The humle red band part 2

The infamous red bands I have previously blogged about have been the subject of a magazine article on the BBC.

BBC News: 10 uses for the humble red band

Who would have thought it, other people think about these things too.

Save our forests update

Well as usual I got stuck on the Tony Baldry specific issue mailing list. Tony stuck to his guns saying that privatisation of the forests was the right thing to do, even sending me an email debunking the 10 myths spread about by the press. One day later the Secretary of State cancelled the sell off.

Funny isn't it how someone can be so adamant that privatisation is so right and then have to flip there position because their leader do so. At least I assume Tony will now say that he is listening to the will of the people and joining with David Cameron to support the public in keeping the forest in public hands. He hasn't yet sent me an email telling me this but I am sure this is his new view.

One of the big issues I have with party politics is that it prevents individuals doing what they think is right or having independent thought. If Tony disagrees with David then fine, please come back to me and say that you still support privatisation of the forests. At the moment I suspect that you only follow the party line and I have no real evidence that you truly stand up for what you believe in,

As a voter I want to know you are voting with your head and heart on behalf of your constituents not just being a loyal supporter of David.

Anyway the next issue coming up is Alternative Voting (AV) - the transferable vote. Watch this space. I am leaning towards the "Yes" camp but I do want to explore the issues fully first.

Save our forests

Over 230,000 people have put their name to a petition calling on the government to save our national forest for future generations. If you haven't already signed the position, do so now, come back and read the rest of this article later.

The Tory government have as usual gone for the privatise everything that moves method of politics, the fact that they can do so under the guise of essential cuts is all the better. Basically they have already sold off 15% of the Forestry Commission land (the maximum they can do without new legislation) without asking or consulting with the public and now they want to sell of the other 85%. Unfortunately they do have to put it into legislation in order to get rid of the remaining woodland.

I like many others are absolutely disgusted that David Cameron can sell off the nations heritage. David will sell anything worth selling to greedy private investors who are not capable stewards working in the public interest. David and the investors just see cash instead of trees, they have no interest in nature, no thought of nurture, no interest in public access and no regard for a sustainable future. They want to steal our woodland and David Cameron is basically holding the gate open while they drive off with it.

As well as signing the petition you should write / email your MP, it is what they are there for, to represent the will of the people.

My MP already has my email, we shall see what he has to say.

Shakespeare's Monkey

Most people have heard of the theory that a monkey given an infinite amount of time and a computer will eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare.

I of course wanted to test the theory, I do random things like that sometimes.

Rather than digitise the complete works of Shakespeare I thought I would start with the famous phrase:

"To be or not to be"

So programmed in perl with a mysql database attached a random number generator tries to recreate the famous phrase. With a bit of calculation it works out the percentage match and records the monkey world record.

Try it for yourself here - Monkey Shakespeare.

Snow Watch Leg 3

According to the latest met office weather warnings there is a good chance of snow across most of the country on Thursday.

Updates will follow

Source: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/images/snow-depth-2-Dec-2010-0900.jpg

Check this out for a map of the lying snow. Adding insult to injury at Snow Watch Headquarters is that we are right in the middle of that small finger of no snow in the middle of the country. 50 miles in either direction and you have piles of it but nothing here.

Current update: little lying snow left with the odd flake in the air, bitterly cold.

Snow Watch Leg 2 update

Well the blizzards did not materialise, believe it or not I am in the small part of the country which has got away with only 1 / 2 cm of snow. Yet travel 50 miles east, south or north and you see feet and inches of the stuff.

The main roads are completely clear and even the estate back roads are only slightly icy. Its hard to reconcile the tv news saying the whole country has come to a complete halt when all of us in Oxfordshire are going about our normal hum drum lives.

Of course next week the situation could be completely reversed.

I am sure it is absolutely terrible in Scotland and in the north east but I cant help secretly liking the idea of 100cm of lying snow. A once in a life time experience, one you would perhaps rather reflect on by the pool in 32 degrees of sunshine but an experience none the less.

All we can expect round here over the next few days are a few night snow showers.

Snow Watch Winter 2010/11 - Leg 1 Update and new Leg 2

Well this season has got off with back to back legs.

