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Alternative Vote?
I thought I would find out more about the Alternative Vote proposal and get past some of the rhetoric that I've seen in the news. It has to be said that so far none of the interviews I've heard so far (on BBC Radio Four's Today programme) have been particularly compelling cases for voting No (or Yes, but I've heard more No than Yes). One interesting thing though is the way the two primary campaigns brand themselves on their website URLs. On the Yes side there is which sort of suggests a wider campaign about electoral reform and also an attempt to give an argument for their case in the URL. On the other side there is which suggests a specific campaign and perhaps it is just AV they object to. Anyway, starting with keeping the status quo here are…
Family Mystery
A cousin sent me an entry from the 1911 census for my great, great grandfather who lived in Old Kilpatrick in Scotland (which is where I grew up). James and his wife Ann Kemp are recorded as living at number 90 (Lusset Cottage) in Old Kilpatrick (the street isn't explicitly named, I guess that is on the page with the first house on it). This sparked an intriguing mystery, as there is a death certificate for Ann Kemp (nee Dewar) in 1890. Her husband James died in 1911 (for which I also have a certificate). His address on the death certificate is different to the census one (Smith's Land, Old Kilpatrick - but the person reporting it is listed as a neighbour and lives in 2 Neil (or Hill) Street Kilbowie), It is hard to be sure as the 1911…
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Second Assignment done
At last I have finished the second assignment for the B301 Making Sense of Strategy Open University course that I am currently doing. I got a week's extension to this one because I'd been a little unwell and very busy, so not managed to get any work done in time to get it done by 30th March (the original deadline). The task this time was to find an annual report for an organisation on the web and use it to describe the strategy that the organisation had followed in the period covered and also to critically examine whether they had conformed to technical rationality (and the clue in the question was to explain why they hadn't followed it). Well this one isn't as good as the last one, because although I got an extension to do it I spent much…
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The Defense of Jisr Al-Doreaa
This is an excellent update of an old classic. Two books in one, the author's have brought Swinton's Duffer's Drift and re-written it for the modern conflicts (which bear more than a passing resemblance to the Boer War). Swinton's book is in the second half of the volume. The basis for Duffer''s Drift (if you aren't familiar with it already) is that a young officer en route to the Boer War has a series of dreams about his first independent command. In each dream it all goes horribly wrong, but on waking he learns some lessons which he then takes with him into the next dream (without remembering the details of the previous dream). Over the course of six dreams he manages to learn enough lessons for a successful outcome. The scenario is well set out, with appropriate maps and…
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You Cannot E-mail HMRC?
I was somewhat surprised tonight to discover that HMRC apparently refuse e-mails from members of the public (AKA customers) with tax enquiries. This was started because I got a coding notice (dated 21 February 2011) that said I owed some back tax from a previous year. They claimed to have told me about this already, but I didn't recall that, and since I'm on PAYE (with a Govt Dept) I believe I've paid the correct tax for my entire career. If anything I may have overpaid because my charitable contributions won't have been taken into account (a modest amount though). Anyway, I used a bit of know-how and after the first obvious e-mail addresses bounced (enquiries@) I then wrote to postmaster@ (the address the bounce came from) and it also bounced. So, being aware of the pan-government standard for personal…