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The Copper King Mansion, W.A. Clark Mansion, In Butte Montana

The W.A. Clark Mansion also known as the Copper King Mansion is one of the most recognized and beautiful buildings in the state of Montana. Built during the years 1884 to 1888, it figures prominently in the history of Butte, as Montana was becoming a state. It was the residence of the famous William Andrews Clark ,one of the three famous Copper Kings of the state. It is the 28th stop in the travel series Off The Beaten Path.

The W.A. Clark Mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. As the home of one of the three copper mining barons of the state, the residence played a role in the development of the regions economy.

The Copper King Mansion did undergo restoration work in 2012.

The mansion consists of 34 rooms and was built in the Romanesque Revival Style, that had become quite popular in the Gilded Age. The building contains fresco painted ceilings, stained glass windows by Tiffany and ornamented hand carved fireplaces.

There are ornately designed parquets of rare imported wood and elegant gilded staircases. One can find both gas and electric chandeliers in abundance, throughout the mansion. Clark did incorporate the most modern household inventions, that were available at the time.

Stained glass,& grand staircase.

Construction came under the direction of D.T. McDevitt. The woodwork was the responsibility of W.F. Beall & Co. from Chicago. There are numerous panels of bird's-eye maple, Cuban mahogany, fine oak, rosewood and sycamore.

Plaster was painted with swirls of gold in the entryway, bronze in the octagonal reception room, silver in the dining room and copper in the billiard room.

The mansion is elaborately furnished with period antiques and furniture, with colorful oriental rugs.

The embellishments and many of the materials for the mansion were all imported at an enormous cost of $200,000 USD (United States Dollar). This would be the equivalent of $5 million USD today.

William Andrews Clark supervised every detail in the building of his red-brick Victorian mansion.

As one of the wealthiest men in Montana, William Andrews Clark built the mansion as a symbol of his wealth and power within the community. He and two other fellow industrialists, Augustus Heinze and Marcus Daly, were in a bitter ongoing competition, for control of the regions rich copper resources.

William Andrews Clark

Clark supposedly was born in a log house in the state of Pennsylvania during the spring of 1839. The family would later move to Iowa in 1856.

In 1862, during the American Civil War, he traveled further west to become a miner. After working in the quartz mines in Colorado, he proceeded north the following year. He had been tempted to participate in the Montana Gold Rush.

Settling in the capital of the territory, his gold claim only paid moderate returns. Clark invested those in becoming a trader. He hired mules to move supplies between the booming mining communities of Montana and the city of Las Vegas.

Within a short time he would change his vocation, and would become a banker in Deer Lodge Montana. He began to repossess mining properties,when owners defaulted on their loans. Clark over time, became a major power in the Montana mining industry.

W. A. Clark buying a newspaper, circa 1906.

As the years passed, Clark amassed a fortune in mining, small smelters, electric power companies, newspapers and railroads.

As part of his transportation empire, he bought and then developed a watering stop that would grow into the city of Las Vegas. The surrounding jurisdiction, was fittingly named Clark County.

He is also largely responsible for the selection of Helena, as the political capital of Montana.

William Andrews Clark could now dream about a future in politics. He served as president of both Montana state constitutional conventions in 1884 and 1889.

His dream of becoming a United States Senator was first realized in 1899, but resulted in a massive scandal. It was later revealed he had actually bribed members of the Montana State Legislature, so they would cast a vote for him.

Political cartoon depicting Clark bribing state legislators, October 1900

At the time, United States Senators were chosen by their respective state legislatures. The obvious corruption of this election and a number of others would soon change history, with the later passage of the 17th Amendment. Henceforth, Senators would be voted for by popular vote.

Since the other Senators refuse to seat Clark, he was forced from office, the following year. It was a major setback for Clark. He is reported to have said in response to the scandal, I never bought a man who wasn't for sale.

After three more bitter campaigns for the Senate he was at last successful, and was able to serve one term from 1901 to 1907.

At the time of his death in 1925, at the age of 86, Clark had amassed a fortune of between $150 to $300 million. At just $200 million, it is the equivalent of close to $2.9 billion in the currency of today. This made him one of the wealthiest Americans, to have ever lived.

