#george telegraph institute of accounts

[gtiaindia]

Best Professional Business Accountant Course in Kolkata

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[thegeorgetelegraph]

Top Professional Diploma in Finance and Accounts in Kolkata | George Telegraph

If your are looking for the best diploma course in financial accounting in kolkata then visit George Telegraph Training Institute today. We provide 100% placement assistance.

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[accounting-course]

A Comprehensive Guide To Understanding GST And Its Implications

George Telegraph Institute of Accounts is a leading training provider in India, offering comprehensive courses on GST compliance and accounting. Their courses are designed to provide practical training on GST, helping businesses stay compliant with the GST laws and regulations.

Learn More:https://eduguide.co.in/a-comprehensive-guide-to-understanding-gst-and-its-implications/

[anonymoushouseplantfan]

Telegraph; Simon Heffer's article

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COMMENT

Finding Freedom drags the royal biography – and the Royal family – into the show business gutter

This vacuous piece of work degrades one of Britain’s great institutions, and raises suspicions about where the authors’ ‘facts’ came from

SIMON HEFFER

13 August 2020 • 10:35am

The new biography of the Sussexes, says Simon Heffer, is an insultingly shabby PR exercise CREDIT: REX

It strains belief that, well within living memory, a member of the Royal household was sent to outer darkness for the crime of publishing a book that was unfailingly loyal, charming and civilised about the royal personages described in it. But that was the fate, in 1950, of Marion Crawford – ‘Crawfie’ to her charges – ex-governess to the Queen when she was Princess Elizabeth, and to her sister, Princess Margaret.

Her book, The Little Princesses, was a highly anodyne account of her life with two little girls, one of whom, by an accident of fate, became at the age of 10 heir presumptive to the Throne.

Crawfie had retired from royal service in 1948, when Princess Margaret was 18 and Princess Elizabeth had married. Such was her devotion to her employers, King George VI and the late Queen Elizabeth, that she had delayed her own marriage for 16 years to fulfil her duties.

When Princess Elizabeth heard she was writing the book (which began as a series of magazine articles, and was an enterprise in which she was encouraged by the Attlee administration for public relations reasons) she pleaded with her ex-governess not to do so, as the principle of confidentiality among courtiers was deemed inviolable: and it was courtiers who, understanding the need to protect the institution, urged a hard line against Crawfie.

For Crawfie, the lure of money and pressure from her new husband was too much; and she transgressed the Unwritten Law by disclosing that Queen Elizabeth didn’t get on with Wallis Simpson – a little like saying that the Chief Rabbi isn’t wild about bacon sandwiches. Crawfie was ostracised by the Royal family and by the Court, and they never spoke to her again.

What the Royal family and Court of 1950 would make of the preposterous “biography" of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Finding Freedom, published this week, hardly bears imagining: a fleet of ambulances would doubtless have been required to take them to the nearest hospital. I put "biography" in quotation marks because this self-serving tripe is really nothing of the sort: it is a cynical and apparently orchestrated snapshot of a period in the lives of two thirtysomethings, which aggrandises and justifies them in the eyes of the world.

The Duke and Duchess’s wedding was only a little over two years ago – their fortunes have since changed CREDIT: PA

It is a monumental public relations job, and a pretty disastrous one at that. The authors are a pair of American journalists who write about the Royal family for American glossy magazines. For them, the Royal family is a commodity, an institution in which their only interest is how loudly it can make their personal cash registers ring. It is a branch of show business; which is why they were the perfect couple to write a book about the Duchess of Sussex. 

Even by the standards of recent royal biographies – most of which, when written about living members of the family, are little more than an extended gossip-column rather than reflecting the serious research normally associated with such a work – this one is an offence against even a moderate standard of intelligence and good taste. It is the perfect present for someone you wish to insult.

Serious biographies do not include effluent such as "the rising sun washed over her makeshift yoga garden, while an exotic flock of birds that looked as if they had just had their tails dipped in pots of colourful paints serenaded her”. Nor would they include drivel such as this description of the Duchess meeting Misha Nonoo, a fashion designer: “Meghan was instantly intrigued by Misha’s effortless glamour, and Misha felt similarly about the actress’s fresh-faced interest.”

Leaving aside the atrociousness of the prose, which any respectable editor would keep only in a book destined to be read by the vacuous, insights such as these raise the question of whether the Sussexes collaborated: a key point, because one needs to know with any biography how credible the information contained within it is.

To those of us who have written biographies – and even, I don’t doubt, to scores of millions of others who haven’t – it is blindingly obvious that much of the information in this book can have only one of two origins: either it is made up, in which case the book is worthless trash, or it was written after some sort of briefing or assistance from the Sussexes or those they may have instructed to speak for them.

The book goes into extraordinary detail about the Duke and Duchess’s early courtship CREDIT: EPA

How, otherwise, do the authors knows that “Meghan was instantly intrigued by Misha’s effortless glamour”? Are they psychic? As with so many books, royal or otherwise, about living people, sources are usually anonymous. That doesn’t mean that what they say is invention; but without attribution, anything goes, and the notoriously unreliable narrative tradition of this history gets off to a flying start in the case of the Sussexes.

If the book were invention the Sussexes, who are not slow to go to law, would be so outraged that a blizzard of writs would have been issued by now: so let us give the authors the benefit of the doubt and assume the contents are true. The book is still pretty much trash.

The Sussexes have made themselves people of no consequence in the British royal family. They are unconcerned, in both senses of the word, with great matters of state. The book is an unwitting tribute to what appears to be the Duchess’s titanic self-obsession  and the tragic ease with which the Duke has apparently decided to let himself be swallowed up by his wife’s narrative.

Prior to the Sussexes’ ‘departure’ from the Royal family, there was widely rumoured to be a rift between Princes Harry and William ® CREDIT: AFP

 What also lowers an already dismal, muck-raking standard is the book’s breathtaking lack of objectivity, with its accounts of people marvelling at the wonder of the Duchess as she condescends to pat a three-year old child on the head, or the magnificence of Harry’s manners when he asks his future wife to go through a door in front of him. That’s Eton for you.

There was an era of royal biography that was considered unduly fawning – Sir Sidney Lee’s authorised life of Edward VII, for example, or Harold Nicolson’s of George V – but that changed with James Pope-Hennessy’s subtle and entertaining life of Queen Mary, as amplified by Hugo Vickers’s superb edition of Pope-Hennessy’s notes, The Quest for Queen Mary, published in 2018.

The finest royal biography was not an authorised one, but Kenneth Rose’s peerless life of George V, written using Harold Nicolson’s notes and published in 1983. Once the Diana industry in all its repulsiveness got under way, standards fell. Royal biography became not a historical record, but a vehicle for settling scores.

That standards have fallen so low as this is something that does more damage to the Sussexes, embodying as it does their non-stop, self-righteous whine, than it does to the biographer’s craft.

In 50 years’ time, will serious scholars refer to this book? Perhaps: it might get a footnote or two as a contrast to more serious studies of the British royal family in the early 21st century. Would anyone, on the basis of what this biography promises, want then to read a book solely about these two future nonentities? I doubt it.

______________________________________________________________________

“Titanic self-obsession...” LOLOLOLOLOL.

[exhaled-spirals]

« In his book In Our Own Image (2015), the artificial intelligence expert George Zarkadakis describes six different metaphors people have employed over the past 2,000 years to try to explain human intelligence.

In the earliest one, eventually preserved in the Bible, humans were formed from clay or dirt, which an intelligent god then infused with its spirit. That spirit ‘explained’ our intelligence – grammatically, at least.

