David Brice

It seems that all the political parties are intent on confusing us all about what their policies actually are. It is all about slagging off each other at the moment which is not good for political debate. Maybe after the TV debate with the party leaders will things become clearer.

However, I think that we must not forget that this election is also about which party and which leader we trust to guide the country through a crisis or difficult times. Out of the three main political parties I think that David Cameron or Nick Clegg is the man I would trust most.

admin My Grumpy Opinions Election 2010

Today Gordon Brown, leader of the Labour Party called a General Election. After 13 years of Labour government has the time come for a new party to lead us all to prosperity ? The next 4 weeks is going to the most boring in terms of media coverage and I am inclined to not watch any of it on TV or read very little. That’s because I already know who I will be voting for and as all the political parties start squabbling about who is best for the country the next four weeks may well be a political turnoff for most people.

All I know is that Labour has not done a good job but the question is will the other parties be able to do any better ? Burdoned with massive debts the next few years are going to be difficult for us all and whichever party gains power they will have to make unpopular decisions. politicians also need to show us all that they are in it because they want to do the best for the UK rather than in it for themselves.

Many major issues need tackling by the next government.

1. There are too many people in this country so there needs to be limits because the infrastructure is not sufficient.

2. End the benefits culture and get people back to work.

3. Treat criminals as criminals and don’t put them up in hotels that are called jails where they have an easy life. A jail sentence in jail should be harsh to prevent the chances of re-offending.

4. Clamp down hard on anti-social behaviour and parents who do not control their children.

5. Spend only what we can afford as a country.

6. Force banks to lend money to businesses that are wanting to create jobs.

7. Encourage a culture that hard work will lead to success.

8. Cut taxes on everything. If we have money we will spend it and this will create jobs.

9. Spend more money on roads and trains to get the country moving more efficiently so that we spend longer at work rather than travelling.

10. Encourage enterprise so that the UK becomes bigger and better as a producer of quality goods and services.

This election looks like it’s going to be a dirty fight as Labour seem to want to doing anything to hang onto power. All the parties will eventually promise things that they know they can’t deliver but one thing is for sure…I can’t wait until 7 May when it will be all over !

admin My Grumpy Opinions General election 2010

The Royal Society recently held a conference to mark 50 years of searching for extra terrestrial intelligence. One of the questions that we all ask ourselves from time to time is whether we are alone in the universe or whether life exists on other planets.

Recently, however, voices in the scientific world have been warning that it might not actually be wise to search for life on other planets. They argue that as the Universe is about 14 billion years old and the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old then if there were life on other planets they are likely to be far more advanced than we are. If that was the case and they happened to find us because of signals we have sent out then it is possible they may not be as friendly as we had hoped. Therefore, some scientists say that we should keep quiet just in case !

They raise an interesting point but I have to say that I would have thought that Earth would have received some sort of electronic signals by now if there was advanced life somewhere out there. So far, there has not been any sort of signs that life may exist elsewhere.

I happen to think, though, that us humans are unique and that life on Earth was caused by a unique accident so rare that it was a one off. In other words, I think that we are alone and it is us that will one day inhabit other worlds when our own has run out of resources.

I have to say that I have, of course, no evidence whatsoever to back up my opinions, apart from the fact that I haven’t seen any sign of any alien spaceships myself yet !

admin My Grumpy Opinions aliens, life on other planets

I walked out for a newspaper this Sunday morning and managed to stay upright despite the ice and slippery surfaces on the pavements.

What amazed me though was the fact that hardly any shops on my local high street had cleared the snow and ice from in front of their shops. The more I think about it the more I think that there should be a law to force shop owners to clear snow from the area in front of their shop. There was a mixture of snow, ice and slush which makes shopping a miserable experience and potentially dangerous too. But from the point of view of the shop owners I would have thought that they would want as many shoppers are possible visiting their shops to spend their hard earned cash there, especially in these harsh economic times when people have reduced their spending.

It does not take much effort to clear snow. In my opinion, it is good customer service to make the shopping experience as stress free as possible and if I saw cleared snow from in front of a shop I would think to myself that this shop cares about its customers. Doing something to make your business stand out from the competition is very important and it seems to me that this simple job is being overlooked.

I hear though that snow clearing from shopping areas is not as easy as it seems !  Clearing snow away but leaving the area more dangerous than it was before could land you in legal trouble. Apparantly, legal experts have said that if clearing snow caused injury to someone they could sue under “tort of nuisance”.  If you make sure the area is gritted or salted after you have cleared it you should be in the clear.  It is easier to walk in uncleared snow than on a slippery iced over cleared patch of snow so if you are clearing snow make sure you do good job of it.

