A Possible Solution to Nuisance Calls
A couple of days ago, I was plagued by a boiler room scam, that decided to ring me every minute. I reported it in this post.
It is now three days later and they are still trying occasionally, but I might have found the solution to criminals like these.
It is called trueCall and effectively screens every call that it doesn’t recognise. All those Unavailable and International calls that are just a waste of your time are challenged and the caller is asked to identify themselves with their name before they are put through. Obviously, the time wasters don’t do this, so the system hangs up on them and asks them to leave a message. I suspect they never will!
The system did cost £99.99 including VAT, but it was just a plug-in to install, as this picture shows.
trueCall Installation
But it was ever so easy to install and it comes with all sorts of features to be valued.
- It simply learns who your friends and enemies are, if you follow a few set of simple rules.
- It has a fully-functioning built-in answering machine.
- You can look at all your incoming and outcoming calls on the Internet.
I shall certainly keep it in place to innoculate me from scammers and time-wasters.
Areas Worst Placed to Survive the Recession
The BBC has made a list of how areas of the UK can survive the recession.
It would appear that Middlesbrough is at the bottom of the list. And no wonder!
I went there to see Ipswich play their first match of the season and although I enjoyed the visit, I got the impression, that the town was doing little to pull itself up by its bootstraps. I was an occassional tourist and I think that they don’t believe they have anything to offer visitors and that Government must do more to help. As an example, the Tall Ships Race was on at Hartlepool across the river and if I’d known then I’d have stayed another day. But it wasn’t mentioned on either the town or the football club’s website, so I didn’t go! There were no posters either! I suspect that certain football clubs would have got in on the act if it had been local to them, by perhaps introducing some of the foreign sailors before the match. If nothing, it would have been good publicity.
Either they learn to live without subsidy from the rest of the UK, or it will get a lot worse! But how do you wean areas like Middlesbrough off their addiction to subsidy?
If they don’t manage it, then towns like Middlesbrough will suffer the same fate as large parts of the former East Germany. There anybody with skills have moved on and it has got to such a state, that the birth-rate has declined to almost zero, as young women just can’t see any point in bringing up children in such an environment.
Middlesbrough has a lot to offer, but it is doing a very bad job in selling itself to the rest of the UK, except by handing out a begging bowl for more subsidy!
Remember, one man’s subsidy is somebody else’s tax! Certain politician’s will always argue that you can tax the rich, but then many in the higher wealth levels can easily move to other countries to live or work!
My Bet For a Winner is Pamela Stephenson
The BBC has just announced the line-up for this year’s Strictly Come Dancing.
My money is on Pamela Stephenson, who showed she can dance, years ago in Not The Nine O’Clock News But perhaps not in the way required!
Reporting Fraud
I had a bad day yesterday, as someone was trying to get me ensnared in a boiler house fraud, trying to buy some useless shares. I don’t buy shares anyway! After they had phoned four times in as many minutes, I told them to Foxtrot Oscar in no uncertain terms.
They then threatened to make my life hell and phoned every few seconds for the rest of day. BT and the Police could do nothing and eventually, I pulled the phone line out of the wall. As I’d had my Warfarin test yesterday, the hospital would have then been unable to get through, if I’d needed to change the dose.
The calls seem to have stopped today, either because they have got fed up with being connected to a void or because BT have done something I don’t know about!
Now, after some nice calls from friends and family, I feel a lot more rational and felt that I should report what happened properly.
After looking at the SOCA web site, I found a link to Action Fraud, which describes itself as the UK’s national fraud reporting centre. I phoned them on 0300 123 2040. They were very helpful and have reassured me on a couple of subsidiary points. So do phone them to report fraud.
They were certainly very much more clued up than the local Police.
It’s Very Lonely Today
Today would have been our forty-second wedding anniversary. I shall probably see no-one all day except for the postman and the lady who delivers the papers.
