Saddo that I am I confess to liking & understanding this sort of stuff & actually use trigonometry a bit as it's useful when messing about with roof heights & angles etc. SOHCAHTOA is your friend for that. Calculus tends to lose one a lot of friends if one tries to explain it mind you so it's a good job I've forgotten most of it ;-)
A bit like pub chat really, Barbara - half of mild for me too, please Dave - oh, make it a pint ! Round my way we'd call a half a "glass" or a "gill", I remember.
A few more biographical pictures from the females would be wonderful.
I can tell that the boys are having fun.
Is it called making friends....with your distant cousins?
This piece came from a book I'd written which had been looked at by a lawyer, so there lots of detail missing, the stockbroker in question was not just a senior partner but in one of the most prestigious city firms and on north of 10 million a year income, he just stole the money didn't need it but why not, the talks were done at arms length so the Firm could not be seen to be negotiating with crooks the money had been washed, so the guy bought himself a huge house. Believe me I've got loads of stories about those days -they say that the city delivers about 9% of the UK GDP so their left to leech of the rest of us, robber barons i think is the term or just crooks
Hi John,
my Grandad started at Leyland Motors (in Leyland) at the age of 14, as a tea-lad. He finished at 65 as Export Director for buses, notably the Tigers (he's the one who sold them to Cuba ; they're still running...). He also sold some to South Africa (this at the time that both countries were, ahem, infra dig-like) so we had the great privilege of two Xmas hampers in the two-up two-down, one from Fidel and one from the Boers!
And my dad worked at what we called "Dick, Kerrs" which had become English Electric by then, that's where the Deltics were built.
Both instances impossible nowadays...
Total coincidence of course!
I never got to grips with a hippopotamus having anything do with maths, but then beyond numbers I have never seen the point of most other mathematics anyway.
David, probably something to do with the dreaded 'Huming Rights'?
They are mainly lost now, UK manufacturing is very much damaged by the various shades of Gov who thought that the UK could become a largely service industry. When we allowed our car industry to disappear and all of the support companies which they relied on to go as well the knock on effect for anyone trying to bring out new product became much harder -injection molding toolmakers went out of business so if I needed a plastic object for a new product I had to go overseas, The city of London never liked manufacturing, too long term too risky far too likely to be run (at least in the early stages) by engineers/designers who of course could not be relied on. I have a story to illustrate this distrust involving a company who were seeking Venture Capital
I d been asked, being regarded as a technical guru at that time (that lasted all of 6 months) to write a report on their product by our stock brokers, who were going being asked to invest £3.5 million in their company,) and gave my opinion that the product was very good and could make healthy profits.
The investment was duly made, with I should add, the normal draconian venture capital conditions in favour of the investors, but even so I expected to see their names in lights shortly.
About 6 months later the stock brokers phoned me and asked if I heard from the lads from Wales only they seem to be gone off somewhere! I hadn't so that was that. I discovered later that the moment the £3.5 million was in the bank they had simple withdrawn or transferred it all and had, leaving their wives and girlfriends, disappeared completely. No trace of these guys was ever found in spite of the investors and the serious fraud squad’s best efforts.
They had obviously planned this for months before.
8 years later I was at the Milan Trade Fair when I saw walking down the aisle in front of me was one of our “welsh villains” I stopped him and we had a drink and he told me his story.
Apparently during their negotiations with the City, they had all become increasingly aware that the deal was so loaded in the investors favour that their chances of making any money from the product or keeping control of their company was, extremely limited. This is in fact perfectly normal city practice but they didn't know that so took great umbrage after uncovering it.
I said “but you would have made a very good living from their business, good salaries, service contracts, conditions” etc.
Then the guy turned and said to me “but I’m having a very good life now thank you very much, I've got a great villa and I sail, life is very good to me and I didn't have to work myself to death to get it all and what about you are you rich yet? No you’re not! You stayed with it all and where has it got you”
I was still openly critical of him- said “but its stolen money your all living on”...... to which he replied “no it bloody isn't, we paid off most of that £3.5m back 6 months ago”.
Apparently they’d all bought some Bulgarian properties which had over the 8 years made them some huge profits and they had then entered into secret talks directly with the stock brokers and paid them back at something like .85p in the pound i.e. £3m after which the now dormant manhunt was officially called off allowing them to return, in one case to see the family and elderly parents left behind.
The tail end to this sorry tale is that the stock broker who did the original investment also did the secret negotiations and a couple of months later when I saw him next in the UK, and without mentioning that I’d met any of them, asked about it all.
I was told “well yes we did get back some full and final monies but only about £1million”! The man telling me this, now a senior partner in the firm and therefore completely untouchable, was sitting in front of me, in the swimming pool suite at his recently acquired palace in Hertfordshire worth £2 plus million. It might have been just coincidence of course.
