Valentine's Flowers are all very nice, but what's wrong with giving flowers on the other 364 days of the year too?

I wouldn’t mind it if it was something which hadn’t become compulsory, but surely any holiday about love which actually causes relationship problems, if one doesn’t comply fully with what society expects (& mostly this seems to equate to spending money), has become twisted to the point of losing its meaning. So, if you’re attached you pretty much have to spend out, at what’s a fairly tight time of the year for most people, or else risk the righteous wrath of one’s other half.
On the flip side the holiday also serves to remind singles that they’re single and lonely, and, damn it, can you get any of your friends to go out for a few consoling beers? well, not if they’re attached, obviously!

So there you have it, Valentine’s is a rubbish holiday! If you’re single it’s an uncomfortable reminder of loneliness, while if you’re attached, you’ll find expectations foisted upon you, and you’ll be a bad, bad person if you don’t spend, spend, spend for that special day.
Overall the only winners seem to the negligent types, who are seemingly quite content to get all the year’s romance over and done with in one day, and the vendors of Valentine’s related gifts.

Still, the sales’ attraction to me is purely pragmatic; they’ve got stuff I want, it’s cheap, I’ll go buy it and then get the hell out of the shops as soon as possible! So it confuses me how the marketing people have yet again managed to hype and glamourize, what should be a series of simple financial transactions into some kind of major must-do holiday event in it’s own right. Are they really that good at their jobs, or are people, in general, just really easy to manipulate? I guess the answer’s a bit of both, but that the latter is especially true if the words “bargain” or “sale” are involved; everyone likes to think they’re getting a good deal, and apparently that extends to buying pretty much anything, even things which we didn’t necessarily want or need!

Wizard needs furniture, badly!... C'mon, really?!?!?

If you’re interested a summary of the the Report’s main points can be found here.

The much speculated upon moves to curb the bonus culture of banks is probably one of the biggest events of this PBR, but in the end were Darlings moves about encouraging the bankers to live in the real world, which most of us mere mortals inhabit, or was it more of a move to placate the public?
There wasn’t a windfall tax on the banks themselves, but bankers’ bonuses over £25k are to be subject to a one off tax of 50%. Yeah, sock it to them Darling!

Actually for all that it sounds good, not to mention fair, when one considers how much of tax payers’ money has been used to aid the banks over the past year or so, the bankers don’t seem to be taking it with good grace. There’s been the predictable wailing and whinging, and threats of taking their business abroad, from some in the industry. I do understand that, to an extent, we have to be careful not to drive the banks overseas; it’s undeniable that the sector does contribute substantially to the UK economy, but at the same time it’s clearly neither sustainable, nor acceptable, to have a system where the bankers run around making risky investments and creaming the profits ’til it all goes wrong, at which point that make contrite noises and go cap in hand to the tax payer.
That can’t be allowed to happen again, and frankly any bank which hasn’t the good grace, to recognise that being based in the UK is to their overall advantage, and engage in a little give and take, is welcome to run off to some unregulated banana republic; Let’s see how willing such countries are to support the banks when it all goes wrong again! Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Even those who are staying are desperately looking for loopholes to try and avoid the bonus tax; apparently the “Investment banking boutiques” are trying to argue that they’re not technically banks, even though some of their bankers are amongst the best rewarded, in terms of bonuses. Well guess what guys, somantics aside, you are exactly the guys that helped kick off the financial crisis, & who the public are pee’d off with! You can argue technicalities all you want, but you’re distinctly “banker flavoured” and you’re precisiely the people that this tax is designed to hit, live with it!
I hope the treasury takes the same attitude. Although full guidelines on the tax are still being ironed out, it at least appears that the treasury’s intent is to prevent the exploitation of such loopholes; lets hope thats how it pans out!

Other tax measures in the PBR include a 0.5% rise in NI, and the basic rate of VAT returning to 17.5%, although on the positive side there is to be a 2% drop in Bingo duty, so it’s not all take, take, take!
Actually, in fairness, there are also to be changes to the NI system so that those earning less than £20k won’t end up paying more due to the announced hike. I do like this move, a lot, it’s almost as if the Labour party have remembered that they’re meant to be the party that doesn’t screw the poor.

