Leningrad - Now and then

Dizzy has a link to a remarkable set of photographs taken during the seige of wartime Leningrad morphed into the same place in modern St Petersburg. Quite remarkable.

Here

A classic letter of complaint

This is rapidly doing the blogosphere rounds ...

A letter about the food on a Virgin flight ......

Priceless...

Almost there

Two days to go before I leave BT - I did a horrible calculation earlier: the 11 years I have spent with them represents over 20% of my life which is really really scary!

I am trying to work as normal - handovers seem to be dominating the days - but there is a definite end-of-term feeling that I am experiencing at the moment, with also a massive melancholy of all the times, peoples and events that I have experience.

Fat Git and Baldy, Norman the Storeman (he is a database administrator), Sally M, Rob C, all the Mart[iy]ns, Steve E, SP/IL (you know who you are - early coffees), John B, Fi, JR, Carl etc etc ... (sorry if you aren't named - I haven't forgotten you!)

I have made some very good friends at BT - I suspect that, rather like an army number - my employee's identification number - the gateway to accessing information within the company - will be with me until the day I am in my grave.

But Friday it will be time to go. Norman is coming up divest me of my BT membership - laptop, pass etc and then I will be gone ...

Serious sleaze allegations

Iain Dale is reporting that the Sunday Times has some very serious allegations concerning the behaviour of certain Labour peers.

Oh dear.

New job

In a roller-coaster of a 48 hours I have gone from almost despair to hope... I have been offered a new contract for a big (VERY big) business services company. It's initially for 3 months but it buys time ....

Six Weeks

It is now six weeks since the operation - a magic figure since I am now "allowed" to do all of the things that I was banned from - swimming, driving etc so it is probably as good as time as any to reflect upon the recovery.

Firstly I am walking better than I have for years - the rolling gait that I had previously has completely disappeared - and the limb centre in particular have commented upon the improvement. I am also not walking upon tip-toes either, something I did obviously to ease the pain from the arthritis and I am placing my feet much more squarely upon the ground.

I still have muscle discomfort, which was made worse by the pinging of a tendon (muscle?) a couple of weeks back which caused intense pain for a few days, but to be honest that is now fading from pain to an ache. It is worse when I go from a sitting to a standing position when the pain hits ... start walking and the discomfort vanishes very quickly. Keep going and I am pain free. Walking is bliss - absolutely lovely and (with a stick initially) I have literally walked miles.

I can also (with great care) hop - it sound laughable but when I was younger I could literally imitate Dudley Moore brilliantly (or was it the other way round?) and being able to get to the shower without assistance from crutches or my spare leg is wonderful .

A few downers - I am terrified of kneeling down still - enhanced since the muscle/tendon problem - although its really of standing up I suppose ...

One final thought: the horrible NHS chair that dominates our living room can now go .....

Anybody want a Unix/Linux/Security guy?

I had my contract cancelled last week - 5 months early. To be honest I wasn't expecting for the contract to be renewed in June, not in this current climate, but for it to be cancelled part way through has come as a hell of a shock. I have been assured that it wasn't anything to do with me ("you are a highly regarded part of the team" "Its just a numbers game" etc etc) but after 11 years with the company, knowing that it wasn't your fault doesn't make it any easier.

The job market isn't just dire, it is non-existent for both the contract and permanent positions and I am getting fairly despondent about the future.

I am not in a dying industry - the world revolves around IT and I have kept my skills up to date (clustering, security, virtulisation, web technologies amongst other things ) so it is gutting for this to happen.

Oh well - time to dust of the CV and pray .....

MP's and expenses

I emailed my MP yesterday the following:

"
Dear Michael Foster,
I am writing to you to express my concern at the recent proposal by the Leader of the House that will allow MPs expenses to be claimed without the production of receipts. In no other organisation would this be allowed and since taxpayer funds Parliament it is essential that complete transparency in all financial dealings is present for all MPs.
MPs for various reasons - and for the most part unjustifiably - are held in very low public esteem which means that the risk of that esteem dropping any further is very real.
Please vote against this proposal and show that Parliament does not have rules that would be laughed at if they were in pretty well any other institution - both public and private
Yours sincerely,
"

I am awaiting - probably in vain - for a reply

Update

Incredibly, Gordon Brown has imposed a three line whip on this for Labour MPs. This issue will be used to beat Labour over the head for a very long time. It really is shaming of this government that they are so hell bent to hide their expences.

