Whilst in town on my lunch break...
I thought of this plan.

1. Become a total self orientated douchbag (or douchbagette).
2. Increase width though fat, shopping bags or kids so you occupy 98% of available walking space.
3. Find narrow car lined pavements.
4. Walk as slow as is humanly possible
5. Ignore polite "excuse me" requests from people behind you.
6. Stop randomly and periodically for a couple of seconds.
7. Carry on ignoring requests to get by
8. Wait for person to become so enraged they beat you with sticks/shopping bags/kids
9. Sue the crap out of them
10. Repeat as necessary.
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 13:45, 1 reply)

First foray into capitalism
When I was a youngun (8 or 9)I decided to become a chocolate tycoon like Willy Wonka, having shrewdley noticed that kids like sweets.

I had a quick look to see if I could employ any oompa loompas, (my little brother was the right height but objected to being painted orange with a crayons)then decided to strike out by myself.

My business planning would have made Branson proud. I set up a stall (cardboard box) in front of my house selling individual sweets for 2 or 3p, kinda like a pick n mix. The maths was simple Tube of smarties= 25p and you get about 20 sweets in a tube. Selling individual smarties for 2p each = 40p giving you a nice 40% profit (or something). I even spent an afternoon making posters to stick around the street.

Incredibly I started raking in 3 or 4 quid a day, my poket money at the time was 30p a day so that was MEGABUCKS! I started to dream of branching out and living a life of fast cars and faster women but my dreams were cut short.

One afternoon a cop came past and asked what I was doing. I told him and hinted that maybe he would like some free rolo´s for his trouble. He just looked at me and then went and knocked on my door and asked for my dad. Then he and my dad (who knew nothing of my scheme)had a quiet conversation about the trading laws. When he left my dad and me had a rather less quiet conversation about how much beating I could take with his shoe.

I´ve never been in sales since.

Edit. I should point out the beating was mainly for the attempted bribery and only slightly for not cutting him in on the profits.
(Bo Nidle Coming back in from the cold., Fri 1 Aug 2008, 13:43, 2 replies)

Lunchtimes
I lived near school. I used to get dinnermoney (a quid) but used to nip home, microwave some fish fingers and beans and save the quid for panini stickers.

Every now and then I'd bring a mate home and charge him a quid for lunch, throw in some oven chips and a cup of tea. This was a daily event and the mates varied.

Cut to one year later.

Service has been refined in to an extremely efficient process. The 14 of us engaged in the various kitchen processes at any one time had evolved in to a perfect little engine. There were the 'provisioners' - responsible for obtaining the basic products from the local co-op, the cooks - the operators of the hob, oven and microwave, the tea makers, and the kitchen hands, responsible for opening packages, disposing of waste, cleaning up, washing up etc. Within 40 minutes, there was a lot of work to do and Home Ec lessons had served us well. It really was quite brilliant. Other than the spiralling fuel bills for my parents, we went unnoticed for most of 6th form.

I think I was dishing out the fish fingers when my mum walked in. Everyone froze. My mum didnt blink and said "ooh fish fingers, can I have some I'm starving" and joined us for lunch. She was ace and I was gobsmacked. Surely I cant avoid the biggest bollockcocking of my life for this? It dawned on me that she thought this was a one off and as long as we cleaned up she wouldnt have minded.

Rich? I saved about £300, bought a sony hifi, and a guitar. That was rich to a 17 year old in 1989.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 13:38, 1 reply)

I wrote for and edited part of the student mag at univeristy
and one term they had a free meal voucher for the local Weatherspoons.

So the mag came in from the printers, and my friends and I didn't cook a single meal for the rest of term.

The mag didn't survive to the next term I don't think.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 13:33, Reply)

smoke me a kipper reminds me!!
We were doing a car boot sale the day Di lost an argument with a pillar, and there was loads of gossip about is she dead or not etc etc.

I strolled to the shop to buy a paper to confirm the news that she had indeed died.

