1. The reason I started this blog was to interact with fellow Masterclass students and hopefully pick up some knowledge in the process. This happened initially when everyone was enthusiastic and had expectations of making money out of internet marketing but unfortunately many realised this just wasn’t going to happen for them and their enthusiasm waned. Their posts, which once were regular, dropped off and many hadn’t posted for months. A lot of the people I shared comments with are no longer on the scene and to be truthful most of the remainder are posting on subjects that I have no interest in.

2. Even from day one it was never my intention to promote the usual marketing subjects associated with earning money online. At 66 I had not got the time, the desire or the inclination to work at something that MAY pay off in 5 years time. I always thought that choosing a micro niche to promote was the way forward. My initial foray into this method didn’t work but hopefully I have now found one that will.

2. My own circle of online friends has dropped alarmingly and I thank the loyal commentators for visiting my blog which it has to be said was never a proper internet marketing blog more of a social blog.

4. The main reason for this blogs closure is that I have eventually found my direction in information marketing and wish to concentrate on this. It is already taking up much of my time and will hopefully continue to do so in the future.

So once again many thanks to all my loyal commentators and I will of course continue to visit your own blogs to see your progress and make a comment from time to time.

In the two years since this blog started I have had over 150,000 spam comments detected by the Askimet plug in. Those spammers really are a pain in the arse.

My new project was online just before Christmas and for anyone interested in having a look the url is http://www.walksintameside.co.uk  I think you will that agree my techie friend Adrian has done a fantastic job again.

White minorities still trying to have English recognised as UK’s third language.

Children from two-parent heterosexual families bullied in schools for being ‘different’. Tolerance urged.

Gay Marriages now overtake heterosexual marriages as preferred ‘lifestyle’ choice.

Manchester schoolgirl expelled for not wearing Burka: Being a Christian is no excuse says school. Sharia law must be enforced.

Britain now has ten Universities of Political Correctness. Professor Goldman of the London School of Political Correctness says there is still a long way to go in the fight to stop people saying what they think.

Britain’s deficit is £10 trillion and rising. Government declares return to surplus in 100 years which is 300 years ahead of time. Prime Minister Mohammed Yousuf claims increased growth through more immigration is the secret to success.

White ethnic Britains urged to take advantage of governments offer to assist their emigration to Asia.

Benefit cheats offered £2M compensation for disruption of lifestyle while under investigation.

Wall Street banks merge to form new super bank, Goldman Rothschild Ebeneezer Epstein Drescher (GREED): Huge bonuses paid to executives to celebrate launch.

Baby conceived naturally! Scientists stumped.

Castro finally dies at age 112. Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking.

Post Office raises price of stamps to £18 and reduces mail delivery to Wednesdays only.

After a ten year £75.8 billion study, commissioned by the Labour Party: Scientists prove diet and exercise is the key to weight loss.

Average weight of a British male drops to 18 stone.

Prisoners complain that gourmet meals and fine wines are hindering their ability to compete in their monthly trips abroad for The European Champions Prisons League matches.

Global cooling blamed for the Australian citrus crop failure for third consecutive year.

Japanese scientists have created a camera with such a fast shutter speed they can now photograph a woman with her mouth shut.

Supreme Court rules punishment of criminals violates their civil rights. Victims to be held partly responsible for crime.

New law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by January 2035 as lethal weapons.

Inland Revenue sets lowest tax rate in decades at 75 per cent.

Bradford won this years FA Cup Final beating the Hindu Hornets 4-1.

First of all if a verbal assault on religion offends you please don’t watch the video. I wouldn’t deny anyone their right to believe in whatever they choose. Personally I agree with every word spoken in this gem from Pat Condell.

In January I set a target for the end of September for the completion of a project I had started work on. However targets and actually accomplishing them are two different things. One of the benefits of ageing and having retired is that I am not unduly worried about it, but I do realise how difficult meeting targets must be for people in full time occupations who are trying to progress an online business.

