RandomJottings.co.uk

Years ago when I wasted some time at university I took out one of those student loan things (well beer doesn’t come cheap you know) and basically, I don’t need to pay anything back until I’m earning above the average wage.

Last year that came to £2161 a month (just under £26k a year). Now, with the recession and everything, I assumed that there wouldn’t be much difference, in fact with all the fat cat bankers and money launderers going out of business maybe the threshold would come down.

Anyway, deferment time is rapidly approaching, so I went online to check where I stood (I’ve never earned above the average wage so far, but sometimes I get a month, with overtime, which would put me above the monthly limit so I try to make sure I don’t get one of those in the three wage slips they assess me on)

To my suprise, despite times being hard the average wage has gone up to £27k, around £100 a month more than it was last year (a 4% rise).

With a lot of perople at the lower end of the scale feeling the pinch and being told there’s no money in the pot for wage rises, I wonder who it is that is raking it in…

As far as most people were concerned, mountain rescue was just a matter of winching ill prepared walkers from the Lake District or Snowdonia, but the recent cold snap has hilighted the larger scope of their role as across the country they have helped the emergency services cope with the treacherous conditions, you may also have been suprised (as I was) to find Mountain Rescue Teams in places that are only slightly bumpy.

Today, I was further suprised to learn that unlike the RNLI which is exempt, the Government charges VAT on the equipment that these volunteers use, in fact 35-45p of every £1 raised to fund this service is snatched away by various taxes (For instance 4×4 vehicles are essential to their work, yet in an effort to crucify the Chelsea Tractor more and more taxes have been heaped on their purchase and use).

The Government’s stance is to blame European rules on taxation and that it would be difficult to change the European rules since our voluntary service is fairly unique (most mountainous countries have state run rescue teams) and that the RNLI exemption was negotiated at the time of these taxation rules being put into place.

Although the Government’s litteral interpretation of the rules is correct, Laszlo Kovacs, the European Commissioner for Taxation and Customs, has pointed out that there is nothing stopping the Government from refunding the money using direct subsidies.

“Such tools are entirely a matter for individual member states and do not depend upon European Union legislation”

In the grand scheme of Govenment finances, the money snatched from the charitable doantions is small (especially when you consider how much it would cost them to provide the service themselves), but for the volunteers and those helped by them, the money would make a huge difference.

After last year’s scandal with the leaked e-mails which possibly show that The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tried to suppress conflicting views, now we find that a key part of their reports was effectively copied off the back of a cerial packet.

The IPCC had claimed that the Himalayan glaciers would have melted by 2035 due to climate change, they even labeled the Indian Government’s study that disproved this as “voodoo science”. Now it turns out that the claim was lifted from an interview in New Scientist magazine, an interview that the scientist in question admits was his own personal opinion and not based on any scientific research.

Professor Julian Dowdeswell, a glacier specialist at Cambridge University, said: “The average glacier is 1,000ft thick so to melt one even at 15ft a year would take 60 years. That is a lot faster than anything we are seeing now.”

The IPCC seems to have been taken over by politicians whilst still masquerading as scientists, they seem to have forgotten that the role of scientists is to constantly challenge and reassess conventional wisdom, especially in a subject where we know so little. It is certainly questionable that the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri (Who has incidently a degree in Industrial Engineering and a PH.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics – no environmental qualifications as far as I can see), is reported to have business interests that receive millions of pounds of funding derrived from IPCC policies.

The Climate Home Guard are quick to point out that there is a difference between climate and weather (or at least they are when an unexpected cold winter comes along and makes everyone question their dogma) but climate is made up of all the little pieces of weather. It’s hard to take these people’s rightiousness seriously when we can’t accurately predict conditions a week away (we certainly have no idea how much of it is caused by human activity) and these people are evangelical about what will “definately” happen in 40-50 years.

There is global warming, historically we’re near the bottom of a cycle that has been going on for millions of years, it’s also possible that global warming won’t be good for the human race (a change in the opposite direction certainly allowed the mammals to take over from the reptiles as the dominant class. The real question is how much of this climate can we change, (the world will continue to get warmer even if we stop all man-made carbon emissions).

We just don’t know and until science can understand the subject well enough to separate the natural changes from the man-made ones scientists need to continue questioning and challenging people’s views on the subject not silencing each other.

In a suprise result yesterday, Alan Ellis, who ran the Oink Bittorrent site was found not-guilty of the charges of Conspiracy to Defraud.

