I’ve never felt comfortable with one on my wrist, haven’t owned one since I got a ‘my first watch’ complete with a book on how to tell the time. Before mobile phones I used to use public clocks – big ones on towers, parking machines, ATM’s the ones on cigarette counters, electronic bus stops etc. I never had a problem with getting the time – now I have a phone.

I get endless adverts for sheds.

I don’t find ticket splitting as helpful as it used to be

Where there are competing companies (next to nowhere, but London Midland – x country – virgin) then it can be possible to find cheap fares – London to somewhere nth of Birmingham will be cheap splitting between London midland and another provider.

“In advance” doesn’t mean 6 months, the *earliest * is about 12 weeks before the journey, but there is no precise point at which they are released. You need to check regularly from a few weeks before and after that point.

I hadn’t noticed Cox advocating the mass slaughter of poor people, which is something Attenborough has a penchant for doing.

Q club in Birmingham – atomic jam specifically, but flashback or many others.
Earko @ custard factory, B’ham
The end in London
Sankeys soap in Manchester
The original warehouse project venue @ strangeways
The bunker -Alderney, not actually a nightclub, just an actual bunker which the police turn a blind eye to, because there are no clubs on the island – top notch, all nighters and longer.

Regards Tatchell – Ten years ago he seemed very much against it

And still remains uninterested in it for himself, however, it’s not about an individualistic expression of rights, the right to equality is something that impacts on all of us no matter who we are, letting anyone get away with oppression against one group of people only leads to the question when will they get to me.

obvious i know but im amazed anyone, gay or straight would want to be married in church

Interestingly enough, Peter Tatchell is campaigning pretty hard for this, but has no interest in getting married at all (from what he said last time I saw him).

The bible spends as much time on not cutting hair, not eating pork or shellfish as it does “condemning*” homosexuality, so what exactly is the ‘religious’ basis of the opposition.

*it doesn’t condemn it in so many words, and the instruction is no stronger than that which covers hair or pork.

Wait for the full confirmation of your new employer, sign the contracts and do the minimum possible to get suspended under your disciplinary procedures, negotiate a no cash compromise agreement to leave, go to your new employer. [/joke]

Ask nicely, the action of asking will make it significantly more likely that they will want you to leave ASAP rather than having a spare part hanging around.

It’s worth noting that not all PGCE’s are equal – mine is a post compulsory teaching one, and as such, universities think it’s fine, colleges think it’s fine, but schools won’t employ me – however, the other way round – with a compulsory education level one, they will all accept it.

Ah – in which case what is the difference between a wedding ceremony and a civil partnership ceremony apart from the words used to describe them (and the substitution of words in a few places during the ceremony)?

In a civil partnership you are not allowed to use any religious readings, texts or hymns, or anything which approaches looking like it might have something to do with religion – if you are a gay person of faith – of which there are many – the state stops you from having the type of ceremony for your joining between you and your partner that you want – there are some churches who will do a blessing which looks a bit like a wedding, but there are clear red lines regarding the use of the actual text from the wedding ceremony meaning you can’t use it.

This might seem slightly obtuse to look at process rather than outcome (which are much more similar) but for many people the process is incredibly important, just look at the effort, money and agonising which goes into the process, and you can see that people really care – I saw a talk by the vicar at the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester and she comes into contact with a large number of people who would dearly love to be able to have a religious ceremony in which they can formally be joined as partners, in religious building, taken by a religious leader, using religious texts – this is currently not allowed, even if (like the MCCM, or the Quakers, or Liberal Judaism) the church itself would happily do it, the law forbids it – this clearly isn’t right.

Your havin a laugh worst one in town.
Shaha on Tate street.

It’s the first curry place inside England on your way home south from a trip to Scotland.

Surely the end of the CRC sale is the end of CRC itself…

The Stanwix Tandoori in Carlisle.

If you want to work in further education then you don’t need to get a PGCE first, they will normally take you on with the requirement to get a qualification whilst you are teaching – I did mine over 2 years at evening classes at the college where I worked with a discount in fees.

