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<title>BA Business Life</title>
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<description>British Airways Business Life.  Business advice and inspiration, insider tips from the world’s top CEOs, analysts and entrepreneurs, cars, gadgets, books, hotels.</description>
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<copyright>(C) Business Life 2010</copyright>
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	<title>Don&apos;t judge a man by his smartphone... </title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/News-and-Blogs/Lifer/smartphone.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[As a dedicated fan of smartphones, I try to keep an eye on what the most popular handsets are and the types who use them. Like Superman’s geeky brother, I seem to have a sixth sense as to when and where someone is going to reach into their jacket pocket. The skill comes in spotting a businessman whose phone is set to vibrate. Just as in poker, everyone has a ‘tell’. For some it’s a momentary skyward glance, or a look of panic flashing across the face. Some people fall silent, eyes narrowing as they scan their surroundings like lone soldiers in a Vietnam movie, before stealthily answering their BlackBerry in the manner of a secret agent, rather than an IT consultant from Milton Keynes. There are several other categories I’ve invented besides the ‘Bond’ reaction, such as ‘Laxative Panic’ and ‘Tarzan Chest’ but I won’t give away all my secrets here. Not too long ago, whilst fighting the continual battle against bulimia at Carluccio’s in Terminal 5 (which, incidentally, at just over 18...]]></description>
	<category>Lifer</category>
	<pubDate>Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:05:01 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/News-and-Blogs/Lifer/smartphone.html</guid>
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	<title>Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, by Ken Auletta </title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/News-and-Blogs/Books/Googled-The-End-of-the-World-As-We-Know-It-by-Ken-Auletta-.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, by Ken Auletta &#163;12.99 VIRGIN BOOKS For a company that’s only 11 years old, you could say that Google is doing pretty well. Seven out of every ten internet searches in the world are made with its search engine, its YouTube video site accounts for two thirds of all web video traffic, and the $20bn a year it scoops in advertising revenue adds up to 40 per cent of the total online ad spend. The company is even making headlines on the global political stage, particularly in its long-running tussle with the Chinese government over censorship. And there’s more. Google wants to digitise almost every book ever published. Google Voice can email you a transcript of your voicemail messages. Then there’s Chrome, the company’s new browser, and Android, its new operating system for mobile devices. But what lies behind this huge expansion? Is Google (slogan: “Don’t be evil”) a force for good or a rampaging monster? Leading US business journalist Ke...]]></description>
	<category>Books</category>
	<pubDate>Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:39:32 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/News-and-Blogs/Books/Googled-The-End-of-the-World-As-We-Know-It-by-Ken-Auletta-.html</guid>
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	<title>The value of money</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Persuasion/The-value-of-money.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[On the face of it a pound is a pound. So asking whether a single &#163;50 note is worth more than ten &#163;5 notes seems illogical. Economically it is clear that they are exactly the same. However, from a psychological perspective things may not be so clear. A recent study by a team of persuasion researchers suggested that people place more value on their money if they possess it in higher denominations of notes than smaller ones. This is the case even if the amount of money they have is the same. The study went on to show that not only do people value the same amount of money more if it is represented with higher denominations of banknotes than smaller ones, they are also more likely to be persuaded to make purchases and spend more when they possess their money in smaller denominations than larger ones. Given that an important part of stimulating the economy is in persuading consumers to start spending again, filling cash machines with &#163;5 notes rather than &#163;20 ones seem...]]></description>
	<category>Persuasion</category>
	<pubDate>Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:57:58 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Persuasion/The-value-of-money.html</guid>
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	<title>Daring to fail?</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Economics/Daring-to-fail.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Most managers will pay lip service to the idea that it’s fine to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them. The comedian Peter Cook once satirised the failure fetish: his creation Alan Latchley, a football manager who kidnapped his players’ wives to try to motivate them, taught a week long course titled ‘Dare to Fail’. Learning from mistakes is no joke; it’s the source of economic growth. Growth largely results from an unplanned evolutionary process of trying out ideas, discarding the bad ones and allowing the good ones to spread. The market plays out this process automatically, but as Peter Cook no doubt realised, as a management tool it is easier said than done. Yes, we should experiment, expecting to fail and to learn from our failures. But failure simply hurts too much to make this a simple process. Economic psychologists have discovered “loss aversion” — gains feel nice, but losses are disproportionately painful — in many contexts. That is why we try to lump together losse...]]></description>
	<category>Economics</category>
