Current Afairs: New French trains too big for stations

… Speechless !

New French trains too big for stations

By The Financial Times

French railway bosses have been forced to admit an embarrassing error that led to hundreds of new passenger trains ordered for its regional network being too big to fit in many stations.

Described as a “tragicomedy” by transport minister Frédéric Cuvillier, 1,300 platforms at stations around the country are having to be altered at a cost of €50m to accommodate the new rolling stock.

The 341 new trains, built by Alstom and the Canadian company Bombardier at a cost of some €15bn, are due to be rolled out on to the network by the end of 2016.

A sheepish SNCF, the state-owned railway company which also runs France’s famous TGV high speed rail network, and RFF, the network operator, said the new trains, which include about 2,000 carriages in total, were built to “international standards” – but this proved to be too wide for many stations.

The mistake apparently stemmed from standard specifications for platform dimensions supplied by RFF to SNCF that did not take into account that many stations were built before the standard came into effect about 30 years ago.

Jacques Rapoport, head of RFF, admitted on Wednesday that the error was discovered “a little late”. Some 300 platforms have already been altered. “It is as if you bought a new Ferrari and you realise that it doesn’t quite fit in your garage because you didn’t have a Ferrari before,” Christophe Piednoël at the RFF, told France Info radio.

Mr Cuvillier pointed the finger of blame for the mix-up at the separation several years ago of SNCF and RFF, in line with an EU push to liberalise Europe’s rail networks.

The Socialist government has instigated a reform of the railway structure that will bring the train and network operators back under one state umbrella group, although they will still have a “firewall” between them to comply with EU rules.

“The point of our railway reform becomes clear when you see the current state of dysfunction of the railway in France,” he said.

Much of the investment due to be made in the French railway system in the coming years is to upgrade its regional and suburban networks that have suffered from the priority given over the years to the TGV network. Last July, six people died when an intercity train came off the rails as it was entering a suburban station south of Paris.

 

Business&Finance: 11 Best Practice Tips for Professional Text Messaging

11 Best Practice Tips for Professional Text Messaging
 

By Small Business Trends

With the overwhelming number of communication channels available to businesses, figuring out the best way to reach clients can be tricky. While you want to make sure your customers get the message, you also don’t want to annoy them with too much contact.

So as more and more companies begin to reach out using text, we asked Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following question:

“For those of you who use text messaging to reach clients/customers, what is one best practice you can share with others? “

Here’s what YEC community members had to say:

1. Keep Them Short

“Text messaging is effective, but only if it’s brief. No one likes having to read a text message that’s more than a sentence or two.” ~ Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

2. Offer Another Level of Service

“Since we ship physical products, we use text messaging to alert customers about when their order is shipped and when it’s gone out for delivery. Since some automated emails hit the spam folder, this ensures customers know their order is coming and we can get them to proactively read our shipping and receiving policies. It’s a great way to ensure a high level of service and interaction.” ~ Gary Nealon, The Rox Group

3. Focus on Building a Relationship First

“I would first focus on being loyal to your clients and building a great relationship with them. Texting is fine, but I would never send an unsolicited text message.” ~ Dan Price, Gravity Payments

4. Be Personal

“We’ve found text message marketing works best when the texts are customized and personal. This may not be possible if your customer list is huge, but we saw a greater ROI from sending personalized messages to a small segment of our customers vs. a blanket message to all of them.” ~ Josh Weiss, Bluegala

5. Limit Frequency and Ensure Quality Content

“People like using messaging to engage with their preferred brands and products. But if you pass a certain threshold where the user perceives they are receiving too many messages, then it can become an annoyance rather than an asset. Also, if you are going to grab someone’s attention on the most valuable real estate available — the phone in their pocket — it has to be high-quality content.” ~ Ty Morse, Songwhale

6. Don’t Reply With One Word

“Give the person a good reply if they are texting with you. I work with people for whom texting is the only way to communicate. Never send one-word texts!” ~ John Rampton, Adogy

7. Provide Relevant Content

“We are all very connected to our phones and text messages are a much more personal form of communication than email, so it’s extremely important that the content is targeted and relevant. Target users you’ve already established a relationship with and tailor content accordingly.” ~ Erica Bell, Hukkster

