2007 — 21 June: Some numbers don't add up
Good old Guardian. While busily concealing over £1,000,000,000 payments by BAE1 to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, two inches below that "doesn't sound as if it would pass the 'sunshine' test, does it?" story comes the sorry news that the cost of allowing brave citizens (sorry, loyal subjects) to roam the countryside here in the Land of the not-so-Free is going to cost me (and other tax payers) £52,600,000. Nice to see that "ministers have no idea how many people are taking advantage of the new rights."
Try brushing a bottle with these... department
They're out in force, just across the road:
There are two close-ups here.
It's a poor show... department
When a chap's got back from a photographic expotition to Totton and the New Forest (even, nearly, unto Buckler's Hard) and a delightful pub lunch in the East End Arms and he finds his eagerly-awaited DVD boxed set of Picket Fences (Season One) has finally shown up, it's a poor show for him to discover that not only has the grasping Revenue decided that the £34-99 price shown on the packet constitutes merchandise (rather than a well-deserved gift from a chap to himself) thus neatly side-stepping the £36 limit that triggers Customs charges but allows the imposition of £6-12 VAT, but the even more grasping Royal Mail charges a further £8 as the International Clearance Fee.
Were I the bean-counting type, I might conclude this changed the Viability of the Business Model. However, as the TV Series in question comes from the Boston Legal stable, I live in continued hope. It dates back to 1992, and was classified as similar to the all-time great Northern Exposure.
Speaking of continued hope, I just ordered, and hope to be able to speak well of, my new external 1TB USB/Firewire400/Firewire800 drive by 26th June.2 The Apple store made me an offer on this Iomega drive I found impossible to refuse. It will free up one of the Western Digital 320GB MyBook drives (gee, how tiny!) to resume duty as networked storage for the household despite the comparatively low speed of the internal network in these here parts.
Approaching 8 pm and not a single CD ripped today. What a pleasant change!