The Public Trust Partnership

Value brands in Britain

Britain’s 100 Biggest Brands

Trusted brands and value for money became more important than ever before  according to the annual Britain’s 100 Biggest Brands report compiled by The Nielsen Company and published in trade magazine, The Grocer, the report ranks the 100 best selling grocery brands in Great Britain.

The 2009 sales value of the top 100 brands accounted for £16.7 billion (12.9%) of the total £130 billion grocery market, an increase of 4.5% Year on Year. The growth was ahead of total market growths which were 3.8% for the year.

Topping the table again this year is Coca Cola, which has become the first-ever grocery brand to pass the £1 billion mark in the U.K. The iconic brand was launched 110 years ago and continues to perform strongly growing 4.9% in 2009 to retain the top spot.

Other classic brands that have stood the test of time and feature in the top 10 of the league include bread brands Warburton’s (#2) and Hovis (#3). Warburton’s is 134 years old and the Bolton-based brand remains strong at number two. Hovis, whose branding hangs heavily on its heritage, enjoyed a very successful year with sales growing more than 13%, sits in fourth place. Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, another brand which has survived for more than a century, ranks fifth and Britvic’s Robinsons drink — which has a history that can be traced back to 1823 — retained its 10th place position.

The oldest surviving brand in the top 100 league is Twinings, which entered the Top 100 for the first time this year, 304 years after Thomas Twining began selling tea from his first premises on the Strand in London. Three centuries later, the brand grew sales 11% and was one of the five new entries to the top 100.

Britain’s Top 25 Brands
Rank	Brand
1	Coke
2	Warburtons
3	Walkers Crisps
4	Hovis
5	Cadbury Dairy Milk
6	Nescafe
7	Kingsmill
8	Andrex
9	Lucozade
10	Robinsons
11	Pepsi
12	McCains Chips & Potatoes
13	Tropicana
14	Whiskas Total
15	Muller Corner
16	Heinz Beanz
17	Lurpak
18	Danone Activia
19	Persil
20	Heinz Soup
21	Youngs Frozen Fish (Branded)
22	Pedigree Total
23	Flora
24	Felix Total
25	Cathedral City
Source: The Nielsen Company In this report, a brand is defined as any products sold under a brand name within a given category. The report covers grocery brands only and does not include personal care, OTC, alcohol or tobacco products.

The complete list of 100 brands is available at The Grocer.

Economic Growth - how will leaders win voters?

Political parties are positioning obviously for the UK Election. Political leaders know they have to find something more inspiring than an offer of years of austerity and disillusion.

It is a tough call. The economy shrank by 5% last year, the biggest fall since the Great Depression. The contraction over the six quarters of the recession was 6.2%. That peak-to-trough decline was less severe than in Japan, Germany and Italy, but the recession lasted longer in the UK than in any other G7 economy.

The Treasury’s projection of 1.25% growth this year seems reasonable. But its prediction of 3.25% in 2011 looks over-optimistic and I thought it would be useful to analyse. Ever the optimist, the IMF is forecasting 2.7%. But the latest survey of independent forecasts assembled by the Treasury found that they were expecting, on average, growth of 2% next year. The Bank of England has held the base rate at 0.5% since March 2009 and has injected £200 billion into the economy by purchasing assets with central-bank money.

 As Robert Chote, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said:  “The government expects public spending in total to be broadly flat in real terms over the four years beyond 2010-11. Making plausible assumptions ... Whitehall spending on public services and administration would need to fall by an average of 3.1 per cent a year over those four years, a cumulative decline of 11.9 per cent or £46bn in real terms by 2014-15. This implies cuts averaging between 5.3 per cent a year and 7.1 per cent in the areas that the government is not planning to ‘protect’ in 2011-12 and 2012-13.” 

The assumptions that underlie those forecasts, can be found  in the economy section of yesterday’s Budget “red book”.

