The Secret to Happiness :: Happiness Essays

There is an ever-growing problem with our world; unhappiness. Unhappiness has plagued everyone at a time or two, sometimes even more. Because of this our world is suffering enormously: shootings, hate crimes, and wars are a few results of this widespread unhappiness. One might say there is no hope for our world, but there is. To end this unhappiness everyone should eat Skittles, own a goldfish, and get plenty of sunshine. One may ask, what can Skittles do? When the question should be what can not Skittles do? Not only can Skittles make you happy, they could end world hunger. But the focus right now is on ending unhappiness. Skittles, (by the author’s own scientific research) can and will make anyone 79% happier. So the next time someone is stressed out at work, fighting with their spouse, have no house, or lost their favorite shirt, don’t worry, just eat Skittles! Imagine how much happier the world would be, if instead of getting sad or upset, everyone ate Skittles and therefore made them happy. In the case of goldfish, here are some reasons why goldfish can end the world’s unhappiness. Owning a pet will lengthen your life. People who have the responsibility of the care of an animal can have lower blood p-pressure and fewer diseases. Goldfish make excellent pets because they are easy to care for, interesting and friendly, and won’t talk back. What more proof does one need? Imagine if everyone could have lower blood pressure, fewer diseases, and a friend who will keep every secret! Well, everyone can, if they buy goldfish. These animals, when cared for correctly, and with the frequent consumption of Skittles, can make the world happy again. Now, the last way to make everyone happy, is by making sure the world gets plenty of sunshine. Sunshine is vital in the life of human beings. It is recommended for everyone to get at least fifteen minutes of sunshine a day. Since sunshine is a required bodily function, there is no excuse for not getting any. Not only is it required, but sunshine is the best reason to be outside. One can go swimming, on a picnic, or eat Skittles in the sunshine.

Recruitment and Selection Strategies Essay

Summary: The recruitment and selection strategies that a company chooses are vital to the success of a business. Recruitment and selection strategies just thrown together are likely to fail. This is why a new business, such as Landslide Limousine must define the necessary criteria for recruitment and selection processes that will support its employee selections. This criterion will include hiring an adequate and qualified staff, a commitment to fair employment practices, and pre-employment standards to include background and reference checks. To determine the criteria for these requirements, the company’s organizational goals, the forecasted demographic changes, analyze workforce needs, workforce diversity objectives, organizational branding, and the methods needed for recruiting, screening, and selecting the proper candidates will be looked at. By assessing these areas we will be able to provide Landslide Limousine effective strategies for the recruitment and selection of personnel to provide a high quality and reliable service to its customers. We will also need to take into account that Landslide Limousine is a new company moving into Austin, Texas, and will need to follow local, state, and federal laws for the area in the employment processes. Organizational Goals Mr. Stonefield has set a goal for his company Landslide Limousine to be the  best limo service in Austin, Texas. He plans on hiring up to 25 employees within the first year with only a 10% turnover rate. He does expect to have a net annual revenue of -$50,000 for the first year, but an annual expected revenue growth of -5% for future years. To meet these goals there needs to be the right employees in place that will â€Å"buy in† to the company. These employees will understand the vision that Mr. Stonefield wishes for his company and want to help him reach it. Forecasted Demographic Changes Landslide Limousine is expecting to have a high turnover rate the first year. To keep the business going successfully it is necessary for the individuals hired to help out in other areas when needed. For this to be accomplished, the applicants need to be qualified in a variety of areas. The company will also need to think ahead and hire individuals who might be bilingual because of the proximity of Austin, Texas, to the Mexico border. An applicant who is not bilingual should not be dissuaded from applying, it would just be an added benefit for the company. Analysis of Workforce Needs Landslide Limousine will employ up to 25 people within the first year these employees will include customer service representatives, dispatchers, drivers, HR assistants, and managers. Customer service representatives will handle the calls from customers and potential customers. They will be the frontline to the business and must have high customer service qualities. Dispatchers will convey information that the customer service representative gathers to the drivers about where and when to pick up and drop off clients. Drivers will drive the customers to their locations in an efficient