vivweb01

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...

  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...

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...