* Posts by John Murgatroyd

166 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2007

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BT, TalkTalk refused appeal against Digital Economy Act

John Murgatroyd

I

take that as a vote of little, or no, confidence ?

Tory terror changes promise moon on stick

John Murgatroyd

How long

before "climate skeptic" sites are on the dangerous list ?

Or political blogs ?

4G interference will knock out Freeview

John Murgatroyd

get freesat

the boxes are quite cheap and a sky dish and lnb work quite well....25 quid the lot..

John Murgatroyd

Well...

given that the major land channels all have videostreaming of past programming....just watch it via iplayer etc....you do not need a tv licence if it is not live...

Euro report slates wireless comms, recommends smoke and mirrors

John Murgatroyd

Fine

at the moment....

But since the power from the muxes is now at summat like 180KW, you will soon be frying in your own juices.

All this digital stuff switching on and off so suddenly causes the fat cells in your brain to turn to strawberry jam....I read it in a green book somewhere.......it was a page or two before the one that said the ideal population of the planet was a half million people.... :-)

David Davis: Jobless should dig trenches for fat UK pipes

John Murgatroyd

The

scheme they are thinking about is the one where you work 9-5, 5 days a week, and get paid your benefit...

It used to be £64.00/week....and you get to have the pee taken out of you by the others on £400.00/week.

John Murgatroyd

What skill

is there in digging a trench ?

Why BT ?

There are loads of other telcos' out there.

John Murgatroyd

or..

Civil liberties only apply to people with money ?

Sex Party's down-under struggles with dominant Catholic priests

John Murgatroyd

Just because

sex is a no, does not mean that BDSM is not on the manifesto.

UK.gov opens Red Tape Challenge regulation-slash website

John Murgatroyd

They're not being used

to stop people putting books on high shelves, they're being MISUSED.

Altering the regulations will not stop the misuse, which is part-and-parcel of excessive risk prevention by people with poor, or no, knowledge of the H&S at work (etc) act.

But then....the deregulation is not to do with excessive H&S it is to do with cost, specifically employers cost/s.

Incidentally, the largest cost to employers is the Working Time Directive....not because it actually costs them money to implement it, but because it stops them working people for 80 hours a week. 10 year cost: 17.8 billion

Burdens-to-Business: (pdf file)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/beyjenwyqhhakde/burdens_barometer_2009-1.pdf

And while the WTD is operated as part of the H&S act it is basically of EU origin...and cannot be altered or removed.

The next one down is The Vehicle Excise Duty (Reduced Pollution) (Amendment) Regulations 2000. 10 year cost about 10 billion. EU as well, so unassailable.

Neighbourhood watchers in Reading get speedguns

John Murgatroyd

Soon, with evolved road pricing

everyone will be anpr'ed every minute they're driving.

John Murgatroyd

like

Truck drivers ?

Maximum speed on a single carriageway 40mph.

Van drivers ?

Max speed on single carriageway 50mph.

The speed limit is the MAXIMUM speed, not the RIGHT speed.

John Murgatroyd

Only

if the device is home-office approved for speed detection and measurement.

None of the speedwatch/grass-your-neighbours gear is home office approved for that.

Boffins hope for dimensional portal event at LHC by 2013!

John Murgatroyd

Do....

you not mean INTERDIMENSIONAL conference on fly-tipping ?

John Murgatroyd

No

Jet packs are canceled.

No way to have speed cameras at higher-than-ground-level, and traffic wardens would need ladders...

Mid-Atlantic Ocean temperatures peaked in 1998

John Murgatroyd

Yes

It's warming.

Since 1880 the world has warmed-up by 0.8 degrees centigrade.

Police reject Labour MP's call for Bristol-wide DNA test

John Murgatroyd

Not an irrational hatred of men.

maybe an unnatural love of women ?

John Murgatroyd

I'm rather more worried

about the new-labour fetish of selecting women who are mentally retarded.

John Murgatroyd

they're

not going to close it.

It will be "privatised"

John Murgatroyd

Bright, and sane.....

......compared to Harriet Harperson.

The question should really be:

Why do the conservative women have all the balls, but the labour women are all bollocks ?

Those govt cuts - slasher horror or history-changing brilliance?

John Murgatroyd

The problem was

that labour ran out of tax revenues to pay for their schemes, after the banks ran out of everyone elses money after buying dept with no asset. Which they could not then sell-on to another idiot because the world ran-out of idiots to buy asset-free dept.

John Murgatroyd

Well

the "right to buy" was ended some time ago for [then] new tenants.

For those who still retain said right-to-buy the maximum "subsidy" (AKA discount-for-years-of-tenancy) was set at a maximum of about 38K (by Mr Prescott when he wasn't busy bashing people).

