BTN_Bertie

New Year's Dis-honour!

2012-01-20T14:43:00.000-08:00

Hey, maybe someone important has read my earlier blog on this subject, as there is a very good chance that an honour is going to be rescinded.

Just goes to prove that my statement that NO ONE should get an honour that is related in any way to the job they do was a valid point. It is about time the rules are permanently changed before the whole credibility of the honours system is confined to the rubbish bin - that's if it's not there already in the minds of many.

Are we still being ripped off?

2012-01-20T14:36:00.000-08:00

You bet your life we are!

The World Bank has dropped its forecast for growth for the year to come from 3.4% to 2.5% and the United Nations and many of the financial papers are predicting, or raising the likelihood, of another world-wide recession. The market analysts predict a significant drop in the price of oil and other commodities, including foodstuffs, during the course of 2012 but whilst this may be good news for the individual consumer it will do nothing towards improving the growth figures, the only thing that can get us all out of the mess we are in.

So why are we still being ripped off? Simple!, because someones still making pots of money and if its not agriculture, commodities or industry it must still be the financial institutions!

But how do I know? Also simple, Rolls Royce are reporting sales figures up 40% and Bentley are up 30%, so someones got lots of money to spend on stuff that one does not really need, who else could it be?

New Version of Windows!

2012-01-11T02:35:00.000-08:00

Blimey, the paint is hardly dry on the last one. I am thinking of going back to a typewriter, they last for over 50 years, don't use electricity and don't need a new version every ten minutes.

Come on Microsoft how about supporting the software that you have already released and issue an upgrade not continuous new versions. Who is going to buy a new version, all the businesses are skint and the public are turning to iPads and Mobiles?

We upgrade our computers last year it will be a little while - YEARS - before we do it again!

New Year's Honours!

2011-12-31T06:39:00.000-08:00

Another year gone and another list of people who have received one of the New Year's Honours. Good to see a number of people in the list who actually deserve an honour either for bravery or for doing somehing that they did not get paid to do but there are still far to many people in the list that have got an honour for doing what they got paid to do. I am waiting for the list of people who have to give back their pay for not doing their job properly, you know all those responsible for the fancial collapse or for the enourmous uncontrolled overspends of public budgets like the Ministry of Defence or the NHS.

One should not get an honour for doing ANYTHING that is related to the job one is supposed to do. I will not name names but if you read through the list you can pick them out yourself. They should be ashamed to accept the award and be listed with those who really do deserve them.

No politician, either from the House of Lords or the other place, should have got an award considering the bloody mess they have got the country and the economy into and unless the business of a 'captain of industry' has increased it's contribution to the exports of the country AND at the same time increased the number of UK citizens that it employs AND reduced its carbon footprint, then they should not get one either! It's no good being good at some minor issue and completely useless at the rest and THEY ARE USELESS OTHERWISE WE WOULD NOT BE BROKE!

We've been framed!

2011-12-24T13:41:00.000-08:00

I have just been watching a re-run of a Christmas episode of 'You've been framed' on the Telly and had a few mild chuckles at some unfortunate folks suffering from collapsing dining tables, collapsing chairs, Christmas trees that fall over at the slightest touch, crap that comes out of crackers and the inevitable junk present that some distant aunt, uncle or cousin bought. And then it struck me!

The stuff that we get sold is mostly low quality rubbish, a collapsing dining table isn't funny it's pathetic, so are chairs that can't take the weight of an average adult. A Christmas tree that falls over when you put decorations on it is as much use as a chocolate teapot. Why do we put up with this junk. No wonder the British economy is going down the drain all we make or sell is crap.

There are laws that state that an object has to be fit for the purpose for which it is sold, so if your table or chair collapses, or your Christmas tree won't stand up, once you've sent the DVD to 'You've been framed' for your £250 ring the Trading Standards Service and get them to get the rest of your money back too.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Card Charges

2011-12-23T06:51:00.000-08:00

The years go by and still the government does not act against totally unfair credit and debit card charges. It is going to take another year whilst they "consult"! Consult who? If they consult the public they will not find one person who agrees with the charges so once again they, the government, are going to do what commerce wants and not what the people want.

I don't have a problem with credit card charges BUT they should be built in to the advertised price of the goods or services and NOT added on at the end of a transaction. That way we can determine who is offering the best deal and vote with our wallet or purse.

With regard to Debit Card charges they should not be allowed at all especially if the government has any intention of getting rid of cheques or perhaps even cash at some point in the future. Why on earth should be have to pay, what we were told when Debit Cards were issued, was electronic cash!

Oh, yes! I bet all that happens anyway is that the companies who charge us for giving them money just change the name of what they are doing to something like "Booking Fee" or some other title that allows them to get around not calling it a "Credit Card Charge" and once again escape the new legislation when ever it arrives - if ever.

Higher Unemployment

2011-11-16T09:38:00.000-08:00

Very depressing statistics out today show the unemployment figures have increased again with the Government blaming the poor results on the Eurozone problems. What rubbish!

The current situation is due to what was happening in the economy 6 to 12 months ago not as a result of what is happening now. The awful thing is that with other current economic indicators also showing sluggish, if not zero, growth then the unemployment figures are set to get a lot worse in 6 months time when the Eurozone effect does actually start to influence them.

The Government has to take action to help the million plus young people get some kind of employment and they need to do it now. This mess will not go away for quite a while, probably years, and it is totally unacceptable for youngsters to be dumped on the scrap heap for that length of time.

What can be done? Well, here's a few ideas;

1) Give employers PAYE credits for employing school/college/university leavers.
2) Remove employers NIC contributions on new employees under 21's
3) Give employers grants to take on apprentices.
4) Allow the unemployed to take up short term unpaid secondment to businesses where they are still paid Job Seekers Allowance but don't need to sign on during the secondment. This will allow them to get the experience required to get a proper paid position.

