Business Rates councilscam

In the UK each business has to pay Business Rates (National Non-Domestic Rates) tax to the local council. you would have expected it to be equivalent to council tax on a similar sized home, but actually it is vastly more.

A 3 bed house pays £1,400 per year council tax. A 5 room business pays £2,500. For that massive increase, they only get a single rubbish sack, no other services are provided!

Time to pay for email?

Guardian has an interesting article The end of free email.

Like calling an organisation or person, I have to pay the cost of the
phone call! Likewise for sending them a letter (with the exception of
organisations offering FREEPOST addresses). Perhaps we should do the
same for email, 1p per email externally to start with?

"One of the best ways to deal with externalities is to create a market. This means we start respecting other people's inbox as their own property, and stop dumping into it without consideration. We create a system that forces people to bear more of the costs of their actions."

Interesting to consider the options to try cut back on both unnecessary email and spam email. Having authenticated SMTP servers on a white list would make it much eaier to see who was actually emailing too.

Missing weight in laptop adverts

I'm amazed retailers get away with this, they advertise laptops in magaines and newspapers, even gadget specialist mags like T3 and Stuff.. and they miss out the weight! Vital info when considering a laptop etc

Rip of UK

Dell Zino HD, $249 in USA,
AMD Athlon 2650e (512K L2, 1.6GHz)

In EU we get slower CPU, AMD X2 3250E 1.5GHz 512k
and costs £329.. bargain!

Considering the exchange rate, should cost around the same price as Acer Revo 3600, £160

Political revival of Cornish

Nationalist politicians in Cornwall are at it again.. like Scottish SNP. As a dead language, Cornish was revived to its current level of 3,500, started by Henry Jenner back in 1903

The Independent writes about the current state. Over 50 primary schools have been forced to become the politician buttress, and devote hours per week to teaching Cornish to pupils, what a waste of education time which could have been spent much better.

500 gram GNU+Linux netbook - £70

Disgo Net Browser 3000 is sells in China for £70 with Windows CE 5.0. With its 7 inch display (800 x 480) it would make an excellent GNU+Linux netbook coupled with Firefox. Buying whole sale would be even cheaper. When the average *new* netbook price is £200, this is an absolute bargain.

So why has no one done it already?

• Needs an ARM distro (OpenZaurus, Maemo, openmoko or other embedded disro might make more sense than a regular Ubuntu distro).
• Only 64MB RAM, bloated firefox would consume that immediately, so Fennec is probably the way to go.
• Only 2GB NAND Flash, distro can fit in that, presumably it is also writable so can be partitioned for a HOME partition.

Simplify Charity Gift Aid

Even charities want my bank details now; as the BBC highlights.

The problem is that because the UK tax system is so overly complicated, charities are not allowed to claim (GiftAid) the income tax back on personal donations they receive (those individuals have paid that income tax on their salary).

Likewise each person then has to keep records of all donations they make, to fill in the GiftAid section of the personal tax return they are obliged to then prepare, costing them around £50 for a fiantial advisor to help them fill in the form.

Shame the government doesn't just simplify the whole system and allow charities just to claim in good faith GiftAid on any money collected in street donations!

M&S Christmas Shoppers Beware

M&S are running a Christmas marketing scam, so beware if you too considered buying from their "Christmas & New Year Food To Order".

The small print on the order form explains they will use your personal info for:
* marketing of products, services, marketing research.
* anything else listed in online privacy policy.
* only possible to opt back out is to write to them, and allow 3 months for them to try and take your details of their lists.

Reminds me of the Phishing scam emails I get. Workaround is to cross through those terms before signing.

Southern Water are just as bad, last month to register for water at my new pad, they ask for my National Insurance number!

This is definitely something the UK should legislate against. Also something that M&S's Stewart Rose should have never let happen. Probably ORG would be good at lobbying for a change here.

Magazine subscriptions a treasure trove of personal data

Just got one of those magazine subscription leaflets fall out of my paper, nothing new there. What was surprising was that their freepost piece of card asked for so much personal information, which would then be all plane to read as it made it through the postal system:

Name, Address, Daytime Tel, Mobile (aren't they the same?), email, year of birth, bank account, branch, signature.

If you must take up one of these offers, send it back in a brown envelope!

Standard light connector

Anyone who does DIY and installs new lights will know as soon as you unscrew the old light fitting you'll see a mass of wires and a connection block. Often due to the way UK ring-main works (6 wires) and then if you have a spur then there are 9 in total. Quite a mess to then try and connect in 3 wires for the new light fitting.

Therefore, what I would like to see is a standard, compact in-line connector, as is common in car lighting. The design needs to be safe, and have different shaped plastic (curve on one side etc) so it can only be inserted with the Earth, Live, Neutral connected correctly.

Digital Subtitles for TV

In the UK both Freesat and Freeview TV broadcast of BBC and other channels feature subtitles. However, I notice how poor the real-time subtitles are compared to the ones on pre-recorded programmes and films are.

Solution is for BBC and other life programs and news to insert a 10 sec delay from capture to broadcast of their live feed to give the subtitlers chance to write and send the text in real-time!

Like other countries have had for years (Japan since 2001 etc), films which on DVD come with subtitles and audio in multiple languages should also be available when broadcast on TV. The UK must be the only country with single audio/subtitle stream broadcasts.

Also I'd like the subtitles available as part of a revised iPlayer open offering, ditching the Microsoft/Adobe requirements.

Time for more HD channels?

In the UK with our free, unrestricted digital satellite service freesat we get 1.5 HD channels. That is BBC HD and the Red Button on ITV1 to switch to ITV1 HD

What I'd like to see is a full ITV1 HD channel schedule, additionally BBC HD being replaced by three HD channels, BBC HD1, BBC HD2 and BBC HD3. During the 2012 Olympics BBC HD2/3 could be completely deadlined to the games, and BBC HD1 somewhat.

In addition the formats and protocols should all be patent and license free like ISO standards and Khronos standards. Ideally also source code of each TV should be published, we could then fix bugs and add new features. I'd like to fix the (Info) button bug on my Panasonic TX37LZD81.

Finally, I would like to see the +1 repeat of BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, ITV1 which currently do not feature on Freesat or Freeview for some reason.

Clear Product Origin Labeling

Just bought from Tesco, Daily Care Toothpaste. What I didn't realise until I got home and read the small print was that it had come all the way from China!

My usual Colgate is made in the EU (Poland). I would rather buy UK materials+production, but there don't seem to be any left (we used to have a toothpaste and even Brillo pad down the road).

Therefore, I put out a call for legislation to have compulsory labeling of:

• Product origin in country name in large letting, equal size to product name/description.
• The origin must not be disguised ("Scottish" Salmon produced in Russia, packaged in Scotland etc)
• Km from the top destinations (as a product made in Beijing is 3,700 Km from Tibet).

Apathetic Voters Elect BNP

It's now four months since apathetic UK voters elected two BNP MEPs in the European Parliament Elections 2009 by not voting.

How did not voting bring in two MEPs you may ask?

Well, the math is is quite simple:

• The electorate is 45M.
• 17M voted in 2004.
• 15.5M voted in 2009.
  
• Due in a large part to various Government scandals, 7% of past labour supporters couldn't be bothered to vote in June 2009. (Overall 9% less people bothered to vote)
  
• By not turning out they effectively increased BNP share by proxy.

• Taking the North West region example, where Nick Griffin was selected as a topical the example, Griffin got 134,959 votes in 2004.
• In 2009 Griffin got 132,094 votes, that is 2,865 votes less! Which is a 2% drop in support.
• However, because of the massive drop in other parties votes, the BNP 6.4% vote share jumped up to 8%, a quarter increase simply due to those other voters.

If the apathetic 1.5M had turned out to vote, BNP share would not have risen and Griffin would not be now sitting in the European Parliament, and attending the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen representing the UK North West (he is a climate change denier).

How much is a vote "worth"? Well, it's relative to the population, electorate, and those who vote. Consider:

• UK population is 61M.
• Only 45M are eligible to vote (over 18)
• Only 15M votes were cast in the 2009 European Parliament elections.
• Each eligible voter represents 1.35 people in the populace.
• Each person who actually voted represented 4 people
  

So your vote is very important, every vote casts currently represents 4 people. If one of those electorate doesn't vote, the electorate that do vote, represent more of the population, and, as with the BNP, their share grows.