We took one look at the Charles and Di wedding plate we were selling that had been studiously ignored all morning, took off the £1 sticker and replaced it with a £20 sticker.

sold within 10 minutes.
(Halfy By light alone, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 13:15, 2 replies)

When I was a Military Policeman

I had the misfortune/pleasure of attending Princess Diana's memorial service at Winchester Cathedral in September 97' (I think most Cathedrals had one at some point)

So there we were, in full numbers 1's watching all these old dears crying and it was then me and my mate noticed all the funeral booklets (I'm sure they have a proper name, but can't remember) at the back of the church.

Well when everyone had left we grabbed a load of them (about 20 each) these things were lovely, patterned card outer and watermarked pages inside, with all the words in from the proper funeral at Westminster Abbey including all the songs and poems etc...

So obviously these slowly filtered onto ebay early on this decade, it's amazing what Americans and Chinese will pay for a bit of paper.

My best one sold at over £200 from what I remember.

Cheers Diana you really were the Queen of my heart, and helped me out of a lot of shit.


Regards
Kip


(Kip, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 13:12, 9 replies)

still, i sold them a terrible old LCD game for 35 quid
they sold it for 50, but i don't begrudge them. aint no-one gonna buy it off me for 50
( monstrinho do biscoito teeeshurts = www.nogunarmy.com, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 13:01, Reply)

Make a Film!
I've been trying to get some financing for a little film project I've written. A sort of art-house cult-film type thing - you know the sort of thing that turns up at midnight screenings.

It's called "Mutant Zombie Bloodbath".

Anyway, I was getting nowhere fast until a friend pointed out that the German Ministry of Culture is throwing money at every film-project imaginable - "Speed Racer" being one example. So I sent off the script.

It came back by return of post with a letter saying "Unfortunately this script does not contain enough German Culture for us to fund it."

So I renamed it "Nazi Mutant Zombie Bloodbath" and sent it back.

We start filming in a week with Tom Cruise in the lead role.

Edit: I use this regularly as part of my stand-up act in German - it gets enormous laughs, and I get 250 Euro for 10 minutes, so I think that satisfies the "get-rich-quick" idea.
( Stevedix http://www.stevedix.de/blog, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 12:48, 2 replies)

Drug dealing at festivals
This is not to be recommended if you are middle class and soft, like every braying bastard Sebastian and Jack is at Glastonbury since the mid-90s. We found two teenage boys snivelling outside the Christian Aid tent and asked them what was wrong:

"We spent £1000 on a block of hash to sell. We got in, and went up to this bloke and asked him if he wanted any drugs. He said 'great, thanks', pulled out a knife and took the drugs, and our wallets, kicked us up the arse and then walked off whistling".
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 12:25, 9 replies)

I once sold my unwanted cheese and pickle sandwhiches
to a lad at school for £3. My mum thought it was brilliant but stopped making them for me shortly after.
( Victor Meldrew, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 12:25, 1 reply)

Be a millionaire the easy way
I knew a lad who worked in one of the large uk banks.

One day he transfered £1,000,000 into his account, printed off his statement, then reversed the funds. He claimed it was an error on his system so no investigation was sought and no interest occured.

Whilst he took his statement down the pub to claim he was the only one of his mates that had ever been a millionaire.

clever idea.
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 12:22, 3 replies)

I used to wish
I had the computer that John Connor had in Terminator Two, where he could draw money out when he wanted.

If i had that gadget I'd think of better things to do with the money than goin the fekkin arcade...
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 12:13, 4 replies)

True wealth is in your heart…

True love cannot be bought…at any cost…
Your soul is the most valuable asset you own.
A child’s smile is priceless
Every generous and selfless acts will be repaid tenfold by the sense of inner satisfaction you feel.
Your Pride, dignity and conscience can never be bribed with mere money
Having good friends is worth a million possessions.
Trust is more precious than gold.
As long as you have your health…
The best things in life are free.
You can't take it with you...
Appreciate what you have. You may not be rich, but there are millions of people a lot worse off than you are

I have been told all of these profound things in my lifetime…

But if it's all the same with you, I'd still like a great big massive stack of cash so I can form my own opinion.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 1 Aug 2008, 12:05, 6 replies)

Just been reminded of a story
When I was younger a friend of mine had a pond in his back garden, which contained a lovely ecosystem of freshwater snails, newts, toads, frogs, very small fish, pond skaters, water boatmen, etc etc.
One day whilst very bored we hatched upon a plan to make money fast - we'd catch frogs, newts and snails, and then set up a street stall outside his house to sell them to passers by. A flawless plan, with only a couple of unforeseen flaws.

