Try Freemind - http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. I haven't used it much myself, but it was recommended to me by some Open University students who like it a lot.

Ooh, yes. My ex and I went to the Pacific North West for our 25th anniversary in 1992, my choice. I loved both cities; having breakfast at Pike Place Market in Seattle, looking out over Puget Sound towards the Olympic Mountains. July 4th weekend in Portland - there was a weekend-long blues festival in Waterfront Park which was amazing, and the great firework display across the river at Fort Vancouver - billed as the biggest firework display west of the Mississippi - accompanied by music that started with Born in the USA and ended with Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner. That's my kind of music :-)

I have a degree in geology, rocks fascinate me, so I loved being in the mountains and exploring the landscape in the Cascades and the Washington Scablands - just wonderful.

Going back there with time to explore the mountains again, and Yellowstone as well, would be my ideal holiday.

The last boss I had before I retired was an absolute bitch; the more I think about this question the more I wonder whether a psychiatrist would call her a sociopath.

She was a salaried partner in a firm of solicitors here in Wiltshire, and she was very clever and devious, a really successful bully. The ones I've met before have been third-raters compared with her. I went to work for her as a temp during which time her behaviour to me was normal, the bullying started when I became permanent. She knew I was vulnerable; after our divorce my ex skipped off to the middle east without paying me the settlement, and I needed every penny to keep my home. In your mid-50s jobs aren't easy to get however good you are.  She knew, and used, every way of belittling and manipulating people, not just the office staff. Bossie blamed me, endlessly, for losing files, documents, whatever, even for losing her security card for the electronic banking system. This last one, when I tipped her wallet out of her handbag the security card fell out with her credit cards - she didn't say anything, she couldn't. She'd often use the most sarcastic and condescending way of speaking to me, as if I was incapable of doing anything properly. Lord knows how many times I bailed her out of her mistakes! In between she gave me jewellery, a handbag, expensive scarves, none of which I ever used; it was impossible to refuse them, she could be so charming when she wanted. Fortunately for me, when I worked in the railway industry I was a union rep and had training in dealing with bullies, and recognised her behaviour. I'm also very organised, methodical, had a good detailed map of the caseload in my head, and strong enough to have kept telling myself that she's responsible for her own behaviour, it's not my fault, and that it reflects only on her, not on me. Even so, I was worried about being hounded out of my job and not being able to pay the mortgage, and it made me ill. She has no regard at all for anyone else's feelings, and no conscience about her actions and hurting people, she's only interested in her own gratification.

She slipped up one day when she called me into her office and started to give me what amounted to a performance review. This firm doesn't do performance reviews. She made several accusations that I could refute with facts and witnesses, and I wrote a formal letter asking for written evidence to back up her statements (I have legal training too), stating that if I didn't have a written retraction by a given date I'd put it on record that she and the firm accepted that her accusations were untrue, and copied it to the senior partner. The date went by without any response, which was what I expected, and I put it in writing, again copied to the senior partner. He came into my office red-faced and shouting that I couldn't say that. I just said, very politely, that I could, and had, and if he didn't like it, we'd just have to agree to disagree. He never said anything else about it. Neither bossie or he had realised that I knew she was leaving but the daily impromptu meetings behind closed doors and her sudden enthusiasm for catching up with things she'd ignored for ages, were a dead giveaway. I'd promised myself that I would see her off, and I did. I also sent back all her presents, packed in a jiffy bag with no postage on it and no note. You can tell how low I was feeling by then, to get some satisfaction from a gesture like that.

I have a lot of legal experience and unfortunately, that industry has a real problem with bullying, it's endemic because the industry is class-ridden and very old-boy male dominated. A poor Oxbridge degree still counts for more than real ability and a red-brick uni qualification. It might well be different in central London, but it's definitely this way in the smaller towns. She got away with it for 13 years (and 15 secretaries, I discovered along the way) because the firm knew of the problem - they could hardly have missed it - but didn't have the moral courage to do anything about it. Solicitors in UK do seven years' training, but none of it is in management; no legal firm I've worked for outside a big city has ever had anyone with even the most minimal management training, apart from in I.T. The Law Society (the solicitors' training body and trade union, for people outside U.K.) has a lot to answer for.

I worked for myself for 18 months until I hit retirement age, then packed it in. My own solicitors (a very big firm in central Bristol, not a market town hack)  managed to get my ex arrested at Heathrow Airport earlier this year and a judge took his passport away until he paid me everything he was supposed to plus interest. Now my house is my own, there's a decent sum in the bank, and I can afford concerts, the theatre, and other things I enjoy. Life is great :-)

Bossie's career move, intended to get her an equity partnership, didn't work out, and she's now working in another firm in the same town, as an assistant solicitor - the lowest grade of qualified solicitor.

Sorry, I don't know why the link wasn't active in my post. Maybe it's because I have javascript turned off in my browser. Apologies.

Hi

I read this today, and was shocked - http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/56303/. I haven't read the original study yet. The country described by this article sounds to me more like a badly governed third world country, than the USA. What do you think? I lived in the USA 1976-1979 and loved every minute of it. I've been back several times since, but not enough to get a genuine picture of such a huge country.