8. Set Boundaries

“Communicating through text with clients is a two-way street, so it’s important that you set boundaries from the start. If you don’t, you can risk becoming overwhelmed by texts during your personal time as well as missing or losing vital correspondence. Additionally, it’s important for the client that you don’t do the same, upsetting them in the process.” ~ Steven Le Vine, grapevine pr + consulting

9. Offer Short Answer Options

“At InList, we know many of our clients do not want to be interrupted with a call. In certain cases we will text the member first, and we’ve found that people prefer short answers. We won’t ask detailed questions through SMS. We’ll ask questions that have simple answers of one to three words to ensure a faster reply. If we need detailed information, we will text and ask for a good time to call.” ~ Gideon Kimbrell, InList

10. Impart Value

“We text message daily health tips to our users and make sure we are providing value. With power comes responsibility and because they opted in with us, we would not betray that trust by spamming. We also note the high response rates on text message surveys to ensure that we align our content to what they expected after sign-up. Text messaging is powerful because it has high instant readership.” ~ Shradha Agarwal, ContextMedia

11. Ensure They Opt In

“Customers may provide you with their cell number at one point, but that doesn’t grant you the right to text them. There have actually been plenty of lawsuits resulting from text message advertising without permission. Always make sure the people you are texting opt in first.” ~ Robert De Los Santos, Sky High Party Rentals

Current Affairs: Wishing for someone else's president

Wishing for someone else's president

 

 

By BBC

Spaniards are swooning over a president - but not their own.

Praise for politicians is rare on Twitter, but in Spain, there's a sudden outpouring of love for Uruguay's President Jose Mujica. There have been more than 100,000 tweets from people comparing him favourably to their own prime minister, using the hashtag #UnPresidenteDiferente - "a different president".

Uruguay's president is famous for driving an old banger, living a humble life and giving a large slice of his salary to charity - so much so that he's often been dubbed the world's "poorest president". It's no wonder then that Spain's Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, might seem dull by comparison.

But comparing the two leaders is exactly what Spaniards on Twitter have been doing since Sunday when Mujica gave an interview on a left-wing Spanish TV station. The presenter of the programme, Jordi Evole - with his more than one million followers on Twitter - did much to get the hashtag #UnPresidenteDiferente trending. But since then, it's taken on something of a life of its own.

"Humble, sincere, honourable. About how many Spanish politicians would you be able to say the same?" is one typical tweet. "It's incredible that a country 'less' developed than ours has more efficient and committed politicians than us," was another. Some shared images of the two leaders, complaining of Rajoy's - by comparison - less modest lifestyle.

Twitter is of course far from being an accurate representation of public opinion, but the Twitter conversation does seem to point to a sense of frustration or apathy about politics from some. Surveys suggest that both the prime minister's Popular Party (PP) party and the Socialists in Spain are losing support. The prime minister took a further knock to his reputation due to the so-called "Barcenas scandal", involving alleged secret payments linked to members of his party.

 

The grass is always greener on the side, but it's unusual for the Spanish to look to Latin America for political inspiration, says journalist Noemi Hernandez. Some using the hashtag have even been comparing Uruguay's president with the Pope - himself quite a social media star. But there's at least one big difference. In his interview on Spanish TV, President Mujica declared himself an atheist.

Scraping for Sea Delicacy, and a Meager Living

Scraping for Sea Delicacy, and a Meager Living

 

By The New York Times

A CORUÑA, Spain — Roberto Mahia, 44, was leaning against his car waiting for the sun to rise before pulling on the frayed wet suit at his feet when two vehicles pulled up not far away.

“Those are poachers,” Mr. Mahia declared, staring hard in the direction of their headlights. “We know those cars.”

On this morning, however, there would be no confrontation. The poachers soon moved on, apparently unwilling to tangle with Mr. Mahia and the other men gathered here who were trained and licensed to scramble among the crashing waves of the rocky Galician coastline in the country’s northwest corner, prying loose and collecting a rare prize for epicures — gooseneck barnacles.

The work has always been dangerous. All the men waiting for daybreak had scars to show. Avelino Mosteiro, 54, once got 36 stitches in his thigh. On another occasion, he got 18 stitches under his arm. But the work also used to be highly paid before the economic crisis, when restaurants clamored for the rare crustaceans.

