Leopards Don’t Change their Spots
The Times has a dramatic picture on the front this morning. It shows one of their reporters being manhandled by someone from the BNP. Here’s the first paragraph of the article that accompanied the picture.
One man grabbed my nose and tried to remove it from my face. I was seized and shoved out of the door towards a parked car. I threw my hands out to steady myself. A BNP thug snarled: “Don’t touch people’s cars mate.” Obviously, I offered no resistance.
Apparently, the BNP were objecting to an article in The Times on Saturday.
I don’t object to that article and feel it is a sound analysis as to the prospects of the BNP. But I do worry about its conclusions. If there’s one thing we don’t want it’s for the BNP to gain a foothold in Westminster. Without that after a couple of years, they will probably return from whence they came.
Incompetent New Labour
In the report in The Times on Prudence’s Death Tax, there is an interesting comment.
Off topic I know, but I have got to point this out ,if only to show how utterly incompetent Labour are. Would you believe that Labour did not know that ALL of the Trademarks they hold for their name “Labour” “Labour Party” etc etc are ALL invalid. They only realised in November 2009 when they were told !!. They were granted one of the replacements 2 days ago and rest are still only applications. As I say, all the old ones are invalid because LABOUR did not know ,or care ?, that Unincorporated Associations cannot own any property including trademarks in the name of the Association. What incompetents Labour are.
Surely, if they can’t manage themselves, they can’t be competent to manage UK Plc.
Prudence’s Death Tax
According to The Times Prudence and his few supporters in Nulabor are possibly proposing a 10% death tax on all estates. Read some of the comments to the article
Now, I’m someone who has a bob or two and when I die I will pay substantial death duties. On the other hand, I would hopefully have sufficient money to make sure that I had enough nubile nurses to keep me happy in my last days. So just because I have saved, why should I pay for those who have not saved for their last days?
To actually suggest it is a crass idea and a vote loser. After all probably ninety percent of the population want to make enough money before they retire to really enjoy it.
But then what do you expect from a man who was a Chancellor, who had the same idea of taxes as the Sherriff of Nottingham?
It just shows how out of touch Nulabor is with everything.
Let’s take a couple of examples.
Suppose someone was dying in their thirties from some awful cancer. Because they have been ill for some time, they would probably not have any estate at all. Or perhaps just a small one. So the widow, who would be up shit-street anyway gets even more of her money taken away by a grasping government.
I also have two friends, who have very disabled children. Their care is expensive, so is it right that if the parents die, that disabled children are taxed, when they need the money. I suppose that their disabilities mean that they can’t vote, so it’s all right then!
Now we need to raise money for care of the elderly, but it would be better if we raised it say on energy taxes or VAT. Raising VAT to 20% would raise about £13billion, but I think that this may be a better alternative as Prudence’s lowering and raising of VAT didn’t seem to make much effect one way or the other.
We could also get rid of two unwanted aircraft carriers, the Joint Strike Fighter, Trident, tanks, identity cards and many other pet projects of Prudence and his cronies.
Policing at QPR
As I walked away from Loftus Road last Tuesday, I was surprised at how many police were on duty.
Obviously, it was because there was a large and angry crowd with a history of violence between the two teams, it was necessary to have this sort of presence of the boys in blue.
But the crowd was 10,000 or so, the Ipswich supporters were their usual well-behaved bunch, everybody seemed to be talking to each other as they walked towards the Tube, I didn’t see anybody who was the least bit drunk and it was all rather cold. Would you really want aggro on a very cold day? Possibly, it would be a way of warming up.
So do the Met just treat all matches the same and send it everything including the kitchen sink and the cavalry, when quite frankly they should be used for something more important than a peaceful football match. Should I for instance report the police to the RSPCA for getting the horses out unnecessarily on a cold night?
The was one unsavoury incident though. The QPR supporters did slag off their club’s owner.
Spam Messages
This was the body of a spam e-mail I received.
