May 2008 Archives

Every now and again you come across a site on the old internet that is just brilliant. If you like music of any sort, from Bach to Boyzone and every crotchet inbetween, then check out www.jango.com where you can set up your own internet radio stations, as many as you like, which just play the sort of music you like with no ads or banal chat between tracks.

The site assures us it is all legal and above board so give it a whirl and just click on the link. I have told all my friend(s) about it, which, to be honest, did not take long, and he tried it out, so now it is your turn.

See, I don't moan about everything and I am quite prepared to take on anyone who says I do.

Notice how our MPs are suddenly stamping their feet and screaming blue murder about stealth taxes as they can see their jobs going down the Swanee at the next election? It is not so much conscience as fear of impending unemployment which is driving their protests, methinks.

First there was the 10p tax rate fiasco now we have the fuel duty and road tax debacle. Environment minister Joan Ruddock's cobblers about green taxes and caring for the environment is just a smokescreen. The vast majority of people cannot afford to rush out and buy a new car so they will be forced to pay the higher tax and duty.

The Government not only knows that but is relying on it to pull in increased revenue otherwise there would be no increase in revenue forecast. Slapping a coat of green distemper on it is just a cynical attempt to justify hefty increases that would be political suicide if there was not a econista band waggon to cling on to.

Meanwhile we all know that the extra costs on company vehicles will just be passed on in higher prices to Joe Public who will thus be paying the increased taxes twice.

Of course if the Government is that desperate to balance the books it could always try what the rest of us are being forced to do - namely spend less.

While we are on spending less, might I suggest that Parliament starts with itself. It could build or buy a modest hotel near the Palace of Westminster, or even utilise the athletes' village at the ever more unaffordable London 2012 games, where MPs who have no London home can stay while Parliament is in session.

I accept that MPs work in both Parliament and in their constituencies so I am quite happy to provide accommodation while they are at the commons. But if they have no home in the area they represent, tough. If you apply for and get a job in Southend and live in Stafford then either you commute, rent accommodation near your work or move at your own expense. MPs should do the same.

As for the suggestion that MPs should be given a £23,000 a year tax free lump sum to cover their second home expenses to avoid the messy and demeaning business of having to provide receipts - I wonder what our banana crop will be like this year?

What a shabby, second rate country we are becoming. Is there no depth to which our third rate politicians and their fourth rate officials will not stoop to squeeze an extra few pence out of us?

Did anyone one spot that Joan Bakewell had won a minor court victory over Westminster Council and their parking scheme. It is a scheme which no doubt will soon be rolling out to other areas. Before you can think of parking you need to set up an account with credit or debit card details and then when you come to park you have to call an 0870 number and text in all your details. If you don't have a mobile, or, like many elderly people, can't really use one, tough. The system is attracting interest because it is cheap to run and does not involve parking meters or pay stations and with the level of confusion it can create there must be plenty of scope for fines.

With officialdom's record on confidential data you may as well just put your bank details on the internet and cut out the middle man but that is another story. The real kick in the teeth in this scheme is that the 0870 number you have to call is a premium rate line so you end up paying through the nose just trying to buy your parking time.

Just you wait, now some jobsworth has thought up that little wheeze it will be premium rate lines to any government or council department before we know it. A whole new stealth tax to play with.

Anyone else wonder how Adam Crozier ends up trousering £3 million this year for what has been a pretty dismal performance at Royal Mail. What is wrong with just offering him a salary, take it or leave it, like the people who do the actual work in his crumbling organisation?

Don't tell me you have to pay £3 million to get people of his calibre. The guy seems to know just as much about postal services as he did about football but he probably has some business studies qualification which is all you need in Britain these days. You don't need to know anything about the industry concerned, how to make anything, provide a service or anything useful, just know all the right buzzwords and cut lots of costs.

Royal Mail has lost money for the first time in history, 2,500 post offices are being axed with no consideration as to need or service, there has been a strike, deliveries axed, the time of deliveries has become guesswork and it is a lottery as to when anything posted will be delivered - and we give him a huge performance related bonus payment.

I dread to think how much it would have cost us if he had been any good.

Is it just me or, while we are on recycling, does anyone else wonder how Birmingham City Council manage to sort the wild and wonderful selection in their green boxes?

We chuck in plastic bottles, brown, green, blue, clear and any other colour glass bottles, jars, jar tops, food and drink cans along with aerosols and then the council in turn chuck it in the back of a bin lorry. Which means somewhere at some depot or other it must emerge as a mass of broken glass, plastic bottles and bent metal cans.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a moan, I am just interested. Sorting out ferrous metal could be done fairly easily with a magnet I would suppose but as for the rest? Anyone out there know the answer or have any suggestions? And yes, I know I should get out more.