	<pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:26:09 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Economics/Daring-to-fail.html</guid>
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	<title>Bernard Gallacher, golfing legend </title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/What-Ive-Learned/Bernard-Gallache-golfing-legend-.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Golf is a sport where you talk. If you arrange to have a meeting with someone, you get a half-hour slot. But if you meet them on the golf course, you can have breakfast, play golf, get some lunch, etc, so it’s a whole different thing. People want to come to places like Wentworth and other famous golf clubs to walk in the footsteps of Seve Ballesteros, Tiger Woods, Greg Norman, the greats. And you don’t have to be a great golfer to do that. Sportspeople who retire from rugby, cricket, football — the ones who think they still have something to offer the corporate world — have to turn to golf. Clients want to meet them, so they invest in golf days. You couldn’t meet Lawrence Dallaglio on the rugby pitch, but you can do it on the golf course. Golf transcends every age. Modern equipment, like the big titanium drivers, graphite shafts, the buggies and power caddies, means that people can now play golf into old age. The greatest example is Tom Watson at last year’s Open, when he came seco...]]></description>
	<category>What Ive Learned</category>
	<pubDate>Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:43:36 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/What-Ive-Learned/Bernard-Gallache-golfing-legend-.html</guid>
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	<title>Vampires</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/Think-Like/Vampires.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Vampires first made it big when Count Dracula appeared in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel. For the next century, they went around in capes, sleeping in coffins, turning into bats and making a liquid lunch out of every fool who lingered at their creaky old castles. In the last few years, however, some in the bloodsucking fraternity have rebranded spectacularly, to the point where they are cast as the romantic lead in Hollywood films and TV shows. These days a vampire is more likely to be a sensitive, apologetic type into alternative, synthetic food sources. Essentially, the vampire has gone green. Realising that its resources are not as plentiful nor its methods as morally acceptable as they once were makes any industry focus, and drinking human blood certainly has image problems. So some vampires have adopted a new business plan. They’ve also moved HQ, with plush, modern American houses replacing dusty Transylvanian piles. Modern vampires such as Robert Pattinson in the Twilight movies an...]]></description>
	<category>Think Like</category>
	<pubDate>Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:04:09 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/Think-Like/Vampires.html</guid>
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	<title>Adam Crozier’s first 100 days </title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/News-and-Blogs/Guest-Blog/Adam-Croziers-first-100-days-.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Lights, camera, action… Adam Crozier, former joint chief executive of Saatchi &amp; Saatchi, former chief executive of the Football Association and current Royal Mail CEO, is leaving his position to take up an even more high-profile role at troubled media giant ITV. Some media commentators have described it as “a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.” The job certainly seems to be another tough brief for Crozier, a man who doesn't shy away from organisations with institutionalised challenges. ITV, like the Royal Mail, has a dense heritage of process and behaviour not easily transformed and is an institution in deep trouble with an urgent need to modernise if it wants to remain a major sector player. Let’s face it, the city is watching, the media is ready to pounce; the staff is anxious… It’s a massive job. And so, as founder and MD of First100, a consultancy that specialises in 'first 100 days' advice for senior executives and CEOs, the obvious question I would pose is:...]]></description>
	<category>Guest Blog</category>
	<pubDate>Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:04:38 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/News-and-Blogs/Guest-Blog/Adam-Croziers-first-100-days-.html</guid>
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	<title>Caprice Bourret&apos;s business tips</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Features/Model-enterprise.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Successful model and businesswoman Caprice Bourret, 35, admits that she was “diving in at the deep end” when she decided to launch her own lingerie company, ByCaprice , which she finances, designs, models and markets herself. Here are her tips for women hoping to start their own businesses. #01 PUT IN THE HOURS If you want something in life, you can get it, but you have to put in the hours and be dedicated. I believe that and I’ve seen it happen. I was a model making an absolute fortune and now I own a successful lingerie business and I did it all on my own, without any help or guidance. And that’s because I put in the hours, working 12 hour days and teaching myself. You need to become obsessed and you have to have passion for what you’re doing. If you have all that then you will succeed. It’s discipline, persistence, passion, obsession, educating yourself, all of that. #02 BE OPEN TO CHANGE With longevity in mind, you have to be open to evolving — my personal and professional goals...]]></description>
	<category>Features</category>
	<pubDate>Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:51:23 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Features/Model-enterprise.html</guid>
