Speaking of lonely-hearts ads, my next attempt to use an affiliate programme to add to my income has just gone online. After the success of ringamoby.com, which is making about £130 a month net profit, I thought I'd try another. This one is an online dating agency, findaflame.com. I'm keeping registration prices low at the moment since there are so few members yet, and maybe permanently, depending on how the economics works out. So, if you're single and need a partner, why not give it a try?

One thing about both of these sites: they cost me money to set them up, and on my money page I say that I don't like schemes where you need to pay up front to join. Is this a contradiction? I'm not sure. These sites qualify on the basis that there is a genuine product, not just sales nonsense or copyright text for sale. As genuine businesses, some set-up costs are to be expected. It is not the same as a "pay to join" or "pay me for this great info which I am not going to tell you anything useful about until you cough up" sort of thing.

Here's a funny news story: A struggling tea-shop owner in China helped her business along by placing lonely-hearts ads, and arranging for the rendezvous to be in her tea shop. She would always order the most expensive food, and was eventually arrested when she ordered kitchen staff to beat up a suitor who asked for a discount!

There's money in consultancy. The University in Bradford has paid
GBP21000 to a consultancy to come up with a suitable name for it. The
consultancy has come up with three possibilities:

Bradford University
University of Bradford
The University of Bradford

Need a job, anybody?

I was amused to see, briefly, before the BBC quickly cut to a more polite
scene, a bunch of Iraqis holding up a sign saying, "Go home US human
shields, you wankers."

I suppose the HS's were well-meaning, but I hope they will get a clue from
scenes like this: naive pacifism is the road to slavery, not freedom. Need I
say more?