Freesteel Blog » 2009 » November

Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 12:21 am - - Machining 8 Comments »

Horrors! This happened in our shiny CAM system when demoed in front of a customer. Everything was performing swimmingly slick and faster than anyone had seen, until this buggered-up boundary appeared, and the customer decided he liked his old CAM system better because it gave smoother, more consistent results.

wobbly

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Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 5:51 pm - - Cave 1 Comment »

Too much ranting in the blog. Here are some still pics from last three weekends caving.

Sunday 18 October
horsebag
What a mean thing to put on a horse. This was during our Wheeler ride around St Helens.

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Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 12:46 pm - - Whipping

salaraysaceg2
Just before the summer Liverpool University staff got this brochure about their new Pensions Plus salary sacrifice scam. You could tell it was a scam by the number of stock photos of smiling models holding money out to the staff in question.

In essence, they have found a way of legally lying to the taxman about employees’ pay in order to reduce tax receipts to the treasury. The deal is made very complex by the need to readjust a host of other entitlements that are pegged to the official salary rate. But here is how it’s explained.

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Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 12:53 pm - - Whipping 2 Comments »

As anyone following the news at the moment would know, there is a sh*tstorm about the sacking of Professor Nutt, formerly head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He is now learning about the Misuse ofDrugs in Politics, since he has made the unadvised decision not to go quietly.

Let’s check the political record:

On 29 October 2003 MPs voted — in line with informed advice — to downgrade the classification of cannabis from a Class B to a Class C drug. That means it would be a lower priority in relation to actual harmful drugs (to which more resources could be diverted), as well as reducing the aggravation to a lot of non-criminal ordinary people who were showing no signs of changing their habits.

All Tories voted against downgrading it. Most Labour and Libdem MPs voted for it.

I don’t have records of the 2005 election campaign, but it’s likely it showed up in the literature.

On 12 November 2008 MPs voted — as instructed by the government — to reclassify cannabis back to a class B drug. We were very lucky to get a vote on this issue, because the decision was scheduled to be waved through. Once again, all Tories voted for higher criminal penalties, and Labour MPs voted for the same, while Libdems continued to vote with the evidence.

There was a debate in the House of Lords on their version of the vote, which explains that the move pre-empted an impending review by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

Indeed, from the Lords debate, we have this comment from Lord Mancroft:

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Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 7:48 pm - - Vero

Vero reported the conclusion of its 2 November 2009 General Meeting thus:

The The[sic] Board of Vero Software plc (AIM: VERO) announces that following a General Meeting of the Company held today at 10:00 a.m. at the Company’s offices, the Resolution set out in the Circular sent to Shareholders on 15 October 2009, has been duly passed.

What? They don’t even say how many people showed up? Did they have a debate? Was the vote unanimous? How about the minutes of the previous meeting? Were they read and agreed to?

What was their last General Meeting?
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