Category: Uncategorized

Read this article with interest, it raises some interesting questions about where the UK is going and why we have ended up in such a bad situation.

It seems we have lost control over many things that are influencing what is happen to the UK, even house prices according to HBOS chief Andy Hornby won’t get back to normal until the US house prices start going up.

Whilst I understand the global finance world that we now live in, why can’t we solve our own house price problems. Perhaps we still have too many greedy bankers in the UK that thought that buying cheap paper debt was a quick way of making money – which I am sure many did – and we of course are now learning to our costs, that it was an idiotic pipe dream.

I am not strong on Isolationism, but I think the UK needs to start to look inwards and solve some of our dependencies on outside influences (Gas and Electricity suppliers would a place to start) or we are going to end up being an even weaker country than I think we are already in danger of becoming.

How reality TV became the real world!

Child snoopers in a street near you!

George Orwell would be proud!

That is, for what is turning out to be one of the most incompetent governments that this country has had in recent years. It seems that not a single member of the government is in charge of anything as yet another set of confidential data is lost by another bungling contractor!

When is someone going to go to prison for what only seem to me to an ever increasing amount of incompetence and when is someone in the government going take some accountability and responsibility for these data losses?

Whilst I understand that it’s the contractors/unskilled staff that are making these errors, at the end of the day it is the government that must take full responsibility.

However, as most of the Government Ministers will have their can’t be prosecuted contracts so tightly written, I suppose that there is no prospect of anyone really being taken to task for this latest debacle. I for one will be glad to see the back on them, but of course can any government get back to the days of protecting our sensitive data?

So the BBC has finally woken up to the fact that some food prices have gone up by nearly 40% over the past months. I sometimes wonder why they seem to be so slow at delivering up to date news.

The roles in our house have some what reversed and I  now do the majority of the shopping, prices have not just gone up! They have been going up for years.

For example last year a 1kg bag of UK new potatoes cost £1.00 in ASDA, this year the cost went up to £1.30! That’s a 30% increase. I could go on and on about how expensive it is in the UK, the same amount of potatoes at a small market in southern France in the summer cost me the equivalent of 59 pence!

I’m all for the free market, but somewhere in the UK there are a minority making a lot of money off the back of the high prices that UK residents have to pay for food.

On the other side of the coin, I should not really complain too much, as I am not in the same position as the starving of this world, when I live in a society that throws away such huge amounts of good food and we flush our toilets with cleaner water than many of the worlds poor have to drink on a daily basis.

I was reading through some of the massive coverage of the US Republicans choice for their VP spot in the US elections and came across this story.

I am not generally a follower of the conspiracy theories that abound the Internet today, but if only half of this story is true, then it really calls into question Palin’s judgment when under pressure and John McCain’s vetting process for the VP position.

That said, she does have some interesting points to make ( I wonder what she thinks of China’s enforced one child per family policy) and as a Washington outsider (is this a female slant on Mr Smith goes to Washington?), she might be able to make some changes; though as the VP, like many before her, she will be some what side-lined. That is, except in the case of Dick Cheney where the roles were reversed and he was the  ‘puppet master’ of George Bush.

Time will tell as they say, I sure that the US media/Blogosphere will have a field day as they try to destroy yet another emerging political figure.

Another good month with no drop outs, but a bit of an overall slow down in transfer speed, I suspect that they may have been working in the exchange again or had some cable changes between my location and the exchange.

A bit of drop in the monthly averages to 4.41Mb download speed and 372Kb for upload speeds.

Also found some new information about ADSL from a revamped Kitz web site including some very interesting diagrams that explains the background to how Broadband/Internet is all connected together, fascinating.

So the final contest has begun for the USA elections. It still amazes me just how much religion has a say in the USA elections.

Whilst I would agree that the USA is a much more religious country than the UK, I wonder at the wisdom of the closeness of religion and politics.

Here’s an article (along with another of Times great demographic images – I wish I could find similar ones for the UK) from a recent Time magazine that I read about how the USA’s Catholics are up for grabs!

I wonder how long it will be before we see such targeted voter analysis here in the UK, that is if we have not already begun that process.

I was in London a couple of weeks ago and fell right into one of the well known take the Tube vs Walking traps. I was around the corner visiting someone near to Westbourne close and has to meet someone else at Queensway tube station.

Being a bit late I rushed down to Bayswater tube station and spent fifteen minutes on the tube to get to Queensway where I meet up with my contact.

So what I hear you say! It’s not what I said when I came out of  Queensway tube station  and remembered that the Bayswater tube station is just 250 meters up the road from Queensway tube station!

Suddenly I remembered an article I found on the web a few months ago about this and a number of other oddities about the tube.

Here’s a few more…

• Tube Map with Walk Lines
• The London Underground diagrams
• Tube map variations
• How do you say it?

With the latest cock-up over lost data, even the company that is at the forefront of the Government ID Card scheme can’t seem to employ the right sort of people to look after its own involvement in the project.

Surly this must be the final straw, if PA Consulting can’t keep content under guard, then who can we really trust any more?

Some more background info for my ISP figures.

Seems I forgot to post the June figures, another good month with only one glitch when for some reason the exchange went off-line!

But apart from that I saw a steady increase in the speed with averages being 4.29mb download speed and 366 kb upload speed.

July saw a steadying of the  download speed with near perfect close to 5MB with no drop outs at all.  Averages for July were 4.8 mb download, the best averages I have ever had and 377 kb upload speeds.

Plus this month BT reduced my price under a new monthly option 3 price, for me this is now very good value for money.

I saw report this morning that quotes average speeds across the UK, it seems that I may be at the top end of this – though my speed today is down to 4.1mb! Anyway, here is the link to the speed table.