I think I’m managing quite well with the suitable distribution of my income. A while back I wrote that I had stopped spending money on music streaming services and if I want some songs then I will pay for them properly. We all know that Spotify pay very little out to the artist for each play and it’s only the mega-hits that actually make any money. I’d try and link that communication here but the way I write the names of these communications means I might have zero chance of finding it. Here goes! I found it! The point is for more of my money to go to the artist. The website Bandcamp seems the best way of doing that short of Patreon or Venmo [which I have never used!].
This morning I have updated the music list on the iPhone contents page. Not that it’s easy to find the new stuff, there’s an awful lot of stuff listed. But I’ve recently bought a few albums and so I thought it was time to update it. There’s a definite theme within that music list of heavy metal, thrash metal and then German rock along with EBM and aggrotech. If you search that list enough you might even find some songs that could be considered “embarrassing”. Have a look and let me know if you find one. Anything from Top Gun does not count, obvs.
I’ve been listening to the music projects of two main labels over the last few years. Those labels are Infacted Records and Out Of Line Music. My most recent purchases are:
Deathless – Amelia Arsenic
Requiem for the Hyperreal – Shiv-r
Kill God Ascend – Shiv-r
That Annihilated Place – Pete Crane
Traumatized – Lights Of Euphoria
Dark Passenger – Decoded Feedback
Domination – Agrezzior
Sittenverfall – Schallfaktor
Judas – Lord Of The Lost
There’s quite a bit of a mix there from electronic to bombastic over the top operatic rock but it’s all good. Well worth a listen. If you like that sort of thing. I will say that the bass line from “To Love Is To Destroy” by Amelia Arsenic is DIRTY.
When I eventually finish the album reviews the idea is to go back and review every album I’ve bought in the last eight years or so. I’ve tried to avoid writing about all the EBM and Aggrotech in the reviews and I will eventually get around to writing about them. Oh, I’ve had both vaccination injections and am looking forward to being considered fully vaccinated in two weeks.
Amongst the horrifying news that yesterday was the worst day so far for Covid related deaths in the UK there was a parliament result hidden away in the news. Apparently there are 319 members of parliament who think it’s ok to have continuing trade deals with nations who have been found guilty of mass killings – or genocide. It is clear that these MPs have no moral compass suitable to hold that post. It is clear that these MPs value money and goods over the welfare of people as a whole. It is clear that we as a country do not have any moral high ground on which to stand to exert influence over the world.
Tories Vote For Trading With Bad People
I’ve been grappling with the thoughts about us getting the leaders and democracy we deserve and I think that’s partially valid. Clearly the influence of social networks has become very important in the battle for people’s thoughts but I also have this nagging feeling that my fellow countrypeople are, as a majority, a little bit racist and a little bit selfish and a little bit greedy.
I do understand that sometimes we need to make allowances and put our own people first. I get it. I think it’s wrong but I do get it. We can’t [or more likely won’t] go around the world seeking to right all the wrongs even when they are clearly there for us to see. But we could at least do something and this vote shows that not only are we willing to ruin our own country by leaving the EU we are willing to ruin the lives of many vulnerable people in the vain hope that we get money. I’m saddened by all this and do think it’s a shame. Sometimes I wish I didn’t think about all this as much as I do and just got on doing the things I do.
I’m currently waiting for a new webcam to be delivered. It was meant to be with me on Friday and it’s now Sunday. I guess that’s not so bad really but I’m used to knowing when things will arrive and normally the estimated date of delivery is spot on, I think that’s why I’m feeling disappointed at the moment. The webcam I currently have is actually pretty good, I bought it a looong time ago for Skype calls to Spain and never used it that much, it lived in a box. It’s only over the last little while that it’s been attached to the computer and working ok. I think it was 720p as I know I bought a good model originally.
