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Home » News » The Infiltration of Sex Education in Our Schools
The Infiltration of Sex Education in Our Schools
November 12, 2018 July 20, 2022
By Karen Mahoney
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the scariest of them all?
It's Planned Parenthood, of course. The same organization that this past March tweeted an idea for a new Disney princess: One who's had an abortion.
That clunk you heard? Snow White, falling into a benumbed faint.
This "brilliant" idea came from Planned Parenthood Keystone, which runs clinics in Pennsylvania. The now-deleted tweet originated with this bit of insight: "We need a Disney princess who's an undocumented immigrant. We need a Disney princess who's actually a union worker. We need a Disney princess who's trans." The tweet was apparently in response to speculation that Elsa may come out as a lesbian in the movie Frozen 2.
Planned Parenthood Keystone CEO, Melissa Reed, later explained to Fox News that TV and movies have a "critical role to play in educating the public and sparking meaningful conversations around sexual and reproductive health issues and policies, including abortion." She explained that we need "emotionally authentic portrayals of these experiences."
How did we get to a place where an abortion business is allowed to be the overwhelming voice, influencing children over the voice of their parents?
The answer points to Alfred Kinsey and his Kinsey Reports, according to Judith Reisman, PhD, author, research professor, and director of the Child Protection Institute, Liberty University School of Law.
Kinsey's sex studies were the basis of his books, the Kinsey Reports, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Of particular concern was his research on childhood orgasmic capability, where he maintained that children as young as two months were able to achieve orgasm.
Kinsey set out to remake a world into one without sexual rules. In his studies with women and men, he purported to show that multiple sexual partners, oral and anal sex, sadomasochism, and even bestiality were normative and that masturbation was nearly universal. And regarding children, Kinsey studied more than two dozen children under the age of one year that his researchers observed being brought to orgasm. Reisman stated that such research required, "brutal, sexual, experimentation on children." Kinsey's questionable research would not only fail any rigorous standard of scrutiny; it was also morally reprehensible.
"Before Kinsey died, he and the National Institute for Mental Health designated Planned Parenthood medical director Mary Calderone to implement a planned role in relation to sex education," said Reisman.
The infiltration
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization began incorporating sex education in the schools in 1958 in the inner cities. Reisman said the idea was to corrupt the children sexually, particularly in schools through sex education.
"They started sex education with cartoons for children. The black parents were furious and upset that they were showing obscene materials, as well as animals copulating, to little kids," said Reisman. "They were worried about their children being sexualized and having problems, but it continued from there."
Reisman became involved in trying to discredit Kinsey and abolish Planned Parenthood in 1974, after her children came home from school with a Planned Parenthood pamphlet called "You Have Changed the Combination."
"My daughter wasn't supposed to show it to her parents, but she brought it home and wanted me to look at it," she explained.
It had images that were Playboy-type, women with huge bosoms and the male was about half the size of the female, with no phallus. The pamphlet said that there were girls who chose the business of prostitution and selling their bodies and not to lie to yourself if you have paid for it. Then it said, "If you want a virgin to marry, buy one." It said there are girls who have freely chosen that business, too, and then it concluded, in case you missed it, marriage is the price you pay, and you will get the virgin, very temporarily. That was Planned Parenthood in 1974, in Cleveland, Ohio. This was handed out to junior-high-school children!
Planned Parenthood's involvement
According to STOPP International, in 1986, Planned Parenthood president Faye Wattleton stated that PP had established a goal of getting kindergarten-through-12th-grade sex education mandated in every school district in the nation.
"Planned Parenthood sees sex education as a way of indoctrinating our children with Planned Parenthood's philosophies—philosophies that include the acceptance of abortion and deviant sexual practices, philosophies that are in direct opposition to the teachings of most churches in the country," said STOPP.
With Planned Parenthood programs in most public, private, and parochial schools in the country, parents who have not wanted their children to participate in sex education classes were given the opportunity to opt out of the classes. However, this has changed in the Orange County California public school system, where a memo was sent to parents in March 2018 to inform them that students may not opt out of a curriculum that teaches on gender or sexual orientation.
"Under the auspices of health, the law says it will equip students to develop 'healthy attitudes on gender and sexual orientation,' among other things. It also says it will inform students about the 'effectiveness and safety of all FDA-approved contraceptive methods,' and facilitate 'objective discussion' about 'parenting, adoption and abortion,'" said LifeSiteNews.
According to STOPP, Planned Parenthood's sex education programs have been thrown out of some school districts and some districts have strict policies against its materials.
Efforts to fight Planned Parenthood and its sex education programs are occurring throughout the nation, and some are meeting with success.
Parents in Cumberland County, North Carolina, expressed their criticisms regarding a Planned Parenthood program called "Get Real." Parents such as Judy Cannady told ABC11: "We don't want our children to be taught there are various ways to have sex. We don't want them being taught that sex is appropriate [at their age]." After months of such outcry, Cumberland County Schools moved toward removing the program from middle schools in February 2018.1
In January 2018, parents in Grandview, Washington, voiced their disapproval of Planned Parenthood's "Get Real" sex education program at a Grandview school district board meeting.2 "We don't need Planned Parenthood in our schools," said one parent. "They give the message that abortion is okay," said another. The board decided to listen to the community and rid the school of the "Get Real" sex education curriculum.
Consequently, STOPP encourages persistence, documentation of course material, and trying to meet with the school board, and possibly running for the board. Know the school education laws in your state, what is mandatory and what is not. If those laws are not available, request a copy of all laws dealing with sex education, AIDS education, family life education, and human growth and development courses from the state department of education. If the school board refuses to listen, write letters to the editor of the local papers, with accompanying facts, to garner the attention of the community.
STOPP also has an excellent book by Jim Sedlak entitled Parent Power!! Especially useful for fighting sex education in schools is chapter 12: "Summary of Actions You Can Take to Defeat PP Sex Education." This section offers invaluable information for fighting sex education in the schools. It covers everything from explaining how to find out exactly what is happening in your school and documenting your findings to meeting the school board and educating the community. There is even an action checklist with 40 items to assist you in your efforts. The book can be downloaded, free of charge, as a PDF at bit.ly/STOPP-ParentPower.
1 Camila Molina. "Parents don't want this Planned Parenthood sex ed program in their kids' schools," The News & Observer. (February 2018), bit.ly/TNO-NCPPSEP.
2 Delmy Moran. "Parents question why sex ed from Planned Parenthood is considered in school," KinaTv.com. (January 2018), bit.ly/KTV-GWPPSEP.
Karen Mahoney is an award-winning Catholic freelance writer, as well as a wife, mother, and grandmother. She has written for a variety of Catholic and secular media over the past 23 years.
This article can be found at clmagazine.org/topic/sexual-morality/the-infiltration-of-sex-education-in-our-schools.
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December 17th, 2019 by Devangshu Dutta
Remember the year 2000? After Y2K passed safely, that year some optimistic analysts predicted that India's modern retail chains would reach 20 per cent market share by 2015. Two years after that supposed watershed, another firm declared that modern retail will be at around that level in 2020 – but wait! – only in the top 9 cities in the country. Don't hold your breath: India surprises; constantly. As many have noted, "predictions are tough, especially about the future!" What we can do is reflect on some of this year's developments that could play out over the coming year.
In many minds 2019 may be the Year of the Recession, plagued by discounting, but that demand slowdown has brewing for some time now. However, there's another under-appreciated factor that has been playing out: while small, independent retailers can flex their business investments with variations in demand, modern retail chains need to spread the business throughout the year in order to meet fixed expenses and to manage margins more consistently.
To reduce dependence on festive demand, retailers like Big Bazaar and Reliance have been inventing shopping events like Sabse Sasta Din (Cheapest Day), Sabse Sachi Sale (Most Authentic Sale), Republic Day / 3-Day sale, Independence Day shopping and more for the last few years. In ecommerce, there's the Amazon's Freedom Sale, Prime Day, and Great India Festival, and Flipkart's Big Billion Day Sale. This year retailers and brands went overboard with Black Friday sale, a shopping-event concept from the 1950s in the USA linked to a harvest celebration marked by European colonisers of North America. (The fact that Black Friday has a totally different connotation in India since the terrorist bombings in Bombay in 1993 seems to have completely escaped the attention of brands, retailers and advertising agencies.) Be that as it may, we can only expect more such invented and imported events to pepper the retail calendar, to drive footfall and sales. The consumer has been successfully converted to a value-seeking man-eater fed on a diet of deals and discounts. With no big-bang economic stimuli domestically and a sputtering global economy, we should just get used to the idea of not fireworks but slow-burning oil lamps and sprinklings of flowers and colour through the year. Retailers will just have to work that much harder to keep the lamps from sputtering.
Ecommerce companies have been in operating for 20 years now, but the Indian consumer still mostly prefers a hands-on experience. The lack of trust is a huge factor, built on the back of inconsistency of products and services. The one segment that has been receiving a lot of love, attention and money this year (and will grow in 2020) is food and grocery, since it is the largest chunk of the consumption basket. Beyond the incumbents – Grofers, Big Basket, MilkBasket and the likes – now Walmart-Flipkart and Amazon are going hard at it, and Reliance has also jumped in. Remember, though, that selling groceries online is as old as the first dot-com boom in India. E-grocers still struggle to create a habit among their customers that would give them regular and remunerative transactions, and they also need to tackle supply-side challenges. Average transactions remain small, demand remains fragmented, and supply chain issues continue to be troublesome. Most e-grocers are ending up depending on a relatively narrow band of consumers in a handful of cities.? The generation that is comfortable with an ever-present screen is not yet large enough to tilt the scales towards non-store shopping and convenience isn't the biggest driver for the rest, so, for a while it'll remain a bumpy, painful, unprofitable road.
Where we will see rapid pick-up is social commerce, both in terms of referral networks as well as using social networks to create niche entrepreneurial businesses – 2020 should be a good year for social commerce, including a mix of online platforms, social media apps as well as offline community markets. However, western or East Asia models won't be replicated as the Indian market is significantly lower in average incomes, and way more fragmented.
As a closing thought, I'll mention a sector that I've been involved with (for far too long): fashion. In the last 8-10 decades, globally fashion has become an industry living off artificially-generated expiry dates. A challenge that I have extended to many in the industry, and this year publicly at a conference: if consumption falls to half in the next five years, and you still have to run a profitable business (obviously!), how would you do it? Plenty of clues lie in India – we epitomise the future consumers; frugal, value-seeking, wanting the latest and the best but not fearful about missing out the newest design, because it will just be there a few weeks later at a discount. If you can crack that customer base and turn a profit, you would be well set for the next decade or so.
(Published as a year-end perspective in the Financial Express.)
Posted in Apparel, Branding, Consumer, e-commerce, Entrepreneurship, Food & Grocery, Footwear, Health & Wellness, India, Lifestyle & Fashion, Market Research, Marketing, Outsourcing, Product Development and Design, Retail, Soft Goods, Strategy, Technology, Textiles, Uncategorized | No Comments »
August 17th, 2019 by Devangshu Dutta
Retail is such a pervasive and dynamic a sector of the economy, that it is impossible to identify a single point at which modernisation began. I've met countless people who perhaps entered the retail sector during the last 15 years, and who mark the beginnings of modern retail around then. There is no doubt that there has been an explosion of investment in retail chains in the last 2 decades, but we need to acknowledge the foundation on which this development is built. The current titans of the sector are standing on the shoulders of previous giants who have created successes and failures from which we are still learning.
This piece is not an exhaustive history of the evolution of the retail business in India, nor a census of all the brands operating in this sector, but the aim is to capture the flavours of the phases of development. (PDF available here to download.)
If we were to trace back the growth of "organised" retail (mind you, I dislike that word!) or modern retail to the first retail chains, we will have to cast our mind back more than a hundred years. While many businesses of that time have disappeared, a few pioneers continue to survive, straddling three eras: the British Raj, the Socialist Raj and the Liberalised Lion economy. The businesses that continue to stand, having been through multiple transformations, include:
Higginbotham's (1844) – beginning from Madras (now Chennai), it spread to Bangalore, and then to other locations and is known around southern India.
Spencer's (1863) – one of the earliest grocery retailers to grow into a chain across undivided India, it moved to Indian ownership in the 1960s and was acquired by the RPG Group in the late 1980s.
