#BP It's OK to smoke in petrol stations #FAIL

Some time ago I was returning home late at night, and pulled into the BP petrol station on the A17 at East Heckington. On walking in there was a clear cigarette fug in the shop. So much so I almost left in disgust without paying (and now wish I had).

So I complained to BP, and suggested they might want to sort things out. After a while they got back to me; but no - it wasn't their problem as it was a franchise operation - so they passed it on to the operator of the garage. I felt this missed the point.

Several weeks later I chase, and then chase again.

Today I am informed that the operator has left the franchise so it's nothing to do with BP any more. So it would appear that if it says BP on the front, and BP on the inside, it can actually turn out not to be BP's problem. Maybe that's how they plan to get out of the blame for the oil pollution problem they have right now.

For me, if it says BP, then it is BP. I don't care about franchises and operators. I use the name on the door as a measure for trust. BP (even ignoring the current Gulf of Mexico situation which is pretty difficult to do) is clearly not a trustworthy brand.
No more BP fuel for me.


PS later on I realised they also were charging VAT at 15% instead of the 17.5% they should have been charging since the beginning of the year. So that was reported to HMRC


PPS let's not forget, it's also illegal to smoke in the workplace AND dangerous to smoke in petrol stations

Strange but true - probabilities

@exitthelemming (Samuel West) posted an interesting question today, which took me back to early grammar school maths – and an answer I’ve wanted to publicly show off ever since!

His question was:
Q: My World Cup sticker album has spaces for 638 stickers. How many packets of 5 must I buy before it's more than 50% likely I get a swopsy?

So, on the face of it, many people might think that it would be a number approaching 319 (half the number of stickers), however this is not the case.

Before I show the answer though, there is an important caveat – the answer to this question assumes that the 638 stickers are evenly distributed in all the packets, and that the manufacturers have not pulled the usual trick of having a few rare stickers to bump up sales of the packets. So, the maths (and many thanks to Rob Williams – my superb maths teacher from Davenant Foundation Grammar School in the 70’s) is:

The probability of the first sticker that you have is 638/638 or 1. It has to be unique.

For the second sticker to be different it must be any 1 of the 637 remaining possibilities, so that is a probability of 637/638 or 99.8433% (to 4 decimal places).

Likewise for the third sticker to be unique – 636/638 or 99.6865% (to 4 dp again).

So you can carry on with this 635/638, 634/638…

So this gives us the probability of any sticker being different from all the preceding stickers.

So the probability of the first three stickers being unique is the product of all three probabilities – 1 times 637/638 times 636/638 (or 1 * 99.8433 * 99.6865) which is 99.5303%.

If you extrapolate these figures, then for any given number of stickers, you can calculate the probability that all of them are unique. Therefore, subtract this probability from 1 and you have the chance of there being 1 or more duplicates in your collection. The spreadsheet numbers are shown below. But more surprisingly the number of cards before a duplicate is more than 50% likely is 31. So if you are collecting world cup stickers, you have a 50% chance of a duplicate (assuming even distribution) when you buy the 7th packet.

Although the spreadsheet above was a new one for me, the one that Rob Williams taught us (although in those days it was pen, paper and slide rule!) shows that if you have 23 people in a room, then there is a greater than 50% chance that 2 of them share a birthday. So that means in any school (provided classes are randomly distributed by birthday) every other class should have 2 children sharing a birthday.
 
 

Look into my eyes!

Cat 5 (or 6 - they joined the family together), can be a right *&^%^ nuisance (she does like to bring in undamaged, live animals), but at the same time, she'll look you right in the eye.

This captures her, and her attitude perfectly.

I hope you like it

Why a Lab/Lib coalition might be better all round

25th May Blog Updated: to remove a description some thought unfair - and with benefit of hindsight it might have been

You know, I cannot help thinking the quicker Clegg gets into bed with Labour the better. He has been quite pious about doing what the people want, but negotiating in secret with one party whilst public discussing with the others is dishonourable, and inconsistent.


A Lab/Lib pact would be doomed as it will depend on even smaller minority parties to stay alive against a determined Conservative/DUP attack, and as such the English will pay to keep the Nationalists onside. (as John Reid has already stated)


In all the negotiations the LibDems seem to be far more fixated on sorting out electoral reform than sorting out the horrendous mess that is the current UK economy (another £10b down the drain yesterday to support the failing Euro).

At some time, the whole thing will fail (I’d say in the Autumn) – probably on some incredibly minor political point, and then the public will be able to express a view on the coalition of losers. Cameron will be able to present a “I told you so” view of
• political machinations unchanged from the last parliament with grubby behind closed doors dealing
• judging by the Venn diagram from the Telegraph here, a whole raft of policies that were voted for, but not enacted
• and undoubtedly either a raft of unpopular fiscal measures on which Cameron can say both a) I told you so, b) you did not explicitly vote for


Thank you and good morning!