Mixing toilets with profit in Cambodia
By Guy De Launey, BBC News, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
The man in the white T-shirt has just won the prize. It is not one to cherish.
He has been declared the person who produces the most excrement in Sleng, a rural village in Kandal province, central Cambodia.
Amid much laughter, all eyes turn to the middle-aged farmer sitting cross-legged in front of the village hall.
Not cracking a smile, he does a little victory dance without getting to his feet.
“I’m not ashamed,” he says. But his face suggests otherwise.
Poor sanitation
This is precisely the impact that the yellow-shirted sanitation marketing team from International Development Enterprises (IDE) were hoping they would have.
Cambodians’ toilet habits are causing serious problems – and gently suggesting changes has not worked.
Most of this small south-east Asian country’s people live in rural areas – and only one in five of them have access to a toilet.
In fact, people are twice as likely to have a mobile phone.
The consequences are predictable. Poor sanitation causes illnesses that kill more than ten thousand Cambodians every year – most of them young children.
The economic costs are high as well.
‘Lack of appreciation’
Days off sick and time searching for somewhere to go to the toilet reduce earnings and productivity – and families spend hard-earned income on healthcare which is frequently of dubious quality.
The Asian Development Bank says that 7% of Cambodia’s GDP is lost due to its lack of sanitation.
Well-meaning development organizations have tried giving toilets away.
They frequently come back a few months later to find them being used as storage rooms or animal shelters, with the family defecating in the open as before.
“When you give something to someone, there’s a lack of appreciation,” says IDE’s sanitation programme manager, Cordell Jacks.
“If you haven’t mentally bought in to the concept of sanitation it’s not likely that you’re going to use it properly or maintain it properly. So the whole health benefit is moot.”
IDE – which is itself funded by donors including the World Bank – developed a fresh approach, using disgust and shame to make people want a toilet enough to buy one at full price.
Rush to buy
The young facilitator at the presentation in Sleng is half stand-up comedian, half sanitation ideologue.
Chhun Dina tells villagers they are surrounded by their own excrementAs she moves between her audience and the whiteboard, Chhun Dina manages to elicit hearty laughter and rueful smiles even as she tells the villagers in no uncertain terms that they are living among their own filth.
She scribbles down the numbers volunteered by the audience and adds them up.
“That’s more than a hundred tonnes a year,” she says.
“It’s like a mountain. Imagine if it rained and that mountain fell into the river. You’d be washing and bathing in your own excrement.”
Before the presentation, only two of more than 40 houses in Sleng had a toilet.
But when Chhun Dina finished, there was a rush to sign up to buy one.
‘Private enterprise’
This is where the second part of IDE’s plan comes in.
It commissioned a design for a low-cost “easy latrine” which, with a little training, local businesses could make and sell.
The price to the newly-enlightened villagers is around $30 – and the easy latrine can be installed and ready to use on the same day that someone decides they no longer want to live without a toilet.
The overall idea is to move away from the traditional model of aid – and towards a solution which brings both economic and health benefits.
“People aren’t going to want to purchase a latrine if they think an NGO is going to come along a week later and give one to them.
In which case you don’t supply a sustainable demand for private enterprise to flourish,” said Mr Jacks.
IDE were hoping that ten thousand easy latrines would be sold within 18 months.
They passed that target with several months to spare – suggesting that it may indeed be possible to reposition the toilet as a status symbol to match the mobile phone and motorbike.
Shame marketing
And success breeds success.
Observing the burgeoning rural demand for toilets, copycat businesses have set up.
Some of them have even reverse-engineered the easy latrine so they can sell something similar.
Far from being affronted, IDE is delighted.
As well as the benefits to entrepreneurs, it reasons that if people can see a business opportunity in selling low-cost toilets, they should be able to spread sanitation far more efficiently than aid organisations ever could.
With this approach showing such promise in Cambodia, other countries are already showing an interest.
Shame marketing may soon become a global phenomenon.
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12366108
Courtesy : BBC News
Free public transport makes sense
By Ajai Sreevatsan
| It will eliminate establishment cost and ensure better air quality |
CHENNAI, INDIA : In light of Transport Minister K.N.Nehru’s announcement in the Assembly recently that the State Transport undertakings are set to incur a loss of Rs.1,000 crore this fiscal, the focus has shifted to defining this ‘loss.’