W. A. Clark Mansion in New York City.

The mansion that he had built in New York City, sited directly across from Central Park on 5th Avenue, is considered by architectural historians, as the most expensive private home ever constructed in the city. Unfortunately, this fabulous residence would be demolished in 1927.

His other residence, the Copper King Mansion came into possession of the Cote family in 1953. Privately owned, the mansion now serves as a bed and breakfast, operated by the Cote clan.

The 5 rooms and suites available for lodging are elaborately decorated with period antiques,oriental rugs and rather dark woodwork. 3 rooms share a bathroom and the 2 suites feature sitting areas and private facilities with claw foot tubs.

Dining room

Guided tours have become available during the summer tourist season. Winter tours are accessible by appointment only.

Location

Copper King Mansion can be found in the downtown area, less than a mile from Montana Tech of the University of Montana Campus and 2 miles from the Big Butte Open Space Recreation Area.

Arranging A Tour

1-(406)-782-7589 or by e-mail: the copperkingmansion@gmail.com

To request a reservation for accommodation 1- (406) -782-7580

Address

219 West Granite Street

Butte, Montana 59701,

USA

Website: thecopperkingmansion.com

Entrance Fee

The cost of an adult tour is $10.00 USD.

For a children is $5.00 USD.

If you are staying overnight at the mansion, the tour is provided free of charge,

Days and Hours of Park Operations

Guided Tours are provided from May 01 though September 30th

Appointments are required during winter months.

Please try to provide 24 hours notice ahead of a tour.

Tours go through all bed and breakfast rooms, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.

Tours are held at 10:00 am, noon, 2:00 pm and 3:30 pm.

Prices for Overnight Accommodation

https://copperkingmansion.squarespace.com/bed-and-breakfast-rooms-rates/

https://availabilityonline.com/availtable.php?un=copperkingmansion

Master Bedroom Suite (private bathroom) $150.00 USD

Family Suite (up to 4 guests) (private bathroom) $150.00 USD

Huguettes's Room $135.00 USD

Andree's Room $125.00 USD

Butler Room $105.00 USD

* There is a 7% State Bed Tax, that is added to the cost of your accommodation.

Amenities Provided

Free Wi-Fi

Free breakfast

Free parking

Helpful Hints

There is no restaurant on site.

The mansion is smoke free.

No pets are allowed.

Children are welcome,but must be supervised.

The post The Copper King Mansion, W.A. Clark Mansion, In Butte Montana appeared first on WanderingTrader.

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Testing our survey against the latest polling of Party members. New evidence on Next Tory Leader.

Today's Observer contains a brief summary of more polling of Conservative Party members for the ESCR Party Members Project.  It is squeezed into a larger story on Labour and Brexit, and the paper's account doesn't come with a table and full details.  None the less, it provides another opportunity to test Conservative Home's monthly survey against a properly weighted opinion poll.  Mark Wallace looked at other recent evidence from the Project late last week.

Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Davis are “top of the party's grassroots list” as preferred candidates to replace Theresa May, the Observer reports.  It says that Johnson “topped the poll” with 20 per cent, that Rees-Mogg “trailed in second on 15 per cent” and that  Davis “scored 8 per cent”. We read separately that Sajid Javid also scored per 8 cent in the poll, so Dominic Raab, with 7 per cent, was therefore fifth.

So discounting the don't knows, the ESCR Project's top five are –

Johnson – 20 per cent.

Rees-Mogg – 15 per cent.

Davis – 8 per cent.

Javid – 8 per cent.

Raab – 7 per cent.

And the top five candidates in our last Next Tory Leader survey were –

Johnson – 27 per cent.

Javid – 13 per cent.

Raab – 12 per cent.

Jeremy Hunt – 9 per cent.

Davis – 7 per cent.

It seems that ESCR put nine names to their Party member respondents: Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Davis, Javid, Raab, Jeremy Hunt (6 per cent in its poll), Amber Rudd (5 per cent in its poll, 5 per cent in our last survey), Michael Gove (4 per cent and 3 per cent respectively) and Penny Mordaunt (one per cent and 4 per cent respectively).  We currently offer no fewer than 19 names, all of whom have been spoken of as potential leadership candidates.

