FREE YORKSHIRE TERRIER. 8 years old. Hateful little bastard. Bites! FREE PUPPIES 1/2 Cocker Spaniel, 1/2 sneaky neighbour's dog. FREE PUPPIES. Mother, A Kennel Club registered German Shepherd. Father, Super Dog . . Able to leap tall fences in a single bound. FOUND DIRTY WHITE DOG. Looks like a rat. Been out a while. Better be a big reward. COWS, CALVES for sale (NEVER BRED) Also 1 gay bull. JOINING NUDIST COLONY! Must sell washer and dryer £100. WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE Worn once by mistake Call Stephanie. And the best one: FOR SALE BY OWNER Complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica All 45 volumes in ‘as new’ condition no longer needed got married last month and it turns out wife knows f *g everything! £200 or near offer. Comments...

Last night I cancelled the connection between my [this] blog and my Facebook page. I've struggled in the last year or two to be open and honest about my lifestyle and how its affecting me. When I started this web site some 8 years ago, I could be brutally honest about how I felt and the world I was stumbling my way into. My family, my friends, no one had a clue about this website or my tentative steps out into the world. Since then, I'm Out, I'm living in London, I'm hanging out...

Well so far so good. The weekend has gone ok but its been a quiet one. The road works are causing major delays and a detour into town adding an extra mile on the journey coming from Barrow Island.One conversation in the car this weekend between a mother and a young girl aged around 8 years old was quite enlightening. The young girl said she had a boyfriend at school and her mother asked who it was. As most 8 year olds do, they refuse to say who it is and she said "I`m not telling, its a secret". Her mother replied by saying that she shouldn't have boyfriends as she was too young to which the little girl promptly said." I need a boyfriend as I don't want to become a lesbian like my sister" I tried not to laugh at this as her mother instantly started to shout at her saying that we...

The messages that the British Council would like you to read about the Education UK website are here.   “The website attracts excess [sic] of 6.1 million unique users per year.”   Even if it were possible to make a credible statement about how many users of a site over a year were unique, we calculate that the top line figure would mean that at least 500 years have been wasted.   “Currently the site has over 450,000 courses demonstrating how much choice the UK has as a study destination”.   These 450,000 courses include a part-time evening course in Portuguese for absolute beginners in Alton, a three week part-time course in Sleep Solutions for Children at Thurrock and Basildon, a one day Abrasive Wheels Certificate course at Walford and North Shropshire, Nail Treatments...

Back in the early days of this blog, I did something thoughtless and cruel to my family and friends. I ran away. Sure I only lasted two weeks but I think that's a pretty damn good innings for a childish, melodramatic endeavour (Part One The Journey To Rome, Part Two The Journey Home). 8 years ago today I was in the town of Menton on the Cote D'Azur (that's southern France for the uninitiated), eating chicken and tomato panini's if memory serves me correctly. Whilst the memories are rather dark and foreboding, given that I was planning to kill myself at some point on the trip, I can now look back on them fondly. I'd given up all responsibilities, ever so briefly, and there was no family, no university, no work, nothing at all to worry about. Except for that damn black dog on...

It’s only a taster rather than an in-depth study (how much more do I have to do for them?) but it reveals how institutions in Wales are short-changed by the British Council’s Education UK web site. It also shows what it is like to use the “official” British international student recruitment site that comes with the support of the Prime Minister, and has enjoyed this support, and caused such immense frustration, for 8 years. For almost all of that period the Chair of the British Council was Lord Kinnock who is of course a Welshman....

Here's a quote I found randomly on Dave2's blog (in the comments): Neil Turner is the secret link that keeps the blogosphere together. If "Neil's World" were to disappear, I fear that the entire blogosphere would implode. I suppose that's a good reason not to quit blogging then. Besides, I've been doing it for 6 weeks shy of 8 years. "The Secret Link" originally appeared on Neil Turner's blog on December 9, 2009. Republishing is permitted under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA UK 2.0...

