were on the substitutes bench. Clarke would replace Fleming in the 69th minute while Ashton Hall, eighteen on Sunday and man of the match at St Neots, continued in central defence. Jordan Pierrepont replaced Ross Durrant in goal.
Basford had beaten Matlock 6-0 in the league seven weeks ago, a repeat scoreline was never on the cards.
Although the hosts rested some players, it was still a line up with plenty of NPL experience but it was one of their youngsters, new signing Zak Goodson, signed from Long Eaton, who would net the winner in the 44th minute.
For Matlock it was a tale of a lack of a final product, caused by a combination of wayward finishing and misfortune in front of goal. The Gladiators created three times the amount of chances fashioned by the hosts but could not find the goal which would have brought about a penalty shoot out at the end of ninety minutes. However, a shoot out should not have been necessary as Matlock ought to have made their pressure count.
Matlock began brightly and after Pierrepont held a shot from Goodson, Matlock broke forward with Knowles being prominent on the right, his centre being smacked narrowly too high by Luke Hinsley from twenty yards. Then a well struck volley from Nathan Whitehead suffered the exact same fate before Brad Beatson's header was again inches too high from a corner..
Pierrepont comfortably held another Goodson effort but Matlock looked the more dangerous and on 18 minutes Hinsley was twice unlucky, a great block from Lewis Carr denying his initial shot before goalkeeper Richard Stainsby was down swiftly to superbly keep out his follow up after great approach play by Jordan Chapell on the left. Beatson glanced his header wide from the resulting corner.
Hinsley met a Harry Vince free kick ahead of Stainsby, his header flashing narrowly wide as Matlock looked favourites to snatch the opening goal.
Basford's promising teenager Kole Lambert was stretchered off after an innocuous clash in midfield to halt proceedings on a chilly night. Chapell weaved a path from the left only for Stainsby to beat away his low shot, so it was against the run of the play when GOODSON headed a James Reid centre past Pierrepont to give Basford an undeserved lead. The half ended with again Stainsby being in the thick of the action as he clawed a Nathan Whitehead header over the bar.
It was much the same story after the interval, with Stainsby being fortunate to keep his goal intact as he failed to gather Chapell's cross from the left, Whitehead following up with a shot which hit a defender on its way for another flag kick.
King came on for Knowles who had been lively on his debut, as Matlock sought a leveller. Stainsby again saved well from Chapell before in a rare moment of danger for the men in blue, Pierrepont held a deflected effort from Courey Grantham.
Matlock piled on the pressure, Stainsby again being the impregnable barrier. Chapell was again thwarted by the stopper and when Jake Green, switched to a more attacking role on the right, broke clear, his scuffed finish was unconvincing and saved comfortably by Stainsby. who soon afterwards dived to his left to turn aside a twenty five yarder from King. Chapell then looked to be impeded in the penalty box but stayed on his feet, the referee choosing not to point to the spot. If he had gone down, the decision might well have gone in Town's favour.
Hinsley nodded wide when well placed before on 89 minutes, Pierrepont was seriously extended for the only time in the game, spectacularly pushing Grantham's stinging drive over the bar from Reid's free kick on the left.
There was still time for Chapell to shoot wildly over the bar from ten yards as composure again was missing from the Gladiators at the vital moment.
A dominant display, markedly better than the one at St Neots, was not rewarded. Again the commitment could not be faulted and the youngsters that came in, plus veteran Fleming who deserves the utmost credit in his first game for two years, did not let Matlock down.
BASFORD UNITED: 1 Richard Stainsby 2 Shick Ndong 3 James Reid 4 Greg Tempest 5 Liam Bateman 6 Lewis Carr 7 Jack Thomas 8 Fernando Bell-Toxtle (14 Kamani Wilson 82) 9 Kole Lambert (15 Niall Hylton 32) 10 Courey Grantham 11 Zak Goodson Other subs: 12 Nathan Watson 16 Michael Leslie 17 Dennell Stokes
MATLOCK TOWN: 1 Jordan Pierrepont 2 Cleveland Taylor 3 Jake Green 4 Terry Fleming (15 Nathan Clarke 69) 5 Brad Beatson 6 Ashton Hall 7 Ethan Knowles (12 Craig King 57) 8 Nathan Whitehead 9 Luke Hinsley 10 Harry Vince 11 Jordan Chapell Other subs: 14 Craig Westcarr 16 Alex Phillipson 17 Ross Durrant
REFEREE: Richie Watkins (Nuneaton) ATTENDANCE: 212 BEST GLADIATOR: Nathan Whitehead


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I don't know about you, but my house and my shopping lists are constantly evolving to cut down on plastic. I've highlighted some simple plastic-free swaps to reduce plastic waste in the past, but as this is an ever-continuing journey, I'd like to keep sharing my new favourite ways to embrace a greener lifestyle.
