Punishing the Home Office

The Home Office has been fined £366,900 for breaching the government's senior salary pay cap.

What impact will that fine have on the Home Office?

Will the HO turn its heating down to save fuel, use cheaper toilet paper in its loos, or go to the market to buy bargain packs of broken biscuits to serve to visitors ?

Pots of Gold

Yesterday I joined a party of U3A members visiting The Crown Derby pottery factory, in Derby as you may have guessed.

I discovered quite a lot during our tour of the factory. Only a quarter of the china is made up of clay, half is bone ash and the remainder some sort of powdered mineral.

Designs are put on as transfers, moistened with water and eased into place by hand.  Pots go into the kiln five times, twice to bake colours in place.

The last and shortest baking is to fix the gold - almost all Crown Derby wares are gilded somewhere or other. The annual consumption of 16 kg of gold costs them about 2 million pounds, a figure reflected in the prices of goods in the shop.

Fractions in the Media

On Radio 4 this morning someone said that the SNP lost 'almost a third' of its seats in the recent general Election.

In 2015 the SNP won 56 seats. In 2017 they lost 21 seats.

One third of 56 = 18 2/3   21>18 2/3

A Metricated Man

I've just checked today's weather  forecast, on a site that initially gave temperatures in Fahrenheit. I found they didn't convey much to me, and had to change to Celsius to achieve full comprehension.

At one time I could cope with either scale, but no longer!

Web Site updated

My web site now has recent pictures of the front of the house (follow the link on the index page) and corrected versions of my philosophy notes.

Fifteen General Elections

This morning I voted in a General Election for the fifteenth time. I've never missed one since I was old enough to vote, twenty-one in  my youth.

Examination of the various opinion polls has proved an interesting statistical exercise. Assuming the variations between the recent polls are just statistical variations, I think the result of this election will be much like that of the last one, except that the Scottish Nationalists will lose a few seats to the Conservatives and to Labour.

Windows Perversity

I recently noticed that my wireless router was using the default password set by the manufacturer, so I changed it, and then had to log the computers on with the new password.

My Windows 10 machines was the perfect gentleman, noting that something had changed and prompting me to enter the new password. My Windows 8 Laptop was less obliging, presenting no password prompt and just saying it couldn't connect. After fiddling about for a while I tried the right mouse button in desperation, and got a little box with a place to enter the password. Thereafter all was well. So there is at least one respect in which W10 is superior to W8.

Elusive Manifestos

I can't find election manifestos for any of the parties. I've asked in vain at the local branches of both Smiths and Waterstones, the only places in Market Harborough here likely to sell them. Perhaps one is supposed to read them online.

I'll try in Leicester next time |I'm there.

A Fruitful Meander

On today's visit to Sainsbury's, instead of going straight to the places where I hoped to find the items on my shopping list, I strolled along every aisle in the shop to see what was there. I spotted various things in surprising places, but the great find was redcurrant jelly. I blogged about redcurrant jelly before after searching for it in vain among the jams and preserves, but today I found it, among pastas herbs and spices.

I sometimes meander around the house too, looking in every cupboard and drawer to remind myself what's there. I may do that again soon. It can be quite a revelation.

A Significant Sum

The Labour Party proposes to increase income tax for those with annual incomes exceeding £80 000.

Wondering why they chose that sum, it eventually occurred to me that £80 000 is just a few thousand pounds higher than the salary of a Member of Parliament.

Vulnerable Computers

Numerous computers have succumbed to an attack that exploited a vulnerability in their aged operating systems.

Apparently the vulnerability had for several years been known to American Security people who had joyfully exploited it to spy on people's data, until hackers stole the secret from Government computers. Microsoft responded by releasing a 'patch' in March, but those in change of the National Health Service computer systems still hadn't got round to applying that patch in mid May, when a virus struck.

From time to time Government agencies demand that computer security systems should have a built in weakness, often called a 'back door', to allow them access. If Governments can't keep such back doors secret malicious folk will be able to use them too.

Reassured

When shopping today I remembered to buy something I hadn't put on my shopping list, evidence that my ancient brain still functions !!