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This book is based on the premise that being good is just not good enough in today's competitive environment. For hotel owners and managers who want to achieve lasting business success through a root and branch review of key processes, How To Run a Great Hotel is a 'must read'. It will serve as a personal business consultant for the hotel professional, probing and testing their thinking across four critical themes which are proven to drive excellence. The content focuses less on day-to-day operations and more on big picture concerns such as strategy development, enhancing leadership skills, engaging employees and attaining customer focus, all of which are central to building a great hotel. Without clear direction in these important areas to guide activities, ongoing daily effort can be counterproductive. It's easy for hoteliers to lose sight of their goals when, engulfed by operational demands, they are often forced to just do rather than to think about what they are doing. This book provides the reader with an opportunity to step back and take a fresh look at their hotel, no matter where it currently lies in its life cycle. The purpose of the book is to get them to question what it is they are doing, why they are doing it and to offer guidance on how they can make it even better. The book is easy to read, practical, and action oriented. It will help the reader to define clear plans with measurable goals for improved personal and business performance.Contents: Acknowledgements; Foreword; Preface; Introduction; Theme 1 - Define Direction; Chapter 1. What is a strategic map and how can it help you to achieve excellence?; Chapter 2. How can you create a strategic map for your hotel?; Chapter 3. How can you measure the impact of your strategic map over time?; Theme 2 - Lead to Suceed; Chapter 4. What does leading people actually involve?; Chapter 5. How can you improve leadership effectiveness at your hotel?; Chapter 6. How can you measure leadership effectiveness over time?; Theme 3 - Engage Your Employees; Chapter 7. What does engaging your employees actually involve?; Chapter 8. What can you do to more fully engage your employees?; 9. How can you measure employee engagement levels over time?; Theme 4 - Captivate your customers; Chapter 10. What is SERVICEPLUSONE and why is it important?; Chapter 11. How can you attain SERVICEPLUSONE at your hotel?; Chapter 12. How can you measure the impact of SERVICEPLUSONE over time?; Make it Happen; Theme 1 - Define Direction; Theme 2 - Lead to Suceed; Theme 3 - Engage Your Employees; Theme 4 - Captivate Your Customers; Looking ahead; Tools and Resources; Index.

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Doreen Massey is one of the most profound thinkers in contemporary human geography, and her work addresses fundamental issues with great insight. This is a work of enormous ambition, breadth, and depth, and not a little complexity. - David M. Smith, Queen Mary, University of London "The reason for my enthusiasm for this book is that Doreen Massey manages to describe a certain way of perceiving movement in space which I have been - and still am - working with on different levels in my work: i.e. the idea that space is not something static and neutral, a frozen entity, but is something intertwined with time and thus ever changing . Doreen′s descriptions of her journey through England for example are clear and precise accounts of this idea, and she very sharply characterizes the attempts not to recognize this idea as utopian and nostalgic." - Olaffur Eliasson "Destined to be widely read by many who are not geographers... in a publishing market currently so driven by what publishers think students will read, its lack of fit into established genres is hugely refreshing... a great book to read in terms of its head-on engagement with the spatial." - Geographical Research In this book, Doreen Massey makes an impassioned argument for revitalising our imagination of space. She takes on some well-established assumptions from philosophy, and some familiar ways of characterising the 21st century world, and shows how they restrain our understanding of both the challenge and the potential of space. The way we think about space matters. It inflects our understandings of the world, our attitudes to others, our politics. It affects, for instance, the way we understand globalisation, the way we approach cities, the way we develop, and practice, a sense of place. If time is the dimension of change then space is the dimension of the social: the contemporaneous co-existence of others. That is its challenge, and one that has been persistently evaded. For Space pursues its argument through philosophical and theoretical engagement, and through telling personal and political reflection. Doreen Massey asks questions such as how best to characterise these so-called spatial times, how it is that implicit spatial assumptions inflect our politics, and how we might develop a responsibility for place beyond place. This book is ′for space′ in that it argues for a reinvigoration of the spatiality of our implicit cosmologies. For Space is essential reading for anyone interested in space and the spatial turn in the social sciences and humanities. Serious, and sometimes irreverent, it is a compelling manifesto: for re-imagining spaces for these times and facing up to their challenge.

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In the title story Away From the Dead we meet Isaac Witbooi, a farm worker, who has to come to grips with losing everything including the graves of his entire deceased family. In After Spring a couple takes a holiday but we're drawn into the issue of identity: Even if they hadn't heard us speaking English earlier, they would have known our foreignness simply by sight. It is visible to them in our facial features, the way we wear our clothes, our hair. The fact that we are third and fifth generation South Africans respectively matters little to them. Making Challah is a touching picture of an ageing woman, and it uses the baking of challah as a wonderful metaphor of passing time. Ridwaan and Chadley are On the Train, a seemingly routine journey but somehow a dog has been acquired and it's been Chadley's first time to kill. Find out how it felt to be Andries Tatane who, on 13 April 2012, died during a service delivery protest in Ficksburg, South Africa. In the Narrative of Emily Louw, a true story, a young woman regrets not having given something to old Emily after listening to her sad story: At the second, a policeman had looked at the blanketed child, her worn face and bleeding feet and he had smirked, as though to indicate that her husband had left by choice and couldn't be blamed for his departure. Next is a thoughtful reflection on being called Muzungu when a white South African woman visits Uganda. From Dark is a rallying call to remember that illegal mining causes the deaths of hundreds every year. Zama-zamas (Zulu for 'chancers') live underground for months at a time, dying in police raids, fires, cave-ins and poor conditions. A young couple's outing goes horribly wrong in At the Seaside. Grandmother's great big wicker picnic basket, which was supposed to be a treat, takes the blame. An 'informal settlement' of zinc shacks on the flatlands sets the scene in Allotment. Warda Meintjes and her husband struggle to survive. A great stadium for the World Cup is being built but Warda's unborn child stops moving. The homeless were being rounded up by police, placed in trucks, driven out into the countryside and dumped. 'Thank God we're spared that,' one woman said. 'Don't fool yourself,' another replied. 'That is us. It has already happened to us.' In The Shark Mia's very sense of being gets overtaken by events. A dark story leading on to Development, darker still, but thought-provoking, and about what it is to be human. The Wall is almost surreal and deals with growing old on the street. Alletjie lives with her husband Jan Bakker and Solly, her disabled brother, next to an old mine built by Cornish miners in the 1880s. Their circumstances are a cut above those of Warda and her husband, yet, 'living on the old goats and chickens and a disability grant was never enough', and Alletjie who 'does everything' thinks it isn't fair, 'the mine owned her this future for herself'. Resurrecting again exerts a certain surreal appeal. A father takes to his bed because of a crushed pigeon or is it a metaphor for a crushed soul in the office? His son is told to pray but is there going to be a resurrection?

