owlface

I've just been watching tonights news, and one of the stories covered was that of a group of university graduates demonstrating in Leeds against the lack of jobs for young people. They were handing out leaflets and chanting 'what do we want ... decent jobs ... when do we want them ... NOW' and also giving interviews to the press complaining that their lack of experience is stopping then gaining well paid work. Whilst sympathising with the youth of today with their increasingly difficult search for employment, I hardly find this group of youngsters views and attitudes moving me towards anything other than apathy and almost disgust that they might think they deserve the right to anything other than a salary of at least 18k per year, bearing in mind their acute lack of both life and work experience. Here's a great idea for this bunch. Get down from your high horse and work your way up to the salary you feel you so richly deserve. The days when a degree in some utterly useless subject got you a graduates position in a large multinational company are long gone, so as the old saying goes ... wake up and smell the coffee.

Don't blame the dogs, they don't have anything to do with it

Surely the rudeness is on the part of the unsolicited caller? They call to try and sell you something you didn't ask for, probably already have and usually at inconvenient times such as tea time or after 6pm. Therefore these people deserve to be treated with the contempt that almost all of the posters in this thread have shown. Personally I like to launch into a tirade of four letter word insults screamed at the callers ... This usually gets you flagged on their system as being un co-operative/rude/agressive etc. and results in no further calls from the said salesperson.

Maybe if anyone that wants a kid should be screened first.... IQ tested and provided they could pass a reasonably simple test then compulsory parenting classes would then be provided. If anyone repeatedly fails the tests then ship them off to a deserted island where they could produce little subhuman brats to their hearts content.

OK so we the public were not privvy to all the evidence presented to the jury in court. BUT what's the betting that Gerrards mates took the fall for him by pleading guilty and contriving false evidence to keep the golden boy looking a lot cleaner than he actually was/is in the eyes of the jury? I'd like to bet that in a certain corner of Liverpools affluent suburbs there will be one hell of a party going on this weekend.

Bet he stood out in it down the pub being the only bloke with a pair of .......

I once worked with a colleague that used to sit at home in the evenings and weekends watching his vast collection of Star Trek DVD's whilst wearing a replica Trekkie sweater. Need I ask how sad on a scale of 1 -10 that is?

My ex-wife only ever had one annoying habit ........ Breathing

Thanks all. Meaks ... the Commercial was at the junction of weedon street and Sheffield road next to the old tram sheds (tile depot now). Best pint of Wards in Sheffield there when Reg had it. As for the Salutation inn, it was renamed in the early 80's as 'Lydias' and was a pub of ill repute (or so I've heard) and was finally demolished in the later 80's. Thanks all for the interest and the replies.

I'm currently trying to get together a collection of pictures of current and bygone pubs in the Attercliffe area but have had a great deal of difficulty in locating a couple, namely the Carlton Inn and the Broughton Inn. If anyone can help I'd be most grateful.

Who needs 'em? You'd have to have a seriously sad existance to have to chemically enhance it. Me? A few pints down the pub with friends is all I need.

Sorry but doesn't the sale of goods act state that the goods must be as described and fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality? i.e. A sofabed is both a sofa and a bed and must be suitable for both purposes regardless of whether or not it is considered to be occasional furniture. Check out the following and it may give you a little more ammunition to fire at their customer services dept. http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/consumers/fact-sheets/page38311.html

I've got the Thomson one with the card slot for use with Setanta sports or top up tv as well as all the freeview channels. They can now be bought for about £80 and have a 160gb drive that stores around 40 hours of recorded material. I've had it about 15 months and so far no bad experiences. Picture quality is fine for both live and recorded media. Any HD freeview pvr's only upscale a normal picture as there are no HD freeview channels yet. This means that a normal resolution picture is upscaled to usually 720p but given the quality of a lot of these channels in the first place doesn't offer any significant gain in quality.

Who on earth would want to confront their mother in law with her looking like Telly Savalas?

as much as i might sympathise with your plight, what's it got to do with this thread?

