Biosolids management integrated into national organic resource strategies in the UK

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
P.J. Matthews

There are many kinds of organic byproducts. They are potentially useful, but can be wasted and thrown away. One use for many of these products is as fertilisers and soil conditioners but they are managed and regulated separately. Customers are faced with choices of services and products. Examples are biosolids, municipal composts, food processing byproducts and farm yard manures. Biosolids are perceived as being special, but part of a range of a number of wastes seeking a disposal. The target must be to establish and maintain safe, sustainable and welcome operations for the supply of all of these products. Trust is at the heart. There is nothing special about biosolids; they should not demand special treatment and should be viewed as one of a range of safe products. There must be a ‘level playing field’ for all products and then customers can choose that which is most suitable for their needs on the basis of agronomic value, customer service and financial deals available. So, for example, municipal compost and biosolids should compete in the market place on the basis of normal commercial terms, but not on the basis of differential safety or quality. It behoves everyone to co-operate in creating the starting point of equality of opportunity. The UK has established the Sustainable Organic Resources Partnership to bring together all stakeholders for all kinds of organic resources. The objective has been to create a national focus of knowledge excellence, which can provide the confidence for building public trust. The paper describes the history, role and future of SORP.

2000 ◽  
Vol os7 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana M Scarrott

Graham Try (page 9) has suggested that the UK is heading towards dentist shortage. This paper picks up the story from there, speculating on how a shortage of dentists might stimulate changes in working methods. The market place will look for workforce configurations which make business sense at practice level and which deliver services in a form which patients find helpful and convenient. Although some dental procedures can be carried out by people with less training than dentists, this may not contribute to economic efficiency and could make the customer service experience less appealing. Changes in the structure of the workforce may therefore be less radical than has sometimes been suggested. Much depends on how decision-making and regulatory processes evolve. It seems likely that local and practice level decision-making will grow at the expense of central planning.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 504-510
Author(s):  
Gunjan M. Sanjeev ◽  
Richard Teare

Purpose The paper aims to profile the theme issue of Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes titled “How is the need for innovation being addressed by the Indian hospitality industry?” with reference to the experiences of the theme editor, contributors from the industry and academia and the theme issue outcomes. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses structured questions to enable the theme editor to reflect on the rationale for their theme issue question, the starting-point, the selection of the writing team and material and the editorial process. Findings It highlights recent innovations that have taken place in the Indian hospitality industry especially in the areas of customer service, cost competitiveness, culinary management, revenue management and technology. Practical implications As hotel sector investment in India intensifies, this theme issue will be of interest to hoteliers, policy makers, analysts and others interested in the role that innovation can play in helping to facilitate differentiation between competing hotel products and services. Originality/value There is limited literature available on industry innovations in the Indian context. All the papers in this theme issue were written after several cycles of interaction between academics and practitioners and so they incorporate real–time, relevant and contemporary data.


1993 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 133-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Goh ◽  
Wee-Liang Tan

Biotechnology is one of the fields highlighted by the Economic Committee as an area of high value-added technology which could be developed in Singapore. The recommendation of the Economic Committee was that the venture capital industry be developed to aid in attracting young foreign technological firms to Singapore. Biotechnology includes the areas of pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food processing and agro-technology. A number of local biotechnology businesses have sprung up. This is an interesting phenomenon since biotechnology is difficult ground for small firms to be engaged in. It is usually associated with a long lag time between the development and the actual introduction of the product into the market-place, a need for large sums to be invested in research, and a short product life span, amongst other disadvantages. In an environment where enterprise is only currently being encouraged and entrepreneurship being nurtured, one would not have expected local entrepreneurs to venture into biotechnology. It would therefore be of interest to examine these businesses to see if there are any unique problems that they face by operating in Singapore. This paper proposes to examine the problems encountered by these local firms. Some of the problems ascertained through interviews with local firms concern financing and government funding, and availability of trained staff.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-49
Author(s):  
Daniel Perez Liston

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to quantify beta for an online gambling portfolio in the UK and investigates whether it is time-varying. It also examines the dynamic correlations of the online gambling portfolio with both the market and socially responsible portfolios. In addition, this paper documents the effect of important UK gambling legislation on the betas and correlations of the online gambling portfolio. Design/methodology/approach This study uses static and time-varying models (e.g. rolling regressions, multivariate GARCH models) to estimate betas and correlations for a portfolio of UK online gambling stocks. Findings This study finds that beta for the online gambling portfolio is less than 1, indicative of defensiveness toward the market, a result that is consistent with prior literature for sin stocks. In addition, the conditional correlation between the market and online gambling portfolio is small when compared to the correlation of the market and socially responsible portfolios. Findings suggest that the adoption of the Gambling Act 2005 increases the conditional correlation between the market and online gambling portfolio and it also increases the conditional betas for the online gambling portfolio. Research limitations/implications This paper serves as a starting point for future research on online gambling stocks. Going forward, studies can focus on the financial performance or accounting performance of online gambling stocks. Originality/value This empirical investigation provides insight into the risk characteristics of publicly listed online gambling companies in the UK.


2018 ◽  
Vol 173 ◽  
pp. 01002
Author(s):  
Jun Fu ◽  
Xin Xu ◽  
Zhijie Sun ◽  
Li Wang ◽  
Dongmei Gong ◽  
...  

