Charity regulator finds serious failings at unregistered organisation READ MORE HERE: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/charity-regulator-finds-serious-failings-at-unregistered-organisation

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/820462/Outraged-parents-Thomas-Tallis-School-suicide-notes-class-project

Hello Everyone. So Here I am ... time to face and deal. I was well man on career ladder working my way up when in 2008 I decided with my business partner to invest in a retail business, this was just before the recession hit. I left my job and got on with the business that started in late 2008. did well to start with but before I really noticed , I was sinking. I took out a 25k loan from Barclays in July 2008 was making payments , but when I hit a birckwall in my business I got really stuck. The busines ran for three years, and in the busy ness of it , toiling day and night , I just completely ignored any reminders or calls from the bank etc ... Anyway , I now have the following Barclays Personal Loan - I believe it is with Mortimer Lake Sols - £22000 Egg credit card - which i believe was taken over by barlcays , not sure who it is with now - circa £2500 Vodafone - £300 apprx contract bill which i didnt even know about untill recently !! (Mobile Contract cash voucher [problem]) I sold my business in 2011 and have been working endlessly since with all this on my mind and with a plan to one day get rid off. I have NOT made any payments to these for years, and luckily they have not bothered or come after me that much either. a letter now and then. Mortimer have started to call recently again which i have not answered. There are no CCJs on file just default/delinquent. It is probably due to the age of debts that I was accepted for entry level capital one card with £500 limit about a year or so ago, which I have been using regularly and paying off , the limit then increased to £700 (current) and I have heard from them again telling me that they are increasing to £1700 from next month. I have no idea how to start on this , the main reason I have had "my head burried" so to speak is that if i contact them they will come after me like wolves asking for to pay amounts I cannot afford. Well now I am in a position to clear these off via full and final settlements. Vodafone I will take care of shortly anyway. Help is needed on how do I make contact and start negotiating full and final settlements with other two and what should I be aiming for. Your help will be highly appreciated. and I kid you not should this forum make me succeed in my goal. I will be making sure to offer financial support in my powers to help the site. Target : Debts cleared via full and final settlement also a clean credit file. Kind Regards, SS

Hi, 2 months ago i bought several packs of wooden flooring from Homebase, which was subsequently laid. I have been online to buy an additional 18 packs to complete the project but it says there are only a few packs left dotted across stores around the country. I called their customer services to be told that the product was now discontinued. They 'cannot' get the remaining packs delivered to my local store and i cannot order online. I said i am left with half a completed room and was told 'nothing we can do'. The product has not been and is still not being advertised as discontinued. I emailed their complaints dept and asked for resolution but they just said that there was nothing they could do. This is going to leave me £100's out of pocket as i will have to re-purchase and lay new flooring in the area i have just done! Do I have any rights??

From this BBC link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22651126 The BBC has scrapped a £98m digital production system, which its director general said had "wasted a huge amount of licence fee payers' money". The Digital Media Initiative was set up in 2008 but was halted last autumn having never become fully operational. "I have serious concerns about how we managed this project," BBC director general Tony Hall said. An independent review has been launched "to find out what went wrong and what lessons can be learned", he said. The Digital Media Initiative (DMI) was intended to transform the way staff developed, used and shared video and audio material and was seen as an important part of a move of resources to Salford. "Ambitious technology projects like this always carry a risk of failure," Lord Hall said. "It does not mean we should not attempt them but we have a responsibility to keep them under much greater control than we did here." The contract to deliver the DMI was originally awarded to technology company Siemens in 2008 but was taken over and relaunched by an in-house BBC team in 2010. Between 2010 and 2012, the project cost the corporation £98.4m. An internal review was set up in October 2012 after the BBC Trust expressed serious concerns. In a letter to Margaret Hodge, chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, the BBC Trust's Anthony Fry revealed the project had generated "little or no assets". "It is of utmost concern to us that a project which had already failed to deliver value for money in its early stages has now spent so much more of licence fee payers' money," he said. "We intend to act quickly to ensure that there can be no repeat of a failure on this scale." Mrs Hodge described the episode as "a terrible shock and clearly completely shambolic". The corporation said the initiative had been badly managed and outpaced by changing technology, and that to carry on would be throwing good money after bad. "It's struggled to keep pace with new developments and requirements both within the BBC and the wider broadcasting industry," Lord Hall wrote in an email to BBC staff. Disciplinary action "There are now standard off-the-shelf products that provide the kind of digital production tools that simply didn't exist five years ago. "We will be looking into what has happened and will take appropriate action, disciplinary or otherwise," he added. John Linwood, the BBC's chief technology officer, has been suspended. In 2011, then director general Mark Thompson told the Public Accounts Committee that the initiative was "critical" to the BBC's move to Media City in Salford and the establishment of new Broadcasting House. "A lot of the future of the BBC is tied up in the successful delivery of this project," he said, at the time. James Purnell, the BBC's director of strategy and digital, said: "In the future we are going to rely far more on off-the-shelf technology. We've messed up and we apologise to licence fee payers for that." Yet he insisted the failed project was "the exception rather than the rule", citing technical successes such as the BBC iPlayer.

