zurich_allan
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Posts posted by zurich_allan
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Congrats. Hope Santa is bring a XXXS strip for him ...
Indeed! already got a wee baby Saints clothes set out of the club shop last week!
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Thanks guys, much appreciated!
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.... born yesterday.... and by the looks of this picture, is going to be a goalie....
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Terrible news, I know people that have worked in BAE in the past, and indeed some who work there currently. However I also know people in other linked areas to this, and was led to believe by one of them today that the decisions relating to these yards are nothing whatsoever to do with politics / the independence referendum, and entirely down to a MOD strategic decision. Of course I can't confirm that, just what I've been told.
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Britain has done a fair bit of bailing out as well. Our money went to rescue Greece and even more so in the case of the imminent collapse of Eire a couple of years ago. .
I still say that the Norwegian model is preferable to me . As far as leaving the EU is concerned , l don't think a member can leave , short of actually going to war , which is why Cameron has postponed the vote on EU membership and will probably continue to do so but in the short term it stops the English Tory party losing out to the UKIP vote ..
The whole Europe senario is an insideous thing over the last 40 years going from the EEC (which the country as a whole did vote on) to the EC and now the EU where some people (Ted Heath admitted he knew it was the plan) in this country contrived to hoodwink the public for personal gain. No one voted for the EU , politicians excluded . They recently got the Cypriot government's agreement to dip the bank accounts of everyone on the island . I'm trying not to be cynical but was that a test case. .
A Member State can indeed leave the EU. This has always been possible, although there wasn't a formal mechanism for doing it until 2009. The formal provision for a Member to leave the Union is contained within the Treaty of Lisbon, and essentially calls for a separation agreement to be drawn up and agreed by both the deceding Member and the EU Parliament. Due to existing commitments (trade & political), leaving cannot be an instant thing, it would likely take a year or more to actually draft and have rubber stamped the separation agreement, and would likely be a further two years before the separation actually happened.
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Why is it that many of the same people who tell us we're "Better Together" are the same people who tell us that we should leave the EU?
And if the Euro is such a clusterf**k of a currency, why hasn't it lost ground against the pound in recent years?
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=EUR&view=10Y
It dropped from roughly 1.50/1.00 about 6 years ago to a low of 1.03 in 2009 and recovered to, and currently sits, around the 1.20 mark (no pun intended). So, for the last 4 years, it has maintained more or less the same level against the pound while it went through economic mayhem.
This is common knowledge within the European Union. The UK has spent more in terms of percentage GDP bailing out our own banks than the rest of the EU has bailing out theirs. Jose Manuel Barroso had a right go (and correctly so) at David Cameron earlier this year for his anti-Euro spin on the currency / economy issue.
And I'm currently in favour of staying part of the UK, but even earlier in this thread emphasised that we NEED to maintain EU membership, whether as part of the UK or as an independent State.
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Picked up my hoody and t-shirt yesterday before the match, great deal! :-)
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I know plenty of people who work in private companies and regularly have to take "business trips" abroad, with expenses. Sounds like you are just jealous of someone visiting your beloved USofA on a freebie
Exactly - the thing is, there absolutely will be lazy lecturers, the same way that there will be lazy teachers and lazy fat pipe fitters. There will also be hard working examples of the above. Whether private or public sector there are hard working and lazy people in every industry. The problem is that some thick blinkered morons (Dic*head-son, whose posts thankfully I only see when others quote him) are just that - thick (in both waist and mind).
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Absolutely disgraceful decision. The pitch was fine after they spiked and swept it, while the ref was testing it the ball was rolling freely and the ball was bouncing in spite of his throwing the ball in the least representative way that a ball travels during a game that it was physically possible to do. There is 100% certainty that he was looking for an excuse to call the game off. Just shocking all round refereeing.
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This is the thing - my annual workload changes year to year, but as a rough guide, this year I work on an approximate 60% teaching / 40% research basis. However 'teaching' also includes writing all associated assessments (coursework, oral assessments, exams) for your subject area, scrutinising assessments for others in your department, marking all of these assessments and moderating work for others, as well as providing feedback for all students. There are also other linked responsibilities such as being a year group tutor for all students in a particular cohort, with mandatory meetings to be held with every one of those students (could be, say, 100 students per cohort), then there's providing one-to-one supervision for honours students as well as postgraduates. Of course there is a major administrative workload linked to all of those to ensure that quality issues are adhered to.
In a research sense you have to produce and have agreed an annual research plan that can include individual, group or collaborative research linked to your subject area. You have to justify the worth of that research, and if you require additional funding there are many hoops to jump through. If you have additional funding from an external source then you often have a vast amount of reporting to do to ensure that you are spending funds appropriately. Linked to your research, you have agreed deliverables including either written publication of interim or full results, conference presentations to carry out etc.
Beyond that there are various other activities that vary from lecturer to lecturer including membership of various important committees such as those for new programme development, international development, dealing with academic misconduct etc.
And then there's external examinership, where academic staff are encouraged to gain contracts from other Universities to externally scrutinise their work (I currently externally examine work for two other UK Universities - one in Scotland and one in England - this involves my having to go and work for a short time at each of those Universities twice a year).
And all of this is before you even ensure that you are keeping your own subject specialist knowledge (in my case - various aspects of law, criminology and criminal justice) advanced, up to date and accurate....
A bit more than 'just a teacher'....
And by the way - I have massive respect for teachers, it's just that the two professions are not really comparable. I certainly couldn't handle teaching a group of children or young teenagers without strangling many of the cheeky little *****'s
so I applaude those who can... -
I'm related to a Lecturer. That's one of the reasons why I said what I did. It was half with tongue in cheek but she gets more holidays than some other family members who have worked at their workplaces longer than she has been a lecturer. Despite what my "friend" in Arbroath says I wasn't even thinking of him when I posted my comment. I tease the aforementioned relative about it because she always bangs on about how much her job entails and how much of it takes up her time. I still reckon she has way too many holidays though.