Big problem here. All the Sheffield colleges offer are GCSE's and A levels or basic skills courses. I'm looking to gain the Microsoft MCSA/MCSE qualifications, but this seems to only be on offer by the host of distance learning establishments that require a 'financial commitment'. It's laughable that I have several years industry experience in IT but due to my lack of formal qualifications cannot get a job in this sector. It's also laughable that the govt. moan that we don't have enough skilled and qualiied people in this field yet will not commit to training willing and able individuals.

Try McDonalds drive through

Many thanks for this info, I'll look into this amidst the job hunting

Shame a lot of the long term unemployed seem to spend most of their time ironically in the working men's club as opposed to the jobclub then.

The comfort ads, the ones that are supposed to smell like white diamond and lotus flower?? Someone should tell the idiots that a flaming diamond has no natural odour!

A half decent job?

OK, before anyone comments, yes this topic has more than likely been brought up before, but after visiting the jokeclub... sorry, jobclub, I just had to ask if anyone has anything to add.... I was made redundant four weeks ago and now find myself for the first time in over 23 years in need of government financial assistance. I had my initial interrogation over the phone and a further one at the jobclub a couple of days later. Not such a bad experience and at least the woman that carried out the interview seemed sympathetic and helpful, pointing out that on my first instance of signing on they would approach me with some 'appropriate' lines of employment and offers of assistance. Well, I turned up to sign on for the first time and was ushered over to a sour faced woman who's air of complete indifference couldn't have been more blatant.... (computer says noooo ring any bells?) After signing on and being grilled about my (unceasing) job hunting efforts, she proceeded to show me a couple of totally unsuitable jobs, told me I'd have to accept something they offered soon and when I asked about any training options was told bluntly that it was only offered to the long term unemployed. I unwisely entered into a debate about these issues with her and was soon aware that I might as well have been banging my head against a wall. Cue my leaving with absolutely no job leads or any offers of assistance. The thing that really has got my back up with this all this is the training issue. Why in gods name do they only offer it to someone who's been signing on for six months or more?? In my experience, the majority of the long term unemployed are the ones that DON'T want a job or any form of training. Surely the objective is to get people back into work? Government officials constantly bleat about a lack of qualified labour available in a variety of industries, well if that's the case then train people that want these jobs to do these jobs and get them filled! Well, that's about the size of it. Just can't wait for the fortnight to end so that I can have another wonderful experience at the hands of these people.

I've already saved up a couple of weeks worth of junk mail with the aforementioned prepaid envelopes .. so now it's just a case of shuffling all the forms and pamphlets and sticking them in at random and posting them off .. oh joy!

I recently received an email that contained the following ..... (1) The three little words: 'Hold On, Please...' Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt. Then when you eventually hear BT's 'beep-beep-beep' tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset .... You have efficiently completed your task. These three little words could help eliminate telephone soliciting. (2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end? This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone. This technique is then used to determine the best time of day for a 'real' salesperson to call back and get someone at home. What you can do after answering: If you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialled the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!! 3: When you get those 'pre-approved' letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope. Most of these come with postage-prepaid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular postage 'IF' and when they are returned. It costs them nothing if you throw them away! In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-prepaid return envelopes. Send an advert for your local chimney sweeper to American Express ... They might need one! Send a pizza coupon to HSBC ... In case their canteen packs up. You get the idea. If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them back their blank application form ... After all, it is their form! If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you return. You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them, and it is their envelope after all ... You are just returning it!!!! The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the post, but folks ..... We need to OVERWHELM them, in order to stop them. Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, And best of all they're paying for it ... Twice! Let's help keep Royal Mail busy. Since the Royal Mail are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, let's help them so they will not need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea! If enough people follow these tips, it will work ---- maybe you'll get very little junk mail anymore.

*UPDATE* Finally got through and went through the usual options of button pressing for various options .. finally got "please wait while we transfer you to a member of staff" .. eventually got the whining bint going on about currently experiencing high call volumes again .. AAAARGHHHHH!!!!