Examine your blog as if you were the Hotel Inspector

I love the Hotel Inspector. She goes into failing, horrible hotels and businesses which are mostly run by, (how to put this tactfully?) fruitcases. And with her searing insight and years of undaunted experience, she is able to spot exactly what needs to be changed to completely turn the whole thing around and give it all a completely new lease of life.

This typically involves getting rid of the horrible colours that the owners think are cute. Destroying unnecessary decorations, in one case, a 'museum' of other people's unwanted junk! And covering everything in sight with such an air of freshness and newness that people can not resist staying there and being happy to do so.

She resolves family issues, and staffing problems and then at the end they have a brilliant re-launch party.

Tomorrow, take a step back from your blog. Sign out and visit it as if you were a casual visitor, just surfing on by on the look out for something useful or interesting to read.

1. What are your first impressions?
2. Is it clean and crisp?
3. Are your 'best bits' on display in prominent places, where they can be easily found?
4. Do the colours or the images clash on the page or in the brain?
5. Do you have a 'museum' of unwanted junk which needs to be removed?

So you know what needs to be fixed. Done that?

Good. As Alex Polizzi would say: "That's brilliant dahling".

6 Reasons Why People Do Not Write

1. Fear:
The main reason that people do not write is fear of one sort or another.

They have various thoughts running through their brains such as : will my writing be good enough? Will people want to read it? Will people laugh at me?

It is the fear of exposing the workings of their private mind to the world at large, to friends and family and to all comers old and new.
2. Work:Reward Ratio.
When people want to write, one of the first things they do is to start to google various questions. just like when you want to change careers, you ask your faithful computer/Internet some basic and fundamental questions:

How do people write?
How do writers earn their living?
How much money do writers make?

Etc. etc.

And the results of these searches are often page after page of writers explaining just how little they actually earn. Warning others off trying to do the same and saying that not everyone can be like J.K. Rowling. This is an immediate dis-incentive. Why would anyone want to put themselves through that anyway?

3. Not Having Any Ideas:
The thing is, that most people do not have any ideas if put on the spot, and the thing also is that, most people would be able to come up with some amazing ideas if they were given half an hour and asked to come up with the most outrageous thing they can think of. Admitedly, there are some people who, after half an hour of thinking would imagine that it is outrageous to put paper in the normal bin and not the recycling bin (oh the terror!) but they would be few and far between.

4. Having an important career and other life.
Is it always a shock to find out that a respected High Court judge writes fluffy romances, or the Police Metropolitan Commisionner writes children's stories? I don't know. But it is possibly enough of a put off for these people to think to embark on a second career as a writer.

5. Having a silly name:
There are many people in all walks of life whose names now trip off the tongue because of the different things they now stand for. Donald Trump, something which obviously means a greatly different thing in the UK than in the States, is a prime example. How about Audrey Niffeneger, or Arnold Schwarzenegger? And a writer is at an advantage from the start because they can take a nom de plume.

6. Just Realising How Much Sheer Hard Work is Involved.
Many writers or would-be writers baulk at the idea of producing a certain numbers of coherently flowing words. Then, having written them, the idea of sitting down to edit them is also a huge put off!

But it is like playing the lottery. Why do people play for that one in fourteen million chance of winning? Someone has to win. Someone has to be the Rowling, the Tolkein, the Fleming, the Cartland, The Clarke... This list is endless!

The question should not be 'why Do people not write', but what on earth is stopping them?

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
                                       Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

                                      It matters not how strait the gate,
                                      How charged with punishments the scroll.
                                      I am the master of my fate:
                                      I am the captain of my soul.


                                                           William Ernest Henley (1844-1903)

A Quick Way to Get More Visitors Without Doing Anything!

From having this blog, I have noticed one thing about the way that visitors arrive here.

Now I will let you into the little secret that I have discovered:

Having interesting photos brings visitors to your blog too. A lot of people come to my blog after having looked for an alien picture. And that alien post is my most popular post and has had thousands of page views by itself.

• Relevant

Obviously, it would greatly help if the photo or image was completely relevant to the subject of the post. There is no use having a highly popular picture of a singer or something in a post about different styles of period lamp post. The visitor would come, find nothing to interest them and leave. Also, do not forget to name the photo with a good, relevant name so that it shows up in search results. If it is just called a number or something completely different, then it will not work.

