Outsourcing Essay -- Economics Economy Consumerism Essays

Re-appropriating Re-appropriating has become a famous issue, and it has arrived at an unequaled peak. Firms are beginning to do this much more than in the earlier decade. What is re-appropriating? Redistributing is characterized as â€Å"The obtaining of administrations or items, for example, the parts utilized in assembling an engine vehicle, from an outside provider or producer so as to cut costs.† And it has become a major issue in our nation. There are a huge number of articles and books composed on it, and you can go to various classes and discourses regarding the matter. The utilization of redistributing is very basic really†¦ Either pay an American laborer $15 60 minutes, or pay somebody in India to do a similar activity for $2 60 minutes. There are bunches of different points of interest and impediments to redistributing yet I will address those later in the paper. So what does a normal American truly think about re-appropriating? A great many people would express sending our busi ness to another nation so as to set aside cash isn’t defended. It would cost many individuals occupations, which would send them into trouble and conceivably obligation. Be that as it may, that’s not the entire story behind redistributing. Individuals catch wind of re-appropriating and naturally conclude that it is terrible for our economy. Shouldn't something be said about the beneficial things that redistributing brings to our economy? We are sending occupations to India, their purchasers will begin getting more cash, and consequently purchase a greater amount of our merchandise and enterprises. In this paper I will show you the two purposes of the discussion and you can choose for yourself whether redistributing is terrible for our nation. A firm’s essential goals are cutting un-important costs, lessening overhead, and cutting work costs. America has one of the most elevated GDP’s, with the lowest pay permitted by law in the US being $5.15 60 minutes. A great many people woul... ...l comes down to the American shopper, and how they see the subject. In the end†¦ the decision is yours. Reference index 1. Seat Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations study led by Princeton Study Research Associates International. July 8-18, 2004. N=1,003 grown-ups across the country. MoE  ± 3.5. Accessible at: http://www.pollingreport.com/trade.htm 2. System Computing on the web, Online article, accessible at: http://www.nwc.com/shared/article/printFullArticle.jhtml?articleID=115201900 3. TechWeb on the web, â€Å"IT compensations are Rising†, online article, accessible at: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20030402S0002 4. Data Week, â€Å"IT compensations Show Upward Trend, Outsourcing Overblown†, TechWeb article composed by W. David Gardner, accessible at: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=50500043

The Science of How Slime Works

The Science of How Slime Works You think about sludge. Youve either made it as a science venture or, in all likelihood blown the regular form out your nose. Do you realize what makes sludge not quite the same as a customary fluid? Investigate the study of what sludge is, the manner by which it structures, and its uncommon properties. What Is Slime? Ooze streams like a fluid, however not at all like recognizable fluids (e.g., oil, water), its capacity to stream or consistency isn't consistent. In this way, its a liquid, yet not a standard fluid. Researchers call a material that changes thickness a non-Newtonian liquid. The specialized clarification is that sludge is a liquid that changes its capacity to oppose misshapening as indicated by shear or elastic pressure. This means, when you pour sludge or let it overflow through your finger, it has a low thickness and streams like a thick fluid. At the point when you crush non-Newtonian sludge, as oobleck, or pound it with your clench hand, it feels hard, similar to a wet strong. This is on the grounds that applying pressure crushes the particles in the ooze together, making it difficult for them to slide against one another. Most kinds of ooze are likewise instances of polymers. Polymers are atoms made by connecting together chains of subunits. Instances of Slime A characteristic type of ooze is mucous, which comprises of basically of water, the glycoprotein mucin, and salts. Water is the fundamental fixing in some different sorts of human-made sludge, as well. The great science venture ooze formula blends paste, borax, and water. Oobleck is a blend of starch and water. Different sorts of ooze are for the most part oils instead of water. Models incorporate Silly Putty and electroactive sludge. How Slime Works The particulars of how a kind of ooze functions relies upon its concoction arrangement, yet the fundamental clarification is that synthetic compounds are blended to frame polymers. The polymers go about as a net, with particles sliding against one another. For a particular model, consider the synthetic responses that produce exemplary paste and borax ooze: Two arrangements are joined to make exemplary ooze. One is weakened school stick or polyvinyl liquor in water. The other arrangement is borax (Na2B4O7.10H2O) in water.Borax breaks down in water into sodium particles, Na, and tetraborate ions.The tetraborate particles respond with water to deliver the OH-particle and boric acid:B4O72-(aq) 7 H2O - 4 H3BO3(aq) 2 OH-(aq)Boric corrosive responds with water to frame borate ions:H3BO3(aq) 2 H2O - B(OH)4-(aq) H3O(aq)Hydrogen securities structure between the borate particle and the OH gatherings of the polyvinyl liquor atoms from the paste, connecting them together to shape another polymer (sludge). The cross-connected polyvinyl liquor traps a great deal of water, so sludge is wet. You can alter the consistency of ooze by controlling the proportion of paste to borax. On the off chance that you have an overabundance of weakened paste, contrasted and a borax arrangement, youll limit the quantity of cross-connects that can frame and get an increasingly liquid sludge. You can likewise change the formula by restricting the measure of water that you use. For instance, you could blend the borax arrangement straightforwardly with stick. This delivers an exceptionally hardened ooze.

Mutual Fund Voting And Pension Ties Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

