Why does anyone care? Get a grip, stop reading the news if it causes you to get a fit of the vapours.

Midsummer day was Sunday, 21st. And my birthday ;-)

Nights are drawing in now… it’s all downhill to Dec 21st!

recruiting foreign workers

Not foreign, from the EU. That’s what the EU is about, free movement of goods and labour.

Of course it could be that there is much less discrepency in pay than some would like to make out:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/06/womens_minister_used_misleadin.html

Comparing men and women who work full-time, the gender pay gap is 12.8%, the ONS preferred measure.

Looking at part-time workers, women actually do better than men: their hourly rate is 3.4% higher than their male counterparts.

But when you add the two together, because part-timers get paid less than full-timers and because there are nearly four times as many part-time female workers as there are male, the gap appears to jump to 22.6%, which the GEO rounds up to 23%.

In other words, because women have more opportunity to work part time, and often do even if they have good well paid jobs, that means that the average for full time women’s jobs comes down – and the average for part time women’s jobs goes up. So it becomes pretty much self-perpetuating.

Of course, Harriet Harman wouldn’t be deliberately misleading, would she?

If one accepts my ONS source’s version of events, this was not a professional difference of opinion between two statistical experts. Harriet Harman’s officials preferred their in-house interpretation of the data to the independent and professional one because, one might assume, it made the case for their controversial Equalities Bill look a little stronger.

Attached to the letter from Sir Michael Scholar are the notes from the Monitoring and Assessment team at the authority which investigated the case. This suggests that it is not just the GEO which may occasionally get political with the numbers.

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission refers to a gender pay gap of 35.6% for women working part-time. It comes to this conclusion by comparing the mean hourly earnings of female part-time workers with those of male full-time workers.

Oh, turns out she would. Who knew?

Don’t see how they could be banned completely, but Turkey bans the wearing of them in government buildings.

We’ve got a cellar people used to put bikes on wet days and some stands outside. However after new carpets were put down in the office we were banned from bringing bikes inside in case they muddied the carpets – no, I don’t know why shoes are meant to be ok but tyres not either.

We were told that a covered shelter would be built outside instead. When this was complete, it transpired it was much less secure, a plastic roof over a bolted down set of little things for putting your front wheel into, and nothing whatsoever to actually lock your bike to (the guys installing the new shelter actually spent days removing the perfectly fine steel stands that were concreted into the floor). Must have cost thousands and the situation is worse than before.

Still, nice carpets.

Oh we have a shower (well one for girls and one for boys). Though I’ve never needed to use it after cycling in, only after running. Nowhere for damp kit, either.

Ive driven behind goodies who drive at 40 in a NSL. They’ll then drive through a 30mph village….at 40mph.

I see this constantly on the Snake and Woodhead. 40mph all the way over then ignore the 30 sign in the villages. Utter twunts.

[irony]Clearly you should have stayed at 39mph on the wrong side of the road for ages and ages thus causing an enourmous accident but avoiding a speeding ticket.[/irony]

Personally though my foot stays pushed down on the accelerator until I’m safely back on the right side of the road – I’d rather risk three points than death.

And if anyone reading this is the person coming toward me that overtook on the summit of the Snake Pass last Friday at about 1mph faster than the other car forcing me to stop to avoid a head on smash, please don’t do that again – either stay where you are or ignore the 50mph signs or quit and brake if you see someone coming the other way – don’t just keep going and hope for best you braindead moron. Glad I got that off my chest.

So its only cheating if you are caught?

It’s only cheating if you do it on purpose and gain an advantage.

If one of the other competitors felt that they had been disadvantaged they should have queried it with the officials.

If they’re so good at “art” why are they going round causing tens of thousands of pounds of criminal damage by vandalising property which usually means councils spending tax payer’s money to clean up?

As to the “brightening up urban hellhole” idea – why then do immature taggers scrawl their daubs all over otherwise attractive stone walls in the parks where I live? Or tag all over the mural that local kids had done?

I think it might be that they are idiots.

Yeah I caught it from my lad when he was little – he was fine in a day or two, I was in a bad way for a fortnight or more.

I’m not sure that doctors will advise you to pass on a disease rogerthecat!

Goods, facilities and services should be provided with regard to the religion or belief of people using them.

Why?

I took up running 18 months or so and have gone from not being able to run more than a mile without stopping (despite being relatively fit from football and cycling) to being able to run 10km in just over 50 minutes relatively comfortably.

What I found was I needed a route that wasn’t too long and to take it steady (force myself not to start too fast) and be able to finish it without stoppping. Then I kept doing that regularly and only very gradually upping the distance (fortunately I can run out along a river through a park and woods and there are opportunities to cross the river and come back the other way at fairly regular points).

At first I found it was a psychological barrier that I had to break (knowing that I can run a certain distance without stopping). Later, having broken that, I found that I had a problem with shin splints and pain in the ankles and feet after I upped the distance, but after perservering (and not overdoing it) that went away too.

I’m now at a point where I have a speed that I can feel like I can run all day at (not that I’m going to) and another that I can push on at and do a reasonable pace for my current regular run – or do a slightly shorter one a bit faster every now and then.

Also I did find that buying some proper shoes helped – partly they definitely felt better, but also spending money on new gear is a good excuse / motivation to get out and do it when you might not otherwise.

Oh and the other thing is I made it part of my routine – I get up and run every saturday morning before doing anything else, so I’m out doing it before I get chance to think about whether I should or not and find a reason not to.

hth

The first rule of Fight Club is…

You cannot have a communist totalitarian dictatorship

Apart of course from every communist regime ever.