• Positioning

It helps to place it in a good place where it is high enough up in your post

• Size

Not too big and not too small

And that is the whole tip. To get more visitors, choose an interesting, relevant, popular picture and that will lead people to your website as well, after that it is up to you to grab their attention and keep them there.

Cute kittens always help too!

What To Do If Someone Has A Heart Attack

New guidelines from the British Heart Foundation have simplified the instructions for what to do if someone's heart stops beating during a heart attack

Hands Only CPR
The main thing to do is to get their heart beating again. If you are a qualified first aider and are confident, then obviously do what you have been taught and what has worked for hundreds of years. But for all the rest of us, they advise, that we hum along to 'Staying Alive' by the Bee Gees and press down on the person's heart to that rhythm.

Administering CPR to someone who has had a heart attack more than doubles their chances of survival. Better still attend one of the training courses which are being run all over the country. You might help save someone's life!

How To Get More Traffic for Your Blog Through Linkreferral

Linkreferral is a great website for generating traffic to your blog, e-commerce website, or any other website that you may have.

 It is basically a links directory where you can add the link for your own website into one of the many categories that they have after registering for their service.

After that they require you to do your share of visiting people's websites which in turn makes people visit yours.

If you go to 30 websites from their directory, from any category, and review 5 sites, choosing one of them to be your favourite, and make one comment on the forum, then you have done your maximum daily amount.

Bad Points

• It takes ages to visit 30 websites. It is not possible to just click through quickly, linkreferral only registers your visit once the whole website home page has loaded.

• It also takes ages to leave 5 reviews on other people's sites which are helpful and meaningful.

• Because the forum comments are perfunctory, the forum is full of thousands of comments, but does not have the feeling of a proper community. A bit like a dance for shop dummies. They are dancing, but they don't know why they are there or whether they are having fun or not.

• From time to time, someone visits your site who just 'doesn't get' what you do and what you are all about. This person just leaves a low score or a poor review and this can knock your ego a bit.

• Another bad point is that sometimes you come across a website which is so interesting that you find yourself so absorbed with reading it and forget to visit the other 29 and one link leads to another and...

Good Points

Linkreferral leads you to discover hundreds of other websites. These are often other blogs, or money-making websites, or anything you can imagine. You can leave comments on their sites and so build up your backlinks and they in turn visit yours.

• You do not have to do every part of the requirements, just surfing a few of the sites lets you work your way up the list of sites in your category. The secret is little and often. Since people have to visit 30 sites, if you are on the first page, then the chance are higher that you will get a visit.

• You start getting visitors almost immediately you join. 

• People come to your site and leave a review. This means that they can spot something obvious that you may have missed, and it also gets tested out by lots of different browsers and computers who can comment on how fast your images load etc.

Link Building
A directory website like this is very useful for making contacts and link building because you are able to send direct emails to the website owners.

Referral Programme
Unfortunately, the actual referral programme is not that great. They ask $50 to join and pay $0.15 cents per referral, so you need to refer at least 334 people before you even get your $50 back.

But on the whole, it is a great way to generate a steady stream of traffic to your site, who are interested to see what your site is like and can review it for you.

No Shopping Left at the End of the Week

When things start to run out towards the end of the week, especially when the kids are on holiday, it is very tempting to go and do a big mid-week shop.

But in these hard times, if you have a budget for a week, then the last thing to do is to go out and do a whole weekly shop. One thing leads to another and you end up spending next week's budget too!

If it is something vital, like milk etc, then pop down to the local shop and just buy some milk nothing else!

But if it not a basic, but a luxury, then resist the urge the go shopping! Just do without it for a couple of days. This is a good time to raid the back of the cupboard and the back of the freezer to see what is lurking there and eat that. Sometimes it is surprising what we buy and forget about which then gets pushed further and further back as new stuff gets piled on top. Now don't you fancy a chick pea and sardine sandwich with custard :)

10 Ways That I Saved Money Today

Times are tough right now, and money is tight for a lot of families. Incomes are not only reducing in real terms because many people are being asked to take pay cuts or to reduce their hours, but also because everything is becoming so expensive. In the UK, unemployment is at a 17 year high, with 8.4% of the eligible population out of work.