Because mutual funds are the largest equity holders and because the retirement assets that are managed by mutual funds have been growing, mutual fund managers may have more incentives to support management in order to attract and retain pension business. I explore whether pension business ties have an impact on voting behaviors of mutual funds by examining the link pension business ties between mutual funds and the firms to actual mutual fund voting outcomes. At the fund family level, I find a positive relation between pension ties and mutual funds voting support for management. This relation becomes stronger when there is a voting divergence among funds within the same families. At the individual fund level, I find that individual funds are more likely to vote with management if they are included as one of the investment options of the pension plan of their portfolio firms. This suggests that the SEC should at least consider the recent petition from the AFL-CIO proposing that the SEC require mutual funds to disclose business ties with the firms in which they invest. Keywords: Mutual funds, Pension ties, Proxy voting * I thank Larry Dann and Diane Del Guercio for helpful comments and suggestions. All errors are mine. INTRODUCTION As institutional ownership has increased over the last few decades, there has been much academic interest in whether institutional investors take an active role in corporate governance. It is important to note, however, that due to potential conflicts of interest, all institutions do not necessarily have the same incentives to monitor management. In particular, mutual funds, the largest equity holders in the United States, were previously considered to be free of conflicts of interest because they did not do business with portfolio firms.  [1] According to the Investment Company Institute, as of the end of 2011, 61.2 percent of 401(K) plan assets and 45.1 percent of Individual Retirement Account (IRA) market assets were invested in mutual funds.  [2]  Since one half of the IRA market assets and 401(K) plan assets have been held by mutual funds since the late 1990s, there is a potential for conflicts of interest in mutual funds, and thereby fund managers have less incentive to exert an effort to monitor management and more incentive to support management in order to attract and retain the assets from the retirement market. Several studies document that mutual fund managers pursue their own interests at the expense of fund investors. For example, Cohen and Schmidt (2008) find that fund families acting as trustees systematically overweight their sponsor firms and even increase their holdings of the sponsor firms stock when other mutual funds are engaged in aggregate selling of sponsor firms shares. Other than through trading, mutual funds can support the management of the invested firms through voting for management proposals. Since proxy voting is the primary forum through which shareholders participate in the governance of corporations, examining mutual funds voting outcomes is one way to investigate the existence of mutual funds conflicts of interest. Davis and Kim (2007), Ashraf, Jayaraman, and Ryan (2010), and Pengfei Ye (2008) provide evidence tha t mutual funds are more likely to vote for management regardless of the best interest of the investors due to the existence of conflicts of interest. In this paper, I explore whether the pension business ties between mutual funds and their portfolio firms have an impact on mutual fund voting behavior. Through mapping mutual funds pension business ties to their portfolio firms onto mutual funds actual voting outcomes, I examine 61,336 voting decisions made by 3,130 mutual funds from 101 fund families for 172 management sponsored proposals and 129 shareholder sponsored proposals voted on at 257 firms over the sample period from June 2003 to December 2005. Using a probit model, I document a positive association between mutual fund voting and pension business ties. Analysis at the fund family level shows that fund families are more likely to vote for the ISS unfavorable management proposals and to vote against the ISS favorable shareholder proposals. The influence of pension ties to mutual fund voting becomes four times stronger when there is voting divergence among funds within the same families. However, there is no evidence that voting support of mutual funds is higher for the proposals voted at their clients firms compared to non-client firms. At the individual fund level, a fund included as one of the investment options of the pension plans of a firm in which it invests is more likely to vote against the ISS favorable shareholder proposals. The results of this study extend the findings of Ashraf et al. (2010) but are different in four aspects. First, to the extent that the marginal effect of the influence of business ties on mutual fund voting support for management is greater for close votes, the sample only includes votes in which the level of the voting support of the proposal is between 40% and 60%. Second, given the evidence of the impact of the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) advice on mutual fund voting support, I segregate the sample in to the proposals recommended by the ISS and the proposals not recommended by ISS. Third, as I observe non-trivial divergence in fund votes within the same families for both management proposals and shareholder proposals, I look into whether the association between business ties and fund voting is stronger with the existence of divergence. Furthermore, the finding of divergence among fund votes drives me to analyze the data at the fund level. Given the fact that the size of mutual funds has significantly grown and is expected to grow more in the future, the findings of this paper suggest that the policy makers should consider new rules in order to mitigate the concerns from conflicts of interest. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should seriously review the recent petition from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) proposing that the SEC require mutual funds to disclose pension business ties with the firms in wh ich they invest. The paper is organized as follows: the next section reviews background; section III describes the sample data; section IV shows the empirical results; section V concludes the paper. II. BACKGROUND Conflicts of interest of mutual funds induced by pension plan business While institutional investors have grown in size and number over the last few decades, whether they play an appropriate monitoring role in corporate governance is still being debated. One possible method to reveal whether institutions exert effort in the monitoring of corporate governance is by examining proxy voting, because proxy voting is one of the primary mechanisms through which shareholders participate in corporate governance. Through management sponsored proposals, corporate management seeks approval of new and existing policies from shareholders. Likewise, through shareholder sponsored proposals, shareholders advocate changes in corporate policies. Brickley, et al. (1988) examine how large shareholders vote on management sponsored proposals for antitakeover amendment provisions during the 1984 proxy season, and they find that institutional investors are more likely to cast their votes against these p roposals. While institutional investors might have greater incentives to participate in monitoring management than do small shareholders, the incentives of all institutional investors are not necessarily the same, and there may be conflicts of interest. With respect to proxy voting, all institutional investors will not necessarily vote against management, even if they believe it will maximize share value. Some institutional investors may choose to vote for management strategically in order to facilitate business ties with companies they own. According to Pozen (2011), among institutional investors, mutual funds are the largest equity holders in the United States. Mutual funds have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of the fund owners. By sponsoring or supporting value-enhancing shareholder proposals and preventing value-destroying management proposals, mutual funds can influence corporate governance to maximize firm value in order to benefit shareholders. How ever, there is some evidence that mutual funds do not perform their fiduciary duties due to conflicts of interest. Mutual funds are able to benefit from pension fund business such as managing the 401(K) plans of their portfolio companies, providing the financial incentive for mutual funds to support management regardless of the best interests of fund owners. Cohen and Schmidt (2008) explain why being the trustee of a large 401(K) plan is attractive for mutual fund families: (1) the trustee fund family guarantees a large initial inflow invested in family funds, (2) the family receives additional inflows in retirement assets from employee savings each year, and (3) trustees of 401(K) plans rarely change. The empirical evidence that conflicts of interest for mutual funds have effects on proxy voting is as follows. Davis and Kim (2007) analyze conflicts of interest in proxy voting by mutual funds using aggregate voting outcomes and find that fund families with pension business ties a re more likely to vote with management compared to fund families without pension business ties. Moreover, by using records of actual mutual fund voting patterns on shareholder proposals, the authors compare mutual fund voting outcomes at firms in which the funds manage pension plans with their votes to firms that do not manage. The authors argue that funds are no more likely to vote with management at client firms than at non-client firms. However, their data is based on the 2003 proxy season, which is the first year of mandated voting disclosures of mutual funds. Therefore, under close public scrutiny, mutual funds might have incentives to appear to not be subject to the influence of management. Likewise, Ashraf et al. (2010) investigates whether pension ties between mutual fund families and the firms affect how fund families vote on shareholder sponsored compensation proposals. The authors find that while fund families that have business ties to the firms they own are less likely to support shareholder proposals for executive compensation, there is also no difference in voting support of fund families with pension ties between client firms and non-client firms. Other than voting for management, mutual funds can support the management of the invested firm through trading. Cohen and Schmidt (2008) find that fund families acting as trustees systematically overweight their sponsor firms and even increase their holdings of a sponsor firms stock when other mutual funds are engaged in aggregate selling of that sponsor firms shares. Duan, Hotchkiss, and Jiao (2011) investigate whether pension business ties enable mutual funds to gain informational advantage in trading. The authors find that there is a positive relation between mutual fund trading and future performance of the portfolios firms with which funds have pension business ties. In response to increasing concern that conflicts of interest allow mutual funds to vote for management regardless of the best in terest of fund owners, on January 23, 2003, the SEC adopted new regulations: (1) the SEC required mutual funds to disclose actual voting results and (2) the SEC required mutual funds to publicly disclose a set of policies on how they will make decisions on proxy votes. The advocates of these rules expected that investors would be better able to monitor whether mutual funds engage in proxy voting in the interests of investors, preventing mutual funds from voting in support of management in order to facilitate other business relations with corporations whose shares they own. Cremer and Romano (2007) investigate the impact of the 2003 mutual fund voting disclosure regulation on voting outcomes by comparing voting outcomes of similar proposals sponsored at the same firms both before and after adoption of the regulation. The authors find no evidence that the rule decreases mutual funds voting in support of management. Indeed, they show that mutual funds appear to have increased their sup port for management on executive equity incentive plans (EEIC) since the rule change. Close votes Listokin (2008) finds that there is a large difference between the frequency of management sponsored proposals passing with votes just above 50% and the frequency of proposals failing with votes just below 50%. As shown in Figure 1, there is a discontinuity in the distribution of voting outcomes in management-sponsored votes at the 50 percent level. This discontinuity suggests that management has information about the outcome of voting at a time when management can do something to change the outcome of votes. One possible explanation for this pattern could be that managers, in order to achieve success, encourage mutual funds that manage their pension. Suppose that management predicts that the percentage of voting support for a management sponsored proposal is just below 50%. In that case, to pass the proposal, management attempts to pressure mutual funds that manage its pension pl ans to vote in favor of management. With a small shift, management can win the proposal as the marginal effect of mutual fund voting shift in close votes is large.  [3]  However, management will withdraw or alter the proposal if it predicts that the proposal would fail with far below 50% of voting support. Furthermore, management will not act if it predicts the proposal will win with far above 50% of voting support. To the extent that marginal effects of voting support of mutual funds for management proposals are greater for close votes than for non-close votes, I expect that the influence on proxy voting of pension ties is more likely to be detected in close votes rather than non-close votes. Therefore, the analysis of this study involves the voting outcomes for close votes. Although there is no such discontinuity in shareholder sponsored proposal, examining close votes for shareholder proposals is also meaningful given that marginal effects of mutual voting shift is large, wit h a small shift from voting against management to voting for management. The ISS recommendation As suggested by prior literature, the ISS has a non-trivial influence on mutual fund voting behavior. As a leading proxy advisory firm, the ISS gives recommendations on proxy voting by publishing general guidelines on each issue of each proposal or by providing case-by-case recommendations. Cotter, Palmiter, and Thomas (2011) find that voting support of mutual funds decreases by 68.3% for ISS unfavorable management proposals and increases by 53.1% for ISS unfavorable shareholder proposals. Choi, Fisch, and Kahan (2010) observe that the cases in which mutual funds always follow management of their portfolio firms are twice as many as cases in which mutual funds always follow the ISS. In considering the importance of the impact of the ISS recommendation on proxy voting, Ashraf et al. (2010) segregates its sample into shareholder proposals recommended by ISS and shareholder proposals o pposed by the ISS. They detect a negative association between voting support of fund families and pension business ties only for the first case. When the ISS opposes shareholder proposals, there is no association between fund family voting and pension ties. Considering that mutual funds likely follow the ISS advice for potential value reducing shareholder proposals regardless of whether they have business ties, their finding is somewhat predictable. If we assume that the ISS provides reliable advice and that mutual funds are the only shareholders, the ISS unfavorable shareholder proposals are comparable to the ISS favorable management proposals. This is because both mutual funds and management likely consider the former as value reduction proposals and consider the latter as value improving proposals. However, for the ISS favorable shareholder proposals, mutual funds consider them to be value increasing while management votes against them as it always opposes shareholder sponsored p roposals. When there is a disagreement between management and mutual funds, management acts to influence votes by using mutual funds ability to attract pension inflows as an incentive. Likewise, for the ISS unfavorable management proposals, shareholders consider them as value deceasing while management makes efforts for them to be passed by encouraging mutual funds with business ties to side with management. Therefore, I expect the association between business ties and voting support of mutual funds is more likely to be detected when the ISS endorses shareholder proposals and when the ISS opposes management proposals, compared to when the ISS opposes shareholder proposals and the ISS endorses management proposals. Divergence in fund votes within fund families Most prior studies on mutual fund voting analyze data at the fund family level since they consider that fund families vote their shares as a block.  [4]  However, Morgan, Poulsen, Wolf, and Yang (2011) argue that for shareholder sponsored proposals there is a large divergence in voting among funds within a fund family while there is a substantial uniformity in management sponsored proposals.  [5]  Such a divergence in shareholder proposals suggests that it may be important to perform individual fund level analysis in addition to fund family level analysis. If a fund votes for a proposal of its portfolio firm and this fund is included as one of the pension investment options of the firm, the fund likely has more incentive to support management compared to other funds in the same family which are not included as an investment option. If this is the case, dispersion in voting within fund families would be more likely to be observed when one of the funds is included as an investment option of the pension plan. Furthermore this dispersion may drive a stronger association between mutual fund votes and business ties. In other words, mutual funds more strongly support their portfolio firms with busi ness ties when dispersion within the same family exists compared to when there is uniformity. Therefore, I expect that mutual funds with business ties are more likely to vote for management when there is a divergence in voting among funds within fund families, compared to those funds when there is uniformity. In a similar vein, Burtler and Gurun (2011) find that educationally connected funds are 42% more likely to vote for management when there is a divergence in voting among funds within fund families (about 19% of the observation in their data), while those funds are 7% more likely to vote for management when there is uniformity. In addition, in order to support the achievement of managements goals, mutual funds with pension ties may be more likely to diverge from their family voting policy for close votes compared to non-close votes.  Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ °Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ °Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ °. SAMPLE DESCRIPTIONS 3.1 Source of data Data on voting outcomes by mutual funds is obtained from the ISS Voting Analytics Database which includes Company Vote Results and Fund Vote Results (mutual fund N-PX filings). Company Vote Results contain aggregate voting outcomes for Russell 3000 companies shareholder meetings as well as the total number of shares outstanding, the total number of votes cast, and the ISS recommendation. Fund Vote Results show how individual funds of fund families vote on each proposal. Voting outcomes are recorded as being for, against, or abstaining per proposal per fund. I have access to voting outcomes of corporate governance related management sponsored proposals and shareholder sponsored proposals occurring from June 2003 through December 2005. Data on pension plans comes from the Form 5500 filings filed with the Department of Labor (DOL) and Internal Revenue Code and 11-K filings filed with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Form 5500 is required to be a nnually filed by plan administrators in order to report financial, investment, and operational information about pension and welfare benefit plans. The Form 5500 provides information on the fees paid to the service providers such as trustees and recordkeepers as well as the amount of assets held by investment providers. Although the Form 5500 covers most of the sample firms receiving proposals, the data is not as complete as the 11-K. The 11-K is an annual report dealing with employee stock purchases and savings plans which is required to be filed if a companys stock is offered as one of the investment options for plan participants. The 11-K filings include the identity of the trustee, total assets invested in the plan, and the proportion invested in each investment option. The analysis of this study first examines 354 firms that all have at least one corporate governance related proposal that has 40% to 60% of voting support. The percentage of votes in favor of a proposal is dif ferently computed according to the denominator of the calculation of both support level and the required threshold for each proposal.  [6]  For each firm in the initial sample, I gather pension data from both the Form 5500 and the 11-K by mapping the IRS Employer Identification Number (EIN) into CUSIP using the CRSP/Compustat Merged Database. Including firms with either the Form 5500 or the 11-K leaves me with 257 firms.  [7]  As my interest of in this study is whether mutual funds with business ties affect how mutual funds vote, by looking at the fund name and the family name. I check each sample firm to see whether the fund family of the individual fund that casts its vote is the trustee or the service provider for the firms pension plans and whether the individual fund is included as one of the pension investment options of the plans. Following Ashraf et al. (2010), I classify fund families in the sample sample as having a pension business tie if the fund family is a trus tee or service provider or if the individual fund is included among one of the investment options of the plans offered by a firm. The final step is to gather additional information about sample firms: the data on firm characteristics are from CRSP and Compustat; the data on governance index (G-index) is available freely from Metricks web-site; the data on institutional holdings is obtained from the Thomson-Reuters 13F database. The final sample of this study is constituted of 257 firms with close votes. As some firms have more than one proposal, 172 management sponsored proposals and 129 shareholder sponsored proposals are collected over the sample period from June 2003 to December 2005. The analysis at the fund family includes 13,120 voting decisions by 101 mutual fund families, and 41,407 fund voting outcomes on ISS favorable shareholder proposals are analyzed at fund level. 3.2 Summary sStatistics Table 1 provides information on the number of proposals and the number of mutual fund families that cast their votes for each type as well as information on how uniformly funds within the same family vote with management for each proposal type. Voting with management is equivalent to funds voting in favor of management proposals. This is also equivalent to voting against shareholder proposals given the fact that management always takes a position against shareholder sponsored proposals.  [8]  Given the importance of the effect of the ISS advice, I divide each proposal type according to whether the ISS endorses it or not and according to who sponsors the proposal (ISS favorable management proposals, ISS unfavorable management proposals, ISS favorable shareholder proposals, and ISS unfavorable shareholder proposals). Panel A of Table 1 shows that for the ISS favorable management sponsored proposals, fund families uniformly vote in favor of management 78% of the time and uniformly vote against management 11% of the time. The divergence in fund votes w ithin the family is, on average, 11%. Interestingly, individual funds show the greatest divergence (50%) surrounding the issue of Declassify the Board of Director, known as one of the most significant value reducing effects. Compensation related proposals such as Approve Omnibus Stock Plan, Amend Omnibus Stock Plan, and Amend Stock Option Plan have the next highest level of divergence as well as the next highest frequency. For the ISS unfavorable management proposal at in Panel B of Table 1, funds uniformly vote against management 64% of the time and vote for management 19% of the time. The average divergence of funds within fund families is registered at 17%. Unlike previous studies, I observed a non-trivial voting divergence among funds within a fund family. Compensation related proposals (Approve Omnibus Stock Plan, Amend Omnibus Stock Plan, and Amend Stock Option Plan) are again the most frequently occurring types of proposals. Panel C of Table 1 shows that for the ISS fav orable shareholder sponsored proposal types, funds are less likely to vote uniformly within families, compared to management sponsored proposals. On average, funds in a family vote identically on 73% of the proposals while votes of funds in a family differ in 27% of the proposals. Board related proposals (Require a Majority Vote for the Election of Directors and Declassify the Board of Directors) are the most common shareholder sponsored proposals. Compensation related proposals (Expense Stock Options and Performance- Based/Indexed Options) have the next highest divergence as well as the next highest occurrence. Table 2 presents the number of and the percentage of business ties of funds families with pension ties to the any of the sample firms and fund families without any pension ties. It also shows the number of proposals for which fund families cast their votes. The top five mutual funds families with business ties are Fidelity Investment, John Hancock Funds, Vanguard Group, S SGA Funds, and Oppenheimer Funds/MassMutual, and these families account for 35.8% of ties in the sample. The top 15 fund families account for 67.6% of pension ties, which is more than twice the level of pension ties of the next 50 fund families managing any pension assets of the sample firms. As shown in Panel B of Table 2, Jackson National, Thrivent Investment Management, USAA, and Munder Funds cast their vote on more than 200 proposals while these families do not engage in any pension business to any firm in my sample. Given the findings of in the previous literature showing that firm characteristics affect how institutional investors vote, I include firm characteristics such as past performance, market capitalization, market-to-book ratio, G-index, and institutional holdings as control variables. Past one year performance is definied as the one year buy and hold market adjusted abnormal returns from the meeting date of proxy voting, and market capitalization is defined as the total number of shares outstanding times the closing price at the end of the year of the proposal. Market-to-book ratio is obtained by dividing the sum of market capitalization of equity and the book value of debt by the book value of total assets. As the sample period of this study is June 2003 to December 2006, I use the G-index published in 2004. Institutional holdings are calculated according to ownership held by institutions as of the end of the meeting year. Table 3 provides information on firm characteristics in the sample. On average, past one year returns for the sample firm are 13.1%, market to book ratio is 2.9, and market capitalization is 26,536 million dollars. Average institutional ownership of the sample firm is 71.4%, and average G-index for the sample firm is 9.4. IV. EMPIRICA ANALYSIS 4.1 Analysis at fund family level The main analysis of this paper explores whether business ties have an impact on mutual fund voting behavior by comparing the association between pension business ties and mutual fund voting support. I begin with the analysis at the fund family level and then extend my analysis to the individual fund level. At the fund family level of analysis, the dependent variable is the percentage level of votes in support of management. Following Ashraf et al. (2010), the percentages of voting support in favor of management for each mutual fund family are calculated by dividing the number of individual funds within the same fund families that vote with management for a proposal by the number of funds in the family that are eligible to vote on the proposal.  [9]  Therefore, the higher voting support indicates that funds are more likely to vote with management by voting for management proposals and by voting against shareholder proposals. As the distribut ion and the level of shareholder support of management proposals differ from those of shareholder proposals, I separately estimate the impact of pension ties on management sponsored proposals and on shareholder sponsored proposals. In addition, given the previous findings on the influence of the ISS recommendation to mutual fund voting, I segregate my sample into the ISS favorable proposals and the ISS unfavorable proposals. Therefore, through segregating the proposals according to sponsors and according to whether the ISS recommends passage of a proposal, the results of this study are separately presented for management proposals recommended by ISS, for management proposals not recommend by ISS, and for shareholder proposals recommended by ISS. The sSmall sample size of shareholder proposals not recommend by ISS does not allow me to include them in the analysis. All analysis is estimated using robust standard errors (Whites heteroscedasticity consistent standard errors). The result s also hold if I use standard errors with clustered by fund family, year, and firm. Table 4 compares the percentages of voting support for management among mutual fund families with pension ties and mutual fund families without pension ties using a simple t-test. For the ISS favorable management sponsored proposals, there is no significant difference in voting support between mutual fund families with ties and mutual fund families without ties. However, for management proposals opposed by the ISS, I find that the percentage of voting support in mutual fund families with pension ties accounts for 32.7 % of the proposals while fund families without pension ties accounts for 22.6 % of the proposals. In order words, voting with management of mutual funds with pension ties is significantly greater than that of mutual funds without pension ties for the ISS unfavorable management sponsored proposals. As discussed, to the extent that shareholders are likely to consider ISS unfavorable ma nagement proposals as value reducing, management may ask affiliated institutional investors such as mutual funds managing their pension plans to support it in order to win a victory. Likewise, management may pressure its trustees of pension plans not to support shareholder proposals as shareholders are likely to consider the ISS favorable shareholder proposals as value improvement. Consistent with this hypothesis, when the ISS recommends passage of a shareholder proposal, fund families with pension ties vote with management 31.5 % of the time while fund families without pension ties vote with management 28.1% of the time, and the difference is statistically significant. Table 5 is the main analysis of this study. As the finding thatSince previous studies have found that firm size, prior performance, institutional holdings, and corporate governance affect the behavior of institutional investors, I include these factors as control variables. The dependent variable is one if the per centage of voting support for management is equal to or more than 50%; otherwise it is zero. The independent variable equals one if a fund family has business ties with the firm in which they invest and is thereforeso eligible to cast their votes; otherwise it is zero. As the dependent variable is the indicator variable, I use a probit model to examine whether pension business ties of mutual fund families affect mutual fund voting behavior. The coefficient estimates of Table 5 present marginal effects of independent variables. I begin by examining whether there is a relation between the likelihood that a fund family votes with management and business ties. As shown in column (1) of Table 5, the marginal effect of the pension ties is negatively significant for the ISS favorable management proposal, indicating pension ties decrease the probability that fund families support management by 11.3%. Although this result opposes the hypothesis that mutual funds are more likely to vote wi th management in order to attract assets from pension inflows, it is not surprising. Suppose that there are two different management proposals: one is recommended by ISS and the other is not recommended. To the extent that shareholders are more likely to vote for the ISS favorable proposal compared to for the ISS unfavorable proposal, the probability that the former proposal is passed is greater than the latter. Therefore, the managers need to exert more effort in order to pass the ISS unfavorable proposal by contacting its affiliated shareholders such as mutual funds managing their pension plans. As expected, for the ISS unfavorable proposals in column (2) of Table 5, there is a strong positive relationship between business ties and voting support of fund families. This indicates that a business tie increases by 11.6% the probability that a fund family votes with management. Regarding the ISS favorable shareholder proposals in column (3) of Table 5, the probability that the fund fa mily supports management by voting against shareholder sponsored proposals is increased by 4.3% when a business tie exists. As discussed in the previous section, the ISS favorable shareholder proposals are comparable to the ISS unfavorable management proposals given that the disparity in voting decisions between management and shareholders is large. Therefore, it is expected that management puts exerts more effort to achieve a victory through pressuring mutual funds that manage its pension plans. Although the table is not included due to inconclusive results, I provide conditional logit analysis as including fund family fixed effect to investigate whether there is a difference between voting support by fund families at their client firms versus non-client firms. Contrary to my expectation that narrowing down the sample to close votes where the marginal effects of voting shift is large would allow me to examine different voting behavior of mutual funds for their client firms and f or non-client firms, I find no difference in voting support of mutual funds across the two groups. This indicates the probability that mutual funds that manage retirement assets vote with management of their client firms is similar to the probability that those mutual funds vote with management of their non-client firms. This result is consistent with the previous findings on mutual fund voting behaviors. As argued above, there is a non-trivial divergence in fund votes within the same families. It is likely that an individual fund has stronger incentive to support management if the fund is one of the pension investment options of the firm in which it invests, compared to other funds in the same families that are not included as investment options. Therefore, I expect the influence of pension ties to be stronger when there is divergence within fund families. To test this, in Table 6 I analyze the subsample with the proposals voted by mutual funds which have divergence within fund families. When there is disparity in fund votes on the ISS favorable management proposals, I find no relation between pension ties and voting support of fund families. However, for the ISS unfavorable management proposal, a pension tie increases the probability that a fund family votes with management by 43.3%. Compared to Table 5, the marginal effect of pension ties is four times greater if there is a disparity in fund voting. Similarly, the marginal effect of pension ties becomes four times stronger when fund families do not uniformly vote for the ISS favorable shareholder proposals. 4.2 Analysis at fund level As shown in Table 7, some funds vote uniformly with other funds in the same family while other funds vote in a diverse fashion. Although most of the previous literature argues that funds within the same family tend to vote uniformly, the evidence in Table 1 suggests that mutual fund voting should be analyzed at the individual fund level rather than at the fund family l evel. To investigate how support of individual funds toward management in proxy voting is influenced by business ties, I use a probit model. Due to limited observation availability, I can only test for the ISS favorable shareholder sponsored proposal. To do this, I examine fund voting at the individual level. The dependent variable equals one if a fund votes with management, zero otherwise. The independent variables is 1 one if a fund is included as one of the pension investment options of the firm in which it invests, and zero otherwise. Table 6 illustrates that the coefficient estimate of the pension tie is positively significant, which indicates that a business tie increases by 15.3% the probability that a fund supports management. This result suggests that individual funds are more likely to vote with management if they are included as investment options in the pension plans of their portfolios firm, compared to other funds not included. Individual funds are more likely to vote against shareholder proposals to support management of the firms with large size and high market to book ratio, and with high institutional ownership. V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS This paper investigates whether pension business ties have an influence on mutual fund voting. As pension assets managed by mutual funds have been growing since the late 1990s, the concern that mutual fund managers could potentially pursue their own interest at the expense of fund owners is raised. This is because fund managers might have more incentive to support management in order to attract and retain pension business. In fact, recent studies provide evidence that mutual funds tend to support management of their portfolio firms through proxy voting or trading. Using the mutual fund voting outcomes fromoccurred the period from June 2003 to December 2005, I find a positive association between mutual fund voting and business ties. Analysis at the fund family level show that fund families are more likely to vote for the ISS unfavorable management proposals and to vote against the ISS favorable shareholder proposals. The influence of pension ties to mutual fund voting becomes four t imes stronger when there is voting divergence among funds within the same families. At the individual fund level, the a fund included as one of the investment options of the pension plans of the firm in which it invests is more likely to vote against the ISS favorable shareholder proposals. Overall, my findings provide the evidence that mutual funds are conflicted due to their pension business ties with the firm in which they invest.Only close votes have been included in the sample proposals at in this analysis. In that Since the probability that management causes an upset by encouraging mutual funds to support management in close votes is higher than in non-close votes, I expect that the difference in voting support between mutual funds with pension ties and mutual funds without pension ties in close votes would be greater than the difference in the voting support across two groups in non-close votes. I leave comparison between close votes for a future analysis.