professional manner. HR assistants will help the manager in making sure that the company is following the applicable local, state, and federal employment laws and help handle any HR related issues with the employees. A manager will oversee the rest of the employees and ensure that the company is maintaining its perspective on the company’s goals and objectives. Workforce Diversity Objectives Landslide Limousine’s success will depend on its ability to hire qualified  candidates from a diverse pool of applicants. For this reason the hiring individual must be familiar with equal employment opportunity laws, fair employment practices related to the recruiting and hiring processes, and employment eligibility that allow an individual to work in the United States. The last is especially important with Austin, Texas, close to the Mexico border the immigration laws must be strictly adhered to (â€Å"Do your applicants,† n.d.). This will ensure that the employees have the proper credentials necessary for employment in the United States. Organizational Branding Mr. Stonefield wants his company to be the best there is in Austin, Texas. To do this he must ensure that his goals and visions for the company meet the needs of his consumers. He will also need to ensure that the employees hired are a good fit for the company and the image that he wishes to portray. In this type of industry, the contact made with the customer is a big influence on how he or she perceives the company. If there is a choice between attitude and skills, the individual with the correct attitude toward customer service should win out every time. Work skills are something that can be taught with training, customer service skills have to do with the attitude that an individual has and how he or she can handle situations with customers effectively. Methods for Recruiting Candidates This will be a key component in an effective recruitment and selection process. The methods for recruiting candidates will be from several sources. We cannot use internal sources at this time because the company is just starting up in the Austin, Texas, area. This is something that will be considered for future job openings in the company. For the initial job openings the sources will be external, and the areas to consider are newspaper advertisements, state employment services, job fairs, and using word of mouth. These methods will bring in applicants who may have the experience needed for the line of work the company is looking to fill. Another area to consider would be online job-related sites such as carreerbuilder.com and monster.com. Networking through professional organizations and keeping an eye out for changes among the competition as  also very useful. The company must know exactly what type of applicant they are looking for before advertising the positions and accepting resumes (Richason IV, n.d.). One last area to consider would be a temp service agency that specializes in providing other companies employees who will work for them on a temporary basis. These employees are hired by the temp service agency to meet the requirements requested by the company. By hiring through a temp agency, the screening and selecting of candidates is completed by them. Employees hired by this type of agency do have the opportunity to be hired as a permanent employee of the company. Methods for Screening Candidates The company needs to ensure the individual doing the hiring is knowledgeable in equal employment opportunity laws and affirmative action provisions pertaining to the position. This is the first opportunity in the recruitment and selection processes that an employer can express his or her commitment to equal opportunity. This is a critical part of any effective recruitment and selection process. When screening applicants for a position the reviewer must look for suitable qualifications. These are the experience of the applicant, his or her credentials, educational requirements for the position, and the presentation of his or her qualifications. A quick review of applications and resumes can help a company identify qualified applicants by looking for key words. Interview Methods Once the applicants have been narrowed down, the individual doing the hiring can conduct preliminary phone interviews. These phone interviews or screening interviews will describe to the applicant in more detail the job position and requirements, assess the applicants communication skills, review his or her work history, and to determine if he or she is interested in a face-to-face interview. The face-to-face interview is the most common interview method, which involves the applicant and the interviewer meeting face-to-face in an office. These interviews can be behavioral, situational, structured, and  unstructured or a combination thereof. A behavioral interview will typically ask an applicant to explain his or her work experience, skills, and activities as examples of his or her past behavior. A situational interview will ask questions about hypothetical events. The applicant is asked how he or she would react in a particular situation. A structured interview has a standard set of questions that are asked of every applicant. An unstructured interview adapts the