Tag Archives: Recession

Women Become The Breadwinners.

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In this wintry economical climate some things have changed. More women than men lost their jobs, but it also changed people’s attitudes. Women have become entrepreneurial.

Avon, the company for women has proven some of the top female Sales Leaders are not only comfortable with running their own businesses, but also with having their husbands help look after the children and even work for them.

Some of these entrepreneurial women have become the main breadwinners in their families. What’s more, they have been able to take their success to the next level, even employing members of their own family to work within their team – including their husbands. Working closely together, and sharing their private lives and careers, these unconventional ‘power couple’ partnerships appear to be a prosperous success, with men that agree to the arrangement perfectly comfortable working for their wife.

Avon Sales Leader Rebekah Testar, who is responsible for training and recruiting her own team of Representatives comments:

“I love having the opportunity to work with my husband, Tony, taking time off together when we want to, and supporting each other on a daily basis. It’s not for everyone, but like other Avon couples I know we make these unconventional partnerships work by carefully delineating the respective roles and playing to each other’s strengths.”

“From my personal experience the most successful, full-time working relationships will find ways to work together at home by creating a separate balance of power in their business relationship, resting on how much each person wants to put in.”

Avon Sales Leader, Tony Testar says:

“I don’t feel intimidated that I technically work for my wife, I’m proud to be a part of such an enterprise that we can run together. When she started working for Avon, the money opportunities, and flexible hours allowing us to holiday and spend time with the kids was certainly appealing. When Rebekah first recruited me I did have a few male friends that took the micky, now some are thinking about setting up their own Avon business.”

Grace Dawodu, 41 from Essex is an NHS community nurse but decided to become an Avon lady due to our current economic climate as a lot of people in the health sector are at risk of losing their job. Grace viewed her Avon role as more job security for her.

Grace is a Sales Leader in training. She lives with her husband who works in admin. With her job as a nurse and an Avon lady, she is now the main breadwinner. Grace used to buy from her local Avon lady but was inclined to become one with the cuts the NHS were making. Grace enjoys working for Avon for several reasons; as a community nurse , she sees her Avon role as an extension of helping others. Secondly, Grace also trained as a therapist at a domestic violence so has a personal connection with Avon’s causes.

Nadine Rowlands and Wayne Rowlands, Manchester

Nadine started her Avon business five years ago, and two years ago, she recruited her husband Wayne as part of her team. They initially started the business because they had just moved house and had a big mortgage to pay, but as time went by, it became more and more of a passion for the couple and nowadays they very much run their business as an Avon partnership. At the last count, they had 1,200 Representatives and Sales Leaders in their team, and an annual turnover of £2.5 million! This year they are on track to earn an impressive £95k.

What Recession? How Biomedical Device Companies Thrived in a Bad Economy

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New Study Reveals the Secrets to this Industry’s Success during an Economic Downturn

The biomedical devices industry grew, invested, and prospered from 2007 to 2009, flouting an overwhelming trend that saw many of the world’s largest companies collapse during the worst economic climate since the Great Depression. How did they do it? A new analysis of this industry from WTP Advisors, the global tax and business advisory firm, reveals three key traits that helped recession-proof the top independent biomedical device makers around the world, and determines whether or not their success is sustainable over the long-term.

The study is published in the current online edition of the biomedical industry journal MD+DI.

“In short, our study shows that the best of biomedical device makers succeed by making very little, very well, for sale at very high prices,” says lead author, Yair Holtzman, director at WTP Advisors and Global Life Sciences practice leader.

The authors looked at 25 of the top independent biomedical device makers worldwide[1] and analyzed their business strategies, financial results, marketing investment, product portfolios, and research and development to better understand what drove growth and profitability in a time of worldwide downturn.  They found three common characteristics shared by the most successful of the 25 firms that appeared to contribute to their growth during the recession, and are still a factor today, including:

  • High Value-Added Manufacturing: Building advanced technology products in developed markets while adding a very high level of value to base costs has and will continue to do well for this sector.  For highly differentiated products sold as customized solutions, the U.S. and Europe have been great places to establish and grow businesses.
  • Increased Marketing Efforts: These companies continued to increase spend on marketing efforts during the Great Recession of the last couple of years (2008-2010).
  • Investment in Research & Development and New Products: The most successful biomedical device companies developed a robust pipeline of new products and R&D capabilities, which allowed them to navigate challenging times successfully. Even during the great recession they were increasing their R&D spend.

