The Artesea

When you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Tories “inadequate at a political, managerial, and community level” ruling party of Lincolnshire County Council, still feel it’s fine to run it alone. They’ve apointed Martin Hill to be the leader of the council, and he has appointed 9 other Tories to be on the executive with him.
Did they not read the Audit Committee Report?
Let just hope that come May 5th we’ll see a change in colour for the political map of the rather blue Lincolnshire.
Whilst we’re on the topic, a generic countywide Tory leaflet landed on my doorstep yesterday (I’ll scan it, when the scanner and photoshop are re-installed). It claims

Better Off With the Conservatives
Whilst costing you less, your Conservative Lincolnshire Country Council gives you more
…
Getting Around
* Lincoln Eastern bypass progressed
* Dualling of the A46 to Lincoln completed
* Bypass at Partney and Burgh le Marsh
* Bypasses for Bourne, Grantham, Crowland
* Rights of way greatly improved
* Rural bus service expanded
…

Strangely no mention of the Jim “put the Crowland Bypass, near my back yard to increase the value of my land” Speechley nor the fact that they’ve been branded as “weak” and “unlikely to improve without help”.

Thanks to Simon Titley for pointing out the new leadership.

I noticed today a press release from Brian Cotter about the 118 service.
Personally I believe that deregulation was needed. If I phoned 192 on my landline I spoke to BT, if I phoned 192 on my Orange Mobile, I spoke to Orange, if I called from a NTL line, I spoke to NTL.
These were three companies offering the same service, but only available via one route, and if you only had one phone you could only speak to that one company.
With the new system, OK we have a 100 different operators, however, pick only one (based on either price or ability to remember the number). If they provide a good service, continue to use them, if they provide a poor service, never use them again.
For the people who say they can’t remember the new numbers, didn’t they see the massive advertising campaign for 118 118.
Finally, before I get the comments, I can’t remember the last time I actually phoned one of these companies. I normally use Yell.com or Google via my mobile for business numbers, and I never need to get a personal number.

Just surfing around and found this. It’s Virgin Radio via GPRS/3G. I was expecting poor quality sound, with it cutting out every 30 seconds as per streaming over dial-up, however I’m pleasantly surprised to find that the quality is great, and that it hasn’t stopped once.
The only problem is that an hours listening equals about 7.2mb of data, which isn’t cheap.
Hopefully we’ll see more stations use this technology in the near future.

This time last week, spotting number plates seemed simple, getting at least one a day, everything was going fine.
On the way to work trying to find a 136, I saw two sets of consecutive 137 & 138, and driving a 139, I was sure that I would be looking for a 140 in no time.
Still no luck at lunch time, and then on the way home, I saw another 137 driving past me. Then, 20 seconds later a 136! This was going to be easy. I had seen at least 5 different 137s in the last two day. OK they were all moving, but they were all in the area.
But no, ten 138s later, I finally find the 137 a week later. Luckily for me, a 138 then appeared within a few minutes. Next job was to safely pull over, spot my number plate before a 140 appeared. No 140 did appear, nor have I found one yet, but hopefully I’ll find one soon, and my ratio of 0.6318 won’t drop any lower.

The LibDemBlogs site continues to grow It now has 25 regular posters, which has meant that over the last 3 months, the number of days shown on the main page has gone down from 7 to 2.

Other features that I might not have mentioned when they were rolled through are:
* An RSS feed – http://www.libdemblogs.co.uk/feed/rss.xml
* Daily Archives
* and some changes to the location of the BlogBox

If you have any ideas for more features please leave me a comment.

ps, try googling libdem

My new job at Vodafone means that I can borrow phones for the evening/weekend. I’ve been trying out the V800, but as I have an o2 sim card, and we have no 3G Vodafone signal in Lincoln, the main feature of the phone is a bit pointless.
Haven’t noticed anything special about it really, and am missing the functionality of my P910i.

I went to my first Lincoln game, haven’t had a chance to go before as I’ve had conferences, family, sleep and cold weather when other matches were on.
The ground is only down the road (literally) from Heather’s, the game was a good one. We got to see two goals (well one, as I was reading the programme during the second). The crowd though were pretty quiet, which is odd as on some days you can even hear them from my place. Probably go again before the end of the season, and there’s always the chance that Lincoln might make it to the play-off finals, when I’m guessing the whole city will suddenly remember that they are fans.

According to a new report today everyone will be paying inheritance tax by the year 2105. This of course is based on the judgment that the average house price will rise to £1,000,000 whilst the inheritance tax threshold will stay the same.
OK the later is unlikely to happen but this is exactly what the HBOS scare story today is claiming about the next 10 years.

Just trying to see if this will work.
Currently I have no money, I also like to help people with their blogs and webdesign.
Therefore if I’ve helped you, why not help me, by giving me money
Just fill the PayPal form in below, thank you.

I was thinking about this post, because when you Google my name, I appeared somewhere on the second page. Noting how Google was giving me some higher ratings, I felt a post with my actual name in it might push me above this person, but today when I went to check where I appeared I found myself top anyway.