Author: Mike

I had a failure of one of the new Energy Saving Lamps last week, only two weeks after buying it!!!

Not a good start to using these, as I understood that they were supposed to last for quite a few years!

Clearly, after I try and get my money back, it is going to have to be disposed of. I have heard so many different things about these lamps, thought I would look into what was really needed.

Here’s what DEFRA says about Energy Saving Lamps. A note from Which Magazine also has some advice about them as well. Although there have been some dire warnings [1], [2], about Energy Saving Lamps and how they themselves might affect the environment!.

It makes you wonder if it’s really worth it?

Seems that the furore over Thatcher has resulted in her being sacked from the One Show, but not from the BBC as I first understood.

Quite a bit was written about the subject, but I came across these comments which discuss the wider aspects of the affect that these sort of comments can have on various people.

Another good month with a steady increase in download speeds.

Well done to whoever maintains the Reading South exchange as no drops out at all this last month.

I hope that when we get to the Governments Digital nirvana in 2012, my speeds don’t take a backwards step to 2 MB!

I reran the BT Speed Test in January as well as my others.

I sometimes find that this in mostly off-line but was very pleased to find that it was on line and gave a very good report for my location.

Lets hope it continues.

I work from home for my business, so was not greatly affected by the weather this last week and luckily,  have a very good broadband connection through BT which on average keeps up around the 4.5MB mark, though I would like to have a better upload speed.

So it was with some interest that I read the coverage of Lord Carters Broadband for Britain plans and the various reactions to them. Seems to be very big on ambition and to my amazement still only talking about getting a minimum of 2MB’s (that is download only of course) to most users across the UK sometime in the next five years. What is strange about this is that the majority of UK broadband users already have an average speed above this. Maybe it was a printing error and it should have read 12 MB!!!

We will have to wait and see what technology is going to be used to deliver this to users, there is still a lot of talk about fibre, but as that is really unreasonable for every user, it really is about what will be used for that last ‘mile’ to the house.

Sure many companies will be able to offer fibre right to your door! But the majority will either have to continue to use their current copper lines or as has been suggested a local Wifi hub broadcasting from local fibre driven hub!

I still think that Ofcom need to tackle the miss-selling of broadband speeds, I still find it hard to believe that non of the ISP’s have been prosecuted for misleading adverts with regards to the ‘up-to-8Megs’ claims.

Still, if Ofcom is as weak as the other so called watch dogs (the FSA is a another good example), is it any wonder?

Some articles that I found during the week worth reading were:

• Computer Weekly Comments
• Planning Digital Britain
• Broadband: Who needs two megs!
• Sam Knows, you know!

According to news reports tonight, Carol Thatcher has been banned by the BBC.

Coming on the back of the Jonathan Ross suspension for bad behaviour, Thatcher is accused of using a racist comment when describing the hairstyle of a Tennis player. Perhaps she should have chosen her words more carefully perhaps using Afro as a more acceptable alternative.

I would not use the word that she used myself as it is an offensive comment, however what is strange is that the comment was made in an unrecorded private conversation with One Show host Adrian Childes and Comedienne Jo Brand in one of the BBC Green Rooms after one of last weeks nightly shows, unlike the Jonathan Ross comments, which was broadcast to some six million listeners!

It now appears that Adrian Childes and/or Jo Brand reported her to BBC managers and it has resulted in her being banned from the BBC!

Yes, Thatcher should not have made the comments (and has since apologised); however, I bet anyone that works with either Childes or Brand will now be watching their P’s and Q’s.

It’s very dangerous when people who themselves are not above making mistakes, suddenly adopt a higher moral tone. I think both of them will come to regret how they ran and told tales to teacher!

Amazing changeable weather we’re having at the moment, I wondered if I should start to think about what plants I wanted to grow in the garden this year and then out of of the East, blew the cold wind chilling away any ideas of that plan for the time being.

Again, Southern England is paralysed by a snowstorm, granted there were some exceptional circumstances in certain parts of the region. But why has Wokingham district closed all of its schools for the second day on the trot with less than 3 inches of snow on the ground!

I’m not going to go down that old route of ‘when I lived in a shoe box’  but for heavens sake, England has become a nation of incompetents.

How is it, as we saw in a TV news story, London bus drivers playing with snowballs in the street, yet their buses sat idly by in their garage as people struggled to work without any buses to use. Could they not have grabbed some shovels/brushes and cleared the snow so that the buses could be got out of the their garage? Is it because their union would not let them do this? I bet it was.

