Warm, wet and wibbly at the Castle this morn, I carried out
yet more vandalism on the mock orange yestermorn with my giant “pruners”-it’s
still there.
The Fallic Glu has returned with a vengeance-I
have this urge to change my francs for Euros.
And after a trip to Tesco for stale bread, gruel and his Maj’s
food I am going back to the four poster.
The loony Left had reached rock bottom, there are so-called
socialists in London who are now taking active steps to scupper young people’s
chances of finding employment.
They are told they can’t get a job unless they have some work experience;
and they can’t get any work experience unless someone is willing to give them a
job. “The Coalition has come up with a scheme to help them into places of work, and to give them at least some of the confidence and the credentials they crave. Instead of just drawing benefits and sitting at home, waiting for their luck to change, they are given the option – the option – of getting some practical understanding of what it is like to be an employee. Since January last year about 34,000 people aged 16-24 have been given their Jobseeker’s Allowance and travel costs while doing work experience in a huge range of businesses. They are not forced to do it, and they can pull out of it within a week if they don’t like it – with no loss of benefits.”
Sounds good Boris.
McDonald's has pocketed £10million of public money for an apprenticeship
scheme ...but has not created a single new job with it.
Instead, the multi-national fast-food giant has spent the
whole sum on “career progression” for 18,000 existing staff.
A Sunday Mirror investigation has found that among nine
other major firms which take the most money from the scheme, £20million has
been spent to create just 2,559 new jobs.
With unemployment hitting 2.67million PM David Cameron has
pushed apprenticeships as a way to get young people back into work. In July he
revamped the Skills Funding Agency to work directly with employers and recently
said: “Apprenticeships are at the heart of the kind of economy we want to
build: one where many more young people have the chance to learn a proper
trade.”
Taxpayers have so far paid out £30,934,034 to create jobs
which cost £12,088 each. But anyone on an apprentice’s minimum wage takes home
just £5,200 a year
A McDonald’s spokesman said: “Our apprenticeships’ scheme is
about supporting and enabling career progression, not job creation. Since we
started our apprenticeships programme, 11,000 employees have completed it and
a further 7,000 employees are currently studying towards the qualification.
“We invest £36million every year in training. Like many UK
employers, we receive some government funding in addition to our own
investment, which enables us to adapt our training into nationally recognised,
transferable qualifications.”
She said the firm hoped to create 2,500 new jobs this year
Glad I never “eat” at McDonalds....
A terrified shop
worker screamed when she found a venomous spider crawling out of a bunch of
bananas.
The Asda worker
discovered the ctenidae spider, commonly known as the banana spider, on
Tuesday.
A colleague at the
supermarket in Chesser, Edinburgh managed to get the adult female and its 10cm
leg span into a plastic jar and called the Scottish SPCA.
Animal rescue
officer Fiona Thorburn collected the spider and took it to Edinburgh Butterfly
and Insect World. However, the creature died overnight.
Ms Thorburn said: “The
spider was found in a box of bananas that originated from Colombia. Although
she was not very large, she was quite an impressive-looking creature, so we can
understand why the person who found her let out a loud scream.
Kevin Thom, from
Edinburgh Butterfly and Insect World, said they often get exotic spiders handed
in to them from shops which receive deliveries from abroad.
He added: “It isn’t
deadly but its venom contains high levels of serotonin. If bitten you would
experience pain, swelling, muscle spasms and flu-like symptoms which could be
very unpleasant depending on the amount of venom that was injected.
“These spiders can
survive transport from abroad by shutting down and becoming very cold. They
awaken when they warm up which is often under bright shop lights.
Someone has worked
out why the universe is 95 billion light years across when it has only
been in existence for approx 14.3 billion years.
According to Professor Paul Francis from the Australian National
University's Mount Stromlo Observatory
the best estimate for the age of the universe from the Big Bang to now
is 13.75 billion years give or take 0.11 billion years.
If the universe was static, you would theoretically be able
to see 13.75 billion light years in any direction because that's how far
photons moving at the speed of light (about 300,000 kilometres per second in a
vacuum) have travelled since shortly after the universe began.
With Earth at the centre of the cosmos from our point of
view, that would make the universe about 28.5-billion light-years wide.
But the universe isn't static.
"[Since the Big Bang] the universe and space-time
itself has been expanding,"
"We know space is expanding it's getting bigger and by
extrapolating that backwards we can work out when everything we see was in the
same place, and that gives us a rough age of the universe."
"The trouble is the universe may not have been
expanding at the same rate, so extrapolating backwards may not be very
accurate," says Francis.
According to Francis, the universe is currently expanding at
70 kilometres per second per mega-parsec (1 parsec is 3.26 light-years or 31
trillion kilometres).
Yeah right-my brain
hurts....
Relatively mild
drought conditions may have been enough to cause the collapse of the Classic
Maya civilisation, which flourished until about AD950 in what is now southern
Mexico and Guatemala.
Scientists have
long thought that severe drought caused its collapse.
But Mexican and
British researchers now think that a sustained drop in rainfall of only 25-40%
was enough to exhaust seasonal water supplies in the region.
The findings were
published in the journal Science.
The research was
conducted by the Yucatan Centre for Scientific Research in southern Mexico and
the University of Southampton in the UK.
Scientists used
advanced modelling techniques to estimate rainfall and evaporation rates
between AD800 and 950, when the classic Maya civilisation went into sharp
decline.
They found that a
relatively modest decline in rainfall was enough to deplete freshwater storage
systems in the Yucatan lowlands, where there are no rivers.
That’s us in the
Sarf East stuffed then.....
And finally:
There is a Bungalow
for sale with 'superb county and coastal view', According to the estate agent’s
particulars; the bungalow commands superb country and coastal views across a
swathe of the Irish Sea.
The three-bedroom bungalow, near Llanddona on the island of Anglesey, north
Wales, is on the market for just under £200,000.Its selling agents, Williams and Goodwin, are gushing in their description of the property.
They say: “An excellent opportunity to acquire a detached bungalow, situated in an exceptional elevated position enjoying superb coastline views over Anglesey towards Point Lynas.
''The property offers tremendous opportunity for further expansion subject to the necessary consents and is situated in a generous sized garden bordering onto and overlooking open countryside. Viewing recommended.”
What they don’t
mention is the 350ft high TV mast and sub-station standing only a few
yards from the property’s back garden.
Viewing is recommended-but at least you will be able to get
decent digital reception...
That’s it: I’m orf to un-jam my GPS
And today’s thought:
Angus