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Skylum’s Luminar AI is a great solution for both professional and amateur photographers who want to quickly create stunning photos. Luminar’s advanced AI-based tools eliminate hours of traditional editing tasks, whether you’re applying automatic tone and colour adjustments, replacing dreary skies with more dynamic ones, or retouching portraits to smooth skin, remove blemishes, and accentuate flattering facial features. For those who want to dig into editing, powerful tools give you full control over your RAW and JPEG images, including advanced features such as masks, blend modes, and lens correction. Luminar AI also works as a plug-in for other applications, such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, and Apple Photos, allowing round-trip editing and seamless integration with workflows you may already have in place.In this book you’ll learn all about:• AI editing: Luminar AI’s many AI-based tools eliminate hours of traditional editing tasks. Improve overall tone and color using just one slider, and enhance a sky using another without building masks or layers. Realistically replace the entire sky in one step, even when objects like buildings or trees intrude. Luminar identifies faces in photos, allowing you to smooth skin, sharpen eyes, brighten faces, and perform other portrait retouching tasks in minutes.• Expert editing: Take advantage of Luminar’s many professional tools to bring out the best versions of your photos. Enhance the look using tone controls and curves, dodging and burning, and tools built for specific types of images, such as Landscape Enhancer, Adjustable Gradient, and B & W Conversion. The Erase and Clone & Stamp tools make it easy to remove unexpected objects and glitches such as lens dust spots. Luminar’s RAW editing engine includes real-time noise reduction and advanced color processing and sharpening tools, all completely non-destructive and with the ability to step back through the history of edits.• Advanced editing: Use masks, blend modes, and lens corrections to combine edits and effects.• Creativity: Open your imagination with Luminar’s creative tools, which range from adding glow, texture, and dramatic looks to incorporating sunrays and objects into augmented skies.• Presets and LUTs (Lookup Tables): Learn how to use Luminar Looks presets and LUTs to bring the look of simulated film stocks and creative colour grades to your work.• Luminar Library: Organise and manage your photos in a central library where your source images can reside where you want them, whether that’s on your hard disk, a network volume, or in local cloud services folders such as Dropbox or Google Drive for remote backup.• Luminar plug-ins: If you already use other applications to organise your library or for photo editing, such as Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom Classic, Luminar AI also works as a plug-in that allows round-trip editing and seamless integration with the workflows you may already have in place.• Sharing images: Whether you’re printing your images or sharing them online, learn how to make your photos look their best no matter what output solution you need.

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“This book provides an excellent introduction to clinical psychology. Written in an accessible style, the text effectively combines theory and research with practice examples and case studies.”—Jason Davies, Professor of Forensic and Clinical Psychology, Swansea University “Comprehensive on key areas, theories and models.”—Jessica Fielding, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Bristol“Case formulations bring to life the various disorders presented here. A scholarly discussion of developments in clinical practice including third wave cognitive behavioural therapies is another unique strength. I highly recommend this as a key text for practitioner psychology trainees and health care professionals working in medical settings.”—Christina Liossi, Chair in Paediatric Psychology, University of Southampton and Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Psychology, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation TrustExtensively updated, this popular and accessibly written textbook outlines the latest research and therapeutic approaches within clinical psychology, alongside important developments in clinical practice. The book introduces and evaluates the conceptual models of mental health problems and their treatment, including second and third wave therapies.Each disorder is considered from a psychological, social and biological perspective and different intervention types are thoroughly investigated. Key updates to this edition include:•The development of case formulations for conditions within each chapter•An articulation and use of modern theories of psychopathology, including sections on the transdiagnostic approach, meta-cognitive therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy•An introduction to emerging mental health issues, such as internet gaming disorder•Challenging ‘stop and think’ boxes that encourage readers to address topical issues raised in each chapter, such as societal responses to topics as varied as psychopathy, paedophilia and the Black Lives Matter movement•New vocabulary collated into key terms boxes for easy reference Paul Bennett is Professor of Clinical and Health Psychology at the University of Swansea. He has previously worked as a clinical psychologist, as well as an academic at Cardiff and Bristol universities. He has published over 125 academic papers, in addition to a number of highly regarded student-focused booksPraise for the previous edition:"This book provided an invaluable orientation to the grounding theoretical principles of clinical health psychology, how this knowledge can be applied by psychologists in healthcare settings, particular assessment and intervention approaches and issues associated with working with patients in healthcare settings ... I would highly recommend this as a key text for clinical psychology trainees and postgraduates working or researching in medical settings across the lifespan, both as a general orientation tool and a resource to refer to with reference to specific presenting issues.Fleur-Michelle Coiffait, Doctoral student, University of Edinburgh, UK"The tone of this volume is well pitched; it is written in clear English yet without being over-simplified. New vocabulary is collated into ‘key terms’ boxes for easy reference at the end of the chapter – a useful device for the new student. Also proffered at chapter end are ‘For Discussion’ boxes, encouraging the reader to critically assess and compare the contents of the chapter, along with useful suggestions for further reading. With a good level of detail without swamping the reader, this volume is an excellent introduction to students of abnormal psychology."Hayley Burgess, Psychology Graduate

