Fonant

Logical scientist. Pattern Language. Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Drupal consultant. Fietser, not cyclist. Windcheetah rider. VW Late Bay owner.

Last Notes

2026-05-09 08:08:37 UTC

- reply

It really annoyed me that the BBC results focussed entirely on just the seats being contested, and not at all on the total number of seats held by each party.
Reform may have gained 1,400 seats, but the Greens now have more than 1,000 council seats too.
The biggest change, I feel, is that the Greens are now a serious political force. They never used to be mentioned at all in local election results.

2026-04-15 06:09:11 UTC

- reply

s/reaching/reducing/ I think?
The USA discovering that bullies are not actually popular.

2026-03-27 08:30:01 UTC

- reply

Council houses help to align the interests of owner and tenant, I think?
The council doesn't need to make a profit, it's a public service (benefitting the public in general) and saves money on benefit support which would otherwise disappear into private landlord profits.
The availability of cheap or even free council housing also reduces demand for private rented properties, reducing market rental prices too.

2025-12-19 10:29:50 UTC

- reply

Of course the people who are wealthiest get much more say in how society is run. They'd rather keep their excessive wealth stored away.
Until the rest of the population finally realise their greed is hurting society as a whole, at least. Then we tend to see a "correction" in wealth distribution...

2025-12-19 07:23:04 UTC

- reply

The problem, as I see it, is not so much income inequality but wealth inequality.
Those pensioners typically live in extremely valuable homes, thanks to the massive rise in house prices (caused by the reduction in social housing). Rent costs follow.
The working-age members of society are struggling because of the cost of keeping their homes. The consequences ripple out across society.

2025-12-12 07:49:28 UTC

- reply

Percentage growth is easier from a lower starting point. The chart would be more interesting in terms of GDP per capita in terms of a common reference value.
The devil's in the denominator.
(GDP is a terrible measure of success, though)

2025-11-04 10:15:12 UTC

- reply

The people that matter are the ones holding the budgets, and, worse, the power to sack the staff and force the school to be taken over by an academy trust.
A cynic might think the whole system was designed specifically to boost privately-run academies and remove power from public local authorities...

2025-11-04 06:36:59 UTC

- reply

The problem with Ofsted inspections is that they're an entirely negative experience for schools. And the fear of doing badly is awful for the whole school. The whole thing is terrifying. The cost of being marked poorly is career-ending.
A better system would be constructive. Providing help where schools could be doing things better, extra funding where needed, and spreading Best Practices around the country.

2025-08-19 07:57:40 UTC

- reply

Battery rental is a right pain. Early Renault Zoe cars (we owned one for a year) all had rented batteries.
Makes them difficult to buy and sell second hand: the insurance company that owns the batteries doesn't care about customer service and the transfer paperwork is slow and inefficient.
We ended up buying the battery by paying the insurance company what they said the residual amount was worth. Then we sold the car without problem.

2025-08-19 07:51:49 UTC

- reply

No thanks, I don't want an unknown battery, worth a significant proportion of the car's value, swapped into my car.
Charging speed is nothing like as big a problem as some people think. Only actually an issue for long journeys, where the car is being driven for several hours in a day.
Cars spend most of their time parked, and charging can (almost always) be done then. A few hours is enough to fill up completely with a fast charger.
Commuters can slow charge (7kW) overnight and/or at work.
Our car is a Kia eNiro, 60kWh battery. It has 250 mile range, or five hours of driving. Easy to add a useful amount of charge while stopping for a meal on a five hour journey.

2025-04-30 18:40:11 UTC

- reply

And of course debt is money. Government debt is money in circulation. It's a Good Thing.

2025-04-17 09:11:22 UTC

- reply

History is cyclical. Societies forget lessons of the past.
Wealth always has positive feedback, making it unstable and unevenly distributed, unless society actively redistributes wealth by taxes on a constant basis.

2025-04-15 07:27:36 UTC

- reply

This is such basic economics, surely the government must know this? Are they stoking the already over-heating housing market on purpose? Why?
We have to build council houses, ASAP, to replace the ones that the Tories sold and never replaced (breaking their promise to do so).

2025-03-07 13:31:17 UTC

- reply

Vivaldi is a good Chrome-based browser.

2025-02-04 07:24:31 UTC

- reply

Beacon Schools, Advanced Skills Teachers, Leading Maths Teachers, all good positive support and peer-to-peer help. CPD budget for targeted teacher training. Dedicated money for inter-school moderation get-togethers.
Then Gove decided to add in curriculum requirements that are way too advanced for most primary children. They shouldn't be learning A-level grammer!
Funding has not kept pace with teacher's pay. Redundancies everywhere. Ten years ago the PTA raised money for extras, now they have to raise money for the basics.
Now there just aren't enough adults in the school to keep basic discipline under control.

2025-02-03 22:31:16 UTC

- reply

Yes. This.
A national service to spread Good Practice, and offer support and advice to schools and teachers. Positive and constructive, not adversarial.
And soon, please. Schools are struggling.

2025-01-02 13:37:41 UTC

- reply

We get stuck if we think the Meaning of Life is to make more and more money. And constant percentage growth is impossible (it mathematically tends to infinity) unless we have regular economic collapses. Capitalism has regular economic disaster baked in.
Money is an artificial thing that was invented to facilitate trade, not an end in itself.

2024-10-02 22:20:14 UTC

- reply

Meanwhile I'm having lots of "fun" trying to prove company details to NatWest via their truly appalling business website.
Seriously considering changing to Starling, just to avoid the hours of seemingly pointless repetition of details publicly available from Companies House.
There must be a middle way to protect against money laundering without penalising legitimate businesses?
Don't money launderers use offshore banks in British territories, or buy expensive houses in London, anyway?