At the moment I’m commuting between Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge by train. It works out for the best for me – the times work out OK, I’m really catching up on reading, and it’s cheaper than driving.
Currently, a weekly ticket costs me £45 , and parking at Bury Station is £12 for the week (or £3.50 per day…), so my weekly costs are £57.
Having looked around, the next station along, Thurston, is much the same distance from home, and the parking is free. So I thought I’d have a look at the cost of the ticket.
A weekly ticket from Thurston to Cambridge is – wait for it – £77. Yes, £32 more expensive for one station more. It’s not even that much of a distance…
View Larger Map
The actual route is the dead-straight run between the two, not the highlighted route.
Even more bizarrely, a weekly ticket from Thurston to Bury is – um – £14. Still more expensive than parking at Bury station, but less than half the price of the extended weekly ticket from Thurston->Cambridge.
I’m sure there’s some logic there somewhere. But damn if I can find it.
I noticed this on the new DVD player today…
The full box
So yep, new cheap-ass DVD player. But what’s that security sign on the right ?
Security Tag - Do Not Microwave
Yep – a sticker telling me to not microwave the sticker / box.
Is that something I’m supposed to do to a DVD player, then? Stick it in the microwave to make it work?
Note : Yes, I do know it’s just a generic sticker, and doesn’t matter whether it’s on a microwave or any other device. It just made me smile
One of the more bizarre sights at AdTech this year was this…
Yellow Camouflage, Yellow Shirt, Yellow DM Boots
Very, very yellow – and very odd.
But what is the point of camouflage trousers in bright yellow? The mind boggles – I want to be concealed, fit in with the forest, but also bright yellow. Maybe it’s for hiding in fields of oil-seed rape.
According to the BBC, Tax through PAYE has been (in some cases) utterly stuffed for the last couple of years.
In the story, about £2bn has been underpaid – but about £1.8bn has been overpaid. Now to me, that’s a case of “Oh sod it, it kind of balances”. But no, in a fit of efficiency (or at least Inland Revenue’s version of efficiency – which isn’t efficient at all) they’re going to send out six million letters telling people that they’ve over- or under-paid, and the differences will be refunded or paid back in the new tax code.
So. Six million letters. Even in second-class post, that’s a minimum of 32p per letter. Which makes a cost of £1,920,000. Doing the letters first class would be a cost of £2,460,000.
Let’s look at this sensibly.
We’ve underpaid £2bn in tax.
We’ve overpaid £1.8bn.
Which leaves £0.2bn to pay.
And Inland Revenue are going to spend £2 million to get back that £0.2 billion.
Is it just me that sees the idiocy in this? Talk about throwing good money after bad.
And actually, why the flying fuck should the people who have underpaid – through no fault of their own - be penalised by having to pay extra this year for a mistake made by Inland Revenue itself ?!?
Yesterday while driving home I had one of the more surreal driving experiences of late.
Pulling out in front of me was a truck with a load of topiary pigs. Yes, topiary pigs.
So half my journey home last night was spent looking at the arses of three green pigs.
Three Pigs Backsides
It’s not the best of photos – taken while waiting for traffic to sort itself out – but you get the idea.
I’ve just realised that last night there was a sign of the upcoming Apocalypse, and I missed it. Arses.
The sign was this : It’s August, and I had a dream about the Festering Season.
Not, thank the Deities, a good dream. Instead it was a dream about Festering Tat being in the stores way too early (again) and me going rather ballistic at the shop-owners/managers who had allowed it to happen.
Very very fucking weird, and I’ve no idea what on earth it’s meant to be about, or what it says about my subconscious.
That is all.
This weekend the village down the road has their annual “vintage working weekend” event. It’s a bizarre thing – not quite a steam rally, not quite anything particular – but means that our road is pretty much constantly thronged by tractors running up and down.
Right now though there’s a parade of tractors going past the front of the house, some with passengers on trailers, most just being driven along as part of the parade. Completely mad.
So far there’s been about forty of the damn things…