Further, because much of the social housing was in a state of disrepair (private landlords have ongoing repairs, social landlords have "if it's still liveable ignore it") its market value was much lower than other housing (and still is despite the government requiring social landlords to maintain and upgrade their premises)

The current social housing rent V private rent is something like three quarters that of private rent.

And if the house has one wage earner on more than about 12-14 K then it will not receive any housing benefit, although they may well qualify for council tax benefit (currently council tax here is about 1400 quid per year) and council tax benefit is ALSO being chopped, although not many people seem to mention that.

John Murgatroyd

Well:

http://www.dailyfinance.co.uk/2010/10/26/nhs-hospitals-beat-foreign-rivals/

John Murgatroyd

And:

A reasonable statement on the economy today will seem poorly thought-out tomorrow and gibberish the day after.

John Murgatroyd

After

the "rearrangement" of various electoral boundaries the labour party and the libdem party will [together] be unable to affect the returned conservative party.

Global warming is actually good for rainforests, say boffins

John Murgatroyd

Everyone

needs to calm down.

No need for exaggeration, no need for hyperbole and definitely no need for hysteria.

Yes, there will still be chocolate.

But you need to get perspective here.

It will not be MILK chocolate.

For that you need milk.

And cows.

And grass.

So the rain forests need to be limited so we can have fields for the cows, to get milk.

Never mind global warming, never mind CO2, never mind the rain forests.

As long as we have chocolate (and beer and music) things will work out.

World's largest pilot union shuns full-body scanners

John Murgatroyd

How

uncomfortable for them will it be to perform a body-cavity search on an uncooperative passenger ?

Government will shred ID card data

John Murgatroyd

Maybe if they used mid-90's gear..

Otherwise not:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html#Epilogue

Hadron Collider switches to heavy ions, tinfoilers wet pants again

John Murgatroyd

They have.

It occurred some time ago.

The hole in the fabric of space time did not occur at CERN, it occurred in London. To be precise, it is located near the Speakers chair in the house of commons.

All the interdimensional monsters invaded, time was slowed and strange particles pervaded the air.

Unfortunately it was not noticed since the occupants of said house do not live in this world anyway. The press people present were still discussing global warming.

Gov may restrict unfair dismissal claim rights

John Murgatroyd

Employees

of small companies already have different levels of rights.

Quite apart from the legislative rights they have conditions of employment that vary from reasonable to appalling. frequently they are dismissed for "gross misconduct" based on lies and innuendo, and the legal requirements for dismissal, such as suspension and investigation and appeal, are very widely ignored anyway. A large percentage of small companies are members of trade organisations whose attitude to both regulations and organised labour belongs in the 19th century, if not earlier.

The majority of cases before the employment courts are brought with trade union backing, which is widely rumoured to be under consideration of a ban.

So along with a two-year period of trial there is also a high possibility of having to pay to use the employment court service, along with a ban on unions representing their members in these courts.

And with employment court average payments hovering around the low four-figure range anyway, even the government now admits that the "compensation culture" is an urban and media myth.

Health and safety at small companies, never really a priority anyway, is now getting much worse with the number of inspectors dropping by over 500 in the last ten years....and along comes the "spending review" which asks for another 25% reduction in spending.

And why should companies take-on more permanent staff anyway, apart from the lack of business they can already use agency workers.....who have no permanent work (12 weeks maximum then out-the-door because of holiday pay) and have a hard time actually having an employer since the agency tells them they work for the client, who turns around and tells them the opposite (and they also have to provide their own personal protective equipment...a breach of the regulations).

It's a hard life running an business, with costs being so high.

But wait, according to business the highest cost is the working time directive (at around 1.8 billion a year) followed by the vehicle excise duty (reduced pollution) regulations at 1.2 billion.

Employment law is way down their list.

And the working time directive is eu law, which uk government cannot repeal or change, along with the aforesaid vehicle excise regulation.

http://www.britishchambers.org.uk/6798219245949300040/burdens_barometer_2009.pdf

Ofcom to TalkTalk, Tiscali: Stop over-billing

John Murgatroyd

Don't even mention orange

As a mobile contract holder I got home broadband for "free".

Except it got charged at 8 quid until they did llu...which was happening "soon"

Then they gave it all back to BT.

I cannot even end the mobile contract because the home broadband cost will be backdated to start of contract....oh well, two months to go then it's "Byeeeeeeeeeee orange"

iPhone, BlackBerry, Droid: purveyors of pestilence

John Murgatroyd

Share

my iphone with another person ?

You need to get out more, preferably a long way away !

Much of recent global warming actually caused by Sun

John Murgatroyd

so:

"We cannot jump to any conclusions based on what we have found during this comparatively short period and we need to carry out further studies to explore the Sun's activity," says Haigh.

So we respectfully submit our application for a £4,000,000.00 grant for further research.

Youth jailed for not handing over encryption password

John Murgatroyd

The offence

was failing to comply with an order to disclose the encryption key.