I’d check out the places you apply for carefully – there are lots of FE colleges which have a very bad reputation for management bullying, endless restructures and putting people on crappy contracts, if you’re moving into it from somewhere else then be aware and check them out – The Manchester College stands out as a NW college which has a sub-optimal approach to it’s staff , but there are others.

Mono – I remember when Mark and Lard played Life in Mono on Radio 1 back in the day when they did a lunchtime show, and (they said) got the engineer to turn the transmission over to mono.

You made them all up!

All but two of them are in my Itunes – can screen shot!

Thee Faction – War of Position – small socialist R & B (in the old sense of the phrase) band.

Earko – self titled debut (probably only available at the club night of the same name about 10 yrs ago…)

Bob L Sturm – music from the ocean

Eleh – Location momentum

USK Muusic is my girlfriend

Gas – Nah Und Fern

Jacaszek – Treny

MWVM – Rotations

Vladislav Delay – Demo(n) Tracks

only problem I have is checking what my wife puts on the list.. got “new years eve” through last week!!

Multiple lists!

You can set it up so you get one disc per list, rather than just 3 discs from 1 big list – my wife and I have a list each and the kids have one – we have one disc at a time for everyone, it works very well.

as the online streaming is rubbish

I’ve always found the online streaming really good – depends what you want to watch and your connection I suppose.

My other half is pretty understanding – I was off winter climbing within weeks of our first two being born (both January babies) she knows I get cranky if I’m cooped up for too long, and need letting out for a good long slog/run/ride like a small child or a dog.

Born in Wantage, grew up on Guernsey, now living in Stafford, via Oxford/Abingdon/Southend.

Buying British, in the context of a global market, means very little – even if you buy something made in the UK, where did the parts come from? there is virtually nothing within the modern world, that is made in one country that solely comes from one country – so the very idea of buying british only has limited effect, the money will find itself overseas eventually (and back again, as money comes into this country from other countries – although mainly through finance, but also tourism and universities etc.)

Have you contacted your local county councillor? there is an election coming soon, so they might be keen on getting the press, if not your actual councillor, then candidates tend to be pretty active round this time.

IIRC Insulating your house is now permitted development, so planning issues are less if thats the aim (conservation area permitting)

Name and shame the artist/label – this might also identify the precise system used, and a clear way round it.

Surely the sections other than the one to B’ham is going to be “HS3”?

Cot wise – one that turns into a bed when they get big enough, one that drops low enough to ensure they can’t climb out when they are tall enough. Our cot bed has long since died (3 kids, it was a bargain basement factory second with parts missing, bodged together for three kids) but the mattress still sees service as a put me up for any of the kids (eldest is 8), because we got one on the large size.

The currency is now counterfeit and there is going to be a bond market/sterling crash.Weimar republic here we come.

Only if people lose faith in the currencies ability to transfer value between people and over time – which at this point it’s not doing, and as such, the wild changes which the Weimar experienced are a long way off – people are kept a lot more docile nowadays.

So, triumphant omnivores “catching us out” because we wear leather shoes or drink milk are probably missing the point. I don’t eat my shoes.

I don’t care either way, but…you don’t eat your shoes, but, by your argument, you wouldn’t mind walking round with turds on your feet?

There was a couple of centimetres of additional snow on top of the thawing slushy ice last night. weather is nice though. Might well end up faceplanting, not sure, the conditions have been difficult to gauge without getting out there for the last week or so.

I had a look at the sizing chart I could find and decided I was XL, then discovered they don’t have them in XL. I’ve never been XL for anything in my life.

How do they size up? (anyone?)

dont listen to the lawyers and hr people on here, get the answers through consultation. it will probably all work out just fine

Shudder.

Not an HR person, not a lawyer (union rep with two TUPE transfers under my belt)

And, surely when the information comes through consultation, then it will be from an HR person, perhaps with some input from a lawyer.

The company will put forward what they want you to think, it’s much more important to note what is possible, which is always going to come from outside – my first port of call would be my union.

dont assume you will get redundancy just because its beyond cycling distance. if you dont want to go and you own a car it maybe within reasonable cummute distance by other means of transport.