I'm always on the look out for the next way to avoid single-use packaging, throwaway plastic products riddled with chemicals and generally reduce household waste. For me, finding those plastic-free swaps that I can continue to commit to is as much a rewarding personal goal as it is vital for the environment.
I think we all know by now how desperate the struggle is to rid our planet's oceans of plastic pollution, and how impactful the 'Blue Planet II' effect was on alerting the global population to the tipping point that the world's seas find themselves in.
Last month I agreed to become an ambassador for Ocean Conservation Trust, and as such, I've felt more motivated than ever to reduce my household plastic waste going into the next decade.
I've already covered 10 initial ways of reducing plastic waste around the home (check out part 1 and part 2 if you missed those) so this is very much a continuation of that list.
1. Reusable cosmetic and sanitary products
I'm very fortunate since my move to Norwich to have a brilliant local ethical shop 'Little Shop of Vegans', which stocks a range of plastic free, reusable products alongside food, vegan-friendly toiletries and seasonal extras.
My favourite buys since moving to the area are these colourful Aunt Irma's cloth pads and facial rounds for make-up removal. Cute, colourful, useful and reusable; they come with handing washing instructions and look fab in your bathroom too. They can be purchased online here: auntirmas.co.uk
2. Soap, shampoo and conditioner bars
This past year I've come to love using Lamazuna Chocolate Solid Shampoo Bars, which I found on Babipur.co.uk — a favourite shop for cloth nappy liners and eco detergent. This shampoo not only smells amazing, but has come to make my hair incredibly healthy.
Admittedly, it took a little getting used to rubbing the bar through my wet hair and finding the right amount to use, and also to adjust to my hair not looking as glossy… but it has certainly reduced frizz and stopped my hair from drying out and breaking, so it's been worth the trade off for me.
I've also been trying out lots of different organic soap bars for hand washing (Emma's Soap is a win!), and faithfully found a brilliant conditioner bar to go with this new favourite shampoo — from the afore mentioned Little Shop of Vegans. Alter/Native by Suma's Lavendar and Geranium conditioner bar is my top recommendation; it makes my hair — and the entire bathroom — smell amazing! Check out their whole range here: www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/alternative-suma/
3. Reusable food wraps
I was incredibly grateful to be gifted these lovely whale-design Bee Bee Wraps from Ocean Conservation Trust when I agreed to become an ambassasor, which are great for on-the-go lunches with my children. They work really well with crisps, biscuits and sandwiches.
For vegan cheeses, leftovers and refrigerated foods, I continue to make my own reusable vegan soya wraps from a guide I found on inspirecreateeducate.co.uk
4. Extending the life of fresh food
Something I'd given little thought to until more recent times was the amount of food waste generated by my household — something that's become impossible to ignore since both my children have moved on to solid foods.
At my previous address, there was no food waste collection from the local council, but thankfully, where we've moved to in Norfolk there's an option to order a food waste collection bin for your household, which is collected weekly. This has been great for dealing with the food scraps left by a fussy toddler.
One of my best buys of this year though, has been this Fresh Pod from The Green Lady Eco Store. You simply place the Pods into your fruit bowl or fridge salad drawer along with your fruit and vegetables and the contents of the pod extend storage life by up to four times longer.
At the end of their use (you get two per pack, which lasts you up to a year!), you can use the stones from the pod to fertilise plants. I've seen a huge reduction (to just about zero!) in throwing away spoiled, uneaten fruit and veg. You can find them here: freshpod.co.uk
5. On the go reusable items
Since becoming a mum, I never leave the house without a big bag or two of spare clothes, nappies, food, etc., etc., for the children, so it hasn't been too hard to get used to adding a few extras in.
My daughter is 2-years-old, and drinking with a straw is much easier than tipping juice all over herself! So metal straws have become a must. I love my reusable shark cup for my own hot drinks, and this #PassOnPlastic 'Moby Sick' by Sienna Miller cutlery set from Sky Ocean Rescue has proved endlessly handy in allowing me to turn down the plastic alternative still handed out from many kiosks and cafes. Did you know a plastic fork takes 400-500 years to breakdown?!
I love the design one this set too — which looks great with my shark cup and whale food wraps. I do love things that match!
What are some of your best plastic-free swaps? Leave a comment below.


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From the monthly column "Becoming". ShowSight Dog Show Magazine, March 2019 Issue. Click to subscribe.
