The oldest living animal!

How excited we were by the reports of Ming the Clam found off the coast of Iceland.

"A clam dredged up off the coast of Iceland has been declared the world’s longest-living animal after experts confirmed it had survived for over 400 years. Researchers from Bangor University in north Wales calculated its age by counting rings on its shell.
The scientists have named the record-breaking Ocean Quahog mollusc Ming the Clam after the Chinese dynasty that was in power 410 years ago. When Ming was in his infancy, Elizabeth I was England’s queen and William Shakespeare was still writing plays!

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the officially recognised longest-lived animal is a 220-year-old clam. Unofficially though, Ming’s closest rival is a 374-year-old clam currently housed in an Icelandic museum."

And what did the scientists do with this oldest animal when they found it? Why the answer is obvious - THEY KILLED IT!!

Is it me or am I missing something here?

Beyond Satire!

I have just been reduced to a state of incontinent incoherence by the following headline on the BBC news site;

"Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah accuses Britain of doing too little to fight international terrorism."

I mean what comes next, "Mafia criticises corruption in U.K."??

This critiscism is from the unelected leader of one of the most brutal regimes in the world where in the words of Amnesty International - "Fear and secrecy permeate every aspect of life. Every day the most fundamental human rights of people in Saudi Arabia are being violated."

It is not just Human rights groups, listen to the verdict of the U.K. Foreign Office, not a noted pinko refugee camp - "Women are subject to discrimination. Prisioners suffer maltreatement and torture. Capital punishment is imposed without adequate safeguards and often executed in a cruel way and in public. Amputations are imposed as corporal punishment ... We also have concerns about freedom of expression, assembly and religion."

And this crtiscism from the leader of a country where women are kept in effect under house arrest. They are banned from driving, from leaving the house without a male guardian, even in a medical emergency, or from holding a passport. And daily they have the risk of being beaten up by thugs from the "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" for "infringments."

And rememeber this is the country which over 30 years has deeply corrupted the traditional tolerance of Islam by exporting its half baked primitive Wahabi creed worldwide by bankrolling fundamentalist Mederessa and Mosques througout the world. This, most tellingly, is the country which provided 19 out of 20 of the suicide bombers who committed the 9/11 outrage. This is the country which interpets the Prophet's injunction to respect the "People of the Book" (Jews, Christians and Zorastorians) by banning any other religion other than its fundamentalist corruption of Islam from the land of Saudi Arabia.

And today Britain welcomes this corrupt monarch from a creaking oil soaked state created by brutality in 1932 in the name of oil, in the name of 7 billion pounds of trade and in the name of the corruption of British Public life by abandoning a fraud probe into the Al Yamanah arms contract kickbacks from which Prince Bandahar (former ambassador in Washington, curent Saudu security minister and friend of the Bush family.) has lived the life of a modern day Croesus.

As Tom Lehr observed when Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize, some things are beyond satire!

Marrakech the Red City - On a Budget.

The city of Marrakech is one of those places on earth which lives up to the hype. It is an amazing medieval city contained within 12 kms of walls or "ramparts" surrounded by a Francophile "Ville Nouvelle", surrounded by palm groves and overlooked by the High Atlas and with an amazing culture and vitality. Traditionally there has been nothing between the backpacker's holiday and the expensive up market experience as exemplified by the famous Mamounia Hotel where Churchill stayed and luxurious Riads (Garden Houses) in the Medina. However the onset of budget flights from the UK and internet hotel booking allows you to put together your own package. I did including flights, transfers and hotel for £80 a head for 3 nights / 4 days and in the process probably saw more of the real Marrakech than people on expensive packages. Let me tell you how.

I went down to Marrakech from London for the first time in December 2006 spurred on by Ryanair opening up from London Luton and being able to obtain a round trip for £37 including taxes - Since Gordon Brown introduced revised APD from the 1st February this tax has jumped to £40 from the UK alone as Morocco is outside the EU and long-haul so it is taxed at the rate as a ticket to Australia - how fair is that? I booked a budget Ibis Hotel because you know what you get and the price of 440 Dirham per room meant that 3 nights / 4 days equated to 80 travel, board and transfers per person - a bargain compared to advertised packages particularly as I saw the same Marrakech they charge £300 / £450 for!

Koutabia Mosque

The taxi rank at Al Menara Airport is an exercise in chaos and here, as everywhere else, prices are negotiable. The petit taxis are Peugeot 205 type cars and don't impress and the Grand Taxis are Mercedes 200's and more practical. They'll ask 100 dirham for the 2.5 mile trip to the hotel but expect to pay 70 in and 50 Dirham (the official fare) back.

The route from the airport is through a scruffy Quartier Industriele but the hotel is a pleasant relief. Whilst 2 star, it is an attractive hotel with secluded gardens and a good pool. The railway station doesn't intrude as it has about 8 services a day and means there are taxis and shops beside the hotel.

The public areas are decorated in traditional Moroccan style and the rooms are good sized and clean. The only real negative was the bar - both times we used it we had "problems" with either short change or being kept waiting over an hour for change. We stopped using it as we didn't feel comfortable - friends who have been there since reported exactly the same experience so there appears to be a little operation there requiring management attention. Breakfast was good in the pleasant restaurant but when we used it in the evening it was good value and competent but the food was dull (an achievement with a Moroccan brochette!) - still it was a safe bet and well priced.

Ibis Hotel
Information at the hotel was in short supply with no leaflet stand. We arranged excellent tours to the Atlas Mountains and of the Medina and while the receptionist was very helpful and gave good advice but there was no price list or receipt and you got the impression that this was a direct transaction between the receptionist and the company. We had a minibus for two of us with a driver and guide and this would be the same price (and really good value) if shared between a few guests.

The Hotel was a gentle 15 minute stroll through the Ville Nouvelle to the Medina and the Gueliz had a very continental atmosphere with good cafes and hassle free shopping in the "Prix Fixe" shops - a lot easier than the hustle and hype of shopping in the souks. Despite any niggles this is a really good value and comfortable base for a Marrakech trip. There is a newer Ibis now open in the Palmeriae but this one has the advantage of being in walking distance of the Medina and the facilities of the New Town and closer to the airport.

Marrakech or Marakesh known as the "Red City or Al Hamra," is a city in southwestern Morocco in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains and the name Morocco itself derives from Murrakush. Marrakech has the largest traditional market (souk) in Morocco and also has the busiest square in the entire continent of Africa, called Djemaa el Fna. The square bustles with acrobats, story-tellers, water sellers, dancers and musicians by day; and food stalls by night, becoming a huge open-air restaurant.

