Call Centres
I thin what you are about to read about was inevitable: the recall of call centres back to the UK.
Remember there was a major migration by many British businesses to take their call centres to countries like India. This was done Lemming like by companies merely seeking to save some money. My personal opinion is that they did little or no research and clearly had not thought through what they were doing.
One thing that has come to light is that they had not appreciated the potential difficulties of upgrading their phone systems in India ... There is a nice BBC article on this topic here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6353491.stmI think it's sad that a lot of stress is laid on Brits as racists leading the charge back to home shores. I don't think so: of course, it is difficult to deal with someone whose native language is not your own. However, it is well known that many non native English speakers who do speak English speak it better than we natives. However, what a foreigner often misses out on is the slang and the colloquialisms. Place names and brand names are also pitfalls for the unwary: how does one pronounce
Cholmondely, for example; and
Bicester and Leicester?
I just wonder what recriminations there might be in the companies that are dragging their call centres back? Will heads roll? Will they finally realise that true costs are not just found by taking expenses away from revenues. There are opportunity costs and so on to take into account too.
Duncan Williamson
The Happy Planet Index
We are accustomed to comparing countries in terms of crude riches or what they trade. Some countries earn, or are given, reputations for music, sporting excellence, food, or as holiday destinations. There are international league tables for performance on a range of issues from corruption to football. This website introduces a measure of something more fundamental. It addresses the relative success or failure of countries in supporting good life for their citizens, whilst repecting the environmental resource limits upon which our lives depend.
The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an innovative new measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered.
You can find a lot more, together with all the data for all the world's countires at
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/introduction.htmWhy not take a guess at the top five countries before you go over there? You will be surprised.
You can calculate your own individual HPI: I did and found it was very low and my ecological footprint was appalling too even though I am a veggie who mainly eats fresh food, recycles and is very parsimonious in terms of resource wastage! Well, I thought so anyway.
I would love to hear from
you if you can prove the formula they use to calculate the HPI. They give a formula at
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/calculated.htm but I don't agree with it. I have written to them to ask for an explanation but if you are a mathematician, please educate and advise!
You should also look for the average placing of island nations: there's something interesting there too.
Duncan Williamson
Fwd: The Happy Planet Index: an introduction
We are accustomed to comparing countries in terms of crude riches or what they trade. Some countries earn, or are given, reputations for music, sporting excellence, food, or as holiday destinations. There are international league tables for performance on a range of issues from corruption to football. This website introduces a measure of something more fundamental. It addresses the relative success or failure of countries in supporting good life for their citizens, whilst repecting the environmental resource limits upon which our lives depend.
The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an innovative new measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered.
Why not take a guess at the top five countries before you go over there? You will be surprised.
You should also look for the average placing of island nations: there's something interesting there too.
Duncan Williamson --
Duncan Williamson
Tennis? What a game!
Womens' libbers have been trying for years to achieve it and now they've done it: given the concept of productivity and massive thrashing.
From this year and onwards, women tennis players at Wimbledon are being given the same prize money as the men: the arguments include equality for equality's sake, spectators spend as much to get in to see them as they do the men (is that true?) so why should Wimbledon keep "their" money?
They always shrug off the idea that men play at least three sets and possibly five sets each game. Women play at least two sets and at most three sets in achieving the same aim.
I call it a crime even though I'm not a massive tennis fan these days.
Duncan Williamson
Nobel Prize Games
You've heard of the Nobel Price but have you usedthe Nobel Games?
Good one here for a bit about trade! http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/economics/trade/index.html
If you want games on physics, chemistry, medicine, peace ... go there too!
I tried the trade game and it's not bad even for a non economist like me!
Duncan Williamson
Try this
Here you are everyone, how would you answer this one?
Hi Duncan, I was testing in a microteaching session for my PGCE course £100, £5, £4, £4, £7; median £5, mode £4 and because of the small data set is it the median, mode or are both correct for the average value? Outlier discounts use of arithmetic mean.
John
I replied to John but why not have a go yourself and I'll post my answer in a day or two.
Duncan Williamson
Labels: Elementary average concerns
Cruel Accounting?
Talking to a chap's personal assistant the other day about a course they are looking to run and we were discussing a few of my ideas. Then we got to accruals accounting: "Cruel accounting?" she asked
I said, what do you think I'm going to do to them?
Oh how we laughed!
Duncan Williamson
What do you think of this?
I came across this in a magazine aimed at highly educated, high flying and aspirant senior management (I know, what was I doing reading it then?!)
I challenge everyone here to guess what they are advertising.
Please use our comment facility to leave your answer. You might also comment on the use of language and so on!
Duncan Williamson
Filthy but it's your health
I think everyone in the UK might be interested in this cases study,
http://www.oxbow.org.uk/php/hospital.phpYou might accuse me of scare mongering but I visited this brand new hospital
in which the tax payers of the UK have invested heavily.
Does anyone attending the hospital deserve to have their lives potentially
put at risk of catching some dread disease?
You decide, anyway.
Duncan Williamson
Avian Flu H5N1
This is another simulcast: duncan's diurnal diatribe and OxBowBusiness Blog.
Well, bad news: avian flu has finally arrived in the UK. Apparently, vets
are worried at how it appeared in a high security environment; the Bernard
Matthews turkey farm in Norfolk. Someone on the radio said this morning that
they had expected to find it in a tin pot little organic poultry farm
somewhere.
Let me predict now, before anyone else gets ranting in the newspapers, that
we are about to face a sickening set of reports and accusations that will
end up with Prime Minister Tony Blair being held personally responsible.
Vets will be accused of hiding the truth. Farmers wil be accused of
knowingly selling infected birds. Large farmers will be compensated
handomely and well before small farmers, if compensation is payable at all.
We had the avian flu scare last year and the best we could do was to find a
dead wild swan in Scotland. Now things really have taken a turn for the
worse and no one was ready.
Be ready now for the nonsense onslaught of typical UK newspaper based comment and opinion that means and signifies absolutely nothing.
End of rant!
DW