questions based on the applicant’s intelligence, understanding and answers. It is recommended that these different types of face-to-face interviews be melded into one for Landslide Limousine. The interviewer should have some structured questions to ask of all applicants, unstructured questions based on the interviewees understanding and answers. Behavioral and situational questions will ask the interviewee questions based on his or her past behavior and questions based on hypothetical events. Testing Procedures There are several types of tests that can be administered. Cognitive tests will test reasoning, memory, math skills, reading comprehension, and knowledge of a job or function. Personality and integrity tests will determine if an individual has certain traits or dispositions and will predict if the individual will engage in certain types of conduct. Medical examinations are required by the Department of Transportation to carry a commercial drivers license (CDL) and in Austin, Texas, a CDL is required to drive a limousine. Drug testing required for every employee before and during employment. Also criminal background checks are recommended because of the nature of business the company does. These tests should be administered without regard to color, race, sex, national origin, age, religion, or disability (â€Å"Employment tests and,† 2010). Before giving a test for pre-employment there are a few things that need to established to ensure that the test is legally defensible. These things are to make sure that the right tests are given and that the company has certified the tests validity and reliability. A valid test must measure the criteria needed for predicting job performances. It also must be reliable, which means that the test must measure an item consistently or that an individual’s score should be close to the same every time it is  taken. Because employment testing can be challenged in court, the company needs to make sure that the tests do not violate any local, state, or federal Equal Employment Opportunity Laws, including Title VII (Quast, 2011). There are several laws that need to be considered when administering these tests. They are the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), and the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII). The use of these tests and applicant selection procedures are prohibited if they are discriminatory. Avoid questions of a personal nature or ones that may be considered offensive. Also the company should not just rely on these test results to choose the right candidate for the position (â€Å"Employment tests and,† 2010). Interview Process Considerations Interviews are scheduled when the hiring individual has free uninterrupted time. This allows them the opportunity to review the resume and conduct an informational interview with the applicant. Refrain from focusing on his or her credentials or experience. The interviewer needs to present hypothetical scenarios to the applicant and ask how he or she would evaluate and solve the problem. Listen to his or her responses without interrupting and make notes on the key points of the conversation (Richason IV, n.d.). Methods for Selecting Candidates The methods used for selecting the right candidates for the positions will be varied, depending on the position applied for. The interviews and tests will be a consideration for positions needing filled. The notes taken during the interview process will be compared to the applicants resume to see if anything was missed. The selections will be based on how competently he or she answered the questions and the questions that were asked by him or her during the interview. The limousine driver position needs a valid commercial driver’s license for the state of Texas, and is a requirement for working in the Austin, Texas, area. Applicants who do not ask questions are either uninterested in working for the company or shy and therefore might not be a good fit for the company (Richason IV, n.d.). Conclusion The recommendations that have been made will ensure the continued success of the company. The company’s organizational goals, forecasted demographic changes, workforce needs and diversity objectives, organizational branding, and the methods needed for recruiting, screening, and selecting candidates have been considered in the development of this plan. The recruitment and selection process must adhere to local, state, and federal laws to ensure compliance and avoid legal issues. By following these recommendations Landslide Limousine will hire an adequate and qualified staff while ensuring a commitment to fair employment practices and pre-employment standards. References Do your applicants have the right to work in the u.s.?. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.firstchoiceresearch.com/docs/I-9 Employment Eligibility.pdf Quast, L. (2011, September 13). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2011/09/13/pre-employment-testing-a-helpful-way-for-companies-to-screen-applicants/2/ Richason IV, O. E. (n.d.). Methods of recruitmant and selection. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/methods-recruitment-selection-2532.html The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, (2010). Employment tests and selection procedures. Retrieved from website: http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/factemployment_procedures.html