In TUPE, material detriment is from the perspective of the employee, not the employer/transferer and as such it os down to him if there is a problem…

Abellio London Ltd (Formerly Travel London Ltd) v Musse and others, EAT

If you were to leave then an EAT would reasonably see this as a dismissal, and unless there was an ETO reason for the change, rather than being specifically due to the transfer it self, then it would be automatically ruled unfair.

The material detriment clause in the TUPE regulations must be considered from the employees perspective, and an additional commute of an hour each day or whatever, would almost certainly constitute this.

I found it inconceivable that between a politician and a policeman there was only one liar.

“If you do this much of activity x, this much of activity y, this much of activity z, you are statistically and historically likely to achieve target” – this then becomes an arbitrary set of KPIs they have to achieve, and these are achievable by the way!

However, in education you are tasked with hitting KPI’s which can be woefully beyond your sphere of influence – e.g. retention, one of the big KPI’s in further education – students leave courses because they have other things to do, they get jobs, they get pregnant, they have to look after their family, life gets in the way – I’d guess that in excess of 50% of students that leave courses do so for reasons which have nothing to do with the course, the teaching, the college or whatever, and there is no way that any kind of changes by staff would help – yet it’s your fault they leave…

Without trying to piss on anyone chips , from the outside the Education system and NHS sorely need reforming. Way too much money pissed up the wall on stupid things, lack of any real pay for performance etc.

It is about time that we got the best that those employed in these two public sectors, not 1980s practices to protect the lazy …

The type of performance management, and indeed PRP is very prevalent within Further Education colleges, most of them are run by accountants and professional managers, and tend to have a very ‘business’ approach to running an education establishment – and yet they are ‘failing’ all the time (we know this, because Michael Gove and Mt Wilshire have said so, and to ensure they are correct, they’ve change the way in which they measure success to make it so…

“If you do this much of activity x, this much of activity y, this much of activity z, you are statistically and historically likely to achieve target” – this then becomes an arbitrary set of KPIs they have to achieve, and these are achievable by the way!

Surely all this means is that they will ensure that it appears that they are hitting the targets – what is the level of surrogacy between the arbitrary KPI’s and the actual target – in a sales driven environment I can see them being slightly tighter knit than in education, but still, the KPI is not the thing that needs to be achieved, and focusing on the KPI, not the actual target surely detracts from acheiving the target any way any how, and just focuses on doing it the way in which you are expected (e.g. killing creativity)

In education, this can be seen quite acutely in two ways – teaching to the test being the first, students are failed in their education, to ensure that their KPI’s are hit, it doesn’t matter if the students are completely devoid of any knowledge of the subject as long as they can get them to write the correct things for the test, then they hit their KPI’s and are safe for another year, and we have falling standards of education…the other is where staff self assess their work, rather than it going to external marking, in order to ensure that their KPI’s are not affected by failures, they ensure that all the students pass – lying is incentivised – even encouraged by middle management, failure is rewarded, but the KPI’s are hit, and the management (who aren’t aware of the difference between education and selling insurance or whatever) are placated till next year.

Often, even if you do improve the end result – that is, the people which came in are better educated than they were when they started, by an amount greater than if they had done nothing and/or read some stuff on the internet, then you don’t get rewarded, because success is measured by surrogates, which will certainly drop when the quality of teaching drops, but don’t necessarily increase when the quality of teaching increases.

“You must be a secondary school teacher working in an Academy.”

Miles off neilm.

This is really interesting – that the same problem can be so easily identified across such a raft of different areas is evidence enough (for me) of a proletarianisation of lots of jobs – turning people from autonomous professionals to factory workers on piece work -pretty much the death of creativity and interesting solutions to problems.

I’ve been using my Icebreaker merino for maybe 7/8 years – I use it winter mountaineering in the first instance that and a pertex windproof top an nothing else for the walk in, then as a base layer under a pertex and pile buffalo copy (both pertex bits are montane) when I’m actually on the route (the slower pace etc. means I get colder.

I don’t have problems with getting cold, and I shove another layer on if I do, really wet weather, I tend not to bother going out, or stay low and walk/keep moving, so don’t get wet. I’ve used it a few times cycling, but only if it’s very cold, in the ‘warm’ which for me wearing a merino is above zero, then it tends not to get used that much, maybe as a jumper on a cold summer evening/bivvi etc.