As you can see, a very sizeable proportion of the economic growth the Treasury foresees for 2011 and 2012 comes from improvements in net trade – or some 0.75 percentage points from growth of 3.25 per cent and 3.5 per cent respectively. The explanation given is the following: “The past depreciation of sterling and the recovery in world demand provide the conditions for the rebalancing of demand between domestic and external sources and so net trade is forecast to contribute a further ¾ percentage points to GDP growth in 2011 and 2012. This is broadly in line with the positive contribution seen in 1994 and 1995, following a sterling depreciation of 18 per cent, less than the 25 per cent depreciation seen since July 2007″.

Commentators are struggling to see the upbeat views on net trade. A lot more external demand will be needed, the eurozone is by far Britain’s biggest trading partner. All eurozone countries are adopting similar policies. Most like Germany are looking at Eastern Europe. We hope the Treasury is right and that Government gets behind our exporters to to get to markets that they need.

 

Arrive at what you do not know every day

TIME TO START TAKING THE INTERNET SERIOUSLY
By David Gelernter

"In short: it's time to think about the Internet instead of just letting it happen."

Introduction: Our Algorithmic Culture
By John Brockman

Edge was in Munich in January for DLD 2010 and an Edge/DLD event entitled "Informavore" —  a discussion featuring Frank Schirrmacher, Editor of the Feuilleton and Co-Publisher of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Andrian Kreye, Feuilleton Editor of Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich; and Yale computer science visionary David Gelernter, who, in his 1991 book Mirror Worlds presented what's now called "cloud computing."

The intent of the panel was to discuss — for the benefit of a German audience — the import of the recent Frank Schirrmacher interview and Reality Club discussion on Edge entitled "The Age of the Informavore." David Gelernter, who predicted the Web, and who first presented the idea of "the cloud", was the scientist on the panel along with Schirrmacher and Kreye, Feuilleton editors of the two leading German national newspapers, both distinguished intellectuals.

As a result of the panel, Schirrmacher has commissioned Gelernter to write a regular column for FAZ, which was inaugurated with this essay, published by FAZ in a German translation on March 1st ("Der Mann, der das 'World Wide Web' erst möglich gemacht hat.")

Those of us involved in communicating ideas need to re-think the Internet. Here at Edge, we are not immune to such considerations. We have to ask if we're kidding ourselves by publishing 10,000+ word pieces to be read by people who are limiting themselves to 3" ideas, i.e. the width of the screen of their iPhones and Blackberries.

Many of the people that desperately need to know, don't even know that they don't know. Book publishers, confronted by the innovation of technology companies, are in a state of panic. Instead of embracing the new digital reading devices as an exciting opportunity, the default response is to disadvantage authors. Television and cable networks are dumbfounded by the move of younger people to watch TV on their computers or cell-phones. Newspapers and magazine publishers continue to see their advertising model crumble and have no response other than buyouts.

Take a look at the photos from the recent Edge annual dinner and you will find the people who are re-writing global culture, and also changing your business, and, your head. What do Evan Williams (Twitter), Larry Page (Google), Tim Berners-Lee (World Wide Web Consortium), Sergey Brin (Google), Bill Joy (Sun), Salar Kamangar (Google), Keith Coleman (Google Gmail), Marissa Mayer (Google), Lori Park (Google), W. Daniel Hillis (Applied Minds), Nathan Myhrvold (Intellectual Ventures), Dave Morin (formerly Facebook), Michael Tchao (Apple iPad), Tony Fadell (Apple/iPod), Jeff Skoll (formerly eBay), Chad Hurley (YouTube), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) have in common? All are software engineers or scientists.

So what's the point? It's a culture. Call it the algorithmic culture. To get it, you need to be part of it, you need to come out of it. Otherwise, you spend the rest of your life dancing to the tune of other people's code. Just look at Europe where the idea of competition in the Internet space appears to focus on litigation, legislation, regulation, and criminalization.