AH Wheeler (1877) – launched from Allahabad Railway Station, it has been operating from railway stations (along with Higginbotham's in some locations) – while it lost its monopoly in 2004, it has certainly played a key role in the growth of paperbacks and magazines in the country, keeping passengers company across billions of kilometres of rail travel.
Nilgiri's (1905) – started with a small shop in Tamil Nadu focussed on dairy products and other groceries, it expanded to a large store in Bangalore in 1936 led by the founder's son, and then spread across the southern states with a well-established reputation in dairy, bakery and poultry products. In recent times it has been acquired by the Future Group.
Fifty Years of Independence
The 1950s and 1960s remained fertile times, post-Independence and before the heavy-handed Socialist Raj truly began squeezing the life out of Indian businesses. Leading textile companies such as DCM, Bombay Dyeing and Raymond, and footwear companies such as Bata and Carona established chains of retail stores including company-operated stores as well as authorised dealers operating under the companies' banners.
The 1980s brought the Asian Games, colour television, and a new up-to-date car model to India, all marks of a new vibrancy. Over the 1980s, a new retail wave was led by indigenous ventures such as Intershoppe (launched by a fashion exporter), Little Kingdom and The Baby Shop (children's products), Nirula's (fast food) and Computer Point (home computers, PCs and accessories). Many of these were certainly ahead of their time: the critical mass of consumers had yet to develop, the business infrastructure was inadequate, and funding norms were unsuitable to the capital-hungry business of retail. Unlike the textile companies that had large manufacturing and trading businesses, these new retailers were like shooting stars, glorious but visible for only a short period of time. This period, unfortunately, also witnessed the degeneration and disappearance of some of the older stalwarts such as DCM and Carona that were beset by labour disputes, management issues and disconnection from the transforming market.
Numero Uno, an indigenous denim brand, was launched in 1987 soon after VF's American denim brands were launched, and it took nearly a decade for Numero Uno to reach other geographies in India. Nirula's, one of the oldest fast food restaurant chains based in North India, expanded across the Delhi NCR in the 1980s and 1990s, and also explored other cities, albeit with mixed success.
Future Group, which today has a large retail and consumer brand portfolio, launched trousers under the name Pantaloons in 1987, initially as a distributed brand, and then denimwear under the brand name Bare. Within a few years the company also launched exclusive stores by the same names, to provide focussed visibility to the brands. About a decade of growth later, the group launched its first large format store under the Pantaloons name, but by now covering a much wider range of products, which became its launch pad for achieving scale.
The RPG group that had acquired Spencer & Co. relaunched it in 1991 in a spanking, new format as Spencer's in Bangalore, and a short few years later rebadged it again as Foodworld in a joint-venture with a foreign partner. It subsequently went on to launch other formats such as Musicworld and Health & Glow.
Also in 1991, the Rahejas converted an old cinema into a department store, Shoppers Stop, aiming to provide an international shopping experience, although initially focussed on menswear. The store added women's and children's sections in subsequent years and the second store was launched four years later after the first one. Subsequent large scale retail expansion only came about towards the end of 1990s.
Little Kingdom is a notable example that I would like to dwell on briefly (partly for the purely personal reason that it was my first retail job!). The business was launched in 1987, headed by alumni of the illustrious IIMs around the country, built on processes and IT systems that could have been the envy of many retailers even 25 years later. The company – Mothercare India Limited – was the first purely retail company to start up and launch a public issue in 1991. During the early 1990s, it was the largest retail chain present across the country, in its categories. In 1991, it also attempted to bring the first home computer, Spectrum, to forward-thinking parents through a mix of in-store sales and door-to-door direct-selling. It was admittedly one of the first to expand internationally, opening a franchise store in Dubai in 1992. During its short life, the team launched multiple brands and formats, including Little Kingdom, Ms (a womenswear brand), The Baby Shop, and became a partner to the international giant VF Corporation's Healthtex children's brand and Vanity Fair lingerie brand in India. But, by the mid-1990s – financially overstretched between multiple brands and formats, and backward integration into manufacturing – it was gone.
Physical retail was not the only avenue being explored for growth during these decades. An Indian company imagined replicating the success of western catalogue companies, and launched the Burlington's mail order catalogue retail venture and even became a joint-venture partner of one of the world's largest catalogue retailers, Otto Versand (Germany). Other models included direct sales business, such as the Eureka Forbes introducing vacuum cleaners through demonstration parties (which was emulated for the Spectrum home computers mentioned above). With the growth of private television channels, products also began being promoted during non-peak hours through infomercials, though serious TV shopping was still a few years away, coming up in the mid-2000s with dedicated teleshopping channels.
The Foreign Hand and Corporate Retailing
The 1980s and 1990s also saw the launch of international brands from global giants such as VF Corporation (Lee, Wrangler, Vanity Fair, Healthtex), Coats Viyella (Louis Phillippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly), Benetton (UCB and 012), Levi Strauss, Lacoste, Reebok, adidas, Pepe and Nike, grocery retailers such as Nanz (a three-way German-US-Indian partnership) and Dairy Farm International (with RPG Group's Spencer's Retail) and Quick Service formats such as Domino's, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Baskin Robbins and KFC.
India was reopening to business, global management consultants were writing glowing reports about the untapped potential of the (mythical) 200 million middle-class customers and global retailers wanted to own part of the action.
Due to the lack of large-format stores and suitable environments, international brands that entered the Indian market during this phase needed to create exclusive stores to ensure that the brand could be communicated holistically to the consumer, in an environment that was more in the brand's control, and many of them were, in a sense, "forced" to become retailers in India.
However, around 1996, a very senior member of the cabinet is reported to have said, "Do we need foreigners to teach us how to run shops?" It was an unexpected condemnation, coming as it was from a person and a party otherwise seen as champions of an open economy. It slammed the doors shut to foreign investment and, to my mind, the sector is still yet to fully recover from that ban and the policy contortions that have come over the years to allow international brands and retailers to play a more active role in the market.
Internal weaknesses compounded the decline or exit of some of the businesses. Nanz folded due to various operational challenges and lack of adequate experience. British retailer Littlewoods' wholly-owned subsidiary pulled out of the market due to problems back home, and in 1998 sold the sole store to the Tata Group, which eventually renamed it Westside.
Despite the early hiccups, India continued to attract international players on account of the high growth and changing social norms. Not only was there greater purchasing power available amongst more Indian consumers, there was a shift in consumer attitude from saving to spending. Several brands, including fashion, luxury and quick service formats, entered the market through licensing, franchising, and joint ventures.
During this period the domestic retail market also drew in more corporate houses, attracted by the apparently abundant market opportunity for them to mine alone or to act as a gateway for foreign companies interested in India. Most were significant diversifications from their existing businesses.
Tobacco, paperboards, agri-commodities and hospitality conglomerate ITC ventured into retailing through Wills Lifestyle and as well as its rural initiative e-Choupal in 2000, followed by John Players and Choupal Sagar respectively. Pantaloon Retail launched a partial hypermarket format Big Bazaar in 2001 and went on to Food Bazaar in 2002, Central in 2004, Home Town and Ezone in 2006. Reliance entered in 2006 with multiple stores of Reliance Fresh being opened simultaneously and over the next few years the company expanded through multiple formats such as Reliance Mart, Reliance Digital, Reliance Trendz, Reliance Footprint, Reliance Wellness, Reliance Jewels to name a few. Telecom major Bharti set up a joint-venture with Wal-Mart at the back end, while the Tata group tied the knot with Woolworths and Tesco in two separate businesses supplying its retail stores, even as it expanded its successful watches and jewellery businesses, as well as Westside.
Even a retail operation like Fabindia, born as an export surplus outlet of a handicraft product business found investors to back a rapid expansion spree, becoming more of a corporate retailer than a front-end for producer organisations and craftspeople.
Through the 1990s and beyond, the market remained in ferment. In 1997 Subhiksha, a small modern retail format for food and grocery was launched. Venture-funded Subhiksha expanded rapidly and over the next decade grew to 1,600 outlets. However, in 2009 the business closed down owing to a severe cash crunch, amidst accusations of criminal mismanagement and fraud.
New product areas emerged highlighting the pace of change of lifestyles, cafes prominent among them. Café Coffee Day opened its first store in 1998 in Bangalore and became the largest organised coffee chain in India by far, though it is now living under the shadow of the recent death of its founder. Barista was also launched in 1999 as India's Starbucks-wannabe, found its footing, scaled up and lost its way, going on to be sold to Tata Coffee and the Sterling Group, who turned it over to the Italian coffee company Lavazza in 2007, who also exited seven years later. Its current owner, the Amtex Group, is itself going through financial troubles in some of its key businesses.
In the last two decades, while some retailers have gone out of business due to unrealistic business plans, mismanagement or lack of funds, most have taken opportunities to rationalise their operations by shutting down unviable or underperforming locations, aligning businesses to market needs, assessing their brand consistency across various touch points, improving organizational capabilities right down to front-line staff, and focusing on unit productivity.
It's not just Indian retailers that have faced trouble. Foreign brands have had their own share of problems – some have overestimated the market, or their own relevance to the Indian consumer, while others have had misalignment with their Indian franchisees or joint-venture partners. A number of foreign brands and retailers have also churned partners, or exited the market outright, but most remain committed and invested in the market for the long-haul. The last few years have also seen the successful launch and humongous growth of global leaders such as Zara and H&M, even mass-market Chinese retailers like Miniso, as well as the largest investment commitment made by Ikea (about US$2 billion).
Showing on a Screen Near You
The late-1990s also witnessed a dotcom frenzy that led to a plethora of travel sites, and a few product sales businesses such as Fabmall, Rediff and Indiamart.
However, the online market lacked critical mass in the 1990s and early-2000s. Despite apparent advantages of the online business model, success depended on internet penetration (low!), the appearance of value-propositions that were meaningful to Indian consumers (questionable), investments in fulfilment infrastructure (lacking) and the development of payment infrastructure (regulation-bound). Malls and shopping centres – the new temples of retail – seemed to be sucking up all of the consumer traffic, in any case.
By the mid-2000s the business had reached just about Rs 8-9 billion (US$ 180-200 million), despite 25 million Indians being online. Dotcoms became labelled dot-cons, with an estimated 1,000 companies closing down. However, multiple changes took place in the mid-2000s, among them being the price disruption of the telecom market and explosion of mobile connectivity, as well as a renewed funding appetite among venture funds.
This laid the path for growing the second crop of ecommerce in India. Billions of dollars of investment was poured into creating India's Amazon wannabes, the high streets ran red by ecommerce-fuelled discounts, aggressive advertising budgets (most promoting discounts) and mergers/acquisitions pushed through by venture investors.
After more than a decade of the second coming, India's ecommerce business accounts for a market share of total retail in the low single digits. India's Amazon – if one can call it that – is the Flipkart group, now owned by Walmart, bought at an eyepopping $21 billion valuation and still bleeding cash, and the runner-up is relentless Amazon that continues its aggressive push to own what could be one of the three largest markets in years to come. The Chinese internet giants Tencent and Alibaba are also trying to hack piece off the market, having fulfilled their aim of kicking out Western competitors from their home market.
However, the wild card has just been played by the Reliance Group – having moved from textiles to fibre to oil, the group has made its move into telecom and data (didn't someone say, "data is the new oil"?). It has strategically pushed handsets and cheap data plans into the hands of the consumers and, according to the latest announcement on Jio Fiber, will soon offer High Definition or 4K LED television and a 4K set-top-box for free. The play is to grab as much of the customer's share of spend on products and services (including entertainment) as possible.
Possibly the biggest driver of modern retail in the coming years will be the shift in the demographic structure of the country. The young consumers who are joining the workforce now are a distinctly different set from previous generations. This is a generation that has grown up in the liberalised economy and has been exposed to innumerable choices since their childhood. The most important factor is that these consumers are increasingly located outside the top 10 or 20 cities in the country, and are becoming more accessible as both physical and virtual access improves for them.