I am way behind schedule for my new project ‘Walks In Tameside’. Originally I thought it would include a maximum of 25 walks but some intensive research on maps means I am now up to 37 walks and hoping to make it a round 40 before it’s completed.

Each walk obviously has to be physically walked and also recorded, both by direction finding and tracking on GPS. Next it has to be typed into a document and the track downloaded into the relevent software and annotated onto a digital Ordnance Survey map. While I am no expert on photography, reasonable photographs also have to be taken to enhance the text and some days the cloud prevents this. Finally the track has to be walked again to check that the text on route finding is accurate and does not lead to any misunderstanding.

Out of the 37 walks, 3 have to be started and to make the 40 that makes it 6. Virtually all have to be re-walked and I have already covered almost 1000 miles todate. 17 have yet to be photographed, plus the extra 3 to make the 40. I am also adding information or links to local history and landmarks so I still have a ton of work to complete.

As an example of one walk that is completed I have converted it to PDF but unfortunately WordPress have an 8MB limit on downloading PDF’s and due to the 7 photographs included in it my file is almost 11MB. So I have had to split the PDF into 3 parts. I realise that you probably have no interest whatsoever in walking or trekking but I would still value your opinion on the layout.

File 1 walk 28 no pics File 2 walk 28 pics 1  File 3 walk 28 pics 2

On the second day, she had the movers come and collect her things.

On the third day, she sat down for the last time at their beautiful dining-room table. By candle-light; she put on some soft background music, and feasted on a pound of shrimps, a jar of caviar, and a bottle of champagne.

When she’d finished, she went into each and every room and deposited a few half-eaten shrimps dipped in caviar into the hollow center of the curtain rods.

She then cleaned up the kitchen and left.

On the fourth day, the husband came back with his new girlfriend, and at first all was bliss.

Then, slowly, the house began to smell.

They tried everything, cleaning, mopping, and airing-out the place.

Vents were checked for dead rodents, and carpets were steam cleaned.

Air fresheners were hung everywhere. Exterminators were brought in to set off gas canisters, during which time the two had to move out for a few days, and in the end they even paid to replace the expensive wool carpeting. Nothing worked!

People stopped coming over to visit.

Repairmen refused to work in the house.

The maid quit.

Finally, they couldn’t take the stench any longer, and decided they had to move, but a month later – even though they’d cut their price in half – they couldn’t find a buyer for such a stinky house.

Word got out, and eventually even the local Estate Agents refused to return their calls.

Finally, unable to wait any longer for a purchaser, they had to borrow a huge sum of money from the bank to purchase a new place.

Then the ex-wife called the man and asked how things were going. He told her the saga of the rotting house. She listened politely and said that she missed her old home terribly and would be willing to reduce her divorce settlement in exchange for having the house.

Knowing she could have no idea how bad the smell really was, he agreed on a price that was only 1/10th of what the house had been worth … but only if she would sign the papers that very day.

She agreed, and within two hours his lawyers delivered the completed paperwork.

A week later the man and his girlfriend stood smiling as they watched the moving company pack everything to take to their new home ……

….. and to spite the ex-wife,

they even took the the curtain rods!

My all time favourite jazz pianist is Teddy Wilson. Theodore Shaw ‘Teddy’ Wilson was born in Austin, Texas in 1912, he had a sophisticated, elegant style of piano playing and played with some of the greatest musicians and singers of the age.

He made some of the best jazz numbers ever recorded with such luminaries as  Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman. Here is an interesting video from the TV series ‘Ken Burns Jazz’ that tells of the racial predujice of an age gone by and how supreme talent won the day.

He was dubbed the ‘Marxist Mozart’ because of his support for left wing causes. Teddy died in 1986, here he is playing ‘Undecided’ in a 1967 concert in London.

With so many graduates now employed in mundane, minimum wage jobs, or even unemployed with no prospect of work ahead, is it time for a re-think on the merits of 3 years further education at university and graduating with a mountain of debt?

