Formerly known as the Widmann Blog
Anna fyldte elve måneder i går, og hun er simpelthen ved at blive så stor og dygtig!
Se bare her på billedet, hvordan hun for nylig hjalp Phyllis med at slibe kanten af en bordplade af med sandpapir.
Hun er også begyndt at pege på billeder og spørge, hvem personerne på dem er. Desværre kan hun godt finde på at pege på det samme billeder 10-20 gange i træk. 🙁
Hun har også lært at nikke, ryste på hovedet og vinke – vældig praktisk!
The pound has been falling against the euro throughout the millennium.
This means that it’s becoming less and less attractive for foreigners to work here, and more and more attractive for British people to emigrate to the continent.
To show the effect, I’ve taken a hypothetical worker, earning £21k in the UK eight years ago, and the equivalent, €35k in the Eurozone. I’ve then increased the salary by 3% each year:
| Year | Exch. rate | Worker in the UK | Worker in Eurozone | Percentage | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 0.60 | £21000 | €35000 | £21000 | €35000 | 100% |
| 2001 | 0.62 | £21630 | €34887 | £22351 | €36050 | 97% |
| 2002 | 0.64 | £22279 | €34811 | £23764 | €37132 | 94% |
| 2003 | 0.70 | £22947 | €32782 | £26772 | €38245 | 86% |
| 2004 | 0.70 | £23636 | €33765 | £27575 | €39393 | 86% |
| 2005 | 0.69 | £24345 | €35282 | £27996 | €40575 | 87% |
| 2006 | 0.68 | £25075 | €36875 | £28418 | €41792 | 88% |
| 2007 | 0.71 | £25827 | €36377 | £30562 | €43046 | 85% |
| 2008 | 0.84 | £26602 | €31669 | £37243 | €44337 | 71% |
This is a dramatic change. In other words, seen from the continent, British people are now earning only 71% of what they did eight years ago.
It made me happy today to see that Duff of the LibDems has pointed out that the UK should join the euro:
In 1997 Mr Brown set five so-called economic tests to judge sterling’s accession to the eurozone. Suddenly, all these criteria are met. The pound has fallen to a competitive exchange rate level. The City risks being pushed aside as supervision and regulation is strengthened inside the eurozone. And the economic cycles of Britain and the eurozone are cow completely in sync as they both plunge into recession together. […] But unless he now changes the terms of the British debate about EMU, the pound will be the ping pong ball bouncing beyond control between the giant footballs of the dollar and the euro.
As I hinted to in this blog posting, I’ve had problems with two RSS feeds that I process in the What Others Are Saying box on the right.
I had fixed them once, but I then upgraded to a new version a bit too quickly and lost my modifications. 🙁
So now I’ll post my changes here, so that they’re saved for posterity.
First of all, my beloved Phyllis insists on writing her titles in all-caps, which looks crap when mixed with other postings. This code takes care of this:
if (stristr($url, 'phylsblog'))
$title = ucwords(strtolower($title));
Secondly, John Wells’s blog stores the date in the title field in a non-standard format, and the title in the description field:
if (stristr($url, 'phon.ucl.ac.uk')):
$day = substr($title, 0, strpos($title, ' '));
if (strlen($day) < 2)
$day = '0' . $day;
$month = substr($title, strpos($title, ' ')+1, 3);
$month = $months[$month];
$year = substr($title, strpos($title, ' ', 4)+1, 4);
$issued = $year."-".$month."-".$day." 00:30:00";
$title = $item['description'];
endif;
As I blogged recently, I learnt at school that devaluation in the longer term is bad for you.
However, if you read Government-supporting media, such as The Guardian or The Times, you might now get the impression that devaluation is the best thing since sliced bread. See for instance this one by Anatole Kaletsky.
For a more orthodox view, see this one by Stephen King.
Don’t read the first article without getting the antidote from the second one!
Min mor havde sidste arbejdsdag i dag, efter næsten fyrretyve år som sognepræst i Sdr. Vissing og Voerladegård.
Hun sluttede af med to gudstjenester og efterfølgende reception. Vi kunne desværre ikke komme, men sagde farvel til præstegården – mit barndomshjem – for en uge siden.
Nu har hun så ferie i et par uger, før hun officielt bliver pensionist den 1. december.
Min far følger så i hendes fodspor to måneder senere.
Det bliver jo nok desværre ikke helt så nemt og behageligt at besøge dem, når de ikke længere har en kæmpe præstegård, men til gengæld får vi dem måske så oftere at se herovre!
Er det bare mig, der har været for længe i Skotland?
Jeg erindrer i hvert fald ikke, at all you can eat skulle være et dansk adjektiv.
Meningen er naturligvis klar nok, nemlig at man kun får en begrænset mængde kød, men lige så meget tilbehør, som man kan spise, men kunne det ikke have været udtrykt lidt bedre?
Tilbehør ad libitum, for eksempel, eller tilbehørstagselvbord?