Comparison Essay on “Dead Souls” and “Taras Bulba”

I. The great achievement of prose of the XIX century (from the 1840s to the 1890s) was Russian Realism, which is represented by many great Russian writers and Nikolai Gogol is not the last in this list. It is often mentioned that after 1830 Pushkin turned more and more to prose, although being the greatest poet of the time. However, the writer who established really innovating novelistic and narrative tradition in Russian literary culture was Gogol. Gogol's example, combined with the authoritative literary pronouncements of the greatest literary critic of the period, V. G. Belinsky, proved prose to be the literary medium of the future. Later, the great Russian novelist   (and not the worst philosopher of religious thought) Dostoevsky have said, referring to himself and his fellow Realists, â€Å"We have all come out from under Gogol's â€Å"Overcoat†Ã¢â‚¬  (meaning the famous story by Gogol, â€Å"Shynel† or Overcoat).Vladimir Nabokov highly esteemed Gogol as a grea t Russian (in no case Ukrainian, he is sure, in spite of the fact that Nikolaj Gogol-Ianovski originates from Ukraine, Mirgorod, and his world outlook is obviously marked by Ukrainian national tradition) novelist, dramatist, satirist, and founder of the so-called critical realism in Russian literature, best-known for his novel â€Å"Mertvye Dushy† (1842, Dead Souls). Praising the imaginative power and linguistic playfulness of the writer’s latest works (â€Å"Shynel† or Overcoat, â€Å"Mertvye Dushy† etc), Nabokov states that Gogol is everything but the romantic folklore novelist.Actually, there can be defined two main periods in Gogol’s writing: conservative romantic and vernacular idealism of the Ukrainian past (which we find in Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka and Taras Bulba) and the next evolutionary period of modernistic urban life reflection with all its psychological abnormality and deviations. If to believe Nabokov, in the mature age Gogol was ashamed of the playful artificialness of his early works; and as for the famous Russian critic, it is a dreadful nightmare even to imagine Gogol scribbling Ukrainian folkloristic novels volume by volume†¦ Had he chosen this path, the world would have never heard his name. So, let’s compare these two antagonistic periods of Gogol’s writing corresponding to the most vividly representative works of his: â€Å"Taras Bulba† and â€Å"Dead Souls†.II. Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, the book of Ukrainian folklore stories, which appeared in 1831-32, was Gogol's breakthrough work (Gogol had greatly admired Pushkin, and he used in this work the same narrative device as Pushkin did in his Tales of Belkin). It showed his skill in mixing fantastic and demonic ideas of his people with macabre, and at the same time he said something crucial about the Russian and Ukrainian (ignoring Nabokov’s imperialistic snobbism, it is important to mark Gogol’s Ukrainian roots) character. After failure as an assistant lecturer of world history at the University of St. Petersburg (1834-35), Gogol became a full-time writer. Under the title Mirgorod (1835) Gogol published a new collection of his stories, also inspired by Ukrainian vernacular culture, beginning with â€Å"Old-World Landowners†, which described the decay of the old way of life.The book also included the famous historical tale (poem in prose) â€Å"Taras Bulba†, which according to many literary critics showed the influence of W.Scott and L.Stern. However, it is rather ignorant not to take into account the original Ukrainian novelistic tradition, which is widely based on folklore (Gulak-Artemovski, Kvitka-Osnovjanenko and many other writers of Ukrainian romanticism are evidently folkloristic). The protagonist of â€Å"Taras Bulba† is a strong, heroic character, absolutely non-typical for Gogol’s later cavalcade of bureaucrats, lunatics, swindlers, and losers, numerously represented on the pages of â€Å"Dead Souls†.In 1569, dominion over the right-coast Ukraine passed to Poland.   The Polish lords (lyahy) promptly tried stamping out Ukrainian culture by savagely exploiting the peasantry, outlawing the Ukrainian language and imposing Catholicism (Unia) and Papal supremacy on the Orthodox population.   In response, Ukrainian male peasants flocked to join the military groups known as the Cossacks. They founded the Zaporizhian Sitch on the Hortycya Island.The Cossacks, essentially a wild cross between mercenary crusaders and highwaymen,  became the focus of resistance to the Poles, the Turks and the Crimean Tatars. Gogol’s novel tells the story of the old and wise warrior Taras Bulba who, with his sons Ostap and Andrij, sallies forth to join the Sitch. Gogol's incontestably romantic adventure was as much a propaganda piece for his own time as an elegy for a way of life that had passed.   In â€Å"Taras Bulbaâ €  we meet conservative Gogol, who has just arrived to Petersburg and is not yet sophisticated in the city life. He is shocked by the corruption and moral decay of the city dwellers. He craves for the Golden Age of his people’s history and this age, he thinks, was the glorious times of the Zaporizhian Sitch.