Here is my entry for this weeks PhotoFriday challenge, “Grandeur.” For those that have been following the current series of The Apprentice, you’ll realise that this image represents English Sparkling Wine. In this case, I’ve stretched the concept even further. In the programme, it was a French word used to describe an English sparkling wine. Here, it’s a bottle of Italian, still wine. Never mind.
I know this picture isn’t going to win any prizes, but it’s literally true that it’s a view “From my window,” which is this weeks PhotoFriday theme. Instead it’s one of a series of shots I called “Asshole who park across my driveway” that I created last year when I was working from home a lot. Because we have our own space and don’t often have a car parked in it, people assume that they can just use the space in front. Really annoying those times where we do have a car to park…
Today the Telegraph had an article claiming that “the top one per cent of British earners are now paying almost 30 per cent of all income tax.” It’s then painted as a bad, unexpected revelation. But I’m not sure that should be the case. In one of my mini-Ben Goldacre moments, I think it’s one of those areas where your intuition and the numbers don’t necessarily align.
This post isn’t about politics or fairness or even, really, taxes. Instead it’s about maths, because what the story fails to say is that you would absolutely expect a small number of high earners to foot most of the bill.
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](http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephendarlington/6653145361/ ““Hobgoblin” beer by stephendarlington, on Flickr”)
What better way to celebrate the end of a hard day than a relaxing glass of beer? Well, that’s what I think anyway, and so it was the first thing that sprang to mind when I saw this weeks PhotoFriday theme, “Day’s End.”
Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Best of 2011.” I’m entry number 121.
I took a pretty literal interpretation of this weeks PhotoFriday theme, “Best of 2011.” I guess I could have used something that signified highlights of the year on a global scale, say my exclusive and so far unreleased images of Osama bin Laden and Gaddafi, but, frankly, nothing better signifies 2011 to me than the birth of my son a few weeks ago.
I’ve not been quite so active blogging this year due to a number of factors. A case in point: it wasn’t until December that I wrote about my holiday in July and a friends wedding in August!
This meant that the most popular articles were actually written in previous years:
While I appreciate people visiting, I am continually surprised by the appeal of some of these. Oracle 10g and CentOS 4 are, in software terms, ancient! And the Dual Scan II is more than a decade old — I bought it with my iBook G3 in 2001!
