coldel

+1 I think the fit will be bad, probably very heavy and poor materials...

So, a three week broken toe, thats the reason he lost...

I put some C5 on mine Friday, woke up this morning and the feel to the wheel was much better. Driven it about 20 miles and usually already the dust is gathering but at the moment nowhere near as much on there as before...

Just back from watching it in the pub, most of the pub clapped for klitschko by the end. What an utterly shocking performance.

I'm loving that Lancia!

Maybe its the light, but is the boot a different colour?

Maybe its time to change my CV to Statistics and Economicology

I think its more granular than just 'what uni did you go to' as Rich said he went to Coventry University to get his engineering qualification and instantly I think yet I bet most people think Coventry university is not worth tuppence. Its got to be about the courses...employers worth their salt should know what Uni's do the best degrees in their fields.

It is a challenge taking education into business reality - something I am challenged with right now is a guy we have who is one of the best qualified in behavioural economics aged just 26 and just out of doing a PHD etc. Problem is that he cannot turn his brilliance into a practical business solution so I am on a very steep learning curve to try and understand what he is talking about so can guide him to create something that actually works in reality!

Reminded me of something that happened a couple of years back, the company I used to work for had an annual graduate intake every year, we called them the 'grad group' and as experienced employees we made sure they made the transition from education to business as easily as possible. Then we got a new CEO who had some very odd approaches to business, he decided that we only take in Oxford or Cambridge students. They joined to much fanfare but they were shocked to find out they had to learn the basics of market research like checking data, creating reports and the like, they thought they were going to walk into a role whereby they would be able to go home and tell mummy and daddy how they are in charge of the global Coca Cola account or similar. Anyway, after 3 months they demanded pay rises and promotions as 'they were grads and the rest of us were just normal workers, as such they were better qualified than us and deserved more' - I was in the meeting where this happened and it was brutal... ...you can have the best qualification from the best uni but the character of the person is just as important. A Geordie Taxi driver once said to me 'common sense isnt common' which I think goes a long way here.

Its a good point, I took a year out from uni to work in an office environment using my uni skills. Gave me a massive advantage over those without that and all the interviews I went to said it was a big advantage. Also, some Uni's have better departments than others, I went to lowly Coventry University and ended up house sharing with some final year students for a couple of months. They all had got 5 As at A Level and were on the vehicle design course at Uni, which as it turns out was the best in the country, in fact is globally renowned. They built some of the Thurst II car at Cov Uni which broke the landspeed record whilst I was there, those guys I house shared with ended up working for Suzuki/Kawasaki straight out of uni on salaries of £100k+ ...for the record, I was not on the vehicle design course

C5 has just gone on, will see how it goes over the coming days...i bought the smallest bottle (cost about £35) and it only just had enough for the outside face of my alloys, havent even gone near the reverse side - might need another bottle and wheels coming off to do that.

Anyway Rich, shouldn't you be working!

this is within the first 10 years of my career, the gap will only grow I am not aware of your circumstances so can only comment generally. I would think someone in engineering starts off with relatively smaller levels of responsibility then moves up these levels with promotion and with it comes pay rises. Similarly to teachers if I read the scales I put on the link earlier, some of those pay hikes between levels of responsibility are huge - I could only dream of being on a max head teachers salary, anyway... Public sector work seems (and please do correct me if I am wrong) to be guaranteed at inflation or above inflation pay rises every year where private sector most certainly is not, in the industry I work in as I say there have been pay freezes for years now, my last annual pay rise was 2004. I can only assume therefore that the gap increasing you refer to would come from the promotions in the private sector - someone not getting promoted will not out perform public sector workers in pay terms, in fact it will close. I can understand an experienced classroom teacher is better than an inexperienced classroom teacher but effectively they are doing the same job whereas your promoted engineer instead of making sure the pavement is straight is now building bridges a mile long and being paid more for it. That said, I am always the first to harp on about 'great teachers I remember...' so don't by any means underestimate the value of a good teacher...