Firstly was catching them and keeping them alive whilst still being visible to the potential customers. We took literally ALL his mum's jam jars (and emptied 2 out the fridge also) to store our beauties in. This presented 2 problems - getting a frog to stay in a jam jar while trying to screw the lid on (We actually broke one frog's leg doing this), and secondly the problem of catching them fast enough. However, we muscled on and by 4pm we'd got about 15 or so specimens for display. Time to cash in on our delights.

At this point we hit two little snags - firstly, we didn't have a street stall from which to sell our goods. Secondly, businessmen travelling home from work prefer to buy paninis and cups of coffee rather than newts in jars. We didn't sell a single one in the hour we were out there, even considering we halved our prices from £5 to £2.50 within about 20 minutes. In the mean time my friend told me I'd need to give him my share of the money as he had "come up with the idea" and it was "his pond". Cheeky bastard.

Then at 5 his mum came home, and bollocked us both rotten. I was never invited back to play there again. Last I heard he had convinced another friend to give him £12 to join his 'club', the only benefits of which were the usage of his tree house and free lemonade off his mum. Bless.
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 11:49, 2 replies)

Someone trying to con me whilst I was doing these offer thangs.
I've already posted on this QOTW about the offers that I do, so I'm not going to plague you with that. Instead, this is to do with what happened when I involved eBay into the proceedings.

I stuck an advert on eBay stating in big big letters "IM NOT SELLING! IM GIVING YOU ADVICE ON HOW TO GET FREEBIES!" and had it catergorised under "Games Consoles-Xbox360". I put down the full details and said 3 times very clearly that I was not selling, but some numpty bought my "advert" for 1p and then emailed me asking for his free x-box. I advised him that this wasn't a sale, and just read the article. He replies "What? I want my f***ing x-box otherwise I'll report you." I told him very politely to do what he wants, and later in the evening I got an email from eBay advising that the article had been pulled as I wasn't selling an item. Fair enough thinks I.
The next day I check me mails and I've got another one from this prick-buyer saying "Haha, now where's my f***ing xbox?" I get a bit pissed at this point. I then notice he's got an unusual username. Hmmm, thinks I. Up pops Google, 5 minutes later I've found a handful of forums this prick has registered on and they're all to do with trying to ger free mobiles etc. A right sponger by the looks of it; even if I was trying to earn a free xbox at the time I wasn't bullying others into doing it like this prick was. I check his profile, bingo. So, you're a part-time baker from Banbury are you? Scaretactics time methinks.
I send him a reply through eBay. I didn't hear anything after this, so it must've worked.
"Why don't you just go away, and "bake a cake" little boy."

Didn't bother using eBay for this anymore. Too many assholes on there.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 11:47, 1 reply)

Staff discount
A school mate had a saturday job at Next. However Next employees had to buy their own uniforms from Next stock and rather unfairly it seemed had to have stuff from the current season.

So my mate was rather miffed that after a few months of working there he had to buy new clothes, but to cushion the blow staff get 25% off.

So we hatched a plan. We set off with £1.20 one day travelcards into central london armed with his current tie. We carefully unpicked a 6 inch section of stiching and I went into the Brent cross store (our first port of call) and returned the "faulty" tie for it's £16 purchase price.

Then in went my mate to purchase another tie for £12 using his staff card. This we then set about damaging in a similar manner whilst on the bus to another branch where we again repeated the return and purchase scam each time netting £4.

By the end of the day we'd hit every Next store we could find around London and netted about £36 in cash as well as a current season tie for my mate to use for work.

Being naive little idiots we spent it on fizzy drinks, onion ring crisps and music from WHSmiths (who never seem to have a decent price for stuff).
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 11:30, 3 replies)

You know how your mate has this great setup with his credit card
where he's actually making money, because he pays off all the money before it accrues interest and still gets extra points for travel?

Well, I know a guy who works in the financial industry. And apparently (I couldn't believe this, but he was adamant that it's true), when a company is going to offer a given rate of interest, or a particular kind of account, or any kind of financial 'product' at all, they actually have some people work out whether they're likely to make a profit or a loss on it beforehand. And if they're going to make a loss they either alter their plan, or even don't go ahead with it at all!

