coastal
Board Posts
DELL do an international warranty
though you have to pay a wee bit extra for it.... but I guess I'm a bit late with that info, sorry :-(
In the US
The normal minimum wage is just over $5/hour (though some states set it slightly higher). There is a different rate for waitresses and barstaff... just over $2/hr!
Working for a pound an hour means that most of the money they earn comes from tips.
So yes, tip generously in bars and restaurants. A minimum would be 20%, more if you get good service.
I'm with creaky
I don't want to die, but am not afraid.
I was in a really bad car crash. As my car was doing somersaults in a field, I was convinced I was about to die. The strange thing was I wasn't in the least afraid, I felt completely chilled and accepting. I'd always imagined that last moments like that would be full of fear, but it was the complete opposite.
As it happened, due to airbags, seatbelts and reinforced car roofs, I didn't die after all....
All in the name of
energy saving apparently.
More light in the evening means fewer lights being turned on.
...unfortunately they don't seem to realise that people need light in the morning too and since most people will now be getting up in the dark come Monday morning, they will have to put their lights on.
So all in all, I doubt the energy saving is going to be any where near the 1% they predicted.
All it's doing is causing hassle since everything is set to automatically change for daylight saving in 3 weeks rather than now.
Liz Fraser's
vocals in Song to the Siren still can make me shiver.
Would you
be able to pay off the balance in 6 months?
If so there are still a few credit card companies that are offering 0% interest for 6 months, without charging a fee... for a 2% fee, there are a some cards that will give you over a year at 0%.
If you switch your balance to an interest free card, also apply for another card with a low rate of interest for your ongoing - if you spend on the balance transfer card, every payment you make will go to reduce the balance transfer first, so you will be charged interest on the new purchases (0% balance tranfer cards usually have a high interest rate outwith the 0% offer)
Does that make sense?
Credit cards are great if you pay them off in full every month, but a really expensive way of borrowing money if you don't...
It depends what you want to do with it
I would start by looking at the qualifications for the sort of job you want. Many graduate jobs just ask for any degree, so an ordinary would be fine. I know a few people who chose to do an ordinary because they wanted to do teacher training, so they knew after they got their PGCE their degree would become irrelevant.
Having an honours degree does keep your options open though. A lot of postgrads require honours...at least to get funding. As soon as unemployment starts to go up, companies start sticking "honours" before the degree that they used to require, as a way of reducing the number of applicants.
One of my friends was unable to finish her honours degree due to family problems. She ended up being in the position of being overqualified for non-degreed posts, but unable to get degreed jobs because they all wanted honours. This was during the eary 90s when unemployment was high.
All in all, unless you have a very definite career path lined up, that you know doesn't need an honours degree, I would stick with it.
my point was
that the abridged version isn't a compromise. Some random editor just wades in with an axe.
How does being longer make it less accessible? Is there some rule I didn't know about that states you have to read a book in one sitting? The person with less spare time, will just take more days to read it, therefore read less books over their lifetime. But at least they will be novels in the form that the author intended.
which is exactly the reason
why I think to abridgement is unacceptable.
The final version has gone through various stages of editing and is, as you said, a compromise between the author and editor... ie it is in a form that the author is happy with.
Why then edit further?
A butchered abridged version will not be in a form that the author is happy with and on top of that the reader will lose out on a huge part of what makes the novel.
What's the point? In what way does it make it more accessible? If people are able to read an abridged version of the book, then they are perfectly capable of reading the original. If they choose not to purely due to the number of pages, then that's their choice.
Ban Readers Digest!! ;-)
I would agree
got some of his strongest stuff on it.
Yup
that sums up what I thought about - brilliant first half... then it just got a bit silly...
we had
2 feet of snow this weekend.
So I was going to go out skiing.
YAY!
...but was ill instead, so spent all weekend in my bed :-(
In Scotland
you don't need your parents' consent to marry at 16... hence all the running away to Gretna Green that went on by the English in the past...
to counter...
How would Labour have been electable? The alternative at the time was John Prescott!
NOW PFI/PPP projects are unpopular, but the only way Labour got elected in the first place was to pledge not to raise the basic rate of income tax, so another way had to be found to build the new schools and hospitals - personally I've always thought that PPP (or PFI, as started under John Major’s government) was a daft idea but I have never been able to come up with another one that didn't involve raising taxes, which they couldn't do.
I accept your comment about schools. Scotland has local control because we now have the Scottish Parliament. After 20 years of Scotland voting Labour and getting a Tory government experimenting on them in return, devolution is something I'll be eternally grateful to this government for bringing about!