There has never been a better time to take a good look at your income and spending and save as much as possible. Here are 10 ways to immediately start saving money:

1. Cut down on takeaways. If your average spend on a takeaway meal is £25 a week, then getting one every other week immediately saves you £50. Cut down altogether and you are £100 a month better off.

2. Lower your mobile phone tariff. Just how much do you pay for your mobile phone texts and calls? Some of the tariffs are so confusing that the people selling them don't even understand which ones are better value for money (this means you Carphone Warehouse!). Work out how much you spend a month and see if there is a better deal out there.

3. See if you can switch to a better rate for your gas and electricity. Many websites let you search online for better value. Save up to £100 a month in some cases. If you have not already discovered these websites, then moneysavingexpert.com and uswitch.com are good places to start. I will put a list of some more at the end of the post.

4. Shop around for cheaper car insurance. If you have been using the same company since you started driving, then the chances are that there will be other companies which provide far better deals to you. Do you have all the benefits? You pay less if you park in a garage, have an alarm fitted etc etc, discuss it with your prospective insurance company and see what they will offer you.

5. Pay off as much expensive credit card debt as you can. This will significantly reduce the amount of interest you pay for the rest of the debt. Letting it stay just builds up the debt for you. Save money by paying it off more quickly.

6. Use your car less, drive to a park and ride instead, or just simply walk for shorter distances. Drive more economically and plan your journeys so that you can get several things done during just one trip.

7. Cut down those subscription services. You know if you cancel your Sky subscription, they only phone you a month later and offer you a much better deal. Haggle with them! Of all the services that you buy they are probably the ones that you can bargain with the most. Save at least £30 a month.

8. If you have a landline phone, see if your phone company offers a cheaper tariff. A lot of companies have unlimited calls during evenings and weekends. Or if you regularly phone overseas, see if they have an Anytime service which lets you call anywhere for a certain number of minutes a month. Halve your phone bills.

9. Shop at a cheaper supermarket. Switching from Sainsburys to Aldi can reduce your bill from £100 a week to £40 a week.

10. Go through your bank account with a fine-toothed comb And pick out the niggling little unnecessary payments. Are you paying for things you no longer use? Are you paying subscriptions for the kids that they don't even read? Cut out all the useless payments. Do you have more than 3 insurance policies? Make sure that you are not paying to cover the same things in different policies!

Don't throw away your hard earned cash. Sit down and make those savings today!

How to Survive Being Limited by Paypal 1: The First Rejection

In the fairytale of our lives, eBay and Paypal are the spiteful ugly stepsisters!
At anytime they choose, they can take their toys away and make you go and sweep out the cinders, poor and alone and dejected.

They do not need to give you a reason, it is all there in their terms and conditions so that the moment you sign up, you are at their mercy.

Paypal is not a bank. It is an intermediary which transfers payments between a buyer and a seller so that the buyer does not have to give out their credit card details online.

When you sign up to their service, you give them permission to access your credit history and to check up on you in any way that they see fit. In the second paragraph of their terms and conditions, they state that any money you keep in their system will be pooled along with other users and put all together into a bank account to earn interest. This interest is paypal's interest and you have nothing to do with it. Herein lies the major problem, set out in black and white right at the beginning of their T & C. They use your money to earn interest.

So, obviously, it is in their interest to keep your money for as long as possible.

There are two types of limitation by paypal and both of them allow paypal to lock you out of your account for 6 months.

A temporary limitation is subject to your providing any details that they ask for. There may be a certain transaction that they are unsure about, or they may ask you to prove where you got the goods that you are selling by sending them invoices for the items you are listing.

By logging in to your paypal account, it will be possible to see what sorts of documents they want to see to help you to unlimit your account. With over 15 million users in the UK, it is impossible to see how they can investigate each case properly and much of it must be automated. Nevertheless, if you do as they ask, then your account can be usually unlimited.

 The other type of limitation is the permanent kind. In this case, Paypal will send you a cryptic email saying that your account is limited because you have breached their violations policy and this means that you will be permanently suspended with no way of getting your account back. They will hold you funds for 6 months so that they can pay any fees or disgruntled buyers, and then finally, they will let you have your money and send you a 'Parting of ways' email.

