Ominous HA! Out-chuffing-Rageous

[Ell]

Meeting at work Today, day off like but come in or else. I teach people over the telephone, when the job started 2 years ago, every student on my books was worth 25mins pay. Yesterday after a number of reductions over the previous months one student would have been worth 15mins pay. Err today one student = 6mins pay. They\'ve basically told me! \"last month for contacting 100 students we have payed you about £1300. Next month, wind your neck in cos those same 100 students are going to net you a whopping £500\" WHAT IS GANNIN ON THERE MAN! Sheesh

Sympathy expected off course, and before you start Brian, stop

Forgot to add, I kicked off at the meeting but the managers responsible weren\'t there, yawn, and my boss who is innocent-ish had to face us. I didn\'t have the heart, although this Brummie Harridan on a full time contract tried to interject on the managements side and caught a full broadside. (ginger nut crumbs and maxpax coffee all ower the place. Bitch!)



[Edited on 19/9/2003 by Ell]

[DaveMason]

Not bad for a \"Labour\"goverment Ell , hope everything works out ok mate .

[Ell]

It always does Dave if you\'re Lucky! Proper looking at a job at sea after taking stock. Lack of science degree seems to be a stumbling block at present.

[mark]

I\'m nee wishy washy liberal, but getting canned b y the lib dems in the bi-election gives me a glimmer of hope that the sun readers of this world might finally being seeing through gloss of new labour. But isn\'t that in itself an irony when the paper that printed \"we won it for maggie\" not much over ten years ago is so enthusiastic to take it the tradesmens entrance from messrs Campbell, Mandelson et al. But lets face it, it ain\'t gonna get better, regardless of who is in power. Demcracy Blair style: \"in order to make the house of lords truly democratic, We\'ll get rid of all hereditary peers and only have appointed menbers...Appointed by me! I\'ll have all my chums running the country, and crole caplin, and here cat and cherie\'s hairdresser, and Prescotts Dietician.....\"

Cash In and Bail out. Just seen a croft in scotland - 25 acres. the house/barn/byre sit on a headland in 7 acres, sea on 3 sides with your own pier - just off shore the remaining 18 acres is your own island - 25 grand! I tell you, the equity on this house is burning a BIG hole in my pocket

[Ell]

How, first come first served Mark! get in there mate otherwise Richy\'ll add it to his portfolio

[DaveMason]

Ah yes Ell , the Coatsworth road property magnate has been quiet for a while . Must be working on another deal .

[LaoFuZhi]

Every Sympathy Ell...

I too teach. I lecture in video and multimedia production. Wall to wall temporary contracts. On Tuesday I\'m to be interviewed for my OWN job!!!! And there\'s a good chance I might not get it! I know of lecturers who have been on temp contracts for 12 years. ...and the knock on effect of that is that ordinary things like mortgages can be impossible to obtain! Last year when I attempted to rent a really poxy flat I got tolt I\'d be a better prospect as a tenant had I been unemployed!!!!! My union, the EIS recently sent me an application for a credit card ..which got knocked back! (No I\'ve never had any sort of default or bad debt) This morning I get another F\'kin one through the door!!!

And there\'s dear Ol\' Tory Blair\'s bumchum about to stick 5p a gallon on fuel. There\'s F-all public transport thanks to 20 years of asset stripping so I have to drive 80 miles a day. Can\'t move closer to work \'cos I can\'t get a mortgage or afford a house in Glasgow... When I get to work I normally have classes with 17 students ..and only 10 computers. Oh yeah, and just to make life interesting, Thanks to Tory Blair and his mates I have at least one class where I have NO copies of the software I\'m supposed to be teaching!!!!!!

[Ell]

Lao m8 that\'s the game I was trained in, Video / electronic imaging. Quantel Paintbox and PLUTO back in the days. BBC model B computer with a betamax video player for interactive productions. been out of the game for a bit too long (haven\'t used any video kit neither ) to get back into it. Or maybe not?

[LaoFuZhi]

Small World!