Marrakech Street Scene

Like many North African and Middle Eastern cities, Marrakech comprised both an old fortified city (the medina) and an adjacent modern city (called Gueliz). It is served by Menara International Airport (RAK is the code for the city) and a rail link to Casablanca and the north. You can obtain a guide through the hotel desk but the cheaper way to do it is through the tourist office in Place 16 Novembre for around 150/200 dirham. Our guide was called Feta,(call me Feta, same as the cheese!) who was very knowledgeable about the area, history and culture and a really interesting personality. I would certainly recommend a guide the first time you go through the Souks and to give you the background to the city and culture

Ben Youseff Mederesa

The souks are hugely confusing to the uninitiated and I'd recommend starting at the Ben Youssef Mederessa and work your way down to the great open air theater which is the square called Djemaa El Fna, literally in Arabic, "The Square of the nobodies". The "nobodies" were the executed prisoners whose heads were displayed on spikes in the square in days (long) gone by. No doubt they would have agreed with the description of themselves! Take a taxi to the Ben Youssef Mederessa or arrange to meet your guide at one of the gates to the Medina you won't find it yourself. The Ali Ben Youssef Mosque and Mederessa are well worth a visit - this is the oldest surviving mosque in Marrakech. Generally mosques in Morocco (Other than the great mosque in Casablanca are not open to non-muslims. You can visit Ben Youssef as it is no longer in use as a mosque). The Mederessa is a place of peace and meditation with stucco decoration as well as zellij. Next door, The Marrakech Museum is housed in a 19th-century palace. Having fallen into neglect it was acquired by arts patron Omar Benjelloun and reopened as a museum in 1997. Items on display include archeological artifacts, ceramics, jewellery, traditional weapons, garments and uniforms, historic documents and calligraphy, as well as contemporary art exhibitions. After enjoying the exhibits visitors can relax in armchairs dotted around the exquisitely tiled inner courtyard.

Djemaa El Fna

Next follow your guide for a spectacle from the Arabian Nights through the Souks or covered markets. Here you sense the atmosphere and vitality of a medieval city. For here everything is made from scratch and in particular I found the metalworker's souk an assault on the senses with torches, burners and furnaces conquering up a vision of the underworld. There were insights into the amazing craftsmanship this city is deservedly famous and the spectacle of a family of 6 in a space no bigger than a desk making nails by hand. In the midst of all this you spy cats oblivious to the surrounding chaos snoozing. We were not very good a bartering, but by the end of the trip the shop keepers said we were like Berbers. Generally in the Souks they ask for about 4 times the "real" price so be prepared to bargain. You should first look at a "prix fixe" shop to get an idea of prices and aim to pay less in the souks. Remember your luggage allowance; it isn't a bargain if you have to pay six pounds / Kg to an airline to get it home! There are 14 main Souks and whilst not obvious to the visitor there is a definite structure.

Souk Marrakech

One word of warning if you are buying leather goods. Traditionally cured leather is tanned in a mixture of camel urine and pigeon droppings (just sniff it and you can tell!) but if you are buying it to use in damper climes it must be leather which has also been silicon treated and this is always more expensive. Feta mentioned that he had previously brought this Irish guy called "Ivy" around and he kept sending him his friends who needed a Marrakech guide and he was coming there in 2007 for a family celebration. When he showed me the number, in his mobile, the penny dropped that it was Edward Guinness, The Earl of Iveagh! Feta is a good Muslim and not a Guinness drinker!

Eventually you'll emerge from the enclosed world of the Souks to the focal point of Marrakech, The Djemaa el-Fna, a vast square in the old town and backdrop for an amazing theatrical spectacle. The drama is most intense at dusk when lanterns blaze on rows of open air food stalls filling the area with mouthwatering aromas. Jugglers, storytellers, snake charmers and even acrobats and clowns vie for the attention of the jostling spectators who listen intently or fall about laughing depending on the act, while Hustlers, merchants and vendors work the crowd. Be aware if you take pictures they'll expect to be paid, 5 dirham is normal.

Mustapha's snails - Djemaa el-Fna

The food stalls are all licensed and you should try the fresh orange juice at 3 dirham a glass. You can get a hearty meal from the many stalls consisting of a spicy lentil & vegetable soup called Harrisa, a main course with rice and vegetables and a pastry for two pounds or less. Or try some of the specialty stalls such as Mustapha's snails which are deservedly popular at only 5 Dirham (38p) a bowl and are definitely fresh as you can see them swimming around in the basins of water underneath awaiting their moment of glory in his steaming cauldron! If you fancy relaxing more there are any number of restaurants around the square where you can sit on a terrace or balcony and enjoy the spectacle whilst enjoying a tagine.


Overlooking the Djemaa is the Koutoubia mosque whose 210 feet high minaret dominates the skyline and at dusk, hearing the sound of the call to prayer echoing across the city can be an incredibly evocative experience. Although the zellij and painted plaster which adorned the outside of the Koutoubia have disappeared the decorative panels remain and are a mind boggling illustration of the possibilities of Islamic design.

Another low cost option is to take a Hop-on Hop-off bus tour which also leaves from opposite the tourist office. Your ticket lasts for 24 hours and allows you to travel on two routes. An outer route which brings you around the Palmeriae (The Palm Grove), of Marrakech and an inner route which brings you around the medina.

On the outer route stop at the Jardins Marjorelles. These iconic gardens were designed by the French painter, Jacques Marjorelles who brought an artists eye to the gardens with his wonderful use of colour. In amongst the cacti, bamboos and bougainvillea is the magnificent blue villa housing Museum of Islamic Art. The gardens and museum were restored and are owned by Yves St. Laurent and his partner who have a house in the grounds.

Jardins Marjorelles

On the medina route alight in the Kasbah district of Marrakech just beside the Mellah, the ancient Jewish Quarter. Off this square through a narrow passage which gives no clue to what is beyond are the Saadian Tombs. This burial ground in Marrakech was created by Sultan Ahmed el Mansour of the Saadi Dynasty in the late 16th century as a cemetery for himself and his successors. In all there are 66 indoor tombs, decorated with intricate mosaics. The central Hall of Twelve Columns, containing the tombs of Ahmed el Mansour and his family, is dark and lavishly ornate with a huge vaulted roof and grey marble from Carrara, Italy. Outside, there are hundreds more tombs among the palm trees in the serene gardens.