Leg 1 Update

This was the snow that was due today. The warnings were quickly downgraded over the last couple of days and in the end we just got a "shake" of snow overnight. For non snow watch regulars a shake is what you would get if you get an icing sugar duster and give it a shake. It has already almost vanished. Judging by the cloud cover although snow like, it does not have that heavy pregnant look so it seems that is pretty much the end of leg 1.

1254 hours: Very slight flakes in the air

Leg 2 - Blizzard Watch

Yes, you heard it right the met office put out an early warning for Tuesday yesterday with a chance of blizzards:

Rain is expected to spread northwards during the day, turning to snow widely as it does so. Strong northeasterly winds will also be a feature, perhaps reaching gale force in exposed areas. This will lead to the potential for blizzard conditions in places, with significant disruption a possibility. At present, these conditions seem likely to continue into Wednesday.

Issued at: 1144 Fri 26 Nov

This is expected to cover the whole of the south of England. A couple of technical weather points for you. Snow usually comes down from the north, when it comes from the south it turns from rain to snow as it moves to the north. In addition if the new low pressure overwhelms the cold high pressure (already in place) then it may warm up increasing the likelihood of rain. Basically for the best snow fall you want to be on the cold side of the pressure battleground giving maximum snow. Of course if it is cold enough and the pressures are finally balanced you also get a heavy snow fall.

So snow could be on the way up from the south but it may fall as rain, or fall as rain first. Only updates from the met office will give us a better idea of what is going to happen.

For a bit of fun, here is an artist's impression of me standing in a blizzard. If you look very closely you can see me waving.

Of course while I have been writing this article the met office have given their daily update, blizzards has been changed to heavy and drifting snow on Tuesday for the east and not the south of England. The good news is that I am still due to get some.





Latest met office update is:

There is a moderate risk of severe weather affecting northern and eastern parts of the UK. Strong north-easterly winds and heavy snow showers will lead to accumulations of 5 to 10cm quite widely and up to 20cm in places. There may also be some drifting of snow in the wind.

Issued at: 1158 Sat 27 Nov

There are also warnings out for Wednesday for snow although not for Oxfordshire although that could change over the coming days.

More analysis and news from North Oxfordshire Snow watch in due course.

Snow Watch Winter 2010/11 - Leg 1

Snow is on its way.

For a very early start to the season we have our first weather advisory issued for North Oxfordshire this Saturday there is a moderate chance of heavy snow with potential for accumulations of 1 - 5 cm.

Now as many seasoned snow veterans know a weather advisory does not automatically mean a blizzard especially 4 days out from the actual event. This could be downgraded or upgraded as we get closer to Saturday.

The good news is that snow showers are forecast from Thursday onwards.

Watch the met office for an update tomorrow lunchtime. Watch this space, will the season start with full on snow or will it turn into a damp squib. Only time will tell.

Train overcrowding: how to fight back.

Ever since this article on the BBC a couple of weeks ago thoughts have been running through my head about how the humble commuter, fed up with being treated worse than a sardine can fight back.

Of course we are only in this position because the companies themselves and the government refuse to do anything about it. Mind you, I am guessing if they were all faced with having to travel by train on a daily basis and not in first class they would quickly do something about it. Lord Young and others are probably at least privately thinking that commuters have never had it so good.

As far as I can work out there are only two ways we can attack the problem.

Breach of Contract (Small claims court)

This I envisage working similar to the banking charges saga. The BBC article linked gave me the signpost.

Under their franchise agreements train operators are required to use "reasonable endeavours" to give peak passengers "a reasonable expectation of a seat within 20 minutes of boarding"

Not exactly great legally crisp wording but there is something here we can work with. Essentially if the conditions are not met you could perhaps claim that the train operator has broken their contract with you which was made when you purchased the ticket based on all relevant legislation and contracts including the franchise agreement.

All we have to do is sort out the test of reasonableness to see if you can make a claim. First we need a reference period. The train operator would clearly be able to wriggle out of a claim if it was based on 1 or 2 journeys or the train was late, weather delays, other delays or delays outside of its control. So lets say 5 journeys on the same train or at around the same time would constitute a reasonable reference period. This is a week of commuting or five regular journeys over a different period.

