Archive for September 2009

Imagine if global warming wasn’t a load of bollocks …

September 21, 2009 Climate Change One comment

Let’s just imagine for a moment, despite all the evidence disproving the theory, that catastrophic man-made global warming is upon us.

Let’s further imagine – suspending disbelief just a little further – that there are a few scientists that remember how real science works and one of them comes up with a technical solution to these hypothetical problems.

Who is going to engineer this technical marvel?  With the global economy destroyed, there will be very little industry left and once we’re relying on windmills and solar panels to provide our electricity, what is left of the manufacturing industry won’t have enough juice to keep the lights on, let alone mass-produce some piece of machinery to save the planet.  Not that anyone will be able to buy said technical marvel because subsistence farming doesn’t pay well and tax receipts will be virtually non-existent with a decimated mediæval economy so state aid will be out of the question.  And even if there was a company left with the capability to produce this technical wonder, one with a magic electricity supply that doesn’t turn off when it isn’t sunny or windy, one that hasn’t been bankrupted by global depression, regulation and green taxes, one that has the ready cash to buy enough carbon credits to cover the production of this technical marvel, they will hold governments to ransom for their magical piece of technology to save the planet.

Thank god it’s all a load of bollocks and the whole scam will soon fall apart in the face of undeniable evidence that it’s a great big socialist tax raising conspiracy.

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Harperson is at it again

September 19, 2009 General One comment

Harriet Harperson, the man-hating fascist Minister for Women & Inequality, has written to the Tartan Taxman 2.0 and demanded that he bans companies from claiming VAT back on entertaining staff and clients at lap dancing clubs because it’s demeaning and effectively excludes women.

Isn’t it a little presumptuous of Ms Harperson to assume that no woman would ever want to go to a lap dancing club?  Presumably she’s aware that lesbians fancy women, what with her husband being a porn connoisseur, so I can only assume that she is intending to discriminate against lesbians as well as men.

And is lap dancing really demeaning to women?  They earn an obscene amount of money prancing around in their bra and pants teasing horny men.  Lap dancers can retire in their 30’s or 40’s on the proceeds of their career choice.  Is that demeaning?

And notice how she’s only interested in banning events that exclude women?  She isn’t asking for a ban on companies claiming VAT back on entertaining women at Chippendales shows, for instance.  Surely they’re “demeaning” for men and exclude men?

I’ve emailed the Minister for Women & Inequality asking for clarification although I fear a smidgeon of sarcasm may have crept into my email as a result of my being unable to take the man-hating old trout seriously …

Dear Ms Harperson,

I see that you have written to the Chancellor demanding that he ban companies from claiming VAT back on entertaining at lap dancing clubs because you believe it is demeaning and excludes women.

Firstly, I don’t see what business it is of yours if a woman decides to take her clothes off for a living.  If a woman chooses to work in a lap dancing club, earning more in a week than most people do in a month, then it isn’t for you to denounce her career choice as demeaning.  Is taking your clothes off and teasing frustrated men for an obscene amount of money really demeaning?

Secondly, I notice that you don’t mention men in your demands in anything other than the negative context we’ve all come to expect from you.  Do you believe that male strippers are also demeaning and that companies should be banned from entertaining women with male strippers?  I ask merely for clarification as you appear to have forgotten that the “equality” you are a minister for applies to men as well as women.

Apologies in advance for being born male,

Stuart

Do you think they’ll notice?

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Shropshire Star: Man sends out council ‘fine’ over bin upset

September 18, 2009 Telford, WTF? 4 comments

The Shropshire Star evidently thought my wheelie bin “upset” was newsworthy as well as the BBC …

Man sends out council ‘fine’ over bin upset

A Telford man has sent his own “funny” fine of £75 to the council over his wheelie bin being left in the street.  He said he was annoted that the bin was never returned and blocked the street.

Stuart Parr of Brookside, in Telford, said he was tired of refuse collectors leaving his wheelie bin on the road.

Mr Parr alleges his bins are taken from a designated spot in his garden and not put back in the same place, resulting in him trying to fine Telford & Wrekin Council.

