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Inventory Base Academy has launched its new course - how to start your own inventory operation.

The new course is aimed at helping new and experienced inventory providers to understand the business processes and acumen required.

With over 70 lessons, information points and topics, the self-paced home study material covers seven areas.

These are - The Lettings Industry Landscape;Marketing to Landlords, Agents & Tenants; Sales Forecasting & Pricing Reports; Social Marketing & Branding; Business Structure; Continuous Professional Development; and Becoming a Successful Inventrepreneuer.

It outlines the legal requirements of running a successful business, it teaches providers how to create the right impression when developing leads, how to get the most out of their social media presence and build the framework that will start their service business off on the front foot.

Sin Hemming-Metcalfe, Head of Training and Development at Inventory Base Academy, says:The property market is changing and at an extremely rapid pace. Whether you agree or not, the government is intent on implementing what it sees as improvements to ensure tenant safety and hold the PRS even more to account.

The launch of the levelling up plan, removal of Section 21 and a national landlord register are yet more examples of the type of legislation the rental sector is now expected to implement and manage.

We want to help providers grasp the opportunity to build and support their client base by supporting them to respond to these challenges.

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Secrets of successful inventories revealed in new course - Letting Agent Today

On a sports talk radio show recently, a Carolina Panthers fan lamented how long it takes for true fandom to take hold for a new NFL team.

In the first few years of the franchise, he said, people would cheer for the Panthers except when their previous favorite teams came to town. Then theyd revert to being Steelers or Raiders or Packers fans again. It wasnt until a generation of children in the Carolinas grew up as Panthers fans that the team developed an intensely loyal fan base.

Thats one mans theory, but it makes sense. And its something the National Football League seems to understand on a molecular level. For professional football to remain profitable in the long term, it needs not only the devotion of grown-ups, but of children.

This is a problem for the NFL, since young Americans are increasingly uninterested in professional football, and in other sports as well.

A 2020 survey found that fewer than a quarter of Generation Z watch a sports game weekly and nearly 40% dont watch sports at all. They might tune into the Super Bowl at 4:30 p.m. MST this Sunday, but not necessarily to watch the Bengals and Rams. More than any other age group, young adults are the most likely to say they only watch the broadcast to see the commercials and possibly the halftime show.

As a 2019 article in Sports Illustrated said, Youth appeal is a bigger NFL business concern than protests or concussions. As such, the league is aggressively marketing itself to young Americans, using social media such as Instagram and TikTok, and the video game franchise Madden. A little more than a year ago, Conor Orr wrote for Sports Illustrated, The attempts to reach younger viewers are not yet at the level of outright pandering.

One might say the pandering arrived with the NFLs partnership with childrens network Nickelodeon, which has broadcast two games replete with animated slime cannons that celebrate touchdowns. While the broadcast might have been aimed at children, one of my colleagues reports that she has 30-something friends who watched and loved it. Nickelodeon also has a series called NFL Slimetime that features child-friendly game highlights, interviews with players and segments highlighting teams.

Will it work? As with the development of the Panthers fanbase, it will probably take a generation to see. But for all the NFLs clever marketing, the league has kid problems that are tougher to solve, the first one being that, when not sanitized and edited for Nickelodeon, the games themselves are not always child-friendly.

In this, Im not speaking of the gladiatorial nature of the sport and the inherent violence of 250-pound men tearing into each other. Broadcasts are quick to cut away when someone is hurt, and injured players are quickly whisked into tents.

Its the experience of going to games that are famously unwelcoming for families, so much so that on online forums like Quora and Reddit, people ask if its OK to take a child to a game. The answers often note that its pretty much a given that there will be drunkenness, foul language and generally boorish behavior outside the stadium and in the stands, more so at night games. In other words, take your chances, better at an afternoon game.