Now the line states that you have a reasonable expectation of finding a seat within 20 minutes. So any journey under 30 minutes (must be scheduled journey time not actual journey time) is not going to be worth claiming for, again you would need to take into account any delays, which would not count towards the 30 minutes.

Next a reasonable expectation of finding a seat, in order to prove this you would have to walk up and down the carriages looking for a seat, so the best thing to do is only claim when you cannot walk up and down the carriages as clearly in this circumstance you do not have a reasonable chance of finding a seat.

Again if you wanted to be really clever and possibly evil you could find a railway employee and ask them if you have a reasonable expectation of finding a seat on the train (use that exact wording). This would be extra juicy evidence against the company as they are a representative of the company giving a professional opinion. You could also consider collecting witness statements from people on the same train. Don't worry too much about witness statements as the onus would be on the company to prove you wrong, plus as long as overcrowding is regular if they contested it you could take a video camera on the next journey. The company cant make the problem go away over night.

You would also need to submit evidence of tickets, at least the photocopies. If it is not a season ticket you may wish to consider submitting the originals or at the very least offering to surrender the ticket if your claim is subject to refund. Obviously with a season ticket you can submit a copy. Also note that any claim should only be for the contested journeys, you cant claim a refund of a season ticket based on five journeys. In this case you must work out the proportion of the ticket that relates to those journeys.

So in summary to make a claim you need to fulfil these pre-requisites:

• Scheduled journey time of over 30 minutes
• 5 journeys on the same train or 5 journeys at roughly the same time over a regular frequency
• a valid ticket
• details of the trains travelled on
• Unable to walk up and down to find a seat

If you have fulfilled all these requirements then you can start a similar two step process to the reclaim of bank charges.

Step 1 is write to the train company, perhaps something like this:

Dear Customer Services,

I am writing to complain about the state of overcrowding on your peak time trains. As a regular user it is clear to me that you are doing nothing to address overcrowding and are therefore in breach of the commitment in your franchise agreement:

"train operators are required to use reasonable endeavours to give peak passengers a reasonable expectation of a seat within 20 minutes of boarding

Here are the details of the trains I travelled on, the journey times and my comments on the availability of seats:

etc etc

I have also enclosed a copy of my ticket/s for your reference.

You have 28 days to reply to this letter detailing the steps you will take to solve the overcrowding issues on these trains. In addition, I am claiming a full refund for the price of the tickets attached as you have clearly and persistently failed to fulfil the terms of agreement under which they were bought.

If you do not provide satisfactory recompense within 28 days then you will leave me with no choice but to pursue the matter through the civil courts.

Yours sincerely etc.

Sit back and wait for a response, the options here are that you get ignored, fobbed off or offered some compensation.

If you get ignored, check their customer service agreement and write one more time quoting their customer service agreement and giving them a final 28 days to reply. You may wish to copy in the Managing Director, chances are the letter will just get forward on the customer services department and match up with your other letter, but you never know. If the ignore you a second time then you have now made every reasonable endeavour to resolve the matter with the company (this will be important in any legal claim) and you can now put in your claim with the courts for full compensation.

If they fob you off, reply re-iterating your position detailing the breach of agreement and detail any more subsequent experiences. Then as above head to the small claims court.

If you get offered some compensation my personal advice would be to take it, even if it is not the full amount. The fact that they have offered you compensation and you have refused to take it would count in the company's favour in any claim. So best to take what's offered and make a new claim in the future if they do not take "reasonable actions" to avoid overcrowding.

Of course the first few claims will be hard but if one ends up at court and the commuter wins then like the bank charges that is a legal precedent which will pave the way for everyone to claim and companies will start paying up at the letter stage. They will also quite quickly start addressing capacity issues as it now hurting their profits.

At the moment this is an idea, but you never know it just might work. If anyone does try the above approach can you keep us up-to-date with any responses etc. I am quite happy to post any rail company responses, good or bad.

Health and Safety

The other approach I have thought about is claiming a fundamental breach of your health and safety if you are required to stand. However, anecdotally there seems to be no research which shows you are at higher risk in an overcrowded train. So this seems to be a non starter unless anyone knows of any research or can commission some.

