Exclusive: universal credit linked to higher suicide risk, says study
If it weren’t for the Brexit train wreck, the incompetent roll out of Universal credit which is costing lives, would be the story of the day. But now it is relegated to the back pages.
Now that the agreement has been finally published we all have the chance to form our own opinion as to its quality.
My preliminary view is that this deal is worse than staying in the EU, but then I am an ardent ‘
If you think the main drive for Brexit was protecting our boarders from foreigners coming to this country – then this deal delivers.
If you think that Brexit was about regaining control and national sovereignty, then you are missing the point of the global world in which we now live. The only question is ‘with whom are we going to share our sovereignty?’ Just ask yourself what control we have over our exchange rate in this world of instant trading – if you remember the ‘run on the Pound’ and the endless problems faced by a lone £ on its own, then you know that control is an illusion.
You can find copies of the full agreement here
Carbon countdown clock.
It has been suggested that at the heart of humour and what makes us laugh, is the dissonance that sometimes arises between how we think the world works, and the actual practice.
Today I was walking along the sea front enjoying the unseasonably lovely weather and listening to a Pod Caste celebrating the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
The programme was explaining how we can now make atomic clocks of unprecedented accuracy by using lasers to cool the essential components to just a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. First you have to take on board the whole concept of using a laser to cool things down (one Nobel prize), then you have to think that a billionth of a degree above absolute zero makes it the coldest thing in the universe – even in deepest space the residual temperature from the big bang is 2 or 3 degrees above absolute zero. The assault on my expectations started to make me smile.
They then went on to explain that this was not some theoretical idea, it had actually been made and the clock can now record time to (I think) 10–15 seconds (that is 1/1,000,000,000,000,000 of a sec or an accuracy of 1 second in 31 million years). Which you might think is amazing but of limited use!
But there is a strange effect predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of relativity. He predicted that a clock in orbit round earth would tick at a different rate of an identical clock on the surface of the earth. A hundred years ago this was impossible to measure which is why so many people doubted Einstein’s theories which were so contrary to ‘common sense’.
Now we have Satellite Navigation that depend on satellites in just such an orbit and if they did not compensate for this Relativistic effect accurately, we might very well find ourselves driving the wrong way up a one-way street. The function of these SatNav satellites is dependant on the accuracy of their clocks which now get updated by these new super accurate clocks on Earth to increase their accuracy even further.
Just to add icing on the cake; these clocks are now so accurate that if you lift them just 5 meters you can ‘see’ the Relativistic change in the rate of time passing, predicted by Einstein, reducing this scientific controversy of a very few years ago, to the level of established fact.
I know this isn’t a joke, but I find myself laughing out loud at the absurdity of such a miraculous achievement.
It is also a tribute to the stunning productivity of the scientific method described by Richard Feynman as:
| make a guess | devise an experiment to test an implication of the guess | if the evidence of the experiment shows the guess to be wrong. Make another guess. |
1. Our expenditure on Health is 9.2% of GDP.
The USA spends 17.9% of its GDP for a health outcome that is not appreciably better (though substantially less equal).
2. In the future we will be able to do more to intervene against the depredations of ill health and old age, so we will inevitably want to spend a greater proportion of our GDP on staying healthy. After all, can you think of a better way of spending money than on being healthy?
3. Politicians need to recognise that the focus should be on good Operational Management of this massive enterprise. Unfortunately both labour and Conservatives have listened too well to their city advisors whose solution to all problems is a top down meddling. Mergers of companies, break up of companies are always being recommended, despite all the evidence that they both inevitably erode shareholder value. We only have to look at the introduction of competition to other natural monopolies like energy or transport; the consumer has not gained – in fact we now have to dedicated lots of time every year to making sure that we are not disadvantaged by their completely legal, but totally immoral business practices.
The fact that these advisors and bankers make large fees from their role in these games of musical chairs, obviously taints their advice.
Hoping that the introduction of a ‘competitive market’ within the Health service, will somehow magically solve the problems that are all too evident, is nonsense. It cannot deliver us from the necessity of doing the hard work to improve efficient Operations Management.
