One association understandably having problems staging some of its events is the Chartered Institute of Credit Management (CICM).
Over the years its British Credit Awards, at which bailiff companies are rewarded for effective enforcement of debts, has generated angry protests that it is obscene to make money from celebrating action that has, in some cases led to vulnerable people being evicted from their homes with their children. Continue reading
Meanwhile those organisers who want, or need to know more about protests, and how they fit or not into the events industry can buy a fascinating book on the subject.
Published this year Protests As Events is a collection of writings on the subject edited by Ian R. Lamond, Lecturer of Events Management, and Karl Spracken, Professor of Leisure Studies, both at Leeds Beckett University and themselves participators in protests, pickets and marches, so some practical experience to draw on. The 269-page book is published by Rowman and Littlefield and covers the motivation for, the management of and the effectiveness of protests. Continue reading
A former purchase ledger clerk at Pembroke College, Cambridge stole £286,000 from her employer to help finance a gambling addiction, placing bets on online bingo site Jackpotjoy totalling more than £6 million and gambling any winnings.
Jaqueline Balaam, a 41 year-old married mother of two from Cambridge, was jailed for 30 months after admitting duplicating invoices from college suppliers, false accounting and defrauding a local social club of £3,000. She was caught by the college after an internal audit.
A new venue review site for London venues, Eventopedia, has been launched.
Unlike Tripadvisor those event organisers posting reviews have to identify themselves, so the site should not degenerate into venues posting positive reviews of themselves or fake negative reviews of competitors properties.
Not to be confused with Event-o-Pedia, the free encyclopaedia of events.
Note.
In the SEO’s ongoing survey of venue criteria important to organisers none of those from the charity sector rated the opinions of other organisers as “vitally important” or “important” as a consideration when choosing a venue, though a few rated them “a possible consideration” and the same number as “no consideration”. A lot more association organisers felt that the opinions of others were “possibly a consideration” with the same number scoring this criteria as “important”. Those from the corporate sector were less enthusiastic about the opinions of others with 40% of responders judging them “an important consideration”, 20% as “a possible consideration” and 40% as “no consideration”.
No organisers from any sector felt the opinions of other organisers about venues were vital to their own choosing of them.
Those interested in the First World War and what it was really like in the trenches will want to see the searing depiction of Wooden Crosses, a recently restored 1932 film that uses real war veterans as actors and advisors and achieves a documentary feel for the battlefield hell faced by the French 39th Infantry Division.
Directed by French director Raymond Bernard and based on a 1919 novel by a former corporal of the 39th Roland Dorgeles, the film was the first French talkie about WW1 and doesn’t spare the viewer the gore and horror of war, nor the assaults on the eardrums made by the different types of guns and cannons, an aspect Bernard took pains to get right. Continue reading
A recent Channel 4 Dispatches documentary Politicians for Hire trawled twelve well-known names with fake offers of lucrative consultancy work for a very rich Chinese businessman and two respected Commons elders Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Conservative) and Jack Straw (Labour) took the bait and came across on film as anxious to leverage their political experience and contacts for personal gain.
As a result of the revelations Rifkind’s political career has come to a sudden halt and he joins Geoff Hoon and Stephen “I’m like a cab for hire” Byers, both caught in the last Channel 4 sting five years ago, on the wall of the political Hall of Shame. Along with Straw who commented five years ago that Hoon and Byers had generated much anger and incredulity in the House of Commons for their stupidity in “being suckered into a stew like this”, or perhaps put another way, being caught. Now however it’s our Jack’s turn to drive the nails in the coffin having told his fake potential client “I have managed to keep out of any kind of scandal all my political career” He then went on to show how he earned a £60,000 a year fee from a commodity broker by getting laws changed in the Ukraine and the EU in their commercial favour, and saying that “the best way of dealing with these things is under the radar”. Continue reading
The marketing of cigarettes is to be restricted in the UK after MPs in the House of Commons voted by 367 to 113 to require tobacco companies to sell their products in plain standardised packs.
The new regulations, which were bitterly opposed by some Conservative MPs with a history of tobacco industry support and Ukip, go to the House of Lords next week and, providing there are not too many highly-paid tobacco company consultants (lobbyists) there, should take effect from May next year. The move has been welcomed by the British Heart Foundation, Asthma UK and Action on Smoking and Health on the basis that it will save thousands of lives and help prevent the next generation from taking up the habit. Continue reading
Legal action for allegedly misleading its customers with its marketing is being brought against pharma firm Reckitt Benckiser in Australia by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
Reckitt sell a variety of pain-specific pills, for back pain, period pain, headaches, migraine etc, but the ACCC is concerned that they all contain the same active ingredient, ibuprofen lysine in the amount of 342mg, and that this is misleading and deceptive. Reckitt’s tablets are around double the price of the standard Nurofen brand and significantly more expensive than generic ibuprofen.
If the ACCC prove their case against Reckitt the company could face a fine of more than £2 million. Trust in the pharma industry would also be eroded, damage worth a lot more.
TV manufacturers Samsung has advised its customers that its Smart sets that have a voice recognition system and connection to the internet could be hacked by a third party interested in their private conversations.
The company have advised customers with the sets not to discuss anything sensitive in front of them, or to switch off the voice recognition system.
Tiger Mobiles, a smart phone comparison site rejected for a slot on the Dragon’s Den reality BBC2 TV series by the producers in 2008 have revealed that 76 (half) of the 153 companies over 11 series that were pledged money by the top entrepreneurs never saw a penny of it, and that only £5.8 million of the £13 million pledged was ever actually invested by the “dragons”.
According to Tiger Mobiles the BBC produce the show as a contrived affair that puts viewer entertainment above genuine business success.
So not to be taken too seriously then? That’s TV for you…