The invention of hydraulic engineering in the 3rd century BCE led to the popularity of a hydraulic model of human intelligence, the idea that the flow of different fluids in the body – the ‘humours’ – accounted for both our physical and mental functioning. The hydraulic metaphor persisted for more than 1,600 years, handicapping medical practice all the while.

By the 1500s, automata powered by springs and gears had been devised, eventually inspiring leading thinkers such as René Descartes to assert that humans are complex machines. In the 1600s, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes suggested that thinking arose from small mechanical motions in the brain. 

By the 1700s, discoveries about electricity and chemistry led to new theories of human intelligence – again, largely metaphorical in nature. 

In the mid-1800s, inspired by recent advances in communications, the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz compared the brain to a telegraph.

Each metaphor reflected the most advanced thinking of the era that spawned it. Predictably, just a few years after the dawn of computer technology in the 1940s, the brain was said to operate like a computer, with the role of physical hardware played by the brain itself and our thoughts serving as software. […]

The information processing (IP) metaphor of human intelligence now dominates human thinking, both on the street and in the sciences. Just over a year ago, on a visit to one of the world’s most prestigious research institutes, I challenged researchers there to account for intelligent human behaviour without reference to any aspect of the IP metaphor. They couldn’t do it. 

[…] They saw the problem. They didn’t dismiss the challenge as trivial. But they couldn’t offer an alternative. In other words, the IP metaphor is ‘sticky’. It encumbers our thinking with language and ideas that are so powerful we have trouble thinking around them. 

The faulty logic of the IP metaphor is easy enough to state. It is based on a faulty syllogism – one with two reasonable premises and a faulty conclusion.

Reasonable premise #1: all computers are capable of behaving intelligently.

Reasonable premise #2: all computers are information processors.

Faulty conclusion: all entities that are capable of behaving intelligently are information processors.

Setting aside the formal language, the idea that humans must be information processors just because computers are information processors is just plain silly, and when, some day, the IP metaphor is finally abandoned, it will almost certainly be seen that way by historians, just as we now view the hydraulic and mechanical metaphors to be silly. »

— Robert Epstein, The Empty Brain

[joeyrob1]

Peer to Peer Lending Sector in UK

Peer to Peer Lending Sector in UK

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– Peer to Peer lending has 7 important differences in the UK compared the US. Otherwise, it is similar and growing.

– Funding Circle, Zopa and Ratesetter are the 3 major peer to peer lending platforms in UK. Their characteristics are listed and discussed.

– UK government had made it easier for investors and the industry is pushing for pension funds to accept it as an asset class. This would open up exponential growth for the industry.

– Public listing of this sector has started to allow international investors to enter the UK market with strong growth potential.

Introduction

In the previous article, we introduced the marketplace lending space in the United States. We saw how Lending Club and Prosper are replacing the role of banks and the method which they matched lenders and borrowers. In this article, we will turn our focus to the United Kingdom. The UK is another matured country for marketplace lending,commonly known as Peer to Peer lending there.

Source: Telegraph

As you can see in the photo above, peers are people with high status in society. Hence it is a desirable and honourable to call this marketplace lending as peer to peer lending in the UK.

Just like how Singtel, Starhub and M1 dominates the telecommunication sector in Singapore, Funding Circle, Zopa and Ratesetter dominates the peer to peer lending sector in the UK. These UK platforms are limited to UK residents to be either lenders or borrowers. The notable exception is Funding Circle which has a US based entity.

Similarities and Differences in the US and UK

Peer to Peer lending platforms are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority since 1st April 2014. In the UK, these platform market themselves as an alternative to bank’s savings account. As a result, they abstain from the term ‘investors’ which is prevalent in the US and prefer to use the term ‘lenders’ instead. However regulations obliged these platforms to disclose that such ‘deposits’ are not subjected to the $85,000 deposit insurance under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

Perhaps there are cultural differences in the UK, these platforms had to emphasize the safety of these investments to a population that are fed up with low savings interest rates but yearn for higher returns. Consequently, there are 6 major differences in the UK system as compared to the US:

Average interest rates are lower at 5% instead of 9% as seen in the US and minimum lending starts at 10 pounds (Zopa and Ratesetter) instead of 25 USD.

Each platform had to form its own provision fund against default. This is a business and not a regulatory imperative. This is one reason that returns are lower in the UK. In the US, the returns are higher but lenders absorb the full losses of default.

Automatic diversification of loans through pooling and ‘savings products’ are classified according to time frame (like fixed deposits without the insurance). Pooling is an advantage.

While the US investor would require USD$10,000 to diversify his loans properly by investing USD$25 in 400 loans, the UK investor would only require 10 pounds.

The exception is Funding Circle and you would need to use their AutoBid to diversify with minimum of 20 pounds and preferably across 100 businesses.

Strong emphasis on the ability to withdraw funds as long as there are new lenders (liquidity) after paying for fees and discount if interest rates rose. In the US, there are such secondary markets but they are not the focus.

Fully funded insolvency plan in the event that these platforms were to go bankrupt as part of regulatory requirements.

Trade body, Peer to Peer Finance Association formed to protect industry’s reputation by encouraging high minimum standards. For example, it has recently passed a directive to its members that all investors should be treated equally. Institutional investors should not be allowed to cherry pick the best loans first at the expense of retail investors.

The US has a much larger market for peer to peer lending and it loan out $12 billion in 2014 compared to $2.3 billion for the UK.

Source: Morgan Stanley

After looking at the differences, we move on to the similarities between the UK and the US. The motivation that drove borrowers to marketplace lending is simply because they can get a lower interest rates when compared to bank’s rate. They are there to refinance their existing loans for more favourable rates. For lenders, they can also get higher interest rate for undertaking modest risk.

Borrowers approach these platforms for small personal loans as seen below.

Source: Zopa

One of the appeal of lending on these platforms is that lenders know that they are lending to real people. This is seen in the personal stories behind the loan.

On the other hand, businesses borrow for the following reasons:

Source: Funding Circle

These peer to peer loans have been so popular that 77% of small businesses will approach Funding Circle first before they reach out to banks in 2013. Where banks would take 2 weeks to decide on the loan, these platforms would just take 2 days and the borrowing costs are much lower.

Features

After we have seen the similarities and differences between the US and UK system, it is time for us to dig into the characteristics of these 3 different leading platforms in the UK.

Funding Circle Zopa Ratesetter Year of Establishment 2010 2005 2010 Target Borrowers Business Loans Personal Loans Personal & Business Loans Loan Origination Amount (Pounds) $956 million $1.19 billion $912 million Loan Amount (Pounds) $5,000 to $1 million $1,000 – $25,000 Personal: $1000 to $25,000 Business: $25,000 to $1 million Loan Period 6 months to 5 years 1- 5 years 6 months to 5 years Provision Fund Not Applicable Safeguard ($11M, 120% cover) Provision Fund ($16M, 151% cover) 5 Year Loan Interest Rates 7.20% 5% 5.90% Fees 1% annual fee + 0.25% if you sell a loan 1% Annual Fee of Loan Lender : 0% Borrower : Late Fees Spread in Rates (Implied) Active Lenders 44818 59000 28832 Bank Barclays RBS Barclays Government Lending (Pounds) (British Business Bank) $60 million Not Applicable $10 million

Of these 3 leading platforms, Ratesetter is the only platform that does both personal and business loans. For companies that are offering business loans, they would receive investment from the British Business Bank as part of the government’s imperative to support local businesses.

Zopa is the oldest platform and it is focused on personal loans. While its returns and fees might lose out to Ratesetter, it has the largest number of active lenders. This means that existing lenders have higher liquidity when they wish to exit the loan early. This is one edge that Zopa has over other platforms. This edge is slowing eroding as both Funding Circle and Ratesetter are catching up in terms of loan origination.