Hi Julian, sounds just the like to sort of thing a dumb twit like me needed to get ahead in life?
Hang on maybe it did ? If I was 10 dumb (10db) then I would need to be 100 dumb now - which sounds about right - I think?
May the power be with you?
Thank you for your consideration on the 'square root' interpretation. I did think of a couple myself (think about it :-)
I remember this! Danny Kaye sang it in a film?
"The sum of the square of a right triange is equal to the sum of the squares of the two adjacent sides" Didn't understand it then either!
I am not at all against some sort of military or optional non military service. I didn't do national service or short service but was in the reserves (RNR) and benefited enormously from it. Most people I know who were in the services have done very well in other spheres, whether they were very clever academically or not. Many academics are not very ambitious in the sense of the commercial world. I accept that a lot of people would prefer non military service and I just can't understand why the taxpayer shelves out billions to people to sit on their botties and watch TV and at the same time pay contractors billions to maintain town and cities. Just look at how filthy many cities are in the UK, and how liter strewn the sides of motorways and trunk roads. Why can't hospital cleaning and grounds maintenance be done by these people. It needn't be a long term job. I did car washing, gardening, wall washing etc when I was a student to help pay my way through. Why allow unfettered long term immigration into the UK to do many of these menial jobs when there are already hundreds of thousands capable of doing the work in the UK and getting paid for nothing? Rant over!
Vic,
I love this and makes me feel so good about not having parents to push me in any direction other that 'make some money' which was pretty basic, but even more so about not inflicting anything on my progeny - as I never had any of those either!
So I was free to also be a poor employee, but a reasonable employer of myself (not sure about anyone else as I never directly employed anyone else either!)
Oddly though my sheer lack of education and my (false?) perception of how important that was, became a driving force in my life, but very disorganised.
Strange how we adapt when we have a 'choice of one' isn't it?
Out here in the Wild South-East I encountered two main types of French colleagues ; the wheeler-dealers, and the hail-fellow-well-mets. The first lot chase the illusions ; the second lot ride the rooster (I decided to use that word to avoid possible misinterpretations :p).
I once heard a German biker say that "happy like God in France" adage, after a hearty meal in our restaurant in Sisteron, as he pulled back his chair to digest! Excellent customers, those bikers :)
David, I am no expert in the field of education, having had almost zero, but I do believe that setting 'targets' is one of the worst ways of going about achieving it.
From my dumb point of view I wanted an education as I thought it would teach me how to learn. How to organise my brain - a problem I still have. What should I read and for what benefit, how should I think a problem through, or even a situation?
What things go into a rounded life? Books, Music, Sport, children, family? How to make a judgement call as an individual and stand or fall on the decisions made?
I never had a father or even a father figure, so maybe these things are covered in usual family groups, as it was I had to find out by myself - which is fair enough, but takes a lot longer and as I mentioned before leaves lots of gaps - maybe some which are more important?
From what I read and hear whatever education systems are currently in place are not working for a whole host of young people and not just thick dummies like me, but those with brains and aptitudes. Brighter minds should be addressing this.
I agree that the old Apprentice system was a good one (ultimately) for those who went through it, but I don't think it would have suited me and seven years seems an awful long time when one is fifteen years old.
Of course National Service was still in place when I left school, although it stopped just before I was due to go in. Most who did that also seemed to come out quite well, having learned a skill, so maybe we should look back at what that used to achieve in just a couple of years?
I took that for granted.....and my Oxford Dictionary says that a hypotenuse only exists in a right angled triangle anyway- is that right? I'm not sure...
You're right Dave- as I said I am slowly losing it!!! Just making sure everybody is awake! Wake up Jones minor!
You've missed the most important bit David. In a right-angled triangle....the square of the hypotenuse
David, sorry to be a picky person, but it is the square of the hypotenuse not the "square root". Pythagoras himself told me! :-)
Richard Of York Gave battle in Vain. I can sing a rainbow!!
Interesting Peter - but doesn't this smack of busy doing nothing? I mean what actually happens to these 'rdvs' ? Do they create jobs? I know my wife went to 'counselling' before she retired and got lots of repeat pieces of a paper to fill out every week, but never a sniff of a real job, although there did seem to be a few 'staple ones' that we found out over a couple of years that everyone we met had also gone through due process with what we believe was a non-existent business.
The Civil Service at all levels has never had a problem in ''looking busy' but being 'productive" is surely something else? As I understand it Pole Emploi is there to help get people suited and fitted into jobs - am I correct or just misinformed? If jobs are simply not available or non-existent what does Pole Emploi do to alleviate the situation? Just keep employing their own people to at least keep their unemployment figures down?
How do they reach 'targets'? This sounds truly bizarre. Targets of finding jobs or filling out forms?