 On January 29th 2002, almost 8 years ago, the British Council was very disturbed. It realised that the launch of their Education UK website, a direct and high profile result of the interest of Downing Street and the “Prime Minister’s Initiative”, with gongs riding on it, had been a disaster. On that day therefore a series of announcements were made, each directed at a different sector of the UK’s educational establishment. I have dug the pages out of the web archive (NB archive pages are SLOW to load) for reference, so that we have here the general one with the links. The links on that page still work and take you the original, unsullied, archived material. (Note that these pages all take 20-30 seconds to load from the web archive, so be patient and wait. Think of your first...

Shock horror!  Lord Pearson has claimed £100k in second home expenses that were not fraudulent and significantly less than most of the inhabitants of Westminster. Lord Pearson's main home is his estate in Scotland, his second home is in London.  He says he spends almost exactly half the year there. The £100k is the total claimed since 2001 - £12.5k per year.  This is significantly less...

The Education UK site uses UCAS data under licence, so you would expect the search results to be much the same, if not exactly the same. But they're not. Even if you think it is more suitable for a non-native speaker of English to type, say, "Biological science" rather than click on it, the fact is that the student who does succeed in getting the spelling right etc. may have a rocky time. The serious question is why does anybody believe that the search system on Education UK, which has been this way for almost 8 years, is better in any regard for overseas students? It works sort of, for some searches, so it's better than the EFL or summer course searches. But let's not kid ourselves that this crappy service is helping international student...

How many times do you find yourself taping your fingers along to your favourite tune – with Piano Hands you can play music anywhere, without the need for a keyboard!Providing hours of fun, these snazzy neoprene gloves have sensors on the fingertips which trigger the piano notes that play through the attached speaker. Each finger corresponds to a different note and to shift up an octave, simply press the heel of your hand on whatever surface you’re playing on. Want to express your musical talents through something other than the classical piano – fear not, there are seven other instruments you can choose from, quite literally at your fingertips! Choose from 8 instruments including: Piano Guitar Drums Organ Violin Trumpet Mandolin Music Box Features: A pair of gloves that...

The owner of this tattoo was in the USMC for 8 years leaving as an E-5 Watching Men Burn: The Falklands War, and What Came Next a Soldier's Story...

A 39 yr old Turkish woman is waiting – more anxiously than others – praying that her lover’s willy is not going to let her down. While to many women, ‘brewer’s droop’ may mean an evening ends with a whimper rather than a bang, failure to obtain an erection will determine how long the woman is banged up in jail. When her lover failed to keep his promise to marry her, she cut off his penis while he was in a drunken stupor and threw it on to the roof of a neighbouring building. Surgeons have reattached the penis but the court was told it may take up to 6 months to determine whether full sexual function has been restored. If he has a ‘Well’ Willy she will be sentenced to 3 yrs in prison. However, if he has a Willy ‘Wonka” she...

Veteran BBC Radio 2 presenter Terry Wogan has announced that he is to leave the Breaksfast Show in December. His replacement will be Chris Evans, 28 years his junior.Predictably, the change has led to accusations that Radio 2 is aiming at a younger audience, and this makes it even more difficult for commercial stations to compete. Frankly, the average age of Radio 2's audience has fallen from 53 to 50, but the station is aimed at over 35s now, not over 50s as it was in the early 1990s under Controller Frances Line. And Evans is older than Wogan was when he started in 1972. Wogan's fans who say that they will no longer listen managed to cope somehow when he disappeared to television for 8 years in 1985.And commercial radio should stop moaning that the BBC is funded by the taxpayer....

The UK is facing an energy crisis in a few years time. Government projections show demand will outstrip supply in as few as 8 years. For the first time since the Miners Strike of the 1970’s, Britain is facing the prospect of electricity blackouts Read more here . . . It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Looking on the bright side – we may well see the return of the 3-day working week in an effort to conserve energy. Though what we are going to do for entertainment during blackouts is anyone’s guess. Me – I’m going to get meself one of these windup laptops. http://tinyurl.com/ln5rvg...