At present, frequent outages have become the major source of power customer complaints and, seriously affect improvement of customer service satisfaction. The current control of frequent outages, complaints has been in a passive state of compensation, which can only get half the result with twice the, effort and has caused adverse perception of customers. In response to this problem, this article takes the, initiative to prevent as a starting point, through studying rules of complaints business for the frequent power outage, constructs the early warning model of the frequent outages complaints, which takes statistics, of outages as the data mining object and uses Chinese word segmentation matching algorithm as data, mining technology and displays through network map technology, and eventually realizes a frequent power, outage scientific and accurate complaints warning. It provides an accurate reference for properly arrange of, troubleshooting and maintenance of the power supply enterprises and line reconstruction plans, offers, technical support for the forward service gateway and lays a solid foundation for effectively reducing the volume of complaints.


Author(s):  
Gaëtan Cognard

Abstract This article focuses on article 28 (right to education), article 29 (goals of education) and article 30 (children from minority or indigenous groups) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and their implementation in the several national policies of Western Europe, especially the UK and Ireland, and to a lesser extent, France. The present research looked more particularly into the situation of children from two communities: Gypsy, Roma and Travellers (referred to as GRT) and Irish Travellers. Although they are from different backgrounds, the analysis proved relevant because of the bridges that exist between their cultures and lifestyles, and because of their minority status within larger dominant communities, placing their children in the frontline of the UNCRC battle. The text of the UNCRC itself was a starting point. The research was mainly based on a series of reports from governments, from organizations such as the Traveller Movement, on articles from newspapers, and testimonies from GRT children and Irish Travellers. The results showed that the implementation of articles 28 to 30 of the UNCRC was being by and large slowly carried out by the countries under study. Yet, national disparities were evident. Also, their national policies revealed different contexts. Ireland seemed to be paving the way for the inclusion of minorities within the educational system.


2018 ◽  
pp. 99-114
Author(s):  
Dídac Gutiérrez-Peris

This article is based mostly on a study conducted throughout 2016 in France, Poland, the UK, Spain, Sweden and Germany with the think tank Demos and the Institute Notre Europe – Institut Jacques Delors, called ‘Nothing to fear but fear itself’. The paper focuses mainly on France and departs from the statement that we are living a sort of backlash against the ‘multiculturalist’ approach to integration. This, as shown throughout the paper, cannot always be linked to some of the new fears European societies are facing, but it is the necessary contextual starting point when analysing one of those new fears, namely the hardening of social attitudes on immigration and diversity. This paper points out three of the most common symptoms regarding the new alignment of fears in Europe. It suggests that Europe is not only witnessing a rise of fearful attitudes about terrorism or uncertainty, but also the rise of a society that shows signs of exhaustion regarding the values that used to be the bed stone of European openness. The three symptoms described are: i) growing support for authoritarian populist parties, ii) a low and failing trust in political institutions, iii) a hardening of social attitudes regarding immigration and diversity.Received: 10 January 2018 Accepted: 9 May 2018 Published online: 31 October 2018


2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Jerven

AbstractIf we take recent income per capita estimates at face value, they imply that the average medieval European was at least five times ‘better off’ than the average Congolese today. This raises important questions regarding the meaning and applicability of national income estimates throughout time and space, and their use in the analysis of global economic history over the long term. This article asks whether national income estimates have a historical and geographical specificity that renders the ‘data’ increasingly unsuitable and misleading when assessed outside a specific time and place. Taking the concept of ‘reciprocal comparison’ as a starting point, it further questions whether national income estimates make sense in pre-and post-industrial societies, in decentralized societies, and in polities outside the temperate zone. One of the major challenges in global history is Eurocentrism. Resisting the temptation to compare the world according to the most conventional development measure might be a recommended step in overcoming this bias.


2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Harrington

This paper develops a rhetorical critique of recent cases on migration and access to health care in Britain. It argues that the national territory, once a taken-for-granted starting point for reasoning in medical law, has lost its common-sense status as a result of neoliberal globalisation. This is evident in recent decisions involving on the one hand HIV-positive asylum seekers coming to the UK and on the other hand British ‘health tourists’ seeking funding for treatment elsewhere in the European Union. Courts are aware that many of these cases are likely to call forth the sympathy of audiences for the individual concerned, further undermining their privileging of the national scale. In curbing this ‘politics of pity’ they adopt a range of persuasive strategies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anneliese Rosenmayer ◽  
Lisa McQuilken ◽  
Nichola Robertson ◽  
Steve Ogden

Purpose This paper aims to present two updated typologies of service failures and recoveries in the omni-channel context. These typologies are based on customer complaints and recoveries collected from the corporate Facebook pages of four omni-channel department stores, two operating in Australia and two in the UK. Design/methodology/approach A document review is used of 400 customer complaints and recoveries. Content analysis is used to condense the Facebook data into categories of failures and recoveries. Findings Customer complaints on Facebook were triggered by a multitude of varying failures in the omni-channel context, given that it is the service brand that customers are experiencing, not just retail channels. The most prevalent failures were “bricks and mortar” shopping, delivery, marketing activities including communications and pricing, quality of goods and customer service. For service recoveries on Facebook, the four-dimensional justice framework appears valid. Research limitations/implications Study limitations include potentially missing details about the nature of the service failures and recoveries, including customer satisfaction with service recovery. Practical implications The typologies offer guidance to omni-channel retailers by showing the range of online and offline situations, including those unrelated to actual transactions that trigger customer complaints on Facebook and the tactics of recovering. Originality/value The authors contribute to the service domain by updating failure and recovery typologies to reflect the emerging omni-channel context, jointly exploring failures and recoveries on Facebook and applying a four-dimensional justice framework for recoveries on Facebook.


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