Flatpackhamster

I caught the last 15 minutes or so and thought it was very interesting.

That's a super shot. There's a sparrowhawk where I live which I've seen in the garden three or four times. Do they take pigeons and collared doves? If so that might explain why the house opposite no longer has 40+ pigeons roosting on it at night.

I hadn't heard of them. I suspect, though, that the cost of them at the moment will be a problem. There's been no ICT budget in this school for about 5 years and the system (1 server, 40 workstations, 6 smartboards) essentially operates hand-to-mouth. When, last term, I told the head that the ICT network will cost £9,000 a year to maintain (based upon needing to replace computers, servers and boards every 5 years) she was horrified. There really is absolutely no money.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. The head has now decided there isn't the money for short-throw, so I've got to find two cheapish projectors and fit them before the end of the week. Go me!

No, you can't draw a dividend. You can still pay yourself a salary and you can still receive a bonus. But they're both taxable at a higher rate than the dividend. So if you urgently need to pay the rent, you can do it. But you can't do it tax efficiently.

I don't know where you heard that, but it isn't true.

There's a version that runs on Windows that you can download here: Gosfish Games - Download Free Games - Elite - The New Kind

I've been self-employed, running my own business for 9 years. Some thoughts which may or may not be useful. Setup - I have a Limited Liability Company. This means that if something goes horribly wrong I can walk away. The costs for this, and my payroll, come to about £1,500 a year. Unless you're a natural accountant then getting someone to do it for you is well worth it. By the way, accountants are all mean with money. The Bank - Cashflow is all important. You need a trustworthy bank manager (or business manager). You have to go to see them in person, every couple of months. You need to build up a relationship. Online accounts are no good. Setup costs - There are costs for setting up the LLC.You'll need printing for leaflets and cards (try Printcarrier.com - the printing people [ALL WE DO IS PRINT]). Running costs - Transport (you will need a car). Fuel, food (never eat on on a job, always take your own, it'll save a fortune). Hardware. Christ, the computer hardware. You need to get that stuff shifted as fast as you can. If you've just bought £3,000 of computer hardware, the faster you get the money for that the better. It's better if you can get the client to buy the equipment. Why? Because, when your turnover hits around £56,000 you will have to register for VAT. Which means more paperwork. Oh, and always take a deposit. No matter who it is. Nobody is your friend. Everyone is a client. Breaking the law and taking cash without putting it through the books - This is illegal. It is also widespread due to the high costs of running a small business and the high costs of regulation. I've had eight tax rises (Income tax, NI, Employers NI, Corporation Tax) in the last nine years so I really can sympathise with the people who do it. Discipline. This is the hardest thing. When you've just come in at 8pm on Saturday night, and you know you're back out again on Monday morning at 8am, and that Sunday afternoon is the only chance this week that you will have to do your invoices, do you have the discipline to sit down and do them while all your friends are having a barbecue and drinking beer? If the answer is 'maybe', then self-employment may not be for you. Customer turnover - Unless your customer base is extremely loyal you can expect to lose 25% of them every year. Some move, some lose your address, some use someone else. You need to advertise constantly. Reputation - Your reputation is the most important thing. If people trust you they will recommend you. 90% of my work comes from recommendation. Those people know that I'm good, they know that I can be trusted and that is worth its weight in gold. Loneliness - If you love the office vibe you will hate self-employment. Contacts - This is so important. One good contact is worth a year's advertising. If you can find someone who knows everyone (head of the Rotary, pub landlord, that kind of thing) and who knows and trusts you and has used you, that person will also be worth their weight in gold. Get in on local committees, local groups (all free ones), get to know everyone you can. Don't expect to break even for 18 months. You can expect poverty and penury and misery. And I wouldn't change it for the world. There hasn't been a day gone by in the last nine years where I've woken up and wished I worked for someone. Not. One. Day. Oh, I've wished for the money and the security. But I'm not prepared to pay the price. And there's something quite special about getting up on a sunny Wednesday morning when you don't have any work on and going for a walk while everyone's at work.

