Scargill

Archive for November, 2009

With the impending release of the (quite exciting) Google Wave, you might find it interesting to watch everyone’s attempts to get on the bandwagon and in particular watch Microsoft…. is this a coincidence?

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/wave/home.aspx

This morning I received my regular “Dickinson-Dees” Vat Bulletin – something I normally ignore… until I noted… “On the 1st of January 2010, there will be a major change to the VAT and administrative treatment of services supplied cross border.” – with of course MORE penalties for non-compliance.

New to you? Well, I must admit it was to me – and I should know better. There are so many things going on right now that one could at least dream that the government would be giving us all a break from their constant changes – but no, never let a recession get in the way of another excuse to squeeze more money out of us.

Meanwhile a report from the FSB says “FSB survey reveals eight in ten could go to the wall, and calls the Government to listen to its ‘Give us a Break’ campaign.” referring to changing tax rules on holiday properties. Under current rules, businesses run in the holiday sector – known as furnished holiday lettings – must be available to rent for at least 20 weeks of the year and must be rented out for 10 weeks. As a result, they receive a number of tax breaks. Following Government proposals to change the tax rules, businesses in the holiday sector will be considered as residential landlords rather than as trading businesses. The FSB’s survey results on the subject show that these tax changes could stifle trade, threatening the existence of the 60,000 self-catering firms across the country and costing jobs. The tourism industry alone could lose £200 million a year.

It simply beggars believe that in the worst recession in living memory, our stupid government STILL can’t see through their long-established political anti-business goggles. Of course, after more businesses go bust, the people will soon throw these idiots out and elect a new government. Posts will shuffle but all those responsible will keep their jobs in some form or another…. and their houses and cars… more than can be said for the businesses they are destroying through their incompetence.

“Hey diddle diddle, the car and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon on discovering just how easy it was to reduce our CO2 emissions”

That’s how the latest “Act on CO2” advert features in last weekend’s telegraph. It then goes onto say that “40% [of Co2] is caused simply by the way we heat and light our homes and drive our cars”.

I’m assuming tax-payers paid for the pile of nonsense. Firstly, this kind of woolly, misleading marketing is on a par with “up to 8 meg broadband”.  At a casual glance, we’re responsible for 40% of emissions and really CAN do something about it.

Or not. Firstly CO2 is only part of the emissions issue and in fact the COW in the advert is probably at least as responsible for greenhouse emissions as we are….   no mention then of reducing meat consumption (and I’m not a veggie). I had planned to point you to a very informative TED conference on the subject of how much damage METHANE causes (a kilogram of methane is something like 23Kg of carbon monoxide) but it seems to have mysteriously disappeared off the web. If you want the full, excruciating facts check on Jamais Cascio’s blog here.

The fact is that in this freezing cold, wet country there is not a lot we can do with our heating other than to make sure we’re fully insulated. In a recession these people are DREAMING if they think we’re all going to pop out any buy newer, more efficient systems – I just had to replace our oil heater (not voluntarily) and its going to cost over 2K all in – who’s going to do that right now? As for the car… the stupid idiots could not have timed it worse – like we’re all going to leave our cars at home and take the pushbike in the freezing snow?? Spring might have been better timing!

And when we’ve done all of that, what influence do we have as a diminishing economy over China and India  who’s burgeoning economies and conversion to western diet (see the blog above – cheeseburgers) will ensure any efforts we make have virtually no effect whatsoever on the environment – we’re a tiny little island for heaven’s sake – what, they’re all going to follow our lead? I don’t think so.

There is of course a solution that solves all of the problems – it requires less cows, smaller factories, less movement of goods, less travel – indeed it covers all angles of the entire pollution problem.

HOW ABOUT HAVING LESS KIDS!

A dramatic drop of children now would be disastrous for any economy and our short-sighted politicians should have been working on this in the 70’s when it was plain for all but politicians to see that automation was going to reduce the need for manual labour – but no-one had the stomach for it – and now we’re paying the price. With the massive societies we have now, any breakdown in our systems (collapse of the automobile industry due to running out of fuel, massive power cuts etc) would result in us spending our lives in total civil disorder, wallowing in our own waste products. Our lack of foresight and lack of ability to take stern action will be our undoing – and what is the solution…   take the pushbike out once a week.

Give me a break.

They’re at it again…. the incompetents at Orange have well and truly surpassed previous levels of ineptitude this time.

I’ve just been told we’ve not had an Orange bill recently and I remembered I’d had something from them recently in email. I looked up the email and sure enough – get your bill online… so I tried – it wanted an email and password.   I’ve never used this before so I rang them up. Wrong department.

The right department then told me I had to go online – to get my bill. I said I had no password. They said register.. to register you have to receive a text message to your mobile and answer 2 questions you set when you signed up. I signed up YEARS ago and my mobile doesn’t work at home.

I range back and went through the usual raft of automated messages – at 14.4p per minute cost to me of course – I’m currently running at just over £1. All through this AS USUAL “we are currently very busy” – which in English means “we don’t employ enough staff because WE DON’T CARE!”   In the meantime I managed to find a message that told me I could ask for printed invoices – at £3 each!!! But I could only get these by going online – which of course I can’t do because I don’t have my password..

What a complete bunch of asses…… I’ve had to resort to writing them a letter!