Thats ok. I was Local Gov then University sector too.

One of the reasons they take such a pendantic route is actually to try to be as fair and unbiased in selecting candidates as possible.

In the far distant past I have talked to a recruiter who refused to interview any men (1 male employee had mental health issues, so condemned all men) and another who pressed for a candidate to be given a job on the grounds they hoped to sleep with them. The government processes though dull and tedious are intended to circumvent this sort of distasteful recruiter as much as possible. As no one can mind read the idiocy of some recruiters, the dull application forms are the nearest official bodies can can get to fair and decent employment practice. So on the bright side, you may be getting a fairer chance than you might otherwise get – given peoples prejudices.
🙂

Loddrik – what brand are you using?

We have 3 cats, so yes, large amounts of food are purchased (and now thrown or taken back this summer). 🙁

I know they put low grade product in, but I dont expect it to be rotting. One I opened even had some kind of green mold all over the top of it. My housemate did another hunt of the supermarket shelves yesterday and said you could see the tops of some of the trays were inflating from the gas due to rotting. We have mainly bought from Sainsburys, maybe its something they are doing.

Replies are interesting. Thanks. I partly asked as I know quite a few people who back away from Tescos for their behaviour rather than prices.

Like the chap in the shop, I was surprised lots of people were keen to dump Tescos totally as soon as opportunity arose – I do not live in an area that is particularly well off. Its not poverty street, but certainly belts are tightening quite a bit and its working class.

I must say I hope Tescos gets driven into selling off shops as I don’t like to see such a monopoly as they had round here.

Thanks people. Oh I have no colleagues who I will be sharing this with, its just for my own project – but great point about being aware of sharing issues, if I had been.

If its any consolation, the ones I have filled in improved over the years. They used to ask all sorts of stuff that was frankly none of thier business and irrelevant to doing the work.

Not repeating yourself is difficult, but the way the forms are scored means it can have advantages. Originality is not always appreciated in the government sector.

I spoke with many interviewers at my last public place. If the specification says
“We want experience in managing ducks, bananas and coal mines”
saying you have wide ranging management skills and quoting a specific successful project cuts less ice than mindlessly saying “I have a long history of successful management, most of it in the duck sector, but also extensively in bananas and coal mines” because they allocate a score (rather like an exam) to every phrase or subject that specifically matches the specification for the job. You could write a really good application but it if does not repeat the specific terms or something very close it could end up at the bottom of the pile. As a result, applications that get anywhere can be almost a paraphrasing of the job spec rather than showing all that much originality.

Yes, they are utterly tedious to write. But better than reading 200+ of them to do the scoring.

Good luck.

It might be worth considering that this person lies

– because they have very low self esteem and can’t cope otherwise
– because they are very unhappy about home life, so make up something in desperation as they are upset about or are ashamed of the truth
– have some form of mental illness

All of the above reasons mean tread very carefully. You could do all sorts of very serious damage before you realise fully what the personal consequences might be to the manager.

If you are worried about work issues, make sure you all keep a diary of any work based details, facts or figures that may be questioned later. Note I say work based, not about private issues.

I used to work with someone who claimed a very bizarre private life and had been employed on the understanding he was a barrister (none of our management bothered to check this). He was asked to leave in the end when it became clear he had no qualifications and no clue either. His stories were unintentionally amusing. Our bosses got what they deserved for slack reference take ups. The guy, pretty harmless as a human being, lived in a life that was sad and pretty much a train wreck. Sometimes pity is worth a try…

It seems seriously bad news to the UK public

To quote 38 degrees
http://blog.38degrees.org.uk/2014/05/15/secret-eu-us-trade-deal/

“…officials in the US and EU are secretly negotiating a hugely influential and dangerous trade deal which would put the profits of big business ahead of our welfare, health and environment.

It’s called the “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership”, or “TTIP” for short, but in reality it’s more like a Christmas-list for big business. The negotiations are shrouded in secrecy, but leaked details suggest the deal will:

– Allow companies to sue governments if they make decisions which negatively affect big business’ potential profits (like capping energy prices, or introducing plain packet cigarettes.)

