4:49 Sunday Morning

..and I've woken up , or rather been woken by an annoying tickly , chesty cough, In an Alan Bennett-esque piece of situationanist observation I'm sure I made myself a LemSip , well Boots own brand equivalent last night , but can't finsd any trace of it, and I'm still wondering whether I imagined it!!

Anyway it's one of those times where it's too early to get up and too late to go back to sleep. There's a thick carpet of snow outside and though it started to melt , it's now freezing , so not driving weather and the roads are very, very quite.

Was listening to an album of protest songs last nightfron the 40's and 50's from the likes of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and many others about the oppression of the average man by a combination of banking and government. It's funny how banks and governments should be there to serve us , but in fact just exploit us. I'm one of the lucky ones in that I am keeping head above water , but lots of people arent so lucky, with fuel and food prices rocketing and wages either staying static or jobs just going and then people expected to take minimum wage jobs.

In yesterdays paper there wasreported a push by the Tory right to curb union power by not allowing strike action unless 50% of the members turn out. Be interesting to apply similar criteria to bills but through Parliament . Nothing gets passed unless 50% of MPs turned up. Can you imagine a company functioning with it's members have such a blatant disregard for their work and responsibilities?

Also yesterday the UK's triple AAA credit rating was downgraded to AA by the banks , who , don't forget put the whole world in this mess AND were bailed out by the governments of the world. George Osborne said that was justification for continuing austerity measures (ie tagetting people on benefits and the pensions of those on minimum wage). Yesterday the Inland Revenue was trumpetting the success of it's anti tax avoidance measures , apparently a Liverpool hairdresser and a Northumbrian Pipe Fitter were the top ones recovering about £20K. Letters of congratulation were probably sent to Amazon , Starbucks and Google. I am not getting at those companies for legally avoiding tax , I'm accusing our governments (and this goes back a long way) for facilitating this: Check this article on tax avoidance (which remember is legal and encouraged and facilitated by goverments all over the world)  and here are some telling figures:

• 1% - Income tax rate reportedly available to members of the legal K2 tax scheme used by Jimmy Carr.  Source: The Independent
• 98 – Number of FTSE 100 companies operating out of tax havens. Source: ActionAid
• £25bn – Estimated annual cost of tax avoidance, according to 2008 research. £13billion of this is lost to individuals and £12billion to the 700 largest corporations. Source: Tax Research UK and the TUC
• 10% - Average rate of tax paid by top earners, according to a confidential HMRC study seen by George Osborne. Source: The Telegraph

Plus a few telling figures from  1227 QI Facts:

• In 2005, the 54 billionaires in Britain paide less that £15 million in income tax between them. £9 million of that was paid by James Dyson. To put it in perspective it's like me and you paying less than 10p a month on our earnings.
• In 2011 only 9 of the 62 owners of apartments in One Hyde Park, London (the world's most expensive block of flats) paid any council tax.
• Over 600,000 companies are registered in the British Virgin Islands (populaton < 29K)
• In 2009 Exxon posted $19 billion profits and received a $156 million federal tax rebate from the US Government

So you can see goverments and big business are still in cahoots , taking profits for themselves and leaving us to pick up the tab. Anyway it's time to go back to bed now...

World Book Night 2013 - I'm In

I've just receved my email that I'm been chosen as a giver for World Book Night 2013. One shocking fact is that a third of the homes in this country don't possess a book. So this is trying to address that little problem , we will see.

The book I've chosen is "A Little History Of The World" by EH Gombrich , which is a history of the world for children. A few of the reviews are here:

• 'Conversational in style, as of a grandparent talking with a child, the story of humanity from prehistory is told.' --Peter Andrews, School Librarian, vol. 54 no. 2, Summer 2006
• '...a perfect present for a child with an enquiring mind. I wish it had been available when I was young.' --Literary Review, September 2005
• 'Had I a dozen grandchildren...I'd order two dozen copies, one for the children, the other for their parents.' 

A full list of the books being given away is here.

This is the first book I'm giving that I have not read , but I will do before I give the book away. Unusually , World Book Night is on a Tuesday this year , April 23rd , 3 days after National Record Shop Day which I will also be taking part in.

One thing is that it costs ten pouns to distribute each box of books so if you can donate something via Justgiving it would be most appreciated.

Sort of Missing Instagram and Twitter

A Photo

I was wondering whether I would get withdrawal symptoms from ditching Istagram and Twitter , and I definitely have. Although the problem is it's like any addiction. Sometimes I want something extra to do on my phone.

Then I think 99% of the posts and pictures will go unnoticed and unread no matter how good the picture is or how witty the riposte on Twitter is. And then the desire goes away.

If I want to post something I can do a blog post like this one or just post a status on Facebook, it just takes a little more effort.

The problem with Instagram and Twitter is that often it's more about getting followers and the way to get followers is to follow people and hope they reciprocate. If you have a big following base then people will hopefully take notice of what you say or take a picture of , although often it's just about what they've had do eat.

