Friday, November 3, 2006
On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Don Valley West (Ward 25). Three candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include John Blair, Robertson Boyle, Tony Dickins, Cliff Jenkins (incumbent), and Peter Kapsalis.
For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Red Bull Racing driver, Sebastian Vettel won the FIA Formula One 2009 Santander British Grand Prix from pole at the Silverstone Circuit, Northamptonshire, England. His teammate, Mark Webber, came second.
As the current leader of this season Jenson Button started sixth on the grid of his home Grand Prix, his Brawn–Mercedes teammate Rubens Barrichello took third joining Red Bull’s drivers on the podium.
Felipe Massa came fourth for Ferrari) despite starting eleventh. Jenson Button came very close to Massa and and Nico Rosberg from Williams but was unable to pass them and came only sixth gaining three points for the Brawn team.
Jarno Trulli (Toyota) and Kimi Räikkönen (Ferrari) closed the top eight.
Trulli’s teammate, Timo Glock came ninth with Giancarlo Fisichella on his back – a good result for the Force India team.
Jenson Button still leads the drivers’ standings with 64 points so far, 23 points ahead of his teammate and 25 ahead of Vettel. The constructor’s championship is topped by Brawn GP with more than a hundred points, Red Bull follows 30.5 points behind.
This year the British Grand Prix was expected to be the last held at Silverstone as Donington Park continues reconstruction to meet Formula One next year.
By Stephen Pope
One of the most frequent questions I receive from those who are trying to start or grow their own consulting business is: “How and what do you charge clients for your consulting services?”
The ways of billing clients are numerous. There are hourly rates, by-the-job fixed rates, contingency or performance arrangements, flat fee plus expenses, daily fee plus expenses, and many other methods of charging for your consulting services. Which one is best?
Let us consider some ways of billing for your time.
1. Hourly or Daily Rate
Many consultants charge by the hour or day. To establish an hourly or daily rate, they try to calculate the number of billable hours in a year. Many hours will be spent marketing and in administrative and other functions, so this time is not chargeable to the client. As well, vacation time, holidays, sick days, and so on, can not be directly billed to the client.
Consultants, like other businesses, must charge enough to cover their overhead expenses and also earn a profit. If a consultant wants to earn twenty-five dollars per hour of working time, he (or she) might have to charge one hundred dollars per hour to the client. This assumes one half billable hours and fifty percent overhead and profit.
Your hourly or daily rate may be limited by what your competition charges, especially if you have not positioned yourself as different from them.
2. Fixed or Flat Rate
Some consultants charge by the job or a flat rate. For example, a tax consultant might charge three hundred dollars to prepare a tax return for you and your spouse, including an unaudited income statement for your business from information supplied by you. If the consultant takes only one hour to do this, he grosses three hundred dollars per hour. If, though, the tax consultant miscalculates the time required, he could take twenty hours to complete the job and make only fifteen dollars per hour.
Of course, consultants can also make a profit on the labour of their employees or subcontractors.
Many consultants claim to make more on a flat rate than on a hourly basis. Advantages include being able to give a quote to the client up front and less disputes on price (as the total bill was agreed upon in advance).
To protect yourself on flat rate assignments, always limit the scope of your engagement to something that you can calculate easily.
For example, if you are asked to give a quote for setting up a website for a business, you might break this project into smaller assignments.
First, you could give a quote for preliminary research and recommendations. Estimate the time required to meet with the client, learn about his business and goals, develop strategies and a budget, and prepare recommendations on how to proceed. Then, give the client a quote (perhaps in the form of a one page letter agreement or proposal). Upon acceptance of the offer by the client in writing, you may proceed with this phase of the project.
Some consultants collect one-half of their fee up front and half upon assignment completion for each phase of the consulting project.
If the client doesn`t like your recommendations, at least you get paid for the work you did. Perhaps you can charge him to prepare alternative suggestions.
If your website project was not broken into smaller steps or assignments, you could find that you spent way more time on the project than anticipated.
Also, you might not find out until you present your bill for the whole project that your client won`t pay, either because he is not satisfied with the results or because he is unable or unwilling to pay.
Breaking down a project into smaller assignments helps you estimate more accurately and limits your financial exposure.
3. Contingency or Performance Arrangements
Sometimes clients will ask you to become their partner. If you do, you are no longer an objective consultant.
What if your client asks you to do management consulting for twenty-five percent of the net profits? Will there even be any profit by the time he writes off his car, home office, entertainment, travel, wages to self and family members, and other expenses?