– Stop future governments from rolling back privatisation of our public services, such as the NHS , energy companies, or the Post Office.

– Relax the rules which protect consumers, our environment, our welfare and health services, to much weaker US levels.

*** PETITION SIGNING at ***

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/pages/ttip_home

Please share the Facebook page for the above Wed 27 Aug protest if you can.

https://www.facebook.com/events/344256829032718/?ref=74

*** PROTEST EVENT ***

Wednesday 27 Aug – 5.15pm. College Green.

“Come to our Metrobus event 5.15pm College Green Wed 27th August prior to the planning meeting at 6pm. Sit in the gallery to support local residents speaking at the meeting to protect their green space and local Park.”
quoted from https://www.facebook.com/events/344256829032718/?ref=74

“…residents are organising events against three proposed Metrobus schemes… They will destroy 28 green spaces including woodland, common land, Parkland, wildlife sites, footpaths, farmland and allotments (see bit.ly/rethinkmetrobus)… planning application has been submitted for Northern Fringe to Hengrove Package Metrobus and will be heard on Wed 27th August 6pm City Hall [aka The Council House, College Green, Bristol]. This scheme will destroy Grade 1 (Blue Finger) agricultural land at Stapleton allotments and the visionary Feed Bristol project run by the Avon Wildlife Trust and take land from Grade 2 heritage Stoke Park. It will drive a new bus road across the paved area by the city centre fountains and remove pavements in Bedminster Parade, taking pedestrian space for massive new Metrobus stops.”

Reminder to sign “stop BR2” petition here
http://stopbrt2.org.uk/sign-our-petition

and while you are at it, sign to save CASTLE PARK from being
built over/40 trees chopped down.
http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/epetition_core/community/petition/2434

Other petitions for Bristol here – some really good eg badger saving, some less so
http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/epetition_core/community/petitions/status/5/page/0

Seems if you get a dog to take along as well, the cat lack of enthusiasm problem is solved….

Milkie, thanks for posting – thats such a funny video.

Ironically that is actually the cat reaction that would be best for me, if I could get him to sit on the lawn or somewhere more interesting and then not walk about, just sit and look around it would be just great!

Thanks to everyone, you have all been so kind / funny with your replies.

CAT PHOTOS

Cat photos are now located here, in a Zenfolio account. Just double click the picture to enlarge etc.

http://severnaimages.zenfolio.com/f462148470

Cranberry, my cat does ‘floppy cat’ if you try to get him to do things he does not want to do. Its very very effective as its hard to even pick them up. Not surprised you were wary of Huffy. I dont think I would want to annoy a cat in any serious way, they are way too well armed and fast. He sounds a lot of fun.

One of our cats is so territorial we have seen it challenge full grown foxes and the foxes detour away!

Aww cute kitty photo by Househusband.
Thats very encouraging. I met a 3 legged greyhound the other day.

The vets said our cats op has a high chance of failing, as the top of his thigh bone had been smashed into fragments, so they had to try to rebuild all the little bits of bone, then pin all the broken bits back to the ball that goes into the hip, then reattach all the torn off muscle. If it fails, they will try this op instead

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femoral_head_ostectomy
there is a blog of someones experience of this here
http://jasonscats.blogspot.co.uk/2006/04/micios-femoral-head-ostectomy-fho.html

And if it fails and none of the bone has joined up at all then they will have to amputate his leg. Another X ray to look in about 6 weeks.

We have been very lucky so far. He has another illness so has spent previous time at Langford (Bristol Uni Vet Sch) Feline Centre. The emergency vets at the PDSA (they do our local vets night cover) referred us back to Langford at 2.30am (we did not find him until 1.30am) and he was operated on by Langfords orthopaedics team a couple of days later. He would have probably lost his leg straight away if he had gone to a local vets – the PDSA and Langford said it was the worst break of the kind they had seen.

On the bright side, the car hit is back end and so did not ruin the 3 newly done root canals on his teeth. He had fallen a few weeks before and snapped of the top 3rd of most of his pointy teeth so the nerves where showing. I am not sure if he is a very lucky cat (near misses) or a very unlucky one (having accidents at all).

I have never posted a photo on here. I will look up how it works or place one elsewhere and link to it. Prob will not be until tomorrow.