Of course, fans behaving badly is not unique to football, and anecdotally, there seems to be this lately, from fans verbally abusing players to throwing water bottles to running on the Super Bowl field. Also, theres more opportunity for bad behavior to be filmed and posted on YouTube, like this verbal altercation at a Raiders-Ravens game last September. Imagine sitting by those guys with your 7-year-old.

Five years ago, The Washington Post examined where and when violence was most likely to occur in NFL stadiums (then, the Chargers had the most arrests; the Panthers, the fewest, and the most incidents occurred during evening games). Likely, many of these incidents are related to alcohol consumption; researchers say nearly half of people going to NFL games consume alcohol, and a third report that they start drinking two hours before the game, a practice so common that it has a name: pregaming.

The NFLs biggest kid problem, though, has nothing to do with any of this, but is the fact that, thanks to Americas declining fertility rate, in coming decades, there will be far fewer children for them to woo, on Nickelodeon and elsewhere. If trends go unchanged, American women will have roughly half the number of children they had in the 1950s, an average of 1.78 throughout the course of their childbearing years. This has sobering implications for every aspect of American life, so much so that there ought to be a Super Bowl ad encouraging people to have children, like one Denmark produced a few years ago.

Already, people are looking at what effect a declining birthrate might have on participation in youth sports, in decline because of competition with myriad other activities and concerns parents have about concussions. These concerns will eventually confront the number-crunchers at the National Football League as well, and no amount of green slime will help. Do it for Denmark, that nations pro-fertility ad urged reluctant couples. Do it for the NFL, ours might say.

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Super Bowl LVI: When is it, and why is the NFL being marketed to kids? - Deseret News

Those making bids for office include Boston NAACP President Tanisha Sullivan, who is running against longtime Secretary of State Bill Galvin; former ACLU attorney Rahsaan Hall, who is making a bid against longtime Plymouth County DA Timothy Cruz; and Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who is running for DA in Suffolk County, where newly-appointed interim Kevin Hayden hasnt said whether he will be a candidate.

Thats a stark change from the electoral slates of not many years ago, when entrenched white male candidates were regarded as so unbeatable that many candidates were reluctant to even take their chances.

The shift leftward is visible in other contests as well. Even as Attorney General Maura Healey seems established as the early front-runner for governor, both Sonia Chang-Diaz and Danielle Allen have staked out positions clearly intended to outflank the attorney general on her left.

Not that Healey is any kind of moderate, at least not by the standards of any state but this one. But in Democratic politics, the ground is shifting. And the faces of those running this year are a clear reflection of that.

* As Boston begins the search for its next schools superintendent, one intriguing subplot is what this will mean for the future of the appointed School Committee.

Following a resounding vote in a nonbinding referendum, the notion of scrapping the current panel for an elected one has never had more momentum than it does now.

Thats a potential political problem for Mayor Michelle Wu, who opposes a return to an elected School Committee. (She says she favors a hybrid, with some members elected and some appointed by the mayor.)

Politically, an elected School Committee is an easy sell to voters, just by virtue of being more democratic. Given the choice, who wouldnt opt for electing their government?

But Boston has had an elected School Committee it was abolished in 1991 by Mayor Ray Flynn and its latter years were nothing the city needs or should want again. With every decision deeply politicized, it spent most of its time in gridlock. Running the schools had become nearly impossible. Troubled as the School Department may be now, it bears little resemblance to that old, broken version.

Then, and maybe now, the strongest proponents of an elected School Committee were politicians, not parents or educators. They liked the idea of more offices for political ingenues to run for, and they liked being able to exert more direct influence on decisions, including budgets and promotions. Nearly every appointment of a principal back then prompted a low-key political campaign.

Lets just say educational quality was not always front and center.

People have forgotten what a disaster it was, said former city councilor Michael McCormack, who first proposed replacing it with an appointed committee and got Flynn on board. I hope Mayor Wu sticks to her guns in not going back to that, and I think she will.

Flynn, and Mayor Tom Menino after him, argued that the appointed committee made the mayor squarely responsible for the schools. That hasnt fueled sufficient progress, but accountability has not been a bad thing.