On the other hand, if you are a marketing consultant that is absolutely certain that you can increase a client`s sales, you may feel confident charging a fee based on the increased sales volume of the client. Are you sure your client will co-operate with you in the attaining of this goal?
Some consultants charge a flat rate plus a percentage of ownership or profits for their services.
Fees based on contingency or performance arrangements are risky. Most consultants are better off charging a fair price for their services and leaving the risk of the client`s business to the client.
4. Value Based Fees
Sometimes consultants can justify fees based on their value to the client. For example, if you save a client one million dollars in taxes, your fee may be higher than normal to reflect the value of the services rendered.
You might pay an accountant or lawyer a fee of fifteen hundred dollars based on time for certain tax related services. What would you be willing to pay to legally save an extra million dollars in taxes? Ten thousand dollars, one hundred thousand dollars, or more?
Can you apply this information to your own consulting practice? Is there some particularly valuable service that you can render that would justify premium rates?
However and whatever you charge, be sure that your fee is a good value for your client and also compensates you fairly.
About the Author: J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc., has been helping clients to earn maximum business profits for over twenty-five years. For more information about profitable consulting and other Work at Home Small Business Ideas, visit yenommarketinginc.com/consulting.html
Source: isnare.com
Permanent Link: isnare.com/?aid=8017&ca=Business
Monday, December 19, 2005File:Santarchy new zealand.jpg
The conduct by a group of ‘Santas’ making an unclear statement last Saturday is not appreciated in the business district of Auckland, New Zealand. The event, organized in the discussion forum of an online skateboard magazine, caused big media publicity.
Alex Dyer, spokesman for the group, stated that Santarchy in Auckland is part of a worldwide phenomenon. It is disputed if Santarchy is a protest against the commercialization of Christmas or not.
Auckland Central Police spokesperson Noreen Hegarty said to the press that the rampage began in the early part of the afternoon when men wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an overpass, then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage bins, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on office buildings.
“They came in, said ‘Merry Christmas’ and then helped themselves,” said a convenience store staff member Changa Manakynda, according to local newspapers.
One writer using the pseudonym ‘Le_SigNagE’ on the Santarchy! (or also known as the Santacon) website commented, “… after all, this is what Christmas is really about… mindless vandalism and petty theft.”
Another writer who posted under the pseudonym Santy Claus said of the media coverage,”There was some major misreporting and Chinese whispers. Breaking bottles and urinating under a bridge, became throwing rocks at buses and urinating on cars from an overpass. The ‘organisers’ as they were, saw little in the way of crime other than one santa attempting to board a foreign vessel by scaling 20 metres along a rope 60 feet in the air. The difficulty and motor skills involved in this task alone should be a defense in itself of being ‘drunk’ and ‘disorderly’.”
Due to Santa’s reputation for integrity and his strict media policy, his sparse communication is mostly one-way: receiving lists from children with wishes for Christmas. It is difficult to get his comment about New Zealands skateboard interested ‘Santas’.
In 1994, the Cacophony Society staged the world’s very first SantaCon in San Francisco. Influenced by the surrealist movement Discordianism, and other subversive art currents.
FAQ 2. Keyboard or Acoustic piano for your first instrument choice
by
Waka Shinko
FAQ 2. Keyboard or Acoustic piano for your first instrument choice
Is the keyboard better or the acoustic pianothe better as the first instrument for the piano beginner?
There are the pros and cons for the both instruments.
There are three kinds. The choices are…
One: electric keyboard
Two: digital piano
Three: acoustic piano.
And consider your situations…
One: What type of music do you want to play, classical, popular or the both? Who is your favorite artist?
– If you want to play the authentic classical piano tunes like Mozart or Beethoven, the acoustic piano is the good choice. If you want to play the popular songs like Bruno Mars or Katy Perry, the electric is fun to do more, changing to the different instruments sound or adding the rhythm with it.
Two: Are you considering to buy the new one or the second hand?
– What is your budget? The price range would be free to million! What kind of shopping style do you prefer? The traditional shopping from real person or buying online, or finding from the classified.
Three: How is your environment, your family and your neighbors?
– Piano practice could be noisy and annoying for others more than you think. You shall consider the support from family members and neighbors. Especially the acoustic piano can not adjust the volume softer so much and this case, the electric keyboard or digital pianos could be useful as you can adjust the volume, plug the headphone for the late night practice.
Four: Physical ability
– If you are buying for young child with small soft hands, the keyboard is the easy to play on and most of them like to have
fun with many buttons. The other hand, the acoustic piano has its own enchanting sound that shall enrich peoples artistry towards the beauty of music.
