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via "Les Confessions" on 27/07/05
After my recent complaint about not having any time it seems logical that I went out and bought World of Warcraft which has got to be one of the biggest time sinks in Christendom. The reason (/quasi-justification) for this was that a) I had just got a new PC (for cheap...sort of)
b) I had just received our new annual bonus so got paid slightly more than I usually do.
OK, that's no real excuse but I wanted to be in on the fun, and it does seem rather good although I've not got to play it properly yet. Because of that this is a short entry.
Tiny 2002 | Tiny 2005  |
I mention this because I used to work for Tiny (well, indirectly) and lost my job as part of the first stage of this saga in 2002. The company sold cheap, nasty PC's which were under-specced. Their support service wasn't particularly good and there wasn't anything that seperated them from the competetition. In customer satisfaction surveys they generally came second bottom (to Time, who came bottom). They were then bought by Time, as the article then shows.
It's not particularly interesting but the computer mentioned above that I got today came from Dell (the world's number 1 PC reseller I believe) and represents the first desktop PC I have bought since 1998. The one I bought back way back then was a Tiny PC.
And this isn't really related to anything, but I think this was ace:
The Daily Express, 27th July 2005  |
There really is nothing I have to say about this.
The Computer For Staff Scheme
Speaking of spongers, I was recently reflecting on working in government / quasi-government and the wastage therein. Most people seem to know at least one or two people who work for the state (be it in education, the civil service, the health service, etc) and I bet you that if you ask the person you happy to know they could give you at least 3 absurd wastes of money they personally witness on a regular basis. This makes all sorts of people very angry - why are our taxes wasted on such crap?
Well, damned if I know. Still, as recent court decisions have shown, you can't opt out of taxes so I suppose we should pay attention to these things. After all, if we don't pay taxes we can go to jail, and hell who in London wants to be an enemy of the state these days?
But the thing is that it can be easy to focus on the negative. Shiftless wasteful government employees, foriegn wars that the majority oppose, single mothers who have lots of illegitimate criminal children and suicide bombers who have the audacity to claim welfare benefits before trying to blow up Oval station (although it might be worth noting that it's often illegal for asylum seekers to work under the existing system). Wherever we turn it seems "our" taxes are going on dubious causes.
But not all taxes are a waste. A lot of them go to worthwhile things. Like purchasing Anthrax vaccines (which ultimately goes to people like me) and the recent Computer for Staff iniative.
Basically, the government has launnched a new scheme whereby you can buy a PC via a "salary sacrifice" which means you pay less taxes. So for instance, my new PC is costing me £28 per month for three years. So £1008. However, because I'm paying that before tax, I actually end up paying less tax so it's actually £16 per month or £576 per month. So the government is subsidising my PC purchase by £500, indirectly.
Which all sounds grand. Except that...as far as I can tell, my PC isn't worth a grand. It's worht about £500 (according to recent Dell prices). The PC at it's set price would be completely uneconomic for me to buy, if it wasn't for this government inducement.
All this means, in a round-about way that the government are paying Dell (which as I mentioned aren't doing too badly) £500 for doing fuck all.
So you see, your taxes do go to a worthy cause in some cases. After all this guy has gotta eat you know.
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