Introduction The girl scout around a crane caricatures a flabby cloud formation. Another most difficult eggplant operates a small fruit stand with a carelessly polka-dotted deficit. If the mortician steals pencils from a bullfrog, then a fundraiser defined by the tomato ceases to exist. If a For example, a tornado about a tomato indicates that a cheese wheel about the wheelbarrow writes a love letter to a paper napkin. Some corporation over a tornado hesitantly is a big fan of another tomato from the freight train. A cargo bay is impromptu. A rude minivan rejoices, and the wheelbarrow caricatures a ball bearing. When the dust bunny living with a tornado is proverbial, some geosynchronous polar bear sanitizes the cab driver. Now and then, the globule gives a pink slip to the prime minister from a customer. The tape recorder aro faults with a soggy polygon. Introduction A buzzard recognizes a greedily rude crane. Most people believe that a lover about a satellite reaches an understanding with a diskette near the parking lot, but they need to remember how wisely the sandwich gets stinking drunk. When a pompous burglar returns home, an umbrella prays. nWUQPeBMQIZgCH[AXUThe formless void borrows money from a customer behind the stovepipe. A deficit derives r freight train laughs out loud, a demon earns frequent flier miles. A canyon around the grain of sand is hypnotic. Any grand piano can organize a crane, but it takes a real eggplant to seek the magnificent crane. When the turkey is frozen, a class action suit slyly figures out an apartment building. Indeed, the hockey player caricatures the tornado. When you see the canyon, it means that a crane beyond a formless void prays. Introduction When another mortician toward the blithe spirit is college-educated, a CEO inside the apartment building sanitizes the accidentally slow razor blade. A cocker spaniel is boiled. Sometimes a most difficult dolphin beams with joy, but a hydrogen atom always has a change of heart about the burglar! When a completely makeshift hydrogen atom leaves, a single-handledly load bearing recliner hides. carpet tack about a short order cook plans an escape from a gentle light bulb the cashier inside a dust bunny. The oil filter living with the skyscraper Indeed, the chestnut defined by some nation knowingly laughs and drinks all night with a turn signal living with some polar bear. A proverbial defendant is rude. The overripe cyprus mulch steals pencils from a stoic fruit cake. Any vacuum cleaner can negotiate a prenuptial agreement with a tripod related to a polygon, but it takes a real bottle of beer to accidentally share a shower with a vacuum cleaner over some cyprus mulch. An apartment building self-flagellates, and a completely tattered deficit takes a coffee break; however, a tripod over a pine cone buries the ostensibly twisted avocado pit. The feverishly loyal inferiority complex sells an eggplant inside the tuba player to the earring, but the customer somewhat finds lice on a cough syrup. When a hockey player for the roller coaster is cosmopolitan, another foreign reactor sanitizes the slyly dirt-encrusted briar patch. Furthermore, a nuclear cargo bay ruminates, and the Alaskan squid dances with the eggplant about a rattlesnake.
You could imagine Richard Burton or Eric Cantona reading it. It would still not make sense, but it would have a certain lilt to it.
As a programmer though, you have to admire the man, who wrote the program that writes this rubbish.
Gluten-Free Pasta with Broccoli, Feta and Puttanesca
This recipe is a modified version of one from Waitrose.
I basically changed the pasta for Doves Farm gluten free penne and doubled the quantity, so it served four. It fact, I miscounted as there were five and a half for dinner, but it stretched OK with the addition of a salad.
The ingredients were.
- 100g feta, cubed
- 300g of Doves Farm gluten free penne pasta
- 400g purple sprouting broccoli, cut into short lengths. I actually used broccoli florets cut into small pieces, as I bought the wrong sort. But you can use cauliflowers as well. Perhaps try them mixed.
- 180g jar Waitrose Cooks’ Ingredients Puttanesca Mix
- 50g pine nuts, toasted
- Grated zest of lemon
The method was as follows.
- I cooked the pasta according to the instructions on the packet in a large saucepan, until it was just tender. It was then drained and kept in the pan.
- The broccoli was cooked at the same time. But don’t stew it.
- Add the broccoli, feta, puttanesca mix, pine nuts and lemon zest to the pasta. Toss all together thoroughly and serve on warmed serving plates. I did cook it for perhaps a minute on the low hob of the AGA.
As I said earlier, I served it with a green salad.
I was the only coeliac at the table, but no-one complained about the pasta. So perhaps, gluten-free pasta isn’t always that bad.
I do think though, that of all gluten-free penne works best. After all Carluccio’s serve this type on their gluten-free menu. I think too, that it worked extremely well with the broccoli in this recipe.
Blogger Abandons FTP
I use Blogger to create news pages within web sites. This approach is good as it enables anybody to update the news without disturbing the actual web site. It also has advantages in that as Blogger updates the search engines directly, any changes are reflected immediately.
In most of the sites, I have used FTP to update the blogs, but Blogger have recently announced that FTP support will be discontinued.
I had felt this would be a problem, but if you look at my stud web site, Freedom Farm, you’ll now see that it uses a standard blogspot address, freedomfarmnews.blogspot.com.
The web site works as well as before, but I’m afraid it’s lost all it’s search engine history, so I’ll have to grow the blog from start again. I suspect too, that because the web site is now hosted on a different url to the news, that the two will not work as well together. That is probably a good reason to use WordPress for a combination of a web site and news.
But if you want still keep to Blogger, there wasn’t too many problems.
- I had to change all of the links, but this was a global edit in the web site and a few changes to the template.
- By default you get the Blogger NavBar, which is annoying in a web site. However there is a patch to put in the template to remove it. The details are here.
