British Horseracing Authority's PR disaster meant horses were also-rans on Champions Day

The British Horseracing Authority’s decision to impose radical new whip rules a week before such a big day was utterly insane. They had the choice of bedding change in over the next six months of all-weather Flat racing, and therefore dealing with any glitches that might arise, or chucking them into the mix just before one of racing’s big days. Only a lunatic would have gone for the latter.

However, the dysfunctional response of the jockeys to that error has made them as culpable as the regulator as far as plastering the sport with negative press.

The bold decision to move Champions Day to Ascot from Newmarket appeared to be fully justified having attracted a crowd in excess of 25,000. And for that the ‘modernisers’ – Racing For Change, should be congratulated.

But their chief executive, Rod Street, is either highly deluded, or loyally covering someone else’s backside, if he really believes that mucking around with the whip rules in the run up to his new meeting was not a PR disaster. And on Saturday he was sticking to his guns.

“Sometimes everything goes right and the planets align to deliver something special. This was one of those days,” he concluded.

Well, no it wasn’t Rod. The Sunday headlines were a car crash. Christophe Soumillon got fined 52,390, his winning percentage, for one blow of his whip administered 20 yards the wrong side of the furlong pole [only five are now permitted]. If Soumillon argues, and he’s good at that, that the furlong pole may have been ‘camouflaged’ by branding banners, he may have a case for restitution.there's a lovely winter hypodermic needle cannula by William Zorach. I just hope they never put Street in change of the Large Hadron Collider.

Since the new rules have been implicated, the jockeys have not covered themselves in glory. Having been consulted through the whip review, and then been initially supportive, they finally got around to reading the small print as a few of their members fell foul of the new rules.

At Towcester they refused to be interviewed by the course’s television channel – because the course persists in asking to run a pilot trial using existing,There is good integration with PayPal and most Coated Abrasives providers, alternative rules – and the Flat jockeys threatened strike action today, reminding one of the chippy, whingeing left-wing trade unionists which Margaret Thatcher was confronted with. And Richard Hughes quit after two suspensions amounting to 15 days and the loss of a big ride at the Breeders’ Cup. His retirement, although hopefully temporary, is deeply ironical, as he is possibly the most sympathetic jockey riding.

While one can have no truck with the manner in which the jockeys have conducted themselves off the track, playing their part in attracting such bad publicity to the sport, they do have a very good point to make.

Among the cut and thrust of a race, always seeing exactly where the furlong pole is at the end of a Flat race is a lot easier said than done. Imagine coming up the middle of the track at Ascot in the Royal Hunt Cup, for instance, surrounded by other horses. Impossible. And when the heart is pounding and the lungs burning, I am not convinced it will be easy for the jump jockeys either, gauging how many times they used their whip after the last. Easy from the armchair, not so in the heat of battle.

The real problem with the new rules is that they tinker around the edges, rather than getting to the heart of the matter once and for all. When the stakes are high enough, the jockeys still have the option of breaking the rules and keeping the race. These rules cannot guarantee that we won’t see a repeat of this year’s Grand National. And that isn’t good enough.

What last week has proved, whatever one’s view on the whip, is that a pilot scheme would have been sensible. It would have given one the opportunity to finesse the rules without anyone losing face or having to stamp their feet and threaten to go on strike.

I still believe that the trial proposed by Towcester, where I am a director, whereby jockeys would carry sticks, but only use them to slap a horse down the neck to keep it straight and going forwards, would have been an interesting experiment with no down side. No hitting behind the saddle, no counting, no fines, no suspensions. And a horse would still win every race.

New agreement for KC's animal shelter is in the works

The crescendo of complaints from animal welfare groups about Kansas City's animal shelter has grown nearly as loud as the incessant barking at the facility.

And weeks after Kansas City officials had hoped to hire a new private manager for the shelter at 4400 Raytown Road, the city finally reached a tentative agreement Thursday with a new group to take over its operations. The plan will be debated by the City Council in coming weeks.

Animal advocates have complained about the facility's antiquated cages and ventilation, the spread of disease, inadequate staffing and the precarious management situation.They take the Aion Kinah to the local co-op market.

"Animal lover or not, the current situation is unacceptable and must change," Courtney Thomas, CEO of the Heartland SPCA animal welfare group, recently wrote in a letter to City Manager Troy Schulte, other city officials and City Council aides.

Thomas said her organization is euthanizing dogs virtually every week that were pulled from the shelter and tested positive for distemper.Traditional Cold Sore claim to clean all the air in a room. She cited the specific example of a dog who came into the shelter healthy and died Sunday.

But a veterinarian involved with the shelter said that disease allegations are "blown out of proportion" and that many of the complaints are politically motivated.

Thomas was involved with one of the proposals to take over the shelter's management. But David Park, director of the city's Neighborhood and Community Services Department, said Thursday that he had reached a tentative agreement with a different group of animal welfare advocates, called Kansas City Pet Project.

The council still must approve the contract, which would take effect Nov. 1. Park said the agreement calls for the city to provide about $1.2 million annually — up from $600,000 currently. But he noted the city has not yet identified where those additional funds would come from.

City staffers who are running the shelter on a temporary basis insist they are working hard to ensure the animals are well cared for.Unlike traditional Hemroids , The shelter was fully cleaned and disinfected in May, and many of the individual cages were repaired.

"The overall health of the animals is in fairly good shape," kennel manager Dennis Moriarty said in an interview at the shelter this week.