Ultimately, what we desperately need is to improve the schools. If Wu can be an effective driver for the changes that are needed which I believe she can be I dont really care whos on the School Committee, or who picks them. Just somebody, please, fix the schools.

* Under the leadership of Mayor Carlo DeMaria, Everett is a city where weird stuff happens routinely.

The latest is that Schools Superintendent Priya Tahiliani who is currently pursuing a complaint against the city for racial and gender discrimination says through her attorney that surveillance cameras were recently found in her office. The devices were reportedly discovered last month.

Tahiliani, whose contract runs until 2024, maintains that DeMaria has been trying to push her out of her job for some time. The School Committee recently shelved plans to undercut her authority, in the wake of her complaint.

Its anyones guess what anyone thought they might uncover by planting a camera in the superintendents office.

Only in Everett.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at adrian.walker@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Adrian_Walker.

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Will this be a big year for progressives, and other thoughts - The Boston Globe

Progressives activists including elected officials gathered at the Florida Capitol Tuesday to complain that the Legislature isnt addressing the problems that average people need help with.

We are tired of a state that continues to demolish the capability of local officials trying to address the needs of their constituents; we are tired of coming year after year to file lawsuits against these bills that are chipping away at our basic human rights, said Francesca Menes, deputy organizing director for Local Progress, during a news conference.

The group represents a collection of progressive public officials.

Jack Porter, who sits on the Tallahassee City Commission, cited one example: Floridas housing crisis. She pointed to trailer park in her community where the owner doubled rents and pushed residents out of their homes.

It breaks my heart to get email after email that people are struggling and they have been removed from their house illegally, Porter said.

One bill pending before the Legislature HB 537 would allow landlords to charge monthly fees instead of security deposits. That would reduce up-front costs but hook renters with monthly fees that they wouldnt get back, unlike a refundable security deposit, according to critics.

Porter argued that policy decision should be left to local government.

Rep. Angie Nixon, a Black Democrat from Duval County, urged repeal of HB1, the anti-riot legislation passed last year. The bill toughens criminal penalties against organizers and participants in demonstrations that get out of hand, even if counter-protesters started the trouble.

A federal judge has ruled the law violates the Constitution.

Nixon has filed her own bill (HB 857), which would repeal the old law.

Our governor keeps saying this is a free state and I say, Free for who? Its not a free state for people who look like me, who are a part of LGBTQ community, and not a free state for women, Nixon said.

Read the rest here:
Progressives claim FL Legislature is ignoring real people's needs this session - Florida Phoenix

I spend a lot of my time yelling at my former progressive comrades hoping that they will come to their senses. But it also occurs to me that I speak the language and I could just explain how progressives should be responding to this crisis if they were still progressive. And then they can choose to uphold their purported values or confess that theyve embraced a new ideology. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, I believe that the points below about framing are useful and important.

George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist at UC Berkeley, is the intellectual godfather of progressive messaging. Lakoffs books, Metaphors We Live By (with Mark Johnson), Moral Politics, and Dont Think of an Elephant are the sacred texts of progressive framing and are read and used by nearly all Democratic political strategists. After reading his books and using them to design messaging campaigns for over a decade, I took a class in graduate school from Dr. Lakoff in 2012. I continue to use his work today.

Lakoffs key insight is that understanding is inherently metaphorical. We process complex ideas in terms of other, simpler, more primal experiences (spatial and tactile sensations, pictures, basic family relations). Choosing the most advantageous metaphor to describe a problem and its solutions is the art of framing.

1. Every word evokes a frame.

So for example, arguments are often described in terms of war. Choosing that metaphor will lead one to think of attacks and defenses, winners and losers, domination and surrender. Some of the examples he gives are:

He shot down all my arguments.

Her criticisms were right on target.

If you use that strategy, hell wipe you out.

