Didn’t actually go to the pub much over the last couple of weeks but drank some very good wine at home, including one bottle pictured here I bought for £25 back in the late 1990s. A lot of money then - but I was really shocked when I looked up what it retails for today – if you can find it at all. It’s rated a 97/100 by Robert Parker, whose ratings can literally move the price of wine by an order of magnitude. And it was … very good, not bad at all. Didn’t make us go “wow” though, to be honest. And I would certainly have swapped it for 20 half-decent bottles of Chilean Merlot which would cost about the same! That just goes to show a) I don’t deserve to drink fine wine and b) the difficulty of assessing “value” rather than “price”.
_______________________
在圣诞节之前，英国政府出版了一份顶级公务员名单。非常有趣，很明显“商业”和采购如何从该领域的人数中提出了优先级列表。该列表由Rail主导，但网络轨道和HS2的许多高薪水。很明显，HS2已经是肉汁火车（原谅双关语），这只是随着时间的推移，我们怀疑。该列表还提出了关于我们将回来的公平的一些有趣问题 - 阅读parable of the workers in the vineyardfor a clue!
_________________________
Talking of announcements made just before the holiday season, but this time presumably not timed to avoid publicity,树液阿里巴went live with four new module releases aimed at spurring innovation in the procurement market. The new releases offer support forguided buying,供应商管理,supplier risk和direct materials sourcing。
“SAP Ariba quietly made what appear to be its biggest product announcements of the year just as December is winding down,” said our esteemed founder Jason Busch, founder and head of strategy at Spend Matters. “These four releases appear to be a material step forward for SAP Ariba in bringing innovation to the procurement market once again”.
_________________________
We got a mention inRoy Lilley的时事通讯for our article on the卫生部采购计划。Lilley is highly influential in the health world and his daily newsletter is often very personal but influential and essential reading for anyone with interest in the sector – or indeed just anyone who cares about health issues for whatever reason.
___________________________
Yesterday theFinancial Times picked upon the formation of the UK Government Commercial Function and the assessment centres that staff transferring into Cabinet Office from departments are going to undertake. However, we think the FT is probably confused between the Government Commercial Function and the Government Commercial Organisation这将是这些高级工作人员的雇主。（除非“组织”现在是“功能”如果你看到我们的意思！）无论如何，我们真的希望评估过程是强大的，否则那些评价的人和“C”等级被转移出来挑战这个过程，我们怀疑。
____________________________
Christine and the Queens was top of our Albums of the Year list and she was brilliant on “Later” on New Year’s Eve. Here she is with an excellent cover version (Terence Trent D'Arby - whatever happened to him?). She has a knack of really inhabiting other people’s songs when she does covers, and I think I am just a little bit in love … the last minute of this is the best by the way.
评估过程只做了除了富人的东西。荒谬的模拟谈判持续一整天，每天的成本高度，每人800英镑，而且花费太久 - 大于一个月 - 做出决定是否在之后将人们进一步推进，完全无视它是候选人的事实- 目前的市场。