Beardy Weirdy

Andrew Losowsky describes the loss of chin fluff much better than I ever could.

Yes folks, the goatee is no more. After seven years of hiding my dimple it now gets exposed to the light of day again. Not that some people noticed mind you. SWMBO took several hours – but the reaction was worth it. Mrs Ramsbottom took nearly two weeks and then wasn’t too sure what had changed. Tsk.

This also means that I’ve started wearing aftershave again. Not that anyone has noticed that either mind you. My fragrance of choice? Why, Contradiction for Men by Calvin Klein, thanks for asking. I’m not sure that keeping it in a cupboard for a couple of years is the best thing for the aroma and consistency but hey ho, in for a penny.

I’m Nailed to the Sofa

Not a lot happening around these parts at the moment. The Sky+ box is fixed (well, replaced) – thankfully – and normal tv viewing has resumed.

I left the small bloke with strangers for the first time this morning. Balham leisure centre has a creche, and he played in there for an hour whilst I went for a swim. Which was nice. Reports from the staff were positively glowing, so we will be doing that again.

We were off to visit the grandparents this weekend, but that has been postponed due to a delay in their bathroom reconstruction. Luckily there is plenty to keep us amused here in "nappy valley". Our next adventure will be exploring the delights of gymboree.

ID Cards to cost £1.3bn

According to No 2 ID Cards the current government estimate for introducing this impingement on my personal civil liberties is going to be £1.3bn. Lets bear in mind that this is an estimate, and virtually without exception these are far below the actual, final cost to the tax payer.

Why do I make that claim? Bearing in mind that the majority of the cost is going to be for an IT project, and that it will go out to competitive tender, the scenario will play out as follows;

The contract will be awarded based solely on bid price. Which means that the companies will pitch their price to win the contract, not according to how much it will actually cost to build. When this becomes apparent to the contractor and the government then compromises will be made to the function of the sytem. Finally, extra money will have to be forthcoming to bring the system to fruition and further phases planned, costed and paid for to get the functionality that was original specified.

Trust me, I’ve been there.

Link courtesy of Spy Blog.

ID Cards Still Won’t Work

Look, this guy is much smarter than I am, and a security expert to boot, and he says that a national ID card wouldn’t make us safer. In fact he says, and I can’t agree more, that the whole farce will actually make life worse and probably make our countries less safe..

Latest news from the government in this neck of the woods is that the "voluntary" UK id cards will only cost £80 each. I told you they would be expensive, but think of it this way – how many pints of beer you will miss out on by forking that much money over to the lovely people in Whitehall? Ergo anyone who drinks beer must stand up and oppose this hideous idea in every way possible.

[Courtesy of Mark Pilgrim]

Oh Dear

Sky+ box goes boom. Andrew becomes even more grumpy.

I am not even thinking about the four episodes of Angel that were stored on the hard drive and are now lost to us.

ID Cards Won’t Work

I’m not going to shut up about this ID card thing, OK. There haven’t been any comments from anyone purporting to be in government on my last piece so I presume that the civil liberties argument is still languishing under the carpet

So today we present the technical and economic arguments against ID card courtesy of the Register. In ID cards: a guide for technically-challenged PMs they point out that biometric IDs may not actually be the panacea for spotting people who are a little bit naughty as promised by our leaders. Oh, and the whole thing is going to cost a fortune because large government projects virtually always go way, way, over budget.

In the words of Ben Folds – I wan’t my money back, now.