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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted -  11/01/2009  :  06:04
New Year, new topic. If you want to see the old one do a forum search for same title but 2008.


Stanley Challenger Graham




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stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk
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frankwilk
Senior Member


3975 Posts
Posted - 16/02/2009 : 08:00
The new series on the BBC " The Victorians "  looks like it may be good, well presented by Paxman.



Frank Wilkinson       Once Navy Always Navy Go to Top of Page
frankwilk
Senior Member


3975 Posts
Posted - 16/02/2009 : 09:02
Just watched Jaqui Smith on Breakfast, she defends the money she has received for the second home as it's "Within the Rules".  I may have missed something here but should the Home Secretary not  have some morals ????  She does not have a second home in London it belongs to her  sister. I wonder if the Tax Man  has investigated her sisters income related to running a B & B !!!!. What the Home Secretary has handed over  £118,000 should be taxable as it is income, not for her, but for her sister.



Frank Wilkinson       Once Navy Always Navy Go to Top of Page
Bradders
Senior Member


1880 Posts
Posted - 16/02/2009 : 10:19
I wonder if she did ACTUALLY or NOTIONALLY "hand it over"

Oh hush my mouth! 


BRADDERS BLUESINGER Go to Top of Page
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 16/02/2009 : 13:21
I watched last half of Paxo. Good stuff but makes you realise how little people know about how the world works. I like the old Scotsman with the painting. Thing that struck me was that as far as I could see there were no women mourners.....


Stanley Challenger Graham




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stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk Go to Top of Page
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 16/02/2009 : 13:24
http://songsofpraise.org/imagestock/songsofpraise_art37_large.jpg

Had a look at this, no women.....


Stanley Challenger Graham




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frankwilk
Senior Member


3975 Posts
Posted - 16/02/2009 : 15:32
I watched it with Val and when the funeral scene was on, Val said could be Wales no women at the funeral. It would appear that in Wales women never went to the funeral only recently have they gone up to the cemetery.



Frank Wilkinson       Once Navy Always Navy Go to Top of Page
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 18/02/2009 : 05:25
Very strange isn't it, especially at the funeral of a child....

I was off-line yesterday and was forced to shout at the wireless instead of venting my anger on this topic. Two silly economists, both well-respected, descending inbto name-calling because they couldn't decide which was worse, inflation or deflation. I have news for them, we lived through 25% inflation in the seventies, it was hard but we managed. Deflation is a different kettle of fish, look at the inter-war years. 

Wonderful interview on the world service with a Russian general who served in Afghanistan. He talked about the 14,000 soldiers who died and said that he couldn't understand why the West wasn't taking that lesson on board. Quite....

GM are losing 14 plants and 50,000 workers world-wide and say that the total bail-out will have to be £30billion.  A long time since 'What's good for GM is good for America'. Mind you it may still be true. Perhaps America needs to cut back....

On minor subjects, I got the results of my retinoscopy and my eyes are fine. At midnight on 13th February I cast off another shackle. My driving licence expired, I am no longer a licenced driver. Yippee!


Stanley Challenger Graham




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stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk Go to Top of Page
Another
Traycle Mine Overseer


6250 Posts
Posted - 18/02/2009 : 07:50
My retinoscopy is tommorrow. I'm sure that will be fine but I have an opticians appointment soon and I suspect there will be some deterioration. I'm probably worrying about now't and it'll just mean a small fortune on updated bi-focals. Nolic


" I'm a self made man who worships his creator" Go to Top of Page
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 18/02/2009 : 09:14
My eyesight changes with every test, sometimes up and sometimes down. One thing I have learned Comrade is to have a prescription made up for a pair of glasses specially for the computer. Get someone to measure the distance of your eyes from the screen and get the glasses made for that. Useful for reading as well and far better than bifocals for these jobs. My eyes had altered a bit last March but I didn't bother to get new varilux, the old ones are still perfectly adequate. We'll see what they say this march.


Stanley Challenger Graham




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stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk Go to Top of Page
Bruff
Regular Member


479 Posts
Posted - 18/02/2009 : 10:37
Responding to comments on the bankers first.

 
I don't think it that unusual for senior management in an organisation to have no 'qualifications' relevant to that industry.  Some do - I think the chap at Rolls Royce (Rose?) started as an apprentice in Derby and I'm sure that some of the heads of the big chemical corporations are chemists.  But for example, Sir John Harvey Jones was a submariner without a qualification to his name yet he headed ICI for years.  And Richard Branson knew very little about planes and trains from a technical point of view

 
I'm not convinced you need a person with a qualification in banking to run a bank and a qualification in say chemistry to run Glaxo.  Indeed you could argue that such specialists are better left to make their careers and have the opportunity to do so, as specialist bankers or chemists.  Organisations are littered with excellent specialists whose only route up the organisation is to forego the specialist skills that marked them out and move into 'management' where often they are found wanting.

