In Thursday Echo we had the front page How does your garden grow?. The article is about the Environment Protection Team taking four households to court over the state of their back gardens. All of them had been asked several times to sort them out, and finally the magistrates fined them over £150 each.
Hopefully other households in Lincoln will realise that the mess in your backgarden affects your neighbours and that the council have a right and a duty to sort it out.

Unfortunately for those in Lincoln (and very similar for those elsewhere in Lincolnshire), the 11.1% increase isn’t over 2 or 3 years. Nor is it calculated against the odd stealth local charge. Nope the figure of 11.1% is the actual increase in council tax on my bill right in front of me.
For this year Lincolnshire Police Authority have been fcked by the government and in return fcked every single council tax payer in the county.
Last year our band A house paid £87.72 to the police, this year it’s £156.90. That’s an increase of 78.9%. Seriously 78.9%! I now pay the police more than I pay the City Council (£147.84).
What seems to be worse is there is nothing we can do about it. If the county or city wanted to raise their portion by over 5% the government would stop them and if they didn’t at the next election the electorate might, but as far as I can see the police seem to be a law unto themselves.

This weekend I have been mostly playing about with Twitter.

First I created a CNPS (Consecutive Number Plate Spotting) TwitterBot. The bot watches for @ and d messages to it, it then adds the plates to my database. Anyone with a Twitter account AND and Artesea account can get it to work, just visit the mashup page here for more info.

Next I managed to exceed the weekly allowance for tweets to my mobile. Think it was something to do with a large number of followers at Conference.

And just now I’ve installed a New Post -> Twitter plugin. This one seems to be one of the best as it’s run from my webserver (doesn’t require frequent polling of the rss feed), and it has the option to enable/disable tweets for draft, edits or new posts, so unlike other who have similar plugins you should only get a tweet from my blog when I hit Publish.

One of the things that you notice whilst away from Conference is the actual coverage that it gets. So far I’ve yet to see any pictures of Liverpool, but the BBC ran with “less VAT on fruit juice, more on alcohol” as their 2nd or 3rd item this morning. However whilst bored on the sofa, here were the stories on their PDA version:

OTHER TOP STORIES
Cable rethink on homes of rich
Vince Cable tells BBC News he scrapped plans for a £1m home tax over fears it would hurt middle-class voters.

SCOTLAND
Talks over scrapping council tax
Talks have taken place between ministers and the Lib Dems over scrapping the council tax, it emerges.

POLITICS
Lib Dems back Clegg health plans
Nick Clegg avoids a conference rebellion over NHS proposals but is forced to make some concessions.

HEALTH
Lib Dems propose juice tax cuts
VAT on fruit juice should be cut to 5% to encourage healthy diets, the Lib Dem spring conference is to hear.

Unfortunately the LibDems don’t seem to appear in one of the most important stories of the day:

TECHNOLOGY
BBC iPlayer comes to the iPhone
The BBC launches a version of its iPlayer video on demand service for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch.

This year we decided not to go to Spring Conference, even though we had paid and booked the Friday off work. The accommodation costs are too high, and nothing really happens. Instead Heather decided to work on the weekend, and we’ve booked tickets for Crufts on the Friday.
Then last night 3 13 16 15 MPs rebelled against the 3 line whip, which suddenly makes conference sound like fun (well fun if you enjoy debating the small print of the Lisbon treaty).
So should I get up early on Saturday, drive to Liverpool, not drink and then late at night head back home? Still not sure…

OK, other than the fact that it is rather crap, the biggest problem I have with Golden Balls is the Share or Steal at the end. Whilst I never studied Game theory, this is pretty much a Prisoner’s dilemma. However the payoff matrix is weighted in an odd format.

Assume that you have a 6th sense, you are sat in the chair and the amount is £50,000.

If you knew that your opponent who you will never see again is going to share what would you do?
If you share it’s 50/50, and you walk away with £25,000, but if you steal thats £50,000 in your pocket!