Gelernter writes:

The Internet is no topic like cellphones or videogame platforms or artificial intelligence; it's a topic like education. It's that big. Therefore beware: to become a teacher, master some topic you can teach; don't go to Education School and master nothing. To work on the Internet, master some part of the Internet: engineering, software, computer science, communication theory; economics or business; literature or design. Don't go to Internet School and master nothing. There are brilliant, admirable people at Internet institutes. But if these institutes have the same effect on the Internet that education schools have had on education, they will be a disaster.

It is just about 10 years since Edge and FAZ co-published Gelernter's June, 2000 manifesto, "A Second Coming", which was widely read and debated. I expect nothing less for this powerful and provocative piece by one of the leading visionaries of the cybersphere. I welcome comments and look forward to a rich Reality Club discussion.

DAVID GELERNTER is a professor of computer science at Yale and chief scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies (New Haven). His research centers on information management, parallel programming, and artificial intelligence. The "tuple spaces" introduced in Nicholas Carriero and Gelernter's Linda system (1983) are the basis of many computer communication systems worldwide. He is the author of Mirror Worlds, and Drawing a Life: Surviving the Unabomber.

David Gelernter's Edge Bio Page

FURTHER READING ON EDGE:
"Cloud Culture: The Promise And The Threat" By Charles Leadbeater
Edge@DLD: "Informavore": David Gelernter, Andrian Kreye, Frank Schirrmacher, John Brockman
"The Age of the Informavore": A Talk with Frank Schirrmacher
"Lord of the Cloud": John Markoff and Clay Shirky talk to David Gelernter
"The Second Coming: A Manifesto" by David Gelernter
The Edge Annual Question 2010: "How Is The Internet Changing the Way You Think?"

[...Continue to "Time To Start Taking The Internet Seriously" By David Gelernter]

Social enterprise brings at least £10.8 million to Cardiff

An article by Assembly Member David Melding in Wales Home reminded me of the great work undertaken by faith and cultural groups in Cardiff. A comment on the article clearly believes that communities only exist outside the Capital.Cardiff is a community of communities.

Our Spiritual Capital report http://www.spiritualcapital.org.uk/docs/spiritual-capital-cardiff-report-final.pdf seems to have been lost in the many reports written of faith works in this secular world.It is clearly  too real for our secular authorities and agencies.

It provides a narrative to the  Gweini Report, ‘Faith in Wales - Counting for Communities’ which estimated that the economic value of the contribution of faith community groups in Cardiff is over £10.8million. The fact that their work does not include the contribution of several large religiously founded, professionally run organisations, whose volunteers engage outside their local faith group context, suggests that the total economic value of faith community volunteers is even more substantial than this estimate suggests.

 

Churches pioneered free community schooling in Wales. Today there are 31 Church Aided schools in Cardiff Borough, representing 28% of the Local Authority public provision. Of these eighteen are Roman Catholic (14 primaries and 4 secondary) and thirteen are Anglican - 11 primaries, 2 secondary). There are in addition 9 independent schools, of which 5 have a religious community affiliation. Two of these are Muslim foundations. Some of them are very diverse in culture and nationality, and have been at the forefront of welcoming and including newcomers to the City for generations.

 

The Church Army's innovative work with homeless young people in Cardiff has created two hostels offering support to the vulnerable. This charity works with Cadwyn, a local housing association and social services in seeking to limit the damage caused by family dysfunction and breakdown, drug abuse and self harm, with educational and rehabilitation programmes.

 

St John's Ambulance is a highly professional organisation offering first aid training services, patient transport facilities, and coverage of hundreds of public events monthly, this is a voluntary charity with roots in a mediaeval Christian order of chivalry, and strong connections with faith communities. Of its 4,500 volunteers in Wales, (380 of them in Cardiff) 2,700 are children and young people receiving an outstanding training and social education as St John's Cadets.

 

Canton Uniting Church brings together former Baptist and Reformed Church congregations with a common will to serve the wide local community, through its Treganna family centre, and a range of church based community activities for the whole age range of people. These include Alcoholics Anonymous, Rainbows, Brownies, Guides; The Little Folks Play Group; Pensioners Luncheon Club; Weight Watchers; dance classes; concerts, choir rehearsals; counselling.