Wealth division IS increasing, I agree, but my point was that this started under Thatcher with her sacrifice the poor to make the rich richer attitude and I can't see how any government can put that one back in its box. Rising fuel prices are badly hitting the poor... but how can government set the prices in privatised power companies?
I still don't see how it was in Britain's benefit for the US to launch attacks on Libya from the UK, but we're just going to have to disagree on that one.
Thatcher did Northern Ireland nothing but harm, but I agree that John Major deserves praise for starting the ball rolling. I don't live there, so all I have to go on is what their politicians have said, which was this government has worked very hard to get them this far.
I accept that Thatcher's policies got industry (what was left of it) on its "feet and ready for the 21st century", but I wouldn't agree that she did the same for the rest of society... quite the opposite.
In what way has Blair left us "on our knees facing civil unrest"? People are experiencing the longest period of economical stability probably ever, with low interest rates and high employment. Hardly on our knees...
do point out
the bits that aren't true
another rant....
It really pisses me off people mouthing off about the current government when they seem to have no grasp of what it replaced and its legacy. Tony Blair is far too right wing for my tastes but I am realistic to realise that without him the Labour Party would have remained unelectable.
After 20 years of Tory rule, the electorate wanted new schools and hospitals... but don't put our taxes up!... so we have ended up with PFI/PPP/whatever the newest version is.
In Scotland, the education system is in the best state it's ever been, with better paid teachers and smaller class sizes.
To say that Tony Blair is further to the right than Thatcher would be laughable, if it wasn't so scary that the media actually have some people believing it. The minimum wage? Substantial redistribution of wealth through tax credits and pension credit? Giving people back the right to be in a union (taken away by Thatcher)? Handing decisions on interest rates over to the Bank of England? - which has had the biggest stabilising effect on the economy. Thatcher would be turning in her grave, if she had the decency to be in one.
Blair is criticised from everything from the Millennium Dome (even though the ridiculous contracts were drawn up by the Tory government) to the "special" relationship with America. Anyone remember the way Thatcher was with Reagan? She allowed US attacks on Libya from UK soil. We even had US military bases here!
I disagree with a lot of what Tony Blair has done, but I think he has done a difficult job well, considering the state of the country when he took it over.
And as for the Iraq war, we would have been in exactly the same situation if we'd had a Tory government, if not worse.
I just wish people could step back for a minute to look at what he has achieved (Northern Ireland, anyone?) rather than always focusing on the negatives, usually in the form of a single issue (ie Iraq), that we are fed by the media.
The amnesia demonstrated by the same media whenever Thatchers name is mentioned is nauseating. Any of Tony Blair's alledged "crimes" are nothing compared to those of the Thatcher that they all seem to be now lauding.
My parents
used to always sing "Wake Up Little Susie" to me when I was wee.
Better than an alarm clock I suppose...
It's normally
cheaper to go October-April, apart from the week before Christmas which is horrifically expensive.
I've found Continental cheapest (to Newark rather JFK), but that was flying out of Glasgow.
There are usually really good (well advertised) BA special offers from time to time, if you're flying out of London.
Glasgow's wonderful
I miss it :-(
I don't for a second
deny that there was a problem with the UK economy and it needed to be modernised. My problem is that she thought that 3 million unemployed was a price worth paying. She didn't give a shit about the communities she was decimating, so yes, in my book that makes her evil. The current problem of state dependancy stems from her government's actions. People I grew up with came from families that not one adult were able to work. The older ones had been made redundant - that's when over 50 became unemployable - so often developed depression problems due to being chucked on the scrap heap before their time. The younger ones were leaving school knowing that it didn't matter how hard they studied for exams, they were going straight to the dole queue. This hopelessness has in turn been passed on the their kids, who now expect the state to provide because they have never seen any different. The strong work ethic of their grandparents' generation has been lost and in the process entire sections of the population are made to feel that they are worthless.
The now horrific gap between the rich and poor I also blame Thatcher for. At the bottom you had the unemployable, trying to survive on next to nothing on the dole. Even if you were lucky enough to get a job, there was no minimum wage, so I know people who were working for 50p an hour because it was better than nothing. At the other end of the scale is what everyone seems to now remember the Thatcher years for... and seem to celebrate - the people in the city getting more in their bonus than other people would work hard to earn in a lifetime (and this is no exaggeration). Wages at the top spiraled out of control, which fueled the property market (which now means that even people on good wages now can't afford to buy a flat if they are single). There is no going back from this without a government bringing in a salary cap (which none will have the guts to do) so we are stuck with the wages at the bottom being pinched to pay for excessive wages at the top (does anyone REALLY need a million quid a year?!...when their workers are making do with 10 grand).