Meanwhile, there is an example here of the size of the hip ball they are trying to pin an entire damaged leg to. You can see why its tricky. I think the coin is a USA dime. The image is from an internet search when I was looking for more info,

note, this is not my cat.

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/nuuk_baby/media/katia%20surgery/2008_05_katia_surgery006.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

Househusband, thanks for your earlier comment about cats avoiding cars. I really want my cat to be able to go back outdoors on his own. He has always been so happy trotting out the door, tail in the air.

I am very afraid he will be hit again and killed, but I dont think I should let my fears spoil my cats enjoyment of life. I am amazed he managed to get home from wherever he was hit, his leg was broken off at the ball joint of the hip and a lot of his muscles were torn off thier locating points. If he had not been such an athletic and fit cat I suspect he would have died due to not being able to drag himself home. I had been out and searched for him but had not managed to find him. I think it took him possibly over 12 hours to get home after being struck.

However much I fear him being hit though, I know he is happy out there, so I will let him out again when he is deemed capable of coping physically with the outdoor situations. Its upsetting to let our other 2 cats out now, though they tend to stay nearer the house. Sometimes you have to live with fear or anxiety though.

Its near impossible to find a safe place for them. A friend has lost several cats even though they live out in the country – the cats dont see much traffic so they have got hit by the few cars that have used their country lane. I used to cat sit for some housecats of a friend and I would not subject cats to that situation myself as a dull, lonely boring life is much worse than a short fun one.

We can’t let him out on his own yet, as his plate and pins may fail if he does anything too active, the break was in a very difficult position to fix.

He is still not permitted to jump or land in any way or go out unsupervised (vets strict orders). I can tell you, the no jumping rule is pretty hard to police even in the house!

Its been incredibly hard to keep him entertained. It was fine the first few weeks as he just wanted to sit about (he was on painkillers) then he was happy to be able to walk about a bit. Now he is allowed to go up and down cardboard box ‘steps’ in order to be able to sit on armchairs. He is feeling well enough now though to want to go out.

Because of his injury, we have not been able to play with him as chasing, pouncing, catnip etc (the main entertainments of cats)are all things too physically violent for him to be safe to do yet, as it may cause his leg to re-break. The vet has said it will be a minimum of 2 more months before he can go outdoors on his own. I guess in case he jumps down off a wall (landing is even more damaging than jumping up on things) or gets in a cat fight.

Cranberry thanks for the link. He cant do shelves or trees yet, due to the jump/landing risk. He sits in his window and I leave radio/podcasts on so there are other things to hear. We make a lot of fuss of him. He has been incredible patient considering he was a higly active cat and he has been ill for about 8 weeks so far. He is such a lovely cat.

We had been advised by a different vet to just stick him in a cage in and empty room and just leave him if he howls. We thought that was appalling, to leave a living thing to just look at blank walls for weeks on end, alone and ignored. So his cage (he had to stay in one for the first 6 weeks most of the time) has been in the living room where he can watch us and be part of everything. As a result we have had very few issues with him, mostly he has seemed very happy. We were keen to get him access to our window, which he loves to sit in and that helped a lot keeping him amused. We managed to get his cage up there at a fairly early stage, its on a shady side of the house so he does not get too hot. At least cats sleep a lot 🙂 I am worried about the coming weeks though as he is getting noticeably more confident and active, hence the possibility of harness walks/sits on the lawn.

Thanks Dave for the info – I took a ferret for a walk with a friend once – gee thats like having a maniac on a string!

Willard, so sorry re your wife. How did they repair it after the re-break? I hope she is ok now.

Thanks for the info/stories folks – its really helpful info.

Nothing to do with my prev post, but a married male colleague many years back had an affair with a married female co-worker. Everyone knew they were having a fling as they were not bright at hiding it and enthusiasm was clearly felt by both parties until they agreed to leave their partners. He went home and told his wife and was minus a home the next day. His girlfiend however changed her mind at the last minute, did not tell her husband of her affair and backed out of the arrangement, which came as a shock to the boyfriend who had just given up everything for her.