It seems that the record industry used the “Conspiracy to Defraud” law as an angle to get file-sharing prosecuted as a criminal rather than civil crime, unfortunatly as this definition from the FACT website shows, intention plays a huge part in the definition:

It is an offence contrary to the common law for two or more persons to agree to embark on a course of conduct which, if the agreement is carried out in accordance with their intentions, will necessarily amount to or involve some third party being deprived of some thing which is his or to which he is or would be or might be entitled.

In this case Alan successfully argued that the site was intended to improve his programming skills, and that since bittorrent can be used to  distribute any files (and indeed has since been developed for legal commercial uses) the responsibility for the content shared lies with the people using the site, not himself.

The Oink site and bittorrent tracker did not store any copyrighted files and the shared files did not pass through the Oink servers, it also seems that all donations to the site were voluntary and intended to cover running costs not make a profit.

Since copyright law in the UK doesn’t allow for a charge of  ‘facilitation’  the failure of this prosecution will make it very hard to bring charges against website owners/administrators for running a tracker.

As the “big chill” looks to be drawing to a close ITV’s Tonight programme aired an investigation into how we can stop the winter weather reaking havok.

According to the programme, the answer is £1.2 billion pounds initial investment and an additional £400 million per year to maintain it (in contrast, the recent cold snap has been estimated to have cost the economy £800 million per day).

Being away this year, I missed the most disruptive weather, but this has got to have been the first time in years that such a major disruption has occurred, so maybe what we really need is better planning rather than a huge investment for an event that hardly ever happened (and should become less frequent as the globe naturally warms).

Our biggest priority must be keeping the public transport links open, even if you can’t get your car out of the garage, if all it takes is a short walk to get to an operating  bus or train, you can get to work. Local authorities (or possibly central government) needs to look at our infastructure and give precise priorities. We don’t need to grit every road, but every area should have a priority route, and these are usually serviced by buses, that should be kept open no matter what the weather throws at us.

Supposedly every council in the country had 6 days supply of grit, but certainly in Rochdale’s case, this six days seemed to have been worked out as a light dusting of salt on a couple of main routes that they were legally obliged to treat, no thought seems to have gone into provisioning to keep the rest of the town running, or dealing with particularly hazardous roads (which to be fair, being situated on the edge of the Pennines we have quite a few of).

In truth, six days (if calculated correctly) should be more than enough to deal with winter most of the time, but we then need a centrally controlled emergency supply that can be brought out those times that we have more serious conditions, and this could be built up with the surplus from milder winters.

Perhaps the most affordable of the programme’s proposed improvements is the airports, (£75 million + £15 million/year) with over 235 million passengers using British airports each year, a levy of a few pence per flight to avoid airport closures due to weather has got to be worthwhile.

Finally, we have a huge manpower resource sat around even in the best of weather. It doesn’t need much (if any) training to use a shovel to shift snow, it’s time that we replaced the “dole” system with a “national service” that can be utilised in general to improve our environment, but can be rolled out in times of need to deal with conditions like this.

An advert for anti-bullying site cybermentors.org.uk has been banned from the TV because some scenes are considered too offensive!

It’s only a short advert, the content isn’t really graphic (it shows, from behind, a girl sewing her mouth shut) certainly far less than the films and video games that our children have suposedly become desensitised to.

More importantly, the aim should be to shock, those responsible have to be made to realise the harm that they cause to their victims and the victims need to be aware that there is help available. It harks right back to the original charter for TV, that it should educate.

The advert is dedicated to Megan Gillan, a pretty 15 year old (by all accounts a bright pupil) who despite being bullied was further victimised by the school, who segregated her rather than dealing with the bullies that pushed her to desperately take her own life.

Compared to the despair Megan (and other victims like her) go through the video (you can see it below) is nothing.

Beatbullying:

If you want to speak out, text SPEAKOUT to 84459 and donate just £3 to Beatbullying.

The cost of your text to 84459 will be charged at £3.00 plus your standard network text charge. Service is available for UK mobiles only.

An illegal-immigrant, Javid Iqbal,  residing in Bolton has finally been found guilty of rape, a reason for Police to celebrate you would think.

However, despite having a description and DNA evidence, this crook managed to elude them.

Three months later the victim even managed to supply them with the registration of his vehicle (after spotting her attacker in another part of town).

