Radio phone-ins and intelligence – mutually exclusive?

Still offline, I’ve been wandering in the wasteland that is the wit and wisdom of Magic 105.4 radio (a region we’ve visited previously). Currently, they’re running a phone-in competition, a general knowledge quiz, with the potential for winning £20,000, so you might expect sensible questions. Ha! A question just asked – How many dots are [...]

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Always read the label (with caution!)

I use Sainsbury’s cistern blocks in my toilet. Like others of their kind they appear to do very little, but they smell OK and, hell, they’re cheap enough. They’re also, apparently, edible. Having dropped in the last block, I was about to bin the empty pack when I spotted the words “This product is suitable [...]

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The Sky saga (a.k.a. Sky sucks!)…

On May 11 I moved into a new flat (I moved to the flat next door and, leaving my router connected in the old flat, I could access my broadband service from the new one). On May 12 I went onto the Sky website to order the basic TV service, plus broadband and their phone [...]

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BT and Tiscali – avoid both if you value your sanity…

As the observant among you will know, I’ve just moved house – all the way to the flat next door. My phone, line rental, broadband and TV are all from Tiscali, and I asked them to transfer the service to the new flat. They can’t do that – I’d have to cancel this service and [...]

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Tiscali is now TalkTalk – should we worry?

Tiscali’s UK operation, as you’ll know by now, has been bought out by TalkTalk. As a Tiscali customer (and an extremely satisfied one), this bothers me, given TalkTalk’s shambolic start-up problems which went on for far longer than was acceptable, because they grossly over-reached themselves. However, they provided a link to a message board where, [...]

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There are Lies, Damned Lies, and Journalism…

(…with apologies to Mark Twain…) This may be my last post for some time. As I say above, I’m moving house tomorrow and will have no Internet connection for a while. So, the labour expenses “scandal” – isn’t it just awful? Well, no, probably not. What it is is a bunch of figures, mostly taken [...]

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Access problems…

Are you having problems accessing any of my posts? There is something weird going on and I’m trying to figure it out, so if you are having difficulties with Ron’s Rants, please let me know by posting a comment here. Watch your language, though, or you’ll be filtered and I won’t see it! Of course, [...]

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The presumption of probable guilt…

In the UK, when using DNA evidence, the presumption seems to be that almost anybody is likely to be guilty of something, sometime. Why else is the government clinging on so grimly to its illegal DNA database? Despite the DNA database being declared illegal by the European Court of Human Rights (I’m in there – [...]

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Swine Flu – the novelty wears off…

It seems, despite all the publicity about the potential  pandemic, people are getting terribly blasé about it. That’s probably a mistake, even though, outside Mexico, it has been extremely undramatic. In the pharmacy, yesterday, waiting for my monthly meds – which should have been delivered but the doctor’s surgery screwed up – a guy wandered [...]

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Self-image on a mobility scooter…

An unusual item from my search engine list – “Worried how I look on a mobility scooter”. Only one sensible thing I can say to that. Why? Why should you care what other people, especially total strangers, think? It’s of no consequence, and if you need a scooter, that’s all that matters. There will always [...]

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