A few factual references with the votes cast: Ref1, Ref2, Ref3

Scottish pointlessness leaving the UK Elephant in the room

BBC are covering the Scottish Nationalist Party MP Alex Salmond's plan for a referendum on Scotland leaving the UK. Like Bavaria in Germany, it's one of those things talked about, which should never really be considered.

SNP and their "independence" bid.. well Scotland are still a very separate kingdom within the UK. For those that haven't heard of them, SNP is basically a one party policy, like UKIP.

Due to all EU member states being obliged to bring in the same EU Directives as local laws, there is very little point of Scotland leaving the UK. The main benefit for Scotts is that in the short/medium term they gain control of their finances. Of cause, as soon as the oil runs out, they will only have their Whisky and Salmon industries (sadly also still Alex Salmond!)

The debate is largely anecdote and personal opinions. If anything they should unify Scotland more comprehensively with the rest of the UK, dropping its separate legal system (incorporating any improvements it does have). Likewise get rid of local assemblies in Edinburgh, and Cardiff (N.Ireland can retain theirs, as it was part of the Good Friday agreement)

The only good thing I think could come out of this is adoption of the Euro!

Let's hope when SNP are gone, this debate will be long forgotten, like Political revial of Scots language.

Sadly Wales is now heading down the same sectionist route as SNP, having just published their very costly All Wales Convention report. They don't say how many millions have been wasted on the consultation. (They also only publish video in Microsoft's WMV format). I bet some poltians and Quango's really enjoyed getting paid lots of tax player cash to write a report about giving themselves more powers.

The only benefit seen so far from these regional talking shops has been the elimiation of tuition fees and prescription fees. Other countries within the UK could of cause take the same approach already, as fees are from the local council council budget.

Update, SNP to waste more money on a referendum (12M), and then more on duplicating administrative powers in Edinburgh.

Supporting UK car production

UK Car production:

For someone who would like to support local industry, for both locality and co2 environmental issues (not importing their car from Japan) a website showing car production in the UK and Europe of popular models would be very useful. A wiki with this information would be most useful, allowing everyone to keep it up2date.

The UK production I know about:
* Honda Jazz, production just moved to Swindon
* Nissan - Sunderland
* Ford - Dagenam

Eco power switch

Just registered to switch to Ecotricity and Equigas.

Moved into a new place, needed to start with British Gas, registered, received 3 A5 letters so far welcome letter, direct debit letter, estimated first statement for a 5 day period..), all 3 arrived on the same day, on coloured printed white paper! -- I would have been happy to get a single recycled brown paper envelope! Almost as bad as my bankers, Coventry Building Society (the UK's 3rd biggest), each time I add an additional transfer recipient (like for today's 86p electric bill) they send me a first class letter confirming it..

Next task is to check if can get cavity wall insulation.

Reform of UK taxation

The UK taxation system does really need a touch of modernisation.

Gordon Brown spoke about a tax on financial transactions this week. I don't agree with that, I've got a better idea. Simplification and adoption of slightly higher rationalised income tax rates like the modern economies of Scandinavia

Get rid of tax havens using the pound like Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man. If they want to be Bailiwicks which are also Crown dependency they should fall under the gaze of HMRC like the rest of the UK.

Tax is far more complicated in the UK than it needs to be. It has only got worse since Labour got into power in '97. I propose some significant simplifications below.

To give an example on the tax paid by someone on 100k (I wish!):

Gross pay £100,000 (arbitrary figure)
Less 12.8% employers NI on most of it
Less 11% employees NI on ~£35k of it
Less 1% employees NI on ~£60k of it
Less 20% tax on ~£35k of it
Less 40% tax on ~£60k of it

You can see the 40% bracket is actually only really 30%, because, employee NI drops from 11% to 1%. So for the employee there is only 10% tax more tax, however, the employer still needs to pay 12.8% on the whole amount!

In the UK, your the pay you see on your payslip doesn't give a full picture as there are taxes on top of your Gross Pay that do not see (they even grey them out for some obscure reason on the copy of the P60 you receive at the end of each year).

In other countries they have switched to "flat tax", e.g. Romania now is 16%. I don't agree with this, as it taxes the lower and middle income brackets the same as the higher-earners who can afford to pay much higher rates of tax.

UK tax deductions are:

1. Employers NI : 12.8% on salary after the first ~400 per month or so. (You never see the amount of this on your payslip.)
2. Employees NI (quite complicated) 11%
3. Income tax: Stepped rate, now 20% or 40% (10% rate bizarrely dropped by Labour 2yrs ago, but not for savings confusingly)
4. Tax free income up to 6,475 (this is your tax code, with the last digit replaced by L)
5. "Emergency Tax codes", this penalises those who arrive without a P45, or those who start working in the UK without an NI card while waiting for it to arrive.
6. Your pension contributions to your pension pot are tax free on input, however, any lump some when you retire, or the monthly income is taxable as your pay is now.
7. For those people into the 40% tax bracket they have a statutory duty to fill in a tax return to declare the difference between their savings interest rate deducted (@ 20% of the interest, and the 40% bracket).
8. HMRC waste time and money each year by sending out "Employers" software CD-ROM and guide on 31 March, and then on 6 April after new budget they send it all out again, with revisions. Then when Labour made the 10% tax mistake which took around £100 per year off the poor, they issued it all again in September.
9. I never use their HMRC software as payroll agency does it for me, so the CDs all go in the bin.
10. HMRC force companies to run multiple PAYE schemes for different offices, branches and purposes. For every PAYE account they have, HMRC sends all the same communications.
11. HMRC lets companies use payroll agencies, they don't make any payments, they just generate payslips and submit end of year P60 information. So they also get copies of every Employers CD-ROM and information pack.
12. Gift aid must be declared on personal tax return. It is not like we get any credit from declaring it anyway. No one checks on the information submitted, and it doesn't get calculated into anything useful on personal tax return.
13. Stamp duty, 1% up to £250k house value (calculated on total!), and then 3% if you slip over the 250k mark (like many houses now do), kerching, £8k stamp duty payable by the purchaser..
14. Tax credits. Labour make you pay tax, then claim it back so you are grateful.
15. 50% tax rate for the amount of income above 100k.
16. Company dividends tax free to the individual (10% nominal rate considered already paid), because the company has already paid Corporation Tax (~21%), upper rate of 32.5%.

The simplifications:

1. "Emergency Tax codes" abolished, if someone is a new employee, even with an NI number, they go on the same rate as everyone else. Employer should keep a photocopy of their ID and proof of address.
2. The Tax free allowance bumped up to to track the minimum wage @ 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year £11,897.60 (5.72 * 40 * 52)
3. Tax codes abolished, any tax due from a previous year cannot be collected by modifying the following year's tax code.
4. Employer's NI moved on to the Employee's side of the equation (with corresponding increase to cover it).
5. Keep stepped income tax bands, combined NI+income tax gives: 45%, 65%, 75%
6. HMRC only send the "Employee Bulletin" to those who have registered for it, likewise their CD-ROMs
7. Notify your bank you are in the 40% tax rate and they will do all the interest deductions automatically, saving you the need to file a personal tax return.
8. Gift aid no longer must be declared on personal tax return.
9. Stamp duty stepped, not calculated on whole amount. So 1% of amount up to 250k, and 3% on the amount above 250k. Also 5% on the amount above £1m.
10. Tax credits are gone, your income is untaxed up to £11,897.60 as a replacement.
11. Corporation tax rates increased slightly to 23% for small biz, and dividends taxed at income tax rates, less the Corporation tax rate of 23%.

The final result:

• Tax free income of £12k per year.
• No forms to fill in (tax credits, or personal tax returns)
• Dividends not used to avoid income tax rates.

;-)

Unsuitable University degrees

The current Labour government has been very keen to widen the university attendance to around 50% of the populace leaving school. All part of the Lisbon Agenda to create a "Knowledge Based Economy" which Tony Blair signed up to. The only problem being that:

1. There are not nearly enough jobs for these Graduates
2. The glut of graduates is pushing pay down from "reasonable" to "low"
3. Pay of practical work like Plumbers and Electricians is booming thanks to the lack of students going into these professions.
4. The University courses are often not relevant, useful or effectively targeted at the Industry jobs they are aiming at.

