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New Years Day 2010 2 January 2010

The lightest faintest invisible dusting of snow, but at least it is there, we have snow on New Years Day. Not that we are going to go out in it, nor are the cats who shiver theatrically, and huddle themselves to the warm air vent.
A new year, a new decade, a new day what shall I do? Well tidy up of course, tackle all those jobs you have been putting off for ages. I open up a cupboard high on the wall and clean it out, what an exciting way to celebrate the new decade! Old tins of soup which I can’t bear to throw away I clear them out and put in boxes of dried fruit, there we are tidyness order, structure. Everything with a place and everything in its place. Emboldened by this minor success I decide to mend the drawer in my bedroom. Despite being held on by four screws the cover of my draw has a disconcerting tendency to fall to the floor whenever I open the drawer, usually it lands with unerring accuracy on my foot. So I take it out, take everything out of it and undo the four screws and put them in new places and add a couple of extra screws just for good measure. I sweat over this for a full sold thirty minutes and panting slightly with the effort I lift the thing up. Six screws, that ‘ll teach it won’t fall off again in a hurry. Except of course that it does falling off and falling down to the floor in a graceful arc, and only by recovering my wits instantly and some fancy foot work do I avoid it colliding with my big toe. It lies on its back, mocking me six little holes where the screws were there a moment ago.
Enraged I lift it up once more and undo all six screws and drive them in once again with extra force. After forty minutes and I finish panting with the effort, and sit back and gaze upon my handiwork, it looks all right, but then it did the last time. Gingerly I prod it with my foot, it does not fall off. Even more gingerly I lift it up taking great care to keep my feet out of the way should it fall off again, it doesn’t. I slot it carefully back in, it,looks all right, probably building up a false sense of security. I put all the things back in it, the drawer was comfortably full when I opened it, but when I put everything back in, its now over full. The perfidy of matter, I rearrange it, its still over full, but it was all right just over an hour ago! I re-rearrage it and close it gently, keeping my feet well out of the way in case of treachery. The draw closes silently everything in it. I step back and hold my breath, if its going to fall off again then this is the perfect moment. But it doesn’t it mutely stays where it is put.
I make soup and we watch the weather, more snow promised, but the pleas from the weather men and women for us to stay home and not venture out into the icy conditions, seem somehow less sincere.
Chips lamb chop salad and we watch the final episode of Coast, having whizzed around the British Isles we are once more back in Dover, excellent series 1. It Series 2 tomorrow.

Postcards

Reflects Du Bord Du Mer, Joie du naturisme, France

South Dorset, around Weymouth, England

The harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire England

Norfolk Broads, Norfolk, England

Great Yarmouth, Norfolk England

Obituary: Tim Hart: folk musician in the band Steeleye Span

Tim Hart played a rich and important part in the revival and popularisation of traditional English folk music. He enjoyed great success as a founder member of the band Steeleye Span, who, together with Fairport Convention, pioneered an innovative form of English folk-rock, performing traditional songs on electric instruments.
It was a bold approach that paid dividends for Hart and Steeleye Span when the group’s exuberant version of the traditional folk song All Around My Hat reached No 5 in 1975.
Tim Hart was born in Lincoln in 1948. He grew up in St Albans, Hertfordshire, where his father was the vicar at St Saviour’s. At St Albans school he joined the Rattfinks, a pop band inspired by the success of the Zombies, whose members had left the school in 1964 and within weeks hit the charts with She’s Not There.
The Rattfinks failed to follow suit and by 1965, inspired by such figures as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, Hart had gravitated towards folk music.
On leaving school he took various dead-end jobs and spent his evening singing in local folk clubs. One night in late 1965 at St Albans folk club he met Maddy Prior, a Blackpool-born singer whose father was one of the creators of the TV police series Z-Cars.
Prior was at the time singing in a duo with the guitarist Mac McLeod but by early 1966 she and Hart had formed both a romantic and professional partnership. Rejecting the American folk and blues songs that were the popular currency of much of the folk revival, they turned to traditional English material.
Their debut album in 1968 was titled Folk Songs of Olde England and was followed by a second volume a year later. Both records featured acoustic arrangements of traditional songs such as Farewell Nancy and The Bold Fisherman, Prior’s pure voice accompanied by Hart on guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin and dulcimer.
Around the same time Fairport Convention were moving away from their US-influenced sound and on their 1969 album Unhalfbricking included their first electric arrangement of a traditional song (A Sailor’s Life) alongside the still obligatory Dylan covers.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6972578.ece

Letters:

Guardian:
Adair Turner is right that the government has a key role to play in creating green-collar jobs, and in highlighting the need to cut carbon emissions from Britain’s homes (FSA chief calls for government job creation and green economy, 1 January). However, for at least one green technology that can be used in the home, micro-CHP, current government indecision is threatening the future of 20,000 UK jobs, and a industry with a potential value to the UK economy of £1.5bn.
Government officials are in the final stages of setting the subsidies in a key environmental policy, the feed-in tariff (FIT) which is intended to provide financial incentives to householders for the generation of renewable and low-carbon electricity. But with just a few weeks before the government’s internal deadline to set the FIT tariffs from April for the next three years, the UK’s emerging micro-CHP industry still has no idea what tariff rate the technology will receive. Support from the FIT for micro-CHP at 15p per kilowatt hour could mean a saving of up to 10 million tonnes of CO2 per annum from Britain’s buildings by 2020.
The UK leads the world in the design and development of micro-CHP units. However, the government is risking seeing investment, jobs and manufacturing go abroad, to where micro-CHP already receives considerable financial support, such as in the Netherlands and Germany.
The Combined Heat and Power Association, the Heating and Hotwater Industry Council and the Micropower Council have jointly written to Lord Hunt, the energy minister, to urgently confirm that micro-CHP will be treated in the FIT as previously indicated by government ministers in parliament.
Ian Manders
Combined Heat & Power Association
• It is a good educational effort, but surely Guardian readers are not all airheads that need to be told not to leave equipment on standby (This is the front line, G2, 1 December). Many of your readers were brought up in the years after the second world war, when we always switched things off. What idiot first sold the idea of standby? We can’t surely be the only household who switched to low-energy bulbs when they first came in; fitted a water meter when they first were available; put 10 inches of insulation in the roof years ago; always shower rather than bath; and brought up our children to do the same. Unfortunately, the result for us is that a supplement like your 10:10 special G2 is an irritating throwaway and a waste of production energy. No, I am not being complacent, but these lists of “worthies” and case studies of people who should know better achieve little, I fear.
Ralph Gordon
Romford, Essex
• Having decided which to use to cook: microwave, gas, or electric oven (Do I have to go veggie?, G2, 1 January), what of the utensils? The specific heat capacities (the number of heat units necessary to raise the unit of mass of a given substance one degree of temperature) of iron, aluminium and copper, for example, vary widely. When buying pots and pans, should we take them into account for the 10:10 target, and which should we favour?
Don Sarll
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
• Copenhagen was no Christmas present to our children or to the planet. So what do we do now? Here are four suggestions:
1) The UK, the country with the world’s first legally binding carbon pollution targets, should continue to lead from the front by increasing the cuts it’s proposing to 40% by 2020 and making them happen without recourse to techniques like carbon offsetting;
2) We, the people, need to get on with building a greener future from the bottom up via self-help movements like Transition Towns or campaigns like 10:10;
3) The government should re-establish its carbon rationing committee, which David Miliband set up when he was briefly environment secretary and which Hilary Benn scrapped, and it should specifically look at David Fleming’s Tradable Energy Quotas concept (TEQs) as a way of decarbonising the economy and preparing for the end of cheap oil;
4) While TEQs are being tested, the UK government should set high carbon taxes and send the proceeds to citizens in the form of an equal payment per person, as the Nasa scientist James Hansen has suggested.
Alexis Rowell