There was also some encouraging green measures in the PBR too. There’s to be a “scrappage” scheme for outdated household boilers, as well as £200m of govt money set aside to assist home owners with improving energy efficiency. There are also incentives for green vehicles too, electric company cars are to get a 5 year exemption from road tax, while electric vans are to receive a 100% first year capital allowance. A piece of news which will no doubt make Sainburys, who have recently announced an increase in the size of their fleet of electric delivery vans, very happy; “Every little helps,” as one of their competitors might say.
Any regular reader will know that I’m a fan of the concept of electric vans and cars, so it’s good to see the govt taking steps to encourage their use, even if, so far, those measures only apply to businesses.

Obviously that’s by no means all that the PBR contained, but it’s tone overall seemed to be one of trying to juggle the need for austerity alongside doing enough “headline” stuff to make people happy. Indeed, opposition have already called it a “pre election report”, rather than a “pre budget report, a label which is undoubtedly politically motivated in itself, but which also, probably, isn’t too far from the truth.

It’s still over a month to Christmas and the frenzy is already well underway, if it only affacted those who wanted to buy into it I wouldn’t mind at all, but I swear that the population’s stress levels rise noticably during the weeks leading up to the festival. It’s palpable any time you’re out in the street, stressed people running around the shops desperately looking for all those Xmas “essentials” which find their way on to the Christmas shopping list. It seems totally perverse to me, and not at all in the spirit either of a holiday, or of the festival itself- I strongly suspect that JC would be turning in his grave if he could see what’s become of the celebration of his birth!
Even though I wouldn’t label myself as a Christian I still find the way that the marketing men have completely twisted Xmas to serve their purposes to be utterly cynical and distasteful! What’s worse is that they’ve so suceeded in subverting the spirit of the holiday that those who choose not to “buy the hype” get labeled as “scrooges” by those around them. Bah Humbug indeed!

What should be a time to relax, spend some time with those who matter, and maybe, if it is one’s want, to consider matters spiritual, is completely overshadowed by an orgy of spending & stress; No wonder most people need a break by the time it rolls round to December 25th!

The last couple of years I’ve completely opted out of the whole thing, and I have to say they’ve been a couple of the best Christmasses I’ve ever had! Yes, I did get some nice bits and pieces of food & drink in for while the shops were closed, but nothing excessive, and certainly nothing that required the amount of effort which people all over the country seem to spend on preparing the perfect Christmas dinner!
I gave Xmas shopping a miss too, rather than guessing at what my niece and nephew might be into currently, (and possibly for as far in the future as the next 5 minutes,) I decided to give them some cash each. The marketing idiots would have me labelled as “not making an effort”, but actually I look on it as giving the kids the opportunity to buy something they actually want. Yes, it does also save me the pain of running around over-crowded shops trying to find something which they might like, but frankly that just makes it a win-win situation as far as I’m concerned.
Come the day itself I got up when I wanted to, some time around lunch time, and spent most of the day slobbing around in my dressing gown with the house to myself, eating and drinking nice things, as & when I felt like it, & watching whatever TV I wanted to.
Honestly, it was heaven!

This year’s different, I’ve been severely guilt tripped by the folks, and although my immediate reaction to such guilt tripping is to be thoroughly bloody minded, I may actually cave and make the pilgramage to London to catch up with the family; Nothing puts me in a relaxed festive mood more than negotiating London’s public transport network at its busiest time of the year!
Of course that means thinking about what to get various elder family members, & on this I have as little clue as I do when it comes to my niece and nephew. The difference, I suppose, is that with adults you can give them ethical gifts; at worst they’ll be too polite to complain, and best case is that the gift actually makes them feel good, which is probably better than me buying them something I think they might like.
Dunno, will have to have a think, but the charity idea strikes me as a pretty good fall back if I can’t think of anything which would be genuinely useful to them.