However, Holtzman warns, “Despite the unparalleled success of the biomedical device industry from a 10,000 foot view, our close study reveals operational fissures that, if left unchecked could threaten future growth.”

For instance, some firms, having grown through acquisition of start-ups and by purchasing of piece parts of organizations now have too many plants and too many labs to be efficient.

Holtzman believes that consolidation will be a key driver facilitating growth over the coming years and that companies should sweep up the collections of purchased parts and turn these businesses into coherent and focused companies in order to achieve maximum efficiency.

In the future, the industry review reveals that the big opportunity for the biomedical device business – one already being grasped by the best in the industry – will be to move beyond the sometimes bumpy revenue stream from selling things, and migrate to a business model focused on selling systems that provide a point of control and differentiation (through software) or that yield sustained revenues from related consumable products used in caring for patients.

“This is the kind of strategy that worked for King Gillette when his business first adopted the razor and blades model, and one that has also worked for IBM as it has migrated from a hardware business to one driven by sustained revenue streams from software and services,” Holtzman says.

Going forward, Holtzman concludes, biomedical device companies will need to demonstrate that a particular intervention improves a specific patient outcome and is more cost effective than existing alternative treatments available on the market.

WTP Advisors is a leader in tax and business advisory services for a global marketplace. Our highly skilled professionals equipped with years of industry experience, coupled with our cutting-edge technologies, make substantive and long-term differences to an organization’s profitability. WTP Advisors is headquartered in White Plains, N.Y., with offices across the Americas, Asia and Europe.

[1] The organizations that were examined in this analysis include:  Abbott Labs, Alcon, B. Braun, Baxter, Beckman Coulter, Becton, Dickinson, Biomet, Inc., Boston Scientific, C R Bard, Inc., CareFusion, Covidien, Danaher, Fresenius Medical Care, Getinge AB-B, Hospira, Medtronic, Smith & Nephew, Inc., St. Jude Medical, Stryker, Synthes, Terumo, Tornier, Varian Medical, Wright Medical, Technology, and Zimmer Holdings.

 

SOURCE WTP Advisors

Money Games

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In these times of penny-pinching, belt-tightening and hatch batten-downing we’re all suddenly obsessed with the price of things. Moreover, we’re turning into a population of individual price comparison services and I fear the day when we’re all Pseudo-Russian rodents may soon be upon us. My wife will automatically quote, and compare, the price of diesel at every petrol station we drive by like she’s got oil-based Tourette’s.

Eventually we all end up drawing the same conclusion- it’s too much. We state, categorically, that everything is too much like we’re some kind of global procurement guru. It’s not worth that much! We say as we roll everything from a chocolate orange to a mobile phone around in our searching little grasp.

My father-in-law just happens to be a global procurement guru. Now retired, he was the global head of procurement for some of the biggest companies in the world as well as our very own treasury. He’s had to establish the actual worth of everything from office-sized mining machines to tiny electrical components so that when he signed off on a couple of million quids worth, he knew he was getting value for money.

His view on ‘value’ is the same as mine, which was forged from a lifetime of selling shit to anyone that will stand still for ten seconds: Something is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it.
That iPad you just bought. Do you care that it cost a few pence to manufacture? No. It’s cost you several hundred pounds because somebody else was willing to pay that much for it. If they weren’t… it wouldn’t.

Our professional footballers are always in for a world of grief because they get paid more in a week than I get paid in… my own dreams. The loudest and most agreed-upon chant from the terraces is always, “he’s not worth twenty million!”, or, “He’s not worth two hundred grand a week!” Well he is, because that’s what somebody is paying him. If he wasn’t… they wouldn’t.

