Struggling with databases

Hi

It is nearly 3am and I am trying to understand MySQL. It is odd that in one sense I an make it happen but in another I am lost.

That is I seemed to have created a baby database BUT I don't know where it is. Somewhere on my machine but what is it called and where is it. It doesn't seem to want to exist when command line client is used but when I click on a database it seems to appear. This is all very rambling cause I don't know what I am doing.

Got stuck so I was looking at the Guardian on line and reading about the Gove and free schools. He seems to have arranged for an independent charity, though I use the word with some caution, to get half a million to promote free schools. But we don't have money to pay for summer activities for kids in poorer areas.

The trouble is that I start from some very negative attitudes to the Tories and so it is hard to believe that any thing they do can possibly be good. So when I read about free schools and read that some are in poor areas my immediate thought that this must be a way for a few parents to self select themselves out of going top school with their neighbours in case they aren't very nice. And the people who do that will be Tory voters so obviously the Tories will support them.

When will people realise that the tory party is one great con trick to get money from the poor and give it to the rich!

Foreign Owners and Seb Coe

Hi

I wonder how many people watched the Seb Coe programme on "Who do you think you are", http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013yx6f/Who_Do_You_Think_You_Are_Series_8_Sebastian_Coe/?

But how many of you thought about the foreign ownership of firms whilst watching it? It just shows how strange some might think I am when watching the bit about Jamaica that is what I was thinking.

At that time Jamaica was making a fortune out of sugar plantations. The profit was large because of the slave trade, but most of us knew that. However the programme made the point that the profits were all exported back to Britain and, it claimed, funded the industrial revolution.

Now turn to modern times, two profitable companies have recently been sold to the Americans, Cadbury and Automony. You always find the CEO thinks it is all great, they usually walk away with millions of pounds. In the short run money get filtered to Britain, but what happens in the long term. The profits get squirrelled away back in the home country of the owner and helps to build their economy.

It does matter who owns what, the politicians, economists and business men who say we shouldn't care are just wrong, we should care because in the end the working lives of most people are at the whim of foreign owners and British business people who want to expand will find it harder to raise funds.

Is that why we have gradually stopped be a nation of manufacturers. How many of the dragons in "Dragons Den" make anything?

All very confusing

Whilst Libya burns I am worrying about how to make adsense work.

Also struggling to understand php and how to make websites behave properly. It is hard to know where to start with all these things.

perhaps some bright reader can point me in the right direction.

Credit Unions

Hi

I have become quite involved with Ketts Credit Union, http://www.kettscreditunion.org.uk/. These are locally run organisations which encourage saving and sensible lending.

They are owned by their members, one person one vote. They should be the way forward for most communities. The members savings are used to help those who need loans. I know there are those who don't wish to encourage borrowing but it is better to lend people money at a sensible interest rate they can afford to pay back rather than just rely on charity.

This is particularly true, since the crash and the introduction of austerity measures people are finding it hard to cope. The banks which caused the disaster will only help those who don't need any help!

This way everyone is some sort of winner. There is a danger that if they get too big they become like banks with lots of paid employees and no local community.

Ketts cover some of the most deprived parts of Norwich, in terms of the Deprivation Index 16 out of the 25 most deprived parts of Norwich are covered by Ketts. For more information about credit unions see the ABCUL website, http://www.abcul.org/home. There was also an article in the Guardian money page this weekend.

I have tried to use adsense for my blogs, this is not to make me money but to try to help build up capital for Ketts, so please spread the word.

Why the rich should be poorer

Given the riots there has been much discussion of the inequalities of wealth distribution in Britain, and the US. The rich always try to argue that it wouldn't help to make the rich poorer, but they would wouldn't they. A bit like the founder of Autonomy saying there is no problem with selling the company to the US but he has just made 60 million!

Trying to find up to date figures for the UK GDP gives slightly different figures but it is roughly 1.5 trillion pounds. that gives, also quite roughly, £25,000 for every adult and child in the country. That would suggest a family of four ought to be worth about £100,000. Let us halve that for the needs of the country, you still get a figure of £50,000. So what has gone wrong.

It is quite simple, the rich are too rich. The solution is of course not so simple. One of the arguments is that the rich have worked hard to achieve their wealth. That is rarely true, most of the really rich in this country have inherited their wealth, see David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg. Note also that many very rich families put their money onto so called charitable trusts so they do not appear to own the money but the trusts only give money to the family!

The myth of the self-made millionaire isn't quite a myth but they are very rare. Very few people start with nothing and become really rich

MP's and Rioters

MP's and Rioters what' s the difference.

It is sometime since I blogged, too much time playing silly games & going on holiday but I was contemplating the smug face of David Cameron on tele yesterday and wondered what the differnce between him and the woman who was given some stolen goods. That is the one who was sentenced to prison and then released and given community service.

Then there werethe MP's who were claiming for things they shouldn't, what happened to them. They paid the money back and were forgiven, well at least by them selves. It might be argued that what they did wasn't criminal but of course they are the lawmakers so of course they decided it wasn't criminal.

It is the same with pensions, public sector pensions are too generous. Who hs the most generous public sector pensions, why the MP's but when it was suggested that they should have the same changes as everyone else, they said that would not do!