A large number of them may have only occasionally, or perhaps never, experienced modern retail first hand while they were growing up, but they have seen this upmarket environment emerge before them and are not shy of spending within it, even if it is only on select special occasions. Most of them are handling mobile phones (even if it is their parents') while still in school and being socially active online even on the go. Certainly most of them have hardly ever visited tailors, growing from one set of ready-to-wear clothes to another. It is this set of young consumers whose outlook and habits will drive retailing very differently in terms of product categories and services in the future.
There is another significant set of consumers whose number is swelling annually: that of working women. As they add to the discretionary household income available to spend, they gain influence in purchase decisions, and with them the entire household's lifestyle also undergoes a shift. There is a greater demand of time-saving solutions and convenience products to make their lives easier. Modern retail environments where their various needs can be taken care of under one roof, and convenience pre-packaged products are natural winners in this shift. Ready-to-wear products for women, grooming, beauty and personal care, women-oriented media products, processed foods and eating out get a boost. Another important shift is that, due to busier lifestyles, they are time-crunched and more likely to rely on branded products and services that they can trust. However, given the nascent stage of the market, these brands could just as well be retailers' own labels, if they are managed well.
In terms of business, significantly greater efficiency needs to be achieved, both at the front-end and in head office and supply chain operations. Process and system-led planning and execution needs to become the norm. With India's burgeoning population, people are treated as a cheap resource: on the contrary, each extra person can be expensive beyond just their salary cost to the organisation. Each extra person adds some friction to decision making, reducing the responsiveness of the business. Smart business will begin to realise this, and look closely at employee efficiency and effectiveness in the context of the overall business, rather than just in terms of individual costs.
Even as the retail business in India is far from saturation, and fragmented growth continues, the business will also undergo consolidation simultaneously, as large scale retail operations are enormously capital intensive. Mergers will be a strategy that will be explored to improve the viability of many businesses in this sector.
Should you be tempted to think that, squeezed between large corporates, international retailers and ecommerce giants, it's "Game Over" for smaller domestic retailers and brands, let me say that the India retail story is not only not over yet, but continues to be written and rewritten. As the market grows and matures, retail businesses also need to differentiate themselves, investing more in product selection or even product development through private label growth to help them stand out in the market. A one-size-fits-all strategy doesn't work in a country as diverse as India. For the size of the market, we have surprisingly few brands, many of them virtually indistinguishable from their competitors. Development on this front, of indigenous brands and product development capabilities, is an absolute must.
The good news is that already there is more talent available than ever before. Most importantly this management pool has experience of the retail sector not just in good times but during (many) downturns as well.
Eventually, what is needed is a mix that will be healthy for India's ecosystem at large for a long time to come. This will not be delivered by a blind transplantation of international templates or a rapid-fire expansion across the country, nor by fearful protectionism or regional parochialism. It will only be achieved by the evolution of market-appropriate business models and a mature approach that can be make the Indian retailers robust enough to grow not just domestically, but possibly even globally over time.
Posted in Apparel, Branding, Consumer, e-commerce, Entrepreneurship, Food & Grocery, Food Service / Restaurants, Footwear, Health & Wellness, India, Lifestyle & Fashion, Luxury, Market Research, Marketing, Real Estate, Retail, Soft Goods, Strategy, Supply Chain, Technology, Textiles, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Do you have this feeling that 2018 went by a little too quickly? Well, however quick it seemed, it was certainly momentous for retail in India.
If 2016 was marked by the shock of demonetization, and 2017 by the pains of GST implementation, 2018 highlighted two threads – the obvious convergence of the online and offline world that had been ignored for far too long, and the interest of foreign capital in India's consumer world.
Walmart bought India's loss-making ecommerce leader for an eye-popping US$ 20.8 billion valuation, while ecommerce giant Amazon injecting equity into Shoppers Stop, bought Aditya Birla's More grocery chain (49 per cent through a back-end entity), and held discussions with Future Group to acquire 9.5 per cent in Future Retail. There were rumours of a mega joint venture between Reliance Retail and China's Alibaba, and media also reported Japan's Softbank looking at ploughing US$200 million into Firstcry. Both rivals Amazon and Alibaba were reported to be looking at Spencer's, one of India's oldest retail chains currently owned by the RP-Sanjiv Goenka group.
Videos of the crush of curious crowds at India's first, much anticipated Ikea went viral, and the company said it planned to open 40 locations over the next few years, upping its earlier projection of 25. Chinese retailer Miniso basically came out of nowhere and claimed to have clocked sales of ?700 crores in the very first year in the country.
But along with these cross-border "big bangs" we saw domestic confidence also quietly resurging. Indian retailers are not cowering before large foreign retailers and expensive ecommerce advertising splashes; today they are less defensive about their own prospects than they were two years ago. There is also a growing interest among entrepreneurs and corporates to create new retail businesses, which augers well for the diversity of competition and freshness of offerings in the market.
Going into 2019, one thing I can say with certainty is that the weather, economic and political – both in India and elsewhere – will be unpredictable, and might even turn stormy. Externally, retailers should "expect the unexpected". To ensure that the business remains on track, however rough the track becomes, retailers must centre all major strategies and decisions on the customer. A theme that has been around for centuries, it is surprising how much it gets ignored in this most customer-facing business.
Retailers tend to divide customers into rigid segments. My suggestion would be to look at customers through the behaviour and experience lens and also recognise that the same customer behaves differently at different times and in different contexts – in effect there are no hard boundaries between "segments".
It is often emphasised is that Indian consumers are "deal-seeking". I don't think we should treat this as a uniquely Indian thing: all consumers look for value-reassurance in unpredictable times and in uncertain conditions. Also remember that even in value-seeking, experience still rules. Retailers and brands that are solely focussing on price or price+feature comparisons are turning their business into a commodity. They are missing the long game: of defining the customer's experience from the first moment of brand contact to the purchase and beyond.
In 2019, if you want to focus on a single competitive strategy, it would be this: for stickiness and sustainability, think about the customer's experience, and actively design it, in every environment where the customer connects with you.
Lastly, technology is transformative, but tends to get restricted to being the contrast between ecommerce and physical retail. Indian retailers need to embrace technology in all forms, from using the zillions of transactions within the business and with the customer for developing actionable knowledge, to automating processes where unnecessary cost or time makes the business inefficient.
Having said that, keep the previous rule in mind when deploying at customer-facing technology – make customer-interfacing technology as invisible or intuitive as possible. When in doubt, learn from one of the leaders in the sector, Amazon: its 1-click ordering patent 20 years ago gave it a huge advantage over competitors, and it is now aiming to replicate the same seamless, friction-free behaviour physically with its Dash button. Or pick cues even from younger fashion businesses like Rebecca Minkoff, whose focus is on ease and convenience. The key reason for adopting technology is to remove friction for the customer and for processes that serve the customer.
I have no doubt that 2019 will be eventful – let the customer experience be the guiding light to keep our businesses off the rocks and afloat.
(Published in the Financial Express on 4 January 2019, under the title "Retail in 2019: Need for stronger brand-customer connections that go beyond purchase")
Posted in Apparel, Branding, Consumer, Customer Relationship, e-commerce, Entrepreneurship, Food & Grocery, Footwear, Health & Wellness, India, Lifestyle & Fashion, Luxury, Marketing, Product Development and Design, Retail, Soft Goods, Strategy, Technology, Textiles, Uncategorized | No Comments »
October 26th, 2018 by Devangshu Dutta
[Accompanying Image credit: Amazon Go; CC/Wikimedia Commons/Brianc333a)]
To many, retail seems to be having an identity crisis.
Closed storefronts on American and European streets and dead malls in India and China are blamed on the growth of online retail. At the same time, the world's largest online retailer, Amazon, is opening physical stores and buying offline retail operations in the US and in India, while the world's largest retailer, Walmart, is busy digesting India's ecommerce market leader. Even India's online fashion and lifestyle websites – among them Myntra, Firstcry, Yepme and Faballey – are acquiring offline brands or opening stores. Or both.
What in the world is going on?
The short answer: consumers want choice; and retailers have no choice.
For many, ecommerce still seems to have the "new car smell" after more than 20 years, the message pitched so desperately by the founders of and investors in ecommerce companies still echoing: that this "new kid" will make customers' lives a quintillion times better and wipe out the competition. Two decades on, and hundreds of billions of dollars of investment later, online retail is estimated to be about 12% of the global market. Ecommerce is 10% of the US market, of which Amazon takes up about half. In India the figure is in the vicinity of 2%, with that share is virtually stitched up between Walmart-owned Flipkart Group and Amazon.
Clearly, consumers value offline retail stores, whether for convenience or as holistic brand ambassadors. You can't take away the fact that retail for us is theatre, experience, social.
Over at physical retail businesses, managers have been terrified of "channel conflict". Senior management have squeezed resources for online, even when return-on-capital was demonstrably better than a new store. Some have refused to publicise their own company's website through in-store banners, fearing that the customers would get sucked away from the store. It has been strange to see this opportunity being passed up – if a customer is trusts you to walk into your physical store, why would you not want to connect with them at other points of time when they are not near your store?
As I've written earlier, retail is not and should not be divided between "old-world physical" and "upstart online". Successful retailers and brands have always been able to integrate multiple channels and environments to reach their customers.
For instance, British fashion retailer Next has long used a combination of physical stores (of varying sizes) as well as mail order catalogue side-by-side, and then ecommerce as the digital medium grew. Another British retailer, Argos, took another angle and embedded a catalogue inside the physical store – first a paper catalogue, and then on-screen.
American designer Rebecca Minkoff has taken this unification further. Without the weight of legacy systems, the brand attempts to create a seamless experience for the customer, unifying the store, in-store digital interfaces such as smart dressing rooms, the website and the mobile.
No doubt, for older companies, integrating is tough; business systems and people are in disconnected silos, incentivised narrowly. Each channel needs different mindsets, capabilities, processes and systems, to ensure that the optimal customer experience appropriate for the interface, whether it is a store, mobile app, website or catalogue. But etailers opening physical stores have their own challenges, too, tackling the messy slowness of the physical world, where you can't instantly switch the store layout after an A:B test. They now need to develop those very "old-world skills" and overheads that they thought they would never need.
Regardless of where they begin, retailers need to mould and blend their business models with proficiency across channels. In the evolving environment, any brand or retailer must aim to offer as seamless an experience to the customer as feasible, where the customer never feels disconnected from the brand.
Varying circumstances make customers choose different buying environments. At different times or on different days of the week, even the same person may choose to shop in entirely different ways. Successful retailers that outlast their competitors have used a variety of formats and channels to meet their customers, and will continue to do so.
To my mind, retailers have no choice but to see the retail business as one, even as it is fluid and evolving. A retailer's only choice is to bend with the customer's choice.
(Published in the Financial Express under the title "Uniting retail: Why online versus offline debate must end")
Posted in Apparel, Branding, Consumer, Customer Relationship, e-commerce, Entrepreneurship, Food & Grocery, Footwear, Health & Wellness, India, Lifestyle & Fashion, Luxury, Marketing, Retail, Soft Goods, Strategy, Technology, Textiles, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Food Processing – Supply Chain Conflicts and Food Security (Video)
February 9th, 2017 by admin
This is a recording of a short, candid talk by Devangshu Dutta (chief executive, Third Eyesight) at the ASSOCHAM's 8th Global Food Processing Summit in New Delhi, India.
He touched upon the inherent conflicts in the food supply chain we need to be aware of before formulating policies and practices, and strongly urged everyone to look at food security from the point of view of sustainability and risk-management. (Transcript below.)
I'll just take just few minutes to share a few thoughts with you on the sector.
The session was titled "Make in India: Platform for investment opportunity in food processing sector and 100 percent FDI in food retail".
