This article struck something of a chord. Actually that's an understatement.

If the article is TL:DR, here's the executive summary: Organisations recruit clever people, but then discourage them from using their intelligence. It could easily have been written about my former employer (one of the Big 4 global professional services firms). And it's one of the things that consistently bugged me the most.

One unfortunate side-effect of my soon-to-be-reduced circumstances is that I'll have to actually buy a mobile phone. This is something I haven't had to do this millennium because my soon-to-be-former employer was nice enough to buy me one (most recently an iPhone 4, before that a pre-3G Blackberry Curve and before that a Motorola Razr V3 (remember them?)).

I make very infrequent calls. How infrequent? Put it this way, when I had to separate out personal calls on my monthly bills, they usually came to less than £1. Still, it's useful to have a mobile phone handy for emergencies like old ladies collapsing and falling off walls as you're driving past*.

I quite like the portable internet browser and ability to play games while sitting waiting for stuff to happen when out and about of my iPhone, so some sort of smartphone would be preferred.

So how do I get a decent smartphone without spending lots on line rental? Tariffs? Network? Handset?

One option would be to pay off my work iPhone. I think I can do this for £100. And then presumably get a SIM-only deal.
A second option would be to dust off the ancient Blackberry and use that, although I don't know how good the battery is, and it's old enough to not have 3G.



* Something that happened in Tavistock a couple of Saturdays ago.

White people of Europe! Only the European Union can protect your women from the blacks and the asians! (Real EU video, hurriedly withdrawn when someone pointed out that it might be interepreted as a tiny bit racist.)

Climate deniers give sceptics a bad name.

Steampunk R2-D2

Gabe Newell is the 854th richest man on the planet.

Private auditors will be 40% cheaper than the Audit Commission.

Women now empowered by everything a woman does.

This is pretty.

Of course you want a BMW-designed gaming mouse.

Life coaching flowchart.

What exactly is the point of the Scottish Conservative party?

Government encourages banks to offer 95% mortgages to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford them, and will use tax money to underwrite the loans. Oh, there's no possible way this could go wrong...

How not to do web advertising placement. (I like 5 the best.)

Is Game dead yet?

How bringing gods into politics created the politics of today - in Iran and the USA.

This is based on a wide-ranging discussion at work over the last two days. The 20-somethings concerned are university-educated* professionals.


The Basque Country
Real tennis
Lord Mountbatten
Any British prime minister before Margaret Thatcher, with the exception of Winston Churchill
Any US president before Bill Clinton, with the exception of FDR
Eric Clapton
Carlos Santana
Laurence Olivier
Alec Guinness
John Gielgud
Kim Basinger



* Or at least they went to university. God** knows what they were educated in if they've never heard of Alec Guinness.
** AKA the sixth entry on this list of course.

An economist explains the British personal tax system in words that the average bloke in the Dog & Duck should understand...

Something to show your boss next time he asks you to work lots of overtime (I wish...)

The half-life of shared links

Should the state step in to stop people saying nasty things online?

How an auditor's trick could have caught out the Greek government's fraudulent accounting

XKCD on opportunity cost

This seems such an obvious idea, why has nobody thought of it before?

Good news: The global population of Sumatran tigers has increased by 1%. Bad news: that's just three tigers.

...in Zug.

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I mean, really know.

Per hour?

When I sold computer and role-playing games in the Virgin Games Centre in the Westgate Centre, I knew the answer to this, sort of. Basic pay was £4.20 an hour. I didn't get much in the way of perks. I worked the hours I was paid for, plus a bit extra, and it took me about half an hour each way to walk to and from work.

Nowadays, I get an annual salary plus bonus, allowance for not having a company car, lunch allowance, pension contributions, allowance for being a first aider, allowance for being an evacuation marshal and allowance for being a workplace assessor. But I work a very variable amount of unpaid overtime. My commute is about 40 minutes each way. And I often have nights away from home in glamorous locations like Watford.

So, although I could work out most of my remuneration from sources like my P60, and I could have a good stab at working out my total hours, it wouldn't be easy. I'm guessing that this is probably the case for most full-time, salaried employees.

And I wonder whether that is deliberate on the part of employers.

Questions meme

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?
I like my new coat.

2. How much cash do you have on you?
£35.00

3. What’s a word that rhymes with DOOR?
Floor

4. Favorite planet?
Athfuashhok'k (or however it was spelt)

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I still have two weeks left of my Christmas holiday. I haven't posted much in a while, so here are some Christmas thoughts and events.

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