He said: “I am fed up of having to get up and drag my bins back after they just leave them on the street.

“They are leaving them on the road rather than on the pavement.  So I sent them a funny fine.  I didn’t get a formal response from them but I know they got the fine because I know someone who works there and they told me they got it.

“I got a phone call to say they would make sure it would not happen again.  Then last Thursday they emptied the bins in the road and left them in my street at the end of the drive.

“When my wife came home and wanted to get the car in she had to stop in the road and move the bins before she could park, they were blocking the road – it’s an irritation.”

Telford & Wrekin Council cabinet member for the environment, Councillor Steve Bentley, said: “I can confirm we have received a complaint from Mr Parr.

“We are now working with our contractors to try and help resolve matters to his satisfaction.”

Just to clarify something which neither the BBC or Shropshire Star have made clear: the road outside my house is no more than a car and a half wide which means that when the bins are left in the road – particularly when they’re left “double parked” with the next door neighbours’ bins – they are causing an obstruction.  I recently spent 10 minutes being entertained by a fire engine trying to do a three point turn in our cul-de-sac after being sent the wrong way by its sat-nav.  The road was designed – like so many others in the 60’s and 70’s – for Mini’s, Fiat 125’s, Renault 5’s and the like and not for modern cars.

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Shropshire Star: It’s not too late to hear out English nationalists

September 18, 2009 Letters No comments

It’s been a while since I wrote a letter to the Shropshire Star. This one was published in tonight’s Shropshire Star …

It’s not too late to hear out English nationalists

It’s a little late for John Denham to be worrying about the emergence of white supremacists in England when he has served in a British government that has deliberately ignored moderate English nationalists for the last decade.

The effect of which has been the emergence of groups like the English and Welsh Defence League.

I have no interest in ethnic nationalism. But I really must point out that independent observers have said that the violence at the English and Welsh Defence League protests in Birmingham has been largely instigated by the thugs from Unite Against Fascism.

If the Government had spent the decade listening to the reasonable demands of ordinary people who want equal rights for English people instead of marginalising them, there would be no reason for white supremacist groups to exist.

We would have an English Parliament and English politicians elected by English people defending English interests, instead of anglophobic British nationalists at Westminster treating us like serfs.

John Denham and his colleagues have only themselves to blame for the emergence of racists like the English and Welsh Defence League because they are a product of their anti-English policies.

It’s not too late for the Government to engage with moderate English nationalists like the Campaign for an English Parliament and promote an inclusive English civic nationalism, but I suspect they will be too busy navel gazing to realise it.

Stuart Parr
Telford

Mandelson the Incompetent strikes again

September 18, 2009 WTF? One comment

Is it unreasonable to expect that the Business Secretary might have some small amount of business sense?

The British government recently confirmed that it intends to build a number of nuclear power stations in England which will, of course, require a large number of experts in the field of nuclear energy.  Experts such as the Atomic Energy Agency.  These experts don’t come cheap so it’s a good job the Atomic Energy Agency is state owned isn’t it?

Enter Peter Mandelson, failed MP, failed international marxist, failed EU commissioner and now failing Business Secretary.  His bright idea for a cheap, secure nuclear energy industry?  Sell the commercial arm of the Atomic Energy Agency to Babcock for £50m.

As the developed world moves towards nuclear energy for its future energy needs, in the knowledge that windmills and solar panels will never produce enough electricity to satisfy demand, Mandelson sells off yet another state-owned nuclear asset.  The Atomic Energy Agency will join the now French-owned British Energy (formerly BNFL) in charging the British government commercial rates for the commission and maintenance of critical infrastructure and all we have to show for it is a paltry £50m.  That won’t cover more than a few minutes of interest payments on national debt.

And this is the man that will lead the Liebour Party when El Gordo is deposed?

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TUC votes to boycott Israel

September 18, 2009 General 6 comments

A number of unions, including the Fire Brigade Union (FBU), Unite and UNISON, voted yesterday to boycott Israel and disinvest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The unions that supported the motion at the TUC conference represent 6.5m people in the UK.