As we all know, whoever's been following the news, there's all this buzz around FDI into retail being allowed, not only for physical retail but also for e-commerce companies, and there are two very strong sets of drivers. On the one hand is the likes of Walmart and Tesco and people who want to actually set up food retail. and you know food is the largest consumption in our basket of consumer products, so they obviously want to tap into that demand. The second side is Amazon and the likes of it where again you know there are no barriers in terms of location, you are buying on the net, tapping into a consumer who's looking for convenience, and there you need to actually service that demand with food and grocery which is packaged, so there is obviously a very strong push a very strong lobby for that to happen. At the same time there's a very strong lobby against that because there are domestic retailers who invested a lot of money over the last maybe 10-15 years in setting up a lot of retail stores. In the recent years there have been a few e-commerce companies that have come up as well with domestic and foreign capital. So there is this conflict.
In this whole ecosystem of food production and supply and retail there are some fundamental conflicts that we need to be aware of, before we get into any kind of thinking about what should be done with the sector.
First of all is foreign vs. Indian; this is a conflict which is there the world over, and I think we will see that increase in Europe, in the US, and in other places. You know, "local versus foreign" is a conflict which we will keep seeing. I think we have moved a little bit away from that within, not only this government's regime but also the earlier government's regime, where we started to welcome foreigners back into the country and said, "let's do trade together".? I think it's important to keep it in mind that local interests will always always be take predominance over foreign interests. If any government comes in and says, "I will give foreign interests precedence", it's going to not be there in power the next time, so that's something which is to be kept in mind.
The second is this is a conflict between large and small…large retailers versus small retailers. A Reliance had to close shops in Uttar Pradesh, had to close shops in Kerala because they were impacting small retailers. So it's not just about Walmart impacting small retailers, it's also about the large Indian companies impacting smaller companies.
The third conflict is between traditional and modern, and this is happening again even in farming. Indian farmers tend to follow traditional practices, there are fragmented land holdings, and then you have modern entrepreneurial farmers, you have cooperatives which are adopting different techniques, and there is a conflict which happens at that level as well. At the local level it can get hugely political and then it starts raising barriers. So if you talk about the food supply chain, it's not a simple thing to deal with.
Fourthly, the biggest biggest conflict – and that's not really a conflict outright because these are people who are working together – but there are differences of interests and, therefore, there are conflicts…that is between retailer, supplier and the farmer, the interests are not aligned. A retailer wants lower prices, a supplier wants even lower prices, but the farmer wants higher yield and higher prices, so that conflict, just something on account of price and commercial terms and various other things, is bound to create friction in that supply chain.
Having understood that, I think we need to also acknowledge the fact that retailers are unlikely to invest in the supply chain and in farming. Amazon is not going to set up food processing. Amazon is not going to set up farms which are contract farming. Let's face it, even Future Group hasn't. Future Group has set up a food park. Future Group has taken over companies which are in food production companies but Future Group has has not set up, ground-up, contract farming. They've tried but it's not their core competence, it's not even their core interest. Reliance has done a little bit, ITC has done a few things but it's not something which is fundamentally their business. They're retailers, that's what drives them, so what they can do is they can create an ecosystem.
Let's take the example of McDonald's or a Pizza Hut or say a Domino's. These are foreign quick service restaurants which have come into the country. A McDonald's had to actually build its supply chain from scratch to get the potato fries, to get the burgers done, to get the patties done and they created an ecosystem, in some cases they invested or co-invested with Indian partners, but in most cases they encouraged Indian partners to talk to their partners from Europe, US etc.
When we talk about people like Future Group, it has done a lot in being a platform for Indian companies to come on board and sometimes international companies as well. They're a platform for them to launch and grow their business. So what the retailer can do is create the ecosystem, create the demand pipeline. Beyond that it is up to the food producer, it is up to the farmer, to take that opportunity and move on. It's not for the retailer to handhold from scratch all the way to selling on the shelves.
In terms of the practices that we need to adopt I'd like to say this, that while we keep talking about international standards, food is a very local thing. We may be going into a world where 50 years down the line all of us will be having a white-gray powder which has no flavour and that's what the future of food…I hope not!…The fact is the food is a very local thing because of tastes, because of cultures, because of the environment that you are in. And we are actually losing a lot. People who are here from farming, if you look back not, even very far – maybe 20-25 years – certainly, if you look back 50 years, what was being farmed we've lost probably 30-40 percent of that produce, because there is no demand, because it is difficult to grow, because it's seasonal, because it is difficult to process,? difficult to sell. If you go to the sabziwala today versus if we went to the sabziwala 10 years ago, you will find that the variety of produce has actually diminished. So while we are talking about food processing, what is happening is…and I'd like to mention this…You know, sometimes we come to conferences like this and we run our businesses, we run with a split personality. We do what is convenient for the business, we do what is good for the business in terms of cost, in terms of ease of processing, in terms of ease of selling etc. When it comes to us as consumers, we want fresh, we want variety, we want flavor, we want colour, we want all of it. Why do we have the split personality? Why can't we actually combine the two and do what is right for us as consumers, our children as consumers, the environment, and the future as well?
Sustainability is should be a big driver and we forget that the kind of food processing which is going on right now, by and large the kind of plants which are being put up, are based on technology which was developed in North America and Europe between 1900 and say 1960-70. That's been the most wasteful part of the last century in terms of energy, in terms of water, in terms of labour, in terms of anything. It's resource intensive. Now imagine even if 20% of India – over 200 million people – started to live and depend on that kind of a lifestyle and that kind of an industrial structure! This country will be finished, certainly! The world would be finished! We cannot do that, so we've got to do stuff which is good for us as consumers, the environment as a whole, and good for the business. It can't just be one. We cannot be uni-dimensional in our thinking.
Last point: I think diversity is a very, very important part of the food supply chain and diversity means that there are "many". We tend to look at large companies as being the standard and, therefore, large being good. But the fact is that if you take food which is an integral part of our lives…You cannot live without air, you can live without food and water for a few days, you can't survive. You can live without clothes for your entire life.
If let's say the food supply chain and even the processing, the acquisition and everything else, if it gets consolidated beyond a certain point it becomes extremely vulnerable. Anybody who's looked at financial services risk management or any any kind of risk assessment, you would know that it is good to have a diversified basket. From the point-of-view of farming, from the point-of-view of manufacturing, from the point-of-view of retail, consolidation beyond a certain point is actually detrimental to quality and to safety. So if you're looking at food safety, if you're looking at sustainability, we need to actually encourage many, many, many entrepreneurs, many small businesses.
For that…I don't know if anybody is there from the government sitting in this audience…but Make in India will only happen if we make it easier. Today all of us who are in business know that India is one of the most hostile environments to do business of any sort. It does not matter whether you are in manufacturing, whether you're a truck driver, whether you are running a consulting business. With all the regulations…we don't lack regulation, there's too much regulation…we don't have an environment where it is easy to do business. If that can happen we will find that we will have an extremely diverse and vibrant ecosystem which will grow and we can actually be the standard, the international standard which can be followed by everybody else. I think what we should do is try and get the government to work in that direction. If we can do that, if that's one outcome we can achieve out of this conference I'll be really, really, really happy.
Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, e-commerce, EVENTS, Food & Grocery, Marketing, Outsourcing, Retail, Social Enterprise/Impact Investment, Supply Chain, Uncategorized, VIDEO | No Comments »
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Searching for Sugar Man, by Sue Purkiss
Someone in my book group recently recommended to me a DVD called Searching for Sugar Man. I don't normally buy DVDs, but it just happened that the shop in Bristol where she found it is on my beat at the moment, and so I went in and asked for it.
It's a documentary, and it tells a real Cinderella of a story. In the early 1970s, two eminent record producers discovered a singer playing his guitar in a bar in the back streets of Detroit. No-one knew much about him; he even played with his back to the audience and a hat shading his face, as if he shunned publicity and played only for the sake of his music. His tunes were melodic, the kind that stuck in your head; his words were intriguing and seemed to come from the heart. He reminded them of Bob Dylan, but with a sweeter voice. He was called Sixto Rodriguez.
They made an album with him, using all their considerable expertise and resources, and, delighted with the results, they sat back to wait for America to fall at his feet. But it didn't happen. There was nothing but a resounding silence. Inexplicably, it bombed, as did the next one. Talking about this in the film, one of the producers was almost in tears, even after so many years: he simply could not understand why it failed. The record company let him go, just before Christmas: prophetically, one of his songs had been the story of a man who lost his job two weeks before Christmas.
That would have been the end of the story. But unbeknown to anyone in America, somehow or other a bootleg recording found its way to South Africa, where his protest songs found an echo in the hearts and minds of the people there who were rising up against apartheid. Over the next twenty years, Rodriguez became huge in South Africa: anyone who had a record collection would have his music in pride of place. It was the background to their lives.
No-one knew anything about him. There were rumours that he had committed an ultimate act of protest or despair, and killed himself on stage. Eventually, two South African fans decided to investigate. As far as they were able, they followed the money: to whom had the profits from all his record sales gone? The trail grew blurred, but in the end, they found a different lead - and a simple phone call established that Rodriguez was not tragically dead; he had simply returned to his life as a builder, and continued to live in the same house he'd always lived in. No-one he worked with had a clue about his early brush with fame, and he had absolutely no idea about his extraordinary popularity on another continent.
Well, the two investigators went to see him. They persuaded him to visit South Africa, where he played concerts to thousands and thousands of ecstatic fans. He strolled out there into the spotlight as if he'd been doing it all his life. His voice was just as good as ever. And the profits from his new-found fame? He wasn't interested. Apparently, he has given much of the money from recent concerts and records away to family and friends. he still lives in the same house, and he doesn't give two hoots for all the lost profits from the million of his records sold in South Africa during the lost years.
The film is absolutely gripping. It's just won a Bafta, and deservedly so.
Of course, I could make a parallel between the undiscovered genius of this likable unassuming man, and the fate of who knows how many other artists - children's writers among them! - who have also languished in obscurity, in or out of a garret. But in truth, that isn't the point. I just want you to look out for this film, because it's the most feel-good work of art I've come across in a good while. And the music's good too!
Labels: Searching for Sugar Man, Sixto Rodriguez, Sue Purkiss
C.J.Busby said...
This is amazing Sue - I used to have both of Rodriguez's albums on tape cassette (those were the days) having made friends at university with someone who had grown up in South Africa and loved his music. I thought he was dead! It is great music - I'll have to search out the dvd. Thanks!!
Thank you! Will do.
Celia - so glad to see your comment! Had the sudden thought - what if none of it's true and nobody in South Africa's ever heard of him? Oh ye of little faith...
Will watch out for this on the Lovefilm list as it is unlikely to be at the local Odeon.
Stories like this are so life-affirming though. I had heard of it a while back but once the BAFTA & OSCAR final BIG BIG titles come out, the "lesser" titles tend to get forgotten, even if they are hugely worth seeing, A bit like book awards really.
Just been to Youtube and listened to 4 or 5 of his songs. To me, they're fairly typical of quite a
bit of what was around in the early to mid 70's. Undemanding to listen to.
Given that the songs were recorded, and released, and he wasn't an established performer, not surprised his music didn't sell. It wasn't strong
enough to make it on it's own. Not the sweetness of the voice that counts, it's what you're saying with it.
Here in the UK, an approximate equiv might be Nick Drake, who recorded his songs, but was unwilling or unable to do the groundwork of pubs, clubs, promotion. His music didn't sell, Drake didn't understand why, and killed himself.
Having said which, the story is good.
And back then, I loved The Doors, Frank Zappa..., so perhaps I'm not a natural for Rodrigues's music.
Will look out for this. Thanks, Sue
My son told me about this documentary just this week. Rodriguez's music was certainly what we were all listening to in Cape Town in the late 60's. Whether it can compare favourably with the rest of what was out there at the time doesn't really matter. For me the sounds were the background thread of that time when I had just left school and was a student in the city and suddenly free! its marvellous that they've traced him and done the documentary. I was planning to watch it this week-end. My son jokes that I hung around in a flower painted VW in my student days!
Meant to say I've been out the country thats why this late comment but thanks for posting this Sue.


