Author: Mike

Seems that we can’t get enough reports telling us that we don’t have the Broadband speed that we are paying for – what’s new! – or that we don’t have the Broadband speed that we deserve – how long will we have to wait?

With the latest OFCOM survey and report telling us again what we all already know; that we all pay too much for lower speeds than we thought we would get!

The full OFCOM report is here. At this stage, I don’t see that it gives much confidence in us achieving the Digital Britain landscape that the government has been recently talking about.

How can you ensure that you can have a good broadband connection. This is not intended to be a tutorial, but here are some pointers (in no particular order) for making sure you have the best chance of good broadband speeds.

• First check out the various speed tests available here. When the test is running don’t be doing any internet work, it will affect any results.

• Check the physical connections inside your house. make sure that you don’t have extension lead plugged into extension lead etc. to connect your router to the telephone line, it could have some effect. You really want the router plugged directly into the first socket on the line (via the filter).

• Make sure that your filter is in the right place.

• Make sure that your telephone line does not have any noise, clicks, hums on the line, it will have a very bad effect on your speed. If you find you have noise on the line, report it and keep pestering your supplier until it is fixed.

• Never switch off your router, even when you go on holiday. A router left on will gradually build up its speed capability – it works in conjunction with an equivalent box in the exchange that looks at how many routers (it can be in some cases up to 50) it has to deliver its share of broadband services to. If you keep switching off your router; believe me, you’ll be at the bottom of its (the box in the exchange) list of potentially bad connections!

• Check that your router is working correctly, make sure that it is using the latest firmware. A word of warning! Be very careful when updating firmware, my last update of a Netgear router completely stopped the router working! Thank goodness I have a spare router (old but working) while it took me a two days to get the Netgear router working again.

• Take time to understand the technology of what broadband is and why it may not be working properly. Your phone line can be working perfectly for voice calls, but the ADSL service may have dropped off at the exchange. Understand what you need to tell the support agent when you report it. In a lots of cases, you will know more than they do. Don’t accept suggestions that your equipment is at fault when you know it is not! That said, if it’s all working okay, don’t fiddle!

• After all that, check out the various speed tests again here. When the test is running don’t be doing any internet work, it will affect any results.

Hope these pointers help.

I’m a bit confused!

1 – Vestas Wind Systems is shutting the Isle of Wight site because it says…

the UK wind turbine market is not big enough to sustain UK manufacturing site.

2 – Residents of Welshpool are up in arms about about five years of potential disruption as up to 150 Wind Turbine are moved through their small town as one of Europe biggest wind farms is built on various hills in Powys – to supply electricity for Liverpool and Manchester!

3 – Local sources tell me that the Turbines and blades  will be imported from Germany!

4 – The UK government has announced a grant of over £6 million to a wind turbine firm’s research centre on the Isle of Wight, despite its plans to cut 625 jobs and shut its factory.

Some where along the line I think there is a bit of government departmental non-communication going on here and a fine example of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.

Why are we paying money to company for a UK research centre when they are shutting their UK manufacturing site. Nudge, Nudge; Wink, Wink; I smell a rat here!

I either did not know this or I had forgotten as it was nearly eight years ago, but the Photo Card part of our UK Driving Licenses runs out after 10 years!

A friend of mine found this out last week when he was stopped by police for a failed stop light and when he produced his license, they told him that it was out of date!

Apparently the DVLC used to send out reminders, but that seems to have stopped, he is being charged with a number of offenses and has been told that he could be in for a hefty fine!!!

He emailed me and sure enough when I checked, my photo bit runs out in 2011 and the paper bit in 2019 (yes I am that old!) so I’d better have a reminder in my calendar to make sure I don’t get trapped in the same way.

It seems the difference in the dates is to ensure that the photo is no older than 10 years out of date. Only in the UK do we need to have two parts to a driving license!

So the message here is get your license Photo Card out and check those dates and make sure you renew before the photo cards expires.

I don’t use the service much, but have been following one or two Twitterers recently (Tour de France for example ) and it seems that it may be running out of capacity!