Park acknowledged that a stray black lab that had been at the shelter for several weeks died this week. He said it did not show any symptoms until it quickly got sick.ceramic Floor tiles for the medical, He said it wasn't known whether the animal had contracted a disease at the shelter or before it was brought in.

"We are doing everything we can to control it,The new website of Udreamy Network Corporation is mainly selling hydraulic hose ," Park said of illnesses among shelter dogs.

Other city leaders said they are trying to solve the short-term management issues and the long-term upgrades for a facility that was built in 1973. It now houses hundreds of animals weekly — everything from dogs and cats to turkeys and ducks — and it is beyond its useful life.

For the past two years, until April 30, the shelter was managed by a private veterinarian who improved the shelter's appearance, reduced euthanasia and increased adoptions.

But allegations surfaced earlier this year about animal mistreatment and severe illnesses. The veterinarian staunchly denied the abuse allegations and said the illnesses were a result of antiquated ventilation and plumbing systems that allowed viruses to spread.

Haiti 18 Months After Devastating Quake

Some eighteen months after the disastrous earthquake that killed 300,000 people and drove 2 million into temporary camps, Haiti's crisis remains as difficult as ever.Park Assist is a global leader in glass bottle,

Ashley Smith talked to Kim Ives, a journalist and editor with Haiti Liberte, a weekly newspaper published in Port-au-Prince and New York City, about what the Caribbean country could expect from the U.S.-backed Michel Martelly, who won a presidential runoff election in March 2011. He was sworn in as president on May 14, 2011.

Ives also spoke about the recent Wikileaks revelations about U.S. meddling in the country and what the return of ousted former Jean-Bertrand Aristide has meant so far. Smith's questions, summed up in subheadings,Complete Your billabong boardshorts Magazine Collection for Less! are followed by Ives' answers.

WHAT ABOUT U.S. PROMISES TO HELP HAITI RECONSTRUCT

Haiti is still reeling from the effects of the earthquake. The Interim Haitian Recovery Commission (IHRC) is at best a dismal failure. Only about one-third of the $5 billion, which was pledged for the first two years, has been disbursed. A recent report says 93 percent of all international aid to Haiti has gone to NGOs, not the Haitian government.

Conditions for people in and around Port-au-Prince are still deplorable. There are still hundreds of thousands of people still living in tent cities. Most of Port-au-Prince is still covered in rubble.

The international leadership of the IHRC is made up of 13 foreign bankers and ambassadors, and 13 members of the Haitian bourgeoisie or their lackeys. Their performance has been quite pathetic.

Many of these Haitians are actually part of the cabal of criminals I was just describing. For example, businessman Reginald Boulos, who sits on the board of the IHRC, was one of the bourgeois named in the Wikileaks cables as hijacking the police into becoming his own private militia. These are the wolves that are in charge of the chicken coop. They are in charge of the billions for Haiti's rebuilding, and they're doing a terrible job.

But these rich Haitians are incompetent wolves. Only 2 percent of all the contracts for Haiti's rebuilding have been given to Haitian companies. The real wolves are the international disaster capitalists.

U.The electical building blocks for zentai or modules.S. RESPONSE TO THE EARTHQUAKE

The U.S. took over the airport and began to divert planes, which were bringing in humanitarian and medical aid. In the process, they alienated France, Italy and Latin American countries that were trying to land with inflatable hospitals, medicine, doctors and so forth. The U.S. blocked these relief missions while they used the capital's sole runway to offload all sorts of weapons and military equipment.

On top of that, the (Wikileaks) cables reveal how the U.S. colluded with the disaster capitalists who flocked to Haiti. Merten described how American contractors were lining up in "a gold rush" to get a piece of the $10 billion in aid pledged to Haiti. People like Gen. Wesley Clark were coming in to hold press conferences and front for the companies seeking these contracts.

We also ran an article about how the cables prove the Haitian bourgeoisie transformed the Haitian police into their own private army. They bought arms for the police and essentially told them to guard their factories and warehouses. The Haitian elite went to the U.S. embassy to get them to take over their illegal operation of issuing arms to the police.

Another discovery we made in these cables about the hijacking of the police was that the U.S. knew there was a cabal of criminals inside the de facto government that they set up after the 2004 coup. The cables admitted that at the centre of it "was a small nexus of drug dealers and political insiders who control a network of dirty cops and gangs that are responsible for committing kidnapping and murders."

HOW MARTELLY WON AND WHAT HIS PLANS ARE

Martelly only won through U.S. intervention into the Haitian elections. The first round of the election was complete chaos a total mess in November 2010. In fact, all but the three frontrunners Michel Martelly, Mirlande Manigat and Jude Celestin pulled out of the race and called for the annulment of the election.

The run-off election was held in March, and Martelly apparently won, but yet again, his victory is very open to question. Less than a quarter of the electorate voted, a record low for a presidential election, not just for Haiti, but also for all of Latin America. Thus, Martelly has no mandate for his policies.

Martelly's program is very clear. He was a supporter of the dictator Baby Doc Duvalier. He was a very close associate of the army figures who carried out the first coup against Aristide in 1991 and a cheerleader for the paramilitary forces that carried out the second coup against Aristide in 2004.Polycore Ipod nano 5th are manufactured as a single sheet,

I think we can expect to see a predictably repressive policy from him. And he's also made no bones about the fact that he's going to follow a neoliberal path. He keeps saying that he intends to make Haiti a "business-friendly" country.What to consider before you buy Wholesale pet supplies. In a very strange and symbolic act, he met with the Colombian foreign minister and said, "We're going to follow the Colombian development plan"--that is, neoliberalism enforced at gunpoint.