The motion also condemns the Israeli trade union, Histadrut and calls for a review of the TUC’s relationship with it after it issued a statement supporting Israel’s illegal military incursion into Gaza earlier this year which resulted in many war crimes being committed, including the Israeli’s military’s illegal use of white phosphorus.

The UK’s trades union movement follows those of Ireland and South Africa which have also voted to boycott Israel until it ends its illegal occupation of Palestine.

I generally don’t have much time for the unions, not least because they keep the Liebour Party from bankruptcy, but they have served a useful purpose in his case.

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Must be a slow news week

September 17, 2009 BBC, Telford, WTF? 2 comments

I thought the media silly season was over now the British government are off their 3 month holidays but apparently not.  Either that or my wheelie bin story is more interesting than I thought.

On Tuesday a BBC reporter turned up at my house unannounced wanting to talk to me about the wheelie bins.  He left a card so I called him back and he came round and interviewed me about it yesterday lunchtime.  At lunchtime today I got a call from the Shropshire Star asking some questions about it and for a copy of the fine I sent to the council back in June.  Now I’ve just had the guy from the BBC on the phone again saying the Press Association wants to talk to me and can he pass my phone number on?

Bizarre.

Edit:
I’m on the BBC News website!

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Manchester Councillor and UAF activist trying to ban EDL march

September 17, 2009 Police State, Propaganda 3 comments

“Faith groups and traders” and councillors in Manchester are asking the Home Secretary to ban a protest by the English Defence League that is planned for next month citing the violence at their Birmingham marches as justification for depriving them of their constitutional right to protest.

The Daily Telegraph says:

Gangs of men and youths hurled bottles at each other and pelted riot police with bricks as frightened shoppers looked on

This is absolutely correct but it wasn’t English Defence League protesters that were throwing bricks and bottles at each other or the police, it was the Unite Against Facism thugs and the young muslim troublemakers that turned out to protest against them.  Wherever the UAF goes, voilence follows and there is no excuse for not reporting who the violent troublemakers were because it was correctly reported in the news and the Daily Mail even had pictures.

Councillor Jim Battle of Manchester City Council said:

Wherever the so-called English Defence League have gone, there has been violence and disruption to ordinary people who just want to go about their business.

These people do not have a legitimate cause – they merely wish to vilify, insult, intimidate and provoke one section of our community. That isn’t protest or legitimate democratic debate and it certainly is not welcome in Manchester.

The city council isn’t a lone voice making this request. We are standing together with faith groups and city centre traders. Manchester does not want the EDL, and we stand united against their poisonous, disruptive and un-British outlook and actions.

But we know that the trouble is being caused by the thugs in the UAF – there are pictures showing their violent counter-protests against the English Defence League – so why is he blaming the English Defence League for the violence?  Thank you Google …

Unite Against Fascism Re-Launch Meeting
Monday 14th July, 7.30pm, Manchester Town Hall (Cttee Rm 2)

Proposed Agenda to include:

  • Speaker from Unite Against Fascism National Office
  • Planning a major Gtr Manchester UAF event for the autumn
  • Agreeing a North West statement against the BNP
  • Campaigning against the BNP – particularly if they stand in next June’s European elections
  • Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) events – eg the planned LMHR Northern Carnival for next year

yours in solidarity,

Sharon Green (Manchester UAF Treasurer)
Councillor Jim Battle (Deputy Leader Manchester City Council)
Colin Barker (former chair Manchester UAF)
Karen Evans (UCU Nat Exec pc)
Steve Ratcliffe, (CWU)
Sarah Holden, (Unite the Union Regional Equalities Officer)
Mike Killian, (Manchester UAF)

No wonder he’s hiding the truth about the fascist UAF, he’s a UAF thug himself abusing his position as Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council to promote the UAF and its violent fascist agenda.  And as an aside, the English Defence League’s actions aren’t likely to be “British” on account of them being “English”.

I have no interest in the politics of ethnicity, I’m not a white supremacist and I don’t share the racist views of the English Defence League but I would defend their right to protest and express their views – that is what democracy is all about.  UAF is the cause of all this violence yet they seem to be immune from public criticism thanks to the number of councillors, MPs and senior police officers that are members who all quite happily spread UAF propaganda and abuse their power to try and ban legitimate, legal protests.

