Category: Uncategorized

Been away from blogging for quite a while, but running through stuff that I had set aside for future blogging was this interesting post from the Art of Manliness!

It asks as question about why so few men today wear hats? Of course volumes have been written about that teenage scourge, the Hoodie! But what about real hats?

My Uncle Sidney had three hats that I remember, the  traditional Flat cap for every day use, he ran a country village garage from the 1930’s till the end of the 70’s and used to wear one for his general work around the garage and a cleaner one for when he used to go to see his suppliers in Derby and Nottingham.

He also had a nice bowler, which always came out for weddings & funerals, he ran a local taxi/hire service with his Austin Cambridge  and a Wolseley 65,  he was also used to wear it to his local monthly council meetings.

My father-in-law was a long time Trilby wearer, my Grandfather was another Flat Cap wearer. So what has happened to modern man and their hats?.

I must admit (must I?) that I had to wear a hat whilst in the Royal Navy, but after leaving the service I would say that apart from a golf cap – too keep the sun and rain off the eyes and glasses, I’ve never had the inkling to wear a cap on a daily basis much like the rest of UK men.

So take a look at this article and decide if it really is time for the ‘man hat’ to make a comeback.

Here’s some information from AA RoadWatch, Ireland. This list is for February, visit their site for updated figures for May.

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Quite rightly the flight deck crew of the British Airways flight that crash landed at London’s Heathrow airport in January have been hailed as heroes again.

However I am very surprised that there is still no public announcement on what the reason for the crash was – it has been nearly six months after all.

It seems that a final report will be released after a more extensive enquiry has been completed.

If the past five months has not been led by an extensive enquiry, then I wonder what the enquiry team have been doing?

It does not send out a very good indication of confidence in the aircraft (a Boeing 777) if the enquiry team are still not able to at least give some indications as to what the cause of the crash was.

Perhaps there is some information that the investigators know about, but don’t want the UK public to know about.

Perhaps we’ll never know what caused this crash. It certainly does not give me full confidence about the safety of the 777 or BA’s ability to fly it.

Seems that I’ve had a steady month connected to the Internet with an average of 3.82 Mb download and 385Kb upload.

Still no where near the advertised up to 8Mb, but much better than many broadband users across the UK.

Lets hope with the new investment in the BT infrastructure we can see better performance figure in May.

I am again staggered!

For the past few years this Labour Government has insisted on:

• Monitoring every moment of mine through the use of CCTV throughout the UK.

• Tracking my movements across the UK by monitoring my cars registration number plate and supplying that information (without my consent) to overseas intelligent agencies.

• Stopping me from taking legitimate photographs at Paddington station and Trafalgar Square in the name of security.

• Loosing my personal data through various ‘cock-ups’ of lost discs, records etc.

But thank goodness they are able to accurately track down every potential terrorist and stop them from causing further atrocities here in the UK. That is of course, unless you have a secure job working air-side at the UK’s airports!

Well done Newsnight for discovering yet another Government farce.  As well as capping it all by seeing the unbelievable and incompetent responses from Jim Fitzpatrick – another Labour Scot running the UK – who only seemed to be competent  in digging an ever deepening hole!

Still, at least we know we are safe in hands of Stephen Boys Smith, I’m sure his report is going to make us all feel more secure!

What a complete an utter disgrace this government is!

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!