Finally, I should also mention that I am not a regular commuter on trains, but have on occasion had to commute into London where the train has been totally rammed with people. So despite a good idea I am unable to follow up on it myself.

How to... compare salaries

Another how to article for thesalaryconverter.com

How to ... compare salaries

So you want to compare several different salaries. Let say you are looking at a number of jobs where the salaries are listed as £14,000 per annum, £250 per week, £1200 per month and £7.85 per hour.

Job Number	salary
1	£14000 per annum
2	£250 per week
3	£1200 per month
4	£7.85 per hour

You could sit down with a pen and paper, scratch your head any maybe find a way to compare them or you could let thesalaryconverter.com take the strain.

Step 1 is to decide what rate you feel most comfortable with, do you want everything converted into a per hour rate or an annual rate. Which is better for you, for most people they want to compare it to their existing salary so it would be whatever you know you current salary rate to be.

Let's say we have decided to convert everything to per hour rate.

So using the calculator we put in "14000" select "Annual" and press convert. Looking at the hourly rate it converts to £7.26.

Using the calculator again we put in "250" select "Weekly" and press convert. The hourly rate turns out to be £6.76.

Using the calculator for the third job we put in "1200" select "Monthly" and press convert. The hourly rate turns out to be £7.46.

We don't have to convert the last salary as it is already in per hour.

So we now have the following conversions:

Job Number	salary	Per hour conversion
1	£14000 per annum	£7.26
2	£250 per week	£6.76
3	£1200 per month	£7.46
4	£7.85 per hour	£7.85

It turns out that that the job number four is the best paid job but of course pay isn't may not be the only reason to take that job.

Try the online calculator for yourself.

The world at large and the humble red elastic band

The world at the moment is a world full of nightmares and bad news. The Chilean miners were the one ray of sunshine in what is going to be a dark winter ahead. Bomb threats and financial crisis, job and funding cuts.

Still in this new age of austerity I would like to talk about red elastic bands, specifically the ones that are left all over the UK by postpeople as they ping off a banded set of mail that is being delivered.

They are not hard to find and are free so very handy if you want an elastic band, but being so colourful they are slightly more exciting than an ordinary brown one. Thinking of those table top Christmas books that litter the book stores at this time of year I was thinking of bringing out a book entitled "101 uses for a postpersons bands". So far number one is to use it to hold down the flaps on an opened coffee bag as those sticky things never seem to work.

Of course if it were a paperclip I could trade it up for a house, for a postpersons band I think you would struggle to trade it up for a shed at least until I have found out the only 100 uses for it.

This random thought was bought to your by coffee from Java and some orange marmalade on oatmeal toast (girlfriends choice).

The Spending Review: A Personal Response

I am a public sector worker, I am not on the coalface but I hire the people that work on the coalface. I agree that cuts had to be made and they had to be deep. I agree that they had to cut the Public Sector borrowing requirement down to size but not eradicate it.

However, I have no doubt that the coalition has gone farther than it needed to, due to the Conservative ideology of smaller government.

I do believe that we needed to make an across the board cut of at least 10%. I don't believe any area should have been ring-fenced including however unpalatable the NHS and education. It is time to live within our means. A significant amount can be saved in the public sector through efficiency saving and getting rid of "nice-to-have" services that have built up in the last ten years without affecting core services. 10% is I believe a fair line in the sand.

I think the public sector pay freeze is right even though in real terms it means many poorly paid workers will find it much harder. Again given the extreme circumstances we find ourselves in I feel a pay freeze is preferable to loosing more jobs.

I think any additional spending should be frozen, what we don't have now we no longer need. A lot of commentators have compared the deficit to your own debt, when you have a debt you need to reduce it. I would compare the budget requirements to a household budget, when money is tight you don't spend it on new things or reduce spending on food to move to a bigger house. You make do with what you have got and so it is time to make do with what we have got. When the good times come again then we can look for new opportunities.

I would not reduce corporation tax, big business got us into this mess they can help us out of it. The argument that this is to stimulate growth is valid but public sector spending and public sectors workers also contribute to the economy.

