Posts by Lost it 28 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Sep 2015
I've always thought if the company/person I'm working for can say to me "Right we don't want you after today" you are basically on a zero hours contract. I'm in a business where that can happen, either way. I can tell the person paying my wages I'm not coming back or that employer can tell me to not come back.
So I'm a temporary worker. How can I possibly be under IR35?
I've done CEST, and it says I'm freelance. And I've just been told by an agency that "The client decides how he is going to treat you, and if he says it's inside IR35 you have no choice". I said, as you can imagine... Yes I have a choice. Tell them I don't want the job...
Last time we tried to buy a phone from CPW, (my daughter wanted an iphone thing) the so called sales assistant got the phone out, put a sim card in it (which I wasn't happy about, it's now not a new phone any more...) Then opened this form up. I said "What's that for?" She said "Oh we have to do this for every phone we sell."
I said "No you don't, you have it in stock, we have the money. Simple transaction. You hand it over, we pay, we walk out of the store".
Oh no, she wasn't having any of it. My daughter could see I was starting to get a bit annoyed. "No sir, to sell this phone to your daughter we HAVE to fill in this form and she has to sign it".
I exploded... "Ok. Last chance. You have the phone. We have the money. Hand phone over, we pay and that's feckin it".
"No sir"
"Goodbye".
That's why they are stuffed. They don't have a clue about customer service.
So... Back when we miners were on strike the local government started killing power occasionally.
I was present at a car garage when this happened, the garage was in a basement area and there wasn't much in the way of natural light. A mechanic there wanted more light so went to grab the lead light. It was clamped to a car on the 4 post ramp, the cable ran under the ramp which was lowered.
So said mechanic gets the hand crank out, plugs it into the socket on the motor and slowly starts to raise the ramp. IIRC it had a Rover P6 on it. After about 5 minutes on the hand crank he asked me to spell him for a few turns. I refused...
Eventually he got it to "click" on the first safety ratchet, crawled under the car, unclipped the lead light, carefully fed the whole thing under the slightly raised ramp, then walked over and plugged the lead light into the 12v transformer fed from the 13 amp socket on the wall....
Well........ Last couple of "world wars" last century were between countries that were huge trading partners with each other. I suggest if history tells us anything, it tells us that the people we hurt economically are the ones that start aggressive maneuvers. Hence if what is left of the EU after we leave will be doing it's darndest to damage the UK, then this "Galileo" nonense is just that. They are the ones we need to protect ourselves from (NATO not withstanding).
I still believe that the EU's biggest worry is that other nations will follow us out. Destroying Germany's great federation plan designed to have every other member making them riches beyond measure.
That's really all we need to accept.
You use a couple of decent clocks forthat. Set to GMT of course. That's all the RN had for quite a while, wasn't that often they were lost.
And there are these things called maps. They introduce all kinds of wondrous opportunities not least they would completely prevent articulated lorries driven by foreign nationals following satnags down the garden path.
And again, before GPS we still managed to arrive where we set out to go.
That's because Architects are nothing more than failed artists. I once had one insist I removed the main structural centre leg in a supermarket on night shift. Because it was "in the way of his vision of the wavy roof tiling that was going in" I told him no, not happening. After three nights of this I was called in to explain why I was "not carrying out instructions according to my contract". I told them to get this ass of an architect on site and I would show him why. He actually went white...
I think it was a well known mobile provider that got a contract for pagers for RNLI responders then discovered they had no actual cell coverage over much of the UK in the area's where the pagers were needed. Last century this was, and the reason the RNLI only stopped launching Maroons recently... BT had the contract for years, their pagers even worked when they got wet...
I ride bikes all the time in the good old UK. Been doing it since 1976 and I'm still going strong.
I "Filter" that's what we call "Lane splitting" over here. I ride from the South coast of England to the centre of London every day, rain, shine, snow, high winds, whatever. Technically it's not against the law, to filter but you do need to be sensible. I did over 38,000 miles last year on my bikes. I've been known to "Filter with attitude" as my mate calls it, in fact I'm so regular on one of the routes I use I see the same vehicles most mornings and they usually make space for me to get past.
