vivweb01

  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...

In his 2026 budget, the chancellor somewhat unexpectedly announced that Gas standing charges 'would be removed', with the cost element transferred to the unit rate. He also intimated that this would 'eventually' happen to electricity standing charges. The only timing quoted for the Gas measure was 'sometime next year'. Although it does look as though OFGEM and the suppliers will now be required to act, I predict the process will be long and drawn out, with the usual objections from high users, and a concerted campaign to slow things down, or even get the decision reversed, by the energy suppliers' cartel. 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 ...

‘Middle England’ is worried…and so it should be.... In his new role as our PM, Burnham has, in his own words, ‘hit the ground running’ in his project to 'Manchesterise' Britain (or at least the non-devolved English part of it). He is looking hard for new revenue-generating targets to fund his many and varied 'projects' to avoid spooking the markets with a lot of extra borrowing.   His left-leaning socialist ideology naturally points him towards across-the-board redistribution of the UK's wealth, and he represents a return to more traditional Labour aspirations and a departure from the Starmer 'aberration' as the hard-left Momentum group would view it.  Since most of the UK’s private money and assets are held by so-called 'Middle England', Burnham sees this large, disparate, and normally compliant group of electors (particularly those over 50), as a potential soft-touch....and they are therefore firmly in his sights as a potential cash-cow. One of...