Listening to young people talk about the difficulty getting a job the most common problem is that they don't have the experience required. This is a growing issue and needs some "out of the box" thinking to permanently resolve. Perhaps all education leavers should go on secondment for 'x' months after finishing education. A permanent system, jointly funded by employers and the government, should be set up to provide a route to experience where every employer over a certain size must offer young persons secondment positions.

Nothing on TV!

2011-11-15T13:02:00.000-08:00

They, whom ever they are!, warned us that once we got multiple TV channels that the quality of the programs would deteriorate. Well, perhaps the quality has not deteriorated as badly as we imagined because all we get to see are the better (or sometimes the worst) programs that were produced years ago. It's repeat after repeat and then they, the TV companies, throw in "The Best of ..." or "Highlights from ..." or "Revisiting ...". What crap that's just another word for REPEAT. Do they think were all stupid?

Poor programming is blamed on low advertising revenues supposedly due to the recession but more likely due to there being too many channels chasing to few advertisers, with new mobile technologies available there are far better ways for advertisers to get their products to the people than using expensive TV adverts.

However the TV companies don't help themselves; putting adverts 5 or 10 minutes before the end of a film or other program does not make me sit and watch the boring adverts as they show for so long I have time to go and put the kettle on AND visit the loo AND get back to see the last 2 minutes of the real program and I imagine the rest of the country is doing likewise. If per chance there is an excellent program being shown and adverts disturb my enjoyment of it I make a point NOT to buy any of the advertised products, I don't complain to the TV company I just vote with my wallet. Given that TV advertising revenues are constantly falling, and set to fall even more, perhaps others including the advertisers have figured out that bad timing of adverts just antagonises the potential customers and it is a poor way to sell products and services.

Whilst I am spouting off I will not just blame the TV companies, the adverts themselves don't help the advertisers either - WHY DOES THE VOLUME (SOUND LEVEL) GO UP DURING THE AD BREAK - It just makes me turn the sound off completely! - ADVERTISERS DO YOU HEAR ME?

WE TURN THE SOUND OFF!

Another AD type that is laughable are those that are obviously recorded in a foreign language and then over-dubbed. There is a current car advert featuring what is supposed to be an English couple in their new offering but if they are in Britain then they are driving on the wrong side of the road! My view is that if you are trying to tempt me to buy your product at least make an effort to appeal to me in my own language and film it in my country or perhaps it's not really an advert you are making but a feeble attempt to produce an out-take for Harry's TV Burp.

COOKERY PROGRAMS

The problem with showing cookery programmes that were filmed last year, or perhaps even earlier, is that they did not reckon on few being able to afford to "put it a slow oven for FOUR HOURS!" - Do you own an electricity generating station or a gas pipeline from Norway too?

And what about your larder - what larder! TV chefs are cooking in kitchens twice the size of most folks houses, using gadgets and gizmo's that few people have room for today.

There is a great need to get back to basics, you don't need all that crap to cook. you don't even need scales (an old fashioned gadget used to weight things), just buy an old cook book from a charity shop as it is likely to use measures like "one and a half a cup of flour" or "a teaspoon full or baking powder" or perhaps even a "pinch of salt". I even saw one gadget that has different size spoons on it to measure a full spoon, a half-spoon and a quarter-spoon! I bet the person who thought that one up could sell sand to Egypt. What idiot needs a gadget other than a teaspoon to measure "half "of one!

Why not make cookery programs using a kitchen space the size of a normal domestic kitchen, with equipment and ingredients that normal people have (and can afford) or perhaps you are not interested in economically feeding the masses but only those who can afford to eat out every day anyway?

Anyway, got to go, the repeat of the repeat of "Coast" has just started and even though I have seen it before, more than once, it's the only decent program on all night. Bye.

Bank threat to move to Hong Kong

2011-03-07T15:36:00.000-08:00

The HSBC, or rather what was the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, makes threats to move to Hong Kong. Let it go then, the sooner we get rid of egotistic organisations that have no care or responsibility for the place and people where they do business the better.

They say we would loose around £1.6 billion in taxation if they move their headquarters. Well we have already lost a lot more than that from having to bail out the banks already, what's a little bit more to be rid of these morons. Oh, yes the HSBC say they did not get any of the bank bail out money so why should they contribute to the additional taxation the government is imposing. One wonders how long HSBC would have survived if the other banks had been left to fail, I imagine not very long.

All the banks benefited from the bail out whether or not they actually received the cash and they are idiots if they think otherwise and even bigger idiots if they think they can convince us otherwise.

I would also think that the Chinese Government would very much like them to move to Hong Kong they will soon need the additional tax revenue to support their expanding economy as that also is a potential "house of cards". Why? because China have very little natural resources so everything needs to be imported to sustain their economy. As the cost of fuel rises they will no longer be in a position to produce the cheap exports that are stuffing up the rest of us. All we have to do is wait.

If HSBC does move to Hong Kong we can still tax its operations in the UK and as they would then be outside the EC we would be free to impose even more stringent regulations and heavier taxation on them than we are proposing at the moment. He who laughs last....go on bu**er off, we'll help you pack!

Fuel costs more than a fine?

2011-02-21T13:57:00.000-08:00

With national budgets and public spending being cut all over the place, including that of the Police and other Emergency Services is it not time to increase the level that drivers, and others, are fined when they break the law. Currently the £80 fixed fine is becoming less than the cost of a tank of petrol. Given the number of cars still on the road, clearly not occupied in travelling to and from work, many people are obviously not bothered too much about the cost of fuel.