Here’s the biggie: Damien Hirst spent fifty grand putting a shark in a tank and sold it for eight million dollars. His diamond-encrusted platinum skull had fifteen million pounds worth of diamonds on it and went on the market for fifty million. It was titled, “for the love of God” and it is, to my mind, the most aptly named piece of art since “bowl of fruit with wine glass.”

Hopefully, by now, you’re not shouting, “How can a shark in a tank be worth eight million?” because you’ve got my point. If there’s someone out there willing to pay that much for it, then that’s how much it’s worth.

People with a lot of money aren’t in the business of throwing it away and those paying footballers’ wages, organizing parking spaces for dead sharks and even, dare I say it, buying iPads are doing it because, for them, it’s worth the money. It’s their money and they will almost always get more out than they spend, either in direct profits or the benefits of use.

The problem comes when it’s not their money they’re spending. It gets even worse when it’s your money- our money.

For me it becomes about as painful as space-hopper hemorrhoids when the decisions to spend the money you were about to fork out on that iPad or, say, a new school, is thrown at two weeks of spot-light sports partying and it costs seven and a quarter BILLION pounds.

This isn’t the folly of some mega-rich Oligarch and it’s certainly not good business sense. Anybody spending their own money or that of the company they worked for wouldn’t entertain such a suggestion longer than the time it would take to guffaw loudly and call security.

The public money being spent on the Olympics will NOT make a profit in any real sense even though the money being spent on it is as real as it gets, regardless of projections of associated benefits to business and local economy. In 2006 Ken Livingstone predicted that the games would make a profit, after ten years, and that they would cost less than five billion and that the resale of the land would generate seven hundred million back. Well the games has come in at fifty percent more than that, the price of land has plummeted, and we don’t have ten prosperous years to frolic in, waiting for pay day.
As for the sheer benefits of use? How many speed cyclists do you think will be paying to hurtle round that Velodrome once the dust has settled? Enough to cover the cost of building it? There’s one in Manchester they built for the Commonwealth games and it’s just a big, empty, curvy-topped warehouse most of the time.

Like I said, something is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it and, in spite of the inevitable feel-good factor that 17 days of international attention will give us, the Olympics will never be worth seven and a quarter billion pounds to me. Simples!

Londoners Life 19 – By Phil Ryan

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Londoners Life 19 – By Phil Ryan

Well a big hello after my absence. Had to finish off two novels and some other projects. But I’m back in time for my New Year review. London has had a busy old time in many ways. We’ve watched the giant money hole of the Olympics steal more and more of our money, we’ve had a bit of rioting, a bit of demonstrating and a bit of a recession. And how’s it left us Londoners? Well certainly the gap between rich and poor continues apace – some areas in London now resembling scenes from the aftermath of an apocalyptic plague movie whilst other tangibly smell of cash and cashmere. This gap can also be measured in ever sky rocketing house prices. Whilst everyday living costs creep ever higher. So for my review of 2011 here’s a quick list of a few London change indicators.
• Starters in restaurants now seem to cost as much as a main course
• More restaurants have replaced their chairs with those highly comfortable solid wooden thin benches from a Victorian prison
• A trip to the cinema for two is coming in at close to £25.00 and popcorn has broken the £5.00 ceiling
• There’s a new demonstration every day in Town not to mention various permanent demonstrations at tourist sights
• The Oyster card now only offers minor convenience in getting in and out of stations but cleverly hides the ever spiraling travel costs (until you have to top up)
• Parking in London is now only affordable by the wealthy or the desperate
• London Councils have finally abandoned all pretense of caring about their residents.
• Shops have sales every other week
• Sushi restaurants are taking over
So goodbye to 2011 with your momentous world events that touched London but didn’t fundamentally alter it in any way. For keen power player watchers we’ve had scandals and phone hacking saga’s that apart from the closure of the News of the World don’t seem to have changed the main players. Our Bankers carry on as normal apart from those lower down the food chain losing their jobs. So from a Londoners perspective what’s 2012 going to be like? Well it’s going to be more expensive across the board from transport to accommodation. The Olympic gravy train will roll in and out inconveniencing us all (of course TFL will run a fantastic tube service with an extra 6 million people on board) And there’ll probably be another uplifting parade to celebrate the royal baby that will undoubtedly appear in time for the Queens Jubilee celebrations. Closer to home still Hammersmith Bridge will be finally replaced by Lego as that seems more robust than the one they spent millions of our taxes on ‘repairing’. The Mayoral election will shock us all when a surprise last minute candidate bags the top job. Said candidate being that bloke off my big fat gypsy wedding. And London Councils will begin plans to cull the poor.