I came at it from Video production. Trained at Thames as an ENG\\PSC op. Came back up the road as soon as my apprenticeship was up. Got into corporates back in about \'86 and more or less been at it ever since. The corporate scene went heavily interactive about seven or so years back.... Then of course all the NLE stuff took over Linear editing. Hardly anything goes to VHS these days.


You\'d basically have to get into using Director, Photoshop and Premiere. Much of the new DV kit is a snatch to use and works incredibly well. The market\'s pretty rabid though (when wasn\'t it? )

Having just turned 41 I\'d really like to make the shift into lecturing permanent. If I could get a 0.5 post I reckon I could survive pretty well doing on spec stuff and maybe the odd corporate for favoured clients.. Like you I\'m suffering for the lackof a degree. It\'s not far away thanks to the OU but still..... Meanwhile I find myself fending off competition from graduate code monkeys who have never ever created a real commercial presentation in their life!

[mark]

You\'d basically have to get into using Director, Photoshop and Premiere. Much of the new DV kit is a snatch to use and works incredibly well.

Hmmnnn, Have to say it, but premiere is pretty much dead in the water, Looks like Final Cut Pro is the way to go. Every one of my clients that was using premier have binned it and followed FCP instead

whic is completely beside the point for this thread but that never stopped me before! So bringing it back again...If memory serves Ell, you\'re into all the microsleaze titles are you not (office/word/Excel et etc) do you have any non M$ titles in your repertoire??

[LaoFuZhi]

FCP is in veritas canus testicullii in certain quarters. But back here in the jungle........

It\'s no practical nor real, Nor are any of the \'advantages\'. If reality were the name of the game we\'d all have bought into Media studio pro before it died..........

If you can work premiere you can work FCP five minutes later! The REAL kick is teachin\' how to bloody edit! A dyin\' craft!!!!!!!!!

World\'s just tooooooo full of f\'kin code monkeys!!!!

[mark]

World\'s just tooooooo full of f\'kin code monkeys!!!!

absolutely, doin more web absed stuff than trad design/repro nowadays, and out of every 10 spotty whizzkid coders you\'ll be lucky to find one that knows anything about design. - Q \"why have you put all this crap on 1 page?\"......
ans: \"Because I can\"

same across the board, in print, I wish I had a pound for every unprintable piece of artwork I\'ve seen. Same scenario: \"but it looks fine in Photoshop\" yes but you cant print 100% of a 4 colours and expect 6point white type to show,

Yes you can learn FCP 5 mins after prem. But you can also use FCP in less than an hour having not used either

[5150]

Well I\'m an analyst programmer, worked originally for an executive agency of the DSS, writing all the benefit systems... the government kindly saw fit to sell (outsource) us to a yank company in 2000... big prospects and all that guff waived at us, it\'ll be great they said... we used to get *reasonable* payrises, this year and last we got a big fat 2% been moved from Longbenton where it was easy for me to get to work all the way down to Washington, turning my travel time from 10 mins to 40 mins each way (unpaid)... there\'s not a single person I know whose better off since we were outsourced.

[LaoFuZhi]

The bottom line 5150 is that we\'re all bein\' shafted. Your \'lost\' opportunities and wage rises are being filtered offshore purely to line the pockets of our political overlords. And that\'s British taxpayer\'s money which, if it\'s to create jobs at all should be creating British jobs!. I doubt whether the price to the taxpayer is less, and the cost will be greater in terms of the social damage it\'s obviously doing!

Isn\'t it the case that the American designed Software doesn\'t actually work?

As for the code monkey phenomena it\'ll blow over. What we\'re seeing is the hangover from the days when only coders could operate the software they\'d written. The irony here being that while these folk know how to create the tools they don\'t know how to create with them. Each to his own I say!

My old editing tutor used to say they didn\'t pay him for just knowing what button to push, but WHEN and WHY he was pushing it........


The teaching philosophy now is very much driven by the needs of creative industries. There is now a generation trained in both old traditional skills and the new who KNOW the real world issues. It\'ll take a while to filter through, but I do beleive standards are improving.