The arguments in favour of "waste of time" University degrees are:

• It's "an experience", learning to live and manage on your own (not unlike you would if you did an apprenticeship with others on a programme).
• University and school should teach learning skills and not teach relevant knowledge which will be directly useful in a Job (like a programming language, project planning, entrepreneurial or business skills).

Debt is the other big issue, I was the last year to receive funding for University, the following year had to pay £1,000 top up fees (and no funding), the years after this increased to £3,250 and I understand it is going up to 6,000 per annum next. You even have to pay £500 fees during your year-out industrial placement/internship! Universities are ironically not regulated by the government as Education establishments, but as private companies under all legislation, like Data Protection etc. Many are making lots of profit from the new government drive for University education. I've written about university top up fees before.

How many jobs are their really for the glut of Documentary Photographer graduates? Graduating with £15k debt and no job prospects. Or the Video Game Designers, with only around 30 UK companies, and probably 2 designers in each, where are the 200+ graduates going to find work? Tesco or Poundland probably. They won't then be over the threshold to start paying back that £15k debt either then.

Soooo many University courses are not relevant, English Lit (does this really open many jobs.. other than English teacher?). Even Electronics, we have few Electronics jobs in the UK for graduates. Most likely they will work as technical engineers, ordering parts for machines which are maintained, something they could have done without a degree. We need to bring back Technical Colleges, and Polytechnics, teaching/training for jobs which are actually available in industry.

Didn't Derby University get in trouble for running a "Kite Flying module"? A quick search could not find anything on it tho.

UK Postal Competition

Our main postal service is Royal Mail, however, it's largely legacy infrastructure left over from when BT was separated from the PTO (Post Office Telecommunications). There is very little competition in provision of door2door postal service, something that has to change. There are a few bulk delivery agencies licensed, UKMail and TNT being the largest.

With postal workers on strike over pay and conditions I would like to see:

• Postal prices go up to closer to their commercial rivals (39p compared to £2 is unnecessarily cheap).
• Postal workers get pay rises, to be in-line with their commercial rivals.
• Modernisation within Royal Mail, for automatic sorting machines, bar-codes, and RFIDs on sacks etc.
• Royal Mail long-term temporary employed staff offered full-time contracts with pension provision.
• Government legislation obliging both Companies like Royal Mail and Unions like CWU to go through a meaningful arbitration process with ACAS before engaging in any strikes.
• Breaking up Royal Mail if it helps competition. Each Region should be a separate franchise (minimum of 10 different companies running the franchises to ensure competition in provision).
• Ban Royal Mail from delivery of un-addressed door2door junk mail. (Replacing the door2door "opt-out" system which doesn't work)

These changes for a start should stop the current strikes, increase productivity and pay for workers. Even stopping the disgruntled posties which dump red elastic bands on my door step and drive every day!

Modern timezone for the UK? British Standard Time / Central European Time

The BBC had an interesting article the other week: Tundra time call in clocks debate. It is great the BBC gave some coverage to this safety and productivity issue (also sanity, daylight helps well-being!)

"Sir Alistair Horne said it was "absolutely crazy" for the UK to have a different time zone from the rest of central Europe."

He is absolutely right, we all deal with Europeans, travel there on holidays, and then because the UK is still -1 behind Central European time we miss meetings (13:00 telecon with German customer? oops, I'm on lunch break then). Wikipedia has a page on GMT showing Western European Time on the map so you can get a better idea.

There is a fantastic independent write up of the 1968-71 UK British Standard Time trial, it was a great sucess. With 2,700 less KSI (Killed or Seriously Injured) over the period the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents reports (section 2.1 in report below), it's not possible to argue with that figure.

"This Note provides an overview of the pros and cons of British Summer Time, as well as details of the latest attempts to change it in the UK.": British Standard Time 68-71

Workaround is start work @ 8:00, and come home at 16:00, the only problem is children aren't allowed to arrive at school before 9:00. Interestingly, 1.3 indicates Norway and Sweden are doing exactly as I suggest already (people work earlier hours in winter months to make the most of the light).

The people who would moan about this reform are likely the same bunch that did last time, the rural crowd saying that this means they have to milk cows in the dark.. (why not just milk them 1 hour later?), and the parents who don't like waking their children up when there isn't a complete sun visible outside (they would rather they walk home in the dark and get run over).

Another post on this matter: RoSPA Calls For Switch To Ligher Nights to Save Lives

BBC article from 2003: Safety call as clocks go back

BBC article from 2006: Clock change 'would save lives'

Daily Telegraph 2006: Majority in favour of double summertime

The Guardian 2006: Whatever happened to Double Summer Time?

For those that argue we are placed to deal with both the US and Asia from our time-zone, just compare the US West coast with Asia/Australia east coast, (both sides of pacific) why not nudge our time-zone to fit best?

Los Angeles is GMT -8
Sydney is GMT +10

See the timezone map.

You can see where I am going with this. The blue column at GMT+1 is perfectly aligned to take advantage of this working day :)

It's also a small co2 issue, there is one hour longer every day now that everyone has to have lights on.

It is inevitable that as is always some are hostile to change, but standardisation and safety improvements really seal this one for me. I say bring it on ;)

p.s. I won't get on to this point this time around, but standardising on driving on the same side as the rest of the Europe is also a good thing (like Sweden did, switching in the 60s). Metric is also one worth moving too (no more Miles and Yards signs, yay!)

Even the EU shores up Adobe Flash now

In a bizarre twist of fate, Viviane Reding one of the non-democratically elected EU Commissioners put up her weekly video entitled "Protecting privacy in the digital age", in the privacy invading Adobe Flash format. This gives a privacy problem like the following screenshot (example I'd saved, she's not using youtube from what I could tell):



I've written about the security and privacy flaws in Flash before. Due to Flash being a proprietary binary that the user has no control over, it can happily just ignore all the cookie and privacy settings in the browser. Happily sending and receiving cookies, as well as maintaining a large set of cached files and data locally that the user is unaware of.

All we need now is for the information commissioner to advocate Adobe Flash, seeing as he's already using unique google tracking cookies to monitor the populace for two years.

I wonder how much/commission_barroso/reding/_bin/favideo/skins/ClearOverAll.swf cost us all to make, on top of the £556 price for a copy of Adobe "Flash Pro CS4" (dabs.com price). Not a good use of our EU taxpayers money!

Return Royal Junk Mail back to them

Royal Direct Mail is at it again.. but this time I've got an idea.. if it comes together it could be quite comic:











The DMA "Your Choice" scheme is ineffective, and why should we have to register that we didn't want junk mail in the first place? Not least because they will write to you 2 or 3 times to get you to reconfirm you don't want junk mail, and then like TPS and DMA lists it will expire after 3 years. Door-to-door is what Royal Mail like to call their marketing scheme. I couldn't find the Yell, Thomson Local and BT opt-out, that would have saved another 8KG of junk mail per year.

Imagine if for every piece of unaddressed junk mail that Royal Mail pushes through letter boxes around the country, just 10% of us returned it to them in the red boxes they place around the streets? Rather than me paying the council refuse collectors to take it all way, Royal Mail would have to cover the costs, and it might just bump the price up sufficiently for them to call of their junk mail programme.

If you don't have any "Return To Sender" stickers, you could always just forward it back to them. See how they appreciate arriving and having a mound of junk mail to wade through each day like the rest of us!

Royal Mail Group Ltd
148 Old Street
LONDON
EC1V 9HQ

How long till an open iPlayer box?

Like everyone else in the UK who watches TV, I've been funding BBC iPlayer (and also Creative Archive "initiative") sine 2003, I've still yet to see any accessible version of the iPlayer product available though.

If you have a Freeview decoder you will know the streams are all transmitted over the airwaves in MPEG2 format, with no Digital Restrictions Management impeding the accessibility of the content. BBC iPlayer streams content, post-broadcast, and because of this they argue they need Digital Restrictions to convince rights holders to let them stream -- it is a shame the BBC argeed to this strategy.

