jayseven

You're not wrong at all. It would serve as a decent foundation to get on with the rest of things. I'm sure you remember me losing a hearing aid or two a few years ago. Typically we can only have one person off at a time but I know I've earned brownie points with work -- plus they're really good at making sure I'm alright in terms of my eyes/ears. I definitely got to do this.

Logically speaking, what do you think? Tunnel vision is a reduction of visual field. Put your hand up to your eye and make an imaginary telescope to look through. That's my eyes permanently. Notice how you don't suddenly need a better prescription, but yet you still actually see less? If my eyes were just that, though, I'd be ok in winter. It's the nightblindness that comes as a consequence of the retina deteriorating which is most depressing. I understand that it's not something that you can describe in words and people 'get' it, and generally speaking I dislike when people say things that they think are helping like "oh lol it is quite dark here I can barely see anything either!" ... because the simple fact is whatever you can see right now is going to be 80% more than what I can see. Anyway I just woke up and maybe I should have a nice day and ignore all this.

It's such a billionnaire playboy thing. So unnecessary. Imagine if someone bought Man U and said "I want to change their name to Manchester Devils" ... as 'logical' as it is, it's just preposterous. I really haven't understood why american or australian teams have opted to sound like competitive cheerleaders. Why do things have to be inanimate objects, or animals? Especially when Comets or Swans or Tigers have nothing to do with the area the team is based, or the players themselves. Might as well do a Prince and be a symbol with people calling you "the team formerly known as Sunderland." I get that we have a few odd team names in our midst *cough* wednesday *cough* but at least there's a logic that lends to an admission of history, right? I mean, how many tigers actually live in Hull?

I wrote a long post, and then deleted it, and now I'll probably write another long post anyway. This week at work was tough as I'd just had a week off, which will be familiar to many people. But the main stress has been from the darkness. Not the band. Some of you know that I have some eye shit. Basically I have tunnel vision, but in reality it means that I can see fuck all in low light. It's a progressive condition that gets worse year-on-year. So basically this time of year is when I really, really notice the difference compared to last year. I was registered blind a few months ago, and I've just adapted my behaviour to my.. illness?... as it's gone on. But every now and then there are little moments that remind me, and during the winter months these moments happen far more often. There are just so many little elements to the stress and sadness, and just so few people who understand or recognise them. From getting up in the dark, to using a bathroom with no light (at work), or turning a corner on a poorly lit street, or not seeing a tripping hazard on the floor at work, or dropping a pen. Those are the 'easy' bits. What about getting on a bus and finding a seat, or walking through a crowd in town, or finding a gift for xmas on a shelf. You're in a coffee shop and you get up to use the toilet or have a smoke and come back and the person you were with changes seats and is somewhere else and you can't see where they are and you just sand there and turn circles and gawp like a fucking freak. Or any pub experience where the chairs are below eye level (of course) so you trip over them, or people are wearing dark clothes (of course) so you bump into them, or the drop in the curb isn't obvious so you falter as you walk, or the light to the bathroom can't be found because the light is off, or a hundred other things exist that everyone else just does and can't see to be a difficulty in life. Oh, and add the fact that you are supposed to wear two hearing aids because you're hard of hearing, and one's totally broken and the other is definitely slightly distorted. Simple answer; get them fixed. Tricky bit; working full time so I can't go in to the hospital. There's a solution that will take 3 months that I can do but that's 3 months without hearing aids in the dark. Add to this the fact I've got a bruised cartlidge in my knee and I have to walk 30 mins to work and I haven't done all my christmas shopping and I need to find a place to live and I need to sort out a million and one things... Fuck, man. I really hate winter.

It's independant. The idea is that MPs haven't had a pay rise in years, and that this increase is actually the lowest figure that ISPA suggested. The supposed reasoning is that a) they want the salary to attract 'average' people into representing their locality. The problem with this is that most people still have a, perhaps overly idealistic, hope that people go into politics for moral reasons and attracting people by offering more pound signs is the wrong way to go about it. b) the increase in salary is coming with a shake-up to the whole benefits package; a curb on what can be claimed as expenses as well as a change to how their pensions work. Again, the problem is that the public perception is that MPs can claim far too much as expenses as it is. Their lunch money will be reduced to a mere £15... which is more than two hours of pay for most people. Considering MPs are currently being paid about triple the average wage currently, and other public servants are being capped at 1% pay rises, it's easy to see that most people aren't chuffed. Long paragraph aside, the bottom line is that no matter how their benefits are being restructured it appears it will cost nearly £5m to pay for this rise in salary. The pay cut to bin men in my local authority area allegedly saves £32m a year, so in a way it's not draining the bank upping MP's pay... but it's the principle, really!

This has been in the works for ages. I'm pretty sure I brought it up months ago when there was a binmen's strike. They were getting their salaries cut by something atrocious like 12% and having their working hours cut back, all the while the MPs were already planning this pay rise. It's just wrong. Pure and simple.