Also, the idea that GPs with years of training in medicine could suddenly be transformed into a managerial elite for the health service, or that it is even a sensible use of their valuable time, seems utterly cock eyed.
4. The concept that we take ‘health’ out of politics has a superficial appeal. But if politics is not about how we spend £1 out of every £10 and an issue that will affect every citizen in the country, it would be a tragic loss of democratic relevance.
Looking at the Microsoft offerings for replacing the Small Business Server now that they are stopping support. If you haven’t done it already, the following summary of how to migrate to their new on cloud service may be helpful.
Compare the various options at http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans-FX102918419.aspx
Let’s make some basic assumptions:
Cost of Microsoft Licenses
Then probably the service you need to get from Microsoft will be their Office 365 Midsized Business account which costs £9.80 / user / year , totalling £117.60 /user / year
What is included
It is an annual contract for
Migration Issues and Admin support
It is no small matter to migrate your entire system without interruption of service, and it will require careful planning.
Local file server
Because you would need to be able to operate off line if the Internet goes down (and because you do not want to become permanently dependent on Microsoft), you would maintain a local file server that is synched with the cloud copies of your documents. This can be done with ‘Sky Drive Pro’ as long as the file server meets certain requirements.
Exchange server
You will want to migrate all your existing settings from you existing exchange server, to the new cloud version. This will include all your contacts, calendar settings, archiving, mobile devices etc.
Sharepoint
Sharepoint is a very powerful new tool and can really change the way an organization operates (especially if you have a lot of off-site members of the team). It makes it very easy to collaborate on shared documents, chat over Lycos (like Skype), run an intranet to capture data and experience and many other opportunities that will only become apparent once you get started.
Ask us for more information
When you set up an Office 365 account somebody has to be an administrator and you can set them up as a delegated admin – in other words you do not need to buy a license for the admin as a user.
If you need any additional information I suggest you have a word with Geoff on 0775 1239292 or email geoffb@denaploy.co.uk and we will be happy to talk to you.
The Hastings and Bexhill area is set to continue the last decade of development with another major step forward. Within the next few years over 42 acres of land able to support 500,000 sq ft of new business premises will make this one of the largest concentrations of employment space available anywhere in the region.
Note the Proposed Development Areas marked out in grey. If you are a business with growth plans, this is a great opportunity. For more details go to http://www.seachangesussex.co.uk
INEA presented a new data feed that enables estate agents to add high levels of functionality to their websites at very low cost.
The Independent Network of Estate Agents yesterday launched an XML data feed that supplies a WordPress plug in with all the details of the properties the agent has registered with INEA (ie both their own and any shares). For the first time this means that an Agent’s website can easily be kept up to date with the ‘current’ details of any commissions available.
Managing data feeds between websites is a great way of keeping data current.
At the last election I was fairly ambivalent as to which party I supported, which is unusual for me. But I was pretty certain that I did not want the Conservatives to win!
The trouble was that I didn’t know how to vote against the Conservatives in my own constituency because the anti conservative vote was evenly split, and the inevitable then happened. The Conservatives won with a minority of the vote because the anti-conservative vote was split. Clearly AV would have solved my dilemma…….. but it becomes even more interesting if you follow through the logic.
Under an AV system all parties would understand that choosing policies that alienate large numbers of voters would not be a successful strategy, so it is very likely that extremists within all parties will loose strength. And I would maintain that anything that strengthens the middle ground of politics against the extremist fringes, is very likely to be good for he country.
There is a quite useful new feature in Window 7 called Libraries. In essence it is a search service
Lets assume there are customer folders on the network that you go to regularly, you can set up a new Library for ‘Customers’ and then link to the various customer folders that you use most often.
In this example I have just listed 4 customer files.
How to use it
There are a couple of tricky issues in setting this up.
First you need to make sure that the Indexing service on the storage drive is running. Its a tick box on the drive properties.
The next one took a while to work out: if you want to have multiple locations in your library, open the Library and note the link where it says ‘Includes: 3 locations’ , when you click on the link it opens a dialogue box that enable you to add additional links.