 

City United Reformed Church exemplifies how city centre churches can serve as gathering places for a diversity of needs. Its building hosts ecumenical meetings, is home to Cardiff's Adult Christian Education Centre, to Cruse, bereavement counselling, Weight watchers, Alcoholics Anonymous, a free Legal service for refugees, a religious book shop, and the Refectory coffee shop, and ordinary church social organisations. It has an open policy to all-comers, expressing its commitment to be a "safe space" for marginalized populations in the city seeking acceptance, support and affirmation."

 

St Teilo's Cathays illustrates how a building can be adapted as a centre for musical performance and rehearsal, benefiting both the artistic community and a church congregation which would otherwise not be able to afford to maintain it as a place of worship and community activity.

 

Thornhill Community Church demonstrates the capability of an enthusiastic active group of Christians to pioneer community development in a new housing area, and take initiatives which led to the City Council being willing to work through partnership with them to set up a new purpose built community library, to add to the existing wide range of social amenities established through this enterprise of faith.

 

The Beacon Centre Trowbridge St Mellons housing estate is an area of high unemployment and social deprivation, where a group of local Christians worked for ten years to create a meeting place that could serve a wide variety of needs for people in the local community. It offers activities for all ages, from crèche to luncheon club for seniors, and flexible opportunities for a range of educational and training activities. With success in funding applications to the E.U., government and charitable trusts, it opened in 2005, and is still developing its range of activities in response of local community needs.

 

Cardiff contains three mediaeval buildings of distinction, one is the Castle, and the others are churches, Llandaff Cathedral and St John's city parish church. Both are 'iconic' buildings. The Cathedral houses two masterpieces of European art; Epstein's 'Majestas' and Rosetti's 'Visit of the Magi'. Cardiff Bay's 'Lightship' - is an unique visitor attraction, also an ecumenical centre, Of these cultural tourism venues, only the Castle figures in city publications or promotions, leaving foreign visitors to wonder what happened to fourteen centuries of Christian heritage in and around Cardiff.

 

Over a dozen churches have been set up by immigrants settling in Cardiff. This has been happening for more than a century. Roman Catholic churches are also welcoming fellow believers and starting to provide worship in several European languages, notably polish. There are Christians from the Philippines, the Baltic States, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, India, China, Korea, and francophone Africa, worshipping together in their own language in their own or borrowed meeting places around the city. Church schools play a vital role in welcoming and supporting people with such diversity of culture.

 

Settlers in Cardiff from the Indian sub-continent have established four Hindu Temples, and three Sikh Gurdwaras, all of which serve as community social and educational centres. Their voluntary community association are able to offer help and support to people in several of the sub-continent's languages, and provide a social 'home' environment in which people stay connected to their cultural and spiritual roots, whilst at the same time being engaged as citizens of their adopted city. Islam in Cardiff is represented by ten mosques and two schools. Due to the breadth of the Muslim population, mosques tend to have members of predominantly one language group, whether it is Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu or Arabic. These communities provide strong links for their members with their communities of origin, and much needed social support to those with language needs. The one distinctly multi-national mosque, where English is the common social language, is closest to the University campus.

 

See David Melding's article in Wales Home

http://waleshome.org/2010/03/moses-maggie-and-the-message/

 

 

 

Property demand achieving what the customer wants - time for IT Industries

Research on propery in South East Wales demonstrates that the demand for employment property in Wales is driven by four key sectors: Business Services; Manufacturing; High Technology; Sales and Distribution.Not only is the number of companies requiring manufacturing accommodation falling, but the type of accommodation is also changing. The extent of accommodation required by manufacturing firms is diminishing and the majority of manufacturing demand is for modern, flexible units of between 2,000 sq ft and 3,000 sq ft.