Hinduism And Its Impact On Society - 1478 Words

Imagine a religion so old that it is said to be timeless and has always been there, even before humans set foot on the Earth. It’s mindboggling to think that the knowledge of everything is floating in the space of the universe and the mind is just a way of reaching it. Hinduism is a very complex religion, yet it still sets one ultimate goal for the soul. To deeper understand Hinduism we must reveal its origin, doctrines, customs, and culture. Although we do not know the exact time that Hinduism began, it is believed to be over 4,000 years old. There have been overlapping civilizations in India that may have molded the religion into what it is now (Kinnard 1). Around 2,000 B.C.E., located near the great Indus River, the Indus Valley Civilization, who worshipped many goddesses, may have been the very beginning of the shaping of Hinduism. Near the end of the Indus Valley Civilization around 1,500 B.C.E., a new society surfaced in India. Believed to be brought by the central Asian Aryans, the Vedic religion began (Kinnard). The Aryans’ practices included the sacrifice of animals and other offerings to their gods into a sacred fire. The gods they worshipped were mainly gods of nature such as the fire god and the plant god (flood). This era was the time of the Vedas, which are scriptures describing rituals to please the gods (Kinnard). Later, around 1,000 B.C.E., priests called Brahmins began to reject the materialistic ways of the Vedic tradition and began to adopt practicesShow MoreRelatedHinduism Impact On Indian Society1029 Words   |  5 PagesIn Indian society Hinduism plays a vital role in shaping Indian society. Hinduism plays a vital role in Indian society whether it be through Dharma, the caste system or Hindu rituals. To further explain how Hinduism plays a role in Indian society we need to explain what is Hinduism. One could not give a definite definition to Hinduism. Hinduism is not an organized religion but a set of belief systems and traditions that is in turn a way of life in Indian Society. Hinduism contains several sects,Read MoreThe Modern Perception Of Hinduism1146 Words   |  5 Pages Even though the modern perception of Hinduism as a whole was popularized by the West and the Indian elite, the commencement of ideas and practices of the ancient religion can be dated back as early as 2500 BCE ( Mittal and Thursby, 2006, 22), long before the colonial impact of the West on the Orient. We cannot deny that the expansion of Hinduism had great help from the West. The colonizers, with the help of the high status Indian castes had a hand in popularising, translating, and distributingRead MoreEssay on Impacts Of Family Traditions And Religion In India668 Words   |  3 Pages Impacts of Family Traditions and Religion in India Family traditions and religion greatly impact the lives of many people in India. These elements of culture are reasons that form the way that Indians lead their lives. Both factors make up what type of person that individual will become. That is the reason why religion and family traditions are so valued in Indian society. Religion is probably the most definitive factor in the way that an Indian will lead his life, particularly if they practiceRead MoreAnalysis Of. Smith s The Illustrated World s Religions1412 Words   |  6 Pageseven established societal norms in the societies they were created in. Starting out with Hinduism, this is a religion that focuses on the journey of the soul and its’ eventual final release or moksha into an ideal state that is perfect. As part of this maturity journey, it is assumed that the soul goes through a process called reincarnation multiple times (Smith, 1994). Now moving into how this religion has helped shaped social matters, in India this Hinduism has gotten tied up with one particularRead MoreMatriarchy and Patriarchy in Todays World1585 Words   |  7 Pagesleaders of the nations throughout the world the number of men leaders greatly overshadows the number of female leaders. By all means, not every society holds the same point of view. On one hand, Hindu and Islamic cultures and religions maintain a patriarchal way of life. While on the other hand, the Mosuo people of China are one of the few remaining societies that don’t consider a gender superior over the other but their women are seen as being more prestigious than thei r men and that may make the MosuoRead MoreHinduism Is A Belief System1053 Words   |  5 PagesHinduism is a traditional belief that has no founder. Compared to the other religions like Christianity, Catholicism, and Buddhism who all have a set foundation in where they have a central authority. Hinduism was formed in the year 2000 B.C. in India. This belief system is considered to be polytheistic meaning, it believes in more than one god. The Hinduism belief has four Vedic Texts: The Rigveda, The Yajurveda, The Samaveda, and The Athvaveda. The word â€Å"Hinduism† is a Persian word which refersRead More Cultural Impact of Hinduism in India Essay1259 Words   |  6 PagesCultural Impact of Hinduism in India Huge population, pollution, peace, snakes, saris, dance, curry, and religion are probably the most popular words that come up when we think about India. India is a well-known country. Although it is a relatively poor country, it has a rich and diverse culture. India is populated by approximately 953 million people. It has been a home for many religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Islam and Christianity. The first four mentioned aboveRead MoreThe Self Impact Self Esteem And Self Image1148 Words   |  5 Pagesviewpoint, the concept of the self impacts self-esteem and self-image. But happens to that definition when we look at it from a religious aspect? In Buddhism and Hinduism, although there are many similarities, there are also key differences in the fundamentals of their teachings and texts, such as the Bhagavad-Gita and the Vimalakirti, regarding the concept of the self in the cosmological, social, and theological aspects of each religion. The self in Hinduism is referred to as atman. In the Bhagavad-GitaRead MoreHinduism And Taoism802 Words   |  4 PagesCompare and Contrast: Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism. Both Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism in religious context compare through origin, philosophy, and their social structures including their outlook on women. These three religious show south east Asian roots, cultural beliefs, and social conflicts and solutions. The origin and expansion of Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism are similar in that all of them were created in south east region of Asia and that they each expanded through the silk road inRead MoreThe Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas And The Lottery Analysis1112 Words   |  5 Pagesfor every action and a creed for existence. In addition, we remind ourselves of the flaws that we must abstain from. Such reminders are often found in religions such as Christianity and Hinduism and dystopian literature. Ursula Le Guin’s â€Å"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas† explores destruction resulting from chaos and religion in which one entity suffers for the prosperity of mankind

Cell Phones And Its Effects On Society - 958 Words

The amount of time we spend staring at screens has increased dramatically in the last few years. Prior to having these technologies at the ease of hand people spend more time outdoors and being expose to healthy elements. The time we spent staring at screens the impacted the not just our vision, but also other parts of our body. As digital use increases, so do potential vision problems, including eye strain, cancer, bacterial infection and many other that has yet to be discovered. A bacterial infection such as MRSA and E. coli bacteria that could lead to vomiting and diarrhea. When it comes down to the health issue for the use of cell phones is it really worth making ourselves prone to some potential health issues that could be avoided. The International Telecommunication Union reported nearly 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions at the end of 2011. That’s 86 out of every 100 people worldwide, those including millennial and generation Z. It a pity that we are so uneducated on how the device we use for mass communication and ease of life can actually turn around and hunt us. Man’s most brilliant and successful invention, a device that can hold more data than our brain can hold in a lifetime made our life easier than ever. We can see places that we might not be able to travel to and meet people from all over the country. Billions of available knowledge and information that we can access to keep us on our feet. This ease of information and communication had allowed our visionShow MoreRelatedCell Phones And Its Effects On Society Essay1277 Words   |  6 Pagesthe world resemble in the event that we didn t have any cell phones? Why is it that we get out of our comfort zone when we do not have access to our phones? Nowadays, cell phones have such a noteworthy effect on our day to day lives, and we owe it to the advancement of technology. In this research paper, we will take a closer look at this phenomenon by examining the evolution of cell phone devices, and it’s effects on society. Cell phones, as we know them haven’t been around for that long. The quickRead MoreCell Phone Effect on Society1526 Words   |  7 PagesClass Date Title How often do we see some people in society now a days on their phones? Whether this be to someone checking their Facebook or just messaging their friends to let them know where they are. How often could you witness to how they could cause accidents such as not paying attention when crossing the road, crime such as the increase in phones being stolen, or car accidents in the split second in which one is looking down at their phone rather than paying attention to what is on the roadRead MoreCell Phones And Its Effect On Society1400 Words   |  6 Pagespossible to carry a phone and still use it, since then there have been millions upon millions released through these forty three years of its existence, every year with a different model, system, camera, you name it, the possibilities are endless! The advantages cellular devices hold over us are massive, from calling a friend situated halfway across the world to ordering food for Memorial High School’s 5th period lunch. Another m ajor factor of our 24/7 nonstop use of the cell phone is texting. TextRead MoreCell Phones And Its Effects On Society940 Words   |  4 Pages Cell phones have been around for hundreds of years. It’s no surprise that more and more people are beginning to partake in cellphone use. Cell phones provide society with an easier way of communicating and obtaining information, but at the same time there are some negative consequences. What most people don’t realize is that cellphones are actually quite harmful to modern society. Scientifically cellphones emit radiations that can potentially produce fatal results. Overall cellphones haveRead MoreCell Phones And Its Effect On Society1480 Words   |  6 Pagesthis technology, the cell phone was created and over the years has advanced itself. The cell phone has become a necessity to many. All ages use this mobile device for either personal or business uses. Higgins states that the amount of cell phones active has increased from â€Å"one billion in 2000 to 6 billion.† Although cell phones paly an important role in the lives of many, the negative possibilitie s could cause destruction to our society. 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People have gottenRead MoreCell Phones And Its Effects On Society Essay1839 Words   |  8 Pagesaffected by cell phones and mobile phones’ temptations have reduced face-to-face communication among people, attracted people from their study and work, and even harmed their health and life, it is urgent now to find detailed origins behind such phenomenon of cell phone addiction and then find solutions to this serious problem. Until now, on this topic many researchers have investigated people’s average using times of cell phones per day, people’s average amount of time of using cell phones per day,Read MoreCell Phones And Its Effects On Society1991 Words   |  8 Pagesadvantage of it, but is this a good thing? Cell phones are taking over people’s lives and the pattern is going to continue if people keep using cell phones the way they are, and allowing their children to use them equally as much. One s relationships, values, and time management would all be better if cell phones were not as significant of a part of people’s lives as they have become. Howard Rheingold says it so beautifully and accurately. Cell phones and other technology is changing the world and