Making Money from the Snow !

I was very impressed yesterday morning when a note popped through my letterbox offering a snow clearing service. Paths cleared for £4 and drives for £6 which included gritting as well ! Now that is what I call enterprising…Well done for the fast thinking !

Related Posts

Heated Roads is the Answer to Snow Chaos

admin My Grumpy Opinions making money from snow, snow clearing from shopping areas

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. – A quote from Winston Churchill.

admin My Grumpy Opinions

The NHS has come in for some stick recently, especially from the USA where a big debate is raging about their healthcare system. The NHS was brought into the debate when Americans began to say that the NHS is rubbish.

I know quite a few people who work for the NHS and whilst it undoubtably has its problems, in my opinion, the NHS does a brilliant job. It employs 1.8 million people and eats up billions of pounds but it is there when you need it for most things anyway.

Of course, the NHS is not perfect, far from it. There are too many managers and not enough front line staff and treatment targets don’t tell the full story. There is also a problem with the cost of drugs for specialist treatments meaning that there is a post code lottery for some treatments.

Personally I would like to see a hybrid system whereby private healthcare is mixed with the NHS and it’s possible to opt out, but overall I think the criticism coming from the USA is unjustified.

DavidB My Grumpy Opinions the NHS

Sorry, but I just have to write another post about the snow as the subject is still causing headlines on TV and in newspapers here in the UK.

I couldn’t believe that the BBC 10pm news had the snow problems as its main story last night. They had a reporter, wearing wellies, who was standing on a road which had a minor amount of snow on it and behind him was a bank of earth where again there must have been a very slight snow covering. The BBC milked this story for about 10 minutes and I just could not believe that the BBC were spending so much time on such a thing. Here in the north of England we don’t have much snow but when we do we get on with things as best we can. Our buses don’t stop running and we manage to get to work even if we have to walk. When we have heavy snow in the north of England the BBC often don’t even mention it, but it’s a different story when snow descends in the south.

I can understand the BBC reporting that hundreds of schools were closed, because it’s a national scandal that schools were closed for two days. One day would have been enough, but due to the health and safety  culture that we have in this country headteachers decided that schools would have to close. This causes big problems for parents who have to take time off work to look after their children. I suspect part of the problem is that the majority of parents like to drive their children to school rather than walk.

When I was at school I can remember that the school playground was on a slope. In winter, when it was icy we used to make the longest ice slides you can imagine. (They seemed long at the time anyway!) We used to have great fun flying down these slides as fast as we could. The teachers didn’t mind at all. These days, however, grit is put down so you can’t slip on the ice. I can remember falling on the ice lots of times and I can’t remember that anybody was badly hurt in the school playground. We used to make them as slippy as possible – because you go faster !

I have just been reading about the winter of 1963. My mum was telling me about it as well. In places the depth of snow was 18 feet in the drifts and temperatures dropped to -16C. The sea froze in places and this freezing weather lasted 3 months. How would the UK have coped with these conditions if they happened now?

I dread to think how we would cope in another Ice Age. 15,000 years ago Europe was covered in ice that was half a mile thick – now that I think would be a reasonable excuse to call off London buses !

DavidB My Grumpy Opinions snow chaos

Much of the UK woke up this morning to a couple of inches of snow and I can imagine that for many people the daily commute to work was a nightmare. Our roads are clogged at the best of times and all it takes is a minor incident like a broken down vehicle to cause absolute mayhem. The situation is even worse when the snow falls. It can take hours to travel a distance that would normally take minutes and the situation is compounded by drivers who do not know how to drive in snow.

I have often thought that there has to be a better way to keep our roads clear of snow, ice and frost in winter so I did a bit of investigating using Google. I have often thought that heated roads would be a great idea, and now I have discovered that the technology does actually exist ! In summer our tarmac road surfaces generate an incredible amount of heat. If you have ever touched or walked barefoot across a tarmac road you will have noticed that the road surface is very hot, that is because tarmac acts as a giant solar panel.

In Holland they are experimenting with tarmac heating. Approximately 33m sq of tarmac is required to heat each 100m sq of a house.  A small area of tarmac (10 x 40m) can generate 108mW of energy per annum.

The system works by storing heat in aquifers in the ground and then it can be pumped up for heating purposes in the winter. In addition co2 emmissions are reduced by between 50% and 90% and there are many other benefits as well.

Typically, an airport runway could heat 2500 homes !

It’s been calculated in Holland that if 15% of Dutch roadways had the Road Energy System, more energy than all the combined utilities in Holland would be produced. 