What about the TV news story that showed rail commuters falling down Waterloo station steps due to ice on them. Why had station staff not been out there and cleared the steps of snow and ice. Was it because their union would not let them do this? I bet it was.

It seems to me that a combination of over enthusiastic Health & Safety interference, combined with absolutely bad management/union interference, a seemingly lazy approach to care/responsibility and a growing incompetence has led us into this laughable situation.

I still have grave doubts that his country thinks it can host the 2012 Olympics successfully. If union lead strikes don’t bring the transport system to a halt, it could be another summer heat wave of 30 degrees that causes us all to stay at home with schools shut and public transport operators demanding personal air-conditioning units for their staff from public funds.

What a mess we are in!

I’ve started watching the second series of Dexter on ITV4, not sure why I missed series one, but there you go!

One thing that has struck me is the intro music. I knew that I had heard something like this before, but where?

The it clicked… The Ipcress File! that great Michael Caine – Harry Palmer classic film of the 60’s with music by John Barry.

Maybe its me, but the music is very close! Listen for yourself.

The Ipcress File…

What do you think?

It seems that the after all the fuss made by the Government and its Three Line Whip to keep MP’s expenses that they have lost!

Congratulations to MySociety who lead the online ‘revolt’.  Here’s their message…

“Blimey. It looks like the Internet’s won – a message from TheyWorkForYou

On the 16th of May 2008 the High Court ruled that MPs’ expenses must be published under the Freedom of Information Act.

Last Thursday, MPs were going to vote on changing the law to keep their expenses secret after all, just before publication was due and after spending nearly a million of your pounds and seven months compiling the data.

However, after a tremendous response from you, with over 7,000 members on our Facebook group, 4,000 messages sent to MPs, help from Stephen Fry, and a helpful 4th Report of the House of Lords Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, it appears that the vote has been cancelled – Guardian, Times, BBC.

As President Obama said in his inauguration speech: “And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

mySociety is a non-partisan, non-profit. If you like our services and are pleased with how the campaign went this week, please read our pledge and support us.”

Read more on MySociety’s Victory Blog Post here.

I’ve been working my way through a really good book over the Christmas/ New Year break, Gulag – A History by Anne Applebaum. It’s not a new book, but one that I have had on the shelf for some time.

A fascinating read and full of amazing facts. Whilst the Holocaust remains rightly in our minds for the atrocity that it was; the numbers of people from many ethnic backgrounds that Joseph Stalin had sent through the Gulag system is staggering!

While many were not directly murdered upon their arrival at the camps unlike the Jews; many simply died of cold, starvation, overwork and abuse in a regime that few managed to escape from.

I seems that final figure of those who died will always be hard to determine, estimates run from from 2 million to 3 million. But surely as many ethnic (from Jew’s to Tartars) groups faced mass incarceration and probable death, it’s another aspect of the 20th Century that should not be forgotten.

As with many books I read these days, I can’t stop going to the Internet to check or look for extra facts, here’s some that I found about this terrible story.

• Forced Labour Camps

• The Soviet Gulag Era in Pictures – 1927 through 1953

• Alexander Solzhenitsyn, voice of the Gulag

• Gulag – A Wikipedia Article

• The Holocaust – A Wikipedia Article

• A Holocaust History Project

  Technorati Tags: Gulag, Labour Camps, Holocaust

On the 16th of May 2008 the High Court ruled that MPs’ expenses must be published under the Freedom of Information Act.

This Thursday(21st January), MPs’ are voting to change the law to keep their expenses secret after all, just before publication was due and after spending nearly a million of your pounds and seven months compiling the data.

Your MP may not even know about this proposal (it was sneaked out under the Heathrow runway announcement). Please take a few minutes to alert them to this attack on Parliamentary transparency and ask them to vote against the measure.

The outcome of this vote will be prominently displayed on every MP’s page until after the next General Election.

See some previous information here.

What an cheating and underhand way these MPs’ have behaved.

What can you do?

* Write to your MP to protest:
http://foiorder2009.writetothem.com/

* Join this Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=50061011231

* Blog about it, call a local newspaper – our unfinished site
http://news.mysociety.org/ might help; text, email, and instant
  message your friends to let them know that about this campaign.

Read more detail about mySociety’s thoughts on this issue.
http://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/17/6-days-to-stop-mps-concealing-their-expenses/