Restaurant - Atlas Mountains

Overlooking Marrakech are the Atlas Mountains and a trip up the Ourika Valley with a guide, driver and minibus will cost around 700 dirham if arranged through the hotel. If you can get a small group together this is well worth doing and will give your trio a different dimension. This was how we found ourselves leaving Marrakech and being stuck behind a snow plough with army conscripts clearing the road, there is a ski resort up here at Oukamaiden. The Berber market at Caid Al Oukri was a revelation with forges repairing 30 year old farm machinery, stalls selling second hand plastic bottles and tooth pullers doing a busy trade and not cheating on their customers who felt everything! We stopped at a restaurant which could have come from Shangri La. Indeed with the snow capped peaks and fortified villages called Kasbah the landscape could almost pass for Tibet and indeed the movie "Kundrun" about the Dalai Lama was shot here. For me though the finest meal I had in Morocco was in a Berber village in the Atlas Mountains with no paved roads and a well to draw water. There with our Berber guide Haj we met his niece Fatima who welcomed us into her simple home, showed us her Hamman and laid out a table for us. She brought a kettle of warm water to wash our hands and a snack of flatbreads, butters from both goats and cow milk and olive oil from her village press. There we broke bread and shared and reaffirmed our common humanity in a way that people have done since biblical times.

Caid Al Oukri - Tooth Puller
The Atlas Mountains extend about 2,400 km (1,500 miles) through Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, including The Rock of Gibraltar. The highest peak is Jbel Toubkal, with an elevation of 4,167 metres (13,671 ft) about 5 miles and is the second highest mountain in Africa after Kilimanjaro. The second highest mountain is the M'Goun of 4071 meters. The Atlas ranges separate the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara Desert.

Atlas Peaks

The Marrakech you’ll see is an ancient and revered Islamic city but with a reputation for tolerance. Partly this stems from the mix between Arab and Berber with 70% of the people being Berber, a distinct people with a more welcoming and tolerant tradition who are intermingled with all levels of Moroccan society including the Royal Family. Furthermore it always had a tradition of trade and visitors with a large Jewish quarter called the Mellah. This is the Arabic word for salt as the Jews largely made their living from the lucrative trade in salt and sugar. Whilst there is no longer a significant Jewish population and Jews in Morocco enjoyed mixed fortunes over the centuries. Morocco has never been strongly anti-Semitic and the present King’s grandfather refused to let the French Vichy Government implement the Nazi race laws in French controlled Morocco and didn’t obstruct Jewish emigration to Israel. In the Ville Nouvelle you may feel you were in metropolitan France if it were not for when you sit on a cafe terrace within 5 minutes somebody has offered to polish your shoes, sell you a newspaper and sell you a single cigarette.

The combination of the walled Medina, the Souks, the gardens, the mosques and palaces, the vitality, atmosphere and tolerance makes Marrakech is unique place which is only four hours away from London but otherwise a world away from Europe. If you go on a budget you have a far better opportunity to savour and experience the real city and people. Go soon!

Photos on;

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=5458&l=35b36&id=723587781

travel

The Benefits of Activity Based Costing - ABC.

Activity Based Costing (ABC) is a generic name for a different approach to costing and production control which grew out of a number of articles and publications in the mid 1980's critical of existing approaches to management accounting and the production of costing information, particularly from three USA based professors; R. Cooper, H.T. Johnson and R.S. Kaplan, and also an influential book;

"Relevance Lost; The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting". - (Johnson & Kaplan, 1987)

The basic tenet of problem identified by Johnson and Kaplan was;

"typical 1980's cost accounting systems are helpful neither for product costing nor operational control"

The remedy proposed by Cooper, Johnson and Kaplan was that companies should adopt Activity Based Costing.

ABC takes a rational approach to product, service and customer costing, identifying what major activities are performed in each function across the business. An assessment is made of how much company resource is actually consumed by each activity, resource meaning anything that is a cost to the business, i.e., employee time, assets, money, etc. These are allocated to activities using appropriate methods dependent on the type of resource to be allocated, for example;



Cost Type Allocation method to activity
Employee Costs - %age of time spent on each activity
Occupancy Costs - M 2 occupied by employees performing activity
I.T. Network Costs - Number of P.C.'s by department, Network Volume

and so on…………the aim being to establish a true cost for each activity, based on the consumption of all resources.

ABC approach to product profitability.



An advantage of ABC is that it involves the line managers with responsibility for production and marketing in the costing process in all aspects, data collection, analysis and accountability. One problem with Traditional Cost Accounting (TCA) is they do not involve the line managers and the accountants are seen as detached “beancounters” producing detailed variance analysis which line managers do not understand or own and therefore do not use for decision making.





The answer lies in the limitations of the TCA approach which was developed during the Industrial Revolution when most organisations had a narrow product range with long Product Life Cycles (PLC). Direct labour and materials were the dominant factory costs, whilst the overhead element was relatively small. As a result of high information processing costs and the fact that the distortions arising from the inappropriate allocation were insignificant it was difficult to justify more sophisticated methods than Absorption Costing (AC).

This entailed establishing a budgeted rate at which the manufacturing plant could recover, usually on a direct labour hour basis, all the organisation’s overheads, when working at normal capacity. Such a method assumes aggregated levels and is inexpensive to operate. However as the American academic Professor Cooper observed;

“If volume related bases are used, high volume products will be allocated with an excessively high proportion of costs whenever overhead costs are driven by forces which are not proportional to the volume of output.
Therefore high volume products will subsidise the low volume products whenever volume-based allocation methods are used. Inevitably this would in the long run with increased low volume activity lead to reduced high volume margins and perhaps, erroneous product mix decisions.” (R. Cooper 1990)








Examples of non-volume related support activities include;

• Material handling and procurement
• Production scheduling and set-ups
• First item inspection procedures etc;

The behavioural implications of AC are well known and documented resulting in dysfunctionally increased overhead recoveries, “profits” and, without the turnover subsequently higher inventories.



The Traditional Costing Approach (TCA) was developed in the early 1990’s by FW Taylor and others in conjunction with work study analysis which provided the impetus for the development of Standard Costing systems. These systems were developed to meet the needs of a business environment drastically different from that which exists today. The main reasons for its predicted demise are;

• Changing cost structure
• Behaviour is encouraged which is inconsistent with just-in-time philosophy
• Inconsistency with a continuos improvement philosophy
• Over - emphasis on the importance of direct labour
• Delay in feedback reporting



ABC takes a different approach;

ACTIVITIES lead to the consumption of overhead resources.

