(no subject)

[zotz]

From the bus home today, I could see a triple rainbow hanging over the bit of Cambridge where I live. Note that I didn't say "home", or "my neighbourhood" or anything. There's a song about that, by a Canadian band called The Pursuit Of Happiness, who I think have broken up now.

Hmmm. According to the Miraculous Interweb, they're actually playing reunion shows in June. Hoodathunkit? Anyway, to the point: "that's where my room is, that's where I keep my stuff" (from Little Platoons). Very appropriate for a man who can't unpack his things in case the carpet people arrive and need instant access. Carpet. I remember carpet. I had carpet once. We were heroes then.

In other news . . . there isn't really any other news. Edinburgh was mondo wonderful, briefly, and Cambridge is mondo flat forever. It's not going to have been a big month throughputwise at work, but I'm spending a few days going through everything and making sure none of the projects are being entirely neglected. My annual appraisal is due in a couple of weeks. I was informed of this in an email from from someone in personnel who (joy of joys) gets to use Micros~1 Office for all tasks. So I got a mail with 130 lines of gibberish to deliver a three-line message. My reply was slightly sarcastic - fortunately I managed to mess up sending it, so it was deleted without trace instead. So I get to have a deep and meaningful talk with Adrienne about my professional performance. Joy.

And this weekend is also Queenie's Golden Jubilee. This is really a matter of supreme indifference as far as I'm concerned, although I do get a certain amount of amusement from listening to self-appointed constitutional experts ruminating on the possibility of abdication, the succession, and so on. It's not really been the same since the departure of Norman St.John-Stevas from the scene, of course - now there was a man who could talk bollocks for Great Britain. And did. Frequently.

I've just noticed that the amount paid to the broadcast industry in subscriptions is
significantly laregr than the anmount collected in TV licence fees. And the amount from advertising is twice as much. So given this, the obvious question is whether the other channels are three times as good as the BBC. Err . . . actually, no, they're not. Nearly all of them are crap, in fact. Hmm. Given that there are people who continually moan about the inequity of the TV Licence (I used to live with one, until I pointed out that he hadn't paid for the thing - I had), I wonder if I can demand 200 pounds a year off my groceries if I promise not to watch commercial TV?

But I'd miss El Sadowici then, of course.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Smog: Dress Sexy at my Funeral

love that song.

Radio 6 outdid itself yesterday evening by talking about Alan Moore, then playing the PWEI track that mentions him. It was like I'd slipped into some strange and wonderful parallel universe, where radio was actually, y'know, good.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Which, Can U Dig It or Def Con One?

Where I live

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

Do Cambridge isn't home and you'd rather be in Edinburgh (or elsewhere) or is this a temporary thing due to the extension building?

Edinburgh's great. I grew up there and have many happy memories. I don't know it very well as an adult though.

Re: Where I live

[zotz]

In general I'd rather be back in Edinburgh. Apart from my work, which isn't really done anywhere else in Britain. The continuing extension saga is annoying, but I've never been very enamoured of Cambridge. I've met some great people here, but the town itself isn't anything to write home about.

Re: Where I live

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

I think Cambridge is quite pretty but I've only ever visited. My brother loved it, went back for two summers working there when he was at uni. I don't know if I'd fancy living there either though.

At least it's not unhandy for London!

That should have been 'so' rather than 'do' in my first comment of course. My typing has gone the same way as my nerves this week...

Re: Where I live

[zotz]

It's very picturesque, but there's not really a lot of it. What there is is frequently very self-regarding, and there's not as much going on as there really should be. In a town with two universities - one of them world-famous - there ought to be more happening. You probably wouldn't be at all surprised at how often I end up explaining this to people.

It is, though, as you say, handy for London. Without many of the benefits of actually being there.

Re: Where I live

[jinty]

my work, which isn't really done anywhere else in Britain
Oxford don't do it, by any chance? Because Oxf and Camb are similar in various ways but Oxford is much more of a real town, with real people and real industry (plus also handy for London).

Where home is

[nickys.livejournal.com]

It's a great shame that you can't get a job you'd like in a place you'd like to live.

I like Edinburgh a lot, although I do miss my old friends in London. I sometimes wonder if I changed my name from "Nicky" to "AJ's Wife" when I moved up here.

