I've been trying to book an appointment to give blood, and it's proving hard enough that I'm thinking of just giving up. It seems to me that either the country already has comfortably enough blood donations relative to demand, or the the blood service is underfunded/badly run and unable to actually collect enough blood to supply the demand despite ( Read more... )

As reported in the news, the Competition and Markets Authority has issued a provisional determination aimed at improving competition in the car insurance market

Two things struck me about the news story which was why I went to read the actual determination.

1. They're planning on stopping price comparison websites insisting that insurers provide ( Read more... )

 It's interesting - and could well turn out very significant for the future of the UK - that in a "proportional" system the SNP got 53% of the seats with 45% of the vote ( Read more... )

My watch strap broke this evening.  Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. That means that by law, all large shops must be closed, so I guess I can't easily replace it until Monday. A very minor annoyance, but one that will be repeated up and down the country to a greater or lesser extent for millions of people.

Apparently about 1.5 million people - 2% of the ( Read more... )

Lots of people have been complaining about this distribution of seats:
PartyVotesSeatsX41,0870Y33,6331Z27,9371

What about this one? PartyVotesSeatsA917,8320B563,7430C491,3866D285,6161E171,9425F168,2168G165,3943H110,9703I42,7621

The Tories have an absolute majority of English seats. How long before this becomes an issue? 

I don't get it. In 2005, the LDs got 22% of the vote, 9.6% of the seats and no significant influence on the government of the country. This time they've got 23% of the vote, 8.7% of the seats, and a huge influence on the government of the country. Why are people protesting now and not then?

We have a CanoScan 4400F. Recently I've been trying to scan lots of pieces of paper into PDF format so I can dispose of the originals ( Read more... )

I blame this on this.

I went to one of the torch protests earlier, here. The torch route was along Great Russell St, so the idea was that the protest would be at the end of Bedford Place. The police had placed their cordon about 5 or 10 metres down the road, though, which would have significantly restricted the view of the route - in sharp contrast to the fact that ( Read more... )