The thing is, most unpaid internships are useless, because most interns are not, in fact, interns, but regular members of staff except without pay, legal protection, or benefits. Employers in the U.K. argue that such positions are justifiable under Section 2 of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, which requires that anyone who is a “worker” be paid, as internships are covered by the exceptions contained within the act for work experience and volunteering. However, advocacy group Intern Aware argue that these exceptions don’t cover the vast majority of internships in the U.K. Rather, businesses which actually do offer valuable experience and training are being used a shield by those companies who exploit young workers for free labour.
Tag Archives: United Kingdom
Starbucks embark on store refresh ahead of the Olympics
Prolific coffee chain Starbucks has announced it intends to revamp its network of cafes to coincide with the Olympics and Queen’s Jubilee this summer, commencing with the chain’s 70 London outlets.
This will attempt to move away from the standardised approach taken thus far to pursue individually designed stores that fit in with their local neighbourhoods.
The Drum: Starbucks embark on store refresh ahead of the Olympics
London Tube Map to large scale collective mental map
Nowadays our orientation is very often not longer based exclusively on the actual geography and their landmarks. There are loads of alternatives, from street numbers to GPS routing in our smartphones, to guide us to a destination. All of those wayfinding devices have in common that they are abstracted projections of the real world’s spatial arrangement. Which brings us to two interesting implications: First, because abstraction means in this case a decrease of information, something is lost. And second, the longer you are using a device the more you accept it or get used to it. For instance the geographical structure of transportation networks are often reshaped to provide users with more understandable transit maps. These distortions have a major influence on people’s perception of a city’s geography, to the point they get stored mentally and become the collective representation of the real world’s geography.
‘Metrography’ attempts to explore this phenomenon using the most famous of transit maps: the London Tube Map.
Benedikt Groß: Metrography – London Tube Map to large scale collective mental map
Work experience: does it work?
The amount of political “heat” surrounding the government’s Work Experience programme seems to be in inverse proportion to the amount of policy “light”. Critics describe it as akin to “slavery”, while the Secretary of State retorts by describing them as “modern day Luddites”. Not only is this exchange of insults neither sensible nor constructive, it obscures the more interesting and important issues.
NHS privatisation: Compilation of financial and vested interests
This list represents the dire state of our democracy. The financial and vested interests of our MPs and Lords in private healthcare. Why are these people allowed to be in charge of our NHS, to vote on a bill that they clearly have something to gain from. Who cares that they have put it in the register of interests. This doesn’t excuse their interests, it merely highlights clearly why they should have no part in the privatisation of the NHS. It is privatisation, despite the media’s continued use of the word ‘reforms’. The question must be asked. Are they public servants or corporate servants?
Social Investigations: NHS privatisation: Compilation of financial and vested interests
The mobile question: Responsive Design
With Government making rapid progress towards a single domain, we’re presented with a fantastic opportunity to start from scratch. So… GDS is turning to responsive design – a solution that we think can offer a high quality user experience that is both easy to use and performs consistently across a massive range of devices and screen sizes.Simply put, responsive design is the discipline of building a website based on a flexible grid system, where the elements on the page rearrange themselves depending on the size of the browser being used.
Government Digital Service: The mobile question: Responsive Design
Bright ideas
From today, the manufacture or import of the 60W filament bulb is no longer permitted across Europe. Opinions obviously differ on whether this is a bold environmental step forward, or an example of nanny state philosophy.
The decision makes me mindful, once again, of the Digest of UK Energy Statistics, or DUKES Report. Published annually by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, it summarises all sources and uses of energy in the United Kingdom.
Broadly, the report illustrates that the UK’s total energy consumption could be divided into three approximately equal groups. The first is transport; the second is heating; the third is everything else. So, if you were to add up the energy used by every light bulb, every computer, every appliance and every machine across the country, the total would equal that used for heating alone.
So, if the decision on European light bulbs is environmentally driven, it can be considered only a small start. Indeed, the question of whether there is a significant environmental benefit to using “energy-saving” bulbs is still debated. Furthermore, the tax on energy for heating in the UK is set around 5%, whereas the tax on petrol and diesel is over 50%. If Europe is so concerned with environmental issues, we would do well to to divert our attention away from how we light our homes and workplaces, and instead onto how we heat them.
Seventy Years Later, Churchill’s ‘Finest Hour’ Yields Insights
Seventy years ago, on June 18, 1940, Winston Churchill, barely six weeks in office as Britains prime minister and confronted with the threat of invasion from Nazi-occupied France, rose in the House of Commons and, in 36 minutes of soaring oratory, sought to rally his countrymen with what has gone down in history as his finest hour speech.
NYTimes: Seventy Years Later, Churchill’s ‘Finest Hour’ Yields Insights