But there is nothing inherent in arguing that leads us to liken it to war. Its just a metaphor that people use to understand it. But imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. (Metaphors We Live By, p. 5).

2: Words defined within a frame evoke the frame.

In the examples above, the words shot down, right on target, and wipe you out all evoke the war metaphor.

3. Negating a frame evokes the frame.

This is the most important rule of all. Every time you try to debunk your opponents frame you just end up evoking it which activates the neurological circuits associated with that frame in peoples minds. So it is always better to reframe and go on offense.

4. Evoking a frame reinforces that frame.

Every frame is realized in the brain by neural circuitry. Every time a neural circuit is activated, it is strengthened. At the most fundamental level, messaging is an attempt to literally build certain neural pathways in the brain. As Lakoff writes,

Framing is the process of choosing words and phrases to communicate an idea in a way that invokes certain metaphorical associations and rules out others. Frames set the vocabulary and metaphors through which an issue can be comprehended and discussed. By consistently invoking a resonant frame, the framing party sets the terms of the debate, shapes the perceptions of the issue, and provides a narrative for possible solutions.

Lakoff argues that most of us think metaphorically of the nation as family.

But what kind of family?

Progressives and conservatives think differently:

Progressives tend to invoke a nurturant parent frame.

The nurturant parent model is gender-neutral and envisions a family where both parents are equally responsible for raising the children.

Children develop best through their positive relationships to others. The obedience of children comes out of their love and respect for their parents, not out of the fear of punishment.

If you empathize with your child, you will provide protection. This comes into politics in many ways. What do you protect your child from? Crime and drugs, certainly. You also protect your child from cars without seat belts, pollution, lead paint, pesticides in food, unscrupulous businessmen, and so on. So progressive politics focuses on environmental protection, worker protection, consumer protection, etc. Dont Think of An Elephant, p.12.

This is where it all falls apart. Lakoff is on record as supporting vaccine mandates because apparently hes never read a vaccine safety study and he mistakenly assumes that captured government bureaucrats and the pharmaceutical industry are being truthful about the data (when in fact they are not).

If we lived in a sane world, the progressive response to mandatory vaccines would look like this:

Nurturant parents do NOT allow felons to perform medical experiments on their kids.

Nurturant parents do NOT allow regulators who are captured by industry to make decisions about their familys health.

Nurturant parents do NOT allow school officials to deprive their children of oxygen and require injections as a condition of school entry.

Nurturant parents do NOT gaslight other parents for their medical decisions.

Nurturant parents do NOT get their medical information from news sources that are captured by industry.

Nurturant parents have a responsibility to read vaccine safety inserts and vaccine safety studies for themselves.

Nurturant parents have a responsibility to read the Nuremberg Code and understand the reasons why The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

Nurturant parents have a responsibility to listen to the mothers and fathers of vaccine-injured children and learn from their experience.

Nurturant parents have a responsibility to engage in critical thinking and unbiased due diligence and have realized that independent doctors understand prevention and treatment of Covid better than captured regulators.

Nurturant parents have a responsibility to oppose show-me-your-papers and vaccine passports because they do not want their children to grow up in a fascist country.

See thats not difficult. If progressives were still progressives they would be fighting bio-fascism with every cell in their body. Some are, but most are not.

Heres the very real problem and Im not sure what to do about it there is no such thing as progressivism anymore. It has evaporated over the last two years. Its now a memory carried by the elders but it does not exist in the real world anymore. Adherents of the ideology became robots, embraced censorship and cancel culture, and mindlessly repeat and obey diktats. So I write this article as a bedside whisper to a friend who is in a coma hoping that the remembrance of the old ways might help him to wake up.

Adapted from the authors Substack

Toby Rogers has a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Sydney in Australia and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focus is on regulatory capture and corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Rogers does grassroots political organizing with medical freedom groups across the country working to stop the epidemic of chronic illness in children. He writes about the political economy of public health on Substack.

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What Happened to Progressivism? - Brownstone Institute