Copyright sanity

Copyright sanity by the European Court of Justice. As I read it a small business playing music on the radio will no longer need to pay an annual fee to the multiple parasites claiming to need the money despite already having been paid by the BBC.

Just waiting to hear the bleating from the PRS et al.

Work for free

Confused I am.

One of the ways for a graduate to get ahead these days is to do an unpaid internship.  That is to be a dogsbody for a city institution, charity, or political organisation.

So good are the benefits of internships that the politicians are trying to make sure they are fairly allocated rather than being allocated by the old boys network or raffled for fundraising.

Clearly unpaid work is seen as a great way to start your career.

The Government has various schemes to get the unemployed into work which are basically internships for the oiks. So why are same bien pensant Gaurdanistas that want free access to internships opposed to work experience schemes for those further down the social ladder?

Work scheme benefit

Today the BBC reports:


Ministers have dropped the threat of sanctions for unemployed youngsters on a controversial work experience scheme.

I have to agree, no loss of benefits if people don't want to  complete a work experience scheme placement.

The right answer is simple. No dole, unemployment benefit for anyone, ever.

Bring in work fare.  Jobs for anyone unable to find one for themselves. No one should have to do work fare but no money for not working.

Not enough jobs for work fare?  There is always more than enough that needs doing.  Are the city streets clean? Are the country byways litter free with manicured grass verges and hand trimmed hedges?  If the worst comes to the worst 1 week a team can dig a football pitch size hole and the next week another team can fill it in again.

There is never a reason for an able bodied person being unemployed.

Minimum wage

 The cartoon says it all really.

Watching question time and they are arguing about youth unemployment.

Simples. Most 16-20 year olds aren't worth £3 an hour let alone the minimum wage. So I don't offer jobs to youngsters.

As it is we are working flat out and could use a few more pairs of productive hands. Trouble is most of the Yuff that wonder through the door are shoved straight back out again.

Elocution and education

I was listening to Radio 4 and caught a programme about failing primary schools.

About half the heads interviewed were unintelligible. How the hell can anyone expect to learn when the teachers and heads are unable to speak properly?

Fred the Shred and the Disgusting BBC

The only good thing I can say about bankers is they are better than banking regulators (and their political masters) so I have little regard for the likes of Fred Goodwin.

I was listening to the BBC this morning and to put it bluntly they got right up my nose.  The BBC seemed to support the idea that bankers bonuses should be repaid if the bank didn't actually make money in the long term. However this morning they were attacking the withdrawal of Sir Fred's knighthood.  But hang on, Fred got the knighthood as a cherry on his pension for services to banking and his bank didn't make a profit in the long term.

So Fred has been forced to repay his knightly bonus which seems to be exactly in line with BBC thinking.  Makes you wonder if all the great and the good at the Beeb who are expecting their honours in due course are worried by the precedent.

Neither a borrower or a lender be

I had a run in with the business's bank the other day.

I run separate sterling, dollar and euro accounts so that I don't get tied up in too much foreign exchange nonsense. As it happened, due to VAT crap with HMRC I needed more pounds for a short period. I didn't want to convert dollars as I would need to change them back to dollars in the not too distant future with all the exchange rate costs and losses.

Easy I thought. A job for an overdraft. So I asked the bank for a £20k overdraft. No problem as I had way more dollars than is guaranteed by the Government. But no the bank insisted they needed my personal guarantee for a business overdraft. No problem I said but I wanted a personal guarantee from the bank directors for my dollars not covered by the Government.

Oddly enough the bank directors seem rather less confident in their business than I do in mine. So I ended up converting to dollars to pay a VAT bill that was refunded to me a few weeks later.