Home-grown nurses join N&N
The News Review:
- Home-grown nurses join N&N
- Green gardening: save the planet
- Economist.com | Articles by Subject | Business.view
- Edinburgh Festival: Five-star guide to real life
- Actress learns to live bargain-hunting role
- Microsoft launches pay-as-you-go Office
Home-grown nurses join N&N
Norwich Evening News - Aug 21, 2007
Thirty-eight adult nurses, who will be qualifying from the UEA’s school of nursing and midwifery, will be joining the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital next month to work across a number of wards and clinical areas. And 13 operating department practitioners, who care for patients before, during and after surgery, will also be taken on after qualifying from UEA, working as part of a team with surgeons, anaesthetists and theatre nurses. The news is welcomed by hospital bosses, who last month admitted they faced a “big challenge” to ensure they recruit enough staff. Strict government targets mean every patient who needs an operation has to be seen within 18 weeks, but the N&N admitted hitting targets had not been possible with the number of staff.
Green gardening: save the planet
Telegraph.co.uk - Aug 21, 2007
The Government wants to reduce this amount to 4·16 tons by 2050. 1 tons are related to food consumption - producing and distributing 1kg of inorganic fertiliser alone generates 6kg of carbon dioxide emissions - so home-grown produce using compost or manure can help reduce the bill. Other culprits are cement and concrete - apparently 10 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions are released in the creation of cement. Concrete is frequently laid under paving, but in many cases, hardcore is enough with a sand bed, a smidgin of mortar for spot bedding or a combination of the two. Even hardcore can be replaced on occasions with existing rubble or other suitable material. I have heard of a dentist using old teeth! What are the green alternatives?If you are considering a block wall to screen your garden, try some green alternatives.
Economist.com | Articles by Subject | Business.view
economist.com - Aug 21, 2007
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This is where Mr Jonah and Mr Ibrahim are somewhat at odds with each other. Last year Mr Ibrahim endowed an annual prize for leadership in Africa, which will recognise a retired African leader who did a good job in office. Mr Ibrahim, one of Africa’s first home-grown philanthropists, believes this prize will help raise the standard of leadership across the continent, without which the recent signs of hope—such as five consecutive years of at least 5% growth—may prove illusory. Mr Jonah fears that Mr Ibrahim’s prize will instead perpetuate a negative outside view of Africa. “It’s a wonderful initiative, but it may continue to stigmatise us. You see Mo go on al-Jazeera or the BBC saying, ‘how do African leaders sleep at night?’ But Enron and WorldCom were not African companies. Given the current state of the world, everywhere needs an overdose of leadership.
Edinburgh Festival: Five-star guide to real life
Telegraph.co.uk - Aug 21, 2007
What’s distinctive about McIntyre is that he’s got a stash of immaculately polished gags up his sleeve, and he knows how good they are. From the moment he arrives, bantering with the audience, he radiates rare confidence and charm, acting like some jolly, ever-smiling tour guide as he steers us around some of the less commonly remarked-upon but widely experienced absurdities of ordinary life and our national temperament. Woody Allen is a big influence, and you can see how that has filtered into his rapid-fire relaying of home-grown neuroses. Underlining each shrewd observation with much slick vocal and physical exaggeration, he unpicks the embarrassment of having a “snort-laugh”, the sudden panic that afflicts you when you’re stopped in the street and asked the time (”I hope it’s an easy time”), and the dread that attends the use of Scottish banknotes south of the border (”There’s nothing more tense”). Not since Ben Elton’s “got-to-get-a-double-seat” riff about the selfishness of train passengers has a comic quite so nailed the niggles that tell us who we are. McIntyre doesn’t have the Thatcherite ’80s to lend his wit satirical force, yet, when he articulates the suppressed outrage that afflicts every supermarket shopper when they see a stretch of unused disabled parking (” ‘I know they should have those spaces,’ you think, ‘but where the f*** are the disabled people?!’ “), he perfectly catches the impotent indignation of middle England today. Tickets: 0131 556 6550.
Actress learns to live bargain-hunting role
Stuff.co.nz - Aug 21, 2007
“I cannot resist a bargain either,” Ms Niccol said. The movie, which began shooting this month, revolves around the Rose family and engaged daughter Cheryl’s fear that her mother’s obsession with bargain-hunting will ruin her wedding plans. A home-grown star-studded cast includes a cameo performance by John Rowles, actors Geraldine Brophy, Jed Brophy, Patrick Wilson, Ray Henwood, Charlie Bleakley, Tina Regtien and Tina Cook. Garage Sale has a total budget of about a million dollars and producer Kerry Robins, best known for running Wellington’s Paramount and Embassy cinemas for years, said support from the community had been tremendous.
Microsoft launches pay-as-you-go Office
BBC News - Aug 21, 2007
“If they can afford it, they’re happy to pay for it. ”
Copies for the street
Meanwhile, piracy may not be the only thing driving Microsoft to a pay-as-you-go plan. Recently, there has been an increase in the use of open source software in South Africa, with many seeing it as a way to save money and develop home-grown software. Hilton Theunissen, director of TuXlab - which promotes the use of open-source software in South African schools - is testing special vending machines in shopping centres around the country at which open-source software can be bought for the price of a blank CD. “You simply pop in the CD that you’ve bought from a shop or wherever, and less than five minutes later you walk away with over 890 applications,” he said. “It’s yours, and you can make a copy for the whole street.