Longrider

Further to my comments on Christianity yesterday, I see the Pope has waded in criticising Italian schools’ decisions to cancel nativity plays incase they offend the sensibilities of Muslim immigrants. How odd that the Pope and I share the same platform - me a non-believer and he a devout catholic.

Most of the Muslims I’ve known over the years are certainly not offended by Christian festivals - it is the politically correct brigade who make such assumptions on their behalf who are responsible for such nonsense.

If Christians wish to celebrate the nativity openly, they should do so with impunity - just as the winter solstice will, doubtless be celebrated at Stonehenge in a few days time. And, if the local Muslims want to celebrate Eid, then again, why not? And if I want to shut myself away in the south of France and ignore all of them - well, dammit, I will.

I saw a snippet of an item on BBC Breakfast this morning. Someone had written a book - I didn’t catch the details, and it’s not that important anyway. It was the comment about cats opening fridges that caught my attention - the author of the book commented that a cat that can open a fridge must be every pet owner’s nightmare.

Well, I got news for you bud….We have two serial cupboard openers. Fridges are at the moment a little beyond their reach, but time will tell. Nefertiti has been a cupboard opener since kittenhood. She has a versatile claw that can be used to hook open doorhandles or pull a door away from the jamb.

Being the tribes’ matriarch, she takes it upon herself to educate any new kittens. Often this is unsuccessful. This year, however, Ahmose has been a keen student. Yesterday, I heard a "whump" noise in the bedroom. Several sweatshirts and fleeces that were on a shelf inside a closed wardrobe were now on the floor and the perpetrator was sitting in the middle of the mess. Ahmose had just graduated, it seems.

Ahmose Nefertiti

Not only does this bridge have a “wow” factor, it is one I’ve watched develop over the last few years. The A75 motorway connects Clermont Ferrand with the Mediterranean and is a rare beast in France; a free motorway. However, the latter part is patchy, forcing the traveller onto the N9 just north of Millau where it is not yet complete. Now while the N9 is a nice twisty stretch of road, the wind down into Millau and back out again usually involves watching the rear end of a truck for most of the way as it is too narrow and twisty to make a safe overtake - although sometimes on the bike an opportunity presents itself and I take it .

For the past few years on our journeys to the Languedoc Roussilon, we have watched a spectacular structure take its elegant form over the valley above Millau. Today, President Chirac opened the bridge and it is open to traffic on Thursday. We are taking the overnight ferry on Saturday to spend Christmas in our French house, so will be travelling across this wonderful piece of engineering on Sunday afternoon. At €4.6 its going to be worth it (a positive bargain, indeed). Added to that, it will knock about 45 minutes off our journey.

Today I went for a walk with two of my sisters. Since giving up paid employment, my quality of life has improved to the point where these little strolls have become a regular thing. My youngest sister, Lucy, usually texts me a grid reference and we meet up and walk out on a route from one of her many walking books. Today, we were joined by another of my sisters, Diane. It was pleasant just to walk and talk, spend half an hour in a pub over a drink before setting out again and munching sandwiches in the presence of a Bronze Age stone circle. Cold though it was, there’s something pleasant about the English countryside even in the depths of winter.

The Guardian has a story about a recent prosecution by ICSTIS, the premium rate regulator. A Bristol based company was fined £300,000 for promoting a bogus prize draw scam. In reality what the scammers do is encourage people to dial a premium rate number (in the UK these have 090 prefixes). They then run up a telephone bill on average of up to £20. Worse are those lottery scams where the tricksters demand money up front to release the “winnings” leaving the victim thousands of pounds out of pocket.

In the UK we have a system of opt-out that allows us to register with the Telephone Preference Service. By registering with TPS, the number is put onto a do not call list that companies are legally obliged to observe. Failure to do so can result in legal action and a fine. Certainly since registering our number, I’ve noticed a dramatic decline in the number of unsolicited calls.

Unfortunately, scammers are engaging in illegal activity to start with, so are not too perturbed by a legally enforceable do not call list. The best defence therefore, is awareness.

A neat marketing trick that came our way the other day was from a company called Telewest - a cable and telephone service provider. The card that came through the door was apparently a follow up to an attempt to call round the previous day. My wife is skeptical that they called at all. I believe that it is entirely possible that they did as this company is a serial door knocker and as neither of us was in, it seemed plausible enough. Either way, the card claimed that they had called the previous day to change our internet connection to their broadband service even though this had not been requested. Despite this, the card stated that they were certain that the competitive nature of the product would have been sufficient for us to allow them to have carried out the work on the spot. Doorstep selling irritates me at the best of times. Junk mail, too - but this little tactic, gimmick though it doubtless is, is a supreme piece of arrogance that ensures I will never, under any circumstances, ever, ever, ever, use Telewest’s products or services.