Four of the ESCR's top five – Johnson, Davis, Javid and Raab – overlap with our top five.  Hunt was in our top five, but not in the ESCR's (which had him sixth on 6 per cent).  Jacob-Rees Mogg is in the ESCR's top five; he wasn't in ours (he was seventh with 4 per cent).  It is sometimes claimed that the ConHome panel is more Eurosceptic than Party membership as a whole.  That may be correct – but this ESCR result actually finds the reverse, though it is of course only a single piece of evidence.

The ESCR Project is run out of Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University.  Its last blog on its latest polling of Party members says that it surveyed 1215 Conservative Party members.  YouGov conducted the polling between December 17 and December 22.

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Simon Clarke: The UK is well-placed to lead the world in the fight against climate change

Simon Clarke is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland.

Successive Government schemes to incentivise investment in energy efficiency and low carbon sources of electricity, like solar and wind, have helped to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the UK's power system, as Amber Rudd has argued on this site.

The policy that has made the greatest difference, however, is the UK's carbon tax, which is imposed on domestic electricity generation that uses fossil fuels. This has helped tip the economic balance in favour of gas over coal, which given has meant that coal power, the most polluting source of electricity, has almost completely disappeared from our energy system. This is the power of a carbon tax.

The Committee on Climate Change is tasked with monitoring the progress of decarbonisation in the UK, and their latest report praised the pace with which our electricity generation has been cleaned up, but pointed to a lack of action in other sectors, like transport, agriculture, and industry. For heavy industry in particular (e.g. production of steel and cement), a carbon tax would be a vital tool to incentivise a switch to cleaner technologies.

Currently, the processes used in steel making and other heavy industry primarily use fossil fuels, resulting in carbon emissions, but this does not have to be the case. Through a process known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), the carbon dioxide from these processes can be compressed and sent via pipeline to undersea geological storage sites (including potentially the former sites of North Sea oil and gas), where it will remain indefinitely, thus mitigating the negative effects on our climate.

People are also increasingly referring to CCUS, where the 'U' stands for 'utilisation'. Inventive companies are coming up with ways to turn this waste gas into useful products like chemicals, fuel or plastic. This creates economic value from waste and removes the necessity to store it underground.

As a Teesside MP, I know how important industry is to our region, employing thousands of people in high-skilled, well-paid jobs. That is why I am supporting plans to develop the world's first CCUS hub in the north east of England.

A group of energy intensive industries, known as the Teesside Collective, are proposing to lead on the development of clean industrial zones, with multiple companies sharing the same carbon dioxide transport and storage infrastructure in order to reduce costs and exploit synergies. This would put the UK at the forefront of the development of technologies vital to decarbonise our energy system, produce good high paid jobs for the North East, and potentially open up new export opportunities.

In order for such a project to succeed in the long term, carbon taxes must be applied to more polluting production processes so that cleaner technologies are not undercut. Most importantly, the tax must be applied in a way that does not simply send businesses overseas where they can avoid such environmental levies. This process is known as 'carbon leakage', and it presents a threat to UK industry if we unilaterally apply a carbon tax alone.

A recent report by the think tank Policy Exchange, 'The Future of Carbon Pricing', proposes a solution: border carbon adjustments. Through this process, carbon taxes are applied in the country where a product is consumed or used, rather than where it is produced. For example, if China wanted to export a tonne of steel to the UK, they would have to pay the same carbon taxes as a UK company, based on the 'embedded emissions' (the carbon dioxide that is released in making the steel). By making all companies that sell energy intensive goods in the UK, no matter where they are located, pay the same carbon tax, this levels the playing field between domestic and international producers and eliminates the incentive to move overseas to avoid such taxes.

This would also make the UK an attractive destination for inward investment in clean energy technologies. There is a threat of being undercut by foreign competitors who do not have to pay environmental levies in their own countries. That is one of the leading factors preventing investment in the technologies, like CCUS, required to clean up all sectors of our economy.

