Heated debate.

Well, the energy companies have been try to explain to a parliamentary committee why they charge as much as they do.  Shouldn't take long - 'cos we want to make money' I expect, if they are telling the whole truth.  I don't know why it's such a big mystery.
That's what business exist for - making money.  If we don't want them to make money, just privatise them or make them a charity or similar.  Oh, hang on, they were privatised once weren't they?  Well, wait a few more years before we forget.
The thing is, the power companies get special attention because we see heat and power as essentials of everyday life, (which I can't argue against) so any deviation from 'the norm' with power is headlines and therefore essential that the politicians get involved.  But that is where is gets messy - the politics of it. 
We should let them get on with it (selling us power) or privatise, everything else is just politics.

Anyway, because I'm an oil boiler user that has to live with the vagaries of the oil price without any political interference, I feel all these discussion on the price of gas is disproportionately high.
I need to get a decent woodburner linked into my central heating somehow - then I'll need to worry about deforestation more.

Power to the people

Electricity and gas prices - quite a difficult time for users of these products at the moment.  The latest rise is just over 10% for NPower (I think it was them), so makes British Gas's 8.8% seem quite a good deal.  We're told that only 16% of the price we pay is related to the power company, the rest being taxes, distribution etc., and the government advise us to seek out the best deal.  As far as I can see, all we can do is seek out the best of a decidedly bad bunch - and when I put my figures into one of the many comparison sites, it advised me to switch, but when I checked the precise details (£ per unit + daily charge), it would have cost me more, so there's a flaw somewhere in the process - I think it's the way it calculates it over the year and because I pay fixed price per month throughout the year I'm never quite sure where I am with usage.
Anyway, I'm sure it's going to be on the political agenda for a while yet.  I note that the SNP are even jumping on the 'we'll freeze prices for 20 months' bandwagon - I think they'll struggle to sell that one, although on the face of it it's quite an attractive proposition opposed to the 'we'll let market forces decide how much you pay'.

Annual Leave

Anniversary blog today - how time flies, and in keeping with my haphazard ramblings I haven't the time or inclination to write anything remotely interesting.  I'll look back on this in a years time and probably think how boring I was, or is it 'am'? Whatever.

Watch it..

I've been reading a couple of articles about new 'smartwatches'.  These devices are supposed to allow us to wear a bit of technology rather than carry it around in our pocket/handbag etc.  I guess they are even supposed to tell the time.  The articles bemoan the lack of a 'killer app', i.e. an application that is so good, we would put one on the Christmas shopping list immediately, and I tend to agree with them.  I'm all for technology, especially useful technology, like when I got my first iPhone and was able to search for a business, tap on the location, which showed me how to get there, displayed a phone number, which allowed me to ring it immediately.  As we have found, the 'ringing' bit is really not that important any more, although I am not suggesting they remove that particular functionality!

I want a smartwatch to be something like that - able to offer me so much more than telling the time, but also make sure it does that pretty well at the same time.  I'm thinking that the models available now are nowhere near what we will get in a couple of years time, and I wonder what the manufacturers (Sony + Samsung) are trying to do with releasing them - surely they will not be able to recoup their development costs?  Mind you, maybe it's just a cut-down phone without the phone bit included, in which case development costs will be confined to the construction.  I'm sure they have done their calculations.  I have done mine - don't buy.

Here we go, here we go.

It was the last of the footy world cup qualifying games last night, and England needed a win to avoid the ignominy of a playoff place with the subsequent gnashing of teeth when we didn't qualify.  As it was, England managed a respectable 2-0 over Poland, and I was lucky(?) enough to listen to it as I was tiling daughter number 1's bathroom.  The funny thing was, the commentators kept referring to the players being 'nervous', 'edgy' etc. etc., when it was obvious to me that it was the commentary team that who had the most nerves, and why they got Chris Waddle to give 'expert' analysis now and again is beyond me.  I know he has some England experience, but I'm not sure his vintage is quite right to be defined as 'expert'.  His immediate post-match review was interspersed with boring clichés, repeated a number times because either a) he didn't have anything to say, or b) he never listens to what he is saying and therefore thinks it's the first time he said it.
Still, the Polish fans enjoyed themselves, letting off fireworks in abandon.  I'm surprised they came all that way to see them play, but actually, they probably didn't have to travel far at all.

Dumber and dumber.

