A woman has been remanded in custody accused of breaching an Asbo banning her from being noisy during sex.
Neighbours complained of hearing Caroline Cartwright, 48, groaning and her bed banging against the wall at her home in Washington, Wearside.
Earlier this month she was given a four-year Asbo banning her from making excessive noise anywhere in England.
But she appeared in court on Monday, charged with three breaches of her Asbo in just 10 days.

It seems pretty harsh to me...

"First Post"
All the way back in August 2001. And there is only one gramatical error in the first entry...

Life seems to be a little bit quiet at the moment. I meant to remark yesterday that we get married in a month, but probably it is quite dull for everyone else and not really all that significant.

The main event seems to be heat. It is hottish here. So we can moan about the heat rather than the cold.

That Kyle guy won the LJ election too. We will see how he does!

I've now got the new LiveJournal Messenger. My Windows Live ID is radiantsoul@livejournal.com. Sign up now and we can chat!
EDIT: Interesting. LJ finally has a chat facility....

As you may know Livejournal has an advisory board and I have nominated myself. I don’t have enough support or sufficient sock puppets to win. But I hope to throw a few good ideas out there that the winner might take on board.
It has been suggested members answer these questions on their journal -
1. What do you think is the value of LiveJournal?
2. What changes would you like to see LiveJournal make in the next year?
3. Why do you want to be the elected representative?
4. What do you think are the community’s greatest concerns?
5. What skills, qualifications, or unique perspective do you think you would bring to this position?


My answers;
1. The greatest value in Livejournal is the community that it has created. I believe Livejournal’s Unique Selling Proposition is the friends systems combined with the content that users have created. Outside of that I don’t believe that much else that Livejournal works especially well and the success of Livejournal versus other clone sites is the number of users, the value of the social network and the content they have created. Livejournal Inc needs to recognise that users have created the content and virally marketed the site.
2. Livejournal has many features that don’t work or don’t work properly. I would like to see features tidied up and a commitment to ensure that new features are either marked as beta and to be actively being worked on or to full operational and are properly documented. My view is that Livejournal hit on great idea in terms of the basic architecture but beyond that the site has not improved a great deal on a technical level since I joined in 2001.
I would like to see the freedom to create content maintained, so that everyone regardless of account level is able to use their Journal as they want.
3. I am not sure that I do want to be the elected representative as it would make my journal and me more public than I like. But I think I can influence the debate.
4. People are concerned that arbitrary actions by Livejournal will affect their free usage of the site and the usage of those who journals they currently read. Livejournal management need to be more open with their user base and regard them as co-contributors, rather than something to be merely monetised. On the other hand Livejournal should be careful with over promising – as it did with this position last year and has currently done with a la carte user pics.
5. I am probably not the best candidate, but I would be far better than last year’s member. I would hope to bring a balanced perspective that incorporates the views of all users of the site regardless of their usage of the site. I would keep my journal open and try to take on board other people’s comments. I would not disappear in order to start working on a rival site. I have worked in senior management in the direct marketing industry and have an understanding of the business that Livejournal operates in.
Do you have any questions for me regarding my candidacy?
If you wish to go vote for me go to my application and comment with "I support this nomination"

Hi radiantsoul,

unstarve has invited you to join the community healthyskinnies!

Clearly these pro-ana chicks want me now.

I don’t really frequent many places on the net. A few mailing lists, a message boards, the odd LJ community, etc. I have observed two things, firstly that many of these communities seem to be in decline or dying and secondly that people are increasing rude to one another. I don’t really buy into the modern life is just nasty myth, but I have been trying to puzzle it out.

1. Communities are new and attract a lot of people, no-one really knows anyone and vigorous debate emerges
2. Gradually a core of regular users emerge
3. New users join at a faster rate than old users leave
4. The society or group becomes steadily closed as “greybeards” grow bored of the same newbie questions
5. Newbies face too much flak and fail to hang around
6. Membership falls off slowly at fist and then more rapidly, often hidden by a raft of inactive members
7. All that remains are longstanding members with well known and hardened positions who have a solidified dislike of those who harbour opposing positions.

Maybe I need to start twittering or something.

We had elections and I didn't bother to vote. I don't think I have voted since the last general election. Overall all the major parties have something to be disappointed about. Even the Tories only polled 29% which is hardly a landslide. Labour got 15% and the LibDems didn't gain from the main parties weakness. Instead fringe nutters the BNP and UKIP grew well. UKIP votes are probably natural Tories, but who knows. The BNP is a far-right facist party, I don't see them as being able to do much.

Those of that didn't vote probably are to blame for the BNP though. There vote fell from 135k in 2004 to 132k in 2009. The problem was that supporters of the main parties stayed home.

A quiet weekend. Laura was away in Cardiff and so I skipped the gym on Saturday and then went to the optician in the afternoon. In the evening we stayed in and ordered a Chinese takeaway.