In 1997 my 16-year-old daughter, Andrea, and I traveled to Louisville for the all-breed shows and a Basset specialty. I didn't take Junior Showmanship seriously in those days, and usually gave a Basset puppy to my daughter to train and show in Juniors. This, of course, did not work out well for her. As other Juniors showed their push-button Goldens and Dobes, my daughter had young Bassets who resembled 40-pound bags of Jello on 6-inch legs that collapsed at will. It was a great plan for me. I was starting to show my Bedlingtons, and I needed the time to learn grooming and training for them. Andrea was beginning to receive a lot of kudos from fellow Basset exhibitors because she really did a nice job with them, so my plan was to give the Basset babies to her while I worked with the Bedlingtons. I know. This wasn't a stellar plan. I recognized that when I actually started observing the Junior Showmanship ring and watched her struggle. She rarely won.
That year in Louisville was different. That show I gave Andrea my Special Basset, Ch First Class Peterbilt, to show in Juniors. Peter was the most magnificent show-Basset I had ever had. Along with wonderful breed-type, this dog could move, and he loved to show. He didn't care who was on the other end of the lead, it was his party and you were invited. Andrea had helped me train him, so I was quite comfortable letting her show him. In my typical out-of-it Mom-fashion, I stayed at the set-up to groom the Bedlingtons, and Andrea took Peter to show in Juniors. She came back a couple of hours later with a Best Junior Ribbon! I didn't know it was the Junior Showmanship regional finals. It was a huge win, and I had not witnessed it. She did it without applause or audience. She did it on her own in stiff competition. I was so proud of her and I vowed to pay much closer attention to the Juniors ring after that.
I did pay closer attention, but by the time this big win came around, Andrea was tired of losing in Juniors. She still showed Bassets for me, and she was highly sought after to show Bassets for other people because she had learned them so well, but Juniors was never again an attraction for her. A couple of her contemporaries approached me to say how good they thought she was at handling, and wondered why they were not seeing her in the ring so much anymore. I passed along the compliments, but Andrea had already decided Juniors was not the ring for her. She never liked the Bedlingtons, and she enjoyed winning. She could win in the Basset ring, but not enough in the Juniors ring to keep her reinforced. I was fine with that at the time, but in retrospect I realized it was an opportunity lost. She was a great handler, and she deserved better than I allowed her in the Juniors ring.
Two short years later Andrea was off to college in Minneapolis. That was the end of Juniors, and the end of our regular travels together. Our world shifted. Her younger brother traveled with me occasionally, but he hated to show dogs, so Juniors was never an option for him. And four years after Andrea left for college her brother died, and our whole world shifted again, only bigger. Life as we knew it could never return, even if we wanted it to.
Our small family has gone through a lot of trauma and challenges since my kids were in high school. After Jacob's death Andrea got pregnant, married, had a second baby, divorced, and fought a tough eating disorder and alcohol addiction problems. There were years when Andrea and I did not speak to each other. Holidays became odd. For me, the one thing besides my marriage that remained constant was dog breeding and showing. It added a measure of stability to a life that was out of control in many other ways. My dog-show world provided a stability that my personal life didn't have, and I immersed myself into it. I formed wonderful relationships with great breeders and handlers from all over the country, and I read everything I could understand about genetics and breeding and ways to raise happier, sounder puppies. I worked hard on my boarding and grooming business, but my true passion was breeding dogs. I could not save Jacob or Andrea from the darkness, but I sure could breed dogs.
As Andrea began to emerge from her darkness, we began the slow dance of learning how to interact with each other again. By this time Andrea was in a stable relationship and had moved to the Milwaukee suburb where her boys were enrolled in school. Grandsons helped a lot. Someone once said that grandchildren are the reward for being a parent. True statement! My grandsons became an absolute joy in my life, and I knew that I needed to do whatever it took to keep them around. As luck would have it, the older grandson has a passion for animals, and we had plenty of those to keep him occupied. We even taught the boys how to help with kennel chores and puppy socialization.
As Andrea began her recovery, she left her job as a parole officer in Milwaukee. When her car died and she had no way to get to work, I suggested she find a grooming shop within walking distance, reminding her that she had done some grooming when she was in high school. She took a job at a local PetsMart, and went through their basic grooming program. About a year later one of my lead groomers left, and I asked her if she wanted to join our staff in her family's business. She took some time to think about it, then decided to give it a try. That was four years ago.