What I'd at least like to see now is an iPlayer box, like I have a Freeview and Freesat box (well and our Panasonic TX37LZD81 includes both Freesat HD and Freeview). At roughly the same price point as a router box (£40), just needs the BBC to freely licence iPlayer so vendors can bring to market open iPlayer boxes for us to connect to our TVs ;)

HTML email considered harmful (TV Licensing)

The problem of companies sending out HTML emails is getting worse, certainly in the UK I just received my TV License email, and the email only said "Your TV Licence is available". I needed to switch Thunderbird to view the message body as HTML to be able to get to the rest of the information. (Thunderbird Message Body naming isn't ideal either).

The automated email from TV Licensing now also uses a from address indicating they don't even want me to contact them, donotreply@tvlicensing.co.uk, their sender address bounces@tv-l.co.uk actually bounces when I tried to reply to them. Visit the TV Licensing site and you're presented with this link "Click here to fill in a short email form", a contradiction as the web-form is worse than usual, a tiny box which they try to give an automated answer, shifting yet more cost saving on to my back when I only wanted to let them know they were sending out empty emails.

Most spam I get uses HTML tricks to get through my ISP filters, a good reason if any not to support HTML email. HTML email is useful for sending tables of information, but then we could all just attach the OpenOffice file to the email!

Ditch imperial measurements

Unfortunately the UK is still using imperial measurements despite introducing metric in the 70s. Now the government is even urging councils not to pursue traders who still insist on selling goods in imperial measurements with no conversion into metric. When really we should be moving towards replacing Pints and Miles with Litres and Kilometers!

Vodaphone O2 stifled number migraton

Sadly Ofcom have not succeeded in their effort to get mobile number portability in under 7 days. Established market controlling companies Vodafone and O2 teamed up to prevent 3 (who have a smaller market share) from gaining migrating customers. Of cause Vodafone and O2 do transfers in 20 mins over the water in Ireland!

Independent gets it wrong on maps

I've posted before about it being time to open up the OS Map resource which successive governments have missed. So was pretty surprised to see the David McCarthy in The Independent Internet maps 'demolish British history' making the mistake of thinking that it's the fault of the people who have to create their own maps.

The article was in the edition I bought friday, actually it's probably one of the worst I have read this year (sorry McCarthy). With not even a mention of the key point that OS refuse to license their material under reasonable terms. I'd love OS to provide their data so we can have public footpaths on Google maps.

It's just such a waste of the fabulous OS map resource at present. The OS have obviously some skilled staff at least, as they have their own internet map (so it is available on the "internet" McCarthy!) but have constrained it to such a tiny image, and you can't take a copy unless you screengrab it as they have blocked the right mouse button... pity the team who were forced to put those restrictions in. It will obviously open up eventually, but why ruin the sector for the next 10 years unnecessarily OS?

McCarthy even miss titles BCS the "British CartographicAL Society"

There is a reason not even government councils use OS maps. Anal licensing and poor integration possibilities mean the OS is again failing to make its mark online.

To prove the point, I checked the OS map online map browser and see all the flaws a site shoudl not have:

* It displays OS maps in a clunky small popup.
* It displays errors in yet another clunky small popup
* It doesn't offer alternatives if I miss spell "TEWKEXSBURY"
* I can't print the map
* I can't link to the map
* I can't email the link to anyone
* The UI is poor, I can't drag the view
* The zoom is poor, I can't use my scroll wheel
* The popups are full of adverts for Garmin, Philips, AZ, cicerone, Isys
Outrdoors, Jarrod, Memory map, and printed maps. They've got there
target the wrong way around, most people use internet maps these
days, when they are just trying to use the internet to sell offline maps.

The problem with OS maps is that its run by the government, and bureaucrats see no reason to change it from it's paper based existence unfortunately.. suck in the 1980s mindset, shame.

Eco driving from 28 to 41 mpg

Having just travelled a monster 2500 mile trip around many destinations in Europe in my Audi I am pleased to say I managed to adjust my driving style and cut my petrol consumption by 32%. In the UK I was achieving around 28 mpg (10 km per litre), with my new approaches I increased that to 41 mpg (14.5 km per litre)!! So over my 2500 miles this saved me £128 pounds (1280 km saved, 10 km per litre at £1.2)

Top tips:

1. Don't leave the engine idle, turn it off if in stationary traffic.
2. Cruse in 6th gear, watch the revs and take it easy.
3. Follow lorries in the slow lane.
4. Don't overtake cars to gain 20 metres.
5. Roll down hills, take out of gear and watch the engine on revs saved ;)
6. Coast up to lights that are on red, rather than racing and then braking. If you're lucky they will change to green and you will have saved momentum.
7. Deal with motorways which are racing, then braking, then racing along again by cruising and evening out the traffic flow. Saves the brakes as well as fuel!

Driving a UK car in Europe on the right side of the road is quite easy actually, I was surprised, the hard bit is usually positioning the car between the line markings in a LHD car, but as RHD I didn't have any probs at all. Overtaking a parked bus is bit harder as view is obscured looking left through. It is a shame Germany does not have cats-eyes on any of its autobanns, especially as some are not lit!

The BBC has recently published an eco-driving article.

If the UK switched to drive on the same side as Europe it would make sense..

RealPlayer privacy issues

Occasionally I need to help out a friend with their computer, then I notice what "Real Spyware Player" is doing, pre-loading its self and using up system resources.. presenting its browser and ads when it first opens, and even going online when the computer starts without permission (causing ADSL modem to dial!)

Check out this screen shot of it causing the ADSL dial:
I don't think it should ever have been coded to work like this. It even does this in the BBC custom version which is supposed to not include all their adverts and calling home functionality. Another reason to not use RealPlayer any more.

Bike and Ski helmets

I'm still surprised bike and ski helmets are not compulsary, either of which could save a life or prevent severe concussion. Time to make helmets compulsory?

I've landed on rocks myself when skiing and it hurts! luckily not on my head yet though :)

UK House Price Crash

Looks like the house price crash I predicted last year is now in full swing. The crash is going to be even bigger than the last 40% correction potentially. A 50% reduction in prices over the next four years is a distinct possibility after all these uncontrolled boom years!

Better UK post codes

Current post codes take the form of 8 alphanumeric characters, but that only indicates a street (or one side of the street typically).

What we really need is a post code which includes the property reference.

So CB1 2QP which is Abbey Street in Cambridge gets an additional number at the end to indicate the property number, making it CB1 2QP 14.

Each post code may have up to 999 properties on it, and so the number can be anything from 1-999 (does not need to be zero padded). The 14 does not necessarily need to correlate with the building number, but if the street is numbered, those numbers should correlate. If the buildings have names they should be assigned a number.

So when we phone up to give our address and order something, we only need to provide CB1 2QP 14, and not need the person at the other end to select our house name from a big drop-down list.

UK road signs

For those of you who've not driven the UK before, it's a bit different compared to Europe, we've still not adopted the standard road signs for Motorways and even speed signs (UK just displays a white circle with black diagonal line across to mean 60 or 70 mph)! So you will have to figure out the UK sign system, which isn't always logical.

Also the UK is still using Imperial measurements for road distances too, which is a shame considering schools and all professions work in Metric!

UK driving on right hand side of road

The Romans drove on the left, as does the UK and Japan, but 72% of the world drives on the right side of the road, with Sweden switching to the right in the 60s. Should the UK follow suit and allow us to import our cars from Europe? See wikipedia for the origins, but being right-handed suits having your right hand potentially free because you are driving on the left side of the road. Generally boats all drive on the right side of shipping lanes. Also planes on a collision course towards each other each turn left to avoid a collision.

Like eating with Knife and Fork, those right-handed take Knife, the more complex of the two to operate in their right hand. How does this compare for driving? Having driven on both the left and right I always find myself crusing with my right hand on the steering wheel, which shows that steering is best suited to to being right-hand drive like the UK is currently. The gears are very easy to operate on a stick or automatic in either hand I find.

Time for the UK to switch to be the same as the rest of the EU?

