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Archives for April, 2015


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It’s the Economy Stupid

It never ceases to amaze me how bad a grasp politicians have on how national economies ; I think it is deliberate rather than ignorance. Or rather they think that we are too stupid to understand how a national economy differs from a household economy. They may even be correct about that Received wisdom on the economy (according to politics) - growth needs to be sustainable - the deficit should be reduced - austerity is necessary Most commonly our main political parties use a household analogy to explain their economic policies. This is a very wrong thing to do. It sort of ignores the interdependency of national economies, and it over simplifies things. That said it is something that most voters can relate to. A better, but still flawed, analogy would be a multi person multi income household. Imagine a…
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B203 Revision

I went to the last OU day school for this module on Saturday. TMA6 is due on Thursday and then the exam is five weeks after that. So it was a timely session, all the more so because I ended up with a copy of all the past papers for the B203 exams. If you are doing this course and missed the tutorial then here are some specific things I picked up. Part 1 is a cross functional question. You need to open with an explanatory paragraph about the organisation that you will use to answer the questions. You can practice this in advance and them just write it down as an intro before reading the question. That para needs to include - the name and function of the organisation; - where it is based; - why you have selected…
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interviews

Author Interview – Gahan Hanmer

Gahan Hanmer This week's interview is with Gahan Hanmer, the author of The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality. Gahan comes from a family of actors and has himself acted and directed, as well as working as a carpenter. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I still have some very short detective stories that I wrote as a young child, the sort of thing a mother would save. They say I could read when I was three years old. I wrote some poetry as I was growing up. I wrote a novella in college featuring animal characters in an artist colony. It was quite talented but very immature and I discarded it at some point. After I outgrew my career in the theater and started living a more normal life, keeping a home…
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reviews

Book Review – The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality by Gahan Hanmer

The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality by Gahan Hanmer My rating: 4 of 5 stars I was offered a free copy by the publisher. What made me say yes to this offer was that the story was about an attempt to set up a fake mediaeval kingdom in the modern world. As a (lapsed) 17th century re-enactor it ticked my 'experimental archaeology' box and I thought it would be worth reading. Member of The Montgomery Levy displaying archery in mediaeval times (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Having read The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality it was much more than I had expected and I really enjoyed it on a number of levels. Firstly there is a very interesting piece of straight literary fiction here. It isn't a work of fantasy and there is strictly no magic. Given a billionaire determined enough this…
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B203 Information Management

Information Management Framework (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I spent Friday immersed in information management, courtesy of the last (of six) assignments for the Open University course B203 (Business Functions in Context). Up until I started this module every time someone mentioned the term 'Information Manager' I internally translated it to 'Librarian'. Generally I've not enjoyed B203 as much as the previous six course, probably because it is too wide (it covers Operations, Marketing, Finance, HR & Information Management). Also some of the text books are just dire, especially the Marketing and Information Management ones. Information Management != Librarian English: The relationship between Information Science, Computer Science, Information Systems and Management. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) What I have learnt is that information management is not about being a librarian, nor an archivist. I'd already separated it conceptually from Information Technology (IT or ICT)…
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