Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

Archive for the ‘Odds and ends’ Category

1. I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.

2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.

3. Sorry to have missed you, but I am at the doctor’s having my brain removed so I can be promoted to our management team.

4. I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from holiday on 18 April. Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.

5. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged £4.99 for the first 10 words and £0.99 for each additional word in your message.

6. The email server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try sending again. (The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many in-duh-viduals did this over and over.)

7. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.

8. Hi, I’m thinking about what you’ve just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.

9. I’ve run away to join a different circus.

10. I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as ‘Loretta’ instead of ‘Scott’.

Please feel free to use the comment facility and tell me your favourite or to add your own ideas.

According to my satnav information there are more speed cameras in the UK than France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Portugal combined! Here is the list of the number of cameras by country:

I’m not sure, but I think Belgium may beat us per capita.

According to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), the “median” gross annual earnings in the UK are £20,801. If you are earning that sum a year it means that half the surveyed working population earns less than you and half more.

The BBC analysis of the ASHE survey shows that the top 25% of people have a gross annual salary of £31,759. The top 10% is from £44,881 and a gross annual salary of £58,917 gets you into the top 5%.

This is priceless…

Old Renter Says Asians Need Not Apply? – Watch more Funny Videos

I found this quote today:

I started the £1k FTSE 100 Confidence Project in January as a personal show of confidence in the UK equity market. I was fed up with the doom and gloom and was convinced that the equity market had priced in bad news. I invested £1,000 in a FTSE 100 ISA tracker from the Halifax and commited to reporting its performance on my blog.Speed Communications – Wadd’s PR Blog, May 2009

You should read the whole article. It’s good to see someone putting their money where there mouth is and keeping at it.

The carrot and the stick

A while ago I wrote about how I felt that The Labour Party spent most of their time legislating to get things in the order they wanted. In the world of carrots and sticks this would be the stick.

Today, Lord Phillips, formerly the UK’s most senior judge, has criticised the government for introducing a “ceaseless torrent of legislation.”

The Liberal Democrats have calculated that Labour has introduced over 3,600 new criminal offences since they came to power in 1997.

Do you see why it feels like a stick? I don’t know about you, but I would struggle to think of 3,600 criminal offences. I’ve probably broken a law writing this!

My favourite news story today was about the two children, aged six and seven, who set off to get married. They set off from Hannover, Germany on New Year’s Eve, determined to tie the knot under the African sun.

Waiting for a train to the airport, they aroused the attention of a guard who contacted police, possibly as their packing had included the essentials of sunglasses, a lilo, summer clothes and provisions.

You can read the full story on The Local.