The Minister was essentially referring to the cash loss that is likely to be incurred, a little over one-third of which is due to the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations, and the rest due to operational loss. Are there any grounds on which this cash loss can be translated into social profit?
Since the benefits of public transit are broader than are apparent with strict financial book-keeping, is there a rationale for universal free public transport?
Can Metropolitan Transport Corporation buses be made completely free for everyone to use? The idea might sound utopian, but experts point out that there is sound logic behind offering free public transit.
In fact, a number of mid-sized towns and cities across the world already have free public bus, train, or tram systems. The city of Hasselt in Belgium, for example, converted its entire bus networks to zero fare in 1997. Public transport ridership increased by as much as 13 times by 2006, according to a study done by the Belgian government.
Even while making the bus services free, the authorities through a combination of measures have made personalised transport expensive. This includes earmarking certain areas where entry of personal vehicles is by a fee and levy of a green tax.
The free bus service results in various benefits for the residents such as better air quality, lesser congestion and reduction in fuel consumption, a significant shift to public transit, fewer traffic accidents and increased access to work places for the poor.
According to an annual survey of air quality conducted by Simple Interactive Models for better air quality (SIM-air), an NGO based in New Delhi, the health cost of polluted air in Delhi in 2009 was Rs.2,450 crore.
A study by the Asian Development Bank in Bangalore shows that a 20 per cent increase in bus ridership reduces the city’s fuel consumption by 21 per cent. It frees-up road space equivalent to taking off nearly 4,18,210 cars.
Anumita Roychowdhury, Associate Director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science & Environment, says: “If public transport is made free, more people would use it. Fewer automobile miles would be driven. Carbon dioxide emissions would drop. Everyone would benefit. It would be fair then that the cost is borne by everyone through a small tax.”
Subsidising public transport is fair, experts say, because personalised transport already receives hidden subsidies through investment on flyovers and broader roads, and free parking.
In the last four fiscal, the Corporation spent Rs.127.31 crore on six flyovers. According to the Chennai Comprehensive Transportation Study, the main beneficiaries of these facilities that were built using public money are car users, a segment which accounts for only 6 per cent of the city’s daily trips.
A senior MTC official said that free transit is a great idea as it would eliminate establishment cost, which amounts to a third of all expenses. There would be no need for conductors, ticket checkers, ticket printing or expenditure on revenue accounting. Excess manpower could be diverted to other activities that would increase overall efficiency.
“Every time the corporation incurs a loss, the government provides loans at 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent. It is almost impossible to pay back even the interest. When the transport corporation was incorporated in 1971, one of the object clauses was to ‘run it on sound commercial principles’ and hence zero operational subsidy. The primary reason for the MTC must be relooked,” he said.
Reference Link : http://www.hindu.com/2011/02/03/stories/2011020358140200.htm
Courtesy : The Hindu
White House to launch job-creating start-up effort
President Barack Obama buys a sandwich before he hosts a round table discussion with small business leaders at the Grand Central Bakery in Seattle, Washington, August 17, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House will announce an effort on Monday to encourage job-creating start-up businesses in hopes of reducing the country’s stubbornly high unemployment rate.
Senior officials are to launch a national campaign called “Startup America,” which will encourage private sector investment in startups and small firms, accelerate research and address barriers to success for entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Officials are to announce that President Barack Obama will propose making permanent the elimination of capital gains taxes on key investments in small businesses, a White House official said.
That provision was passed in September as part of a temporary measure. Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget proposal to be released in two weeks will propose making the provision permanent.
Officials will also announce that the Small Business Administration will direct $2 billion over the next 5 years to match private sector investment funding for startups. The money is already in the budget.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Todd Eastham)
Reference Link : http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/31/us-obama-economy-startups-idUSTRE70U2BY20110131
Courtesy : Reuters
Gujarat's astonishing rise from rubble of 2001 quake
By Emily Buchanan and Bhasker Solanki
BBC News, Kutch
Some 20,000 people died in the quake that struck Gujarat in January 2001
Ten years on from the huge earthquake that razed swathes of India’s western state of Gujarat, the BBC finds the place transformed from a pile of rubble in a neglected backwater into an economic powerhouse. How?