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Award-winning songwriter Linda Thompson breaks her silence, sharing the extraordinary story of her life, career, and epic romances with two of the most celebrated, yet enigmatic, modern American superstars-Elvis Presley and Bruce Jenner For the last forty years, award-winning songwriter Linda Thompson has quietly led one of the most remarkable lives in show business. The longtime live-in love of Elvis Presley, Linda first emerged into the limelight during the 1970s when the former beauty pageant queen caught the eye of the King. Their chance late-night encounter at a movie theater was the stuff of legend, and it marked the beginning of a whirlwind that would stretch across decades, leading to a marriage with Bruce Jenner, motherhood, and more drama than she ever could have imagined. Now, for the first time, Linda opens up about it all, telling the full story of her life, loves, and everything in between. From her humble beginnings in Memphis to her nearly five-year relationship with Elvis, she offers an intimate window into their life together, describing how their Southern roots fueled and sustained Graceland's greatest romance. Going inside their wild stories and tender moments, she paints a portrait of life with the King, as raucous as it is refreshing. But despite the joy they shared, life with Elvis also had darkness, and her account also presents an unsparing look at Elvis's twin demons-drug abuse and infidelity-forces he battled throughout their time together that would eventually end their relationship just eight months before his untimely death. It was in the difficult aftermath of Elvis's death that Linda found what she believed was her true home: the arms of Olympic gold medal-winner Bruce Jenner. Detailing her marriage to Bruce, Linda reveals the seemingly perfect life that they built with their two young sons-Brandon and Brody-before Bruce changed everything with a secret he'd been carrying his entire life, a secret that Linda herself kept for nearly thirty years, a secret that Bruce's transition to Caitlyn Jenner has finally laid bare for the world. Providing a candid look inside one of the most challenging moments of her life, Linda uncovers the struggles she went through as a woman and a mother, coming to terms with the reality of Bruce's identity and resolving to embrace him completely no matter what, even as it meant they could no longer be together. And yet, despite her marriage unraveling, her search for love was not over, eventually leading her to the legendary music producer and musician David Foster-a relationship that lasted for nineteen tumultuous years, resulting in a bond that spurred her songwriting career to new heights but also tested her like never before. Filled with compelling and poignant stories and sixteen pages of photographs, A Little Thing Called Life lovingly recounts Linda's incredible journey through the years, bringing unparalleled insight into three legendary figures.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSAVE A FORTUNE AND TRANSFORM YOUR LIFESTYLE IN 2022. If you're worried about the rising cost of living then INSTAGRAM SENSATION MONEY MUM is here to help you SAVE THOUSANDS WITHOUT EVEN NOTICING."Money Mum, here, coming to you, as always, with another money tip! You don't have to be wealthy or earn a huge salary to achieve all the things you want in life - and I'm here to show you how. Just by spending a little less on everyday small costs or being savvy with your choices, you will naturally have a little more for the finer things in life. My exciting new book will show you everything you need to know to save money and be truly happy forever. When you're trying to manage a busy family, it's easy to lose sight of the things that really matter and feel like you're drowning in worries while the pennies are drowning away. So many of us feel we have to pretend to be wealthier than we are and try to hide it when we can't afford something. Why though, when we are all sharing what we had for our tea and how many press ups we did that morning on social media, can't we be more honest about our finances? Why is there still so much shame and secrecy about being a bit strapped for cash, or in debt? I feel really strongly that it has got to change, and I'm here to get you through it.. I want to empower women and girls to take responsibility for their own financial futures. To have those difficult conversations and do the uncomfortable maths, because believe me one day you will be so glad you did. From starting small and making little changes to your everyday habits, through building a second income into your lifestyle, to going for the big goals in your life that you might think are out of your reach - this book will help you reboot your finances one money tip at a time.Because money isn't a secret recipe that only rich people know, it's a mindset and an attitude that anyone can have. And Money Mum is here, as always, to show you how.Now stick the kettle on, grab a pen and paper and let's start saving you some serious cash!"Inside you'll find:- My ultimate deals and tips, covering everything from shopping and bills to selling unwanted items - How to follow my weekly 'No Spend Day' and 'Make Money Day'- What your money mindset does to your anxiety levels and the impact social media has on your spending- Tips for getting the whole family talking about money from an early age- Spending tracker templates, charts and plenty of space for your own notes!

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With expert advice and helpful exercises, this charmingly designed, interactive workbook will help you find a path toward a calmer, happier daily life. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a psychological intervention program that teaches you various techniques to help you redirect away from your anxious mind and into the moment. While you can’t control what emotions come up in any given moment, you can control how you choose to respond to those emotions and thoughts, and to other people. With Finding Your Balance, you can express your feelings in a safe and constructive way. Stress, worry, and anxiety can make it hard to enjoy your days, and these feelings tend to build up over time. This useful workbook is a colorful, friendly guide that’s written to be straightforward and easily accessible, with the warm, caring feel of a guided journal. Inside, you’ll find a simple toolkit for reducing your anxiety, no matter where it pops up, including: Learn to separate yourself from your anxious thoughts Break unhelpful thought patterns Practice how to confront and manage your fears Find strategies for focusing on the present moment Practice techniques to keep anxiety at bay for the long haul Accompanied by engaging, inspirational illustrations, this guided workbook offers writing prompts, meditations, tracking exercises, and more—giving a gentle, eye-opening introduction to scientifically proven techniques to reduce anxiety in everyday life. With so much of our lives and contact going digital, the Guided Workbooks offer an intimate way to nurture your connection with yourself and the people around you. An entertaining way to get off your screen, the pages in these guided prompt books are great for writers and first-timers alike. Each workbook offers content around a different, compelling theme, filled with thoughtful questions, inspiration for composition, and interactive prompts to learn about yourself and the world around you. Beautifully designed on high-quality paper stock and full of mindful prompts, channel your inspiration as you put pen to paper to learn more about what inspires you. Other books in the series include:The Adulting Workbook, Finding Your Authentic Self, Stop Overthinking, 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health, 5-Minute Productivity Workbook, 3-Minute Positivity Workbook, The Anti-Anxiety Journal, Manifest Your Intentions, 369 Laws of Attraction Guided Workbook, Tarot: A Guided Workbook to Unlock and Explore Your Magical Intuition and Astrology: A Guided Workbook to Understand and Explore the Wisdom of the Universe.