'Dummy cycles on hard shoulder' is one of the headlines on the BBC website, and I mistakenly assumed this was some sort of safety warning whereby the highways agency were demonstrating how unsafe cycling was on a motorway by siting 'dummy' cyclists on the hard shoulder.  But no, it was a chap cycling on the hard shoulder, in the rain (I guess it was the shortest way home) being called a 'dummy' by the police.  How disappointing.
The thing is, it's probably just as safe if not safer on the motorway than some busy A roads where it is legal to cycle.  However, I have to credit my local highways for filling in a bad pothole 2 days after I reported it, so they're not always bad.

Memory? More fool you.

Danny Someoneorother (an ex-player from yesteryear - was it Danny Mills maybe?) was on the radio this morning bemoaning the state of English football - not enough young talent coming through, too many foreign players in the Premier League etc. etc., but the one thing that amused me was the comment he made that standards were so much higher 10 or 15 years ago when he and luminaries such as Glenn Hoddle was playing.  Yeah right.  Now, I'm not an expert in the 'beautiful game' but I have followed the progress of the national team quite closely over the last 45 years and to say the English game was better in those days is obviously being viewed with the proverbial rose tinted glasses.  The English game has been so mediocre for so long he should remember the old adage 'the easiest person to fool is yourself', because he's not fooling anyone else.
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Cool millions..

51 billion dollars to stage the Winter Olympics seems like a lot of money to me.  I read that there's 5000 competitors, and although its not a very scientific calculation, that's about 10.2 million dollars per person.  That can't be right can it?!  Even if I've cocked up the number of zeros by 1, that's still over 1 million per person.  I hope they have a good time.
Luckily for the UK, London 2012 only spent 13 billion which is looking like a bargain.

Must do.

There seems to be more and more blog style articles in my favourite online reads - the BBC and Guardian.  This is probably down to cost and the need to fill space - although because a webpage has got almost unlimited space the fill space argument could well be wrong unless there is pressure to provide more diverse opinions and therefore attract a bigger audience.  In fact, now that I've written it down and thought about it, I've convinced myself that's why it is like it is.
It's not as if I'm a media expert, far from it (and in fact not an expert at anything) but because the media informs and drives opinions, one cannot escape being influenced be merely glancing at the headlines.
One thing that has become 'normal' nowadays are the 'related links' section at the bottom/side of the articles.  Amusingly, they are not often related at all, so must be selected in some cases by an algorithm using keyword searches.  Some online pages also add other 'must read' articles that are nothing to do with it, but might attract your attention.  These are most prominent with Yahoo news articles and I'm fed up of seeing the '10 things every gmail user MUST do' ..or similar when it's just trying to sell a bit of add-on software.  I wonder how many people really do believe they 'must do' those things.

Nice to see you...

One of the headlines on the BBC and Guardian websites was that Bruce Forsyth would miss this week's episode of 'Strictly' due to illness.  They must be short of news, as is this blog, because I'm struggling to get any enthusiasm to pen anything, and feeling quite tired on this Friday afternoon.  I have my first duathlon tomorrow in Clumber Park, so looking forward to that.  Apart from that, I'll be back on Monday.

Travel Flash

The highways agency have devised a pilot project for the A14 where sensors in the road will communicate with base stations along the side of the road which will then relay relevant information (e.g. traffic updates) to emergency services, driver mobile phones, speed restriction control people etc. all in the interests of 'traffic management'.  Ultimately this will give them the ability to control equipment within the car itself.
My car is about 11 years old and shows no sign of giving up yet (fortunately), so how they are going to get cars fitted with the right gear able to be controlled is a bit of a mystery, unless this is a very, very long term project.  Even if they started fitting vehicles with the correct technology from now (realistically agreeing just that part will take years) they will not success in getting rid of 'legacy' cars and trucks for about 20 years at least, so they will have to have some sort of restriction in place to only allow 'controllable' vehicles on specific stretches of road.
I wonder if they just need something to spend their money on.  Oh, hang on, couldn't they improve the existing controlled transport (railways) instead?

Driven Over.

One of the Saudi clerics has stated that women are not allowed to drive cars because it damages their ovaries.  Hmm.  I can't see him being nominated as spokesperson again.  It's akin to how we explain some things to our children - as also expounded in a Guardian piece today.  I wonder if he really does think that - maybe his boss told him that when asked why women are not allowed to drive.  I remember being a bit worried about my bus journeys to school having the ability to damage my testicles (I guess it was fertility thing, but 'testicles' is easier for a 12 year old to understand).  It was to do with regular journeys on bone-shaker of a bus, but it didn't stop me fathering 3 children.  That's not why I am ridiculing the ovaries story though.
Lets hope they think up some other innovative original reasons for e.g. wearing a burka - so they can breastfeed, for instance.  That was my made-up reason by the way.