“This page has a redirect loop”
Is this some subtle dig to the funding hamster wheel?
The endless application, turned down, re-application of promotion panels?
Journal hopping in an attempt to find a home for a crap student project so that you can tell your boss at annual review that you published something this year?
The curious feeling of your mind snapping during a four hour staff meeting marathon?
Dear reader, answers on a postcard. I promise not to redirect you.
I’m curious.
Given the sheer volume of spam I get from people apparently searching for Quest Bars, I have to wonder….
What are these Quest Bars, and should I find it ironic that so many people are in search of them?
Bertrand Russell:
“Oh Lord, give me health and strength. We’ll steal the rest.”
Nietzsche:
“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”
It’s fine spending all your savings on a deposit for your first house until six months later when the roof starts leaking…
I may be a little late in finding this out but, here is a potential way to fill the pension deficit in the USS pension scheme at UK universities…if it is good for the goose (how I fondly refer to my VC)
BY SAO PAULO, ON JANUARY 14TH, 2014
The BBC has decided not to ask its long-serving staff – who, in common with much of the public sector, enjoy guaranteed pension benefits when they retire – for any additional contributions
The BBC is to pump £740million of licence fee payers’ cash into its pension scheme, to try and close a funding deficit that has nearly doubled over the last three years.
According to a new valuation, the deficit in the BBC pension fund – ie, the value of its assets minus its projected liabilities to retiring staff – has grown from £1.1billion in 2010 to £2billion in 2013.
However the BBC has decided not to ask its long-serving staff – who, in common with much of the public sector, enjoy guaranteed pension benefits when they retire – for any additional contributions.
As a result, licence-fee payers will be expected to foot the entire bill, at an additional cost of £365million over the next four years.
The amount that the BBC pays to its pension fund over the next four years will increase from an already-agreed £375million to £740million.
That averages out at £185million per year – or roughly twice the annual budget of Radio 4.
It also means that every licence fee payer will be paying roughly £7.36 a year, out of an annual licence fee of £145.50, solely to pay down the BBC’s pension deficit.
The decision to force licence-fee payers to pay the entire increase in the pension fund deficit has been made by BBC management, led by the director-general Tony Hall, and agreed with BBC pension fund trustees.
It has not been publicised to licence-fee payers, instead being announced by email to BBC staff who are members of the pension scheme.
While costing licence-fee payers dearly, it will ward off any conflict with the unions who represent BBC staff – principally the National Union of Journalists and Bectu.
In 2010, the BBC suffered industrial action, including strikes, when it asked staff to accept lower benefits and higher contributions to help pay down the deficit.
The supervisory BBC Trust, led by chairman Lord Patten, has not yet made any comment on the decision.
The BBC Trust is tasked by the BBC’s royal charter with ensuring that the BBC provides value-for-money for licence-fee payers.
I was thinking about this, and its one of the biggest con jobs around today.
In the UK, you pay your TV licensing fees, that covers sponsorship of the BBC and allows them to produce content for you to watch on your TV, as well as being the law.
The BBC also releases its most popular shows on DVDs. And, if you’ve ever bought Sherlock, Spooks or This Life, you’ll now how ludicrously expensive they are for what you get. Seriously, £25 for three episodes of Sherlock? If you want to know why people illegally download, I give you Exhibit A, m’lord. 24 episodes of a US network show will cost you around £25; three episodes of a BBC series will cost you the same.
Likewise, does the BBC have any right to automatically delete your iPlayer downloads after a certain period? You’ve paid for them already.
But, if you actually think about it, YOU’VE already paid for it once already when you paid your license fee. Why should you have to pay a further £25 to get it again? Shouldn’t all BBC content be free to TV license payers?
So, get down to your local HMV or supermarket and nick a copy. I’ll be your character witness when you get caught.
Dear Clive Myrie
A quick note from Scotland.
We Scots find it offensive when you state that Scotland only has a few days of summer each year, which were last week, and now it is Autumn. This is just the typical type of parochial thinking that we’ve come to expect from twats like you from London. Fuck off back there before the Glasgwegians get you outside the stadium.
Of course, because of your parochial thinking, which is shared by the rest of the London knobs at the BBC, you are blind to the fact that everyone outside the UK thinks that it rains constantly in England/London too. Why do you think that 300 miles means that London and Glasgow have such drastically different weather.
Fuck you.
And good luck getting home tonight.
PS, your incessant drivelling on about bugger all is seriously annoying. Go back to reading the auto-cue.
Dear lord. If there was an award for bullshitting then the BBC would win.
Here’s the problem: It’s the final of the World Cup. It goes to extra time. BBC decide to make it their “leading story” on the 10pm news. Golden opportunity for BBC News to spend the entire extra time section bullshitting about nothing in the hope that someone scores while they are reporting on it.
We get endless talk about defending well, attacking well, but at least that is vaguely relevant (and I do mean vague seen as no-one with any football knowledge is actually doing the reporting). But when the reporters start talking about the weather, dancing and what the fans are eating, then you know that you are in the 9th circle of BBC bullshit hell.
BBC, save it for the next royal funeral procession. We don’t want to hear non-news.
Those Sugar Puffs are dangerous! I nearly choked on them again this morning when a spokesperson for the College of Midwives announced, in reference to emergency closures of maternity wards, that this does happen because people require their services with very little notice
HILARIOUS!
If there is one thing that has a long notice period – in fact, NINE MONTHS – it would be going into labour.
If you can’t plan with that kind of notice no wonder the NHS is going to hell in a hand basket
FlippinNora 