â€Å"Taras Bulba† is a remarkable example of the early romantic Gogol (if to call Gogol the writer’s texts). However, this novel works on both levels (historical and pshycological, more typical for the later Gogol’s works) and is surely one of the most exciting masterpieces in world literature.  Set sometime between the mid-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, Gogol’s epic tale recounts both a bloody Cossack revolt against the Poles (led by the bold Taras Bulba of Ukrainian folk mythology) and the trials of Taras Bulba’s two sons. As Robert Kaplan (translator) writes, â€Å"[Taras Bulba] has a Kiplingesque gusto . . . that make s it a pleasure to read, but central to its theme is an unredemptive, darkly evil violence that is far beyond anything that Kipling ever touched on. We need more works like Taras Bulba to better understand the emotional wellsprings of the threat we face today in places like the Middle East and Central Asia.† (Jane Grayson and Faith Wigzell; p.18).And the critic John Cournos has noted, â€Å"A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critic’s observation about Gogol: ‘Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life.’(The Rise of Prose: Nikolai Gogol). But this statement does not cover the whole ground, for it is easy to see in almost all of Gogol’s work his â€Å"free Cossack soul† trying to break through the wall of gloomy and non-heroic ‘today’ like some ancient demon, essentially Dionysian. So, through the years, this novel sounds at once as a reproa ch, a protest, and a challenge, ever calling for joy, ancient joy, that is no more with us.This wide interpretation lies far beyond previously often-uttered accusation of vernacular populist romanticism. Nikolai Gogol searched for the joy and sadness in the Ukrainian songs he loved so much. Ukrainian was to Gogol the language of the soul, and it was in Ukrainian songs rather than in old chronicles, of which he was not a little contemptuous, that he read the history of his people. So, here in this novel the writer’s intention is not the historical but rather the psychological picture of his people. Hence no one (even Nabokov) has the right to accuse Gogol of Ukrainian culture profanation as if following the modern literary trend of his time.Indeed, so great was his enthusiasm for his own land that after collecting material for many years, the year 1833 finds him at work on a history of ‘poor Ukraine’, a work planned to take up six volumes; and writing to a friend at this time he promises to say much in it that has not been said before him. However, Gogol never wrote either his history of Little Russia (Malorosiya) or his universal history, he didn’t become Ukrainian Balzac but is often called Ukrainian Goffman or Poe.Apart from several brief studies not always reliable, the result of his many years application to his scholarly projects was this brief epic in prose, Homeric in mood (The Rise of Prose: Nikolai Gogol). The sense of intense living, ‘living dangerously† – to cite Nietzsche – the recognition of courage as the greatest virtue, the God in man, inspired Gogol, living in times which tended toward grey monotony, with admiration for his more fortunate forefathers, who lived in a poetic time, when everything was won with the sword, when every one in his turn strove to be an active being and not a spectator. In â€Å"Taras Bulba† we find the people of action, and â€Å"Dead Souls† gives us th e gallery of people of things.Russia! Russia! I see you now, from my wondrous, beautiful past I behold you! How wretched, dispersed and uncomfortable everything is about you†¦(Nikolai Gogol)III. Gogol began working on â€Å"Dead Souls† in 1835. The plot and the main idea of the story was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin who seemed to have understood Gogol as a writer quite well. Pushkin felt that the idea of a man travelling all over the Russian Impire buying up the ownership rights to serfs who had died (‘mertvye dushy’) would allow Gogol to make at once the literary success. In fact, it was an opportunity to introduce a multitude of characters, varied settings, mountains of detail, and the scope within which to be able to elaborate the anecdotal story of the work to his heart's content and to reveal all the sins of his contemporary. Gogol had big ideas of becoming a scriptor of his age a sort of Balzac†¦For the next six years, he devoted almost all of hi s creative energy to â€Å"Dead Souls†. His compulsive craftsmanship is evident in that the entire work was revised at least five times; the author stated that some passages had been rewritten as many as twenty times. He felt that this novel should be his best one.Unfortunately, only the first part of Dead Souls, twelve chapters in all, was completed by Gogol. The second part, as we know it, (some chapters of which are often published with the first part) is a recreation from various sources of what Gogol might have done with the continuation of his work. Influenced by the fanatical priest Father Konstantinovskii, he burned what he actually had already written for the second part of the novel just nine days before his