Looking back I’m left with some of my favourite moments from what I can only describe as ‘spokespeople’. TV and Radio reporters grabbing that all important human interest moment out on the street. So from ‘Rioters in Tottenham’ we had (from young guy number 1 with a hoodie and face mask carrying a large plasma TV) “It’s all about Iraq” (from young man number 2 with a hoodie and face mask number) “It’s about anger. We’re angry about being angry”. From a ‘St Pauls Cathedral Camp protester’ (who looked slightly the worse for wear) “I came to support these people and whatever it is they’re protesting about – it’s brilliant whatever it is and they gave me a tent a spliff and some soup I mean how great is that?” From a Christmas shoppers laden with about ten bags “Yes we’re cutting right back this year” and from some religious loon with a beard “Threatening death for us is an argument it’s not unreasonable”. So Happy 2012 to us all and whether its Ken or Boris as Mayor, whether we win gold medals or flog the Olympic venues for a tenner to a friend of Lord Coe’s as Londoner’s we just won’t care – It’s a London thing.

Chancellor’s statement shows a glimmer of hope

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George Osborne’s autumn statement was an opportunity for the government to return much needed confidence to the retail sector to boost growth. The Chancellor’s statement questions the conventional wisdom that countries can spend their way to economic prosperity, as reference to consumer spending is almost completely bypassed.

Last week’s concerning official figures published by the Office for National Statistics paint a worrying economic picture for the retail and distribution sector. The figures were followed by a warning from the British Retail Consortium that the ONS were in fact painting a far rosier picture than they were hearing from their members.

Kevin Flood, co-founder and CEO of Shopow, the UK’s largest social shopping site, commented, “For the British economy to start growing it is absolutely vital confidence returns. With conditions still fragile on Britain’s high street, providing greater support for SMEs and freezing the proposed fuel duty rise are welcome. The Chancellor’s proposed extension to rate relief for small firms and the implementation of a credit easing program to underwrite up to £40bn of small business loans will give smaller firms greater confidence. It will not however alleviate the strain on the purse strings of the consumer.

Kevin adds, “The Government needs to review its decision on VAT however to alleviate some of the economic gloom people are experiencing. A temporary cut in VAT would help give consumers confidence to get out and spend.”

UK Youth Unemployment Hits a Million – A Fundamental Not A Short Term Problem

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UK youth unemployment rose above 1 million, its highest level since 1996 according to government figures. Employment Minister Chris Grayling blamed the Eurozone debt crisis for the rising number of jobless. Looking at the table below we can see that youth unemployment in this country has been rising for many years even before the recession.

May-July 2004 580,000 12.2
May-July 2005 600,000 12.6
May-July 2006 706,000 14.5
May-July 2007 711,000 14.6
May-July 2008 727,000 14.8
May-July 2009 944,000 19.8
May-July 2010 921,000 19.4
May-July 2011 973,000 20.8
July-September 2011 1,020,000 21.9

Source: Office of National Statistics

Typically and not unexpectedly the politicians have sought to push blame and responsibility elsewhere. The coalition blame everything on the Eurozone, Labour just want to capitalise on the situation and refuse to take any responsibility for a problem which they largely created. They still claim they did a brilliant job with the education system.