The eyes of eBay and Paypal are full of shards from the devil's mirror and they can only see foulness and corruption around them, everywhere they look (The Snow Queen, Hans Christian Anderson (1805-1875), and because of this they clamp down hard on anyone who goes against their rules and instead of giving people the benefit of the doubt or taking each case on an individual basis, they just use the same strict criteria to judge everyone.

The problem is that Paypal has become such a universal and easy way to pay that, for many people, it seems that there is no way that life will survive without it. Freelancers, online retailers and other service providers depend on paypal for their livelihood. And often the only payment that buyers will prefer is paypal because, as one buyer said to me, they only trust paypal as a way of sending money online because it is thought to be very safe.

A permanent paypal limitation is a double blow because firstly it hits your income hard. Many thousands of people have taken to online retailing as a way to make ends meet between jobs, or even given up the day job to sell things online.Without this income stream, they can feel hopeless and helpless.

Secondly, it is a complete rejection. When they reject you, they use words which make you feel like a criminal. In many cases they give you no reason why you have been thrown out, only that you have 'violated' something. They have thrown you out of their exclusive and popular club and shut the door in your face, and no amount of begging and pleading on your part will make them open it again. This makes it even harder to turn around and walk away. You do not get to have the last word and there are no ways to make them listen. You really do feel like a gnat trying to make the elephant notice it. And a criminal gnat at that.

In part two of this series, I will highlight how people try to get around this problem...

Short Survival Tips #4 Lose Weight, Save Money, Clean Up!

Instead of vacuuming your whole room, buy a stiff brush with a long handle and brush all the dust into a big pile in the middle.

Then vacuum around the edges and the big pile.

• Burn off some serious calories while you are brushing.

• Save money by not vacuuming for so long.

• Save energy by not using so much electricity

Apostrophe S and Plural S

Lot's of Video's and Thoma's the Tank Engines Merchandise

Really?  This lovely message was seen today in a newsagent's window.

Just pluralising something does not need an apostrophe.
Add as many numbers of things as you like, you do not need to apostracise it.

But if something belongs to something then it needs a belonging apostrophe.

Sophie's Choice: The choice belonging to Sophie.
Sophies' Choice: Lots of Sophies making a choice, possibly a cafe?

Thomas the Tank Engine's Track: The track belongs to Thomas
Thomas the Tank Engines Track: Some weird activity that lots of Thomases do when they get together.

Short Survival Tips #3 Reduced Support

Save yourself money.

• Instead of buying expensive tops which give added support, and can cost a fortune, buy cheaper vest tops which are a couple of sizes small. They will hold all the curvy bits in without reducing the size of your bank account!

• Do not wash and condition your hair twice as it says on some shampoo bottles. You will only wash all the natural oils out of it and make it limp and lifeless! Save money and get twice the use out of your shampoo.

• If you come home with a cracked egg in your shopping, and don't like the thought of using it in your cooking, rustle up a quick egg conditioner for your hair. Either quickly whisk it up and use as it is, or add a tiny amount of oil or honey to make your hair even shinier. Use it in the bath or shower, massage it on to your hair and leave for as long as you like. Wash out with your normal shampoo for lustrous, shiny locks.

How to Write

When I was young, I bought a coach ticket for the first time. I simply went to the coach station ticket office and paid for it and brought this very important piece of card home.

Now, as the day approached for my coach journey, I wondered how it was that I would be told to get on the coach. I checked the post everyday to see whether an invitation had arrived telling me that my presence was requested to attend the launch. Or maybe a phone call would inform me that my seat was confirmed. I was expecting at least a gold-edged envelope. Because this was a journey from out of the city, it seemed to be more important.

But no, to my amazement, it was nothing like that at all. You make your way to the coach station on the day and at the time that the coach is supposed to leave, show the driver your ticket and go and find a seat - any seat you like. The coach goes whether you are on it or not.

This childish scene reoccurs to me now because if someone wants to be a writer, they must just write! There is not going to be a gilt-edged invitation, or actually even a ticket. For a first time, unpublished author, there are no looming deadlines, only the vague intention of somehow ending up with a publication one day.