Funding Circle is the most international of these 3 platforms with presence in 5 countries. Unique among these 3 platforms is the fact that it has no provision fund but it makes up with higher interest rates. It should be noted that Singapore’s sovereign fund, Temasek invested $30 million pounds alongside Blackrock in April 2015. They valued Funding Circle at over $1 billion with this deal.

All three have rigorous credit underwriting procedures to protect their reputation and their lenders. Zopa, Ratesetter and Funding Circle use the services of leading credit reporting agencies such as Experian, Equifax and Callcredit as part of the credit assessment. Based on the riskiness of the borrower, they are assigned the appropriate interest rates or rejected.

New Updates

A new update for the UK marketplace lending is the new policy that was recently announced by the Chancellor of Exchequer (UK’s Finance Minister) George Osborne would be the extension of Innovative Finance Individual Savings Account to peer to peer loans from 06 April 2016 onwards. The FCA is currently asking for public consultation before its eventual implementation.

This extension would allow investors to save on taxes and set the stage for the eventual inclusion of P2P lending as a debt asset class. This is what Zopa is actively pushing for in its blog to open up a new major market of investors. If institutional pension funds were to accept these loans as an asset, there will be another wave of exponential growth for the industry.

Conclusion

Peer to Peer lending industry is maturing in the UK and much of the regulations are in place to provide for the safety of borrowers and investors. Regulations are also changing to accept this as an asset class of its own. It is clear that the model of cutting out banks as the middleman are widely accepted by both the borrowers and lenders.

The UK market is much smaller than the US market and there are much room for growth. While overseas investors are still barred from investing in the UK market, Funding Circle has made it easier for foreign investor by being the first platform to float an investment trust on the London Stock Exchange called Funding Circle SME Income Fund. This small $150 million aims to provide 7% dividends and it is open to institutional investors.

This is likely to be the tip of the iceberg and Ratesetter has plans to be publicly listed following the footstep of Lending Club. This will create a fortune for its founders and also allow the global public to ride on the rising wave of P2P lending in the UK. That is all for the overview of the UK marketplace lending and thanks for reading.

Brought to you by RobustTechHouse. We provide Fintech Development services.

Peer to Peer Lending Sector in UK was originally published on RobustTechHouse - Mobile App Development Singapore

[heavyarethecrowns]

Those that have married in to the Royal Families since 1800

Sweden

Lady Louise Alexandra Marie Irene Mountbatten (13 July 1889 – 7 March 1965), previously Princess Louise of Battenberg

Louise was born a Princess of Battenberg at Schloss Heiligenberg, Seeheim-Jugenheim, in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. Her father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was Admiral of the Fleet in the United Kingdom, renounced his German title during World War I and anglicised his family name to "Mountbatten" at the behest of King George V. He was then created the first Marquess of Milford Haven in the peerage of the United Kingdom. From 1917, therefore, his daughter was known as "Lady Louise Mountbatten". Her mother was Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. 

Louise was a sister of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and of Princess Alice of Battenberg, who was the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. She was also a niece of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia. 

Because of her father's work, the family moved around between different British territories, such as Malta, but they returned often to the Heiligenberg outside Darmstadt which they considered their holiday home, always retaining residence in England. Louise often visited her great-grandmother Queen Victoria on the Isle of Wight with her mother during her childhood. The family is described as harmonious; the parents of Louise lived in a happy loving relationship, not in an arranged marriage, and Louise was particularly close to her brother, with whom she corresponded until her death. Louise and her sister were educated by governesses, except for a brief period at Texter's girls school in Darmstadt. 

In 1914, Louise and her mother visited Russia, and were invited to a trip down the Volga with their Imperial relatives. During her visit, Louise noted the influence of Rasputin with concern. The trip was interrupted by the sudden outbreak of World War I, and Louise's father telegraphed for them to return immediately. Louise's mother gave her jewellery to the empress for safe keeping, and they left Russia by boat from Hapsal in Estonia and travelled to neutral Sweden, paying for the trip with gold, as their money was suddenly not acceptable currency in Russia. They stayed in Sweden as guests of the Crown Princely couple (her future husband and his then wife, Margaret of Connaught, who was also her first cousin once removed) at Drottningholm Palace, just one night before they returned to Great Britain. 

During World War I, Louise was first active within the Soldiers and Sailors Families Association and the Smokes for Soldiers and Sailors, but she soon enlisted in the Red Cross for service as a nurse. She was active at a French military hospital in Nevers, and then at a war hospital at Palaves outside Montpellier, from March 1915 until July 1917. She was commended for her hard work, and was awarded The British War and Victory Medals, a medal from the British Red Cross, as well as the Médaille de la Reconnaissance française. After the war, she was active in social work for the children in the slums of Battersea in London.

In 1909, Louise received a proposal from King Manuel II of Portugal. Edward VII was in favour of the match, but Louise declined, as she wished to marry for love. In 1913, having been deposed in 1910, Manuel married Princess Augusta Victoria of Hohenzollern in exile, but their marriage was childless. At the age of twenty, Louise became secretly engaged to Prince Christopher of Greece, but they were forced to give up their relationship for financial reasons. While living in exile more than 10 years later, he would wed the wealthy widow, Nancy Stewart Worthington Leeds, and after her death Christopher would marry Princess Françoise d'Orléans in 1929. Shortly before World War I broke out, Louise fell in love with a man of whom her parents approved but he was killed in the early days of the war. Later during the war, while she volunteered as a nurse in Nevers, she began a relationship with Alexander Stuart-Hill, a Scottish artist living in Paris. Anticipating that her parents would be disappointed in her choice, Louise kept their engagement a secret. Eventually, she confided in her parents, who were initially understanding, and invited Stuart-Hill for visits at Kent House twice. In fact, her family, referring to him as "Shakespeare" because of his odd appearance, found him "eccentric" and "affected". Lacking resources, the engaged couple agreed to postpone marriage until after the war. But in 1918 Louise's father explained to her that Stuart-Hill was most likely homosexual, and that a marriage with him was impossible.

In 1923 Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, having been for three years the widower of Louise's mother's cousin Princess Margaret of Connaught, paid a visit to London and, to Louise's surprise, began to court her. Although as a young woman Louise had said that she would never marry a King or a widower, she accepted the proposal of a man destined to be both. However, under §5 of the 1810 Swedish Succession Law (Act 1810:0926), a Prince of the Swedish royal house forfeited his right of succession to the throne if he "with or without the King’s knowledge and consent, married a private Swedish or foreign man’s daughter" (med eller utan Konungens vetskap och samtycke, tager till gemål enskild svensk eller utländsk mans dotter). Once the couple's engagement was announced, there were lively discussions in the media about whether the bride-to-be was constitutionally eligible to become Sweden's future queen. In response the Swedish Foreign Ministry, citing the law in question, clarified the term "a private Swedish or foreign man's daughter" to mean "he who did not belong to a sovereign family or to a family which, according to international practice, would not be equal thereto" (som icke vore medlem av suverän familj eller familj som enligt internationell praxis vore därmed likställd), and announced that the Swedish government had "requested the British government's explanation of Lady Louise Mountbatten's position in this respect." The ministry further announced that following the British government's reply to its inquiry and the subsequent investigation into the matter, it had been determined that the Crown Prince's choice of a future wife was in compliance with the succession law, thereby concluding debate on the imminent nuptials.

