Stone me! [via The Motley Fool]
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23Mar06 — 2
Budget Agony
I had a copy of The Daily Telegraph (aka The Torygraph) because it’s always worth reading the opposition press on a day of Labour Party smugness. [TEN YEARS OF A CHANCELLOR WHO KNOWS WHAT HE’S DOING, YOU TORY BASTARDS! TEN YEARS! HE MAY BE A ONE-EYED WONK FROM PLANET MEDDLE, BUT HE’S OUTPERFORMED EVERY SORRY […]
Read More03Mar06 — 1
Serious Breakfast Mistake
Above the usual manufactured outrage headline on the front page of the Daily Mail this morning I read the following smaller banner: He’s quizzed over £350 000 “bribe”. Their home is remortgaged three times in four years. Yet not once, says Tessa Jowell, did she ask her husband: “What the hell is going on, darling?” Crikey. […]
Read More14Feb06 — 2
Bucks On A Till
A few months back I emailed some friends (one of them a Samuel L Jackson fan with a subscription to Empire) a link to this ‘Blog post about an upcoming movie that practically defines “high concept“: Snakes On A Plane, a film that Samuel L Jackson will appear in because of, not despite, its title. Since then, Snakes On A Plane has become a full-on […]
Read More31Jan06 — 3
Too Cheap To Check
Apparently it costs too much money for publishers to fact-check the non-fiction they produce: Last Thursday, publishing-industry veteran Nan Talese was excoriated on television by Oprah Winfrey for publishing James Frey’s 2003 “A Million Little Pieces,” a bestselling memoir about the author’s struggle to overcome drug dependency that he has since admitted is partly fictitious. […]
Read More25Jan06 — 0
70s Revival Continues
I overheard two of the staff in Maplin today complaining that they had had to change the price on some piece of consumer electronics twice in one day. We live in the noughties now so both changes were decreases. A Chinese factory employee probably figured out some way to make ten of of whatever gadget […]
Read More24Jan06 — 4
Listening For A Calling
I’ve cited one of Paul Graham’s long essays before. Even when I disagree with them they are brilliant and deceptively simple. This one isn’t about being a nerd; it should be of interest to everyone (who is lucky enough to be well educated and living in the comfortable West). It’s about finding a job you […]
Read More16Jan06 — 4
Yes And No, Jackie
Jackie is of course right to be disgusted with Alastair Campbell admitting that both he and the Prime Minister are clueless about computers. She is wrong to make any connection between this and their being employees of the state. Many senior managers in large UK organisations, both public and private sector, are incompetent because once […]
Read More06Jan06 — 1
Running It Up The Flagpole To See If Anyone Salutes
Okay, people. I’ve got a new business model here. It’s very Web 2.0. It’s very post-marketing. Here’s how it goes: “entrepreneurs” who’ve set up per-pixel advertising Websites pay me money per letter to add their comments to the others from all the other dollar-millionaire wannabes who’ve already left theirs behind on my Alex Tew posts. […]
Read More03Jan06 — 2
Penny For A Cup Of Chai?
As a fellow member of the middle-class unemployed I can also testify to the horrors radio agony aunt Anna Raeburn described so “movingly” yesterday in the Guardian. Very recently she found herself jobless, without even so much as a rich husband and a poorly-paid but glamorous career in the media to rub together, and thrown […]
Read More02Jan06 — 2
Oh Poo
I found out just before Christmas that I’ve been turned down for that SciArt grant I was applying for. This is not exactly a surprise, but I’m still not happy about it. Thankfully, my family took my hint when I told them and I didn’t have to endure a Christmas of them looking at me […]
Read More30Dec05 — 6
Meeting A Sales Target
Back in September I picked up on Alex Tew’s milliondollarhomepage idea of selling advertising space by the pixel. Just as he planned, he’s approaching dollar millionairehood.
Read More12Dec05 — 1
MTA Wanted—Emphasis On T and A
Media composer Richard subscribes to various lists that offers work for people in his business. As with much of the media world, those offering gigs are fully aware of the desperation of celebrity wannabes to get any kind of experience—so they pay accordingly: peanuts or less. To use the jargon, they take the piss. Such […]
Read More12Nov05 — 6
A Very Silly Woman Indeed
Also amusing in the Graun are the wonderfully unselfconscious words of Susan Rice, Chief Executive of Lloyds TSB Scotland. She’s so terribly, terribly important that she has to put in a 15-hour working day. “Home for me is Aberdeen, my head office is Edinburgh and I’m in London a couple of days a week because […]
Read More12Nov05 — 9
“Hello, Am I Through To Customer Services?”