I wonder what C would be thinking. She always said that she would hate to be alone and wanted to die first. This was partly because she said she hated her own company, but I suspect she’d be coping with the loneliness better than I am.
Today, there is nothing to do, as it’s not going to be the best weather and I have no driver. And there is no public transport! I simply refuse to take a taxi just to get somewhere, where there are some people!
If I did have some transport, I’d go to Colchester to see England Under-21 play Lithuania. At least there is the football and cricket on the television this evening!
But then, life gets better in the next day or so, as I’m spending a couple of days in London and then it’s off to Portsmouth to see Ipswch play!
The Elusive Boss of Transocean
The phrase isn’t mine, but it was said on the Radio 5, Wake up to Money program this morning. It has always puzzled me, why BP’s drilling company in the Gulf, didn’t take some of the flak over the Gulf Oil Spill. I can’t even remember seeing him on the News either.
It will be interesting to see who foots the bill in the end, after the lawyers get their teeth into the problem.
Self-Repairing Solar Cells
I like this story. It just goes to show that if anything gets the world out of the mess, it will be scientists, engineers and other thinkers, who use science and technology correctly. It will be not be politicians, union leaders or those that believe God is always the solution. These people will just hold back those like the scientists in this story, who might be leading us to salvation from our lack of energy.
The Edgley Optica
The airship photo and the associated comments with Paul, have got me thinking about aviation.
It lways seems, that any alternative approach to replace conventional fixed wing types or helicopters, ends in failure.
Sometimes, this is because the technology doesn’t work, sometimes because there are accidents, but I do feel that sometimes vested interests strangle the new ideas at birth.
I used to be a competent private pilot and I still have over a thousand hours in my log book, if I can find it. It is quite a lot of varied flying in both singles and twins, all around the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States and Australia. I used to follow the aviation press a lot too, so I’m not without knowledge and experience of what has been tried and what works in aviation. Artemis, the project management system, I designed, was also used on a lot of aviation projects.
One of the aviation projects that fascinated me was the Edgley Optica observation aircraft. It was designed as an alternative to a helicopter for low-level surveillance, for use by those such as the Police. In about 1986, the company was in trouble and looking for investors, so I checked them out and actually had a flight in the aircraft as a passenger. I did take control for a few minutes and it was an easy plane to fly.
The company’s troubles were probably in part caused by an unexplained crash of an Optica being flown by Wiltshire Police. It certainly wouldn’t have helped sales.
The pilot had his own theories about the crash but writing over twenty years later, I can’t give any credence to what he said.
However, this doesn’t mean that this unusual concept isn’t worth pursuing. Especially as now we have learned so much more about the lightweight structures that might just make designs like this possible and economic.
I have a personal regret about my trip in an Optica. I didn’t have my camera with me!
How Internet Rumours Start
I was looking down the list of flying exhibits at Duxford today and noticed that the Royal Netherlands Air Force were flying in their Spitfire. So I was curious as to how they acquired their plane and searched the Internet. I found the details on this page at the Spitfire Society.
But there is also this interesting bit on the page under a heading of Dissimilar Combat Exercises.
In 1963 it was thought that the English Electric Lightning might have to be used against P-51 Mustangs in Indonesia, and the Mk XIX PM631 of the BBMF was diverted to Central Fighter Establishment Binbrook to provide an opponent similar to the Mustangs in a dissimilar combat exercise. During this exercise it developed engine troubles, and PS853, which while being a Gate Guardian at CFE Binbrook had also been maintained in flying condition on the orders of the Station CO, took over the role.
Has anyone any information on the story that in the simulator, a Spitfire armed with Sidewinders has a fair chance against a Tornado?
The question has to be asked, as to why need all the expensive military hardware, politicians and those in the armed forces, say we need.
But how many people would take the last part of the extract and believe it to be the truth?
A Spoilt Basset Hound
C would never allowed this and I generally don’t! But some of my guests invite my basset to misbehave!
A Spoilt Basset Hound
The Anonymous Widower 