Society changed for the worse under Thatcher. She was a different breed of Tory. Before Torys had had some feeling of social responsibility, albeit through charitable giving rather than state support. Under Thatcher it became acceptable... in fact actively encouraged... to only think about yourself...
And yes I do blame her personally. She was a very forceful prime minister that didn't allow dissent in her cabinet. Anything that happened, happened because she wanted it to.
I could go on... arms to Iraq scandal, Falklands War, selling off council house stock for next to nothing, privatising everything possible, interest rates at 15%. And don't start me on the NHS - what this government is doing is NOTHING compared to the under paid, understaffed wards under the Tories. Whole wards were closed... whole psychiatric hospitals! Care in the community... only the community now didn't care...
I've still never managed to see all of this
It was an ex's put-on-after-the-pub dvd and I never managed to not crash before the end.
I always enjoyed the bits I DID see :-)
creaky...
"the UK spectacularly ignored a warning from the captain of hms endurance about argentina and the falklands the year previous to the argentinian move on them"
Yes, this was ignored, but not due to incompetence. The Thatcher government were flagging in the polls and NEEDED the Falklands War to be re-elected. I would go as far as to say the Tory government actually inflamed the situation to make war more likely.
And it worked. Everyone got their union jacks out and voted Tory at the next election...
I can't make my mind up
whether they "let" it happen (in the way that Roosevelt (allegedly) allowed the Pearl Harbor attack to go ahead to win public support for the US entering WWII)... or whether they just didn't believe anyone could pull it off, so ignored the threat.
At Strathclyde Uni
they missed a bit out of the prospectus - Wednesday afternoon is left free for sports and recreation... unless you are doing an engineering degree where you will have timetabled compulsory labs since we'll we have run out of room in the your overly full timetable to fit them in elsewhere.
Bastards...
This happened to my friend
She had just moved to Glasgow and was meeting her boyfriend outside his work. He'd gone on about her being "on time" which she took to mean, don't be late, so turned up very early. What he really meant was "my work is in the middle of the red light district so don't be early or you'll be harassed by the driver of every passing car"
She wasn't too impressed.
A sense of community is really important to me
...so it was a HUGE thing for me moving to 4000 miles away from the closeknit community I was used to.
I moved out in September. A week before Christmas, I was "asked to leave" due to a problem with my visa. As soon as I told the girls in the Pilates class I was going to, they rallied round - phoned up every contact they had who could help, introduced me to a local political activist, who immediately got me a case worker at the senator's office.
ok... none of this helped and I was still chucked out (and only got back on Monday!), but it was such a lovely feeling that people cared enough to help... even people who didn't even know me!
Went for a drink last night and was greeted by the barman's "Hey, when did you get back?!"
It has really made me feel that I was coming "home".
So yeah... feeling part of a community is good :-)
Cheers
that's much better than the bbc one :-)
I'm trying
to follow the Celtic v AC Milan match via the bbc website 2 minute text updates.
This is crap! There MUST be a better way of doing it!
(can't get it on tv/radio...don't have broadband, so can't even listen to the radio commentary online :-( )
I used to be a maths teacher
I does take over your life. I know a lot of people who stuck with it and the work load does ease off a bit the more experienced you get, since you are able to adapt the lessons you taught the year before, rather than doing everything from scratch.
Apart from the hours, I did love it and found it very rewarding.
I was going to see if my PGCE would be recognised in the States, but just after I moved here there were three school shootings in the one week - one just up the road from where I live.
So maybe not....
most airlines
let you check in a box instead of a suitcase... if you've got the original packaging, this would probably be the safest way of doing it.
It probably wouldn't be covered by their insurance though, so you would have to insure it yourself, which might be expensive since luggage handlers are notorious for dropping things from a great height...
I use flickr too
but am slightly concerned about the new terms and conditions now that yahoo have taken them over.
A Forest
hasn't lost its effect on me either - it still grabs me and makes me listen, regardless of what I'm doing. Not bad after over a quarter of a century!
my favourite album is
Seventeen Seconds
Camera Obscura
every gig they played for the first 5 years, however many that was.
It is dependent on income
But more people are eligible than you would think. You can't put an earnings figure on it because it depends on the individual circumstances - how many children etc.
