2016 — 26 July: Tuesday
Having answered some Kodi-related email1 I'm contemplating the whichness of the why, some breakfast, and then perhaps a little adventure ahead of tomorrow's walk, Thursday's lunch, and Friday's walk. Busy chap, me.
Interesting
Those poor banks:
Shortly before the credit crunch, Cheltenham & Gloucester building society launched a mortgage deal that tracked the main Bank of England lending rate minus 1.01%. When the Bank cut interest rates to 0.5% in 2009, that suggested borrowers would have to pay -0.51%. Instead, C&G cut the rate to 0.01% — its computers could not handle mortgages at 0% — but did not actually go negative. Any challenge to negative interest on deposit accounts may cite the example of C&G.
Given how relatively few subjects in the "Untied" Kingdom actually have much by way of savings... [Pause] Or is this just a sneaky way of introducing those infamous "bank charges" that were a feature of life in earlier times (not to mention a feature of the game of Monopoly)? I will never understand the dismal science.
O me miserum
There's a depressing conclusion to this piece, too:
Cameron warned of "the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations". He was right. It's just that it's been led by those at the top – the ones at the boardroom tables, their expensive helpers – and their mates and supporters in politics using taxpayer money to wave them on.
Uplifting lit?
She makes quite a good case:
The whole-hearted embrace of kink by other romance novelists, however, means that the modern romance novel might well take its motto from John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. "There should be different experiments of living ... free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; ... the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when anyone thinks fit to try them." Whatever romantic or erotic interest a reader has — heterosexuality, bisexuality, homosexuality, BDSM, threesomes, moresomes, vampires, aliens, threesomes with vampires and aliens, angels, demons, werewolves and other werecreatures in their human or animal forms — there is a romance novel out there for the reader who wants to read about it.
I shall be...
... studying the "Full Test" in this issue very carefully:
My wondrous...
... electricity supplier has decided the one thing missing from my life is some sort of Sky Cinema streamed access. Can I just have a discount instead, please?
Kodification progress...
... is lazily captured here:
The 141 folders of XML stubs represent about 4,000 TV episodes of one sort or another spread across a set of physical DVDs and BDs. Tomorrow I'll start on TV material beginning with the letter "J". It's more fun than the "news" and much less harmful to my peace of mind.