A Suite of Planets
On Tuesday night, I noticed a planet in the western sky. It could have been Venus, but looking at the Internet, it possibly could have been Saturn. A bad star chart in a newspaper, indicated that it could have been Saturn.
So last night, I checked and got my Meade telescope out. I also found this entry on the Internet, which showed that the planet was indeed Venus. The chart shows that Saturn is above the moon, but also that Mars should be visible to the naked eye.
According to the entry about the planets, the rings of Saturn are not particularly spectacular at present, as we are looking at them almost side on. But you’ll still see one of the most unusual and spectacular sites in the sky. Even a good pair of binoculars will reveal them!
So keep checking where the planets are on the Internet and take a look regularly, when the sky is clear.
The Phone Finally Arrives
It was finally delivered at 14:45, by a pleasant driver, who hadn’t been the one, who had ytied to deliver it on Monday.
The Samsung B2100 is now working and I’m trying to find all the features. It didn’t come with a cable to link it to my computer, so this may be a problem, as I like to update the contacts from the computer, rather than by typing them in on the small keypad.
Is 20% VAT Fair?
There has been a lot of fuss about raising VAT to 20%. I‘m in favour though
- Most countries in Europe have a rate of 20% or over.
- There is no VAT on food, so perhaps instead of eating out all te time, it’s time to learn to cook. After all, there are masses of books and programs on the television. There is no VAT on books.
- There is VAT on fuel, so change your driving hsbits and use less. This a good thing as we will cut carbon emmissions. Osborne should have raised fuel taxes substantially, though!
- There is VAT On building work, so perhaps it’s the time to learn to do things yourself.
- There is VAT on consumer goods, such as telvisions, but then do you really need a four metre screen. I suppose it goves a better picture for those who watch Royle Family style with endless cans of lager. As large screen TVs use a lot of energy, there is a special case for taxing the larger screens heavily. But you can always buy one before next January. It could be argued that as virtually all consumer goods are imported , that a drop in demand would be a good thing.
- But my main reason for liking VAT is that everybody pays a bit. Remember that because of pension and income tax changes, many people will have a little bit more to spend.
Why We All Hate Couriers – 3
The saga of the non-delivery of my mobile phone continues. The courier was slated to deliver it between 16:55 and 17:55 yewsterday. I cancelled going out and stayed in, as I didn’t want to miss them this time.
And guess what?
They didn’t turn up. So I still haven’t got my phone. O2 have told them to deliver it today and there are rumours that it will be here by 12:00. It’s not shown on the courier’s web site though! I probably won’t be as I have a physio appointment. I’ll have to hurry back. But my secretary manager will be here.
Lady Macbeth
You may think that has nothing to do with my predicament, but they quoted her in an article in The Times today about cricket.
“If we could fail?” “We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking-place and we’ll not fail.”
Shakespeare got it so right!
Value Added Tax
There is talk of value-added tax being raised in the budget today. I feel that a rise to bring us more in line with the higher rates in Europe would not be something that caused too much pain, as most VAT consumers pay is on things like electronic goods, that are imported anyway. Perhaps we need a higher rate on things like that and perhaps a 15% rate on services, such as building work!
VAT to me is a good tax, as the system it replaced, purchase tax, ruined my father’s printing business. In the 1950s, printing work had two rates. On something like an invoice form or a letterhead, that had been printed and you could write on, my Dunlop handbills for their tennis tournaments all over the UK, the tax rate was zero, because it was not designed to be written on. Incidentally, the tax on plain paper was zero. This anomally lives on in that we don’t charge VAT on newspapers and magazines. Why not? A tax on OK, Hello et al would probably mean people read something more intelligent.
The outcome of this crazy tax regime was that more and more large businesses set up their own printing departments, buying plain paper and then using the new offset-litho techniques to create perfect copies of the originals created by craft letterpress printers like my father.
When my father had started up again after the Second World War, there were upwards of forty small printers in the old London borough of Wood Green. When he sold up in the mid-1960s there were just two.
So not having a fair tax system cost hundreds of jobs.
Vote Early, Vote Often
Various web sites in the United States publish polls on the application or use of the death penalty. There’s one here.
Panorama on the Gulf Oil Spill
A fascinating program, which probably asked more questions than it answered.
I’ve worked on some fairly dangerous chemical plants and you always put safety first, last and at every place in between. You might be lucky taking a short cut, but can you live at peace with yourself, if that short-cut proves to be fatal for others? I couldn’t!
So when doubts are raised about the working state of the blow-out protector by an engineer and it would seem these warning are ignored by BP and Transocean, I raise my engineer’s head in despair.
But then other engineers and managers have ignored such calls. I worked on a plant at ICI Mond in the late 1960s, where one of my colleagues installed an instrument, that said under some operating conditions, the plant could explode. The plant operation was immediately modified to avoid this condition. However the non-ICI designers of the plant saidthat no instrument could measure what we had found and refused to shut a similar plant in continental Europe.
They were wrong, not to do something which may have been important for safety.
Stroke-Friendly Keyboard
I know it will get better with practice, but my typing annoys me!
I usually hit the right key, or one that a spell-checker will correct, but it is the caps lock, shift and control keys that are the problem. For example :-
- I sometimes hit the caps lock instead of shift and get everything in caps. That is very rude in an e-mail and one has to have standards doesn’t one!
- I do a lot of shift characters by using two fingers of the right hand, rather than shift with the left hand and and the character with the right. But thinking back, I’ve always done this to a certain extent, but really I shouldn’t as it’s ignoring getting the left hand back in good form.
- I sometimes, hold the shift down with my left hand and not release it for the next characters. So I end up having to retype a whole phrase or sentence.
- But the major problem is that as the control and shift are so close together, I sometimes use control instead of shift. As control with a character has a meaning in most programs like Word or Internet Explorer,I tend to get in a mess, with all sorts of unwanted actions being carried out.
These problems are caused because the keys are so close together on my laptop, but even on a 2005-vintage Dell keyboard, I get the same problems.
I thought about disabling the control stroke, but that would mean I couldn’t use control-C and control-V for cut and paste. Old habits die hard.
How about the shift, control and old keys being something like piano keys on the edge of the keyboard.
Has anybody got a better solution?
John Bird on Benefits
John Bird,the founder of the Big Issue.should know a thing or two about poverty and also how the benefit system works. One thing he said was that to deliver a pound of benfit to someone who needs it costs five times that amount.
He’s just been on BBC Breakfast more or less saying that no-one should get benefits unless they sign a contract to perhaps do voluntary work.
If you can see the interview watch it.
I think he’s right, as from experience of life, I know of various families, who do nothing except sponge on the rest of us. And they have done for several generations! With the budget on Tuesday promising pain for us all, those on benefit must do something in return. One thing they should do as a condition of benefits is look after their health. After all is fair to fund their drinking, smoking, drug abuse and over-eating and then have to pay further costs for their treatment on the NHS?
One thing that annoys me, is if you drive past the Job Centre in Cambridge at say ten in the morning, there are always a few scruffy individuals outside smoking and drinking lager. Surely there is something more productive that they could do!
The Anonymous Widower 