Perhaps by dramatically increasing the level of fines one of two things would happen. Either the government would get some income which could be used to help fund the Emergency Services., or everyone would drive more sensibly and the number of accidents would go down thus reducing the costs of the Emergency Services.

I can almost hear the sceptics that say recovering the money from increased fines would erode any benefit from doing so. No it would not, because once an offender had received a Penalty Notice they would have to cease driving and surrender their driving license. The driving ban should last until the fine was paid in full or they had negotiated a payment plan. Oh yes!, if the fine is not paid the car gets crushed too.

Similarly the costs of an accident, or at least a substantial contribution, should be charged to the insurance companies of the parties at fault. Why should all the careful drivers and the public that don’t drive have to pay to clear up the mess created by those that are reckless?

Recovery will be in jeopardy

2011-02-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

A ludicrous situation is going to happen shortly when the Bank of England is forced to raise interest rates to slow down inflation. It will effectively screw up the financial recovery!

I have no confidence in the Bank of England experts or those in the Treasury because just as they should have separated the Investment Banks from the Retail Banks when they had the ideal opportunity. They should also have separated the domestic interest rate from that of commercial borrowing. The Bank of England would then be able increase interest rates on domestic borrowing to slow down inflation whilst leaving the borrowing rate for commerce and industry at a lower rate to encourage growth.

WHAT IS A JOB WORTH?

2011-02-17T06:49:00.001-08:00

Our economy is about the sixth largest in the world, yet we're told we're broke. What rubbish, we're merely spending our money on the wrong things like Local Authority Chief Executives who take home over £300,000 per year. This is OBSCENE.

Even if these people were being paid £100,000 it would be too much. I would hazard a guess that their authorities are over budget and requiring to make dramatic and drastic cuts and even then they will still be over budget and short of funds. They should not just have a pay cut, they should have a P45 because none of them are competent senior managers.

All our local authorities are over borrowed and over budget. What makes the executives think they deserve high salaries? It is obvious why they work for local government, they could not hold down a job in commerce or industry for very long, or even more unlikely, manage a business by themselves.

Every business has to live within it means or it goes bust. Our local authorities and our central government have gone bust, yet the remunerations and pensions of all the idiots that run them go up and up. It is time to call a halt. A graduated remuneration scale for ALL public employees should be defined and enshrined in law then we will not have the ludicrous state of affairs where a Local Authority Chief Executive is getting paid more than the Prime Minister.

BANKERS WILL GO ELSEWHERE?

2011-01-17T15:04:00.000-08:00

We are constantly being told that if we put limits on the earnings of the banks or individual bankers that we risk them going elsewhere. What rubbish!

The banks and the other financial institutions are located in London because of geography not for any fiscal reason. The UK market place is convenient as it straddles the "opening hours" of all of most the world major markets, they can do business with the Middle East in the morning, Europe and Africa at lunchtime and the USA in the afternoon. The only other major markets not trading whilst London is open are Hong Kong, China.and perhaps you could include Australia.

This fact is the other major reason that it is unlikely that we, the British Isles, will move to a European time zone as to do so would erode some of this advantage. At the moment we can trade with the USA markets for at least one hour longer than the rest of Europe.

Unless someone is going to physically move the UK then we don't have to worry about the banks and other markets moving elsewhere there is no elsewhere. The threat that they will relocate to another county in response to caps on their earnings or higher taxation is absolute rubbish as they will loose far more than us.

Rubbish on TV?

2010-11-21T04:43:00.000-08:00

Is it me or is the quality of British TV deteriorating beyond a joke? It seems to me that the only new stuff on TV at the moment is the news -and most of that is boring - and the soaps and they are all getting very tired. Everything else is just re-runs and repeats of rubbish that we have all seen over and over again. One wonders how the TV companies are convincing their advertiser's that there are people watching, I hardly watch any of the programs let alone sit through the adverts!

Then there is FREEVIEW - what crap - Multiple choice stations like hell, it the same stuff repeated over and over again at different times, the other night Grand Designs was allegedly showing on five different Freeview channels over the same evening. They think that this is "choice" - bo**ocks! - what was worse was that they were all repeats anyway.

They should change the name from FREEVIEW to VINTAGEVIEW or ANTIQUETV, but hey, soon you will be able to watch all this crap in High Definition - WOW - we can't wait!

The Govenors Speech to the TUC

2010-09-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

I quote from Mr King's speech to the TUC, "After a decade-and-a-half of stability, with rising employment and living standards, came the crisis and recession - the biggest economic upheaval since the Great Depression."

What bulls**t! - There was no stability, the economy of the whole period was a house of cards built on sand. Mr King is attempting to fudge the fact that the Bank of England and Treasury had no control over and no vision of the international banks selling each other completely worthless stocks and bonds for more than a decade.

Further more this rising employment he talks about was masked by the fact that on one hand some people were losing well paid jobs and whilst on the other they were replaced in the overall figures by more people in lower paid jobs, how else can Mr King explain that the gap between rich and poor getting wider every year. If the jobs available were improving every body's wealth fairly, the gap could not be widening, could it?

And finally the gross national living standard as a statistic may have risen, but only because the minority at the top are getting far more of it than their fair share. That's the only way his statement can stack up. Talk about spin, he would be better off working as a gyroscope!

Supermarket creates new jobs!

2010-09-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

We are constantly being told about this or that major retailer, usually one of the big five supermarkets, about the quantity of new jobs that they have created somewhere. However we are not told how many jobs the new business destroyed, the brand new supermarket or super store opens up and all the smaller retailers around it close down.