I noticed the benchmark for the N2800 Atom processor was more than that of my twin Xeon hyperthreading 2.4ghz server from the last decade. So the N2800 supports 4 gig (although windows starter only accesses 2 of that) and an SSD can be swapped in. The N2800 only uses 6.5W including graphics, although its 2W max fan runs most of the time at half speed~(1W?). Its smaller brother uses only 3.5W (often fan free machines) but only supports 2 gig with a third slower graphics (though both are full HD video compliant). So mine now has a 1.35V 4gig stick, and Ubuntu dual boot (which is buggy on Linux as I have done nothing to fix it yet). Eight hours running is not a problem with the six cell battery, often more. Next plans are a 480/512gig SSD which I suspect may go sub £200 at new year, 64bit windows, and 3G/GPS in the available slot. Its windows score presently is 3.4 with the main restriction being the games/business graphics. It seems accessing a faster drive can up the graphics to 3.5, but as its irrelevant to me it serves little purpose other than mentioning. Its an HP Mini (I normally stick with Asus, but they have upgrade issues), and it seems a 1366 x 768 screen was available to the american market- although I am quite happy with the 1024 x 600 as a travel PC. The higher res offers little more than curiosity presently. A lit keyboard would be nice, as the poundland USB light bar is too bright. £7 for a car charger also makes £20 for a small motorcycle battery power source an idea for over a week of use away from the mains (I do sleep). Its an HP Mini 4000 series. Any other suggestions are welcome.

After five years of hard work the monkeys of Longleat Safari Park have put the finishing touches to a metallic blue Vauxhall Astra. Paul, spokesmen for the 100 strong Rhesus monkey troop proudly confirmed ‘It’s taken a lot of hard work and dedication but we pulled the final rear quarter moulding from an unsuspecting family last Friday and now we have a fully operational car. We’ve been at Longleat for 10 years now, and we wasted the first 3 just monkeying around, but then Curious George suggested we focus our efforts on building our own motor. Initially we set our sights slightly too high and decided to build a Jaguar XKR Convertible, but after 2 years with no models passing through we set a new target and haven’t looked back since.’ ‘Work was initially hampered as the tools were limited to a monkey wrench and monkey nuts but after I liberated a tool box from the back of a works van we haven’t looked back. The last few weeks have been manic and I’ve been rushing around like a blue ass monkey but it’s all been worth it.’ When asked what plans the troop had for the car Paul told us that as soon as one of them passed their driving test they were off on a road trip to India to harass tourists but until then they would probably just p*** and s**t all over it. The troop are keen to put their new found skills to further use however, and have opened a Kwick Fit franchise outside the gates of the safari. ‘We have noticed most cars do need some work done by the time they finish the monkey drive through’ Paul went on ‘and I’m pleased to say our specially trained grease monkeys can now successfully diagnose faults and fit tyres without biting them first. That doesn’t mean they won’t bite your children though.’