Then she charged her boyfriend at work with sexual harassment, presumably either to get rid of him or to appease her husband if he had heard the rumours.

Next thing we knew the boyfriend was demoted instantly to another department, career and reputation tarnished. No wife, no girlfriend, no home, no career.

Buyer beware!

It always seemed unfair that he got the most punishment and loss as it was all rather one sided in that respect. Still, neither of them was very nice anyway – as people to work with generally.

Friend of mine says if he cheated on his wife he would be betraying himself even more than he would be betraying her.

He loves his wife (of over 20 years) to bits, but also values his view of himself and his own integrity and honesty.

He is a modest man, but says he likes to be able to look himself in the mirror without disappointment.

Its all PR in the run up to the election.

Sainsburys near me has got rid of nearly all its till staff recently, its just machines in there now, same with several other local shops. So more people on the dole, more families with less income, less customer service, less people with money to spend, more taxes going to support the unfortunates on the dole while all the roads, libraries, local maintanance, health service etc go even further down the pan or vanish totally. They even took all the dog litter bins away from here so that they did not have to pay staff to empty them, they have sunk so low financially.

A friend who has been made redundant for the 2nd time in 18 months says there are even less jobs about to apply for than last time and it was bad enough back then.

Pretty much everything unless highly skilled seems to have dropped down to minimum wage or less than a pound above it.

More and more zero hours contracts despite bad publicity.

Load of fat cats just got great pay rises for their Board level jobs – so alls well really then. For some. More money at the top is all that counts.

I have to say I find this amusing, but the ego is staggering
http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Bristol-Mayor-George-Ferguson-s-delight/story-21103349-detail/story.html

16 May
Bristol Evening Post
“Bristol Mayor George Ferguson’s delight at no-confidence petition’s lack of support”
http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Bristol-Mayor-George-Ferguson-s-delight/story-21103349-detail/story.html

2 June
BBC
“Bristol Mayor George Ferguson is to face a council debate over his leadership following a petition. The petition, which needed 3,500 signatures to trigger the debate, passed the threshold at the weekend.
Mr Ferguson told the BBC the petition was “not worth the paper it’s not written on”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-27660226

THIS BRISTOL PETITION ENDS ON FRIDAY (TOMORROW)- No confidence in Mayor Ferguson

http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/epetition_core/view/verybadmayor

I dont know how many of the Bristol people know of this petition. There was a previous one that did not get far but this one has legs. Some of you Bristol folk may not wish to support this given the car wording, but personally I feel anything that makes the Mayor feel slightly less god like might be helpful in relation to other projects he is handling.

This page on facebook is also interesting (called Bristol News)
https://www.facebook.com/BristolNews?ref=ts&fref=ts
but I have no idea how accurate some of the reports are about the Mayors property taxes – they may be true or not.

Ask your mums friends in the locality what the reputations of the estates agents are.

Pick a couple of houses with the for sale signs up and go in and ask them what service they are getting.

Take a good look in the windows of estate agents – you can often draw conclusions from how faded or fresh the images look, if the same property is in multiple places in the window etc. It gives you an idea of turnover, what properties sell, what stagnate etc, if the company is not doing much trade.

Look up similar properties in the area yourself on the web and see how the prices compare to what you have been given as a guide price.

Or MAKE A PROFIT yourself from their calls like this chap did

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/aug/29/cold-call-victim-gets-own-back

“Leeds man sets up personal 0871 telephone number and makes 10p a minute from businesses and cold callers.”

Thanks lots both of you – thats a big help.

I think also, the more I am looking at some of this, the more intesting it seems. I imagine it will change to some degree how I look at films etc.

I am thinking this could be an interesting read about lighting develpment to get around to reading.

Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noir by Patrick Keating

I have also managed to pick up a couple of older video and cinematography books from a 2nd hand bookshop. Details on cameras/film/video are somewhat out of date, but I am thinking the principles of lighting and light placement are not going to change so rapidly and basic theory on that will remain fairly static.

Hi Mr Smith. I am waving IKEA desk LEDs and bits of lighting gel about at the moment as I am trying to scale everything down a bit in size with some experiments. Not a lot of room here sadly.