What's perhaps worse is that most of these "new" jobs are part time, very low paid and with little prospect of promotion. The retailers will no doubt argue with me that there is much potential for staff to work their way up inside the business but against what odds, today one of the biggest retailers ran an advert in our local paper for 75 new jobs and got 500 applications from desperate people. At this rate you will soon need a degree in retailing to operate a checkout or even stack shelves.

Expanding businesses rarely create new jobs they just destroy older, and in their eyes, more costly and less efficient ones, its called "economics". Just remeber that one new job probably means the loss of more than one old one, that's why there are more and more people becoming unemployed.

Number of MPs, what about the others?

2010-08-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

Central government is considering reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600 (that is still to many!) but what about the other elected representatives. Our county, Cambridgeshire, has 69 county councillors and then the District Council, Huntingdonshire, in addition has another 52 and then our town council has a further 16.

Just how many people do we need to represent us? Quantity has never produced quality!

A county should have no more than 20 and a district or borough no more than 10 or perhaps 12 and the town/parish no more than 6 or perhaps 8. In preference, the later two councils should each be replaced by one elected mayor. The amount of money we would save in expenses, office space and administration staff would be enormous, decisions would take half the time and also reduce one of the global warming hot air sources.

A cap on Parish Councils

2010-08-26T14:09:00.001-07:00

A little bird informs me that the government is considering introducing a cap on the precept of parish councils. This means that for the first time since parish councils were introduced they will not be able to just increase the amount they add onto our Council Taxes to pay their bills.

Perhaps someone has read my previous blog?

Local Authorities reducing expenditure?

2010-05-31T14:18:00.000-07:00

Well no, not exactly. They are just moving it elsewhere. In England District and Borough Councils are transferring costs down to the Parish Councils in their area because they know Parish Councils are not subject to the capping rules that apply them.

The District and/or Borough Council simply refuses to contribute to essential items like toilets leaving the parish or town council to pick up the bill or loose them. This type of liability transfer is not restricted to toilets but being applied to a whole range of services that the District or Borough Council are not forced by law to provide but the loss of which will have serious effects on the local people.

Similarly District and Borough Councils are raising revenues elsewhere by increasing fees for services like local car parks and leisure services BUT are very secretive with what savings they have made by efficiency improvements, staff reductions and reduced remunerations.

If you think I am making this up be sure that I am not, the precept of our local town council has increased from 3% of the total Council Tax to a massive 8%. They have picked up the costs of services that were once provided elsewhere. This is not saving money this is "cooking the books" and deceiving the general public once again.

This leaves us with higher council tax bills, higher car parking and higher other local charges. The Local Authorities have not got the message yet that they need to actually CUT costs and stop trying to pass the buck by moving things about pretending that they are doing something.

We need toilets and we need car parks and we need leisure services BUT we need them provided economically and efficiently and that is NOT done by fiddling about with who pays for them.

More evidence that there are two laws!

2009-04-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Once again the actions of the government prove that there are two different laws, one for the rich and one for the poor.

Firstly, the directors of the failed banks escape justice from the Official Receiver and the Bankruptcy Courts that would have banned them from being executives of any company for a number of years and consequently from holding any form of public office.

But now other government officials get to resign rather than being sacked. They are therefore free to move to another job to continue their destruction of the things that British people used to hold in some kind of respect.

To make matters worse we force the resignation of really valuable people, like the Head of the Anti-terrorist Division of the Police, for trivial mistakes. Yes, I do mean trivial, by simply re-organising the schedule of their planned actions very little real harm was done and I imagine that he had a great deal of control over that re-organisation anyway. OK, he probably could not ave stayed in his current role but he should have been simply transferred to another and we, the British people, would not have lost his years of experience and the massive investment that we have made in his career. I imagine that the embarrassment he caused to himself was sufficient punishment without the need for anything else being done, but then he was not a politician and thus exempt from being kicked out.

Anyway a single Downing Street advisor can abuse his position and bring about total distrust of the entire government especially the office of the Prime Minister and all that happens if he is allowed to resign. I imagine that he will have a better paid job with a newspaper or such like within a few days.

If this person had been employed by a normal company he would have got the sack, probably lost pension and other benefit rights and been on the scrap heap as far as further employment is concerned. There would also have been the possibility of legal action for bringing his employer into disrepute or even prosecution under the Misuse of Computers Act. I trust that Downing Street does have an IT Policy that all of its staff is required to sign or am I just kidding myself why should the government follow their own recommendations?

King Canute II

2009-03-29T16:51:00.000-07:00

New Flood Risk Map

The Environment Agency has just released a new flood risk map for the United Kingdom highlighting all the areas at serious risk of flooding, not just from coastal or river flooding but also from flash flooding.

Flash Flooding is that which can be caused just about anywhere as a result of torrential rain. Although this can occur anywhere there are areas at much greater risk than others as shown on the new map.

Great, so now that we have spent a fortune making the map, will anyone take any notice of it?

Stop building in flood risk areas
The scientists keep telling us of the increased likelihood of extreme weather conditions as Global Warming takes effect. So why don't the government pass legislation to stop all building and development of these flood risk areas?

What confidence can anyone have in politicians who ignore warnings about things we know about being able to deal with things we don't? No doubt we'll have to deal with the mess that will inevitably occur when the floods devastate the homes of 1,000's of people probably sadly with some loss of life too. The cost to our economy will be once again enormous adding to the already stretched public borrowing when all it needs now is the stroke of a pen!

"I think". Oh really!

2009-03-15T06:28:00.000-07:00

Politicians that think, that's a novelty.

Listening to the BBC Politics Show this morning my attention was drawn to the fact the all the politicians that were interviewed prefixed almost all their statements with the words "I think". It reminded me of the TV show "The Apprentice" and I wonder what Sir Alan Sugar would say to an apprentice that said that. Something like "You think, why? don't you bl**dy know? - YOU'RE FIRED!"