Update 2

Brown has backed down .... here

Greed and stupidity are not crimes

There has been waves of outrage concerning the way some bankers - in particular Sir Fred Goodwin of the Royal Bank of Scotland - have been able to cause such havoc within the industry whilst at the same time walking away from the wreckage with pensions intact, knighthoods etc etc.

In it most extreme form this outrage (as heard yesterday on the Jeremy Vine show) has including calls for criminal prosecutions to be undertaken ( on what grounds I haven't a clue - for all his faults Goodwin is not a Madoff), his knighthood stripped and so on.

I understand the outrage - lives have been wrecked due to the actions of these people - but the calls for criminal actions are misguided.

If greed and stupidy were criminal then the jails of Britain and the world would be overflowing.

The Inauguration

Images .... Aretha Franklin screeching(awful perfectly awful), a good but less impressive than expected speech from Obama, a dreadful poem from God only knows, an nice speech from that old civil rights pastor (which had the best lines by far)

Arrogance of Harman

Iain Dale has made a plea that everyone who can to write about the appalling decision by Harriet Harman to override a judge's ruling about the declaration of MP's expenses. In no other industry would this be allowed - expenses claimed without the production of a valid receipt.

If MPs voted for this the damage that that they would do to the perception that the public hold them in would be enormous - MPs already are held in very low esteem (made worse by incidences such as Margaret Beckett's gazebo being funded by the tax payer) and the image of having their snouts-in-the-trough will be heightened.

Some MPs have realised this and are preparing a vote against the proposal.

Contact your MP here and tell them what you think - it stinks.

Ken Clarke

Good news. We cannot afford to exclude such a big hitter from the front bench. I suspect that he will totally trash whoever is Mandy's stooge in the Commons.

Yes Europe is a problem, but again the descision to agree to disagree is right.

Start Ya Bastard

Since I have been banned from driving (for medical reasons I hasten to add !) my own car has hardly been used since my wife prefers her own rustbucket, so I was not totally surprised to find my Zafira diesel not starting .....

Called AA Homestart who wondered if air had got into fuel system but then he wandered back to his van and came back with a can of some Aussie stuffed gloriously called "Start Ya Bastard" which he then proceeded to spray into the diesel's air intake. He then attempted to start the engine, which then promptly gave an almighty cough (almost a backfire!) and slowly clattered into life .....

I had a look at the web site for "Start ya bastard" I see that it contains 25% ether ...... http://www.startyabastard.com/

I am wondering if anyone knows where I can get a can of the stuff?

Two Nations Revisited

I was pleased to see that some new economic thinking is coming out of the Conservatives, especially thinking towards those of us who have been saving towards their future (I dread to think what my private pension has been doing over the last few weeks - I haven't dared look) and this alongside the ringfencing of key public services - defence, education, health and foreign aid - should make it easier to sell to the public. Even so, I see the parroting of "tory cuts, tory cuts" has started already - Hazel Blears was saying as such on the newslast night.

Lets be honest - the public services in this country is bloated, and has become even more bloated since Labour came into power. (for example at least 25% of council tax is spent upon what are sometimes very generous pensions, a figure that is bound to increase.) Additionally, there will be a increasing sense of grievance from private sector workers (and even worse from self-employed) who see that the public sector workers are being protected from the economic maelstrom that is engulfing the country.

Cuts MUST be made in the public sector - a good kick off would be to abandon ID cards for example - in order to prevent this country becoming once again Disraeli's "Two Nations" but this time not "The rich and the poor" but rather "the public and private sectors"

Even Labour supporters despise Jacqui Smith

If I had seen this post on ConHome I would have nodded in sage agreement at the further destruction of our civil liberties by possibly the worst Home Secretary we have had in living memory. But to see it on LabourHome indicates just how much she is despised by pretty well everyone.