The numbers game.

Whoever it is who runs the saynoto870.com website deserves a medal, but isn't it a scandal that such a site has to exist? For anyone not aware of what's going on - and has been going on for years now - when you ring a telephone number starting with 0870, you will be charged between two and three times more than to a normal non-local number, and part of what you pay will go to the company you are phoning! No surprise then that more often than not when you call such a number you have to spend time going through an automated menu, and then be put on hold before you finally speak to a person. The point is, of course, that it is in the interests of whoever you are calling to keep you on the line as long as possible - the longer you're on, the more money they make. How this was ever allowed to happen in the first place is an outrage, and even more outrageous is the fact that Ofcom, who are supposed to look after our interests, have spent years looking the other way, and even now, when they have finally grasped the nettle and decided to do something about it, nothing will change until at least 2008. What a disgrace!

Tick, tock....

Well, it's coming up to changing the clocks time again - I've had a moan about this before - this time last year in fact. The more I think about it, the more the whole thing seems to be an unnecessary faff. The idea of putting the clocks forward really originated in World War I, and was a perfectly sensible measure designed to maximise the amount of war work which could be done in daylight - you have to remember of course that the standard of artificial lighting back then was pretty poor. Much the same considerations prevailed in the Second World War, when we had the blackout to contend with, so Double Summer Time was introduced, with the clocks two hours ahead of GMT. But what's the rationale today? Certainly factories and offices no longer rely in any way on daylight to do their thing. The usual explanation is that it's for the benefit of the farmers and others who work outdoors, but what I can never understand is that no amount of tinkering with the clocks can alter the amount of daylight available, so how does it matter when that is? In the depth of winter say, you've got somewhere between 6 and 8 hours of daylight, depending on just where you are in these islands, to do whatever you've got to do, so what difference does it make just when that starts and finishes? Please can we take a sensible look at this?

Damned by association

"Gas-guzzling 4 x 4s" are in the news again, with proposals to penalise them by charging them more for on-road parking. Problem is that when this item appeared on TV, the accompanying pictures were not of 4 x 4s at all, but of people carriers, such as the Ford Galaxy or the Renault Espace, and indeed most people do not differentiate between the two types of vehicle. But whereas there is little or no reason for an urban dweller to run a 4 x 4, the same does not go for a people carrier. I have a friend (yes, I do have friends!) who has three school-age children, and who child-minds two, and at times three toddlers. So do the maths - there's no way she can get them all in a standard car. For her, and others like her, a people carrier is a necessity.

Progress report

Six months now, and still trying to come to terms with what's happened, and this new unwanted life which now faces me. What I have found of some help is a quote from the late Queen Mother of all people. What she was doing talking about bereavement I don't know, but apparently she said "You don't get over it, but you do get better at it". I've found this of real practical assistance because it gives me something achievable to aim for - forget trying to get over it, I never will, just concentrate on getting better at dealing with it. And I think I am - I still have my moments, when for no apparent reason it all sweeps over me, and I break down and howl like a baby for a few minutes, but such incidents are becoming fewer and when they're over, I'm able to look at myself and say "Just what was all that about then?" So I'm still truckin' as the saying goes, even if I haven't yet got out of second gear.

Don't answer back!

I know nothing about the modern pop scene, but my attention was caught by the story of a girl pop group who were singing at a football match when they were subjected to foul-mouthed abuse from a section of the crowd. They responded in kind. Result? They were arrested and fined. Unfortunately it seems to be a commonplace these days that you get punished for retaliating, whereas the instigator gets away with it. Somehow it just doesn't seem right.

Nasty smell.

Some 80 years ago Parliament acted to restrict the right of the media to publish salacious details of divorce proceedings. In 1969 Parliament made a well-intentioned but half-hearted attempt to get away from the idea of a divorce law based on fault to one based on the purely factual concept of irretrievable breakdown. How sad then to see the McCartneys' dirty linen being so publicly washed. Of course, they are both public figures, and there may therefore be an element of the "there is no such thing as bad publicity" principle involved. Whatever, I find it depressingly unpleasant.

I yam wot I yam!

Big news story about research which has shown that people are throwing sensitive personal information out with their domestic waste, and about how this could be used to steal their identity. I certainly religiously shred any document which has any sort of reference number connected to me on, but what I can't understand is that it is suggested that you should also shred anything with your name and address on. Why? My name and address is a matter of public record - if you want to know who lives at my address you don't need to rifle through my wheelie-bin, you simply look my address up on the electoral register. If you only have my name and want to know where I live, you need look no further than the telephone directory, so I can't see the point - or have I missed something?

Remember Raquel Welsh in a fur bikini?

My younger grandson, like most kids of his age I suppose, is heavily into dinosaurs, and I was trying to give him an idea of just how long ago it was they were around. He had the idea - probably from various films - that they co-existed with primitive man. So I came up with the concept for him of a time machine which enabled you to travel back in time at the rate of one year every second. So in just a minute or so you could be back in the middle of the Second World War. Ten minutes would take you back to the time of Chaucer - five or so minutes more to the Battle of Hastings. In just over a hour you could be watching the building of the pyramids or possibly Stonehenge. But to get back to the dawn of homo sapiens will take you getting on for five days, and to that of our earliest human ancestors the best part of two months. And the dinosaurs? What do you think? A few more days? A few more weeks? Well to get back to even the last days of the dinosaurs - the point at which they became extinct - would take a little over two years, and to the point at which they first appeared, no less than seven years! The results surprised even me, so I thought I'd share them.

For whom the bell tolls (again)

A new report suggests that more than 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the US/UK invasion of 2003. The Americans dismiss this finding as not credible, and the US commander in Iraq has said that he has "not seen a number higher than 50,000". So that's OK then......

What are you hiding?

Jack Straw's comments on Muslim women who cover their faces by wearing what I now understand are called the Niqab and the Burqa have predictably polarised public opinion. I have to say that I always feel slightly uncomfortable when I come across such women - particularly those wearing the Burqa, where the face is completely covered, with just a mesh over the eyes for them to see through. But why? Straw bringing the issue out into the open has made me think about this, and I've come to the conclusion that, for me, it's not anything to do with it being a statement of difference or anything like that - it's simply that I associate people covering their faces with a wish to conceal their identity - usually for nefarious purposes. It's what kidnappers, bank robbers and terrorists do, so that's the basis for my feelings of unease - completely irrational I know.

Big Bin is watching you....

Have you seen this business of some Councils equipping their wheelie-bins with micro-chips, with a view to charging households according to the weight of rubbish they put out for collection? How is this going to work without some account being taken of how many people are in the house? I now (sadly) live on my own, and my bin is rarely more than a third full - my daughter and her family number five in all, and they regularly have to get up and stamp on their bin to get the lid to go down - how can we be judged on the same criteria? And even supposing every household is given some sort of nominal allowance based on the number living there, what happens if they have friends to stay for a week, resulting in more rubbish than usual? I just can't see how it can work equitably - and I bet it will not result in any reduction in Council Tax!

Lateral thinking.

As a one-time Civil Servant who spent more hours than I care to think about struggling to find ways of meeting (or at the very least, appearing to meet) more and more unrealistic Government targets, I was tickled pink to read about South West Trains' approach to the Government's demand that they reduce overcrowding - they're taking out some of the seats so that there's more standing room! Brilliant, folks, absolutely brilliant!