Kutch is a remote region in the arid borderlands of north-west India. For centuries life was brutally tough – rains often failed, there were few jobs and the enterprising would emigrate.
Then in January 2001 a magnitude seven earthquake struck, devastating a huge area, flattening cities including the district capital, Bhuj, and wrecking over 8,000 villages. Twenty thousand people were killed and more than a million others made homeless.
Those who witnessed the devastation at the time must have thought this would set back development by decades.
The Indian government was spurred into focusing on this much-ignored region in a way it had never done before.
The army was sent in to help with the emergency and $2bn of reconstruction money was allocated to the region.
Contrary to what many feared, aid and government grants were put to good use. In the first two years after the quake, nearly all the damaged villages were rebuilt.
Mithapashvaria, near Bhuj, is a small village that was completely destroyed. It was re-built with donations from the UK.
Families showed us the ruins of their old dark two-room house, and then took us to the new village.
Houses there were light and airy, with four rooms, running water and a toilet.
The village also had a medical centre, a temple and communal areas it hadn’t enjoyed before.
Navin Prasad, of Sewa International, a non-governmental organisation, said that in village after village the reconstruction had produced a leap forward in development.
“We have taken people out of the Middle Ages and into the modern world,” he said.
This progress was repeated all over Kutch, and it is most noticeable in Bhuj.
After the earthquake it was a sea of rubble.
Radical plans
Shocked and traumatised, residents fled, with many living in temporary accommodation for months.
It took several years to implement plans for a completely new city.
Houses had to be destroyed to make way for wider roads.
Ten years on Bhuj has been reborn.
It has two new ring-roads, an airport, parks and thriving shops.
Pradeep Sharma was the government official widely credited at the time with pushing through the radical plans.
“What you see is a new Bhuj,” he says. “We have widened the roads, laid down water supply systems and underground drainage systems.”
The BBC’s Emily Buchanan explains how this street in Bhuj was cleverly widened after the quake
The success of the reconstruction effort could never have been sustained without economic recovery.
This was triggered by the Indian government creating new tax-free zones, which sparked a boom in private investment.
It is thought $10bn has come into the region, with £7bn more to come.
Business boom
Some 300 companies have established their businesses in Kutch and many more are queuing up to follow suit.
Mundra is a microcosm of the scale of development.
It was a small fishing port in the middle of a salt marsh before the earthquake.
Now it’s an industrial hub, handling hundreds of tonnes of goods every day.
Once a tiny fishing outpost, Mundra’s port is expected soon to be bigger than the one at MumbaiThe Adani group which owns the port is now worth $7bn.
They’ve also bought a coal mine in Australia and container ships to bring the coal back to India to feed the country’s biggest power station.
Mundra is expected soon to be bigger than the port at Mumbai.
They are drawing on the ample supply of land and cheap labour.
In nearby villages, the only work used to be in traditional crafts.
Now there are thousands of new jobs and Adani is taking over the work of aid agencies.
Sushma Oza is a former aid worker who now heads the Adani Foundation.
Jobs revolution
“Our own budget for social development in this region is $6m a year, so you can imagine how we are trying to change the lives of people to live in better way,” she says.
Gujurat is now home to a gleaming new power station, India’s biggestNear Anjar, a city that was devastated by the earthquake, the biggest towel factory in the world was set up by Welspun in just nine months.
Its vast mechanised looms weave 250,000 towels a day.
It has taken over the British company, Christy’s, the official towel-maker of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championship.
The chairman of Welspun, Balkrishan Goenka, says good local governance was key in choosing Kutch.
“There were no local taxes for the first five years and no excise duties. Nor were there indirect taxes to government – they were exempted for five years,” he says.
“Those were the primary benefits. More than that there was huge support from the local government so industry can come faster.”
Beside the towel factory, the jaws of the Welspun steel plant’s furnace spit out great slabs of metal.
Since the earthquake, over 110,000 new jobs have been created in Kutch, and there are thought to be hundred of thousands more on the way.