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	<title>The business of luck</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneur.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Think innovation and whisky isn’t the first market that comes to mind. Yet in the dry cellars where distillers are patiently waiting for their current batch to reach a delicious age in exotic oak barrels, they are also dreaming up new combinations. For William Grant &amp; Sons, one of its dreams is the perfect beer-finished blended whisky. Which is why the firm engaged beer industry innovator Dougal Sharp to create a special brew that would infuse the oak barrels with a malty, hoppy flavour that could become part of a whisky during the ageing process. SUCCESS AND THE DRAIN William Grant &amp; Sons was pleased with the results. The Grant’s Ale Cask Reserve whisky that had rested in the barrels after the beer had been discarded had an exciting and distinctive taste. But, as the ever diligent distillery staff discovered during the process of emptying the barrels, so did the beer itself. So Sharp arranged a partnership with William Grant &amp; Sons that takes the surplus beer from the...]]></description>
	<category>Entrepreneurship</category>
	<pubDate>Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:48:23 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneur.html</guid>
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	<title>How to spread the virus</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Features/How-to-spread-the-virus.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[By now you will almost certainly have heard of viral marketing, a technique that uses social networks to help spread a marketing message, usually by means of short video clips. And if you’re involved on any level with getting people to buy things, then you will know (or should) that viral has become increasingly important as the world moves away from broadcast media and towards the collaborative media of the web. It stands to reason that the more control people have over the content they watch, and the easier it becomes for them to avoid advertising, the more important it is to convince those people not just to pay attention to your marketing message, but to want to tell other people about it. At The Viral Factory we know this to be the case, because our work has been seen by more than 1.5 billion people, all because they shared it with each other. The general consensus on using viral marketing is that it sounds great, but it’s  actually down to luck, and nigh on impossible to achi...]]></description>
	<category>Features</category>
	<pubDate>Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:34:22 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Features/How-to-spread-the-virus.html</guid>
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	<title>Lust haves: February</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Tech-And-Gadgets/Lust-haves-February.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Leica M9 digital camera  With tricky manual focusing, little by way of features and a stratospheric price tag, the new digital Leica M9 might not seem to have a great deal going for it. It does, however, do two things better than pretty much any other camera in the world — take pictures and look implausibly cool. Think &#163;6,000 and upwards with a lens. Check it out online or at the new Leica Store in Mayfair. leica-camera.co.uk Ultrasone edition 8 S-logic headphones There are expensive headphones — and there are these, from Ultrasone of Germany. Not only is its &#163;1,100 Ultrasone Edition 8 S-Logic model supremely comfortable — the ear cups are made from Ethiopian sheepskin (minus the fur) — it also sounds superb, as you might expect. ultrasone.com Eigenharp Is it a wind instrument, is it a keyboard? Er, it’s both, actually. There aren’t many new musical instruments being invented, but the Devon-designed and made Eigenharp is just that rare beast. It sounds like whatever you w...]]></description>
	<category>Tech And Gadgets</category>
	<pubDate>Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:47:50 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Tech-And-Gadgets/Lust-haves-February.html</guid>
	<source>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Rss.xml</source>
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	<title>Sexism in the workplace</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Dear-Deborah/Dear-Deborah.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[At my workplace, the ratio of men to women is roughly 4:1 among 200 employees. I manage a team of 30 and was recently asked by my MD to put forward six team members to be considered for promotion. I am all for meritocracy in the workplace but am unhappy to have been told to ensure that at least three of the names must be female (to redress a managerial imbalance). I find this to be divisive. I am not even sure if it is legal. How can I persuade my MD to think again? Instinctively I think it’s absolutely right that it should be the best person for the job. I’d probably let my boss know this and say that I’m uncomfortable about showing bias towards either gender. However, if they were really insistent on it I would produce two selections: one on merit, which should be done first and might even consist of all women. Then do another one based on what you’ve been asked to do. You might find that the choice is so tight that it doesn’t actually compromise much. If it’s worlds apart then i...]]></description>
	<category>Dear Deborah</category>
	<pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:42:36 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Dear-Deborah/Dear-Deborah.html</guid>
