freeg131: Philip Gamble

The papers are constantly telling us that the economy is all messed up.  That students cannot get jobs when they leave University with debts and ridiculously high applications-to-graduate-jobs figures are being quoted almost every week.

Today joy of joys the BBC is headlining with “Students to face higher costs as graduate tax proposed” whilst a quote from today’s Guardian Online reads “It makes gloomy reading for those studying computer science and IT – they have the lowest employment rate for any area of study”.  Lucky us.

Natwest also sent me a nice letter saying they are going to stop paying me interest on my student account. I don’t know what the rate of interest I had been receiving from them was but it is the principle of the matter! The savings I have elsewhere are earning me something like a pathetic 2% a year thanks to low interest rates caused by all those people buying houses they couldn’t afford and inflating the prices so I will have no chance of owning one for the next 20 years or so.

So the parents of my generation not only got paid to go to University and benefited from vastly increasing house prices once they were on the property ladder they also get to retire at an age which is totally unaffordable leaving us to work longer and pick up the bill!

Grrr. I bet that if I do manage to save up to buy a house interest rates will magically be much higher then.  </rant>

Had my last exam of the year a week ago today.  Results are supposed to be with us before tomorrow but as yet no-one has received anything.  Unlike people taking other subjects or going to University elsewhere I do need to stick around to the official end of term date as there are a series of events I need to, or may need to, attend.

Yesterday for example there were presentations of the third year module options, today there were committee elections and tomorrow exam script viewing.  On Friday I am going to the GradJobs fair at the NEC.  I went last year and couldn’t see myself working for the vast majority of companies there.  I applied for a couple of industrial placements at the most promising looking businesses but they didn’t go very far, I got further with ones that advertised on campus and online.  Better luck this year I hope although to be honest I don’t really expect to find anything to suit my fancy there as most of the companies that will attend are large and boring.

Also booked myself a careers appointment for tomorrow having realised that in about a year I will have finished my final year and will need to get a job.

It’s scary.

A bizarre title I hope you’ll agree.

I receive a daily Google Alert informing me of webpages that refer to a park in my hometown.  The linked pages often provide information about an event that has taken place or is taking place that might be of interest to me and the readers of my websites about the park.

Amongst the more normal entries, many referring to the recent Watford 10K race, one result jumped out at me as being, well, unusual.

Keyword targeting gone wrong.   But there is more.  I visited the site and it appeared to be very badly stuffed with keywords – back to the old days of keyword lists at the end of the page – but with the addition of top of page keywords too!

But who could have built such a terrible website? Apparently a company called BTCustomerStreet who cold-call small businesses selling them online promotion packages which apparently encourage sticking keywords in irelevant locations on your website (see below).

Not only that but there have been a lot of complaints about the sales tactics used by the company.  The complaints show the price structure is pretty random with most businesses being charged about £300 for set-up and then an ongoing £50 a month fee.

What do you get for your ~£1,100 a year? A template website and inclusion on some directories owned by the same company which apparently normally charge a £200 setup fee and £30 a month for a listing. Each. Yeah right.  I hadn’t even heard of any of them before.

Here’s another equally bad site targeted at the same area.