Jon’s Blog

I’ve finally managed to find a pen that will fit in my wallet. I had one from a cracker for a while but that disappeared somewhere. Anyway, it’s the OHTO Petit-B and it arrived today from Cult Pens. Here it is with an extra small Moleskine Volant for a complete tiny note taking solution! (Although the Moleskine is 1cm too long for my wallet)

It’s got a nice fine tip and writes pretty smoothly – not quite as nice to use as my favourite pens the Pilot G-Tec-C4 and the Pilot V5 Hi-Tecpoint (0.5mm) but I can’t get them in my wallet.

I think that’s a suitable inane post to restart up this blog!

Ann Pettifor writes the following on her Debtonation blog today:

The implications are clear. It took years – from 1929 until the 1940s – and a World War, before the US cleansed itself of the 1930s debt sludge.   Japan is still trying to purge itself of debts built up in the 1980s.  18 years after the Japanese ‘debtonation’ of 1990,  the economy is still  the weakest of all the OECD countries. Eighteen years after the property bubble burst, Japanese house prices are still falling!

Will it take 12-18 years for the US economy to recover, after purging debts equivalent to 350% of GDP?  On this reckoning: more than likely.

…and George Monbiot is saying what many of us UK taxpayers are starting to think on his blog today:

For the first time in my life I resent paying my taxes. Until now I have seen this annual amputation as a civic duty – like giving blood – necessary to sustain the life of a fair society. Suddenly I see it as an imposition. Its purpose has reverted to that of the middle ages: subsidising the excesses of a parasitic class. A high proportion of the taxes I pay will be used to bail out companies which, as the Guardian’s current investigation shows, have used every imaginable ruse to avoid paying any themselves.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Happy Groundhog Day!

Just testing blogging photos from my phone to opalfruits.net through flickr.

This is the big pile of film I’ve accumulated from ebay to use with my new film cameras.

I don’t really do new year’s resolutions but this year I’ve decided I’d like to take more photos so I’ve bought a few film cameras (a polaroid and two 35mm) to mix things up a bit and I’ve set up a photoblog to encourage me to keep going with it. You can see the latest photo from the photoblog in the sidebar on the right and you can head over there to see how I’m getting on so far.

(Also using this to test blogging from my flickr account following the server move)

Interesting (as usual) piece from George Monbiot in today’s Guardian about the whole “cash for laws” scandal…

So the circle is closed. The government that won a landslide in 1997 after Tory MPs were revealed to have taken cash for parliamentary questions now faces far graver allegations: cash for laws. Along the way, almost every policy that distinguished it from John Major’s corrupt and pointless regime has been abandoned.

Read more here…

Tony Blair was the Obama of his day when he was first elected, offering change from an unpopular government. Let’s hope the new President can leave a more popular legacy.