On Sunday Laura marked some papers. I watched Young Victoria, which was a fairly dull film as not much happened. Tudor monarchs seem to be far more interesting. Yesterday evening was the last of the Apprentice. I have not really got into this series - the challenges are the same each series and so are the mistakes. They had to make chocolate and Sir Alan picked the outsider. But it begs the question as to whether they edit the outsider to look stronger. Probably. I think I found it harder to get into than other series and perhaps it needs to be freshenned up. It doesn't really matter who wins as they don't actually get given proper job or even a particularly high salary.

Gotta love freakshow telly

"My Monkey baby" is on now. It is about people who adopt baby monkeys and treat them as babies. And I don't mean love them like a member of the family, but dress them as children, etc. This is obviously filmed in the USA. Channel Four now for anyone with nothing better to do.

It is month end at the moment. Month end is always the time that makes me question this whole accounting thing. It is not something I ever really enjoy as it is quite routine, often involves long hours, is totally thankless and it seems to revolve around lots of trivial details. As things stand this is my penultimate one in this contract.

The big issue then is what do I do next. I have an interview on Thursday though and I guess it is time to get myself out there. Although I am sort of looking forward to starting in September rather than having to start somewhere after the honeymoon/wedding.

I have read a lot of people on the internet criticising the governments handling of the economy on the grounds that the recession is bad and therefore what the government is doing cannot be working. This argument seems flawed as it is perfectly possible to argue that if the government did nothing then the situation would be a whole lot worse.

National income is basically determined by total current expenditure in an economy. Every pound spent on UK products is a pound someone earns. I always liked to think of it as a sort of bath with the taps running, and the plug open. The taps are spending in the UK; private consumption, government spending, investment and spending by foreigners on UK products. The plugholes are savings, goods purchased from abroad and taxes.

We can define this more formally as;

National Income = Private consumption plus government spending plus investment plus exports minus imports minus taxes minus savings


Y=National Income, C=Consumption, S=Savings, G=Government Spending, T=Taxes, I=Investment, X=Exports, M=Imports
Or
Y=C + (G-T) + (I-S) + (X-M)
Where G-T is the government surplus/ (deficit) and X-M is the trade surplus/ (deficit)

In this recession the government has increase the fiscal deficit (represented by G-T) by 12% this year.

The government has also slashed interest rates. This has reduced the incentive to save and increased the incentive to invest.

Finally the exchange rate has fallen by(from £1=2.1euro in Nov 07 to £1=1.1euros. This acts to increase the price of foreign goods and to reduce the price of our goods overseas. The result should increase exports and reduce imports.

The big fiscal debts that are terrifying everyone are massive, but they are probably preventing the economy falling off a massive cliff. The above analysis would indicate that without it national income would be 12% lower. However it is possible worse that that, the reason being that every pound spent goes to someone who will spend some of the money they receive and so on. For the numerate it is a geometric sum. This is called a multiplier and is 1/(1-%marginal increase in consumption). Probably in the UK at the moment that is between 1 and 2. So probably government expenditure is preventing a 15-20% in national income and leaving us with a mere 3-5% instead.

In addition to that we also have the fact that if the banks had collapsed (in my opinion a real possibility) then consumption and investment would probably have dried up almost entirely and it is likely national income would have contracted by an unknown about(in the case of Iceland about 10%).

I kind of wonder who long term winner and losers are. Anyone of working age is going to have to pay an addition £20k+ in their lifetime in taxes to cover the next couple of years. But on the other hand house prices have dived. It always seemed to me that rising house prices benefited the elderly disproportionately.

How much money would it take for you to have sex with a stranger you found moderately attractive? Would it make a difference if they were an ex-partner or friend?

I'll even screen the answers.

I am 32 today. That is quite old.

I received a few books from Laura; Brida by Paulo Coelho and an Introduction to Wine Tasting, as well as a new tshirt. I left before the post and so haven’t got the card from my mum yet.

Being at work it never really feels special. I haven’t bothered to tell anyone here. Will get a takeaway tonight as a bit of a treat.

Nicked off nojness

Have I ever offended you? If so, how did I offend you?
Post this in your journal and get a reality check.

You are a cat. A cat that doesn't do outdoors, but shares a house with your brother.

Your joint possessions consists of;
1. A shared waterbowl
2. Two litter trays(presumably one each)
3. Two bowls(one each)

Suddenly you find the need to take a piss. But one of the two litter trays is in use - your brother is in there.

So what do you do?

Poll #1371904 Cat toilet etiquette?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

So what do you do?

Whatever happened to train spotters?

Not much seems to be happening this week. Probably not a bad thing.

It is 2am on a Sunday morning so there is fuck all on television.

We the license payer have presumably paid for "Naked Cabbies" which BBC3 is currently showing. The premise of the program seems to be that 5 taxi drivers are in some way "deficient" because they are not really all that comfortable with getting naked in front of an audience of strangers and a national television audience. It is presented as a sort of four day therapy workshop.

I have the slightly weird image of being picked up by a naked minicab driver. For some of you it might be an interesting sexual fantasy I suppose, but I feel their is an episode called Naked Nurses that might have been more to my tastes!