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During the last months of the war, Josef Pieper saw the realization of a long-cherished plan to escape from the “lethal chaos” that was the Germany of that time, “plucked,” he writes, “as was Habakkuk, by the hair of his head . . . to be planted into a realm of the most peaceful seclusion, whose borders and exists were, of course, controlled by armed sentries.” There he made contact with a friend close-by, who possessed an amazing library, and Pieper hit upon the idea of reading the letters of Goethe from that library. Soon, however, he decided to read the entire Weimar edition of fifty volumes, which were brought to him in sequence, two or three at a time.The richness of this life revealing itself over a period of more than sixty years appeared before my gaze in its truly overpowering magnificence, which almost shattered my powers of comprehension – confined, as they had been, to the most immediate and pressing concerns. What a passionate focus on reality in all its forms, what an undying quest to chase down all that is in the world, what strength to affirm life, what ability to take part in it, what vehemence in the way he showed his dedication to it! Of course, too, what ability to limit himself to what was appropriate; what firm control in inhibiting what was purely aimless; what religious respect for the truth of being! I could not overcome my astonishment; and the prisoner entered a world without borders, a world in which the fact of being in prison was of absolutely no significance. But no matter how many astonishing things I saw in these unforgettable weeks of undisturbed inner focus, nothing was more surprising or unexpected than this: to realize how much of what was peculiar to this life occurred in carefully preserved seclusion; how much the seemingly communicative man who carried on a world-wide correspondence still never wanted to expose in words the core of his existence. It was precisely in the seclusion, the limitation, the silence of Goethe that made the strongest impact on Pieper. Here was modern Germany’s quintessential conversationalist intellectual, but the strength of his words came from the restraint behind them, even to the point of purposeful forgetting:The culmination is when the eighty-year-old sees forgetting not as a convulsive refusal to think of things, but as what could almost be termed a physiological process of simple forgetting as a function of life. He praises as “a great gift of the gods” . . . “the ethereal stream of forgetfulness” which he “was always able to value, to use, and to heighten.” However manifold the forms of this silence and of their unconscious roots and conscious motives may have been, is it not always the possibility of hearing, the possibility of a purer perception of reality that is aimed at? And so, is not Goethe’s type of silence above all the silence of one who listens? . . . This listening silence is much deeper than the mere refraining from words and speech in human intercourse. It means a stillness, which, like a breath, has penetrated into the inmost chamber of one’s own soul. It is meant, in the Goethean “maxim,” to “deny myself as much as possible and to take up the object into myself as purely as it is possible to do.” . . . The meaning of being silent is hearing – a hearing in which the simplicity of the receptive gaze at things is like the naturalness, simplicity, and purity of one receiving a confidence, the reality of which is creatura, God’s creation. And insofar as Goethe’s silence is in this sense a hearing silence, to that extent it has the status of the model and paradigm – however much, in individual instances, reservations and criticism are justified. One could remain circumspectly silent about this exemplariness after the heroic nihilism of our age has proclaimed the attitude of the knower to be by no means that of a silent listener but rather as that of self-affirmation over against being: insight and knowledge are naked defiance, the severest endangering of existence in the midst of the superior strength of concrete being. The resistance of knowledge opposes the oppressive superior power. However, that the knower is not a defiant rebel against concrete being, but above all else a listener who stays silent and, on the basis of his silence, a hearer – it is here that Goethe represents what, since Pythagoras, may be considered the silence tradition of the West.Pieper concludes his remarkable find with this summation:When such talk, which one encounters absolutely everywhere in workshops and in the marketplace – and as a constant temptation – , when such deafening talk, literally out to thwart listening, is linked to hopelessness, we have to ask is there not in silence – listening silence – necessarily a shred of hope? For who could listen in silence to the language of things if he did not expect something to come of such awareness of the truth? And, in a newly founded discipline of silence, is there not a chance not merely to overcome the sterility of everyday talk but also to overcome its brother, hopelessness – possibly if only to the extent that we know the true face of this relationship? I know that here quite different forces come into play which are beyond human control, and perhaps the circulus has to be broken through in a different place. However, one may ask: could not the “quick, strict resolution” to remain silent at the same time serve as a kind of training in hope?

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Praise for MANAGING THE NEW CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP “Gordon delivers an impressive synthesis of the newest methods for engaging customers in relationships that last. No organization today can succeed without the mastery of customer relationship management strategy fundamentals. But to win in the decades ahead, you must also understand and capitalize on the rapidly evolving social computing, mobility and customer analytics technologies described in this book. Checklists, self-assessments and graphical frameworks deliver pragmatic value for the practicing manager.” — William Band, Vice-President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, MA “A very comprehensive and practical book on managing relationships with existing customers in the age of social media! I particularly enjoyed reading chapters on teaching customers new behaviors, which were illustrated by excellent case studies.” — Jagdish N. Sheth, Ph.D. , Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, Emory University, Atlanta, GA “The strategic breadth and depth of this book is impressive as Gordon explores the new customer and how to plan and manage the new customer relationship. I found his review of strategies, techniques and technologies for social, mobile, mass customization and customer analytics to be particularly insightful. Gordon urges marketers to live and breathe one-through-one marketing and to master social engagement techniques. The checklists, cases and examples make the content grounded and actionable. This is an important, current and detailed book to which every organization should pay close attention to improve customer relationships and create shareholder value.” — Marcus Ruebsam, Vice-President, Line-of-Business Marketing Solutions, SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany “There are many books on CRM, but I recommend this one because Gordon’s book does what others do not. He considers CRM strategy and evolves it to recognize a new customer, one who is always connected, socially available and influential. The book doesn’t just discuss many point solutions for specific marketing challenges; it integrates technology with strategy, people, process and customer analytics to develop relationships continuously. This book is a broad and deep exploration of CRM, providing practical, fact-based perspectives that every company can use to validate and rethink their customer and stakeholder relationships.” — Helmuth Cepeda, Small, Medium and Distribution Director, Microsoft Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico Marketing has changed fundamentally in the last few years and has become an entirely new discipline, one that focuses on a new customer and a new relationship, framed by new principles, strategies, processes, roles and tactics. Individual customers are economically targeted and served, and treated as segments of one rather than members of a target market. Word of mouth and recommendations are vital as customers influence one another more than a company can do within its own advertising or customer dialogs. Today’s customer is always online, accessible and connected. Now marketing is not only direct and customer-specific but a continuous process by which companies seek to engage customers and be progressively more relevant, attractive and valuable. This is the era of a new customer relationship—an individual relationship that is social, mobile and local, influenced by peers and shaped by cognitive, behavioural and social psychological principles. New techniques, processes and technologies transform what it means to implement marketing strategy and achieve improved business results. The new customer relationship requires that even those companies that have embraced customer relationship management ought to reassess their customer management. Now every marketing decision, whether online or in the physical world, whether of a technological nature, whether it affects customer experience, communications, dialogs, teaching or organizational memory, every decision should be seen through a single lens focused on the individual customers who matter most. Managing the New Customer Relationship provides a strategic and practical guide to help companies attract, develop, sustain and build more valuable relationships by: Expanding upon existing customer relationship management theories, concepts and methods to make these considerations more useful, strategic and contemporary Recognizing the profound importance of social media and how to plan customer engagement in the social context of each customer Exploring new technologies that offer new opportunities for engaging customers, including mobile, local, the cloud and customer analytics Demonstrating how to develop customer-specific understanding, predict what customers will want next, and how to manage each individual customer, and Offering perspectives to help the organization endure by focusing a chain of relationships on the end customer and creating meaning for stakeholders that can make relationships more intense and robust. Managing the New Customer Relationship is for organizations of all sizes in all industries, for private- and public-sector organizations and not-for-profits. In short, every organization can apply the new principles, strategies, techniques and technologies discussed here to recognize important marketplace changes, plan to improve relationship and financial results and capture new shareholder value from new customer relationships.

