Athletes by their very nature like to be in control of their destiny, which is why, on the eve of the London 2012 Olympic Games, there have been so many selection appeals – in taekwondo, fencing, triathlon, rowing, rhythmic gymnastics, diving and modern pentathlon.
Many are opportunistic and understandable or wild last-minute stabs to ensure no stone has been left unturned in the battle to make the GB team.
But many others have great legitimacy. Many athletes, not just those involved in high profile cases such as taekwondo player Aaron Cook, can rightly feel that the UK sporting system has failed them badly.
This is because some of the country's top athletes have had no control. Their sporting careers have been determined by blazer wearing officials whose opinion overweighs any objective criteria.
Circumstances in taekwondo over the past fortnight have exposed the flaws in this system. UK Sport has being missing in action – it has distanced itself from any responsibility over national governing bodies – even though the taxpayer and national lottery player are contributing the £100 million a year to keep many of these sports solvent.
For nearly four years UK Sport has been monitoring each sport to extract the optimum chance of Olympic medals but now, on the eve of that performance, worryingly significant governance issues are bubbling to the surface.
The British Olympic Association has tried to enforce some responsibility, by demanding adherence to the various selection policies, but its power is largely limited to Games-time operations once the team has been selected.
The Minister for Sport Hugh Robertson has been relatively quiet too, claiming to want to have the best team to win medals, but his Ministry has been lax in its oversight of many of the smaller sports procedures.
In this vacuum of scrutiny, many national governing bodies have instituted secretive, and on occasion, completely subjective policies where there is zero accountability.
Seemingly the one fundamental value – athletes' rights – has been overlooked within these policies. The sports appeals system restricts objections to whether the selection policy has been implemented fairly, but then sends the selection back to the same group of selectors for more clandestine meetings.
What happened to the notions of justice, procedural fairness and transparency? Surely the Olympic team shouldn't be a function of how good a lawyer an athlete can hire?
In the United States most of the team selections are objective. It is a cruel one-shot chance. Compete in the Olympic trials, finish in the top two (for swimming) or the top three (for track and field) and you are in the team. Injury or illnesses are not considered.
World rankings, Olympic medals, having a relative as a sponsor / selector / coach are immaterial: it all comes down to a single performance. Athletes in combat sports earn their place with victory at a selection tournament. Such a black and white approach has its failings of course, notwithstanding that the country's best medal hope might dip out by 100th of a second, but athletes are accepting of such a model simply because they know where they stand.
In Australia and Canada many of the sports have adopted a similar performance-based system. But those that haven't are required to publish their selection criteria openly on websites. Appeals are heard by quite separate selection panels. It may well have been the case that Cook's rival, Lutalo Muhammad would have been selected by both selection panels if such a system existed here in the UK, but at least Cook, and the public, would have some faith that the system was fairer.
GB Taekwondo has come in for particularly harsh criticism of late and rightly so. Even after three selection meetings, the taekwondo selection policy has remained secret. As outsiders we are puzzled by the decision and can only infer it has included an overweight “subjective'” component. For how else could a relatively inexperienced Muhammad, ranked 59 in the world, earn the Olympic berth repeatedly ahead of the world number one Cook?
Source: blogs.telegraph.co.uk
Tokyo named the world's most expensive city for visitors (London slips to 25th) - Daily Mail
By Damien Gayle
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Japan has been named the world's most expensive city in a new survey of living costs for expatriates.
The Japanese capital overtook Luanda, capital of Angola, to claim the top spot, while the Land of the Rising Sun's second city, Osaka, came in third.
London still ranks among the top 25 most expensive cities, but lost seven places from last year after gains by a number of Asian and Australian cities, including Melbourne.
Land of the rising prices: Tokyo's Shinjuku district. The Japanese capital has been named the world's most expensive city for visiting foreigners
The survey, by consultancy firm Mercer, analyses costs faced by visitors from the U.S., so the weakening of sterling against the dollar drove the decline in London's position.
Birmingham moved in the opposite direction, jumping 17 places to 133rd and overtaking Aberdeen (148) and Glasgow (161) after both Scottish cities fell.
Belfast is still the UK's least expensive city in the poll, but jumped 13 places to 165th place.
Mercer's research showed average rent for a luxury, unfurnished two bedroom apartment in London is one of the highest in Europe at 2,800 per month, compared with 1,925 in Paris and 1,506 in Rome.
Cinema-going is also an expensive activity in the capital, with admission costing an average of 12, nearly twice the price of tickets in Rome, Madrid and Berlin.
Beautiful... but dangerous: Luanda and other African cities feature in the top 20 of the list because of the cost of finding secure accommodation for expatriate workers
Mercer's UK head of data and product services, Milan Taylor, said: 'Despite price increases on goods and services most UK cities moved down in the ranking this year, following the loss in value of the British pound against the U.S. dollar.
