Where did it all go wrong

This makes me mad, you too?: Shetland independence, all that oil and Norway

2012-01-13T17:46:00.000Z

This makes me mad, you too?: Shetland independence, all that oil and Norway: I seem to recall that way back in the early devolution vote - 1978 - the Shetland Isles (and Orkney) voted very much against devolution. T...

Indiscriminate Apathy: Legalise it

2012-01-12T00:10:00.000Z

Indiscriminate Apathy: Legalise it: And by 'it' I mean everything. I don't partake. I know some that do. My main issue with drugs being illegal is the idea that nanny shoul...

This makes me mad, you too?: Scotland and Independence

2012-01-09T17:34:00.000Z

This makes me mad, you too?: Scotland and Independence: Some of you will have read my previous posts about the fear that surrounds Alex Salmond and the SNP, (fear of calling a referendum) and th...

This makes me mad, you too?: Scotland funding is grossly unfair

2012-01-08T20:20:00.000Z

This makes me mad, you too?: Scotland funding is grossly unfair: That is according to the chairman of the Local Government Association. Local authority funding in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is...

This makes me mad, you too?: Cash for Scrap - Act Now

2012-01-05T15:45:00.000Z

This makes me mad, you too?: Cash for Scrap - Act Now: The recession in the UK coupled with high commodity prices has led to a significant rise in the thefts of metals and then onsale of these f...

English Pronunciation

2012-01-04T21:08:00.004Z

I think this is simply brilliant.

http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

This makes me mad, you too?: Grantham's shame - Margaret Thatcher

2012-01-02T11:28:00.000Z

This makes me mad, you too?: Grantham's shame - Margaret Thatcher: As the film 'The Iron Lady' is readied for its premiere, isn't it about time that Mrs Thatcher's home town and birthplace finally gave due ...

This makes me mad, you too?: Energy - Make your mind up

2011-12-22T18:49:00.000Z

This makes me mad, you too?: Energy - Make your mind up: What do you want? Access to energy sources that provide a cheap (cash terms) solution such as natural gas and ultimately nuclear power or ...

HIV

2011-12-20T22:35:00.000Z

All I can say is it is about time. Let just all be hopeful about this.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Canadian+researchers+start+clinical+trials+vaccine+January/5887090/story.html

This makes me mad, you too?: Scotland the brave?

2011-12-17T08:57:00.000Z

This makes me mad, you too?: Scotland the brave?: Scotland the brave? Or Scotland the coward? We hear time and again that Alex Salmond will decide when to call a referendum on indepe...

Adsense

2011-12-16T20:39:00.001Z

So for those of you who don't know what 'adsense' is I will quickly explain. Adsense is part of googles advertising branch, it allows people with websites or blogs to earn money through giving google a space on your website or blog to advertise, google acts as a sort of a middle man in the pay out of money to you. Advertisers will pay google for every click that their ad gets, you will get money for every click on these ads and google will take a small amount. The money is saved up in what is called your 'adsense account' where the money is stored until you reach an amount that google sees as worth a transaction. This differs between currencies. For example in GBP it is £60. This can then either be transfered to your bank account or sent to you by check.

Now. First of all I would like to commend googles efforts on this, there are many other providers who offer the same service, but none that do so with such ease as google does. Google has made blogging a very easy way to make money, and for those of you with a website it also is very easy. Google is very fair in its payments and to me the payments seem generous. However to those of you who think that you are able to make enourmous sums of money off of this by cheating the system, all I can say to you is you will get caught. You may get away with it for a small amount of time, but google being google have some of the best programmers in the world and have a large resource base so cheating them is not easy. If you try you will get caught, so dont go around clicking on your ads from other computers. You will just get your hopes up by seeing your balance increase and then be upset when your account is disabled before the end of the month.

So anyway. To sum up I would say that for those of you who blog or have a website and have never tried adsense before DO IT! Really easy way to earn some extra money with very little effort. I think this service is brilliant! I could not be more please with it.

This makes me mad, you too?: Taxing ideas

2011-12-16T17:20:00.000Z

This makes me mad, you too?: Taxing ideas: Here I post some ideas for taxes. Currently there is much noise surrounding executive pay. Companies pay these salaries claiming they ne...