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The LG G5 Won't Be Powered By A Snapdragon 820 In Latin America, Snapdragon 652 Instead
by Ben Schoon | Feb 29, 2016 | Tech News
Back before LG announced their latest flagship, leaks were flying left and right and one we saw that was, well a bit odd, was the LG H840. This device showed the same basic specs as the standard G5, but with a lower end processor under the hood. Pulling a similar model number to the LG G5, it was widely expected that this was the "LG G5 Lite", however it seems we were wrong.
LG's sales manager for Latin America confirmed that the country won't get a Snapdragon 820 powered G5, rather a model powered by the Snapdragon 652. The device will also lose one GB of RAM taking the total down from 4GB to 3GB, although that's still more than enough power for 99% of users. The rest of the specs however remain the same. USB C, 16MP camera, fingerprint sensor, 5.3″ display, and the awesome removable battery.
Why the change? The (very) rough Google translation below states why LG made this decision:
"Latin American version will be the Snapdragon 652, based on the feedback we had several operators in the region to sound out alternatives accessories we had, and where VR was not very appealing.That is why, in addition to the situation of currency appreciation in our countries that savings so that the product is not [expensive]. They urged we sought and so we had a better proposal for LatAm without sacrificing performance and only potentially non – use of VR . "
So essentailly, this was a price based decision. By offering a lower-end processor, the company can provide a smooth and fluid experience without sacrificing noticeable performance. Two notes however include that this change does remove quick charging and also takes away VR capabilities.
Via: GSMArena