Yemen’s foreign minister has warned the west of the presence of al-Qaida in his country and that it “may plan attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit” (Report, 30 December). He then went on to say: “We have to expand our counter-terrorism units and this means providing them with necessary training, military equipment, transportation – we are very short of helicopters.” The minister may be blackmailing the west in an old and often successful tradition. The west should not become a party in a war that is essentially a civil war in a failed state. If we needed proof, the minister is explicitly admitting his government has failed to maintain internal security. A government so incompetent to have lost authority cannot be revived by foreign intervention. The US is admired in the Middle East as a model for tolerance and prosperity for its own people. It is hated for the allies it chooses in the region. As young Britons and Americans are returning home in body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan, do not get the west into an internecine conflict it can avoid.
AR Sheikholeslami
Oxford
• Except for two periods of hated intervention by the Ottomans in the 16-17th century and again in the 19-20th century, Yemen has not suffered colonisation as such. Only in the south western corner, around Aden, did Yemenis cede full sovereignty to the British from 1838 to 1967. The forces at work in north Yemen today must not be equated with the colonial scars of Somalia.
Francine Stone

The judge ruled in favour of the Blackwater men (US court dismisses charges against Blackwater security guards accused of killing up to 17 Iraqis, 1 January), saying prosecutors wrongly used against them statements they had given under duress. However, statements made during visits to the waterboard or during torture after “rendition” are the holy grail of US intelligence. Why have our leaders sold our souls to these malign buffoons?
Denis Jackson
London
• There’s a reference in Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road (Letters, 30 December): “The cancerous growth of Senator McCarthy had poisoned the United States, and with the pouring of second or third drinks they would see themselves as members of an embattled, dwindling intellectual underground. Clippings from the Observer or the Manchester Guardian would be produced and read out loud, to slow and respectful nods; Frank might talk wistfully of Europe … “.
David Dear
Liverpool
• No, no! You shouldn’t count all the syllables (Letters, 18 & 23 December), just the stressed syllables – the beats that make up the rhythm of English speech. Twenty ten has two stresses/beats; two thousand and ten has three. That’s why Vic Voss’s argument (Letters, 29 December) about www does not work: world wide web has just as many stresses as double-u double-u double-u (and more complicated consonant clusters as well). Let’s go for twenty ten – less stress!
Dr Paul Tench
Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University
• What ticks all the boxes for most annoying cliche of 2009 (Letter, 31 December) has to be just that.
Bob Ford
Keighley, West Yorkshire
• Annoying cliche of 2009, especially from Radio 4 interviewers and their victims: “In terms of … “
Michael Footman
Waterlooville, Hampshire
• Security services should be seeking advice from the mothers of teenage boys as they are experts at dealing with toxic underwear (Report, 31 December).
M Rahman

It’s been more than 15 years now, but do you remember when Em was a little girl, before she started school, and she refused to go anywhere without you? I think the comfort to be had from a doll made of green brushed nylon stuffed with polystyrene balls, with a plastic head, was primarily your feel and size. You were small enough to fit into a matchbox; small enough for a little hand, where you felt safe. You were always there, Bean, sleeping partially stuffed up one or another of my daughter’s nostrils, while her thumb occupied her mouth. You developed quite an understanding look as your fixed, painted stare chipped off and your body became flattened, greyish and smelly.
One day, as usual, you rode around the Co-op squashed in the baby seat of the trolley beside Em. But when we reached the checkout, without noticing, we had lost you.
Em was shockingly distraught. We spent the next few days slowly walking our usual routes, spiralling from the aisles of the Co-op outwards, on the lookout, but you’d gone. Finally, we stood on the pedestrian bridge overlooking the railway lines and, as tears fell from Em’s face, through the fencing and down on to the tracks below, I said, “Hey, Em, I bet Bean has gone on the train to London!”
It worked. Em’s eyes dried and she looked interested. She agreed. Bean had probably gone to London. We had friends in London. We could ring.
It didn’t take a lot of organising to get Francis on the phone to Em to confirm that, yes, you had turned up safe and well and that you were going to be living in the city for a while. Maybe for a few years. You hadn’t decided yet.
Em left home herself a couple of months ago, to go to college. It’s normal. It’s what children are supposed to do when they are not our babies any more. It’s her birthday today, actually, the first we have ever spent apart. But if I allow a pageant of memories to replay in schmaltzy Technicolor, I shall do myself no favours. I can be more sensible than that. I shall remember instead the 53 unwashed socks peeled and scraped from the more disturbing nooks and crannies of her deserted bedroom. I feel better already.
And then … yes, I know it’s my age. I am a cliche. I am a joke. But 16 days late and I started to hope. I thought … Worse, I actually began to talk to you, silently, of course, because I actually began to believe you were there. Big as a bean. So, “Stick with me, Bean,” as I changed the wheel on the Citroën because the other half has a bad back. “Stay with me,” quietly, as I imagined a new, warm weight to love. Another chance. “I know some of the things I did wrong last time, Bean.” Making plans. “I promise not to do all of them again.” “Only fireworks, Bean. You’ll like them.” “Tinned spaghetti, Bean? It’s been a long time.”
But of course, you didn’t stay. I expect, if I’m honest, that the only place you ever were was in my premenopausal imagination, churning the suppressed need to have a baby safe at home instead of walking, alone, thinly dressed and tipsy through a far off city centre, between some heaving pub and a grotty hall of residence. All that pain and nausea was just a hormonal joke to trick me. And it worked. I forgot my place in the merry march of atrophy. I thought I could do it again.
But, Bean, don’t forget: if you ever do decide to come home from London, you know where I am. You will always be welcome. Mum is always here.

Abolishing cheques is not a customer-friendly move to the future, it is a means of cost-cutting by reducing services provided by banks (Cheques out, but what does it mean for everyday payments?). Direct debit is uncontrollable and the direct debit guarantee no substitute for a cheque. Logically, the answer is Bacs or standing orders. But an increasing number of providers demand direct debits and charge a premium not only for cheques, but also for Bacs, since the real agenda is to control not merely the amount of a payment, but also when it takes place.
After all, why should they let you pay when it’s convenient for you, when they can force you to pay when it’s convenient for them? loftwork, guardian.co.uk/money
• A mobile phone payment system will take off totally. It is absurd to wonder about people “without mobile phones” when there are more mobile phones than people in the UK.
In some countries, far less developed than the UK, mobile phone payment systems are entrenched. M-Pesa in Kenya is one example. People not only transfer between mobiles, they can collect the cash from numerous outlets, including garages. Fathers and sons working in Nairobi can send money to their home village instantly, and the family can pick up the cash straight away. thesageone, guardian.co.uk/money
• I don’t quite understand the uproar. Payments by cheque have not been the norm in many other European countries for almost two decades, and people cope. So why wouldn’t we?
If someone pays someone else by cheque, it takes five days to clear. And sometimes it doesn’t clear. What is the difference between handing over an invoice and hoping it is being paid by bank transfer, and accepting a cheque and hoping it will clear? High street shops stopped taking cheques a while ago. Did that kill us? No. MorganaLeFay, guardian.co.uk/money
• Wow, every single anti-argument in favour of cheques is laughable. There are well-tried, practical solutions in every day use around the world for each of the fears.
Fifteen odd years ago in Switzerland, whenever I got a bill (landlord, electric etc) it came with a paper form for payment. I could either go to the branch cashier and ask them to process a payment, there were machines next to the ATMs that read them and I could send them the money using my pin number and now the internet banking service replicates the form.
It’s 10 years since a dual electronic signature was widely used by my business (at that time in the Czech Republic). The cheque should go the same way as the Woolies gift voucher my granny used to give me. ExPatJon, guardian.co.uk/money
• Cheques in France are very much a part of everyday life, from buying your food and goods, to taxes and doctors – I don’t think it will be dying the same death here any time soon. In France, too, the penalties for a bounced cheque are much more severe.
I’m far from being a technophobe (using computers since the age of five, and took a degree in the subject), but I dislike mobile phones and never use the old brick of a model I have.
I would never pay by this means, and I think such convenient methods are too convenient. There’s already too many people racking up debt on credit cards – I can’t see all these electronic forms of payment are going to help change bad habits.
When you’re writing out a figure, rather than swiping a piece of plastic, you have a better appreciation of what is coming out of your account even if the transaction isn’t instant. brothersgrimm, guardian.co.uk/money

Independent:

Mixed metaphors about holes and digging and fiddling in Rome come to mind, with the government yet again showing an abject bankruptcy of the imagination in its plans legally to impose writing on three-year-old boys (“Boys aged three ‘must work more’ “, 29 December).
Surely any open and relatively undefensive government, faced with a substantial deterioration in young children’s capabilities after the first year of the compulsory Early Years Foundation Stage, would begin by thinking again about its essentially arbitrary pitching of the learning goals in the EYFS “curriculum”, rather than simply imposing more of the same fare on our hapless young.
It is a constitutional outrage of scarcely believable proportions that the government takes upon itself the right legally to impose pedagogical practices that have no evidence base on very young children, practices many authorities on childcare believe to be developmentally inappropriate and even harmful to those children. Such an extraordinary state of affairs is an open goal for a concerted legal challenge.
Your disappointing leading article (“Closing the education gap”, 29 December) merely adds to the highly fashionable obsession with early literacy, in assuming “earlier is necessarily better”, when a wide range of highly experienced early-years opinion begs to differ. Not least, recent ground-breaking research from the University of Otago, New Zealand, shows conclusively that introduction of literacy learning to children under six has no long-term benefit whatsoever.
Campaigns such as ours will continue to expose these State-imposed child-abusive practices relentlessly until such time as some evidence-based sanity prevails in the pre-school domain.
Dr Richard House
Co-founder, Open EYE Campaign for open early childhood learning,
London SW15
A bitter pill to swallow
It was with a heavy heart that I read the article from Liz Hoggard, “A morning-after pill is best served without a sermon” (29 December). I find her attitude to abortion disturbing, not to say frightening.
The idea that young women who find themselves pregnant should have the immediate facility to abort the new life in them, by use of Levonelle 1500, without having to think or care further about the consequences of their actions is bad enough, but then to expect everyone around them, including the pharmacist, to be forced to silently endorse the same total lack of moral awareness or responsibility, is a sad comment on our society.
But my main concern is the wider assumption in the article, that the expression of individual convictions has no place in public services, and, by extension therefore, in the public sphere at all, for fear of offending or stirring the conscience of some individual or group.
Moral reform has always been informed, if not driven, by public debate, followed by the action of Parliament and the State, and the agenda for public debate has been set by concerned individuals, whose deeply-held moral and/or religious views have forced them to act. William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer spring to mind.
What I see now in the UK is the State gradually arrogating to itself the right to decide whether something is right or wrong, and doing its level best to stifle debate, which is never a healthy state of affairs. Left to itself, the State has no moral scruples, as the lessons of the 20th century teach us, in the history of the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Cambodia, and so on. Individuals and groups have to be allowed freedom to express their moral convictions without fear of being persecuted, in both in private and in the relevant public sphere, if the liberal democracy allegedly so dear to Liz Hoggard is to continue.
Andrew Rumley
Chatham, Kent
She’s a victim, twice over
The article about Ms Lorraine Morris, who faces prosecution for prostitution offences after she called the police to report a violent attack, makes important points but leaves out crucial aspects of what happened (“New laws put prostitutes at risk, claim escort agencies”, 29 December).
First, the attack was serious and could have resulted in severe injury or worse. Two men, one who seemed to have had a sawn-off shotgun up his sleeve, pushed their way into a flat run by the Cloud Nine escort agency, threw petrol about and threatened to torch the premises.
Second, Ms Morris courageously came forward to give police information about the agency; she was told this was needed to prevent another attack, and the men had threatened to torch other premises.
She encouraged other women to report what they saw, after the police assured her that the information would be used only to investigate this serious crime. Yet this information is now being used to prosecute Ms Morris for brothel-keeping.
Third, while the police investigate Ms Morris, the two violent men are still at large and have been heard publicly bragging about the incident. How many more women must suffer before the police arrest these men rather than their victims?
Cari Mitchell
English Collective of Prostitutes,
London NW6
Rising house price is not good news
So, the average home has gone up by 68 per cent in value during the past 10 years, after allowing for inflation, and this, presumably, is meant to be a good thing (“House prices increased 5.9% during year”, 31 December). Would people feel such delight if the cost of food, gas and electricity had increased by 68 per cent, above the rate of inflation, during the past 10 years?
Rising house prices simply mean that fewer young people will be able to afford to buy a home, particularly as pay is being frozen or cut in many jobs. Instead, more young people will be compelled to live at home with their parents, perhaps until they are well into their 30s.
Unaffordable housing might also undermine the Tories’ expressed desire to promote marriage, because young couples might defer getting married, and starting a family, until they can afford to buy a place of their own, which might not be for a very long time.
Pete Dorey
Reader in British Politics, School of European Studies, Cardiff University
Your story of the 5.9 per cent rise in house prices reported by Nationwide and the decade-long 117 per cent rise in house prices indicate the problems of lack of housing supply rather than any increases in demand and the property market “bouncing back”. Put simply, over the past 20-plus years, we have failed to build enough housing in the South-east and London regions.
As a result, there is always pent-up demand in these areas. The effect of this is seen in the families and individuals unable to afford housing and, perhaps worse, families having to live in overcrowded accommodation both of which store up social problems for the future. The only way to make housing more affordable is for us to build more family-sized homes in the private and social sectors.
Luke Evans
London SE5
Student visa seen as a gold-plated scam
Mary Dejevsky talks a lot of sense (Comment, 29 December). A few years ago in Bangladesh, a well-known newspaper editor there told me that Britain’s student visa scheme is universally regarded as a gold-plated immigration scam.
The “traditional” means by which a young ill-educated Bangladeshi man could emigrate to Britain was through an enforced/arranged marriage to a British-Bangladeshi girl. But British-Bangladeshi girls are ever more unwilling to marry unsophisticated strangers who know nothing of British culture and society.
But with a three-year visa, a “student” (who will in fact spend all his time working) can gradually acclimatise himself to the British way of life and thus make it much more difficult for a local girl to refuse him as a husband.
The idea that any “student” from Bangladesh (or from dozens of other countries too) will return home without having moved heaven and earth to ensure permanent residence here is laughable.
In misgoverned, overpopulated, environmentally threatened states, the emigration imperative is utterly overwhelming. People aren’t stupid either. They can spot a wide-open goal. The expansion of higher education in the UK, wholly dependent on a maladminstered and barely policed influx of foreigners, offers them this on a plate.
David Hargreaves
London SW11
Christmas humbug? No, it’s just bunkum
Maybe the reason for Margaret Knight’s lament (“Even Britain has now taken Christ out of Christmas”, letters, 23 December) is that more people have rumbled that the whole Christmas story is largely bunkum.
It’s been based on the myth of a passing patriarchal control-freak sky-god, and the story of the Virgin Mary is little more than just another transferred myth from the Greek god Zeus, who did this sort of thing all the time.
The name “Jesus Christ” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew for King or, God King as such was regarded in those days, for King Josephus or possibly Joshua. The later death on the cross and resulting symbolism is the former Greek Dionysus myth, and before that, the Egyptian Osiris myth transferred. JC probably was, if he existed at all, the legitimate and earthly only next king of the Jews, the Herods being Roman appointees. Later Christians, Paul especially, just hyped up the whole story for their own ends in their battle against the Roman Empire.
Ray Duff
Folkestone, Kent
Arise, Sir Robert, but not yet
As I understand it, the honours protocol is to receive a letter advising you of your recognition weeks before the official announcement on New Year’s Eve. I have received no such letter but, what with the postal strike and all, I held on to the hope that this morning’s newspaper would bring confirmation of my inclusion.
Alas! It appears that once more I have been overlooked, along with millions of others who contribute so much to our society and economy. Oh, we are fed the occasional morsel of the odd lollipop lady or road-sweeper, but that only shows the system to be elitist. Will someone please scrap the Honours List?
Hang on, wait a minute. Is there any chance that the letter went to the wrong Stewart?
Robert Stewart
Wilmslow, Cheshire
You’re under de-free
Your reporter’s use of the legal term “de-arrested” in his story on Colonel Gaddafi’s son (31 December) has made me wonder, do we have on our statute books legal definitions for “free” and “de-free”. If not, why not?
Kartar Uppal
West Bromwich, West Midlands
Forget Schengen
Your correspondent, Dennis Lennox, of Cheboygan County, Michigan (31 December), provides the usual over-reaction from the USA to an event which, it appears, it had every opportunity to prevent. Schengen opens borders across Europe, allowing a similar freedom of movement as Americans enjoy, in roughly the same size of area, and has nothing to do with the Christmas Day incident. The suspect started in Nigeria, then passed through security in The Netherlands and perhaps even had a passport check in transit. Those are the places to check for the intelligence that was available.
Edward Hutson
Caterham, Surrey
Problem licked
John Sharkey may be celebrating being able to re-use an apparently unused stamp (letters, 28 December), but he is costing the recipient a nearly £1 handling fee plus the cost of the stamp. The machines at the Post Office mark each stamp with a UV-readable mark so they know when someone is being dishonest. Frankly, honesty pays.
David Gould
Canonbie, Dumfriesshire
Snap decision
I’ll bet the authorities in Tehran (report, 31 December), faced with the worldwide dissemination of mobile phone footage of the disturbances in their country, are kicking themselves that they didn’t have the foresight to make the photography of police officers behaving badly an offence. Again Britain leads the field.
Andrew Calvert
Ruislip, Middlesex
He’s no hero
Johann Hari’s praise for Peter Tatchell (30 December) ignores the latter’s “outing” of public figures who were homosexual but kept it private. Tatchell’s exploitation of the public’s weird fascination with other people’s sex lives was an unforgivable invasion of individual privacy.
Tom Canham
Little Dewchurch, Hereford
Oil’s the answer
Peter Bloxham (letters, 15 December) asks why Blair’s principles for regime change apply to Iraq, but not Zimbabwe. There’s no oil in Zimbabwe.
George Heath
Harwich, Essex

