vivweb01blog

  There has been much reporting in the media recently about the 'rise and rise' of Nigel Farage’s Reform party, culminating in a row between Kemi Badenoch and Farage about his claims on snowballing party membership. This, and Labour’s abysmal performance since the July election, has inevitably led to speculation about whether our UK  2-party ‘first past the post’ system is still appropriate to our electoral needs. Before we look at the likelihood of anything replacing it , or indeed what might take its place, let’s look at the current state of the parties' fortunes. Labour, as we’ve already discussed, has not lived up to its electors’ expectations, and have made a series of strategic blunders, starting with the removal of the pensioner universal winter fuel payment just a few days into their term. Their many broken promises have made the leadership team highly unpopular, especially their PM and his chancellor, who are seen as responsible for the damage done. They have m...

  In a word, no..... Why ? Before I try to answer this question, here's some relevant background info.  In less straitened times, much more competition existed in the energy supply marketplace, and some quite competitive offers were available, particularly from new suppliers wanting to increase their market share. Amongst these deals were some involving tariffs which were ‘no standing charge’ i.e. you paid a higher unit rate for your gas and electricity, and only paid for the units you used, which were all priced at this higher rate.  This benefited low users of gas and electricity, and at the time these tariffs started to appear they were hailed by environmentalists as a much fairer and greener way of charging customers, given the urgent need for us all to consume less of the fossil fuels we use to power our boilers and generate our electricity. The recent upsurge in ‘raw’ gas and electricity prices, and the desire of the power supply companies to maintain their pr...

  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...