What I do know is that I ride expecting cars/buses/truck/vans/cyclists/scooter riders AND pedestrians to make any crazy maneuver you care to think of. Stop dead, instant turns, drive where they are looking, step out, cross the road in front of buses (happens a lot in central London) open doors, you name it. And so I never get surprised by what they do, I'm expecting it. I ride a bike that is capable of 150mph, but can still, just about, stop far quicker than it can accelerate. So that's always the first option, stop or slow down.
Yes, I agree this rider was at fault as far as I'm concerned because he should have been expecting this autonomous car to look after the occupants of the vehicle, not anyone over taking it without making sure it's safe to do so. It's pretty simple, me and my bike weigh about 320kg together. Most cars have much more mass than I have, they are not going to "bounce" off me. I'm not ever going to knock a Routemaster off it's intended course.
A scooter I might be able to move, a cyclist is possible, a pedestrian might but anything heavier than I am gets enough space to keep me safe. Anything that I might be able to knock out of the way gets enough space as well. I always let buses out, if I see a car waiting to turn right in front of me especially in London I will wait until I know he has seen me or he has pulled out.
It's called looking after No1. He wasn't doing that, even in the US surely there has to be some measure of taking responsibility for your own actions?
One of my Construction Manager best moments. The day I Red Carded the H&S advisor off my site...
I had a site with the vehicle park about 30 yards away from the site offices. So I put a "Green safe route" between the two, mapped designated, signed and barriered.
I got in to work one night to find the route removed by our H&S because of the risk.....
So I looked at the signage, stayed sat in my car. When the worker bee's came in I told them to stay in their vehicles and do not approch the site under any circumstances.
The client rolled up. As usual about half hour after everyone else, looked at me, walked over and asked what was wrong. So I pointed at the signs, told him that technically he was breaking the rules standing outside his vehicle, and until H&S sorted this out we would all be staying in outr vehicles. I couldn't do anything about it, my PPE was in the site office.
So next our H&S weenie rolled up. Looked at me, looked at the rest of us and then walked across the car park to the site office in his trainers and jacket.
Then he came back out to see what was wrong. By then I had informed head office that I was Red Carding him and removing him from site for a gross misdemeanor. And until someone rolled up on site with PPE that could go to the office and bring MY PPE to me so that I could get to the office we weren't going anywhere near work.
I was told by him that I couldn't red card the H&S guy. I pointed out that as an F10 site, under CDM it was MY responsibility to mangle the H&S on site so yes I definitely could red card him and remove him from site. I also out ranked him having better H&S qualifications but there you go. Have to be honest I enjoyed it...
A certain famous car manufacturing plant that was...
The lads all bought me my coffee for the rest of the job. You know, I didn't care less if they sacked me...
And here's me, bimbling along with my Nokia 735 Windows phone that I paid just over 100 squid for happily letting it link with my Windows 10 laptops, Xbox etc, taking all the photo's I could ever need, uploading them to the cloud and wondering what all the fuss is about an old new phone. And why it costs so much for an old design with a new processor and presumably less battery life than it had before they put the faster bits in it. Is the battery the same size? Who knows. I don't really care.
Seems pretty obvious to me, the new 6 is way too big. The 6 XL I think was thought up when someone had imbibed something, and from my wife's experience every time she update her ithing she never really know if it will work afterwards.
Less stress in my little world. Does what it says on the tin even if it isn't the fastest thing on the planet.
And here's me, bimbling along with my Nokia 735 Windows phone that I paid just over 100 squid for happily letting it link with my Windows 10 laptops, Xbox etc, taking all the photo's I could ever need, uploading them to the cloud and wondering what all the fuss is about an old new phone. And why it costs so much for an old design with a new processor and presumably less battery life than it had before they put the faster bits in it. Is the battery the same size? Who knows. I don't really care.
Seems pretty obvious to me, the new 6 is way too big. The 6 XL I think was thought up when someone had imbibed something, and from my wife's experience every time she update her ithing she never really know if it will work afterwards.
Less stress in my little world. Does what it says on the tin even if it isn't the fastest thing on the planet.
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