However if you knew that they were to steal, your f*cked. You’re going home with nothing, so what do you choose? Well if it’s share, you’ve just given your opponent fifty grand, but if it’s steal you could shaft them and ensure that they go home with nothing too.

So if you look back, on both scenarios steal was the best option, which means that you should always steal.

Yesterday Ofcom announced that Lincs FM has won the licence for the Lincolnshire DAB multiplex (with MuxCo). Ok there was only one bid, and as the only countywide FM broadcaster it would have been hard for them to lose.

I’ve looked at the stations which they are going to run:
Lincs FM 102.2 (Lincs FM Group Ltd)
Compass FM (Lincs FM Group Ltd)
Lincs Country (Lincs FM Group Ltd)
Easy Radio (Easy Radio Limited)
Shuffle (MuxCo Lincolnshire Ltd)
UCB UK (United Christian Broadcasters Ltd)
Traffic Radio (Highways Agency)
and I’m pretty sure that I wont bother with any of them except Lincs FM and Traffic Radio.

When I was in Hemel, I was used to having over 10 good stations to pickup including X-FM, however since getting to Lincoln my choices have been BBC Radio 1-5, BBC Radio Lincolnshire, Classic or Lincs FM. As Radio 1 don’t play any music, I can’t understand either Terry Wogan or Ken Bruce and I would crash the car listening to the Today programme, I began listening to Lincs FM two years ago.
Whilst the music is a bit too much Radio 2, at least they play lots of songs. All the presents are local, the quizes are good to listen to, the traffic is really useful (even if it is to tell me that the A46 is closed, whilst I’ve been sat in it for 20 minutes in the fog on Monday), and unlike almost every other regional radio station they are owned by themselves. They don’t drop out to national quizes pretending to be local, don’t have evening shows shared with other stations (other than the Sunday Chartshow) and something like 95% is broadcast live.

So good luck with the DAB, just hope that one day I might be able to get a signal without holding my radio high in the air without breathing!

In the last few days we’ve bought tickets to two events, Supergrass at the Engine Shed and Hard Graft at the Drill Hall.
Supergrass tickets were on sale at £17.50, so for a pair it should cost £35. However I was also charged £2 per ticket booking fee and £1.50 postage taking the cost to £40.50. (Collection would have been £1.75)
Hard Graft were on sale at £8, so for a pair it should cost £16. However I was also charged 50p to pay via card, and 35p to have them posted.
So the question is, how do venues and promoters get away with charging so much in extras. There is no option to aviod the booking fee. There is only one offical supplier of tickets (Ticketline), so I can’t shop around for a cheaper fee, and is a first class stamp really £1.50 these days. Whilst the fees from the Drill Hall were reasonable. If I went to the booking office and paid with cash, there would have been no extras.
Ryanair have since been forced to quote prices with all unavoidable charges included (taxes etc), shouldn’t this also be the case for gigs?

This post is safe to read, however follow the links at your own risk!
It seems that Russell T Davies has got a bit excited ordering his Christmas 2008 toys, and that Character Options have issues a press release saying what they are going to make. Whilst I can’t find the original, DoctorWhoToys.com have it in their News Roundup for the 21st January. Hat-tip David.

I’m a regular blood donor. I have a nice certificate and a pin badge saying I’ve made it past 10, however this time last year I failed one of their tests. It turns out I’ve got Anemia. They wrote to me they advised me to see my doctor, and to come back in a year. I now take iron tablets each day, and my last blood tests showed everything to be ok.
So when the email came around saying that the blood van was to be parked up in our work car park on the 4th February I gave them a call. The first problem I had was that session hadn’t been put on their system, and so it wasn’t possible to book an appointment. A few emails later this had been sorted out and I called again. They could find the session, but their computers refuse to let me give blood until the 9th February, one year after their letter. Even though it’s been 16 months since my last donation, computer says no.
I was offered alternative locations after the 9th, however with the hours they are available being the same as those I work, it makes it pretty hard for me to donate. Instead I’ll just have to wait for them to come back in June.
At least in June they’ll give me the chance to give blood, if I was Gay, I would never be allow past the questionaire.