Goodnight Speedbird

The last ever Concorde flight took place today. Concorde 216 flew from Heathrow to Bristol today, landing at just after 1pm. It's a sad say for British Aviation. The first and, so far, only Supersonic passenger liner has been turned into a museum piece.

GO ON ENGLAND!

YEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are WORLD CHAMPIONS!

England Win the Rugby Union World Cup

WELL DONE ENGLAND! Jonny & Clive deserve more medals than the ones they got! :)

Even I wouldn't call 999 because...

Carla didn't leave me anything to eat. Unlike this guy.

You can find more of these examples of 999 calls here.

Hubble

Now this is pretty cool.

You need the flash player to see the movie and it's a big file so if you're on dialup expect a wait but it's really pretty cool. A movie of some of the galaxies / nebulas that the Hubble space telescope has allowed us to see in detail for the first time.

Great news for FG fans!

It looks like Family Guy may be making a return!

Along with King of the Hill FG has got to be one of the greatest adult cartoons ever made. Fantastic news if it comes back... Rejoice!

Bush / Blair

I was going to blog about the protests in London and Edinburgh but Funtime Franky has already done it and said pretty much what I was going to.

I also noted that today the protesters were being called "anti-American" by some media outlets... While I certainly agree that some may have anti-American feeling from what I can see the protests are about one man, not the entire country. Most Americans I know are peace-loving people who don't want Bush in the Whitehouse (never forget he was appointed POTUS, not elected). The majority of popular votes went Gore's way (Gore 50,996,116 / Bush 50,456,169). That's a popular majority of 539,947 to Gore.

Unfortunately some other Americans I know think he's doing a good job. Sigh.

I'd also like to take the opportunity to remind people of the 25 year relationship the Bush's have had with the bin Laden's...

I'm NOT a Saddam apologist nor am I Anti-American, I just genuinely believe that Bush is doing a horrible job and the fact that both he and the British Prime Minister lied about going to war is unforgiveable. And the fact that they've turned the argument around to "Saddam was horrid and the world is a better place without him" (a fact I don't deny) shows they lied about WMD's and they think we're stupid enough not to notice that they've changed their tune about the reasons for war.

At CostOfWar you will find a running total of the cost of this unecessary war which so far could have paid for over one MILLION school teachers for a whole year!

You can also find a daily review of the distortion that the Bush administration uses at the Misleader.

And as my parting shot, a song. Sung in the style of "If you're happy and you know it"

If you cannot find Osama,
bomb Iraq.

If the markets are a drama,
bomb Iraq.

If the terrorists are frisky,
Pakistan is looking shifty,
North Korea is too risky,
Bomb Iraq.

If we have no allies with us,
bomb Iraq.

If we think someone has dissed us,
bomb Iraq.

So to hell with the inspections,
Let's look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions,
Bomb Iraq.

It's "pre-emptive non-aggression",
bomb Iraq.

Let's prevent this mass destruction,
bomb Iraq.

They've got weapons we can't see,
And it's good enough for me,
'Cos it's all the proof I need
Bomb Iraq.

If you never were elected, bomb Iraq.

If your mood is quite dejected,
bomb Iraq.

If you think Saddam's gone mad,
With the weapons that he had,
(And he tried to kill your dad),
Bomb Iraq.

If your corporate fraud is growin',
bomb Iraq.

If your ties to it are showin',
bomb Iraq.

If your politics are sleazy,
And hiding ain't that easy,
And your manhood's getting queasy,
Bomb Iraq.

Fall in line and follow orders,
bomb Iraq.

For our might knows not our borders,
bomb Iraq.

Disagree? We'll call it treason,
Let's make war not love this season,
Even if we have no reason,
Bomb Iraq.

Dr. Who is back!

OK, it's only a webisode but it's better than nothing. At least for now...

Bush

George Soros has decided that Bush has to go. Good luck to him. This president is a disaster, both for the United States and the World in general.

