Life, The Universe and Small Things all covered in one friendly blog.
Remember DON'T PANIC! .

30 April, 2009

Flu Pandemic

"Mortuaries and emergency services are to be put on alert and told to prepare for up to three-quarters of a million deaths from a flu pandemic." "Emergency planners have begun to look for sites for special mortuaries, each capable of storing 1,000 bodies"

That's scary stuff, you would be forgiven for thinking that it was today's headlines. But no, this is a headline story from March 2005, the last time we were all going to die a horrible death, that time from bird flu.

It is very confusing with the WHO doctors (Dr. WHO?) trying to whip up panic, and today the threat level is 5, no, I have no idea what that means to us either.
The government is even thinking of stopping some sporting and music events. Something isn't right.

I don't believe we are being told the whole truth, is this another government way to hide a new piece of big brother legislation while everyone is looking the other way, or is it really serious. Do we panic or not, where is Corporal Jones when you need him.

At my Gym its almost impossible not to see the TV screens and Sky news are loving it, every few seconds the "Breaking News" is scrolling across "Mrs Miggins was heard to cough and maybe all the customers of her pie shop are now infected" and the like.
One thing that stands out on all the news reports is the lemmings wearing face masks. I really want to spread the word that if you put your right finger in your left ear and walk about saying iggle you won't catch flu. People would do it, because for no rational reason they are all buying and wearing face masks.

There is so much to write about this flu PANDEMIC, why are people calling it swine flu when no pigs have it, but ill finish this blog entry with one more point that confuses me.

We are told to make sure we wash our hands properly, but we are also told that the virus can live for two hours on surfaces, the problem is this, I wash my hands, turn on the taps, lots of soap, good wash, rinse, then oh, um, the taps on, but I and hundreds of other have touched that before washing hour hands. I'm stuck. Do I turn off the tap and re-contaminate my hands or leave it running. It makes little difference if I am in a public toilet thought, because after all my careful hand washing I now have to touch the toilet door handle anyway.

As I said before, its all very confusing. I called the swine flu help line for advice, but all I got was crackling.

28 April, 2009

Swine Flu. We are all going to die!

Like it or not we are all going to die.
No, no, not of swine flu, didn't you see the full stop in the title.
I can not give you a cast iron guarantee that we won't all die of flu but it is rather less likely that the panic mongers would have us believe. Although, if it gets me I want someone to edit this blog with an appropriate comment or two.

I am more worried today than I was yesterday, because Gordon Brown has got involved with one of his famous predictions. "We are among the best prepared countries in the world". Well that's done it, we were the least likely to suffer in any recession, and boom and bust was over. On is past record maybe we are all doomed.

Give it a couple of days and Alistair Darling will be telling us when it will all be over, probably by June I expect.

Still every cloud has a silver lining, there is no chance that surgical mast makers will suffer in the recession this year, despite them being almost useless at preventing you catching flu.
There are also 30million doses of an anti viral drug that will definitely keep some companies in profit.

Still at least we are safe in the UK, for as the USA and other countries begin to prepare their anti-viral drugs for distribution, any day now every household here will receive a leaflet from the government. Now which would you rather have ?

26 April, 2009

The Financial Crisis - Solved

This blog is stolen from someone, I don't know who because I heard it from someone who heard it on the radio. For those, like myself, who didn't hear the original Ill endeavour to explain the basics of the idea.

With the exception of a few bits of gold, that good old Gordon didn't sell off, there is actually no money in the UK, no really there isn't.

Look at any note in your pocket and you see that it says "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of". Not that the note is actually £5, £10, £20 or whatever just that someone will pay you it.
Try walking into you bank handing over a tenner and saying "please honour the promise and give me ten pounds in gold or coinage" and see what you get. The whole point of currency is rather eroded these days and the promise on the note as relevant as an Alistair Darling prediction.

Before I digress I had better move back onto subject.
If you are reading this blog on a Windows computer then the chances are it has a bit of software called "system restore". This allows you to effectively wind back time on your machine, if for example you try to load something that trashes everything you already had. It takes your computer back to any date in the past prior to the moment you sodded it up.