death.The situation from which the novel develops is based upon a scheme which theoretically was possible in Gogol's day. The government had a policy of loaning money to landowners, feeling that this class was its strongest support. Lands owned, however, were me asured not in acres, but by the number of â€Å"souls† (serfs, or here, mertvye dushy) residing on them. De facto, landowners were serf owners†¦ The government was ready to accept the land (that is, the serfs) of an individual as collateral for a loan. Thus, a method was required by which the holdings of an individual landowner could be established at any given time.This method stated that an individual possessed the number of ‘souls’ recorded as such that belong to him/her in the most recent population census. The census was taken every ten years, which meant that near the end of the ten-year cycle almost every landowner would have some serfs who were not recorded in the preceding census because they had recently been born, and some serfs still recorded even though they had died long ago since the last census. In â€Å"Dead Souls†, the main character, Chichikov, schemes to buy from the serf holders a number of those â€Å"souls† who had died b ut were still counted as living until the next census. An absurd situation becomes possible: dead souls are sold as being alive people, which ar estil able to work. â€Å"It's cheap at the price.A rogue would cheat you, sell you some worthless rubbish instead of souls, but mine are as juicy as ripe nuts, all picked – they are all either craftsmen or sturdy peasants†, – Sobakievich boasts to his weird buyer (Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich). Once Chichikov had a number of such souls, he would apply to the government bank for a loan, using the â€Å"souls† as his collateral. With this low-interest loan in hand he would then buy and work an actual country estate, eventually paying back the loan and purchasing living souls to work the land. Well, passing the whole plot, it is imporatnt to state Gogol’s idea of small marginal people actually decaying in their small towns and farms. The Russia of small towns is the country of odd and irreversibly narrow-minde d people. What Gogol proves is that these small landowners are actually dead†¦ They have burried themselves alive in their dirty stinking flea-bitten houses.Contrudicting the wide-sprea yet contested idea of Gogol’s evolution as a writer, it is possible to say that either completing histoical heroic plot or conveying contemporary decayed society, Gogol’s intention stays the same – to show the depth of a human soul and how this soul can be filled with live brightness of heroism or by dead wickedness and miserable oddity. Bibliography Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich. Taras Bulba and Other Tales. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library// http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/GogTara.htmlNikolay Gogol: Text and Context, ed. by Jane Grayson and Faith Wigzell (1989).N. V. Nabokov: Nicolai Gogol, 1944.The Rise of Prose: Nikolai Gogol// http://www1.umn.edu/lol-russ/hpgary/Russ3421/lesson6.htm

My Childhood Memories Essay

It’s considered that childhood memory is special for everybody because it’s very personal. I can’t imagine my childhood without reminding the time that I’ve spent at our summer cottage. I can even say that it’s the most precious time in my life. It’s situated in half an hour from city by the most beautiful sea that I’ve ever seen in my life. Unfortunately we sold it 6 years ago, and maybe that is why I appreciate it so much, people always desires what they’ve lost and aren’t able to get back for going through it again. I still clearly remember us, me, my aunt and my granny, going there every summer for a holiday. And with every new word that I write into this essay I remind new shots from that what we’ve got through there together. We used to spend there 3 months of summer. We went there to spend my birthday and stayed till the study year begins. My mother came to visit me every weekends and I used to show her everything new I’ve found around there. But there is a thing which about I will regret all the rest of my life. It is the time that I’ve spent with my aunt. If I only could I’d give everything to return these days even though for couple hours. Everything we did we did together, everything I had to share I shared with her and she treated the same way with me. One of the best things I remember is how we went to the seaside everyday. It took us 15 minutes to walk there and we spend nearly whole day there. I liked to go there with her very much; we’ve had so much fun together. Well, also one of the reasons was my friend Tima, 6 years older than me, very cute and kind guy. He was at sixth class when he left the school to find a job at the building construction to help his mother financially. We met every summer during 5 years. I miss his friendship very much now. The whole woods of the world won’t be enough for me to describe all the good things we had because of they all were such a people and it was such a place that I even can’t remember anything bad. I was 12 when my parents sold the cottage. I believe my childhood ended that day.

