All posts by Ryan Cullen

So what do those under-age drinkers drink?

Featured, Lincoln, Lincolnshire Echo, , , , , , ,

The Echo last week ran with a story about the Police confiscating alcohol from under-age drinkers. They published a table of what was taken and had a picture of the haul.

Under-age Drinking Now was it like what the Tories were saying? That the problem is with alcopops and super-strength booze?

Nope, here are the figures:
Beer – 157.69 litres (78%)
Cider – 25.52 litres (13%)
Wine – 7.5 litres (4%)
Spirits – 4.2 litres (2%)
Alcopops – 5.72 litres (3%)

and whilst the beer and cider figures don’t separate normal from strong, the picture clearly shows a large number of cans, bottles and boxes of Carling, Fosters, Stella and Carlsberg.

Doctor Who Season “4” trailer on-line

TV, , ,

45 minutes ago the BBC first aired the new Doctor Who trailer, it’s already online via their Doctor Who Site.
It seems that U.N.I.T. will be making there appearance in this season (after the name dropping in Reset, and then the raid in Fragments in Torchwood) and for those who haven’t seen the spoilers in the tabloids, both Martha and Rose seem to be making a comeback.

Council crack down on junk gardens

Council, Lincoln, ,

Echo 2008-03-20 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.

Council Tax up by 11.1%

Council, Lincoln, , , ,

Council Tax BillUnfortunately 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.

Twitter fun

CNPS, Plugins, ,

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.

BBC Conference Coverage

iPlayer, LibDems,

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.

Should I go to Liverpool?

LibDems, ,

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…

The problem with Golden Balls – always Steal!

TV, , ,

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.

Lincs FM goes digital

Entertainment, , ,

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!

A tale of two tickets

Entertainment, , , ,

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?