Aeolienne

Have you tried osteopathy for your shoulder?

I Can Make You Confident: The power to go for anything you want! by Paul McKenna

I live with my parents and we have a cat called Leo, a large tabby with white paws. He's currently being kept indoors as one of his paws is bandaged, following an accident earlier this week in which he managed to wrench one of his claws nearly out of its socket. So far this week I've had to take him to the vet to have the bandage replaced after he'd torn it off, and I've had to empty his litter tray and clear up some sick. Oh joy...

95 Excel Tips & Tricks To Make You Awesome at Work by Purna Duggirala, available to download here

BBC People with Disabilities in Tech Event Event Thursday 17 December 2015 | 15:00-19:00 Quay House, MediaCityUK, Salford This free event – which offers a great opportunity to take a behind the scenes look at the various applications of technology at the BBC – is aimed particularly at those who have tech skills, qualifications or experience and whom also have a disability. It’s a networking, development and recruitment event to help us to attract more disabled talent to roles in BBC Digital. For more information click here

Who here is going to Paris for COP21?

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Rutgers is launching an initiative to establish a center that will provide adults with autism a unique opportunity to live and work independently within a university setting. The Rutgers Center for Adult Autism Services (RCAAS), to be located in two buildings on the university’s Douglass Campus in New Brunswick, will offer up to 60 adults with autism, who are living off campus, with university jobs supported by clinical staff and graduate students. A second phase of the center will offer a pilot residential program for 20 adults with autism who will work on campus and live alongside Rutgers graduate students in an integrated apartment-style residence. Read full article

Watergirl et al, you may be interested in supporting Pipedown - the campaign against piped music. This, lifted from their website, makes interesting reading: Despite all the hype about differing types of music affecting people’s shopping habits, there is no genuine evidence to show that piped music increases sales by one penny. (Aldi, Lidl, Waitrose/John Lewis and Primark all thrive without wasting money on piped music.) Pipedown has helped persuade Gatwick Airport to drop piped music in its public areas and Sainsbury and Tesco not to install piped music in their branches (except alas at Christmas). Recently Pipedown was behind decisions by Waterstones booksellers, the UK’s biggest booksellers’ chain, and the Nationwide Building Society, the largest building society, to phase piped music out of their respective branches gradually.

When German software giant SAP said [in May 2013] it plans to employ hundreds of autistic people as IT experts, the news was welcomed especially at a small Berlin computer consulting firm. The pioneering company, Auticon, already employs 17 people who live with autism, the disorder characterised by difficulties with social interactions and exceptional abilities in specific fields. "Many people say that if a company like SAP said it makes sense ... it's very good for us," said its chief Dirk Mueller-Remus. "That means it's something serious, solid." SAP, which makes business software, said in May that after pilot projects in India and Ireland, it plans to employ hundreds of people with autism as software testers and programmers. Its goal is that by 2020, people with autism will make up one per cent of its worldwide workforce of 65,000. Mueller-Remus created his far smaller company in November 2011 with the idea of "investing in the strengths" of these potential employees. His son was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a variant of autism, as a teenager, and Mueller-Remus has long known that many people with autism excel in fields like programming or quality control. "This is my talent," one of the employees, 27-year-old Melanie Altrock, stated matter of factly, sitting at her screen in a white-walled, modern top-floor office in western Berlin. "Other people are interested in languages or math, for me it's computers. I don't just search for errors, I see them." Auticon now has 25 staff and offices in Berlin, Munich and Dusseldorf, with plans for another in Hamburg. It looks to break even "by the end of the year", said Mueller-Remus. "We wanted a normal consulting company, without subsidies, without donations, without funding from a foundation," he said, adding that the aim was to "combine social commitment and business". "Today, after a little over a year, we have good customers like Vodafone, it's looking good," said Mueller-Remus. But he also emphasised that working with autistic people can be "a very complex issue". "We can make many mistakes because people with Asperger are very demanding people," he said. "People with autism are very concrete, unequivocal," added Elke Seng, a "job coach" at Auticon who assists the employees in their relationships at work and with clients. "There is no innuendo, there is only one or zero. It's rather nice," she smiled. Friedrich Nolte, board member of the Federal Association for the Development of People with Autism, said "only five to 10 per cent of people affected by autism find a place on the regular job market". Mueller-Remus said that "their CVs often have brief episodes of work interspersed with long interruptions". Often people with autism "have no situational awareness, may seem arrogant, have no interest in small talk, and are not interested in people because people are not logical," he said. All of this can give rise to misunderstandings with sometimes serious consequences, he said. In this context, the SAP initiative was widely applauded at the small company. "That more people with autism can access a job is simply fantastic," said Seng, who confessed she finds her work "fascinating". An autism specialist, psychiatrist Kai Vogeley of Cologne University Hospital, told a German medical journal that people with autism who work can "develop confidence in themselves". He cautioned however that "certain conditions must be met for this to succeed". "I hope that SAP knows how difficult it is," said Mueller-Remus. "If things are done well, you can really achieve great results." Altrock, the autistic programmer, agreed. "I have a full-time job, I take pleasure in it, I earn my own money and I have my own apartment," she said. "I'm glad it's like that."

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621), Ick voer al over Rhijn, performed by Liuwe Tamminga (harpsichord)

in Boy: Tales of childhood Roald Dahl described spending summer holidays on the island of Tjøme in the Oslofjord. That same island is now home to the summer retreat of the Norwegian royal family.

The Cypriot by Andreas Koumi

I just received an email inviting me to register for this event. I thought I already had!

Handel, Saul

There appears to be something very similar already in existence... The new disability travel site making exploring accessible for all

Lynda Sayce, Travels with my Lute

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Jean-Féry Rebel (1666 - 1747), Les Elemens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNXgDNbXhUE

When: Friday 23rd October 2015 10:30 - 17:00 Where: The Royal College of Surgeons, 35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3PE. Nearest tube: Holborn The Diversity Careers Show offers you a range of opportunities to explore what's is really like to work within a diverse company. Throughout the course of the event we are providing you with a multitude of options to improve your career prospects through engaging workshops, 1-2-1 CV advice and interview technique practice and panel discussions. The employers attending this show are here because they want to bring people like you into their organisations. They understand the multitude of benefits that come with having a diverse workforce. Creativity and innovation are made possible by having a team of individuals who work and think differently. Details and times of workshops and seminars to be released soon.... For more information and to register click here

Bit pricey for a solo traveller, unfortunately - unless our Mikecunniffe could wangle a special deal... (see his thread). How close are the cabins to each other?

That seems to be the one legacy we have - elsewhere sporting participation is down.

No thanks, I'll pass on the on-board entertainment. Whilst it is possible that a coach journey might be enhanced by some background music if it were the kind that I like - music which would later serve as a reminder of the holiday - or maybe even a stimulating film, chances are that it would be impractical to find something which would suit everyone's tastes. Or at least not without adding to the cost of the coach travel, money which would be better spent elsewhere. I'd rather have entertainment in the form of concerts or cinema visits separate from the coach journey, which the holidaymakers would be free to attend as they please. For example, in previous holidays I have enjoyed concerts at Troldsalen (at Grieg's house in Bergen) and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek in Copenhagen, plus films at Lynton Cinema in Devon and Fellini's in Ambleside, Cumbria.

Where was this? I'd like to go!

You wish... Call the banker who fixed the Libor rate whatever you want, but please don't call him 'Rain Man'

Or if you fancy something more avant-garde than a cottage: Living Architecture