Finally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change once again this week highlighted the importance that negative emissions technologies (NETs) will have in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the future. NETs are anything that helps to remove gases that cause global warming from our atmosphere – this can be as simple as planting trees to increase forest coverage. But the most important NET may be bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). By using biomass as the fuel source for a power station and then capturing and storing the resulting carbon dioxide, the overall life-cycle emissions from that plant will be negative. It is effectively sucking CO2 from the air. The UK is already leading on this, with Drax announcing they will building Europe's first BECCS pilot plant on their Yorkshire site.

The UK is well-placed to lead the world in the development of CCS technologies that will be vital worldwide in order to fight climate change. We should get on with it, but we must also ensure that domestic industries are not unfairly disadvantaged.

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Monumental Cemetery in Milan, Italy – An Open Air Sculpture Museum

When I prepared my Last Will and Testament some years ago, I included specific provisions that I wish to be cremated. I promised my sisters that if they put me in the cold, hard ground, I'd come back to haunt them. But a recent visit to the Monumental Cemetery in Milan, Italy, had me reconsidering that view. In 1838, the city of Milan announced a competition for the design of a new cemetery that would be open to citizens of “all forms and all fortunes” and become a...

The post Monumental Cemetery in Milan, Italy – An Open Air Sculpture Museum appeared first on Hole In The Donut Cultural Travel.

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PHOTO: Volcano Caldera in Santorini, Greece, A Study in Blue and White

The volcano caldera in Santorini is a study in blue, and white, with the ominous black volcano cone squatting in the center of the lagoon. Since the beginning of the Christian Era, the volcano has had eight eruption episodes, in 46-47, 726, 1570-1573, 1707-1711, 1866-1870, 1925-1928, 1939-1941, and 1950. Though the average number of years between eruptions is 272, there is an alarming trend that points to an acceleration of eruptions. The interval between the first and second events was 679 years; between the second and third 847...

The post PHOTO: Volcano Caldera in Santorini, Greece, A Study in Blue and White appeared first on Hole In The Donut Cultural Travel.

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Henry Smith: Why our ancient counties need preserving

History matters. Our history matters. It forms a crucial part of our heritage. It should not be thrown into the rubbish bin, but be preserved and cherished, for future generations to appreciate.

Geography matters. We all have a sense of who we are based on where we are, where we come from, where we live, and where we are going. Geography too forms a part of our heritage.

People respect their heritage. It forms a very important part of their identity. Identity matters.

Put all this together, and you have a sense that our traditional, historic conceptions of geography should be preserved, so we can talk about past, present, and future generations, based on where they live, and so we can preserve our identity.

Neglected heritage

In many ways, the heritage, history, and culture of our country has been neglected, abused, discarded. One way this has occurred has been in the treatment of the 92 ancient counties of the United Kingdom, in particular the 39 in England, 34 in Scotland, and 13 in Wales. The six counties of Northern Ireland have escaped the worst of the mangling.

For reasons ranging from the non-existent to negligence, carelessness to deliberate destruction, county identity in our country has been put through the mill, since the 1960s onwards, starting in and around London in 1963.

“Let's kill off Middlesex, and hope no-one notices if they play Surrey,” they said.

The powers that be then took out their atlases of the rest of the country, for the Local Government Act 1972.

“Lincolnshire doesn't matter. Who weeps for Glamorgan? Cromartyshire is barmy.”

Successive waves of administrators – presumably at the will of their political masters – have chopped and changed the counties with abandon. In their wisdom, they have created not one but eight different types of county – as if there were eight different Marks & Spencers, eight different laws of differential calculus, eight different Jupiters.

Constants in a changing world

They have taken something as softly precious as county identity, developed for the most part over 1,000 years and more, and got themselves very confused as they took their turns to impose their new wills on the county system.

If there is one civil servant who can happily explain what a Welsh preserved county is, please step forward: after all, the Newport-Gwent Dragons play in Monmouthshire.

Furthermore, and utterly bizarrely, the powers have at all times tried to claim the counties have not actually changed in law, while doing everything in practice to assert they have. What's the catch?

Just to press the point, Aberdeen is in Aberdeenshire – everyone knows that. And for the benefit of the media, while Lancashire is in the main in Lancashire, Wigan is both in and not in, like a Schrödinger county cat.

And don't just take my word for it. See this article, for example (in relation to England).

England's counties – for example, my county, Sussex, which holds my seat in Crawley – are often older than England itself. We have no right to mess around with them. In our rapidly changing world, we need some constants.