The English Defence League are not my type of people and they don’t speak for me but I would rather have them on the streets than the vicious, far left extremists of Unite Against Fascism.

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Ho hum, more climate change propaganda

September 15, 2009 Climate Change, Propaganda 2 comments

The British government reckons it’s saved £7m in the last year through “green” measures in government departments.

The “green” measures referred to include double-sided printing, turning computers off at night and replacing PCs after 5 years instead of 3.

These are not “green” measures, they’re common sense money-saving ideas!  They may have a positive effect on the environment – less pollution and less landfull – but they are primarily common sense ways of saving money.  Turning electrical items off at night saves electricity which saves money.  Printing on both sides saves paper which saves money.  Replacing PCs after 5 years instead of 3 means you don’t have to buy new computers so often which saves money.

Whether these “green” measures were good for the environment or not, they would have saved money anyway.  The environmental benefit is just a happy co-incidence – the civil service has been on a cost-cutting drive since before the global warming scam started.

There is plenty of money to be saved by businesses and governments through “green” measures but they are all common sense cost saving ideas that have nothing to do with environmentalism and everything to do with saving money.  But ultimately, any cost saving made from this type of thing in the private sector is going to wiped out by “green” taxation.

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Scarecrows!

September 12, 2009 General 4 comments

Today is Mrs Sane’s birthday so after the presents, crumpets and bacon butties we went to Sheriffhales Village Fair.

Now, village fair usually means WI, homemade skittles and dodgy cake stalls but this is in a league of its own.  The entire village of Sheriffhales is closed off to traffic and the locals make scarecrows and display them all over the village.  Visitors vote for the best scarecrow and they win prizes – top prize is £150 this year!  There are scarecrows everywhere.

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British government says electricity supply will fail in 7 years time

September 11, 2009 Climate Change, Come the revolution 8 comments

The British government’s new Energy Minister has admitted that the UK will be facing electricity black-outs by 2016 because coal and nuclear power stations are going to be decomissioned and “green” power can’t be produced in big enough quantities to keep the lights on.

It’s a welcome admission that the British government’s energy policy is going to destroy the country and that the green scam is intended to return us to a mediæval economy but there’s a gotcha.  It is, says David MacKay, our fault that there isn’t going to be enough electricity because we keep opposing wind farms, nuclear power stations and energy imports and not at all the fault of the British government for committing to closing down existing powerstations and replacing them with windmills.

So it’s our fault for objecting to handing over acres of countryside for windmills and the planning system is getting in the way of the British government’s plans.  The general public isn’t going to change its mind over wind farms and when electricity rationing and black-outs start there are going to be riots.  Therefore, in the mind of a politician, the only solution is to change the planning system so that we can’t object to wind farms.  And because planning is devolved, it will only be changed in England and large scale wind farms will only be built in England against our wishes.  The Scottish government has already said that no nuclear power stations will be built in Scotland even though they have thousands of square miles of uninhabited countryside that would be perfect for nuclear power stations.

So the burden will once again fall on England to provide for the whole UK while the celts get to pick and choose when they want to contribute and on what terms.  All I can hope is that when the lights go out – and there is very little doubt that they will – that the ensuing total failure of society will destroy the anti-English British establishment.

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Telford council taking the piss

September 10, 2009 Telford No comments

The council left my bins out in the road again today, forcing Mrs Sane to stop in the road and move them before she could park in the drive.

They’re taking the piss now, but I have a cunning plan …

Once again my bins have not been put back at the end of my garden from where they were taken, instead being left at the end of my drive at the edge of the road.  My wife had to stop in the road, blocking the way for two cars, while she got out and moved the bins out of the way of the drive so she could park.

A couple of months ago I sent you a fine through the post.  That was joke to get your attention and hopefully deal with the problem.  You didn’t respond to the fine and you haven’t dealt with the bin men leaving my bins in the road because they can’t be bothered to put them back where they got them from.