Enquiry from Online Galleries regarding "20th-Century Signed Krautheim Selb-Bavaria Coffee Service"
Presented coffee service was manufactured in K&A (Krautheim & Adelberg Selb Bavaria) Manufactory in Germany.
and a border with gildings and a cobalt strip. The signature indicates that the service was produced in the period between 1945 and 1977.
The pitcher height: 19 cm.
A cup height: 4.5 cm.
A saucer diameter: 12.5 cm.
This coffee service is, as for its age, in good condition. There are some cracks on the sugar bowl. Other than that, the china does not have any defects.


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Garlasco es una localidad y comune italiana de la provincia de Pavía, región de Lombardía, con 9.728 habitantes.

Evolución demográfica

Referencias

Enlaces externos

 Página web oficial de Garlasco (en italiano)

Localidades de la provincia de Pavía

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Garfield-Lodi
Garfield-Lodi Daily Voice serves Garfield-Lodi, NJ
Saddle Brook-Elmwood Park
serves Elmwood Park & Saddle Brook
serves Lyndhurst, North Arlington & Wallington
serves Carlstadt, East Rutherford & Rutherford
Helen (Petrochi) Ahern, 90, Garfield Resident
Helen Ahern Photo Credit: Santangelo Funeral Home
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GARFIELD, N.J. -- Helen (Petrochi) Ahern -- a Garfield resident, formerly of Wood-Ridge -- died on Tuesday, April 26. She was 90.
She is survived by her daughter, Sharon Geleski and her husband Steve of Garfield. She was sister to the late Joseph, Andrew, Steve Petrochi, John Komar, Michael Petrowsky, Anna Veliky and Mary Moskaz. She was predeceased by her husband William, and her parents, Joseph and Anna.
Visiting hours will be from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. on Thursday, April 28, at the Santangelo Funeral Home, 300 N. Main St., in Lodi. The funeral will be at 8:30 a.m. on Friday at the funeral home, then to St. Francis de Sales Church for a 9:30 a.m. funeral mass. Interment will be at St. Francis Cemetery.
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Garfield-Lodi Daily Voice!


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Mallena's Musings: Supernatural 13.06 "Tombstone"
Written by Mallena
For this article, I decided to stir things up a bit. I'm in a weird mood, so I'm doing some very strange and random musings at the end of my Supernatural review. You're welcome.
I'm not the biggest fan of this episode; it starts with a cold open that doesn't add to the drama, but detracts from it. Sam and Dean found out that Castiel's alive, so instead of going straight there, we have to watch Dean and an unknown fellow in a graveyard. To make the early scenes even more banal, this happens: "Oh Cas, you're back." Hug, hug. "Now, let's go get Jack and work a case." That's it, really? We've had so many deaths and resurrections on this show; some of them get me blubbering like nobody's business, but this time I'd like to quote the musical, A Chorus Line :
Six months later I heard that Karp had died. And I dug right down to the bottom of my soul…and cried. Cause I felt nothing.
Sorry, folks, but that's how I feel about Castiel's death and return. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed him for many a season. It's only been in the last few years that I've realized that he's not contributing very much to my enjoyment of the show. I miss all the variations of Cas that we used to have and I hope that his story becomes more interesting. It might be that Dabb has many twists, turns, thrills, chills, and epic moments for our angel buddy in the coming months. Right? Maybe?
I do enjoy Dean's antics, up to a point, though many of them almost seem like caricatures of Dean Winchester. Sleeping with his gun, being grumpy over coffee, fanboying about the western memorabilia - they seem old hat, somehow. Jensen does look good in western wear, I'll admit to that. I'm not thrilled with the idea that Dean's all better now because he got his angel friend back. "Whoopdy frigging doo," as they say on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
I did like it when he climbed in that hole in the ground – now that was very amusing. There's no way that I'd have done it. Just the thought of getting stuck and not being able to get out…that scares me almost as much as possibly meeting that ghoul around a bend. Dean's brave, though. We learned in "Jump the Shark" that Dean's good at earthen tunnels and finding ghouls. Sam digs around a gravesite with his bare hands for a clue. I have a clue for him: wear gloves next time, eww. The monster this time is just okay, but I did enjoy the fellow who helps Dean. If the show's going to separate Sam and Dean, at least they gave us someone interesting. It's not the same as our boys, though.
After a shoot-out, in which Sam and Dean couldn't hit the side of a barn, we get poor Jack feeling terrible that a security guard unwisely stepped into his line of fire. That's definitely an accident; if that guard had just stayed back, he would have been fine. It's a miracle that no one else is hit by stray bullets. On a cop show I watched, they had an episode where a man fires a gun into the air to scare off a car thief, and the bullet kills a man a block over. Bullets were flying everywhere, but like when Sam and Dean trash a motel room fighting, no one seems to be anywhere nearby.
I'm sad that Jack thinks so little of himself and that he can only think about the bad things he's done, not all the good he's done and could still do. Huh, that reminds me of someone.
Oh, yeah. Sam's in this episode, too. He looks nice when he's all a-sleeping.
Jack's reunion with Cas is sweet, but I'm rolling my eyes at the ending. Did Jack get lessons in avoidance from Mary? Jack didn't want to risk hurting Sam, Dean, or Castiel – so, I guess he's going to take the chance of hurting strangers that he comes across in his travels, instead. Oh, well.
Random Musings with Bonus Songs for Castiel
I'm reminded of City Slickers (1991) when I watch this western-themed episode of Supernatural. It's like we send Dean Winchester to an Old West dude ranch. He finds his smile as he travels with his returned friend, the Angel "I don't sleep at all" Castiel, young "I don't sleep much" Jack, and Sam "I love watching him sleep" Winchester. (That last quote's mine.)
Here's a song I wrote for Castiel: (set to the tune of "Oh Christmas Tree.")
Oh Castiel, Oh Castiel,
Why'd you have come back so quickly?
We never had time to properly miss thee.
And we're afraid that you will get between
The epic brotherhood of Sam and Dean.
Please pray to Chuck for better writing.
When Jack said, "You're afraid of me," I immediately thought of Anthony Fremont from The Twilight Zone. I love the old series, but I really love the movie version that was produced in 1983. "Kick the Can" and "It's a Good Life" with Kathleen Quinlan as Helen Foley, were my favorite segments. In this version, Helen decides to take Anthony on the road with her. She's going to teach him to do good things, instead of bad. Just don't get him angry, Helen, if you don't want to see something really scary.
I've modified this song in Castiel's honor:
Little Dean had an angel that they wouldn't let him keep
So, he put him up for sale at a price he thought was cheap
He took him to a neighbor to ask him for advice
He said, "Leave Castiel here. He can help me smite the mice.
But the Cas came back, he wouldn't stay away
He was sitting on the porch the very next day
The Cas came back, he didn't want to roam
The very next day it was Home, Sweet Home.
Then Dean met a man who was driving way out West
He would take Castiel along as a special honored guest
The steering wheel was wobbly, he drove into a tree
The car was just a total wreck as anyone could see
Castiel came back, he didn't want to roam
So, Sammy bought a gun from the Human Cannonball
He put Castiel inside with Tri-Nitro Alcohol
When he pulled the trigger, the cannon made a roar
The neighbors all surrendered 'cause they thought it was a war
Then Sammy gave the Cas to a man who had a bomb
When he took Castiel away, he was acting cool and calm
And then the bomb exploded, it made an awful sound
They searched and searched for ages but the man was never found
This song is a popular children's and folk tune which has evolved from a song of the same name written by Harry S. Miller in 1893. This version of the song was featured on The Muppet Show.
Athena reminds me of Geena Davis, quite a bit. This picture is from one of my favorite movies, A League of Their Own.
Dean wears a string tie called a bolo. My dad wore those all the time when I was growing up. He was born in Montana just before the Great Depression and died in Utah almost 85 years later. My dad always said that he loved his string ties because he never could figure out how to tie the other ones, very well.
I'd also like to invite you to watch this gem of a slideshow, which was written/produced/directed by Alice Jester:
http://thewinchesterfamilybusiness.com/articles/article-archives/slideshows/18275-the-winchester-family-business-short-attention-span-theater-presents-castiel-s-lament
Th, th, th, that's all folks!
----Mallena
Image courtesy of news.uark.edu