So, let's not mess around with them.

And just one aside. The concept of regions cannot be allowed to cause further confusion, for example with “Yorkshire and the Humber”. I was under the impression they were scrapped anyway, by my colleague Eric Pickles, former secretary of state for local government and communities.

A question of money

To repeat, people's heritage matters. Our counties are worth preserving. At what cost, you say? Well, I would argue, very little. The county system can be fixed through a gradual system of patch and mend, which would happen naturally as we fix a road sign here, update a map there.

The cost of not preserving our heritage is greater, surely, for that means we have completely lost touch with who we are. We would have to start over again, and that might cost a great deal indeed.

People who are happy with their identity are more likely to be happy full stop. They can lead happy, productive, economically successful lives: yes, the counties can be good for business.

British Counties Campaign

Last year, I agreed to be “champion” MP for the British Counties Campaign, a campaign seeking legislation to enshrine Britain's counties once and for all, which I hosted in parliament in the spring for its official launch. Further events are planned around the country, as well as online activity.

While the campaign is cross party, at its core is a recognition of the need to build on Britain's past as we move towards the future.

The campaign is not about reorganising local government, at least not over and above perhaps using counties as a very broad template for local government. What it is is a movement seeking to ensure there is just one type of county – the traditional one – in this country, and to use those counties for any ceremonial purposes, as well as for tourism, leisure, culture, sport, and so on. The campaign has created a draft bill which I am happy to share.

We need to beat those who mangle county names at their own game, and insist on using the correct county names to maintain and re-establish our county heritage.

As campaign founder Pam Moorhouse asserts, we also need to set right the wrongs committed by administrators in the past, who chopped and changed county names against people's will, causing great confusion, which persists to this day. Ms Moorhouse constantly stresses the unfair force used, in particular in and around 1974, with the implementation of the act.

This country deserves and will have an imaginative and inventive future. We are clearly at a potential crossroads in the life of the nation. Keeping firm friends, such as the counties we have known and cherished for centuries, at our side, will help us as we move into that future.

I look forward to your comments and support as this campaign progresses to ministerial and policy level to the implementation of its goals.

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Whately and Pursglove replace Caulfield and Bradley as vice-chairs of the Party

Yesterday CCHQ announced that Helen Whately and Tom Pursglove will be joining the Party's 13-strong team of vice-chairmen, taking up responsibility for women and young people respectively.

They will be replacing Maria Caulfield and Ben Bradley, both of whom resigned over their opposition to the Prime Minister's Chequers proposals for leaving the EU. How do their replacements feel on the subject?

Whately voted Remain but represents a seat which voted almost 59 per cent Leave and has said Britain should 'just get on' with leaving, and Pursglove is a committed Eurosceptic who helped to set up Grassroots Out. The MP for Corby is an especially interesting appointment, given that he is accepting an office vacated by a Brexiteer.

For those who (inexplicably) aren't keeping track of them all, here are the rest of the vice-chairs:

David Brownlow (Campaigning)

Kemi Badenoch (Candidates)

Rehman Chishti (Communities)

Helen Grant (Communities)

Dominic Johnson (Finance)

Andrew Jones (Business Engagement)

Marcus Jones (Local Government)

James Morris (Training and Development)

Chris Skidmore (Policy)

Paul Scully (London)

Alec Shelbrooke (International)

These offices, alongside other posts such as trade envoys, special ambassadors, and so on, provide an unofficial avenue for the Prime Minister to expand the de facto payroll vote – a practice which has shown no sign of abating in the years we have written about it.

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Our snap survey. Tory member support for May's Brexit plan falls. Two in three are now opposed to it.

Almost a fortnight ago, in the aftermath of the Chequers Cabinet meeting and the Government statement that followed, 31 per cent of our Members Panel thought that Theresa May's new position on Brexit would be good for Britain if implemented.  In a separate question, 33 per cent supported it.

60 per cent thought that it would be bad for the country if implemented, and the same proportion opposed it.

Now, in the aftermath of the publication of the Government's White Paper on the plan, the percentage believing that it would be good for Britain if implemented has fallen to 27 per cent, and that supporting it to 29 per cent.