Current webcam model
I’m a bit of a brand whore and certain brands I like while others I avoid. Maybe I’m a bit of a marketeers dream but I would like to say that I only buy things when I need them, but that’s rubbish. I don’t need a new webcam even if I am going to be upskilling my YouTube presence. There’s an old webpage where I discuss or show which brands and companies I like, click here, looking at it, there have been a few changes but not that many. For instance, I would still buy a Logitech steering wheel rather than move over to Thrustmaster.
Current Set Up – Soon To Change
So, I’ve been thinking a lot about our current brand of politician and how society is made. I don’t think my conclusions are fully justified and I recently had a chat with the Penguin just to get some counter-argument to my thoughts and ideas. I’m not the greatest at setting out reasons even though I can become quite convinced with my conclusions. Obviously I think the Universal Basic Income is a great idea I think it would go some to help those who are struggling. I think my main thought process starts with a – let’s be nice to people – approach and looks at society from that.
This communication is about getting money. Specifically getting money from your parents or someone else who “leaves” their money for you. The idea that when you die your possessions and money get moved over to members of your family seems wrong to me, when looking from a particular point of view. I believe that there are too many people who think it is their right and correct place to be in power or leading when in fact they are just shit at those jobs. I see it all the time in society and professionally. One of the main things that contributes to this overbuild sense of purpose is the idea that people are born to a particular station or place in society. These sorts of thoughts are what private schools create as does wealth and a sense of family destiny. All of these things annoy the fuck out of me. I do wonder that these annoy me because I grew up with very little and when my parents die I will only inherit my father’s debt, they don’t own any property. I won’t get a Brucey-Bonus to help me pay off any of the money I owe. I will be just me working to pay for the things I own.
There was a study which looked at the richest people in Florence, Italy, and compared them to who was the richest SIX hundred years ago. Something like ninety percent of the families were the same families from 600 years ago. Having wealth generally creates wealth and stops others in society from gaining their own independence. This idea of a ruling class is screwing this country, and others, over. Now, before I get on to the idea of removing our monarchy and such institutions I will try and discuss the main thesis in this communication.
I think I’m coming around to the idea that people are allowed to inherit a maximum amount, let’s say thirty grand, and all the rest goes to the state. Now, hopefully we would have a state that can spend the money in a decent way for the better of society rather than the shambles we currently have in charge of this country.
Let’s suppose your mother built up a successful business and has made a ton of money. Good for her. Now, when she dies, that business becomes owned by the state. Any property your family had goes into state ownership and if you want it then you have to earn the money to buy it back. How do you get the money? Do it yourself you lazy fuck. It wasn’t your idea to build that business. It wasn’t your effort. You have had a privileged start to life because you aren’t poor. Go and build your own things.
I’m not sure how any of this would work legally. I’m not even sure how I can persuade other people about this. There is a massive instinct in humans to look after the tribe and make sure that everyone in the tribe does well. We want our things to continue after we are dead and the best way to manage this is to let our family, our DNA, run these things. To have this work well we would have to spend a large amount of time persuading everyone that it is for the best of all. The problem with that is that people are mostly selfish and for good biological reasons. But, selfishness doesn’t go with running a fair society and looking after the people. It’s why to current government is in power.
If you want to be rich and build your own business then that’s great. Go ahead and do it. Measure your success by the size of your property portfolio. Lord it over all the little people as you go about in your chauffeur driven Jag. But, once you die it all gets given back to the state. You made yourself rich off the backs of people you used and in the end everyone starts again from the same place. I guess I think this is a way to level the playing field even though it’s not that thought out.
tldr: you aren’t allowed to pass on anything you have once you die.
The BBC is still the best news site this country has and unfortunately it’s going to be destroyed by the current government because they report on news and are independent. Oh it’s not a glorious future for our country. Mind you, there are still times when the BBC News section falls into the populist click-bait type of “news” which isn’t news but more magazine. Perhaps I should expect it and be forgiving but I can’t. Some of us have to talk about what we see.
Not a “news” story
Money.
There, that’s a simple, easy, quick, and honest answer.
There are all these people out there around my age with money to burn and they will go and see this because they remember Back To The Future being a good film and they will want wholesome entertainment for the rest of their family. Just to be clear BTTF is a good film.