My portrait photographer who had been teaching me some traditional stuff has now moved to the other end of the county, so its back to fiddling at home at the moment. You see some beautiful atmospheric lighting in films and TV and I would like to bring relevant bits of that to my photography if I am able to.

Sorry for the delay in replying to this folks. Just another thank you to the people who have been kind enough to share advice and history etc.

For those concerned about electrics, I know pretty much nothing other than to be very cautions with it and to not dabble foolishly without experienced advice from someone. My dad was an electrician and he saw 1 person die from a shock on a generator lorry on a military airfield and another probable death from a vacuum cleaner in an engineering works. I would add that both these events took place prior to 1960 and my dad was on both occasions a passer by, though he did actually manage to shut down the current on the lorry at risk to himself, but sadly too late.

At the moment as I think I mentioned somewhere up near the beginning, I am looking to enhance the lighting and understand lighting for stills photography, how to imply depth, help indicate mood etc so I am not likely to be handling any electrical kit at this stage that is outside of the realms of studio strobes or house light units. I promise not to stick my finger in any of the sockets and yes, studio kit can melt or set things on fire if its to close to stuff so I will watch out for that one too! 🙂

Thanks again to everyone for their kindness.

Wow, you lot have really come through, thanks so much. I thought I might be asking in vain here on this subject, but I should have remembered Singletrack has the whole world on its forum 🙂

Thanks Trail of D for the kind offer to answer questions. I dont have any questions yet, but when I do I will come back to you. I am a photographer looking to broaden my awareness and understanding of lighting. I have not been using artificial lighting for very long and am finding books on photographic lighting to be surprisingly narrow and unimaginative. I look at lighting on film or stage and think there must be a way to bring more of that to photography in some way. So I have decided to investigate film and stage lighting more. The bit I have done so far is making me interested in that field for its own sake now as even initial reading has made me realise the skills required for something so scaled up, with people that are moving about.

I am curious, for those who worked in the stage/film lighting field, what were the good and bad things in that sort of job? Would you recommend it as a good job to others?

The one in Bristol went bust several years back. Hardly surprising. They only had about 3 stands in the city itself (and 2 out at UWE Frenchay / Fishponds).

The city stands were all in the centre of the city, so you could not bike out to anywhere as there was nowhere to return the bike to. You could not bike into the city as there were no bikes available in the suburbs. To top it off, all the in city ones were only about 10 mins walk apart, so it was actually faster to walk then to get a bike, cycle through city centre heavy traffic and park the thing again.

UWE was still promoting it after the bike stand on one campus was empty for weeks and the 2 damaged bikes on the other looked unsafe to ride (rusty chain and brake cables).

The parent company right from the very start seemed to make no serious effort to look after the bikes or site them anywhere genuinely useful. I wondered at the time if it was some kind of tax write off scheme or similar and was never intended to actually work.

I think you can now rent Bromptons down by the Temple Meads train station which seems rather fun – they have some kind of locker system there – its a different company to the one mentioned above I think, seems more sorted. I presume you have to return the bikes to the same place.

I was both the witness at a civil partnership and the official photographer. Longtime friends in my social group. It was a really lovely day. I feel very sad for people in the past who have truly loved and been condemned for it.

Ironically, the person who I have known to be the most hostile to gay and lesbian weddings (refusing to go, hostile at being invited) was a gay man. He was full of resentment he did not have a life partner, so was incredibly hostile to anyone who did. Rather sad and immature.

I think its important to remember that not all straight weddings are welcomed by family and friends. Sometimes the new partner is hated by the opposing family. My sister and I both had difficult times with dating and weddings as my family were hostile and nasty to anyone we dated. If I had married anyone my parents would never have come to my wedding. Both I and my sister are straight.

I think anyone who finds love and acceptance is lucky and I dont care what sex any of them are. Happy for them to adopt kids too. Any happy home is better than a straight miserable one.

I hope your wife has an unusual sense of humour.

To get her all excited about a gift on Mothers Day, then for her to unwrap what is obviously a selfish and self serving gift for yourself instead – and that you have used your child in the process to ‘justify it’ looks utterly self absorbed and not at all nice.

