Use Gmail to get rid of spam

I first got an email address back in 1993 and in those days you thought nothing of giving it to all and sundry - spam was still meat in cans. That soon changed and after a few years I was getting several hundred unwanted emails a day. A change of email address helped but pretty soon the flood resumed. That's when I was tipped off about  Gmail - and how I could keep my email address and get rid of almost all the spam.

In some ways, Gmail is just an ordinary email service like Yahoo or Hotmail. The key difference is they have got a really good spam blocking system.

So, here's how I used it:

1. I opened a free Gmail account
2. I set up an autoforward from my normal email to send all my mail to the new Gmail account
3. I could have stopped there and just read my email in Gmail and adjusted it to send replies "From" my old email address
4. However, I prefer to read my email via a separate program so I used the autoforward in Gmail to send the messages on to an ordinary email account which I access with Thunderbird

Gmail settings screen

So the upshot is I "haven't changed a thing" but Gmail is silently cleaning up my email.

 If your existing email doesn't have an autoforward facility, there's a facility in Gmail called Mail Fetcher that pulls your email out rather than your old account pushing it into Gmail. A disadvantage of this is that incoming email may be delayed

Wetherspoons: Fail

So I got to the head of the queue at Wetherspoon's and tried to place my food and drink order, "Table number?" asked the barman. "Oh, I haven't got one yet" I explained. "I can't take an order if I don't know where the food is going to go"

I looked round the busy pub, briefly contemplated finding a table upstairs somewhere, determining its number, coming down, queuing again, placing my order and hoping the table would still be vacant when I went back.

"I'm sorry", I said, "I'm in the wrong place" and left.

Poitically Correct Gardening

The rules are reversed in gardening. We are positively encouraged to root out migrants such as Spanish  Bluebells because they breed with our native Bluebells.

Chemical warfare is still very much allowed although the list of allowable toxins is cut every year. Instead, we are offered nice biological weapons such as nematodes that carry bacteria into the bodies of slugs and kill them.

But, dear gardener, come out of the garden and try any of that in the rest of the world and you're in trouble!

Getting culinary with the Sea Kale

I've written about this easy luxury vegetable before but this time I've got better pictures. The first move is to approach the bucket...

...Flipping it over...

...just snap off the stems...

...steam for 6 minutes...

...serve with fried breaded chicken. This picture uses the "food" setting on the camera - not sure what it does!

Pensioners to be the new hate figure

I've commented before on our government's campaign to demonise benefit claimants. Up to now, the targets have been working age "scroungers" - pensioners have been off the radar and protected from cuts. (although some will argue that the rising pension age represents a cut)

Now, Iain Duncan Smith is suggesting that better off pensioners hand back their benefits such as the winter fuel payment (which isn't means-tested). The reason why these benefits are not means tested is simple - it  actually costs more to means test these small sums than just to dish them out to all. My guess is that if pensioners did start repaying benefits, the administration costs would result in a net loss.

Actually, pensioners have been helping the government on this issue for a long time anyway. What they've done is simply failed to collect/apply/etc for benefits. According to AgeUK, this amounts to £5.5 billion/year.

Pensioners are a tempting target. Although a lot of them have low incomes, they often have capital in the form of houses. Meanwhile, young people are often unemployed, in debt and have little chance of acquiring property.

There's a lot of pensioners and their numbers are growing. Any politician seen to attack them may suffer at the ballot box. The ballot-box hit isn't just from the pensioners themselves - it's from their children. Not only might children want to protect their aged parents - they'll want to protect their eventual inheritance. That inheritance might be the only chance to buy a house - but wait, the attractions of owning a house may be less if it comes under attack later in life.

A canny political move might be to encourage inter-generational conflict, EG: "It cannot be right that Granny Perkins lives alone in a three bedroom house while hard-working Kirsty is crammed into a one-bedroom flat with her two children". Perhaps Granny Perkins should have her state pension reduced for under-occupancy in order to encourage her to swap with Kirsty? I think that particular wheeze won't fly simply because it would be another "bedroom tax" and that policy is doomed medium-term as its unworkability becomes more evident. However, other policies that attempt to wrest money from older people can be expected. They will probably take the form of attacks on capital leveraged by attacks on income.

Camping food: Instant Porridge

I'm probably the last person in the UK to discover this sort of product but never mind. This example is sold by Lidl at 55p a throw. You peel off the top, add boiling water up to the line, stir for a couple of minutes and eat.

It's quite nice. Purists will object that it shouldn't contain sugar - I believe the Scottish way with porridge involves salt which is currently not favoured by the health-eating lobby. A look at the nutrition panel on this product shows it does a fairly good job of ticking the boxes.

Verdict: Worth packing a few for the next camping trip and seeing what the gang think.

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