The fine was tongue in cheek but on reflection I believe the council may have a case to answer.  If I leave my bins in the road you will fine me but you seem to think your rules don’t seem to apply to your own people.  I pay you to empty my bins so we have a contract and I think that a clause in our contract allowing you to fine me for leaving my bins in the road but not for me to be able to fine you if you do it is an unfair term.

The Office of Fair Trading defines an unfair contract term as follows:

“A standard term is unfair ‘if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer’– Regulation 5(1). Unfair terms are not enforceable against the consumer.”

There is a significant imbalance in our rights and obligations under the contract we have for you to empty my bins.  I have an obligation to leave my bins out at a certain time on a certain day determined by you and at the edge of my property and not on the road or pavement.  You, on the other hand, only have an obligation to empty my bins once a fortnight, on a day of your choosing (which may or may not be the day you are supposed to empty them) and are allowed to leave my bins wherever you want without penalty.

The Office of Fair Trading also says the following on exclusion of liability for poor service:

A business that supplies services to consumers accepts certain contractual obligations as a matter of law. In particular, consumers can normally expect services to be carried out to a reasonable standard. That applies not just to the main tasks the supplier agrees to perform, but to everything that is done, or should be done, as part of the transaction.

It is a reasonable assumption that under our contract you will return my bins to the place you got them from and not leave them in the street.  By failing to meet such a basic and reasonable level of service with no penalty to yourselves in our contract, that is again an unfair term.

Rather than cancel our contract, I will instead fine you £60 every time you fail to return my bins to where you took them from.  This redresses some of the imbalance in our contract.

Regards,

Stuart Parr
p.s. I’d quite like an answer this time.

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Slide to the left …

September 7, 2009 Transport 10 comments

Nope, nothing to do with the Cha Cha Slide.  Samoa is changing which side of the road it drives on from the right to the left.

The reason given by the Samoan government is that they’ll be able to import cheap cars from Japan which produces cheaper right hand drive cars for its domestic market and Samoan ex-pats in Australia and New Zealand will be able to send their used right hand drive cars home.

The Samoan government reckons it’s going to save money, protesters say it’s going to cost money and result in accidents and deaths.  I’d probably agree with the protesters but it’s good to see another country driving on the right side of the road (by which I mean the left).

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BBC invite BNP to appear on Question Time

September 7, 2009 BBC 4 comments

The BBC have invited the BNP to appear on the panel of Question Time for the first time.

The decision is the right one, no matter how awful the BNP are.  They have two MEPs and several councillors, to deny them a platform does nothing to reduce their support – in fact, it increases their support because it’s human nature to support the underdog.

A spokesman for the BBC said “The BBC is obliged to treat all registered political parties operating within the law with due impartiality.  Our audiences and the electorate will make up their own minds about different policies offered by elected politicians”.  Damn right and the best way to ensure the electorate doesn’t vote BNP is to allow them to see the BNP in action.  Give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.

Liebour are flapping though because they have a rule that prevents Liebour Party members from sharing a platform with the BNP.  Anything that gets Liebour MPs off the telly is to be encouraged, even if it means seeing Nick Griffin’s fat, sweaty face on Question Time.

The best quote on this has got to come from John Mann, the Liebour chairman of the all-party anti-Semitism group who said:

This is how Hitler came to power

Now, I wasn’t around in the 30’s and I only received a state education but I’m pretty sure Hitler didn’t appear on Question Time and that any TV coverage he may have had from the BBC wouldn’t have helped his election campaign.  What actually allowed Hitler to come to power was the German government’s refusal to do what the German electorate wanted and Hitler’s promise to deal with immigration, unemployment, hyperinflation and to make Germany a world power again.  Hmm, now that sounds familiar.

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Why out-of-hours pharmacies are a dying breed

September 6, 2009 England, Health 3 comments

A Twitter friend re-tweeted a request for information about local pharmacies open on a Sunday evening.  Easy I thought, I’ll pop on t’interweb and get the out of hours pharmacy rota off one of the 5 million websites the NHS runs.

