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UK Local By-Election results as a Barometer of National Political Fortunes

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Making long term predictions about political outcomes nationally is a risky process indeed. In some ways it’s comparable to weather forecasting – the earth’s atmosphere is a chaotic system and trying to predict its behaviour locally more than 2 or 3 days ahead with any degree of accuracy still presents us with many uncertainties, despite all our advances in predictive technology (including even AI!). And we’ve all seen recently how long a week is in politics nowadays, let alone a month, or indeed 3 years - chaos seems to reign there, also. Although 2029 is thus a very long way ahead from a political point of view, and Labour's leadership and cabinet teams will be focused on more immediate policy decisions, the time will (hopefully!) fly by. Labour's advance planners, mindful that the day of reckoning draws ever nearer, will already be thinking hard, and I suspect with some trepidation, about their electoral prospects…and not solely for the next general election. Even the a...
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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….particularly since FIFA will be keen to 'keep Trump on side'...while the current tournament is in progress, at least. The problem, as I understand it, is this.  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 flagship campaign to ‘Make Soccer Great Again’ (already christened as 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 promoting the MAGA agenda have apparently spawned a 'Grand Plan' for sports reform, both in the US and worldwide. The start of his administration's campaign was designed to coincide with the ...
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Amazon withdrew support from their older Kindles on May 20th 2026 - Is yours now defunct ?

  Amazon’s Kindle eReaders were ahead of their time when they first emerged in the late noughties, and were the first of the specialist eReaders with e-ink displays and long battery life to hit the mass market. They have amassed a large following of dedicated reader fans over the years since then, and have proven themselves to be robust and long-lasting devices. They are also the preferred vehicle for reading eBooks, given the eyestrain probems associated with long-term use of LED screens.  Amazon have been steadily phasing out support to their older devices 'on the quiet' for the past couple of years, with increasing restrictions on registration and downloads for their oldest models, but there has been considerable concern voiced amongst the Kindle fan-base over the recent 'final' announcement   by Amazon that they are withdrawing support from all of their older devices from May 20th. It's important to note that this doesn't in fact cover the whole range o...
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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 will strike….. I’m of course referring to our forgetfulness about taking regular backups of the data stored in the multitude of digital devices we rely on nowadays ...and how we assume backups are either not necessary at all, or that someone else is looking after them for us. Nowadays, most things are stored in ‘the cloud’, and we assume that anything that lives there is properly protected. This might seem a reasonable assumption, but recent experiences within 'big tech' have cast doubt on the confidentiality of our data, and potentially its integrity. We tend to store far less on our desktop devices than we once did, although all manner of  key data gets stored within our phones, on which we depend daily. Very few phone users take the trouble to back this up on a regula basis. We should be asking ourselves the question: Is this reliance on cloud suppliers really a sensible mov...
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