Charity or Pressure Group

I understand a charity called Alcohol Concern is saying (according to the BBC) the age when alcohol should not be given to children under any circumstances should be increased to 15, from 5 now.

I understand the Grip Water given when I was young had 4% alcohol and shandy under 2% was sold with the soft drinks. I may have this wrong as it is memories from many years ago.

I understand that some give a small drink to children or with water at special occasions so as not to make a big deal out of drinking. I am sure this works with some and not others, but this is probably the case with whatever you do. I understand that the Minister said it would be very difficult to police, though you wonder about some of these groups, do they want every second of every person watched, perhaps we do not have enough CCTV cameras, which in some cases are fine, but footage should only be used where a crime has been committed. They also want the price to go up, well that will give the Government more money to waste, or perhaps they think the extra should go to groups such as theirs.

In the past I made home-made wine and a bit of beer, but with the reduction in prices and my other interests this has stopped and I feel more did make wine and beer at home in the past, so is it just the measurable amount of alcohol (that bought) that has gone up but overall gone down. Not all home-made came from kits and who know what kits were made and how many failed. So are their statistic correct. After all at school I was told the oil in the North Sea would run out in the 1990's and in 1985 by the year 2000 there would be 2,000,000 who were HIV+ and 1,000,000 dead, the insurance companies excuse for increasing male life insurance premiums by about 50%.

Anyway, what I wonder is, has this charity over stepped the mark and become a pressure group not entitled to tax exempt status? I understand there are organisations that are classed as pressure groups as they lobby for a change in the law. I hear charities doing the same thing but they keep their charitable status and so are subsidised by the British Tax Payer.

When a charity as with any organisation anything said is only being said by a proportion of that group, usually the stronger character types from the organising committee. Ian

MS Vista UK Price

Though I am trying out a vertion of Linux called Unbuntu which is the first one I have been able to install and work, it even has the advantage of being about to select the applications that you want and the system will install them, sort of like installing MS Windows modules.

Anyway, the reason for looking at it is that I cannot see that I will be able to afford the VISTA cost for my PC and Laptop. In the past I have bought my computers from Novatech, who included a proper MicroSoft O/S, though for XP it was a cut down recovery disk. In the leaflet provided, it says if you have a problem, and have a full XP disk you can use 'Recovery Console' if a Novatech Recovery disk you have to format and start again. I feel a lot of the MS advertising was about recovering your system. Now I find some, who knows maybe all computer suppliers, do not even provide a disk, you have to remember to copy it off your system when setting it up. What if you disk or copying software fails, no recovery disk?. So perhaps you go for a Full Vista and pay double the USA price. There is a Number 10 Petition which you maybe interested in, unless you are one of those great people who program for Unbuntu Mozilla or OpenOffice you are making the software able to be used by more people each year. Ian

Recycling and Bins Charges

I was not sure whether to add this item to this blog or the other that I do called 'Gosport.info' where I put down things about Gosport or a Gosport linked theme.

I hear today that Councils will be allowed to charge for the quantity of waste taken. If Gosport was to do that they will have to sort out the glass recycling, which is not collected with the recycling bin. You have to take it to a glass bin in car parks and so on dotted around Gosport. It is OK for me as there is one in Whites Place which I pass a couple of times a week, but only have a bag full of glass once a month or less. I know of people who do not, and add it to their waste, due to the amount they have or as they do not have a convenient bin.

Now if there was a charge it may encourage more to put the glass in the bin, but as I said I go past the Whites Place bin and at least 3 times this year at least one section of the bin is full, so there are boxes and bags of bottles, piled around the bin. How many more bins or times a year would Gosport need to empty the bins. Of course this also answers the criticism of Gosport made by local papers and politicians, as I could see if we were as bad as they say there would be a risk of someone breaking the bottles around the car park, would the Council be responsible for any damage? I feel I could point this out as only a month or so ago I e-mailed the Council about the full bin, even then it was a couple of weeks before it was emptied.

The Gosport recycling does seem to cause some confusion. I understand in some areas letters are put through the door. The people who receive them see them as threats. I do some gardening including some bungalows in the Elson/ Hardway area, an elderly lady received one of these letters, as she was sorting out the recycling items and putting the different types in different carrier bags, she thought that she was helping, but the Council were not happy as the plastic bags were in the bin. She said that,'they will have to sort it themselves'. Which is I suppose what the Council want. The authorities talk about recycling of the past, but do not seem to want to look at how it was done then. Even I remember the recycling of 'tin foil' - aluminium foil, I think most of the 'Guide Dogs for the Blind' were paid for by it. I also feel it is odd that household batteries are not recycled, as I understand they contain metals, some of which I understand, have a value others are toxic, so should they be buried or burnt? Ian