Aspinall Business Club 14th July 2010 at Port Lympne

http://aspinallbusinessclub.co.uk

Visitors and members present

Suzzane Emson http://www.kentwildlifefund.com
Jaci Godmin-Irvine http://www.estatelegacyservices.co.uk
Carol Arter http://www.arterworks.co.uk/
Lee Freeman http://www.kentbusinessdirectory.co.uk
Alan Noake http://www.theicelab.co.uk
Barry Nutley http://www.viridisec.co.uk/
Christine MacSween http://www.lionaid.eventbrite.com
Trevor Cobb http://www.microwaveservice.co.uk
Steve Orca http://www.OrcalocalHythe.co.uk
Chris Raines http://www.copy-link.co.uk
Peter Wood Hawkeye
Robert www.aspinallfoundation.org
Dreda Van-beer http://www.juststyle.me
Jo Dodds http://www.jododdssocialmedia.com

The Meeting

Robert Boutwood introduced the meeting, giving us an update about the animals that have been born over the last month; an Elephant calf that was rejected by the mother as it was her first baby. The keepers have hand reared it over the last six weeks spending 15 hours a day feeding and caring for the calf, the latest news is that the calf has been accepted back by the elephant herd so is doing very well.

Mark Kingstone Jones – Eduction and Research Officer

Mark gave a talk through a thunderstorm about the varied work that the Port Lympne does to educate children, teenager and adults and companies about the conservation work. This takes different formats depending on the audiences.

School Groups

At school groups it is mainly talking about conservation, zoos, and adoptions. The zoo has out-reach officers go to schools and give talks Port Lympne also offer junior keeper for the day experiences http://www.totallywild.net/schools/index.php.

Mark and his team run Enrichment programs for the animals that makes the visitors experience much more interesting as well. Using ropes and karabiners supplied by a company Port Lympne have made the snow leopards life much more interesting by hanging prey from a tree see this great video of the snow leopard in full flight climbs a tree to get a special treat in the snow.

For the children they give them a task of taking the lid off some black barrels, putting in a selection of food, then writing their names in large writing on the barrels and putting the lids back on securely. The barrels are then carefully placed in with the Gorilla, to work out how to get the lids off and into the food. The children can see which barrels are theirs because of the writing and the Gorilla’s can have an interesting thing to play with.

Corporate Team Building

Port Lympne also run corporate team building workshops which are tailored to what the company wants to get out of the day, how many people are involved, and how much time they have available; one activity we saw was four teams making a reindeer for the lions to play with. The team members all had fun making the reindeer from papier-mâché. The lions then loved tearing the reindeer apart and throwing them up in the air to catch in their mouths.

Lion Aid

The English Lions, the Dutch Lions and the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon all lost the battle for the World Cup

Real Lions are also losing their battle for existence in Africa. Join Lion Aid on 22nd July 2010 for the Lion Aid Challenge Trophy and ensure lions will participate in the WILD CUP forever. Brad Burton, the MD of 4Networking, will be dressed up as a lion and we invite Company teams and individuals to participate in the competiion to splatter Brad with paintballs. An amazing Business Networking opportunity and a chance to support Lion Aid. The participants will take part in the following challenges:

• Paintballing
• Par 3 (9 hole) Golf
• Water Walking & Archery.

The venue is Great Chart Golf and Lesiure centre, Great Chart, Ashford, Kent, TN23 3BW. Whole day including lunch is offered for only £35. Ticket and information www.lionaid.eventbrite.com
chris@lionaid.org. Phone 07772697498

Alan Noake

Trip to the Aspinall Reserve in the Congo

Alan Noake gave a talk about his trip to the Republic of Congo to visit and do some voluntary work for the Aspinall Foundation at their Western Highland Gorilla reserve. Alan talked about the Gorilla explaining that they eat 9K of fruit a day and that adult males weigh up to 200Kg. A Gorilla spends approx 30% of its time eating, 40% sleeping and 30% travelling. The gorillas are social animals and live in groups with one dominant male, 5 to 7 females and infants. Female gorillas have one baby approx every five years. While there Alan saw the lodges that the Aspinall foundation are building so that they can have visitors close to the Gorilla so helping with the funding of their re-introduction of gorillas into the wild.

