The surprises you can find on the internet… I stumbled across a website earlier, where British people can post jobs they can do for just £5. The reason for charging this amount of money is to allow people to fight the credit crunch. I was quite amused at some of the things you can get for a fiver, such as help choosing what colour clothes you should wear on a certain day…

However, I was slightly more than horrified when I saw this for just £5: translating 2 articles of 350-400 words each from English into Italian or from English into French. Just to make sure that this was a slave rate – or someone who has no idea of what they are talking about – I calculated that this person would actually earn £0.0071 per word they translate (or even £0.00625 per word if both articles actually total 800 words). I assure you that I didn’t put the decimal point in the wrong place. Not exactly what people mean when they say they want a salary with a lot of zeroes in it!!

What does this say? I do not really have an answer, but I was a bit reassured when I saw that no one has rated this person yet, which means that their services have never been used. Maybe prospective consumers have realised that there is something wrong there…