It also quite clearly reveals that the govts objections to cannabis and ectasy seem to come down to “drugs are illegal because they’re bad, and they’re bad because they’re illegal”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that these drugs are 100% harmless, but if an expert, whose job it is to know, is stating that they’re less harmful than substances which are legal and freely available then surely that has to be a pretty good arguement for their legalisation?
OK, you could take the opposite tack and say that maybe tobacco and alcohol should be made illegal instead, but apart from being a non-starter in terms of getting the populace to accept such a move, not to mention how much it would cost the exchequer in terms of lost duty, there comes a point where govt has to butt out and let people make their own choices (and take responsibility for them) even if there is some risk involved; Else we’ll eventually end up as a society of joyless wage slaves whose only purpose is to be good little workers. I mean, if you want to start talking about banning anything which is dangerous then lets start by looking at privately owned vehicles; how many deaths and injuries do they cause each year on our roads? By contrast we’re talking about cannabis & ectasy, susbstances which routinely kill less people each year than bed related misadventures!

There’s also the fact that history has shown that prohibition doesn’t work, where someone stands to make a profit you’ll just get a black market economy spring up to meet consumer demand for prohibited goods. As things stand in this country millions of otherwise perfectly law abiding, productive members of society are criminalised because they want, and choose, to smoke cannabis. If the govt truly represented the people they’d accept that for most users cannabis is a relatively benign substance with minimal knock on effects for wider society, and they’d legalise it.
Yes I said legalise it, forget decriminalisation, although it’s often touted as an acceptable method for govt to look the other way and quietly accept that maybe cannabis isn’t such an evil drug after all, decriminalisation is in fact the worst of both worlds from a societal point of view. Users are still forced to interact with the black market, organised criminals, in order to get the stuff, and this has a number of wider implications. It means that there aren’t any safe guards on quality, no product information in terms of the strength of any particular batch, and most importantly of all, money spent on cannabis is going to support organised crime!
On the other hand if it were legalised these issues could all be eliminated; users could be sure they knew what they were getting, and wouldn’t be funding criminals, but on the contrary could be providing revenue for govt.

At a time when we’re being told that, due to the banking bail out, our country is going to be in debt for decades to come you’d think that the govt might be open to new means of raising revenue. The Home Office estimates that in 2006 the UK drug trade was worth between £3.5 and £5.8 billion, not enough to solve the country’s money woes, but getting a slice of any figure which is measured in the billions isn’t to be sniffed at!

Really it seems like a no brainer to me. Now that “the genie’s out of the bottle” it’s never going away, people are going to take these drugs, they’ll find a way to get them because someone else can make money from supplying them. When even the experts are saying that dope is less harmful than substances which society already makes freely available, why can’t the govt just get over the outdated dogma that “drugs are bad m’kay” and do the thing which would benefit everbody except the organised criminals?

This piece in the New Scientist lays out the wider picture, in terms of the govt’s rocky relationship with it’s own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. There’s also a petition running on the No. 10 site here, if you want to join the call to re-instate Dr Nutt.

I’m an unrepentant cynic so I tend to lean on the side that most of the talk is just that. On one side you’ve got Brown who’s track record is far from inspiring, while on the other you have Cameron, who models himself a little too closely on the Blair style of politics for my liking, in the sense that he’s clearly trying to be everything for everyone; a trick which Blair managed to pull off in ‘97, but, just like Blair, Cameron can’t possibly be all things for all people, so the question is, is he lying to his core voters, as Blair did when he sold out socialism to serve that all important electoral trophy, “Middle England”, or is our mate Dave going to revert to classic Tory form when/if he gets into power?

It’s hard to buy in to Dave and George’s “we’re all in this together” rhetoric when they’re both millionaires, from privileged backgrounds, who’ve never done a decent days work in their lives, and really, even if they tried, can’t have a proper appreciation for how hard the recent recesssion has been for the vast majority of hard working Brits; Sorry davey boy, but for all that M&S dresses are a solid British middle classed brand, getting your missus to parade around conference in one isn’t convincing anyone that you’re just another hard pressed Brit; You’re a spoilt toff with no idea what it’s like to live in the real world, and you’re not fooling anyone!
On the other hand though Gordan has a pretty shocking track record too. I feel for the man slightly in the sense that Blair stiched him right up with promises of taking over the leadership when he was done, but only handing over the reins once things were well and truly in decline; Kinda like Dr Frankinstein telling Igor that he could have the castle once the baying, pitchfork armed mob, was already at the front gates. Still, Brown’s period as PM hasn’t exactly been inspirational, he gives the impression of being a slightly awkward, but principled chap, who wants what’s best for all of us, but in this age of spin one has to look at actions more than words, and if one does Brown’s term in office doesn’t look good. Abandoning good policies to kow-tow to media driven public opinion, and allowing ministers who have clearly screwed up to keep their jobs, when the honourable thing to do would be for them to resign, doesn’t exactly reinforce the quiet but principled image.