The recent news that Bush's security detail wanted to close down Central London for three days just shows how much he wants to control the media and attempt to show that the rest of the world agrees with the neo-conservative doctrine of pre-emptive permanent war.

Have we got news for you, Mr. Bush... The rest of the world does not agree with you or your neo-conservative ways. Even normal Americans are starting to see through what you and your disastrous administration are up to - finally. Perhaps when Americans see British protestors on the streets protesting about Bush they'll start to say "hey, perhaps there's more to this than we're being led to believe by our unfair and unbalanced news media."

One can only hope.

This burns me up...

OK, someone has a wicked sense of humour. This morning, after Carla had posted about the current difficulties in the IT market that I'm facing a leaflet drops through the door with this text on...

Make your living as a...

Thousands of jobs available NOW!

Sorry, where are these jobs exactly? I've been applying for a number of jobs that I absolutely 100% can definitely do (probably going on for 10 a week) since I was made redundant by my previous scum-sucking bottom-feeding employer with no response whatsoever.

Looking around at various jobseeker boards and going off the response Carla's post got (though not mine - perhaps I should just close comments on this page as no-one seems to bother anyway) it seems that this is a very widespread phenomenon. I wanted to take a law course this year but was too late to signup with the local college for it. Sigh.

I can already see that I'm almost certainly going to have to retrain to do something else and have I.T. as a hobby as it seems that the pendulum as swung completely in the other direction and now, as long as you can sell something and you're willing to throw your own grandmother into the deal, you can get a job as a sales guy without much problem. I don't want to work in sales. Why on earth would I? Especially with skills that should be perfectly marketable (cisco, wireless networking, general networking, WAN, procurement, server skills etc etc etc)?

So, perhaps I'll bide my time doing a warehouse job as I know at least one other person who's pretty talented is doing. At least it'll be bringing in some cash.

Or, perhaps I'll retrain with the company who had the leaflet dropped through my door this morning. After all the examples they give sound awesome...

• Knowing I have a qualification in IT is such a bonus. I know I can apply for new jobs if I need to. There seem to be so many these days, it's good to know I've got a choice.
• At last I can actually look forward to going to work and I have the confidence to make the most of new and exciting career opportunities.
• Now I've got a career I can actually enjoy, a job with genuine prospects. My future feels so much more secure.

Where did they get these people from? A parallel universe? One where techies are actually wanted and respected? I don't believe a word printed on the leaflet as I can see through my own experience it's all lies.

Travel Insurance

Message to anyone even thinking about going abroad, even for a day or weekend..

DON'T GO WITHOUT TAKING TRAVEL INSURANCE!

The value of Travel Insurance has been proven to me this year in a very big way, as I was struck down with type-1 diabetes while on Holiday in Canada (as you'll already know if you read this blog regularly. I do have regular readers right? No? OK.)

Basically, the 60 ukp I spent on annual travel insurance I was sure I wasn't going to need paid for itself 166 times over! If I hadn't had insurance I would have had to settle $20,000 CAD of medical expenses on my own! You should never travel without travel insurance, just on the off chance that something does happen.

Annual travel insurance doesn't have to be expensive, the 60 quid deal I bought this year covered myself and Carla anywhere in the World for up to 60 days duration. I won't get that deal again (because they won't cover the diabetes and the insulin and supplies I now have to carry everywhere) but boy was I glad I got it this time.

Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

War Declared

Adam Kalsey has declared war on comment spammers.

By way of this entry, I sign the manifesto and join him and others in the war. There will be many battles but we will win!

I personally haven't seen any of this type of spam yet but I guess it's merely just time before I do. I have taken pre-emptive steps to protect both my and Carla's blogs from spam by installing the excellent mt blacklist plugin. If you use MT to publish your blog you should run not walk to go get and install this marvel. Even you can upload 3 files and protect your blog!