There is no money, (see above) but there are huge computers all over the world that hold ones and noughts that we translate into having money. When you buy something, pay money into an account or draw out cash from a machine, somewhere a computer will be updated. Even if you pay the local shop, eventually it becomes just another entry in our cyberspace banking.

The financial crisis didn't happen in reality, if it did there would be fields full of the "lost billions" stacked as far as you can see, but there isn't. Those of us who lost money on savings can't go and watch it drifting in a soggy mess off the coast somewhere or see its dying embers in a colossal bomb fire, because all that happened was a lot of cyberspace numbers just went blip.

So, and this is the clever bit, all that has to be done is a huge "system restore". Wind back the banking computers to the time immediately before it all went lumpy bits up.
The missing billions are returned.

21 April, 2009

Budget 2009

This week the labour party get another chance to sod up the country. It is budget time again.
Despite the fact that these are the people who took the country at full speed into an economic crash, because they didn't see it coming, for some reason we are expected to trust them with the country still.

Darling is apparently going to announce £15 billion of "efficiency savings". Stop, hold on, efficiency savings. He is intending to become more efficient to the sum of 15 billion pounds. This isn't just making people return the Bic before you issue a new one, or stopping people from unfolding paper clips. This is saying that they have been wasting 15 billion pounds.
I keep saying that amount because I can not comprehend how any organisation has been allowed to be inefficient to the tune of £15 billion. Who the blinkin heck has been running things.
No sorry forget that question, we know the answer, its the same bunch setting this weeks budget.

God help us!

I know the man holding the box is Gordon, you don't believe Darling gets to make decisions, do you ?

New Speed Limits

I have written about speed limits, speed cameras, and those stupid flashing signs that tell you to slow down or that its a 30 limit before. To continue in their effort to spoil driving the government is set to lower speed limits in an attempt to "save 1000 lives a year".

The plan is to drop a lot of the 60mph de-restricted roads to 50 and many of the 30 limits, especially near schools, to 20. Funny, because we all know that when children are going in and out of schools there is little change of doing 5mp past anyway because of all the 4x4's and people carriers parked ready to take little Chav and Chavney 400metres home.

If it was about saving lives, or stood any chance of working how fantastic it would be. But it won't save lives and its not about that anyway. It is about other things.
Firstly it is about raising money, if they lower the speed limit there is more chance of people exceeding them so more fines.

The second point is a little less obvious and connected to another government announcement. Remember that they plan to give a £5000 incentive to people to buy electric cars? OK, I know there are no cars that will be eligible for the grant, but ignore that for the moment. Imaging there were and the roads were busy with millions of electric cars. What will be needed.

You are off on holiday, its 300 miles to Cornwall and your electric car does 50miles per 1 hour charge what do you need, you got it, millions of electric sockets on the route.
To connect you dead battery car to a socket you need an extension cable, the chances of you running out of power right by are socket are slim so you will connect to the closest one.

Yours won't be the only car on charge so there will be cables all over the road. Snagging your bumper on this jumble of cables, especially near schools where children could easily be caught up in them, will be a major new road safety hazard.
So the obvious solution, you got it, slower speed limits.

16 April, 2009

Old Car Trade in - How to make money from it!

The word is that the government is about to announce a scheme to pay £2000 towards a new car if you scrap your old car, which is over 9 years old. This is going to save the planet.

How quickly the planet is saved depends on how many miles a year you drive your new car. As making your new car and re-cycling your old one will produce a massive amount of carbon you might have to drive the new one about 300,000 miles before the planet wins.

The great thing about the scheme is its potential for making money so I am off out to buy up as many old wrecks as I can. Under the scheme the plan is this:-

1) Buy a wreck over 9yrs old for £100 and register it in your name.

2) Scrap the car and get the £2000 off voucher

3) Buy a basic new (or under 1 year old) car for £7000

4) Sell the new car straight away, maybe even back to the dealer for £7000 less VAT £1050

5) Pocket £850

Repeat as above.

At last the chancellor has proposed something really useful.