Apart from the utter sneakiness of this, there's also a slightly bizarre consequence: it means that the financial industry, as a whole, is actually better at this than your mate.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 11:29, 3 replies)

I got rich
once. Almost. I joined a company a few years before they were due to go public. As a mid level manager, I was entitled to 7,500 shares on starting. 2 years later I had 24,000 pre launch. The due diligence had been done, the launch (on NASDAQ ooh swanky) was prepared, the flights booked for the directors to spend the morning at the stock exchange on Wall St etc, all looking good. Opening price expected to be around $22, everyone working how much they would get if they sold immediately (as I was planning), I had opened a Wachovia Bank account in the US, done my capital gains calculations, booked a visit to a porsche garage, the lot.

About a week before, the whole office was asked to gather in one of the conference rooms.

We were told about something called Stock splits and were all excited because this could mean even more money. Then they told us, in slightly less revere tones about the term reverse stock splits which didnt sound quite as good. The tension changed in the room a little. As they explained what a ratio of 1:7 meant. I had done the calculations already. 24,000 divided by 7 is roughly 3 and a half thousand, the 'new' stock price was expected to be around the $7 mark. That means my shares are worth about $7K. Or at the time, about £4K. Factor in broker fees, taxes, capital gains, some other american taxes, bank charges, transfer fees and my overall profit had just dropped from about £100K, to a rather unbelievable £900.

The $7 wasnt enough to meet the NASDAQ minimum, the deal collapsed overnight, and the company got threatened with a visit from those nice people at the Monopolies commission because of a little deal we had going.

The next week my gearbox in my rusting Alfa died (yeah yeah alfas..) and I spent £1400 getting various repairs done.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 11:28, 2 replies)

What are the odds?

I received an email from a Nigerian Civil Servant saying that I was randomly selected to have a percentage of between $10-$60 million, which the Nigerian government overpaid on some procurement contract.

All I had to do was send off my identity and bank details, with a transfer of £300 to cover the administration costs.

So that's what I did.

Imagine my surprise when I checked my bank account 6 months later to find I had been credited with just over £18 million pounds.

Just lucky I guess. You lot could do with being a bit more trusting I reckon.

Love,

Pooflake
c/o some mahasseeve mansion in Hawaii
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 1 Aug 2008, 11:22, 2 replies)

technical point
if the question were get poor quick schemes i'd be a winner.

Since 2000 i've had four identical Honda S2000 sports cars. exactly like this one... www.geocities.com/napavalley/1269/pictures/s2000-lf.jpg silver, red leather - four of the fuckers.

first one - paid 26,500 quid almost 9 years ago. brand spanking new. had it 8 weeks came over a crest one fine evening at around 90mph and found a kind farmer had decided to extend half the contents of his field onto the road using his tractor wheels as a shovel - 50 yards of 3 inch deep mud. spun three times crashed through a fence. write off. (oh and my insurance renewal leapt to over 3K)

number two - grease monkey at dealership decides to 'test' next one when i put it in for its first service. skidded avoiding a bin lorry destroyed a solid stone wall. threatened dealer with press interest - new one offered.

number three. last january. local council decides to only grit one half of the notorious country road i drive to work. me, an articulated, lorry a van and three other cars all caught out with black ice. write off.

replaced with another one in february then got offered a job in dubai so forced to sell. use 5k of cash for failed IVF treatment for mrs spimf

so 5k for a wank

oh well, be lucky as they say


!
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 11:19, 3 replies)

My friend 'X'
once tried the old 'get rich quick' thing while at uni.

Actually, being a lazy arse, he tried the 'get rich for no actual effort, I don't care how long it takes' thing.

He replied to a sign in a newsagent's window proclaiming 'earn pound pound pounds from home - simply send £1 and I'll tell you how'. as this was in Scotland, it was fairly easy to shove a pound note into an envelope and so he sent it off.