The Notting Hill Carnival free essay sample

The events industry has become an essential part of our culture today as Bowdin et al (2006, p. 4) noted when he sated, ‘since the dawn of times, human beings have found ways to mark important events in their lives. Today, events are central to our culture as perhaps never before’. As a consequence countries are increasingly looking for ways to highlight their advantages in order to produce a variety of social, economic, environmental and cultural benefits that, in turn, reflect the area. Heritage and cultural tourism is a fast growing sector within the tourism industry with a rise in the number of tourists who look for culture, history and interaction with local people (Hollinshead, 1993). The multifaceted nature of urban tourism and the use of heritage and cultural events as a vehicle for its production, are both difficult when describing and interpreting them (Laws, 1998). Therefore the aim of this report is to address the implications and changes to the heritage and culture tourist industry and how this has impacted upon the execution of cultural events, especially the Notting Hill Carnival in London. Heritage and Cultural Events Major events can be an advantageous way with which to position a destination and all that it represents, promoting it to the world stage. It has been suggested that destinations have become a place product, with Selby (2004) indicating that cultural events are able to improve and create unique place products, a concept that is both attractive to the consumer and the producers. Major events around the world have been used as a means to raise destination image, boost their cultural offerings and benefitting the economy. The Liverpool European Capital of Culture attracted 9. 7 million additional visits to the area, generating ? 753. 8 million to the economy. It is estimated 2. 6 million European and global visits were motivated by the Liverpool Capital of Culture in 2009, with 97% of these being first time visits to the city (Garcia et al, 2008). However with economic benefits of these kinds, it has resulted in cultural and heritage tourism becoming more competitive and the events industry has witnessed destinations developing a more strategic approach when delivery these kind of events. The Notting Hill Carnival Within various countries the cultural strategy for urban tourism is the same, in that it is a growth factor in boosting the culture of the area and spreading tourist activity within the region (Richards, 1996). A city which has utilised this approach is London by using events as a catalyst for bringing the diverse cultures of the area together and enhancing the tourists experience within the city. Established events, such as the Notting Hill Carnival have acted as channels to reach London’s ever diverse communities, improving social capital and engagement, also benefiting the economy with the carnival bringing ? 93 million to the area over its 3 day weekend (Festival and Events International, 2012). Benji B of Radio 1 comments on what the carnival means by stating that the ‘Notting Hill Carnival offers a reflection of what it is to be a Londoner (Benji B, 2011). From these comments it suggests that the public identify with the ethos of the carnival and its place within mainstream culture. A theory which Bowdin et al (2011, p. 153) seemed to agree upon when noting, ‘the carnival has become more than just an event, it has become a way of life’. The origins of the carnival can be seen as being purely cultural with the carnival stemming from freed slaves in the Caribbean, make musical instruments out of materials they have around them, as any other instruments were banned by the British and the French. Originating in 1964, the carnival is regarded the largest festival in Europe and is only 2nd in the world to the Rio de Janeiro Festival (The Notting Hill Carnival, 2012). The objectives of the event were to portray Caribbean people in a positive light, ‘uplifting the Caribbean community, build upon the new found sense of unity and begin the process of healing’ (Greater London Authority, 2004). However it was suggested by Alleyne- Dettmeers (1996, p. 1) that this has been forgotten as she stated, ‘It is often forgotten that carnival at Notting Hill and those mirrored in other parts of Britain, is based on a historically and culturally-specific model, borne out of an unfortunate, yet relevant historical context: i. e. European expansion, colonization and slavery in the Caribbean islands, especially Trinidad and Tobago’. The use of cultural tourism as a mechanism for promoting areas, has come under scrutiny in recent times due to the loss of authenticity, commoditisation and romanticization, factors which will be discussed theoretically and in the context of the Notting Hill Carnival further. The Commodified Event Increased competition, within the industry, has resulted in cities adopting brand strategies and participating in destination marketing (Evans, 2003) however it has been suggested that by branding events, events have become a reproduction of others and have actually lost the competitive advantage they possessed before (Harvey, 1989). It has been discussed that places are becoming areas of consumption rather than production, a theory which was furthered by Richards (1995) who suggested that processes of serial reproduction may impact upon the city in the long term as events lose their competitive advantage, which they intended to enhance in the first place. It has been suggested that the Notting Hill Carnival has become a brand. The carnival organisers looked to rebuild its reputation in 2004 after a murder and violence during the carnival, with the objectives being, ‘to reposition the carnival as a cultural outdoor festival that is open to all, rather than a street party. To build the carnival as a viable brand and support the search for credible sponsors’ (Hill, 2004). However in turning the carnival into a brand, it has become susceptible to commercialization, losing the cultural identity it possessed previously. It has been discussed that the carnival is losing its identity and ‘Caribbean flavour’ in becoming more contemporary with the presence of British black culture (Jasper, 2001). The emphasis has been on the culture of places being the reflection of its uniqueness and distinctiveness. There has become more attempts to identify an areas cultural or heritage properties, which will set it aside from other places. Richards (1996) proposed that culture had become a product and not that of a process. A theory which Urry (1995) agreed with when he noticed the impact of commodification of a place, where the area becomes the product, that can be packaged, presented and sold, something which is at threat of happening at the Notting Hill Carnival. The tensions between the commercialisation and the authenticity of the carnival have been questioned due to funding issues within the management. Unlike the Rio de Janeiro Carnival, which is thought to be the only carnival in the world to have official sponsors such as, You tube who broadcasted the event to the wider audience who could not attend (Woodroofe, 2012). Steve Pasca (2011), current carnival chair, noted that the carnival was ‘forced into a position to exploit commercialisation’. However Michael La Rosa (2011), a media expert, stated ‘there’s nothing wrong with entering the main stream, its what you enter the main stream with, is it authentic or is it something that is diluted’. It has been implied that the marketing of the Notting Hill Carnival is a romanticised view, an event that is uplifting and joyful as not to remind people of its true past. A former chair of the carnival committee, Ansel Wang (2011) implied that the masquerade tradition had in fact just become an event to dress up in different clothing and enjoy a street party. The European Centre for Traditional and Regional Cultures considered events to be one of the highlights of cultural tourism (Richards, 1996) however such events are at risk of losing their authenticity due to commodification. Mordue (1999, p. 631) noted that places could become ‘centres of spectacle and tourist consumption rather than places of material production’. While Wang (2000) proposed that commodified cultural events lack authentic experiences and that globalization has contributed to the modified production of cultural tourism for the purpose of the visitors. An early definition of commodified events was given by Greenwood (1989, p. 178) when he noted they were, â€Å"a public show to be performed for outsiders who, because of their economic importance in the town, had the right to see it† (p. 78). Bruner (2005, p. 5) expanded upon this when he suggested â€Å"what is presented in tourism is new culture constructed specifically for a tourists audience†. Cultural identities are something that are developed over sustained periods of time. The development of media and the effect of globalisation are given as the reason why communities are losing their cultural identities. Clair Holder (2011), former carnival chair, believed that the carnival was a,’ part of national culture, national identity’. Place Image The use of place image, whether organic or induced, is an essential part of a successful destination image being portrayed to the tourist. Place image can reflect the shared meanings and values of the area as its ‘currency of cultures’ as Morgan and Pritchard (1998 cited in Burns, 2010, p. 99) labelled it. Hall (1992, p. 14) further added to this when stating, ‘it is apparent that major events can have the effect of shaping an image of the host community or country, leading to its favourable perception as a potential travel destination’. The Notting Hill Carnival aims to enhance the image of the city, especially in recent times as London witnessed violence and rioting, which was seen across the world due to extensive media exposure. Clary Salandry interviewed for the Guardian, post London riots, commented that the ‘carnival will show what our good kids do’ (Muir, 2011). Events can act as a catalyst in aiding a perception that a city is a nice place to visit and they intend to fulfil visitor experiences, making them stay longer in a specific destination (Getz, 1991). By identifying the value of events in adding to the image of places and attracting tourists, it has indicated why cities compete for tourism in order to develop communities (Haider et al, 1993). The problem occurs when the event becomes detached from the original objectives, with these being fewer links to the locals ideas and identity, which may develop because of an increased image which is not similar to the objectives of the event (Pollard, 2004). Within the context of heritage and cultural tourism, place promotion produces issues and complications within communities. The first issue is what is usable to the area to promote and the second is more political, in what message is going to be selected and conveyed. The decisions on what elements of the area are to be promoted can cause tensions within areas as some events are selected while others are not and questions begin to mount about why these events or locations were not promoted (Wright, 1985, Lowenthal, 1998). Ancil Barclay (2011), one of the co-directors of the carnival who quit in 2011, suggested that the carnival did not receive the same support as similar London events. He stated, ‘it is still seen as just a Caribbean event and just not taken seriously’. However according to a strategic report delivered for the Mayor of London at the time in 2004 gave a strong suggestion about the future of the carnival, ‘It is a major world-class event that should be supported both politically and financially’ (Greater London Authority, 2004). The lack of economic support has resulted in smaller commercial sponsors taking up floats for advertising during the parade a clear sign of how the event has been modified from its origins(Jasper, 2001). In the past it has been lead to believe that a places heritage and culture is the driving force for the economy however this has been exaggerated according to Graham, Ashworth and Tunbridge (2000). Such has resulted in investors from outside of the community, coming into the area looking to develop it. A term which has been used to describe these types of investors is cultrepreneurs, with a definition of their purpose being, ‘culturepreneurs promote highly professionalized events, in order to strength cultural and creative sectors within the urban sectors’ (Hagoort et al, 2012, p. 17). It is clear that the Notting Hill Carnival is a huge cultural event, in both its size and its contribution to the economy. However it has managed to continue as an independent event and even though the future of funding towards to event seems unclear it should be agreed that such issues have not diluted the carnival completely in its traditions in representing the black community. It would seem that as the event is not official funding and has not obtained an official sponsor, the carnival board have control over its output. The event has clearly had to develop as the scale of the carnival has increased and over the years such has been witnessed, however it can be credited with the success in addressing racism and integrating the diverse cultures within London. Now a large tourist event, the event would be seen to be retaining its cultural creditability and authenticity however the future of the event could be likely to become more commodified with the sale of intellectual media exposure. It would seem from this report that it is difficult for major events like the Notting Hill Carnival to maintain there cultural and heritage traditions when events of there kind are looked upon as having a vast economic input to the area. However it would seem that the local authorities do not support the event by not offering funding that will maintain its origins and cultural background. This could have manifested from the violence that has been publicised at the event, which has meant the authorities do not want to be directly backing the event and promoting the place image in this way. The event has changed over its history and although it has clearly been commodified, it has been unnoticeable unlike if there was major financial support that would develop the event a huge amount in commercial terms.