Everyone should have a copy of Fowler’s, even if just so you can choose to disagree with the old duffer (not to be confused with the new version which should be called Burchfield’s). Chicago manual of style is also a standard (though ‘mercan).

Guardian style guide also on line and quite useful.

Did the Communist Party call for the deportation of black, asian and non-British born people ?

Not in Britain perhaps, but communism is no guarantee of fair treatment it seems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union

(not forgetting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge)

Has anyone noticed that Bob Crow and Frank Sobotka appear to have been seperated at birth?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/bob-crow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sobotka

Be aware that her solicitor will advise her to resist any attempt by you to have more than 2 nights per week, as more than 110 nights per year will mean less money for her; 3 nights a week will be seen as ‘shared care’.

Presumably she is resisting any further increase hence going to court for an order, or are you mostly wanting to get the current situation formalised? It seems that courts (and the CAFCASS officer) like to keep things as they are “when working well”, in general.

To be honest if it’s contested I would be surprised if you got more than one midweek night – sat and tue or wed, or alternate weekends and every tue/wed seems more likely to be what they’ll go for, unless things have changed in the last few years (which I doubt).

Hope it goes well. If you really can’t afford a solicitor (can you afford not to is what my dad annoyingly said to me) then remember you are allowed a ‘McKenzie friend’ to assist you in court, if you can find someone you trust who’s been through it all.

Finally, remember what others have said, you have to go out of your way not only to be reasonable but also to be seen to be reasonable, or it will be used against you. Also put everything you say in terms of how it will benefit your kids – and as others say, if mediation is offered, try that.

Cycling or running to improve ski fitness ?

Cycling is pretty similar IMHO (as is running up hill) – you’re pushing down with your upper leg, calves not used much.

My lad was the same – bored stiff by the (very tedious vocab based) books at school, but as soon as he got onto anything he was interested in he was away. Kids (especially boys) don’t seem to learn the way teachers want them to in these prescriptive days. Don’t worry about it.

I did have a Mr Man reading thing for the PC but it was ages ago (designed for Key Stage 1 though), dunno if you can still get it. Must be something similar around.

Oh and keep reading books to/with him – the more he enjoys that the more he’ll want to read.

4 legs good…

Anyway the treaty of union and stuff was all a stitch up anyway

It’s not England’s fault Scotland went bust investing all its money in some fantastical scheme in Panama…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_Scheme

the cuddly and diverse left and the free-trading capitalist right

The union of these sets is known as New Labour.

over the last ten years Scotland would have been better off with the Euro interest rate which has been a point lower.

That’s not working out too well for Ireland at the moment.

What we need is some sort of chemical storage system, whereby millions of years worth of solar energy is used to convert carbon in the atmosphere into a highly combustible liquid form in the ground with a very high energy density, which would be very easy to transport and could easily be used to power engines.

Oh wait… we’ve done that and it’s nearly all gone. We’re knackered then.

Yeah ‘only’ 100,000 people in the SE voted BNP, thus proving that The Daily Mail isn’t xenophobic, or something.

Maybe Daily Mail readers are xenophobic, but that manifests itself as voting for UKIP. It’s xenophobic Sun readers in Labour areas that vote BNP.

And their vote went down BTW:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/

Not really given the vile, mean-spirited, bigoted nonsense that The Daily Mail spouts on a regular basis.

It wasn’t the Dail Mail type areas that voted BNP. Daily Mail readers are far too busy voting UKIP anyway.

The funny thing is watching the Tories, the right-wing press et al, who have spent the last 20-30 years pushing a slightly less right wing agenda, a slightly less obvious racism, now having to protest about the BNP getting support.

And there was I thinking it was Brown who said “British jobs for British workers” and Blunkett who went on about immigrants “swamping” Britain.

It’s the collapse of the Labour vote in traditionally Labour areas (that have been betrayed by Labour some would say) that has led to this situation.

It’s interesting that the Daily Mail have a lot of anti-BNP articles, given that I imagine a lot of Daily Mail readers probably voted BNP.

An odd thing to imagine.

I’ve never managed to watch more than two thirds of An American Werewolf in London.

You stop watching after Jenny Agutter’s shower scene eh?

Despite living only 15 miles away, I’ve never been to Barnsley.

Perhaps that’s no so surprising though.

Otherwise normally sensible people will drink too much and turn into nasty, violent people.

No, only nasty violent people behave like nasty violent people when drunk. It’s just that when sober they have learned to act like normal people.

So, am curious, how might you minimise the visual intrusion of a wind farm?

Build a lot more, so that people stop seeing them as strange and instead just see them part of the scenery. You don’t often hear people moaning about electricity pylons or telegraph poles.

Never had any problems with them. Not tried the customer support though.

use your legs not your arms?

Shandy and crisps. It’s got everything you need…

Now they’ve put “advisory” 10mph signs on Clough Lane (i.e., the steep bit that used to be rocky but is now sandy) – sign (laminated A4 posted to a tree) says it’s because of the jumps, sorry, drainage humps.

I noticed this as I slogged up at 3mph yesterday but strangely managed to forget as I came down a couple of hours later as I was too busy drifting the back wheel around the corners to get some erosion going (some nice ruts starting to form, keep it up people).

Sheff council really are dullards of the finest quality.

Hmm, well it’s quite pleasant in the beer garden of the Strines Inn, the view from the Ladybower Inn’s not bad either…

depends where you’ve already been I guess! ;-)

Barrel at Bretton view OK but nowt special, and last year when I was there on a bike ride the beer wasn’t worth the slog up the hill. Plenty of places in the villages on the western fringes of Sheffield are better…

Monsal Head?