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"Creativity in marketing communications is one of the most potent ways for companies to increase their productivity. This book contains case after case, which demonstrates the leveraging power of innovative thinking in advertising today." -Joseph E. DeDeo Chairman of Latin America,Young & Rubicam, Inc. The days of expensive network television rollouts of new advertising campaigns are over. Targeted, niche-driven selective marketing is less expensive, more profitable, and far more sensible in today's thriving culture of special-interest media. Here's your chance to learn all about this revolutionary new marketing strategy. Written by the advertising genius behind some of the most unforgettable campaigns of the past 30 years, Divide and Conquer teaches you what you need to know to conduct your own successful selective-marketing campaigns. Fifteen fascinating and instructive case studies demonstrate how to identify your markets precisely, get to know them inside and out, fashion a message that they'll hear and respond to, and find the perfect media mix to deliver your message. No matter what size company you work for, in Divide and Conquer you'll learn valuable lessons about how to find your customers, reach out to them, and forge profitable, long-term relationships with them. With the advent of cable TV, the Web, and other new platforms, media have become as diverse as the increasingly fragmented markets they serve -dangerous terrain for one-size-fits-all advertising. In the 1980s, a handful of visionaries began developing an alternative designed to take advantage of today's thriving culture of special-interest media. It's called selective marketing, and unlike mass-market advertising, it doesn't tell people what they want, it asks them. Selective marketing uses sophisticated intelligence-gathering techniques to pinpoint niche markets and learn all about them. It plies everything from print, TV, and radio, to Web technology, fax response, and even performance art to capture specific markets and forge lasting relationships with them. And it helps clients find the best ways to satisfy or surpass customer expectations. In Divide and Conquer, Harry Webber reveals the secrets behind this revolutionary new marketing strategy. The advertising genius behind such memorable campaigns as "I am stuck on Band-Aid," Webber clearly and concisely lays out basic selective-marketing principles and practices. With the help of 15 selective-marketing case studies, he demonstrates that any advertiser can use his proven techniques to identify markets, create the right message for a particular market, and develop the most effective media mix to deliver that message. Fascinating and instructive success stories, the case studies provide a unique insider's look at selective marketing in action. You'll learn how selective marketing was used to restore the investment community's faith in Ford; win the alternative adult market for Dr Pepper; entice baby boomers to Kentucky Fried Chicken; and even forge an alliance between the Crips and Bloods street gangs for the Los Angeles city attorney's office. Each case study presents concise descriptions of the target market, marketing challenge, selective-marketing solution, and outcome, and concludes with a quick summary of important selective-marketing lessons learned. Throughout the book, sidebars spell out key selective-marketing principles embodied by the case at hand. The first practical guide to the revolutionary marketing strategy that threatens to make mass marketing a thing of the past, Divide and Conquer is essential reading for marketing managers, entrepreneurs, and professionals working in small businesses, midsize companies, and large corporations.

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A comprehensive guide to everything scientists need to know about data management, this book is essential for researchers who need to learn how to organize, document and take care of their own data. Researchers in all disciplines are faced with the challenge of managing the growing amounts of digital data that are the foundation of their research. Kristin Briney offers practical advice and clearly explains policies and principles, in an accessible and in-depth text that will allow researchers to understand and achieve the goal of better research data management. Data Management for Researchers includes sections on: * The data problem – an introduction to the growing importance and challenges of using digital data in research. Covers both the inherent problems with managing digital information, as well as how the research landscape is changing to give more value to research datasets and code. * The data lifecycle – a framework for data’s place within the research process and how data’s role is changing. Greater emphasis on data sharing and data reuse will not only change the way we conduct research but also how we manage research data. * Planning for data management – covers the many aspects of data management and how to put them together in a data management plan. This section also includes sample data management plans. * Documenting your data – an often overlooked part of the data management process, but one that is critical to good management; data without documentation are frequently unusable. * Organizing your data – explains how to keep your data in order using organizational systems and file naming conventions. This section also covers using a database to organize and analyze content. * Improving data analysis – covers managing information through the analysis process. This section starts by comparing the management of raw and analyzed data and then describes ways to make analysis easier, such as spreadsheet best practices. It also examines practices for research code, including version control systems. * Managing secure and private data – many researchers are dealing with data that require extra security. This section outlines what data falls into this category and some of the policies that apply, before addressing the best practices for keeping data secure. * Short-term storage – deals with the practical matters of storage and backup and covers the many options available. This section also goes through the best practices to insure that data are not lost. * Preserving and archiving your data – digital data can have a long life if properly cared for. This section covers managing data in the long term including choosing good file formats and media, as well as determining who will manage the data after the end of the project. * Sharing/publishing your data – addresses how to make data sharing across research groups easier, as well as how and why to publicly share data. This section covers intellectual property and licenses for datasets, before ending with the altmetrics that measure the impact of publicly shared data. * Reusing data – as more data are shared, it becomes possible to use outside data in your research. This chapter discusses strategies for finding datasets and lays out how to cite data once you have found it. This book is designed for active scientific researchers but it is useful for anyone who wants to get more from their data: academics, educators, professionals or anyone who teaches data management, sharing and preservation. "An excellent practical treatise on the art and practice of data management, this book is essential to any researcher, regardless of subject or discipline." —Robert Buntrock, Chemical Information Bulletin

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The revised second edition of this established text offers readers a significantly expanded introduction to the effects of radiation on metals and alloys. It describes the various processes that occur when energetic particles strike a solid, inducing changes to the physical and mechanical properties of the material. Specifically it covers particle interaction with the metals and alloys used in nuclear reactor cores and hence subject to intense radiation fields. It describes the basics of particle-atom interaction for a range of particle types, the amount and spatial extent of the resulting radiation damage, the physical effects of irradiation and the changes in mechanical behavior of irradiated metals and alloys.Updated throughout, some major enhancements for the new edition include improved treatment of low- and intermediate-energy elastic collisions and stopping power, expanded sections on molecular dynamics and kinetic Monte Carlo methodologies describing collision cascade evolution, new treatment of the multi-frequency model of diffusion, numerous examples of RIS in austenitic and ferritic-martensitic alloys, expanded treatment of in-cascade defect clustering, cluster evolution, and cluster mobility, new discussion of void behavior near grain boundaries, a new section on ion beam assisted deposition, and reorganization of hardening, creep and fracture of irradiated materials (Chaps 12-14) to provide a smoother and more integrated transition between the topics.The book also contains two new chapters. Chapter 15 focuses on the fundamentals of corrosion and stress corrosion cracking, covering forms of corrosion, corrosion thermodynamics, corrosion kinetics, polarization theory, passivity, crevice corrosion, and stress corrosion cracking. Chapter 16 extends this treatment and considers the effects of irradiation on corrosion and environmentally assisted corrosion, including the effects of irradiation on water chemistry and the mechanisms of irradiation-induced stress corrosion cracking. The book maintains the previous style, concepts are developed systematically and quantitatively, supported by worked examples, references for further reading and end-of-chapter problem sets. Aimed primarily at students of materials sciences and nuclear engineering, the book will also provide a valuable resource for academic and industrial research professionals.Reviews of the first edition:"…nomenclature, problems and separate bibliography at the end of each chapter allow to the reader to reach a straightforward understanding of the subject, part by part. … this book is very pleasant to read, well documented and can be seen as a very good introduction to the effects of irradiation on matter, or as a good references compilation for experimented readers." - Pauly Nicolas, Physicalia Magazine, Vol. 30 (1), 2008“The text provides enough fundamental material to explain the science and theory behind radiation effects in solids, but is also written at a high enough level to be useful for professional scientists. Its organization suits a graduate level materials or nuclear science course… the text was written by a noted expert and active researcher in the field of radiation effects in metals, the selection and organization of the material is excellent… may well become a necessary reference for graduate students and researchers in radiation materials science.” - L.M. Dougherty, 07/11/2008, JOM, the Member Journal of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society.

