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My eye! Sweet Jesus, Ouch!


Sledge

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3. No excuse for him there. We are trained to expect lights to change at any time, even if we think we know the sequence. That guy was obviously on a promise or a dare!

 

Alas, most NI banknotes and Jock Banknotes dont have the queen on. and for someone who ends up with a handfull of the things at least twelve-fifteen times a year this can be a real PITA (as IIRC Samm saw me parleing with a barlady after MI6)

 

4. Sorry old chap...you are in the wrong there. You ARE supposed to flag the bus down or make some indication that you want it. Around Stoke, it is almost a requirement, or we don't stop - the company tells us not to. CERTAIN stops in some city centres are 'priority stops' (the name can change depending on the city) where a bus which serves that stop MUST stop even if there's noone there. These will be marked differently in some way to other stops.

 

Sorry Guzzi, might be the policy in Stoke, but it has never been the policy in my lifetime in Leeds. Never before 2008 have I EVER flagged a bus down.

 

5. Breakdowns happen. Service shortages happen. Driver shortages happen. As long as the lost mileage is reported to the transport office of the council, that's the way it is, sadly. Oftentimes, companies will have 'sacrifice' routes so that if a bus or driver is required elsewhere, they will sacrifice that service. USUALLY this is a short variant of a regular longer route, but not always...

 

again, a certain bus in Leeds is simply notorious now for never ever turning up on time and more than occasionally not at all. Most others are fine.

 

6. It happens like that sometimes, especially if the bus is required to be in a certain place to run a certain service.

 

In Stoke we used to have the service 101 which, in order to aid reliability, had a bus travel light from Hanley to Stafford (16 miles), service to Hanley, service to Stafford, light to Hanley (16 miles). This was put in place to cover for the regular service running late with any traffic hold-ups.

 

fair enough, but Chappletown is not a place that most people want to be dumped at like 9PM in the pitch black

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@Desolation - As a fellow Leeds citizen I must say I have ALWAYS flagged busses down - so does every bus-taking person I know.

 

But I must agree, my experience with First and Arriva especially after using the amazing Stagecoach service of Sheffield (50p student :D) has been bad. Nearly been hit by first busses many a time, especially around chapeltown/crossgates in the tighter streets they seem to fly round bends without looking and crossing fully onto my side of the road.

 

Also in past work at Leeds Thomas Danby College (now Leeds City College) one of the tutors I knew taught basic maths/english to bus drivers at First. I saw her in tears after it at least three times because of how they - grown adults - behaved and treated her!

 

 

I agree with not wanting to be dropped in Chapeltown in the dark either

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Our company does not accept NI notes. Last I knew, Scottish ones did. Ah well, our policy is not to take any note without the Queen's smiling visage on, so you may have gotten a Lizzie-less note :(

 

The nationwide bus policy is that you should hail buses. If you haven't had to in Leeds, you're lucky. Usually I will accept someone stepping towards the kerb or getting a pass/money ready... over time you learn the sort of secret signals that people give. Stepping back is usually a sign to drive on. We do get it wrong though, sometimes I have stopped to see some gawking pratt just look at me because they didnt want me, and I'm sure I've bimbled past the occasional non-hailer by accident.

 

Haha did you ever have experience with Black Prince buses? They gained national notoriety for using stolen vehicles, illegal and misregistered buses, and operating without O licences!

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Oh, looks like I was mistaken... RBS notes have never had old Lizzie printed on them. I did get a shop to accept it though.

 

I know for sure Manx pounds aren't accepted, the cash machine at the sea terminal only issues English notes for that reason.

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I know. But the tourist guide when I went for the TT said that they were'nt accepted in most English stores. Odd.

 

I think it's simply because they are not commonly seen over here, and since they look *VERY* different they stand out too much. You can pass Manx coins without a problem - normally - because they are the same size and colour as those in the UK, you'll only see a difference if you study the "tails" side, and even then most people just assume it's a different or new design. Likewise with coins from Gibraltar, as it happens...

 

Some places in Liverpool, and other places the Isle of Man Steam Packet ferries go, will take Manx notes. I guess they see enough of them to know what they are and the regular service back to the island offers a convenient way to get rid of them if they need to.

 

But yeah, we always change our Manx notes for English ones before we return from visiting relatives over there. It's a bit of a pain, but what're you going to do? I assume the same is true with notes from Jersey, Guernsey, the Falkland Islands and all those other places using Sterling.

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Scottish and Irish bank notes are not legal tender. Only notes issued by the Bank of England are legal in the UK. Further information here.

I think the text of that document is worth understanding though.

 

"The term legal tender does not in itself govern the acceptability of banknotes in transactions. Whether or not notes have legal tender status, their acceptability as a means of payment is essentially a matter for agreement between the parties involved."

 

Hopefully common sense rather than legal minutae should govern whether a person will accept a given bank-note.

 

If I can get on the Eurostar in London, get off it in Paris, buy a Double Whopper in the train station and pay in british currency I should hope that we, as a nation, aren't so petty and childish as to refuse scottish and northern irish money on our own home turf.

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And, given that we *ARE* British, there is no justification for different banknotes in different parts of the country. Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, etc are not part of the UK but use Sterling, so they have a good reason to have their own money, but nowhere in the UK can say the same. What if Manchester or Birmingham or Essex starts printing its own money? What if Natwest or LloydsTSB starts issuing banknotes? Where does it end? <_<

 

The fact that there are banks in parts of the UK printing their own non-legal tender money is really quite ridiculous.

