Grombles

No wonder we're all in the shit. How I hate bloody form filling, especially when there's clearly no point in the activity whatsoever. Wastes my time, wastes paper (assuming it's not yet interneted), and even more off-pissingly, keeps some civil service twat in a job, paid me, that could be done by a waste paper bin or NEEDN'T BE DONE AT ALL. This morning I received a letter from the Specialist Personal Tax Employee Shares & Securities Unit. My company takes advantage of an HMRC employee share option scheme that basically encourages business owners to share any gains in the value of their companies with their management. Excellent idea which has enabled me to share in the good fortunes of previous companies with several of the people who helped me build them. What works for them, works for me. So far, so good. I originally filled out the necessary forms to advise HMRC about the scheme I had set up for a company I own. I told them who was registered on the scheme,

We love the whole restaurant thing. We choose from a list of deliciously described items and magically, only minutes later, it arrives in front of us. We eat, we pay and we go home. But what did we eat? What risks did we take? Nothing I'm going to discuss will be any great revelation to anyone, but we conveniently push all ideas about any possible health risks to the back of our mind in the same way that we treat global warming and the demise of the Euro. So far, so good, but sure as eggs is eggs, it will all end in tears. Call it paranoia, but I'm beginning to get nervous - and especially abroad. The dangers from eating food we can't see being prepared are: Contaminated ingredients 'past sell-by dates' (if the country you're in has them), improperly stored or cheaply sourced Incomplete cooking to kill bacterial pathogens Dirty hands, cooking implements and preparation surfaces Deliberate contamination by kitchen staff A country's economic health a

One of the excuses deists frequently throw at me for the value of having a deity is that a belief in an afterlife provides comfort, especially to the old, the terminally ill and their relatives. I don't have a problem with them believing this, incredible though it surely is, if it helps them to achieve a peace of mind. Of course I'd prefer it if they found that peace of mind from meditation or some more positive activity like mental challenges, music, arts, marveling at the complexity of the universe and our creeping comprehension of it etc. But if it works like a drug to ease stress and worry, then OK. Clearly the loss of a loved one and the approach of the 'grim reaper' are terrifying prospects, so relief of the stresses they cause is understandably valuable. Of course if this aspect of deity worship is then used to persuade otherwise open-minded children of some sort of 'truth' to explain the world, then it's very wrong. And unfortunately, as I type this