Yep, around 6pm yesterday.

The new season of Mongrels starts in a few weeks. How did everyone got on with that?

Take a Look in the Mirror - Guy Fawkes' blog Guido handily links to the Information commissioner's report, which you can find here: http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/current_topics/~/media/documents/library/Corporate/Research_and_reports/WHAT_PRICE_PRIVACY_NOW.pdf It refers to 'blagging', which is illegally obtaining information about people. I should have been more explicit and not just referenced phone hacking. As you can see from the report the police have already been involved.

I don't see how it's any more ignorant than any other US news channel, which all seem to have pretty dimwitted people regurgitating stories that they have no hope of grasping. The difference is that it is unashamedly right-wing, and that's what you object to. So what if the people who watch it don't read books? Who are you to judge their lives? They've found a TV channel which reflects their core values, just as the BBC reflects the core values of wealthy Islington middle-class socialists. The Mirror is also the gutter press. The Mirror has done far more phone hacking than the NOTW. But everyone's been pretty quiet on that front, because of course the Mirror is a left-wing paper, and that makes it OK. I doubt that he knows who is hired, what the editorial line is, or any of that stuff. He hires people to do that for him. That's why he doesn't know what the editorial line is, or who hacked what and when it was done. The missus works for a bank in the city. She's relatively high up but I doubt that there's a single director who could link her name to her job, say when she was hired, say exactly what decisions she made and when they were made. When she tries to explain it to me it boggles the mind. The one she works for hires 15,000 new employees a year. The scale of these big companies is such that it is simply impossible, even if you wanted to, to know everything that's happened. Politicians who operate in a very small world, and people who work in very small businesses or institutions (like schools) seem to forget that.

It isn't everyone that hates him, it's the BBC and Guardian who hate him. The reason they hate him is his politics. He doesn't agree with the BBC/Guardian left-wing 'consensus' and his news agencies follow his line - liberty, democracy, free markets. The Left hate him because of it. That's all it is. I mean, I might despise Polly Toynbee, but I wouldn't write on Twitter about how she deserved to be gassed or poisoned for her views. But that's what we see from the Left. And they think they're the nice ones!

It's the scale of that volcano that I find so extraordinary. I'd love to do that, though. What a great job collecting lava would be.

I'm not sure that the general public cares about it quite as much as the media thinks. This is what the media loves best - a story about itself. Not that there's anything important happening in the US, China, Australia, Canada, or the entire fricking EU at the moment, of course. The polls haven't budged so, despite the best efforts of the Guardian and BBC, people aren't linking 'EVUL THATCHER TORIES' to 'EVUL THATCHER MURDOCH'.

Dear everyone, I'm looking for some advice about replacing two projectors. One of the issues that the teacher has raised with the existing projector fitting (conventional fitting on the ceiling about 12 feet from the Smartboard) is that when the children in the classroom above rush in the ceiling sways, putting the projector out. Can anyone suggest a reasonably good quality, reasonably cheap short-throw projector? They need to work with a Smartboard but otherwise I can't think of any criteria that might affect purchase. Let me know if you can. If anyone also has any suggestions on a standard ceiling-mount projector - something reliable and reasonably good quality - that would also be much appreciated. In terms of budget - money is very tight. The less I can spend the better.

I'm jealous. The primary school whose system I help to support has no money and has never had a rolling budget for IT hardware replacement. Total spending this summer will be about £800 to replace two projectors (both 5 1/2 years old). If I'm lucky I'll also get to order a couple of toners for the long-suffering printer.

Speaking from personal experience only, I used to get very stiff shoulders and a very bad back while working in front of a PC because I'm a natural sloucher. A change in chair and a mental reminder to stop lolling over the desk has helped that in part, but the thing which has made the biggest difference is exercise. I go to the gym several times a week now and now the only pain that I get from spending too long in front of the computer is a numb tingling in my wrists and forearms (classic RSI, I suppose).