'However, Birmingham and Belfast bucked the trend, moving up mainly because rental costs for expatriates increased a fair bit and price increases in these cities were higher than in say London and Glasgow.'
London is still more expensive than other leading tourist cities, including New York, in 33rd place, Paris - which fell 10 places to 37th - and Rome, which has fallen to 42nd.
The strength of emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific and struggles in the eurozone are reflected in the results.
Most European cities surveyed, including Athens, Madrid and Lisbon, slid down the rankings, while every surveyed city in Australia, China, Japan and New Zealand climbed, with Tokyo coming top.
Luanda and other African cities feature in the top 20 of the list because of the cost of finding secure accommodation for expatriate workers.
Brazilian cities Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are also more expensive than London at 12th and 13th places respectively.
Pakistani city Karachi came bottom of the list, where the cost of living is under a third of that in Tokyo.
THE TOP 25 MOST EXPENSIVE CITIES IN THE WORLD FOR FOREIGN VISITORS
Here is a list of the most expensive 25 cities. The 2011 ranking is in brackets:
1. Tokyo, Japan (2)
2. Luanda, Angola (1)
3. Osaka, Japan (6)
4. Moscow, Russia (4) (right)
5. Geneva, Switzerland (5)
6. Zurich, Switzerland (7)
7. Singapore, Singapore (8)
8. N'Djamena, Chad (3)
9. Hong Kong, Hong Kong (9)
10. Nagoya, Japan (11)
11. Sydney, Australia (14) (middle right)
12. Sao Paulo, Brazil (10)
13. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (12) (bottom right)
14. Bern, Switzerland (16)
15. Melbourne, Australia (21)
16. Shanghai, China (21)
17. Beijing, China (20)
18. Oslo, Norway (15)
19. Perth, Australia (30)
20. Libreville, Gabon (12)
21. Copenhagen, Denmark (17)
22. Seoul, South Korea (19)
23. Canberra, Australia (34)
24. Brisbane, Australia (31)
25. London, United Kingdom (18)
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
The marriage of church and state is anything but gay - The Guardian
The relationship was never on. The two of them hated each other and bickered from the start. There have been rows, bust-ups, trial separations and expensive lawyers, but they are irreconcilable. It is time to call a halt. The marriage of England's church and state is anything but gay.
Henry VIII's leadership of the church made sense at the time. It freed England from the religious bonds of Rome. But 1535 is not 2012. This week's Home Office document on gay marriage proposes that same-sex civil partnerships be called marriages, like the others. We can ask why, at these of all times, David Cameron should want to stir this episcopal hornets' nest. He apparently has debts to pay the gay community. But he is adamant for change, insisting at the same time that "no religious organisation will be forced to conduct same-sex marriages". They will be legally exempt.
If any proof were needed for church disestablishment, it is the capacity of canon lawyers to find quarrels in straws. What consenting adults do in private should be of no concern to governments, and that applies to worship as much as sex. If grownups want to dress in Tudor costume, douse babies in water, intone over the dead and do strange things with wine and wafers, it is a free country. But for a Christian sect to claim ownership of the legal definition of a human relationship is way out of order.
The church has a dreadful record on marriage. Rome placed chastity and celibacy as the highest state of man (and woman), while marriage was for the fallen. As Milton said, the church regarded matrimony as a state of disgrace, "a work of the flesh, almost a defilement". Only when medieval bishops saw where the money was did they declare marriage "so sacramental that no adultery or desertion could dissolve it".
Throughout the middle ages the church struggled to gain control of what had been an essentially secular contract between men and women. It was not until the 13th century that weddings had to be hallowed by a priest, even if this meant little more than an exchange of vows in a porch. Churches tried to bribe couples to the altar, as by giving them sides of bacon (hence "bringing home the bacon"). Common law marriage in England was not outlawed until 1753.
The current argument over gay marriage is near incomprehensible, except in terms of Anglican conservatism. All sexes can now be legally wed in registered premises and call themselves married. The word has changed its usage to embrace them. Gay people are now demanding the social status of "marrieds" and, more controversially, that the church be allowed to marry under licence.
The first demand is for lexicographers and seems harmless. The second is a matter between gay people and the church authorities. The government is not insisting on anything. It is specifically providing for churches to be exempt from any requirement of access for gay people. Yet the church seems desperate for a fight. It behaves like an elephant bitten by a gnat.
Given that only a quarter of weddings take place in Anglican churches, the number of gay couples wanting such a service must be small. Some churches already "bless" gay civil partnerships, as they do divorcees. Yet the church's lawyers claim that any exemption "could be challenged" by some litigious and theologically apostate homosexual under the European convention on human rights.