Anyone guessed how you are supposed to earn pound pound pounds? 'Stick an advert in a shop window telling people they can make money, and ask them to send you £1'

As well as being so laidback he's almost comatose, my friend is terribly nice, so he didn't do it. (He now works for a national newspaper, and I maintain he is probably the only one among the whole bunch I would trust with my car keys)

Nowadays I 'work' on eBay, and I've often thought of doing something similar - a 99p buy it now to tell people how to get guaranteed income. I wonder how long I would last as a trader if I tried it...?
( b3th Not shit. Not mod., Fri 1 Aug 2008, 11:01, 1 reply)

Royal Cornwall Agricultural Show, circa 1994
This highlight of the Cornish social calendar was understandably chosen for the local giveaway launch of LiptonIce, a beverage fondly remembered by no-one. Cold, fizzy tea in a can - call me a philistine if you will, but a failed Soda Stream experiment does not a viable retail product make. But then it was New and Exciting and (more importantly) Free. The same compulsion that drives anyone who has ever tried to carbonate the should-be-uncarbonatable (see milk in last week's QOTW) seemed to grip us all. The same reasoning too: "That sounds disgusting, but it might well be really nice. And it's free, you say? And I don't have to dig the Soda Stream out from behind that machine that turns radishes into malformed waterlilies and empty the spiders out in order to make it? LiptonIce me up, baby!"

However, sometimes knee-jerk reactions can be correct. It tasted like running your tongue under the rim of your gran's teapot, then hurriedly squeezing a Jif lemon onto your tongue to take the taste away. Or maybe cold stewed tea made with Junior Disprin and crushed-up lemon-flavoured calcium tablets.

The stall where they were giving it away was inside the showground and was rammed with yokels and tourists alike claiming their free can of ick (before taking one sip and throwing the rest away, of course). This meant the studenty types running the stall neither knew nor cared if people came back for another can - they just thrust cans into the seething sea of grasping hands.

Meanwhile, an enterprising young moglin came up with a plan....

Fill a 50 litre rucksack with free cans, procured over a hour long period. Collect some of the discarded crates from behind the stall to stack them in. Borrow appalling turquoise baseball cap from cousin (the sort of hat nobody but him would wear unless they were being made to as part of a demeaning temp job). Sell cans for 40p each to the huge queue waiting to get in to the showground. Make a speedy getaway before too many people notice they have paid for something that not only tastes rancid but that they could also have got for free. Go home and laugh and drink proper tea whilst laughing some more and counting earnings. And laughing.

I didn't get rich quick, but I did get enough to buy Sonic and Knuckles. And at the end of the day, that's all that matters.
(moglin shall make you writhe in her cage of torment on, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 10:51, 2 replies)

The great HMV Student-discount heist
My housemate at uni was a bit of a wideboy and wouldn't miss an opportunity to get something for nothing.

He used to go into HMV with his student card and buy something, didn't matter what, with his student card for 10% discount (although more often than not it was a CD so he could copy it and get double freebie).

He would then take said item back to HMV, without a receipt (unwanted gift, lost receipt- you know the drill!) It would have HMV price stickers still on it so they knew it was theirs. He'd get the full price back- 10% instant profit!

Of course, he couldn't get cash, but he built himself a good nest egg of store credit, which he then used to buy a PS2 (back when they were new!)

Apparently in the larger London stores you could repeat the scam several times a day- buy from one till, take back to one on another floor, etc.

I wish I had the balls to do it myself!
(devilstickz, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 10:40, 1 reply)

50 pence - Get Rich or Die Wanking.
At a factory, where I worked years ago was your stereotypical, balding, toothless, dirty mac wearing, buy-a-bride type bloke and in the voice of Harold Steptoe, "A Dutty awld man".
He had a big fuck-off satellite dish in his garden. It was something that wouldn't look out of place on Desperate Dan's table next to a jug of cactus juice.
This dish could receive pron from all over the place. Please don’t ask about the technicalities, but I think it could rotate to constantly pick up signals and he had a number of VCRs set up to record 24 hours a day.