But where you have the freedom of the press, you will get both sides of the coin. You either have an unfree press and no expenses revelations and no Wikileaks revelations, or you have a free press and, frankly, have to suck it up. If you think the stuff that's printed in the tabloids nowadays is bad take a look at the 19th century pamphleteers. I agree that there's no 'public interest defence' in the NOTW. Let me reiterate that I don't defend what they did. The problem arises with the definition of 'public interest'. If politicians are allowed to tighten that definition then there is a risk that their corruption and hypocrisy go unpunished. Yes, the NOTW should be responsible for their actions, as everyone should be. What I'm objecting to is the way some papers and broadcasters have made this political. This, for them, isn't about a newspaper, it's about a man and what he stands for.

It shouldn't have been done but let's not pretend for a minute that journalists are angels. They're not paid to be. They're muckrakers. They all are, that's what they love doing and what draws them to the job. Often they're vile. Without them, though, we'd be in a hell of a bind. Look at William Cobbett. A journalist and muckraker in every way, but he revealed the corruption at the heart of Parliament. Few other people at the time could have done it. He broke the law to do it and was imprisoned for it. There's no comparison between the NOTW and Cobbett, but to draw another analogy - look at the expose of politicians' expenses in the Telegraph, or the Guardian's Wikileaks features. Both were passing out illicitly gained material. The NOTW is the other side of the coin. That's why I loathe the sanctimonious hypocrisy that's flying around at the moment. All journos know in their hearts that, if they really wanted that scoop badly enough they'd have done the same things as the NOTW did.

You see, this is the problem that I have with much of the commentary on the News of the World stuff. It isn't that it was wrong which has got so many people agitated, it's that it was a Murdoch newspaper doing it. Guardian, BBC, Independent - their knives are out not because of what's happened but because Murdoch is unashamedly right-wing and they see it as a chance to settle scores. They hate him in the same way that they hate the above-mentioned Margaret Thatcher. It's visceral, it's incoherent, and it drives them to apoplexy. Look at the last paragraph: "Doing so would not mean that Milly Dowler did not die in vain. It would be insufferably glib to suggest that. But it would honour the memory of her name if something wonderful could be salvaged from an unspeakable tragedy that meant no more to Murdoch's minions, as ever working to the Fuhrer in whose image they are cast, than another opportunity to cash in. " It would 'honour the memory of [Milly Dowler's] name' if News Corp couldn't take over BSkyB? Did you ever read such a sanctimonious, rancid, mawkish piece of doggerel outside a tabloid paper?

I set one of these up for a client a couple of weeks ago. It's the first gadget in a very long time that I used and thought 'I must own one of these now.' I liked everything about it. I haven't bought one yet though due to penury.

Well it isn't good for the elderly. Colder winters mean far more deaths amongst the over-65s. Mrs FPH and I are house-hunting at the moment and it was particularly noticeable when we were looking in March and April that there was a flood of probate and vacant possession properties on the market and the agent confirmed that this was due to the colder-than-normal winter. It's also more expensive for councils who have to repair the roads more often. In Finland they resurface all the main roads every year because cars have winter tyres with studs in which tear the roads to hell and back. As it is the council around here only finished fixing last winter's damage in June.

I've used the Devolo boxes for a number of clients. They've been very good and the new ones which create a wireless access point are even better. Software is good (now they've got the bugs out of it) and the security is effective. I recall reading, somewhere or other, that they cause a huge amount of interference to radio waves.

Yes, mine's fine. Load times when I die are 6-8 seconds. No jerking animation. I don't have a computer of doom or anything, it's a quad-core with 4GB RAM running XP, and it's an ATI graphics card (can't remember the model). It's 2 years old and the card cost about £120 then, so it wasn't exactly top of the line. I don't have a SSD, just standard 7200RPM drives. Maybe I've just been lucky.