Buying everything British - not easy

On BBC TV this morning they featured the Bradshaw family who are trying to buy everything British during 2013 i.e. food, clothes, electrical goods, fuel etc. As most of our manufacturing base has disappeared overseas, mainly to China, to reduce manufacturing costs, it is increasingly difficult to succeed in this challenge. The PC I am writing this on is made in China for a start. I see they have just run out of black pepper and are now stuck for a replacement as most pepper comes from exotic places. Buying BP petrol is a bit of a cheat as this company is really a large multi-national, but short of running a car on chip fat oil made from British grown sunflowers it is quite hard to find British petrol.

In my own small way I'd like to try to emulate them, in shopping if in nothing else, by buying British meats and British vegetables and fruit far more than hitherto.

Can someone explain to me how our economy works if nearly everything we eat, drink and use is imported from abroad? What we export surely does not balance the costs of these goods, so doesn't it mean we are just stoking up our debt still further?

The Bradshaws website is at http://www.britishfamily.co.uk/.

In the limit world trade would collapse if we traded nothing outside our country, but they are trying to make a point that virtually nothing is made in the UK these days. Surely there has to come a time when more of what we need will be made in the UK again?

The bonus season fiasco

The BBC News website mentioned that Goldman-Sachs may be postponing their UK bonus pay-outs this year so that employees who qualify will only have to pay tax at 45% rather than 50%. I do not know if this is factually correct but I have strong views on this:

• No company should be paying its employees average bonuses over £200k as I understand G-S did last year. Is this a correct figure? If correct, such payments look OBSCENE. Who needs this sort of money?
• No company should be manipulating bonus payments for tax avoidance reasons.

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21015726 .

Spareone mobile phone

Spareone emergency phone available from www.amazon.co.uk

Amazon and others are selling the Spareone emergency mobile phone. This interesting product uses a single AA battery (all types) and will hold its charge for 15 years (they claim) if the phone is not used. It is therefore ideal to have in the car or in a handbag in case of emergencies. It retails at just under £40. Neat idea that has won several awards.

Why is weather forecasting in the UK so bad?

The Met Office weather app screen

On my iPod Touch 4g I have the Met Office weather forecasting app. It is great with forecasts every 3 hours for the current day and for the following few days. There is a lot of detail there. The problem is it is frequently wrong, even at the current time!

I know all the excuses about butterfly wings flapping, but with huge mega-computers now in use is it really so impossible to get a decent weather forecast just a few hours in the future?

RFID chip security risk to credit and debit cards

Did you realise that your credit card and debit card may have an RFID chip embedded inside it that can be used to hack into the card details? Neither did I. Watch this video and see. Clearly it needs someone with the right software and skills to do this, but as this demo shows it cannot be that difficult.

Consumption and economics

With the US heading for a "fiscal cliff" unless Obama, the Senate and House of Representatives can muster a last minute deal, it is timely to remind ourselves that western economics is based on driving consumption to stupid levels to encourage "growth". This is ultimately unsustainable.

See http://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-death/ for an interesting article on this.

The end of the world? No, the beginning of the future

There has been a lot of publicity about the end of the world predictions which were supposed to have originated from some Mayan calendar that said the world would end at 11.11am on Dec 21st 2012. Well, the time came and passed and we are still here.  But, I am sure I can't have been the only person who asked the question, "what if this really WAS the last day?" and reflected, if only for a few moments, on our life and its finality.

In one way, we can think of today as a new day, with new hope and new ideas. Whatever the past has been has been, it cannot be undone or changed. The future though is an unwritten book. It can be what we want it to be, full of hope and promise. It is ours to forge.