An analysis of the policies introduced by the Office of the Mayor of Essay

An analysis of the policies introduced by the Office of the Mayor of London - Essay Example The GLA has power deliberated to perform duties in various parts of the city (Greater London Authority 2012). It has four bodies that range from the London Development agency, The Metropolitan police authority, which is in charge of security in the city, The Emergency planning authority that deals with the disaster, and the London fire brigade. The role of the mayor of London The mayor of London`s job basically ranges from developing policies, setting budgets, as well as ensuring that London is well marketed globally. The mayor has powers and duties to ensure that there is absolute promotion of both the economic social and environmental improvement (Greater London Authority 2012). That is perhaps what may be termed as â€Å"improving London for all†. Before putting any of his powers into action, the mayor has to first consult the city dwellers. Consequently, he must ensure that equality for all citizens is achieved. Being a mayor in London, means one is also in charge of all p olicies and plans for city. This covers all aspects ranging from panning, development, housing, health injustices, culture and other environmental issues including climate changes, noise pollution and health quality too. On improving London, the mayor has to set up budgets that must project the visions that improve London; this makes him to come up with the annual budget for the Greater London Authority and the entire GLA group, this includes the metropolitan police, fire brigade, transportation in London and the London Development agency (Great Britain: Parliament House of Commons: Justice Committee 2009). In addition to his duties, he holds executive positions, as well as non-executive ones, in different organizations. The need for reforms in housing policy The mayor argues that London has got the need to have better and quality housing delivered to the citizens. Due to long term housing pressure in London, it is evident that many have failed to meet the increasing demand of the r esidents in London. With this in mind, it is clear that the quality of life for London citizens have been clearly undermined especially for those who cannot afford the high rents for home in the open market. Despite the number of households registering as homeless decreasing over the years, the number of temporary accommodations has been increasing too. This leads to recording of two thirds of the total households in London. Over 150,000 household in London are overcrowded, this is more than half the total number nationwide. This means that overcrowding rates are now higher as compared to the private rented tenancies. The policies put in place would only do more harm than good because the estimated growth of the population would only increase to 80,000 by 2016 thus creating demand for over 300,000 households. Although the current new housing output is around 270000 new homes every year, only half of them can be affordable. Perhaps, that is why the London housing requirement study ha s identified a need to have 35000 increments of new homes yearly so as to meet the needs as per the projected growth (Greater London Authority 2012). According to the London Housing Capacity, there is enough land that can accommodate more than 31000 new homes every year. However, the significant increase in housing investments over the years means

Peer Coaching Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Peer Coaching - Assignment Example Program briefing for all teachers: 2 handouts namely: Briefing Handout and Peer Coaching Program Handout are to be given out to all teachers to be signed up and returned. Power point slide presentation on the Briefing handout is to include: Touching the core of teachers by valuing teaching skills through acknowledging the peak highlights of the teaching milestone. Explaining the power of questioning to solve problems, giving and receiving feedback from peer coachers, using reflection tools to build learning and experience, educate and implement the Peer Coaching Observation process. With a worksheet, the observer will note their behaviour, analyze and interpret them, educate and implement the Peer Coaching Feedback process. On a non-teaching day, a 4 hour workshop will be implemented with the teamed volunteers who will note down what they observed from the participating teachers. A follow up will be made one week later with the observation analyzed and interpreted. This process of observation, analysis and interpretation will be passed on to the participating teachers. They will then do their analysis and interpretation and checked by the respective volunteers as evaluation. A centralized hierarchical... Explaining the power of questioning to solve problems, giving and receiving feedback from peer coachers, using reflection tools to build learning and experience, educate and implement the Peer Coaching Observation process. With a worksheet, the observer will note their behaviour, analyze and interpret them, educate and implement the Peer Coaching Feedback process. 