This isn’t a cyclical problem. It’s not about getting the economy to grow (as we keep hearing) it’s about the fundamental failure of our education system to prepare young people for work. The statistics above don’t lie. The problem is an obsession with grades and targets when we should be obsessed with skills. See my earlier article here. The previous Labour government became pushed as many students as it could into universities and it shunned apprenticeships. I myself have first-hand experience of the system I came out of school and university with top grades but totally unprepared for work.

Almost 28% of UK graduates who left university in 2007 were still not in full-time work three and a half years later, figures have suggested.

But if you think it’s bad here and can’t get any worse think again. Youth unemployment in Spain is at an astonishing 46.2% and youth unemployment across Europe has soared. This has been going on for much longer than the Eurozone crisis.

The exception to the rule is Germany. Please politicians look at the German system. The German system is defined by flexibility. It is designed to suit the individual Germany has five different types of secondary school. The German education system is geared to getting people into work. It has an incredibly successful apprenticeship system which allows young people to gain valuable experience and skills. (p.s. It has little or no tuition fees as well) The coalition government has made some progress in regard to apprenticeships but it is not nearly enough. Our entire curriculum, system and culture needs to be completely revised.

I am writing this article not to complain or blame the government but to make people aware of this serious fundamental problem. Make no mistake if we don’t fix this we are heading for a crisis. It will not be fixed overnight. We need a radical overhaul of our education system, if we continue down this path we are heading for disaster. The coalition government thinks it has done enough, it has not.

 

It's Christmas time- there's no need to be afraid.

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I’ve just seen an ad for Littlewoods, or copses as they should be known. It’s your usual fare. Loads of cute kids on stage at a school and the proud parents beaming from the fold-up chairs below. It’s not a nativity of course, god forbid, it’s a singing tribute to how wonderful mums are. Nice? Well not really no, because the song- and there’s even a rap in there to keep it ‘street’, is all about how mum is wonderful for buying just about every consumer electrical gizmo you could imagine that doesn’t begin with an ‘i’.

There’s a laptop and an HTC Android phone. The first kid proudly holds up his X-Box Kinect unit like it’s the ‘fragrances that are also useful in scrabble’ shop’s entire stock of Myrrh.

It ends with a little girl, her ruby cheeks poking out from between the just-closed curtains, reminding us that the mark of a wonderful mum is the quality, measured in expenditure, of her gifts. And that we should, therefore, measure our own maternal love by that scale alone.
The add stops short of having Santa flying overhead trailing a banner from his sleigh that reads, “MONEY = LOVE, don’t forget kids!” But that mantra is sewn, inextricably, into the underpants of every precious, seasonal second.

I’m not against Christmas, contrary to the view of the parent of a child that approached me once and asked if I was Santa’s sister because his mum has said I was ‘Aunty Christmas.’ I love Christmas. I come over all Jimmy Stewart as soon as Summer’s over and I can’t hear the opening bars of ‘Silent Night’ without bursting into tears and wanting to join the Sally Army. I just hate this unnecessary and inexplicable extortion every year.

I don’t have kids, and I’m sure some of you are thinking, “If your wife’s as tight as you are, you never will!” But my sister does. My sister is a single mum with two sons. The eldest is 22 now so his festive focus has fully relocated from under the tree to under the table but his kid brother is 14. Old enough to want everything but too young to care what it costs.

When his mates are all tweeting photos of their new PS3 on their new ipads and running round to his house in their new trainers to make sure he got it because he hasn’t ‘RT’d’ yet, he’s going to hide his market versions- the ‘iPhone’ and the ‘Games Centre Play Console- with 7 game cartridges included!’ And look at my poor sister like she’s picking the last of Santa’s gonads from between her teeth just because she couldn’t get herself into deep enough debt to avoid the emotional scarring a shit present can have on a teenager.

He won’t really because he’s a good kid. He’ll do what I used to do and pretend it’s just as good as the thing you really wanted then find a way to hide it long enough to casually mention you played with it so much it broke, and suffering the inevitable comeback, “That doesn’t just apply to toys you know!”