Mmmm, wonder how long this marriage will last…

Seriously, get her a nice necklace or chocs or something, declare the cooker as a separate purchase – NOT a gift – for the benefit of all of you and cook her a special mothers day dinner with it, with no effort on her part.

I know a UK chap who married a polish girl. He finds it hard to communicate with her family due to language (they have only been married a couple of years), but the family are very friendly and welcoming to him, as are all the people he has met there.

He loves going to visit. He told me winter is particularly good as you get to walk along beaches looking at frozen sea then get to head into a nice food place or bar for a warm up.

I can remember him commenting that the older buildings are very nice in the cities too. He thought it was a lovely country, with super people.

Disappointed how rude people have been about the original post.

Someone has posted a caring and concerned issue. If they come from another county, have learning difficulties or dyslexia or are just not brilliant at English, to have been so rude as people were to the OP at the start of this thread is really nasty.

I rarely go to London. The last time I went was maybe 6 or 7 years back. I found it a nightmare to use the underground as I had never used it before and the instructions at the time were pretty dire. I tried to find a person to ask but it was very difficult. At the time I thought it must make a terrible impression to visitors from abroad if its having this impression on me.

Personally I am sick to death of shops and now the underground removing all human contact. Its just signs of more and more greed – as the staff get sacked and moved on to the dole queue, profits for the board of directors continue to rise and rise.

Added to that the expectation of companies that its ok to give erratic (zero hours contracts) and low pay to workers not on a liveable wage as ‘the staff can get the shortfall made up by benefits’ – before long working at the pay rates of India is going to be looking like being rich to the working class here and to those who naively like to believe they are middle class.

You cant control how you feel – they are emotions after all. Just accept the emotions you do or don’t have, just as they are.

No point at all in going on a guilt trip or trying to force feelings you just dont have. To be honest, in many ways you are lucky as it can be utter hell if someone you deeply love and are close to dies – would not wish that grief on anyone.

If you care about your gran, you clearly are not a cold hearted person. We cant care about everyone we are related to in exactly the same way. They are like anyone else that we meet as friends, some relatives we love, some we hate, some we feel comparatively indifferent too. Its just the way of the world.

Sounds like she has a lifetime of treats to look forward too…
🙂

I have been waiting for the Mentalist to come back on. It ceased mid season just before Christmas and is not due back until 25 Feb.

The reason is that people in the USA are viewing the programs only a few weeks behind the making of them, UK is slightly behind that too.

They do not finish filming, then release the entire series. As a result they do things like taking a cast/crew break over Xmas (so no filming). Then to compound it, at the moment they have some big sports event on in the USA. They figure no one will watch anything but the sport, so they suspend the viewing of shows mid season while the sports are on, instead in the USA they run old repeats of the same show for a few weeks, this makes a big gap in the viewing of the current season. This sports suspension seems to mean they also dally more over filming the rest of the season shows, so everything is pushed further back in time.

When we import this stuff to the UK, it is still being filmed in the USA or being delayed due to sports. America want to watch everything first, so all the rest of the world has to sit about waiting for them to finally release the rest of the series we are interested in.

Its not helped by companies like Channel 5 breaking off mid season and then saying stupid stuff like ‘the show will return sometime in the spring’ instead of at least giving the relevant month, though maybe they too are left hanging by the USA filming and distribution as much as the viewer is.

US companies will be deciding which shows get renewed or cancelled in the next month or so and there seems to be some debate about the chances of Elementary getting another season, though it depends a lot on where you look – different speculators on renewals say different things. Looks like my Mentalist show will be cancelled at this rate, shame as the revamp has been doing quite well in America, now they are continuing after Red Johns death with a whole new scenario/locations.

If you do an internet search you will find lists of renewed or cancelled shows, along with the viewer ratings for each week.

I accidentally got assigned a hotel room with one it. I was quite keen to try it, but when I did I could not beleive the racket the pumps and swirling water made. Took all the ‘romance’ out of having a swirling pool of water. After about 5 minutes I felt so guilty that it might be disturbing people in all the ajoining rooms or below me that I turned it off and for the rest of the stay used it as a normal bath, with the pumps off. I was stunned how disappointing it was, due to all the noise it made.