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Pass this offer on to anyone you think would want to save money on their bills!

Taster Paper Sculpture Workshops

from 10 – 12 Saturdays
Last 2 Saturdays in July and through August
Price: £10 on the door
Ages: all ages from 7 – 70+
Location: Business Stationery Store behind Tesco, Whitstable
Special offer: Last session free if attending all.

Other Events

Giacometti style wire & papier mache sculpture

2 full day workshops to be held in the Barn, Kingston with all materials/refreshments provided and inclusive of a pub lunch
Cost: £65
Date: October 9th.

Christmas Themed Paper Sculpture

23rd October
Details on the website

Pregnancy Workshop – Natural Labour, Birth and Beyond

Tuesday 20th July 6-7.30pm at Foreman and Jones (112D High St, Hythe, Kent)

Come to meet other parents to be and learn about

• How to have a comfortable and fulfilling birthing process
• Treating your pregnancy symptoms naturally.
• Herbal medicines for babies

Jodie Foreman has been in practice as a medical herbalist for eight years and sees many patients before, during and after pregnancy and labour.

Cost £10 per person or £15 per couple.

Visit Foreman & Jones Website for more details and to book.

Finding Bargains on the Internet

It’s a fact that these days we’re all far more bargain conscious and the first place we look for bargains is the Internet. With instant information at our fingertips, the Internet makes it really easy to find out where you can get the best deals.

There’s also been a huge explosion in the popularity of online promotional voucher websites, so now you can simply download discount vouchers to use at your leisure – Brilliant! However, it’s mainly the big brands that market themselves in this way and there’s a real lack of online opportunities that allow local businesses to do the same.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get the same exclusive offers and discounts from your favourite local businesses? Well now you can – through ORCA Local!

What is Orca Local Hythe?

ORCA Local Hythe is a new, community focused, shop local scheme, designed specifically to provide you with the latest exclusive offers, promotions and discounts from local businesses.

Thanks to ORCA Local, you’ll never miss out on fantastic offers from your favourite local shops as we make sure you’re kept up to date through regular emails. How does it work? Simple, All you have to do to find out which offers are available and where you can get them from is to browse through the latest exclusive discounts and promotions on the homepage of your ORCA Local site. Then, simply print these out or use your FREE ORCA Local Key Card to take advantage of them!

Who is Taking Part in the Orca Local Hythe Scheme?

The ORCA Local Key Card is a FREE plastic Key Card that attaches to your key ring, so you always have it with you. You simply show it to the relevant retailer or business owner to take advantage of whatever offer they’re promoting. When you’re out in Hythe simply look for the ‘ORCA Local Key Card accepted here’ sticker in the window to find the latest offers. You can pick up and register your key card at any of the following participating businesses: Halcyon Days, S A Crunden & Son, Vestiti Boutique, Bellissima, The Centre, Foreman & Jones, The Flower Shop, Inside Out lighting, Interior Living, The Red Lion Hotel, In Action Sports, Hythe hand car wash, Oneonetwo wines, The Eye Centre and Flower craft or you can register for yours by visiting; www.orcalocalhythe.co.uk

Benefits for Shops and Businesses

ORCA Local Hythe is also great news for local shops and businesses – in fact it’s one of the main reasons I started ORCA Local Hythe. My family ran a local business for many years, often struggling to compete against the bigger brands, so any community scheme that encourages local people to shop with local businesses gets my approval – it’s great that ORCA Local allows local businesses to take on the big national chains at their own game and win!