The minimum wage was 10 years old earlier this year and fantastic though the concept is, the minimum wage is still too low (it is tough trying to live on £5.73 an hour, especially if you have others to support) and we now need to tackle the fat cats with a maximum wage.While trying to live on £230 per week before tax, assuming that you can get a 40 hour per week job, is difficult, earning more than, say £2300 per week, is simply unnecessary. If £5.73 translates to between £10k and £12k depending on hours and conditions, if the national average wage was £479 in 2008, the gender gap in pay widened in 2008 to 12.8%, and there are £2.4 million people unemployed, is there any rationale for people to continue to earn more than, say, £2300 each week (£120k p.a.)?The country needs to...

Yes, it was 8 years ago today when I first opened a copy of the Guardian and discovered something called "blogging". No less than 5 minutes later I was sitting in the dining room on the computer starting up this very blog under the name "Aah!! It's Uni Time". I'd like to thank you, Dear Constant Reader, for taking the time to read my insane ramblings and hope they've sometimes made you smile. 8 years ago... Jae was on his summer holidays before starting at Brighton University. Jae was living in Cheriton, part of Folkestone, Kent with his family. Jae was single-ish. My strange relationship with Stephen was still sort of happening. Jae had visited only France, Italy and Spain.Jae was a Wiccan. Jae was a self-loathing and melancholy bastard and it's atribute to my friends they stuck by me...

I built me my own on Wordpress theme at last from scratch (with the aid of a few plugins), I think it’s the seventh incarnation since this site started 8 years ago. It’s still not perfect, but wanted to get it up there....

William Hague famously on the eve of the 2001 election shouted from his soapbox there was only 24 hours to save the pound. Well 8 years later I still have it in my pocket, however this fate of Livngston FC may well be up at noon tomorrow.The paper that as a true Liverpool fan I cannot bring myself to read has a headline flashing up in google news 'No Tears if Livi Fold'. Well I believe...

We Tylers are off for a weekend of bearing witness, toasts, and big hats. Our elder son is getting married, and we are delighted.These days of course, getting married is pretty well a minority pursuit. We now have the lowest marriage rates since they were first calculated in 1862. The number of first marriages has halved since the early 70s, when Mr and Mrs T got shackled. Does it matter? Will the relationship between our son and his fiancee be strengthened by their marriage?Actually we think it will be, but in truth that's more about them than the institution of marriage per se. They've already been together for 8 years, and they're now making a very public statement that they intend to stay together. And - famous last words - from what we know of them, it will then take an atomic bomb...

Sadly I don't mean an upgrade to this site, it's still as ugly as it was the day it was born about 8 years ago. Upgrade Complete! is a cracking little game where you have to upgrade the game itself as you go along. It's pointless in the same way Achievement Unlocked was - think of it as a meta...

Was looking for this all morning after watching open-mouthed on Sky News earlier! Managed to find it, courtesy of ConHome.Watch as Neil Kinnock berates Prezza for his "ill-advised" comments, reckons that no-one is better equipped than our Glenys as Minister for Europe, and then reckons Gordo shouldn't quit until he's won two elections! (2 mins 50 secs in) Truly eye-watering stuff!...

    BABY P MUM JAILED BABY Peter’s evil mother could be free in just over THREE YEARS – after she was jailed today over her son’s horrific death.    The toddler’s sadistic stepfather was given life for a campaign of abuse against the little boy and the rape of a two-year-old girl – but could be out in 8 years.  And their sick lodger Jason Owen could be released in less than 12 months after he was told he must serve at least three years behind bars.     Sign our petition to force Justice Secretary Jack Straw to act NOW to increase the sentences handed to the mother and stepfather of Baby P and their lodger Jason Owen to reflect the true nature of their appalling abuse of an innocent child.  Click here to sign  ...