The Terrible War

The American civil war, which stated in 1862 and ended in1865, is one of the bloodiest civil wars waged on this earth (Porter, 1976). There were many issues at play leading to the war but slavery was the key concern. The war happened because of economical, political and cultural differences between the Northern states and the Southern states.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Terrible War specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The two regions had different economical foundations i.e. the north was industrialized and the southern states were dominantly agrarian. The strife, which resulted to the war, emanated from various political, economic and social issues, which informed the decisions by leaders from these regions. This essay will evaluate in details what exactly caused the terrible war and its aftermath. Fellman et al (2002), point at slavery as the main reason that provoked strife between the two regions. In the late 1970s to 1860s, slavery was the norm in most of the Southern states. Slaves supplied adequate labor that helped flourish the cotton industry. White-Americans perceived the African-Americans (slaves) as mere objects; this mistaken perception led to African Americans being exploited and mistreated (Porter, 1976). On the other hand, the industrialized northern states believed slavery was incorrect and that the African-Americans, like any other human being, are entitled to dignity and respect. The conflict between the two regions kindled tension, which later turned out to be the worst war fought on American soil. Apart from slavery, economic differences and thus different economic aspirations between the south and the north led to the emergency of sectionalism. The impacts of sectionalism were deeply rooted and widely spread. This kind of problem became more apparent in 1787 through debate on a new constitution (Catton, 2004). The southerners felt that the economically stable Nort hern states were prejudiced against the southern states given racism was prevalent in the northern states as well. Majority of the Northern states allowed for discrimination against the blacks; actually, only four northern states allowed blacks to vote. Negroes, as black Americans were called in the northern states, were subjected to threats of eviction from some states. In addition, blacks were not allowed to serve in certain posts especially the jury in all states (Catton, 2004). The debate on whether to maintain slavery or not led to the southern states declaring succession. According to Catton (2004), the withdrawal by these states was interpreted by Buchanan, outgoing president, and Lincoln, the president elect, as an act of rebellion against the Union. The succession was a calculated move because majority of the southern states were against the Republican Party, which had won an election and Lincoln was promising to abolish expansion of slavery.Advertising Looking for ess ay on history? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Both the incoming president (Abraham Lincoln)) and the outgoing president (James Buchanan) labeled the succession as an act of rebellion. It is also worth noting that some slave states refused to back the withdrawal from the Union. Later four more states joined the succession, prompting President Lincoln to declare war against slave trade in the southern states. This declaration aroused an atmosphere full of contempt and suspicion among the southern states. The other cause of the civil war was due to the unstable allegiance to nationalism belief by the southern states. The southern states were torn between accepting the Union and rejecting it. The southern states upheld their religious ideologies and rationalized their institutions and judicial system (Carter et al, 2003). When the crisis arose, the southerners decided to fight rather than denounce their religious beliefs for nationali sm, which was perceived as a northern principle. Fellman et al (2002), suggest that the civil war can also be attributed to misinterpretation of the State’s right. The southern citizens believed each individual had the right to transfer his/her property to any part of the US without any restriction. Since the rich southern farmers perceived slaves as property, the property rights also applied to them. However, the northern counterparts refuted this â€Å"right† because it would contravene with their stand of abolishing slavery within America. President Buchanan who was opposed to the slave trade believed that the southern interpretation of the right was misplaced and erroneous. The Civil war caused much damage to the US and the American people at large. For instance, very many people died i.e. soldiers and civilians alike. Although the North won against the south, about ten percent of youthful males from the northern states died in the war. On a positive note, the civi l war helped end the slave trade that had turned black Americans into mere commodities. In 1865, all the slaves were declared free. Later, the US embarked on the post war reconstruction to stabilize the country’s economy and unify the northern states and the southern states (Blair, 2006). The civil war is the worst war fought on the American soil. Although, there are many causes that have been posited to explain the war, none is enough to account for such a horrendous ordeal. Although one cannot single out a conclusive cause of the war, the Civil war acted as an example of how minor issues can trigger massive bloodshed.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Terrible War specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The 1960s census indicated that about three percent of the total American population succumbed to the war and a lot of property was destroyed. This was generally unnecessary. However, despite the negative con sequences of the civil war, slave trade was eventually abolished and America has since then, gradually, developed to enjoy enhanced internal peace and cohesion. Reference List Blair, J. E. (2006). The Essential Civil War: A Handbook to the Battles. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Inc. Carter, A. E., Jensen, R. J. Thomas, W. G. (2003). The Civil War on the Web. California: American Library Association. Catton, B. McPherson, J. M. (2004). The Civil War, American Heritage. New York: American Heritage Inc. Fellman, M., Gordon, J. L. Sutherland, D. E. (2002). The Terrible War and Its Aftermath. Michigan: Longman Porter, D. M. (1976). The Impending Crisis. Michigan: Harper Row Press This essay on The Terrible War was written and submitted by user Kingston Alvarez to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

buy custom buy custom Variance Analysis essay paper

buy custom buy custom Variance Analysis essay paper Variance Analysis Variable hospital departments are important for hospitals in a variety of ways. When addressing issues of budgets, variance reports come in as essential tools that help hospitals in the management of their budgets and funds. A budget acts as a strategic financial planning tool for an organization that helps it to organize and balance their finances and funds. A budget variance comes in when a difference arises between the plan and the outcome, for example when a hospital variance unit receives its monthly budget outcome, which states that the wages were higher and the funds were lower than planned in accordance with the budget. When thinking about a budget variance, a manager must differentiate between aspects that affect the budget, and can be controlled versus those that cannot be controlled. A budget variance can occur because of several reasons, one of which could be the fact that the budget was poorly and inadequately planned. It is an example of the factor that can be controlle d. A variance report is a good way for managers to measure the company performance by putting sets of figures against others; for instance, a planned amount versus an actual amount, and seeing the difference between them. Several factors are considered when writing a budget variance. A well-organized variance report addresses such factors as trends, overspending, and under spending. The world changes as time goes by, and health care organizations also change with respect to the factors in the environment, and expectations of the patients and people, who work in those organizations. One of the most important aspects of trends to be captured in a variance report is the changing economic times that may force an organization to overspend or under spend. Thus, a variance report must put into consideration the trends in spending. If there is a trend towards overspending or under spending, then the budget must be revised. Trends are best depicted in graphic terms, and they help to reveal to an analyst whether there is a minor or a major budget lapse (Finkler McHugh, 2008). Another factor that must be put into consideration when writing a variance report is an aspect of overspending. Overspending can cause serious problems to the project that is ongoing, or the one that is under planning, as well as to other projects, just in case the organization runs out of resources. Thus, the vice president must know whether there is an aspect of overspending, and by what margin. A variance report is important for this purpose because it should communicate such information, so that the appropriate action can be taken. Another facet that a variance report must consider, is under spending. Under spending indicates problems in issues of quality control, if the budget was planned correctly. If the budget was not planned well, then the variance report will indicate an issue of over allocation. Thus, a variance report must consider this aspect to show whether the budget was done as required, and that everything was planned adequately. The mentioned factors are very import ant when writing a variance report, and if left out, it may cause a serious problem in terms of managing the organizations funds (Berger, 2008). The abovementioned three factors cover changes in input prices, changes in input productivity, and changes in departmental volume. Trends can influence the increase or decrease in input prices, input productivity, and departmental volume that could in turn influence spending towards overspending, or towards under spending. There is an important relationship between variance reporting, interpreting variance report results, and actual results of performance. Variance reporting is done when the results are available. Every month, a variance report must be provided to the vice president, meaning that there are results that are realized every month. If a variance is reported and not interpreted, then it has no importance to the organization, and will not communicate anything to the enterprise. For example, as a manager of the variable hospital unit, I received the monthly budget results for the department, and they show that the funds were lower than budgeted, while the wages were higher. The information will be meaningless if it is not interpreted; thus, I have to compare the budget results with the budget plan, and interpret the meaning of the difference to make sense of what went wrong. When reporting to the vice president, interpretation is important because a variance report has a purpose of revealing the issues that caused the differences between the budget plan and actual results. Hence, a variance report must communicate the budget plan and the monthly budget results. It means that variance reporting has a core function of communicating actual results performance that has been realized in that month (Allen, 2011). The function of variance reporting is not just reporting the variations that occurred between the budget and budget results. Interpreting does not just serve the purpose of defining the figures contained in a variance report. Variance reporting and interpretation of the variance report results have a relationship in the sense that interpretation of variance report results cannot happen without variance reporting, and actual results of performance cannot be found without variance reporting and interpretation of the variance report results. Each of these helps the other to occur. Variance reporting leads to interpretation, which in turn leads to finding the actual performance results. Likewise, actual performance results depend on the undertaking of interpretation of the variance report results, and this depends on the availability of variance reporting. The given relationship helps in variance analysis, and aids to formulate a variance analysis model, which separates cost variations a nd factors that suggest cause, and lead to corrective actions (Berger, 2008). References Allen, J. E. (2011). Nursing Home Administration. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Berger, S. (2008). Fundamentals of Health Care Financial Management: A Practical Guide to Fiscal Issues and Activities. New York, NY: John Wiley Sons. Finkler, S. A., McHugh, M. L. (2008). Budgeting Concepts for Nurse Managers. New York, NY: Elsevier Health Sciences.

