Wednesday and 2pointfive_man looks for his Meccano set

Tilting at Windmills, old technology,
can have it's uses as
a model for new technology

Started Wednesday 29th December 2010.  Time: 600 am.

Woke up at about 5.15 am to the sound of Geese flying over the house.  The cat had also decided she wanted a bit of quality time.  She had crawled onto my chest where she proceeded to do a bit of industrial purring that convinced me I was actually awake.  Not one to turn over and ignore the world I sought out the BBC news.  I had last updated myself of the cricket about 130 am by wirelessly accessing BTBroadband on my  Blackberry.  So knew already England had retained the Ashes. Does sport give a feel good factor? I think it does.

By 550 am  I had the pre-breakfast diet of news and information.  I had listened to the BBC News channel, the Telegraph, Shanghai Daily and Hindustan Times had all been delivered to my Kindle.  A great facility within Kindle editions is the View Section List tab.  I have long been a headline and first paragraph reader.  I can usually consign a newspaper to the recycle bin in a number of minutes that are inversely proportional to the that days' news' relevance to my present egocentric world.

In amongst the stories that grabbed my attention this morning there was reason for optimism.  Ignoring all  the doom laden stories of how the weather has affected small businesses, the ski slopes are open.  The 300 direct jobs are benefiting.  More importantly as was pointed out, so do greater rural economy of petrol stations, hotels and restaurants.  As one person interviewed intimated, who  needs to get on a plane to ski in the alps, even if you could travel.  The distributive effect of wealth transfer to the highlands from the lowlands seems to be alive and well and healthy.  We just need to hope that there is not too much of a good thing and the snow gates on the A9 are closed because of wait for it .....  the wrong type of snow.  Infrastructure?  A comment from the Scottish transport minister could be imminent. 

The trade in rare earth elements has hit the headlines.  China has decided to reduce it's exports of raw materials used  amongst others in manufacturing of  IT chips.  American businesses are starting to grumble as they can see restrictions affecting their supply chain.  Rare earth elements are quite abundant but they are distributed thinly in the Earth's crust.  They have to be mined and due to the nature of their distribution a lot of rock needs to harvested to yield useable quantities.  

South Korea's business intelligence must be working more efficiently than some of American's corporations since the Telegraph (Article Challenge to China over rare minerals by Ian McKinnon) has reports that a deal has been struck with Burma to develop it's mineral reserves.  South Korea's familiarity with totalitarian regimes probably makes them more willing to become bedfellows with the Burmese.  However, I can see a potential for a new viral or tweet campaign around "conflict minerals".   Daewoo might be hit by brand avoidance for conscience sake.   Personally, if I was really switched on  I'd be looking into property round Ytterby, in Sweden where rare Earth elements were first discovered. That also assumes that there are any rare earth elements left in the ground around Ytterby.

Recycling and recovery from waste could therefore be a viable alternative.  A crop production solution for mineral recovery would be my pet preference.  We already use varieties of plants that are tolerant of toxic soils to rehabilitate old British Coal board sites.  Let the plants mine the slag heaps of Latvia that are apparently rich in rare earth oxides.   The added advantage would be the locking up of carbon.  Using the plants to produce micro-charcoal which could then be injected back into soils could yield the minerals and create a carbon sink.  Joining up the technology, how much would it cost? What would be the time frame? Would it be a good use of the artificial trading carbon trading market to make the process viable?

Back to the Blog headline.  Meccano has just replaced EastEnders (the former booze cruise destination) as the success story of Calais.  Production is being moved back from China (a reverse of globalisation, see previous blog).  Competitiveness was sited in the BBC interview.  I can recall stories two summers ago reporting the difficulties companies in the special economic zones were having recruiting workers.  Apparently the wages were not high enough to make workers economically dependent on factory work and were instead choosing to return back to their villages and a marginally less well-paid  sustainable rural life.  The report and the move by Meccano are about two years apart.  Is this the start of a flood of manufacturing jobs back to the EU.  I say EU as Meccano although an iconic British Toy Brand is actually French. 

Finally, the average British worker will now have to work two extra days apparently before they have payed off their tax liability.  

I have blogged out for now.  I will go and do something productive.  I have subscribed to the Teleworking Association as it provides a fit with other economic activities I am investigating to supplement any earnings within the dwindling Supply Teaching market.  Further looking into the Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs and updating Linked-in profile should be the tasks for the day.  The time between Christmas and New Year always has the potential to be "dead days" in the UK as everybody is on holiday.

It is extremely foggy outside so a good day for the bodywork repair shops!

