Inter-library loans beckon then I think! The British Library will have it - or it might be worth browsing the COPAC catalogue (www.copac.ac.uk) just to see if anywhere local to you has a copy if you have SCONUL borrowing rights.

If someone brings it up at the viva the last thing to do is deny it. If it is brought up, that means it's been spotted and checked, and denying it is risking the degree. It might get picked up I'm afraid, as the likelihood is that the external at least will be familiar with the literature and plagiarised sections do tend to stick out to experienced markers. I would suggest your friend gets some advice from the students' union - I would imagine, there's an academic advice person, who could say what's best to do in the circumstances - being proactive might be better than keeping fingers crossed. Does the thesis go through turnitin or someone similar where you are? If so, s/he needs to own up before being accused. If not, one idea might be to ask the supervisor to flag the offending passage to the examiners but alongside it, send a scan of the whole thesis showing that it's an isolated incident. But whatever s/he does, they need to make sure, it's removed from the final thesis post viva.

The relevant funding body would be the AHRC I think. (Unless you're an anthropologist in which case it's the ESRC). Obviously, you've missed the deadlines by a long way for this academic year, but I would suggest checking whether your institution has been allocated any AHRC funding for the following year for your subject area. If so, ask your prospective supervisor how competitive a candidate you would be. If not also ask your prospective supervisor how others have funded their work. The likelihood is though that like most arts and humanities PhD students, you will have to self-fund as there are far more people wanting to do PhDs in this area than the government is prepared to fund. Self-funding is a massive commitment especially as unless you're wealthy or have a well-salaried partner, it generally means part-time study. Think too about the career prospects and be aware that the academic job market is dire, particularly in areas where undergrads are looking doubtful about paying the higher fees to study.

Do you need the actual book or just the taxonomy itself? If it's the taxonomy it's widely available online, see here for example for the original & revised versions:
http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/best/bloom.html

Hi Holly,

It depends on what languages you are offering and what employment direction you want to go in as courses specialise in different types of translating. But when I considered this some time ago, the following were considered to offer good professional training: Bath, Westminster, Heriot Watt, Aston and Portsmouth.Whether this is still accurate, I don't know. But hope it helps you make a start!

Do you have a clear sense of why you didn't get funding and is it something that you could fix? If so it might be worth self-funding a first year part-time to work intensively on the proposal with your supervisor and reapply for funding.
If not, then get someone to talk honestly to you about what the academic job market in philosophy is like and what you'd need in terms of publications, teaching experience, areas of expertise etc to be in with a chance. You need to be very aware of how tough it is before you self-fund. (Ask them to be brutally honest about the job itself too - it's not as nice as many people think it is.) The snag in your plan is that if you work that many hours in another job, you are probably not going to have time to acquire the sort of cv that would be competitive, even if you managed to finish the thesis in 3 or more probably 4 years, particularly if you intend to spend any time with your wife. Trying to go fulltime with those work commitments could in fact be an error on that front. Finally, I'd ask yourself how much you'd (and your wife) resent the fees and years of lost fulltime earnings if (as is the case with most PhD students) you did not get an academic job. Sadly a PhD in Philosophy is not likely to add much to your value on the non-academic job market, so this is really something you have to both be fully on board with. If you still can't imagine anything other than a PhD and a try at the academic job market making you happy, then go for it, but if you have doubts then I wouldn't self-fund.

I think your age might not be the issue you think for academic jobs if your cv is good. After all they'd get over twenty years work out of you! The question though that seemed to hit the more mature PhD students who I know, was whether they were prepared to uproot and move long distances for even short-term contracts (which tends to be the reality of ann early academic career) - many just couldn't do it for varying reasons so unless they were unusually lucky and a position opened up locally in their specialism they were stuck.
I think you're absolutely right to look beyond hourly paid / fractional contract teaching as it really isn't a sustainable longterm way to earn a living if it's your only source of income. But if you do pursue admin roles I just wanted to suggest that there's admin jobs and admin jobs in the university. If you went for widening participation, international office, careers or even marketing roles, I think it would be less office-based than say the registrar's office.
And like the others, why not Australia? Were you thinking of emigrating or a gap year type thing? Go into all the options and then at least you'll know you gave it a good shot if it didn't work out. What about applying for a postdoc there?

I would read that bit of the regulation to say that the word count includes footnotes, references and abstract / acknowledgement etc. The only things it does not include is any appendices. If you think you are going to be over the limit, could you move some of the tables you have in the chapters at the moment into an appendix? Or would that ruin the argument? Alternatively find a friend or relation who's good at English and bribe them into editing out unneccessary words for you!