On 27 October 1923 Sweden and Britain's respective plenipotentiaries signed the "Treaty between Great Britain and Sweden for the Marriage of Lady Louise Mountbatten with His Royal Highness Prince Gustaf Adolf, Crown Prince of Sweden". The treaty stated, in part, that the kings of the United Kingdom and Sweden "having judged it proper that an alliance should again be contracted between their respective Royal Houses by a marriage...have agreed upon and concluded the following Articles", which articles declared that the marriage would be celebrated in London and duly authenticated, that the couple's financial settlements would be expressed in a separate marriage contract which was declared to be "an integral part of the present Treaty", and that the two nations' ratifications of the treaty would be exchanged in Stockholm, which formally occurred 12 November 1923. On 3 November 1923, at age 34, Louise married Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, in the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace in the presence of King George V and members of both royal families.

The marriage between Louise and Gustav Adolf was by all accounts a love match and described as very happy. She was also liked by her mother-in-law because of her friendly nature, although they seldom saw each other, as Queen Victoria spent most of her time in Italy. The fact that the Queen spent most of her time abroad meant that Louise took on many royal duties from the beginning, which was initially hard for her as she was at this point described as quite shy. After the queen's death in 1930, Louise was officially the first lady of the nation, expected to perform all the duties of a Queen, twenty years before she actually became Queen. This meant that Louise was to take over the protection of all the organisations and associations traditionally assigned to the Queen. Regarding this matter, Louise remarked: "It is hard for me to be the protector of different institutions, as I have been accustomed to practical work, as an ordinary person, before my marriage". As a former nurse, a fact she was proud to point out, Louise was interested in improving the working conditions for nurses. Louise's only child, a daughter, was stillborn on 30 May 1925. 

In 1926–1927, the Crown Princely Couple made an international trip around the world to benefit Swedish interests, which was described as a great success, especially the trip to the United States, during which they travelled across the nation from New York City to San Francisco. Public interest was high, and the couple acquired a reputation for being "democratic", after having refused such formalities as greeting the guests at a reception sitting on thrones, which they had been invited to do at the reception of an American millionaire. During an interview in Salt Lake City, Louise stated that she believed in gender equality and that women are fully capable of being active within all professions and in the business world, as well as within politics: "Women are completely intellectually equal to men and, provided they are given sufficient education, are just as capable to deserve respect and admiration as men in this field". In 1934–35, she made a similar trip with Gustav Adolf to Greece and around the Middle East and Africa, called the Orient Tour. 

During World War II, Louise was active in aid work within the Red Cross. She collected candles and other non-electric light sources for the needy during the campaign "Vinterljus" (English: Winter Lights). Another contribution was Kronprinsessans Gåvokommitté för Neutralitetsvakten (English:"The Crown Princess Gift Association For the Neutral Defence Forces"), which provided the soldiers mobilised to guard the borders of neutral Sweden with gifts: normally socks, scarfs and caps knitted by contributors from all over the country. As a citizen of a neutral country, Louise was also able to act as a messenger between relatives and friends across warfaring borders. She also provided supplies to many private citizens in this way, such as "two old ladies in Münich", the former German language teacher of her husband's late wife, and the exiled Princess Tatiana of Russia in Palestine. It is said many would have died, had it not been for Louise's help. In 1940, for example, she sent supplies to the British major Michael Smiley at the Rifle Brigade, who was captured and placed in a prisoner of war camp, after his mother-in-law Alicia Pearson had asked for her help. During the Finnish Winter War, Louise set up a home for Finnish war orphans at Ulriksdal Palace

In 1950, Louise became Queen after accession to the throne of her husband. Louise is described as a true democrat at heart, and was therefore somewhat disturbed at being celebrated merely in her capacity of Queen. In reference to the attention, she remarked: "People look at me as if I were something special. Surely I do not look differently today from how I looked yesterday!" Louise disliked the strict pre-World War I protocol at court, retained during her mother-in-law's era, and reformed it when she became Queen, instituting new guidelines in 1954 which democraticised many old customs. In 1962, she abolished the court presentations, replaced them with "democratic ladies' lunches", to which she invited professional career women, a custom which was to continue under Princess Sibylla after her death. Louise also renovated and redecorated the interior of the Royal Palace in Stockholm.

Queen Louise had several Pomeranian dogs which she would hide about her person when visiting abroad which caused problems when travelling through customs (which she usually did under the pseudonym "Countess of Gripsholm" or "Mrs Olsson") After having taken summer vacations with her husband in Italy every year, she always departed before he did to visit England prior to returning to Sweden. A popular story told of her alleges that Louise, after almost being hit by a bus in London (because she would often jay-walk), took to carrying a small card with the words, "I am the Queen of Sweden" printed on it, so that people would know who she was in case she was hit by a vehicle. In London, she often stayed at the Hyde Park Hotel, often crossing a heavily trafficked street there to shop, which prompted her note.

In 1963, Louise accompanied her spouse on a state visit to France, where she made a great impression on President Charles de Gaulle. At dinner, she said to him: "I must ask you to excuse my ugly French. My French is the one spoken in the trenches of 1914." De Gaulle later attended her memorial in Paris, which was the first occasion for a French president to visit the Swedish church there, as well as one of only two occasions de Gaulle visited a memorial service of this kind. Queen Louise's last official engagement was the Nobel Prize dinner of 1964, during which no one noticed that she was in fact already ill.

Queen Louise died on 7 March 1965 at Saint Göran Hospital, in Stockholm, Sweden, following emergency surgery after a period of severe illness. She had made her last public appearance at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in December 1964. Queen Louise is buried beside her husband and his first wife, Crown Princess Margaret, in the Royal Cemetery in Solna north of Stockholm.

[jkottke]

Card catalogs and the secret history of modernity

A large file room at FBI Headquarters, 1944. By George Skadding for LIFE Magazine.

Card catalogs feel very old but are shockingly new. Merchants stored letters and slips of paper on wire or thread in the Renaissance. (Our word "file" comes from filum, or wire.) But a whole technology, based on scientific principles, for storing, retrieving, and circulating an infinitely extensible batch of documents? That is some modern-ass shit. And it helped create the world we all live in.

I could recite the history of the idea and of the furniture, French bibliographic codes, Melvil Dewey, the standardization of index cards, how vertical filing propagated from railroads into offices and from there into the university. It's on Wikipedia. Instead, let's talk about the card catalog as a concept.

Before loose-leaf cataloging, books would be cataloged in other books. (Most other documents were never cataloged at all.) This meant they'd be recorded chronologically, sometimes alphabetically, or according to some other scheme, with ad hoc additions and substitutions sprouting off like epicycles on Ptolemaic circles. It was a big damn deal to even find a book.

Manuscripts on parchment -- the universe of The Name of the Rose -- you could almost keep up with that pace. Printed books on rag paper? It gets a lot harder. And steam-powered fast-press books on wood-pulp paper? Even setting aside newspapers, pamphlets, telegraphed letters and memoranda? You can't keep track of any of that without a system.

Card catalogs imagine an endlessly growing collection of books and other documents. It imagines institutions capable of standardizing the treatment of those documents. And it imagines a democratic public, scholars, students, and amateurs with both the urge and the ability to seek out such materials. The card catalog is everything that is the best of the 19th and 20th centuries. And they look beautiful, and smell fantastic.

In Control Through Communication, her study of 19th century information management, JoAnne Yates identifies five breakthrough technologies. There's the telephone and telegraph, which handle external communication. For internal communication, the big three are the typewriter, carbon paper (and other duplication technologies), and filing systems, especially the vertical file and card catalog.

The others made information producible, reproducible, and transmittable, but the file systems made information intelligible. If the telegraph was "the Victorian Internet," the file cabinet and standardized filing were the Victorian operating system. For over a century, it was Windows.

