Category: Business

Londoners commute to see their “Local” doctors

Bloomberg.com: U.K. & Ireland
U.K. businesses lose four times as many hours of productivity to doctor visits than to strikes, said the Confederation of British Industry, the country’s main employer group.

The taxpayer-funded NHS provides health care to all Britons, with no direct payments for doctor consultations or services when they go through their registered general practitioner. The requirement is a legacy from the days when physicians were expected to pay house calls.

However, delays and inconvenience mean U.K. workers spend 3.5 million working days a year traveling to and from NHS family doctor visits, at an annual cost of 1 billion pounds to employers, the CBI says.

Coffee: The Generation Gap

Coffee: The Generation Gap
It’s a grind these days for the biggest makers of grocery-store coffee. Procter & Gamble (PG) and Kraft Foods (KFT) are facing sluggish sales for their hallmark Folgers and Maxwell House brews—and the demographics are moving against them. Youngsters drink far less coffee than their baby boomer parents, and, when they do, it’s more likely to be on the go. Only 37% of young adults between 18 to 24 drink coffee, compared with 60% for those between 40 and 59 and 74% for Americans over 60, according to National Coffee Assn. data.

Coffee is still a growing market. Overall consumption rose by 9% a year between 2001 and 2006. The problem for P&G and Kraft is that their supermarket brands no longer cut it with consumers who have gotten hooked on the darker, richer brews from Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and even McDonald’s (MCD). “Retail coffee is unexciting,” says Robert Goldin, executive vice-president of Chicago food consultancy Technomic.

East, West German Shepherds Rivalry

East, West German Dog Breeders Divided | World Latest | Guardian Unlimited
One thing nobody denies is that in the more than four decades of Germany’s division, the dogs did develop different looks: Eastern shepherds are mostly dark gray or black, while the Western dogs have the better-known yellow-and-black appearance.

Schultze, 46, has been breeding shepherds on the eastern outskirts of Berlin for more than 20 years and is convinced that the East German bloodlines are better than those of the West.“Our dogs are healthier and have a better personality,” she said. “Those overbred shepherds in the West are merely about good looks.”

Heiko Grube, a west German shepherd aficionado and the spokesman of the national German Shepherd’s Club, strongly disagrees.“It is absolutely not true that the bloodlines of the East are better,” he said. “After all it was the East Germans who weren’t allowed to leave their country while in the West we had an open market for the fresh blood that’s needed for successful breeding.’

East German breeders get particularly upset when confronted with the widespread assumption that most of their dogs were used at the border to keep citizens from fleeing to the West. “The army and the police only got the scum – the best ones went to dog lovers,” said Werner Dalm, the former government official for shepherd dog breeding in communist East Germany. However, he acknowledged that the East German army asked particularly for those “that could really bite well.”

Export Growth

Here is the good side to a weakening dollar and the importance to Free Trade Agreements to our Balance of Trade.  Last year, U.S. exports grew by 13% over 2005 to $1.4 trillion. Exports to all regions of the world showed significant growth, rising for 29 of America’s top 30 trading partner countries — and reaching double-digit growth rates in such key markets as China, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Mexico, India, Brazil, and the European Union. Exports comprised 11.1% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006 compared to 9.6% in 2002 and 5.2% 50 years ago.chart21.gif

Are America’s Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?

In The Know: Are America’s Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich? | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
Panelists discuss a new study showing the gap between the wealthy and the absurdly wealthy is widening, and how we can help the merely rich catch up. The Onion spoofs the left/right argumentative TV on the woes of the Rich versus the Uber Rich.

Slide Show of Specialized Cameras

Photos: Camera makers bring niches into focus | ZDNet Photo Gallery
With hundreds of models on the market, it can be tough to get your digital camera to stand out–heck, it can even be hard not to be overwhelmed by the 28 models Canon sells right now. One strategy employed by mainstream manufacturers and smaller rivals: specialize.

London Most Expensive Place To Eat Out

Average Restaurant Meal in London: $79 | World Latest | Guardian Unlimited
London is the most expensive dining capital in the world, restaurant rating company Zagat said Tuesday.

The average meal in London costs just over $79, beating out Paris, at nearly $72 and Tokyo, at just over $71, according to the company’s survey of 5,300 Londoners.

That makes eating out in the British capital more than twice as expensive as New York, where the average meal costs $39.

What is the Average American Woman’s Bust Size?

What is the Average American Woman’s Bust Size? | LiveScience
In the last 15 years, the average bust size has increased from 34B to 36C. Whether the lift is due to breast augmentation surgeries or a side-effect of expanding waistlines is not known.

  • A single bra weighs about 1.6 ounces (45 grams) and contains more than 40 components.
  • Caterpillar spit, dirt, crude oil and molten metal are several of the ingredients in a bra.
  • More than 4 million new bras are created on average every day.
  • Consumers spend around $16 billion a year on bras.
  • Each woman owns an average of about six bras.

For the first time in 10,000 years, farming is not the dominating industry

For the first time in 10,000 years, farming is not the dominating industry « Peter S Magnusson
So, firstly, modernization of large economies is largely bypassing industrialization and going straight for service industries – in our western economies the service sector was about two-thirds of the economy, and has grown further (to 71.2%). But the so large parts of the world economy are moving straight to service industries that their roles have changed. Worldwide, in 1996 agriculture employed 42%, industry 21%, and services 37%. In 2006, the numbers are 36%, 22%, and 42%. So in the period, services has overtaken farming on a global scale. Continue reading “For the first time in 10,000 years, farming is not the dominating industry”

Ooops! – Server Worth $1.5 Million Wrecked by Forklift

PC World – Server Worth $1.5 Million Wrecked by Forklift
The accident happened in October, 2006. The server destined for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, was being transferred from a delivery truck to T.R. Systems’ warehouse in Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. It was packaged in a crate on a pallet and held on a fork-lift truck’s prongs.

A report said that the rear wheels of the fork-lift truck encountered a step at the warehouse entrance. The truck rocked and so did the pallet: “the base of the pallet and the crate broke and the crate fell onto the curb, damaging the server packed inside.”