Avatar Gratuitous self-promotion

I wrote a thing for a blog site that gets even more people visiting and posting comments than The Beans, if you can believe such a thing.

You can read it by clicking on these words, or these words, or this letter Q, but not these words, or this asterisk: *

This post is not just blatantly self-promoting and aggrandizing, but also rather lazily adding to my Bean Count for this month on a day where I clearly couldn’t think of anything better to post.

Now go! Go and bask in my reflected glory! Go and revel in the euphoria and majesty that is me!

Avatar Beans 2015 Customer Satisfaction Survey: Results

Last month, Pouring Beans conducted a vast survey of all its regular users and contributors, with a lengthy survey form circulated to everyone involved in the site. Since then, our data analysis specialists, Wainscotting Wainscotting and Feeble Ltd., have been running the responses to the survey through a computer that occupies a large data centre just outside Neasden.

The response was immense – two people completed the form – and now I’m pleased to present to you the full results of that survey in a single, easy to read chart.

Survey Results

Thank you to everyone who took part. I think we can all take a great deal from these results. Hopefully it will help The Beans to improve even further in future.

When discussing these results on social media, which I’ve no doubt you will, please use the hashtag #pouringbeans2015customersatisfactionsurveyresults.

Avatar Grand Moments in Grand Designs, episode 43

Hello and welcome to another edition of Grand Moments in Grand Designs.

Today we look back on the never-to-be-forgotten moment when Kevin off of Grand Designs was going to stand on an arch that had been made out of tiles and plaster by some bloke who was building a house on Grand Designs.

Grand Designs

Here we see them linking arms in preparation for stepping onto the arch, but this still image has a poignancy and emotion all its own, evoking as it does the tension and the energy of Greco-Roman wrestlers engaged in noble combat.

Go on Kevin, deck him!

Wait, no, this is a celebration of unorthodox and innovative architectural practices. That’s not appropriate.

Next time, we look at the incredible time when Kevin off of Grand Designs wore a particularly vibrant jumper and scarf combination on the day the double glazing was late.

Avatar Immortalised in stone

It’s with great joy that I can now announce the unveiling of a statue to commemorate my life’s work and achievements. It has been carved from stone and then coloured exquisitely by a team of master craftsmen from Madame Tussaud’s in order to create a lifelike rendering of my own handsome and stylish body.

Statue

Please feel free to use the comments thread below this post to discuss all the wonderful things I have done and the many reasons you admire me.

Avatar Beans 2015 Customer Satisfaction Survey

Here at The Beans, the happiness of our readers and contributors is paramount to us. In fact, if you came to our prestigious penthouse offices, you’d see that we have a chart on our wall of all the things that are important to us. “The Happiness Of Our Readers And Contributors” is in big letters at the top, number one. (“Kev” is at number 16, just below “coordinating our socks with our underpants”.)

To help make sure we’re doing all we can, please complete this short survey about your experience here at The Beans.

Read More: Beans 2015 Customer Satisfaction Survey »

Avatar Shatnerlink

In these tough financial times, we can’t expect our public services to run the way they always used to. The days of government subsidy are over. Hospitals, schools, old people, making George Osborne’s hair look like the plastic helmet hair of a Lego man: all these things cost money. There isn’t enough to go round.

That’s why, increasingly, public services are being run as public-private partnerships, where stakeholders outside the public sector are brought in to invest and improve our services. One of the latest examples of this, and the most innovative, has been the pairing of Manchester’s tram network with celebrity spaceman William Shatner.

Shatnerlink logo

Shatner has pledged to invest £2.3 billion in Manchester’s trams over the next fifteen years, renewing the vehicle fleet and upgrading passenger information services. In return, he gets a major boost to his profile, with his face adorning the new tram livery and his voice used for automated announcements. To complete the effect, his unique style of speech has also been replicated in writing.

Service.........information

The dawn of the Shatnerlink era is just the latest step in the long-running association between trams and space travel, and looks set to ensure that Manchester continues to have a world-class transport network and that William Shatner remains reasonably famous.