Erm no.  NHS Direct has nothing but a list of pharmacies with normal opening hours and the two local NHS websites that had an out-of-hours pharmacy rota only had rotas up to Easter this year.  With all these admin staff the English NHS employs, you’d think one of them would be able to keep an out-of-hours pharmacy list up-to-date.

But while I was going through the list of pharmacies on the Shropshire NHS website the real reason why there are no pharmacies open on a Sunday evening dawned on me and for once it’s not about NHS funding.  It’s Alistair Darling’s fault.  “How is the Chancellor of the Exchequer to blame for pharmacies not opening on a Sunday evening?” I hear you cry.  Well, it’s quite simple …

A couple of years back Alistair Darling was the Minister for Trade & Industry (an English department of course, he is an MP for a Scottish constituency after all) and was approached by the major supermarkets asking for a repeal of Sunday trading laws in England.  He declined despite there being no Sunday trading laws in Scotland where he was elected.  So what has that got to do with pharmacies?  Take a look at a list of pharmacies in your local area and see how many different names there are on the list.  I doubt there will be more than 9 or 10 in a medium sized town.  Boots, Lloyds, Superdrug, Tesco, Asda … all big chains and all banned from opening for more than 6 hours on a Sunday.  Because they have the buying power they are pricing independent pharmacies out of business and because they are cash rich they can buy up the independent pharmacies they are putting out of business.

If NHS services are going to be farmed off to the private sector then Sunday trading laws need to be repealed because people need access to medical services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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Wireless Wii Nunchucks – don’t bother

September 6, 2009 Technology One comment

We’ve had a Wii for a while now and a combination of the kids using the remote and nunchucks as nunchucks (Kung-fu style) and chewing the wires has rendered the nunchucks a tad unreliable, often causing you to veer off to the left in Mario Kart Wii at inopportune moments.

So we thought we’d invest in a set of wireless nunchucks to get round the problem.  Mrs Sane ordered a pair of nunchucks off the Game website which were rubbish.  They were really sluggish and didn’t last more than 10 minutes without unpairing themselves from the remote.  So she returned them and bought a pair from Tesco instead which were more reliable in that they didn’t disconnect from the remote but were still super-sluggish, causing you to suddenly drive into walls or off the edge of the track in Mario Kart.

So we’ve gone back to wired nunchucks again and we’ll stick with them until Nintendo make wireless nunchucks themselves.  I suspect that the technology doesn’t allow reliable wireless connectivity for the nunchucks otherwise Nintendo would have done it themselves by now.

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Protest Propaganda

September 6, 2009 Propaganda One comment

Protesters from the English & Welsh Defence League and anti-fascist fascists rioted in Birmingham yesterday – a repeat of events a couple of weeks ago when the English & Welsh Defence League marched on Birmingham City Centre and the fascist Unite Against Fascism came out in force to protest at them.

The BBC News website seems to be a bit light on information about the protest but there are pictures and a video on the Daily Mail website.  The BBC did mention the fact that there was going to be a protest a couple of days ago but they mysteriously seem to have glossed over the finer details of the violence during the protest itself.  Well I say mysteriously but there’s not much mystery about if you look at the pictures on the Daily Mail website.

The pictures show the English & Welsh Defence League protesters (who the media have decided to rename the English Defence League) and the “anti-fascist” protesters who are all Asians.  So not actually anti-fascist protesters, but Asian protesters.  This is the reason why the BBC have been vague.

There’s no doubt that the English & Welsh Defence League are racists and intent on causing trouble but why were the UAF allowed to stage a counter-protest a fortnight ago and muslims allowed to stage a counter-protest yesterday in the same place as the English & Welsh Defence League, knowing full well that it would end up causing trouble?  The police have the power to prevent the two protests from taking place in the same place at the same time so why didn’t they use it?

I’m not interested in race politics and I would certainly never support a group like the English & Welsh Defence League but the biased reporting irritates me.  They are not the English Defence League, they are the English and Welsh Defence League and the protesters yesterday were Asians, not anti-fascists.