The Border Security Force (BSF) on Thursday busted a Maoist hideout and recovered a cache of arms and Naxal banners from a dense forest in Chhattisgarh's Kanker district.
Based on specific inputs, a team of the BSF's 35th battalion had launched an operation from its Sulangi camp in the interiors of an area under Siksod police station limits, Inspector General, BSF Bhilai Headquarters, Mahendra Singh said.
While cordoning off the targeted location near Tekapani village, around 11 kms from Sulangi, they spotted the Maoist hideout and recovered 10 SBML (single barrel muzzle loading) guns hidden inside the cavity of two separate trees, he said.
Some old paint containers, a brush, Maoist banners, writing material and a pamphlet were also recovered from the spot, the IG said. Prima facie it seems that the weapons were dumped in the area 2-3 months back by Maoists, he said.
The search operation was underway in the region, located around 200 km away from the state capital Raipur, he said.
The seizure has been made at a time when the Naxals are opposing various developmental works, including construction of roads at various places, in the state.
On April 24, as many as 25 CRPF personnel were killed and seven others injured when the Naxals attacked a patrol party of the paramilitary troops while they were ensuring security to road construction work near Burkapal village of the state's Sukma district.


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The Scholars of Hadeeth used to say.. (Part 3)
Hadeeth, Science of Hadeeth, The Scholars October 2, 2013 Leave a comment
The Scholars of Hadeeth used to say (and still hold):
3. Weakness due to a narrator being discredited for problems in his Dhabt (His Precision)
It should be known that the main way the early scholars of hadeeth would ascertain the dhabt or precision of a narrator is by comparing their narrations with the narrations of the trustworthy scholars known for their precision.
If he is well-known for agreeing with the trustworthy narrators in his narrations and that his narrations rarely opposing theirs and rarely differ then he is considered precise.
If his narrations agree with the narrations of the trustworthy, but on occasions his narrations oppose them then the scholars would pass a verdict upon him that he is of a lesser level of precision than the well-known so he is considered 'Hasan' in hadeeth and they would use descriptive words that would indicate that.
If though, his narrations oppose their narrations to the extent that it is said his opposition to them is greater than his agreement with them he is considered weak and his narrations are rejected outright, though it maybe that he is described as being 'mimman yuktab hadeethuhu' (from those who ahaadeeth may be written down) that is since his weakness may not be severe his hadeeth may be considered as ahaadeeth that may be used to support ahaadeeth of their like.
As for if his oppositions are gross and he rarely agrees with the trustworthy, he is declared 'Faahishul Ghalat' (Severe in making errors)', his ahaadeeth are abandoned and are not even written down for consideration.
from the Categories of weak hadeeth that relate to dhabt (Precision):
1. Al Munkar (المنكر): It is that hadeeth wherein a weak narrator opposes in his narration those who are trustworthy or that a weak narrator is alone in narrating a hadeeth.
This category of weak hadeeth differs from the hadeeth Ash Shaadh in that the Shaadh revolves around the trustworthy narrator opposing the trustworthy, the Munkar revolves around the weak narrator opposing the trustworthy
We must always bear in mind that the scholars of hadeeth usually had many students and many teachers. Therefore whenever we have a hadeeth being narrated from an Imaam, then there will usually be from the students of that same Imaam, a student who would have narrated the same hadeeth at some time. Thus when a narrator, who the scholars of hadeeth discover weakness with him in narration, is alone in narrating a hadeeth, and no one from his trustworthy contemporaries have agreed with him in narrating this hadeeth, or none of them narrate it in that manner then this is a cause for concern.
Imaam Abdur Rahmaan Ibn Mahdi – Rahimahullah mentioned as occurs in 'Al Jarhi Wat Ta'deel' of Ibn Abi Haatim (1/1/38):
"I memorize (i.e. Hadeeth) from a man who is Haafidh (a Great scholar of hadeeth well-known for his strong memory) and 'Mutqin' (A precise memorizor), this individual no one will differ about him (i.e. whether or not to take from him etc). And (i take) from another (narrator) who may make mistakes but for the most part his ahaadeeth are sound and authentic, then the hadeeth of this individual is not left, for if one were to leave his hadeeth then many of the hadeet of the people would go (i.e be lost due to them being abandoned). Then another makes mistakes and the bulk of his narrations are erroneous, then the ahadeeth of this individual are left.."
An example of a hadeeth Munkar:
Imaam Ahmad mentions in his Musnad (1/195) upon the authority of An Nadhar Ibn Shaibaan who said : "I said to Abi Salamah 'Narrate to me something you heard your father narrating from The Messenger of Allah – Sallallahu 'Alaihi Was Salam. (So) He said My Father narrated to me concerning the month of Ramadhaan He said the Messenger of Allah – Sallallahu 'Alahi Was Salam said:
"Indeed Allah – Azza Wa Jall – has made fasting the month of Ramadhaan compulsory upon you, and I have left as a Sunnah for you (the establishment of ) Prayer. Thus whosoever fasts it and prays throughout it, believing in it and seeking the reward (for that from Allah) he exits from his sins as the day his mother gave birth to him"
In is chain Is An Nadhr Ibn Shaibaan and he is a weak narrator and he has erred in the narration of this hadeeth. He narrates it from Abu Salamah Narrating from his father, thought the scholars hold Abu Salamah did not hear from his father, this is the first issue of opposition making the hadeeth Munkar. The second issue is that the hadeeth has been narrated by upright trustworthy strong narrators (Such as Yahya Ibn Sa'eed, Az Zuhri, and Yahya Ibn Abi Katheer who narrate it from Abu Salamah, not from his father but from Abu Hurairah with the wording
"Whosoever fasts Ramadhaan having Imaan in it and seeking the reward for that from Allah, his past sins will be forgiven. And prays On laylatul Qadr believing in it and seeking the reward for it from Allah, his past sins will be forgiven
Thus An Nadhr Ibn Shaibaan opposed the trustworthy narrators in both the chain of transmission and in the text of the hadeeth (only one of those forms of opposition is needed for it to be considered Munkar, here we have two!) thus it is rejected.
2.Ash Shaadh (الشاذ): The Hadeeth As Shaadh is defined as: 'the trustworthy narrator opposing those who are more trustworthy than him', thus in essence the hadeeth Ash Shaadh is the similar to the Hadeeth Al Munkar except that with the shaadh the narrator is trustworthy but opposes those more trustworthy than him.
3. Al Mudraj (المدرج): This is a reference to a hadeeth that has in it wording from one of the narrators of the hadeeth, this wording was heard by one of that narrators students and he presumed that it was part of the hadeeth itself and so it was added to the text of the hadeeth while it is not actually from it
This usually occurs when a narrator hears his Shaikh narrating a hadeeth, and in the course of his narration, the Shaikh mentions an explanatory statement that one of those who were present presumed was from the wording of the hadeeth, when in actuality it was the statement of the narrator.
This 'Idraaj' occurs at the beginning of the hadeeth (which is very rare), in the middle of the hadeeth (which again is quite rare) or at the end of the hadeeth (which is the most common).
Examples of this:
1. In the beginning of the hadeeth:
That which was collected by Al Khateeb Al Baghdaadi by way of Abu Qatan and Shabaabah who both narrated from Shu'bah who narrated from Muhammad Ibn Ziyaad who narrated from Abu Hurairah who said: The Messenger of Allah – Sallallahu 'Alaihi Was Salam Said: "Perfect the Wudhoo!, Woe to the heels from the hellfire"
The statement "Perfect the wudhoo!" are actually the words of Abu Hurairah and this is indicated by that which was collected by Imaamul Bukhaari in his 'Saheeh' upon the authority of Aadam who narrated from Shu'bah who narrated from Muhammad Ibn Ziyaad who narrated from Abu Hurairah (thus Aadam (who is Aadam Ibn Abi Iyaas), Abu Qatan and Shabaabah all took from the same narrator in this hadeeth, namely Imaam Shu'bah – Rahimahullah) who said: "Perfect the wudhoo! for indeed Abul Qaasim said: "Woe to the heels from the hellfire!"
Thus we see that the version of Bukhaari makes it clear that they are actually Abu Hurairahs words.
2. In the middle of the hadeeth:
That which was collected by Imaamun Nasaa'ee in his Sunan (6/21) by way of: Ibn Wahb who said it was narrated to be by Abu Haani upon the authority of Amr Ibn Maalik Al Janabi that he heard Fudhaalah Ibn Ubaid say: "I heard the Messenger of Allah – Sallallahu 'alaihi Was Salam say:" I am the 'Za'eem' (Guarantor) – and the 'Za'eem' (meaning) the 'Hameel' (warrantor) – for the one who believes in me, embraces (Islaam) and migrates of a house in the outskirts of Paradise and a house in the middle of paradise.."
Here the statement The 'the 'Za'eem' (meaning) the 'Hameel' is actually from the words of the narrator Ibn Wahb
3.At the end of the Hadeeth
That which is collected by Ibn Abi Haatim in his 'Illal' (1/65) from the hadeeth of Ibraaheem Ibn Tahmaan who narrated from Hishaam Ibn Hasaan who narrated from Muhammad Ibn Seereen who narrated from Abu Hurairah and (a second chain of narration beginning with Ibraaheem) who (also) narrated from Sahl Ibn Abi Saalih from his father from Abu Hurairah who said The Messenger of Allah – Sallallahu 'Alaihi Was Salam said: "If one of you rises from his sleep then let him wash his hands three times before he immerses them into his vessel (of water, meaning he washes his hands externally then immerses them into his vessel of water) for indeed he does not know where his hand has spent the night, then let him scoop with his right hand from the vessel and let its contents pour upon his left then let him wash his rear end"
Abu Haatim mentioned:
"What is befitting (and correct) is that the statement "..then let him scoop with his right hand from the vessel and let its contents pour upon his left then let him wash his rear end" is attributed to Ibraaheem Ibn Tahmaan, for indeed he connected his statement to the end of the hadeeth and those who heard (the hadeeth from him) did not make a distinction"
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Trust your Mashaaykh! →
« Sep Jul »