The amount of resource consumed depends on the COST DRIVER of activity.



The definition of ABC in “Management Accounting - Official Terminology” is “Cost attribution to cost units on the basis of benefit received from indirect activities; e.g. ordering, setting-up, assuring quality.” - 1991

“An approach to the costing and monitoring of activities which involves tracing resource consumption and costing final outputs. Resources are assigned to activities and activities to cost objects based on consumption estimates. The latter utilises cost drivers to attach activity costs to outputs” - 1996



ABM - Activity Based Management is a widely accepted process using activity based cost data to manage businesses. It seeks to promote continual improvement through improved knowledge and information. A key apex of this approach is the internal selling process by which all branches of the organisation understand and embrace the results as appropriate and applicable to their tasks.

The definition of ABM in “Management Accounting - Official Terminology” is “System of management which uses activity-based cost information for a variety of purposes including cost reduction, cost modelling and customer profitability analysis.” - 1996



ABB - Activity Based Budgeting

ABB is defined by the ABC model of the organisation. It is, in essence running forecasted demand levels through the existing organisational model to determine the constraining resources, the effect on activities in the organisations, and the overall implications of meeting the defined demand levels.

ABC - Its Relevance to Modern Business.

Traditional accounting was invented in the Middle Ages by monks and has severe limitations in today’s business world. It has a conservative bias, difficulty in reflecting the time value of money and focuses on accuracy to the detriment of speed. ABC often shows that some products and some customers are profitable and are unwittingly used to subsidise others which are making a loss. In a competitive environment, not understanding the profitability or customers will result in competitors picking out the cherries.

Many companies using ABC have found that their view of the business is turned upside down and many previously held beliefs are shattered. Numerous cases exist where highly prized customers (usually prized because of high gross margins or revenue) are found to be amongst the most unprofitable following an ABC analysis, because the true costs of all the hoops we jump through for them are determined. The same applies to products. Some thought to be highly profitable turn out to be the complete opposite when all the hidden costs (warranty, returns processing, set-up time and frequency, handling and storage difficulties, obsolescence or deterioration, customer complaint, etc., etc.) are allocated.

Similarly, the insights gained from understanding activities and drivers within the business reveal areas of inefficiency and waste where little or no value is created, more appropriate metrics on which to base business planning and forecasting, smarter and more accurate ways to construct a budget and powerful metrics on which to base performance measurement structures such as Balanced Scorecards.

Outsourcing or Ouch-sourcing?

Outsourcing has been described as company’s giving away their brains and the major consequence of doing this is it is very difficult to get your brains back in the future! However, in the U.K. both Private Enterprise and the Public Sector seem to have acquired a worrying addiction to frontal lobotomy!

The trend towards Outsourcing and Off shoring is driven by the Management Consulting industry who have a vested interest in “Change”. Let’s face it, at their extraordinary fees they are hardly going to come into an enterprise and tell you “It ain’t broke so don’t fix it.” But these same reassuringly expensive Consulting Firms often bring to the table generic solutions and very little emphaty with your business. More worryingly, they are very rarely objective as they are often owned by companies which profit from the downstream activities associated with outsourcing. IBM’s press release when it paid a small fortune for PWC’s consulting arm in 2002 summarises the point.

“These skills (of PWC Consulting) need to be combined with large-scale implementation capabilities such as outsourcing, IT infrastructure skills, key technologies, and financing, where IBM is the market leader. IBM Business Consulting Services is now uniquely positioned to advise and enable clients to fully leverage these new models of business computing, driving greater return on IT investments.” Since the takeover of PWC Consulting by IBM Outsourcing and IT related services account for over half its income.


Change Agents or The Great Unwashed?

As with every other new business trend, from process re-engineering to quality management, the promise of dramatic performance improvement gives way to surveys revealing widespread dissatisfaction with what is actually achieved. Although not many have re-absorbed activities that failed to work in the outside world, many have experienced much smaller cost savings and service gains than they expected. If it’s potentially so advantageous, why does outsourcing go wrong? The main business criticism of outsourcing is that it fails to realize the business value that the outsourcer promised the client. So how should companies approach the issue? The following 6 pointers should provide the framework to keep the delivery of outsourced fulfilment focused on your business’s strategic objectives.


1. Set targets to measure effectiveness.

The temptation to outsource because rivals are doing it, trusting in them to have done the right calculations, should be resisted. The costs and expected savings from large outsourcing deals – in the public or private sectors – are not transparent and are rarely revealed, and it can’t be assumed that all are making a respectable return. Without detailed costing and rate-of-return calculations in advance, it will be impossible to set targets for an outsourcing project, and to know how well it is performing.

2. Assess against future needs to ensure scalability and the ability to add to the project.

Problems often arise when an outsource meets or exceeds the improvement target for the work first assigned to it – at which point the excited client passes more work out to them, only to find that performance has suddenly deteriorated. Suppliers must be chosen with a view to what you might want them to be doing at the end of a 5- or 7-year contract, as well as what they will be doing in the first phase. Problems can also arise if the primary supplier agrees to take on extra work, and then sub-contracts it to other companies to access the capacity or capability it doesn’t have. This leads to a loss of control, and can run into trouble if the primary outsourcing fails to manage its own outsource competently.

3. Avoid becoming a hostage to one supplier.

If an outsourcing relationship succeeds, and widens into new areas of activity, it can become increasingly difficult to consider re-tendering for a contract and changing the service provider. Partners must be given a reasonably long contract if they are to invest in providing specialist services, and be motivated to suggest improvements. If they get to the end without problems, and have delivered identifiable savings or service improvements, there is a tendency to renew the contract with little thought for alternatives.

But unless the present provider is compared with others available, it can be impossible to know whether they are delivering as good a service for as low a cost as possible. Once they become assured that a contract will continue without further contest, once hardworking and pro-active suppliers can be tempted to slacken off, or assign lower-quality resources to a contract. So even if there is periodic review before renewal, outsourcing can lose its edge through loss of convincing benchmarks. The risks of disruption when a sole supplier fails to deliver, or suffers a quality lapse, are a further strong reason for limiting the use of single sourcing, unless reliable alternatives can be summoned from the market at short notice.

This is a difficulty seen in the U.K. where consolidation has meant that, for instance, IT support contracts can only be tendered to a small number of large companies. The example of the 11 year saga for a computer system for Magistrates Courts in the U.K. illustrates the issue.