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	<title>Dear Deborah...</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Dear-Deborah/Working-from-home.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Two months ago I left a steady desk job to set up a copywriting business from my own home. The trouble is, I’m finding it impossible to organise my time and seem to spend hours talking to my cats, playing games on the net and raiding the fridge. Although I always somehow manage to meet my deadlines, I often work beyond midnight to make up for all the wasted hours. My girlfriend is becoming increasingly fed up with spending evenings alone. How can I discipline myself?  Working in an office gives you structure. Only work at home if you can simulate this by designating an area of work. Explain to everyone (and the cats) that between the hours of 9-5, you are actually working, which means no stopping for a chat or nipping out for a coffee. It’s about a mindset — when you cross that threshold, it becomes your place of work. Spend a day turning whatever your area is into something that actually feels and looks like work. Psychologically that starts structuring your life. Post needs to be...]]></description>
	<category>Dear Deborah</category>
	<pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:40:20 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Dear-Deborah/Working-from-home.html</guid>
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	<title>TomTom, and the latest in satnav</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Tech-And-Gadgets/TomTom-and-the-latest-in-satnav.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[The only technology I can think of in which complication is deemed a good thing is fine watches. The great watchmakers of Geneva and the Jura even have a name for it — grandes complications . Outside watches, geeky complexity and arcane features are loathed — especially by busy, intelligent people with better things to do than read weighty instruction books. This is one of the reasons why Apple’s computer operating systems have always appealed more than Microsoft Windows to what one might broadly call the intelligentsia: clever people just can’t be bothered with — or, alternatively, are too lazy and distracted to deal with — the complication of Windows. It’s an issue that Microsoft has addressed pretty well with its Windows 7, although I suspect Apple isn’t particularly scared by the simpler and more elegant new Windows. Complication has come to satellite navigation by stealth. Early satnavs were simple. The latest, especially from the mass market brand leader — arguably the Micros...]]></description>
	<category>Tech And Gadgets</category>
	<pubDate>Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:42:30 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Tech-And-Gadgets/TomTom-and-the-latest-in-satnav.html</guid>
	<source>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Rss.xml</source>
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	<title>Camila Batmanghelidjh</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/In-My-Office/Camila-Batmanghelidjh.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[I love my room. I designed much of it myself with our artists. This was a horrible social security building before. We only moved in this May. Everything is second hand. And it’s full of the kids’ art. This is exactly how my brain is. I wanted a bit of Persia, a bit of wild. 1. I actually don’t like wearing necklaces, but the kids like buying them for me so that I can hang them on the trunk they also made me. Each necklace has a story. 2. This was painted by a shy girl on my staff who was incredibly hardworking and didn’t say very much. One Christmas this was on my desk with a note from her. I think it’s a statement about the importance of childhood, hers too, and the reason she discovered this talent was due to the therapeutic support she received here. 3. The wishing tree was created by the children for an exhibition three years ago called ‘Demons and Angels’. We put it up so that the public and the kids could put their wishes on it, and it grew throughout the exhibition. I keep...]]></description>
	<category>In My Office</category>
	<pubDate>Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:59:15 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/In-My-Office/Camila-Batmanghelidjh.html</guid>
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	<title>Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years, by Richard Watson </title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/News-and-Blogs/Books/Book-of-the-month.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years, by Richard Watson &#163;9.99 NICHOLAS BREALEY PUBLISHING There’s a page in Richard Watson’s book on which the renowned trend watcher offers an ‘extinction timeline’. It shows things that we currently take for granted but that are likely to disappear by 2050. Some of them are fairly obvious: ‘letter writing’, ‘fax machines’, ‘coins’, ‘oil’. And then suddenly one stops you in your tracks: ‘Belgium’. Has anyone told the Belgians they’re likely to become extinct sometime around 2049? To say Watson’s book is thought-provoking is an understatement. We all like the idea of peeking into the future and Future Files is positively Nostradamian in scope, looking at trends and innovations in a whole host of areas, including finance, the media, retail, travel and more. Although the five major trends identified will not come as a surprise (an ageing population, a power shift eastwards, greater global connectivity, the convergence of computing wi...]]></description>
	<category>Books</category>
	<pubDate>Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:44:43 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/News-and-Blogs/Books/Book-of-the-month.html</guid>
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	<title>Flealancer and job-sculpting</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Bizwords/Flealancer-and-job-sculpting.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[FLEALANCER An irritating or insignificant outsider. In 2002, Charles Handy published The Elephant and the Flea, promoting portfolio working . The ‘flea’ was a heroic multitasker revelling in their fleadom . In tough times the small player gets short shrift and less respect, and the expression now tends to be used dismissively by big corporations (‘elephants’) of consultants and independents they want to brush off. JOB-SCULPTING Hand-crafting a job description that truly reflects ‘the inner you’. This phrase featured in a much quoted Harvard Business Review article of 1999. Back then the authors, Timothy Butler and James Waldroop, saw it as the task of talent managers responsible for shaping their subordinates’ career paths. Today the expression is typically used by victims of turbulence . Faced with an uncertain future, the individual seeks to reinvent her/himself (perhaps invoking the buzz-synonym reconfiguring ). For cynics, meanwhile, job sculpting is a euphemism for simply maki...]]></description>
