Frizz

A, whom I’m going to call the civil servant, told me that bears in Russia are coming out of hibernation early, because it’s been so warm there and for some reason it’s conjuring up a sweet image of a bear waking up and rubbing it’s eyes.

Quite fun and very addictive, although I’m not entirely sure how it works and what are the points for anyway? Google Image Labeler

I was one of the 5.2 million watching last night to see what all the fuss was about.  Saw Jade’s outburst, she needs some anger management training don’t you think?  What disturbed me the most was the other two just sitting and watching and laughing… that felt very uncomfortable.  Whatever else is going on and S made me realize that there is a lot I haven’t seen, if you are using someones race/culture to bully them, then isn’t that racism?  Pure and simple - none of this Channel 4 we can’t be sure it’s racially motivated, lets see if we can get 6 million viewers this evening rubbish.

Now I want to do my tax return, I can’t. Having agreed that whoever’s tax return they had under my name, was obviously wrong, my tax office assured me that it would all be sorted out and I wouldn’t have to do anything else. So it’s a week later and I’m at that stage where I’ve almost got all the info I need and I thought I’d login to start filling out the form, but I hadn’t thought about this; the online system is saying that I’ve already completed my return and hence I can’t fill it out again (no second chances). What was that about not having to do anything else? I spoke to Alex at the tax office who looked through my details and agreed that it was taking a bit of time and promised to send an urgent message.* He said I’d have good recourse if I got it in late, well jeez thanks… I said that I could do without the stress and I’d have to charge them for the work it would involve, he laughed, sort of. He said this happened now and then… inspires confidence in the ’system’, is there a system?**

*Will take two days; interesting idea of urgent.

** Actually I don’t want there to be a system.

iPhone the Commercial

It really is an all in one…

Ops, had a little trouble signing up to YouTube… told a fib and then couldn’t take it back, accounts pages have no sense of humour. So the video should come up as the next post and it should work this time. Crossing fingers.

I’m doing my tax return. I’m bored. I thought I’d check back to see when I did it last year and it was around about the same time - I was convinced that I’d sent it in before the New Year… I don’t feel so bad now, although obviously I’m ignoring the bit about not leaving it so late again.

I’m thinking about the extension of the congestion charge in London, which comes into being on the 19 February. I’ve been looking at the map and trying to understand the justification for charging to travel in North Kensington, Westbourne Grove, Portobello Road, OK maybe the Kings Road, but the more I look at it the less it makes sense. I hope that the small shops on little streets, which are just that bit too far from a tube station will be OK. At the moment I don’t have much need to drive that way, but I have done in the past and there are lots of little places I would stop off at, that I won’t be able to afford to once the charge comes into force. There’s the really good veggie place for lunch on Portobello, or the Oxfam and the organic shops on Westbourne Grove, and all the little boutique shops there too. It’s not like I can’t live without them, of course I can and I’m thinking hey Ken is actually going to save me money, but they are a part of what makes London special for me. I was also thinking does this mean that all the people who live in the extended area, will now be able to drive into central London without paying any more money? So once the congestion charge covers the whole of London, we’ll all just have to pay the extra tax, but we’ll get our city back again. It’s not that I’m against not driving, but I’d like a sensible system that’s not about earning Ken money and pricing people out of living in London, but actually about getting people out of their cars in a fair way. And what I’d really like is school buses, which seem to exist in many other countries - if we are really talking about congestion (which of course we are not), then who doesn’t notice that during the school holidays there is no congestion.

And don’t get me started on how much it’s now costing me to travel by ‘public transport’.

Oh… my… god… (Think Janice from Friends), I’ve just discovered sidebar widgets… Hit myself over the head with a brick… OK, if you aren’t using Wordpress this will be gibberish, but really I was trying to do it manually… Well I learnt some code.

YO! Sushi half price deal on again until the end of January!