But otherwise it was painless.
I wouldn’t use Blogger again for this purpose, as it’ll probably degrade the search engine performance significantly, as the link between the web site and news are broken.
Cutting Unemployment
I run a couple of small businesses; one is a computer software firm and the other is a thoroughbred stud.
I have a problem on the stud in that work is distinctly seasonal and so some of the essential maintenance jobs that no-one really likes to do, get put to the bottom of the queue, when other more important things come up. For instance, if it means having an injured horse for rest after a racing injury, which requires extra care time, then this will take precedence over say painting fences or renewing a badly worn gateway, because the former is better for your cash flow.
In the past twenty years or so, whilst my late wife and I have run the stud, we’ve often needed someone for say a month or two for these maintenance and other tasks. Usually, we’ve subcontracted to a building firm, who don’t like these sort of small jobs and charge much more than say employing someone for a couple of months.
What is needed is a computer system based on the technology used on many web sites, to match the unemployed to the small jobs available. The site might be something like a cross between a dating-site for something like The Times and eBay.
Suppose you chose someone from this web site for a job that would last anything upwards of a week.
You would pay the site, which would then pay the employee directly and automatically adjust their benefit, so that they avoided the problem of going on and off benefit. After they’d finished, you would then assess their work and post it with ratings on the web site.
I think that this would have benefits for both employers and claimants.
Employers and especially small ones, would have a simple means of bridging that temporary labour problem without any great hassle. They could also read the references of those available for employment in their area and may well choose an employee whose skills and experience matched their needs. In the case of the stud, I’d probably do jobs where I can easily find people to do them. For instance, I have several painting jobs that need doing, so if I found someone, who had experience of industrial painting, then that job would be done.
Claimants would benefit from the work and the extra money, and because they were rated, this would increase their chances of getting full employment. The system would also benefit, those who perhaps because of circumstances like age, children and disability, did not need or want to work all of the year.
It is an idea, that I feel needs to be examined. As a computer scientist, I don’t believe that setting it up would be the biggest of technological problems, although asking the government to do it would probably be a disaster.
Ipswich at QPR
Last night was the first time this season, that I’d seen Ipswich win. I must admit I was there when they beat Coventry, but I left immediately Coventry equalised, so didn’t actually see the win. I was also at Shrewsbury, when they won in the Carling Cup, but that was on penalties.
I’d never been to Loftus Road before, but I certainly enjoyed the visit. It is a compact ground with good views tucked away behind Shepherd’s Bush. I think though now that the crowd are better behaved than they were years ago, when someone chucked a dummy hand grenade being the opposing goalkeeper. Apparently, he ran very fast.
But as supposedly one of the richest clubs in England, if not the world, the ungrateful crowd really didn’t appreciate the match, giving Flavio Briatore some typical football humour. I’ve just read Briatore’s bio on Wikipedia. I can’t be all true! Can it? Wikipedia doesn’t always get it right.
Note in the pictures, one shows the immaculate minute’s silence for someone who did a lot for QPR.
Toy Oh Dear
Toyota has a few problems. Not only do accelerators stick on some models, but now the Prius has a brake problem.
These may be serious and they are probably hurting Toyota’s image and the company will suffer for years to come.
The problems are very different. The accelerator is a mechanical design fault and the brake is a software one. But if you have the first, here is excellent advice from the BBC. I know you’ll be unlikely to be able to access this advice if you have a problem, but make sure that you read it.
The trouble is that we assume are cars are perfect, the roads are perfect, the weather is always fine and nothing untoward will ever happen as we drive along in our cars listening to the Beatles, smoking fags and eating sandwiches. I don’t do the last two as I abhor smoking and can’t eat bread, unless I make the gluten-free variety myself, but I hope you get the point.
We must have more driver education to make the roads safer and dare I say it allow everybody to enjoy driving more. It’s a great pleasure to drive a car fast and legally down a challenging and empty road.
I have two cars; a Lotus Elan and a Jaguar X-Type Estate.
The Lotus is simple with no-ABS, no-traction control, no-air conditioning and very little electronics to go wrong. It incidentally has a full electronic control system on the lump that does the work under the bonnet. The Jaguar has all these, but other than body styles, the two cars are both manual gearboxes, front-wheel drive, full leather etc.
Now when it comes to bad roads, the Elan is in a class of its own compared to the Jag. The ABS and traction control cuts in on the latter and makes things more rather difficult rather than easier.
So is one of the problems of modern cars, that they have just got too complicated, too heavy and we isolate the driver too much from the road?
I know that on bad days, I take the Lotus and enjoy that drive. Perhaps, if we all learned to enjoy driving, we’d do it better and have less accidents and breakdowns.
The Anonymous Widower 