If you have your own trade, i.e. plumber, electrician, joiner etc. and you would like to ‘Stand out from the crowd’, I will build you a web page within the ‘Featured business’ section and market your business for you!! All local businesses in Hythe are also entitled to a FREE listing in my ‘Business finder’.

To find out more about ORCA Local Hythe and how I can help your business, please contact Steve on 07834 827809 or email him on steve.holley@orcalocal .co.uk

What a great meeting it was!

We had three new members join:

Babs Seymour – Forever Living Products (FLP)
Barry Nutley – Viridis
Steve Holley – Orca Local

And some visitors (as well as the usual members!)

Sarah Washford – Writer and trainer
Andy Setterfield – Hoodner’s Horse, Great Chart
Allison Hogben – Mobile Beauty Therapist

We had a talk from Adrian Harlam – Director of Animals at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park

Adrian started on the large Carnivores section in 1986, progressed through the ranks and become a Director.

Poaching in Tanzania

Recently Port Lympne has returned two Rhinos to Tanzania and these returned pair had a calf; so in two years the population has increased by one. 13 Rhinos have been killed in a 15 month period. The reason for the killings is that the poachers want the Rhino horn which sells for up to £25,000. The horn is used in remedies for rheumatism, arthritis and other alternative medicines. When the average yearly wage is £1500, then from a financial point of view, there is a big incentive to kill the Rhinos, and the poachers just cut the horn off and leave the rest of the body where the Rhino fell. Adrian also showed us an elephant tusk again recovered from smugglers, the ivory is used to make knife handles, and in the past, piano keys, snooker balls, and Japanese ivory carvings.

Lions

There are about 20,000 lions left in the wild. In South Africa they organise canned hunts; you choose your animal and they supply it and you shoot it. They breed the lion cubs and then take them away from their mother, so the lioness comes back into season. In the wild when the leader of the pride become old, he would either die from disease or be killed by a younger stronger lion. At the moment in South Africa, as they have a lot of visitors for the Football World Cup, they are offering two for one, shoot a male lion which is what everyone wants to do and also get to shoot a female lion as well for free. As these lions have been handreared, they don’t run away when they see man approaching, they think that they have come to play.

Port Lympne have a theatre group travelling around Africa performing play by mime to educate the African population about the wild animal population and how it is declining because of the poaching and hunting.

How to reduce poaching

One way to reduce the hunting would be to ban the import of animal trophies and skins into the UK. The UK has a very influential place in the Commonwealth so if we took the lead we could convince other European countries to follow suit. LionAid are campaigning for this currently.

Education at Port Lympne

Port Lympne see their role as to educate visitors about the animals, to get the visitors to like the animals and have an affinity with them. Then to progress onto why the animals desperately need the visitors’ help otherwise there will be no animals left for our grandchildren to see, they will only see them in old films or documentaries.

The Aspinall Foundation website talks about the international conservation work that Port Lympne is involved in.

Counterpoint Networking member Alan Noake’s business, The World’s Most Expensive Link website is celebrating being around for 4 years! Here is a press release from Alan.

It all started as a bit of fun and an experiment (after a few beers in the pub!) – however along the way it has become a cool whacky new way to cost effectively get lots of brand exposure for your website.

In the last four years…

• 150 websites have added their link to the www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.com
• To date the site has generated a total revenue of £3118.69
• £687.55 has been allocated to local, national and international charities.
• We have supported 21 nominated charities to date.
• £1374.84 has been allocated as commission to participants.
• The remaining income has all been invested back in to supporting & marketing the site.
• 23 sites have held the prestigious top spot and are in the Hall Of Fame
• The site now has a Google page rank of 3/10 (Let’s see if we can get it to 4/10 soon!)
• As the site gains exposure and kudos on the internet a link from it grows in value.
• The top spot has reached a value of £500 and is has currently been held by www.anthonygrayclocks.com for nearly 200 days.
• The longest spell at the top was also www.anthonygrayclocks.com for 568 days, 37 minutes

A big thanks to everyone who has participated to date. We are dedicated to promoting your sites.