Anyway, he marries/purchases a Thai bird. The only middle-aged one I have ever seen in my life, the reason being that you never see middle-aged Asian women. They're a bit like bananas. One day they're lovely and ripe and then they age overnight, just like that. I don’t know if there’s some sort of rapid ageing thing going on. I digress…..
Upon her arrival to this country she insisted he got rid of his extensive collection of porn and this was something that he was sadly lamenting in the works canteen. And this is where I cut in.
“So, uh what are going to do with it then?”
He looks up, still chewing his sandwich, of which some of the mayo was now dripping from the corner of his mouth. “You want ‘em? You can have ‘em for 50p each if you’re interested. They’ve gotta go today or I’m in shit street.”
“Yeah ok, how many have you got?”
“Dunno, about 400 at least.”
My yoghurt yo-yoed and exited via my nose. “Fuck!”
At this point I had a weird out of body experience whereby I was now an observer looking into the canteen. It was a bit like in the movies where the shot freezes, zooms out, pans a 360 and zooms back in again. There’s me with yoghurt coming out of my nose, there’s him with mayonnaise dribbling out of his mouth and we’re discussing a monumental stockpile of hardcore Scandinavian porn. Please God nobody walk in now, please! I pulled my hanky out, wiped off the offending dairy product and stammered, “F fuh four hundred? Are they any good?”
That question launched him into a soliloquy that was akin to Cheech Marin outside the Titty Twister. “Penetration, double penetration, anal, double anal, double vaginal and double anal, white on white, ebony on ivory, farters, squirters, blow jobs and jerkers, you name it.”
“Okay okay okay. Jeez!” I was praying nobody was going to walk in. “How are we going to do this?” Then I realised what a dumb question that was.
“Well duh! You give me two hundred quid and I give you the tapes.”

At this point I realised I had £200 in the bank but that was all I had. I phoned my best buddy - my wing man and partner in crime if you will - and told him what the deal was. He wanted in on it and we agreed to go halves. I said that I would cover his half and he would pay me later. It was situation GO.

That night I turned up at this blokes gaff and he’s stood at the door with a number of large boxes next to him. He was grinning like a monkey having a wank. In fact he probably just had, you know, for old time’s sake, so I didn’t shake his hand just in case.

We loaded (forcibly rammed) the precious cargo into my little Metro. It was brimming.
We had to drop it off at a mate’s house because we were both living with our parents at the time due to an ‘unfortunate’ accident at a previous residence that we shared. We opened the boxes and they were meticulously sleeved and labelled, they looked good.

I’m going to shorten this a bit. We each took a couple of samples home for product testing and they were fine. Good porn, no dodgy shit like donkeys and dwarves, which is what I was dreading they would be, and we were set to make some money.


We paid 50p each for these and we had a big network of friends and friends of friends who all love a bluey. The going rate at the time was £10 each and we banged them out at 2 for £10.
We had a good influx of customers in the first week and even set up our own 'fucky dip' whereby you just put your hand in and pulled out your 2 mystery prizes. We sold about 50 and that was excellent, we made our money back and had £25 each in our pockets. We went down the pub to celebrate and had a nice piss up.
The next week we sold about 30, which meant that we now had £75 each in our pockets so we took the Friday off work and had a 2 day piss up and piss it up we did.
The next few weeks were a bit different, I think we sold about 4. Still, we had another £10 profit each so we went to the pub.
Then the whole thing dried up, what with the amount we sold and the few we kept or gave away to people, we still had 300 of these bloody things and our mate was getting restless about having all these vids still in his house cluttering up the place. We couldn’t shift them for love or money.

Now, with hindsight, I realise what happened. It was a case of supply and demand. We had flooded the market. The punters were merely swapping the ones they had bought with people who had also bought some and it was like a perpetual chain of porn. By the time you got back the one you’d watched first it was almost fresh material. We weren’t selling any because the need for fresh porn wasn’t there.

We ended up having to sell them for like a quid or 2 quid each here and there and, since it was only change in our pocket, would get spent pronto.

We thought we were onto a good thing. The projected profit we should have made if we sold them all would have been £1800. Instead we pissed all of the money we did make up against the wall and were lumped with 300 boxes of filth that nobody wanted any more.
We ended up giving them away.

No business sense and a penchant for alcohol will always mean that I will never get rich.