With two years of good rainfall and with the 400-km (250-mile) water pipeline from the Narmada River, the population is now increasing as the job opportunities increase.
The region is now a cornerstone of the Indian economy, a fact almost unthinkable 10 years ago.
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12309791
Courtesy : BBC News
Confidence in jobs recovery continues to grow
The UK job market is on the road to recovery, with IT industries leading the way, according to a new jobs report.
The monthly study by KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation showed that the demand for permanent employees across all sectors grew at the fastest rate in four months in December 2010.
IT workers were one of the groups that were most in demand in the period covered by the report.
Bernard Brown, partner and head of business services at KPMG, said: “The latest data suggests again that the UK job market is on the road to recovery as growth of permanent placements remained solid and demand for staff rose strongly.
“A look at the sectors indicates that the private sector is mainly responsible for the overall positive picture, with IT and computing as well as executive and professional staff most in demand.”
The report is based on a survey of 400 UK recruitment consultants, and as well as asking consultants to name specific skills that are in short supply, uses a figure to represent demand in each job sector. A figure above 50 indicates an increase on the previous month.
Last month, the demand for IT and computing workers grew at the strongest rate out of all industry sectors, with growth picking up to a six-month high. Its report index figure for permanent IT staff was 60.5, down slightly compared with 63.6 December 2009, but up from 56.6 in November 2010.
For temporary IT staff, the figure was 56.6 in December 2010, which was also a small reduction from 58.1 the same time a year before.
However, Brown also warned that there was still the impact of government cutbacks in the public sector to be felt.
“[The impact] should start to bite over the coming months. Second, the impact of the recent VAT increase [to 20 percent] and whether this will affect UK consumer demand and job creation [will be the two big issues],” he said.
Kevin Green, chief executive of the REC, added: “Addressing the issue of one million young people under 24 not in education or employment is critical for the long-term success of our economy and must be a priority for the government in 2011.”
The skills that continue to be reported to be in short supply are those in .Net developing, for both permanent and temporary roles. In addition, Java developers were said to be in short supply in the contract market.
Permanent staff skills in short supply were reported as net developers. And in temporary skills, it was net developers and java developers.
IT jobs experts recently predicted that a skills shortage may be shortage by the end of the year, particularly in web-based skills, as customers increase their development in online and e-commerce.
David Cameron also this week hosted a jobs summit with some of the largest UK companies to solicit pledges from them to help the government’s agenda to boost jobs. Microsoft announced 4,000 jobs to this end.
Reference Link
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/011211-confidence-in-jobs-recovery-continues.html
Courtesy
Network World
India plans Asian tidal power first
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News
The Indian state of Gujurat is planning to host Asia’s first commercial-scale tidal power station.
The company Atlantis Resources is to install a 50MW tidal farm in the Gulf of Kutch on India’s west coast, with construction starting early in 2012.
The facility could be expanded to deliver more than 200MW.
The biggest operating tidal station in the world, La Rance in France, generates 240MW, while South Korea is planning several large facilities.
To claim the title of “Asia’s first”, the Indian project will have to outrun developments at Sihwa Lake, a South Korean tidal barrage under construction on the country’s west coast.
Atlantis’s recent feasibility study in Gujurat concluded that the state had good potential for tidal exploitation.
The Atlantis AK1000 turbine will be deployed in the Gulf of Kutch
“About two and a half years ago we ran a global study of tidal power resources and came up with some hotspots where resource seemed pretty well matched to load,” said Atlantis CEO Tim Cornelius.
“One of them was the Gulf of Kutch – and since then we’ve had wonderful support from the government, culminating in the annoucement that the project was going ahead,” he told BBC News.
Projections indicate that the cost of the initial 50MW farm – to consist of 50 1MW turbines – will come in at about $150m.
As much of the manufacturing as possible will take place in Gujurat, taking advantage of the skills base in India’s booming wind turbine industry.
Tide turning?
The current timescale has the project’s final engineering plans completed by the end of this year, with construction commencing early next year and completing by 2013.
“Gujarat has significant resource in the waters of its coast, so tidal energy represents a huge opportunity for us,” said DJ Pandian, chairman and managing director of Gujarat Power Corporation.