You're in Germany if I remember correctly? I have two friends who did PhDs there and they also said there is basically no supervision. One saw her Doktorvater three times throughout the entire PhD and that was for history. So I wouldn't take it personally. Oh and in German universities generally, do not expect people to praise you for your efforts or positive validation and support - it's not how they work. I have studied there and it feels like you get a degree from successfully fighting the system rather than your intellectual ability! On the positive side because of the PhD examination system, as far as I understand it, if you submit a thesis it's next to impossible to fail. So if you have results and you follow the expected style of presenting them, it might well be worth persevering if you can face it. I'm presuming your supervisor is the professor. Have you made any connections with any of his/her postdocs? They might be both more approachable and able to tell you whether what you have is PhD standard. I suspect that if you knew that you were going to get out of there with a PhD in x months, it might make everything a bit more bearable.
If you do decide to leave, describe it as two years as a research assistant perhaps? And yes it's fair to ask him/her for a reference.
The other thing I just wanted to suggest from my own German experiences is some possibilities to expand your social life if you don't speak German (I did and it's still extremely hard to make friends). THings that I tried that worked: if your uni has an Anglistik department, there's probably a Stammtisch English conversation evening. You may meet other international people there. Details tend to be on their departmental notice boards. If you like sport, try joining a club - Germans are slightly more relaxed around strangers in a sporting environment. There's also a internet forum called toytown germany - mainly for Brits in Munich but I did find out about various foreigner-friendly social events happening in my area from there. Final though - it will be grim but is there an Irish pub? If you can face the over-priced drink, and over the top fake-Irishness, it is a good place to get chatting to other English speakers. I eventually made German friends but it took ages, and these things did at least stop me going crazy in the meantime.

I think it depends on the make-up of the research student group in the department. Sometimes it's supportive, other times there are just too may egotistical types who view everyone else as competition to be stamped all over. My PhD years were blighted by a few obnoxious people, who were convinced they were god's gift to the subject, spent their entire time telling everyone how much better they were than the other PhD students and all the academic staff (they were really horrible about the early career academics in the department) and that anyone not using the same approach as them were losers. Interestingly none of them got academic jobs, so maybe karma kicked in. Mind you, I imagine it's exactly the same in any other sector that attracts driven and ambitious people. Certainly I've heard that law is like that. Most of the international students I studied with were not aiming for UK academic jobs (on the whole the terms of their funding meant that they had to return home and take a university job there), and so they were protected a bit from this. Where the international students really suffered was undergraduates complaining about their teaching because they had accents (but spoke perfectly good English and knew their stuff).

It sounds as though this has come as a bit of a shock to you. I'm sorry if you'd assumed that it would be a straightforward move into a lectureship. Although I think education is less competitive that the other social sciences, I think if you want a research-based lectuership rather than doing the PGCE / teacher training side, then the advice you're getting is probably correct.
How much do you actually want a lectureship? Are you prepared to apply internationally, take a series of temporary jobs etc? The thing that makes me wonder whether the very insecure early career academic path is right for you, is that you say you need financial stability and I'm guessing with family that you might not be able to relocate easily. I can't describe my own path to a permanent post or that of friends as financially stable, and most of us clocked up several long-distance moves in the process. To be brutally honest, unless you really want a lectureship above anything else, then it's probably not worth it (and be realistic about what the job entails in terms of pressure on family life). Also, don't assume getting a postdoc is easy - the schemes that I can think of that you could apply to with a PhD in education are very very competitive.
I hope that whatever you decide though, that you won't continue to see your PhD as a waste. Even if you don't use it directly to secure employment, it's still a great achievement.

Inbetween the predictable 'PhD a waste of time' comments, there's actually some useful advice for people looking for academic jobs in the comments:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/aug/03/academic-job-seeking-and-post-doc-unemployment#start-of-comments

404 I think as well an issue is that some PhD students do not want to be supervised by junior staff, which may be why you are getting conflicting messages.

Where I work, you need to be a fulltime permanent lecturer. I'm in the social sciences, and for us the main supervisor has to be someone who has supervised a PhD to successful completion, newer staff start as secondary supervisors. It depends as well if anyone applies for whom you are the most suitable person for their proposed topic. I did a course on supervising PhDs as part of my HE teaching qualification, and every year all staff involved in supervision to a one day / morning training session (so that we are up to date with regulations, research council procedures etc).

I agree with what Hazyjane has said but just wanted to add another couple of things that might be helpful.

Usually it is possible to submit a shorter thesis for an MPhil, if it's agreed that the work is not PhD standard by the student and the supervisors, or the student wants to leave early. Have a look at the regulations for the MPhil where you study and see what it entails. But I'm not sure this is what your supervisors are telling you. It's very normal for PhDs to take 4 rather than the funded 3 years. I think you really need to arrange a meeting with your supervisors and get them to give you very clear guidance on what the issues are with the draft and what you would need to do to get it to PhD level. Then you need to discuss your options with them - be open about the financial issues. Try to be as calm and collected as you can, so you may need to leave it for a couple of weeks. You do need this information to make choices - no-one makes good decisions when they are upset and panicking so don't do anything hasty. Could you see if you could make an appointment with the university counselling service - for some people talking it through with an impartial counsellor might help you see possibilities and options that you don't think of yourself.
I would also suggest that you need to try to separate your supervisors' views on your work from their opinions of you as a person. I suspect that the supervisor that that walked away rather than sit and chat for 1/2 an hour before your meeting, did so because s/he knew that s/he was going to have to deliver upsetting feedback to you in the actual meeting, felt awkward about it as it was, and just couldn't face spending 1/2 hour pretending everything was OK. I suspect that actually says that s/he likes you and was dreading the meeting - it's a lot easier to deliver bad news to someone you dislike than it is someone you like.