I think the point is, as Agent Gibbs said, that you should be covered under warranty anyway, but if you are wanting an immediate console swap then the manufacturer has no obligation to respect this request, however clearly the work-around is the promise of a refundable deposit. Point is you get that deposit back once the manufacturer can confirm the console is faulty and not a con. Personally I'd rather just wait

To our favourite admin, my ol' chum; Happy birthday Shorty! Here's to a guy who invests a lot of time into the site behind the scenes with very little recognition. Audio [/homo]

Personally I feel sorry for the dude he's dating. Daley's stated "at the moment I'm dating him," which doesn't sound like he has high hopes for it lasting!

Month finished. My first non-training month and I had the most output, made the most money, trained the new guy, was supervisor for a few days, and now I have the first week of december off so I can CHIIILLLL! Was hoping for a massive lie-in after the pay-day pub trip last night, but my landlord is begrudgingly asking me for rent early as they need to pay for an MOT, so I'm up earlier than intended. This means I'll sort out my rubbish and recycling, get cash out, get a load of washing on, get the paper (for the crossword) and be back here by 10:30, ready for a day of Red Dead... and, most likely, a pizza shall be ordered for tea! My week ahead = sort my rooms out, do my washing backlog, go to london for a gig with my lady... and just enjoy sleep. Mmmm! Oh! And christmas shopping, of course.

@Eenuh keep telling them that you're too busy. If someone else can do it because they know that they can bung it onto your work queue then you can do it too. If it's mis-management then keep bringing it up and your team leader will have a duty to chase it up and sort it out. Hope work doesn't get too unbearable though @Animal you are overthinking it :P a pound here and there can simply mean a mistake or two. Nothing major. Maybe the till wasn't set up with the right change in the first place! Plenty of legislation in place to protect you from being fired by a suspicion of theft, especially for such a minimal amount.

@Eenuh they can't fire you if you say that you feel there is too much work. Do you have a line manager or someone in HR you can sit down with for a brief meeting? If I was your employer and I was risking losing a talented member of staff who was able to deal with a lot of stuff that my other workforce can't hire, I'd make sure I wasn't pushing them out the door by overworking them. It may be that they simply don't realise they're asking too much of you. If you're excelling at your job currently then the natural assumption for them is to think that your current workload is too easy. Ultimately, though, your employers or your manager or whoever sheds the work your way is simply not thinking about you. They aren't worrying about how they'll impact upon your working life. You have to play the politics a bit - if you can surmise to them that doing x y and z takes a certain amount of time per day to do to a certain level of quality, then you can show that introducing another task will detriment things all-round. Essentially the number one rule in the workplace (in my limited experience) is simply; if you don't ask, you don't get. I've got colleagues who have a small list of qualms of over-work/under-pay, but the fact is they never mention it to our supervisors. I went to my boss and highlighted an area of my working day where I'm being unproductive due to this and that, and they've altered things. Ultimately my job is about output and results, and as a consequence if I can structure an argument that proves I can be a more productive employee if things changed... well, they'll change! Of course I've had ideas shot down as well, but I really do feel that I've done myself a world of good by bringing my displeasure to the attention of my superiors. tl;dr your bosses may not know what a burden the extra work is, and may be willing to compromise. Your working life is a huge chunk of your day, don't let it eat into the rest of your life (and @Frank I know what you mean - there are whirlpools out there that do nothing but drain you of your attention)

@Jon I do agree with you to a large extent. That kind of scenario reeks of ignorance on behalf of teh parents. If a parent has played through a game, understands what they'd be exposing to their kid, and feels they've brought their kid up with a mature outlook/respect for the content in question then sure, buy the game for the kid... but if the kid's just saying "i want this!" thten you're not going to presume such a background exists. An automatic solution would be to treat it like alcohol, however I do believe alcohol is way worse for minors than some brain trauma in the form of shocking scenes (though society could be worse if general standards lower, etc). I genuinely think the solution would be fairly easy. First off -- the sales person says "are you buying this game for yourself or for others?" then if they say others; "please be aware that this game contains heavy/light/frequent emphasis on sex/drugs/crime/killing, and is rated [whatever]"... Of course a) if this happened then the sales person would probably skip it or b) the parent would just answer whatever, or c) people would quickly learn to just answer "IT'S FOR ME" rather than go through the questions again... in which case I guess the REAL answer would be a massive marketing campaign in the vein of "you wouldn't steal a car..." only "you wouldn't let you child watch THIS..." or whatever. Interesting topic, though. I was always brought up allowed to watch 'older' films once my parents had seen it and decided whether it was a sensible idea or not. @tapedeck ... that's... a joke, right?

Deleting for spam might be a generic/default setting? I dunno anything about this modding business. :P But srsly - the whole TV! TV! TV!! side of xbone is totally unexplained, I feel. For our EU market, anyway. But then I've not actually, like, looked at any info or anything. Fuck paying full whack for a console.

@ReZourceman I TOTALLY feel for you re: proof of id/account/address. Fact is it's for THEIR protection that such measures are in place, otherwise pretty much anyone could withdraw her funds!