Times:

Sir, I was struck by your analysis of loneliness, particularly among older people, as a silent epidemic and by your article on the increase in self-service checkouts in supermarkets (reports, Dec 31). When I was 22 I worked on a checkout in a supermarket not long after decimalisation. Many old people who came in to to buy a few items had handbags full of change but would always proffer a note. They could not manage the new coinage and did not want to appear foolish. The checkout operators could help. Most elderly people, in any case, came in several times a week simply to talk to someone. The brief exchange at the checkout was some kind of human contact in a lonely day. Now my mother is widowed and lives alone. She has friends, but many are themselves elderly and immobile. For her, the daily visit to the Co-op, with its exchange of greetings, a smile, is a vital link with life. It sounds silly, perhaps, but such small human contacts can keep the thread of optimism, of sanity, intact. The fewer chances we have for exercising such small acts of kindness, the more harm to our society.
Diana Pollock
Great Witley, Worcs
Sir, Besides the items listed in your editorial (Dec 31) there are many other recent factors that have had the consequence of reducing the opportunities for social interaction even at a superficial level. These include the vast reduction in the availability of evening classes and the greater use of cash machines and direct debits, which means that visits to the bank are far less frequent. Older people now tend to be issued with bus permits, so there is no need for interaction with the driver. The growth in buy-to-let mortgages can mean a quick turnover of tenants, so long-term residents no longer bother to make the effort to make contact with newcomers. The decline in smoking reduces the opportunity to ask somebody for a light. Playing the lottery, although done partly for altruistic reasons, is not a sociable activity in itself, unlike, say, bingo. Group medical and dental practices mean that the patient has less chance of building up a relationship with the one practitioner. Sales of evening newspapers from a street vendor have shrunk. And the increase in customer-operated tills will not help.
John Crompton
London N10
Sir, Contrary to Joan Bakewell’s commentary, churches are often at the forefront of efforts to alleviate loneliness. We have, for example, during the past 12 years, along with other churches in the area, provided Christmas and Easter Day lunches for those who might otherwise have been on their own.
We also run a community café and shop, which has become a hub of social life in the area. As with many churches, we have an active programme during the week, running and hosting up to 40 groups for all ages and abilities in the four community rooms and centres that we have built in the past 15 years; two in our churches, one in our parish hall and one on the local council estate. Some of these groups are there to build up people’s faith but most are open to all.
Perhaps the reason we don’t hear more about the amazing work carried out by churches of all denominations is that we are not in the business of self-promotion, but of quietly and faithfully serving our communities, providing welcoming places and opportunities for friendship and community life, as well as for worship and prayer.
Rev Rupert Martin
Wakefield, W Yorks

Bill Duffay wrote:
John Crompton’s litany of factors make depressing but truthful reading. I’d add the decline of shops and pubs in villages, meaning the rural eldery are probably the loneliest of all.

Sir, One feature of Chinese justice is the absence of any reasoned judgment at either the trial or the appeal stage. A Western court passing sentence, or dealing with an appeal, in a serious case does so by delivering a public judgment that states the reasons for its choice of penalty and its rejection of arguments for leniency. This gives an element of protection against decisions that are thought to be inappropriate, which can, in the West, be the subject of comment — as illustrated recently by the case of the householder who was sentenced after pursuing and attacking a burglar. It is this element of public reasoning that transforms an executive act into a judicial one and which was lacking in China.
Peter Crawford, QC
Culworth, Northants

Martin Evans wrote:
The Chinese justice system is about deterrence, not justice.
January 2, 2010 3:03 AM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Elizabeth Payne wrote:
FROM IAN PAYNE [WALSALL] :

……..including sentencing also !!!!

Sir, It having been lately represented in the newspapers that the supply of female cooks is at present very inadequate to the demand for that description of servant, and that numerous families, both in town and country, experience much difficulty in procuring a good cook who is also a really steady, sober, and trustworthy person, I would suggest that the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851, when so many people will visit London without servants of their own, might afford an excellent opportunity for establishing a school for women cooks. To this should be attached a restaurant, where dressed dinners might be sent out to private residences. The articles should be good, well-cooked, and at a moderate price, so as to cover all expenses, and leave a small profit on each dinner; to be paid for on delivery.
In this establishment a number of respectable young women, not under 20 years of age, divided into classes according to their ability and aptitude to learn, might be taught to cook well, under first-rate direction for a month or longer, and, when they had attained a competent proficiency, dismissed with a certificate properly attested.
Each of them should be provided with her lodging, food, and washing, for a weekly payment, and be required to bring with her three changes of linen. None should be admitted without a testimonial of good character from the clergyman of their respective parishes, or their previous mistress or other known and responsible householder. The weekly payment made by the inmates should be as moderate as is practicable; their services being gratuitous to the employers, and merely instructive to themselves.
It is possible that many reputable young women, who through deficiency of knowledge of the art of cooking, find it difficult to obtain a situation in that capacity, would gladly avail themselves of such means of superior instruction, to the great benefit, in the result, of the community at large.
A CLERGYMAN’S
stanley cohen wrote:
We’re back to my student union’s sign
‘PART TIME LADY CLEANERS WANTED,’
at the back of U.C.London.
January 1, 2010 9:05 AM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
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stanley cohen wrote:
2I would suggest that the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851, when so many people will visit London without servants of their own, might afford an excellent opportunity for establishing a school for women cooks.”

Ideal Regulo number and cooking time please?

Telegraph:

SIR – You report Jack Straw’s comments (“Police too lazy to fight crime”, January 1). I have been a police officer for 30 years, a sergeant for 25 of these, and share the common frustration at bureaucracy that hampers fighting crime.
This lame, performance-driven government has consistently given the police targets that mean nothing to the average law-abiding citizen. There has been promotion for senior police officers for whom front-line supervision is confined to looking at performance charts. Senior officers are judged on centrally imposed targets and are scared of failure.

