Andrew Grice, the Political Editor of The Independent reports.
A Conservative Government would start to dismantle the generous pensions schemes enjoyed by 4.5 million public sector workers, David Cameron has said.
…
Tories sought to play down his remarks, aware they might alienate public sector employees. A Tory spokesman said everyone acknowledged pensions are a “pressing issue”.
Mr Cameron was setting out the party’s “direction of travel” but the party is yet to make a decision on policy. “Nothing has been ruled in or out,” he said.
Why don’t Tories learn? Yes, public sector workers’ final salary pensions are an improvement on the miserly defined contribution pensions offered to private sector workers. However, instead of reducing the public sector pensions – what’s wrong with improving private sector pensions instead?
The Secunia PSI utility, which comes free of charge to consumers, scans Windows systems to provide a clear guide of applications that need patching or are out of date. Better still it provides links to download locations, detailed advisories from Secunia on the flaws and information of where utilities are installed. The product works of Windows 2000, XP and Vista. Source: The Register.
I pretty sceptical of such programs, still I thought I’d give it a go on the work laptop and I was surprised to find that I’d an out of date version of Adobe Flash Player 9.x (General Plug-in) and Sun Java JRE 1.5.x / 5.x – that’s on a machine that’s supposed to be patched to within an inch of its life.
I was able automatically update to flash player 10 by just a click, however the Sun Java update was a little more complex – still that’s nothing to do with Secunia PSI and all to do with Sun, watch out you don’t end up with the , anyway I was able to update to version 1.6 / 6.0.
PSI has two modes simple and advanced; the simple mode is for those with less technological know-how working on the theory its better people fix something than nothing at all.
Selecting the advanced option presents a lot of additional problems that can take some time to fix, and will give you a healthy dislike of Adobe and Sun and the way they handle updates – badly.
So, will I use PSI at home? I don’t think I’ve a choice; I’m just not enthusiastic about spending time patching another PC. Ho-hum!
The Socialist Worker has created a chart showing occupations of BNP members from the leaked members list. Construction includes both workers and self employed.
Greenpeace reportsvery few firms are showing true climate leadership. Despite many green claims, major companies like Dell, Microsoft, Lenovo, LG, Samsung and Apple are failing to support the necessary levels of global cuts in emissions and make the absolute cuts in their own emissions that are required to tackle climate change.
If like us, you’ve users who seem to break every mobile phone they’re given then maybe it’s time to get them a Sonim XP3 – which comes with a 3-year unconditional guarantee, is drop proof, water resistant and is certified against salt, fog, humidity, transport and thermal shock. It’s not pretty and it hasn’t a camera, GPS, 3G or Wi-Fi – but it can make and receive calls, sends texts and it’s even got Bluetooth!
The Observer reports Alistair Darling us expected to cut VAT from 17.5% to 15% for one or possibly two years. The government’s deficit will balloon to way above £100bn next year, but the Treasury hopes to reassure the City about the long-term health of the government’s finances by announcing detailed plans to increase taxes and squeeze public spending, once the recession is over.
I’d like to see the reduction made permanent, indirect taxes always fall heaviest on the poorest in society moving tax from indirect to direct taxes would be a great boost for low-income families.
You often get what you pay for and with cheap electrical charges it would seem more often than not something completely unsafe.
People are being urged not to buy cheap imported electrical chargers after nine out of 15 failed safety tests by Gloucestershire Trading Standards.
The devices used in the survey included phone chargers, a laptop adaptor and Nintendo DS Lite mains adaptors.
All of them were bought from an internet auction site and originated from China.
One of the failed tests included poorly fitted plug pins, which could lead to overheating, officers said.
With postage, the average price of all the items came to £3.93, compared to safe chargers which normally retail for about £10.
Eddie Coventry, from Trading Standards, said: “The message from this survey is clear, don’t be tempted to buy a cheap charger.
“Some of the items tested were for games consoles and therefore used by children.
“I would particularly urge parents to use reputable retailers selling genuine parts when purchasing a charger for hand held devices like games consoles, which may be used while the charger is plugged in.”
The survey was conducted following the death of a seven-year-old British boy, on holiday in Thailand, after using his games console charger. Source: The BBC.
On The Official Google Blog software engineer Paco Galanes
writes:
We’re excited to announce availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s.
Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive – about 10 million photos.
Just add the text “source:life” to your Google Images search to specify images from the archive.
A number of the Honda garages have closed locally and now.
Japanese car giant Honda added to the economic gloom today, announcing it is to shut its UK factory in Swindon for two months in February and March next year in response to falling sales.
The plant’s 5,000 employees will be laid off for the duration of the closure without pay. Although jobs are not believed to be at risk in the short-term, news of the temporary shut down at Honda will increase fears the car industry may be forced to make employees redundant in the face of a worldwide slump in car sales. Source: The Guardian.
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