So once released he can be asked again.

Failure to disclose again is another offence.

Nuclear merchant ships could open up Arctic routes for real

John Murgatroyd

Let

pirates hijack a nuclear vessel.

Then we can watch them try to get the fissile material out of it, for a short while.

And why assume the use of uranium ?

Further, since the main reason for the use of uranium was so that it could be used for military purposes, why use uranium for civilian purposes anymore ?

There are more suitable fissile materials:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/

"There is another option that receives relatively little attention but has compelling attributes, and that is the use of natural thorium in nuclear reactors. Thorium is fertile and can be converted into a fissile nuclide, uranium-233, inside a reactor core. Uranium-233 has the compelling attribute of being able to produce enough neutrons in thermal-spectrum fission to continue the conversion of thorium to U-233 and then into energy.

http://energyfromthorium.com/

All CO2-spewing kit now in existence is OK for the planet

John Murgatroyd

Well..

Is petroleum fossil-fuel, or not ?

The Russians seem to consider that petroleum is constantly being "made" in various chemical processes within the earth.

Diesels greener than electric cars, says Swiss gov report

John Murgatroyd

Public Transport

is only efficient if it takes you where you want to go, and sufficient people also want to go to the same place.

Not much good if you want to go fishing in the middle of nowhere.

And even less use if you get stuck in a tube with a person with rear-end-pollution problems.

John Murgatroyd

Well...

Diesel is a mixture of various petroleum products and not a specific individual refinery product.

I can mix vegetable oil and petrol together and run a diesel on it....and even run it on straight veggie oil ! (66p/litre at Tesco (special offer))

John Murgatroyd

Prius 2004

Battery life 100,000 miles (160,000 KM) or 8 years.

John Murgatroyd

Maybe

That's why Toyota are using NiMH now ?

John Murgatroyd

Dop cars

still use carburettors ?

Fuel injected ones have no carburettors !

Jobs offers relief for iOS 4-running iPhone 3Gs

John Murgatroyd

ios4

http://www.andrewstechnology.co.uk/reference/tips/38-iphone-3g-lag-fix.html

Shopping mall mulls Supreme Court bid to back no-speaking ban

John Murgatroyd

If I was to ask someone

here if it was ok to speak to them......I can foresee the response being two words, one beginning with "F" and the other being OFF....but this is the UK2010, under the rule of ? (who?)

Court slaps down coppers in photography case

John Murgatroyd

Meanwhile....

they still had dna taken, and were photographed and 'printed.

And the reasons needed for a legal arrest have changed a lot in the past 5 years.

You can be arrested simply to confirm your identity (and then dna'ed, photographed and 'printed)

UK.gov may cut BBC licence fee in 2012

John Murgatroyd

You do not pay

the licence fee to watch BBC.

You pay it to operate a broadcast television receiver.

In the case of you watching sky, you pay the licence fee to enable you to watch a commercial station with long advertisements that are drawn-out even longer by insertion of self-advertising, making it hard work to watch a program without having to note down what was happening before the ads !

UK.gov abandons 2012 rural broadband pledge

John Murgatroyd

Another

of "their" big ideas is to make it less attractive to move North, by outlawing large pay deals negotiated country-wide.

So the North will get lower pay because it costs less to "live" there.

Then there is the "on yer bike" attitude to getting people working by making it impossible for them to stay where they live and get them to move elsewhere to look for work...like the North....

The beeb had "Wales" on the news this morning....no broadband in the village/s...except the pub landlord said one guy had a sat link installed and had great broadband.

The technology is there, the will to pay isn't.

eBay shill bidder gets £5,000 fine

John Murgatroyd

a minor

problem. I have spotted the same vehicle advertised by "different" people several times.

I can only suppose that the practice of bidding-up the price is common as well.

Leaving bad feedback is getting hard to do, you have to wait a week now.....and even then it seems that sellers with poor feedback just change name....

The Arthur-Daleys seem to have deserted the back streets in favour of ebay.

Want a car mister ?

Don't use ebay !

Internet abuzz with BitTorrent bypass code

John Murgatroyd

But even

David Cameroon has to follow EU law, which overides UK law. Nothing he can do, short of leaving the EU, will change anything. the EU is just as restrictive as the UK !

And where did you get the idea that EU law does, or will, allow download of unpaid-for copyright material ?

Overzealous Orange cuts off customer, still bills

John Murgatroyd

He would be better off

moving to a different company every year !

I got charged data costs by orange for their mobile-tv....250MB at 4 quid a MB....even though I was on a free trial !!

Home Sec says 17m ID cards in circulation by 2017

John Murgatroyd

Since...

....you cannot get a job now without some sort of id...

And since loads of people (well, a few thousand...ish) have applied for the cards....and you can register your interest on the site...

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Identitycards/DG_174257

I should say that whichever gov is elected the cards are coming.....or else !!

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