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My other rant today is the tossers from the "university of life." I was working behind the till, when it ran out of the receipt roll, so I changed it, for the first time, but put it the wrong way round yadda yadda. Some bloke in his 50s said "let me guess, he's just done his a-levels", to which a co worker replied "actually, he's doing a degree", he replies "good to see he's learning practical skills with that then", so I told them that luckily for me, my degree wasn't in till receipt changing, which prompted my boss to laugh out loud, and for him to look a bit shocked, and walk out of the shop, empty handed. Result biggrin.gif

 

Just seems a bit *suitcase* that if you choose a career that doesn't happen to me manual labour, you are chastised for not having attended the "university of life", regardless that I currently work 9 hours a day 5 days a week for a pretty low wage to help fund my studies. Think I'll attend the university of life, by living, and in the process, go to a real university aswell.

 

 

On the flip side to this, in IT I come across quite a few people who have come out of Uni with 1sts in Computer Science, A-levels out of their ears and an IQ score that could be mistaken for a telephone number, but have absolutely NO common sense what so ever. So I can see where the guy was coming from, but I'm surprised he could lift the brush he used to tar all uni students with, has to be pretty damn wide.

 

Also, I have to deal with a number of people, similar to the above who are quite happy to talk in depth, technical and accept your ideas, right up until the second they find out that not only do you not have a degree, but don't even have A-Levels. At that point, despite 30 seconds earlier accepting what you'd said, then blank you as being stupid. It was fun when one guy got everything he needed from me, ignored it and went to see my manager and was promptly told to see me as I was the one that provided the training, (at the time - long since changed).

Ah well, at least I know they're the minority of uni products.

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I have to say I know where both you and Scarclaw are coming from. I knew some guys at uni (and now at work too) who are very intelligent, but I swear would struggle to walk and chew gum at the same time. On the other hand, I've found lots of people who come out with the whole university of life stuff are the ones who are simply too bloody thick to get any qualifications further than a 10 yard swimming certificate. I remember when I had a summer job someone I was working with actually came out with this classic. "why do you want to go to uni anyway?" My awnser of "because I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing a *suitcasey* dead end job like stacking shelves in a warehouse for minimum wage" shut him up for the rest of the day.

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Of course, having obtained my BSc (Hons) in Physics some six years ago, I discovered that it is not the passport to wealth and security that I'd previously been led to believe. After trying my hand at teaching in some of the zoos around Manchester, I was lucky enough to get a dead-end job working for IBM and 5 years later I'm on the dole, apparently unappealing to anyone with a job vacancy - my qualifications are valueless, my experience insignificant and my employability low. I'd be fortunate to get a *suitcasey* job stacking shelves... :(

 

I should have just got to RMAS Sandhurst instead. I'd be at least a Captain by now. <_<

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Count yourself lucky, I just got a 2:1 in English with Creative Writing.

 

I have to say Dan, I have a friend who's just done a computer science course. The close minded cuntishness and general misogyny she's encountered for a) being a woman doing computer science and b ) being a woman doing computer science who's about 50 times smarter and better at it than all her classmates is unbelievable.

 

On a personal note, I'm peeved as I've just spent 20 minutes looking for the hop nub out of my M16 when it flicked off somewhere while trying to get it into the hop unit, only to find the reason I couldn't find it was that it's somehow landed perfectly into the notch it's supposed to be in. The mind boggles.

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Just got my MPhys Physics degree - Hedge you're filling me with confidence over job prospects.. I'd say about half of the people on the course are now too geeky to function in everyday society - they cant hold a normal conversation and know little about anything except from Physics, computers, games and anime (and how to not take a shower in some cases). The odd thing I noticed was the more 'normal' people seemed to do better grades wise.

 

 

 

Today's annoyance and a major annoyance since I've been about 15.. My bloody height. Went to find a shirt for me suit as my only other one has died a red-wine stain death. Every goddam shirt is either two inches short in the sleeve or ridiculously tight across the shoulders.

 

I know loads of people who are 6'5" or more and all have the same problem, no one but uber expensive specialists cater for us.

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WEll done on the degree. I hear Tesco is hiring... :P

 

I received an unconditional from SHU for their MA/PGCRT writing course so I've got a while yet, I'm fairly confident I can pull some form of career out of the bag with that but thanks :P

 

Although I made enemies of two Art history guys in the SU bar the other day... they were joking about their results saying they better start practising their 'Do you want fries with that?' I may have replied off the cuff that with Art history they were being optimistic and would be better off learning 'any spare change guv'nor'... they were not amused.

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Why thankyou sir. Doctorate is slightly tricky in the English field; most of my writing lecturers didn't actually have PHDs, just MAs. If I can get published (which if I've got an unconditional from the SHU course I stand a fighting chance of apparently) and do well on my writer as teacher module of my MA, I stand a decent shot of getting into Academia :D.

 

I'm just happy that despite one of my writing tutors giving me a 57 (robbing me of my 1st) and telling me getting into SHU was extremely unlikely and that I shouldn't bother applying I got a 2:1 anyway, a 1st for my 3rd year writing submission and an unconditional from SHU anyway. Get in...

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