Coca-Cola – between £ 7.98 & £ 24.11
Coca-Cola (Diet) – between £ 8.73 & £ 24.11

These prices are for 24x330ml cans but they show such a wide variation that it is obvious the market isn’t price sensitive.

Consumption estimates vary but it’s fairly safe to assume 2-3 million cans are sold in the UK each day and that’s just Coca-Cola!

Assuming CC have about 20% of the UK carbonated drink market we are actually looking at a total market of 10-15 million cans per day!

Add  a tax of 10p per can and suddenly we have £1-1.5 million pounds per day!

Every little helps!…… Anyone like to have a think about chewing gum?

The WWF want a billion people around the world to sign up and switch off their lights for one hour.

If they achieve their billion people it will send a powerful message – suggest all readers sign up now.

Yesterday was mad:

• A man was jailed for having a crash in his truck
• A man was jailed for flushing somebody’s heroin down the loo
• Captains of two nuclear submarines went unpunished for bumping into eachother
• Tony Blair was given $1 million for being a great leader

I think I’ll get my coat……

There is a lot of noise being made about the proposed windfarm at Cheverton Down. The main complaint seems to be about the visual impact on the area, but to my engineering eye, wind turbines look rather pleasing.

They certainly appeal rather more than this:

In all its glory this is the latest Red Funnel paint job as seen in Cowes and Southampton.

A quick play with an image editor gave me this:

Which is still ugly but, IMO, not half as bad as the real thing!

Click on the logo to visit http://www.axethebeertax.com/, they have 5 basic demands of our government:

1. To stop plans to increase beer tax by up to a third
2. To enforce existing laws – not create new ones – to deal firmly with irresponsible drinkers and premises
3. To end the irresponsible promotion of alcohol in supermarkets, pubs and elsewhere
4. To trust responsible adults to make informed choices about what they drink, not punish them for the actions of an irresponsible minority
5. To support the British pub as a vital part of social life in local communities.

Earlier in 2008 we were told that those who didn’t like smokey old bars would flock to them when smoking was banned, that appears not to have been the case and the increasing economic pressures have made it impossible for the likes of The Wishing Well, The Colwell Bay and the Plough and Barleycorn to survive – and while driving around in the evenings there are many more which seem to close after about 9.30pm. This might not seem like much at first glance but it takes on a degree of importance in very rural areas with few or no other gathering places.

Take Newchurch Parish as an example; odd and very old covenants on the land mean that only one pub is allowed in the area (corrections welcome!), and I now hear that even this is under threat from an over-zealous brewery who want a rent increase of some 50%!

Pic from Matt and Cat

The pub in the spotlight here is The Pointer Inn in Newchurch itself; yes, the one which has just won an award for the Island Dining Pub of the Year for the second year running. The Pointer is the very best of breed providing a real public bar for those looking for a drink and a seperate, busy restaurant for those in need of a quality meal. Balancing the two needs is not easy (yes, I do have pub experience, both sides of the bar) and Nathan and staff do an excellent job which deserves our full support. It’s a real shame that Messrs Gale and Co seem intent on making life impossible for them by demanding such an increase.

I’m really not sure what difference my small voice can make but I’ll try. Publicity can only help and I again draw your attention to what may be the last event at the pub – Public Star Gazing, 25th Jan 2009.

Please support your local if you can as, in the words of Joni Mitchell, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone..”

In this case “support” doesn’t mean spending loads of cash, it does though mean making a fuss! we have a community in Newchurch and surrounding areas, and it makes no sense for us to lose something valuable. Please join me in protesting about this unfairness, sign petitions, write to the brewery, complain to your councillors…. whatever! I love my local and I’d like to see you in there too!

The very fact that all this has been revealed must now mean I can freely talk about going there many years ago. In fact I went with two employers; first the Southern Electricity Board to visit the underground substations and second, with Emerson Electric servicing/repairing the UPS system in one of the comms/radar rooms. Unfortunately I can’t remember the exact location or zone.

The second visit was the strangest as I arrived by lift, about 3 or 4 storeys down I guess, and was greeted by the surreal sight of about 6 RAF bods, all in full uniform, sitting some 50-100ft underground staring at what looked like radar screens!

You could almost their thoughts “..and to think, I joined the RAF to see the world..”

It’s an interesting read and well worth half an hour..

“Public money is limited and it is the government’s responsibility to ensure it is not unduly diverted from supporting the delivery of frontline services”
Baroness Ashton
Information Rights Minister.

This is to do with suggested changes to the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act which is our only way to real find out what these people are doing in our name. Ministers want to limit the amount of resources spent on FOI requests to £600 – including officials’ time.
So, now:

• When we want to know something the limit is £600,
• When they want to tell us something, the limit is 10,000.

Whatever next?

Well listen up guys; we already do understand it and we’re not that impressed!

Search UK Google for “How parliament works” and you get about 16,200 hits. First on the list is UK Parliament – How Parliament Works and surprise, surprise it explains how the system works!

The second Google hit is an Amazon advert for a book on the subject and the third is an advert for a training course to learn all about it for £485!

A fair way down the first page, bottom in fact, is a link to one Liberal Democrat’s website – Roger Williams and there he explains things, with the aid of pictures, rather better than the first hit.

I suggest taxpayers insist all that is required is one central “portal”, well advertised and connecting to a page for each MP to blow his/her own trumpet. After all there are only 646 of them and I am sure that one 650ish page site would be a lot cheaper than a potential bill for almost £6.5 Million!

Tell you what, I’ll host it for £100,000 pounds per year!

Email me at mpwebhosting@bunker.co.uk for details