        

Monday and 2pointfive_age_of_man is reading the digital ocean - via Kindle

Started Monday 27th December 2010: 7.00 am GMT.  All URL mentioned accessed on this day.  There would be a picture but the Picasa service I praised yesterday is currently unavailable.

Bloggin' could become a habit.  There is a bit of Old St Paul's (pre- Great Fire of London) atmosphere pervading the experience.  Old St.Paul's at that time was where the intelligentsia of the 1600s, namely anybody that could read, went to buy books.   An agglomeration (wonderful word) of small printers, would the turn out pamphlets and news sheets for anybody and everybody to hawk on the steps of the old cathedral.   These were the bloggers of their day   This is almost a diarists type experience.

I have looked up the diarist Samuel Pepys, for the day 26th December 1667 .  The temperature for that day in London was given as the monthly average of 3 °C.  The temperature for the present day is predicted to between 1°C and 3°C in Greater London.   Little change in the experience for the average Londoner over the span of 343 years, which leads to question of  climate change or just weather.  This links nicely with the today's activities so far.  There is talk of floods in the UK (now where did I hear that yesterday or the day before?) 

I have been awake since about 545 am catching up with the news bulletins on how England are progressing in the latest cricket test.  Geoffrey Boycott is probably being made to listen repeatedly to his expert commentary made 12 minutes into the BBCs coverage yesterday of where he could not see the England team having a hope of defeating the Aussies.   Maybe he should stick to just calling himself a commentator (If you had the chance to hear the banter glasshouses and stones come to mind.  Anyway he was a successful batsman despite the Boycott and Botham story related by Dickie Bird on the Wit of Cricket.)  As I was listening and fiddling with the Kindle the newspaper arrived.  I have only been re-connected to the Internet since last Tuesday (14 days of absence) but now have the benefit of super fast Broadband to my wireless router.  I have been busily exploring the Kindle library of free-trail subscriptions, free books and occasionally buying a paid copy.  Kid in a sweetshop resemblance here.  


Now I used to be a Telegraph subscriber because it was conveniently a lot cheaper than the cover price on the news stand.  I did my bit for the local economy by paying for delivery.  I cancelled  the subscription a number of years ago as I did not really have enough time to read everything.  The fortnightly blue bin recycling collection was never rapid enough to cope with the newspaper and all the paper I seemed to acquire as part of my job (see yesterday's blog , I can self-reference !).  Plus all those lower backs of paperboys that might have been problematical in later life were prevented.

I had caught up with the Sunday Edition of the Telegraph late last night.  I have experienced a few problems with Kindle wireless delivery when the Kindle has gone to into what appeared terminal sleep.  After much fiddling, charging  and finally resurrection  I received the wireless delivery  I was intrigued by the Web 2.0 phenomena of  Thom Coststello and UK Uncut.  (I hope I have the right character as I have only just clicked on that part of the line on the Kindle screen that allowed me to keep today's edition).  The PhD student acting as his own case study appears to be attracting a lot of media attention for the facilitation of attacks "on the establishment".  (Orchestration is too strong a word as people choose to turn up to sit on shop floors or slow queue, although didn't Norman Cook do this for a pop video. An  I was there aside, I saw him live, I did, when I was a student when he was part of the Housemartins, who'd have thought he had all that creativity in him )   Unlike other media grabbing  anti-establishment trends such a Punk Music the focus of the disruption is that socially moral crusade against tax avoidance.  We can't say it's tax evasion as it is legal.  He has probably made it onto a  watch list as a danger to society, much like Mick Jagger did at his age.  But now look at Sir Mick's privileged position sitting next to the great and the good at England football matches. 


The raised eyebrows that could be sensed in linking UK Uncut and the fact that the PhD research at Royal Holloway was being funded by a grant was amusing.  It is probably the best piece of state research investment ever.  With Mr Costello's marketing skills we should be thankful that his talents are fully occupied on what he claims is also part of an academic exercises.  What would happen if he followed his role models that have also had dealings with "labour leaning Demos"  and cashed in on the commercial world?  Would his viral marketing skills, if  snapped up by an Arcadia type organisation, result in a greater amount of money flowing to a company making tax efficient decisions (another euphemism)?.  Let's give Thom Costello a chair at  a prestigious University and save the national wealth for future generations.  It should be an anthropology chair as he certainly seems to be the foremost expert in understanding the way to manage human behaviour (no disrespect to Desmond Morris).    