 
Wondering how on earth the head of a bank can be such without a banking qualification rather misses the point, and lets them off the hook.  Heads of corporations should set the strategic direction of the outfit and ensure it meets all it's obligations.  To do this they need the best advice and the skills to question that advice.  These are generalist skills.

 
There are systemic failures at work here.

 
Very good article in The Guardian yesterday by Polly Toynbee on the girl's pregnancy and the 13-year old dad that hit the news recently.  Lots of good points.  One thing she made clear was that teenage pregnancies in the UK were genrally falling.  To understand this, you don't look at the numbers you look at the rates.  This is because the number of teenagers is rising and so of course there will be 'more' unless you look at rates (in the same way that crime numbers would go up in Barlick overnight if it's population doubled, but the rate might actually be the same, or lower, or higher of course).  Course, the media don't report it as such.

 
She also noted the teaching of sex education in this country and its focus on the mechanics of the act etc.  I tend to agree that this approach encourages experimentation but hey, kids will experiment anyway.  Contrast with say the Netherlands (lowest teen preganancy rate in Europe) where the focus is on respect for your own and each others bodies and self, and the consequences of doing 'what comes naturally.  Course kids will do what comes naturally, but put the focus on respect and consequence.  And in the Netherlands they start this teaching this at five years old.

 
That's right, at five.  Can you imagine anyone suggesting that here?  Folk foam at the mouth when it is suggested that young girls be immunised to protect against cervical cancer, preferring presumably their early death above any linking of said immunisation to a more frank sex education agenda.

 
Richard Broughton



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Tizer
VIP Member


5150 Posts
Posted - 18/02/2009 : 12:28
Richard, I know what you are getting at and I agree that the focus on so-called "banking qualifications" is off the mark. But the top men in the banking companies should at least understand the current banking business. The top man at Glaxo neeed not be a Nobel prize winning chemist but he needs to fully understand the business of developing and selling pharmaceutical drugs. The bankers we are talking about didn't even understand the transactions that their staff were carrying out and which got them into such difficulties. Unwise lending was the start of it all but the selling on of loans got into areas they didn't understand.

Also, in Harvey-Jones's time big companies had layers of management through which everything got filtered and there were experts at all levels. Now big companies have the top management and not much between them and the folk at the coal face. For instance, I have a friend who has been working in a major food company as a director. When they had food safety issues he had to go into the factory himself and do tests to find out what was wrong. There was no-one else in the company could do it. A big confectionery company got itself into serious trouble recently with salmonella in its product. It relied on outsiders to tell it what to do and they gave the wrong advice.


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frankwilk
Senior Member


3975 Posts
Posted - 18/02/2009 : 20:20
The Consultant at the Hospital, Well it is probably nothing to worry about, then came the But. Can you hang on for an hour so we can get someone from the lab to collect a sample from your lymph node. Well fine needle aspirations in your neck are no fun. So we wait a couple of weeks to see, hope this is not my breathing in of coal dust, asbestos and  oil vapours etc finally coming to catch up on me. I don't think it's anything to worry about as well but, Stanley I need encouragement lol



Frank Wilkinson       Once Navy Always Navy Go to Top of Page
HerbSG
Senior Member


1185 Posts
Posted - 18/02/2009 : 20:40
Frank I think the waiting is the hardest, a friend of mine had tests done, the doctor called him said "you have cancer, I'll be away for a few days come and see me next week" my friend could not sleep for 4 days.  Positive thinking and the way you feel are the answer, good lucl!


HERB


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Tizer
VIP Member


5150 Posts
Posted - 19/02/2009 : 11:38
Frank, in this sort of situation the more you think about it, the more you'll worry about it. And there's nothing you can do to influence the outcome of the test. Worry does no good - as Herb says, think positive and get on with life.


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frankwilk
Senior Member


3975 Posts
Posted - 19/02/2009 : 13:23
I will get on with my life, no fear of that.
 I know worrying about these things can't make it better. It just means focusing on the good things. Off to take the Grandaughter swimming right now, hope I don't drown lol



Frank Wilkinson       Once Navy Always Navy Go to Top of Page
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