Picture puzzle answers

Well all, Prison Widow had the correct answer to this puzzle

The answer was 42 !

How do each of the pictures lead to this

There are 42 laws of Cricket

The group is Level 42 - Their most successful single was - Lessons in love

The cartoon character was Arthur Dent from Hitch-hikers guide to the Galaxy - He was looking for the meaning of life, and the answer was - yes - 42

Finally the rainbow, this is a bit of a nerdy answer

When a rainbow is formed, a light wave enters the raindrop and as it leaves breaks up into the colours we see. It leaves at an angle of 42 degrees to the angle it went in at.

Hope you all enjoyed that

Governments’ Illegal Immigrants go home campaign

While I agree that some immigration is good for the UK and that Illegal immigrants should go home. I cannot believe in the recent government campaign of driving a van around certain areas with a big billboard on the side!

As was pointed out on the news this morning, most illegals do not speak or read English. So why is the request to go home, only in English?

Since government is supposed to be transparent I would like the government to answer the following four questions.

I am sure they will be able to answer them, after all, have they not been telling doctors, nurses, teachers, banks etc, just how important target setting is, and being measured against your targets!


1 What was your target for people handing themselves in?

2 How many did hand themselves in during the period of the campaign?

3 How many of those handing themselves in said they did so as a direct result of reading the poster

These first and last questions will tell us how good they were at hitting their target

4 How many non-illegal, English speaking readers of the poster thought it was a good idea?

From this last question we can measure how effectively public money has been used to fund a Conservative Party PR exercise

Employers shunning traditional school qualifications

Read an interesting article today on an accountancy website

The link is below if you want to read it all


But in summary,

27% of employers expect to increase their training budget next year
44% are expecting to increase in-house learning
44% would like more podcasts & vodcasts
38% would like more e-learning

I guess if successive governments had not interfered so much with school curriculum's , and teaching methods, we would not have these problems and the UK would not be so low down in the school league tables



http://www.aat.org.uk/about-aat/press-releases/employers-shunning-traditional-school-qualifications

energetic day yesterday

Well I had a fantastic day yesterday with 42 very enthusiastic guys. It was the second day of a learning programme that is going to last some 16 months.

I will be placing regular bulletins about the progress here.

Yesterday we had a very brief introduction to communications, problem solving, team working and learning styles

It was amazing just how much we got through . Amongst the fun activities was my version 'introduce yourself to the group' which caused a great deal of hilarity and rivalry.

My two favourites,  number jumble and the Indian Rope Trick

I think the best team game of the day was erecting a tent blindfold.

I was amazed by just how good the guys were

A picture puzzle for you all

I am teaching a one day course next Tuesday, and I was wondering how to make a novel introduction. Then I had an idea.

I looked at the number of participants, and thought, lets find a few pictures with this number in common, and ask my audience if they can find the common theme to the pictures.

Can any of you find the number?

And can you justify it for each picture?

Have fun!

The painful triangle

Today would have been my Uncle Jim's birthday, so I was thinking about life and death.

I often think better in pictures, and I have been listening a lot to the debates on pensions, things like how much to contribute, how much to get back, when to draw it.

I have come to the conclusion that we have got ourselves into a painful triangle, where the only winners are the drug manufacturers and medical equipment suppliers.

I will be interested in how many agree and what solutions you offer.

This is how I see it

Let's start at the base of the triangle and more around anti clockwise.

We now have really good healthcare, but it costs a lot, because of the new drugs.  The fact is, the better they work, the longer we live, and the longer we take them, and the more it costs. So it is in the drug companies interest to provide expensive drugs that really work well.

Because we live longer, we need the finances to support us, that means we will need to put more money into our pension pot, and we will need medicines for longer.


Say we start earning at 21 and retire at 67. That is 46 years earning. Average life expectancy is now around 80-85, and getting better every year. So there has to be enough cash to support us for about 15 years, that's about a third of our working life. If we were to put that cash in a box under the bed, then we would have to be putting away about a third of every weeks earnings to fund our retirement. Of course, the third we put away in our early years will not play a significant part in our nest egg, because of inflation. And, the longer we live the greater proportion of our earnings we will have to put away.

Now we are back to the base again. Because we are living longer, we will need medical treatment for longer. In addition the problems will be worse, and they will need more expensive treatment.

In summary, the longer we live, the more money we will have to contribute to the health service and the more we will have to put away for a pension, so the less spare money we will have, to enjoy our young healthy time of life.

If we put the emphasis on managing the quality of dying, rather than extending a painful miserable life, we would have a lot more spare money to enjoy in the prime of our life.

Of course the down side of this, is that the drug companies would not become so mega rich!