In last Thursday's Question Time on BBC1, Margaret Beckett claimed that the existing system of parliamentary expenses was brought in under the Thatcher government in 1983, after a recommendations on a salary increase for MPs by an independent body had been deferred and staggered for 8 years – at which point the additional allowances were brought in ‘in stead of the pay increase’ (see below).If this is true, it suggests that MPs were explicitly encouraged to subscribe to the culture of greed that Thatcherism is so often accused of having fermented during the 1980s, and it will be interested to wee whether this is confirmed in any forthcoming investigations of the system....

Well as it has been 8 years almost since Douglas Adams died. This is a fitting place to leave the last tribute to him on my blog. I hope regular readers will have enjoyed some writing by me in a different style, on different subjects. So where does that leave us.Douglas was proud that he was born in Cambridge in 1952 and joked that there were more than one important DNA discovery to come out...

Normally this is the sort of short musing I'd reserve for Twitter, but I'll treat blog readers to it too. Anyhow, Firefox 3.0.0.10, a minor security and bug fix release, is out, and so I've updated my Windows copy of Firefox - as I run Windows Vista in a somewhat seldom-used virtual machine I was still running 3.0.0.8, so the updater downloaded the full 9.2 MB patch rather than the smaller 1.5 MB patch if I'd had 3.0.0.9. What struck me was that the 9.2 MB file downloaded in about 10 seconds, although this is to be expected for a 10 Mbps broadband connection. The thing is, I remember about 8 years ago, when I was still using dial-up, and how long files would have taken to download. That 9.2 MB file would have probably taken the best part of 45 minutes on dial-up - more if the connection...

You remember him right? So Dick was CEO and chairman of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, this BBC story details huge bribes paid to Nigeria that occurred from 1994 to 2004. Yet nowhere does it mention Dick (I have helpfully emailed the Beeb to remind them who ran the company for 5 years). Now I know it’s not his worst crime, but the man who became Vice President of the Empire for 8 years, the most powerful VP ever being CEO of a company found guilty of paying $180m in bribes to Nigerian officials, yet not being mentioned in the report? A story that has been rumbling on for years and many other outlets are not shy of printing the D word. Are they afraid he has become a charity appealing for help in Gaza (I think on the list of things Dick will never do, as in help a human being as...

Its that time of year when the cab has to go for its "taxi test". Now this is not just a once a year event but in the local borough of Barrow In Furness cabs have to be tested twice a year if they are less than 8 years old and 3 times a year (every 4 months) if they are more than 8 years old.For me, that's due soon so the cab goes in to be inspected and tested tomorrow and this leads to more expense as the licence is due for renewal as well.When you think that it costs over £130 a year for the licence then there's the drivers licence on top of that at around £30 a year plus and ID badge thats another £10 or there abouts. Add to this annual insurance costs together with daily and weekly running costs such as fuel and radio rent (circuit Fee - paying the company to provide you with...

It's been 8 years now since Melly died: March 9th 2001. Not much more to say really. She's gone and life has, cruelly, continued. This world sucks. This blogger works for nothing but the joy of writing but always appreciates things bought from his...

A Detroit mother of five was charged with child abuse and torture Wednesday after she called the police on herself.Reyna Valentina, of Hamtramck, is accused of putting her 4-year-old daughter inside a heated oven and burning her eyes with a metal object."She stated that, 'Mom cooks me like a turkey in the oven'," said Hamtramck police Detective Ben Bilecki. "The youngest daughter also said, 'Mama gave me the boo boos in my eyes.'"The 40-year-old mother is also accused of beating her 6-year-old with a metal bar. Valentina has been charged with two counts of first-degree child abuse and two counts of torture. Valentina's children are ages 9 months old, 4 years, 6 years, 8 years and 9 years old."All of the kids are terrified of their mother, the defendant in this case. They do not want to go...