The lifespan of roads is prolonged about two-fold as they can be kept cool during the summer and frost-free during the winter.  Resurfacing costs are typically halved as maintenance is reduced accordingly.  Traffic jams are decreased as there’s reduced road maintenance and bad weather doesn’t impede drivers as badly.  

Icy surfaces don’t have to be sprayed with salt – an obvious cost saving for local authorities and an ideal solution for airports (it’s not possible to spray airport runways with salt; the Road Energy System resolves the problem of ice on runways).

I think that it is solutions like this that need to be looked at. There will be an initial cost but the long term cost benefits are considerable. Even if a small percentage of the UK road network can be heated then our most important bits of the road network can be kept running.

The following photo is how snow free heated roads would look.

DavidB My Grumpy Opinions snow free roads

It’s official. The UK is now in recession, as if we didn’t already know! Everyday, I hear of shops closing and established businesses being denied credit from their bank. As a business owner myself I can tell you that these are very worrying times. Most businesses that sell anything must be seeing a reduction in sales. People are worried about their jobs and there is more unemployment which causes people to hang on to there money. As a travel agent I am seeing a shift to late bookings and I think that people will be reluctant to give up some sort of holiday this year.

In the past, people have found money easy to borrow for their holiday. After all, it is a major purchase and a family holiday for four people in high season to spain can cost £2,000. There is a definate shift towards All Inclusive holidays, where all food and drink is included in the basic price of the holiday. This makes it easy to budget as prices for buying things abroad have increased due to the fall in the value of the pound. I still think, though, that a holiday is good value for money compared to a holiday in the UK. Our travel agency is selling holidays to Greece at the moment for a week at a price of £199.00 per person which I think is great value for money.

The Idea to stop the rot

I think the government could have done much more to stop the recession in its tracks. Our greedy banks have been bailed out to the tune of billions of pounds. One of the main reasons for this was to get the banks lending again. This has not happened and the banks actually need bailing out again as the original sum has been swallowed up. The government has lent to the banks when it actually does not know the extent of their bad debts. I think the government should have missed out the banks and given money direct to the tax payer and to small businesses. What should have happened is that VAT and PAYE payments should have been stopped for 6 months and the slate wiped clean up to a certain amount. At a stroke this helps a struggling business and could avoid the need for shedding staff.

At the same time tax should have been reduced for 6 months, so that we all have more money in our pockets to encourage us to spend. This keeps the money supply moving and creates confidence in the economy.

Lets Build Houses!

In addition to this I think the government should have bought houses, thousands of them! It was only in the last year or so that the government said we needed to build thousands more houses for an increasing population. The building industry is in the doldrums, so why didn’t the government get the builders building by ordering houses to be built. The government could have done a deal with the building industry and they even could have become a huge landlord and rented these houses back so that they get their money back in rents. This scheme could even make the government a lot of money as these houses could be sold for a profit in the future. This makes sense to me!

I am not saying that the banks should not be saved but it strikes me that they were the ones who got us into this mess and they are being rewarded for that!

DavidB My Grumpy Opinions recession

I watched the inauguration of the new American President on TV. You can’t beat a bit of pomp and ceremony but it fell way short of the show that is put on in London for Royal occasions. It’s amazing what a few horses and guards in red uniforms with tall hats can achieve. There was nothing like that in Washington. All we got were a few old and past presidents and a bit of music. But there was passion in the crowds of people who were there to witness this historic event, which took place with blue sky but in the freezing cold.

The inauguration itself was a very short affair, but it did not run smoothly. Words were mixed up and Obama even forgot what he was supposed to say ! I hope that this mix up is not a sign of things to come.

As far as the Obama speech was concerned, I found it a little disappointing. It was very sombre and the expected phrase that people were hoping to remember and hold onto did not materialize. The new President’s in tray is going to be full for some considerable time and there are many problems to solve. I sincereley hope that the USA does change. It needs to change its foreign policy and it needs to change the lives of its own citizens. Obama needs to improve its health care, its education and to build up again its industry and its standing in the world. Whilst offering a hand of friendship to other countries it still needs to be alert against terrorism and it needs to change its image in the world

How to achieve all these things is the big question. Change breeds hope amongst everybody and we need the USA to solve its economic problems quickly because until it does the rest of the world will not recover either. George W Bush was not a good President but in my humble opinion Obama seems to have the drive and the team around him to make the changes he has promised.

As far as the inauguration ceremony is concerned us Brits should sell our expertise, as we may make some much needed money!

DavidB My Grumpy Opinions President Obama inauguration