I have been reading a book called: ‘Plundering the public sector – How New Labour are letting consultants run off with 70 billion of our money’ by David Criag and Richard Brooks which I find very worth reading especially for me details of the expensive failures of various government IT projects and how the same mistakes were made again and again. But the book also goes much further than just mistakes made to detail how Consultants often act against the interest of government departments they give advice to; all backed up with quotes from those involved and from wide range of reports and sources.

2 weeks ago a street mapping party used Infoseed as a base, to go out and record GPS traces to add to Open Street Map. I like this project creating more open distributable free information. I have not got a GPS device myself. I might get one at start of next year, after looking into which ones of best use. In UK the official maps from Ordnance Survey are not freely distributable.

I have recently started cycling to work; and found it to be quicker than I have to allow to get the bus as I had to get two buses. I am using the same bike I used to use in the early 90s in Cambridge. It was originally my dad’s. I used another bike in late nighties since which was stolen which was also given to me by my dad. And my dad gave me this one back last year, but it took me till now to take the plunge to cycle to work.

I spend most winter looking forward to the spring equinox as I don’t like the dark of winter, and we passed it last week. The clock went forward last night so we get up earlier to give us more daylight when active. Yesterday with Ulla I visited St Andrews in Fife, as she had not visited it before and I did not properly look around last time I visited which was quite a while ago.

Radio 4 had a programme covering the issue of reclaiming bank charges. They also just had a good one on Privacy in Peril which cover identity theft and use of information stored on us in databases such as credit card info. But back to bank charges, which it seems well worth reclaiming any that have been made against you for missing credit card repayment, bounced direct debits or cheques, or unauthorised overdrafts in last six years (maybe more in Scotland, yet to check out, but there is the lower limit of £750 at small claims court in Scotland).

There is a popular misconception that as payments made in shops and on websites with Visa Electron debit card are checked with the bank to see if there are sufficient account funds, that one can’t go overdrawn if one just uses Visa Electron, but one can, as unlike withdrawing cash from an ATM the amount is not debited from the account straight away but takes 3 to 5 days, so one can make multiple payments with a check being against the only balance that does not include the other payments.

Ok, after my post the other week on phone call costs, I though I would post up a summary Here are some pre-dial numbers for having cheaper UK mobile calls: 0844 428 0004 (4p/min) 0844 428 2525 (4p/min) price comparison from: http://niftylist.co.uk/calls/to/uk/mobile/ or for UK landlines: 0844 721 2525 (1p/min) 0844 861 2121 (1p/min) 0844 861 3838 (1p/min) 0844 721 0001 (1p/min) from: http://niftylist.co.uk/calls/to/uk/landline/ The Niftylist website is best viewed with CustomizeGoogle enabled in Firefox web browser.

BBC have a story today about rip off ATM charging. This comes after the goverment forced pensioners and those on benefit to get bank accoutns to receive dole in. There was a previous story on Scottish TV. In our area the only ATMs that charge. One is in a location that used to be non-charging can they keep the bank symbols on it and only warning that it charged £1.75 was on screen in a blue thin font on a blue background.

I just added to my webpage on phone issues that some of the cheapest phone calls can be had is by using pre-dial numbers from a company called Connect Telecom UK Ltd (Finarea SA) under brandnames Phonecheap, 0844calls, Discountdial, Dialaround, Telediscount, Telesavers and Telestunt (note they offer a different mix of rates via each but rather than lok at each site you can use a comparison site). For UK landline numbers at 1p per minute try 0844 861 2121 or 0844 861 3838.

Recently a few friends have asked my advice on which service provider to go for when getting Broadband internet connection. I have a page on my homepage concerning internet access in the UK, but I did look further into the range of ADSL providers at the moment. One to check out is: UKFSN (http://ukfsn.org/) who give some of the proceeds to free software development. See write-ups of various providers at: