Personally, I think telephone interviews are a bit of a cop out, but at least you are one step nearer to a proper interview.

90% of communication is non-verbal. Sure, they can pick up on your tone, but so much is lost with a phone call.

If it's a call to determine if you have key skills, then all's good.

In this case I hope you tick all their boxes and move on to the next stage.

Those N. Korean female soldiers look hot! Where do I sign up to fight them?

Actually, I think supermarkets should be likened to a "theatre of war" 😆

£5 is a price worth paying for "supermarket rage avoidance", but what do you do if you want a pint of milk? Get a big trolley and block the free flow of aisle traffic?

Some people should have to sit a shopping trolley test in how not to be an "oaf"!

Now I know where scotch eggs come from. Always thought they tasted disgusting!

Just tile over it mate!

I wouldn't bother with a HIP, just go a head and market the house.

HIP's are worthless, a total waste of time!

As a buyer I wouldn't take one bit of notice of a HIP especially if I hadn't paid for this most questionable and uncomprehensive form of survey.

HIP inspectors can only make an educated guess about a property and will only have a seller's word on what has been done beneath the surface. They are mostly estate agents, or other non-engineering non-mechanical types who know next to ferk all about the fabric of a building other than what they have read in a book! Attending a 3 month course doesn't give you the knowhow and like any survey, you don't really know what a building is about until you pull it apart.

A pointless bureaucracy that serves as a hindrance and additional cost to a sale!

Your so called breach of the rules can be excused by today's announcement to scrap them.

Good job! The industry never wanted them in the first place!

Several years ago, the need was identified to simplify and accelerate the sales process of a property. The HIP was born, but failed on all counts to remedy the problem is was intended to resolve. It actually made things worse.

Sold off the nation's gold reserves at half price.

Ran up the public debt from £6,000,000,000,000 to £157,000,000,000,000 with it set to peak at £1,300,000,000,000,000 by 2012.

Welcomed "with open arms" (Quote by Jack Straw) unchecked immigration causing horrendous pressure on hospitals, schools, and welfare support. Undermining the livelyhoods of many working class Britons.

Gave Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland their own hugely expensive assemblies, thus allowing them to increase public spending to the injustice of tax payers across England.

Committed the tax payer to an uneccessary 20% increase in the number of people employed in the already top-heavy public sector, thus putting more pressure on the public purse.

Signed us up to hugely wasteful inefficient private public partnerships.

Detrimentally interferred with the way schools are run and wasting a spectacular sums of money in the process.

Created their highly paid unelected quangos to wreak damage, misery and injustice in almost all areas.

Surrendered the hard won rebate we used to receive from the EU, leaving the UK with one of the worst deals out of all the EU countries.

Gave away billions of UK public money to foreign causes with no requirement for recompense, or accountability.

Destroyed a private pension industry that was already in a perilous state. The effect of this was for responsible people to seek alternatives for their security in retirement. Buy-to-let created a property bubble which now excludes first time buyers from the property market.

They presided over a period of unchecked irresponsible lending whilst rubbing their hands together in anticipation of the resulting huge tax receipts. This fueled an overcooked housing market where all but the most wealthy are locked in to their homes (or locked out). People are seriously over leveraged, but had little alternative. Personal borrowing is at record levels and only a low interest rate is preventing carnage.

Deregulated the financial sector and set up the near useless, but expensive FSA – you have their incompetence to thank for the banking crisis (amongst other things).

Increased a raft of benefits for those who are not inclined to contribute, making them less likely to contribute. DOn;t we all need to work?

Created huge amounts of red tape to the detriment of British industry.

Created a system where young people feel compelled to run up an average of £25000 debt in pursuing a higher education, but not recognising that the business world does not really value the degrees acquired at these newly formed universities. There simply aren't the jobs for the thousands of graduates, so the £25k debt cripples these people before they have even started out in life!

They have done nothing to address the north south divide. The opposite is true infact.

Erroded civil liberties and privacy. Gave power to local authorities to waste huge sums spying on people by using anti-terrorism laws, but for minor indiscretions like trying to get their child into a decent school!

It's nice to have benefits, privilges and rights, but they need to be
a) affordable and b) fair.

Labour seriously hurts the people of Britain through sheer financial incompetence and unfairness. They undermine our rights. All because of their misguided socialist ideals.

Ideals need to take a back seat and pragmatism needs to come to the fore.

We need dynamic pragmatic leadership and now we might just have that.

Perhaps with Liberals working alongside Conservatives, we might see some benefits.

Time will tell!

Should be repaired by a qualified electrician now, so be discrete and only attempt this if you know what you are doing. Surprizing how many people think they can wire a switch or socket, but simply can't!

Hooorhah!!! 😆

Tax free pensions are a massive subsidy to the rich.

So TandemJeremy, I conclude from your argument that everyone who has a private pension is rich!?!?

What an idiotic assumption!!!!!

So what you are saying is that people on low incomes don't have private pension schemes.

I bet you work in the public sector and this would ring true given your back to front understanding of the sums of money the state puts into public and private pensions.

The private pension requires the individual to make contributions into a personal fund. The pension is not determined my the level of salary in the last year of employment. The private sector worker builds a fund throughout their working life and tax relief is given on these contributions. This assumes the pension company doesn't go bust. The fund is linked to the markets, so is not protected. It's very risky! For a private sector worker to build a pension the same value as that of the public sector counterpart, they would need to be on 37% higher income than their public sector equivalent. When they retire, they can take a percentage lump sum and the rest must be invested in an annuity. After the pension is set up, there is no guarantee of index linking and the pension can decrease inline with market performance. Pan over to the public sector and you have a cast iron guarantee of index linking and no reductions in income – all shorn up by the tax payer!

The system is patently unfair and i am certain that there will be riots over the matter in the coming decades. Young people are already disgruntled at the burden they are shouldering for the masses of people who retired early and who are going to live a lot longer than the previous generations. They are angry because they have had to accrue debt to get qualified, but can only attain modest incomes. No chance of getting their own home!

Gordon Brown has made the situation worse because he has markedly increased the size of the state sector, reduced the number of years an individual has to work before they become elligible for the state pension and raided billions fron the private sector pension funds.

So who is going to pay for everyone's retirement? There will be more retirees than workers at some stage and with a socialist government, who have no idea how to run an economy, they will be forced to impose crippling taxes. The young will say no! We aren't paying for people to sit at home.

I had a 5% increase in my council tax this year, but when the county I live in is making large cuts. The only reason for the increase is to pay for all the council workers' fabulous final salary pension schemes.

Get real man!

Here's instructions on how to get an iPod to work with Windows Media Player

There are others, including Winamp.

Frankly, I don't know why the EU anti-competition people don't slap a fine on Apple Corp. for making their products incompatible with all other media software providers.

Why did Gordon Brown remove the cap on the maximum pension allowance?

We used to have pension regulations, which for many decades had included something called "The Pensions Cap"
The pensions cap set a limit on how much pension any scheme member (including directors) could get from an occupational pension scheme,
irrespective of how high their earnings were.
It was there to protect the ordinary members pensions. To prevent Directors paying themselves obscene salaries and then draining the pension funds with huge pensions.

Then Gordon Brown's banker friends said that they wanted the pensions cap removing so that they could get pensions related to their obscene earnings.
(The whole Pensions industry gave him warnings of the effects it would have. Even the Inland revenue put forward objections)

BUT GORDON SAID OK
Because Gordon never likes to disappoint his banker friends

So Gordon took away the Pensions Cap in 2005 and then some of his friends were able to leave their boardroom positions with huge pensions!!!
For example Fred Goodwin was apparently entitled to a pension of over £700,000
If Gordon had left the pensions cap in place that would have been a mere £125,000
Well done Fred and your mates!!!

(The Superannuation's Division of the Inland Revenue have kept a record of what it should be, in readiness for when we get a new chancellor who sees fit to re-instate it. George Osborn has pledged to do that). The record of Pensions Cap limits are available to view on the Revenue's website

The result of this is that along with Gordon's "Tax Raid" on pension funds starting July 1997, over four thousand UK company pension scheme's have closed their doors to new members and many of them have had to close down altogether, leaving millions of workers without any pension provision.

So Gordon Brown is looking more like a capaitalist to me!

But don't worry about what politicians say, just keep your head in the sand and vote for the party who's ideals that once accorded with your views.

anyone who believes a specific pledge from a politician is a fool

Yes, so why do they bother ever opening their mouths?

Why did we have those live debates betweens the three main leaders?

Why did any party bother with a manifesto?

I guess the system is broken then.

I sometimes wonder if people recieve party's policies via some kind of ethereal message from the spirit world – they certainly don't seem to read the manifestos or listen to what the politicians are saying.

Or they have had their heads in the sand.

To be fair, all parties manifestos are 99% bollocks, so its fairly reasonable to completely ignore them

I voted against a capitalist ideology, rather than for a particular manifesto.

An example of a voter with their head in the sand!

The situation is a charade now!

Make a bloody decision Clegg!

I guess it's typical liberal behaviour: they can't make their bloody minds up and just sit on the fence!

If this is a true democracy, I reckon there should be national vote on this mess, because too many voters' wishes will be disregarded if any of these deals go ahead.

Simple vote: either Con/Lib coalition, or Lab/Lib coalition

This assumes the liberals can actually strike a deal with Labour and the various other factions required for a 325 seat majority.

The Conservative/Liberal coalition would be by far the strongest majority and therefore the most democratic solution. However, I wonder if Clegg has the voters wishes and the future of the country in mind, or if he is putting his political interests first. If he hadn't gone to see Gordon after yesterday's announcement outside No.10, I'd tend to think the former!

To think that people once laid their lives on the line for democracy.

Is this a democracy?

Not really!

One gets the chance to tick a box every few years, but then whoever gets voted in often doesn't do what they said they would do. Or does the opposite/something different, whilst falsely and brazenly proclaiming they fulfulled their promises. Or they sneak in significant changes in the hope that nobody notices (often successfully). If these changes are noticed, a lot of voters don't understand the effects of these changes anyway. I often ask people what they think about these significant political moves, only to be met with blank stares, or no opinion.

As a voter it's difficult to know the truth: Journalists and politicians twist things to sound the way they want them to, statistics are open to manipulation and frankly, we are subject to a lot of lies from politicians. They assume we have no memory too. Or perhaps it is they who suffer from amnesia!

People's political allegiences are primarily motivated by their own personal interests, so if one political party gerry-manders to their benefit, these supporters have little choice going forward. We should all care about the future prosperity of the country, but short term personal needs get in the way of making the right choices for everyone's longterm benefit.

Are we competent enough to vote? For example: What percentage of the voters keep up to date with what is going on and can remember what has been promised?

How many seek a balanced spread of quality news sources?

How many people have their head in the sand and will vote the same way as they have always voted? Even if their party has changed beyond recognition and are no longer serving their personal short term interests?

We have all agreed to disagree this election, so under a democratic system which respects the wishes of the electorate, there cannot be any decisive leadership.

A stupid broken system!

Bring on complete electoral reform. One that is easy to understand and that is fair. How about an English assembly? All the other parts of the UK have their interests represented.

Don't suppose anthing will significanly change and that is why something like 35% of the voting population didn't feel the need to cast their vote.

Sorry to those who turned up and weren't able to. The person responsible is blaming everyone else but herself.

I've bought three handsets on pay as you go, but never used them with the airtime provider to which they are supposed to be used.

None were locked to that airtime provider, none had any logos appear on start up, or any taylored profiles for that provider.

In essence they were all manufacturer's default set units, to work with any compatible SIM.

Do Apple think we're made of money???

No, but they do know many of their customers are stupid fashion victims!

Apple Corp. spends huge sums getting their products to the shelves and making sure that they are covetted by those who like to make a statement about themselves.

These product are aimed squarely at those who shop with an emotive head, rather than a practical analytical head

Apple stores must cost a fortune to set up and run, but conversely who else gives you better access to try out technology on the high street before you buy? Great marketting.

Anyone with a financial head on their shoulders balks at Apple products, even if the hardware and software is very seductive.

Apple are great at aesthetics, ergonomics, building subscription and aftersales opportunities, but that's it. They know how to market!

I'm sure there are a few applications on the Apple platform which are vital to business and not available anywhere else, so in this case, buying these overpriced mediocre performing machines is understandable.

Southwold has a nice beach but the further down the coast you go everywhere has pebble beaches

Not at low water!

Southwold is quite well to do. Mate of mine has a couple of terraced holiday cottages there. He paid £250k each for them, but they are tiny and needed a total refurb. Finished articles fetch towards £400k. Stupid money for a two up two down!

IMHO the property market is way over valued there, but as Southwold is about the only "chavless" seaside town on the East coast, you can kinda see why. Well Aldeburgh is pretty damn good too, but is lacking enough eateries and pubs.

There are no pound shops in Southwold, just boutique style places, great restaurants and pubs. Of course, Southwold is the home of Adnams, but prices are steep there (like 30% more than where I live, buying the same beer).

The pier is worth a visit with it's alternative "tongue in cheek" slot arcade. Or you can enjoy a decent coffee in nice surroundings. Not a pair of Kappa jogging bottoms in sight! 😆

Alternatively, if you are an inverted snob, there's Walton on the Naze further south in Essex. It has it's pound shops, boarded up pubs, boarded up shops, boarded up hotels, dilapidated pier with a huge ugly steel shed covering a tacky funfair. Just make sure you don't twist an ankle on the rotten planks on your walk out to the lifeboat. There's a couple of pubs where you can rub shoulders with some of the scuzziest people in Britain. This is assuming you can park – the council have put double yellow lines just about everywhere. If you really like the chav atmosphere, there are beach huts for sale, but only if you have £25000 for a rotting wooden shed. Don't forget the council will want £400/year council tax too.

Conversely, Walton has a lovely sandy beach at low water, an interesting tower, a nice pool and a good Thai restaurant. Away from the town centre there are some very nice bits, but the heart of the town has been destroyed by bad planning.

For two towns so close to each other, there really couldn't be more of a difference. They are separated by several river estuaries, The Deben, The Stour and the Orwell. There are a good few decent pubs, marinas, villages, but they aren't easily accessible by land unless you like losts of driving. Ipswich Haven Marina at the head of the Orwell has a nice atmosphere with lots of bars and restaurants.

If you travel down from Walton, to Frinton, to Clacton it doesn't get any better. St Osyths however is something else – THE most run down horrible shanty town which I'd bet is probably the worst seaside resort in the whole of the UK! Don't go there!

Don't visit Essex coastal resorts, stay in Suffolk, but to be honest, you would get better value and much more to do if you opted for the North Norfolk coast.

Sheringham is a good base – a pretty seaside town that is always thronging with holidaymakers and it has a good beach. There are even better beaches at places like Wells-Next-The-Sea/Holkam where you can walk for miles, or just hang out in the dunes. One of the best beaches in the country IMO.

Downham Market is good if you like posh villages in a similar vein to Southwold, but expect the vista to be spoilt by a sea of 4×4 cock mobiles as a load of ppl with more money than sense pursue their rural idyl!

There are seal trips from Blakeney Key, various impressive country houses to visit, a bird sactuary, Thursford steam collection, the salt marshes at Cley, North Norfolk railway, Aylesham narrow guage railway taking you to Wroxham. You can buy a ticket that combines a boat trip on the broads. Many good eateries and pubs.

There's lots more to do in Norfolk IMO, but i'm sure others will disagree.

Our great country will become a true seafaring nation, as it sails majestically around the oceans of the world, and a new era of British sea faring dominance will have begun.

And we shall indoctrinate the world with political correctness, force foreigners to become health and safety obsessed and we'll ensure everyone has free healthcare and an unbelievable raft (groan) of other benefits.

Get to your GP immediately!

My wife is still recoveing from Shingles 6 months on. She got a very expensive drug early on that minimized the rash and fought the infection, but she was still really sick.

As I understand it, Shingles is an infection of the nerve endings and you can get it in any part of the body. It can be pretty severe if you are unlucky.

It affects everyone differently, but the wife was floored for at least a month. The recovery has been very slow.

So forget biking and go and see your GP to see if he can nip it in the bud.

Change the wife for a diesel version! 😆

Do deer and other wildlife know to stay off tracks then?

Probably not, but most tracks arent within inches of bushes and trees due to reasons of safety. How many race tracks do you know like that?

If you are racing, you void your insurance and are generally accepting of the fact that you will be burning up money. Unlike on a public road, generally, the only person you are putting at risk is yourself.

Totally agree molgrips!

Cars are fun when driven hard, but only on dickhead free, hazard free race tracks.

I've around a million miles of experience on public highways and can confirm that the public highway is no place to drive fast, or aggressively, even at night on empty roads when deer and other wildlife can shoot out from the shadows.

Cars on public roads serve as a means of getting around, safely!

Save the Clarksonesque stupidity for the track!

The Accord estate is one of the ugliest cars I have ever seen. It makes me wince when I see it, and I think my Prius looks good!

Oh dear!

How much is the tax on this £25k car? You need to look at the emissions.

Do you have the option of a car allowance?

There are three factors to consider which make a company car the better option:
1)If you are young and would have to pay squillions for your own insurance.
2)You will be committed to starship business mileage.
3)You haven't a bean to spend on a car.

If you have your own car, you choose when it gets changed, you choose what spec, you have control.

I got sick of paying tax based on the list price of a car, knowing that the vehicle was aquired for around 30% less than list. This smarted even more when the car was 4 years old, worn out and was only worth two or three grand.

If you have to take a company car, make sure you don't take a fuel card, but pay for your own fuel. This will save you loads! When I gave up a company car to go for an allowance almost 10 years ago, the fuel card would have cost me the equivalent of 14000 miles of private mileage – based on an efficent diesel (1.9Tdi VW/Audi) and the price of a litre of diesel at around 85p.

Why don't you find a UK charity? Don't we have enough problems here?

😆 😆 😆

A £50 drill will become landfill. Double your budget and you will aquire something worthwhile.

Makita make top sellers.

My Atlas Copco cost me £12 a year (£200 17 years ago and heavily used). The 12V NiCd smart charger has enabled the batteries to last all this time – astonishing! Blows the LiIon and NiMh technology out of the water on longevity grounds. What do you get out of those with careful management? 3 years?

Cheap power tools = landfill. They will let you down, no matter how infrequently you use them.

We'll see.

He is isn't he?

Going i mean.

grum – Member

OK I'm proposing this as the new independent state – need a name though

Profligania?

From my personal experience, perhaps it's got something to to with the my enduring observation of the anti-English attitude from virtually every Scottish person that I have ever met! Seriously, the negative attitude toward the English is so blatant and highly offensive. I guess it has something to do with history, but move on guys! Why should we personally have to bear the brunt of Scottish anger?

I see that Scotland is a Labour stronghold. What I can't understand is, after 13 years of a Labour administration in Westminster, with a cabinet comprising of many Scottish people, why they have failed to address the problems of a north/south divide. Yet still people vote for them.

All that seems to have changed is that the taxpayer funded handouts have been disproportionally increased in Scotland. This wouldn't be so bad if the administration weren't running up billions of public debt at a rate not seen since WW2 and without any indication of how thay will control this runaway train!

So the English have every right to feel aggrieved by the unfair benefits that the Scots currently enjoy, at the expense of all of the UK population.

I'm not!

The endless pre-election opinion polls and the vast quantities of speculative journalistic hot air has rarely tallied with the actual result.

Looks like Labour have decisively lost power to me!

Garden Leave Gordon! 😆

It's gonna be either Cameron, or Cameron-Clegg in no 10.

My question is: If the parliament is hung, will Clegg and Cameron share No.10?

Could be a wife swapping opportunity. 😆

Now I am all for people getting on in life and being paid a decent salary, but £38k would put that person into roughly the top 15% of earners in the UK. Do we really think that a PA to the head teacher of a mid sized school (or any public sector school for that matter) does a job that justifies a salary in the top 15% of UK salaries?

And don't forget to add on around 37% to this salary to get the equivalent private sector rate with parity on their pensions!

£38k is not a bad salary, but it's not great either. The 37% pension adjustment makes it very good however. If someone is absolutely outstanding in their field, I reckon this is a fair rate.

If only 15% make it to this level of income, this demonstrates what a poor country the UK actually is. Wage inequality is a massive issue when you consider the misery this causes with the cost of acquiring things like a home. I'm begining to sound like a lefty, but what is needed is some sort of balance between unashamed capitalism and the commercial naivety of the socialist ideals.

Now look at Premiership footballers. Some make £140,000 a week!. Sure, they are outstandingly talented and many argue they should get this sum as a result (I certainly don't!). There are outstanding people in all areas of work. Take a teacher who is simply jawdroppingly brilliant, who stands head an shoulders above his/her colleagues. What extra money are they going to get paid for their extraordinary ability? A couple of grand per annum?

So yeah, if a school needs a top performing PA, the money on offer is about right. However, if they take on any old PA who's just got a lot of experience, but is mediocre and/or not motivated, it's a waste of ratepayers and tax payers money.

Yes mod, i know your a bit left wing, i don't expect you to do the decent thing and remove the BNP tag, but lets be proud of being English without being branded racist!

One can be certain that EVERY time one makes patriotic noises, some uber aggressive far leftwing socialist thicko will rear their ugly stinking head(s), making those who are proud of their identity feel look they are behaving unacceptably.

Why is it ok for Scots, Irish and Welsh to be proud and not the English?

Why do they have representation in the form of their own assemblies and the English don't?
Why do councils make people who fly the English flag, take them down?

Why do we now feel ashamed to express pride in our country?

I have American friends who cannot believe how we are here. How we have no loyalty to british companies, have no pride, can't fly flags etc etc.

We have lost our way and it has become "cool" to be negative about our country.

I believe it's down to thenasty left wing socialist thought police, who's ideals are based on the evils of communism. Shame on them!

Happy St Georges day, just make sure you don't express your pride in your country!