Last night a Master’s student (whom I have never taught) phoned me to vent her justified frustration with one of her lecturers’ chronic incompetence. This keen and bright individual had done everything she could and should about the situation and complained through the correct channels. As usual in these situations she wasn’t the only member […]
Read More09Nov05 — 18
Sorry, We Don’t Do Business With Negroes
Soon it’ll be time to renew my car insurance. When I investigated, I was disappointed to discover that I don’t qualify for cover from Whitey’s Wheels, the new company that only insures Anglo-Saxon drivers. For some time now, actuaries have recognized that white people make fewer and smaller claims on their car insurance than black […]
Read More29Oct05 — 2
International Playboy
This photo from my leaving do in Cambridge demonstrates the stunning improvement in my luck with the ladeez as a result of carefully spreading rumours about the size of my redundancy package: Jo, inventor of “Shouty Woman”, is on the left; Hot Wheels Helena is on the right. [click to enlarge]
Read More19Oct05 — 2
Laddered
They came to install my broadband connection yesterday and the news was bad. Apparently the main cable is too far away and they’re going to have to “get Construction in” to move the access point nearer to the building and bring a link up to my flat—two weeks minimum before I’m back online properly. Sorry, […]
Read More10Oct05 — 12
‘Women are spending too much time in sheds, and not everyone’s happy about it’
Further to this post, it’s time for a shed update from the Telegraph: The mystical covenant between men and sheds, an anchor of civilisation for centuries, appeared last week to be facing two dire threats to its existence; the advent of the £20,000 price tag, and an invasion by women. Twenty grand for a rickety […]
Read More09Oct05 — 3
Certified By A Chartered Surveyor
I am starting a new category on PooterGeek: “Mad As A House”. This will be for the looniest reality-denying tales of British property market craziness I read online. Here’s my first example. You know those “money surgery” type articles they have in the weekend broadsheets where some thirtysomething media drone living in London on £28K […]
Read More08Oct05 — 0
Public Service Announcement
Jackie would like people to check out this appeal over at Science Blog.
Read More04Oct05 — 2
The End Times
You might have guessed from the thinness of posting here that I am busy at the moment, but the Anonymous Economist recommends this (non-free) editorial from the New York Times. I extract the first five and last three paragraphs: IF you believed Tom DeLay then, you no doubt believe now that the deposed House majority […]
Read More03Oct05 — 5
Doesn’t Exactly Help With The Cashflow Problem
“Kate Moss to spend month in £2,250-a-night US clinic” Just think of all the coke you could buy with that kind of money.
Read More25Sep05 — 21
Plots In The Klondike
The mini-revival of dotcom mania is in full swing. Even The Guardian printed a student entrepreneur story yesterday. A month ago the “bedroom boffin” (as has probably already been described by his local newspaper) had an idea that’s turned out to be a cleverer than it looks on paper. Alex Tew’s milliondollarhomepage sells off space […]
Read More19Sep05 — 11
The Negative Equity Show
Yet another reason why I am glad I don’t have a television set is that there is no chance I will have to watch financially illiterate debt-pushers peddle their poison in my living room. These people are destroying young lives. If I had bought a place to live when I moved to Cambridge to start […]
Read More13Sep05 — 0
Fashion It Is Then
Remember when they used to do stories about falling sales at Marks and Spencer, when they still didn’t take credit cards? Today it’s a story about falling profits at French Connection, whose Website won’t allow you to look at anything at all unless you have Flash installed. Once you have Flash installed then you can […]
Read More03Sep05 — 12
Jordan: The Comeback
My mother always taught me that reading books would help me to get on in life*. You only have to look at my dazzling career to see how right she was. (Funnily enough, people in my old job looked at me like I was stupid because I refused to cite a source without actually plodding […]
Read More22Aug05 — 32
What Damian Did Next
Some weeks ago I promised you, dear PooterGeekers, that I would be telling you what I planned to do with my life now that the Medical Research Council no longer has need of my services. Those of you who come here for the trouser jokes can stop reading now. The rest of you might be […]
Read More08Aug05 — 13
Gone The Way Of Painting
“We have decided that the time is now right to take 35mm cameras out of the frame.” Daddy, why aren’t your photographs flat and over-sharpened? Why are things naturally out of focus in the background instead of blurred later by Photoshop? Why do human beings look human and sunlight look warm? Why can you take […]
Read More05Aug05 — 2
Mill Owners Only Truly Fat Cat Males In England—Discuss
According to NHS data, women in lower income groups are fatter everywhere in England, but there is little correlation between the incomes and weights of men in England—except in the North West where rich men are fatter.
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