The universities minister David Willetts has just announced the UK’s first private university in decades will be created. Immediately there is uproar and negativity for something which in the current economic climate might not be so bad. A private university will mean that more students are given the opportunity to go the university who perhaps were rejected due to current lack of available places in public universities. A private university offering more flexible courses such as part-time or two-year degrees (more…)

We live in a review age: when you want to buy something then your first instinct is usually to find out what other people think about it, and draw a conclusion from a pool of varying opinions. Times have indeed changed. With many popular review sites – covering everything, from hotels to kitchen cleaning equipment and even obscure things which you would be surprised anyone else is even interested in – it has never been easier to determine if a (more…)

I always used to moan that no man would come shopping with me and enjoy it. I thought that was a bad thing and I longed for the day when a man would sweep me off my feet–a man who enjoyed shopping–a man who loved clothes as much as I do. Maybe even more.

Finally, last month, that day came. His name was Jacob and he loved shirts and jeans and scarves even more that I did. I thought my (more…)

People get really funny about checking their front door, don’t they? Is it locked? I mean I locked it three times but seriously, what if I imagined that because I’ve done it so many times in the exact same way that now it just doesn’t even register?

Sadly, most people aren’t as worried about their energy saving. In fact, energy saving is a long way down the list, way behind “did we get that wine for Friday night?”and even, “have (more…)

This blog post is about a serious topic, easily as serious as laser hair removal is to a model. It’s about sitting with your back straight. I know–I know–It sounds really very dull, and it might have been. But would I let you down? I think you know I wouldn’t (can you tell I work in sales?) I wouldn’t dream of it. Quite simply, it’s just not something I do!

The reason I am writing about this is simple: I (more…)

I love new scientific discoveries. It’s something I keep completely secret from my girl friends though–It’s not that I’m ashamed of it (I’m sure some of them at least can understand how exciting a new species of animal is–but they might just look at it like “that’s more material to make hand bags out of!” is my fear–) it’s just that it’s my thing. So that’s it. When I’m out with the girls I’m all girl: pink, hand bag loving (more…)

I am a redhead girl. Such a simple statement, so powerful and easy to understand. You would think that it contains everything, right? But here’s the thing, us true and natural redheads are dying out fast! Slowly but surely, our incredible hair is being phased out and replaced by non true redheads–Girls with hair that only gives our plight a bad name!

Take the fake redheads, for example, who are trouble enough. If you’re the kind of girl who doesn’t really do the redhead thing well, and just kind of lets her hair go browny-red as it wants to, then I am talking to you.

Then you have what I like to call the pseudo-redheads–These are by far the worst, and faker than a how to not act fake acting course . Why? Because they know what they are doing, that’s why, and they continue to do so with no respect for anyone but themselves. They may seem to have a full head of glorious red hair, but alas it’s not true! They’ve died and coloured it using awful artificial chemically things! They have no business doing this!

I guess what I am saying is this: It is my belief that unless you can really pull it off, and are ready to admit openly that you are a fake redhead, you shouldn’t be allowed to die your hair red. It’s giving us a bad name girls! It’s making us natural redheaded beauties look all the same and non-special! Think before you act, please, we’d all really appreciate it.

Every so often, amid the debate of if a green bum bag is better than an orange bum bag between a group of German people, the debate of eating human flesh comes up (if it comes up more than once every five years then I suggest you seriously think about who you make friends with). I am talking about the great film ‘Alive’, of course. This debate always intrigues me, mainly for two reasons: 1) It never ceases to amaze me how many people say “I couldn’t do that” before biting in to some animal flesh—essentially the same thing we are made of, whether you like it or not. 2) How surprised people are when I say “I’d do it, I wouldn’t even think twice”. The party usually then goes very quiet. Lots of nervous laughter and the sliding of chairs on floor—in any direction which is not mine.

But I have thought a lot about it on occasion, and I have come to the conclusion that in reality you do what you have to do. Because that’s the basic rule which drives our survival instinct: the fact that we drive cars, buy our food in the shops and watch TV doesn’t mean we are any less screwed when we get stranded.

I suppose it makes you stand out if you admit that you’d do it ‘no problem’, and most people don’t want to be expose their ideas to be so grim. From what I know about people—and this is all from comparatively my experience as one—they don’t much like you to think bad things about them, as that might mean you think other bad things about them too.

"Would you rather be pretty or clever?” That was the question my female friend posed to me the other week. I was about to open my big fat male mouth without speaking when I chose, instead, to say “Hmm, good question, let me think–”

Ten minutes later she asked if I was done thinking. I said, “not really, give me five?” Five minutes was, obviously, not nearly enough time. First I was confronted with the problem that, in my opinion, it depends on the culture around you and whether you have ovaries or a penis, then I had to give thought to the pros and cons of being pretty or clever. The conclusion I came to (which, when it arrived half an hour later, was met with little interest–) was that I thought it would be better to be a pretty woman than a clever woman, and that by being a pretty man you weren’t necessarily granted the same special powers as what good-looking women were. By that I mean that men—and let’s not get all upset, because it is, unfortunately, a fact—still largely rule the world and that even a good-looking man can get it in the neck: after all, how many times do you hear people say “this guy had the most amazing body and botox injections, and guess what? Yes! He was clever with it!” I think you catch my drift. The thing is, no matter what sex you are and where you live and how you look, there are draw-backs to being both clever and pretty. Thinking about it, the debate in my mind is still open–

For a long time, at various points in history, we wondered where technology would take us—how it would affect the way we live even the simplest parts of our lives, as well as govern how we ran our businesses. Although some of the inventions seen in sci-fi films are still a long way off from becoming reality (such as the hover boards in Back To The Future), many more have gone from writings in books such as 1984 to real life with almost flawless transition.

This is discussed over at the Enigin blog. If you are a fan of the latest gadgets and advances in technology, you may well want to take a look.

Look at email phones for example—not to mention consoles capable of playing games, texting, calling and connecting with people in the farthest reaches of the planet. Even the most basic of modern phones now has at least some kind of GPS function, while the top-of-the-line Blackberry is more than capable in ways that seem to defy common sense and logic: while shopping you can check and answer emails at will for little expense, while a number of other applications allow you to calculate, book films at the cinema and even choose the most suitable wine for a specific meal. It really is something else.

As a result of all this new technology come new degrees which allow students to study it and compare it to that of times gone by. It’s all pretty impressive really, when you consider that ten to fifteen years ago computers were jerky, slow, and difficult to use without bashing your headed repeatedly against a brick wall.