Like all media revolutions, this one changed how we thought. Our ideas about knowledge, the universe, human achievements, all had to be revised. In the ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound puts his finger on it:

Contemporary book-keeping uses a 'loose-leaf' system to keep the active part of a business separate from its archives. That doesn't mean that accounts of new customers are kept apart from accounts of old customers, but that the business still in being is not loaded up with accounts of business that no longer functions.

You can't cut off books written in 1934 from those written in 1920 or 1932 or 1832, at least you can't derive much advantage from a merely chronological category, though chronological relation may be important. If not that post hoc means propter hoc, at any rate the composi­tion of books written in 1830 can't be due to those written in 1933, though the value of old work is constantly affected by the value of the new.

Literature and human culture are no longer bound to time. Or rather, they are no longer bound to the linear sequence of time. The past -- multiple pasts! -- and the present can coexist, shaping and transforming each other. The text -- no longer the book -- becomes a cinema where narrative and montage are only a few of the wider set of possible techniques.

For William James, concepts become flexible and variable, suited to the task of the moment, not our inherited intellectual architecture. For Saussure, signs become slips of paper, shuffled and reshuffled, their meaning always relative to the other terms not given. For Darwin, species is a category in process; for Mendel and later scientists, genetic material is a code that is recombined and deciphered. None of this is an accident. Our physical and psychological experience of the media made us ready for these ideas.

The vertical file and card catalog also very quickly became the chosen technology of surveillance by state and industrial agents. But in this way too, it paved the way to what we are now. And if a technology can't be abused by the Stasi, was it really ever that powerful in the first place?

Sarah Werner, a Shakespeare historian and independent librarian, once took me on a tour of the beautiful card catalogs at the Folger Shakespeare Library. This is what she had to say about them:

What makes card catalogs more magical than machine readable catalogs is that they carry in them the passage of time. Books acquired early in a library's history might have handwritten cards, while later purchases could have typewritten cards; printed cards might be annotated and updated by hand; and there might even be cards for books that have not yet been cataloged. The best card catalogs are time machines built on the most accessible and inexpensive of technologies--and that's even before you get to the books.

Like tables, like books, like newspapers and magazines, and like everything else, most libraries are giving their card catalogs away to make more room. If your library still has one, take a moment to ride that time machine. You won't be sorry you did.

[gtiaindia]

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Discover how course duration influences learning outcomes in accounting. Explore the benefits of professional accounting courses and their impact on mastering financial accounting. Learn more about the offerings at the George Telegraph Institute of Accounts and find the right accountant course duration for your career success.

[thegeorgetelegraph]

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[accounting-course]

Learn The Best Goods & Services Tax (GST) Certificate Course in Kolkata

Do you want to learn  the best certification course on gst in Kolkata? then visit George Telegraph Institute of Accounts today. George Telegraph Institute of Accounts is the one of the best GST training institute in Kolkata.

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[accountancyandtaxupdate-blog]

Does the Apprenticeship Levy need fixing?

One of the government’s flagship skills policies, the Apprenticeship Levy, celebrates its first birthday in April. But despite the great hopes at the launch, the programme has yet to find much love from businesses – indeed a growing number of corporates are complaining that the structure and administration of the levy are proving counterproductive. When skills minister Nick Boles launched the levy in April, much was made of the impact it would have on investment levels in skills training across a range of sectors. Boles recently told FE Week: “I’ve always been quite interested about the idea of hypothecated taxation and whether you can get greater acceptance on the part of people paying the tax if they know what it’s going towards.” “Politically, it fell on very fertile ground because the chancellor and the PM felt that, in a sense, this was the time to cash in our chips with business.” “So when I presented the idea of the levy to George [Osborne] first, I could see, immediately, his eyes lit up. He thought, ‘now that’s great’, because it solves how we get the three million and how we pay for it.” Boles proved a successful midwife of the policy, which essentially marries government subsidy with corporate contributions to give a turbo charge to the UK’s skills pipeline. Teething problems Since the April start, however, the levy has attracted some criticism for, among other things, imposing too great an admin burden on business and failing to achieve the intended boost to skills investment that targets 3m people starting apprenticeships by 2020. Government data showed that in period between May and June 2017, covering the period when the levy came into effect, apprenticeship starts plunged 59.3% to 69,800. The knives have been out. “The levy is nothing but a tax,” Sir John Timpson, chairman of high street cobbler chain Timpson, recently told the Telegraph. “The only way to get money back is a tortuous process of changing your training programme to fit government guidelines.” Arch co-founder Ben Rowland defended the levy, explaining that any change of this scale will naturally require a period of adjustment. He suggested that the drop in numbers could be attributed to small companies now struggling to afford apprenticeships due to changes to the system. He said: “Previously, training providers would receive money from the government to provide apprenticeships, then they would go out and try to engage employers and offer them the spaces on the courses.” “However with the introduction of the levy, many training providers are receiving much less money than they were before. It’s less viable for them to be trying to engage the smaller, non-levy paying firms.” Looking at the figures, Rowland explained: “Apprenticeship numbers weren’t supposed to fall, but it’s not a surprise, and not necessarily a bad thing, as it demonstrates that two good things have happened; employers have jettisoned low-value programmes, which they previously didn’t have to pay for, and have spent time thinking carefully about how to best use their levy.” Furthermore, based on direct experience with dozens of employers, Rowland outlines a typical time-frame of 12 months to take a levy paying company from zero awareness to having a strong programme ready to go. As a result, companies may have to wait a full year before the programme bears fruit. He added: “Our number of starts has gone up x2.5 since the levy came in, but only because we started working with employers on it back in early 2016.” The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) last week issued a report that called on the government to rethink the ways in which the levy is run. It highlighted the growing practice of rebadging – where employers simply rename existing training as an apprenticeship. The research shows that “46% of all respondents think that their organisation will be encouraged to rebadge current training activity as apprenticeships. The proportion is higher amongst public sector organisations, where over half think that they will be encouraged to rebadge.” By any other name… Recent reports have highlighted that some businesses had started using the apprenticeship levy to fund senior executives on MBA courses, and our research suggests that a large proportion will use the levy to support similar activities. Over a third (36%) of respondents reported that their organisations are using or planning to use the apprenticeship levy to fund management and/or leadership training. Lizzie Crowley is a skills adviser at the CIPD. She said: “The Government needs to seriously review the levy to ensure it is flexible enough to respond to employers’ needs and to drive the greater investment in high quality training and workplace skills needed to boost UK productivity. “There also needs to be much better support for SMEs, both for those that pay the levy and those that don’t, to help them to design and implement effective apprenticeship schemes.” A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “Feedback we have had from levy payers shows they are planning to increase their demand for apprenticeships to ensure they have the right skills in their workforce to grow their business and boost their productivity. “Government will continue to work with employers on how the apprenticeship levy can be spent so that it works effectively and flexibly for industry, and supports productivity across the country.” Making the levy work for you Employers may experience a levy headache, but firms can use the scheme to their advantage and maximise the benefits. Companies like Arch Apprentices can help firms to convert costs to a professional-grade training programme for existing employees as well as new starters, including school leavers, graduates, and business as usual hires. As a result, firms will see this compulsory investment in training deliver a real return for their business and shareholders. Arch can help firms throughout the process, including the account and levy management, the recruitment and onboarding, the delivery of training, and the quality management. The post Does the Apprenticeship Levy need fixing? appeared first on Accountancy Age.

https://www.accountancyage.com/2018/01/30/apprenticeship-levy-need-fixing/

[whitestonetherapy]

George finally does it... (28.5.17)

Boxing isn’t a sport for everyone, but there’s something about it that I love. 

When in my teens and early twenties there was a big social aspect to this. Whenever there was a mega-fight friends of mine from boarding school would come together from across the country, and sometimes even further, and we’d watch the fights together.   A love of boxing and watching the big fights became something that continued to tie my group of friends together despite most of us living increasingly different lives in different areas. 

