- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
How much debt is the right amount? My guess is that everyone reading this column will have a slightly different answer. Some might say, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be,’ or words to that effect, suggesting that their level of debt is zero. Some will no doubt have too much debt - where the repayments are not affordable. Most readers will have some level of debt (on a mortgage, car payments, credit cards etc) and will find that the level of repayments is currently affordable. Hopefully no readers are subject to the depradations of usury: the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender1.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
So, ‘Global Cement’ is 20 years old. The fore-runner of this magazine - Asian Cement and Construction Materials Magazine - was first published in January 1997. The magazine was later amalgamated with other titles to become GCL: Global Cement and Lime Magazine and finally became simply Global Cement Magazine in October 2006. The original magazine was created in an attic on a computer with a then-huge memory of 1Gb. Each issue took up 500Mb of space, and so had to be separately archived each month, to make room for the next month’s issue. We used huge SyQuest disk drives to send data to the printer. We scanned in real photographs using a scanner that cost around Euro/$/£3000 - something you could buy now for less than £300. When that first issue was published, I was a young man of 29, with a full head of hair, and was yet to meet my wife.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
Artificial intelligence (AI) is here. It’s probably in your pocket right now, or perhaps on your table at home. It might be in the next call centre that you telephone, or behind a pop-up ‘Would you like to chat?’ screen next time you shop for something online.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
What would you do if the doctor said to you that you had six months to live?
- Written by Peter Edwards, Editor, Global Cement Magazine
Four years’ ago, the Olympic Games came to Global Cement’s home town of London. The event generated much excitement and a sense of pride in the city, even before the Games had started. At the time I was lucky enough to be living just yards from the route of the cycling road races - could Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish really be cycling on the same road that I commuted up every morning? Yes they could!