They appear not to trust lower ranking officers just to get the job done. The culture is: “If you haven’t told me what you have done then you have not done it.” The plethora of “performance returns” mean that a simple interaction can result in an entry on at least six different returns.
As a sergeant I am more likely to be admonished for not filing a return than for not actually performing the task written about.
The vast majority of lower-ranking police officers do want to get out on the streets to fight crime and are frustrated by the hurdles placed in their way.
Clifford Baxter
Warlingham, Surrey
SIR – Mr Straw, when home secretary, decided to publish police performance league tables, a policy which Michael Howard, when he held the post, tried in vain to implement, against opposition by Acpo.
These tables dramatically concentrated minds all round on enhancing performance nationwide, at substantial savings to the taxpayer.
In his annual report for 1986, for example, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner actually boasted that the 15 days’ average sick-leave taken by his officers compared favourably with the other forces in the country.
The current figure is seven days and is still falling.
John Kenny
Acle, Norfolk
SIR – What makes the criticism of lazy police officers really rich is its origin: Jack Straw, who introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 when home secretary. It was a prime example of routine policing being made complex, so that it took an immense amount of time either in application or in justification in the courts.
Andrew C. Pierce
Barnstaple, Devon
The DPP must go
SIR – Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, appears to misunderstand the purpose and obligations of his high office (report, December 29).
His function is to oversee criminal prosecutions in England and Wales, and to that end it is of fundamental importance that he is seen to be impartial and independent. The one thing he must not do is give the impression of any kind of political preference or bias.
Sadly, that is exactly what Mr Starmer has done. He has publicly expressed views in the media hostile to prospective policies advanced by the Conservative Party, seeming to take the side of the Government and the Labour Party.
He has stepped into the political arena, and so undermined public confidence in his impartiality and independence. In the result he has demeaned his great office, and diminished his own authority.
It is particularly unfortunate that he should have made such an error at this time. At present the Crown Prosecution Service , which he heads, is considering whether criminal charges should be preferred against a number of peers and MPs in respect of allegedly fraudulent expenses claims. A general election is not far distant.
Mr Starmer carries the ultimate responsibility for deciding whether charges should be brought, and against whom. Suppose he prefers to defer making any decision until after the election; or makes some other decision which may appear to favour Labour or give an impression of bias, for example by proceeding against some defendants, but not against others.
Even if his decisions are entirely independent and impartial, based on a proper evaluation of the evidence, there will always be an uneasy feeling that they may have been politically motivated. One thing is certain: the media will be subjecting his conclusions to unfriendly scrutiny.
The only course now open to Mr Starmer is to resign; and if he is unwilling to do so he should be relieved of his office.
Stanley Brodie QC
Dalrymple, Ayrshire
Ghurka campaign honours
SIR – I notice that in the New Year honours list Miss Joanna Lumley was not included. This is despite her heroic and successful stand in enhancing the status of retired Ghurka soldiers in the face of government indifference.
I take it that this omission reflects the infantile bloody-mindedness of the present Prime Minister.
Dr John Black
Bristol
Three ominous words
SIR – The three most depressing words (Letters, January 1), when said by my wife, are: “I’ve been thinking.”
Richard Payne
Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Second-class war
SIR – The Royal Mail has been tinkering with the price of postage again. Surely it has become the time to abandon the concept of first-class and second-class mail.
This was introduced by John Stonehouse during the Harold Wilson years in 1968. This colourful Postmaster General, if he were still alive, would not be out of place among the present incumbents of Parliament.
C.B. Hone
Battle, East Sussex
Inheritance tax catch
SIR – Now that the election campaign has begun in earnest, my namesake Stephen Timms (Letters, December 31) is trying desperately to confuse Middle England with smoke and mirrors over inheritance tax.
It may be that only 16,000 estates were liable to the tax in 2008/9, but then, of course, you have to die first. What about the anxious hundreds of thousands who are potentially liable?
Brian Timms
Pickhurst, West Sussex
SIR – Stephen Timms’s claim that only the richest estates in the country pay inheritance tax is misleading.
My mother, widowed at 28, struggled all her working life to pay the mortgage and raise a child. She sadly died in 2005, with few savings and living on her pension. However because the value of her modest property had risen sharply in the previous couple of years, her estate was subject to this iniquitous tax.
My mother-in-law, who also worked all her life, died earlier this year and left an estate that is also subject to this tax because it has been added to that of her husband who died in 1974.
People are not automatically eligible for the double allowance because of the many technicalities involved, and so we are paying this tax for the second time in four years.
Frances Broad
Stockton Heath, Cheshire
Upwardly mobile gardens
SIR – We British had vertical gardens (Letters, December 31) long before the new French fashion.
They were called ivy-covered walls.
Richard Shaw
Dunstable, Bedfordshire
Useful foreign phrases – beginning with commands
SIR – Perhaps an English-French conversation dictionary that belonged to my grandmother gives an idea of the Englishman abroad in the 1920s.
One memorable phrase was: “There are too many people in this compartment, someone will have to leave.”
Michael Mason
Marlow, Buckinghamshire
SIR – My copy of The Traveller’s Manual of Conversation in Four Languages (1878) has the French, German and Italian for: “Have you fresh leeches? These do not bite.”
Lesley Bright
Haywards Heath, West Sussex
SIR – My 1828 French-English conversation manual has a whole chapter on “Antipathy and Aversion”, including such useful remarks as: “There is something disgusting in his address,” and, “I am in pain when I am in his company.”
Margaret Fryer
Swindon, Wiltshire
SIR – My favourites, in a phrase-book that accompanied my father’s army posting to colonial Kenya, were: “Pitch the white men’s tents in a line over here,” and the very useful: “Poke the animal’s brains out with a stick.”
David Creffield
Lancing, West Sussex
SIR – My old Italian phrase-book contains a sentence I once tried out in Pisa. When presented with a restaurant bill I said: “What! 3,000 lire? Here are 2,000 lire. That’s enough!”
It wasn’t.
Oliver Berlau
Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey
SIR – No one has yet mentioned the wonderful 1855 Portuguese-English phrasebook English As She is Spoke, written by a man with no knowledge of English, who did have a Portuguese-French phrasebook and a French-English dictionary.
The chapter headed “Idiotisms and Proverbs” offers the following gems: “The stone as roll not heap up not foam” and the baffling “To craunch the marmoset”.
Ken Battersby
Millom, Cumbria

Irish Times:

Reporting of Brian Lenihan’s illness
Madam, – The criticism by Greg Higgins, Sarah Carew, Shane O’Hanlon (December 29th) of the TV3 broadcast relating to the announcement of Brian Lenihan’s alleged cancer diagnosis, is in my view somewhat harsh. Mr Lenihan is a senior Government Minister responsible for the most important portfolio dealing with the present dire economic circumstances.
To prevent misunderstandings and obvious hurt to his family, the Government should have insisted that a statement be issued within a reasonable timeframe rather than it being announced independently by the media.  Those of us who are living with this illness know only too well the impact this disease can have on our families and are acutely aware of the negative and detrimental impact of recent political decisions on our medical issues.
Mr Lenihan’s position is such that news about his health and well-being is in the national interest and unfortunately that is the heavy price paid by those engaged in the political joust.
Indeed, some would have us believe, their privacy is sacrosanct. Perhaps this is the dilemma between public and private that needs to be addressed in the future.Irrespective, I applaud TV3 for its contribution and do not believe its presentation was unprofessional, or for that matter uncaring, voyeuristic, irresponsible reporting or the like. Indeed some of your contributors should take a step back and live in the real world. Those of us living with cancer have to. – Yours, etc,
PETER MULVANY BCL (Hons),
HDip Arts Admin,
Conquer Hill Road,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.
Madam, – Sean Ward contends that Brian Lenihan “is not a private citizen” (December 30th). Not quite true.
Mr Lenihan’s career and performance is very much in the public eye, to be sure.
However, Mr Lenihan has every right and privilege (as Mr Ward does) to protect or disclose his personal and private data as he wishes.
Would Mr Ward condone his medical records being revealed without his authorisation, for example in some online social networking site? What Mr Ward contends as “a legitimate journalistic exercise” was in fact an unauthorised leaking of a person’s private information.
Such is the seriousness of this privacy infringement that I would expect repercussions at the source of the leak. – Yours, etc,
NIALL O’DONOGHUE,
Lempäälä,
Finland.
Madam, – The behaviour of the Irish media towards Brian Lenihan has been nothing short of despicable. All citizens, regardless of their poistion, have a basic right to privacy with respect to their health. This is a concept that every healthcare professional in the State takes for granted and it has been respected by honourable journalists for decades.
Unfortunately, it now appears that some sections of the  “professional media” do not share these values, preferring instead to operate in a culture of self serving moral cowardice. As a result,many journalists show a complete inability to understand basic human decency matched only by an  enormous capacity for narcissistic attention seeking .
The media of this country have disgraced themselves. They are worthy of nothing but our contempt. – Yours, etc,
Dr RUAIRI HANLEY,
The Lurgans,
Carrickmacross,
Co Monaghan.
Madam, – Oh, the hypocrisy of RTÉ and other venerable media organs tut-tutting at TV3’s reporting of Minister Brian Lenihan’s illness and then proceeding to sink their journalistic chops into the self-same story! Surely an agreed collective silence on the matter by the so-called editorial good guys would have been a more genuine (and thunderous) denunciation and isolated TV3 more effectively? – Yours, etc,
OLIVER McGRANE,
Marley Avenue,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.
Madam, – I assume (and hope) the Minister for Finance will receive the best available treatment for his illness and therefore every citizen in Ireland suffering from the same illness is afforded the same expertise on their doorstep. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN BYRNE,
Berry’s Close,
Inchicore,
Dublin 8.
U-turn on senior civil servants’ pay
Madam, – I was appalled to read, (Sarah Carey, Opinion, December 30th), that on December 23rd the Department of Finance issued a press release stating that the 15 per cent pay cut for senior civil servants earning over €200,000 and the 12 per cent pay cut for those earning between €165,000 and €200,000 would be reduced to between 3 and 5 per cent. A good day to bury bad news.
Only for the time of year I would have thought it was an April fool’s joke.
The pay of civil servants earning only €30,000 and less has been cut by 5 per cent. In several private companies that have had to implement pay cuts, those on higher salaries took greater pay cuts. This is fair. On Budget day we were told the same would apply in the public service. So the vast majority of civil servants were duped into accepting pay cuts of 5 per cent or higher on this basis. This reversal is outrageous.
I concur with Ms Carey that it cannot stand. How can senior civil servants have any moral authority over their staff if it does? This country is crying out for consistent leadership from so many quarters. The Government must do a U-turn on its U-turn. If it doesn’t then truly we are a supine people. – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN MORAN,
Loreto Grange,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
Madam, – I agree that cutting higher public servants’ pay by 15 per cent was “not fair”. Cutting by up to twice that would have been fairer. – Yours, etc,
E QUILL,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
‘Treacherous’ roadways
Madam, – Why is it only when our country is subjected to disabling weather conditions that the news media describe our roads as being “treacherous”, that is: “not to be relied on” or “likely to fail”, when the word could be more appropriately used of our banks and politicians, not to mention some elements in our church structures? – Yours, etc,
DON TALLON,
Bothar an tSleibhe,
Moycullen,
Co Galway.
‘Facts not fantasy’
Madam, – I read with growing incredulity Stephen O’Byrnes’s piece (Opinion, December 31st). He, late of the late Progressive Democrats, so to speak.
Was it not an absolute axiom of faith for the Progressive Democrats that low personal taxation was the engine that created jobs? It was this economic insight that set them apart, this was their mission statement.
They, along with Charlie McCreevy, ruthlessly pursued this policy to the point that tax take in this country is so low that the State is not in a position to fund the public services that are required in a modern western democracy.
It turns out, however, that wealth was not being generated by the imposition of a mythical economic truth, no; we were “building houses and selling them to one another”!
Apparently what we need according to Mr O’Byrnes is “leadership based on facts, not fantasy”. Indeed! – Yours, etc,
BEN BYRNE, LLB,
River Close,
Killiney,
Co Dublin.
LockerRoom conversion
Madam, – I had considered cancelling my daily purchasing of The Irish Timesas one of my New Year resolutions both because of the anti public service bias of some of your commentators and as a means of sparing some of my dwindling take home pay as a teacher.
However, upon reading Tom Humphries’ article (LockerRoom,December 28th), I have reconsidered my resolution.
To paraphrase his comment on teachers, “One great journalist is worth more than a ‘boredom’ of oleaginous political and economic hacks”. – Yours, etc,
SEÁN SCULLY,
Fahanalooscane,
Ballinhassig,
Co Cork.
Madam, – I’m glad I have lived long enough to see history made in Thursday’s Irish Times (2009 Sports Review) – laudatory words about Irish rugby from Tom Humphries! It has indeed been an amazing year for Irish rugby. – Yours, etc,
JOHN KILCULLEN,
Foxborough Road,
Lucan,
Co Dublin.
Controversy over stag hunt ban
Madam, – Has The Irish Times now reached a new low? I refer to the front page photograph of a stag, entitled “Ahead of the Pack: purebred stag is released at start of hunt meet”. In reality it should have been titled: Defenceless animal released to certain death.
One would expect this from a downmarket tabloid, not a so- called respectable newspaper. Sickening. – Yours, etc,
CAROLE MOLLOY,
Kerrymount Rise,
Foxrock,
Dublin 18.
Naming a decade
Madam, – Having bid farewell to the first decade of the new millennium, we face the problem of decennial nomenclature. Are we in the Teenies, the Present Tens, or Your Ones? Considering the poor quality of the decade just ended, I suggest Not-the Noughties. – Yours, etc,
JOHN O’BYRNE,
Mount Argus Court,
Harold’s Cross,
Dublin 6W.
Time for the Angelus to go?
Madam, – I am a Welsh Presbyterian of mature years living in north Wales. Whenever I am able I tune in to RTÉ Radio One at home or in the car, especially so at midday or at 6pm to hear the Angelus. I value the prompt to prayer and quiet contemplation and trust that this will not fall victim to the obsessive drive to secularise traditions that so many of us hold dear. Yours, etc,
MEIRION HUGHES,
Pendre Avenue,
Prestatyn,
Wales.

Well I must be off

best wishes John

LinkUp is the full-featured job-search engine that doesn’t stack the deck against you.

Did you know that job boards and aggregators aren’t designed to help you find work? They’re paid for by employers and recruiters, to increase competition for specific listings.

Job boards do this by charging high fees for each job listed (dramatically reducing supply), making it trivially easy for candidates to apply (increasing ill-considered and unqualified applications), and publicizing those listings through aggregators (boosting the applicant count but drowning HR in resumes). The job boards’ business model, emphasizing applicant quantity over quality, virtually guarantees that even great candidates won’t get noticed.

Recruiters using job boards — and the majority rely on them — play a similar game when seeking contractors: trawl for applicants, reply only to the best, start a (low-)bidding war, and submit the most profitable prospects.

When seeking staffers (aka FTEs, full-time employees), recruiters are only slightly less antagonistic, seldom recognizing (let alone promoting) a candidate’s potential, providing useful feedback, or seeking fair compensation. Face it, most recruiters are predatory. But even the most principled, knowledgeable, respected recruiters have become poor sources of fresh employment opportunities because their fees (typically 15-25 percent of the successful candidate’s base salary) are unaffordable to cost-conscious employers and, at least in California, it’s illegal for them to seek income from their candidates.

LinkUp is your ‘purest’ solution

Job-seekers need more employment choices. They also need a way to bypass the employer-funded ’services’ that exist to exclude them. Ideally, they need a way to find unadvertised jobs in nearby locations and desirable industries, reduce their competition, and connect directly with hiring managers.

The good news is that there are about 5 times more unadvertised jobs available than advertised ones. The bad news is that — until now — there’s been no easy or reliable way of finding them. True, social networks can help connect job-seekers directly with off-radar opportunities. So can professional and trade associations, alumni groups, industry connections, ‘affinity‘ sites, and focused discussion lists such as those on YahooGroups and GoogleGroups. But these are all haphazard, time-consuming options.

LinkUp.com connects you quickly with the ‘purest’ jobs available. Here are 10 reasons it should be your primary job-search tool.

1. Many more job listings are available on employers’ own sites than on the job boards or via recruiters; you get more viable job options
2. Most listings aren’t advertised anywhere else; you’ll hunt more efficiently
3. Listings on companies’ own sites are kept more current and complete than on the job boards; you won’t see phantom listings
4. Opportunities not posted on job boards or via recruiters receive fewer applicants than others; you’ll have less competition
5. Hiring managers know that applicants who visit companies’ own sites and apply directly are usually better informed and more motivated; you’ll get preferential treatment
6. Searching by location helps minimize your commute; you’ll stay employed longer when the job is local
7. Searching by industry saves time, energy, and frustration; you’ll maximize your earning power
8. Applying directly through companies’ own sites is free; no advertising or commission costs means you cost companies less
9. Your information doesn’t get shared with us, just with prospective employers; your personal data stays secure
10. No resume database means no identity theft, no spamming, no sales pitches, no one-size-fits-all resumes; you retain full control

Letting LinkUp work for you
LinkUp can power your job search in numerous ways, including:

1. free iPhone app with all the functionality of LinkUp.com
2. Facebook app that lets companies’ fans see their current job listings
3. job clouds, essentially tag clouds for career categories, which reveal popular search terms and thus let you create better queries
4. a blog widget that is configurable in terms both of its screen dimensions and the company, keyword, category, and location searched
5. customizable RSS feeds for any and all your job query results
6. occupational code-based search; all jobs are categorized with O*NET codes
7. WorkSearch, a timer for tracking how long you actually spend on your job-hunt, as well as documenting your results
8. LinkedIn integration, so you can see whom you know at companies appearing in your search results
9. search by geographic proximity, keyword relevance, posting recency, professional category, and company
10. free emailed, fully customizable Job Alerts