This makes me mad, you too?: UK not so isolated?

2011-12-15T18:06:00.000Z

This makes me mad, you too?: UK not so isolated?: So if we look around and get our news stream from other than the biased BBC, we find that other countries are having second thoughts about ...

This Ridiculous World: Movie of the year

2011-12-15T17:39:00.000Z

This Ridiculous World: Movie of the year: Honestly, Movie of the year...

www.ustream.tv Such a cool idea.

2011-12-08T23:17:00.001Z

This is my friends stream in america. I think this is such a cool idea, allows us to take big brother to the new level....

I can't wait for my january exams...

2011-12-08T20:31:00.001Z

So now they are helping people pass.

Francis Thomas, director of internal and external affairs at Ofqual, said boards could be fined or shut down altogether.

“An act of Parliament has just been passed that gives us powers to fine [exam boards] and that will be in place early in the New Year,” he said. “But actually the ultimate sanction we have got is we can actually take an awarding organisation and put it out of business by telling it that it cannot run exams any more.

“We need to look at the evidence and assess whether, at one end of the scale, this is systematic right through the qualifications business or is this just one or two rogue operators who have gone beyond their brief.

“Depending where it is on that scale we have the powers and we will take the action because we do not want to see the confidence in our qualifications system being undermined.”

Pupils facing examinations this January could have their papers “pulled” and re set should exam boards be found to have given improper guidance over expected questions.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/8943291/Exam-boards-could-be-closed-down-over-cheating-revelations.html

And they are making them easier.

Ms Warren, the chief examiner for Edexcel GCSE Geography, said that teachers should pick her company’s exam because “you don’t have to teach a lot”.

Ms Warren also expressed her disbelief that the geography exam had been cleared by the official regulator.

She said: “There’s so little [in the exam] we don’t know how we got it through [the exam regulator]”. She claimed it was “a lot smaller [than other boards] and that’s why a lot of people came to us.”

The conversation, involving an undercover reporter and two teachers, took place at an Edexcel seminar in Birmingham last month. It will also raise concerns about the rigour of exam papers and standards.

The comments will fuel concerns by head teachers that competition between exam boards has driven down standards and undermined the integrity of the education system.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/8943954/Exam-chief-you-dont-have-to-teach-a-lot-for-our-tests.html#.TuEOP7tYBsk.facebook

What happens when someone jumps on the track...

2011-12-08T20:03:00.001Z

Kings Cross at 19:33, All these people will be late home tonight.

This Ridiculous World: Copenhagen just got a lot closer to legalizing the...

2011-12-08T17:04:00.001Z

This Ridiculous World: Copenhagen just got a lot closer to legalizing the...: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/111201/win-win-drugs-fighting-gangs-legalizing-pot MALMO, Sweden — Copenhagen j...

This Ridiculous World: Well this is quite funny...

2011-12-08T17:04:00.000Z

This Ridiculous World: Well this is quite funny...: Just posting because this is incredibly funny... Enjoy :) This Ridiculous World

Cars that drive themselves

2011-12-07T15:45:00.001Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15820069
I personally think the idea is great! If you have seen movies like 'minority report' or 'irobot' you will see how cool the idea looks, and how much of a leisurely activity driving could become. Obviously we are years away from this being a perfect system, as the whole idea is that they become crash proof, and the only way I can see this as feasible is if there is real time system that every car is hooked up to feeding data about other cars positions and speed. However it would be awesome. When this finally happens I do hope that they still allow manual over-rides so that people can drive themselves if they want to. Personally I find driving fun when I do drive, which isn't very often, so for long journeys it may be nicer to just be able to get in your car and sleep but for other journeys I know I would want the control so I can have some fun!

Twitter

2011-12-07T15:33:00.001Z

I created a twitter account a good few years ago now, but only recently started to use it, I am not a regular tweeter but do log on to see what the people i have been following have been saying. Personally I love twitter, it is so simple and allows you to see what everyone has been up to recently. I see it as a place where instead of writing long winded blogs like the ones that i always do, it is a place where you can write sentence blogs that everyone can see. I do not think that you can compare the service with other sites such as facebook because they are so different and do cater for a different audience. But for all of those people who do like letting the world know what they have been up to or just giving you view on something twitter is great! I personally enjoy a balance between facebook, twitter and blogger and use them for different means. So in conclusion it is fast, easy and the mobile app is so streamlined it makes posting a breeze.
https://twitter.com/#!/leprichaun23

For no other reason than it is funny- GEEKS

2011-12-06T23:05:00.001Z

The name's Bond, Ionic Bond. Taken, not shared.