Anything these days can be challenged, but such a case is unlikely to prevail, given the convention's defence of religious freedom. The church has long refused to marry divorcees, and a local church can deny marriage to those with no parochial connection. I am not aware of any being dragged to a European court by irate suitors.
Canon lawyers protest that, even so, exemption would create a conflict between "separate categories" of civil and religious marriage. That is a difference, not a conflict, and hardly more terrible, as "senior church figures" tell the Daily Telegraph, than "any rift since the reign of Henry VIII".
This difference arises only because the Anglican church has long enjoyed a peculiar legal privilege of being able to register weddings in its own buildings. But such ritualising of a legal contract can now can take place in most stately homes. The church may moan about an offence to family tradition, but given its casual readiness to marry the absurdly young, it is hardly an ideal matrimonial counsellor. As for its complaint that gay marriage "raises the sort of problems that no one has had to address before", it should try joining the 21st century.
The church has been on the reactionary side in almost every political and social reform of the past two centuries. It opposed popular enfranchisement, secular schooling, easier divorce and legalised homosexuality. It continues to defy the law on gender equality in respect of bishops. This may be lovably fuddy-duddy to some, but the claim to parliamentary and legal privilege is an anachronism.
The government is proposing no more than to remove what in secular and civil terms is a terminological distinction between men and women. If the church wants to make this a Thomas Becket issue, that is its affair. The issue should not condition the action of government.
The Anglican church emerges from this row as absurdly pedantic. It wants to sustain an antique religious bond to a modern democratic state, with the outrageous claim that this should be a partnership of equals. The days when bishops could deny the franchise to Irish Catholics or demand a veto over the 1944 Education Act are over.
The government has honestly tried to meet theological objections to "marrying" gay couples through exemption. The church may fear a quarrel with the human rights lobby, but that is not the state's business. The only alternative is to strip the church of its special licence to register weddings altogether, and have done with "by law established".
The church has kept its 16th-century status for years by ducking and weaving whenever the going gets rough. It will presumably do so again. The government should take at face value the bishops' claim that gay marriage "snips the thread" between church and state, and toss establishment into the bin.
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Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Youth arrested for cheating girls online - in.com
Hyderabad, Jun 12(PTI)A youth who dated and cheated as many as 22 girls by collecting money from them using his fake matrimonial profile has landed behind bars, police said today. After receiving complaint from a victim, Cyber Crime sleuths in the Crime Investigation Department arrested Ravi Kishore Bojanki from Masab Tank here yesterday, Superintendent of Police (Cyber Crimes) U Ramamohan said. On interrogation, Ravi confessed that he had created a profile on a matrimonial site falsely stating that he did IIT in Mumbai and MS from University of California and was presently working with a IT major here, the senior police officer said. "Upon seeing his impressive profile, many girls including the complainant contacted him and subsequently developed close relationship with him online and even fixed matrimonial alliance," Ramamohan said. However, Ravi, taking advantage of the situation and to earn easy money squeezed huge amounts from these girls by exploiting them emotionally with false stories like his father was undergoing surgery or his mother met with an accident, the police officer said, adding the accused extracted about Rs 12 lakh from the victims and was leading a lavish life. The accused confessed that he was a B Tech graduate and was making his earning by cheating girls and that he was in touch with 54 girls online, of whom he took money from 22 girls.
Source: ibnlive.in.com
Expat Experiments in London Fuel Drug Sales in Japan - Businessweek
Tadasuke Takahashi, a London hair stylist, supplements his income by taking part in medical studies that offer him about $1,000, bento box meals of rice and fish, and Japanese comic books during a 6-night hospital stay.
During his time in London clinics, Takahashi, 33, takes experimental drugs so researchers can determine if his reaction is any different than that of Caucasian volunteers. These overseas tests are part of an effort by Japan’s government and the pharmaceutical industry to speed up approvals in a market where a complex regulatory process had delayed treatments for an aging population for years after U.S. and European clearance.
The changes are now yielding results. They have spurred double-digit growth in sales for Pfizer Inc. (PFE) (PFE) and GlaxoSmithKline Plc in Japan, as the debt crisis depresses revenue in Europe and growth slows in the U.S.
“It has been a terrific two years for Pfizer Japan, as we have had over 20 submissions” for approval, said Jorge Puente, president of Pfizer’s Asia Pacific and Canada regions, in an interview. The country’s drug regulator “has become flexible, in my experience, and is open to engage in discussions to try to understand the position of the company.”
Demand for diabetes, cancer and dementia treatments is rising in Japan, the world’s most rapidly aging nation with people 65 or older representing 23.3 percent of the population, according to a government report. Growing social acceptance of medical treatment for mental illnesses is also driving sales of depression and schizophrenia drugs, according to market researcher IMS Health Inc., which says Japan will remain the world’s second-largest market behind the U.S. in 2015.
