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Editor's Blog Jun 19th 2012

Circus Maximus

Long weekends are the little nuggets of respite given to the working classes to break up what is potentially an all work no play situation. The summer festivities were in full swing and there was contentment in the air.

The Romans were really good at this, so good that they even developed it as a policy.  Juvenal, a Roman Poet with a name that would never mature well, noted this in his satires, Panem et Circenses Bread and Circuses, a reference to the pacification of the Roman people through food and entertainment.

Keep the people fat, happy and feed any dissidents to the lions (killing two birds with one stone, as animal husbandry, especially for large felines can be expensive) a winning formula for any Government if you asked me.

No matter how much we like our long weekends; there are implications for the small business owners. Productivity drops right after a long weekend as people try and shake off the post holiday blues.

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Editor's Blog Jun 15th 2012

Fear

It is said that fear is one of the most crippling of emotions; it has lurked in all of us since the dawn of humankind. Without fear most of us would have not reached our teens and as a survival mechanism it is fear that keeps us alive.

Fear for very young humans, is not present until they start acquiring experiences through their senses and is a life long lesson, which develops as we encounter situations that hurt us physically and mentally.

As we get older we accumulate fears like a philatelist collects stamps, but we also lose fears as we learn the dangers and accept that some things cannot be changed.

Phobias are something quite different; they induce a state of paralysis or a flight response, which will carry you away from the source of the fear. I have an old army buddy who would run a mile when he saw a ball of wire wool. This is a bloke that had shown a total disregard for his own safety on many occasions, yet he would become a blubbering mess every time we had to use the stuff on a rusty piece of equipment.

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Editor's Blog Jun 14th 2012

Early Christmas

It is not often when the Directors buy you something that you have needed to do your job for a while. You end up buying your own pens and using your own equipment to get the job done.

Requests for something as inexpensive as Cheap Charlie toilet roll, only 75p for four rolls, are met by a sharp intake of breath, a sad shake of the head and a demand to file in a procurement form in quadruple, which will require the approval and stamp of at least three of the five Directors.

You see, most of the money almost always goes on supporting the lavish lifestyles of the Directors, which seldom is transferred to the poor worker. We strive to produce the goods in these times, where only the boardroom glitterati seem to be having all the fun.

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Editor's Blog Jun 13th 2012

Royal Pride

Early this morning I was awoken by a sound I have never heard before. The closest sound that I could think of that resembled this sound was the hissing of a very large and irritated anaconda.

I poked my head and half my body out the window. I had forgotten to put some underpants on, realising that the tiles that adorn my balcony are quite cold at that time in the morning, I ran back to the bedroom and made myself decent.

Poking my head out the window again, I had to crane my neck out to see what the noise was. To my surprise, Master Services where there in force, on the patio adjacent my flat, with a platoon of workers pressure hosing the dried dog turd skid marks off the flag stones, but only for a stretch of about fifty metres.

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Editor's Blog Jun 12th 2012

Photography Wars!

I have never liked press packs, the pressure to get that one good shot can lead many photographers to become obnoxious in the extreme. When covering big events I like my space, jostling for the best position leaves me angry and drained.

Normally I will go for one of the flanking positions and set up away from the herd, with telephoto and camera set to repetition will get me at least a couple of usable images.

Sticking a camera in someone’s face is considered rude by many of the less inclined and private celebrities, the others I call frame whores and they are kind of ok with it.

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