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What are busy bees vouchers?

Busy bees vouchers are now widespread across the UK and are excellent as a way for employees with children at nurseries and other pre school activities to save tax of anything up to £100 a month. The money is deducted from your gross salary each month by the employer which means you save PAYE and Employees national insurance as well as your employer saving on employers national insurance also.

Recent busy bees developments

However they have recently been taken over by a company called Computershare and from my recent personal experience and from what I have heard from others that the recent takeover has meant there have been a fair few hiccups! Busy bees is busy bees no more when it come to child care.

Keeping people holding on the phone for up to 30 minutes before getting through to anyone is no way to have good customer service. Indeed the busy bees trading name has been tarnished in such a short space of time.

If going for the busy bees childcare vouchers option you need to way up your own personal circumstances first as some people may be better claiming extra child care vouchers or working tax credits. If in doubt you should really get independent advice with an organisation such as the Citizens Advice Bureau as they should tell you which is the better option for you.

Apparantly there are other providers out there who administer childcare vouchers but for some reason Busy Bees have been able to monopolise the market.

Importance of childcare

Sending your children to nursery is a very important part of their “character building” and ability to interact with other young children in their formative years. This is why these childcare vouchers and the people who are administering them need to be doing so in a reponsible manner.

What you can do outside of the nursery environment

There are however some things that a parent can do outside of the busy bees childcare environment, which can effect a child’s behaviour now and in the years to come.   To find out more, visit my blog at:   http://hubpages.com/hub/Busy-Bees-Vouchers-Taken-Over-By-computershare

Technology is unavoidable. The other day, my boyfriend couldn’t find the charger to his cell phone, and you would have thought that the world might come to an end if he didn’t find it in time to charge his dying phone. I couldn’t help but think to myself how far we have come in the field of technology.
r
rI can still remember having a rotary phone in my parents house when I was growing up. I remember it very clearly because I had been allowed to use it a few times to dial my grandmother’s phone number. Her phone number was considered “long distance” which was great for me back then because this meant that it took even longer to dial the number and wait. Nowadays though, if I had to make a phone call like that, I would cringe because of the sheer amount of time I would suspect that it would waste. Now, if I want to make a phone call, I press a button on my phone or say a name out loud, and my phone does the rest in a matter of what sometimes seems like nanoseconds.
r
rEvery time you turn on your car, play a cd in a cd player, listen to an mp3 player, write a blog or overhear a plane flying over your head, this means that technology is out there…working. Even the prescription glasses that are sitting on my face right now are evidence enough that technology exists. So, how do you avoid technology? Simple. You don’t. Instead, you get used to it; you become acclimated to the surroundings, and eventually, you forget that technology even exists until something doesn’t work the way it is supposed to.
r
rThe other day, I was trying to watch a movie on Netflix, for example. The movie was supposed to play instantly over an Internet connection. However, for whatever reason, it was not playing properly. Well, after about two to three seconds (tops) of waiting out the frustration, I got up and put in a DVD of my own. I don’t blame impatience in this case as much as I blame the fact that technology wasn’t working in one area, so I simply switched into a slightly different realm to satisfy my technological needs.
r
rTechnology is also at work when you need directions to go somewhere. When I first went away to school to go to college, I had purchased an actual, physical road atlas for driving purposes. Cut to almost a decade later, and almost no one uses road maps anymore because we all have some sort of GPS system to fall back on- whether it is one that we purchased to mount in our vehicles or whether it is some sort of capability that comes with our cell phones (like mine does). Even small things such as carrying cash around is affected by technology. For example, have you ever seen those Visa debit card commercials? Everyone is in line at a store swiping their debit cards and moving along smoothly until someone with cash tries to pay for something and ends up slowing the entire line down. It was both funny but true!

Sally Marks, co-author of the upcoming book, Erase Negativity and Embrace the Magic Within is scheduling free presentations on how to eliminate negativity from one’s life.

The presentations can be customized toward a specific audience or follow a standard format on the following topics: cleaning up speech, thoughts and actions; reducing anger; the importance of choosing good friends or gossip control.  The interactive talk can be customized to range from 15 to 40 minutes.

The book Erase Negativity contains a series of interviews of individuals who have transformed their lives.  The interviewees range from meth addicts to successful entrepreneurs.  Marks’ presentation will touch on the stories offered in the book, as well as include straight forward advice and simple exercises to guide the listener toward a more optimistic way of living.

The following is an excerpt from her book:

To improve his employee’s work ethic, as well as their outlook on life, Ed implemented a training program to help his stylists improve their attitudes and earning potential.  He also tried to serve as a positive role model.  Many of the cosmetologists came to look at him as the father they never had.  They would ask his advice about buying a car or taking out a mortgage.  On more than one occasion he would escort them to their cars or homes to defend them against abusive boyfriends and ex husbands.  However, when it came to financial matters, he went from protector to pragmatist.