Not sure where it originated but this is where I saw it.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-names-Bond-Ionic-Bond-Taken-not-shared/190920030953506

Spotify- Continued

2011-12-06T22:55:00.001Z

http://liamobrien-wherediditallgowrong.blogspot.com/2011/12/spotify.html

I recently received a comment on this post that I have decided not to publish simply because of the length of the comment. The person made this point, that a 30 second advert every 15 mins is not that bad. Which is true, however due to spotify recently limiting the amount of time that you can listen to music if you are not subscribed to 'unlimited' or 'premium' I feel that it makes the adds that less desirable. As you are limited to the time you may spend listening to music, plaguing your music with adverts isn't for me. I understand that some people really do not mind that adverts, and also to not listen to that much music for the limit to be an issue for them, but for those people who find music something that is a must when sitting doing your emails at home, or writing that assignment i feel that it is better to not have the adverts. This person also mentioned how they assume that I intend this blog to mainly be for students, who typically would not be able to afford the 120 pounds a year that it costs, and i would say to that, unless they are going to download there music illegally (which they shouldn't be doing) then they may well spend more on actually buying the songs on itunes and have a far more limited library than if they spent £9.99 a month.

Facebook

2011-12-06T19:53:00.001Z

Every now and then Facebook decides to update, and change the way it looks. Whenever this happens all I see on my news feed is, facebook is becoming so rubish and blah blah, first of all i do not understand the need for people to complain about a free service, that if non existant there would be an even worse version in its place! I think we should stop complaining about something we all love actually. And also realise that when an update is brought out it is because it makes the service better and easier to use! So just learn to adapt!

Interview tips

2011-12-06T19:07:00.001Z

1. Don't bring anything
Sometimes they ask for it, but most of the time they do not. Employers simply expect you to know what to bring to an interview and to be prepared. While every industry is different, the bare minimum to bring to an interview is a copy of your resume, your portfolio, a pen, and a pad of paper.

2. Wear what you want
Jeans and t-shirt? Not a problem! It's whatever you want to wear, right? Not quite. While you should wear something comfortable, don't get too comfortable, what you wear tells the interviewer you respect and value them and the company. As a rule of thumb, dress slightly nicer than one would usually dress when working in the position.

3. Nix the research
The interview is all about you, right? There's no need to know about the company! Not even close, and not cool. While the interview is about you, it's also about how you fit in the company. Do some research about the company, its products or services, competition, target customers, salary rates, interview process and the company culture (if you can find this information). Before you can convince the interviewer that you are the right person for the company, you have to figure that part out on your own.

4. Arrive fashionably late
You know it takes exactly 23 minutes to get from your house to the company, so why leave any earlier? Follow Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And, even if you're on-time, you're late. Try to arrive at least five to ten minutes before your interview - this tells the employer you are a punctual person and won't be a tardy employee.

5. Wing it
Just like the toast at your brother's wedding, this might not be the best time to just wing it. Even the most solid folks fall victim to butterflies, so you want to be as prepared as possible. Practice interviewing in front of the mirror or with a friend. Review the major points of your resume. Practicing really helps.

6. Don't offer anything extra to the conversation
The interviewer should and will lead the conversation, but that doesn't mean you have to act like a criminal in an interrogation room. When asked a yes-or-no question, open the answer up with an example, but avoid digressing into unrelated topics. Connecting conversation topics logically with examples that demonstrate your understanding of the position helps the interviewer see the entire package you offer.

7. Ditch the thank you note
Why should you send a thank you note? After all, you were the one that went to meet them! They should send you a thank you note. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.
In addition to an E-mail follow-up, send a hand-written thank you note addressed to the person(s) who met with you. Thank them for their time, tie up any loose ends from the interview, and revisit any especially strong points about your qualifications.

http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/11/28/7-ways-to-royally-mess-up-a-job-interview/?ncid=dynalduscare00000003