Posts by David Cantrell 281 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2007
I am not a cricket umpire because to be an umpire you need a CRB check. I'd pass, I'm sure (I only ever got done once for vandalism twenty years ago) but it's the principle of the thing. In any case, for cricket umpires it's stupid to require a CRB check. Umpires stand out in the middle of a field where everyone can see them, so they're hardly likely to be kiddy-fiddlers on the job.
And it's not just childrens' sports that will suffer. I'd still have needed a CRB check even though I had no intention of ever umpiring childrens' matches.
While cutting VAT might help small businesses make more money (bet they don't pass the cut on to their customers) it won't reduce red tape. If VAT is 5% or 1% instead of 17.5% you still have to do the same sums every month, submit forms to the VAT man, write cheques, keep accounts, undergo occasional audits. The only way to reduce red tape would be to make small businesses entirely exempt. The obvious way to do that is to raise the threshold. But then, if you're VAT-exempt you have to *pay* VAT when you buy something from your non-exempt supplier because he's *not* exempt, and can't claim it back later.
STOP. And THINK.
The price is of no consequence, the difference between 220 quid and 199 quid is just noise in yer typical geek's budget spreadsheet. But a 120GB hard disk in an Eeee-a-like is ridiculous. You might need that if it's your primary machine, or you're editing your band's music video on it, but neither of those is going to be the case. Even 20GB is being very generous.
My heart bleeds for the tax-dodging bastards.
While there are a few competent contractors, most of the freelance workers I have had the misfortune of dealing with are only freelancers because they are too lazy to do manual labour and too fucking stupid to get and keep any other proper job.
Paris, because she's thick as pigshit.
"Vulnerable adults" apparently includes old people. My father, having retired, now volunteers as a bus driver for a local community bus charity, and also helps out with a library service for the housebound. He is Not Happy about having to register and allowing people to sneak and pry into his private life, and has told me that when it comes time for him to register, he'll just stop volunteering. So, no library books for old people, no cheap public transport.
I myself decided about a year ago to not train to become a qualified cricket umpire, solely on the grounds that to do so I would have to submit to the CRB's sneaks and spies. This was justified by the umpires' and scorers' association on the grounds of "child protection". Apparently they're scared that, while standing out in the middle of a cricket pitch where their parents can see me, I'm a danger to the little darlings.
Fire, because someone needs burning at the stake for this idiocy.
As it happens, George, I have indeed never let my satnav direct me to the wrong village. That's because, being a clever sort of chap (and also wise in the ways of these computar things) I know perfectly well that there are several places with the same name and that I should tell the stupid thing to take me to a particular post code instead. And I then check that the destination and route look sane. This also has the advantage that once I'm in the town or village I want, it takes me to the right place in that town. I know, it sounds crazy, but it does work. You should try it some time.
Perhaps the Royal Mail are expensive for delivering parcels because, unlike all their competitors, they actually bother to deliver them. If I'm not home when they try to deliver, I can phone them and say "please deliver on Saturday" and then my parcel turns up on Saturday. None of their competitors will do that in my experience. They all expect me to either take a day off work or drive to their depot which is only open for a few inconvenient hours in a ghastly industrial estate 20 miles away.
The cynic in me wonders how many times the police and government are going to seed stories in the press from this one incident, to further their agenda of ever more surveillance and interference in peoples' private lives BECAUSE OF THE CHIIIILDREN, all the while carefully not mentioning that most kiddy-fiddlers are either family members or very close family friends.
According to the number allocation files on OFCOM's website, no numbers beginning 05 (which is where VOIP lives) or 07 (personal, mobile, and other numbering) have been issued to "Truphone", or to anything that looks like a plausible variation on that. The 07624 number they have on their home page is allocated to Manx Telecom for radiopaging, *not* for mobile services. I think Truphone (and Manx Telecom) are being a bit naughty.
"Webster Freaky" may or may not be right that us lefties can't stand "decenting" opinions - I don't know, because I don't know what one of those is. We also can't stand far-right nutjobs who are too stupid to spell "dissenting" correctly and who think that the Romans were still ruling Britain in the 1300s.
It's also worth noting that Roman wine was so awful that no-one would *want* to make it these days. They generally drank it watered down or mixed with honey to make it taste better.
Anyone relying on email for anything important needs their head examined. Delivery is not guaranteed, *timely* delivery even less so, there's no way of ensuring that you get an acknowledgement from the recipient that your message got through, and there are some circumstances where you won't get notification of failure.
If it's something important like buying a house or selling a manuscript to a publisher, then use the damned phone or a respectable courier who will get a signature when he delivers your disc of information to your correspondent. Would you use the ordinary postal service for those things? No, you'd pay a bit extra for peace of mind. Email is no different.
How on earth can watching the dross that is television be rehabilitating? At best it keeps the mindless drones passive, but crap like Celebrity Big Brother and fantasy like Doctor Who is hardly the sort of thing that will make them into better people.
Ban TVs in prisons, and make them go to school instead.
Oh, wait, good teaching is expensive, TV pap is cheap.
... then how come I turned out as an overweight geek who's going grey in his early thirties instead of as an Adonis?
And how come my eyes are backwards, and I've got an appendix? Seems to me that if I really was designed, then the designer was either a retard or an utter bastard.
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