Prince Naseem Hamed fights were the highlight.  He was all about the swagger, with extravagant ring-walks, cat-like reflexes and outrageous power in both hands, plenty of trash-talking in fight week.    He was brash and unbeaten and Naz fight-nights were just fun events.  We made extra efforts to get together for these fights.

In 2001 Hamed came up against a prime Marco Antonio Barrera in Las Vegas in a super-fight at the MGM Grand.  Hamed was the betting favourite and we all gathered in a party atmosphere.  The fight didn’t go as we’d hoped.  Hamed’s reflexes had slowed, his punches were telegraphed and falling short, and Barrera controlled the distance and made his opponent miss. 

Hamed lost for the first time in a wide decision over 12 rounds.  It transpired his training camp had not been good.  I’ve since read that Naz had lost his appetite for hard training, increasingly believing his own press and relying on his freakish power to win fights.  Barrera put on a master-class of boxing that night and made Naz look pedestrian.  We were left feeling shell-shocked as the pre-fight bravado was for the first time not matched by the fighting in the ring. 

I was especially sad when he lost, though I’m sure I disguised it well enough at the time.  I felt in my bones that my group of school friends from my boarding school would see less of each other from that point onwards.  It had taken events like this to act as a kind of catalyst, occasions significant enough to bring a large group of old friends back to one place.  My feeling turned out to be right. I’ve since heard several similar stories from ex-boarding school pupils on the issue of school relationships coming to an end. 

There is often difficulty in maintaining relationships forged at boarding schools.  Young people generally have less money and more limited means to travel freely, perhaps even more-so in years gone by.  Until recently there was no social media and no mobile phones to help people stay in contact over long distances.  But friendships made at boarding school can span many important formative stages of growing up, and are built over many years. This happens in the near-total absence of parents for long periods, and in an institutional environment where ‘care’ or ‘love’ are not things that staff can provide beyond a certain point.  I think, in these situations, there are often some deeper or more pronounced fundamentals found within close boarding school friendships. 

Friends at a boarding school are not just people with similar interests who spend time together for a while after school before each goes home. Friendship in this environment can become part of an absolutely critical support structure for children, helping them navigate and even survive a difficult environment.  These relationships between children can also take on some of the characteristics we most associate with parenting -  children can literally co-parent each other at times, drawing on the examples they have internalised and, as best they can, helping their friends mediate tough emotional and physical experiences.   A number of people have told me of a feeling of grieving as such relationships have come to an end abruptly when school finally ends, and friends who have lived together for years are suddenly dispersed across the globe. These things are not written about enough.

I’ve been waylaid.  Back to boxing. On Saturday night George Groves finally won a world title.  He bear Fedor Chudinov at Bramell lane with an incredible stoppage in the 6th round.  If you don’t know George, he is a charismatic fighter with a sharp mind, always entertaining in interviews and good fun to watch. This was his fourth attempt at a world title, I think only Frank Bruno has previously had as many attempts before winning a version of a world title.  Groves first came to wider attention with his 2011 fight with James DeGale, where the crowd had sided heavily with Groves (who many felt had been the target of unfair personal attacks by DeGale in the build up).   

In his previous title fights George had fought Carl Froch twice for the WBA belt. 

In the first fight George had made some bold predictions and come in as the underdog against a seasoned champion. He knocked the iron-chinned Carl Froch down in round 1 to stunned disbelief in the stadium, and gave an impressive account of himself before being stopped controversially later in the fight. Here’s the thing… George just looks rattled when under pressure.  It’s another reason why I find watching him compelling but also quite hard.  His long arms and looping hooks are serious weapons when on the offensive… but when he is taking shots in return he is all flailing arms and legs and slumped shoulders.  He just has the look of someone who is exhausted, despite his good engine. Being a pale skinned person he also marks up easily, and taken together this is a vulnerable package.  Referees rightly have to make judgement calls in hard fights and this is what happened against Froch.  The referee stepped in and stopped a flailing George Groves when under sustained pressure. The crowd was not pleased at the stoppage and George wasn’t either.  He left with his hand raised as the crowd cheered his name that night, as a moral victor, but with his first loss.  

A rematch with Froch was made - George’s second attempt.  Fuelled I think by his excellent performance in the first fight and a sense of injustice at the stoppage, Groves was too cocky in the build-up.  You felt a shift in the mood of the same boxing fans who had given Groves plaudits after the first fight.  Froch was increasingly needled in the build up and the fans did not like it, a champion being humiliated by Groves in TV interviews despite having won the first fight!  And so it was that when the second fight came around many people were willing Carl Froch to win.  The 80,000 strong Wembley crowd was against Groves that night, the noise was deafening.  After some very close rounds with George getting the better of a tactical battle, Carl Froch landed a knockout blow.  Froch has since retired but can rightly be considered a great champion.  Poor George meeting him twice…

Groves went away to regroup before a third crack at the title in Las Vegas against Badou Jack.  Jack is the sort of fighter who does “everything well”.  In addition he is a freakishly tough specimen and Groves lost against the home-town fighter in a fight that might have gone either way.  Groves had some poor advice from his corner and instead of trying to win the final rounds decisively he sat back, defending a lead he did not actually have.  Unlucky again.  And back to the drawing board with a new trainer and changing every aspect of his life.

Finally on Saturday night Groves got everything right.  A boxing ring leaves nowhere to hide, and you have to marvel at the determination, the physical and mental strength it must have taken for Groves to walk down Fedor Chudinov - himself an undefeated ex-champion.  A lifetimes dreams and work and 36 minutes to get it all right, in front of an audience of 35,000 and millions on television. 

I’m delighted George Groves won this.  He has had to deal with tremendous pressures to achieve his dream.  Borrowing the ‘drama triangle’ metaphor from Transactional Analysis and taking the large liberty of trying to apply it to boxing - over the course of his notable fights, George has shifted spectacularly from the role of victim, to persecutor, and back to victim again.  The idea behind the drama triangle is that within any drama people will naturally assign themselves one of these roles: victim, persecutor, or rescuer.   I assign the role of rescuer to the referee (who is bound by rules) and the crowd in attendance.  I also include the general mood of boxing fans who watch at home on TV, of which the fighters must be aware in fight week.  On whose side are the fans?  Who do they want to ‘rescue’?  Sometimes of course the crowd want to see the persecutor win in which case they too becomes persecutors, as was often the case in Hamed fights (until he met Barrera).  This can be a lonely place for a victim to be, ranged against an opponent and a noisy partisan crowd, with no rescuer in sight except a referee.

On Saturday night the crowd wanted to see George win, with him cast psychologically as the victim (having failed honourably in three previous attempts at the title) facing the strong, determined teak-tough persecutor in Fedor Chudinov .  And with some help and noise from the rescuers, the drama was completed when he did. 

www.whitestonetherapy.com

[biofunmy]

Suiting Up for the Impeachment Battle

The fourth presidential impeachment hearings in the history of the United States, whose public phase came to an end on Thursday afternoon in the columned environs of the House Ways and Means Committee hearing room, may have hewed to decorum, but they were a battlefield nonetheless.

It was clear in the language, between those who used words like “bombshells” and “smoking guns” and “explosive” and those who used words like “boring” and “flop”; and clear in the spin, as Democrats and Republicans sparred over demands to keep the whistle-blower’s identity secret.

And it was clear in the optics of many of the witnesses, who dressed as if girding themselves for the thinly disguised war that their testimony would likely spur.

They may not have been wearing actual armor, but the references were impossible to miss.

Does it matter?

