Author: Mike

With the Cyclone death toll now passing the 22,000 mark and another 41,000 reported missing, it seems that Burma’s suffering will only increase in the coming weeks. At least Burma’s Military leaders have agreed that the UN can start delivering aid, albeit only one plane for now.

However, I was appalled to hear on yesterdays Jeremy Vine BBC talk show at least two phone-in callers saying that we (the UK) should not be sending any aid to Burma and that charity should begin at home! I wonder how these sorts of people sleep at night, they clearly have no humanity and I would hate to end up depending on them for any kind assistance in an emergency.

Perhaps these sorts of people have never needed help themselves and from the smug comfort of their own surroundings have no idea what sort of suffering the Burmese people are going through at the moment.

Perhaps a catastrophe in their own back yard might wake them up!

As the USA government continues to subsidise its farmers to the tune of 51 cents per US gallon of Ethanol to divert corn production away from food and animal feed to domestic fuel production – for the USA SUV’s of course, is it any wonder that we have seen the immense hikes in the price of basic food such as Rice and Pasta over the past few weeks.

This completely stupid action, seemingly to be followed by a number of other world governments has not only resulted in additional food price increases but also food shortages and even riots [1], [2] around the whole world.

I came across this short article on the subject which certainly sums all that is wrong with our love affair with the motor car and our gives some interesting  suggestions to solves what could turn out to be an unstoppable le problem.

I for one would rather have food to eat at reasonable prices than worrying about where my next gallon of fuel is coming from!

This must be what a number of employees of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) must have thought as they freely trawled through many peoples personal tax records over the past few years.

According to a written answer parliament by Treasury Minister Jane Kennedy, it has shown that 192 HMRC staff had been disciplined last year (2007), 180 in 2006 and 238 in 2005 for unauthorised access of tax records.

It seems that not only have Senior Managers at the HMRC been presiding over incompetent staff that lost all those child benefit records, but they now seem to have been incapable of managing their staff  to ensure that mine and your tax records remain private and only accessible by those that are officially dealing directly with individuals’ tax records.

Another good example of this governments cavalier attitude to data security has come to light. I wonder how much longer they will insist on the ID Cards and other hopelessly insecure data projects.

I was clearing out some old papers over the weekend I came across some invoices for one of my old PC’s. I used to build them, but now its cheaper to buy them fully built (or is it?).

Compared with today’s prices we really had an expensive hobby!!

For example…

• 64 MB RAM cost £57.00!

• Toshiba CDROM (40x) cost £36.00!

• Seagate ST310230A 10.2GB disc drive cost £129.00!

What a difference nearly 10 years make, today you can get…

• 2 GB RAM for my Dell – £29.20 (inc VAT) from Crucial Memory

• Samsung CD-ROM (52 x) – £11.50 (inc VAT) from DAB.Com

• Seagate ST3160215A 160GB disc drive –  £31.,72 (inc VAT) from DAB.Com

Things have never been cheaper for budding PC builders, maybe I’ll have another go again for my next one?

I found this oddity in one of my LA Times newsletters over the weekend.

The oldest running light bulb in the world is located at Fire Station No. 6 in Livermore, California, it has apparently been burning since 1901!

With its own entry in the Guinness Book of World records and a dedicated web site I wonder how much longer it’s going to carry on shining!

It seems that McCarthyism is controlling who gets jobs in California.

After Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching  the Protection of  Constitutional freedoms. However, the day before class was to begin, her employment was cancelled all because she did not sign a loyalty oath swearing to “defend” the U.S. and California constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

As a Quaker (non-violence) she objected to the loyalty as an infringement of her rights of free speech and religious freedom.

This method of detection was something that was used during the McCarthy witch hunts for communist, now it seems to be aimed at all walks of life.

Now it seems that although it is still is the land of the free, unless you’re willing to sign a loyalty oath, you won’t have the freedom to work anywhere you want.

Well it seems that its nearly official, Mugabe has lost the election! But it seems that the guy is not going to give up without further interference in the electoral system.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has leaked information that shows that  Morgan Tsvangirai won 47 per cent of the vote against President Mugabe’s 43 per cent, but it is conveniently below the required  50 per cent  needed for an outright victory. So 47+43 = 90.

I wonder where the other 10 per cent of votes have disappeared to, so as to reduce Morgan Tsvangirai ability to get past the 50 percent margin? Straight into the pockets of Mugabe’s party thugs who have acted a voting officials in some of the polling stations I wouldn’t wonder!

It seems that a last minute struggle is still to take place in Zimbabwe to finally get rid of Mugabe, unless of course he manages to rally his supporters and the military for one last grab at power.

Of course he could capitulate and run off to his hidden coffers of money and seek asylum in a friendly country. It will be interesting to see which one that will be (China, France, Switzerland) and clearly an indication of what outside help he has received to stay in power all this time.

What is going on in India?

It seems that the mother of  Scarlett Keeling has been told by the Goa Medical College and Hospital that she will have to pay a substantial repatriation fee to have her daughters illegally removed internal organs returned to her!

I wonder if this is a hospital fee or something more personal?

Clearly, India is now not a very pleasant place to die if as I suspect, many bodies are having their organs removed to be sold on their illegal pink market!

Someone in India is making money from the dead!

Another interesting motoring tax came to light this week, and thank goodness it won’t affect me.

My car is a 10 year old Vauxhall Omega Estate and luckily it will escape the newly announced tax increases for cars with high carbon dioxide emissions.

Last time I looked, my car was worth around £750.00. It seems to pass its MOT every year with little fuss and with 150,000 miles on the clock and only standard excise tax to pay, it seems that I’ve still got a bargain car. It may even go up in value!

Like many people this morning I woke up to the news that our ever so open Labour Government have been secretly building 150 Bail Hostels across England – of course they would never dare build them in their Scottish heartland!

The Bail Hostels are to be run by private company ClearSprings Management Ltd,  under an outsourcing contract.

A list of potential locations can be found here, but its only a list of counties and cities, not exact geographic locations so we still don’t know how close one is to where we all actually live! So how do we find this out?

I know that these facilities need to be built and many Nimby‘s will be dead set against them, but I think by conducting the whole project in secret is only going to make matters worse.

More info on this subject…

• Hostels in Burnley and Nelson

• Western Super Mare is to get one

• Another report

  Technorati Tags: Government Spending, Secrecy, Hostels