Even you think to buy online or the second hand, check on your local music store how you feel with them. Some people can not accept the keyboard sound and vice versa.
Of course you will search online resources. There are many reviews, forums and online music shops available at your finger tips.
Waka Shinko /Professional Pianist, Piano Teacher, Personality at Piano123TV
budurl.com/Piano123TVart
:Challenge You! Learn to Play Piano in 3 Minutes.The Playful and Entertaining Web TV Show for Piano Beginners and Music Lovers~Learn to Play Piano Easy with Your Favorite Songs, Fun in Your Fingers, You Can Play!~
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FAQ 2. Keyboard or Acoustic piano for your first instrument choice}
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
“Localization of ‘SEMI Safety Guideline'”, executed by Safety and Health Technology Center of Taiwan (SAHTECH) and supervised by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), was announced today in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
This localization included several fields on health and safety of semiconductor manufacturing, certification testing on electrical devices, evaluations on fire or natural diseases, and environmental issues on semiconductor manufacturing devices, etc.. Companies and manufacturers from the semiconductor industry also paid more attentions on this guideline because issues on carbon-savings, earthquakes, fire diseases, and environment-efficiencies were included into this guideline.
| This [safety] guideline was originally promoted by SEMI since 1975 and was set up according to industry infrastructures in Europe, America, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Currently, its standards from the S1 to S25 was completely ruled by several world-class executives in semiconductor industry, and the S26 standard for FPD industry, proposed in Taiwan, was also in several arrangements with the other countries. | ||
| The semiconductor industry is a high-value industry in every country. If a fabrication plant (fab) was vandalized with fire or earthquake, how will a company decrease its lossless after a disease? As of some examples from the other countries, several companies didn’t pay more attentions on devices’ safety and finally got a damn trouble on counting lossless after a disease. By the way, voltages on electric using will take effect on energy especially the wasting of CO2. We [the semiconductor industry in Taiwan] hope this announcement will drive on global safety standards. | ||
| Generally, the designs of a fab will take effect on possibilities when a disease take place in, and its scale will chain much wasting on manufacturing devices and materials. For example, when using fluorine in a fab, a company would consider using a gas tank car rather than a steel bottle. But due to environment and carbon-saving issues, some evaluations should be tested in a fab. | ||
On the other side of the incoming trade show of 2008 SecuTech Expo, scheduled after 2 weeks at Taipei World Trade Center, not only main fields on security devices, information security, and fire & disease preventions, the digital monitoring will be a hot topic in security industry. For applications on fire & disease preventions, because its issues contained industrial applications and ESH (Environmental, Safety & Health) managements, if a company want to decrease the ratio of fire disease or earthquake, companies from safety and related industries should pay more attentions on disease preventions.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
The upcoming 2006 Brampton municipal election, to be held November 13, features an array of candidates looking to represent their wards in city council or the council of the Peel Region.
Wikinews contributor Nick Moreau contacted many of the candidates, including Vicky Dhillon, asking them to answer common questions sent in an email. This ward’s incumbent is Garnett Manning; also challenging Manning is Stella Ambler, Mandeep Dhaliwal, Daljit Gill, and Nalem Malik.
Morphy Richards 45362 Deep Fryer Review
by
Britto Thomas
Morphy Richards is a name that has always been associated with an excellent quality, as well as great customer service. And if you love deep fried snacks, Morphy Richards’ 45362 Harry Ramsdens Deep Fat Fryer is the thing for you. It is ideal if you are looking for restaurant quality food, in the comfort of your very home. This fryer comes with a one-year guarantee, is compact in size and rectangular in shape. With its 2.5 liters’ oil capacity and 1.2 kilograms of food capacity, it is big enough to cater to the whole family.
It has a black colored, scratch resistant exterior; minimizing the need for maintenance. Another good thing about it is the safety lock on its lid. It prevents accidental opening of the fryer. Moreover its lid is dishwasher safe; and with a vertical opening eases the removal of hot, fried food. The inner tank of this appliance is actually non-stick aluminum, which is great as it prevents the sticking of food. The fryer unit is pretty stable, all thanks to its non-slip feet. It even has a couple of light indicators that guide you through the cooking progress, making its use very convenient. The orange light indicates that the oil is hot and ready for cooking; whereas the red light means that the cooking is under progress. Apart from the lights, it also features a small viewing window that allows you to keep a check on the progress of the cooking, without causing any heat loss. This appliance, like any other Morphy’s product, comes with a cord storage facility; keeping the cord out of sight when not required. It also has an oil storage container to store and reuse the oil. This particular product also has a ‘rise and fall’ basket with ‘rest’. The different levels of the basket allow for cooking of different kinds of foods; and the ‘rest’ enables draining of the oil to avoid spills. Another wonderful thing about this unit is the ease and speed at which it can be dismantled, and thereon assembled back. This makes it very convenient to clean and thus helps in maintaining proper hygiene. However, it is extremely essential to remember that the tank should not be dismantled for at least three hours after frying; and that the charcoal filter, inside of it, should be replaced after every 15 sessions of frying. There you have it- go ahead and get your hands on this soon. Deep Fat Fryer
is one of the best kitchen appliance to make healthy Food.
