vivweb01blog

  As a follow-up to the budget, and my recent pre-budget blog on the likelihood of Income Tax rises, I’ve tried to answer the simple question in the title i.e. Did Labour break their manifesto promises by raising the rate of one of the 3 main taxes – i.e. Income Tax, NI or VAT ? The short answer to this question is...Yes, they did, despite their protestations to the contrary.  Read on to find out why..... November' budget was a complex affair, and seemed almost to be designed to confuse. It was widely anticipated by industry and the general population as a "death by a thousand taxes", and certainly lived up to the prediction. Much was made of sticking to manifesto promises, almost to the point of obsession by the Party, in the weeks before the budget, to the extent that Reeves was eventually forced to 'chicken out' of her planned 2p across the board rises in direct tax on income in order to head off a widely anticipated rebellion by her 'unruly' back...

  A couple of years ago I attempted to answer the question ' Are we alone in the universe '.  At risk of appearing to be a 'glutton for punishment',  I thought it would be useful to follow this up by looking at an even weightier and perhaps even more topical question - 'How did the universe start and how will it end ?'. There is a lot of argument about this currently, with the principal 'Big Bang' theory (BBT), until recently taken as gospel by cosmologists, now being challenged in the light of new evidence from the JWST. More evidence suggesting the presence of 'bio-signature' gases in the atmosphere of a 'nearby' (relatively speaking!) exoplanet has also caught the media's attention and promoted discussion about our place in the universe recently, thus re-igniting the debate. Another recent development was the observations on supernovae from DESI suggesting the universe may already have started contracting again. Read on for a short...

Editor's note: Looking back at this blog from 2022 has been instructive in showing just how much has changed since then...and how much hasn't.... Putin is obviously as resolved as ever to continue is 'special operation' in Ukraine, and as the devious campaigner that he is, has found ways to circumvent all attempts by the West to broker a cease-fire deal. Even that arch-deal maker himself, Trump, well into his last term and clearly in 'legacy-seeking' mode, has singularly failed to make any impression, and has now finally realised that Putin has been 'playing him' all along. His surprise comments in a BBC interview this summer confirmed this, but Trump obviously hasn't given up yet on arranging his 'master deal'.  When he does finally realise it's hopeless, and that Putin's obsession is 'hard wired', things could get quite unpleasant for Russia on the economic front, and more to the point, for anyone found to be continuing to t...

  Editor's note: See recent update 23.11.25 at the end of the main article for the latest news on the new UK.GOV plans for reorganising recycling collections....if you're waiting for a new food bin, don't hold your breath.... ---------------------------- As one of the more incisive questions of our age, "When is Bins ?" definitely deserves some attention…and hopefully a reliable and effective solution for those afflicted by the recent changes (i.e. most of us!). In days of old, life was much simpler when it came to getting our rubbish collected…. The majority of households had just one dustbin. We put it out for the dustmen (as we affectionately referred to them in those balmy 'pre-pc' days) on the same day each week, and with a bit of luck it got emptied sometime on that day.  Life is much more complicated nowadays when it comes to dealing with our domestic waste. The advent of recycling and climate change awareness, which admittedly was overdue  an...