John Hemming's Web Log

As a result of the assault by a Magpie on my laptop I have now obtained an updated laptop and am in the process of setting up everything to work on the new machine.  I had avoided leaving the XP operating system because I had a large email archive. I also don't want to use IMAP as I want my database where I can see it. I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out a number of different POP email clients and to write notes as to my experience of them. The first one I tried was EM Client. This was quite good although the cursor had a tendency to disappear in some circumstances. The next one I am trying is DreamMail.  This is written by someone in China whose English is not particularly good, but their computer programming seems quite good (although it crashed in a strange way to start out - this may been linked to trying to get the pop and smtp parameters automatically.) I particularly like the facility to import a *.dbx file.  In fact you can load a number ...

Elections are happening in Spain in which a party with a similar view to the Greek Syriza  (Podemos - We can) is putting forward an "anti-austerity" platform. The difficulty in government is that policies have to work.   The Greeks appear to have put a major hold on payments to suppliers prioritising employees and other objectives.  Inevitably suppliers have put a hold on supplying the Greek government with the consequent damage to public services.  On a cash basis they may have a primary surplus, but with a purchase ledger of EUR 4.4bn and spending EUR 2bn less than budgeted something has to give. Claiming that they have a primary surplus when it has mainly come from not paying suppliers is obviously misleading.  None of the Eurozone finance ministries are stupid enough to believe what the Greeks are claiming. Then again when you have this idiot as finance minister it is not surprising they have problems.  Quoting from the linked article: "Greece’...

It remains that some people (sometimes known as Freeman of the Land - aka FMOTL) continue arguing a case based upon a strange interpretation of the UK constitution.  This ends up with a strange distinction between common law and statute law and an attempt to argue really quite unorthodox things. I am not in itself opposed to things which are unorthodox, but if people do not follow the procedures defined in the UK constitution they should not expect anything to come of this.  I know of a case where someone's mental capacity was removed for relying on this.  I believe that decision to be wrong, but whatever it may be it does not help. Every so often people try to rely on these theories.  Can I emphasise: I have never heard of anyone succeeding in the UK on the basis of FMOTL legal theory.  I am quite happy to look in the comments at something. The most important point to understand is that the UK constitution is based upon a popular revolution from 1688. T...

People vote for all sorts of reasons.  Some vote as to who they want to be the local MP.  Others vote as to who they wish to see as the prime minister and there can be combinations in between. The postal votes in Yardley which were cast about two weeks before polling day gave me 40%, but on the night I only got just over 25%.  This has happened previously. I had been for some time of the view that the attempt at equidistance from Labour and Conservative was likely to be problematic.   Once we had gone into coalition with the Conservatives we would lose support from people who were unhappy with the government.  Hence if we go into the general election saying we might put Labour in we run the risk of losing support the other way. My personal view is that we should have campaigned for the continuation of the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition.  That would at least have had some certainty about it.  People tend to vote against risk.  It would also h...