The best thing about Edinburgh as a city is all the bridges and the old buildings. London was sufficiently bombed and redeveloped that although there are areas of old stuff there's a lot of concrete mixed in with it. And in Edinburgh you can walk to most places, London's much bigger so stuff is spread out more.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Can U Dig It.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Well, my personal gripe with the TV Licencing system is not to do with whether the BBC is any good or not, but partly the fact that one has no choice in the matter (unless you do without all TV), and mainly the manner in which the licence is enforced (which seems to result in innocents getting harrassed, whilst others watch the BBC without paying, and they don't get noticed).

How do ITV/Channel 4 compare in terms of the amount they receive from advertising? Surely that would be a fairer comparison, since subscription based channels don't have the advantage of having the rights to terrestial broadcast. I would expect the costs to be higher, due to the costs of additional cable/settop-boxes/etc, not to mention a far greater need to advertise since they don't have a ready-made legally-enforced market for them.

Anyway, now that I've phoned them, hopefully they'll stop sending me letters, and that'll be the end of my moaning:)

[zotz]

The broadcast industry as a whole get twice as much money from advertising as from the licence, and about the same from subscriptions as from the licence. Roughly speaking. I don't offhand know how that breaks down per channel. And as I don't these days days tire of telling people, even not having a TV doesn't get you off paying it.
We actually pay more than this, because that's the amopunt paid for broadcast of the adverts and doesn't include the cost of making them, or the cost of the ad exec's BMW and coke habit.

Yeah, hopefully if they realise they've got the address wrong they'll STFU. It usually works, anyway.

Re: Where I live

[zotz]

Nope, it's done in one purpose-built centre in South Cambridgeshire. Not only is it the only genome sequencing centre in Britain, it's the biggest in the world (as Celera Genomics seem to be moving out of the field).

Re: Where home is

[zotz]

I do miss my old friends in London. I sometimes wonder if I changed my name from "Nicky" to "AJ's Wife" when I moved up here.

Ah. I miss people in Edinburgh, but at least I'm fairly free to pop back and see folk.

bridges and the old buildings

Apparently Edinburgh wasn't bombed because it was the favoured new capital - well, look at all that neo-classical architecture. And it survived the sixties road-building binge as well. Very lucky, all in all.

Re: Where I live

[jinty]

So, this one friend-of-a-friend Simon, who was a friend of Alan Jeffrey's, and who worked on the HUGO or whatever the Human Genome Project was called -- he would have worked where? This was in about 1989 or 1990. I would have said he worked in Oxford, as he shared a house with Alan in 45 St Mary's Rd at that point. Was it Oxford and things have changed a lot since then?

Re: Where I live

[zotz]

So you know Simon Mercer as well? Figures. You seem to know everyone else.

He worked here from as soon as there was a here to work in until a couple of years back. He went off to industry eventually.

There are various jobs connected with the Project around the place, actually, but what I do is fairly intimately connected with fridges full of DNA samples and rooms full of sequencing engines, although I very rarely handle them myself these days. So a move to anywhere else would defintiely mean a big change to what I actually do. Eventually it'll happen, of curse.

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

Not having a tv doesn't get you off paying the TV licence? *boggle* Care to elaborate?

[nickys.livejournal.com]

We didn't have one for ages, and the TV Licence people kept hassling us about it. After about their third visit they gave us a form to fill in, but the "Reasons Why I Don't Need to Pay for a TV Licence" section didn't include a box for the option "I don't have a tv"!! Mind Boggling!

Re: Where home is

[nickys.livejournal.com]

Well, either AJ or me had to give up our friends and move house when we got married. I made the choice of my own free will, and I wouldn't change it, even though I am aware of what I've lost as a result.

Being a wife and mother is great, but it is also hard work and it's nice once in a while to go out and talk to people who don't think of me as just an accessory to someone else.

[zotz]

No, not having a TV doesn't get you off paying for commercial television.

[zotz]

Presumably there's a different form for that. "Ah, you've been given a QV-1357a (Exemption from licence fee) when what you wanted was a QV-1357c (Declaration of lack of TV receiver). What you need to do now is phone up for a TSD-96342 (Exemption form exchange declaration) and once you've got that filled out I can give you the right form . . ."

Played much Paranoia lately?