Posts by H2Nick 96 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Feb 2007
Just think what (they said) RIPA was for & what it was actually used for
http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/TheGrimRIPA.pdf
Or prevention of terrorism used to prevent Walter Wolfgang from rejoining the Labour conference
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1499466/Heckler-82-who-dared-called-Straw-a-liar-is-held-under-terrorist-law.html
Or my car failing it's MOT due to a blown number plate bulb.
(MOTs were initially introduced as a safety improvement)
Thanks for the URL.
Just tried "total government spending"
Nothing for the total on the first page.
saw "UK Central Government Procurement Spend"
tried "UK Central Government spend"
Hopeless.
Simple enough to find on this site : http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/total - though that fails quickly enough with 'server not found' if you click on "revenue"...
Maybe all the various Gov sites feed data into this new one. Maybe I'm just dreaming in colour...
£2m is a drop in the ocean compared with the £40m just wasted on the train fiasco.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212069/West-Coast-Main-Line-Three-civil-servants-suspended-probe-Government-bungled-sums-begins.html
Oh & the gov is probably still giving India £280m / year, effectively to help with their space program
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/feb/14/government-defends-1bn-aid-india
£100m wasted on Aircraft carrier conversion
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9256977/Aircraft-carrier-omnishambles-wastes-100-million.html
& you really dont want to even look at ther plans for spending billions on HS2
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/10/high-speed-rail-waste-money-hs2
etc etc
Maybe you also skip the "previously on..." recap & the next week trailer as well as the TV station trailers...
That can reduce some stuff considerably...
I've set one button on my Humax PVR to skip 3 mins forward, & that gets past the majority of ad breaks exactly, so all I see it the bumper with a slight jump.
So a nominal "hour" program has 3x3 minute commercials, = the 9 in max.
But I don't need to watch them, so I'm happy.
So despite the fact the UK's been in recession several years (I'm ignoring the growth of 0.made_up_percent) it seems the Gov spunk-o-tron is still in overdrive.
Thing that get's me is that they never seem to learn
eg buying £250 milion worth of helicopters then keeping them in storage as they didn't buy the reqd software...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/6085909/MoD-software-blunder-keeps-Chinook-helicopters-grounded.html
It's much worse than a simple "fail"
While I can see that one SAP system could support a load of local councils (not just 2), so provide good value, the public sector IT record says we will probably be reading "lessons learned" in about 2016, once this is all scrapped..
It's not even like Haringey has a good record so far...
http://www.lynnefeatherstone.org/issues/haringey-council
OK - I just read the steps to avoid ID theft, including the gem where one govt dept recommends opting out of the edited electoral register, run by another govt dept.
Well here's an idea - if HM Govt knows it helps ID theft, then why doesn't HM Govt scrap it & stop selling these details.
Result would be less ID theft & less junk mail & less crim aiding & abetting by HM Govt.
Reminds me of a 1994 article in IBM system user "If operating systems were airlines"
DOS Air
All the passengers go out onto the runway, grab hold of the plane, push it till it gets into the air, hop on, jump off when it hits the ground again.
Windows Air
The terminal is very neat & clean, the attendants are all very attractive, the pilots very capable.
The fleet of Lear jets the company operates is immense. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds and, at 20,000 feet, it explodes without warning.
What's £2.7 million in these affluent times.
They must be, as barely a day goes by without another politician "making a commitment" on how He/She will spend billions.
Actually I spose we should count ourselves lucky they didn't commision some IT.
If they'd done that it would be £2.7 billion instead of million
Population.
Needs to be reduced.
Example : Recently, the Bangladesh finance minister warned that 20 million might be forced to leave the country due to climate change in the next 40 years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/30/rich-west-climate-change
This is less than the expected growth in population, which has nearly doubled in the last 30 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bangladesh-demography.png
Est 156 million now
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bg.html
Time for (more?) state-sponsored contraception
If they average £90K, I doubt many are receiving tax credits/benefits
More generally, HMRC should tax UK generated profits (not like at present where Google, News International etc pay nearly sweet FA).
Maybe they would have got more tax if they hadn't been so busy with their own tax dodging schemes (Stuff like where they sold all their buildings to Mapely Steps, who were gave the best price as they pay no UK tax...)
My Quad core PC still hangs for a few seconds while Windows decides it needs to refresh something or other.
I'm sure another 12 cores will make no difference.
Ditto startup - that always seems to wait, rather than really running stuff in parallel.
After recent reports that their Irish branch protected dozens of paedos masquerading as priests, they should just STFU & get their own house in order.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6662086/Catholic-Church-in-Ireland-given-immunity-for-child-sexual-abuse-cover-up-report-says.html
Assume I'm 15 & my mates at school have GBs of songs I'd like a copy of.
What am I going to do - spend ages on the net or just get a copy with a 16GB memory stick...
Meanwhile, if gas/leccy can cut people off by mistake & take months to correct errors, how long do you think it will take ISPs to restore connections, due to misdiagnosis of packets etc ?
(especially as this has no effect on physical wellbeing)
EG of pensioner cut off
http://www.rochdaleobserver.co.uk/news/s/1033775_electricity_cut_off_for_six_months
XP does mostly what I want (with a few annoying random freezes) & seems fairly stable too.
Why would I want to get W7 & have to relearn where M$ has decided to put everything this time...
Hopefully by the time I need to upgrade it will be simple enough to go to Ubuntu or similar.
I don't want to pay M$ any more to have to jump thru their hoops (eg WGA) for DRMd crap (eg fista file copy)
Are you kidding ???
What about the removal of the 10% tax rate then - he either didn't think it through or he very cynically didn't care that some of the poorest people would see their tax nearly doubled -
(not quite doubled, as personal allowance was originally going to be increased by (only) £210)
I think he tries hard to do the right thing (just fails miserably), which only leaves not-very-bright
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