Vet

Yesterday we took the cats to the vet...all three at once.

Mayhem ensued when it came time to catch them, put them in the baskets and then the car.

Oddly they got quieter when we got there, by the time we got the first one out of her cage for her check up and booster she was purring like a kitten.

She had a bad chunk of plaque on her teeth, which the vet pulled off with a pair of pliers. That spoiled her mood a bit!

Shelley

MP Expenses - James Arbuthnot

I have been looking at the records on the BBC website about MP expense claims.

As an IT professional I was interested to see that my MP, James Arbuthnot has been buying computing equipment and software on his expenses. He bought an IBM Thinkpad laptop for £2001.18, he then added a DVD drive and a spare battery for £350.22. This was in Feb 05. In May 04 he bought a memory stick for a whopping £322.26. In Dec 04 he bought wireless PC kit for £184.96 and in Jan 05 a service pack from IBM for £158.63 - this was before he bought the laptop though. In Jan 05 he also bought a scanner, wireless cards and a copy of Adobe Acrobat software. In Feb 05 he added a firewall and a router for £129.99 and £119.91. He seems to have trouble using this kit though as he has twice paid for out of hours IT support at his home to connect his wireless network.
In April 06 he bought another scanner for £559.30 to go with the one he bought in Feb 06 for £75.98 I assume.
He bought several USB memory sticks in 2005/06 - Feb 06 he bought 3 for just under £90, Sep 05 he bought another for £149.99 and Dec 05 he bought another for £59.99. In Sept 05 he bought a couple of external hard drives for over £300. It is a good job he is also claiming for his subscriptions to the Information Commissioner as a registered data user under the Data Protection Act as he seems to get through a load of USB Memory - maybe he leaves them in all the taxis he takes.
On the telecoms side he claims between £60 and £120 per month for his broadband (on a few occasions he pays for his calls - or half of them - but usually he doesn't split this out and claims for all the charges). He also claims for a separate fax line but this also appears to be included in his broadband bills too. I pay about £60 per quarter for my broadband, I share my fax line with the same line and I have a broadband phone service thrown in for free. So he seems to be being seriously ripped off.
He is also running BOTH a Blackberry Mobile Phone (which has Internet access built in) and paying for a Vodafone mobile with GPRS Internet on top. So he pays for using the Internet on his Vodafone mobile. I say "he pays" but of course he has re-charged both of them. Does he always carry both of them?
It occurs to me that the country could save a fortune if someone at the House of Commons arranged for MPs stationery, computer purchases and so on. How can the country provide security for PCs and networks used by MPs at home if they seem to be able to buy their own equipment out of the public purse?

Brigadoon

We arrived in Lyme Regis yesterday. The fog started between Dorchester and Bridport so the house came out of the mist like a scene from Brigadoon.
After a cup of tea and a chat the first job was setting up the tv to the new digital signal. That took 5 minutes. The next job is explaining to Mum how to use the on-screen tv guide and extra channels! That is on-going.

Pictures of the water gate after “repair”

Below are some images of the pond gate after I put the wood back in the slots.

Water starting to build up… but still leaking through.

Note the rocks where the vandals broke down the sides of the channel.

Mindless Vandalism

We went for an afternoon stroll yesterday evening, taking our usual route over the golf course to where the Roman Road supposedly runs (see my post of 4th May). Just as we started to cross the golf course we encountered a group of teenage boys - 5 of them. They stopped to drink from a water fountain provided for the golfers. Suddenly a man on a bicycle came speeding down the path. He was yelling and cursing. "I'm gonna get you...you little...&^%$£$%!" The boys scattered in all directions but the man chased after one in particular over the brow of a low hill in the direction of the club house.

We waited for a minute or so, but there were no screams of pain or anything and the surrounding golfers went back to their game.

A few minutes later the man cycled back up the path - a bit slower now. We asked if everything was okay and he replied "yes, I got them" and rode on.

A short while later we came to where the path goes by the "monastery fish ponds". There is a sluice gate here: a concrete channel leading under the path, where two pipes take the overflow water down to the stream nearby. The channel is blocked by a wooden barrier. So to drain the ponds you just remove the barrier.

Yesterday we found that the wooden barrier had been pulled out and broken up into separate planks. The ponds were draining fast.

I climbed down into the channel and retrieved the slimy planks. I then managed to lift them into the groove in the channel where they were supposed to sit. It wasn't water tight, but it was a lot better than it had been. Water started to build up again behind it.

There was the blade of a garden trowel wedged into the wood. I seemed to have been used to lever the planks apart and to lift them out of the groove.

Hopefully not too many fish had died.

We assume the teenage boys had something to do with it. Had the man on the bike seen them or had they done something else to him?

The day before (Wednesday) when we did the same walk there were 4 teenage boys hanging around the same place at about the same time. They were very interested in the sluice gate channel. I wondered at the time if they were going to fall in to the pond and get into trouble with their parents. I didn't think anyone would be so stupid as to break up the barrier and drain the pond.

The man on the bike was not around. Had the boys drained the ponds and then gone on to do some other mischief that upset him? What did he do to them over the hills of the golf course? Will my repair to the sluice gate hold? Are the boys innocent?

More information and maybe a photo later on!