My girlfriend has been a volunteer teaching assistant for aaaages. A paid version of said job appeared at her school and she was overlooked. She's applied for various other TA jobs and just had no luck. She's great with the kids but just isn't an interview person, and it's just so harsh. OAP women are getting the job over here, and they have no real understanding of how to properly assist kids with autism or dyspraxia or dyslexia. It's so hard to apply for a job you know you can do, when the employer has opinions of secondary applicant preferences that aren't made apparant at the advertising stage. Ultimately she needs someone to give her a chance - something all jobhunters emphasise with, I'm sure. I was personally pretty strong with rejection and ultimately lucked out, but rejection can be really hard and actually detrimental for some people going into future interviews. Bleh.

In my job I read a lot of mortgage applications and statements and all sorts of malarky. I've seen mortgages from the 80s where they were paying £6 a month, including house insurance and PPI. Sick. It was up north, of course!

@Eenuh your store only has the latter 5 on it. I would like to buy all 12!

With meat I go by smell/colour. With fruit and veg it's about texture and... honestly... appearance of mould. With Eggs... eggs are good to go for a long time! A common mistake people make is storing many sorts of fruit and veg in the fridge rather than a dry cupboard. It's moisture that damages stock rather than temperature, and many fridges accumulate a lot of condensation. Anything I buy that isn't sold in a fridge won'd be stored in a fridge. But then again, I don't care for a cold cider, so what do I know?

Rummy hits it. Basically I'm looking at paying £800 a month for a decent 1-bed property. For sure, houseshares bring this down - you can look at around £500 a month if you share a 3-bed. 2 bedroom properties are £1,100 for shit and £1,250 for something decent... mortgages are definitely a lot cheaper, with many people I know paying £600ish a month for what would be a £900 rental. Of course saving up the deposit for such a mortgage takes time, but there are so many other factors in staying where I am that make me really, really consider paying double the amount for full freedom. There are a lot of other options, if I look at more distance. A matter of looking at 10 miles away I can get a 2 bed house for the same price (if not cheaper), but I'd be sacrificing social life massively. Personally I have to factor in my eyesight issues, especially with travelling in the dark - I am entitled to (but yet to claim) on a few benefits that will help with this -- a reduced tax rate and a free bus pass, for example... But it's still fascinating to see what people in other parts of the country would consider to be acceptable.

I'm sure I saw an article that said that people are spending 60% of their income on rent in some parts of the uk (London and the south east). Currently I'm spending just under a third of my income on rent, but the sort of 1-bed properties I've been looking at will be about 66% of my income (after projected bills)... Now, typically most people I know house/flatshare down here in Brighton. 'Professional Couples' can, of course, afford to split rent. I could instead go for a studio flat rather than a 1-bed flat, which would be less than 50% of my income and perhaps allow me to save up for a theoretical mortgage one day... but the difference between the two price brackets is insane. I am literally getting depressed just looking at the pictures of the cheaper places... So yeah - what percentage of your income goes on rent?

I've read the post back and I do agree with you jamba - it's more argumentative than constructive, and it really makes no actual points. I have no idea what I was trying to say. I woke up this morning thinking "... oh no did I drunk post on NE again?" and... yeah. I'mma go back to lurking and refrain from posting after 11pm, especially when I'm drunk!

I don't think women hide their breasts because they are ashamed of them. There is such a thing as modesty. Covering up lad's mags and removing page 3 are supposed to be motions towards braking down the objectification of women. Personally I think the magazines women buy are worse than the lads mags as they're always full of "how to lose weight quick" type stories. But Grazza I do think you're kind of clutching at straws. Each of your 'examples' can be explained by their individual, independant circumstances and it's not accurate to see them all as signs of the same prudish apocalypse.

The problem is that, basically, no individual has ownership of "our" culture. Culture isn't defined by people, but people are defined by culture. Accept that you're used to things being a certain way, and realise that they things you're used to aren't right, just the way you are used to them being in your blink of a life so far. Get over the fact that other people are different and pay less attention to scandelous news that holds no actual relation to your life at all and just let it go! There is really no need to instill legislation saying "one should be able to see the road whilst driving". Making it illegal won't stop idiots from doing stupid shit. The only reason to make something illegal is so that one day such people can be prosecuted for their stupidity. They already can be prosecuted for killing someone due to wearing stupid clothes. Nanny-state saying they can't wear religious clothing is another ignorance-led statement. Who here has worn one? How restrictive is the vision exactly? Right, bingo. You don't know. Extrapolating from bullshit. Right then! I mean seriously. If it's so vision-reducing, how are they not slaying 21 people each time the hit the ring road? It's really not as mental as people are making out. As italian Bart Simpson would say; eat my socks. Or something. I'm not even sure why I'm annoyed! There's just a whiff of generalisation and BAM here I am. Fuck that post, it's shit.

This broadcasting stuff -- it's fairly clear that BT are trying to bite into the pub/sports bar business that sky has a monopoly on. If they can get chains to subscribe to them then it provides a source of revenue. Nobody is going to subscribe to BT JUST for champs football, are they? I think it's excellent, in the long run, to have other services challenge sky in the pubs.