Too much packaging

I'm sure everyone is noticing just how much superfluous packaging food and products now come in. Now rather than taking all that packaging off individually wrapped apples in a larger bag at home, imagine if we took all the packaging off while still in the supermarket. Imagine if we left it all there neatly placed in black sacks, and took the food home in our reusable shopping bags. Supermarkets would have to hire skips at great expense to take away the packaging, and would soon stop buying produce from supplies who over-packed their food ;)

English spelling irregularities

English spelling is pretty eccentric, I wonder if it would ever be possible to switch the spelling of words to a phonetic base. Would be hard as spelling is so engrained, and also many other countries speak English as their first language. However, other languages have tried to make modifications over time, i.e. like High German dropping the sharp-s character, so "Grüße" becomes "Grüsse", I still see the ß charcter widely in use, so the government trying to change may not necessarily make it successful. Also, do we really want to have to change languages back to just latin letters..?

Phorm unique tracking

BBC ran a story earlier this week: Ad system 'will protect privacy'. Also the PMs site has a petition worth signing. The Phorm site has a privacy page with some more information.

Phorm say their tracking is anonymous, but surely they have miss-understood the definition of Anonymous (from the Greek ανωνυμία):

Oxford English Dictionary:

Anonymous a.
1. Not identified by name; of unknown identity.
2. Having no individual or unusual features.

Or as Chambers Dictionary puts it, "without character; nondescript"

Once I have been assigned a unique number which identifies every communication with me uniquely, surely I am no longer anonymous?

Once they have tagged my interests as "cars", "music", "travel" and "gadgets" surely that would constitute something along the lines of "individual or unusual features" ? I'm certainly no longer nondescript.

The honest way would be for Phorm to phrase it: "uniquely identified, profiled and browsing categories tracked by a number rather than a name".

Let's see what the Information Commissioner's research into Phorm reveals.

Phorm privacy problem

The UK PM's site has a petition We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Stop ISP's from breaching customers privacy via advertising technologies. Please consider signing it, already on 2,009 signatures, going up 500 per day!

Freeconomy walk fails - just bad planning?

Inspired by Gandhi's walk to Porbander (India), Mark Boyle planned to walk from Bristol to Porbander as a "Community Pilgrim" to promote his Freeconomy community movement. Unfortnately for him he failed and returned from France this week.

To me it looks incredibly stupid to set off abroad to France in light of not being able to speak French! No wonder everyone thought he was a freeloading backpacker or illegal migrant. It's pretty rude to expect people to speak English when French is such a significant language itself. Setting out on a walk with such a complete lack of planning is simply stupid. His community didn't yet exist, and no wonder no one understood what he was aiming to achieve. Had he marketed his mission in advance online, and got local media involved it would probably have been more successful.

However, setting off with no money at all is pretty silly, if he wants to get things to move to a "freeconomy" there has to be some intermediary phase (like the difference between socialism and communism, no country ever reached communism).

From his site:
"So what is The Freeconomy Community about?

It's about making the transition from a money-based communityless (sic) society to a community-based moneyless society."


What Mark wants has been tried before, the socialist countries in Eastern Europe, CCCP and Asia all operated barter trading agreements. Putting a numerical value on things just seems to work better though, because you can't often work out how many sheep you need to barter for a car..! the free market is pretty good at deciding prices. In CCCP there was a state managed economy, where Gosplan would "predict" demand, and set prices. The problem with predicting is that they would ramp up production for say "fashionable shoes", and then it would turn out that people didn't like them. The moral is, you can't predict what consumers what to buy. In addition, there needs to be the "success factor" that is capitalism, otherwise there bad ideas and bad products last for ever, when, like in evolution only the successful products and services should survive.

It's odd that Mark expected to rely on others food and shelter while on his trip, which those people would obviously foot the bill for.

At least the media have highlighted the need for schools to educate in modern popular languages which people like Mark will need when they are on trips abroad.

The Landshare idea on his website is pretty silly, making everyone run an allotment. It reminds me of domestic iron production in CCCP.

These days Mark would probably make more of an impact on the world if he got on Wife Swap somehow.

Telegraph article. Mark Boyle website. Funny commentary on the walk.

Time to prohibit chewing gum?

As chewing gum will always get dropped and stuck on pavements by a minority, is it time to prohibit chewing gum sales in the UK/EU? Singapore banned it back in 1992, the ban remains to this day (although medicinal gum is allowed). I wouldn't miss it, and it would not be "nanny state" ban. In fact, dog dirt is just as much a problem, if only the culture would change, and owners would tidy up after their pooches!

Arnotts Tim Tams!

Tim Tams taste great! Only £1.30 on that site, for an Australian delicacy! TrueBlueTucker also sell them in the UK.

Adam Curtis Documentaries

I've been catching up on older documentary series' by Adam Curtis recently. Saw his Power of Nightmares, and The Trap previously.

Century of Self - concerns consumerism and democracy.

The Mayfair Set - concerns how a group of four men who frequented the Clermont club in London ultimately shaped the climax of the Thatcher years.

Pandora's Box - concerns how governments have utilised technology for their own aims.

Political revival of Scots Gaelic

After the nationalist politicians in Wales have been desperately reviving the Welsh language, Scotland's nationalist politicians have also started along a track to the detriment of the citizens who elected them as well. The Scottish Parliament passed the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act back in 2005, establishing a quango called "Bòrd na Gàidhlig" to push Scots Gaelic back into Education and Scottish life from it's defunct position.

It's a sorry day for the students who could otherwise be spending those 4-6 hours a week learning another popular language to give them an advantage in life.

At least Scotland isn't trying to mandate school lessons in Gaelic... yet.. See Wikipedia's Language revival and Languages of the United Kingdom articles for further information.

FTSE speculation graph

There is an interesting graph on the BBC site at present. It shows the FTSE index over the last 20 years. You can see it has grown 3500 points over this period, which in the two year intervals on the graph is 175 points per year on average. If we take that increase and draw a diagonal line we can see the index is roughly on track at its correct value at present.

I've prepared an estimation of what it could be over the next four years if it actually stuck to this average increase rate (picture right).

No we all know from looking at the BBC graph that it doesn't follow the trend.. However, the key thing to remember is that, if we buy when the index is below the current trend line then we are sure to make more than we would if bought when above the line over a long term investment period.

So.. I'll be waiting for the next dip below the trend before I get an ISA index tracker! Personally I think the index will drop to around 4,500 over the next 12-18 months. Happy investments!

Free SAP competitor?

Anyone know of a free software SAP competitor? It's a big marketplace.

Apple Milking Europe with 20% higher prices

Arp has posted some US figures to go with my Apple Macbook Vs Dell Laptop comparison.

Looks better, only a $180 US difference, which translates in to UK pounds as:

• Apple Macbook - £778
• Dell M1330 - £686

I wonder why Apple have such different prices in the states, 20% more expensive! The Dell is only £33 (5%) more than in the UK! Apple milking it's European "fan base" ?

Boost min wage to reduce inequality

The BBC are covering today research which shows the top 10% of earners are accelerating away from the population as a whole. If those 10% were taxed more this wouldn't be so bad under the last 10 years of Labour government.

The top 10% do not really matter that much, it's the average of the population that has to be improved. If the minimum wage was increased above 20% per annum this wouldn't be so pronounced after 10 years. Currently the min wage is £5.52, if increased at 20% for the next too years that would take it up to £7.94 per hour, taking the lowest salary up to £16,000.

ipod advert music

While I prefer my Sony Ericsson to a solely music player with Digital Restrictions like Apple's ipod... I still find the song on the ipod advert quite catchy. If you want to buy it too, it's by a band called Feist, and the track is called 1234, get it from the hype machine!

Warning - MPS Junk mail opt out only lasts 5 years!

Having just registered with the UK's MPS (Marketing Preference Service) to stop getting junk mail I got a confirmation letter warning that it will expire in 5 years, and that it will take them up to 4 months to stop their marketing association members from junk mailing me. Not very effective+efficient is it.!? Why can't it last for ever?

BBC-B in UoSAT-2 launch video

Not exactly 20 years ago today.. but this UoSAT-2 video is pretty cool anyway. Check out the BBC-B in the video!. The Major Tom sound track is pretty ace too :)

The political revival of the Welsh language

It's a shame how things have gone in the last 10yrs regarding Welsh, from being a dead language only spoken by a few in the North West of the country (Snowdonia etc) it has had the political bellows firmly wedged into it, and they have managed to keep the embers burning at great cost to the UK and to the people of Wales.