I would not increase International development, again referring to the household budget, I like to give to charity but I don't give more than I can afford. As a country we may have a responsibility to the rest of the world and that is why I would not make any reduction in the budget for international development but it would be frozen.

I would not give a rise to the cabinet office for their "big society" work. "Big society" is a good idea but it doesn't not need that much money. I would prime the pump but not to the extent of £1.8 bn perhaps £0.5 bn would be more appropriate. Government cannot order you to volunteer but they can encourage you.

I would bring forward the pension age increase, it makes economic sense.

I would increase pension contributions, although I acknowledge it will be painful the current system is no longer viable for individuals, the country or the economy.

I would not freeze the science budget but as per all other areas cut it by the required 10%. Sorry scientists everyone needs to do more with less and no one can be protected under these circumstances.

I would get rid of trident, we have no need for a nuclear deterrent that we would never use saving us £20 bn that could be better spent elsewhere.

With some significant regret I would not expand the funding for energy and climate change projects. Again we cannot afford the "nice to do" stuff, when things improve they can go back on the agenda. For now the £2.9bn could be better spent elsewhere. I would if the figures allowed allocate £200m for the wind power projects and £50m for solar power and energy efficiency projects. This would help continue the push to a green and sustainable economy. In this area alone I feel we must move forward not back.

I would not scrap the index linking for rail travel, those without cars would be the hardest hit.

The NHS is tricky but I would enforce my golden rule of 10% cuts with a stipulation that savings must be made from efficiency saving and cutting red tape and not closing wards or hospitals. That may be very painful but I would also commit that when the good times come back the NHS would be the first in the queue and I would aim for funding increases to a level equivalent of 5% per year for each year they received no increase. Over the long term there would be no reduction in funding.

There are other areas I could go into but I think you can understand extrapolate my thoughts.

On one final note the average savings across the board for the government have been 19%. I have said across the board saving will be 10% with some significant extra savings made which should allow us to head towards the 19% target. In addition, I do not believe we need to totally eradicate the deficit. Some deficit is acceptable as long as it continues to reduce and does not get out of hand.

I recommend my plan to the house.

Watching the news: Another Auntie's Bloomer

A vaguely interesting article about people protesting against potential cuts in the Science sector.

However, for a bit of impossible science cue some random BBC sub-editor.

If you look at the caption to the second photograph:

Demonstrators were asked to wear science items such as a laboratory coat or telescope.

Can I just ask for my own piece of mind how do you wear a telescope, there doesn't seem to be any arm or leg holes. You cant really wear it as a hat, it keeps falling off. Perhaps people often wander the corridors at the BBC wearing a telescope.

Product Review :Powerpod Solar Phone Charger from Powerbee Ltd

Cross post from my renewables generation society blog.

This is a great little phone charger. I bought it in my continued quest to save energy.

Its about the size of an A6 sheet and you put in the light and it charges up. Then you can plug most mobile phones, digital cameras and any other small portable device in and it will happily charge it up.

The first thing to say is you don't need a lot of sun to charge it, so far it has charged on a non south facing windowsill on a grey autumn day, sitting on a shelf in the pool of light from a 50w halogen bulb and pretty much anywhere where there is a reasonable level of light. I suspect it will even charge at work under normal office lights, will have to check this out. Which basically means you should be able to get it to charge on the majority of days.

It worked for me straight out of the box, very easy to use, had the right adapter for my phone and charged it up easily just like it would if you plugged the phone into the mains.

On a cost benefit analysis it doesn't really stack up on pure energy savings alone. The considered opinion of the internet is that when charging a phone they suck up 4w of power, when already charged but still plugged into the phone 2w and when not plugged into a phone less than 0.1w.

In other words assuming that my phone is charged for 5 hours a week I would use just over 1kw over a year, so charging it by solar would save you approx 10-15p. So based on energy saving alone there is a payback time of 482 years.

However and this is a big one, your phone is solar powered so it is totally green, as it no longer uses electricity powered by fossil fuels. You can also take the charger with you and you don't need a plug, very useful if travelling. You can charge any device that uses 5, 5.5v or 9v and if you are using more than just a phone the cost savings improve.

If you currently have a car charger you can power your phone by attaching it the car window and you are not burning petrol to charge your phone.