The manufacturing industry is experiencing a decline nationally in the United Kingdom and the south east Wales property market has been heavily dominated by the supply of manufacturing accommodation in the past.Those manufacturing industries which remain in the region have been streamlined in the drive for efficiency. Modern, smaller units, therefore, are in greater demand in the manufacturing industry. Wales can provide low cost efficent units but there is a need to review employment land suitable.

In the past South Wales has underperformed in attracting high value users. There are a number of reasons for this including: the general perception of the region as one characterised by heavy industry and manufacturing; the perceived skill set available in the workforce; the cost/value gap associated with large scale speculative development and, therefore, developer confidence; the lack of suitable sites; and general investor confidence in the region. IT Sector is now the only sector that can lead on this.IT Engineers should be brought over from countries looking to invest in Europe as Asia is where they are now heading.

World Kidney Day -new research fund in Wales

Today on World Kidney Day 12 of March 2010  - Kidney Wales Foundation announces the launch of a new " Kidney Wales Research Fund" in Wales.
 
Kidney Wales  will kick start the fund with £100,000 and invite expressions of interest from researchers who wish to prevent renal disease and alleviate the cause of kidney failure.

Bids to the Fund are being sought from researchers across Wales and interest has been shown from overseas and particularly the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative MedicineWinston-Salem in the United States.

The mission of World Kidney Day is to raise awareness of the importance of our kidneys to our overall health and to reduce the frequency and impact of kidney disease and its associated health problems worldwide. The mission of World Kidney Day is to:

Raise awareness about our kidneys ;
Highlight that diabetes and high blood pressure are key risk factors for Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) ;
Encourage systematic screening of all patients with diabetes and hypertension for CKD;
Encourage preventivion ;
Educate all medical professionals about their key role in detecting and reducing the risk of CKD
Stress the important role of local and national health authorities in controlling the CKD epidemic. Health authorities worldwide will have to deal with high and escalating costs if no action is taken to treat the growing number of people with CKD.

On World Kidney Day all governments across the World are encouraged to alleviate kidney disease. Kidney Wales works in partnership with our Patients, Supporters, Assembly Members, Members of Parliament and Members of the European Parliament and the Welsh Assembly Government and all those who join in KW objectives.
 
As a Charity we are also taking action today by announcing this new Kidney Wales Research Fund.

Trust is phantasmagoric among the salts and acids of Google

A favourite quote fell into my  discussion with my son over the weekend.

" No man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in the warm phantasmagoric chamber of the brain, with all the painted windows and storied wall"  - Robert Louis Stevenson.

It also  appeared by coincidence on page 24 of Googled "The End of the World As We Know It " by Ken Auletta.It focuses in on Larry Page and Sergey Brin who resisted it seems the attempts by Michael Moritz the welshman from Cardiff and others to appoint a CEO at the beginning of the journey.

Trust is a big thing when growing a company or economy.But in Google nowhere in the three billion daily searches it conducts, the two dozen or so petabytes (about twenty-four quadrillion bits) of data it stores the more than twenty million books it plans to digitise do we so trust another company .Google has built itself so quickly it must trust itself.

Since Google's mission statement is "Don't be evil", and since the founder's letter which accompanied its share prospectus stated an ambition to "make the world a better place". Ken Auletta, is one of America's best business journalists, has turned his attention on the corporation, with particular reference to the challenges it faces. Many of these bear on the tension between the company's good intentions and the actual consequences of what it does.

In Googled, Auletta identifies one central, crucial characteristic of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the company's founders they trust their judgement.

I like this definition of Trust- it applies to the best companies.

See http://trustedadvisor.com/trustmatters/

 

Where:

T = Trustworthiness C = Credibility (words)    R = Reliability (actions)
I = Intimacy (safety)   S = Self-orientation ( agenda  working?)

Why is trust important to understand in our 21 st Century ? There are three forces driving the need to better understand trust:

• the world is getting more linked—we must deal with others more often, and better;
• horizontal external relationships are replacing vertical internal relationships—we are moving from a global managerial economy to an influence economy;
• the same forces that link us also depersonalise those links; links without personal connection are suboptimal; links with connection create trust and trust creates value.