Morphy Richards Deep Fryers
are one of the best selling products with affordable price.
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Morphy Richards 45362 Deep Fryer Review
Saturday, October 23, 2021
China property giant Evergrande Group wired USD83.5 million in interest owed in an offshore bond from September 23 on Thursday, temporarily averting default, according to a Reuters source and Chinese newspaper The Securities Times.
The wire to a Citibank fiduciary account following a 30-day grace period came after assurances by various members of the Chinese government, Reuters reported. At a Beijing forum Wednesday, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He described the risks as controllable, and chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission Yi Huiman said that while authorities needed to curb excessive debt more broadly by “improv[ing] the effectiveness of the constraint mechanism on debt financing”, the matter would be dealt with properly.
Once China’s top real estate developer, Evergrande had accumulated approximately USD305 billion in liabilities, two per cent of the Chinese gross national product, after “dwindling resources” cut its value by 80%, according to Reuters. September data revealed Chinese home sales by value fell by nearly 17% year-on-year, according to The Guardian, and fears over its default led to a slowdown in China’s third quarter GDP growth to a year low of 4.9%. Two sale negotiations with rival developers Hopson Development and Yuexiu, valued at USD2.6 billion and USD1.7 billion, respectively, were suspended, reportedly due to a lack of consent by the government of Guangdong province currently overseeing Evergrande’s restructuring.
News of Evergrande’s remittance caused its shares to rise by as much as 7.8% this morning after a two-week pause in trading for the anticipated sale of 50.1% in Evergrande Property Services Group, and offering some reprieve for bondholders, according to Reuters. Portfolio manager at GaoTeng Global Asset Management James Wong, interviewed by The Guardian, called the news “a positive surprise”, adding “[i]f Evergrande pays this time, I don’t see why it won’t pay the next time.” Jun Rong Yeap for IG Asia pte., interviewed by Bloomberg, said the report “overturned” the narrative “that Evergrande will face difficulty in securing cash ahead”.
Further missed payments are due October 29 and November 11 after similar 30-day grace periods; including yesterday’s USD83.5 million, nearly USD280 million is owed to bondholders.
Stocks have been down for many major Chinese developers: Reuters Wednesday reported year-to-date stock prices fell 87.8% for Sinic Holdings, currently in Fitch Ratings’ ‘restricted default’ after failing to make an October 18 bond payment valued, according to The Guardian, at USD246 million; 80.2% for Evergrande itself; 78.3% for E-House, 58.5% for Fantasia Holdings and 54.6% for Kaisa Group, which defaulted in 2015 and had bonds reach record lows.
Estimates of the Chinese real estate market’s size range from 16 to 25% of the Chinese gross domestic product, according to The Guardian. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s aim to transform the country’s economy from one of debt-fuelled “inflated” growth to one of improved “quality and returns” included imposing regulations on developers that limited their capacity to borrow. A Guardian comment piece from economist George Magnus published on October 15 made reference to China’s “ghost cities” and “rampant credit creation” that has given rise to high vacancy rates and the “financialisaton of housing”.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Dutch financial institution ING Group reported today in its quarterly results an impairment charge of €194 million euros (approximately US$285.6 million). However, as a result of selling an equity stake in rival ABN AMRO, the net profit of €2.48 billion, was 18% higher than last year.
The impairment charge is a result of risky investments, including RBMS (mortgage) investments backed by subprime loans and Alt-A loans, which are made to borrowers with a slightly better credit profile than those in the subprime category, as well as from collateral debt obligations (CDOs).
CEO Michel Tilmant said that “solid risk management” shields ING from the worst effects of the financial crisis. “ING’s exposure to the riskiest assets is limited, and the RMBS investments we selected have a high level of structural credit protection to absorb significant losses as the U.S. housing crisis deepens,” added Tilmant.