Plus it is a very cool gadget.

I would definitely recommend it to everyone especially at the price of £24.11, you cant go wrong.

I give it the following scores:

Easy of use 5/5
Green Credentials 5/5
Cost / Benefit 3/5
Coolness 5/5
Overall 4.5/5

The last word on the matter is this text, I sent to my girlfriend:

This text was bought to you by the power of the sun. No fossil fuels were harmed in the making of this text.

thesalaryconverter.com: How to... work out your pro rata salary

I have been meaning to write some "how to" articles for thesalaryconverter.com one of my many projects.

There are some things the converter can do if you knows one or two tricks.

How to ... calculate a pro-rata salary

We have all seen jobs advertise at £23,000 per year pro rata to 22 hours. Which is great but it doesn't tell you what your actual salary is going to be and you need to work out whether that means you are better or worse off compared to your current salary.

Example

Take the pro rata salary and type in your salary as "23,000" but leave the hours as 37. Press the magic button and you get the conversions. Remember the hourly rate which is £11.92.

Go back to the main page and type in "11.92" set the period to hourly and type in the actual hours of your job which is "22".

Press the magic button and you can see that your annual salary will be £13,673.

If you knew you were earning £14,000 for a full time job you would now know you would only be slightly worse off if you took the new part time job.

Easy when you know how.

The maze project

I thought I would cross post an article to show what I am working on over at the maze project.

These are some designs and ideas for an indoor maze.

The first design I came up with was a series of interlinked rooms.



I had the idea that at the exit or entrance to each square (or room) in each doorway there would be a curtain that prevented you seeing what was beyond. So if you stood in each room all you would see in each one is the four curtains. I imagine the room to be plush red Victorian study type rooms all with exactly the same furniture, perhaps a round mahogany table in the centre, a dresser and a bookcase, all in exactly the same location with exactly the same stuff so whatever room you entered it had exactly the same layout. If you wanted to be really difficult you could give the room furniture a 2 or 4 fold symmetry. Of course if you wanted to be devilish you could change one item in each room, perhaps the book title of the third book on the third shelf would always be different, or there would be a silver spoon somewhere different in each room. Each room would not only be part of a larger maze but a sort of Sherlock Holmes esque spot the difference competition.

After this initial design I thought there was still lots of white space and really it could be a lot more of a complex maze.

Iteration 2 of the maze turned into this:



Now this is much more of a maze. Still the same curtains in each room but now when you leave the bright room you enter not just a corridor between rooms but a dark maze of twist and turns lit in shadows as you find your way to the next room. This also has dead ends in the maze so you can get lost, although once you learn the symmetry of the maze it becomes a lot easier.

To add to the darkness visitors to the maze would have torches as the dark areas are barely lit.

There are lots of other variants to the maze, I can imagine actors roaming the maze telling stories to visitors, different lighting effects both in the dark areas and the room. Although I would probably want to stick to the rooms as places of quiet sanctuary and only the dark areas being the scary part. I imagine in the darkness you could have scary footsteps, howls and thunder and lightening, it would be a fantastical yet scary place.

I have also had practical thoughts as well, the entrance would be in the bottom left and the exit in the top right, but an emergency escape route would be a corridor that runs all the way round the outside.

To leak or not to leak: 5 types of leaker

Another day, another leak. Goes nicely with cheese don't you know.On a more serious note who is behind a leak and what are their motivations.

First, I suppose is the "knight leaker". They do it because the public should know about this travesty / abomination, they are people of honour and integrity, a shining example to us all. I imagine them to be people who have campaigned internally for the information to be released and get frustrated enough, realise it will never come to light unless they take a stand and do it themselves. I imagine these people have true moral dilemmas over loyalty and accepting what the right thing to do is. I imagine the decision to leak wins over loyalty on the basis it is for the good of mankind.

An example of this type of leak is that a government department has failed to keep track of 50,000 immigrants and has not put in place any policy to resolve the issue. Or Revenues and Customers have notice 50,000 tax errors but are only chasing those that have underpaid.

