OK, this is a return to more serious and controversial issues.  I can’t help it, I find these debates interesting.  Before I start this rant properly, I should state that I am a perfectly normal heterosexual male, but that over the years, I have known and been friends with a number of gay people.  I don’t care what people’s preferences are; what two consenting people get up to behind their own closed door is nothing to do with me.  However, it should stay behind that door.  It does not need to become the defining characteristic of life.  I once had a work colleague who kept describing gay sex practices to me like fisting, and cottaging, as if these were going to be somehow attractive to me.  Quite the reverse.  I was naive enough to ask him what the hell he was talking about.  I hope my reaction was enough to communicate the message that I really wasn’t interested!  He did eventually give up…..thankfully.  Behind all that he ...

 Yeah, I know, my posts are much too serious, so here is something much less dystopian. Our solar panels have now been in place for 4 years as of April 16th, so I can now show some decent average figures.  Actually, it took me a few days to get round to connecting the WIFI dongle on the inverter to our router, and a couple of days more to be bothered to download the app, so these figures are very slightly low. In total we have generated 12.406MWh of electricity, that is an average of 3101.5 units (1 unit = 1KWh) produced per year.  The estimate when we were buying the system was for around 2700 units, so I cannot complain.  Peak production for a single day so far is 27.5 units but there have been grey and rainy days even in June where the system only produced 1 or 2 units, so if you wanted to live off grid, you would need a much more extensive and complex system that the one we have. Now the bit I hate.  Our local electricity supplier charges 29.06p per KWh, but...

  Sorry, this is just another cathartic rant. So, Trump and Musk call themselves businessmen, but anyone as supposedly intelligent as their egos are telling them that they are, should surely be able to see the difference between business and government.  It may be OK to cut costs to the bone if you are trying to sell a product at a competitive price and still make a profit, but that doesn’t necessarily work when in government. Think of where government money comes from, i.e. taxes.   Let’s assume a simplistic example where a government department employs a number of people, each earns $1000 at 20% income tax (this is basic stuff from John Maynard Keynes, BTW).   Before these employees even leave the building, the government gets their 20% income tax back, so their employees have really only cost $800 each.   Then, each one goes out and buys the things they need to survive, like housing, food, clothes, transport etc.   Notice that I didn’t mention saving...