Onward and upward!

Best Regards,

Alan

Why you might like to add or top up your link on The World’s Most Expensive Link?

Why you might want to consider listing your site on www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.com?

As the site becomes more established it is slowly but surely becoming a “Beverley Hills of the Internet”. Traffic to the site is increasing. Referrals from the site are increasing. By listing your website you are effectively moving into a new exclusive online neighbourhood. As more and more people become aware of this unique and fun way to promote their website your site will continue to get even more exposure for no ongoing cost. The more we shout about it the more publicity we get for our participants, the more people visit the site and the more money is raised for charity!

We are often asked how or why anyone would find www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.com?

We tweet about it! We shout about it! We even have our new fun 4 meter banner to promote it at public & business events / locations out and about…!

We will be promoting the website on our website and on other websites.

We will be promoting it in emails we send out.

We tweet about fresh activity on the site on Twitter.

We encourage all participants to link to www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.comfrom their website or blog.

The site is self-publicising in that the more people that participate the more people know about it.

Every time someone else joins the site they will see your link till at least 31st December 2012.

We send out a monthly newsletter by email to promote the site.

Commission payments are sent out monthly promoting the site.

Charity payments raised are made in the name of www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.com

Lots of people have been asking me recently how is the commission calculated on www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.com?

OK, it is our policy to be entirely transparent about this so here goes, I guess the best way to explain how commission is calculated is to use a real example…

Let’s say Fred pays £50 to add or top up a link.

Fred basks in all the glory of owning the top spot or moving higher up.

• £1.90 will be paid to PayPal for credit card processing fees.
• £6.27 will be paid to HM Customs & Excise as VAT.
• £20.91 (i.e. 50% less PayPal Fees & VAT @ 17.5%) in commission is shared out proportionally* between all the existing site participants (including Fred if he is topping up his link).
• £10.46 (i.e. 25% less PayPal Fees & VAT @ 17.5%) in charity donations is shared out proportionally* between all the existing site participants (including Fred if he is topping up his link).
• £10.46 (i.e. 25% less PayPal Fees & VAT @ 17.5%) is our remaining profit and also covers our administration costs of running/marketing the site.

* Someone who pays £50 will get 50 more shares of any commission money than someone who pays £1.

I think that’s about it – obviously the longer you have been on the site the more commission you are eligible for a stake of.

So basically The ICELAB Ltd make 25% (less VAT & PayPal Payment processing fees) of all income – the rest is all invested back in commission payments and charity donations.

It is all bit of fun and an experiment – we will continue to keep shouting about the site to get all participants some benefit of listing their site.

At Foreman & Jones, Hythe, Kent, we often receive enquiries from people who want to buy high quality herbal products. If a person wants treatment for a particular condition and a prescribed herbal medicine we can only supply this following a consultation (because of the law in this country). But if a person wants to buy herbs ‘over the counter’ without a consultation then they can do that.

Tinctures, Teas, Tablets, Capsules, Juices

This means they can buy individual herbs such as Chaste Berry, Echinacea, Liquorice, Valerian, or Passionflower. Or compound tincture mixes such as our Relax Away Mix, or Energy Tonic, and herbal teas such as Relax Away Tea, Hay Fever Season Tea or Nettle, Cleavers and Fennel Tea. we also stock capsule, tablets, juices and powders – everything that we need to run our dispensary for our patients.

And we have finally sorted out our website so that you can now buy our products ONLINE!

We have started adding our product range to our website. You can now buy our lovely specially formulated herbal products online using PayPal.

Hay Fever Season Tea

To buy Hayfever Season Tea click here

‘Your hayfever tea is the only thing I can take since I am pregnant and it has really done the trick! Three cups a day and no stinging eyes, scratchy throat and sneezing! You’ve saved my Summer!’