I still remember desperately faking happiness when the ‘Evil Knievel action figure with interchangeable costumes and multi-trick stunt bike’ I’d asked for turned out to be a small plastic moulded ‘figure-on-bike’ with a big glued seam running down the middle that you revved up and watched career in a short curve into the nearest skirting board. Not to mention picking the stitching from the fourth stripe on my ‘same as Adidas’ trainers before I got to school only to be told by my jeering fellow students, as I knelt down for assembly, that they had different coloured soles- not from genuine Adidas trainers but from each other.

That was nearly 30 years ago. The pressure’s ten times worse now.

Why? Where did this law that you have to spend a couple of hundred quid on gifts come from?
Not the Nativity, that’s for sure. Its been sacked by Littlewoods in favour of ‘Grange Hill does the Ludovico Technique.’ (Google anyone?) And I’m sure Jesus would be spinning in his shroud, if he was still dead, at the thought of his birthday being hijacked by everyone else. Imagine if everyone got presents on your birthday. It’d certainly take the sheen off it I’ll bet, and that’s my point really. Birthdays are personal and they only involve one person.
Mark Twain said, “The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” I agree with the first part, although the day I heard my mum say, “by the time I realized it wasn’t wind it was too late,” doesn’t even make my top 100, but you get my point. Presents on birthdays make sense! Let’s just do that shall we?

Here’s what I think we should do: Everyone, at the same time, stand up and say, “There won’t be any presents this Christmas.” Then enjoy a huge sigh of relief and start, for the first time in a long time, to really look forward to the holidays.

It’s important that everyone does it at the same time and sticks to it, which will be hard to organize and even harder to check, and there will be mass disappointment for every child in England but it will pass when they all realize they’re in the same boat and they’re not missing out.

Now imagine the Christmases that will follow. Everyone can just work until the holidays start and then enjoy time with their friends and families. Boyfriends and husbands won’t have to reduce themselves to asking the teenage assistant behind the perfume counter for suggestions because they’ve forgotten what their wife’s favorite is called and EVERYTHING just smells of perfume!

It can feel like a real holiday for a change and, once it’s all over, there won’t be a national depression as everyone spends January skint, cold and about as festive as Scrooge’s warts. Better still, single parents or families that have little or no income won’t have to worry that their kids will hate them and/or get bullied at school. Loan sharks, feeding on the poor and vulnerable in in the less affluent areas of the country, will have to find other ways to ‘help people out till pay day’.

A weight of unnecessary obligation would be lifted from everyone and we would all be no less festive for it.

As for Christmas morning? Imagine getting up (whenever you like- you’re on holiday remember) and strolling downstairs to greet your family with a hearty breakfast and a mulled wine and hugs all round. Elders can talk to youngsters while the crisp winter morning air draws the first flame from the Yule log. Christians can take a moment for silent reflection while the rest of us slap a bit of Slade on and work up an appetite for the largest and best meal of the year. Happy in the knowledge that it’s cost you no more than all the good will and genuine Christmas cheer you can muster.

Sounds great to me.

Magazine Round-Up: October | Amanda Seyfried and Rosamund Pike Cover Stars.

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Glamour has Amanda Seyfried on the cover. She gives a refreshing interview inside. She reveals: “British guys are definitely funnier than American guys.”

It is Glamour’s Men Issue and they have 25 pages of men

In the Dos and Don’ts, Jimmy Choo re-release their greatest hits, men in uggs, ipad covers, Lucy Liu becomes an artist and Prince William is heading the fund-raising to help homelessness, Diesel clothes, Children in Need turns 31!,

Louise Mensch tells Glamour readers how to succeed in a man’s world. Louise is inspirational and she gives good advice.

  What a man is thinking on the first date, work habits that are making you sick, Career tips from jewellery         entrepreneur Jessica Herrin, Food versus Exercise; which is better for you? , Is being single making you broke?, How to be single, are you in drinking denial?, Celebrity tenants. You won’t want one after reading the article, Your right to abortion (a very good article, laws are being passed quietly all of the time to take away women’s rights),

50 Sexiest Men: Robert Pattinson takes the top spot again, Taylor Lautner is second.

Brad Pitt, Hugh Jackman, George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Matt Smith, Ashton Kutcher, Justin Timberlake, Darren Criss, Prince Harry, Zac Efron are also on the list.