These juke-box musicals or film translations are easy money and rely on the original ideas being burned into the brains of the middle-aged. Have a look around and see all the shows and shit with their origins in the 80s.
Within visible distance from my house, about a mile away over the fields, I can see looming lights and flashing brightness. I had thought it was set up for a weekend when a friend performed some music thing at the Monastery down the road. There’s an actual piece of St Simon Stock’s skull down there and I think it’s where they draw their power. Have a google for Aylesford Monastery if you want to find out more.
Next to the monastery at the moment is a large temporary theatre showing a pantomime once or twice a day for about a month. It turns out that the lights and glitz are connected to the pantomime and it’s meant to be a Winter Wonderland.
WinterWonderLand
I went there. No, I’m going to sound like an untrustworthy snob and I probably am but I don’t really like the health and safety aspects of carnival rides that are routinely reduced to fit on the back of a truck and moved around the continent. I do not think that all the best possible safety aspects are adhered to.
The Winter Wonderland consisted of lots of rides, a few food stalls and ticket outlets. It’s one of those places where the workers aren’t trusted with money, like in a Roman nightclub, and you have to buy tickets at centralised locations and use those tickets to go on rides. Twenty five tickets would set you back the discounted price of GBP20 or it was GBP1 each.
A ride on the shittiest ride was three tickets. The dodgems were five tickets a car and to me that sounds expensive. I was thinking maybe GBP3 would be more reasonable but I now realise I’m old and grumpy and harking back to the old days when things were cheap. I don’t get out much and perhaps that explains why I thought everything was pretty expensive.
The ice skating seemed reasonable though. GBP10 for an adult ticket which lasted for the entirety of a three hour window. I managed an hour and forty five and so I think I got my money’s worth along with a hurt wrist after having to do an emergency stop into the barrier with my arm. There’s plenty to remind me I’m getting old. Aches and pains and a natural tendency to moan about how expensive things are!
It has struck me recently that while I stream quite a bit of music the money I pay for this doesn’t seem to get back to the artists. I know that each Spotify steam is bugger all. Each stream of a song is about 0.4 cents or pence it doesn’t really matter. For an artist to make a living from Spotify they have to be best sellers really. Now, I will listen to an album a large number of times when I like the music. But I might steam an album once or twice. It seems to me that if I know I like the songs then paying for the album means I will listen to it more, enjoy it more and contribute to the artist more.
Just paid for an actual album (download). More of the money will go to artist than streaming.
So, my first album purchase in probably over a year goes to: Leaether Strip.
I decided to buy two albums. A “best of” and a later album. Ironically I’m going to share them here via Spotify you can always search for these on your preferred content provider.
I think it should be an aim to buy an album each month. Preferably using Bandcamp or something similar where more of my payment goes to the artist.
I’ve become quite philosophical about traffic jams. Rather than get annoyed and irritated I now realise there’s little I can do and so I relax. It is highly unlikely that I will lose lots of money through a traffic jam [being late for an appearance on Dragon’s Den maybe] and it is also rare that I have to be somewhere at a very particular time. As I work in education you might consider that I should be at work for the start of the day and normally I am there with plenty of time to get a coffee, do some photocopying and prioritise my emails.
This morning was a little different. Maidstone is updating and improving the bridges gyratory in the centre of town. This means that occasionally they have to close the roads overnight so they can get the work done. This morning they failed to get the road cured on time and so there was a delay in opening Fairmeadow, possibly the most important through road in Maidstone.
This delay meant the two lane traffic was heading around the prison which is a single lane carriageway. Thus there ensued chaos. Well, not literal chaos but lots of cars going into not a lot of space and therefore lots of congestion.
It took me ninety five minutes to drive eight miles, the first four of those I covered in about ten minutes, the rest was Maidstone. I am happy to accept these delays as the improvements to the junctions will be worth it. Also, the extra time in the car gave me more time to listen to the Skepticrat podcast. Warning, there’s swearing a-plenty in this podcast and it’s political with a liberal bias. What else would you expect?