	<category>Bizwords</category>
	<pubDate>Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:12:04 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Bizwords/Flealancer-and-job-sculpting.html</guid>
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	<title>France: the local fare of Roanne</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Travel/Food-And-Drink/Local-fare-of-Roanne.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Roanne is about an hour and a half’s drive west of Lyon airport. It once prospered as the hub of the canals that supplied Paris, and then as a centre for the textile and engineering industries. The latter are now in decline, while the canals are now predominantly used for pleasure. But the wealth these historical associations engendered, together with the rich agricultural countryside that surrounds Roanne, have left one indelible mark: the Roannais really enjoy their food and wine. The slopes of the Côtes Roannais provide good, inexpensive wines, and the more famous vineyards of Burgundy and the Rhône are not that far away. Charolais cattle graze in the lush fields, which also provide produce for the city’s Friday market. It was into such welcoming terrain that Jean-Baptiste Troisgros opened his restaurant in 1930. His sons succeeded him, winning their third Michelin star in 1968 and creating their renowned dish of escalope of salmon with a sorrel sauce. This plush restaurant with...]]></description>
	<category>Food And Drink</category>
	<pubDate>Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:45:52 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Travel/Food-And-Drink/Local-fare-of-Roanne.html</guid>
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	<title>Travel broadens the mind - doesn&apos;t it?</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/News-and-Blogs/Lifer/travel-broadens-the-mind.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Gaining perspective is perhaps one of the greatest benefits of the travelling business life. Take our education system, where current hot topics are class sizes, funding, and whether four year olds should be taking exams. Compare this to French universities where classes are so large that a second room is used with a CCTV feed from the first in order to fit everyone in. Equally, if our funding is so poor, why does every classroom up and down the country have an interactive whiteboard with a projector and PC, and why have most schools got cutting-edge digital signage, video conferencing facilities, and armies of specialist teachers for dyslexia or just about any other minority need? We are remarkably well catered for. My biggest fear is being outsmarted and replaced by some 18 year old — ironically, the product of an education I helped pay for. Weather is another example. After an inch of snow in Hampshire we go to DEFCON 1, with imminent threat of apocalypse. When explaining to my...]]></description>
	<category>Lifer</category>
	<pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:32:12 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/News-and-Blogs/Lifer/travel-broadens-the-mind.html</guid>
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	<title>The business of bio fuel</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Entrepreneurship/Fuel-proof.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[The Google tool ‘Trends’ will plot the number of searches on a keyword over time. Searches for the word 'biofuel' peak on 30 April, 2008, coincidentally the date an article entitled ‘Scientists want to stop using food to make biofuel’ was in the news. And if Google Trends is any indicator of general sentiment, interest in biofuel has been cut by well more than half since spring 2008, dropping precipitously even prior to the global financial crisis. Whatever the reason for this, the fact remains that despite any historical correlation between biofuel production and food prices, first generation biofuels based on corn, soy and rape seed have lost public appeal and will likely not expand beyond today’s production levels to provide the cure to our energy woes. TECHNOLOGY ENERGY End of the story? Not for Per Falholt, chief scientific officer at Novozymes. Today, biofuel is made by physically grinding corn, breaking down the starch into sugar with enzymes, converting the sugar into ethan...]]></description>
	<category>Entrepreneurship</category>
	<pubDate>Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:08:32 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Entrepreneurship/Fuel-proof.html</guid>
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	<title>Meet Chrissie Castagnetti</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/What-Ive-Learned/Chrissie-Castagnetti.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[As an independent, we have to be the best we can. There is no big corporation behind us. We’re doing this on our own. If anyone had said to me in my teens that I would have had my own business, I wouldn’t have believed them. You have to be photographer, stylist and client all in one. You have to see a face, recognise a certain look and know that it will work. It may not be a conventional beauty but it’s got to have real personality. When me and a friend used to do car boot sales she’d make 30 quid whereas I’d always take about a hundred. I just seemed to have a knack for it. The fashion world is ruthless. You have to fight for your place in this industry. If you can handle the pressure, then fine, but if you can’t, the cracks will appear pretty quickly. If models make a product so attractive it encourages higher sales, then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be paid well for it. It’s the same with footballers. If they put bums on seats, then you can’t really argue with it. People...]]></description>
