Craig in feed form

I recently got one of these household electricity display devices things and being the information fiend that I am I’ve started studiously recording how much electricity I use. That lead to the obvious question, How much is normal electricity consumption in the UK. The Internet did not provide me with reliable and consistent answer to this question, so after not inconsiderable rooting for information, I derived the answer from the most up to date available:

1 860 kWh (per person per year, UK, 2007). I’ll write about how my consumption compares once I have more lovely data to play with.

That is based on data from The Department of Business Innovation and Skills on the UK domestic electricity consumption in 2007 (117 126.2 GWh) and the associated number of domestic meters (26 670.3×10³)¹. For the per person figure, the UK 2001 Census provides a persons per household figure of 2.36².

1. Electricity Consumption Data at Regional and Local Authority Level
2. Census 2001 – People and their homes in England and Wales

My letter to my MP, Don Foster, regarding Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill.

Dear Don Foster,

I would like to draw your attention to Clause 152 of the Coroners and
Justice Bill. The Bill is currently in the committee phase. I am not
very familiar with reading legislation or interpreting it, but having
read the clause, I would summarise as follows.

The clause amends the Data Protection Act 1998 to allow ministers to
break the act (by sharing personal information) when it is “necessary
to secure a relevant policy” i.e. whenever they like. No restriction is
placed on who the information may be shared with, or for what purposes.

Part B, subsection (2) also allows for the creation of offences through
the issuing of information sharing orders… I don’t know how these
things are normally done, but that just doesn’t sound right.

I fear this is a “get out clause” for those who feel tied by the Data
Protection Act. It also seems to clear barriers to sharing of personal
information between government departments… but further places no
restriction on sharing with the private sector.

Yours sincerely,
Craig Loftus

My letter was sent with the aid of WriteToThem.com.

For the last few days my eyes have been feeling strained and I’ve had a constant low-level headache. I’m usually pretty good at knowing what is wrong, and I was sure that my prescription was off.

I wasn’t wrong. Although the optometrist said that the relatively sudden onset of headaches was probably the result of working too hard (most of my few readers are probably laughing now).

Basically, I am more myoptic (short sighted, represented by SPH), but my astigmatism (none spherical-ness of the eye, CYL) is the same. Oddly, the ways my eyes are pointing (Axis) has reversed… either that or someone wrote them down the wrong way around!

To cut a boring story off quickly, I ended up shelling out £309 for a new pair of frames and lenses! My current frames have last for about 5 years (with 3 prescription changes), so hopefully it will be money well spent.

A new age has dawned. I have just experience my first trip to Sainsburys during which I did not once have to interact with a single pathetic meat bag. Truly the future is upon us. All that is left is for this pathetic meat bag to be replaced with shiny metal shopper-bot.

I recently visited the United States of America. For as long as I’ve held opinions on anything, I’ve said that US was somewhere I would be quite happy if I never visit. I now have to amend that statement. The US is somewhere I would be happiest if I never visited again.

I’m not really feeling very literate today, so I’m just going to make an ad-hoc list of points which come into my head:

• As soon as you make land-fall in the country the state assails you
• Conspicuous consumption at a scale I’ve never seen before
• A tendency for large products, made from expensive materials, but made poorly
• Service staff skitter around like frightened bunnies, keen to help, but completely incapable of doing so
• For an Englishman, the culture of tipping felt so awkward as to make me reticent
• The programmes on their TV had me chuckling for hours
• Their cars aren’t just big, they are designed to look big
• The stereotypes of the average American have not been washed away
• Despite being in ‘hippy’ California, and despite assurances from various Americans, it was not easy to find vegetarian food
• Perhaps related to the last point, at no point did I find good food

I might add to this list as the visit comes back to me.

I should add the caveat that I did meet some wonderful and lovely people. People who were interesting, intelligent, witty and worthy of my admiration and respect. However, the ‘nature’ of these people did not seem to be represented in the media, the culture, the shops or the infrastructure.