In short this country seems to face only bad choices at the next election; Both parties are promising that they have what it takes, but it’s hard to believe in Labour, given their track record, & some of the policies which Osbourne unveiled as the cure to our economic woes seem very unpalatable to me; It’s easy for him to talk about raising the retirement age when, as a millionaire, it’s something which is never going to effect him greatly, and it’s hardly surprising that he’s all in favour of scrapping 50% income tax for top earners; It all sounds a little too much like the traditional Tory values of looking after the well off at the expense of the rest of the population.

Time will tell of course, but right now I’m not expecting much from whoever wins the next election- any party who’s capable of winning under the current system just doesn’t have that great an incentive to change things too much, and, in essence, I believe that to a large extent that’s the crux of this country’s current political woes.

This piece from the BBC looks at a long running legal case over the use of the fungicide dimethyl fumarate on leather sofas made by a number of firms in China, & sold by UK retailers, including big names like, Land of Leather, Walmsleys and Argos. The sofas were apparently treated with the chemical to stop them developing mould while in transport & storage, however many people who bought the affected sofas developed painful skin rashes, as well as chest and eye problems in some cases. The chemical has now been banned by the EU, and the big name retailers who sold the sofas were all quite prompt when it came to issuing recalls & offering refunds.

Sofa so good?

In anycase this is the sort of hidden danger which a consumer can’t reasonably be expected to anticipate by exercising common sense, and which they should be protected from. Ok, so this is a pretty clear cut case, people looking to buy quality sofas have a reasonable right to expect that they shouldn’t be laced with unpleasant toxins. Whereas warnings about not letting heavy furniture fall on children should be pretty redundant, since, to my mind it’s rather obvious advice. Obviously there are grey areas inbetween these two examples, & I suppose those are where the slippery slope towards an over-protective nanny state starts.

Hopefully, this sets the record straight on the view I’m expressing, i.e. that people should be expected (& given the freedom) to exercise personal responsibility where possible, not, that we should live in an unregulated world where unethical manufacturers can endanger the lives of consumers if it means cutting production costs.

*No, I didn’t publish them, I’m fine with people criticising my views, but I’m not going to publish streams of profanity, or waste my time editing such comments to make them work place friendly.

The tendancy for governments to bombard us with more and more safety legislation every year is an insidious creep towards a situation where everybody is assumed to be a moron who should be wrapped in cotton wool for their own safety. Maybe this is a good thing for the “hard of thinking”, the proportion of society who really do need to be protected from themselves, but I firmly believe that, by taking a “one size fits all” approach to looking after these poor unfortunate souls, govts are encouraging everyone to be more cretinous and less likely to think for themselves in situations where some judgement might be advisable; Not to mention that blanket legislation which caters to the lowest common denominator curtails the freedoms of everybody else.

I’m sure the campaigners who get behind these causes do so with the best of intentions. Often I believe it’s because the “danger” which they seek to protect everybody from has effected their lives in some traumatic way, and that’s almost part of the problem; Nobody wants to be the one to tell these poor misguided souls that they’re over-reacting, perfectly understandable if the campaigner in question has lost a relative, but really somebody should, rather than media, and politicians, jumping on the band wagon for the sake of sales, or to gain a few points in the polls.

Someone really should be able to tell these people that sometimes bad stuff happens, and it’s just bad luck, that no-one deserves to be sued as a consequence, & no laws need to be drawn up to protect others from themselves, or cruel twists of fate, especially if those laws would curtail the freedoms of others who are willing to take personal responsibility & aren’t hurting anyone else.