These days, however, the men and women who do this for a living say it is hard to make ends meet. Certainly, there are fewer Europeans able to afford expensive treats of any kind.

But worse, there are the poachers, many of them out-of-work citizens, trying to make money any way they can. Their scavenging brings prices down further and depletes the area of barnacles, forcing the licensed collectors to work in more remote and difficult areas, often for a poorer haul.

“Fifteen days ago, we were on those rocks,” Mr. Mahia said, pointing out a jagged outcropping in the distance. “Two of us were legal collectors, and 11 were poachers.”

In the heady days before Spain’s economic crisis, barnacle collectors, many who learned the art of dodging waves from their parents, could earn more than $800 in a few hours. But on a recent morning the men here had collected only four or five pounds of barnacles each, most of them small and of less than ideal quality. Perhaps, they said, they could get $135 for them, maybe less.

In the past, the men said, they would not even have tried to go out on a day with such choppy seas. But lately, they could not afford to let any opportunity go by.

The barnacles, known as percebes in Spanish, can be collected only under certain conditions, including the point in the lunar cycle when tides are lowest.

Along the coast here, some restaurants offer barnacles for as much as $80 a serving. In Madrid, the price can be much higher. Cooking them is simple. They are generally boiled for just a few minutes. Aficionados compare them to oysters, not for their texture, which is chewier, but for their subtle sea taste.

Spanish officials agree that the unemployment rate has prompted more and more untrained people to take their chances in the rocky inlets here, occasionally paying with their lives.

“If from time to time you hear about someone dying doing this, it is almost always a poacher,” said Rosa Quintana Carballo, Galicia’s regional minister of the rural environment and the sea.

In some areas, as in Baiona, a village farther down the coast, the licensed collectors have grown so frustrated that they are paying private security guards to patrol the area on land and on sea. The government splits the bill with them.

One morning, one of Baiona’s guards, Darío Freire, guided his S.U.V. up a hill so he could use binoculars to scan the coastline. He said confronting poachers was a dangerous business.

“I have been punched, threatened with a stick,” Mr. Freire said. “They have thrown things at the car and smashed the windows. It isn’t easy.”

Mostly, he said, he just alerts the police, who give the poachers summonses. But like José Do Val, 62, who readily admitted that he had been collecting barnacles that morning, most of the poachers are far too broke to pay the fines, so they are not a deterrent.

Mr. Do Val, who said he was once an executive in a food distribution company and dined regularly on barnacles, estimates that he has collected more than $135,000 in fines for poaching. “I’m not really sure how much it was,” he said. “It’s not something that really interests me.”

Galicia has struggled in the last few years with an unemployment rate of about 27 percent, one of the highest in the country. It once had a thriving shipping industry. But that is in shambles now, and there are few jobs that pay much for anyone. Police units assigned to stop the barnacle poachers are stretched thin and have perhaps more pressing business, keeping an eye on those who dig for clams in polluted areas, for instance, and then bleach them to make them look right.

“After what I have seen, I am finished with eating clams,” said Juan Da Rocha, who heads a regional police unit that concentrates on illegal fishing.

In Baiona, many of the barnacle collectors are women. Susana González works with her three sisters, who like her went to school for other professions, but ended up in wet suits instead. Though collecting barnacles is difficult, most of the people in this business find being up at dawn in the sea, without a boss, an attractive way of life. “You are free,” Mrs. González said. “I like that.”

After a successful morning collecting, the women gathered at the local auction house hoping that all the talk of economic recovery coming out of Madrid would mean higher prices. But that was not the case. Even the biggest barnacles sold for about $40 a pound, less than half the opening price.

“We really thought we would do better,” Mrs. González said with a sigh.

Current Affairs: UK 'second best education in Europe'

UK 'second best education in Europe'

The UK is in second place among European countries and sixth overall in a global education league table.

(.. in the same study, Spain is ranked at Nº 29 just behind Portugal and just ahead of Bulgaria and Romania …)

By BBC

South Korea is top, with three other Asian countries and Finland making up the top five, in rankings from education and publishing firm, Pearson.

The rankings include higher education as well as international school tests - which boosted the UK's position.