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Home > Marking a century of progressive Catholicism
Catholic News Service has a feature [1] that notes an interesting centennial, of sorts:
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The year 1910 was quite the watershed year for U.S. Catholicism. Catholic Charities USA was founded a hundred years ago. So were the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, followed by the Maryknoll Sisters in 1912. The Crosiers, founded in Europe 700 years ago, decided to place their first outpost in the United States in 1910.And that's just a sampling of Catholic groups marking their centennial.What was it that prompted these Catholic organizations to take root in 1910 and not only to withstand the vagaries of the following century but to flourish a century later with an enduring influence on the larger society?To hear some historians describe it, the growth of Catholic organizations 100 years ago has much to do with the Progressive Era, a period of social activism and reform that had its heyday from the 1890s to the 1920s. Among its leading exponents were presidents, including Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover, Wisconsin Gov. Robert La Follette Sr., and Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, who went on to become Chief Justice of the United States.
These groups still exist today, and may have even greater reach, it seems to me. And there are plenty of "progressive" Catholic leaders. But the Catholic Church is not seen as "progressive" in the wider social context. Is that a misperception, perhaps created by the focus on battles over abortion and homosexuality? Or is it perhaps an accurate assessment?
David Gibson is the director of Fordham's Center on Religion & Culture.
Source URL: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/marking-century-progressive-catholicism
[1] http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1004856.htm
[4] http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/marking-century-progressive-catholicism
[5] https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/marking-century-progressive-catholicism


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Q: Symfony Process component returns exit code -1 I am getting exit code -1 from the Symfony process command on some machines, while exactly the same code returns exit code 0 as excepted on others. In both cases the given command is executed successfully regarding its output.
Running the same command line from shell gives the correct exit code (0).
I produced a small test case to reproduce the issue:
use Symfony\Component\Process\Process;
$process = new Process('./console');
$process->run();
echo $process->getExitCode();

Any ideas on how to diagnose this?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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With over 25 years of experience in the field of infrastructure & construction, Mr. Vilas Yadav founded Sharada Alliance in 2005 with a passion to create real estate spaces that add value to the citizens of Pune and subsequently the whole of Maharashtra.
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Yesterday turned out to be a pretty bad day.
First off, I started adding additional steps to the pi-lite config for QCPM as I stepped through getting the service to work, only to be presented with another site DB failures. If you tried to hit the site yesterday it was probably down. I got to the point where I quit calling on it because it usually clears soon.
Next, I spent almost the entire day installing VS2017. Not sure why but a push of 2015 update 3 was failing. This meant that every time I would open VS it would shut down and say an update was running, close the app. After about 5 times of this I decided it was time to upate to 2017. This took pretty much the entire day. About a half hour before it was time to leave, 2017 was installed but the push was still shutting it down. I figure my only option is to uninstall 2015 so that it does not try to do the update but I was not going to start that right before I left for the day.. so I left early.
That being said, I am hoping today will be a better day.


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Nikolić noble family was Bosnian medieval noble family from Hum (later Herzegovina), today Bosnia and Herzegovina. The family's estate was in western part of the Bosansko Primorje (), namely Popovo Polje and Neum. They were of minor importance, serving under Grand Dukes of Bosnia and noble families of Hranić and Kosača, lords of Hum and later Herzegovina.

History
The progenitor of the family was Nikola, a župan or knez. Nikola had two sons by Katarina, the daughter of Stephen I, Ban of Bosnia: Vladislav and Bogiša.

Little is known about the first ancestors of the Nikolić family, though they were most likely important family in Hum, with princess Vukosava, Petar and Miliša Nikolić probably being the second generation of the Nikolić family. The first mention of the Nikolić brothers happened after the death of King Tvrtko I of Bosnia in 1391. Loyal to the new Bosnian king, Stephen Dabiša, they were granted Republic of Dubrovnik citizenship by 1392. After ascension of the rival king to Bosnian Kingdom throne, namely Stephen Ostoja, the Nikolić brothers, also related to Queen Jelena Gruba who was of the House of Nikolić herself and widow of Stephen Dabiša, were forced to take refuge in Dubrovnik. Later Vukosav participated in the Bosnian-Ragusan War around 1403 as a nobleman of the Grand Duke of Bosnia Sandalj Hranić, and was killed and was buried in Ston on 28 November 1403.

Grgur Vukosalić, the son of Vukosav Nikolić, was present at historical events in Bosnia in the course of Tvrtko II's campaign against King Stephen Ostoja and his own lord and Grad Duke of Bosnia, Sandalj Hranić. To no avail the Nikolić family tried to gain independence from the Bosnian duke, and after Hranić's death they remained loyal to his successor as the Grad Duke of Bosnia, Stjepan Vukčić Kosača, as well. Grgur died in July 1436.

The sons of Grgur Vukosalić, Vuk and Vukašin Grgurević, maintained their position under Stjepan Vukčić Kosača, as the Grand Duke tried to overtake Zeta. In 1442 Vukasin fell into Venetian captivity, but with Dubrovnik help he was released. The last mention of the Nikolić family was in 1453, and they were still under the lordship of Stjepan Vukčić Kosača. The Ottoman Empire had already entered area of Vrhbosna and prepared conquest of rest of the Bosnian Kingdom, which will occur 10 years later. Finally, after decades of political and social instability, Bosnia officially fell in 1463. Herzegovina would follow in 1482, with a Hungarian-backed reinstated Bosnian state around former capital Jajce being the last to succumb in 1527. After the end of Bosnian medieval state, Nikolić's fate is little known until the 18th century.

Members
Family tree
Nikola, knez (župan)
Vladislav (fl. 1347–1363)
Vukosav Nikolić (fl. 1395–d. 1403),
Grgur Nikolić (fl. 1403–d. 1436), knez
Vuk Nikolić
Vukašin Nikolić
Radoje Nikolić, vojvoda
Bogiša (fl. 1347–1363)

Unknown genealogy
Jovan
Bogdan
Miliša (fl. 1392)
Jelena Gruba (ca. 1345–d. after March 18, 1399), Queen of Bosnia from 1391 to 1398, first as queen consort until 1395 and then as queen regnant.

References

Bosnian noble families
Kingdom of Bosnia


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Douglas Laing launches 26-year-old Macallan
Sep 25, 2020 by Owen Bellwood
Independent bottler Douglas Laing & Co has added a 26-year-old Macallan Scotch whisky to its XOP The Black Series.
The Macallan 1993 Vintage was distilled in November 1993 at the Macallan distillery in Speyside. The whisky matured for 26 years in an ex-refill butt and has been bottled at cask strength of 56.4% ABV. Just 244 bottles of the whisky have been released, which is said to have "a remarkably warm, amber colour and a flavour profile encompassing dried fruits, milk chocolate and honeyed barley". Each bottle has been filled by hand and feature a glass stopper and embossed metal label incorporating the signatures of Douglas Laing & Co chairman Fred Laing and former Bruichladdich distiller Jim McEwan. McEwan said: "Every note detected on the nose can be experienced on the palate and its magical Macallan, warm and generous, the pride of Speyside at its very best. This is one of the most stately and elegant single malts I have experienced in my 56 years of making whisky." Douglas Laing & Co XOP The Black Series Mcallan Vintage 1993 is available throughout Europe and Asia with an expected retail price of £2,150 (US$2,700) per 700ml bottle. Douglas Laing & Co launched its XOP The Black Series last year with the release of a 1994 Springbank whisky.
Douglas Laing launches 26-year-old Macallan - Wooden Cork