Loads of solar stuff, lots and lots of lack of warm and
little atmospheric movement at the Castle this morn, quite late, the vast
amounts of skywater and low readings on the liquid metal gauge has it seems
finally managed to paralyse the interweb thingy, and it is only working in
spurts which is a bit miffing.
Those with expectations of becoming rich old farts are a tad
disappointed; the Financial Services
Authority (FSA) said that from 2014 the predicted growth rates used to give
investors an idea of what their pension pot will be worth when they retire must
be significantly lower than they are today.
Currently pension
companies use a so-called “intermediate projection rate” of 7 per cent in
statements to savers. This means that someone in their 20s who earns £30,000
and saves £2,000 a year into a workplace pension can expect to have a
retirement pot when they reach 68 of £540,000.
However under the
new 5 per cent growth rate that firms will have to use, this pot will be valued
at just £335,000. The change means that the person’s predicted pension income
will fall from £10,400 a year to £6,430 a year, a drop of 38 per cent.
Experts said that
the lower rate will provide a “dose of cold economic reality” to savers and
will give them a more accurate idea of the money they can expect to receive on
retirement.
As well as
pensions, the new rules will also cover the expected growth of financial
products including ISAs and endowments. From 2014 all statements about existing
investments will use the new lower projection rates.
Which means bugger all really...
Silly Billy has coughed up ten grand to re-stuff his new
mate; a giant anaconda named Albert who has spent most of the last century
hanging above the ministry library and reckons that "He is looking very
optimistic about the future of our foreign policy".
A ministry spokesman said that as Albert was a gift, he is
regarded as a government asset.
"As such, the Foreign Office is obliged to maintain its
assets, and the work on 'Albert' was essential maintenance," he said.
"It is believed that 'Albert' was first re-stuffed in
the 1960s or 1970s, but there are no records of how much it cost on that
occasion. Certainly no significant maintenance has been carried out on him in
the last 40-50 years."
And it could have waited another decade or so....
Photographer Mark Bridger captured a picture of Gandalf the great
grey owl at an outbuilding at Knowsley Safari Park in
Prescot, Merseyside, on Monday.
'It transpires
he lives in that outbuilding,' said Mark, 44, from West Malling, Kent.
'I went up to
the park on Monday to photograph reptiles and noticed that Gandalf was happily
watching the birds flying around out of the window of his house.
'He lives at Knowsley
Safari Park. They said he loves watching the birds and the dogs through the
window.'
Bless...
A four-minute-long Air New Zealand safety video celebrating
the upcoming premiere of the first film in the Hobbit trilogy has gone viral
within 24 hours of being posted on YouTube.
The in-flight video – which features the character Gollum
and the film director Sir Peter Jackson - has received more than two million
hits.
The video is the latest of the airline's in-flight films to
become popular online.
Other online hits have included a video showing fitness guru
Richard Simmons wearing in a sequin tank top, and another starring the cast of
the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team.
My brain hurts....
A Norwegian plane carrying 40 passengers turned around and
returned to an airport hundreds of kilometres away -- despite having already
started its descent -- just so the crew would not have to work overtime.
The plane was about to land in the small northern town of
Mosjoen when it turned back to Trondheim, around 350 kilometres (220 miles)
south, local newspaper Rana Blad said in a report.
"Shortly afterwards, the captain himself said on the
tannoy that it was unbelievable, but that it had been decided that we had to
turn around," passenger Steinar Henriksen said.
Company Wideroe, a regional carrier owned by Scandinavian
airline SAS, said that the last-minute decision was based on Norway's strict
working time regulations.
"Unfortunately, the plane took off with a crew that was
about to clock out. We have strict working hours that are imposed by the
authorities, which we cannot exceed," a spokesman for the company, Richard
Kongsteien, told the paper.
"If the airplane had landed, it would have had to stay in Mosjoen since
we didn't have a back-up crew there, and the schedule for the rest of the
evening would have had to be cancelled," he said, adding that this would
have affected more than 200 passengers.
My brain hurts even more...
And finally:
Well now it seems that you may be able to, travel to the moon, asteroids, Mars and other
nearby destinations could become more affordable if a Virginia-based company
achieves its goal of building cheaper electric space propulsion.
The firm, called
HyperV Technologies Corp., has started a crowd-funding campaign on the website
Kickstarter to pay for the project, called a plasma
jet thruster.
The 8-year-old
company, which officials said collaborates with several United States laboratories
in its research, has just two days left in the campaign to raise its goal of
$69,000.
Anyone would think that it’s rocket science......
That’s it: I’m
orf to reset my brain cell to GMT
And today’s thought:
Hard life.
Angus
