Oh look...
.... another Lewis Page Opinion Piece (this time about energy bills) with no opportunity for us to post comments.
One could almost get the feeling that he doesn't like his opinions being questioned...
6899 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jan 2007
Perhaps because not everyone *has* a fixed line phone these days.
If you can get a pay as you go mobile for a tenner (or less) why do you want to pay line rental every month? If you get a bundle of free minutes, why pay a land-line connection charge?
Several people I know have ditched their land-lines because it's cheaper to use a mobile.
Maybe it's your inability to do any research that leaves you unfamiliar with the cost of phoning people in hospital, but it costs 49p a minute to call someone on their bedside phone between 8am and 6pm and 39p per minute at other times.
Calling out requires that first you buy a Hospedia Card (non-refundable, of course, unless you can pay with a credit or debit card) for a minimum of £3.50 and then pay 20p connection charge per call and 10p per minute thereafter.
Now if you actually compared that to the cost of most phone calls people make these days, I think you would consider that the words "somewhat excessive" would not be inaccurate.
Oh and, PS, you might be interested (well, if it fitted in with your parocial attitudes, that is) that Hospedia took over from Patientline after getting £30m of debt written off, sacking support staff (so if you have a problem you have to phone a premium rate support line!) and getting NHS Trusts to pay for updating system even though existing contracts have years to run.
But, hell, let's just bleed the sheeple white, it's what we've always done...
... says the Anonymous Coward...!
But you and Tapeador seem to think that we should throw away the fundamental Right of Presumed Innocent Unless Proven Guilty and instead go for "We don't know that you're *not* guilty, so we'll monitor everything you do and everything you say and everyone you talk to and everything you read *just in case* you might be planning on doing something which we think is bad!"
Double-plus Ungood!
I'd guess that the rear wheel is there to act a bit like a flywheel.
If you've ever tried riding a cheap exercise bike (one that just has pedals and a turnscrew to provide resistance) you'll have found that it's nothing like riding a real bike because as soon as you stop pedalling, all momentum is lost.
With the rear wheel, even if the rider relaxes for a moment, the rotational energy of the rear wheel keeps things going.
... "It is the latter that the Communist Party has been leaning on social media companies in the Middle Kingdom to stamp out as they are believed to disrupt social order"
Listening to rumours is treasonous, Citizen! - Your friend, The Computer.
Mine's the Ultraviolet Security Clearance one...
"seems like I'll be a Firefox user"
Be careful before you say that, v22.0 of Firefox appears to have broken cut and paste! (It's very hit and miss as to whether it works or not)
I've also had an instance of a Captcha repeatedly telling me that I didn't enter any data in the box (when, obviously, I did), so something certainly seems to have screwed up somewhere...
"The UK is sitting on a cheap energy economic revolution comparable to the heyday of North Sea Oil, the British Geological Survey suggests.
"The Survey’s estimate of the potential gas reserves of the Bowland–Hodder shale formation - finally published today – indicate that using today’s technology, the rocks should yield 1,329 TCF (trillion cubic feet) or 37.7 TCM (37,631 BCM, or billion cubic metres) of gas."
There's a lot of conditional words there...
I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't take drugs. I have no interest in the recreational use of substances that alter my perception etc and I am most certainly not "drug addled" in any way.
But if someone else wants to take these substances, why should they not be allowed to? More people die from tobacco related illnesses and accidents caused by drunk drivers than from illegal drugs. Legal drugs would, as has been pointed out many a time, allow the control of quality *and* permit Governments to raise tax on them, rather than pissing away huge amounts of money trying, as they have been for the last several decades to win an unwinnable "war on drugs".