Princess in wonderland

If the European Commission pass the recent Green Paper on an EU-wide standardized legal definition on labor law, our freelancers could lose their freedom to be self-employed.

According to the Commission, “Four out of ten EU workers are now on non-standard contracts or self-employed and reality is rapidly outpacing regulation in the EU workplace”.

The Green Paper states that “the modernization of labor law constitutes a key element for success of the adaptability of workers and enterprises”.

However, such a proposal for refined labor law has been claimed that it would lead to “a full scale assault on the right to be self-employed”. UK labor law has a distinction between employment contracts and commercial contracts, with wide space left to cover the uncertainties in the future. Its application depends on a mass of credible tests which have been developed by court for a long time, which has been long proved to be a consentient principle.

Called himself Crazystart58 on ebay.co.uk, the 34-year-old Welshman has had his online PDA （Personal Digital Assistant—like Blackberry）business for over 5 years. He told Welsh Globe that, “There are not so many rules to be an online seller. And if there is any, I won’t feel so free to start my own business.” Freelancers like him in Wales can reach several thousands（Sub:I can’t find the data） and the population is still increasing. Self-employment is one of the best ways to release the pressure caused by the year-after-year rising unemployment in Wales. Research from Welsh government has confirmed that the contribution rate of the self-employed is as same as employed one. A one-size-fits-all labor market model can restrict contractors and freelancers’ enthusiasm, as they have been comfortable with the free commercial atmosphere for such a long time.

Eu-wide definition of self-employment may be a helpful way to modernize the economies of different countries along with Wales, unless a new and clearer law on employment status is to be introduced to the UK as a whole.

So far, a great number of freelancers have submitted their opinions by sending emails to empl-labour-law-green-paper@ec.europa.eu.

Rosie Swale Pope, the world round runner has reached to Wisconsin, US this week. The 60-year-old Welsh woman has achieved two-thirds of her trips so far.
Started from her 57th birthday on 2nd October, 2003, Rosie has spent three and a half years on this self-supported voyage. She has neither back up team nor solid sponsors.
It was Clive, her husband’s death which inspired her to set off the journey to raise money for cancer charity. After her husband’s death, she realized how precious life could be and would like to do what she can do while it is still possible. She planned the journey to run over a complete circle of the earth. She has now run across Eastern Europe, Russia and Siberia, Alaska, Canada, reaching Baraboo, Wisconsin three days ago. Her continuing destinations will be Greenland, Iceland, Ireland then return to the UK.
The toughest section she faced so far was in Russia, where her entire life nearly been taken away. She had to fight against insects in the forest every single second during the summer and battle for temperatures of minus 45 and below in the winter. She was diagnosed with double pneumonia and forced to take a break from her trainers for a while to recuperate. But she carried on as soon as she got on her feet.
Tossing behind the most testing stretch of her route, the prospects are looking rosy and the runner is still in great spirits.
More information can be found from the website: www.rosiearoundtheworld.co.uk.

Dried nuts will be used to replace the plastic buttons. Howies, the famous environmental products company recent come up with the idea.
In order to solve the plastic waste problem, the ethical Welsh company begins to use tagua nuts to be the buttons on the clothes. The nuts come from a certain kind of palm tree called Phytelephas Macrocarpa in South America. After gathered and dried out for four to eight weeks, these nuts will be selected and cut carefully, to be prepared to sew on the clothes.
As nature and non-toxic as just-picked-up from the tree, the nuts are thought to be the perfect environmentally-sound products for clothes-making. A lot of them have been sewn on to tops, trousers and jackets for the coming summer season.
Howies was bought by Timberland early this year. The takeover didn’t change its original aim and helped to put plans into action better. The company still has passion on being the pioneer of producing environment friendly clothes as well as giving part of its turnover to environmental and social projects.
Besides dried nuts, Howies is also starting to use other materials for replacement, such as to introduce hemp into its jeans to please vegan customers, for some vegans may allergy to the leather patch at the pack of jeans.
One of the biggest actions of Howies is to open up a printmaker in the abandoned shed on its property, Ceredigion. The previous one was in Turkey.
An open letter to Welsh First Minister about making Wales the first organic country in the world is Howies’ recent emprise. It says “The idea is to make all foods produced in Wales organic. That’s right, convert the whole country.”

A new research warns that the species of Welsh streams and rivers are in great danger because of the climate change.

The 25-year study by Cardiff University warns that the rising temperature cloud have a knock-on effect on stream macro invertebrates, including crustaceans, snails and larval insects such as stoneflies.

According to this research, number of small invertebrates like mayflies and stoneflies could fall by as much as 21 persent for every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature. This would lead to a corresponding reduction on species which live on them—birds, fish and bats for instance. More over, as current predictions point out temperatures will rise by two and three degree Celsius in next few decades, the number of species may fall by 12 to 25 percent in next 50 years.