We don't need to be governed by people who think, people who think should only be advisors. We need to be governed by people who know and if they don't know they should not be in government. If this were the case we would be in a better situation than we are now because the decisions that got us here were made by people who thought - WRONGLY!

Politicians, especially ministers, should be subject to the same rules as a small business owner - one mistake and you're out!

Government needs to be reactive, ours certainly is not. It takes years to come up with any decision because all the decisions are too big. Things should not be suddenly radically altered on the scale they are now, they should be constantly tweaked and adjusted to suit the prevailing conditions. If one radically alters too much at once it makes it almost impossible to determine what it is that is causing the issues if problems arise.

At the moment we wait until things fail dramtically before anyone does anything about them. In business one has to constantly monitor cause and effect and if you want to do anything new you need to produce a detailed cost/benefit analysis with very clear statements as to what the measures of success are and if the project is approved then whomever is managing it has to frequently produce updates documenting the achievement of project milestones, the state of the budget and whether or not the project is achieving its goals.

The government of our nation and the creation of legislation needs to be tackled in a more professional manner. What we don't need are these endless committees trying, after the fact, to determine what went wrong.

Welfare and Benefits Reform Bill

Tomorrow the government publishes the new Welfare and Benefits Reform Bill. Here we go again, let's take something which is not working and completely mess it up. One day we will learn a new approach to slowly change things until they achieve the results we are looking for. One can be absolutely sure, because I KNOW, that this reform bill will not solve our welfare and benefit problems and we'll be reforming the reforms again before too long.

THE RIGHT TO PROTEST

2009-03-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

I would be the first in the queue to protect our right to protest as I am doing it right now!

But I wonder if Celtic Supporters would get permission to protest at the same place and at the same time as Rangers Supporters?

OR

Would the pro-nuclear lobby be able to protest in Parliament Square at the same time as the anti-nuclear lobby?

Highly unlikely, no, just plain NO!

What am I going on about? - Luton!

Yesterday are heroic soldiers of the Anglian Regiment exercised their right to parade through the town of Luton behind their colours and a fine sight they were too. But how on Earth did a handful of fanatics get permission to demonstrate in the same place at the same time when as I have pointed out above no one else would?

OK, they can protest BUT NOT AT THE SAME TIME. Let's have some fairness in the mad world of political correctness and can our authorities apply the same rules to everyone. Equal rights for all, so why were the rights of the Anglian Regiment pushed aside by a small group of fanatics?

THE RISING TIDE

2009-03-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the scientists announced that sea-level was rising much faster than previously predicted. It was estimated that sea-level would rise about 50cm by the end of the century (2100) hoever due to the increased speed of climate change they now recalculate those figures to at least 1 meter by 2100 with some predicting in excess of 1.2m

Hang on a minute, that is more than TWICE AS HIGH as was originally thought!

So bad things are going to happen twice as quickly than we thought...

The Thames Barrier

The Thames Barrier was expected to be able to cope until around 2060 with the original prediction but what now? It took 8 years to build the barrier and if it were to be replaced the second one would have to be much biger in comparison and therefore will take much longer to build. The suggestion being that a new barrier would need to run from Sheerness to Southend, a distance of 16Km. It is also interesting to note that the think tank for the Thames Barrier was set up in 1953 and it took until 1970 before any serious work was begun!

Low lying coastal areas

But there are many other low lying coastal areas that are already suffering from the effects of coastal erosion. These areas are now going to be under greater threat than first thought. Areas of East Anglia, around the Humber Estuary, the Medway and between Folkestone and Hastings are at greatest risk and some of these areas are densely populated.

The UK Government is scheduled to publish a draft bill on flooding and coastal erosion this year, which means most of it is already written. Obviously in the light of the new sea-level rise figures they will need to go back to the drawing board because what ever it proposes is unlikely to be big enough or actioned quickly enough to do any good.

The next best guess...

I would think it would be a good bet to say that the current estimates for sea level rise are wrong and that in a short while they will once again be amended and I would also think it is a good bet to say it will be in an upwards direction.

My personal view is that the rate of sea level rise is increasing exponentially. What this means is that the speed of sea level rise is increasing at an increasing rate, what is 10mm per year this year will be 13mm per year next year and so on. It is because we do not yet know what this logarithmic formula is, we keep getting updated predictions.

Ya what?

2009-03-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

Sustainable - like hell it is!
I was watching a programme on the telly last night about a National Trust property where the old walled garden on the property was being put back in to use to grow produce for sale and use in the visitor restaurant. That in itself is laudable - maybe! But then it went on with lots of waffling on about the sustainable locally ecologically grown organic produce and then..., they showed us the two new POLY TUNNELS!!!!!!

Where do they think polythene comes from?

So the whole idea is about as sustainable as an ice cream on a sunny day and ecological as a land fill.

Petroleum By-products
But it got me thinking. Polythene is a by-product of petroleum, so when the oil runs out we loose polythene - At last no more plastic bags! - I wonder what else we get from oil?

Well apart from the obvious fuels, there are less obvious things at each end of the oil spectrum like benzine or tar. So what are we going to make roads with when we don't have tar?

But the list is huge; nylon, acetate, ethylene, polyesters, detergents, polyurethane, PVC, glycol (anti-freeze), even paraffin wax and many, many more items. So when the oil runs out we don't just have to worry about not having a car we're going to loose thousands of other things at the same time.

