Lost

I was on a course yesterday and it was made up of three lectures, the first lecturer was late and the third lecturer did not turn up at all. I found it quite interesting though, but guessing by the body language of some of my colleagues they did not agree and one of them looked like a surely 12 year old being all stroppy about having to be there. Watching various colleagues reactions to the course was in some ways as interesting as the course itself and I certainly learned a lot about how some of them deal with things they don’t like.

I am a big fan of public libraries and would be a lot poorer if I bought all the books that I read. I have read 10 books so far this year… Anyway, if you borrow a book from the library, if the author is signed up to the Public Lending Right, they get 5.98p every time you borrow a book. G and I were talking about this on Tuesday night. I belong to the library service where I work, which is a different borough to where I live and therefore pay my council tax. I get to borrow a book for free and the library then pay out 5.98p to the author on my behalf. I find this a strange concept… I then read this post last night and thought that I would encourage people to maybe venture to their local library and get some books out. It helps to keep them open, you get to borrow a book for free and the author still gets money. Everyone’s a winner. I would also add that if I really like a book I then do actually buy a copy and so the author might also get money from two sources from me sometimes. I think the scheme only applies to British and EU authors who have signed up to the scheme and it is capped at something like £6500 a year, but that would mean an awful lot of book loans to hit that amount. Get borrowing!

In these financial times you might want to use this free service to track down any bank accounts you have lost along the way. There i.e. meant to be something like £1 billion of unclaimed money, but unless you have a really bad memory, it is unlikely to uncover any accounts that you don’t have a vague memory of having a few years ago. It might help you to uncover some old account you hadn’t though of in years though...