Pearson chief executive John Fallon highlighted the economic importance of improving education and skills.

These latest international comparisons, compiled for Pearson by the Economist Intelligence Unit, emphasise the success of Asian education systems, with South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong in China rated as the highest performing.

But it shows a strong performance from the UK, which is ranked sixth, behind only Finland in Europe and ahead of countries such as Germany, France and the United States.

Finns no longer flying

Finland, which was previously in first place, has slumped to fifth, and there has been a wider downward trend for a number of Scandinavian countries.

It also records the rise of Poland, which has been hailed for reforming its post-Communist education system and sits in the top 10.

These rankings are based upon an amalgamation of international tests and education data - including the OECD's Pisa tests, and two major US-based studies, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls).

They also include higher-education graduation rates, which helped the UK to a much higher position than in Pisa tests, which saw the UK failing to make the top 20.

The UK's Business Secretary Vince Cable said: "The UK has a global reputation for excellence in higher education, attracting overseas students who make huge economic and cultural contribution to Britain.

"To maintain our position, we must continue to attract international students and promote the UK as a knowledge economy."

A Learning Curve report accompanying the ranking says that the success of top-performing Asian countries reflects a culture in which teachers and schools are highly respected and "teachers, students and parents all take responsibility for education".

Students in South Korea, with the strongest test results, will have had to memorise 60 to 100 pages of facts, says the report, raising questions about the long-term value of such rote learning.

The report also notes that highly-prized skills such as being creative and problem solving are much harder to measure and put into such rankings.

The lowest-ranked European country is Greece, with a group of emerging economies at the bottom of the table, including Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil.

Global lessons

John Fallon, chief executive of Pearson, says the report shows a strong link between improving levels of education and training and economic growth.

And the international comparisons, such as with the top Asian education systems, show the potential for what could be achieved in other countries.

Healthcare has benefited from a globalised approach, he says, such as developing and testing medicines.

And education systems around the world could learn more from each other, he argues, when many face the same challenge of raising standards while facing financial constraints.

"How do we do more or better with the same or less resources?"

More than $5 trillion (£2.95 trillion) is spent on education globally each year, he says, but there is pressure to target this more effectively and see what really worked.

Digital technology could play a part in sharing good ideas, but this will mean reinforcing rather than displacing the role of the teacher.

Mr Fallon says it would be a "huge mistake" to think of the role of teacher being lessened by an increasing use of technology.

Pearson has also created an open-access information hub, with a databank of education information for 50 countries.

Innovation

So far, the education community is only at the stage of "dipping its toe" in applying the lessons of international data and research, says Mr Fallon.

"There is a huge amount of innovation in schools and colleges around the world. And the biggest challenge isn't finding brilliant teachers or high-performing schools - it's how to share that, and how you replicate that at scale."

Where Pisa test results are very high, he says, "our job is how to replicate this".

But he says globalisation will have limits and that education systems will always have a strong national and local identity - shaped by "community, culture and language".

Sir Michael Barber, a former Downing Street adviser, who is now Pearson's education adviser, says the rankings and report provide "an ever-deeper knowledge base about precisely how education systems improve themselves".

"The rise of Pacific Asian countries, which combine effective education systems with a culture that prizes effort above inherited "smartness", is a phenomenon that other countries can no longer ignore."

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "Given the criticism of schools by many of our politicians you could be forgiven for thinking that our education system compares unfavourably with others.

"Yet when alternative research becomes available, it shows a different picture."

Mary Bousted, leader of the ATL teachers' union, welcomed the UK's strong performance.

"We are confident that Michael Gove will respond positively to the good news and acknowledge the hard work of teachers and lecturers in this achievement."

 

TOP 20 EDUCATION SYSTEMS

• 1. South Korea
• 2. Japan
• 3. Singapore
• 4. Hong Kong
• 5. Finland
• 6. UK
• 7. Canada
• 8. Netherlands
• 9. Ireland
• 10. Poland
• 11. Denmark
• 12. Germany
• 13. Russia
• 14. United States
• 15. Australia
• 16. New Zealand
• 17. Israel
• 18. Belgium
• 19. Czech Republic
• 20. Switzerland

Source: Pearson/ Economist Intelligence Unit

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