Barbara Cartland, was one of England's most prolific writers. She wrote for nearly eighty years and is thought to have sold over a billion books. She wrote over 700 books in total, writing 23 novels in one year alone - leading to an entry in the Guinness book of Records.

For her, writing was purely a matter of discipline. She used to sit down to dictate her books at 1.30pm she said, (not 1.35, and not 1.40), and she would write for two hours every single day. She said that there was no use waiting for the muse to arrive, you had to write, and it was mainly a matter of controlling yourself. When she died, she left 162 still unpublished books.


How to Write

• Set aside a certain amount of time everyday 
• Write
• For the first draft, think of quantity, not quality, if that helps. Have a daily word count goal and stick to it everyday.
• Write!
• Take part in an online challenge. NaNoWriMo is an excellent one with wonderful support and regional groups set up all over the world.
• Join a writers' group or a creative writing course 
• Write

The best way to be a writer is to write. Don't worry how you will handle all the fame and publicity. The theme park design can wait, it really can. First work towards producing a complete document.

Bedercise Your Way to Fitness

Every time you find yourself in bed, try to do some exercise. Make it into an unthinking habit like brushing your teeth and combing your hair.

In the Morning:


In the morning have a good all-over stretch. Stretch out as long as you can make yourself. Push your legs out and flex your feet. Wriggle your toes. Stretch yours arms out long and make your fingers spread out as far apart as you can. Stretch your face, open your eyes wide, and then stretch each cheek. Open your mouth wide.

Then do some wriggling. Wriggle everything and stamp your feet several times in bed hard to warm up your leg muscles. Then jump out of bed!

At Night:

At night flex your feet and wriggle your toes.

Stretch your calf muscles and stretch your thighs and bottom as hard as you can, hold for a count of five and release.

Lie on your back and pull your stomach muscles in. Push down on your stomach gently with both hands. Hold for a count of five. Repeat as many times as you want.

Push the back of your arms into the bed hard several times.

Stretch your back.

Then: breathe deeply and relax and go to sleep.

How to Survive as a Paypal user

Paypal is not a bank. It is a middle man between a buyer and a seller.

As such, although they are regulated by some of the same laws as banks, they are free to make up any of their own rules as they want, so it is very important to read the Terms and Conditions.

After you sign up with them, then you will need to link a bank account or credit card to your PayPal account. This is very easy to do and to verify that it is actually your account, Paypal will put some small deposits in. Once you see these deposits in your account, then you can enter them in and your account will be verified.

As a buyer

Paypal is used on thousands of websites around the world. It is incredibly easy to buy something and pay for it almost immediately as long as there are funds in your account. If there are not enough funds, then PayPal can easily access your bank account and withdraw as much as it needs to complete the transaction.

Just like a credit card purchase, a PayPal purchase is protected if there should be anything wrong, such as the item does not arrive, or it is faulty in any way. All it takes is usually a complaint to PayPal and they will open a case to investigate.

As a Seller

Paypal is very easy to use. They allow you to put a button up on your website which lets people buy your products and services easily and quickly. The fees to receive a payment depend on where in the world you are, but for the U.K. They are 3.4% plus 20p of the Payment up to £1,500 and a tiered reduced rate for higher payments.

Unfortunately, although they actually started as a way to help the world,Paypal have been a bit arbitrary in their judgements over the years and a little heavy handed in their control of their own reputation, so I think it is necessary to have a strict policy when dealing with them.

Like everything else on the Internet, it is a good idea to do a quick search to see if they are any good and a search through Google, using the term "PayPal problem" brings up nearly half a billion web pages. Of course many of these will be duplicate content and some will be things like, " I had a huge problem and PayPal fixed it for me". but still, half a billion.

* Don't keep a large balance in your PayPal account. Withdraw the funds into your bank account as soon as possible.

* Because all buyers are so protected under the Paypal system, your dealings and business are vulnerable on two sides, Paypal keeps an eye on all their sellers' activity, and, as they say in their T&Cs at any time, they can do anything with your money, with your account, with your business and therefore, with your life. Secondly, buyers know that they are protected, so they can play all sorts of tricks to get their money back: non-delivery, faulty/broken item, problem, even weeks later, so it is vital to protect yourself as much as possible by using track able postage and accurate descriptions as much as possible.