I've been very guilty of that, and people aren't interested in what I've had to eat , although people may be interested if I recommend a good restaurant or pub. Anyway I am happy with what I'm doing and when I see things I want to photograph I can take them for my own pleasure , share them on Facebook or Picassa for people to check out.

Riddle Me This ...

A short follow on to last night's post. When I went on to Blinkbox to check the price of Soylent Green it was £2.49 to rent and £7,49 to download. This is a film that is forty years old and , yes , it's a decent film.

The problem with films is that unless they are very special you only tend to watch them once or twice. Music and books which also have their e-quivalents are similarly expensive when new but prices tend to drop after time. Novels are like film , but music does tend to be played and replayed, but film not so.

In my collection I have 400 DVDs , many of which havent come out of the box and some of which I have only watched from recording to my hard disc from Film4 or some other digital channel. So why are digital copies of old films so expensive given their nature. The DVD equivalant will be around £2.99 and for that you get a hard copy that , with the appropriate software , you can make a digital copy of.

iTunes has a similar pricing structure and on demand service will charge £3 to £4 for a rental , but they are usually newer films. 4OD gives you free on demand stuff (admittedly padded with unskippable adverts , but I don't mind that, they are giving me something I want) and the BBC iPlayer and other TV companies give similar service (although the BBC iPlayer has no adverts , it comes from the license fee).

If films were a couple of quid to download a copy I would happily buy them if I fancied them but I won't pay 7-10 pounds for something that I will only watch once. Youtube has it's own channel with a lot of free movies here such as the excellent Kung Fu Hustle . Also Blinkbox have advert supported free stuff and special offers , but the question remains , why ore downloadable DIVX movies so expensive? Bring the price down and you would see and explosion , like with MP3 and eBooks

Pause For A Hoarse Horse

I nicked the title for this post from a seventies album by the band Home, which you can sample here . This is going to be a short post just about the whole kerfuffle of Findus Beef Lasagne and Tesco's burgers being contaminated with "horse meat". It's not poison !!

How often have you be so hungry you could eat a "scabby horse between two bread vans" ? When you go to a restaurant and order steak , you just expect beef , but it could really be any meat and the vendor would not be done under the trade descriptions act.

There's talk of criminal activity and nefarious dealings but the basic facts are that beef costs ten times as much as horse , and let's face it , when it's minced it becomes even further removed from the source animal. Also it's the risk and price you pay for eating ready meals and convenience foods.

It really isnt that difficult to make meals fronm scratch. Get meat from your local butcher (NOT Morrison's Market Street or Waitrose Meat Counter) , support your local butcher . The meat will be local , and visible and trustworthy . And you will probably find it's a lot cheaper.

Also did you know that supermakets plump up their bacon by injecting it with water , which means when you cook it , it shrinks to about a tenth of the original size you thought your were getting.

Anyway I still can't get over the media and gullible public's reaction to this . I'm surprised David Cameron hasn't applauded them on the meat suppliers cost cutting initiative ,I mean he expecte deveryone else to do it. But the Mail and Express et al continue on about the scandal . I mean it's not like we're eating Soylent Green ...... yet 

Forecast Cloudy

The lyrics to the Joni Mitchell song are remarkable pertinent to to The Cloud we know todow.

I keep getting bombarded with offers of Cloud storage (Apple/iTunes) and Cloud Players (Amazon). These are all very well and each has offered me 5GB of free storage so I can listen to my own music anywhere. However these are dependent on a reliable internet connection , so it's fine if you are at home or at a friends , or maybe in an area with reliable free WIFI. In a 4G area it will also be fine and 10GB is a hell of a lot of space to play with.

But you have to remember it's only available when you have a connection. When 4G is ubiquitous speed will not be an issue for anyone , but remember that your daya and files will effectively under someone elses control.

On the numbers involved my first desktop computer had a 10 MB hard disc , (thats 10 minutes of normal quality MP3 music!) , but I could still play colour graphic games under the DOS operating system.

The amounts of cloud storage would enable you to store 400 albums of music , a dozen DIVX movies but there wouldnt be enough room to store a High Definition movie within the 5GB, although they do offer you more space at a price. Though I would rather watch through Netflix or Blinkbox and again you come down to the issue of having a permnent reliable connection.

You are not at the moment able to watch a streamed movie in a remote Scottish Glen on on the train from Aberdeen to London.

I still havent used my Cloud Storage yet ........

Kitchen Armoury

Never really thought about before , but almost everything you have in the kitchen could be used as a lethal weapon. You have access to fires , gas , electricity , water , an explosive combination at the best of times.

Then pans and heavy roasting dishes would make effective heavy duty blunt instruments. Follow this up with meat skewers and something as innocent seeming as a cheese grater and potato peeler , in the wrong hands could do a lot of damage.

Then in the cutlery drawer you have knives and forks all of which would do your skin complexion no good whatsoever.

Oh yes then you can heat cooking oil and melt butter and spreads , which a remarkably efficient aid to skin removal.

This is before we hit the knife block and meat cleavers !! I'm just surprised that there arent an enormous number of cooking fatalities..

... and to think they let people like Gordon Ramsay in kitchens !!