Touring LinkUp’s interface

Here’s a run-down of LinkUp’s features, to help you get great results quickly:

1. Advanced search, which lets you go beyond specifying a job title/keyword and location to control how and where to match those search terms, specify a company, restrict your search to one or more industry categories, and have your results sorted by relevance or recency (jobs posted within the last day, 3, 7, or 14).
2. OpenID, which lets you log in (from the search results page) using an existing Facebook, Google, MySpace, Twitter, Yahoo, AOL, Blogger, Flickr, or WordPress account — your identity is protected because you can’t create a separate account even if you wanted to.
3. Once logged in, Advanced Search lets you perform a proximity search — job listings can be an exact location match, or within 10, 15, 25, 50, or 75 miles) — and control the number of results on a page (10, 25, or 50).
4. Also, once you’re logged in, Settings lets you control your account (whether to arrange search results by tabs, save recent searches, and group searches by company), use WorkSearch (a timer that lets you track how much time you’re actually working at finding work, as well as helping to track your results), monitor your Job Basket (a ’shopping cart’ of opportunities you tagged from the search results page), as well as manage your Job Alerts (emailed notifications of new jobs returned by saved queries) and Saved Searches (custom queries you’ve created). You can even create an RSS feed of these last three features’ contents.
5. For each result on the search results page, you’ll see the job title, company’s name, a ‘circle-i’ icon — if you’re logged in to LinkedIn, this reveals which members of your network work there — as well as an extract of the job description containing your keywords, the company’s location, its distance (in miles) from your designated ZIP code or city, when the job was posted, and how recently it was verified.
6. Also for each result on the search results page, you’ll see icons that let you email the job listing to a friend, add it to your Job Basket (see Settings, above), open the complete job listing in a new window, and report a bad listing (expired job, incorrect location, posting from a job board or staffing agency, or other reason).
7. If you click on a (bold) job title from the search results page, the company’s complete job description opens in a new tab. At the top of this page, LinkUp inserts a link to “show me other jobs” from a) the same parent company, b) via LinkedIn (whose “in” icon lets you find out whether you know anyone at the company), and c) in the same industry category. Clicking the (a) or (c) link constrains the search results; just click the white minus sign in the red circle to discard a given constraint.
8. When an individual job description is displayed in its own tab, several Job Options become available in the top right-hand corner of the screen. You can print this page, email it to a friend, report a bad listing, add it to your Job Basket (only if you’re logged in), bookmark the job, Tweet about it, or share this page using one of 45 social media tools.
9. If you need help or have a suggestion to share, LinkUp’s help desk — accessible from its Feedback link — is well-informed and responsive. It’s easy to believe their team wants you to enjoy using this product.

Special request: when you visit LinkUp, stop long enough on the home page to answer the “how’d you hear about us?” question (in the small “have a moment?” box to the right of light-blue Search Jobs panel). Then please let them know Andrew Davis sent you.

Who pays for LinkUp?

LinkUp is entirely free to job-seekers. There are no Google ads on the right margin, either — they’ve devoted the entire screen to displaying relevant jobs.

LinkUp is funded entirely by the employers whose jobs it carries. This happens in 2 ways:

1. Employers pay a flat subscription fee each month to have LinkUp index all their employment listings and revisit their sites each night to check for changes. If a job has been added, deleted, or modified since LinkUp’s last visit, those changes are reflected without any effort on the company’s part.

As a result, you don’t have to wonder whether a given job is stale, dead, unfunded, or a cynical resume-harvesting project. Instead, you can be confident it’s a current, live, funded, genuine opportunity.

1. Employers who want to draw candidates’ attention to selected jobs can run customized sponsored ad campaigns, similar to Google’s AdWords, to improve the search-result position of their relevant job(s). Companies select their keywords, bid on them, constrain their display (by geography, for example), and define their daily or monthly recruitment ad budget.

When a job-seeker’s relevant query causes the company’s sponsored job to display, instead of appearing in the ‘organic’ (white background) results area, they show up with a yellow background in one of the top two positions on the page.

As of September 2009, LinkUp’s sponsored ad pricing is about 1/8th what those companies would spend with Indeed, Simply Hired, or Google.

For more information, or to get your company’s job listings onto LinkUp, please contact Andrew Davis, 1-866-359-9360 x031, andrew@linkup.com.

HURRICANE WARNING

The disaster in Haiti is serious business and tragic, but in chaos, we must find humor.  I have found FEMA. Media reports the FEMA decision maker have stirred from the underground bunkers to control the lives of disaster survivors. The chatter indicates that Hurricane FEMA has formed in the Caribbean is headed toward New Orleans and  the north Gulf Coast.

According to Orlando Sentinel News story FEMA memo sparked Haiti refugee rumors “The federal agency sent what’s called a “tasking order” to Florida EMA on Jan 14 instructing them to get ready to help house up to 10,000 Haitian refugees. You can see the FEMA MEMO Tasking for Migration Support on the Sentinel web site. orlandosentinel

FEMA Temporary housing plan allows HUD to provide foreclosed properties for Temporary Housing and rental assistance. FEMA believes in employee and crony opportunity as many used inside information to invested in local Real Estate and many recovery development remain unoccupied. Is FEMA planning  to bring Haiti survivors into areas that have not yet recovered from damagefrom from Katrina/Rita/Gustav/Ike and the unnatural disasters caused by USARMY Engineers and Hurricane FEMA.

South Louisiana locations would be prized locations because French is spoken and New Orleans has a deep French and Creole history. FEMA future plan will likely include the continue dumping the toxic trailers into private market. These units will likely eventually become low cost rentals and may become these survivors sole option after the government stops assistance and forgets these poor souls. Will the survivors be giving citizenship? Do you think ACORN will get grants to handle voter registration? This would make for interesting elections in David Duke Vitter’s backyard. The local cuisine may change over post Katrina increase in Mexican food availability.  I have enjoy Caribbean food and respect the culture as well as  any religious diversity. Hoodoo Voodoo (not NOLA US Arena Football team) has roots on coast and NOLA and is not just practiced at Saints games.  How will CDC handle health issues in this relocation effort. During the FEMA Formaldehyde trailer debacle, CDC did nothing until a whistle blower came forward. CDC claimed that it is not an real deaths exceed CDC acceptable level.  Should FEMA have to be accountable and disclose it plans or just stick it to local communities as they have in the pass. We were warned the effects of Hurricane FEMA will remain long after Katrina/Rita/Gustav/Ike are forgotten.  If the doomsday posters are correct 12/21/2012 in near.  I sure some of us may still have your Y2K survivor kit.  If this is true, I’m fortunate as my driver license expires in March 2012.  Gulf storms and disaster has brought many of our communities together.  We understand that nature does not grant privilege to anyone when disaster strikes.   Many of us have experienced what it is like have our homes destroyed and be shipped away from home only to discover that opportunities were few. If nothing else we can ask Government to use lessons we have learned. After Katrina FEMA lied, gassed and injured survivors by making them victims. When FEMA acts it disables locals and establishes  “profit over people  policies favors cronies. This experience has made us resistant to any future FEMA mandates; FEMA lack of accountability has developed into our lack of trust.  Trust is earned, FEMA must become accountable.

–JESSE JOHN FINERAN

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: U.S. House of Representatives – Committee on Homeland Security – FEMA Trailer Auction Should Be Stopped

Idiots in Louisiana Auctioning (Livingston-based Henderson Auctions) 400 FEMA Trailers bought from the U.S. General Services Administration & The Advocate – WBRZ News 2 is there & mentions absolutely nothing of the controversy (katrina) & health risks!!!