“A report published today by the National Audit Office (NAO) today makes it clear that although plans to create an IT system for magistrates courts has been under development for more than ten years, such a system has yet to be completed. The report highlights a number of errors including the lack of "competitive tension" surrounding the project after only one formal bidder remained at the end of the procurement process.

In July 1998 the Government chose ICL (now Fujitsu Services) as the preferred bidder with its bid of £146m over 11 years. Six months later when the contract was signed the price had increased to £184m. Since then the contract has been renegotiated twice and in May 2000 the cost of the project rose to £319m.”


4. Protect external sources from internal politics.

Savings and service improvements are noticed when first achieved, but then get rapidly taken for granted – until someone interferes with the outsourced relationship, or something goes wrong with it. The possibility of such disruption arises as soon as the original sponsor of an outsourcing relationship moves upwards or out of the company, leaving no-one to argue its merits when questions are raised about it. The trigger for such disruption tends to be when new managers arrive at a division that has outsourced, and seek to establish their authority by implementing quick changes. Finding that key areas have been passed to an external supplier, and having to work through them, can be a source of frustration that causes the out-of-house work to be viewed unduly harshly.

Even if their original sponsor is still on hand to remind the company of why it outsourced, and how performance improved as a result, the supplier is recommended to make contact with new management to explain the rationale, and to suggest what could now be improved. This way, the new drive for change can be channelled into moving to the next level of outsourcing benefits, rather than swinging the pendulum and taking work back in-house – or changing supplier – only to discover that you can’t beat what was there.

5. Prevent ‘parallel insourcing’.

Keeping some of a division’s work in-house, and outsourcing another part, can be a valuable way of benchmarking the two options and avoiding the all-or-nothing risk of spinning everything out. But the division between what goes out and what stays in must be clearly drawn, and adhered to while the comparisons are being made. And this is often most appropriate in the early stages of outsourcing, when its feasibility and the best people to do it are still being assessed.
A more damaging tendency, which tends to occur when arrangements have been in place for longer, is to allow in-house activity to stray into the same areas that have been handed to an outsource. The U.K. Public Sector again provides an example where Governments (especially after two terms) are often accused of building up a ‘parallel administration’ of special advisers and chiefs-of-staff who start to duplicate, and ultimately override, the activities and decisions of the civil servants they are meant to work through. The same can happen in companies, as managers who resent the loss of operational control to an external supplier start to rebuild the same capacity in-house. This ‘creeping re-insourcing’ leads at best to a waste of resources, at worst to a loss of coherence as confusion grows over who is responsible for which task, and cooperation breaks down.

6. Move on from initial assignment to performance assessment and re-tendering.

While some areas are still going out-of-house for the first time, many long-established outsourcing arrangements are now coming up for renewal, often not for the first time. After the move from initial investigation of the outsourcing market to the award and management of the first contract, the management task evolves again, to the assessment of performance and arrangement for re-tendering. The renewal of a contract gives an opportunity not only to assess whether the outsource has done well enough within the contract parameters, but also to check that the parameters were sensibly set. When reviewing their initial experience.

While IT was initially popular because new computing and communication technology was seen as exotic, requiring handling by specialists, new and more user-friendly machines may allow the basic functions to come back in-house, with outsourced fulfilment needed instead for more complex functions such as software development, database management and analytics. So a contract may need to be re-tendered not just because other suppliers could do the job better, but also because a different job may need to be done.

Generally the U.K. Public Sector and the large grey area of the economy has had a bad record in outsourcing functions, particularly around I.T., and has not achieved an effective risk transfer to the Private Sector because they simply are not commercial and when placed head-to-head with sharp and incentivised negotiators on the other side they will have insufficient knowledge to achieve an optimum result. One area of giving part of your brain away is the issue of “Moral Hazard”.

Moral hazard is exemplified in outsourcing of public sector IT services. In outsourced public sector services, the supplier owns the intellectual property before the system is even delivered. Removing the supplier means, in effect, a total restart of the project. This is a significant, if not the major, risk (and moral hazard) in public sector outsourcing. Where private sector funding is providing the majority (normally 90 per cent) of the investment, it makes no sense in PFI contracts to call a halt to the projects. The most that government or public sector authorities may do is to extract compensation for failures to deliver, but this is normally capped in the outsourcing contract.

PFI contracts make no sense, where the supplier provides the investment, unless the public sector secures a charge over the intellectual property until it is satisfied with the delivery. Indeed, it would make more sense for the public sector to be an equal investor in the intellectual property. Providers would then no longer have the power of ownership over the intellectual property.

Finally, Best practice is key in the success of outsourcing projects, liaising correctly with all involved and working with suppliers to get the best deal. Handled properly, hopefully the public sector can work towards a more efficient, cost effective way of working, and to those departments that would like a helping hand there is always the NOA! Perhaps one of the reasons Public Sector outsourcing had had such a bad press is just that, the results are public and can be examined. If the interlinked Consulting, Outsourcing and Off shoring industries are to regain credibility there will need to be greater transparency in terms of costs and outcomes in the Private and Public sectors to make a proper judgement as to whether Outsourcing is really Ouch-sourcing?

Turin.

Trip to Turin was lovely (1p each way, inclusive!) , weather divine, met some nice people and Lingotto Art + Tech hotel was really luverly and good value on the "Weekend in Turin" deal on www.turismotorino.org

Best night was surprisingly, having got back late, when we went into the adjoining shopping centre (using the private lift & entrance from our hotel, don't ya know) had a really wonderful meal in a chain restauraunt and there was an organised and free salsa dancing evening with a couple of hundred folk - compared well to a UK shopping centre on a Sunday night!!

Opposite the hotel was EATALY (love the name) which was the most wonderful foodie spectacle in a converted vermouth distillery, just heaven.

Ciao!

Photos on:

http://www.bebo.com/PhotoAlbumBig.jsp?MemberId=2135194564&PhotoNbr=1&PhotoAlbumId=5802532850

Have a look at Lingotto from the air on:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=lingotto+art+%2B+tech+turin&ie=UTF8&ll=45.031424,7.666118&spn=0.007324,0.013754&t=h&z=16&om=1

Hotel Meidien Art + Tech on:

http://www.starwoodhotels.com/lemeridien/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=1873

Eataly on:

http://www.eataly.it/

The First Female Member of Parliament

The media in the U.K. often repeat the common error of referring to Nancy Astor as the "First female member of parliament." This distinction actually belongs to Constance Gore-Booth, The Countess Markiewicz, who in the December 1918 general election, was elected for the constituency of Dublin St Patrick's as one of 73 Sinn Fein MPs. This made her the first woman elected to the British House of Commons.

http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/members-faq-page2/

She did not take her seat and along with the other Sinn Fein TDs formed the first Dail Eireann. She was also the first woman in Europe to hold a cabinet position (Minister of Labour of the Irish Republic, 1919–1922).


