Greens are oil company shills?
I have to say that as a concept this makes sense. Large parts of the 'Green Movement' may be funded by established oil companies in order to promote the use of natural gas (produced largely by OilCos), obstensibly as an alternative to coal, but in fact as an alternative to nuclear (funny how the greens all hate nuclear, isn't it?).
Read about it here: http://atomicinsights.com/2011/05/flush-with-cash-how-did-climate-activists-get-so-much-money.html
I can't see any actual evidence there, but an interesting theory it certainly is.
Traffic
Is it just me or is the traffic godawful so far this week? And is it just me or are the vast majority of problems caused by a small number of utter gimps? Will people have re-learned how to drive after the bank hols by next week? I hope so.
Fuel prices
Never mind those charts you see of the 'average' price of fuel; they are normally wrong for the vast majority of people as they give equal weight to little-used expensive petrol stations as they do to the heavily-used cheaper ones. What you want is a chart of actual prices paid, not prices posted on forecourt signs.
Here is such a chart. Each dot represents a tank of diesel put onto one of my business's (small) fleet of vans, and the lorry. I started collecting this data in april 2008, which is where the chart begins. The vast majority of the data points are at reasonably cheap stations around the midlands. There are a few outlying expensive points, mainly caused by someone running empty on a long trip and filling up at a motorway services.
I don't have any data for petrol I'm afraid, putting petrol in vans causes them to break down, so it's something we don't do.
Geographically accurate tube map
Found here, of all places: http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26696
A geographically accurate London Underground map; showing platforms, sidings, crossovers, opening dates etc etc.
Do you wonder where the actual tunnels go, instead of being satisfied that they run somehow between stations X and Y? Then this is for you.
There are also similar maps on that site of the Paris Metro, Barcelona and other places.
Attention, jobhunters
At the moment I have a job on offer so I have been sifting through CVs, doing interviews etc etc. Having seen a large number of job applications recently, I thought I'd share a few basic tips to help anyone reading this to actually get a job; instead of sending thousands of applications off to people who just click 'delete', perhaps after chuckling a little.
DON'T put or do these things on your CV:
1) A photo of yourself. I am not interested in seeing you looking like either a convicted paedo or a mail-order bride. I'm not employing actors, I'm employing mechanics. I don't care what you look like.
2) Your 'personal goals' to excel thoroughly in everything you do, climb Everest, watch every Rocky film back-to-back or whatever. Irrelevant vacuous bollocks.
3) Tell me in great detail about lots of irrelevant yet highly paid jobs, while the one job you've had similar to the one you're applying for is a footnote from 10 years ago. This tells me "stopgap job, he'll sod off very quickly".
4) Overuse 'power words' or marketing speak so your CV ends up reading like some scam webpage advertising a pyramid scheme. I mean FFS.
DO put or do these things on your CV:
1) Tell me about what similar jobs you've had, AND WHAT YOU ACTUALLY DID IN THEM. "Worked for Company 2001-2008" is OK, "Worked for Company 2001-2008, responding to breakdowns across X area, carrying out routine servicing at so-and-so, carrying out engine overhauls on XYZ , sourcing parts from a variety of suppliers, dealing with customers..." is fantastic and would stand a good chance of getting you a job. Even if your only job was working at a burger chain, and you're applying for a job as a shop assistant, tell them WHAT EXACTLY YOU DID. It shows at least that you know what you did there.
2) Put down RELEVANT qualifications. If the fact that you're a fully certified H&S forklift inspector and you were trained in advanced CANBUS troubleshooting is buried in details about your swimming certificates and your highest break in snooker, your relevant qualifications might not be noticed.
3) It's a good idea to summarise why the hell I should give you a job at the top of your CV. When applying for a mechanic's job, a paragraph or two saying "I am a highly experienced and skilled mechanic, who has carried out a wide variety of work from X to Y, on A, B and C machines." can work wonders.
More DONT's:
DON'T phone up every 2 days chasing your application. Some people recommend this; but I'm actually quite busy and chasing your application all the time is going to piss me off.
DON'T apply for jobs you're hideously unqualified for. By 'unqualified' I don't mean 'doesn't have a degree', I mean 'has so little of a clue about what the job involves, they dont realise that "forklift mechanic" might involve skills that you don't get simply by working in a place that has a forklift'. I've been on planes, that doesn't make me a plane mechanic. By appying for jobs you couldn't even be bothered to fully read the description of, you're wasting everybody's time.
*I wish to point out that this post represents my personal opinion and does not represent any official opinion of any company, anywhere. If you have applied for a job recently and you have done all of the 'donts' listed here, it is entirely coincidental and this post is in no way based on you being a tool.*