* Do not forget the real world! In this country, there is a financial ombudsman, there are all sorts of agencies, there is the small claims court and, may e as a last resort, there are the police. It is a mistake to think that if it happens online, the. It stays online. If you have been badly treated by a buyer or by Paypal, then it is possible to get recourse through offline actions.

The Dash Poem by Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning to the end.

He noted that first came the date of her birth
And spoke of the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we own,
The cars, the house, the cash,
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard;
Are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough
To consider what’s true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we’ve never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect
And more often wear a smile,
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.

So when your eulogy is being read
With your life’s actions to rehash
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

© 1996 Linda Ellis

www.lindaellis.net

How to Survive a Zombie Attack

I'm sorry, I just don't like zombies, you are on your own with this one!

How to Get More Traffic for Your Blog Through Twitter

Using Twitter is a great way to increase the traffic that you receive to your blog. Of course, you must already be a member of Twitter, and it is very easy to sign up here:

http://www.twitter.com

You do not have to have a large number of followers to get people to visit. But follow these easy steps and you will soon see an increase in the numbers of people who visit you and want to read what you say and if you do it properly, maybe an increase in twitter followers as well!

1. The very first step is to make sure that your blog looks at its absolute best. Build up a nice number of interesting and informative articles on your subject. This way when you get visitors, they will have something to read to stick around for, and hopefully join.

2. Test your blog by loading it using different browsers and get friends and family to test it on their computers. It must load quickly and be easy to read. The average visitor who comes along from twitter will not stick around if a lot of large graphics and fancy widgets slow the loading speed down. 

3. Sign in to Twitter.

4. On the twitter home page, you will see your timeline on the left hand side and on the right in the blue column, it list a varied amount of information, including a list of the top trends (TT) occuring on twitter at the moment. These sometimes have the hashtag symbol (#) and sometimes are just some words or a sentence.

5. If you notice one of the TT is relevant to anything in your blog, then it is really easy to tweet about it to that group of people who are currently discussing that subject. This could be thousands of people! The more relevant it is the better, because that means that your visitors will actually be interested in it and might stick around to read the rest of your blog and tell other people about it.

6. Because twitter limits the characters to 140, your blog url can take up a lot of this the first thing to do is to shorten your url so that it leaves space for the rest of your tweet. Visit a website like tinyurl and paste your url into the box so that you end up with a shortened version like this: http://tinyurl.com/74lmnqt

7. Now you are ready to tweet your information into twitter. 

8. Make it short and meaningful. I get some visitors to my How to Survive Spreadbetting page whenever there are relevant tweets on twitter by tweeting things like: Read How to Survive Spreadbetting (tinyurl link to page) and the hashtag, whatever it is. I do this when people are discussing the economy or the credit crunch, or banks, finances or anything relevant. 

9. Do not try to be obscure or witty or interesting, you can do that in your own timeline with your friends etc, Keep it short and simple enough and to the topic to make people want to click it and know what they will find. A lot of people will not click on a strange link in case there are viruses, but if it is interesting to them and about a topic which they have already been discussing, then they might click on your link.

10. Have a call to action like 'Click here' or 'Click now!' will incentivise more people to click.

11. When they get to your page, keep them there by having a few links of your other topics, this is easy in blogger by putting the 'Labels' widget somewhere on your page, like I have the 'Categories.' Click Now, if you see something interesting!

12. Don't spam. You will not get any visitors who are interested and they may never click on one of your links again.

13. Don't overdo it. About one or two of these types of tweets along with 30-40 of your tweets is OK but any more will really put people off!

14. A good thing to do might be to have two accounts where one of them is your personal one about your life and another one where you only tweet links. This way, anyone who signs up to join you will know what they can expect.

Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden

This is another one of my favourite poems. It so perfectly portrays Grief!



TWO SONGS FOR HEDLI ANDERSON
in
Selected Poems of W.H. Auden
by W. H. Auden
Vintage

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
    doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.



© Copyright The Estate of W. H. Auden, 1976, 1991. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system now or hereafter invented, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Few and Less, Fewer and Lesser

Few is for numbers of things.
Few rhymes with You.