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During the last months of the war, Josef Pieper saw the realization of a long-cherished plan to escape from the “lethal chaos” that was the Germany of that time, “plucked,” he writes, “as was Habakkuk, by the hair of his head . . . to be planted into a realm of the most peaceful seclusion, whose borders and exists were, of course, controlled by armed sentries.” There he made contact with a friend close-by, who possessed an amazing library, and Pieper hit upon the idea of reading the letters of Goethe from that library. Soon, however, he decided to read the entire Weimar edition of fifty volumes, which were brought to him in sequence, two or three at a time.The richness of this life revealing itself over a period of more than sixty years appeared before my gaze in its truly overpowering magnificence, which almost shattered my powers of comprehension – confined, as they had been, to the most immediate and pressing concerns. What a passionate focus on reality in all its forms, what an undying quest to chase down all that is in the world, what strength to affirm life, what ability to take part in it, what vehemence in the way he showed his dedication to it! Of course, too, what ability to limit himself to what was appropriate; what firm control in inhibiting what was purely aimless; what religious respect for the truth of being! I could not overcome my astonishment; and the prisoner entered a world without borders, a world in which the fact of being in prison was of absolutely no significance. But no matter how many astonishing things I saw in these unforgettable weeks of undisturbed inner focus, nothing was more surprising or unexpected than this: to realize how much of what was peculiar to this life occurred in carefully preserved seclusion; how much the seemingly communicative man who carried on a world-wide correspondence still never wanted to expose in words the core of his existence. It was precisely in the seclusion, the limitation, the silence of Goethe that made the strongest impact on Pieper. Here was modern Germany’s quintessential conversationalist intellectual, but the strength of his words came from the restraint behind them, even to the point of purposeful forgetting:The culmination is when the eighty-year-old sees forgetting not as a convulsive refusal to think of things, but as what could almost be termed a physiological process of simple forgetting as a function of life. He praises as “a great gift of the gods” . . . “the ethereal stream of forgetfulness” which he “was always able to value, to use, and to heighten.” However manifold the forms of this silence and of their unconscious roots and conscious motives may have been, is it not always the possibility of hearing, the possibility of a purer perception of reality that is aimed at? And so, is not Goethe’s type of silence above all the silence of one who listens? . . . This listening silence is much deeper than the mere refraining from words and speech in human intercourse. It means a stillness, which, like a breath, has penetrated into the inmost chamber of one’s own soul. It is meant, in the Goethean “maxim,” to “deny myself as much as possible and to take up the object into myself as purely as it is possible to do.” . . . The meaning of being silent is hearing – a hearing in which the simplicity of the receptive gaze at things is like the naturalness, simplicity, and purity of one receiving a confidence, the reality of which is creatura, God’s creation. And insofar as Goethe’s silence is in this sense a hearing silence, to that extent it has the status of the model and paradigm – however much, in individual instances, reservations and criticism are justified. One could remain circumspectly silent about this exemplariness after the heroic nihilism of our age has proclaimed the attitude of the knower to be by no means that of a silent listener but rather as that of self-affirmation over against being: insight and knowledge are naked defiance, the severest endangering of existence in the midst of the superior strength of concrete being. The resistance of knowledge opposes the oppressive superior power. However, that the knower is not a defiant rebel against concrete being, but above all else a listener who stays silent and, on the basis of his silence, a hearer – it is here that Goethe represents what, since Pythagoras, may be considered the silence tradition of the West.Pieper concludes his remarkable find with this summation:When such talk, which one encounters absolutely everywhere in workshops and in the marketplace – and as a constant temptation – , when such deafening talk, literally out to thwart listening, is linked to hopelessness, we have to ask is there not in silence – listening silence – necessarily a shred of hope? For who could listen in silence to the language of things if he did not expect something to come of such awareness of the truth? And, in a newly founded discipline of silence, is there not a chance not merely to overcome the sterility of everyday talk but also to overcome its brother, hopelessness – possibly if only to the extent that we know the true face of this relationship? I know that here quite different forces come into play which are beyond human control, and perhaps the circulus has to be broken through in a different place. However, one may ask: could not the “quick, strict resolution” to remain silent at the same time serve as a kind of training in hope?

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Get the big picture on the vet tech's role and responsibilities in large animal care! A practical, comprehensive guide, Large Animal Clinical Procedures for Veterinary Technicians, 5th Edition describes how to set up, assist, and follow through on medical procedures and treatment regimens for domestic livestock. The book begins with an overview of livestock handling, reproduction, and nutrition, along with the skills required in hospital management. Following are separate sections on horses, cattle, sheep and goats, llamas and alpacas, swine, and poultry, with each section including chapters examining husbandry, clinical and surgical procedures, and common diseases. Written by expert clinician and vet tech educator Kristin Holtgrew-Bohling, this text provides an ideal study tool in preparing for the VTNE® and for everyday practice. Comprehensive large animal coverage is specifically tailored to the needs of veterinary technician students. Coverage of the essential large animal-related tasks in the CVTEA Manual of Accreditation for Veterinary Technology Programs prepares you to pass the Veterinary Technology National Exam (VTNE®). Step-by-step procedures explain how and why a clinical procedure is performed, and the roles that you fill in preparing for, assisting in, and following up the procedure. "How-to" chapters within each species section examine husbandry, clinical procedures, surgical procedures, and common diseases - so veterinary technicians, acting under instructions of veterinarians, can plan and follow through on procedures and treatment regimens for large animals. Evolve website includes quizzes, images, and reference materials to reinforce understanding. Full-color photographs and line drawings show step-by-step procedures in areas such as restraint, bandaging, physical examination techniques, and diagnostic procedures. Coverage of husbandry and breeds demonstrates how day-to-day housing and feeding affect the care of many large animal diseases, and also helps you provide quality client education. Livestock Industry section provides an overview of safety and handling, reproduction, and nutrition, so you can better understand the practices, procedures, and decisions in large animal veterinary medicine. Learning features enhance critical thinking and decision making with case studies, clinical applications, key terms, chapter outlines, learning objectives, and Technician Notes. NEW! Coverage of animal care includes care in small-scale and hobby farm settings, fear-free care, and IV catheter maintenance. NEW! Updated information includes illegal drugs, remote delivery devices, nutrition and environmental enrichment for each species, carcass removal information, breeding soundness exam information for bulls, poisonous plants and other toxins, needle disposal and broken needle guidelines, sedation protocols, dehydration tables for calves, and more. NEW! Updated images, case studies, step-by-step procedures, disease information, and terminology ensure that you have the most current information. NEW! Updated test questions and chapter quizzes on the Evolve website make it easier to study, review, and remember difficult subject matter.