Then there must be the "profit leaker", they have information that someone wants and is willing to pay catch for it. Psychologically they think they can easily get away with it or the profit outweighs the risk. They have no moral dilemmas and are motivated by pure hard cash which might get them a new car or a house in the country. They also think there is no victim and it is perfectly harmless.

These people might be giving away confidential information such as who has quoted what for a government tender or giving away personal details such as bank details they might have access to.

Next will be the "thrill seeker leaker", this small group purely like being the centre of attention, they might be the secretary's and assistant's who are underpaid and over worked. Yet now they control the information and can leak something important. Again they think it is harmless, at least at first, then they might display addictive tendencies, aching for just one more leak. They probably carry on until they get caught or just get too greedy and leak something too big to go unnoticed.

Then there is the "revenge leaker" these have information which put someone in a bad light. They can also twist the information to be out of context, perhaps by lifting quotes which in isolation look bad. This is a very politically motivated leak and might be to discredit a rival. I imagine there are some labour supporters in government departments who pass things to Labour so the Tories look bad.

Finally, there is the "false leaker", these are the government sponsored leaks to test public opinion. I would imagine 50% of leaks at least, have semi official approval because if they leak the document they can canvas public opinion for free and if there is unanimous disapproval of a leak the party involved can always go on record and say it was a "blue sky" discussion document that was drafted and circulated at a low level. The document was never meant for public consumption and was discarded at an early stage. Most importantly the government or other party has plausible deniability.

As a way to canvas public opinion for free you cant really fault it.

I think today's announcement is of the false leak variety. The government can canvas opinion and see how much support some of these bodies or organisations have. If the hordes start to advance on Downing street they can always deny there was ever any intention to abolish the organisations. Plausible deniability and smoke and mirrors, now its policy now its not.

Current projects

I thought I might mention some current projects that I am working on.

The Maze project

Plan A was to work for the establishment, build up a pension, marry the wife have, 2.4 kids and a dog. This site is about Plan B move to Somerset and build the maze project tourist attraction all about mazes.

If you can help make plan B a reality get in touch.

thesalaryconverter.com

Having started the salaryconverter.co.uk and made a success out of it I wanted to get a .com version and rewrite and redesign it for the American and international market. So this is it a new site with a crisp clear design where you can convert between your hourly, daily, weekly monthly and annual salary. At some point soon I am going to write some how-to's like how to work out you annual salary at different pro-rata hours. I am also working on a simple hourly to annual and annual to hourly widget that you can embed into any web page.

More project updates another time.

Audit Commission to be scrapped

The Government has announced that the audit commission will be scrapped. This is a public body that looks for savings and efficiencies in local government.

The functions that it provided will be replace by private sector organisations and consultants.

Well I don't know about you but I think it is the perfect time in this current economic climate for getting rid of the audit commission , after all its not as if we need to make savings and efficiencies. Plus what a good idea, lets pay consultants to do the work, but hang on doesn't the government always go on about how much consultants cost and waste money.

Some days you just dont know whether you live inside the insane asylum looking out or outside the insane asylum looking in. I am waiting for the announcement that white coats with straps are cheaper than suits because it wont be long before David Cameron and his cabinet are wearing them.

When will the madness stop, please don't let it go on for five years until the next election.

Some recent press releases from the audit commission to show what a complete waste of time and money they are:

Local government pensions in England
An information paper

29 July 2010

In our latest information paper, we examine the long-term affordability of the Local Government Pension Scheme, and look at steps that could be taken to put it on a better financial footing.

Sustaining value for money in the police service

20 July 2010

Together with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Wales Audit Office, we have found that police in England and Wales could save up to £1 billion without reducing police availability.

Against the odds
Re-engaging young people in education, employment or training

7 July 2010

We reveal how councils need a new approach in getting to grips with the needs of their local teens, in order to make scarce resources work harder for those at greatest risk of long-term unemployment.

Making the most of frontline staff in the NHS

25 June 2010

Making better use of doctors and nurses in the NHS has the potential to make significant savings, provided that trusts understand the reasons for existing staffing variations on their wards.

I don't know about you but that is one organisation clearly not engaging with the state of the nation and looking for savings all over the place.

Please note - This is all sarcasm, of course we need the audit commission especially if like everything else the government is busy trying to get rid of they save more money than they cost.