Answer: Now is ALWAYS the time to pay off our debt.
It is too late for Keynesian economics. Gordon Brown spent it all during the boom. We are too indebted to borrow and spend our way out of this recession (rather, depression).
We must pay our debt back: public debt and personal debt. Our economy, currency, pride and reputation will be stronger in the long run.
Lets get on with it. Take the pain ourselves, not pass it on to our children. Let the recession hit. Don't be afraid, be creative. Find ways to cut your costs where you need to. Find ways to be more productive in your work. Train yourself. Learn new skills. Work hard. Work smart. Enjoy the free things in life.
And we must learn our lessons:
Debt is bad.
Nothing is too big to fail. Especially banks.
Soaring house prices always end in a collapse. Keep house prices affordable.
October 15, 2009 at 11:33 pm
· Filed under Environment
Today is Blog Action Day 2009 and this years' topic is Climate Change.
We all contribute to global warming through our daily activities, so here are 5 ways to reduce your impact:
Shower faster – you will use less hot water. Heating water is one of the the most energy intensive activities in your home.
Use EcoBalls – stop using washing detergent, start using these hi-tech ecoballs instead! We've used them for 3 months and they work well for us.
Turn down your heating 2 degrees – you can save a massive amount of CO2 (and lots of money) by heating your house to a lower temperature.
Turn off your computer – or at least, put it into standby. Obvious, but it is easy to fall into bad habits.
Switch to Ecotricity – the UK's first 100% renewable energy company. Great customer service and they genuinely care about the environment. All their power comes from wind turbines.
I'd like to buy a highly efficient water filter to make healthy, potable, odourless drinking water in my home. The tricky thing is, how do you measure efficiency?
There is a debate going on at MetaEfficient about what constitutes efficiency. The reverse osmosis water filtration process is put forward as a solution even though it consumes electricity and outputs more waste water than it outputs drinkable water. Does that sound efficient to you? Me neither. The meta-efficiency is measured as follows:
"When assessing a product, we consider not only its energy efficiency but also its embodied energy, toxicity, affordability, and usability."
That's sensible, but you can't roll all these things into one score because they are measured by different means. Furthermore, people have different perceptions of what is important. $100 might be a lot of money to me but it could be cheap to you. Environmental impact might be important to you but it might be critical to me.
The solution would be to rate products on separate factors and provide multiple scores, e.g.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): taking all environmental impact into consideration, measured in a unit such as joules. Incredibly hard to do accurately.
Usability: gauging how well it does the job and how easy it is to use. Scored out of 100.
Retail price: in £/$/€
Running cost: in £/$/€
Only when you separate the important aspects of a product and measure each one in an standard unit can you compare products effectively.
It takes a true geek to do such in depth research and comparison for water filtration systems. It will happen eventually – the internet's global reach makes in-depth comparison a viable business proposition. But in the meantime, can anyone point me in the direction of a highly efficient household water filter, regardless of cost?
It's one of those tracks that gets your foot tapping involuntarily. At 5min 30sec it's longer than most of his previous tracks yet it leaves you wanting more, more, more. No wonder Fensepost says he's "truly one of the greatest hidden treasures in the European underground" and that that he is "at the top of his game".
Join his mailing list to receive dates of his gigs in London and new song releases.
I look forward to the day Google Health launches in the UK with the same services it offers US users. Features like "Import medical records" and "Explore health services" are for US users only, but Google Health is still useful for the rest of us.
They've just added a new feature to let you upload scanned paper documents. I think its the sort of system the NHS is gradually adopting. My GP typed notes into her computer during my last visit. It's a giant leap forward from paper, but to benefit fully from digitised patient records, the patient should be able to access and contribute to their records. Nobody cares more about their health than themselves and perhaps their immediate family. Letting people fill in the gaps will lead to better care and greater involvement by the patient. It is also a step towards self-diagnosis, a faster, more accurate and cheaper solution than going to a doctor.
I'm using Google Health to keep track of my daughters' immunisations. I've shared the profile with my wife so that she can contribute too. When our daughter is old enough, she can take over managing her health records and she'll have a full history without gaps.
A top executive has argued that government regulation may be required over the position of search results in Google.
Bad idea.
Government regulation is the absolute last resort. It might start with good intentions and the Government might have a light touch, but it would open the floodgates. Regulation only becomes more onerous and cumbersome over time. It stifles businesses ability to innovate, it slows progress and it takes some of the fun out of business.
In the free market, if Google screws up, we can go to Yahoo or Bing or another search engine. If they all screw up, a new competitor will rise. It is a self regulating system.
I trust an honest company (such as Google) more than any government, sadly.
May 21, 2009 at 10:20 am
· Filed under Fun / Jokes
With my parents approaching their seventies, I couldn't help laughing at this…
I was recently diagnosed with AAADD – Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder
This is how it manifests:
I decide to water my flower tubs in the front garden.
As I go to turn on the hose I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.
I go to get the car keys from the porch and then notice the post on the porch table.
I decide to go through the post before I wash the car.
I put my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the bin under the table, and notice that the bin is full.
So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the rubbish first.
But then I think: “I can run down to the post-box when I take out the rubbish, I may as well pay the bills first.”
I take my cheque book off the table, and see that there is only 1 cheque left.
My other cheque book is in the computer desk, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Coke I'd been drinking.
I'm going to look for my other cheque book, but first I need to push the Coke aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over.
The Coke is getting warm so I decide to put it in the fridge to keep it cold.
As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the window ledge catches my eye … they need water.
I put the Coke on the window ledge and discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning.
I decide I better put them back on my computer desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers.
I put the glasses back down on the window ledge, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote. I must have left it on the kitchen table.
I realize that tonight when I go to watch TV, I'll be looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the living room where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers.
I pour some water in the flowers, but some spills on the floor.
So, I set the remote back on the table, get a towel and wipe up the spill.
Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.
At the end of the day:
The flower tubs aren't watered;
The car isn't washed;
The bills aren't paid;
There is a warm can of Coke sitting on the window ledge;
The flowers in the vase don't have enough water;
There is still only 1 cheque in my cheque book;
I can't find the remote;
I can't find my glasses;
I have absolutely NO idea what I did with the car keys.
Then, when I try to work out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day, and I'm really tired.
I realise this is a serious problem and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail.
If this isn't you yet, trust me … your day is coming!
In response to this Guardian story on the economy:
We all contribute to global warming through our daily activities, so here are 5 ways to reduce your impact:
I'd like to buy a highly efficient water filter to make healthy, potable, odourless drinking water in my home. The tricky thing is, how do you measure efficiency?
Just been listening to Robin Grey's latest track: 
I look forward to the day 
A top executive 
Subscribe to RSS feed