Freecycle: Accountancy Personality of the Year

Many Happy returns ... on the Second Day of Autumn 🍂  ...

More Than 9 Million People Use Freecycle Instead of Buying New

A bona fide sharing “economy”: Freecycle plans to add a lending and borrowing tool to encourage people to share with friends and neighbors.

Debtors of the World, Unite! Boston Review

Socks, underwear require ‘additional security’ at this Minnesota Walmart Bring Me The News (CL). No doubt face masks, hand sanitizer, rubbing alchohol, etc. will be locked up soon, if they have not already been.

'Irreplaceable' but ignored: the unique Sydney architectural gems under threat

The century-old Globe Theatre and its 1923 neighbour Dudley House are at risk of being demolished to extend a hotel

These photos show holdout houses giving the finger to redevelopment

Accountancy Personality of the Year

Posted on February 27 2020

I have done a couple of events with PQ Magazine of late. This magazine is aimed at accounting trainees (PQ stands for ‘part qualified’). There are a lot of trainee accountants in the UK, and a whole industry (including a big bit of the university sector) that is aimed at helping them develop their careers.

I have never regretted being a chartered accountant, despite all the criticisms of the profession that I have made over the years. I have embraced other disciplines, and much enjoy working in a multi-disciplinary has on, but often make the joke that if I was cut open you would find the words ‘chartered accountant’ running through me, as ‘Blackpool’ does through all the best sticks of rock. Encouraging young people to join the profession is, then, something I am happy to do.

So I when Graham Hambly of PQ Magazine invited me to their annual awards bash I thought it was a note of thanks. I was, then, slightly surprised to find when I arrived that I was listed as one of three nominees in the ‘Accountancy Personality of the Year’ category. I was even more surprised to find myself heading out of Kings Cross for home last night with the award in my bag, even if the oxymoronic nature of the award was noted whilst it was being presented!

Graham had kind words to say about me last night, and I am grateful. Accountancy has, for me, always provided a powerful framework for not just viewing what has happened, but also for appraising what should happen, for which purpose I think it even more useful. I prepared my first set of very simple accounts during a summer holiday job in 1975, at the age of 17. I have no idea how many have followed since then. But my enthusiasm for finding appropriate and meaningful interpretations of accounting data remains undiminished - hence my current enthusiasm for sustainable cost accounting and all the effort I have put into country-by-country reporting.

Now, enough of that and let’s get back to the day job....

New England Journal of medicine study on 1,099 Covid-19 patients

In case some of you may have missed this from Friday, the New England Journal of Medicine published its latest report on the coronavirus, in which it extracted data regarding 1,099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 from 552 hospitals in 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in China through January 29, 2020.
You can read the whole study here, but here are the main points:

• The median age of the patients was 47 years and 41.9% of the patients were female.
• 0.9% of the patients were younger than 15 years of age.
• 5% were admitted to intensive care, and 1.4% died.
• Only 1.9% of the patients had a history of direct contact with wildlife.
• The most common symptoms were fever (43.8% on admission and 88.7% during hospitalisation) and cough (67.8%).
• Among the overall population, 23.7% had at least one coexisting illness (e.g. hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).
• On admission, the degree of severity of Covid-19 was categorised as non-severe in 926 patients and severe in 173 patients.
• The median incubation period was 4 days.
• Many did not have abnormal radiologic findings (X-ray/CT scan).
• A majority of the patients (58.0%) received intravenous antibiotic therapy, and 35.8% received oseltamivir therapy.
• Oxygen therapy was administered in 41.3% and mechanical ventilation in 6.1%; higher percentages of patients with severe disease received these therapies