Nancy Astor with evacuee children during WWI

When her husband Waldorf Astor went "upstairs" to the House of Lords, Nancy Astor decided to stand in Plymouth Sutton in his place. She won the election in November 1919, beating her main rival, Liberal Isaac Foot - the father of Michael Foot who of course went on to lead the Labour Party. Thus, Lady Astor became the first women to take her seat in the House of Commons. Incidentally, her maiden speech on the evils of excessive drinking could probably be dusted off and re-used today!

The Countess Markiewicz who was the first female MP was also a suffragette and like Nancy Astor a member of the aristocracy but there are few other comparisons except that they both led extraordinary lives.





Constance at 21



Constance Gore-Booth was born into a famous Anglo-Irish family on Feb. 4, 1868 at Buckingham Gate, London. Her father, Sir Henry Gore-Booth was an explorer and philanthropist with a large estate at Lissadell in Co. Sligo. The Gore-Booths were known as model landlords in Sligo. During the famine of 1879–80, Sir Henry provided free food for the tenants on his estate in the north west of Ireland. Perhaps being raised in this atmosphere of concern for the common man had something to do with the way Constance and her younger sister Eva would conduct their later lives. Their privileged position as members of the land owning Anglo-Irish Ascendancy contrasted with that to the lives of the poor dispossessed Irish families along the western coast must have affected them as well. Eva would become an advocate for labour and women's suffrage in England, and Constance would become the most famous women of the Irish revolutionary movement.






Lissadell House, Co. Sligo



A frequent guest to their estate at Lissadell, Co. Sligo was a young W.B. Yeats. Later, after their deaths, in a poem he would capture the atmosphere he recalled of this great house and its two daughters.


Constance Gore-Booth portrait in 1905 when she was living in Paris




“The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.”



From William Butler Yeats' - In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz






Eva & Constance - "both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.”



Her Polish title derives from her marriage in 1901 to Casmir Markiewicz in 1901 when she was pregnant with their child. He left Ireland in 1913 to live back in the Ukraine and she was estranged from him and later their daughter Maeve until just before her death in 1927. After training at the Slade School of Art in London she settled back in Dublin in 1903 and helped found the United Artists Club to bring together nationalist leaning Artists and Literary figures including W.B. Yeats great muse, Maude Gonne, with whom she was involved in the Abbey Theatre. She became involved in the Gaelic revival and made the acquaintance and was influenced by many figures in the Irish Nationalist movement. In the 1908 British Election she went to Manchester, where her sister Eva had settled as a leading Suffragette, and stood unsuccessfully against Nancy Astor’s great nemesis Winston Churchill.







The year after in 1909 Markiewicz founded Fianna Eireann, a para-military organisation outwardly similar to Baden Powell’s Boy Scouts which instructed teenage boys in the use of firearms. She was jailed for the first time in 1911 for speaking at an Irish Republican Brotherhood demonstration organised to protest against George V's visit to Ireland. Markiewicz also joined the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), a small volunteer force formed by the Scottish socialist James Connolly, in response to the lockout of 1913 to defend the demonstrating workers from the police. Markiewicz held the position of an officer, above the rank-and-file members making her a decision maker, and more importantly, able to carry arms.


College of Surgeons, Stephen's Green, Dublin

As a Lieutenant in the Irish Citizens Army she was one of the leaders of the Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin where the rebels occupied strategic buildings. The counter attack by British forces under General Maxwell resulted in widespread destruction. Markiewicz was second in command to Michael Mallin in St. Stephen's Green. She supervised the setting-up of barricades as the rising began and was in the middle of the fighting all around Stephen's Green, wounding a British sniper. Eventually under attack from British forces they retrenched to the College of Surgeons where Mallin and Markiewicz and their men would hold out for six days, finally giving up when the British brought them a copy of the leader of the rising, Padraig Pearse's, surrender order.



GPO Dublin






Easter Rising 1916



The rising was not generally supported in Ireland and especially not in Dublin which had witnessed widespread destruction as well as 132 dead among the British forces and the police and 318 Irish deaths, mostly civilians. Prisoners were jeered after the surrender, and executions were demanded in motions passed in some Irish local authorities and by many newspapers, including the Irish Independent and The Irish Times. This is not too surprising given the atmosphere of the time with thousands of Irish soldiers fighting as volunteers in the British Army in the war against Germany and the general view that by striking in time of war the rebels had committed treason.

For an insight on the schism caused in Ireland by World War 1 see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html



However, the number and swiftness of the executions, combined with the arrests and deportations and the destruction of the centre of Dublin by the artillery, led to a surge of support for the rebels. Of the ninety originally sentenced to death at summary trials by military courts without representation or rights of appeal, fifteen of those (including all seven signatories of the Proclamation of Independence) had their sentences confirmed by General Maxwell and were executed by firing squad between 3 May and 12 May (among them the seriously-wounded Connolly, shot while tied to a chair because he was too weak to stand). At her court-martial Markiewicz told the court, "I did what was right and I stand by it." Her conviction was not in doubt, only her sentence. She was sentenced to death, but General Maxwell commuted this to life in prison on "account of the prisoner's sex." She told the court, "I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me".



Constance Markiewicz home from prison 1917



The Countess was released from prison in 1917, along with others involved in the Rising, as the government in London granted a general amnesty for those who had participated in it. It was around this time that Markiewicz, born into the Church of Ireland converted to Catholicism. Markiewicz was in Holloway prison when her colleagues assembled in Dublin at the first meeting of Dáil Éireann, the unilaterally-declared Parliament of the Irish Republic.



When her name was called, she was described as being "imprisoned by the foreign enemy" (fé ghlas ag Gallaibh). She was re-elected to the Second Dáil in the House of Commons of Southern Ireland elections of 1921.Markiewicz served as Minister for Labour from April 1919 to January 1922. She left government in 1922 along with Eamon de Valera and others in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty which resulted in the Partition of Ireland and the British King remaining as nominal head of state. She fought actively for the Republican cause in the Irish Civil War and after the War she toured the United States fund raising. She was not elected in the 1922 Irish general election but was returned in the 1923 general election for the Dublin South constituency. In common with other Republican candidates, she did not take her seat. However her staunch republican views led her to being sent to jail again. In prison, she and 92 other female prisoners went on hunger strike. Within a month, the Countess was released.