Not very good for something that is said to be the biggest thing since….

Today is the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, it was a great achievement considering the technology in use at the time and when you think that the average PDA/iPhone today probably has more computing power than they had on Apollo 11.

It’s one of those events you don’t forget it or where you were at the time, for me that was sitting on board HMS Devonshire in a dry dock in Portsmouth naval dockyard under going a small refit. What a bore.

At least the TV’s were working, if nothing else and if I remember correctly, quite a few of us stayed up to watch it live.

What a fantastic event, it’s just a pity that they did not them plan to go further afield, Mars? But I suppose that will come in time.

So the secret is out of the bag, the Labour Government is proposing Tony Blair as its candidate for the first EU Council/Commission President. So says Glenys Kinnock, you know that unelected Minister of Europe that was given this important position without as much as a nod to the UK electorate.

Also in case you thought that you would have a say in who is to be the first EU Council/Commission president, well you won’t! In the end the final decision will be made by a number of EU commission heads.

What is strange to me is that this position, still undefined by the EU is largely ceremonial as the European Parliament – which we all voted in recently has already elected its own President  European Parliament, former Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek.

So if the Lisbon treaty is ratified and it’s a big if and the EU Council/Commission does elect its first President, then we will then have two EUI presidents, one elected and one not!

No wonder people are confused about the whole aspect of the EU.

Cutting his political teeth as a shop steward at Jaguar in the 70’s and later as a branch organiser for the MSF (now the Unite) union and even being a candidate member of the International Marxist Group, he seems to be a strange choice by Gordon Brown to be running our Armed Services. Perhaps he can organise a ballot to end the bloodshed!

He gives me no confidence at all that he can help with the equipment situation, but I suppose he has his hands tied by the likes of Brown and Darling as per the previous incumbents.  I wonder when we will have someone who knows a bit about the military in that position?

Here is some interesting voting information about Bob Ainsworth.

• Voted strongly against a transparent Parliament. votes, speeches

No wonder when he came joint top of the list of people claiming second home allowance!

• Voted very strongly for introducing ID cards. votes, speeches

• Voted strongly for introducing student top-up fees. votes, speeches

• Voted very strongly for the Iraq war. votes, speeches

• Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war. votes, speeches

• Voted very strongly for replacing Trident. votes, speeches

Taken from the They Work for You web site page for Bob Ainsworth.

Lets hope that they get the helicopter situation sorted out as soon as possible and we see a reduction in deaths caused by these IAD’s.

I watched Andy Burnham’s statement in the House of Commons this afternoon as he set out the Governments Green Paper on a national care service for the elderly.

I might be confused here, but don’t we all contribute to the NHS and its related services through our taxes already and isn’t the care of the population one of the remits of the NHS?

Perhaps, if the government was better focused on not wasting so much of our tax money, there might be enough to start building up reserves to begin to cover this need.

For once I was impressed by the comments made by Andrew Lansley, the shadow spokesman. He quite rightly chastised the government for not doing enough to begin solving this problem when they came to power 12 years ago – see the full debate here.

I think I’ve paid as much tax as I possible can over my lifetime, but it looks like even what I have saved won’t be enough to cover any extra care that I might need in later life. It will be interesting to see what comes out in future discussions, as with an impending election, the political parties all begin to offer promise after promise to get our vote.

What a very moving day it has been for the people of Wootton Bassett and those of us that managed to witness the repatriation of the 8 recently deceased solders.

What a sad sight to see those 8 hearses as they travelled from RAF Lyneham through Wootton Bassett up to Oxford.

It’s obvious from what is going on in Afghanistan, that this will not be the last time we see such sights, but lets hope there are not so many at once  next time.

Finally, its staggering to me that not a single politician bothered to turn up to this or any of the other repatriations that have taken place in the previous years, seems that it only adds credence to the statement that they seem not to care what is happening to our service personal.

I can across this list of fatalities that the BBC has put together, staggering how many have died, all the more poignant when you see all the images of the people that have died.

• Afghanistan Fatalities List

• Iraq Fatalities List

I wonder how many more will be added to this list in the coming days and months?