The Mail has launched its Go Green campaign this week and I must admit I feel a bit like Galileo and his followers back in the 1600s being branded heretics because they tried to tell people the earth was not the centre of the universe as the popular bandwagon of the day claimed.

Don't get me wrong I am not against going green and treating the earth with a little respect. That has been my philosophy all the time that Governments allowed raw sewage to be dumped in the seas, or allowed our rivers to become so polluted the only life they supported was bacteria that lived on the dead and a whole host of other acts of corporate and state vandalism.

The problem is that I don't subscribe to the current global warming bandwagon although I will admit as bandwagons go it has a very small carbon footprint, being driven as it is by smoke and mirrors. Some of the dodgy science backing up even dodgier claims would struggle to get a GCSE in even our Play School level exam system.

I just get the feeling that the pseudo science behind all this is about the same as waking up one morning and finding it is raining and a group of scientists then claiming that if it is the same for the next 40 days and nights then the earth will flood so give them wheelbarrows awash with readies and they will tell you how much it will flood, design an ark, create flood defences and then explain in detail, for a further sum, why the sun came out after three days and we are safe after all until the next time it rains.

Governments lap it up because it is yet another inventive way to raise taxes and takes bureaucracy into Alice in Wonderland territory while industry is happily trading in carbon futures and a whole raft of new companies and consultancies are being set up to estimate, manage, reduce, monitor of whatever else can be thought of to do with carbon footprints. Then there is bio-fuel which, as cons go, rates with the South Sea bubble. That nice little earner is managing to push up food prices, add to starvation and destroy rain forests all at the fill of a petrol tank.

I can't help but think though, that in 50, or 100, or 200 or 1,000 years or whatever the earth will be warmer or colder whatever we happen to do. I supect we make about the same difference as a raindrop in the Pacific but there you go.

But back to Go Green. Not subscribing to the dodgy theories on global warming is not to say that all is well in the world. We do need alternative sources of energy or one day our world will just stop; we do need to recycle more and throw away less and we need to cut down on energy use by, for example, buying locally produced products in season rather than strawberries in February flown halfway around the globe and we need to get back into some sort of balance with nature.

If you think about it every other creature on earth from bacteria and worms to lions and whales live in some sort of balance. They have a purpose in the great scheme of things to justify their existence. The odd creature out is man. We are out of balance with everything else on the earth. As for our purpose . . . you tell me.

After trying to fry bacon and ending up with a watery stew again I have decided to start the Campaign for Real Bacon. We could call it Camrb but that looks a bit silly, so why don't we call it Buttie

I think we can forget the supermarkets in this campaign, they are more than happy charging bacon prices for water - helps keep the record profits rolling in - so it is down to independent shops. If you know of any let us all know and we will build up the definitive bacon directory.

To start you off if anyone is heading off to Cornwall for their holidays or even a weekend away and is passing west through Camelford there is an old fashioned butchers on the left at the bottom of the hill who sells bacon like it used to be before someone discovered how to pack it with water. Well worth stopping off for and the rest of their meat is pretty good as well.

Nokia have finally sent me a new batter cover for my Nokia N95 so may their camels prosper in the desert.
For new readers the lugs on the battery cover on my phone broke and Carphone Warehouse wanted a mere £45 for a new cover - a bit of plastic half the size of a credit card.- works out about £15 a square inch.
I asked Nokia how much a new one should be. They could not tell me but said they would send a replacement about a month ago and it has finally arrived.

So Sainsbury's chief executive Justin King reckons food price inflation is running at two per cent in his stores. He must shop in a different set of aisles to the rest of us then. Mind you Government figures are predicting the consumer price index could hit as high as, steady yourself for this one, 3.7 per cent this year. If only. Whatever planet our captains of industry and politicians are on they obviously never do any shopping on it.

Anyone noticed how drivers of these 4x4 Tonka trucks whose only excursion off road is the car park at Sainsbury's seem to be incapable of actually driving them.

Maybe they are sitting too high up or the ridiculous vehicles are just too big to allow anyone to see white lines but the people perched behind the wheel really do struggle to park them. Some clown in a monster affair with personalised number plates parked next to me while I was in the gym today (first one to laugh will find there is a contract out on them) leaving a gap of less than an inch between the passenger side of their posh bread van and my wing mirror.

There was not even enough room to open my door and slam it satisfyingly into expensive, gleaming paintwork to squeeze in so I was left scrambling in from the passenger side and climbing over to the driver's seat.

My mood had not helped by being almost forced off the road on my way to the gym by a BMW 4x4 driver, who either had a sore ear or was on his mobile, who seemed to think the white line in the midde of the road was a guide track, something like Scalextric. Perhaps the time has come when these giants are taxed not as cars but as something more substantial, like, say an artic - £1,850 a year would seem fair.