Our understanding of trust is limited, fragmented and hard to access but the Google story is a good case study of trusting employees and it is apparent that the public trust Google to do the right thing  because it creates partnerships. So I will change the above equation soon.

 

Economic benefits must be realised with vision for the future

The economic benefits of broadband go hand-in-hand with social benefits and the potential for vast improvements in the quality of life. Connecting the country to higher speeds means more jobs, more innovation, and more economic growth.

In the USA the National Broadband Plan will describe concrete ways in which broadband can be a part of 21st century solutions to some of our nation’s most pressing challenges, including:

• Extending the availability and lowering the costs of quality care by putting digital health tools in the hands of doctors and hospitals across the country and removing geographic barriers for patient treatment.  
• Providing our kids with a world class, 21st century education, connecting them to the global library and giving them the digital skills they need for the future.
• Making our electric grid smart and efficient and providing Americans with the information they need to make their homes and buildings smarter.  
• Ensuring that law enforcement officers and first responders across the country have cutting-edge, reliable communications technologies to respond to emergencies efficiently and effectively. 

These are real benefits for real people.Wales should look at it closely.

Reforming Universal Service For 21st Century Communications
March 5th, 2010 by Rebekah GoodheartThe draft National Broadband Plan creates a path to ensure that, regardless of where individuals live, they will have access to broadband service by 2020. Doing so requires a transition away from the 20th Read More...

Wales national broadband strategy

Wales needs a national broadband policy that recognises the tremendous benefit that can be served by focusing on increased access and less barriers to entry of this essential service. Digital, broadband and communications strategy can only assist in the birthing and growth of new ventures, which will be the  source of net job gains

In a 11 days, in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission will deliver a National Broadband Plan, as it was asked to do by Congress and  President  Obama in the Recovery Act. Today, regardless of where individuals live, they have access to telephone service. Congress asked the FCC to create a plan to achieve the same result for broadband service.

 
  

The Plan is intended to aid  U.S. global leadership in high-speed Internet to create jobs and spur economic growth; to unleash new waves of innovation and investment; and to improve education, health care, energy efficiency, public safety.

In Wales increasing access to educational resources, mentoring, and funding, are now essential. A cogent national  policy can accelerate these activities at this critical time in our economic recovery.

Stifling of Creativity, Innovation and Free Speech

The Digital Economy Bill, which turns much of Lord Carter's Digital Britain report into law needs to be reported upon.An article published on Thursday in, The Guardian, discusses a debate taking place in the British Parliament around a new Digital Economy Bill.

One amendment in particular is stirring a lot of discussion about its impact on content online. The Guardian writes:

The new proposal – which was passed in the House of Lords by 165 votes to 140 – gives a high court judge the right to issue an injunction against a Web site accused of hosting a “substantial” amount of copyright infringing material, potentially forcing the entire site offline.

A judge could  shut down a Web site  because of copyright infringement, even if the site’s manager didn’t put the content online.The concern is how a company can be held accountable for every piece of content placed on its site.  Many critics of this Bill say it is most likely to result in the stifling of creativity, innovation and free speech.

On Monday, Lord Puttnam said that the scheme was being rushed through parliament without sufficient scrutiny, and that legislators were subject to an "extraordinary degree of lobbying" from copyright holders.The Bill must pass through the House of Lords before it can be put before the Commons and turned into law. Reading continues in the Lords on Monday.

 

The Internet Services Providers' Association(ISPA), which represents ISPs, issued a press release in which it said it was "outraged" by this amendment, which it described as "misjudged" and "disproportionate".

The prominent blogger and web-freedom campaigner Cory Doctorow went further, warning that in trying to end the use of "web lockers" for copyright infringement, the Lords could cripple services like Google Docs and You Send It, and end up damaging Britain.

Despite the imminence of a general election, it's now looking quite likely that a bill which has the support of the main parties could well end up in law.