Katherine Jenkins tells of the friend, Polly Noble’s, battle with cancer. A very inspirational story. Polly has a book out, The Cancer Journey, that I think will be brilliant after reading the article.

What a man wants in bed.

James Cordon protests that men have feelings too, and he’s right. Well written.

Gabrielle Bernstein gives her happiness guide.

Arianna Huffington has written a brilliant and informative article on the economical climate, explains what happened and if we will recover.

Steve Jones is interviewed by Celia Walden in the lunch date feature.

The rise in broody men.

Guillaume Henry tells Glamour readers how to get Parisian chic.

Julia Restoin-Roitfeld’s celebrity look book.

Bad beauty habits to kick.

Five reasons to love Emma Stone.

The truth about your lady parts: everything you want to know about your vagina.

Charlotte Ronson shows Glamour around her home.

Tatler has Isabel Lucas on the cover, and an interview with her inside.

Anna Dello Russo talks front row fashion.

Frida Giannini, Gucci creative director, gives Tatler her mood board.

Emily Blunt’s brother Sebastian joins the family business.

Sam Leith shows how not to make a speech.

There is an amusing article on fancy dress parties, and lots of pictures, Marc Jacobs dressed as a pig? Why not.

David Sedaris interview.

Super Tutors to the rescue, if you have the money, get the best with Tatler’s guide.

The wonderful Francis Wheen writes about Private Eye’s 50th anniversary, and to the next 50!

Gallerist Maureen Paley.

School pranks.

Camel Racing.

The richest man in Britain: Alisher Usmanov.

The worrying trend of parents taking drugs with their kids. Jeez….

Keith Vaz profile.

Emma Freud’s technology reviews.

Jonathan Yeo interview.

An editorial on Britain’s funniest comedians. Al Murray in the nude (!), Laura Solon, Tim Key, David Armand, Rufus Hound, Miles Jupp, Lucy Porter, Jack Whitehall, Greg Davies (as Christine Keeler, so funny).

How to keep your money safe. Clue: buy gold.

Dynasties of Dynasties: A profile of the Rothschild dynasty.

How to sleep better.

The virtues of Crème de la Mer.

Tatler homes: Scotland’s Linzee Gordon’s.

Ralph Lauren interview.

Solange Azagury-Partridge tells Tatler what she loves.

Ciara Parkes travels to Botswana.

Rosamund Pike is on the cover of Instyle, she is interviewed inside and says: “I find award ceremonies so often the low point – people delivering trite lines in a pretentious manner”.

Sexy perfume adverts.

Nicole Roberts gives her Style IQ

The wonderful world of Christian Louboutin.

15 minutes with Diana von Furstenberg

Chloe Sevigny’s fashion genius.

You can tell people are tightening their purse strings as Instyle – and other magazines- are giving advice on how to do things on the cheap or by yourself. In the ‘your look’ section they tell you how to fake a facial, become your own hairstylist, make your own jewellery.

How to stay original when people keep buying the same clothes as you.

Instyle sits down with Gucci’s Frida Giannini to celebrate Gucci’s 90th birthday.

Jessica Chastain models and is interviewed.

Inside the Kardashian sister’s wardrobes. Envy alert!

How to wear a hat.

Olivia Wilde is this month’s beauty crush.

Downton Abbey star Jessica Brown Findlay models evening make up and there is 10 things you need to know about Jessica.

Narciso Rodriguez, Michael Kors, Tamara Mellon, Oscar De La Renta tell Instyle on the inspiration behind their perfume.

Jessica Alba, up close.

Dita Von Teese goes to the Maldives so we don’t have to. Sob.

Melissa Odabash tells Instyle what she packs for her holidays.

Diane Birch shows Instyle the contents of the bag.

Part 2 here