The British establishment will be wringing its hands over the emergence of the English & Welsh Defence League and trying to think of ways to shut them down but none of them will accept any of the blame for the existence of groups like this (there are more that have recently come into being) despite it being almost entirely down to their anti-English policies and refusal to deal with moderate English nationalist groups like the Campaign for an English Parliament.  Maybe now their head-in-the-sand approach to English nationalism, immigration and self-imposed segregation has spawned various extremist groups the British government will pay more attention to moderate English nationalists before they have home-grown terrorists to deal with as well as imported ones?

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From the makers of “Microsoft Time” …

September 6, 2009 Technology, WTF? 2 comments

CPU running at 100.5% ... apparently… Microsoft Percentages!

I’m sure every Windows user has experienced the curious phenomenon of “Microsoft Time” which uses the same units as normal time – hours, minutes, seconds – but in an entirely random way so you can never know whether “15 seconds” to copy a file in Microsoft time means 15 seconds, 5 minutes or 2 seconds of normal time.  It all adds to that unique Windows user experience and I’m sure we wouldn’t have it any other way.

But is it really necessary to invent “Microsoft Percentages” to randomly gauge the performance of your processor?  Is my processor really running at 100.5% utilisation?  I suspect not.  And why is the progress bar at 50%?  Does Windows expect the processor to ramp up to 200% utilisation at some point?

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Bloggers4UKIP: 64% of Tories would vote for Farage

September 5, 2009 Tories, UKIP No comments

No need to spend a fortune on a polling company to find out how many Tories are intending to vote for Farage, ConservativeHome have already got the answer – 64%!

The Tories are more split than ever under the expert leadership of David Camoron. Keep up the good work Dave.

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Child Trust Fund still losing money

September 1, 2009 General 2 comments

About this time last year we received a statement from Engage Mutual Assurance, the company the British government “invested” #4’s Child Trust Fund in, showing that it made a 6.2% loss.  I reiterated my belief that the Child Trust Fund is “a fucking rip-off scheme designed to make rich companies richer”.

Today we’ve had the latest statement.  The British government has “invested” some more money with Engage so the £210 that was left last year after Engage took their 1.5% mismanagement fee is now worth £439.99.  Great stuff.

Unfortunately, it’s a tad difficult to track how bad the performance of the fund is because the statement we received in August last year said the fund had £210 left in it but according to this statement it had £494.48 in it.  So, at some point between the statement being produced for August last year and the end of the financial year for the fund on 10th August, the British government pumped an unspecified amount into the failing fund which has still lost 11% of its value after the mismanagement fee had been taken.

Amusingly, Engage have enclosed a leaflet with the statement inviting us to make further payments into the fund which they describe as “a great way of helping to build up a fund to help pay for further education, or perhaps help buy a first house or car, or even to start up in business”.  The only thing this scam is good for is pissing taxpayers money up the wall.  Putting the £500 or so that’s been given to this bunch of wasters into a savings account with a bank would have made more money and if all the Child Trust Fund money had been put into high street banks instead of being distributed randomly amongst incompetent investment companies then we might not have had to hand over so much money to stop them going bust.

I phone HMRC this morning to ask if they could tell me if there’s a Child Trust Fund that’s making money but they apparently don’t know and advised me to go and see an Independent Financial Advisor.  So I phoned Engage to ask them if they have another Child Trust Fund that isn’t losing money but they only have this one.  Searching for other Child Trust Fund providers, I came across HMRC’s Child Trust Fund calculator that makes the hilarious assumption that the fund is going to make a profit and could be as high as £1,270 in 13 years time even if we don’t make any additional payments into it.  The only time we’re going to see those sort of numbers on this fund is when it’s in the red.

Although I don’t think the Child Trust Fund will ever be a good investment, I’m buggered if Engage are going to carry on ripping off the taxpayer with their crap investments so I’ve done some research and decided to transfer the lot to Yorkshire Building Society’s CTF savings account which works just like a normal savings account so they’ll pay interest if they make money but don’t take money away if they don’t.  Interestingly, their stakeholder CTF account is run by none other than Engage Mutual Assurance.  The only Child Trust Fund rated higher than Yorkshire Building Society was Henley Building Society but they don’t do them over the phone, internet or by post and I’m not driving to Stoke just to open a Child Trust Fund!

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