My general thoughts on traffic jams are that they normally mean someone is having a far worse day than you. Relax, there’s nothing you can do.
To give you an idea of the traffic chaos here’s a shot from Google maps:
A Bad Morning
I am going to find another map for you, possibly a larger version with a little more detail, but it would serve you well to see a version of a “normal” morning to compare, so I intend to do that also.
So, having said that here is a map of today, the next day, a day when the roads are working “normally”. Here you go, enjoy:
This communication is going to be a little different. This entire website contains a lot of stuff written by me, most of it is pretty dull. I’m not really sure of my motivation but it’s something to do and it makes me feel modern even though I’ve been writing web pages since 1995 [Imperial College Student Union web site].
Over the last year or so I have been thinking about horse racing and whether it is morally justifiable to allow this to happen. I have slowly come to the conclusion that there is NO moral justification for humans to use animals in sport.
I dislike the idea that we, as a species, put ourselves on top of horses and then race them as hard as possible around a track and that it is then broadcast for people to watch as sport. I do realise that it is a huge industry and that many people rely on this for their livelihoods but that doesn’t get around the fact that I find it impossible to justify as a just thing. Horse racing is a hangover from a time when we were not a liberal society. I would argue that our society (esp in the UK) is largely liberal and we seek reason for doing things. I do not see any reason why we take large beings and race them against each other for the financial gain of ourselves.
Sport is for human pleasure and social cohesion so we can only use humans to help us create that. I do not see any reason why humans should be using animals for sport. I would happily sign a petition calling for the end of animals in human forms of entertainment. Sport is, essentially entertainment. It doesn’t matter who or what wins, we just use it as a distraction from the more important aspects of our lives, such as our moral duty to save this planet and ensure everyone has enough to eat and freedom to be what they want. [Deep breath] Here goes:
Animals should not be used for sport
I’m pretty sure that this also goes for greyhound racing, fishing, cock fighting etc. As I said, this topic is one that I have been thinking about gradually and so “pretty sure” means I am working through the arguments in my head and trying to decide on what is “right”. Just in case you are wondering, I do NOT need a god to help me decide what is just.
I am happy for humans to be used in sport. Having said that, we generally don’t have to “destroy” humans if they fall in a race. Yes, some sports people die for what they do and that is sad, but at least they were (hopefully) aware of the risks.
I am reasonably happy to grow animals for food. I like eating meat and poultry and fish. I am aware of the inefficiencies of us growing meat to eat and that is a problem I should think about another time. We specifically grow animals to kill and then eat. I understand that, morally, that is different from growing animals to use as ENTERTAINMENT. This does not make me an hypocrite, just in case you were thinking that. I’ll explain my rationality for you: growing and eating animals to survive as humans is ok, growing animals for entertainment is not. Whether it is justifiable to grow animals for food, given the energy constraints this world faces I shall deal with another time.
I do know that when I try to put my thoughts down in writing that I struggle a little to get my ideas across. This is because writing is not a natural thing for me. I also haven’t spent all my time covering every aspect of this communication because I haven’t got the time. What you are reading here is the condensed version, putting my argument as simply as possible and trying to justify it. If you have problems with what I say, I don’t care. Perhaps you will start to think about this and work out what your arguments are.
The car had to go to the tyre and brake people this week. I had noticed the feel of the brake pedal was changing slightly from smooth to a bit jerky when releasing pressure. This didn’t really concern me but the fact that the rear discs were looking rusty and there was only a thin band of clean metal had me worried.
The car went in to ATS Euromaster at 08:30 and I’d had the call by about 09:30. New pads and discs at the rear (I’d expected that), two new tyres as the fronts were worn to just about legal. I hadn’t really expected that but then I don’t hang around and a little sliding when it’s damp is good fun (no kids in the car and only where it’s safe and there’s space). I had mentioned that there was a slow puncture on the nearside rear tyre and it’s just aswell.