Sales Surge
Revenue at New York-based Pfizer, the market leader, rose 11 percent to 576 billion yen ($7.3 billion) in Japan last year as the overall market grew 6.9 percent, according to IMS. Glaxo’s Japan pharmaceutical sales jumped 28 percent last year, a trend that continued in the most recent quarter ended March. The London-based company recorded the steepest growth in sales last year among the top 20 drugmakers in Japan, IMS said.
Sales there will help drugmakers offset a decline in Europe, whose share of spending on medicines will drop to 19 percent in 2015 from 27 percent in 2005, Danbury, Connecticut- based IMS said. Glaxo’s sales fell 4 percent in the region and were unchanged in the U.S. last year. Pfizer’s European sales dropped 5 percent, while U.S. sales slid 7 percent.
New Rules
Revenue is rising in Japan because the government is trying to get its aging citizens access to the latest treatments as their health declines. Lawmakers implemented a pricing program that pays more for new medicines that offer a significant improvement in patients’ quality of life and health compared with older therapies. In another change, drugmakers can avoid repetition of expensive studies by recruiting expatriates like Takahashi, a native of Nagoya in central Japan, from London to Hawaii, speeding approval times.
“The Japanese government in the last ten years or so has made it so drugmakers now go through a much less onerous process to get approval,” said Jonathan MacQuitty, a Menlo Park, California-based partner at health-care venture capital firm Abingworth. “That has coincided with Asia becoming a more important market, where growth is going to occur.”
Abingworth invests in SFJ Pharmaceuticals Inc., which helps companies including Pfizer introduce drugs in Japan.
Pricing Program
Under a pricing program that began in 2010 and was renewed in April, new medicines that offer a significant benefit to patients over existing treatments may command a price as much as 120 percent higher than those of older drugs, according to Alan Thomas, director of Japan business planning and analytics, for IMS.
Japan’s biennial price-cutting plan also was revised, resulting in more than 400 compounds receiving lower price reductions or being exempted this year under a new set of criteria, Thomas said.
“That system is stimulating the right behavior,” Glaxo (GSK) Chief Executive Officer Andrew Witty said in an interview. “It’s attracting people to bring innovation into the Japanese marketplace.”
Before regulatory reform in Japan, U.S. and European drugmakers conducted the three required phases of clinical trials in Western countries. Once approved in those markets, companies had to repeat the entire process in patients in Japan, creating a “drug lag” and ballooning costs, said Robert DeBenedetto, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based SFJ Pharmaceuticals. That lag was as long as nine years after U.S. and European clearance, IMS said.
‘Drug Lag’
The trials had to be repeated because of concerns about side effects in Japanese, who tend to have lower body weight and may require lower doses than Caucasians, said Colin Vose, who led strategic business development for Japan and South Korea from 1999 to 2005 at Quintiles Transnational Corp., the biggest provider of testing and drug-trial services.
That changed in 1998, when Japan accepted the concept of bridging studies, which pave the way for clinical data gathered in one country to be used in regulatory filings in another. Bridging studies are small trials that observe both healthy Japanese participants and Caucasian subjects to study whether there are any differences in how a drug is processed in the body.
London Trials
Hammersmith Medicines Research, a London hospital center, recruits expatriates like Takahashi, the hair stylist, for bridging studies. Takahashi is monitored for adverse reactions at the hospital while he watches television shows and reads books in his native language.
“I do this two or three times a year,” Takahashi said in an interview. “I know there are risks, but most of these drugs have already been tested in Caucasians, so I’m not too worried.”
If a bridging study shows the drug’s safety is equivalent in both Japanese and Caucasian people, those results can supplement data from trials done in other countries to avoid repeating mid-stage studies in Japan. Late-stage trials are still required to be conducted in Japan for most therapy areas, according to IMS.
“That has allowed us to reduce the regulatory package that is needed and to reduce costs,” said Klaus Beck, head of research and development in Japan for London-based AstraZeneca Plc. (AZN)
Japan’s example may have implications for drugmakers trying to expand in China, whose regulatory guidelines will probably evolve in a similar fashion to its neighbor, according to Quintiles’ Vose.
“One would hope we will have learned by our experiences in remodeling the way we’ve approached Japan,” Vose said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Makiko Kitamura in London at mkitamura1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net
Anti-influenza virus medicine Tamiflu packages and capsules are displayed at a Tokyo pharmacy. Photograph: Yoshikazu Tsuno via AFP/Getty ImagesSource: www.businessweek.com
It probably depends on what you buy / do. Personally Sydney has been the most expensive place I've visited. There is virtually no way of living cheaply there. Whereas in places like Singapore, there are cheaper places to eat etc.
- KL, IOM, 13/6/2012 06:19
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