If you are awarded Child Tax Credit(CTC) of more than £545 a year (the family element) then you will be entitled to a Sure Start Maternity Grant.
In practice this usually means that if it is your first child (so you don't have a CTC award yet) then you won't be entitled to the grant until AFTER the baby is born, unless you are on income related benefit (like Income Support or income related Job Seeker's Allowance).
You only have 3 months after the baby is born to claim, so you should get the forms in while you are still waiting to hear what your award for CTC will be. You may be turned down since you won't (yet) be on a "qualifying benefit", but hang onto the letter and ask for a supersession as soon as your award letter for CTC comes in.
The grant is worth £500, so is worth the hassle!
aarrgghh
I hate these programmes!...and the publicity seeking weirdoes that want to go on them.
There is this show in the US called Dr Phil, which I watched once because I thought it might actually be discussing real issues instead of tabloidy crap. BIG mistake - it was probably the most irresponsible piece of television I've ever seen.
..."and after the break, find out the results of the lie detector test. Is Paul sexually abusing his 3 year old daughter?"
oh he is! says the lie detector test expert man...boo hiss go the audience.
I would have thought most mothers who thought their child was being abused by their father, would 1. Stop sending them to stay with their father every weekend and 2. Go to the police.
But no, being America, you film your child crying when being handed over for access visits and go straight to a tv station that will perform trial by television, presumably prejudicing any subsequent legal trial.
In the footage of the child, her face was disguised, but since her parents and grandmother were all being interviewed, how hard would it be for her to be identified?!
I find it really depressing that UK tv is going the same way :-(
[/rant]
no... not if it's used properly
The point of it is for cases where the juror has the gut instinct that a crime was committed, but due to the lack of (usually) physical evidence they decide they cannot find the accused guilty "beyond reasonable doubt".
The not proven verdict shows exactly what the jury thinks, which is you're guilty, but we can't prove it...and we don't want the world to think you were a victim of a false accusation.
Methinks
this hasn't exactly turned out as the BBC expected - now they'll know how lawyers feel when you have to rely on 12 individuals.
I think they set it up expected Stan Collymore and Megaman to have closed "not guilty" minds from the start, resulting in a 10/2 majority guilty verdict. I don't think they took into account that a forceful character (Stan Collymore), misunderstanding the judges use of the word evidence, would influence the other jurors to the point that they would find people they thought guilty, not guilty because of a lack of physical evidence. Dominic McVey was the only one that seemed to understand that evidence also includes the witness testimonies. For Sara Payne to say that she thought a rape had occurred, but the prosecution hadn,t proved their case was a contradiction - if she could say that the she thought a rape had occurred, then the prosecution HAD proved their case to HER.
I was really glad I watched the programme. It was really interesting to see how the jury system works and how personalities can affect the outcome. I did find it really upsetting though and I just wish they hadn't chosen rape as the subject because I agree it will put women off reporting rape - it has demonstrated that even if you're believed by a juror, they may still find the person not guilty.
At least in Scotland we have the "not proven" verdict, which although acquitting the accused, lets the victim know that they were believed. [/smuggness]
Yay!
Don't remember the last one at all.
I really must do something about converting all my vinyl to mp3s while I still have a working turntable to play them....
Second one
Illuminations - Swansway
maybe...
not true!!!
I've had nice people help me out when I was just short with my bus fare in Glasgow - you were just having an unlucky day :-(
This is a nice thread :-)
I don't think occasionally taking anger
and frustration out on furniture is a problem.
But if it's happening on a semi regular basis... is scaring her... if she is being told it was her "fault"... if it happens even if she tries to not to argue back...
then you've got the start of an abusive relationship, which will only get worse the longer she stays in it.
and the longer she stays in it, the harder it is to leave.
we played that too
for some reason at my primary school, you played tig till you were about 8 or 9, then en masse decided you were too old and started playing british bulldog instead.
...and why was it called that?!
normally due to falling ratings
so the show is cut, rather than a conscious decision by the writers.
...which is why
they are making the rare but sensible decision (or at least, John Simm made it for them) of only making another 8 episodes.
I'm going to watch the first two back to back tonight, then will have to get someone to record the rest for me and post it out to me, since I go back to the US on Monday :-(
...which I think might be the best decision
The first series was brilliant and I would have hated it to have been one those series that goes on to make yet one more, even though they are starting to run out of ideas.
Two series may just be perfect :-)
aahhh
it's been on my "must visit" list for years, but I've yet to persuade someone to come with me.
All of Scandinavia looks wonderful :-)