Three films I have been waiting for

Three films I have been waiting for... No 1 Ridley Scott's Prometheus

Three films I have been waiting for... No 2 Peter Jackson's The Hobbit

Three films I have been waiting for... No 3 Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises

Also out this year... Chronicle / Sherlock Holmes - Game of Shadows / The Raven / Hugo. 2012 looks like a good year for films.

Never ever buy gift vouchers.

Never ever, ever buy gift vouchers or book tokens. 30% of gift vouchers are never cashed. Most gift vouchers have an expiry date of between 6 and 12 months, but if the retailer who issues them has old stock they can be expired before you walk out of the door.

I was treated like a criminal because I tried to use £50 worth of gift vouchers I won in a competition in work. I was trying to spend them before they expired. After spending hours on the telephone I was told that because of fraud I needed to write a letter to get issued new vouchers.

Most issuers of vouchers don't do refunds or replace expired vouchers. This is corporate theft as far as I can see. I had £20 of vouchers from Capital Bonds that were short dated. I did not know where I could spend them until it was too late. When I contacted them I was told "We don't reissue or honour expired vouchers". We need a change in the law or at least someone to make a test case.

Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

Gary Moore - RIP

When I was a teenager all my heroes were all motorcycle racers and I remember one day lying in bed thinking that most of my heroes were dead. They were not all that much older than me. Move along 30 odd years and I keep loosing my musical heroes. Rest in peace Gary Moore, he too was not much older than me. Gary was best remembered as one of the guitarists in Phil Lynotts brilliant band Thin Lizzy, but he was so much more. Gary's solo career spanned the globe and he was a big name in Japan. I rate Gary as one of the best rock guitarists of all time and have a stack of probably 25 of his CDs not including my Thin Lizzy collection. I recently watched one of his concerts on Sky Arts channel along with some of his old Thin Lizzy pals it was an absolute cracker. It is incredibly sad we will hear no more Moore anymore :0(

http://www.gary-moore.com/

Going Postal!

The British Post Office can go to hell! Yesterday I had an A4 card through the door telling me I had mail with underpaid postage. It would cost me £1.19 and I had to collect it from the sorting office. So I drive five miles only to find it is a Christmas card. Why I ask is the post not enough? Due to a small diamanté jewel on the card it would not fit through their slot. So what do I want with a Christmas card for in the middle of January? I told them to stuff it where the sun doesn't shine.

So be warned if you send Birthday or Christmas cards with badges or are a little thicker than normal it needs to be posted as a large letter. A normal 1st or 2nd class letter needs to be less than 5mm. Not that 5mm means anything to half the population who where raised on Imperial measurements and who measures their letters before sending anyway?

The GPO is so screwed, if only there was an alternative like electronic mail. We could call it email for short. I think I will refuse to send anything through the mail in future if I can help it.

So if you sent me a Christmas card in a gold envelope with a small diamanté jewel on I never got it.

Where have all the Clacks towers gone?

Tax Rises Fund Criminal Activities

So VAT is 20% and it stinks. I don't really blame the present government for the rise, that was brought about by the mess left by the last lot. I do however think it is the wrong move on so many levels. In a faltering economy it is going to slow growth and plunge us headlong in to a true recession. Even those with a good income are already crippled by 40% income tax, local taxes in the form of rates and insanely high taxes on fuel for both our homes and cars, then there is road tax and so on. You are not safe with money in the bank these days either. Because interest rates are so pathetic prices are rising faster so you just loose, loose, loose. Whenever a country gets in to this sort of mess the way out is to start a war and it would not surprise me if this time it did not erupt on our own streets. I am quite afraid that if someone does not get a grip of things soon then all hell will break loose. Modern communications mean the people are the press and they cannot gag us all. When the riots start the word will spread faster than has ever been seen before.

Hopefully I am being too pessimistic about things and we will not see a civil war in the streets of the UK in 2011, but what is unavoidable is a growing black economy. If you can avoid paying income tax by going "Underground" and sell your goods VAT free you can be making a profit of at least twice what you could as a legitimate business. One can see the attraction.

I already know of businesses on the edge who have offered to service my car, supply tyres or electrical goods for cash in hand, no VAT. If I visit people I know who live on council estates I often see the visitors they get selling cigarettes and booze smuggled in to the UK from door to door. The higher the taxes go up the more people are tempted to buy from these criminal types, for that is what they are. They may start out as doing what they have to to make ends meet but at some point they cross the line between what is tax dodging and what is downright criminal. So effectively by increasing tax the government is funding criminal activities.

Tonight the price of Diesel is up at my local petrol station from £1.24 per litre to £1.31 so a full tank of gas now costs me £107.83. When the 1973 oil crisis was in full swing my father complained that it cost him just under 10 shillings to fill up, that is 50 pence in today's money or a 21,566 % price rise in 38 years. If we look at the average UK wage in 1973 as being £38.10 then the average wage in the UK today would be £819,508.

Crisis what crisis? We are on the Titanic and we are not about to hit the iceberg we have already hit it.

Hang on it may be a bumpy year.