ToxicTrailers.com – selloff of FEMA trailers unfair – Many trailers tested high in formaldehyde

A letter to the NAA regarding an email they deleted without reading – please retract your amicus in the Abad case in Arizona – it is fraud by a political action committee, the National Apartment Association, that is furthering another fraud by another political action committee, the US Chamber of Commerce

Political Action Committee – NAA – files Amicus Brief in mold case (two infant deaths in mold filled apt – Wasatch Prop Mgmt) citing US Chamber/ACOEM ‘litigation defense report’ to disclaim health effects of indoor mold & limit financial risk for industry

“Changes in construction methods have caused US buildings to become perfect petri dishes for mold and bacteria to flourish when water is added. Instead of warning the public and teaching physicians that the buildings were causing illness; in 2003 the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, a think-tank, and a workers comp physician trade organization mass marketed an unscientific nonsequitor to the courts to disclaim the adverse health effects to stave off liability for financial stakeholders of moldy buildings. Although publicly exposed many times over the years, the deceit lingers in US courts to this very day.” Sharon Noonan Kramer

Information on Riverstone Residential knowingly exposing tenants to extreme amounts of mold toxins at Toxic Mold Infested Jefferson Lakes Apartments in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Toxic Mold Infested Jefferson Lakes Apartments managed by Riverstone Residential

Riverstone Residential Litigation

Mold Inspection Reports

Photos of Mold in Apartment

Attorney Malpractice

The MLM Network Marketing opportunities and the home based business opportunities have been around for decades. They both have stories of failure and stories of success, and some with major success. So, which is better? In this article, I will attempt to answer which is better – MLM Network Marketing opportunities or home business opportunities.

As you read this article, you will discover:
* Fundamentals Of MLM Network Marketing Opportunities
* Fundamentals Of Home Based Business Opportunities
* How To Find Which Option Is Best For You
* Points To Think About

* Fundamentals Of MLM Network Marketing Opportunities
There is a big difference between MLM and other home based business opportunities. The biggest difference is how they operate. For example, a home business may have a product which you need to make or you have to market or do both.

In a MLM Network Marketing opportunity, you will predominantly be involved in marketing – hence the name Multilevel Marketing. The Multilevel part is what makes Network Marketing opportunities so unique.

Instead of simply earning money through your own efforts, you also have the added advantage of selling the opportunity. The result is that anyone who joins your “leg” and sells products earns you money. So this becomes a great residual income. And some network marketers are at a stage where they don’t have to work, because others bring in enough commissions.

* Fundamentals Of Home Based Business Opportunities
Home based business opportunities are great for many reasons. The home based business opportunities are home business ideas that people have had, made a business out of, and are now making it available to others as a out of the box type business.

You create a product or sell a product. You get a system to run the business, which is great for people new to business.

* How To Find Which Option Is Best For You
Starting a business is not easy; there are a lot of tasks that need to be completed. What is more, if it is your first business, then you will want as much help as you can get. Books do a great job and so do formal business courses for entrepreneurs, but there is nothing like the practical training you can get in home business opportunities.

Your choice will come down to your goals, and expectations. MLM seems to work better with people who know a lot of people and or are willing to “get out there” so to speak.

* Points To Think About
Starting a home business can be an arduous process. If it is your first time in business, then consider the home business opportunities. These opportunities don’t need a lot of investment, and can produce good results. However, in all cases, remember that business takes time to be successful.

‘Wash Your Dishes’ barters for services and goods in exchange for dishwashing

By Leah Ingram
Contributing Writer

Portlanders are often viewed as a pretty odd bunch. We West-Coasters of the Oregon persuasion can act a bit differently from others in our every day activities. We slap “Keep Portland Weird” stickers onto our cars, we love composting and we enjoy hugging the occasional tree. There are, however, still organizations and services to surprise even the most veteran of Portland hipsters. One of them is “Wash Your Dishes.”

Wash Your Dishes is an exchange based dish washing program that was founded in Portland last year by Scott Davis. It all started when Davis, recently self-dubbed “Ether Sky,” realized that there was a need for dish washing in many artist circles. “I started hanging out with a lot of interesting people in town and I realized that everybody’s dishes were left in the sink,” Sky said. “Lots of people who are really active in the world seem to drop the ball for basic things in their homes like washing dishes.”

While the title “Wash Your Dishes” seems to fully explain what you can expect from the business, Sky’s service offers more than the name implies. Sky’s original intent on making the program was to connect with more circles of people. “A lot of it was based on friendship, which then became spreading the news between each other,” said Sky.  Whether his dish washing is earning him a place to stay in South America or at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, Sky says that the service opens many doors to meeting new people.

The service itself is organized on Sky’s Web site. He regularly leaves business cards around Portland and attracts attention through word of mouth. He has had five dishwashers work with him through the year, and they accept a range of compensation. Sky’s business cards state that dish washing is payable in “$, food, philosophy, plants or conversation.”  The whole idea behind the dish washing is to create an opportunity for people to exchange services without the overarching presence of money, while at the same time promoting closer community life. Claire McDonald, a recipient of the dish washing services said, “People have problems just giving money away to those in need, but what if we gave meals to people in exchange for services?”

Whether it is a vegan lasagna meal, hula hoop lessons, coherent or incoherent philosophy, most exchanges can be worked out with Wash Your Dishes workers.  “I have heard a lot of weird stuff about aliens and the matrix,” laughed Sky, “but I really enjoy that.” McDonald claims that the dish washing service promotes richer Portland life. “Portland has such a sense of community and it’s really cool to have people over for dinner all the time, but it’s so much work,” said McDonald. “That’s why it’s so great to have someone do the dishes after dinner.” Gary Evans, the newest addition to the team of dishwashers, thinks that swapping dish washing for a meal is a creative outlet for meeting other Portlanders. “I think that community is so incredibly important, especially when it comes to food,” said Evans. “We all have to eat, and bringing people together in that way to share a meal is like Thanksgiving every day.” Evans hopes that the Wash Your Dishes service will provide opportunities for both giving and receiving, and that the service could be copied in other cities to promote social change. “We get into our cars and we don’t talk to our neighbors,” said Evans.  “It (Wash Your Dishes) is helping combat this way of life.”

To those who are hesitant at the thought of allowing a stranger into their home, Sky offers some peace of mind. “I do have references and they are rock solid people,” said Sky. He plans to incorporate a rating system on his Web site for people who have had their dishes washed to evaluate their dishwashers. Evans suggested adding background checks and address verification for people’s safety, but he added, “It’s very unlikely that anything bad would happen (with a Wash Your Dishes worker) because of the type of person who would be attracted to Wash Your Dishes.”

The dishwashers anticipate that other businesses will catch on to this sort of bartering method when paying people. Evans hopes that smaller businesses can be a model for larger businesses by incorporating this unconventional method of payment. He says that, particularly for craftsmen like himself, barter is feasible  way of paying for services. Ultimately, Sky wishes to make the notion of barter a nationally and globally acceptable idea. In doing so, he aspires to improve society. “I want to make people’s general existence better,” said Sky. “That is my goal.” Whether this method will prove possible on a larger scale is up to speculation, but Wash Your Dishes is one Portland attempt to change the way we do business.

Learn more at www.washyourdishes.com.

The MLM Network Marketing opportunities and the home based business opportunities have been around for decades. They both have stories of failure and stories of success, and some with major success. So, which is better? In this article, I will attempt to answer which is better – MLM Network Marketing opportunities or home business opportunities.

As you read this article, you will discover:
* Fundamentals Of MLM Network Marketing Opportunities
* Fundamentals Of Home Based Business Opportunities
* How To Find Which Option Is Best For You
* Points To Think About

* Fundamentals Of MLM Network Marketing Opportunities
There is a big difference between MLM and other home based business opportunities. The biggest difference is how they operate. For example, a home business may have a product which you need to make or you have to market or do both.

In a MLM Network Marketing opportunity, you will predominantly be involved in marketing – hence the name Multilevel Marketing. The Multilevel part is what makes Network Marketing opportunities so unique.

Instead of simply earning money through your own efforts, you also have the added advantage of selling the opportunity. The result is that anyone who joins your “leg” and sells products earns you money. So this becomes a great residual income. And some network marketers are at a stage where they don’t have to work, because others bring in enough commissions.

* Fundamentals Of Home Based Business Opportunities
Home based business opportunities are great for many reasons. The home based business opportunities are home business ideas that people have had, made a business out of, and are now making it available to others as a out of the box type business.

You create a product or sell a product. You get a system to run the business, which is great for people new to business.

* How To Find Which Option Is Best For You
Starting a business is not easy; there are a lot of tasks that need to be completed. What is more, if it is your first business, then you will want as much help as you can get. Books do a great job and so do formal business courses for entrepreneurs, but there is nothing like the practical training you can get in home business opportunities.

Your choice will come down to your goals, and expectations. MLM seems to work better with people who know a lot of people and or are willing to “get out there” so to speak.

* Points To Think About
Starting a home business can be an arduous process. If it is your first time in business, then consider the home business opportunities. These opportunities don’t need a lot of investment, and can produce good results. However, in all cases, remember that business takes time to be successful.