Monthly Archives: November 2009

Equal Pay Madness

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I’d no idea why there’s a bin strike in Leeds

The strike began in early September, in protest at Leeds city council’s attempt to equalise the pay of their male and female employees. Rather than raise the wages of its female workers, the council elected to reduce the salaries of its male counterparts, which translated as cuts of up to £4,500 on salaries of £18,000. Laura Barton, The Guardian.

No wonder there’s a strike – Leeds City Council a Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition in action – a taste of what a Tory victory at the General election will bring.

Why Are Tories So Worried About The National Deficit

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Conservative leader David Cameron has told the BBC he plans to hold an emergency budget within 50 days if his party wins the next general election.

Mr Cameron told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show it would be “about getting the deficit under control”. BBC.

G7 Net Debt

Looking at the graph of G7 countries the UK national debt deficit certainly isn’t the worst.

UK Debt sinc 1900

And looking at the UK’s dept as percentage of GDP since 1900 the UK debt was it’s greatest during the 50s when the UK economy was at its most buoyant. These figures bear out my view get the economy growing and the deficit will pretty much take care of itself.

So what on earth is the government worrying about – and as for the panic stricken Tories what are they trying to achieve?

Data Source: UK Public Spending & IMF.

Deflation Stalks Japanese Economic Growth

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Japan has been fighting a recession for well over a decade now and after posting two quarters of growth the outlook for their economy is still not rosy.

Deflation has returned to the Japanese economy for the first time since 2006, the government has warned.

The Cabinet Office said the falling prices could hurt the recovery of the economy, which left recession in the second quarter of this year. BBC.

Why is deflation bad news?

People tend to wait and wait for prices to drop before purchasing – the waiting slows growth.

What will be the effect of recession in world’s second largest economy be?

The World is an uncertain place and you have to wonder at the UK’s obsession with paying back the national debt seemingly whatever – Gordon Brown in four years David Cameron just two years – growth is the issue not debt – debt can wait till later. Unless we get very lucky we seem certain to turn a recession into a depression.

94 Wines

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A Dutch company 94 Wines sells well; 94 wines – no labels and no names, just 94 bottles numbered and coloured each listing the grape variety, region of origin and alcohol strength with brief tasting notes. You can answer six simple questions and 94 Wines will select three wines for you to purchase – I rather like the idea and design of the bottles. Now comes the clever/daft bit depending on your view.

Each bottle has a QR Code also know as a two dimensional bar code and what do theses do?

Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hard link or physical world hyperlinks. Wikipedia.

94 Wines allows you to load text, photo or even a video to their website so each bottle can have it’s own custom QR Code – all included in the price – trouble is I don’t know of many people who know what to do with a QR Code – maybe it’d different in Holland – I don’t know – personally I go with daft idea.

So what’s the wine taste like? I’ve no idea – I’ll have to buy some although I’m not sure they deliver to the UK – Oh Well.

What’s The Cost?

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A drug that can prolong the lives of patients with advanced liver cancer has been rejected for use in the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) said the cost of Nexavar – about £3,000 a month – was “simply too high”. BBC.

I’d not like to have to make these sorts of decisions – at the end of the day the Health Service resources aren’t limitless and £3,000 a month is a lot it – although it wouldn’t seem quite so much if your life depended on it.

What no-one seems to be asking is how Bayer justify such an exorbitant price – what was their development costs, what’s the production costs and what’s the payback period – questions that we’ll never get straight answers to – all you can say is Bayer made €1,719 million last year – plenty of profit margin.

The whole sorry tale confirms what we all know – health care is for the rich.

Confirms My Suspicions

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Music files are generally stored on computers as MP3 files. These files are compressed to reduce storage requirements. The bit rate of these files, which might be from 192kbs up to 320kbs and possibly even 640kbs will determines the size of the file and quality of the sound – the lower the rate the smaller the file and conversely the higher the bit rate the better the sound quality. Additionally there’s something called FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) which doesn’t compromise on sound however, FLAC isn’t as widely supported – and there are others such as Apple Lossless. Anyway I diverge from my point – or at least Trusted Reviews which came to the following conclusion

For most listening purposes, with most equipment and most ears, 320kbps MP3 is perfectly good enough. Sure, use FLAC for archiving purposes – it makes sense to have a lossless master of your CD on a server, NAS or PC in the house – but if you’re clogging up a portable player with FLACs or Apple Lossless files, then either a) you have superior ears, a headphone amplifier and seriously high-end headphones or b) you’re lacking in common sense.

Many of us simply couldn’t tell the difference between 192kbps and FLAC. There are caveats. A wider selection of music in our test might have thrown up more differences, and some ears and some headphones might reveal more obvious distinctions. That said, there’s no reason why you should turn your nose up at 192kbps or 256kbps files if you’re just looking for something to listen to in the car or on the daily commute. You’ll get more tracks on your player, and the sound quality will probably be good enough. Stuart Andrews, Trusted Reviews.

Personally I suspect that’s true for most of us when at home – how many of us have a perfectly positioned stereo in a perfect acoustic room – pretty well none of us – we sit to close to one speaker or the other, there’s a sofa in the way of one, or we sit too close or even too far away… You get the picture – there’s a lot of snobbery about music but I wouldn’t pay too much attention.

You Don’t Really Want the Tories

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In May 2010 many on the Left will say it does not matter whether we get a Labour or a Conservative government; that they will be as bad as each other. They are wrong. Labour may have lost its way, but its methods still have some institutional basis in the social democracy of the post-war settlement.

The Conservatives are preparing intellectually to take the Thatcherite revolution to its conclusion – to do away with many of the core tenets of the postwar welfare state compromise between capital and labour once and for all. And once it’s in train, there may not be that much the Left can do about it. The forces may simply be too powerful. Does the left want to run that risk? Paul Cotterill, Liberal Conspiracy.

An argument that can’t be repeated enough.

But the Queen is a Parasite

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Peter White, a Labour election candidate for Havering Borough Council in east London is facing the sack after comments he made on Tory MP Andrew Rosindell’s Facebook page about Rosindell’s call for a public holiday to mark the Queen’s diamond jubilee.

“What is the point of celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of someone who is born into a position of privilege, she is a parasite and milks this country for everything she can,” Mr White wrote.

“She has more front than Margate asking for extra money from the civil list. Maybe she should sell a couple of her properties.

“Maybe if she wants Buckingham Palace to be maintained from public funds she should open it to the public.”

He added: “Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with a public holiday but lets (sic) have one that means something, rather than celebrating vermin.” BBC.

Personally the Labour needs more anti-royals not less – aren’t we supposed to be socialists?