The economic cost is plain:

• There is no economic benefit to speaking welsh when everyone in Wales speaks English.
• It costs the UK millions and millions to translate all official documents and leaflets into Welsh, when they are already struggling to assist "genuine" non-native English speakers to understand the paperwork they need to complete.

The strategy which should have been fostered:

• Assistance provided to the elderly generation who live in the North regions which don't have English as their first language.
• All schools teaching pupils in English.
• Encourage take up of a "genuine" foreign language in school, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese etc

Then:

• After the benefits of a workforce fluent in an international standard language and an equally useful second language are realised, phase out Welsh completely. Leaving Welsh like Cornish and Gaelic, Scots and Latin.

My welsh friends all broadly see Welsh as a waste of learning time when we live in such a connected world where English and another international language would be very useful.

The economic benefits of a workforce which can live and work in other areas of the UK and the world are a key point. I've seen no evidence to support teaching Welsh and reviving it further, everything points to it just being a nationalist political exercise which will do Wales no long term good. Will the Nationalists have the last laugh? or the citizens?

Check your insurance file

Insurance Database Services Limited run the Claims and Underwriting Exchange which holds a database of information passed to them from Insurance companies on any claims you have made. I checked my record recently and found errors on the record which Elephant had twice assured me they had corrected!

Fill in this form and write to them yourself at:
The Company Secretary
Insurance Database Services Limited
1st Floor, 100 Fenchurch St
London EC3M 5JD

Oddly they ask on that form for us to tell them what claims had been made, surely they should be the ones telling us that so we can check?

It costs slightly more than the credit reference agency file, coming in at £10, but maybe you can argue for it back if there are errors?

Check your credit file for only £2

I'm glad I checked my credit file recently, both Experian and Equifax had erroneous data from two banks.

The good news is we can pay £2 by cheque or postal order to the companies and get a full copy. Be sure to include your D.O.B. full name and previous addresses in the last six years!

Write to:
Experian Limited
PO BOX 8000
NOTTINGHAM
NG1 5GX

Equifax
Credit File Advice Centre
PO BOX 1140
BRADFORD
BD1 5US

Consumer Services Team
Callcredit plc
PO Box 491
Leeds LS3 1WZ

Interestingly, although they hold a database on us, it is currently regulated by the Credit Act rather than the Data Protection Act (so the Information Commissioner does not directly regulate).

Missing Data Protection Contoller contact details

I've noticed in recent years that I will purchase something or donate to a charity, and then discover that despite not ticking the box to opt into their marketing (or vice versa, always ticking to opt-out!), I've been added to their marketing databases. Often my details are then sold on to other companies, I've had Oxfam passing my details to Crisis, and also SmileTrain have just passed on my details to RNLI and MINT I suspect.

The problem is, they don't include a clear address to write to get in touch with the Data Protection Controller and track down the cause of this leak. Also the organisations are often unwilling to put in place policies to verify consent was provided before they buy in data. Many Data Protection Controllers do not even keep records of where they obtained the data from (Gateshead Council Electoral Roll return slips) (Gateshead sold my details to Harveys Furniture Store).

In my experience many Controllers are unwilling to divulge who they have distributed personal data too, or the source when they must have records of it.

I think we need a few "cultural" changes relating to Data Protection of persons information by organisations which we hope we can trust:

• Include full contact details for Data Protection Controller in all communications.
• Data Protection Controller needs to keep records of where personal data arrived from and that permission has been provided and verified.
• Penalties and compensation for breaches of personal data and the time taken to sort out the problems of unauthorised data leaks.
• ICO office being given more powers to investigate/audit organisations, and do spot checks to verify data breaches and record keeping in organisations.
  

Some organisations are not even registering on the Data Protection Register, in my view they should be fined and audited by the ICO, charging them for the cost of the audit.

The HMRC incidents in the UK really highlight how lapse this situation is at present. So Data Controllers, have a new years resolution to do your jobs properly! ;)

New train service to London!

I wondered why there weren't many services running these days. Now I know the answer:
hehe, merry Gregorian new year everyone

When even the Information Commissioner's office is tracking us, who's left to trust?

I posted last month about cookie tracking, and now I noticed that none other than the UK Information Commissioner's website is also assigning me a unique number which does not expire until 2009!! Spot the referal tracking too? and what does "organic" mean?

I could not believe that this would be something the ICO Richard Thomas, would have allowed his office to set this up. I can't even think this was an oversight, as it is necessary to sign-up for the tracking system account before you can use it!

Interestingly, even googling for "information commissioner" gives me the warning that the website is trying to set a unique tracking cookie on my computer.
Before anyone posts saying it is anonymous, check the definition of anonymous -- "lacking individuality, unique character, or distinction", oops Mr ICO!

So much for warning of the big brother state then Mr Thomas!?

The ICO is an independent office of government, responsible for protecting access to personal information and providing access to official information. Covering the following legislation: Data Protection Act 1998, The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, and the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Let's see if the ICO practices what preaches regarding privacy any time soon...

Forms and paperwork now expand to fit the net

It seems like every form which used to be 1 page has now increased to about 10 thanks to how "easy" it is to ask for someone to fill it in online. The net could be used to complete the compact forms of old and speed up the process, but it seems it's only made it simpler for organisations to ask for more information! When a new motorway is built to ease congestion, within a couple of years it's also at gridlock.

Simple changes to improve road safety

Working in the home counties recently, I see lots of little villages and winding roads. What surprises me is that nearly all these roads are set at the national speed limit and there aren't any double-white lines in the middle stopping people from overtaking. So every day I am doing 40 mph around a sharp bend and find someone else overtaking and almost careering into my car!

So some simple steps to cut down road traffic accidents:

• Double-white lines on all roads where there is not a perfect overtaking opportunity, cutting out about 50% of the current overtaking death spots.
• Widen roads by 1 Meter, and use that space to separate the two opposing traffic lanes with a white dash painted area.
• Repaint the white fluorescent markings down the centre of the road regularly, and in particular at junctions (a common location of accidents)
• Fix or replace all broken cats-eyes, too many roads have worn markings and missing cats-eyes.

Easy stuff, and not that costly to save lives, so why isn't it done!?

Happy birthday Open Rights Group!

ORG is officially Two years old today, congratulations! For those not already members, please consider supporting any way you can ;)

The French will be pleased not to arrive in Waterloo!

With the opening of St Pancras to the Eurostar High Speed 1 route which travels through the chunnel from France, some must be very pleased about not having to arrive in a station named after the defeat which ended the Napoleonic wars!

Victory against Napoleon was on 18 June 1815 at Waterloo (Belgium), secured by the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian army against the might of Napoleon. Waterloo bridge was named after the battle, and then Waterloo station was named after the bridge.

I'm happy to have a high-speed route in to London from the channel, but wonder just how long we'll have to wait until the rest of the UK has high-speed routes..?

Regulating CCTV in the UK, Surveillance Protection Principles proposed

From last year's EthiComp Conference, A. A. Adams of Reading University presented Regulating CCTV.

Quotes from the Abstract: "Given that the number of CCTV cameras in the UK is the largest in the world, and given that it is unclear when video data should be regarded as Personal Data (or what rights a blanket definition would reasonably provide to the surveilled) it is claimed that a CCTV Act is needed in the UK"

"Specific proposals for securing data and infrastructure are suggested, in addition to some general Surveillance Protection Principles."

The real reason and benefit of the 2012 London Olympics

We would all think the Olympics was about sports and building bridges between different countries and peoples. That's still officially the goal, but the reality is that it costs too much to bid successfully and develop the facilities that now it's about more than just the eight week Olympic period.

It's about the legacy, what facilities and regeneration the Olympic works will bring in. It's a great excuse to spend a lot of tax payers money, re-developing depressed areas. Like the Stratford in North London.

As well as all the fantastic sports facilities, we are also getting part of the rail network the capital is desparate for. The new Crossrail route from east to west, and the eurostar line (High Speed 1) down to the chunnel from St Pancras, Stratford and Ebbsfleet International stations.

I'm looking forward to making the most of these new transport facilities ;)

Guesthouse provides Linux wireless config!