Of course, the vehicle might not have been registered, so maybe the Police were still struggling to find the perpetrator.

Three years later, they just happen to stop Javid’s vehicle, in the course of an investigation into illegal street trading and link it (and him) to the earlier rape.

According to the Police, “It must have been galling for the victim to see him a second time going about his business, but thankfully she was able to make a note of his registration which was key to us identifying Iqbal.”

All well and good, but the vehicle in question wasn’t exactly common place…

Had the vehicle been a red Ford Escort, maybe they could be excused the long delay in tracking it down, but it was infact an ice-cream van!!! Surely it doesn’t take much to letpatrol cars know to check registration plates on this sort of highly visible vehicle, what were the Police waiting for, the victim to supply them with the name, address and phone number of her attacker?

I can only hope that there aren’t more victims of this scumbag who could have been saved if the Police weren’t so incompetent.

“Just how many Hayseed Dixie albums can one man own?”

Well the boys are back (after a quiet year) to put this to the test with their eighth studio album (due out in February)

I haven’t heard the full album yet, but luckily Barley has been posting teasers on YouTube for a couple of months now.

While I like Hayseed Dixie’s tongue in cheek original songs (There’s seven on this release), the good news is that the cover versions are back in the mix with rockgrass assaults on bands like Queen, The Prodigy, Black Sabbath and Mozart, all chosen to highlight the album’s theme of killing and death, although the other three elements to any song worth singing also get a good airing.

“There’s still plenty of drinking, cheating and hell in there too, as them 4 elements all go together like stink on poop,” remarks front-maniac Barley Scotch.

If that isn’t enough to get you to put your hand in your pocket though, the package also comes with a DVD with six music videos from the album and five tutorials. Want to know what to do if your banjo playing brother accidentally cuts off one of his arms, or how to play Duelling Banjos with an African darbucka, the answers are right here.

Still not enough?? Well now it’s time to try your hand at being a record producer…

The DVD contains (in full CD quality) all the multi-track audio files for the album so that you can mix the songs yourself, there’s even a track – Love Cabin – that is only available if you mix it yourself, a first for any band.

So what are you waiting for (well apart from February), get out there and fund the band’s ambitious project to drink like students.

After yesterday’s rant about gritting…

Up until recently, our road used to get gritted in cold weather, then a couple of years ago it stopped. I don’t like it, but since it isn’t a main road I can understand that the council’s priorities are elsewhere.

So, with councils across the UK being ordered to cut their gritting by 25%, and our council in particular complaining that the stocks are critically low and that the government has hijacked the extra grit they’d ordered, what happens?

I get home last night to find our road has unexpectedly been gritted!!!

While personally I’m happy, I’m also dumbfounded as to why Rochdale Council suddenly think they have grit to spare. I can only assume that some bean-counter has found some down the back of the sofa and they want to get rid of it before anyone else notices.

With grit for the roads rapidly running out (if you believe the news and distrust Gordon Brown) it’s funny to note the excuses put out by local authorities accused of not gritting the roads properly.

1> Grit needs a flow of traffic over it shortly after being laid down for it to work.

Funnily enough, when I got back from Austrailia, the first thing I did was grit the area outside my garage (it’s not funny when the car starts to slide just as you enter an enclosed space), following day, that gritted area was snow free despite only having one car drive over it.

2> Grit suplies are low because the weather was unexpected and you can’t store it for a long time.

The grit I used was some I liberated from a grit bin last year when it snowed (and stored in my garage ready for the next time it was needed), not sure how long it had been in the bin, but it has certainly not degraded over the 12 months that it has been in my possession.

The true cause of the situation we are in however is the budgets and the hype about global warming.

In the first case, councils are being hit with ever tighter budgets for the essentials because their money is hoovered up protecting the pensions of council workers and funding strange minority projects like “Gay Lithuanian Pensioners against Apple Blossom*” when all they really should be doing is the essentials like emptying the bins and keeping the roads clear.

Secondly, with their unerring political belief in global warming how could it ever snow again, surely a cold-snap is impossible, so why bother to prepare for it – Boris Johnson’s London Transport Strategy (all 354 pages of it) bleats on about responding to climate change but not once covers what will be done in the case of freezing conditions.

* Please note that I have nothing against Gays, Lithuanians or indeed Pensioners, Apple Blossom however, is only fine whilst it’s on the tree, I hate it when it falls off and starts littering the streets 😀