It has worked out far better than either of us imagined. She discovered that I am a better boss than she thought I was a mother, and I discovered how talented she is as a groomer. Then she started talking about getting involved in grooming competitions. When she said she would need a Poodle, I told her I knew just where to get a nice standard, but there was a caveat. If she got a Lakeridge Poodle, she was going to have to show it in conformation. And there was the problem of bringing a standard Poodle into her home with a partner who swore he hated Poodles. Andrea took about a year to think about it, and I put in an order for a black standard male from my friend Debra Ferguson-Jones in Seattle. Since most of Debra's Poodles are white, I figured we had some time to get things worked out. After a lot of thought on Andrea's part, and several false starts with puppies from Debra, Andrea flew out to Seattle in November and brought home a 5-month old white female puppy. I am not quite sure how a black male became a white female, and I don't really care at this point. Andrea and her partner are absolutely in love with the new dog! She got some brief grooming lessons from Penny, and a promise from a couple of Poodle handlers near us to help with the spray-ups at shows, and a miracle happened. After a 20-year absence, Andrea returned to the dog-show ring!
She tells me it's been really hard. She's been gone from dog shows for a long time, and Poodles are way different from Bassets. She was really worried that she was going to look stupid, so I made sure she came to some training classes, and I watched a lot of Poodle handling to pick up some of the finer points of showing the breed. Fortunately I have a few Poodle handlers coming to my training classes, so she's getting some pretty good advice—and has even picked up a new grooming client who has a young black male standard to show! It also didn't hurt that she had to go shopping for show clothes since she didn't have anything in her wardrobe that was appropriate. Shopping for the two of us has always been a bonding experience, so this was actually a good thing.
Andrea entered her puppy in two shows of the Park Shore weekend. Her nervousness was not helped by the timing—her first show was the day after we returned home from her Grandfather's funeral. Fortunately, standard Poodles had a late show time, and she set up with a young groomer who helped her with the final trimming and spray-up. Her puppy looked magnificent, and she handled her like it was the most natural thing in the world. I took videos. The Junior that had shown naughty Bassets for me 20 years ago was all grown up showing a breed she has always loved—her own dog, trained and groomed by her. I didn't think this day would ever come. I didn't think that young girl with her Bassets could ever forgive me for ruining her experience in Juniors. And yet, here she is. Welcome home, Andrea!
In Andrea's own words:
"I did something big this week! After a 20+ year hiatus, I've re-entered the world of dog shows! I stopped in high school and life really hasn't slowed down since. I decided it was time to get back to something I love and enjoy! Returning hasn't been easy, especially since I decided to do it my way this time with a breed I've always adored but know nothing about. Thankfully, I have a village of support and I can't thank everyone enough…
It's never too late to do the things you love! Just make sure to ask for help (and then show gratitude) along the way. P.S. Meet Stevie, Lakeridge Dreams at First Class".
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text: Curbell is committed to giving back to the communities that we serve. One way we do so is by partnering with students at local colleges and universities on a variety of business initiatives. These initiatives support our business goals while providing students with hands on learning experiences. Throughout the years, Curbell Medical has worked with engineering students at the University of Buffalo on a number of core projects. Two of these projects are featured in the article published on UB's Campus News Site. We are proud to have a strong partnership with UB and we look forward to continued collaboration in the years to come.


text:
MUNDELEIN, Ill., Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ — Sysmex, a global leader
in medical diagnostic testing equipment and information systems
technology, today announced a three-year, dual source hematology
contract agreement with Amerinet. Amerinet members have immediate
purchasing/leasing access to Sysmex automated hematology analyzers,
reagents, controls, and service. Training and technical support for
Amerinet members will be provided through Sysmex America's
headquarters in Mundelein, Illinois. The contract, which includes
Sysmex's newest addition to the hematology product line, the Sysmex
XT-4000i™ Automated Hematology Analyzer, is effective
immediately with an expiration date of September 2013. Amerinet is
a leading national healthcare group purchasing organization that
strategically partners with more than 41,000 healthcare providers
to reduce costs and improve quality.
"We at Sysmex America are pleased to be continuing our working
relationship with Amerinet. The fact that this is our third
consecutive hematology contract award from Amerinet is a strong
indicator that the reliability and uptime of our hematology
instruments remain critical to a clinical laboratory's survival in
a new healthcare era. We look forward to meeting these
expectations," said John Kershaw, President & CEO, Sysmex
America, Inc.
Amerinet GPO members also have access to the Sysmex Peak
Performance Program. This program is a rich and comprehensive set
of systems and resources that set apart three distinct categories
of instrument or system support for Amerinet's GPO member-sites:
Pre-implementation, Implementation and Long-Term. Amerinet GPO
customers can select their support services of choice. Sysmex's
hematology contract partnership with Amerinet follows a dual-source
urinalysis contract awarded to Sysmex by Amerinet for its GPO
About Amerinet
As a leading national healthcare group purchasing organization,
Amerinet strategically partners wi