Such findings are important messages on the effects of Global warming, since that streams and rivers are quiet sensitive to climate, which indicates that Wales has got much hotter than 25 years before.

This project is the longest and most detailed investigation of the effects of global warming on Welsh fresh water systems, which was funded by the Countryside Council for Wales. Such a study is the first and one of the oldest studies of its kind in the world. The team leader, Professor Steve Ormerod from Cardiff University told Welsh Globe, “I and my colleagues were surprised by our findings. True evidences show that (Welsh) rivers are heating up and （the rising）temperature is the cause for this. Our government should take serious action on how to solve the problem, saying investments on technologies and policies on environment control.”

A paper on the study is published in Global Change Biology, calling for a range of mitigation efforts from Welsh Government.

Supply and demand: that is how the scam marriage came out. There are always some people in the world who are not satisfy with the situation in their own countries and would like to escape at all costs. And there are accordingly a number of people who realize this and would be willing to risk their own freedoms for the riches that immigration fraud can offer.
It is an insult when marriage is set up to get round immigrations laws. However, blinded by quiet large sum of money—the earning can be as high as £5,000 to arrange a marriage which will give a bride or groom greater rights to stay in the UK—those people are willing to take chances to marry with somebody they have never met before, even they knew that immigration fraud is a crime. After all, love is hard to trace and prove, and no one bother to investigate until the crime raise to a huge amount—3,578 suspect marriages were reported to the British Government by registrars in 2004. It is therefore the new immigration marriage rules have been introduced to stop the marriage fraud.
Though the number of scam marriages went down sharply after the British Government introduced the new immigration marriage rules in 2005, it is still very hard to crackdown such crimes. According to the British senior registrars, before the new legislation launched in February 2005, there could have been at least 10,000 scam marriages a year. Registrars at Brent Council in north London, one of the most diverse areas of Britain, suggested in 2005 that a fifth of all marriages there were bogus, with officials able to spot couples who barely knew each other. Moreover, Scotland on Sunday of Last month reported that scam marriage in Scotland is still taking place every day.

Trial scam marriage is hard, because nobody knows how to scale it in a scientific way. In most of cases, the involving UK-citizen accepts a one-time payment from the foreigner, usually they will have a wedding and live as roommates, or at least to set up a family that make them appear to live together. Such cases are the hardest to uncover, since doing so would require a great deal of manpower and resource. Still, some people who commit this crime believe it as good thing for helping someone out.

Not matter how a scam marriage will benefit a fake couple, it is still a serious crime and will be punished by jail. Those who give up their freedoms to scam marriages seems seldom have happy ending. After all, freedom is never free.

Mike Ruddock has agreed with a three-year contract to be the new coach of Worcester Warriors on 1st May. The multimillionaire and club chairman, Cecil Duckworth, met him last week and made his return to full-time rugby at Sixways.
Ruddock, 47, was said to restore the fortunes of Welsh rugby by coaching the 2005 Grand Slam winning team but surprisingly stepped down mid way through their defence of the title. Duckworth believe his outstanding coaching can help the team play better.
In his “anything is possible” speech, Ruddock shows his ambition to mould Worcester into a major domestic and European force. Being one of the only two English teams occupying this season’s European Cup final, Worcester Warriors is facing its biggest challenge. Ruddock is their new hope after losing eight successive games resulted in Coach Anthony Eddy leaving the club.

Duckworth considered Ruddock as an eligible leader to coach the team to get the Heineken Cup at the end of the season. Thus Ruddock successfully takes over John Brain, who left the club on Monday, just 48 hours after masterminding Warriors' Guinness Premiership survival by keeping one point above relegated Northampton.

Ruddock is eager to start his coaching work, concentrating on the new signings to follow New Zealand centre Sam Tuitupou, who arrives at Worcester after the World Cup.
It is believed Ruddock will be given substantial funds to strengthen the Warriors squad with immediate signings. Under his leadership, Sixways is expected to reach a new era.

Flybe, one of the Europe's leading low-cost airlines, is launching a new service between Cardiff International and Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport from April 29.

Cardiff - Paris flights have operated from 29th April with fares from £34.99 one way including taxes and charges, bookable from Friday 2nd March 2007. The service runs seven days a week throughout the year with seats available for booking at www.flybe.com and offering convenient early morning departure and same day afternoon returns. The whole journey will take 3 hours from Cardiff to Paris and will be available to departure as early as 8am in the morning, which would be preferred by business travelers.

To celebrate the launch of the new route, Flybe is offering readers of local regional press the opportunity to win five pairs of return tickets per title, with competition details being published over the next few weeks starting from May 9.

Previous direct fights from Cardiff to Paris stopped since Air Wales closed the route for bmibaby last year.

Flybe believes the Welsh airport will play an important role in its future operations.With 152 routes operating from 22 UK and 34 European airports, Flybe will become Europe's largest regional airline and will carry a higher proportion of business passengers with new routes to key commercial centres including Paris, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Milan.