Several of you have written and asked me why I've got a picture of that Triumph 2000 car on this Blog. I went to the North East last week as you know and my companion and I stopped for a short sojourn part of the way there and that Triumph parked next to my car in the mean time. I remember that model and it's in such good condition I felt the need to snap it. The driver came back as we were about to leave and he told us that it's a 1964 model. Beautiful irony: I took a picture of the car from the back end as well and only once I'd looked at the picture did I see that he'd parked the thing under a sign saying 'New Range ... '. 43 years late but it did look new! DW

Hmm, it's tempting, very tempting. Microsoft is offering a free of charge 60 day trial of its new Office 2007 software. I had taken part in their Beta trials last year and even though Outlook 2007 Beta collapsed on me in spectacular fashion, I started the trial yesterday.

I told the software to install the 2007 version completely separately from my existing 2003 version. I also kept the default do not install Outlook 2007 in tact.

The first thing I did was to take a very, very quick look at Access 2007 since that is where I am spending a lot of my time at the moment but did nothing with it. I then created a Form in Access 2003 and I found that it had overwritten my Calendar ActiveX control by installing Calendar 12.0. That then caused a problem as when I send that database to a colleague the
calendar failed to work.

I also noticed throughout the day that I seemed to be receiving a lot more junk mail than normal. This morning, the same: every junk message and I think viral message was getting through to my inbox even though I'm well covered with anti virus software and have hundreds of junk mail interventions in place (they're still there, I checked). I don't know why yet but even though I didn't install anything to do with Outlook, I think it may well have interfered with my system in some way.

I wrote to MS about the first problem and then found the second problem later.

Let's see what happens now as I did ask for feedback from these people.

DW

Last weekend they forecast snow falls for England. For once, the Met Office got it right and today we woke up to lots of snow. Now, given such warning I would have thought that our gritters and so on would have worked their magic and kept us running. Far from it: thousands of schools closed (in my day that never happened), airports closed ... is this idleness and opportunist idle people taking a chance to have an official duvet day or is it yet another lessening of services by our local authorities? Here's another thing: listening to Radio 4 this morning at around 9 am. I am working in the dining room and I play the radio via my digital telly so it's digital radio. It started to break up badly and after around 5 minutes or so it stopped completely. Hmm, I thought, that's a bother. Then I realised the problem: snow on the satellite dish. Went to the garage and got myself a brush and swept and knocked snow off the dish, switched on the radio and Bob's you Uncle again. A good job I'm tall, by the way, as the dish is around 10 or 11 feet off the ground. Someone squat wouldn't have coped without the assistance of a chair or step ladder or even hovering helicopter.

DW

Let's hear it for Romania: you might be surprised to learn some of the great things you'll see in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSoruzRkj7g&mode=related&search

And here's my friend Lilly from Romania: we worked together for around half of 2006 in Bucharest. Lilly's an ACCA qualified accountant. I'm always impressed by people like Lilly who learn a foreign language and then pass high level qualifications in that language. She speaks French as well. Such talent!

DW

Today was one of those that Shakespeare called so foul and fair.

I met a woman at work who told me stories to make our politicians ashamed of themselves. I have railed against the likes of that odius Claire Short and the deceased Robin Cook. Pretend socialists both: one was the Foreign Secretary and the other the DFID Minister at a time when South Central Africa was suffering badly from floods, then famine and always from political instability. They nailed their colours to the anti Iraq mast in a very public way. At the same time they were, in my opinion, derelict in the
way they treated their African briefs.

What has brought this up again? The woman I met is from an African country I knew well for a while and this happened to her and her family:

Her husband was forced to flee to the UK following attempts on his life
She and their children then followed him here after having been forced to flee the arrival at their house of 14 armed murderers
Her children were followed and harassed by a Policeman from their home country on a bus ... in ENGLAND
Her mother was poisoned and died

The former consort of a late president who was a tyrant when he was alive is now living in poverty in a village: good. Her uncle, also a former murderer and henchman of that President is in relative poverty although still active in politics. This man sent his own son to a police station to deliver a written note. On the note, addressed to a policeman it said, "Shoot the bearer of this letter, my son". The policeman advised the young man to run away for his own safety.

We are not talking about Zimbabwe here either. As my contact told me, the good news from Zimbabwe is that everyone knows what is happening and people can take action against it. Where she comes from, no one outside the country knows.

What crime is this family guilty of? Being politically active in a way that the ruling party does not like. What's not to like? Well, just being a member of an opposition party, that's all. Not activists or rebel rousers: just being prepared to say you don't agree with the ruling party. So you have to die. And your spouse. And your children. And your parents.

There are some evil people around and yet the likes of Short and Cook are happier playing interfering petty politics than protecting the lives of ordinary people from countries who could be making a difference or just living a normal life.

DW

This is another simulcast: duncan's diurnal diatribe and OxBowBusiness Blog.

Well, bad news: avian flu has finally arrived in the UK. Apparently, vets are worried at how it appeared in a high security environment; the Bernard Matthews turkey farm in Norfolk. Someone on the radio said this morning that they had expected to find it in a tin pot little organic poultry farm
somewhere.

Let me predict now, before anyone else gets ranting in the newspapers, that we are about to face a sickening set of reports and accusations that will end up with Prime Minister Tony Blair being held personally responsible. Vets will be accused of hiding the truth. Farmers wil be accused of knowingly selling infected birds. Large farmers will be compensated handomely and well before small farmers, if compensation is payable at all.

We had the avian flu scare last year and the best we could do was to find a dead wild swan in Scotland. Now things really have taken a turn for the worse and no one was ready.

Be ready now for the nonsense onslaught of typical UK newspaper based comment and opinion that means and signifies absolutely nothing.

End of rant!

DW