Kile, who pays and social media

11 May 2013

Kile is with us but we won't be going out today because of the forecast isn't so good for the two places we were thinking of.  So tomorrow we are heading for Slimbridge.  Kile will have fun there running around taking lots of photos and Jan and me will get a spot of birding done at the same time.  Looking forward to that now.

A fuss is brewing between Coventry City Council and the Department of Education over a bill of £150K for putting up DoE staff in two city hotels when the that staff were in the city.  That's a lot of dosh folks and I'm not sure who should be paying it.  Council Tax payers have currently paid it but surely if the DoE staff were on their business then the DoE should be paying it, not the Council.  But hang on though, if DoE pays it will it have an effect on the amount of money actually spent on education within the city?  The top and bottom of it all is that we, the UK tax payer will end up paying the bill somewhere along the line.

I lay in  bed last night reading Writers' Forum magazine.  One article ask just how useful social media is in winning commissions for editors of magazines.  It seems to be a bit of mixed bag really with some editors saying they do use social media and others saying they don't.  Blogging is one of items covered with the article writer saying he would sooner be writing his stories/articles that may or will earn some money than writing a blog which doesn't.  For a writer depending on sales for his livelihood, I can see his point.  However, I write for the fun of it, not to earn money - although I won't deny that selling a few books and earning a few bob would be useful.  Perhaps it all depends on how much time we spend on social media and not the media itself that might cause a problem.  If we spend all day reading and writing blogs, tweeting and following others on Facebook as well watching videos on YouTube, then it could well become a problem - and not just for writers.  I'm minded of the Neil Sedaka song Solitaire.  The danger is that social media takes over our lives to the detriment of everything else.

Today's Telegraph On This Day piece goes back a long way - all the way back to AD 330 this time.  On the day in AD 330 Constantinople became the head of the capital of the New Roman Empire.  OK, but has the change of calendar had any effect on the calculating that date? 

Today's photo is ... 

Serenity, a boat I saw on the River Trent the other day.  That's a nice boat, one I wouldn't mind living on.

And another short funny ...

Did you hear about the fat, alcoholic, transvestite? All he wanted to do was eat, drink and be Mary.