It has escaped no one that while the purpose of public hearings is transparency, the side effect is theater. (Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, did keep calling them “a show trial,” after all.) And the audience was not simply the reality-television star whose administration is in the dock, or the body politic of the moment, but the body politic of the future. The images, and the words they frame, will also become part of history.

The actors in this drama are playing their parts and costuming themselves not just for the social media age, but also for posterity. How we present when we say something — our decoration, our camouflage — helps shape the way it is received.

There is a reason that both the bow tie of George P. Kent, the State Department official and witness, and the jacket of Representative Jim Jordan, ended up with their own Twitter accounts. (The bow tie actually has two.)

There is a reason that everyone became fixated on the seeming twinkle in Ambassador Gordon D. Sondland’s eye, the smile that seemed to play around his lips. They undermined the card-carrying-member-of-the-establishment messaging of his dark suit and subtly patterned Republican red tie, just as his testimony undermined the no-quid-pro-quo White House story line.

And of all the images, after the hours of questions and answers, grandstanding, interpreting and debating, it is not the many dark suits with red or blue ties and the little Congressional lapel pins that are the de facto Hill uniform that remain seared into memory. (Though they were consistently, consciously, modeled by Adam Schiff, the Intelligence Committee chairman, and Mr. Nunes, as well as by David Holmes, the political counselor in the American embassy in Kyiv, and David Hale, the under secretary of state for political affairs.)

It was, rather, an actual uniform: one that was formal in its rigor, unmistakable in its messaging, and representative of a different kind of national institution.

In many ways, Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman’s decision to appear in his Army dress uniform, medals arrayed on his breast, buttons agleam, was simply the most obvious statement of an implicit position, one shared by most witnesses, albeit expressed in various individual ways.

It was one that stood aside from partisan politics, that prized country above self, that understood testifying as a duty — but also understood the rules of combat.

Colonel Vindman said as much to Representative Chris Stewart, Republican of Utah, who first put the uniform on the table as a topic of conversation (followed quickly by President Trump, who told reporters, “I understand now he wears his uniform when he goes in.”).

In response to a not-so-subtle attempt by Mr. Stewart to portray the choice as a ploy, Colonel Vindman said, “I’m in uniform wearing my military rank” because “the attacks that I’ve had in the press and Twitter have marginalized me as a military officer.”

It was a symbol, just as Mr. Jordan’s decision to shrug off his suit jacket was a symbol of his willingness to be the Republican Party’s attack dog.

After all, as he said in the “House Freedom Caucus” podcast in March, apropos of his tendency to tote his jacket over an arm instead of wearing it: “You get in these hearings, and if I think the witness isn’t being square with me and it’s going to get kind of heated, I mean maybe it’s just me, I just don’t feel right with the jacket on.”

The imagery taps into the cinematography of stripping down before you get in the ring; of every boxing or schoolyard tussle movie ever made. Even when he wasn’t ceded the floor, Mr. Jordan was telegraphing readiness to rumble.

Not that Colonel Vindman and Mr. Jordan were the only participants dressing for a fight. They were simply the most obvious.

While Mr. Kent’s bow tie got most of the viewing attention during his appearance, his three-piece suit was equally notable. All five buttons of the vest were tightly buttoned, even though men’s wear rules tend to dictate that the bottom button be left undone, as it is in a suit jacket.

The vest formed a kind of extra protective layer for the witness, just as the silk scarf guarding the neck of Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, demanded a closer look. Reportedly a traditional design from Hermès known as the Grand Uniforme, created in 1955, it featured a pattern of gold helmets and what looked surprisingly like swords.

Elaborate, almost Napoleonic hilts, with tassels and ropes and other elements of martial pageantry. As if there were any doubt that a woman who started her testimony paying homage to her fellow diplomats in “hardship” positions, a woman of calm, carefully considered answers, did not anticipate what weapons may be deployed.

There was more: Jennifer Williams chose to appear in a hunter green coatdress with a black belt cinching the waist, almost military in line, and Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, wore a gold chain around her neck, with a matching gold chain around one wrist. It was visible as she raised her left hand to gesture while she crisply handled questions about who knew what in the chain of command.

Coincidence? It’s possible.

But given the attention paid to the moment, now and forevermore, given how much care and preparation each witness put into his or her testimony, given the way the whole case may turn on the telling detail, it seems unlikely these details, no matter how minor they seem, would be overlooked. They tell their own part of the story.

Sahred From Source link Fashion and Style

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2OCWsTw via IFTTT

[sheetforce5-blog]

Links 6/18/19

The League of Entropy Forms To Offer Acts of Public Randomness Duo

Dogs’ eyes evolve to appeal to humans BBC

Cheddar To The Rescue? UK Company Uses Cheese To Power 4,000 Homes OilPrice

Robocalls Are Overwhelming Hospitals and Patients, Threatening a New Kind of Health Crisis Washington Post

China?

Huawei Says US Ban Hurting More Than Expected, To Wipe $30 Billion Off Revenue Reuters

U.S. chipmakers quietly lobby to ease Huawei ban: sources Reuters (resilc)

The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Cancer Researchers From Top Institutions Bloomberg (Chuck L)

Free speech under fire in India Asia Times

Uncertainty over output gap and structural-balance estimates remains elevated Bruegel. More important for the EU than the geeky headline suggests.

From coup leaders to con artistry: Juan Guaidó’s gang exposed for massive humanitarian aid fraud Grayzone Project (Chuck L)

Brexit

From Politico’s morning newsletter:

BRUSSELS TO BOJO: YOU’ll CHANGE YOUR TUNE. Seven EU diplomats and officials who spoke to POLITICO offered a sanguine assessment of a Boris Johnson U.K. prime ministership. Johnson will turn out to be more pragmatic than his rhetoric suggests, they reckon. “Once in office he’ll change,” said one EU diplomat. “It’s very different when you have a country in your hands.”

Labour chaos over Brexit deepens as Tom Watson calls for special party conference Telegraph

New Cold War

Russia Expert’s 2017 Prophecy About The Nuclear Threat Of Russiagate Is Coming True Caitlin Johnstone (UserFriendly)

Bookstore politics Irrusianality (Chuck L)

Erdogan sees Russian S-400s delivery starting in July: NTV Al Jazeera (resilc)

Syraqistan

Gulf of Oman: US sends more troops amid tanker tension with Iran BBC

Officials Worldwide Are Skeptical of Claim that Iran Attacked Tankers In Gulf of Oman George Washington

EU warns against blaming Iran for oil tanker attacks DW

Iran To Exceed Some Nuclear Deal Limits Moon of Alabama (Chuck L)

Averting a Disastrous War with Iran American Conservative. Resilc: “Disastrous war is what USA USA does best.”

Accidental cat filter appears on Pakistan official’s briefing Guardian (Bill B)

Solidarity With Glenn Greenwald Jacobin

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

John Pilger: Extradition Process a ‘Very Long Uphill Road’ for Assange Real News

Trump Transition

As promised, Trump slashes aid to Central America over migrants Reuters

Trump: Obama ‘had to know’ of ‘setup’ to block presidential bid The Hill

Trump’s order to trim science advisory panels sparks outrage The Hill

It’s A Horrible Idea To Privatize The Tennessee Valley Authority And Other Public Energy Assets Forbes (UserFriendly)

Navy Contaminates Local Groundwater and Sewer System in Maryland Truthout

Health Care

The U.S. Leads the World in Health-Care Spending Atlantic. UserFriendly: “ROFL you don’t really want m4a.”