Ok, so you’ve had the rant now but what was it that set me off? Actually it was this piece from an US news site. It details moves in New Jersey to introduce laws which would require manufacturers, of TVs, and furniture, over a certain size, to provide warnings about the potential dangers to children of such heavy objects falling on them, & provide advice about ways to prevent such accidents.

From the article:

The proposed rules would apply to dressers, bookcases, bureaus, armoires or similar furniture that is 42 inches or more in height and designed to store, display, or otherwise place items; televisions with display screens that are 25 inches or more; and all television stands.

Furniture can Kill! No really, it can!

That’s right apparently furniture is a hidden menace lurking in our homes! All this time you thought it was useful stuff you kept around to store things on, or in, but in reality it’s a killer, just waiting to strike!

Don’t get me wrong I don’t intend to make light of anybody dying, let alone children, but we, as a species, have survived around heavy objects for millenia without anyone needing to legislate for our own protection; Why do we suddenly need laws to protect us, & why should a manufacturer be responsible if a consumer lacks the common sense to realise that heavy stuff is dangerous if it falls on you?!? By the logic of this legislation everything we ever buy should be plastered in warnings, just on the off chance that someone might use it in some unintended but potentially lethal manner! What? you mean it’s a bad idea to insert TVs into random bodily orifaces?
I mean, really, come on, where does it all stop?

It wouldn’t be so bad but, honestly, how many people actually read the manuals for their new TVs anyway? This move seems to be purely about protecting manufacturers from the asininely litigious, a section of humanity who thoroughly deserve to be told to shut up & go away, if not locked up for wasting everyone elses time!

Anyway, you’ve been warned, so next time you’re thinking about buying furniture or a new digital TV consider the dangers it poses to others around you, especially if you have small children! Anyway I’m off to post a warning in the article I hosted about sideboards, a couple of months back, before some litigious numpty tries to sue me for not pointing out the incredibly obvious!

Although there’s been a lot of talk in the news about the this year’s late monsoons, and the consequences this will have for India’s agricultural sector, it’s still looking like Bangladesh is going to be subject to it’s normal annual flooding over the next few months.
Last week I caught this video report from the BBC, part of a series which highlights the plight of Bangladesh’s poor as they prepare for the annual deluge. It not only gives some insight into the terrible conditions which these people have to endure as part of their day-to-day lives, but also highlighted, for me, how vulnerable the residents of Bangladesh are to the effects of global warming; With ~50% of the country lying at 3m above sea level, or less, it’s easy to see how even a modest rise in sea levels would render much of the country uninhabitable. This would be a disaster for any nation, but with Bangladesh being a relatively poor nation, yet at the same time being the world’s 7th most populous (~150 million people), it’s quite clear that it’s people stand to suffer more than most if climate change predictions are correct.

Washout: the topography clearly shows why Bangladesh floods so regularly

In the mean time, spare a thought for the poor of Bangladesh who, over the next couple of months, are going to be dealing with the floods; Think about that next time you’re cursing the wet British summer, by comparison we have it easy… for the moment!
The BBC report also mentioned the work which Oxfam, amongst other charities, are doing to help preparations for this years Bangladesh Floods, so if you can afford to spare more than just a thought for Bangladesh’s poor take a look at Oxfam’s campaign page to see how you can get involved!

Darling: The raised eyebrows, the wide eyes- the look of a man undergoing industrial scale proctoscopy?

Really, how Darling can be so brazen as to say that there’s been no regulatory failure is totally beyond me, the concept just defies common sense! Either Darling is an utter moron, lacking even the most rudimentary reasoning skills, or, he’s confident that the electorate will forget this epic show of spinelessness by the time it comes round to the elections!

I’ve said it before but the Govt should have dealt far more strongly with the banks at the point when the banks came crawling for a bail out. Sadly though, they seemed to be quite happy to bend over (on the tax payers behalf) and take it from the banks, and now, with this latest announcement, have pretty much given a green flag for the banks to do this all over again, at some point in the future.

Afterall, why shouldn’t they? It’s not like they’ve come out of this farce too badly off, and now that they’re not even going to be watched more closely in future, what’s to stop them?