A frugal life is an easy life!

In our house, we rarely use the fire. It has to be minus 10 outside and ice cold in the house before it gets turned on.
So, when we started the building work (which still needs plastering) I decided we should have a real coal fire.
Heating and water would still be in place via a new boiler (our current Baxi Potterton back boiler is almost 30 years old and still going strong) but with the option of long, dark winter evenings, being in front a snugg coal fire!

Well today, the plans for the new boiler and radiators have been put in place. It may take a few months to get the blokes out to physically do the work, but once it is in place, then the real fire will follow close behind.

We already have the hearth marble base and a fantastic wood fire mantelpiece, from a frugal job I did for a neighbour (who had a friend that wanted rid of the mantelpiece and base) so just the workings of the real coal fire to get, then it is up to the chimney sweep to prepare it all... I can't wait!
Small sacks of smoke free coal are only around £4 here, picked up from our nearby farms and are in plentiful supply.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been repaired after more than a year and could be "fired up" as soon as this weekend.

The LHC fascinates me, not because of the size of the thing/project, or where it is situated, or the costs involved... will they recoup any of the money they have have spent?
The thing about the large hadron collider, that makes me even take notice, is the conspiracy theorists!

There is a belief that the LHC was broken on purpose, by someone who has come from the future to "avert disaster for planet Earth!"
As daft as this sounds, let us say that the LHC reveals something about the cosmos, some previously unknown fact or way of doing something, or even a new chemical in the dust particles generated from a collision, that proceeds to be used in a weapon or a method of generating energy in huge amounts and their is an accident or it falls into criminal hands, etc.
In the future time travel maybe possible - look up at the stars in the night sky outside your house, you could be viewing a star that no longer exists, but is still visible to the nakid eye on Earth, due to the time take for the light of the image to reach our view - say there was a way to go back in time and destroy or break the LHC?
This could avert a future disaster could it not?

Who knows, amongst us there could be people going backwards and forwards in time already, how would us mere mortals know about it?

T-Mobile, it has been revealed, are "working closely with" the Information Commissioner's office, over the passing on of millions of people's data and thousands of personal records of its customers.
The Information Commissioner's office, have interviewed staff after entering company premises with search warrants.

"Justice Minister Michael Wills has said that there was a "strong case" for introducing custodial sentences to prevent the illegal data trade" - the problem here is the law is clear but not being applied.
Under the Data Protection Act, information is not allowed to be passed or sold to any other company, without the individual's permission. Where the law fails is that only a "successful prosecution" results in an upto £5000 fine.
As anyone who has been cold called and requested information of where their own personal details have been received from, only to have the phone put down on them, knows, proving that companies have your personal data on their systems is hard enough, but to prove they sold it on, is almost impossible!

Also under the Data Protection Act, information is not allowed to be stored or transferred to or used, in countries that do not have the Data Protection Act, or similar legislation in place.
As we have all witnessed from the banks, insurance firms and other big businesses, they are passing on and using our information in countries not protected in the same way we are in the UK.

To be fair to T-Mobile, my family and I have been with o2 for many years now, two weeks before our contract is to be renewed, we get cold calls, from random businesses trying to sell us a new contract.
When I ask where they got my private number from, they put the phone down on me. I suspect that this happens to customers on other networks as well?

I've listened to the debates all over the news, radio and TV this week over the Y factor and the votes. I have heard a few different arguments about what was thought to be the reasons for it.

Tonight, as I post, I have on my Live Aid dvd, the original one from 1985.
Already after just four artists, we have had an angry Bob Geldof, a bouncing status quo and a youthful Paul Weller belting out his own hits with the style council.
It occured to me, that back then we had huge talent around, who made their money by selling records, if the records were not up to it, they made little money.
The artist was king, big business courted them, gave them a six figure record contract and the artist made their own albums and put them out to the public. If the public were lucky and the album was good enough, then maybe one or two successful singles came from each album, regardless, the promotion was relatively non existant, bar a guest appearance on swapshop or the like.

Would any of those artists I watched growing up through the 70s and 80s, have put up with such interference from record companies and big business? I doubt it!

In today's world, big business no longer needs the artist, they could put a tin of carrots on stage, as long as the promotion and image caught the public mood, the tin of carrots will make them big profits.
This is destroying creativity, which is why the more I think about it, the more I realise just how lucky my generation has been to have such varied styles and great artists coming through, the likes of which I'll never ever see again.
The question is, will the young people of today ever see it either? Or has musical talent gone forever? :no:

Halifax and Bank of Scotland ATM cards are not working this morning, as their systems have crashed.
This includes terminals in shops and stores.

The system could be off for many hours it is being reported, not good for saturday shopping!