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Introduces key terms, debates, and histories for feminist studies in gender and sexuality Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies introduces readers to a set of terms that will aid them in understanding the central methodological and political stakes currently energizing feminist and queer studies. The volume deepens the analyses of this field by highlighting justice-oriented intersectional movements and foregrounding Black, Indigenous, and women of color feminisms; transnational feminisms; queer of color critique; trans, disability, and fat studies; feminist science studies; and critiques of the state, law, and prisons that emerge from queer and women of color justice movements. Many of the keywords featured in this publication call attention to the fundamental assumptions of humanism’s political and intellectual debates—from the racialized contours of property and ownership to eugenicist discourses of improvement and development. Interventions to these frameworks arise out of queer, feminist and anti-racist engagements with matter and ecology as well as efforts to imagine forms of relationality beyond settler colonial and imperialist epistemologies Reflecting the interdisciplinary breadth of the field, this collection of seventy essays by scholars across the social sciences and the humanities weaves together methodologies from science and technology studies, affect theory, and queer historiographies, as well as Black Studies, Latinx Studies, Asian American, and Indigenous Studies. Taken together, these essays move alongside the distinct histories and myriad solidarities of the fields to construct the much awaited Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies.

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Teaching is complex. But there are simple ideas we can enact to help our teaching be more effective. This book contains over 400 such ideas.The ideas come from two sources. First, from the wonderful guests on my Tips for Teachers podcast - education heavyweights such as Dylan Wiliam, Daisy Christodoulou and Tom Sherrington, as well as talented teachers who are not household names but have so much wisdom to share. Then there's what I have learned from working with amazing teachers and students in hundreds of schools around the world.Inside you will find 22 ideas to enhance mini-whiteboard use, 15 ideas to improve the start of your lesson, 14 ideas to help make Silent Teacher effective, seven ways to respond if a student says they don't know, and lots, lots more.Each idea can be implemented the very next time you step into a classroom. So, whatever your level of experience, subject or phase, there are plenty of ideas in this book to help take your teaching to the next level.Book contentsChapter 1: How to use this bookTip 1. How to use this book to improve your teachingTip 2. How to give yourself the best chance of making a lasting changeChapter 2: Habits and routines Why are habits and routines important? Tip 3. Eight ideas to help introduce a routineTip 4. Beware of the Valley of Latent PotentialTip 5. Two ideas to help a routine stickTip 6. Develop a set of high-value activity structuresTip 7. Six ideas to help establish positive norms in your classroomTip 8. Four types of words to consider removing from your teaching vocabularyChapter 3: The means of participationA challengeTip 9. Front-load the means of participationTip 10. Ten ideas to improve Cold CallTip 11. Eight reasons to strive for mass participation more frequentlyTip 12. Twenty-two ideas to improve the use of mini-whiteboardsTip 13. Five ideas to improve the use of voting systems Tip 14. Nine ideas to improve Call and ResponseTip 15. Fifteen ideas to improve Partner TalkTip 16. Six ideas to improve group workTip 17. Use the means of participation holy trinityTip 18. Never rely on a mental noteTip 19. The best tool for the long term might not be the best tool for nowChapter 4: Checking for understandingTip 20. Think of questions as a check for misunderstandingTip 21. Use the temptation to ask for self-report as a cue to ask a better questionTip 22. Lengthen wait times after asking a questionTip 23. Lengthen wait times after an answerTip 24. Ten types of questions to ask when checking for understandingTip 25. Try these three frameworks for learner-generated examplesTip 26. Three ways to use diagnostic questions to check for understandingTip 27. Provide scaffolds for verbal responsesTip 28. Six key times to check for understandingTip 29. Ten ideas to improve Exit TicketsTip 30. Pick the student least likely to knowTip 31. Start with whoever got 8 out of 10Tip 32. Ten ideas to help create a culture of errorTip 33. Three ideas to encourage students to ask questionsChapter 5: Responsive teachingTip 34. Trick your students to test if they really understandTip 35. Never round-upTip 36. Six ideas if a student says 'I don't know'Tip 37. What to do when some students understand and some don'tTip 38. What to do when some students still don't understandTip 39. How students can own and record classroom discussionsTip 40. Share students' work with the rest of the classChapter 6: PlanningTip 41. Seven ideas to improve a scheme of workTip 42. Six ideas to help start the planning processTip 43. Plan to do less, but betterTip 44. Ask yourself: 'What are my students likely to be thinking about?'Tip 45. Write out ideal student responsesTip 46. Four ideas to help you plan for and respond to errorsTip 47. Two ideas to help teachers engage in Deep Work Tip 48. Aim to close the loop when sending an emailChapter 7: Prior knowledgeTip 49. Plan relevant prior knowledgeTip 50. Prioritise relevant prior knowledgeTip 51. Assess relevant prior knowledgeTip 52. Respond to prior knowledge assessmentTip 53. Assess relevant prior knowledge for each idea, not for the whole sequenceChapter 8: Explanations, modelling and worked examplesTip 54. Five ideas to show students why what we are learning today mattersTip 55. Use related examples and non-examples to explain technical languageTip 56. Fourteen ideas to improve the explanation of a conceptTip 57. Teach decision making separatelyTip 58. Five ideas to improve our choice of examplesTip 59. Model techniques liveTip 60. Use a teacher worked-examples bookTip 61. Use student worked-examples booksTip 62. Make use of the power of Example-Problem PairsTip 63. Fourteen ideas to improve Silent TeacherTip 64. Use self-explanation prompts to help develop your students' understanding Tip 65. Six ideas to improve 'copy down the worked example'Tip 66. Vary the means of participation for the We DoTip 67. Three errors to avoid with the Your Turn questionsTip 68. Reflect after a worked exampleTip 69. Beware of seductive detailsChapter 9: Student practiceTip 70. Eight ideas to improve student practice timeTip 71. How to harness the hidden power of interleavingTip 72. Consider using Intelligent PracticeTip 73. Consider using 'no-number' questionsTip 74. Nine ideas to help you observe student work with a purposeTip 75. Occasionally let students do work in someone else's bookChapter 10: Memory and retrievalRetrieval opportunitiesTip 76. Show your students the Forgetting CurveTip 77. Show your students the path to high storage and retrieval strengthTip 78. Show your students the limits of working memoryTip 79. Show your students how long-term memory helps thinkingTip 80. Show your students that being familiar with something is not the same as knowing itTip 81. Ensure you provide retrieval opportunities for all contentTip 82. When designing retrieval opportunities, aim for 80%Tip 83. Vary the types of retrieval questions you askTip 84. Consider providing prompts and cues during retrieval opportunitiesTip 85. Get your students to assign confidence scores to their answersTip 86. Make corrections quizzableTip 87. Twenty-one ideas to improve your Low-Stakes QuizzesTip 88. Fifteen ideas to improve the Do NowTip 89. Consider using Trello to help organise the disorganisedChapter 11: Homework, marking and feedbackTip 90. Make homework feed into lessonsTip 91. Eight ideas to improve homeworkTip 92. Two things to check if homework or test scores are a surprise Tip 93. Be careful how you respond to 'silly' mistakesTip 94. Turn feedback into detective workTip 95. Consider recording verbal feedbackTip 96. Twelve ideas to improve whole-class feedbackChapter 12: Improving as a teacherTip 97. Find the expertise within your teamTip 98. Five different people to learn fromTip 99. Revisit education books and podcast episodesTip 100. Four things to consider when trying something newTip 101. Five ideas to help tackle the negativity radioTip 102. Consider slowing down your careerTip 103. Sixteen ideas to improve the delivery of CPD Tip 104. Micro tipsTip 105. If you want more tips...

