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Making Soccer Great Again….

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  As someone with a lifelong interest in ‘The Beautiful Game’, I must confess to being somewhat alarmed at a recent rumour emanating from the US concerning possible changes to its rules…. Fresh from his 'triumph' in getting the Iranians to agree a deal, ‘The Donald’ seems to have found time in his busy schedule to address the subject of sport reform. He appears to have decided to adopt a campaign to ‘Make Soccer Great Again’ (MSGA) as a first step in this important aspect of his legacy. According to recent reports, high level discussions last week within the administration concerning the MAGA agenda have apparently spawned a 'Grand Plan' for sports reform, both in the US and worldwide. The start of this campaign was designed to coincide with the US’s hosting of the football (or Soccer as it’s more correctly referred to in the US) World Cup this summer.   Trump, having been rather busy recently, has not been actively following the group stages of the tournament himself...
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No Standing Charge Electricity Tariffs: OFGEM says they’re coming, but will they save us money ?

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A Warning to low Electricity and Gas users:   If you are anything other than a high user of both fuels, don't be tempted by offers from your supplier to fix your tariffs now.... Suppliers are now piling on the pressure to fix with a plethora of different and highly confusing offers, few if any of which include a reduction in the standing charge . These offers have been coming in thick and fast since the Iran war made a hike in prices in the July price cap almost inevitable. What's more, OFGEM are effectively 'co-conspiring' with suppliers to try to get you to fix now, by soft-pedalling on a final decision on the precise details of any SC reductions. It has allowed the supplier cartel to get away with promises of Low SC 'pilots' rather than an across the board Low SC tariff offer. OGFEM's own website gives little indication of any timescale for a future switch, merely referring to a 'consultation' on tariff revisions. There is also a nasty rumour that...
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How can I back up my Blog Content...and do I really need to ?

  We’re all guilty of it…and most of the time we get away with it…but sooner or later disaster strikes….. I’m of course referring to our forgetfulness about taking regular backups of our data...and how we assume they’re either not necessary at all, or that someone else is looking after them for us. Nowadays, admittedly most things are stored in ‘the cloud’, and we assume that anything that lives there is properly protected.  We tend to store far less on our desktop devices, although we do seem to be averse to taking proper backups of our key phone data, on which we depend daily. But is this reliance on cloud suppliers really a sensible move, given the prevalence of ransomware attacks and hacking generally, and the recent 'leakiness' of big tech data in particular ? While our data is safe and well-cared for most of the time, things can, and do, go wrong.  Blogs and websites that we’ve taken a lot of  time and trouble over creating and maintaining are no exceptio...
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The UK's Energy ‘Crisis’ – How do we solve it ? Some practical suggestions

  Editor's note: Looking back on this blog from 2022, its clear that we haven't really managed to solve our energy problems in the UK, despite a change of government...and a lot of undelivered promises. A few things I covered back in 2022 have changed for the better: Inflation has been brought largely under control, although the full effects of the Iran war have yet to bite. The falling interest rate trend has been halted, for now at least. Reeves' treasury, although unwilling to fund our country's defence adequately, is still racking up debts to support inflationary public sector pay increases and pay the burgeoning benefits bill (courtesy the left wingers on the back-benches).  We have, at least managed to wean ourselves off Russian oil and gas in Europe. Milliband is still in charge at Environment, though, and still refuses to cough up anything to fund domestic solar, while encouraging as many new solar farms on our prime agricultural land as he can...and blocking an...
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