“This project will be India’s and indeed Asia’s first at commercial scale, and will deliver important economic and environmental benefits for the region, as well as paving the way for similar developments within Gujarat.”
Tidal power is a tiny contributor to global electricity generation, even compared with other renewables.
But there is a feeling in the industry that a phase of fast expansion is beginning.
In October, a consortium including Atlantis was given the right to develop a tidal farm involving about 400 turbines in the Pentland Firth in Scotland, which as things stand would be the world’s biggest – although South Korea’s proposed Incheon barrage would come in at over 1GW.
China, and other parts of India, are also seen as productive areas in the near future.
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12215065
Courtesy : BBC News
Job Offers Rising as Economy Warms Up
As the economy gradually recovers, some big U.S. companies are cranking up their recruiting and advertising thousands of job openings, ranging from retail clerks and nurses to bank tellers and experts in cloud computing.
Many of the new jobs are in retailing, accounting, consulting, health care, telecommunications and defense-related industries, according to data collected for The Wall Street Journal by Indeed Inc., which runs one the largest employment websites. It said the number of U.S. job postings on the Internet rose to 4.7 million on Dec. 1, up from 2.7 million a year earlier. The company daily collects listings from corporate and job-posting websites, removing duplicates.
![[JOBS]](https://i0.wp.com/si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-AY764_JOBS_NS_20101223174812.jpg)
Its figures may undercount available jobs because some companies don’t post all listings online, an Indeed spokesman said. Farming, manufacturing and construction jobs tend to be under-represented in online postings, while skilled computer and mathematical jobs are overrepresented, said June Shelp, an economist and vice president for the Conference Board, a private research group.
To be sure, the postings data offer only a partial and unofficial look at the labor market. Job losses in the recent recession have been much worse relative to output declines than in previous slumps, and official payroll data so far haven’t shown signs of a big rebound in hiring. While some big companies are expanding, others are merely replacing workers who are retiring or otherwise moving on. And many of the available jobs require experience and technical expertise that few job seekers can muster. Jobs that don’t are still seeing a flood of applicants for each opening.
New claims for unemployment benefits fell just 3,000 last week to 420,000, indicating a slight slowing of job losses. A Wall Street Journal survey of 55 economists in early December showed they expect only moderate job growth in 2011, enough to reduce the unemployment rate to a still-high 9% at the end of 2011 from 9.8% last month.
But companies are racking up profits and now have built strong cash positions, and may be ready to hire again. As consumer confidence revives, the economy should continue a gradual recovery that encourages more companies to hire, says Robert A. Dye, a senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. in Pittsburgh. There is still a lot of spare capacity in the economy, so “some companies, particularly auto makers, can continue to see increasing sales without hiring many more workers,” he says.
Government data show a rising trend in openings. There were 3.2 million private-sector job openings at the end of October, up from 2.3 million a year earlier but well below the 3.7 million in October 2007, before the recession, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Among firms expanding their payrolls are accounting and consulting giants Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. As the economy revives, more companies are seeking their services.
Since June 30, PwC has hired 2,500 people, excluding college students, nearly four times more than it hired in the year-earlier period, says Holly Paul, U.S. recruiting leader for the firm. Ms. Paul first noticed the pickup in March, and by May hiring was in full swing. The most-needed professionals will have six to eight years’ experience, she says.
“It’s really hard to convince those people to leave [their existing jobs],” Ms. Paul says.
Deloitte’s U.S. work force numbers about 50,100, up from 45,730 a year ago, says Jim Wall, global managing director of talent. He says the firm has a growing need for seasoned people who can provide advice to clients in such areas as mergers and acquisitions, health care and information technology.
AT&T’s work force at the end of the third quarter was 272,450, down 3.6% from the end of 2009, partly because of the shrinkage of the land-line phone business. But AT&T is scouring for highly technical workers and retail sales people.
“We’re looking for very skilled folks” in such areas as network engineering and cloud computing, which allows smartphones and computers to tap applications via the Internet, says Scott Smith, vice president for staffing at AT&T Inc. in Dallas. “There are not many of them out there.”
