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Business Liverpool Rated World Class
BUSINESS Liverpool has been ranked in the world's top 5% of investment agencies by an independent survey. The survey was carried out into organisations who provide specialist consultancy services to economic development agencies.
It is jointly organised by the specialised economic consultancy GDP Global Development, London, and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), a division of the World Bank Group. They conducted a
"mystery shopper" exercise checking on over 80 agencies, throughout the world, ranging from Invest Australia to the Invest in Iceland Agency. A total of 29 UK agencies were evaluated. Posing as a major European corporation in the manufacturing sector they sought information on a number of issues including financial support available, relocation issues and staff support. They also sought information via Business Liverpool's website.
The survey concluded:- "In terms of the overall performance, e-communication and investment project handling the agency's performance evaluation resulted in a world class response. The agency 's general performance evaluation was amongst the top 5% of all agencies benchmarked."
The ranking is seen as major boost to Business Liverpool, which is the new identity for the former Liverpool Business Centre. Business Liverpool outperformed other regional and local agencies.
Mike Taylor, Business Liverpool's chief executive. , said:- "Naturally we are delighted with this evaluation but we are not surprised. Our aim is always to give a prompt, accurate and informative service to all callers. However, we are not complacent and constantly strive to develop our services. It is this sort of service to the business community which has seen £225m of inward investment, more than 500 businesses helped and around 5000 jobs created or safeguarded since our forerunner, the Liverpool Business Centre was established in April 2001."
Councillor Peter Millea, Executive Member for Regeneration added:- "This is a world class accolade for what is increasingly acknowledged as a world class city. It is a great boost to our ambition of becoming the country's most business friendly city."
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T'WAY US WERE
"BOSTIN" British Library website now includes over 650 sound recordings of English accents and dialects
Regional accents are back in fashion and spoken with pride. England's rich assortment of accents and dialects are featured on an updated website from the British Library. Visitors to the site can listen to the incredible variety of spoken English, and hear the sounds and words which define people from all four corners of the country. The site is nobbut a mouse-click away at:-
www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/dialects/.
The site pulls together two large sound archives of English speakers made fifty years apart and puts them on the web for the first time. It is 'wick with' over 55 hours of recordings and users can hear how people spoke in the 1950s, and how they speak now. The words in each recording are explained so that users know what a 'stithurum' is, what to put in the 'barton-linhay', how to play 'knur and spell' and when to eat 'bait', 'bever', 'docky' or 'snap'.
Recordings made in Lancashire and the North West are plentiful, with subjects ranging from traditional methods of baking oatcakes over an open fire to Marshside fishermen's memories of the strike of 1926; from the raising and slaughtering of livestock on late nineteenth century Ribchester to a barmaid's tale of two ghostly encounters at Harwood church, near Bolton. They reflect not only ways of speaking but also ways of life that have changed forever, making the site a treasure trove of local and social history.
The site features pairs of recordings from over 250 locations in rural England and multiple extracts from today's urban centres.The website will interest specialists and non-specialists alike and should prove invaluable to the large number of actors who currently use the British Library Sound Archive for research purposes.
Jonathan Robinson, Curator of English Accents and Dialects at the British Library Sound Archive, said:- "The way people speak in England has changed over the last half a century. Contrary to popular belief, there is still an incredible amount of regional diversity and the recordings on this website illustrate elements both of continuity and of change. It has all been made possible by the fact that the British Library's oral history holdings include two wonderful collections - the Survey of English Dialects, recorded by Leeds University in the 1950s and the Millennium Memory Bank, recorded by the BBC in 1998/9."
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