Back to today's stories that fall within my sphere of interest and curiosity.  I have taken up the trials for the Telegraph and the the Mail.  So far only these in this country, although I have garnered everything  from the New York Times, Harvard Business Review (useful for the end user of exponents of the "do as I say but not as I do school of Emotionally Intelligent Managers") , Shanghai Daily, etc.   I will get round to assessing their relevance in the next few days.   I probably need to also find out how to change my Amazon affiliate recommendation so that Amazon.co.uk is the featured site and not the American site.  There seem to be fewer references to the relevant products I am seeing in the UK. So stories that are interesting me at the moment on the Kindle editions.

Telegraph -  Students face entry tests.... by Graeme Paton.  I remember as a Sixth Former in the mid-eighties taking 4 A-levels (Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology not an Art in sight)  at a newly opened Upper School universities did have their own exams (not just the ones they administered as Local Examinations Syndicates before the rights were sold to people like Edexel).  Even then there was still a potential for US state pupils to sit the local University (Cambridge) entrance exam.  The traditional time to sit this if I remember correctly was in term 7 ie after the end of traditional state sixth form.  Gap years had not been invented at time, they just existed if you did the Oxbridge entrance.  Is this change?  The same light seems to be focused on GCSEs in "it's time to scrap GSCEs" by a staff reporter.    I have blogged already a little on this  http://2pointfiveageofman.blogspot.com/2010/12/1603-and-all-that-ever-after.html, I would have blogged even further if I had not lost connectivity owing to BT (see previous blogs) under which I now draw a lie until the next attack of the Big company syndrome 

Just had a minor electricity outage that caused the interruption of the flow and the computer to restart. Everybody must have started to cook breakfast and the local factories switched on the oven to roast peanuts for the next seasonal occasion.  Which brings me to another story  "Power cut risk from ageing networks" ...... by Rowena Mason .   We have been warned or is it so long since the last warniing everybody has forgotten and nobody has done anything about it    


Telegraph -  Wildlife flourishes in good old British weather  .... by Richard Saville.  Good for farmers too. Cold winters remove aphids so cuts down on pest and viral loss to crops, so here's to a hopefully smaller chemical inputs in the British countryside. 

Telegraph -  Record day at sales .... by Tim Ross.  Apparently Amazon have had an e-book frenzy, I am not surprised I am one of the frenzied.




Telegraph -  Health Wealth and Happiness .   by  a Staff Reporter....... a good toast but does everybody have to come and live in the South for these, surely not in the 21st Century.

Telegraph -  Airports face fines for failing to cope in winter .... by Steven Sainford.  who gets the fine and how will this make sure that that money could have been spent on infrastructure and prevention ..... actually is.  Sounds like a dastardly conspiracy of legal advisers (what does LLB stand for Lying Little B******** or is it something else) or is this another way to stop the bonus culture?

Telegraph -  You pay five times for PFI schemes ....... by Rosa Prince.  Enough said, career wish list for average 6th former to be CEO of a PFI?

Telegraph -  Calls to scrap inheritance tax ........ Fully agree


Just  a few of the stories that I think will become quite important this year.  Especially the infrastructure issue,  a story I recall about CBI wanting fewer taxes but more investment in infrastructure spring to mind.

To end the blog before another Power Outage strikes didn't  mention any Mail stories as they seem to have much the same thread as the subject areas mentioned in the above articles.

Looking at Pepys' diary for the 26th December 1667 again he would appear to be spending his day doing not dissimilar activities to myself.  He visits a pub and possibly indulges in  a little preparation for some tax evasion  (it wasn't illegal then) by talking to somebody from the Exchequer, although I seem to recall he was a government official himself as quartermaster to the Navy and may also have been a tax official.  I will be visiting a pub called the Royal Exchange for a quick pint a little later but doubt I will have the opportunity to discuss tax or want to.   He visited his bookseller, which I have done with Amazon today.

A visit to the theatre is remarked upon where Nell Gwynne was playing. I shall probably watch a little TV the modern day theatre in my home.    A conversation with the father of William Penn founder of the colony that became Pennsylvania was had by Pepys.  I doubt I shall meet  a father of a  nation builder unless I bump into one of the Zimbabwe law students we have in the town at the moment.  Cosmopolitan little place this part of West Suffolk.  Pepys indulges in a little society gossip which I have received second hand from the newspaper.  Apparently the forces are good for Old Etonian future Monarchs as they have an independence that even runs to doing the dishes.  Which reminds me....

And finally winter fluxes struck Pepys' family and the subsequent funeral he was unable to attend.  Swine flu and slippery roads of modern times?

  Does anything really change?