Scotland’s Feel-Good Factor
The News Review:
- Scotland’s Feel-Good Factor
- Oracle’s BEA acquisition seen as smooth, low-risk in India
- Plankfest pulls plug on this year’s gig
- Bruce Hay
- Budget backlash
- Less killing, but not fear
Scotland’s Feel-Good Factor
Goal.com – Oct 13, 2007
“This meant clubs turned to their own youth development programmes and we are seeing the results now, even at places like Celtic with Stephen McManus and Shaun Maloney, who they sold to Aston Villa. There are similar examples at Rangers and at Hibs and Aberdeen. “The return to home-grown talent was a welcome departure from expensive foreign imports. ”
Scotland also introduced the ‘positive discrimination’ rule whereby a quota of a couple Scottish under-21 players must be included in the matchday squad of each team in Premier League matches. Fifa president Sepp Blatter praised that initiative last week and linked it directly to the success of Scotland’s Under-20 team in qualifying for the Fifa U-20 World Cup last year – as well as to the senior team’s impressive performances in the Euro 2008 qualifying competition. Brown points out that even the reserve league is flourishing at SPL level in Scotland again. “The talent was beginning to be blocked because young guys were getting despondent when a player in their position was coming from abroad and they weren’t getting an opportunity.
Oracle’s BEA acquisition seen as smooth, low-risk in India
Economic Times – Oct 13, 2007
Oracle has years of
experience in integrating its Indian back-end with its target companies,
industry experts said. Oracle’s two of the recent acquisitions
have had a major impact on India. The buyouts of Peoplesoft ($10. 3 billion) and
home-grown i-flex ($909 million) have jacked up the Indian staff strength of the
world’s third-largest software company to some 22,000. However, i-flex
continues as an independent company. Oracle’s main development and support
centres are in Bangalore and Hyderabad. BEA, on the other hand,
employs close to 500 people in India and runs its largest development centre
outside the US, in Bangalore.
Plankfest pulls plug on this year’s gig
St. Petersburg Times – Oct 13, 2007
By HELEN ANNE TRAVIS, Times Staff WriterPublished October 13, 2007DADE CITY – Several local bands learned a tough lesson Friday – gigs are not always guaranteed. Plankfest, which would have celebrated its third year as Dade City's home-grown alternative music festival next weekend, was canceled Friday afternoon. "A person who I thought was going to financially back me pulled out at the last minute and I don't have the funds to pull it off this year," said organizer Brad Ash, 38. The cancellation wasn't a surprise, Ash said. Preparing for this year's festival hasn't been easy. Some of the band members have been belligerent with him and he's had to referee fights among the musicians, he said… The cancellation wasn't a surprise, Ash said. Preparing for this year's festival hasn't been easy. Some of the band members have been belligerent with him and he's had to referee fights among the musicians, he said. "You know when you have a gut feeling that something's not right? I have been having that the past couple of weeks. Usually my gut's pretty dead-on. " Ash, a special education teacher at Pasco High School, started Plankfest in 2005. "I realized a lot of our kids don't have the means to get down to Tampa to see concerts or shows.
Bruce Hay
Times Online – Oct 13, 2007
After retiring from playing, Hay took up coaching, first with Boroughmuir, whohe took to the Scottish league title in 1991, and later with the Edinburghdistrict side, Scotland B and Scotland Under-19. He stayed on withBoroughmuir as director of rugby. It was his role as the Scotland Under-19 team manager that should prove to behis lasting legacy, helping to provide the framework for coaches includingFrank Hadden, the present international coach, Sean Lineen, the Glasgowcoach, and Peter Wright, the present Under-19 coach, to flourish as well ashelping to spot and develop most of the current batch of home-grown players. He had a reputation as a hard-as-nails player with the honesty, character andcharisma to win friends wherever he went, as was shown by the 500-plus whotravelled to his tribute dinner earlier this year. He is survived by his wife, Lynda, and daughter Lynsey. Bruce Hay, rugby player and coach, was born on May 23, 1950. He died of abrain tumour on October 1, 2007, aged 57.
Budget backlash
Telegraph.co.uk – Oct 13, 2007
Even though Mr Darling had previously hinted strongly that inheritance tax might be re-examined, few guessed that he would go as far as to slot in a triple whammy of Tory plans, throwing in the flat-rate levy on non-domiciled foreign workers and the new duty on air flights for good measure. According to analysts, there was very little of extra substance besides. But, ironically, it was the one of the Treasury’s few home-grown policies that provoked the biggest roar of disapproval. Step forward Mr Darling’s decision to scrap so-called taper relief on capital gains tax, and replace it with a flat rate of 18pc. Taper relief was one of Gordon Brown’s big business initiatives, allowing businesses to pay less tax on the gains from their assets the longer they held onto them. The logic was to encourage investment in long-term assets, and many analysts think it has been the bedrock of Britain’s enterprise economy over the past five years. Its abolition was intended to affect private equity chiefs, who have been able to use the taper to cut their tax bills on their earnings (which are largely liable for capital gains tax rather than income tax) to a low 10pc.
Less killing, but not fear
Houston Chronicle – Oct 13, 2007
That’s a significant jump. But 30 of those 74 murders involved victims who were evacuees and murderers who either were not evacuees or were unknown. In other words, some of those “Katrina murders” were perpetrated by home-grown thugs. “We saw an infusion of people into some areas of the city that produced a target-rich environment,” said Assistant Chief Vicki King, who analyzed the statistics for the department. “Some of the victims were trying to survive and had cash on their persons given to them by FEMA or Red Cross or other organizations, and they didn’t have bank accounts or other infrastructure. ”
One clear Katrina Effect is that Houstonians are more worried about crime. According to Rice University sociologist Stephen Klineberg’s annual Houston Area Survey, crime knocked traffic out as the top concern for the first time since 1999.