Just think:

Nearly all children's toys are made from plastic. Not for very much longer.
Planning on using a candle when the power goes off - Nope, no wax!
Many medicines and cosmetics will vanish
No oil based paints, glues and solvents
Much fewer synthetic (hard wearing) cloths and materials
No more oil based food preservatives
No more oil based detergents, cleaners and disinfectants
And just in case your not in a state of panic yet, no more bicycle tyres. They're not just rubber they are nylon too and nylon comes from oil.
If you wish to see a more comprehensive list of the products we will loose when oil runs out follow this link Ranken Energy

I did a search on Google for "organic replacements for petroleum based products" and guess what, it says "NO RESULTS FOUND". Which just about sums up the effort being made to cope with the major problems we have waiting for us just around the corner!

TRANSPORT AND ENERGY POLICY 2

2009-03-06T15:09:00.000-08:00

Protect the Permanent Way

One thing I missed out in my previous post was the need to protect what remains of the Permanent Way. This may mean nothing to most folks but to railway people they know what I am talking about, the Permanent Way is the trackbed upon which railways run or used to run.

All that is left of the Permanent Way not currently in use should be immediately protected against development, in fill or an other damage how so ever arising. The Victorians and Edwardians moved millions of tonnes of rock and earth making tunnels, cuttings and embankments for the railway system they used to have. We may need these routes again at some point in the near future and we don't want to have to do it all over again.

Come on politicians put your brains into gear and think past just today.

TRANSPORT AND ENERGY POLICY

2009-03-06T14:58:00.000-08:00

In the century to come these two subject will become merged into one policy because without energy you'll have no transport.

What should we be doing?

Firstly look around us and see what's going on in the long term:

Global Warming
Sea Level Rising
Running out of Oil and Natural Gas

Well then this is simple, we have some of the highest tides in the world so build barrages across the entrances of all our major rivers to generate tidal power creating huge fresh water reservoirs in the process. In one stoke we protect our major cities from inundation, solve the fresh water problem for a while and make a large contribution to alternative energy.

This will also make all our major rivers into large safe harbours. We'll need large safe harbours for the thousands of sailing ships that will be needed to replace the massive oil powered ships that we have today. A large sailing ship can carry about 500 tonnes of cargo, so we'll need quite a few to deal with the 300 million tonnes of natural resources we import each year but I imagine that figure will drop dramatically once the fuel runs out.

Other large reservoirs could be constucted above sea level to which water could be pumped from behind the marine barrages at times when we have lots of wind power. This water could then be released back to flow by gravity the other way generating power like the generating station at Dinorwig in Wales but on a vastly larger scale.

At the moment most of the UK's imports come in to ports like Felixstowe on the east coast and then are moved by HGV across country to the western cities like Liverpool and Manchester. This will have to stop as it will become a lot cheaper to move heavy things by sea, even if it is by sailing ship. There is however a problem, we've filled in all the old docks and places like Liverpool - whoops! - we've filled in the docks in London too! If you have bought an apartment at Canary Wharf don't plan on leaving it to your children because Canary Wharf will be docks again before your life is over. The only way of sustaining our cities will be via river transport, that's why all cities were built on rivers in the first place.

But what about the rest of the country?

We used to have a fabulous system of canals and railways. At least we have kept many of the canals but they are far too narrow to handle the kind of traffic that we will require of them. We should start an immediate programme of widening the main canals whilst we still have fuel to do it. If we don't then prepare to use a wheelbarrow and spade because that is how we will eventually be forced to do it.

If we do manage to solve the problems of generating sustainable electricity then railways and tramways will be an option however railways also require vast quantities of steel and only time will tell whether that is a sustainable option in itself.

Personal Transport

Without oil, personal transport is likely to become a thing of history viable electric cars or ones powered by alternative fuels are still a long way off and you still need to be able to generate affordable electricity or other fuel. Already we have learned to our cost that growing crops like oil seed rape for alternative fuel causes reductions in the World's food supply, it is hardly an alternative - drive and starve or walk and eat! - and this is under circumstances when we have fuel to power the tractors and combine harvesters to get the crops in and out of the ground.

Action is needed now!

The government should appoint a permanent cross party executive committee to manage our long term Transport and Energy Policy and they should come up with some ground breaking ideas that are swiftly put into action to see us into the next century. If we don't do something like this and NOW, we are not going to make it.

FUEL POVERTY FOR ALL JUST ROUND THE CORNER.

2009-03-06T13:52:00.001-08:00

What are we going to do when the fuel runs out?

Goodstein, author of the book "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil" stated "The oil will run out, the only question is exactly when," but continues, "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime this century, when the fuel runs out". So we probably have a lot less than 90 years.

When do we panic then?

According to Stanford University geophysicist Amos Nur. "The point of panic has already taken place. There is a huge conflict that might already be emerging"

So what exactly are we going to do?

The UK government is contemplating the building a wind farms, that's really going to help. To power 25 million homes you'll need 7,000 working turbines, that's one for every half a mile of coastline and we're not talking about powering our industry and transport. The Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Dr Sue Ion, said that wind power could only provide about 20% of the country's electricity to preserve grid stability.

"Laudable though the targets are, we urge government to think about the practicalities of deploying these technologies; the engineering effort to build 7,000 large offshore turbines by 2020 would be enormous, unprecedented and is probably underestimated," she said.

To achieve the governments target it has to build 14 turbines a week for the next ten years and they're still just talking about it.

No one has explained what they are going to do when there's no wind!

OK, so we'll go nuclear.

Building one new nuclear power station takes decades and one will not be enough and anyway from where are we going to get the Uranium to make it work. Uranium is not exactly going to be readily available or cheap once the oil starts to run out. Oh! by the way, Russia is the largest exporter of Uranium followed possibly by Australia and the USA. To top it all there's only about enough for the next 100 years anyway, it's not exactly a common element.

So what are we really going to do?

Nothing, as usual, Goodstein says "Governments do not have the political will to prepare for the end of oil."