Rose Geranium Cream (Paraben-Free)

To buy lovely Rose Geranium cream click here

‘The smell is really wonderful, romantic but clean and fresh. There was no skin type specified, but I put the cream on after a face mask and it was both easy to glide on but quite rich ( I couldn’t wear it every day in summer as my skin’s quite oily). I love the fact that it only has three or four ingredients and that they are all natural. I am definitely going to come back for a bigger pot!’ Joanna

Relax Away Mix

To buy Relax Away Mix click here

‘Foreman and Jones Relax Away Mix is a great medicine for keeping in the cupboard for those days when the Stress gets to you and you feel a bit frazzled! My husband also takes it to help him sleep – works a treat’
S. F. Folkestone

Check our website regularly, our products will be added to our site gradually….there are quite a lot of them www.foremanandjonesherbaldispensary.co.uk

A team of four “Gurkha Girls”, all wives of soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan are putting their stamina and fitness to the test to take part in the Trailwalker 2010. This is a 100km run/walk across the arduous terrain of the South Downs to be completed within 30 hours on the 17/18th July. The money they raise will be split equally between the Gurkha Welfare Trust and Oxfam, who organise the event.

40km in One Weekend!

Training has started and they completed easily 40km last weekend and when their feet began to hurt, they appreciated the need to train hard, but felt no room for moaning with the realisation that their husbands’ tasks in Afghanistan include at least that distance daily while carrying all their heavy kit and body armour in serious heat.

100km in under 21 Hours and 27 Minutes!

This I have no doubt will motivate this team to the bitter end and will certainly be an enormous achievement if we can raise significant funds to support both charities, which we firmly believe will make all of those within the Gurkha community enormously proud and if running or walking 100km in 30 hours were not already challenging enough, the “Gurkha Girls” are hoping to beat last year’s fastest women’s team time of 21 hours and 27 minutes.

The Gurkha Welfare Trust

The Gurkha Welfare Trust works to provide necessities such as water and sanitation facilities, schools, medical assistance and financial help to Gurkha communities. The Trust also gives educational grants and provides vocational training to the children of the Gurkha regiment. A welfare pension and medical treatment is also provided to around 10,000 Gurkha ex-servicemen and widows living in Nepal who face destitution.

Can You Support the Charity?

We would be delighted if you are able to support the “Gurkha Girls” in their challenge. The website for donations http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/team/gurkhagirls alternatively donations can be sent to (cheques made payable to Mrs. Cathy Strickland) The Gurkha Girls Trailwalker 2010, c/o Engineer House, West Road, Folkestone Kent CT20 3HH (cheques made payable to Mrs. Cathy Strickland)

We were told about this event and wanted to share the information with you as it can have an impact on local businesses.

Canterbury Christ Church University would like to invite you to a public debate with local politicians and journalists/editors on ‘Crisis in Local Democracy? The media, politics and public opinion in Kent’.

The event will explore a number of questions/issues including:

* How effective are the local media in informing the public,
holding politicians to account, and providing a forum for public debate?
* How have technological developments changed how we consume news and communicate at a regional and local level?
* How has the economic recession impacted on local news
provisions?
* What is the future of public service media at local and regional
level?
* How can media and politicians adapt to change in a way that
enhances rather than decreases accountability?
* How can we engage the public more effectively with democratic
discussion in the digital age?
* In short, how can we work together to reinvigorate local
democracy?

Location: Canterbury, Kent

The event will be held in Powell Building, North Holmes Road, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury at 6:30pm on 27 May 2010.

Refreshments provided. The debate is co-organised by the Departments of Media and Applied Social Sciences and is part of the ‘Making Politics Matter’ initiative at Canterbury Christ Church University, which aims to engage the population of Kent more effectively with political debate.

If you have any questions regarding the event, please do not hesitate to contact one of the organisers:

Dr David Bates
Email: david.bates@canterbury.ac.uk

Dr Agnes Gulyas
Email: agnes.gulyas@canterbury.ac.uk