Back in Edinburgh

Staying a bit further away down the Royal Mile, so shank's pony down the hill to this. An intersting contrast!

Apologies for typos - the perils of mobile computing :-)

In my haste I let the mobile phone get away with some typos on the last post - I'll correct my English as soon as I get near a full keyboard and screen!!!

Twitter

The jury's still out for me on this one. I've signed up (@pjbryant if you're interested) but spent a bit of time experimenting with a number of apps for Windows Mobile before settling over the past few weeks on Twikini (http://www.trinketsoftware.com/Twikini). Why?

1. Well it was in beta
2. It was therefore £0
3. It actually worked (most of the time - it was beta!) unlike some I could name...
4. It was visually simple,and had clean lines (as an example - see the image here)

It's allowed me to experimentwith the genre, but I'm still not sure what the point is....

Guess!

What is it with Italian coffee shops in the UK?

The look is good, the sound is good, the faux accents are good, the food is (generally) good.

But the coffee - overheated, scorched, mouth burning and weak to boot. I can do far better at home.

The chains may cost more, use inferior coffee beans, but their baristas can generally get the temperature right...

Presumably...

Bob Quick will be organising an anti-terror raid on the Telegraph's office in a mo...

I don't get it

I'm not the most expensive consultant in IT, but i'm not cheap either.

I just don't clients that are wiling to have you sit around twiddling your thumbs for 2 hours whilst waiting for some credentials, whilst they go and do something.

Ultimately I don't mind being paid for nothing, but it devalues what I do, and is frustrating. And eventually everyone pays through unnecessary business costs...

Inequality of treatment

About 9% (I think that's the latest figure) of road deaths are directly related to speeding. Yet policing of our roads is almost exclusively speed cameras now raising over £250,000 a day in fines (soon to go up 25% with a "victim levy").

Cameras don't catch insurance cheats, bald tyres, unsafe cars, unlicensed drivers...

Now I read that violent assault victims have gone up by 50% in terms of hospital admissions. Of these about 50% are alcohol related. Govt/police action - nowt.

Time to call time on our 24hr drinking experiment? Time to make sure kids aren't drinking? Time to stop the growth of alcopops that encourage children to drink sweet flavoured alcohol?

1918 flu

I'm sure I remember reading a few months ago that scientists were disinterring a few victims of the 1918 Spanish flu to genome type the virus that caused that outbreak.

Hope they didn't send samples to Mexico for analysis...

Oh, and whilst i'm on it..

Howcome it's always taxpayers' monies that are saved, but Govt money that is spent?

Housing

For quite a few years the Govt has (pretty much) imposed house building quotas on unelected regional assemblies (that cost the taxpayer a fortune); these then get foisted on elected local govt, and anger or upset residents.

Today I read that there are 960,000 empty houses (mostly rural) on which VAT would be due if renovations are done (whereas new builds are VAT free). Where's the sanity in keeping nearly a million homes empty and building more instead. Let whatever money is swishing around help fix these homes, and if jobs need to move out (or more telecommuting) then let it. Rural communities have taken quite a battering from Nouveau Labour over the years, I don't suppose they'll change, but...