When has our government planned for the future? We are World leaders in wind turbine technology but are we seriously using it? No! As a result of the credit crunch President Obama has announced a huge investment in alternative energy sources in the US so we won't be the world leaders for much longer. But don't I remember we were once World leaders in nuclear energy too!

It's amazing how the Bank of England can find £75,000,000,000 yesterday to pump up the economy, why don't they spend it on something useful?

Websites for only £???

2009-03-04T16:49:00.000-08:00

Don't fall into this trap!

Getting or building a website is the easy bit, a child can do that. Getting people to visit it is hard and getting people to buy anything from it is even harder.

If you have a website built for you then you must make sure that the deal includes some element of marketing it for you and at the very least getting it into the Google index. Make sure you don't have to pay a thing UNTIL your site appears in the Google index and what's more it stays there. If you don't you, will likely to be sold a chocolate teapot.

Be aware also that most new sites are included in the Google index for a few weeks and then totally disappear from it. This is called "the Honeymoon" period. Google appears to give most new sites the benefit of the doubt and includes them for a short while to see how they do and to see hoe many other site are linked to them. If it turns out the content is hopeless and no one else links to the site then it is moved (rapidly) down the index and if you are not on page one or two or the search then you may well not exist. If your site does not stay in the index for at least six months make sure you can get your money back.

Social Responsibility

2009-03-04T02:26:00.000-08:00

All forms of the media, including blogs such as this, are constantly on the lookout for a good story and the best ones of those are when we find someone to blame for something. But perhaps it is time to take a step back and look at what we do ourselves.

Perhaps it is not the bankers who are to blame for the current financial situation. It is more likely our fault. We are the ones whose ceaseless demands for cheaper this, that, or the other, has caused the problem in the first place. We have not stopped for one moment to calculate the effects of our insatiable demands.

Why do we blame the banks for letting us have mortgages we could not pay for or credit that costs us a fortune and why do we complain about the huge salaries and benefit pakages that some of the directors and executives of these banks receive, hang on a moment are we not in most cases the shareholders of these institutions in one way or another?

We blame the supermarkets for destroying our high streets and clearing our market towns of the independent stores that used to make them a delight to visit. Everyone I speak to says they don't like or don't use Tesco's or the other huge supermarkets but why then are their car parks full and why are they still in business? I wonder too how many supermarket shares are owned by our own pension funds? So collectively we are responsible for them too.

We sit in our cars and complain about the traffic and that fact there is no where to park when we get to our destination and if we do find somewhere to park it costs the Earth. The usual excuse is that there is no alternative, how lame!

We complain that our nation has lost its industrial and manufacuring base and all the jobs and wealth that these businesses used to provide. Why? It was us that stopped buying the products that they made!

Well, the bill has finally arrived and we're all having to tighten our belts but that is not going to be good enough we're going to have to change our habits. There is no magic wand that is going to wave this situation away, the World is not going to go back to how it was before this crash - ever! It is no good waiting for the politicians to "sort it out", we need to take a deep breath and start in a different direction and that would be better if it is one of our own choice.

Me, I'm taking the bus into town, having lunch (and a few beers, no need to worry about drinking and driving or parking for that matter) and then doing some shopping in my local shops for some, in the most part, locally grown organic produce and if I end up with too much to carry I will get a local taxi to bring me home. What are your doing?

MP's Second Homes

2009-03-01T16:09:00.000-08:00

Why are we, the General Public, paying to provide MP's with second homes in London?

Why not build a 700 room apartment block near the Palace of Westminster. There are currently around 650 MP's, they could have one room each. This then would remove this wasteful system of buying each of them a new second home in London every time we have an election and a change of the membership.

Additional Benefits

Apart from the obvious security benefits that would come from accommodating them in one place like they have already done with the MP's new offices at Portcullis House. This would be a significant building project in the city that would perhaps help stimulate the economy of the borough in which it is built. It would also release the hundreds of houses and apartments in London back into the market place that they occupy at the moment.

One remaining question!

Until the recent collapse of house prices I wonder where the capital gain profit made from the sale of an MP's second home went in the past when they finally left parliament. With many MP's being members for many years there must have been a significant profit made on the difference that the second home was purchased for against the price for which it was ultimately sold. What happened to this money?

How to escape the law - be a Banker! (Editorial)

2009-03-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

One law for the rich and one for the poor.

You would have thought this applied sometime in the Victorian Age, or perhaps before it, but it seems that it is still true today and not hidden but RIGHT IN YOUR FACE.

If the Government had not bailed out some of our major banks they would have gone bankrupt and no doubt the subsequent investigations by the Official Receivers, Accountants and Tax Officials would have blamed the collapse on the incompetence of those in charge, namely the Directors and Executives.

They would have found too that the assets of the banks involved were falsely inflated and that the official accounts were thus equally untrue, This fact is now obvious as these banks do not have the required collateral to cover the current liability let alone those which will crawl out of the woodwork over the coming month and years. Knowingly trading when a company is insolvent is an offence.

If this had happened to any other company the shareholders would loose everything and the directors banned from involvement in any other company for many years, that is of course if they had escaped gaol for fraud. But did that happen to the bankers? No!

What they get is a huge pay-off either as a bonus or a massive pension the scale of which the rest of us can only dream of.

There was absolutely no need for this to have happened. The banks could have been left to fail and thus fall into the hands of the Official Receiver, the Boards of Directors would have been shown the door pending potential legal actions by various authorities and then and ONLY THEN the Government could have stepped in to pick up the accounts of the banks customers, they could have simply been transferred to remaining banks or event the Bank of England.