Markievicz pictured with de Valera and Mrs Tom Clarke, 16 May 1926. The event was the founding the Fianna Fáil Party. Markievicz had less than a year to live.

She joined Fianna Fail on its foundation in 1926, chairing the inaugural meeting of the new party in La Scala Theatre. In the June 1927 general election, she was re-elected to the 5th Dail as a candidate for the new Fianna Fail party, which was pledged to return to Dail Eireann, but died only five weeks later, before she could take up her seat.


Countess Markiewicz amongst the poor in Dublin

She died at the age of 59, on 15 July 1927, possibly of tuberculosis (contracted when she worked in the poorhouses of Dublin) or complications related to appendicitis. Her estranged husband and daughter and stepson were by her side. When Countess Markiewicz was taken to the Republican plot at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin for burial, it was said that as many as 300,000 people turned out on the streets to bid her goodbye. At the graveside, Eamon de Valera, the Fianna Fail leader, gave the funeral oration.


Funeral



In his poem “Easter 1916” W.B. Yeats who was on the other side to her “die hard” republican politics aptly captures the change in Constance Gore-Booth and in Ireland since his earlier visits to Lissadell.



“That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?”

“Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”



Perhaps the life of this privileged aristocrat who became a Suffragette, a Revolutionary, a Military Commander and the first women MP and Minister is best summed up by the playwright Sean O'Casey, who quit Connolly's Citizen Army in a dispute with Markiewicz, who once said of her: "One thing she had in abundance -- physical courage, with that she was clothed as with a garment."



When seeking history's female heroes, maybe the remarkable story of Constance Gore-Booth, The Countess Markiewicz, should be in the reckoning?

Should we mourn a cat?

Our cat, Freddy, died at the beginning of August in Hampden Animal Hospital where he had a second thyroid removed. He has been on a drip since the operation as his calcium levels didn't recover and he has had to take calcium tablets as his para-thyroids (which regulate his calcium) didn't operate as they should to control his system. Despite the best efforts he had a seizure probably due to his heart having been weakened and damaged by his thyroid problems this year and last. We reckon he was 18, which is 3 years more than the average span for his breed.

All this, I admit, was a sharp learning curve for me as I was not a “pet person” and had never set out to get a cat. We didn’t choose Freddy, rather he choose us. He was the neighbour’s cat who tended to “wander in.” often we would see him at the back wall and he would wait until we signalled for him to come before he bothered to get down from the wall and come in. Soon we would find him outside when locking up at night and he would invite himself in and snore his head off for the night. How we wondered at his amazing bladder control! When my father – in-law came to live with us Freddy and he developed a little routine. Freddy would appear at the back door around 10.30 in the morning, stare in until he was let in and snooze on the settee while dad in law organised lunch, watched television and so on. After lunch he would go up for a snooze on his bed and so would Freddy. This arrangement had its hiccups like the day my father-in-law was startled from his slumber by the phone ringing and jumped out of bed. He didn’t realise that Freddy was sleeping soundly on his leg and was catapulted towards the ceiling!

At around five in the afternoon he would let Freddy out the front door and chuckle when the neighbours arrived home saying “poor Freddy, have you been out all day?” Freddy would demand food and soon, even though we didn’t have a cat, we found ourselves picking up cat food in the supermarket. A Cat’s ability to train its humans is well known. So when our neighbours moved to Spain and we agreed to take Freddy on he was not a stranger but we worried about the practicalities of the handover, we needn’t have as he figured it out for himself and on the appointed day he walked out of their front door, in our front door and without skipping a beat made himself at home.





Cats are the world’s longest domesticated animals. Humans kept them close to protect their grain stores, a pre-requisite for survival until the next harvest, and the humans for their part fed them and protected them from predators. The relationship between people and animals has changed in the last 50 years from keeping them as pets who are “working” animals to being human companions. This change in terminology implies a mutual relationship between humans and animals which has been described as the ‘human-animal bond’. It is this bond that makes pet bereavement acute and painful.

When Freddy died I felt a real sense of loss but at the same time felt alternatively stupid that I was having these feelings about an animal and guilty to be so upset. Partly this guilt was from the fact that two people I knew had lost family members in tragic circumstances around the same time and my feelings somehow suggested an uncomfortable parity between human and animal loss. I needed to understand and rationalise why I was feeling this way.

I found that cat bereavement in particular can have a lasting effect upon us. We establish a special bond with our pets and when they pass away the loss which we feel can be very deep and acute. For many people the death of their pet is less stressful than the death of a human member of their immediate family, but more stressful than the death of other relatives. The loss of a pet and pet bereavement may have many more implications other than the loss of companionship. The absence of the pet often creates secondary disruptions resulting in the loss of enjoyable past times or a loss of emotional support that a pet offered. This in particular affects older people or those who are on their own and whose sense of routine has been reinforced by their interaction with a pet.

One overlooked area of pet bereavement is known as symbolic loss where the pet represented a last link with special people now departed. The pet’s death removes those links and old losses are re-grieved in conjunction with current ones. Grief due to symbolic loss is often very intense and certainly in Freddy’s case it brought back memories of our father-in-law who also passed on. There has been much publicity recently about a cat in an old person’s home in America who could tell when residents were near death. What is certain is that they can detect illness in humans. When my father-in-law had a blackout and fell down the stairs Freddy rushed to comfort him licking his face. We took him away but he followed him out to the ambulance and the ambulance staff had to bring him back and lock him in the house. But when my father-in-law came back to the house before going into a nursing home 3 months later Freddy avoided him. Later that week he was diagnosed as suffering from cancer. Did the cat know?

Another manifestation of symbolic loss surprised us. Freddy had been around the road for 12 years so the neighbours children had grown up with Freddy, indeed they used to call and ask could he come out and play with them. So they looked out for him and looked after him when we were away and now they sent cards to let us know how sorry they were that “their” Freddy had gone.

Grief is an almost inevitable consequence of pet bereavement. There are many myths relating to grief that actually prolong the grieving process - such as remaining strong and composed, or staying busy . So, to answer the question, it is OK to mourn a cat, the answer must be Yes! Grief over a pet bereavement is a very natural thing and should be allowed to happen openly and freely. As with all loss the secret of coping is to keep a sense of proportion, get on with life and concentrate on the happy memories.