I have to say, this was a first for me, Clifton Guest house in Maidenhead provided me with a wireless connection sheet with Linux (and MS-Windows) instructions on it! Interestingly they missed Mac details out, a signal of the way things are going!?

Commercial Maglev comes to Europe

The BBC reports that Europe is getting it's first commercial Maglev train, in the form of a service from Munich aeroport into the city centre. We could do with a Maglev in London. Now we only have the Heathrow express which costs £15.50, about 8 times more than other airport shuttle services, and still takes over 20 mins to get to Heathrow!

Time for Free Software addoption in whitehall?

Interesting article in the Guardian, Ignoring open source is costing us dear. Not making the most of these opportunities for cost savings does seem mad, spend the money savned on the front line services politicians keep talking about!. Hope the UK and Europe will consider adopting more Open Source/Free Software apps... what's good for Google, Amazon, Malmaison and Alfresco should at least be considered !

UK fibre broadband

The UK Government is considering fibre broadband assistance. The thing is, we've been lagging behind Korea and Japan for some years now on this front. I'm sure it would drive our economy forward if we had 100 mbit/sec connections in each home! Certain areas have VirginMedia cable, which can offer up to these speeds, but without competition in the marketplace they don't really have any reason to ramp up!

Inefficient road usage (not making the most of our roads!)

I've noticed a few drivers don't follow golden rules of keeping traffic moving on normal A roads and even motorways recently:

• Not driving near the national speed limit (60mph). Trundling along at 40mph creates a tailback with often no safe overtaking spots. Solution: Drive the same speed as everyone else, like they do in the US, an evenly spaced convoy ;)
• Speed cameras and traps, at fixed locations and fixed speed limits delaying traffic 24hrs a day when they only need to rate-limit traffic during rush hour. I've been on dual-carriageways which are empty at midnight, still with a 50mph speed limit. Likewise driving past a school in on a Sunday is still a 30mph zone!
• On motorways some drivers forget to move back to the slower lanes when they've finished their overtaking manoeuvre. On four-lane motorways I see people trundling along lane 2 and 3 at 65mph, which bungs up the fast-lane with more traffic than the rest of the road (undertaking not being allowed!).
  

What's the solution? I think just a little bit of common sense, and polite reminding of those making the mistakes. Variable speed-limits which depend on traffic levels, like we have on motorways. Speed cameras can be replaced with interactive speed displays, with the polite "Thank you" when the driver slows to within the limit ;)

Bring Concorde back to flight?

Wouldn't it be great to see Concorde flying again? or even another Mach 2.0 consumer aircraft. I'm surprised no one has yet filled the gap left by Concorde myself. Personally I'd be happy to invest time and effort to buy an airframe and get one flying again on a commercial basis!

Quite a few Concorde models are within reach, Concorde 216 is at Filton Aerodrome in Bristol, and 206, 204, 208 and 209 are also in storage in the UK!

The Save Concorde Group are looking to get one back into flight, hopefully it will come together! Concorde SST is another website with an active forum.

iPlayer Linux

The BBC have just launched their "on-demand" internet ready iPlayer beta. It's actually only Microsoft Windows XP compatible though -- no Linux or Mac support! This is essentially the same as if the BBC broadcast in a format incompatible with TVs which weren't manufactured by Panasonic!

Sign the iPlayer Linux petition, and make yourself, the free public heard!

Lib Dems ensure Red Ken is reelected

We learned this week how Greg Dyke was forced to rule out a bid for London mayor. Ming Campbell put the boot into the Torys' proposal of a joint independent candidate to scupper that venture.

Ed Davey said: "the way to defeat him [Red Ken] is not to have an 'anyone-but-Ken' candidate, it is to win the argument over issues that matter to the capital."

Sounds like Ed Davey doesn't hasn't seen the realities of election politics; because the populace have so few opportunities express their opinion, when an opportunity does arrise after a long stint with a present party, the opponents often pick up many more votes than they could otherwise -- due to protest votes. Also, interestingly people won't want to risk a protest vote when things aren't going well, so Red Ken would have actually been at risk because he'd done "not that bad a job", as Greg highlights.

The Lib Dems command such a small amount of support, so why not form alliances with other parties and succeed overall? Also, while it's not to late for another Lib Dem leader!

House Price Crash Soon

I've been looking at the housing market in the UK and I can see we are in-line for a significant correction affect, bringing houses down to just below there market value.

I'm sure this correction will occur over the next four years. Below I've included analysis to support my assertion, let's see how it pans out.

House prices presently stand at six times average earnings, historical peaks like 1990 only went up to five times average earnings. In the dips like 1991-95 it went all the way back down to three times average earnings. (ERM disaster in 1992 hurried this along)

Upto 25% of the market is buy2let, another influencing factor pushing the prices up has been the fact that a typical household is now down to 1.9 from 2.4 (younger generation living alone for longer). Younger generation buying on their own as previoys point, in both their own home and rented (from all those buy2let people!).

Inflation is high now (RPI, PRIX and even CPI at running at 3%).

The other thing to consider is if there has been a change in the model. The Labour government, in power since '97 has adopted polices to push families where one parent at home to put the children in nursery and after school clubs, allowing both parents to work. This has boosted the income, meaning a combined earnings of six times average salary is more common. This is a shame for the single income house-holds, as they have been squeezed out of the market.

There is significantly more to be gained now by waiting 3-4yrs than buying now and paying off 3yrs of mortgage, because over that period the house price will have gone down 40%!

A house which cost £76,000 in 1980 cost £60,000 2 years later, a 22% reduction. A house which cost £116,00 in 1990, cost £70,000 five years later, a 40% reduction. What we have at present is an unprecedented over speculation on prices, the fall may even surpass the last 40% correction and make that £190,000 home worth only £95,000 in four years time.

Time to open up our data? (Ordinance Survey OS map)

Canada has just adopted a free model for map data, great news for the citizens and business of Canada!

The UK (and EU!) really needs to follow Canada's lead, opening up access to Ordinance Survey map data too, in addition Post Code and address data which will empower citizens and create new businesses. So come on MPs, create the opportunity!

Double the budget doesn't quite equal success

There's a piece on the BBC today about a private company charging premium prices for TV and incoming/outgoing calls. Should these private companies really be given contracts which allow them to make so much money out of people in need?

Gordon brown has increased the UK budget from £320 Billion back in 1997 to £537 Billion for the coming year, well above inflation; the NHS alone now gets £104 Billion. The problem is the money hasn't been injected and spent well, leaving no real improvement in the last 10 years. Only middle management has swelled, managing targets etc, heading for a narrower pyramid base than ever before! Someone needs to slim down management and delegate more decisions to the doctors and nurses as it worked previously. Could experienced private medical managers help improve the organisation? Only consider managers with a proven track record, and make sure they have the remit to push through reforms.

Patients may be forced to get a mobile phone now, so this company will loose out in the end; but they've missed an opportunity provide a great service for people to pay a reasonable price for. Providing patients their mobile on silent that is a much more convenient too.

Regarding this price hike, it's the same situation with car parking, trusts are even pleased to announce record profits from their clients (the injured and the families)! The good thing is that the pendulum is swinging the other way slowly now -- next even prescriptions will be free again! NHS dentists costs are already better, their do need to be a lot more NHS dentists still though. Fun times ahead eh!?

Hopeless parliament.uk webmasters?

This is either a large problem, or very humorous that the parliament.uk, website has had a broken "Find your MP" link for the last four days.

Is it any wonder parliament.uk is out innovated by the likes of writetothem.com and upmystreet.com? We need an clever bunch of people to provide the parliament services to subjects of the UK, and it seems they don't have that at present! So c'mon parliamentarians, get on top of things!

Gordon Brown's legacy

Gordon Brown's 10 year stint at the tiller of the UK economy is almost over; but what is his legacy in this relatively stable period since the Major government of the mid-90s? An interesting question, even if I do say so myself ;)

We've seen how Gordon Brown has made a few changes, and used a lot of spin in his presentation. When he first came in, he introduced special rules:

1. Gordon Brown's first rule declares that over an "economic cycle" he will only borrow to invest, but that "economic cycle" term isn't fixed and is open to fiddling by his department of statisticians (first it was 7 years, then 9, 10 and now 12! increasing the duration to fiddle it, to average it out in effect); and that all other spending must come from taxation revenue.
2. Gordon Brown's second rule declared that public debt must be kept at a prudent and stable level (whatever that is, in a reasonable interpretation). The economy has been strong, so it's not been necessary to break rule two officially -- however, it has been heavily broken by using PFI contracts which hide the public debt behind a long-term contract with a private company.

The Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, highlighted that by Gordon Brown excluding Network Rail's billions of debt from the government accounts, Gordon Brown has not met his spending rules. He also said Gordon Brown's means-testing and constant meddling has put administration costs at a ridiculous level compared to the total cost of the benefit schemes introduced. Almost as bad as the £25 Billion PFI debts underwritten by the government.

In another case of subterfuge, Gordon Brown changed the way inflation rates are measured to keep them appearing lower. In his pre-budget statement on 10 Dec 2003, Gordon Brown announced he was switching the UK inflation definition from RPI (reasonably broad base, excluding mortgage though) to CPI (narrow), cleverly hiding our inflation rate going up. RPI inflation for February 2007 was 3.7%, but CPI was only... 2.8%! -- you can see why he wants to hide the rise, it keeps the Bank of England's monetary policy from setting interest rates (2% above inflation) at the higher rate they should be (as I figure it).

Pensions is a big one: Nothing was taken into account for the fact that people live longer. Nothing was taken into account for if the stock-market didn't continue to rise at a quick rate beyond the dot-com era. On top of this, abolishing share dividend tax credits (aka ACT, essentially no tax on dividends from companies in which they owned shares), took £6 Billion out of pension pots each year since 2000, which compounded means over £100 Billion has now been removed (No wonder over 60,000 company pension funds have been wound up!) -- what a result Gordon!

Public sector borrowing will probably hit £36 Billion this year, not surprisingly the treasury is desperate for cash and is offering great deals on NS&I fixed-term stock Government bonds these days. So much for prudence Gordon eh!? I'll admit I've never been one to Gordon Brown-Nose, but I don't put him down unnecessarily, his Bank of England call was a good one.

I've broken down my overall points into successes and failures.

Failures

• Not taking the UK into the Euro when they had the necessary public support in '97.
• Abolishing share dividend tax credits.
• The public pensions black hole is now close to £90 Billion, which will have to come from somewhere.
• Council tax doubled because Gordon Brown puts the responsibility for additional services on local council budgets (and central government keep blaming local councils for putting it up).
  
• Hiding the inflation rate, by switching from RPI to CPI.
  
• Selling the UK's gold reserves at rock bottom prices.

Successes

• Passing responsibility for setting interest rates to the Bank of England.

If Brown wanted a genuine legacy, he could have done a U-turn on means-testing, then increase the tax-free allowance to £12,000, making the poorest in society better off; closing the gap with the middle-class. Fund this by introducing a top tax rate of 45-50% if necessary. Or Brown could have voted against war with Iraq.

In summary, the economy hasn't been wrecked, but it doesn't have the GDP vigour it had in the Major years after the recovery from Black Wednesday. Gordon has squandered to a certain degree a fantastic legacy, replacing it with rampant consumer debt, a trade deficit, pensions crisis and pubic debt. Brown's kept the UK economy going on borrowed money, the next 15 years will show how in debt the UK is, and will suffer unfortunately. Will history give him a better legacy than William Patterson? Will Gordon have a Profumo moment? Would he give an honoury place to Boris Berezovsky around his cabinet table? Anyway, who knows what the future holds, if Gordon Brown gets the top job it will be interesting to see if he fairs better in No.10 at least! The BBC background on Brown's shows where he cut his teeth. Now let's hope the leadership election is a little more interesting than Michael Howard's coronation... ;)

Will Prince Charles bring an end to the Monarchy?

Will Prince Charles do for us what Parliament hasn't had the bottle to do so far? Europe has lost most of the monarchies which were around before WW1. Our little island has survived though; with our queen outlasting eight PMs by my calculation.

Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, is known to be a meddler though, and if he doesn't change when he gets the top job he might push things far enough for reform to finally take place. Sweden replaced the head of state with the speaker of the house, we could do something similar ;)

Would be an interesting situation if Parliament did want to remove King Charles III, as we don't have a written constitution and no real relevant historical precedents that I know of!

The PR facade of the bobby on the beat

This evening's Channel4 political slot had the Labour MP for tooting, Sadiq Khan, saying what a success moving police on to the beat had been. I'd like to see some accurate figures on this; I really doubt there is any notable reduction in crime rates or an improvement in civic cohesion; Khan only gave sound-bites to backup his points.

Dedicating police staff to what is essentially a PR exercise is a complete waste of tax-payers money in my view. Why not focus on tackling outstanding issues like unsolved crimes, or people trafficking?

Luckily those police walking the streets for no good reason aren't actually fully fledged police officers, and are only Community support officers. Which does lessen the wasted resource at least; it's still a big enough waste of money when budgets are so tight.

However, the real solution is to tackle the underlying social problems which cause the visible symptoms of crime and anti-social behaviour. Poverty and not having a job (for various reasons) are two big factors. Tackle these by building communities, creating jobs, providing social, youth and sports facilities for people to come together and make the most of life.

Let's see if any accurate figures materialise from Labour about the bobby on the beat, or even an independent study!? Or perhaps the next government will simply cut out PR exercises like this..

Junk caller number withheld ?

It's a shame, the TPS and the Information Commissioner's office can't do anything about junk calls, because unscrupulous companies are exploiting a loop hole. When asked why they are calling my non-publicly listed number they just claim the number has been generated using random modification of an existing number as a base -- which gets them off the hook with the IC's and TPS office. The legislation really needs to prevent all junk calls by default, sure if people really opt-into it then its fine, but we shouldn't be subject to interruption by these unscrupulous companies without opting-in. Regulation by "voluntary" industry groups like TPS/DMA/MPS isn't working because they are funded and represent financially the same companies they are supposed to be regulating! Conflict of interest ?

Junk calls often have the number displayed as "Withheld" (not to be confused with "Unknown"). I've been looking for a way to reject Withheld calls outright (aka Anonymous Call Rejection [ACR]), with a recorded message explaining that anonymous calls aren't accepted etc. I've not found a way to do it at present though. BT have their "Choose to Refuse" service on land-lines, which lets people reject individual numbers, and individual Withheld numbers (BT obviously knows the real number!). Also BT customers can dial *227# to reject all Withheld numbers from a BT line, and #227# to receive Withheld number calls again.. (A lot of legacy company PABX systems don't set a valid number still, so these won't get through) more info.

Apparently it is possible on some mobile networks, this page lists the GSM Caller ID codes, (background), however *30# sadly doesn't work on o2! Anyone able to reject Withheld calls on a UK mobile? Post a comment if you have managed it. This Caller ID FAQ has some useful info, which makes it sounds like o2 isn't working within the Telecoms Data Protection Directive (97/66/EC)!

In practice this kind of feature doesn't need to be server bound though, it could be a local setting to redirect to a special voice mail message etc. I'd code it myself if we had an open mobile phone platform!

Update: Samsung D900 can reject calls from Withheld or Unknown callers. N95 comes with Advanced Call Manager, as does Sony's P910i letting the user create whitelists and blacklists.

Royal Direct Mail commits to spamming UK households

I just came across the "Royal Direct Mail" Spamming Guide. It is disappointing what a once great national enterprise can turn into to. (Royal Mail is the national post operator within the UK). Now it appears Royal Mail are focusing on milking their position, using their post-men/post-women to spam each household rather than innovate in the marketplace. What a decline from the dizzy heights of pioneering the Penny Black postage stamp in 1840!

I am unaware if there is any way to not automatically be included the the Royal Direct Mail schemes. If anyone knows please let me know and I will post here.

If you are in the UK, you can ironically register that you do not wish to by default be "opted-into" marketing schemes without your permission; still better than nothing I suppose. The online registration often does not work, so you should email TPS, or phone them: 0845 070 0707. If you do not get confirmation letter, they have probably slipped up and not added you.

Really no one should be by default "opted-into", but I expect with time the legislation will be corrected. Shame it's not happened yet.