That thinking it would be bad for the country if implemented is up to 68 per cent, and that opposing it to 67 per cent.

In short, the Prime Minister's backing has actually gone backwards since she stepped up her efforts to sell her new position.  Two in three Party members oppose it.  Under one in three support it.  She has her work cut out to turn them round during the summer tour of Associations and the country that she will apparently undertake.

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Giant m&m and hospital story

Update: We are home! We got back from hospital late last night after nearly four weeks. Technically James is still a patient of the hospital, we have a nurse coming to our house every day to give him IV antibiotics, which he'll need for the next month. I was overwhelmed by the number of lovely comments last week and so many people from all over the world praying for James. Things got a bit scary

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To help small businesses we must curb the banks' greedy appetites

Two things have dominated recent headlines – the fallout from the Carillion liquidation and the abuse of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by banks.

The common factor is the legal privileges enjoyed by banks which need to be challenged if any government is to create the necessary conditions for survival of SMEs.

Carillion collapsed with nearly £7bn of liabilities. Its liquidation is in progress and chances are that most the proceeds from the sale of the assets will go to banks, Carillion's secured creditors.

The unsecured creditors, which include thousands of supply change creditors, will get little. The losses to unsecured creditors are also drivers of new insolvencies as the cash flows of creditor businesses are squeezed. A domino effect has already set-in and many other businesses are facing closure.

In 2017, due to Carillion and other bankruptcies unsecured creditors suffered losses of £4.2bn. The first half of 2018 has inflicted another loss of £2.7bn. The hit from the bankruptcies of Maplin, Toys R' Us and Palmer & Harvey are yet to work through the system.

Many SMEs will take a financial hit

SMEs are frequently not diversified and cannot easily absorb the losses. They don't have sufficient economic clout to impose covenants on companies to safeguard their interests. They do not have sufficient resources to take out credit insurance. They are left to bear a disproportionate part of cost of client liquidation whilst banks walk away with most of the liquidation proceeds. The risk sharing, as prescribed by law, is highly inequitable.

The second thing dominating the headlines is the fallout from the leaked Turnbull Report.

The Turnbull Report shows that many viable businesses have been unnecessarily and deliberately placed in liquidation. And the Treasury Committee said that “small businesses have been subject to some appalling treatment by banks”.

This pattern of abuses has also been documented in the Tomlinson Report and a report on RBS' treatment of small business customers in its Global Restructuring Group (GRG).

A key reason for the abuses is to increase bank profits and executive bonuses. These are assured because banks, as secured creditors, are able to grab almost all of the assets and leave others to absorb almost all of the losses.

A common factor in the above two stories is the interests of banks and their capacity to destroy viable businesses. There is no reason why the banks and other secured creditors should not bear a greater proportion of the losses arising from bankruptcies.

Possible solutions

Unlike SMEs, banks and other financial institutions hold diversified portfolios and thus have a greater capacity to absorb losses. Their overall losses are likely to be a small proportion of their total investment whereas the losses to SMEs are substantial.

The very concept of a secured creditor could be abolished and all creditors, after payment of any priority creditors, could rank equally for claims on the proceeds of liquidation.

Such a rapid change may be too much for some and no doubt privileged interests would agitate against any change.

Another possibility could be to reform Section 176A of The Insolvency Act 1986 and the Enterprise Act 2002, and ensure that a substantial part of the proceeds of liquidation are ring-fenced for payment to unsecured creditors.

Currently, up to £600,000 can be ring-fenced to pay unsecured creditors and is totally inadequate.

This could be changed to ring-fence say 30% of the proceeds of liquidation, thus ensuring that SMEs and other unsecured creditors receive something after the bankruptcy of a Carillion-like customer. It could be a life saver for many.

The proposed change in the distribution of assets would also give SMEs and other unsecured creditors incentive to watch over and invigilate the bankruptcy proceedings.

The proposed 30% ring-fencing still gives banks privileges – i.e. they will still get majority of the proceeds of liquidation but not all of it. The change would make risk sharing more equitable and SMEs and unsecured creditors would not bear most of the cost. Secured creditors would still be able to obtain charges on assets, but wouldn't be able to walk away with all of the proceeds.