It also is hiring briskly to maintain staff levels at its 2,300 U.S. stores selling cell phones and other gadgets. The retail sales openings pay between $30,000 and $45,000 a year, including commissions. AT&T also regularly hires heavily for call centers that deal with customer inquiries and people who sell products and services to companies.
For simpler jobs, such as in retail sales and call-center work, applicants still far outnumber positions. AT&T is getting about 50,000 applications a month, or around 30 for each person it hires on average, Mr. Smith says.
WellPoint Inc., an Indianapolis-based health insurer, mostly is seeking information-technology specialists, registered nurses to advise policy holders over the phone, actuaries, insurance-policy underwriters, salespeople and call-center employees, says Randy Brown, who heads human resources for WellPoint.
The call-center jobs generally don’t require a college degree, but WellPoint does put candidates through simulations to see whether they are patient and good at solving problems. “There are a lot of people who want those jobs,” Mr. Brown says.
Science Applications International Corp. of McLean, Va., has openings for intelligence analysts, including translators and people who analyze data; engineers; cyber-security experts, and project managers. The jobs are nearly all full-time and the vast majority require at least a four-year college degree. More than half the jobs require U.S. government security clearance because of the sensitive nature of work the company does for the military and other agencies.
Health-care companies have major needs in information technology as they upgrade electronic-record systems. Tracie Grant, director of recruitment at Catholic Health Initiatives, a Denver-based operator of hospitals and long-term care facilities, believes competition for application analysts and software developers specializing in medical records will be acute in 2011. CHI may need to raise salaries by as much as 10% for such people, who typically earn $70,000 to $90,000 a year, she says.
Wells Fargo & Co. has a wide variety of openings. In Medford, Ore., the bank holding company needs a part-time teller with computer skills and at least a year of experience “interacting with people or customers.” In downtown Los Angeles, Wells is seeking a 24-hour-a-week assistant for a Wells Fargo museum, with at least six months of customer-service experience, computer skills, an ability to “think on your feet” and a “basic understanding of U.S. history.”
Big defense contractors are also scrambling for people with information technology skills. At Lockheed Martin Corp., “more than 80 percent of our skill needs are for technical talent in IT and engineering, specifically computer science and cyber security, systems engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and aerospace engineering,” says spokesman Christopher Williams.
Reference Link
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703548604576037612752480904.html?mod=WSJ_Careers_CareerJournal_4
Courtesy
The Wall Street Journal
Nigeria's President Jonathan signs 'bad' bank bill
Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has signed into law a new agency that will take over bad debts from the banking system.
The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (Amcon) will attempt to draw the poison out of the country’s banks, after a $4bn (£2.6bn) rescue of the nine biggest banks last year.
The banks will be able to replace dud loans with government-guaranteed bonds.
A leader and key staff for Amcon have yet to be appointed.
“The establishment of Amcon is a reflection of the government’s commitment to safeguard the interests of depositors, creditors and other stakeholders in the Nigerian financial system, and in doing so rejuvenate the domestic economy,” said the president.
The Nigerian government is treading a well worn path, with many governments having set up similar government-backed “bad” banks to help clean up their banking systems.
It is hoped that, with toxic debts off their balance sheets, the Nigerian bank will be able to attract new investors in the private market, and will be better placed to recommence fresh lending to support the economy.
Markets will be keen to discover who will run the agency, as well as the total size of bad debts it will go on to buy from the banks, and what valuation it puts on those debts.
Reference Link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10697718
Courtesy
BBC News
London pushes energy independence program
LONDON, July 13 (UPI) — Allowing communities in the United Kingdom to sell their own energy will generate much needed revenue while ensuring energy security, officials said.
British Climate Change Minister Greg Barker launched the first stage of an effort to create self-sufficient energy markets at the community level.
“I want to see more homes, communities and businesses generating their own energy,” he said. “We can literally bring power back to the people.”
Chris Huhne, the British climate change secretary, last week said he would like to see local communities sell any electricity they are producing from renewable energy resources back to the national grid.
Nearly 100,000 homes and businesses have installed green energy technology through a cash incentive program, the British Department of Energy and Climate Change said in a statement.
The program unveiled by Barker includes projects that generate less than 50 kilowatts of energy and heat generating technologies less than 300 kW in size.
