vivweb01blog

  Just a quick 'heads up' on a very useful tool I came across some years ago for downloading BBC programmes direct from iPlayer servers – and have used regularly ever since. As a committed user of BBC’s services for many years previously, I joined the online viewing revolution and started using iPlayer in the early 2010s. Not being particularly keen on ‘live’ streaming, and in any case having a limited broadband download allowance at the time, I took to selective downloading of anything that particularly took my interest.  As for the old VCR recordings we all remember making in the 80s and 90s, the problem was finding time to actually watch what I'd recorded. I quickly became tired of discovering that much of what I'd painstakingly downloaded from iPlayer, and had finally got round to looking at, had already expired, and was unreadable due to Digital Rights Management (DRM)-protection.  A workround was therefore a must, and fortunately one presented itself in the form...

  The rather unexpected announcement on 29 th November that Louise Haigh had resigned as Transport minister inevitably precipitated much speculation about ‘goings on in high places’. The party line explanation she offered was the bog-standard   ‘I don’t want to be a distraction’ recipe, accompanied by the usual weasel words of support from the PM for the decision and good wishes for the future….which, if course, tells us precisely nothing. To establish what really went on, we need to look at the background. Several pertinent facts emerge: 1)        *  Starmer knew about Haigh’s 2013 conviction for ‘making a false report to the police’ about her mugging when he appointed her to the ministerial posts she has occupied. This rules out concealment on her part as a direct cause for her dismissal. 2)       *  Since the election in July, Haigh has been in the spotlight several times as ‘not seeing eye to eye’ with the PM, most notabl...

F or anyone struggling with the recent UK Freeview TV channel changes, here's some relevant info. which might help you make sense of them.... I've just posted an updated list with the multiplex channel numbers for each TV channel included. These are for the Waltham (E. Midlands) transmitter. I've added instructions for getting the equivalent multiplex channel numbers info for your local transmitter. If interested, download the Excel spreadsheet from my website at: https://sites.google.com/view/vivweb01/home I have also added a 'Freeview' page to my website providing more info on UK digital TV and Radio reception. Hint: You can search each column of the spreadsheet via the filter buttons on the top row. Hope this helps,  Update 18.6.22 : Excel sheet revised yesterday - only minor changes, but if you haven't retuned your digital box or set recently, now would be a good time. Update 21.11.24 : Excel workbook revised with new channels for 2024. Happy viewing.... Ver...

  Those of us who were suspicious of Labour’s motives before the election will not have been surprised at Rachel Reeve’s first salvo in Labour’s ‘war on pensioners’ in August. The only thing that was a little unexpected was the belligerence of her delivery…and the readiness with which she was prepared to ‘let the cat out of the bag’ this early in her tenure. The pronounced ‘gasp’ from all sides of the Commons when she announced the move suggested that even her own colleagues were a tad surprised. Subsequent analysis has shown very little evidence of contrition on her part, although Starmer's 'happy band' of new MPs are getting it in the neck via their mailboxes. It was a virtual certainty that benefits would come under attack following the Tories election defeat. Labour, having successfully hemmed themselves in by their manifesto promise of no increases in NI, VAT or income tax rates, have already agreed several inflation-busting increases in public sector pay. With man...

  We've been hearing rather a lot about ‘Black Holes’ over the last 3 months or so….some would argue a bit too much. Sadly, there has been little attempt being made to explain their true origin or properties, and the focus instead has been on explaining how terrible things are likely to get for us all because of them. In an attempt to dispel some of the current UK.Gov-induced pre- (and now post- !) budget gloom and despondency, I’ll take a light-hearted look at these not-so-celestial phenomena and attempt to explain them for the interested reader. Firstly, do they resemble the cosmological feature of the same name ? In some ways, they would certainly appear to.... Physical black holes are frequently found at the centres of galaxies, and have such huge masses that their gravitational attraction sucks in everything in their vicinity, including light. They thus have a habit of getting progressively bigger…and darker, and present a distinct ‘event horizon’ beyond which nothing...

  Since Rachel Reeves axed the winter fuel payment in July, there has been much angst amongst pensioners not entitled to Pension Credit over her plans to remove other essential benefits they are currently entitled to, such as free prescriptions and the concessionary bus pass.  These additional restrictions would be likely to apply to the same cohort (i.e ca 10 million of the 11 million over the current state pension age of 66), and would include up to 2 million of the poorest in our society, many of whom live alone and have no relatives to provide assistance. Means testing using anything other than Pension Credit entitlement would be time-consuming and costly, since a new method would need to be defined, agreed  and implemented, then validated to ensure it didn't discriminate against specific groups on grounds of age, race, gender, etc., etc. The DWP database, which is already 'primed' with an 'entitlement list' for Pension Credit, already provides an easy option f...