	<category>What Ive Learned</category>
	<pubDate>Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:06:50 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/What-Ive-Learned/Chrissie-Castagnetti.html</guid>
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<item>
	<title>Mixing business with pleasure</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Travel/Hotels/Hotels.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Make the most of working away from home by choosing a hotel where it’s easy to turn business into pleasure. Istanbul MÖVENPICK HOTEL It’s likely to be a busy year for Istanbu l, one of Europe’s Capitals of Culture 2010. And, as a World Travel Award winner for Europe’s Leading Business Hotel, the Mövenpick has the right credentials for a working visit. More than half of guests are repeat visitors, drawn to the hotel’s efficient service and handy location. The Movenpick towers over uptown Istanbul, in the heart of the business district, and is only a short metro ride from the main tourist sites. The lower lobby ballroom might lack natural light, but it’s kitted out with chandeliers and has space for up to 550 delegates. Stay over a weekend and you’ll get your second night for half price, plus a room upgrade and breakfast. moevenpick-hotels.com Geneva PRESIDENT WILSON Get down to business in this hard-working city, then ski into the sunset. The centre of Geneva is half an hour from Cr...]]></description>
	<category>Hotels</category>
	<pubDate>Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:10:06 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Travel/Hotels/Hotels.html</guid>
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<item>
	<title>Heard the one about Benford&apos;s Law?</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Economics/Maths-test.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[The modern world is full of numbers — bank bailouts, government debts, MPs’ expenses — and it is only human to find them confusing and perhaps, at times, even suspicious. But it is hard to check so many numbers directly. An alternative is to look for patterns in the data that might indicate that something is amiss. One such pattern is Benford’s Law, named after a physicist at General Electric. In 1938, Benford analysed 20,229 sets of numbers including such wildly different categories as the areas of rivers, baseball statistics and all the numbers collected from an issue of the Reader’s Digest . He found something surprising: numbers whose first digit was one cropped up 30 per cent of the time, much more than we might expect. Benford’s Law does not apply to every set of numbers — for example, it does not apply to post codes or national insurance numbers, which are assigned by bureaucratic processes. But all sorts of “natural” processes should produce Benford data. To see why this mi...]]></description>
	<category>Economics</category>
	<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:23:54 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Economics/Maths-test.html</guid>
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<item>
	<title>The secrets of self-publishing</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Features/Have-you-read-my-book-.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA["I’d exhausted all traditional publishing channels and been told no. I was about to go and stick the manuscript in the drawer,” says Lisa Genova of her novel, Still Alice , which charts a woman’s decline into Alzheimer’s. “But I’m very lucky to live in a time when I can self-publish.” Self-publish was exactly what Genova did in July, 2007. She got some good reviews and then Simon &amp; Schuster stepped in with a half-million-dollar deal. Reissued by the major publisher just over a year ago, the book has now sold more than half a million copies in the US and has been translated into 17 languages. Digital publishing has made it possible and affordable for almost anyone to design and print their own book (if not necessarily to sell it), and self-made authors are increasingly side-stepping traditional publishing houses and going direct to market. The technology of digital publishing, so-called ‘publishing on demand’ (POD) allows for books to be printed and distributed, post-sale, in pr...]]></description>
	<category>Features</category>
	<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:07:49 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Features/Have-you-read-my-book-.html</guid>
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<item>
	<title>Mary Poppins</title>
	<link>http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/Think-Like/Think-like-Mary-Poppins.html</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Dick van Dyke’s mockney accent aside, discussions of the Disney film of Mary Poppins usually invoke whizz popping, the flying of kites and other adventures generated by a brisk nanny with a brolly and a warm heart. But look deeper and the film reveals itself to be an indictment of the financial world, with Poppins’ role central to fixing the system and rehabilitating the reputation of a banker. Harsh but fair would be the best way to describe Mary Poppins’ management style: she’s an authoritarian and a stickler for discipline while at the same time showing the employees (or in this case the children) a world where anything is possible if they believe enough. This perfectionist, cult-of-personality style of management is supremely effective if you can really pull it off (just ask Steve Jobs or Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron). And Poppins does it with aplomb. Her eccentricities mark her out as one to watch (and would get lots of PR), while her hard-headedness makes her tru...]]></description>
	<category>Think Like</category>
	<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:15:06 GMT</pubDate>
	<guid>http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/Think-Like/Think-like-Mary-Poppins.html</guid>
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