Reference Link : http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/07/13/London-pushes-energy-independence-program/UPI-30551279028176/
Courtesy : Science News Daily, UPI
Prune and Grow
Sixteen months ago, Congress passed a stimulus package that will end up costing each average taxpayer $7,798. Economists were divided then about whether this spending was worth it, and they are just as divided now.
The president’s economists ran the numbers through their model and predicted that the stimulus package would create or save at least three million jobs. John F. Cogan and John B. Taylor of Stanford and Tobias Cwik and Volker Wieland of the Goethe-University of Frankfurt argue that the White House methodology is archaic. Their model suggests the stimulus will create about a half-million jobs.
Edward L. Glaeser of Harvard compared the change in employment in each state to the amount of stimulus money it has received. He found a slight relationship between stimulus dollars and job creation, but none at all if you set aside three states: Alaska and the Dakotas.
Over all, most economists seem to think the stimulus was a good idea, but there’s a general acknowledgment that we know relatively little about the relationship between fiscal policy and job creation. We are left, as Glaeser put it on The Times’s Economix blog, “wading in ignorance.”
If the economists are divided about what just happened, the rest of the world is not divided about what should come next. Voters, business leaders and political leaders do not seem to think that the stimulus was such a smashing success that we should do it again, even with today’s high unemployment.
They seem to see the fiscal floodgates wide open and that the private sector still only created a measly 41,000 jobs last month. That doesn’t inspire confidence. Furthermore, they understand something that is hard to quantify: Deficit spending in the middle of a debt crisis has different psychological effects than deficit spending at other times.
In times like these, deficit spending to pump up the economy doesn’t make consumers feel more confident; it makes them feel more insecure because they see a political system out of control. Deficit spending doesn’t induce small businesspeople to hire and expand. It scares them because they conclude the growth isn’t real and they know big tax increases are on the horizon. It doesn’t make political leaders feel better either. Lacking faith that they can wisely cut the debt in some magically virtuous future, they see their nations careening to fiscal ruin.
So we are exiting a period of fiscal stimulus and entering a period of fiscal consolidation. Last year, the finance ministers of the G-20 were all for pumping up economic activity. This year, they called on their members to reduce debt. In this country, deficits are now the top concern.
Some theorists will tell you that if governments shift their emphasis to deficit cutting, they risk sending the world back into recession. There are some reasons to think this is so, but events tell a more complicated story.
Alberto Alesina of Harvard has surveyed the history of debt reduction. He’s found that, in many cases, large and decisive deficit reduction policies were followed by increases in growth, not recessions. Countries that reduced debt viewed the future with more confidence. The political leaders who ordered the painful cuts were often returned to office. As Alesina put it in a recent paper, “in several episodes, spending cuts adopted to reduce deficits have been associated with economic expansions rather than recessions.”
This was true in Europe and the U.S. in the 1990s, and in many other cases before. In a separate study, Italian economists Francesco Giavazzi and Marco Pagano looked at the way Ireland and Denmark sharply cut debt in the 1980s. Once again, lower deficits led to higher growth.
So the challenge for the U.S. in the years ahead is to consolidate intelligently. That means reducing deficits while at the same time making the welfare state more efficient, boosting innovation in areas like energy, and spending more money on growth-enhancing sectors like infrastructure.
That’s a tough balancing act.
The biggest task will be to reduce middle-class entitlement spending. Alesina found that spending cuts are a more effective way to stabilize debt than tax increases, though we’ll need both.
The second biggest task is to consolidate while addressing another problem: labor market polarization. According to a Hamilton Project/Center for American Progress study by David Autor, high-skill sectors saw no net loss of jobs during the recession. Middle-skill sectors like sales saw an 8 percent employment decline. Blue-collar jobs fell by 16 percent.
In other words, the recession exacerbated the inequalities we’ve been seeing for decades. Somehow government has to cut total spending while directing more money to address the trends that threaten to hollow out the middle class.
During the period of consolidation, in other words, the government will have to spend less, but target better. That will require enormous dexterity and intelligence from a political system that has recently shown neither.
Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11brooks.html?th&emc=th
Courtesy
The New York Times Company
Goodness Apple 
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