Posts

Brilliant post Barney (especially the story of the boats) and resonated a bit. To this day people look at me oddly when they see me writing, telling me I'm writing upside down. Reason was like you I was forced to use a fountain pen as a left hander and got a constant rollicking for smudging everything, which as a left hander you can't help. So ended up with a unique style of writing that I'm stuck with 

I wasn't designed or receptive to academic style teaching, partly lazy, and partly it was very obvious that my destiny wasn't going to be University.

Back to the OP, I think a lot of us were far from angels (though not as bad as Barney!) and I think it's hard to saddle someone with a stupid mistake they made as a spirited youth. So I'm all for a clean slate and give someone a break. In my case it prob took about another 10 years before I grew up 

It's interesting though, with our military a fraction of the size of what it was in the 1970's and 80's, a natural avenue for spirited youngsters has now gone, with nothing really to replace it. 

This is something I knew very little about until recently, when signage, petitions and campaigns appeared locally against the building of a new housing development on Wellesbourne Airfield.

George Osborne gave a speech recently encouraging the building of new housing developments and utilising brownfield sites (ie previously derelict land, or former industrial but non contaminated land).

But recent rules by the Government reclassified what is classed as a brownfield site, and this includes former military airfields, either disused or in use by flying clubs. All of a sudden the owners of the land have the ability to make a killing by selling up to property developers, regardless of the number of small businesses that operate from an Airfield, or facilities provided to the community.

In Wellesbournes case there are a number of fixed wing and helicopter schools, commercial driver training, motorcycle training, one of the UK's largest outdoor markets, with 500+ stalls, and various other businesses.

Plus it's home to a museum and also the historic Vulcan, which draws in the crowds every year as it blasts up and down the runway.

Here it is motoring up the runway last Sunday (yep I love the Vulcan )

There are a number of airfields that have either fallen under the developers diggers or are about to.

You can't blame the land owners, who would turn down the opportunity to sell prime building land, but are some things worth more than money? 

Do we have to sell, destroy or scrap all of our heritage in the name of progress, or affordable housing?

Or is this just another take on the "not in my backyard" argument?

Well nearly 2 years on after the contract farce and Virgin have had the West Coast contract extended until the Spring of 2017.

According to the Beeb, 3 civil servants were suspended over the collapse of the original deal, so by that I assume they are back working again 

I clicked the link to this article and got as far as the picture.

Sorry, it may be wrong, but I didn't need to read any more. I drew my own conclusions in about 2 microseconds 

not listening - not listening - not listening

Don't want to know and prefer ignorant bliss  Gums and eyeball burger anyone?

This is something that has been on my to do list for years 

We send out lots of emails, from system generated ones for new listings, confirmation of email addresses, lost passwords, news letters, sales mails etc.

Currently our emails use a variety of addresses depending on the purpose of the email, eg listings@ info@ admin@ etc. We then use a blackhole address that captures most autoresponders and bounce messages to stop us getting swamped.

We state on emails not to reply to this email, and to contact info@ if they have a query, but some enquires inevitably get routed to our black hole account, which we have to sift through periodically.

To make it more obvious that an email address is unmonitored, I'm thinking about moving all system emails and non reply emails to be sent from no-reply@mylocalservices.co.uk

I know a lot of organisations do this, and in my mind it makes more sense, and is more obvious to the recepiant that this is a non reply email (especially if re-enforced in the message as well).

Is there a down side or anyone see a problem with this strategy? 

Would sending out emails from no-reply@ be more likely to trip spam filters, so reduce open and response rate? Does anyone use or have experience of using no-reply addresses?

Is there a better way of doing it, should it be noreply or no-reply, or doesn't it make any difference? 

Thought I would canvass opinion before we did anything 

Interesting move by Google as it looks to turn YouTube into a subscription service. There has been a back lash by independent artists and labels who have resisted Googles license terms, who are claiming terms are unfavourable.

"By not giving their subscribers access to independent music YouTube is setting itself up for failure... The vast majority of independent labels around the world are disappointed at the lack of respect and understanding shown by YouTube." - Full BBC article

Could be interesting times ahead if enough artists join forces and snub You Tube, especially with rival Apple and Amazon services. Is the Google steamroller big enough to squash any voices of discontent?

I'm dying of curiosity as to which directory it is, but being able to turn off the ratings to reviews you don't like, with anon reviews. Sounds like a spammers paradise.

Freeindex have an interesting system that flags reviews coming from the same IP, letting the user make an informed judgement as to how reliable the reviews are.

The review side of things is something that fascinates me and is something we are constantly tweaking. The latest incarnation of our system was done in partnership with TSI, for the Trading Standards directory, then incorporated into MLS. We've also recently had some input from the Property Ombudsman, and always ready to listen to any organisation who has expertise in this field.

I'm a firm believer in there are 2 sides to every story versus a user simply writing negative or potentially damaging comments and being allowed to freely publish it. If it is proved to be justified, then bad feedback should go live, but with review systems comes responsibility, something some sites don't understand or comprehend.

But I'm digressing from the OP and could waffle on about review systems for hours 

My own father confessed up this week to filling up his diesel discovery with a £100 worth of unleaded. Another £250 later to get it emptied and back to square one 

Hoping it's not genetic.... Have run out a fuel a few times, but never put the wrong juice in!

Yup Expedia 

"One of the world's largest online travel agencies, Expedia, has become the latest company to accept Bitcoin transactions as a form of payment." - BBC article

Maybe this is the beginning of mainstream adoption, or just a clever marketing campaign by Expedia to generate some back links after getting hammered by Google