Author: Mike

Just took my wife to work, managed to get out of our local side road as many of the residents worked to clear snow away over the weekend. Car had not moved for over a week but started first time!

Went into Reading along the Shinfield Road and could see that there was a great deal of snow there as well, but some has obviously been cleared away.

But came back via Pepper Lane and could not believe how much snow was still on  the road as well as packed ice!! Does Reading Council not see this road as a major traffic route?

I had heard that buses from Lower Earley were not using Pepper Lane during the deep snow fall, that I can understand. But over the weekend how come that the council snow ploughs have not been out at night when there was no traffic on the roads to get it sorted.

I expect it has something to do with the current stupid interpretation of Health & Safety rules where the council won’t insure their workers at night and I expect the local council unions have something to do with this not wanting their members to suffer too much in the cold!!!!

I seems to me that this country is loosing it ability to look after itself and everyone is always looking for an easy way out of any situation. I am sure if I can clear my part of my local road, Reading Council should be able to clear all major commuter roads!

Surely this is one very good reason that we pay our local taxes for!

I think that the current government thinks we are! Yes it is great that we have a plan (announced today) to provide more greener energy as an alternative to fossil fuel based energy generation.

But hang on a bit! If we now have all this new energy, how do we get it to the users? Well, it seems as per the article referenced above, that the government in their wisdom have failed to understand that all the new energy generated by the wind farms needs a better infrastructure than currently exists to deliver this new found green energy to the final consumer.

Estimates for the new super grid run at around £10 billion with no firm plans as to how this will be financed. Very clever joined up thinking; not!

It’s a bit like, lets build two new aircraft carriers, yet we don’t have any planes as yet to put on them, why? Well we haven’t ordered them as yet!

Yes, the government may think that we don’t know, or are not interested in these minute details. But I have a thought, I think we are interested, very interested in making sure that the short-sightedness of politicians and their supposed vote grabbing is seen for what it really is; vote grabbing with a huge cost to the public purse.

We must make any future government fully accountable to us for any further public spending and they must realise that we want real value for money, not just lip service for a tick on the ballot paper.

More snow feel last night with more predicted to fall later today and at the weekend. Thank goodness for broadband and working from home. I was supposed to go into London today, glad I moved that appointment to next week!!

The view of my back garden does look nice though!

Over 3 inches in four hours tonight.

So a new year has arrived. Had a good break over the holiday culminating in a nice three day break with friends in northern France and very nice New Years day walk along the beech at Le Touquet.

Following on from the previous post and looking at my potential next domestic fuel bill in light of the recent cold snap, I had some time to look into some online Electricity Running Costs Calculators. Are they accurate, do they really tell you what’s going on?

About three years ago I purchased a wireless Electricity consumption indicator – you basically wrap the sensor around your incoming power lines and the meter picks up the signal and displays it in pence per hour or Kilowatts.

It’s the last thing I look at before I go up to bed and really does make you focus on what might be running that should not be. When I get up in the morning, with the Fridge, Freezer, House Alarm, two bedside clocks running overnight and the morning start-up of the central heating pump it averages about 2.5 pence per hour overnight.

Of course there is that heart stopping moment you get when Sunday lunch is on the go, it’s been raining for a few days and the tumble dryer just has to go on and a few other appliances are running when the reading peaks at over £1.00 per hour!!! But on average it does make me think more about the energy running cost of the house.

But what about if you want to calculate what a single electrical appliance uses, here’s a few online calculators that I found that seem to work quite well.

• UK Power Online – with some built in defaults
• SJE Electrical Installations
• Switchwise.com

Happy energy saving.

Back in July this year my car, a 12½ year old Vauxhall Omega Estate (169,570 miles travelled, many over the whole of Europe, original engine, original clutch, original gearbox with one careful owner!!) finally gave up the ghost through having both exhaust manifold gaskets blowing up and requiring a costly engineering job to fix.

After some thought and as I was not really driving many miles any more and as the repair would have cost more than the car was worth, I decided to give up having a car and although I miss it (strange, but true!) we are managing very well with one car.

Although now not owning a car, one thing that does not seem to have changed is the still high cost of petrol and diesel! I was out today for a walk and noticed that my local garage prices were still up at the £1.04/litre for Unleaded and £1.06/litre for Diesel!

I thought as the cost of Oil was still down why are we still paying through the nose for fuel. Somewhere, someone is making money at our expense.

I came across this widget from Oil-Price.net and have added it to my Blog in the left column – you may have to scroll down a bit to see it.

As you can see from the graph Oil, although going up a little bit in recent weeks, remains massively down on the previous high of 24 months ago. So why has the price of petrol become again an expense purchase?

Yes, we do have to conserve fuel resources, yes we have to cut back on emissions and yes we have to save the planet. But we still have to get around and go places.

I could understand if Oil was over $100.00/barrel, but while it remains at $78 ish and an average UK litre of unleaded costing £1.07 and diesel costing £1.09, I can’t help thinking that someone is making a killing. By the way, don’t forget that VAT goes back up in the New Year so there’s another 1.5 pence on a litre to think about. Here’s a recent report from the AA on the cost of fuel and comparisons with other European countries.

I think our high prices are here to stay.

As the current government tries to find yet more ways to cuts its overspending, it is turning its attention to reducing its spend on IT.

To date its record of bringing home IT projects on time and on budget has not been great, the NHS IT mess is just one good example.

Here’s a report from last weeks Computer Weekly that sets out on page 8 just how much money Labour hope to save in the coming months/years.

Of course it will be interesting to learn after the election just how much of this was true and how much was actually saved. Not a lot I fear!

As we close off this year, I am hoping that in 2010, the Iraq Inquiry will start to dig a bit deeper into the obvious flawed decision making and Blair’s Invade at any cost policy and get to the real issues behind the biggest electoral hoodwink of all time.

I was sent a link to a story by John Pilger about how the Crime of the Century is being normalised. It’s a good read and although is is only one persons view, it shows how, as many of us fear, no one person will be blamed for the Invasion of Iraq. See full story here.

With the world being ratcheted up by various politicians for other conflicts, this time potentially with Iran or Korea, I hope that we can get some of our politicians and senior civil servants under a more intense spotlight and really point the finger at the ones that took us into an illegal war and at the others, who simply stood by and did nothing to prevent it happening.

I was going through some old magazine clippings today and came across an old article about Missing People. The figures are quite staggering with over 200,ooo people going missing each year.

At this time of year when  families have been together for the usual gatherings, we must take a moment to think of those people that are sitting at home waiting for news of their missing relations.

Here is one description of a person that has been missing since 1996!