Baseball History

Baseball is the oldest and oldest professional group sports in North America. Of course, even after years of existence, baseball fans of all ages still have many moments to remember. I remember catch in the first game of the home run of the 1954 World Series and the 1960 Bill  · Mazero Ski World Series. Players like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson surpass them. These players remain in the mind and head of the country for a long time after the game. In my opinion, the lack of baseball history is the last five letters. Since baseball's history is a historical department of a toy shop rather than the average writing history of the United States (baseball is called a toy division in the newspaper), it is moved by the event, moved by the character, the cargo train I will move the story. Like a novel, there must be a wise truth illuminated by the truth and wisdom of the truth. In other words, you can not precisely ignore speculative and aesthetic possibilities in the history of baseball. Problem-driven baseball history is simply unread for baseball history But the history of baseball may begin and the history of baseball history starts with most of us from Henry Chadwick. He remembered the first experience of playing baseball in 1848 - his comment showed that Nick Bock's rule did not wipe out everything before - if it is true - England cricket What is ~? Today, most people think that Father Chadwick and Nick Bock are playing together at Irisian battlefield. Just to invent scoring system and box score, or to sneak into the bad impact of gambler and tire. However, as Rankin pointed out during the first few years of the next century, Chadwick has been on for decades. Campaign on est moi's platform. I remember that subsystem trust is not Chadwick, but Herald's Michael Kelly.

Drug Testing in the Workplace Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Drug Testing in the Workplace - Essay Example This approach has streamed a mix though strong reaction with or against the act. The random drug test and medical assistance is legally applicable incase of rational grounds especially when there is probability/occurrence of an accident involving the worker. Observing behavior such as alcoholic odor on breath, glassy eyes, unsteady composure, slurred speech and multiple errors while working substantiate a proper drug test without any prior notification. Incase the test results positive the employee should be granted rehabilitation epoch and permissible to return to employment following an evaluation by a Substance Abuse Professional [SAP] (Drug and Alcohol Testing). Often such an employee challenges the drug test lest if the result is positive. The victim should be elucidated that workplace drug testing is not a vindication of dismissal, it is adapted by the company to safeguard its work environment as well as to achieve the expected performances & production goals by its employees. Strict action maybe taken incase of recurring liabilities of any employee. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, "civil disobedience can be defined as refusal to obey governmental demands or commands especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government" [1866]. This means that the individuals responsible for civil disobedience are willingly accepting the legal consequences on behalf of their actions since they are involved in falsification of the law. The justification of severity of the legal action is dependant upon the act executed by the persons and its consequences. The mode of action and the motivation for acting must be kept in view while legally examining the act (Civil Disobedience). In terms of environmental causes or animal rights, civil disobedience is often the universal retort by the populace concerned about such issues. Such a dilemma requires action that reflects the protesters' compassion towards the egalitarian principles. The conventional environmental groups have turned believers of incorporating undeviating policies like civil disobedience so as to protect their cause. This usually occurs due to the disappointment concerning the leisurely outcomes of the governmental authorities regarding vindicated environmental issues. It so happens, that such environmentalists involved in safeguarding their root violate the law through their aggressive obliteration of the court, however justified in the other case. These concerns need to be addressed in-depth by the governmental authorities by crafting the laws in accordance to the mainstream causes of today. Ecological laws should be addressed to cater to the environment and the wild life to avoid such extremist behavior of their supporters. From a resource in the Internet find a current article regarding Deep Ecology, environmental activism, or environmental extremism. Read the article and post a short summary (about 100 words or so) of its main points as your response to this DQ. Include the reference information for your article so everyone can find it if they are interested in reading the material. 250 words The

Money and Banking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Money and Banking - Essay Example To put into effect the ruling, federal authoritarian agencies inspect banking association designed for CRA compliance, in addition to get this information into deliberation when appreciative applications for fresh bank branches otherwise intended for mergers or acquisitions. The Worker-Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 looks for to address inequity in loans prepared to persons and businesses as of less and reasonable -income neighborhoods. The Proceed mandates that the entire banking organization that take delivery of FDIC insurance be assess to ascertain if the organization is suggest credit in cooperation in which the banks receive deposits, in a mode consistent by means of safe and sound process. The regulation does not file exact criteria for assess the performance of economic institutions. To a certain extent, it through that the assessment process must provide accommodation the circumstances and context of every one particularized institution. The Federal policy dictates agency performs in assess an institutions compliance in the five functioning areas, encompass the twelve estimation factors. This inspection culminated in the delegation of a ranking and the inscribe report turn out to be part of the supervisory document in favor of that institut ion. The law, nevertheless, give emphasis to that an institutions CRA actions be supposed to be undertaken in a secure and sound mode, and does not necessitate institutions to build high-pitched -risk loans that possibly will get losses to the organization. An organization CRA compliance document is taken into account by the depository regulatory organization when the institution searches for to get bigger all through merger, acquisition otherwise branching. The law does not consent in the least added penalties for non-compliance among the CRA. Housing backing groups be there also influential in the fight in

The Hole In The Net :: essays research papers

Our social safety net has a hole in it. The fibers of the net are decaying; the hole is getting bigger. More people are falling through, and the people with the least strength are holding the most of the weight. Three to four million Americans are homeless according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 5.5% cannot find jobs according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, and the figure is over twice that in the 20-24 year old age group, according to the Department of Education. A very slim minority of these people are sucking off the system, but the vast majority just had a bad break. Such is the story of Peter and Megan, as told by author Jonathan Kozol in his Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award winner Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America. Peter was a carpenter and she was a homemaker who raised their five children. They lived in a neat, working class apartment building in New York City. Peter did construction for public housing projects, and had a vast array of technical skills and tools: â€Å"I did carpentry. I painted. I could do wallpapering. I earned a living. We spent Sundays walking with our children on the beach.† It may sound like this was a happy family, living the American Dream. Perhaps they were -- they were self sufficient for all of the 12 years that they had been married, they had a steady income, a close and loving family, a home, and a chance for their children to do even better than they had done. Then the fire struck. They came racing home after hearing the news, only to find that everything had been destroyed. The children lost their pet dog and cat, Megan lost her grandmother’s china, but Peter perhaps lost the most: his tools. Since the fire, he has not had a job, because a carpenter without tools might as well not have eyes. He explained that for every job he had, he would add a new tool to his collection. But they all went up in the blaze. When Kozol first met them, they were living in a welfare hotel in New York, where they had been living for two years. They can’t get out because federal assistance programs (better known as welfare) tell them that their family limit for an apartment is $366 a month -- this with seven family members living in New York City. (In comparison, that’s about the rock bottom price for a week in a New York City one room motel.) In their two room â€Å"apartment†, the entire place is falling

Part One (Olden Days)