Anyone who likes cats (guilty) invariably has a similar passion for big cats (guilty). After all, they are just cuddly kitties with bigger paws (and claws), aren’t they? It seems that attempts to classify tigers - a wonderful cat if ever there was one - have been flawed. A new genetic study has identified two groups from the so-called indonesian subspecies. They have dubbed the new discovery Panthera Tigris Jacksoni after tiger campaigner Peter Jackson.

Worrying though is the news that of the eight subspecies of Panthera Tigris, three are now extinct.

I was buying my rail tickets last week when the counter clerk proffered a copy of the new timetable, which comes into force today. The British railways network has traditionally operated two timetables - summer and winter - in May and September. Invariably this leads to subtle alterations in timings and occasionally more (or less) trains at certain times or on certain days. More on summer Saturdays, for example.

Anyway, this change has made the news because it is an extra change and the Train Operating Companies have also changed in some locations. These changes are part of the EU-wide standardisation whereby in future there will only be one annual change. There is a drive from the EU for interoperability between member states and this is part of that process. That’s the upside. The downside is that people may find that their regular train no longer runs or that is stops more frequently leading to more overcrowding.

Overcrowding is a pet peeve of mine. When all the mainline trains were of the old High Speed Train type (the 125 Intercity trains) they were either seven or eight coaches long. The newer trains are four or five coaches long. The cross country and commuter services have always suffered from overcrowding so replacement with shorter trains just makes matters worse. The apparent solution was to run more trains. However, this merely massaged the problem and caused more strain on the already crowded network. One of the reasons trains have difficulty running on time on the UK network is that it is running at full capacity and therefore there is insufficient makeup time built into the timetable. A small delay has knock-on effects that can affect services several hours later.

Despite all this, the services that I take from Bristol are little changed - just a minute here and there. On the downside, though, the fares are set to rise. Not that I am too worried by that as I charge them back to my clients.
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Yesterday was a day and a half. Literally. Moving from being employed by a large organisation to being a self-employed consultant is a culture shift. You have to take personal responsibility for everything - tax, national insurance, pensions and, crucially, work. While I charge much more for my time than I was paid as an employee, it compensates for the feast or famine nature of the work. I work when there is business to be had, and I don’t when there isn’t - at least, it isn’t paid work. Selling your business takes time and effort and the payback is not always immediately obvious.

Following my redundancy at the end of 2003, I endured a period of enforced idleness until my contract officially terminated on New Year’s Eve. During January and February I did a little work, but was relying heavily on my redundancy package for subsistence. By May, things were getting fairly busy. However, at this stage all I was doing was assessment - the real money is in training, so I was still not yet on the same level of income as I was during the previous year. Two four-day training courses in a month would see me breaking even on my previous salary. It takes sixteen assessments to make the same income.

Then came the summer. For most of June, July and August I hardly worked and again, I relied heavily on my dwindling redundancy payout. September was manic - I barely had time to breathe rushing from one end of the country to the other getting up at godawful times in the morning to meet clients. This was a slightly unusual piece of work as I was helping my erstwhile employer try to recover from problems with a training programme, so I was providing a day’s top-up training for the candidates. I did well that month, but the planned work in October collapsed when the client decided not to spend any more money. They concluded that the exercise had cost too much (but chose to ingore the cause; bad planning) - well, they were told that at the beginning…

November was pretty quiet and my redundancy finally ran out causing me to curb all unnecessary spending. December however, has been busy. Yesterday I had two assessments - one in Bournemouth and one in Salisbury. This meant setting out at 06:00 to get to Bournemouth by 08:00. I planned to be in Salisbury for 14:00. Unfortunately, assessment is not an activity that has set timescales - you are driven by the needs of the candidate and if they take a long time over their preparation activities, well, so be it. I set out for Salisbury at 13:30 - it’s an hour’s ride, so I walked into Salisbury Railway station at around 14:30. Like his colleague in Bournemouth, this candidate took around 4 hours. I was supposed to be back in Bristol for 19:00 to meet my wife and join her colleagues at 20:00 for a meal. We were an hour late. Not that that was a huge problem as we let them know. When we eventually got home it was gone 23:00. Shattered? You bet.

Yup - feast or famine - yesterday was one of those days that just didn’t have enough hours. I could do with a few more of those.