I'm so pleased I've found this YouTube clip of Sol Davis', erm, "solid" tackle from Luton Town's rather bad-tempered 0-0 draw with Stoke City last weekend…  It's fair to say that you can see this one (and the resulting red card) coming a mile off

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | 2 Comments »

Recently the debate about government plans for pay-as-you-go road charging has resurfaced.

I have never been in favour of this scheme.  Motoring in the UK is an extremely expensive activity already, with the poor quality and capacity of the road system only adding to the frustration.  A large part of my opposition to the plans has been that while suggesting that everyone stops driving may be fine if you live in Westminster, with the huge public transport infrastructure there, it's not so feasible if you live in a rural area, where public transport is non-existant and people have no choice other than to drive in order to get to work.

However, I thought about the sums a bit and now I'm not so sure that the rural argument necessarily stands up.

The plans, as unveiled by the Department for Transport in 2005, suggested that either road tax, fuel duty or both would be abolished if road charging was adopted and that the cost on rural roads would start at 2p/mile.

The current rate of fuel duty, as set by the 2006 Budget, is 48p per litre.  For an average family car with a fuel consumption of 35mpg this equates to 6.2p/mile.  This means that if that car was only used for travelling to work outside peak hours on rural roads, the driver would actually be 4p per mile better off if fuel duty were abolished.

Similarly, the average rate of car tax is currently £125 per year.  If the car is driven for 10,000 miles per year (about average mileage) than that equates to 1.25p per mile, so the driver would only be £75 a year worse off if they drove 10,000 miles on rural roads and car tax was abolished.

Given that the economics for rural communities don't seem quite as bad as they did on first sight, maybe the introduction of pay-per-mile road charging wouldn't be such a bad idea?

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | No Comments »

When I say a plague, I mean a particularly nasty plague at that…

I recently set up a new Dell desktop computer which came pre-installed with McAfee Internet Security 2007.  Since the subscription price was reasonable, Internet Security seemed to be a good package for all round protection, since it incorporates antivirus software, a firewall and email spam protection.

Immediately it became apparent that it was not as good as it seemed.  The firewall had a complete mind of its own, ignoring settings for trusted programs to the extent that applications such as Windows Live Messenger, Remote Assistance and Java applets in Internet Explorer refused to function.  Changing the settings (even setting the firewall to 'open') and reinstalling the whole Internet Security package failed to improve it.

It came to the point where I decided to uninstall it and use the Windows Firewall and AVG's free antivirus protection instead - but the problems did not even stop there.

Following uninstallation, the firewall problems remained.  The curse of McAfee lived on!  I eventually discovered that I had to reset the Windows Firewall to the default, out of the box settings in order to clear whatever madness Internet Security had left behind the scenes.  Also, the email spam protection had installed a proxy POP3 email server which intercepted incoming emails.  When it was uninstalled, it only reinstated the email settings of the user account which was used for the uninstallation, leaving the other XP users unable to access their email until their email account settings were re-entered manually.

In summary, and in my opinion, McAfee Internet Security 2007 is more trouble than it is worth and shouldn't be touched even with an extra-long electrified cattle prod.

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | No Comments »

I recently renewed my passport and received a new biometric "e-passport" from the Identity and Passport Service, which has a microchip which contains a digital copy of my photograph and other information.

I was pleasantly surprised when, despite paying for the bog standard non-guaranteed three week service, I received my new passport in the post exactly a week after posting off the application.  I think I helped to put the odds in my favour by using their pre-printed form service, whereby you enter your details on their website and they send you a pre-printed form which you only need to sign and date.  This avoids the possibility of your application being rejected on the grounds of illegibility.

On the down side, I read recently that my shiny new ten year passport contains a microchip… with a two year warranty.  Can anyone spot the potential problem there?

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | 1 Comment »

Well, sort of…

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | 2 Comments »

Whilst I'm not much of a photographer I like to have a go - I host my better (note the relative adjective) photos at Zooomr and I'm going to start posting them here occasionally too.

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | 3 Comments »