2015 — 26 June: Friday
It's mildly depressing to see1 just how much work some people are prepared to put into dishonest labour. (And I refuse to believe that any sentient human who watches "Orange is the New Black" can have the faintest desire to spend time in prison.) Mind you, I have no current need to "safeguard my privacy" on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn. That alone already puts me in something of a minority. But then so does running a Linux desktop.
Yet more promising weather...
... as I make plans for an afternoon tea and biccie sortie across the village. It's already far too late to dodge the crowd of Friday shoppers this morning so I shall, for a change, be enjoying a leisurely breakfast.
I wonder...
... how much my son, who attended a secondary school named (I assume; I could be wrong) after Arnold Toynbee, knows about him? My own ignorance is profound. Source and snippet, from an interesting essay:
Today, technology cries out for robust criticism. As Toynbee recognised, scientific principles and technical innovations might help us build a better railway, a faster locomotive — but they aren't very good at telling us who can buy tickets, what direction we should lay the track, or whether we should be taking the train at all. "Man," he wrote in Civilisation on Trial (1948), "cannot live by technology alone."
Though he can certainly die by it.
Beard and Cerf...
... are still making me smile:
Within a week of...
... my initial attempt to offload dear Mama's BP shares I'm just back from paying in a cheque for the sale proceeds, before making a bite to eat and heading back out (via my opticians) for that afternoon rendezvous with a biscuit barrel. The share price had twitched up a little from its level on the day after her death — just enough to offset the £150 seller's fee, in fact, which strikes me as neat. I wonder if that constitutes "instant karma"?
Reading what our guvmint has to say about Capital Gains Tax is a fun way to spend some quality time. But if "You also don't have to pay Capital Gains Tax if all your gains in a year are under your tax-free allowance" means what I simplemindedly think it means, there's no CGT liability to be coughed up. The total value of her shares was itself less than said allowance, so whatever their gain in value (if any) has been since she first started buying the things (at the tag end of the 1980s) that gain is likewise necessarily less than said allowance. Meanwhile, of course, the ol' dear's been paying tax at source on all the dividends paid out over the years.
Death and taxes: Life's eternal verities.
I've yet to check...
... but I'm pretty sure the evening concert is currently a piece by Shostakovich. [Pause] His "Symphony for strings and woodwind" isn't a piece I know, but I'm enjoying it. His music has been slowly growing on me (as it were) since I heard the world premiere recording (transmitted by the BBC) of his Symphony #15 with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by his son Maxim very early in 1972. My ancient cassette of that isn't even Dolby B. It's my sixth classical tape.