When I went to pick up the car it was still on the jacks so the guys could show me the problem that was causing the slow puncture. The inside of the tyre where the join normally occurs and is “welded” nicely was just a split. It had gone down to steel and would eventually have caused some serious issues. They believe it was a manufacturing fault and the tyre has been sent back to Pirelli and I hope I get a refund and I ended up paying for 3 tyres.
An interesting little fact that I hadn’t considered was that the new tyres went on the rear of the car and the worn tyres were swapped to the front. This is to try and ensure that when the car is on the limit it will understeer rather than oversteer. Understeer is much safer that oversteer and so by keeping the grip at the rear of the car (especially an estate where the rear is quite light) the car is safer to drive. Nice.
315 feet is the stopping distance of a car travelling at 70mph. This is the number given in the Highway Code. Most cars will stop much shorter than that. Should you ever be lost for a stopping distance then the formula s=v+(v^2)/20 works to give you the Highway Code numbers. The thinking and reaction time is the same number of feet as miles per hour and then the actual breaking distance is proportional to the speed squared. It’s all down to kinetic energy! See the Wolfram|Alpha stopping distance calculation here.
First things first. I love my dog. He is wonderful company, very playful and more than a little crazy. He doesn’t necessarily do as he is told but he fits in well to my family.
The renewal notice for his insurance came through about a week ago and the yearly premium has changed from GBP 400 to GBP 640. This was apparently due to increasing vet’s costs and his age being more of a concern. The whole reason I got the dog insured was to save on vet’s bills. Also, he’s only six years old and so has some way to go before he takes his final walk. A GBP 20 a month increase, or more than 50% increase, seems a little high.
I went to a price comparison website to see what other offers I could get and there were companies willing to insure him for last year’s rates but they would not cover pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately for us, George has had a few fits over the couple of years and should this become more of a problem than it is currently then a new insurer would not cover that cost. Bugger.
I phoned my current company and they said they could reduce the level of cover to a lower premium which sounded nice, but it would be the same as taking out new insurance and so pre-existing problems would, again, not be covered. Double Bugger.
It would appear that I am stuck with these ludicrous price increases for the insurance for my dog. It would, in all honesty, be cheaper to buy a new dog each year than pay my new premiums!
Apologies to Terry Pratchet for the title of this communication.
The other day I got a letter from Domestic and General who are the people who underwrite my PS3 insurance. My payments are to increase from £4.99 to £7.99! That’s a 75% increase! Now even given the ironic situation of times past I have phoned D&G and cancelled my policy. Somehow £60 a year seemed ok but nearly £96 is ridiculous. I’ve also cancelled my Sky+HD insurance as I’ve just had a new box.
Now, if the PS3 dies I’ll buy another. They are cheap enough. Then I’ll do my best to fix my classic 60 Gb model. It’s lovely! Lots of USB ports, PS2 backwards compatibility (suck on that you later model users), multimedia card slots and SACD playback because, yes, I bought some of those!
Now I just need to remember to back up my game saves regularly.
The date is 16 August 2011. A few days ago I had a chat with a friend of mine in Washington D.C. and we discussed the downgrading of the USA’s credit rating by Standard and Poor’s. We both agreed that there are at least two or three more years of finacial repercussions of the 2008 financial crisis.
It looks as though the Euro might implode and other countries might find themselves being downgraded. I don’t think the Euro will disappear it is too important for that but I do believe that there is going to be a whole lot more of hurt for the whole world as markets realign the worth of everything. Ministers and world leaders aren’t allowed to speak the truth about the markets for fear that it will make things happen quicker. Those who we expect to speak for the countries are largely self interested and afraid of completely wrecking what is seen as a broken system (by me). This inability to speak of more financial pain is leading to a protraction of the crisis.
I am glad that I work for the state in a roundabout way and not in the service sector. I think the next few years are going to go from pretty bad to worse. Such is life.
It would be nice to see governments finally reigning in corporations and banks so that there is more regulation. It appears that those in charge of these institutions over the last few years have made their cash and are now nicely retired in their gated homes.
Oh for the good old days of stability!? When was that?