“Often they would come to me crying that they weren’t making enough money,” said Ed.  “I’d look at their time sheets and I would point out how they left early one day and called in sick the next.  I would explain that the first rule of earning money is to show up and work!  It sounds obvious, but this was actually new information for a lot of them.  They had never connected the dots between hours worked and dollars earned.”

Ed tried to instill a sense of pride and work ethic in his employees, and also taught the stylists to view things from the customer’s perspective.  That not only meant giving a good haircut, but also making sure the salon looked clean and inviting.

“As the owner, it is your job to establish the atmosphere. In my case, I want a clean, but neutral look that no one will find distasteful.  And that includes not playing loud music with offensive lyrics.”

Unpleasant noise also applied to internal grumblings.  Instead of listening to the hair dressers complain about how another employee didn’t take out the trash, he would tell them to be proactive, take out the trash themselves and set a good example.

In addition to being an author, Marks is the president of Marks Public Relations, a public relations agency specializing in the promotion of small businesses.  The award-winning journalist, comedy writer and author graduated cum laude from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and has published numerous articles and stories in local, regional and national publications.

For more information call MPR at 480-664-3004 or email markspr@cox.net. A blog about the book is also online at www.erasenegativity.blogspot.com.

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Indiana Jones Action Figure Article:

I get a lot of enjoyment from collecting all kinds of action figures including a little collection of Indiana Jones action figures. It goes without saying that, you gotta have at least one Indiana Jones action figure for a collection based on that character. I love to study up on the background of the action figures I collect, so here is a brief account of the Indiana Jones story…

Doctor Henry Walton Jones (also called “Indiana”) is a fictitious adventurer, professor of archeology, OSS agent, in addition to being the main character from the Indiana Jones media franchise. George Lucas dreamt up the fictitious personality in devotion to the action roles from the Nineteen Thirties film series. The fictitious character first came along in the 80s motion picture Raiders of the Lost Ark, to be followed by Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom also from the 1980s. Additional motion pictures following were The Last Crusade, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, & Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Furthermore the many better regognized motion pictures & TV shows, videogames, comic books, novels, Indiana Jones action figures, and other media similarly have him. Indiana Jones is also included in the theme park ride referred to as Indiana Jones Adventure, that is in comparable forms in Disney.

The Indiana Personality is largely well known as played by Harrison Ford. He’s additionally been played by River Phoenix as the young Indiana in The Last Crusade, plus by Corey Carrier within the TV serial The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Doug Lee has done Indiana’s voice to a pair of Lucas Arts video games, plus David Esch added the voice to Indiana Jones & the Emperor’s Tomb.

Especially distinguished aspects of the character are his famous whip, fedora, bomber jacket), extensive understanding} of many early languages and civilizations, dry wit, & his huge fright of snakes.

In his position as a faculty teacher, He is studious and learned wearing a tweed suit, teaching about extinct cultures. However at the prospect to retrieve crucial artefacts, he evolves into “Indiana,” a nearly superhero-like figure he’s made up for himself. Producer Frank Marshall said that Indiana Jones is surely an imperfect persona. Indiana has faults plus gets harmed. That’s the charactoristic that fans enjoy: He is a real persona, not a fictitious persona with unrealistic powers. Steven Spielberg stated there was the readiness to allow our principal character to become injured & to express his agony & to get rage out or sometimes be his own object of his jokes. Indiana Jones isn’t a flawless winner, and his faults made the movie-goers feel that, with a little more exercising & a touch more heroism, they could be similar to Indiana Jones.

Jones created his magnificent hero to break away from the tedium from instructing at college. Each of Jone’s sides fight each other in school of thought, creating a dichotomy. Ford stated that the enjoyment of acting as the Indiana persona was thanks to Jones being both a romantic plus a fault-finder. People have split Jones into possessing the personality of a super hero, a treasure hunter, a man on a mission, a lone wolf, a hardend detective all wrapped up in a single mortal man..

Like varied roles in Spielberg’s films, the character has some autobiographical characteristics from Spielberg’s life. Jones doesn’t have a real father figure because of the man’s distorted family relationship with his father, Henry Sr.. his anger is misguided at the likes of Professor Abner Ravenwood who’s Jones adviser at the Chicago University. The teen Jones found his own style on a person fromthe Last Crusade introduction, once getting his fedora. In the Temple of Doom, the the character becomes the dad during a transient family with Short Round & Willie Scott. the character is rescued from the Kali from the loyalty of Short Round. Jones also saves various kids from being slaves.

There is so much to the Indiana Jones tale. Too much for this one article. Stareing at a Indiana Jones action figure, I can understand he has seen a heap of action in his time. Indiana Jones action figures are a nice collectible as a result of of the long cavernous saga of the character.

For more, come visit my Indiana Jones Action Figure blog!