2016 — 2 November: Wednesday
Of course, the darker evenings are compensated for by lighter mornings.1 Tea doesn't change, thank goodness, in its ability to kickstart the proprietor into wakefulness.
A momentary panic...
... until I realise that the longer-than-usual startup was preceded by a request for the F1 key to select my user name rather than just typing in my password. A sign that the file system has just been checking itself. All is well.
I need to read...
... more cheery news and opinion than this:
That is partly why May took a casual dig at the Bank of England in her party conference speech, fretting about the harmful consequences of low interest rates and quantitative easing, adding — in the tone of ominous imprecision that is becoming her trademark — that "change
has got to come".
I doubt she realised that this would be taken as a licence to kill by Carney's would-be Tory assassins... But for Brexit Bolsheviks, bent on total revolution, the Treasury itself is untrustworthy — a redoubt of obstructive pro-Europeanism that can mesmerise Philip Hammond with
evidential hocus-pocus.
Should I try Madame Blavatsky? Or just a batch of that chilly fresh air out there? Toot, toot!
We picked...
... a day of excellent weather for our walk. The near-Durley loop, all roads, but very little traffic. One of our trio is taking it easy after a nasty bout of 'flu knocked him around last week. [Pause] Meanwhile, Big Bro is now visiting beanie shops on my behalf since the delivery to him, yesterday, of his requested (but over-weight) 2017 Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue.
I was amused...
... to read this magnificent piece of HMRC subtle understatement in one of their fact sheets. Snippet:
The Contracted-out Deduction can only be offset against additional State Pension built up before 1997 — the basic State Pension is unaffected. This feature of State Pension and contracting out is little understood and is likely to be of more interest as people become more aware of the new State Pension.
I don't think I could have put it any better myself :-)
A happy little trio...
... of identified trouble-makers, according to the boss of MI5:
- Islamic-inspired terror, which he calls "enduring and generational"
- terrorism in Northern Ireland — from what he calls "dissident republicans of various sorts"
- the covert threat from foreign governments. He is most exercised about Russia
Nurse! More meds, please.
Here endeth, by the way, my first complete decade as a pensioner! "What a long, strange, trip it's been" (to borrow a phrase).