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There are Lies, Damned Lies….and Election Manifestos

First, please accept my apologies for butchering Disraeli’s old quote....however, needs must…. The reason for re-hashing it in 2026 is the vexed question of whether Labour breached their 2024 election manifesto as a result of Reeves’ 2025 budget measures (mercifully her last!), followed by Healey's in 2026. The point at issue is whether Reeves’ application of a 2p surcharge above the rate for earned income to the rates for both Rental and Savings income, followed by Healey's application of an additional 2p, actually constituted a double manifesto breach. What it essentially comes down to is the exact wording of the document in question.   The Labour Manifesto of June 2024 explicitly states on p19 of the document: “ …we will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the Basic, Higher, or additional rates of Income Tax , or VAT.” The fact that the w...
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Producing Electronic Crosswords From their Printed Versions

  Most of us who indulge in crosswords, however infrequently, are well aware of the ‘crossings out syndrome’ as I call it.... This irritating by product often appears when trying to complete a puzzle from a printed newspaper or magazine. Depending on the accuracy (or otherwise in my case!) of your initial guesses, it’s possible to end up with a board which is virtually illegible. And Tippex is no solution – it just takes too darned long to dry ! The only practical solution using the printed version is to make notes of your guesses elsewhere...which I find is more trouble than it's worth. Having got thoroughly fed up with messy boards, and not found a better conventional solution, I decided to look at the practicality of capturing an image of the printed version of a board and creating an electronic version from that. Much easier, with that available, to eliminate any mistaken clues without leaving a single mark on the printed version. To cut a long story short, after much s...
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Advanced Search Query Builder: The Easy and Quick Way to do Selective Internet Searches

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  Ever wanted to get rid of those pesky AI summaries that seem to appear nowadays every time you do any kind of internet search ?  Want to bypass AI and 'do your own thing' with a more focussed advanced online search ? Or switch to a different search engine at the touch of a button ?  Fed up with following up links that turn out to have expired years ago ? Now you can tailor your searches efficiently yourself - and without needing to remember the exact query syntax to use....or even opening a new window. To find out how, just read on….. Background Internet searching has changed a lot over the last few years, due largely to the automatic insinuation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents into everything but the most basic searches by the all the major search engine providers. Now don't get me wrong - I'd be the first to admit that those AI summaries which now appear in response to most of our queries can be very useful, particularly if you know little about a pa...
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