Some of the most successful people I know have never seen the inside of a university or further education college.

Education is of course vital, too many youngsters leave school even unable to read or write properly, which not only is a sad indictment on the education system but more so on their parents lack of responsibility. However many people have left education with the bare minimum of skills and have gone on to be big successes in business.

Why should this be so?

Which brings us to the old ABCDEF formula.

A – Ambition
B – Brains
C – Commitment
D – Drive
E – Education
F – Focus

To succeed in business A, C, D and F are essential, even a lack of B and E doesn’t mean failure but many people with B and E never attain their potential for success because of lack of A, C, D and F.

Although never having been blessed with an abundance of B and a limited E, when younger I always had A, C and D but tended to lose out on the F with too many social and leisure pursuits. With ageing it’s only natural that a persons A, C, D and F decline, they certainly have in my case. What about you?

In 1952, Armon M. Sweat, Jr., a member of the Texas House of Representatives, was asked about his position on whiskey. What follows is his exact answer (taken from the Political Archives of Texas ):

“If you mean whiskey, the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.

However, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life?s great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of which pours into Texas treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it.

This is my position, and as always, I refuse to compromise on matters of principle.”

Further to my post on Broken Britain? I came across a video by Pat Condell in which he sums up the problems and how we fail to address them.

Now this guy would put the Great back into Britain. I have seen quite a few of his videos and he always hits the point, talks common sense and ridicules the PC brigade which I am fully in agreement with. His comments on the video below are spot on.

Patrick Condell (born 23 November 1949) is an English writer, comedian, and atheist internet personality. He performed alternative comedy shows during the 1980s and 1990s in the United Kingdom, and won a Time Out Comedy Award in 1991. He was also a regular panellist on BBC Radio 1′s “Loose Talk”.

Pat Condell was born in Ireland and raised in England as a Roman Catholic. He was educated in several different Church of England schools across South London; he said of this time “I found myself segregated in assembly and shunted into another room while everyone said their morning prayers. The whole pantomime seemed hollow to me even then. Once you become aware of the gulf between what people profess to believe and how they actually behave, it’s hard to take any of it seriously.” His father was a compulsive gambler working in a betting shop until he was sent to prison for stealing money. He then died of leukemia in prison. The family was impoverished, moving repeatedly from one rented flat to another. Condell left school at 16, and his first job was washing dishes in the revolving restaurant on top of the Post Office tower, now known as the BT Tower in London, for five shillings an hour.

Condell became a vegetarian in 1976 after watching a deer being butchered. Condell did a number of jobs including six years’ logging in Canada.

From early 2007, he began posting short monologues denouncing religion to a number of video sharing websites. His videos have been featured on many websites, including YouTube and LiveLeak. They have also been published to DVD, and also as a book of video transcripts. As of September 2011, Pat Condell’s YouTube channel has over 165,000 subscribers and 36 million views.

In a video titled “Vote small, think big”, uploaded a fortnight before the 2010 UK general elections, and on his website, Pat Condell expressed support for the UK Independence Party. He is a strong proponent of free speech and critic of religion.

Condell has been resolute and outspoken in his opposition to the development of Park51, near the site of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attack, in lower Manhattan. On June 4, 2010, he released a video titled “No Mosque at Ground Zero”, in which he claimed that it was representative of Islamic triumphalism and that the United States would soon be on the verge of Islamization and have its freedoms trimmed, as Europe has. The video has attracted 5 million views since it was uploaded. Speaking on why he believes the Mosque is offensive, Pat Condell claimed:
“To describe it as they have as a tribute to the victims is beyond bad taste, and shows a profound contempt for those who died. It would be hard to find a more provocative gesture short of standing on their graves and burning the American flag. Yet how typical of Islam, with its own hair trigger sensitivity to the slightest imagined insult, to do something so arrogant and insensitive.”