Recent content by Terry - Somerset

Farage has the capacity to very directly change minds. He is a hugely effective communicator - as was Boris in the EU debacle. The remain campaign thought rational analysis would win the day - they were wrong! That I disagree with him on Brexit and many other issues does not render him...

The national leadership team: There are 7000 senior civil servants - people who earn similar amounts to MPs, Ministers and the PM. Mostly Whitehall types There are 50,000 NHS staff earning over £100k pa. Most are professional medical staff - at a guess perhaps 5,000 are admin and management...

If it is so easy and cheap to use a VPN, why do companies continue the illusion of country or regional blocks.

Average housing starts over the last 40 years are ~140k pa largely irrespective of the party in power at the time. A few predictable peaks and troughs - Covid, financial crisis etc. UK population has grown by 11.4m from 56.5m (1984) to 67.9m (2024) - about 280k pa. About 60% of the increase...

Confidentiality is a basic right. For a whole host of reasons you may not want your neighbour to know how much you earn, what religion you follow, of which masonic lodge you are a member, how you voted in the last election, your medical history, how much tax you paid etc etc. That places exist...

Probably a little late on this one. Open shelving gathers dust and needs cleaning - this is a pain. To me book spines are an unremarkable vista, not something to be admired. I would have doors on all but those shelves which may have books which genuinely add interest through being exposed or...

Irrespective of the settings on my devices - laptop or smartphone - I have low confidence that my use and data is going unrecorded in some way. Duplicate devices may be sensible - one for formal and largely unavoidable activity - eg: banking, tax, medical records - and one for all other...

I have set my laptop to delete all cookies on shut down, bar a few which I trust - eg: banks, HMRC.

Debates over avoidance and evasion, and the distribution of wealth and income, are confused. Highly paid "captains of industry" evidence unjust inequalities. Top sports and media folk who earn similarly are often just respected for their talent. The former can create jobs and wealth, the...

I don't doubt that a computerised system to manage the Post Office made good sense. 25 years on we would not contemplate so large an organisation supported only by manual systems. That the system was flawed and the data produced misused is a management failing. The focus on reducing fraud is...

There is a fundamental difference - avoidance is legal and evasion not! An example - ISA's were originally established to encourage saving, particularly for retirement. Any income or withdrawals are free of tax. Assume I have £10k to invest at a rate before tax of 5%. The cash ISA generates...

Starmer made pledges in his leadership campaign including abolish universal credit, nationalise rail, mail, energy , water, ban outsourcing NHS, strengthen workers and trade union rights etc. These are probably now largely history - in fairness the manifesto yet to emerge may (but probably...

The skills required to motivate others to work collectively are completely different from those required of a craftsman. The former manage enterprises which can produce many, the latter only one at a time. This is not downplay the skills a craftsman deploys - quite simply they have less...

Were this a connection for a domestic dwelling (assuming you had planning permission) there would be no issue. You would ask the water company for a connection, they would no doubt do a survey, and come up with an estimated cost (probably much more than you first guessed). So the "mechanics"...

Unlike the sunlit socialist uplands found in world leading command economies epitomised by personal freedom and economic success in Russia and North Korea? There no no evidence to justify a claim of their superior intellect, although there is zero evidence they are uniquely thick. What is...