I am sure lots of private sector workers would trade in 5-10 percent of their pay to get public sector benefits

I am all for paying public sector at the same level as private, how you would do that I am not entirely sure (how do you suddenly re-evaluate a salary in that way?). Just be prepared for a huge shock, 9% pension payment, that's the absolute minimum and if you want a pension that is somewhere like 75% as much as you would get under a public pension you are probably wanting to at least double that percentage payment (just having a punt there based on skim reading other material but you get the gist). Ironically if you type in teacher salary into google http://www.tda.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/salary/teaching-salary-scales.aspx I was quite surprised, even by the basic pay levels, in the private sector with a degree in economics and stats, a years placement experience and a levels in maths stats and business I managed to scrape a job on £14k a year (albeit back in 1998!) - the industry I am in has a complex pay structure, probably 80% earn less than £30k and the rest earn a fair whack more. It takes a good 6-8 years of work to get over that £30k mark. These aren't stupid people either, all degree educated, all working ridiculous hours. I think unfortunately there is as much a misconception about public sector as there is about this 'rich' private sector who get paid so much more, I am afraid it just isn't true anymore - in my industry there have been successive years (four now) of pay freezes whilst the public sector get their guaranteed percentage, surely that must say something about the level of pay disparity between the two.

I think that's the crux of it, you can argue the government can't change what it promised etc decades ago but the world has changed, the private sector has changed massively along with it (over the last 8 to 10 years I don't know many people that have had annual pay increases in line with in inflation, certainly in my industry annual pay increases have pretty much disappeared altogether - you have to rely on promotion pay increases to keep up and negotiate hard on it). It's a case of adapting, adapt or fail at the moment, it's not nice, you can argue principles but the harsh reality of the world was nicely spelt out by chesterfield earlier. Unfortunately it is a case of union leaders defending their huge salaries, if they didn't have a 'call to arms' they would be seen to be not acting on behalf of its members. The other side are the turn outs for the voting were terrible, how can you call a general strike when less than 40% of your members bothered to vote in the ballot.

Anyway night chaps, 5:30am rise...erm...today...for work

I wouldnt even know how to spell payd ovartyme...

I just have this vision of a sweet little angel sitting on my shoulder being slapped off by some devil who takes her place the second I hit that TC button

I can confirm that when i nag rich for a game on the xbox he is never free as he is marking work ALL THE F***KING TIME nobber My mum is also a teacher and she puts vast amounts of hours into the job. In the private sector you do extra time you claim overtime, when you clock off you clock off. As a teacher you simply never clock off and never claim overtime. From my point of view on pensions, I got one of the last final salary pensions available in britain so i was very lucky. They do seem to faff about with it in the background though and i have no idea what it all means. Ruddy nora Husky, you seriously don't think that the majority of the private sector really clock on and off do you? Lots of private sector work ridiculous hours, even more so with mass redundancies going on and work still to be done. I have had a little run of work over the last two months, paid for 38 of the 70 hours a week I have been putting in ...

I think a small minority still think teachers only work x amount of weeks a year. Most people I know are intelligent to know they have to prepare stuff outside of working hours, but then again its the same for everyone, I work more than my 7.2 hours every single day without pay for that extra time but it comes with the life and times of living in the UK.

It was Aristotle I think that said something like "It takes an educated mind to entertain another idea even if you do not accept it" ...but hey, question was, do you support striking. I don't, especially in hard times like this. I don't think the government is just 'picking' on any particular group of people or doing this out of malice, its purely cost cutting which has to happen somewhere. It does seem a little crap that pension age goes up, costs go up etc so there is ground for debate, but it should be debate not striking. Am having a good old read up on this now...

Look what you have gone and done Rich...I know a few forums ban political discussion!

Actually a really good comment...although I still find striking too extreme...sure you are not part French Vik?