Of course, banks are likely to oppose any change as they have got used to having their ways regardless of the social consequences. They would try to frighten governments and others by saying that if the proposed change goes through they would deny credit to SMEs even though SMEs are poorly treated.

The alternative is to permit the current state of affairs and abuses to continue and let the weakest bear the biggest share of the cost of bankruptcies.

Today's SMEs are tomorrow's business giants, but too many are being strangled by unfair distribution of assets from bankrupt customers. This is facilitated by inappropriate laws.

It is time that parliament rebalanced the privileges of banks and secured creditors with more equitable distribution of the proceeds of liquidations.

If we want to solve this crisis and put our national economy back on its feet something must be done. But so far we're standing still.

Prem Sikka is Professor of Accounting at University of Sheffield and Emeritus Professor of Accounting at University of Essex. He tweets here.

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Easy Fast Cream Number Biscuits

  These yummy numbers are fast, pretty and perfect for any celebration. Using store bought toppings will of course decrease the prep time even further. This style doesn't have to be numbers, you can write whole words or images. Just be aware that the width of the pastry part needs to be reasonably consistent so that it bakes evenly. To make the cream biscuit numbers you will need 4 sheets of puff pastry macarons, you

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PHOTO: Young Girl Serves Fresh-Baked Bread at an Ethiopian Wedding

The tiny village of Neakutoleab came into view as I left the Monastery Church of Neakutoleab. Music wafted down from the top of the hill. “Want to go see what's happening?” my guide asked. “Absolutely,” I said. I struggled up a steep dirt path to a concrete house painted in brilliant primary colors and rounded the corner to the front door. A group of men stood outside, sipping local brew and dancing to the music. Their Sunday-best suits were draped with the white gauzy shawls that Ethiopian Orthodox...

The post PHOTO: Young Girl Serves Fresh-Baked Bread at an Ethiopian Wedding appeared first on Hole In The Donut Cultural Travel.

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This Week in Travel – Episode 236

This week Jen Leo, Chris Christensen and I are joined by this week's guest, David Swanson: travel writer and president-elect of SATW (Society of American Travel Writers) Subscribe on Apple Podcasts This Week's News: Flight 1380: First air accident-related fatality for nine years named More dogs die on United than on any other airline. Here's …

Continue reading "This Week in Travel – Episode 236"

The post This Week in Travel – Episode 236 appeared first on Everything Everywhere Travel Blog.

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The Conservatives must press on with giving housing association tenants the right to buy

In case anyone had still not got the message, there was an explanation of the political imperative for the Conservatives to boost home ownership by James Forsyth this morning. Writing in The Sun he said:

“Labour's rise in London is quite remarkable. They have gone from 37 per cent of the vote in 2010 to 55 per cent in 2017.

There are several reasons why the capital is turning red but one of the biggest is the decline in home ownership.

Home ownership in London peaked in the 1990s and has been falling since. Homeowners became a minority in London in 2011, the first time that has been the case since Margaret Thatcher's Right To Buy revolution in the early 1980s. On current trends, 60 per cent of Londoners will be renters in seven years' time.

It is no coincidence that this rise in renting has coincided with Labour's surge in the capital. For one of the things that makes you most likely to vote Tory is owning your own home. Labour's surprise success at the last election was largely down to a big increase in turnout among renters who swung heavily to Labour.

Labour London offers a preview of what happens to the Tories when homeowners become a minority.”

Spotting that this must be a priority – and can't be put off until after Brexit – is the easy bit. The challenge is to meet the objective of a rising home ownership rate. We will not get there with bland platitudes and a bit of technocratic tinkering.

What is particularly disappointing is the slow progress on extending the right to buy for housing association tenants. This was promised in the 2015 Conservative Manifesto which said:

“We will extend the Right to Buy to tenants in Housing Associations to enable more people to buy a home of their own. It is unfair that they should miss out on a right enjoyed by tenants in local authority homes. We will fund the replacement of properties sold under the extended Right to Buy by requiring local authorities to manage their housing assets more efficiently, with the most expensive properties sold off and replaced as they fall vacant. We will also create a Brownfield Fund to unlock homes on brownfield land for additional housing.”