Trespassers 12.43 As against trespassers (who, in principle, must take other people's premises and their occupiers as they find them) †¦ Charles Arnold-Baker Local Council Administration, Seventh Edition I Pagford Parish Council was, for its size, an impressive force. It met once a month in a pretty Victorian church hall, and attempts to cut its budget, annex any of its powers or absorb it into some newfangled unitary authority had been strenuously and successfully resisted for decades. Of all the local councils under the higher authority of Yarvil District Council, Pagford prided itself on being the most obstreperous, the most vocal and the most independent. Until Sunday evening, it had comprised sixteen local men and women. As the town's electorate tended to assume that a wish to serve on the Parish Council implied competence to do so, all sixteen councillors had gained their seats unopposed. Yet this amicably appointed body was currently in a state of civil war. An issue that had been causing fury and resentment in Pagford for sixty-odd years had reached a definitive phase, and factions had rallied behind two charismatic leaders. To grasp fully the cause of the dispute it was necessary to comprehend the precise depth of Pagford's dislike and mistrust of the city of Yarvil, which lay to its north. Yarvil's shops, businesses, factories, and the South West General Hospital, provided the bulk of the employment in Pagford. The small town's youths generally spent their Saturday nights in Yarvil's cinemas and nightclubs. The city had a cathedral, several parks and two enormous shopping centres, and these things were pleasant enough to visit if you had sated yourself on Pagford's superior charms. Even so, to true Pagfordians, Yarvil was little more than a necessary evil. Their attitude was symbolized by the high hill, topped by Pargetter Abbey, which blocked Yarvil from Pagford's sight, and allowed the townspeople the happy illusion that the city was many miles further away than it truly was. II It so happened that Pargetter Hill also obscured from the town's view another place, but one that Pagford had always considered particularly its own. This was Sweetlove House, an exquisite, honey-coloured Queen Anne manor, set in many acres of park and farmland. It lay within Pagford Parish, halfway between the town and Yarvil. For nearly two hundred years the house had passed smoothly from generation to generation of aristocratic Sweetloves, until finally, in the early 1900s, the family had died out. All that remained these days of the Sweetloves' long association with Pagford, was the grandest tomb in the churchyard of St Michael and All Saints, and a smattering of crests and initials over local records and buildings, like the footprints and coprolites of extinct creatures. After the death of the last of the Sweetloves, the manor house had changed hands with alarming rapidity. There were constant fears in Pagford that some developer would buy and mutilate the beloved landmark. Then, in the 1950s, a man called Aubrey Fawley purchased the place. Fawley was soon known to be possessed of substantial private wealth, which he supplemented in mysterious ways in the City. He had four children, and a desire to settle permanently. Pagford's approval was raised to still giddier heights by the swiftly circulated intelligence that Fawley was descended, through a collateral line, from the Sweetloves. He was clearly half a local already, a man whose natural allegiance would be to Pagford and not to Yarvil. Old Pagford believed that the advent of Aubrey Fawley meant the return of a charmed era. He would be a fairy godfather to the town, like his ancestors before him, showering grace and glamour over their cobbled streets. Howard Mollison could still remember his mother bursting into their tiny kitchen in Hope Street with the news that Aubrey had been invited to judge the local flower show. Her runner beans had taken the vegetable prize three years in a row, and she yearned to accept the silver-plated rose bowl from a man who was already, to her, a figure of old-world romance. III But then, so local legend told, came the sudden darkness that attends the appearance of the wicked fairy. Even as Pagford was rejoicing that Sweetlove House had fallen into such safe hands, Yarvil was busily constructing a swath of council houses to its south. The new streets, Pagford learned with unease, were consuming some of the land that lay between the city and the town. Everybody knew that there had been an increasing demand for cheap housing since the war, but the little town, momentarily distracted by Aubrey Fawley's arrival, began to buzz with mistrust of Yarvil's intentions. The natural barriers of river and hill that had once been guarantors of Pagford's sovereignty seemed diminished by the speed with which the red-brick houses multiplied. Yarvil filled every inch of the land at its disposal, and stopped at the northern border of Pagford Parish. The town sighed with a relief that was soon revealed to be premature. The Cantermill Estate was immediately judged insufficient to meet the population's needs, and the city cast about for more land to colonize. It was then that Aubrey Fawley (still more myth than man to the people of Pagford) made the decision that triggered a festering sixty-year grudge. Having no use for the few scrubby fields that lay beyond the new development, he sold the land to Yarvil Council for a good price, and used the cash to restore the warped panelling in the hall of Sweetlove House. Pagford's fury was unconfined. The Sweetlove fields had been an important part of its buttress against the encroaching city; now the ancient border of the parish was to be compromised by an overspill of needy Yarvilians. Rowdy town hall meetings, seething letters to the newspaper and Yarvil Council, personal remonstrance with those in charge – nothing succeeded in reversing the tide. The council houses began to advance again, but with one difference. In the brief hiatus following completion of the first estate, the council had realized that it could build more cheaply. The fresh eruption was not of red brick but of concrete in steel frames. This second estate was known locally as the Fields, after the land on which it had been built, and was marked as distinct from the Cantermill Estate by its inferior materials and design. It was in one of the Fields' concrete and steel houses, already cracking and warping by the late 1960s, that Barry Fairbrother was born. IV In spite of Yarvil Council's bland assurances that maintenance of the new estate would be its own responsibility, Pagford – as the furious townsfolk had predicted from the first – was soon landed with new bills. While the provision of most services to the Fields, and the upkeep of its houses, fell to Yarvil Council, there remained matters that the city, in its lofty way, delegated to the parish: the maintenance of public footpaths, of lighting and public seating, of bus shelters and common land. Graffiti blossomed on the bridges spanning the Pagford to Yarvil road; Fields bus shelters were vandalized; Fields teenagers strewed the play park with beer bottles and threw rocks at the street lamps. A local footpath, much favoured by tourists and ramblers, became a popular spot for Fields youths to congregate, ‘and worse', as Howard Mollison's mother put it darkly. It fell to Pagford Parish Council to clean, to repair and to replace, and the funds dispersed by Yarvil were felt from the first to be inadequate for the time and expense required. No part of Pagford's unwanted burden caused more fury or bitterness than the fact that Fields children now fell inside the catchment area of St Thomas's Church of England Primary School. Young Fielders had the right to don the coveted blue and white uniform, to play in the yard beside the foundation stone laid by Lady Charlotte Sweetlove and to deafen the tiny classrooms with their strident Yarvil accents. It swiftly became common lore in Pagford that houses in the Fields had become the prize and goal of every benefit-supported Yarvil family with school-age children; that there was a great ongoing scramble across the boundary line from the Cantermill Estate, much as Mexicans streamed into Texas. Their beautiful St Thomas's – a magnet for professional commuters to Yarvil, who were attracted by the tiny classes, the rolltop desks, the aged stone building and the lush green playing field – would be overrun and swamped by the offspring of scroungers, addicts and mothers whose children had all been fathered by different men. This nightmarish scenario had never been fully realized, because while there were undoubtedly advantages to St Thomas's there were also drawbacks: the need to buy the uniform, or else to fill in all the forms required to qualify for assistance for the same; the necessity of attaining bus passes, and of getting up earlier to ensure that the children arrived at school on time. Some households in the Fields found these onerous obstacles, and their children were absorbed instead by the large plain-clothes primary school that had been built to serve the Cantermill Estate. Most of the Fields pupils who came to St Thomas's blended in well with their peers in Pagford; some, indeed, were admitted to be perfectly nice children. Thus Barry Fairbrother had moved up through the school, a popular and clever class clown, only occasionally noticing that the smile of a Pagford parent stiffened when he mentioned the place where he lived. Nevertheless, St Thomas's was sometimes forced to take in a Fields pupil of undeniably disruptive nature. Krystal Weedon had been living with her great-grandmother in Hope Street when the time came for her to start school, so that there was really no way of stopping her coming, even though, when she moved back to the Fields with her mother at the age of eight, there were high hopes locally that she would leave St Thomas's for good. Krystal's slow passage up the school had resembled the passage of a goat through the body of a boa constrictor, being highly visible and uncomfortable for both parties concerned. Not that Krystal was always in class: for much of her career at St Thomas's she had been taught one-on-one by a special teacher. By a malign stroke of fate, Krystal had been in the same class as Howard and Shirley's eldest granddaughter, Lexie. Krystal had once hit Lexie Mollison so hard in the face that she had knocked out two of her teeth. That they had already been wobbly was not felt, by Lexie's parents and grandparents, to be much of an extenuation. It was the conviction that whole classes of Krystals would be waiting for their daughters at Winterdown Comprehensive that finally decided Miles and Samantha Mollison on removing both their daughters to St Anne's, the private girls' school in Yarvil, where they had become weekly boarders. The fact that his granddaughters had been driven out of their rightful places by Krystal Weedon, swiftly became one of Howard's favourite conversational examples of the estate's nefarious influence on Pagford life. V The first effusion of Pagford's outrage had annealed into a quieter, but no less powerful, sense of grievance. The Fields polluted and corrupted a place of peace and beauty, and the smouldering townsfolk remained determined to cut the estate adrift. Yet boundary reviews had come and gone, and reforms in local government had swept the area without effecting any change: the Fields remained part of Pagford. Newcomers to the town learned quickly that abhorrence of the estate was a necessary passport to the goodwill of that hard core of Pagfordians who ran everything. But now, at long last – over sixty years after Old Aubrey Fawley had handed Yarvil that fatal parcel of land – after decades of patient work, of strategizing and petitioning, of collating information and haranguing sub-committees – the anti-Fielders of Pagford found themselves, at last, on the trembling threshold of victory. The recession was forcing local authorities to streamline, cut and reorganize. There were those on the higher body of Yarvil District Council who foresaw an advantage to their electoral fortunes if the crumbling little estate, likely to fare poorly under the austerity measures imposed by the national government, were to be scooped up, and its disgruntled inhabitants joined to their own voters. Pagford had its own representative in Yarvil: District Councillor Aubrey Fawley. This was not the man who had enabled the construction of the Fields, but his son, ‘Young Aubrey', who had inherited Sweetlove House and who worked through the week as a merchant banker in London. There was a whiff of penance in Aubrey's involvement in local affairs, a sense that he ought to make right the wrong that his father had so carelessly done to the little town. He and his wife Julia donated and gave out prizes at the agricultural show, sat on any number of local committees, and threw an annual Christmas party to which invitations were much coveted. It was Howard's pride and delight to think that he and Aubrey were such close allies in the continuing quest to reassign the Fields to Yarvil, because Aubrey moved in a higher sphere of commerce that commanded Howard's fascinated respect. Every evening, after the delicatessen closed, Howard removed the tray of his old-fashioned till, and counted up coins and dirty notes before placing them in a safe. Aubrey, on the other hand, never touched money during his office hours, and yet he caused it to move in unimaginable quantities across continents. He managed it and multiplied it and, when the portents were less propitious, he watched magisterially as it vanished. To Howard, Aubrey had a mystique that not even a worldwide financial crash could dent; the delicatessen-owner was impatient of anyone who blamed the likes of Aubrey for the mess in which the country found itself. Nobody had complained when things were going well, was Howard's oft-repeated view, and he accorded Aubrey the respec t due to a general injured in an unpopular war. Meanwhile, as a district councillor, Aubrey was privy to all kinds of interesting statistics, and in a position to share a good deal of information with Howard about Pagford's troublesome satellite. The two men knew exactly how much of the district's resources were poured, without return or apparent improvement, into the Fields' dilapidated streets; that nobody owned their own house in the Fields (whereas the red-brick houses of the Cantermill Estate were almost all in private hands these days; they had been prettified almost beyond recognition, with window-boxes and porches and neat front lawns); that nearly two-thirds of Fields-dwellers lived entirely off the state; and that a sizeable proportion passed through the doors of the Bellchapel Addiction Clinic. VI Howard carried the mental image of the Fields with him always, like a memory of a nightmare: boarded windows daubed with obscenities; smoking teenagers loitering in the perennially defaced bus shelters; satellite dishes everywhere, turned to the skies like the denuded ovules of grim metal flowers. He often asked rhetorically why they could not have organized and made the place over – what was stopping the residents from pooling their meagre resources and buying a lawnmower between the lot of them? But it never happened: the Fields waited for the councils, District and Parish, to clean, to repair, to maintain; to give and give and give again. Howard would then recall the Hope Street of his boyhood, with its tiny back gardens, each hardly more than tablecloth-sized squares of earth, but most, including his mother's, bristling with runner beans and potatoes. There was nothing, as far as Howard could see, to stop the Fielders growing fresh vegetables; nothing to stop them disciplining their sinister, hooded, spray-painting offspring; nothing to stop them pulling themselves together as a community and tackling the dirt and the shabbiness; nothing to stop them cleaning themselves up and taking jobs; nothing at all. So Howard was forced to draw the conclusion that they were choosing, of their own free will, to live the way they lived, and that the estate's air of slightly threatening degradation was nothing more than a physical manifestation of ignorance and indolence. Pagford, by contrast, shone with a kind of moral radiance in Howard's mind, as though the collective soul of the community was made manifest in its cobbled streets, its hills, its picturesque houses. To Howard, his birthplace was much more than a collection of old buildings, and a fast-flowing, tree-fringed river, the majestic silhouette of the abbey above or the hanging baskets in the Square. For him, the town was an ideal, a way of being; a micro-civilization that stood firmly against a national decline. ‘I'm a Pagford man,' he would tell summertime tourists, ‘born and bred.' In so saying, he was giving himself a profound compliment disguised as a commonplace. He had been born in Pagford and he would die there, and he had never dreamed of leaving, nor itched for more change of scene than could be had from watching the seasons transform the surrounding woods and river; from watching the Square blossom in spring or sparkle at Christmas. Barry Fairbrother had known all this; indeed, he had said it. He had laughed right across the table in the church hall, laughed right in Howard's face. ‘You know, Howard, you are Pagford to me.' And Howard, not discomposed in the slightest (for he had always met Barry joke for joke), had said, ‘I'll take that as a great compliment, Barry, however it was intended.' He could afford to laugh. The one remaining ambition of Howard's life was within touching distance: the return of the Fields to Yarvil seemed imminent and certain. Then, two days before Barry Fairbrother had dropped dead in a car park, Howard had learned from an unimpeachable source that his opponent had broken all known rules of engagement, and had gone to the local paper with a story about the blessing it had been for Krystal Weedon to be educated at St Thomas's. The idea of Krystal Weedon being paraded in front of the reading public as an example of the successful integration of the Fields and Pagford might (so Howard said) have been funny, had it not been so serious. Doubtless Fairbrother would have coached the girl, and the truth about her foul mouth, the endlessly interrupted classes, the other children in tears, the constant removals and reintegrations, would be lost in lies. Howard trusted the good sense of his fellow townsfolk, but he feared journalistic spin and the interference of ignorant do-gooders. His objection was both principled and personal: he had not yet forgotten how his granddaughter had sobbed in his arms, with bloody sockets where her teeth had been, while he tried to soothe her with a promise of triple prizes from the tooth fairy.