2020

Can Elizabeth Warren Win It All? New Yorker

Elizabeth Warren

• Says we need to "stand up to Assad" • Supports the Venezuelan opposition • Voted for and supports sanctions on Iran • Voted to increase Trump's military budget • Says we need to "hold Assange accountable" • Says supporting Israel is a "moral imperative"

— Rob (@philosophrob) June 16, 2019

On Being Serious Current Affairs (UserFriendly)

What does Joe Biden mean when he calls for a “physical revolution”

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) June 17, 2019

As US-Iran tensions increase, Tulsi Gabbard calls her 2020 candidacy a ‘threat to the foreign policy lies sold to the American people’ Independent (resilc)

First Amendment Constraints Don’t Apply To Private Platforms, Supreme Court Affirms The Verge

Oberlin College case shows how universities are losing their way The Hill

Fake News

Adobe’s Experimental AI Tool Can Tell If Something’s Been Photoshopped The Inquirer

YouTube is Too Big To Fix Completely, Google CEO Says CNBC

Tech Companies Need To Take Responsibility For the ‘Chaos’ They Create, Tim Cook Says The Hill

Airbus Wins 100-Plane Order From Air Lease at Paris Air Show Bloomberg (resilc)

Class Warfare

The One Percent Have Gotten $21 Trillion Richer Since 1989. The Bottom 50% Have Gotten Poorer.https://t.co/64KOUjJIiR

— Gabriel Zucman (@gabriel_zucman) June 17, 2019

Amazon slams AOC for saying it pays ‘starvation wages’ New York Post

Antidote du jour. MGL: “As seen at La Serre aux Papillons at Parc Floral in Orléans, France. Sorry, can’t tell you what type of papillon; only that it’s lovely.”

and a bonus (guurst):

In otter news: This cute fella likes milk and needs a new home! pic.twitter.com/VUwfrlmwSi

— RT (@RT_com) April 14, 2019

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

This entry was posted in Links on June 18, 2019 by Yves Smith.

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Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/06/links-6-18-19.html

[selfhelpqa-blog]

A Message to Garcia

New Post has been published on https://selfhelpqa.com/a-message-to-garcia/

A Message to Garcia

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

by

Elbert Hubbard

APOLOGIA

HORSE SENSE

If you work for a man, in Heaven’s name work for him. If he pays wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him, speak well of him, think well of him, and stand by him, and stand by the institution he represents. I think if I worked for a man, I would work for him. I would not work for him a part of his time, but all of his time. I would give an undivided service or none. If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must vilify, condemn, and eternally disparage, why, resign your position, and when you are outside, damn to your heart’s content. But, I pray you, so long as you are a part of an institution, do not condemn it. Not that you will injure the institution–not that–but when you disparage the concern of which you are a part, you disparage yourself. And don’t forget–“I forgot” won’t do in business.

This literary trifle, “A Message to Garcia,” was written one evening after supper, in a single hour. It was on the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-nine, Washington’s Birthday, and we were just going to press with the March “Philistine.” The thing leaped hot from my heart, written after a trying day, when I had been endeavoring to train some rather delinquent villagers to abjure the comatose state and get radio-active.

The immediate suggestion, though, came from a little argument over the teacups, when my boy Bert suggested that Rowan was the real hero of the Cuban War. Rowan had gone alone and done the thing–carried the message to Garcia.

It came to me like a flash! Yes, the boy is right, the hero is the man who does his work–who carries the message to Garcia. I got up from the table, and wrote “A Message to Garcia.” I thought so little of it that we ran it in the Magazine without a heading. The edition went out, and soon orders began to come for extra copies of the March “Philistine,” a dozen, fifty, a hundred; and when the American News Company ordered a thousand, I asked one of my helpers which article it was that had stirred up the cosmic dust.

“It’s the stuff about Garcia,” he said.

The next day a telegram came from George H. Daniels, of the New York Central Railroad, thus: “Give price on one hundred thousand Rowan article in pamphlet form–Empire State Express advertisement on back–also how soon can ship.”

I replied giving price, and stated we could supply the pamphlets in two years. Our facilities were small and a hundred thousand booklets looked like an awful undertaking.

The result was that I gave Mr. Daniels permission to reprint the article in his own way. He issued it in booklet form in editions of half a million. Two or three of these half-million lots were sent out by Mr. Daniels, and in addition the article was reprinted in over two hundred magazines and newspapers. It has been translated into all written languages.

At the time Mr. Daniels was distributing the “Message to Garcia,” Prince Hilakoff, Director of Russian Railways, was in this country. He was the guest of the New York Central, and made a tour of the country under the personal direction of Mr. Daniels. The Prince saw the little book and was interested in it, more because Mr. Daniels was putting it out in such big numbers, probably, than otherwise.

In any event, when he got home he had the matter translated into Russian, and a copy of the booklet given to every railroad employee in Russia.

Other countries then took it up, and from Russia it passed into Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, Hindustan and China. During the war between Russia and Japan, every Russian soldier who went to the front was given a copy of the “Message to Garcia.”

The Japanese, finding the booklets in possession of the Russian prisoners, concluded that it must be a good thing, and accordingly translated it into Japanese.

And on an order of the Mikado, a copy was given to every man in the employ of the Japanese Government, soldier or civilian. Over forty million copies of “A Message to Garcia” have been printed.

This is said to be a larger circulation than any other literary venture has ever attained during the lifetime of the author, in all history–thanks to a series of lucky accidents!–E.H.

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him: for he refresheth the soul of his masters.–_Proverbs xxv:_ 13 In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.

When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba–no one knew where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly. What to do!

Some one said to the President, “There is a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can.”

Rowan was sent for and was given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How “the fellow by the name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia–are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point that I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?” By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing–“Carry a message to Garcia.”

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.

No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man–the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it.

Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office–six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: “Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio.”

Will the clerk quietly say, “Yes, sir,” and go do the task?

On your life he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions:

Who was he? Which encyclopedia? Where is the encyclopedia? Was I hired for that? Don’t you mean Bismarck?

What’s the matter with Charlie doing it? Is he dead? Is there any hurry? Shall I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself? What do you want to know for?

_I wasn’t hired for that anyway!_

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia–and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average I will not.

Now, if you are wise, you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Correggio is indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile very sweetly and say, “Never mind,” and go look it up yourself.

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift–these are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting “the bounce” Saturday night holds many a worker to his place.

Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate–and do not think it necessary to.

Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

“You see that bookkeeper,” said a foreman to me in a large factory.

“Yes; what about him?” “Well, he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him up-town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street would forget what he had been sent for.”

Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “downtrodden denizens of the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is continually sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on.

No matter how good times are, this sorting continues: only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer–but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best–those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress, him. He can not give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, “Take it yourself!”

Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled Number Nine boot.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds–the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there’s nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner-pail and worked for day’s wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. His kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village–in every office, shop, store and factory.

The world cries out for such: he is needed, and needed badly–the man who can carry

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA.

To act in absolute freedom and at the same time know that responsibility is the price of freedom is salvation.

HERE THEN ENDETH THE PREACHMENT, _A MESSAGE TO GARCIA_, AS WRITTEN BY FRA ELBERTUS AND DONE INTO A BOOK BY THE ROYCROFTERS AT THEIR SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST AURORA, NEW YORK.

LIFE IN ABUNDANCE

The supreme prayer of my heart is not to be learned or “good,” but to be Radiant.

I desire to radiate health, cheerfulness, sincerity, calm courage and good-will.

I wish to be simple, honest, natural, frank, clean in mind and clean in body, unaffected–ready to say, “I do not know,” if so it be, to meet all men on an absolute equality–to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unafraid and unabashed.

I wish others to live their lives, too, up to their highest, fullest and best. To that end I pray that I may never meddle, dictate, interfere, give advice that is not wanted, nor assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people I’ll do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. That is to say, I desire to be Radiant–to Radiate Life.