3) Selecting teams (matching teachers)Teachers are matched accordingly to the following criteria: same areas of subject, same gender preferences, good fit of time schedule, complementary/ reinforcing personality traits, common agreement to be matched, same set beliefs, same intellectual level, fit of skills and same work attitudesThese fields are tabulated and matched with mutual approvals of the coach andcoachee. 4) Scheduling an initial round of clinical cycles On a non-teaching day, a 4 hour workshop will be implemented with the teamed volunteers who will note down what they observed from the participating teachers. A follow up will be made one week later with the observation analyzed and interpreted. This process of observation, analysis and interpretation will be passed on to the participating teachers. They will then do their analysis and interpretation and checked by the respective volunteers as evaluation. 5) Monitoring the peer-coaching program A centralized hierarchical system will be implemented where monthly, all teachers will submit their data to the volunteering teachers and then to the HODs or sub- heads and meet in person every quarterly year. At all times enquiries and feedbacks can be made informally

Successful Enterprise in Russia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Successful Enterprise in Russia - Essay Example However, Gorbachev created so-called cooperative enterprises that were allowed by the government. Highly volatility was observed in the institutional environment of the Russia. In many regions, market economy in support of weak institutions, and large variations were found regionally. In other words, the development of the private sector was affected by the corruption, bureaucratic harassment, as well as, racketeering adversely. Furthermore, financial intermediaries that were developed poorly also affected the development of the sector. "There is a push in Russia to advance the cause of the entrepreneur by providing classes that assist the population in learning how to develop their own business. Reports indicate that other European Universities will see as many as 70% of their higher education centers providing classes on business development". (Lindsay, 2006) Entrepreneurial development was not considered by the inherited ideology of the Russia, which was similar to a number of other centrally planned countries of the world. In the Soviet, speculators were equated with the period entrepreneurs. Furthermore, profit making by these entrepreneurs was considered as a criminal activity. Independent innovative culture was stifled by the ideology of the Soviet state. On the other hand, development of a punishment-oriented culture was done by the ideologists. In the result, corruption was created by the discretionary power of the officials. Bureaucratic means were used for the running of the economy. Thus, the appetite for risk taking was suppressed by the concentration of reward on plan attainment. (Ellman, 1994) "Throughout the history of enterprises Russian entrepreneurs did a remarkably good job of seeking out profit opportunities". (Paul, 1987) As a result, informal norms and values were combined with the weakness of formal institution enforcement, and a less-conductive environment was created in the result, which affected the development of new entrepreneurial firms adversely. In this regard, a number of existing barriers to entrepreneurship that are being confronted presently have been pointed out by many authors. Property rights enforcement has been lack in the Russia, which is one of the examples of these barriers. It has also been pointed out that the government officials have enriched their personal needs by the corrupt behavior that has characterized the grabbing hand model of government intervention, which has been emerging in the present Russia. Although the facilitation of exchange reducing transaction costs has been the one of the objectives behind the designing of the formal rules, different ways can affect the individuals, as well as, groups by them. "According to --------- As individuals -- and increasingly, collectively in grassroots organizations -- entrepreneurs in Russia are fighting back against the mediocrity and parasitism that is endemic in the country's public and commercial life. They are ideal fighters because entrepreneurs are the first to feel