We, or a committee acting on behalf of the Government, would then have been able to pick and choose which accounts they wished to save and which could remain with the Official Receiver to fight over the bones. We then would not have ended up still paying the incompetent "fat cats" these ridiculous salaries, bonuses and salaries.

The Government says they did it to protect us. From what? and Who is us? The majority of the staff of the banks involved are still going to be made redundant, it might perhaps just take a little longer. We still cannot get a mortgage and small businesses are still failing by the minute through lack of available funds. The only people who seem to have been protected are the rich and the "fat cats"

Perhaps there is a lesson here for the future, that an official body, perhaps part of the Insolvency Service, be standing by to cope with major situations such as this with an agreed battle plan in place, backed if necessary by changes in legislation. The very minimum of which should be the immediate suspension of everyone involved that had an executive position in the organisation involved and that must include every other organisation that they are involved with too. Accounts under a certain limit, that is those of the General Public, should be immediately transferred to another bank with others following subject to strict conditions.

Stop BOOM and BUST.

It does not require much of a brain to figure this one out. All we need is to set different interest rates by law. All lending must then be charged within the limits set by the applicable interest rate band.

There should be one rate band for long term corporate borrowing, one for short term corporate borrowing, one for domestic mortgages and one band for personal unsecured borrowing. It should be illegal to lend money outside these defined bands.

Rate Examples:

Long term secured corporate borrowing 2% - 4% above base rate
Short term secured corporate borrowing 4% - 6% above base rate
Domestic Mortgages/Unsecured corporate 6% - 10% above base rate
Unsecured Personal borrowing 10% - 15% above base rate

The Chancellor could then control inflation by adjusting the various bands (with emphasis on the later) in relation to the base rate set by the Bank of England. In this manner the lending rate could be increased on personal borrowing, that is credit cards and loans, or even mortgages but not on long term corporate borrowing. This means inflation could be controlled without stuffing up the businesses trying to sustain the nation.

An additional benefit of this type of solution is that it would be illegal to overcharge customers for a particular lending type.

We need a fiscal policy designed to maintain stability in the long term, one that protects all the people of the nation not just a few.

New structure for the British Towns and Villages Network

2009-02-27T14:04:00.000-08:00

Major Upgrade

It has been a while since the last update as we have had to split the British Towns and Village Network site into three domains, or rather we have moved two of the really large sections into two sub-domains.

This huge job was not really a planned activity but the result of a technical problem that required a re-installation of the entire site, with nearly 2 million pages it took 12 hours to upload then to top it all it seemed like we would have to do it all over again! - However a superb job was done by our IP provider Fasthosts, the staff there worked through the night and by the time we got up in the morning they had resolved all the problems and we were up and running again.

The first thing we all decided was that this could not happen again so we looked at the physical size of the content on the entire site and decided to move the image library to a sub-domain of its own so our British National Image Library is now at http://images.british-towns.net/. As every one knows pictures take up a vast amount of space and therefore a long time to upload thousands of them by placing them into a domain structure that is not complicated by loads of additional services they are less likely to be subjected to problems caused by unconnected issues.

Another part of the main website is our British Database of World Flora and Fauna and its image library is huge and growing relentlessly so that too was moved to its a new sub-domain at http://nature.british-towns.net/.

By removing the image libraries we have reduced the physical content size of the principle domain by a huge amount so if we have technical problems again we do not have to go through such a major job to rebuild the site. This has already proved its worth as we and Fasthosts have recently upgraded the main SQL servers that drive the site to SQL 2008 and we are very pleased to report that the entire job went off without a hitch.

So where does that leave us now?

By spreading the site over a number of different servers we have much less work to do if any part of the site has a problem and that work is less complicated too.

The main domain http://www.british-towns.net/ is delivered in a load balanced environment from three servers, with the two sub-domains on two other servers and the whole lot driven by a huge database on another SQL Server and we are very pleased with the overall result.

Additional functionality

Now that we have some room and we can see the wood from the trees we have been able to add new functionality to the site in the form of allowing our users to upload their own content, both text and images, to the local pages.

We have also added basic Social Networking driven by Google Friends Connect to the local pages too. If this proves successful we will add further user driven content functions as time goes on.

BRITISH TOWNS AND VILLAGES - An encyclopaedia of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

2006-12-29T09:43:00.000-08:00

BRITISH TOWNS AND VILLAGES - An encyclopaedia of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: "Falkland Islands: Silver Jubilee of the Liberation"

Loads of pictures direct from the Falklands with more to come soon.

ENGLAND - English Towns and English Villages

2006-08-13T01:17:00.000-07:00

Completed adding the "new" pages for the whole of ENGLAND - English Towns and English Villages and that was over 16,000 of them. Local website owners can now add their sites directly on each town, parish or community page and we have added notes on the history of every English County. Next job is to plot all the towns and villages on the maps - back in a while then!

The Counties of England and their County Councils

2006-08-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

Well that's one part of the job over. It is a pit that Tyne and Wear never had Armorial Bearings (Coat of Arms) or we could have had a complete collection. The Counties of England and their County Councils pages are nearly complete, just some URLS to check on the pages that we did first. I think the pages look quite good. What do you think?

The English Administrative County of Shropshire

2006-08-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

The English Administrative County of Shropshire

Saturday - Managed to get some good old books with loads of old photos in them to go on the site later. Finished importing the history of Shropshire and most of the locations in the text linked to the relevant pages. Still now it's time for anohter beer - see you later...

Dawn

2006-08-04T00:31:00.000-07:00

I have just awoken and trying to feel what today is going to be like. I think I am going into Cambridge to the old book shop under the arches in Newmarket Road. Hopefully I can find some old pictures of British Towns. We're upgrading our website and adding lots of new things and as everyone like to browse old pictures were added loads of them, over 1000 already.