By the 2017 manifesto this had been weakened to the vague statement:

“We will continue to support those struggling to buy or rent a home, including those living in a home owned by a housing association.”

Apparently the housing associations and local authorities have persuaded the Government that selling the expensive properties would not be enough to fund the replacement properties and that some extra Treasury handout must be found.

They would say that, wouldn't they?

These assertions appear to have been passively accepted by the Government. But it is pretty feeble to do so.

For a start the housing associations have plenty of high value properties of their own which they can – and often are – selling when they become vacant, to fund the building of a larger number of replacement homes. The same applies to local authorities. So why should local authorities have to hand over funds to housing associations? I suppose one argument is that councils have a substantial amount of surplus land (including around the edges of their existing housing estates). Of course if you already own the land then the cost a new home is greatly reduced – perhaps by around half.

Some research from Policy Exchange in 2012 found that if a formula they proposed was followed there would be sales of 28,500 high value social housing “voids” a year – and that would provide enough funds for between 80,000 and 170,000 new homes depending on where the sales took place.

Yet even without bringing in the proceeds from expensive property sales it should be entirely viable for both councils and housing associations to fund replacement properties from the proceeds of the right to buy sales – even after the discounts are applied.

The right to buy housing association pilots so far have seen very strong demand from tenants combined with anger that the process has been delayed.

So the Government should get on with providing the right to buy for all housing association tenants – and not worry too much about trying to placate those in the “sector” who are hostile to home ownership anyway no matter how much extra funding they are offered.

Yet if they wanted to be really conciliatory, the Government could hand over (or sell cheap) to housing associations some of the five million acres of land owned by central Government.

So catching up with what was promised in the 2015 manifesto would be a start. But, of course, more is needed. There should be a right to shared ownership.

In 2012 the Centre for Policy Studies produced an excellent paper entitled Unleashing the British Bulldog. It advocated a “right to own” and declared:

“From the point of view of both creating more housing stock and promoting social mobility, a more radical option would be to promote a Right to Own. The Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, has done ground-breaking work showing the beneficial impact of giving the poorest people in shanty towns title over their unregulated and untradeable properties.

“Giving title to the poor over sprawling homes and other assets – such as businesses – otherwise caught up in a legal no-man's land can free up credit and encourage investment. The situation in Britain is far removed from the poor countries de Soto has in mind. Our legal and property systems are well-developed. Nevertheless, the assets that comprise the social housing sector are massively underutilised. There are around 4 million social homes in England worth around £250 billion. A Right to Own scheme could unlock that underutilised capital and incentivise home ownership for those excluded from the bottom rung of the housing ladder.

“One option is a scheme that gives tenants an equity stake in their home that could be either realised on sale – and put towards a deposit – or transferred to a shared ownership scheme (combining equity and renting). Giving tenants an automatic share in ownership of the property – scalable according to variables including income, deprivation, and length of tenure – would incentivise those in work to save, sell up and buy a new home. That would also free up existing stock by enabling proceeds from the remainder of the sale to be reinvested in building new social housing. By releasing 'dead equity' – in the same way that de Soto advocates releasing 'dead capital' – there is an opportunity to promote social mobility for those who would otherwise remain excluded from home ownership.”

The author of that paper? None other than Dominic Raab, who is now the Minister for Housing.

When it comes to boosting home ownership as the most effective method of averting the calamity of a Corbyn Government the prudent approach for the Conservatives is paradoxically to be bold.

Over to you, Dom.

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Apple Shaped Dessert

  I've seen chefs make apple shaped desserts but they all use expensive apple-shaped silicone molds. If you want to make these at home the expense for the mold can't really be justified. So my challenge today is to find a way to make apple shaped desserts without using a mold. How To Make Apple Desserts Serves 4 3 Apples, peeled and finely diced 1 container of apple puree 1/4 tsp cinnamon 1 teaspoon vanilla

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Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska

Overview Gates of the Arctic National Park is one of 2 national parks located above the Arctic Circle, and one of 8 national parks in Alaska. Like Kobuk Valley National Park, there are no roads leading to the park. The only way in or out is on foot, via a river, or by bush plane. …

Continue reading "Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska"

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3d Chibi gravity defying cake tutorial

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