NHS Spending on Diabetic treatments

Just come across an interesting graph which shows what the NHS has spent on Diabetic treatments in the quarter to June 2003.

Makes for interesting reading although you do have to make some assumptions about the quantities involved.

If we assume that the glucose testing strips (an absolute necessity for ANY diabetic) are prescribed in batches of 100 then we can see that the average cost per prescription is 23.42 ukp and therefore the cost per strip is 23.42 pence. Although I understand that these are little electrodes and probably complex to develop that does seem a little extortionate.

I know when I had to buy my first batch in Canada I had to pay $85 Canadian for a box of 100 strips...

I did absolutely observe that the meters were generally given away or heavily subsidised if you bought some strips for it though so it is perfectly obvious where the relevent drug companies make their money on diabetes care.

When I got home I was prescribed the same strips here but they didn't work in my meter. I called the customer care line (mainly because the chemist couldn't be bothered to do it for me, even though they had no idea why the strips wouldn't work) and it turned out that the north american strips were incompatible with the english meter. No explanation was given but they did send me out a new meter.

I find this very interesting though, especially given that I KNOW the two strips are made in the same factory, probably side by side. Why on earth would they make the meters incompatible?

Another interesting one is the cost of intermediate or long-acting insulin. We see here that the average cost is 42.78 ukp per batch. Again, if I make an assumption that this is the cost for 10 cartridges and therefore the cost per cartridge is 4.28 ukp. I'm not sure if this is reasonable or not though it probably is... Would love to get a proper breakdown so that I could see how much these treatments cost per unit.

Thankfully, diabetics in the UK treated with anything other than diet and exercise get a medical exemption and don't have to pay for anything they get on prescription. If this wasn't the case I know this insane disease would be costing me a fortune every month.

On another related note I had a rant about misinformation on the NHS direct website a week or two ago. I note with interest they have changed the relevent text now to Type 11 diabetes is so closely linked to obesity that simply losing weight and changing lifestyle can greatly reduce the risk of developing it.

No doubt many diabetics either called or emailed to complain and have the text changed. Good.

Accomplishments

OK, most days I reckon I'm doing alright even though I don't have a pile of money saved or a great career, then I find something like this and I start to wonder where I went wrong (apart from the last one obviously).

At age 33:

English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote "Vindication of the Rights of Women"

Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic alone.

Vaudeville performer Walter Nilsson rode across the United States on an 8 1/2 foot unicycle.

Successful merchant Cyrus West Field retired at age 33 to devote himself to laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable.

John Knowles published A Separate Peace, which was immediately successful.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his essay, "Nature," encouraging readers to see the miraculous in the common.

Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh and 80 others die after cult members set fire to their compound.

Agency Police

As an aside to what I said in the previous entry about agencies I note that a site has been set up to name and shame the guilty agencies...

Go have a look at the Agency Police.

Jobs

OK. What's going on? I'm an experienced manager with a reasonably technical background and yet I can't even manage to persuade anyone to give me even an interview or pick up the phone...

The economy can't be that bad surely? Apparently it's doing well enough that the Bank of England decided to raise interest rates yesterday. Oh no, wait, that's because the housing market is overheating and Briton's have record amounts of personal debt and won't help small businesses at all.

I've got to say, it's pretty irritating to apply for a number of jobs and get no response even though you KNOW the recruiter has seen the email as they haven't set their mail client not to respond to receipt requests. Even a quick email saying "sorry, you're not suitable for this position" would be better than no response at all. Not responding is just plain rude.

Here's hoping I'll get something soon. There appears to be quite a bit out there but the marketplace also appears to be full of rude people who don't bother responding to you.

Perhaps this is the point where I just need to say "sack it" to this country and move to Canada where they seem to be struggling with some of the same issues but the standard of living is sooooo much higher than here. Don't know - not sure yet but if nothing appears to be forthcoming soon it will be a very serious consideration.