There can be fewer people, fewer numbers and fewer trees etc.

Fewer things can be counted.

There can not be fewer sugar or fewer custard.


Less is for an amount.

Less Mess, less sugar, less sand.

Less is for a quantity of something.

You can not have less people but you can have less money.

Their, There and They're

They're over there, they've bought their picnic!

They're is self explanatory: It is a short form of "They Are"

Their means belonging to them. A good way to remember the meaning of this word is that it has a little person in the middle:

so it is a good way to remember that it is their item.

There is the opposite of Here. It is a place, Here or There. 

Once you have learned the differences of these three different words, then your brain will recognise them by the meaning and it will jump when you see it spelled wrong in the wrong place.

Their over They're, they have bought there picnic. Doh!

How to Survive A Violin - The Paypal way

I read today about the tragic story of a deceased violin. This was not just any violin (none of them are, are they?) but one which was at the centre of a dispute between a buyer and seller on eBay, which was, at one time, marketed as a website where the little people could buy and sell their unwanted things.

The whole story can be read here: http://www.regretsy.com/2012/01/03/from-the-mailbag-27 but the main details of what happened can be found below:

A smashed violin!!! 

Dear Helen Killer (From the Regretsy blog)

I love your site and was thrilled to hear of your “win” against PayPal. I recently had a heartbreaking experience of my own with them.

I sold an old French violin to a buyer in Canada, and the buyer disputed the label.

This is not uncommon. In the violin market, labels often mean little and there is often disagreement over them. Some of the most expensive violins in the world have disputed labels, but they are works of art nonetheless.

Rather than have the violin returned to me, PayPal made the buyer DESTROY the violin in order to get his money back. They somehow deemed the violin as “counterfeit” even though there is no such thing in the violin world.



The buyer was proud of himself, so he sent me a photo of the destroyed violin.

I am now out a violin that made it through WWII as well as $2500. This is of course, upsetting. But my main goal in writing to you is to prevent PayPal from ordering the destruction of violins and other antiquities that they know nothing about. It is beyond me why PayPal simply didn’t have the violin returned to me.

I spoke on the phone to numerous reps from PayPal who 100% defended their action and gave me the party line.

Erica

Heartbreaking is not a strong enough word!

This is normal policy for Paypal, who can apparently order any item to be destroyed if they suspect that it is a fake. An objective observer might say, surely, if they have to deal with so many disputes a day, then it is reasonable to think that they must have to have the same policy apply to everyone.

But, crucially, what this does is to expose both eBay's and paypal's policy of only trusting the word of one party in nearly every dispute. They value their buyers so much that they unerringly seem to fall down on the buyer's side nearly every time.

This is evidenced by the growing numbers of websites full of disgruntled sellers who have their accounts limited or frozen by arbitrary decisions which are churned out on a worryingly regular basis. Look for disgruntled buyers and they are there, but not legions like the sellers are.

In this case the seller listed that they had the violin checked by a luthier but the buyer disputed the authenticity. Well you could say that about anything, who are we supposed to believe? Would you walk into your local designer goods store and dispute their veracity? You would get laughed out of the shop. So, in a listing, which explicitly stated that it was authentic, why did PayPal not even investigate it?

Paypal are at the heart of millions of ecommerce solutions all over the web. They provide many, many families with a means to earn enough to pay their bills - and this does show in the many different reactions to this viral story all over the web.

from the Guardian website we have an antique violin dealer saying "only a fool would buy an instrument without playing it"

From various twitter feeds and social websites there is outrage at this obscenity

This is from Kottke.com

Hey Peter Thiel, instead of whining about the iPhone, Twitter, and internet not being innovative and life-changing enough, why don't you fix this life-ruining piece of sh** company that you cr***ed into the world? That would definitely be a "net plus".

But ultimately this is about a violin, which, if real, managed to survive seventy-plus years in this world, probably thruogh Nazi-occupied France, if you can believe it, but lost the fight against a nameless, faceless PayPal employee. How hopelessly sad.

  How do we survive this? If you feel strongly enough, then surely a complaint to paypal is justified or a comment on a relevant Facebook page.

We must rage against this dying of our humanity.