As T.S Elliot remarked in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats;

>“ That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad”

The Death of Jean Charles de Menezes

Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by Metropolitan Police firearms officers at Stockwell Tube station, London, on July 22nd. 2005. Bizarrely the Met(as the Metropolitan Police or Scotland Yard are commonly known) is being prosecuted under English Law not for Murder or Manslaughter but under Health and Safety legislation for failing to protect the health of Jean Charles de Menezes and members of the public who were exposed to danger in the operation. Indeed.

The details revealed so far in court are of a 27 year old electrician peacefully going to work unaware he was being trailed, not being intercepted as a possible suspect, getting on and off two buses, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a light jacket with no baggage or possibility of concealing anything on his person, going routinely through station barriers and pausing to pick up a free newspaper, taking his seat on a tube train.

There he was held without challenge by a police officer who immobilised him by holding his arms around him in a vice like grip whilst his two colleagues fired 7 special "124 grain" dum-dum style bullets into his head at point blank range. The details of this killing have appalled and dismayed the public in equal measure and common sense would suggest these feelings will not be addressed by a prosecution under "Health and Safety" legislation - this being somewhat beyond satire. I think we can take it as read that if you kill somebody wrongly you have not protected their "Health and Safety."

Scotland Yard have real issues to answer about the apparent ineptness of the operation and about the large amount of uncorrected disinformation disseminated afterwards from the Commissioner downwards that this innocent persons' killing was "related to the ongoing terrorist situation", that he behaved suspiciously, ran away from officers, vaulted over ticket barriers and was wearing "bulky clothing". As none of this was true, where did it come from?

Hindsight is a great teacher, it is always a pity we don't have it beforehand, but there is another side to this sad story. Fifteen days previously on the 7th July 2005 4 suicide bombers had detonated 3 bombs on the Tube and one on a London bus. They killed 52 people (and themselves) in the biggest mass murder in peacetime Britain. The roll call of the dead is heart rending encompassing a typical cross section of Londoner's going about their day, young and old from every continent, colour and religious persuasion including a 19 year old Muslim girl on the threshold of her life. Of the 4 "brave" martyrs one was a 19 year old Jamaican Muslim convert who lived near me in Aylesbury and who took 26 lives on a Piccadilly Line train between Russell Square and King's Cross. What did a 19 year old know about life and what sort of crypto fascism justifies this cruel obscenity towards people you do not know but look in the eye before killing and maiming them? Maimed indeed for as well as the dead there were over 300 injured, some who lost limbs and eyes and some who will never live independent lives again.

I was in London that day and for a number of days afterwards spent afternoons and evenings helping people cope with the transport disruption. Two things were palpable. one was the great determination that London would not be brought to its knees by what happened, there was the quiet unseen courage of the Tube and Bus drivers who climbed into cabs at dawn the next morning and in their own way said "let's Roll!". The sense of determination was shared by the public who displayed stoic courage by insisting on going about their everyday business and not being terrorised even if it meant walking halfway across London to work.

Nerves were of course there under the surface but they had recovered somewhat when exactly 2 weeks later on the 21st July 2005 there was almost a carbon copy attempt of 4 suicide bomb attacks on the transport system in London by fanatics equally determined to destroy their fellow unknown human beings. This second attempt nearly succeeded and only failed because they had made a small error in the formulation of the homemade but deadly explosives they attempted to detonate. This second attempt was a great shock to the system, to the morale of Londoner's and no doubt to the security services who felt they had bottomed out all the leads and had stabilised the situation.

Now along with all of London they were looking into the abyss and not knowing what they were looking at or where the next threat would come from. What is happening and how many more are out there? - was the general public feeling. It was Jean Charles de Menezes great misfortune that he lived in a block of flats which was also the address of Hussain Osman, one of the failed suicide bombers from the day before and he was not entirely dissimilar in appearance given the limited identification information the police had to go on.

No doubt these court proceedings and further inevitable investigations will draw their own conclusions and I'm not attempting to anticipate them, but I make two observations of my own.

One is that society as a whole is not pacifist. We expect that the welfare of all is protected and logically that means we assent to people killing on our behalf. So we agree an Army is maintained and we expect it to kill and its troops to accept the possibility they will also be killed in combat. If an embassy is besieged, if a plane is hijacked or if a deranged gunman walks down the street killing at will we expect somebody to deal with the threat on our behalf. And if a suicide bomber is apprehended before he can blow us up we expect they will be killed. On the morning of the 22nd July 2005, the Met, a civilian police force had called in all the help it could get from the Defence and Security services and was trying to cover an impossible number of bases not knowing where the next threat was or where it would come from. Wherever fault lays in this sorry story it does lay with the three armed officers acting under orders who entered a Tube train to stop what they thought was Hussain Osman detonating a bomb.

The second point is who those of us who live and work in London felt that morning. Shamefully, I can remember my reaction was "Good on them, they got one!" and I can tell you in feeling that I was in a majority of, well, everybody. For at that stage, below the surface, there was a palpable sense of fear about town. And that is the point of the sheer obscenity and ruthless cruelty the suicide bomber. It desensitises all of us and for the sake of our protection makes us accept in our heart that which we would not normally accept in our head.

That desensitivity is something we all must fight against because otherwise the bomber has won and that must and will never happen. In this case it means we must, however difficult it may seem, try to do two things. Respect the memory of Jean Charles de Menezes and the grief of his family and respect the courage of the Police Officers who, out of a profound sense of public duty, did the unthinkable on all our behalves.

First Women MP

Emily Dugan's "Men Only, you must be joking" article today (16/10/2007) in the U.K. Independent Newspaper repeats the common error of referring to Nancy Astor as the "First female member of parliament." This distinction actually belongs to Constance Gore-Booth, The Countess Markiewicz , who in the December 1918 general election, was elected for the constituency of Dublin St Patrick's as one of 73 Sinn Féin MPs. This made her the first woman elected to the British House of Commons.

She did not take her seat and along with the other Sinn Féin TDs formed the first Dáil Éireann. She was also the first woman in Europe to hold a cabinet position (Minister of Labour of the Irish Republic, 1919–1922).

When her husband Waldorf Astor went "upstairs" to the House of Lords, Nancy Astor decided to stand in Plymouth Sutton in his place. She won the election in November 1919, beating her main rival, Liberal Isaac Foot - the father of Michael Foot who of course went on to lead the Labour Party.

Thus, Lady Astor, became the first women to take her seat in the House of Commons. Incidentally, her maiden speech on the evils of excessive drinking could probably be dusted off and re-used today!

You don't expect this error in a newspaper which like its Irish namesake is ownded by Tony O'Reilly!