Apologies for length - At least 2 hours per tape.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 10:31, 2 replies)

Send that Fudge packing
When I was a wee nipper in Junior school we used to have a school cake sale at the end of every term. The idea was that the kids in the their final year (more likely most of the kids parents) would make some cakes and bring them to school to make bit of extra pocket money by flogging it to the rest of the school.
My mum taught me to make a delicious fudge which I duly prepared for the big day. It tasted delicious and I had high hopes that it would sell well, but alas come the end of the day there was still stock left. Not a total loss as I got to gorge on fudge until I almost vomited, however it did leave me with very little profit.

At the last cake sale of the year I was determined to make some money. I tried to enlist the help of my mom, but it should be noted at this point that she couldn't make a bit of toast without burning it. It was with great dismay that I realised I would have to rely on the fudge again. A burst of inspiration appeared while I was making the fudge and I threw in some green food die which resulted in the fudge looking like a horrible snot colour - perfect!!

The next day I proudly displayed my "teenage mutant ninja turtle" fudge and sold out within minutes. I was the only boy with a queue of people waiting to buy his stuff. I duly took my days profits and trotted off to shops on the way home and bought a load of sweets which I gorged on until I almost vomited. Some things never change.
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 10:24, 2 replies)

Move
to Poland, where you get paid 3X the national average wage, just for being English.

I shit you not.

I have no teaching qualifications, just a reasonable education and a moderately interesting CV. I can splel most of the tiem.

I teach for 25 hours a week. I can afford a flat in the capital, constant beer and a non-working girlfriend 25yrs younger than me. I am in the top 20% of Polish earners. I can even afford to play jazz without worrying about the fact that the money is piss-poor. I have done NOTHING to deserve this.

The only drawback - when you pop back to blighty, your zloty ain't worth sheeyit. Solution: don't pop back to blighty, invite friends & rellies to visit and spend their powerful pounds over here :@ )

Length? Ten months, so far...
( blyerkit e k trilby, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 10:19, 7 replies)

My little plan wasn't as quick as I hoped but I was successful in the end!
It all started when I was an arts student at college back in the 80's, I enrolled onto a decent course and found out we had a pretty famous music teacher. I was in a few of his lessons and slowly fell for him. Instead of taking the more direct approach of throwing myself at him (Which is no mean feat when you are blind) I decided to bide my time and impress him with my *ahem* other available talents.

Over the next few weeks I played all coy with him and showed my tutor that I was intellectually mature too. I could tell that he was starting to notice me as he spent more time hanging around me in the lessons we had together. I pretended not to notice and carried on my act for a few more weeks, to make sure that I was all he thought about night and day (And because the second part of my plan wasn't ready yet).

I realise that I achieved this when he started calling me at night. The phone conversations were usually short and he only said a couple of words before hanging up, this may sound a bit creepy but this bloke has one smooth voice.

The next day at college everything was in place for the second part of my plan and I decided to show him that I felt the same way too. I told a mate of mine to go get the tutor and send him down to the room I was waiting in. Thankfully he fell for it and found out that I was waiting with a bust of his head(the tutors that is) that I had designed by hand from my own imagination. Even though my mates had described the bust as a roided up version of my tutor (I'm blind FFS give me some credit) my soon to be man was chuffed with it.

And that's how I got Richie quick.

(Around now I should get my coat but as I mentioned earlier I'm blind so I may need some help)
(mon bison powered by magnets, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 10:14, 3 replies)

My 3 step program for making money
1) Go on holiday to Portugal
2) Sell my 3-year-old daughter to human trafficers in return for vast sums of cash whilst I get pissed with my partner at a tapas bar
3) Oh wait that's just two steps
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 10:08, 2 replies)

In relation to Legless's post below
here's another porny scam.
Advertise on e-bay DVDs "Two hours of pure hardcore" or whatever combination you want, as long as it includes the word "hardcore", that's where the money comes in.

So Joe Bloggs spends his hard earned monies anticipating a wank like none other. Sitting at home, the discrete package arrives in the post, the wanker whips it out (the DVD, that is), puts it in the player and lo and behold... you've sold him a video of a couple gardners laying hardcore from a truck.

He takes you to court, you win as the video was in fact two hours of hardcore, quids in!

Of course nowdays with the internets this doesn't really work any more, but oh well, it did work in the past for some lucky chappy.
(Frozen_Banana Shaved against the grain; thoroughly unrewarding., Fri 1 Aug 2008, 9:55, Reply)