Regulating Childcare

I recently heard that no child minder is allowed to look after more than two children under the age of 2.

How long will it be before we hear demands for triplets to be made illegal?

High Speed Trains

Look at a map of England, and then meditate on the thought that the quickest way to travel from London to Nottingham might one day be through Birmingham.

Expensive Self-Indulgence

The Prime Minister has promised that, if he wins the next General Election he will hold a referendum on European Union membership after he has re-negotiated the terms.

I expect that, if he is ever in a position to keep his promise, things will turn out much as they did in the last referendum on the subject in 1975.

Minor cosmetic changes in our conditions of membership will be presented as a great triumph, and membership will be ratified by a large majority, with the Prime Minister claiming a great victory.

However, nothing significant will have been won, and the cost will be high. Business confidence will have been undermined, and it is possible that the cost of servicing the National Debt will rise. As we have more than two years to wait for the next General Election, much of that cost will be incurred even if the Conservatives lose the next election so the Prime Minister cannot keep his promise.

I think the Prime Minister is clever enough to realise the consequences of his announcement, making his action especially reprehensible.

Battery Care

A recent news item mentioned that batteries are often thrown away while they still hold a fair amount of charge.

What was not mentioned was that even if completely discharged, they can be recharged.

Many years ago a student told me that even batteries not sold as rechargeable can be recharged a few times. As I use mainly rechargeable s I'd never tested the claim until a few days ago when the battery in a remote control expired, and I had no rechargeables of the requisite size. I therefore tried recharging, and it worked!!

Distracted by Computer Code

I've been neglecting this blog to the extent that this is my first entry of the year.

I have been distracted by websites - my own and that of the Leicester U3A.

The problem was handling the menus. Originally each page had its own menu - very tiresome when I had to edit every page on the site to change the menu.

A few years ago I devised what has come to seem a distinctly Heath Robinson arrangement using frames and JavaScript to weld a single menu file onto whatever page was being viewed. Not only was it clumsy, but it behaved oddly. The refresh command took one back to the page one originally logged onto, not to the page one was viewing at the time.

A few weeks ago I investigated php, in particular the include command, and after pottering about for a while got it working. I then had to resolve competing styles, those used on the main pages and those needed by the menu, but today I got it all working, with considerably simpler code than I had before.

I'm so happy I don't mind even the snow !!