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ONE FAMILY’S REVOLT AGAINST EVERYDAY POLLUTION When a beanbag sent thousands of polystyrene balls flying through her garden, Kate Hughes decided to make a break with the throwaway society. She and her husband transformed the lives of their ordinary family of four. They ditched plastic, shunned supermarkets, cooked all meals from scratch, bought only second-hand clothes, and made their own cleaning agents. Then they went deeper – greening every aspect of their home life, from their gas and electricity to their car, from their money to their IT. The Hugheses have achieved the ‘zero waste’ goal of sending nothing to landfill. Now they are going even further… Told with refreshing humility and humour, this eye-opening story shows that a well-lived life doesn’t have to come wrapped in plastic. Packed with handy tips, it reveals much about what makes a fulfilling modern family – and how readers can empower themselves to preserve the climate, forests and seas. And, heart-warmingly, how that can lead to a more relaxing life. Extract Cooking our own meals Wrestling out of the firm grip of the supermarkets has had other, unexpected benefits, too. It’s undoubtedly cheaper to cook from scratch, especially if you can batch cook and fill every available space in your oven to reduce energy costs. The need to become the more organised, list-writing type of shoppers has also helped dramatically cut our food waste. We’re lucky that we can and do buy our raw ingredients from small, independent retailers that source from nearby suppliers and growers and pass on our questions about sustainability, sometimes even with enthusiasm. But what we hadn’t anticipated were the indirect effects of a brand vacuum. If you ever pop round to ours and start randomly opening our kitchen cupboards, fridge or freezer they would probably remind you of a blind taste test or an episode of the BBC’s Eat Well for Less. There’s definitely food in there, but it’s all in label-less jars, paper bags or sometimes even sacks for bulk items like bread flour and oats. At first, visitors find the lack of familiar packaging quite unsettling. We get a lot of questions that start: ‘Is this proper/real/like…?’ as guests hold jars up to the light with badly disguised scepticism. On the plus side, our children now have zero pester power. We don’t need to navigate the snack shuffle at the supermarket checkout because they have no hope of deploying the ‘It’s not the one I like’ argument at mealtimes. Nor, for that matter, have the adults. ... But we were starting to realise that making the journey was leading to more questions than answers, more grey areas, misinformation and conflicts of interest than we ever imagined – and that was just about food. We hadn’t even got started on anything else that came into our home yet. Take a single, uncontroversial ingredient, let’s say peppers. Should we buy them grown in a UK hothouse or ones trucked in from Spain? What if the Spanish ones are organic? Or the only UK option is wrapped in plastic? Which is better for the environment? Or at least less harmful? If we ever want to eat peppers again without negatively impacting the planet in some way are we going to have to grow our own? Because self-sufficiency wasn’t really part of the plan.... All we could do was dive in and hope we didn’t drown in the detail as we swam around looking for food that worked for us and the planet. We started with the problem of transport because food mileage was a well established measure that meant we could actually make some decisions based on numbers for once. Or, at least, we thought we could. Three quarters of all the fruit and veg now eaten in the UK is imported. Almost all the fruit we eat has been grown overseas, and soft fruit in particular is flown in. It turns out that the UK only produces half of all the food that is consumed on these shores – which is somewhat patriotically disconcerting as well as practically unsustainable. Global sourcing is not a new approach to feeding a nation. One of our family stories is the recollection of the first banana my great uncle ever tasted after the Second World War, shipped from the other side of the world and unloaded onto the Liverpool docks. We were very aware that bananas came from overseas. But the fact that such a vast proportion of the apples eaten in Britain are imported from South Africa, or at best France, when the fruit grows very well in the miles of orchards you can see from the motorway near our house seemed to be absurd. The obvious solution appeared to be only to buy food produced not just in the UK but as close to our immediate vicinity as possible. That immediately threw up two questions. The first we were becoming increasingly familiar with. Were we really prepared to give up things we took great pleasure in for the sake of an unquantifiable, but undoubtedly minuscule effect? Or even just to settle for not adding to the runaway levels of damage that our disconnected food shop was causing each and every day? We are children of the 90s. We grew up safe in the knowledge that the world’s produce was at our fingertips at any time of the year. When we were kids, cuisine was regularly valued on the exoticism of its ingredients. Even if your palate was resolutely British, a Sunday roast at an ageing auntie’s always included the smug mention that the family was consuming lamb imported from the other side of the world. Even in our twenties, the craze for exotic bottled water shipped, plastic encased, in vast quantities from tropical islands thousands of miles away, packed a serious economic punch. And then there’s the avocado – a native of Mexico and now all but a dictionary definition of the British Millennial. We had come of age and then brought our children into the world on the assumption that it was normal to buy exotic food cheaply all year round. Things were clearly going to have to change, starting with my obsession with avocado on toast. But the second question was whether a straightforward food mile approach was even a worthwhile aim. When I put the question of food miles to Riverford Organic Farmers, the sustainably produced veg box people, they told me that for most of the year our carbon impact would be smaller if we bought organic tomatoes trucked in from Spain than those heated thanks to fossil fuels in a UK hothouse. That means the answer has to be to eat food grown in the UK at the time of year it is traditionally produced. We finally arrived at a robust solution – seasonal, native eating. Buy the book to find out how they tackled this!

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