I'd hate to have to deal with this kind of situation. My ex was a computer security expert (corporate/military contracts) until he retired recently, and he's convinced there's no technological answer to this problem. He says it's a social problem and can only be dealt with by eliminating the perpetrators (impossible) and educating the end user - you and me. And we have to make sure we operate security protocols, every day, every time. The integration features that make Windows apps so useful are also the way in for the perps - according to him; I trust his knowledge but have none myself.

My little business uses Macs and Windows PCs, but the Windows machines are disconnected from the internet.   All virus and security scanning is done on the Mac before files that have to go to a PC, are sent there. I'm amazed how many nasties I get sent by clients, though, and unfortunately when I look at the email headers, they've always come from either Outlook or Outlook Express.

I always address a letter to 'Mr A and Mrs S Foody', unless Mrs Foody had told me otherwise. No-one ever has. The 'traditional' style comes from an age when women were chattels and only existed in their husband's identity. That isn't so now, and to me, addressing a woman by a form that clearly misidentifies her, is just plain wrong. I do feel strongly about this one. When I was married all our regular correspondents were instructed, if writing to us jointly, to write to us as Mr R and Mrs P, and anything else would be considered bad manners and trashed without opening.  My 2p worth.

On outsourcing, I think this decision is shortsighted, possibly dangerous for patients and driven by the bean counters that run our public services these days. Absolute accuracy is surely critical in patient notes and related documents, the potential for hazards resulting from mispellings and wrongly interpreted specialist terms is enormous. I'm not casting any aspersions on the people who will be doing this work abroad, I just believe that you have to be brought up in a language to understand all its nuances, variations and inconsistencies. Then there's the added problem of understanding regional dialects - who uses received pronunciation these days? If I were a medical professional I'd be very concerned about this, and as a patient I'd be equally concerned.

On typing pools, the job market will decide, I'm afraid.

No. 2, amended - 'their' or 'his or her' instead of 'his/her'. Try saying 'his slash her' out loud...

O.k, I'm being anal, but it relates to the work I do. In copy editing people rely on me to pick this up ;-)

Aye to that, Gee4.

Yes, I do think the NHS has gone completely nuts. There was a job advertised in the HQ of my local PCT (Primary Care Trust - an autonomous regional organisation) for a part time (16 hours a week) PA/secretary/admin to support 9 managers. Duties included typing reports, preparing PowerPoint presentations, arranging all travel, diary management, the usual collection of PA duties. In 16 hours a week?

The ad said that no pre-application enquiries or discussions would be allowed. This is the third time in 18 months this job has been advertised. I guess they're not getting the message why.

Yes, I take precautions to avoid RSI - specialist keyboard and mouse, and most importantly, a well designed chair, fitted to me. I don't agree touch typing should be taught in schools, there's not enough time in the curriculum for the basics, we should teach every student maths and English, and preferably sciences as well, until 16 (school leaving age in UK). My 2p worth!

I don't believe that Brits take that number of days off for alcohol-related problems. What I think, and I have eight years of observing this in one big engineering company, is that it's more acceptable to be off sick because of something alcohol-related, like a hangover, than it is to actually be ill. In our sick society it's macho and not frowned on, to be drunk, it's a weakness actually to be ill. I was criticised by HR for being off sick with a 'headache' (which was a migraine), when a colleague who was off the same day with an admitted hangover wasn't hauled over the coals, he was just a 'good old boy'. I'm not sure that a woman with a hangover would have been given the same latitude.

I've felt discriminated against when I've had to cover for certain family-related absences, although I'm basically sympathetic to their problem. IMHO, one answer to this is for more flexitime working, and more flexible hours within those arrangements.

We're not going to solve this problem until it's addressed as a societal issue:  employment laws, family rights and it involves the tax system and environmental issues that have been mentioned already.

I don't have kids, from choice, but I remember my childhood. My Dad was disabled and looked after the house while Mum travelled in her job. I was very close to my Dad, but I wanted my Mum there a lot more than she was, even at 59 I remember how much I missed her. We had very little money and I'm not criticising them in any way, nor anyone here. That's just how it had to be for us.

It's my feeling that employers are going to have to have a drastic change of policy on family issues. The UK workforce works longer hours than most of Europe, and I don't think its any coincidence that in the recent UNICEF report on the state of the world's children, the UK ranks lowest of the highly developed nations in many ways regarding children: their happiness, time parents and children spend together, shared family meals, health care, mutual respect, diet, education, highest in binge drinking and substance abuse, and more. It's fatuous to think there's no connection between our employment policies and the wellbeing of our children. People who raise kids today are between a rock and a hard place. Raising kids is the most fundamental thing the human race does - survival of the species - and there just has to be a radical change of attitude by political leaders, to get themselves educated about life's realities, show some leadership, and devise genuinely family friendly policies that let people earn a decent living and devote the time to their kids that they want to. The world won't end if this happens, despite what the 'captains of industry' would have us believe, look at Scandinavia. Would I pay higher taxes to make this possible? Actually, yes I would.

I worked in the deli in my local Sainsbury's (big supermarket chain in UK) for a while, and they sent me on a food handling course. They showed us how to wash our hands: wash palms and fingers as you do normally, but more thoroughly and vigorously; then do the same to the backs of your hands and fingers, then wash your thumbs. Rinse under running water and dry with paper towels; hot air driers are apparently a big source of germs.

If you shop in Sainsbury's, know that all deli staff have done this one-day food handling course! They taught us other stuff as well as handwashing :-)