Fair do's. As I said, it's just that most of the time when you hear the criticism, it's because a lot of people seem to think of lecturers as being 'big teachers', which is way off the mark.
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It's just interesting, because it tends to be those that don't have a clue how universities work or what lecturers jobs actually are that lump them in with teachers. Two utterly different, incomparable professions with completely different holiday arrangements. It always astounds me when I say I'm a lecturer and people say 'oh, those great long summer holidays you get!', and surprises them when I say 'no, I get 35 days holiday a year, and most years (5 out of the last 6 years) I don't manage to find the time to actually take them all'. 35 days is still darn good compared to many many other places of work, but it's not the extravagant amount that many think, especially if you only actually manage to take 25 days of them.
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Teachers and Lecturers get way too much time off anyway.
I notice that you've lumped lecturers in here - as a matter of interest, how many holidays do you think lecturers get? And are you referring to college lecturers? University lecturers? Or both? Just interested to see how much perception matches with reality here.
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I agree - all the more worrying.
Does anyone know how long it takes the PF to review a case. I know of someone who had a case sent by CID to PF in February and there has been no news back from the PF. Maybe Zurich Allan knows how these bodies work.
It really depends to be honest. The PF at the moment is absolutely swamped. I've sat in many cases this year where the first hour of business is taken up with nothing more than the Fiscal Depute pleading with various Judges to have extensions granted to the time bar in various cases due to not being ready to go to trial having not had time or resources to fully review cases and gather evidence.
The problem is that the PF have had a freeze on permanent recruitment imposed by the Scottish Government for the past three and a half years, and so they can't take on new staff to deal with the backlog.
That said, a time bar only comes into effect if the charge stems from a statutory breach of the law. If the charge is a common law one, then there isn't a legally enforceable time bar. Also, a time bar only exists prior to the Fiscal deciding whether or not to proceed with a case. Once they've decided to go ahead, they can commence proceedings to allow pleadings to be made and then adjourn them for as long as they choose, again with no legally enforceable time bar as such.
That said, there is a legally accepted principle that somebody is entitled to expect the justice process to be completed in a reasonable time, and should not have to have a potential criminal case hanging over them indefinitely, and at a hearing when the Fiscal Depute requests an adjournment, the lawyer of the accused is entitled to challenge that adjournment and argue that it is prejudicial to the accused who is effectively already being punished if held on bail in perpituity etc.
In my experience, a Judge will be happy to adjourn a case based on resource reasons / lack of witnesses etc. ONCE, but on request a second time they tend to get quite annoyed and tell the Fiscal to either proceed with the case or be prepared to drop it unless there are exceptional circumstances in the public interest.
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It must be my mentality - but when I read the above, all I see is 'Father Jack'... even though I know this is nothing to do with Father Ted... :-)
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So you can see through the bullshit but cant see the difference between calling someone a Nazi & calling someone scared ?
Of course I can see the difference, I didn't compare the two - you might think I did, but I didn't. What I did was give another example of inappropriateness from the other side, I didn't rank them. Two separate examples is not the same thing as a comparison - back to school.
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Project Fear is BT's own name for what they're doing, ZA, not the Yes campaign's.
Mibees aye, Mibees no, but regardless of that it is still a wee catchphrase that is used and not accurate. That fact doesn't change regardless when it is used as a rather pathetic veiled insult by one side against the other. As I already said, each side is as bad as each other with the immature name calling, it's quite pathetic for adults to get involved in. I for one refuse.
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If you visit this site and end up in a well paid job, should you feel flush?
That's plenty...
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I really wish you would stop using that word. Comparing the SNP to one of the most evil tyrannies in history does your argument no good at all.
Neither does describing those that would vote for the Union as 'scared' or that the whole campaign is based on 'fear'.
Not voting for change due to a complete lack of tangible evidence (yet - hopefully evidence will come through the closer we get) as opposed to speculation that things will be better in the long term, is NOT the same thing as 'fear'.
Each side are as bad as each other on the political front when it comes to 'buzz words' and spin, neither worse and neither better. Thankfully I can see through most of the bullsh*t.
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Council leaders and MP Douglas Alexander were at BASF (Ciba) today to see if there was any way of rescuing the situation or finding a buyer rather than having to close. Don't know if it'll come to anything, but at least they're trying to do something.
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Thai Siam
Cardosi's
La Mesa
All excellent! :-)
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Get it SORTED MacPherson!!
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I'm a 22 year old Engineering graduate and I was lucky enough to go straight from Uni into a job as were the vast majority of my classmates so there is definitely still jobs out there in that field. However I know of many people with degrees in other areas who took years to get a graduate job or still haven't. The figures don't actually reflect how bad the reality is as young people who can't get a full time job (Grads or Non-grads) usually work part time and therefore are counted as being 'in employment' even though they are on minimum wage and small hour contracts.
This isn't strictly correct. The government figures on graduate employment come from the universities themselves gathering data required by the government and are split into those in graduate employment, and those in non-graduate employment. (There are other figures on those that have left the UK, those who have gone on to a further level of study etc.). How the figures are presented by various interested parties is one thing, but they are given the correct figures, not just 'employment' bundled into one category.
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The Uni is a lot more than 850. More like double that amount.
For the whole uni, yes, but this is just those based at Paisley.
New St Mirren Fan....
in General Nonsense
Posted
Again, thanks for all of the messages. Interesting points to note - first match since he's been born - a 3-0 away win today. First actual match he physically went to - the League cup final win, 7 months before he was born... and I got his name put in the credits on the DVD...