OMORROW we unofficially go on “holiday” or a weeks-long vacation, even if it is a stay-cation and most travel will be to places nearby. We don’t plan much shopping, windows “shopping” can be fun too.

A week after Rianne’s birthday it’ll be Bank Holiday, then we’ll be back to normal.

I plan not to check E-mail much. It’ll be as if I’m away somewhere in a distant island (like I was less than a decade ago).

With Rianne by my side, life is always a joy.

Keep it simple, stupid (KISS).

Being “offline” is not a state of misery but a sign of contentment.

HE firm that has bullied us for 2.5 years seems to have entered “cost savings mode” and is still not revealing financial details despite it being well past due date and end of the financial year. Their papers and their envelopes became visibly cheaper; they are budgeting their inventory in the office, what’s left of it anyway.

In the Court, they have very few staff attending (minimal crew). So what happened?

Let’s consider what people said about IBM this week: “This is typically expense control because customer travel is charged against cost of sales while non customer travel is charged as a regular operating expense. It is a symptom of financial pressures due to sales numbers not as great as hoped…”

Another said: “Having $70B of your market value in one day is pretty much an indicator that the company is in serious trouble regardless of how much they try to explain it away. Surprises me that so many people at IBM are in a bubble and think they are working at a growing and thriving company.”

And also “that’s what dying companies do, start cutting back on all the unnecessary expenses” (yes, it said “dying companies“).

T remains to be seen how many people will vote “POCOCK”, but voting is exactly a week from now. This is the schedule:

For what the candidates have to offer, specifically Daniel Pocock:

HIS short article recently mentioned the menace of ‘white elephant’ datacentres which serve little function, they help inflate the bubble that’s killing our economy

In attempting to find out how many “datacentres” per se are based in Manchester, I got this map:

What % of them perform actually useful functions? What % serve a foreign and maybe very hostile purpose? Should we mind?

This was leaked online this month:

HE nation’s police resources are limited. Regardless of how one feels about the above “cause”, holding up a sign or placard or whatever hardly puts anyone at risk.

Contrariwise, when people receive death threats calculated to terrorise (whether acted upon or not is irrelevant), there is action the cops can and should take.

It’s saddening to see how police resources get misallocated.

HIS morning we have a short (non-paywalled) outline of yesterday’s friendly match won by Enzo’s Manchester City. It’s an official video, not some random thing like whatever I shared yesterday.

Well done, Enzo.

It is his first win, hopefully one of hundreds of wins to come. If it’s in the “hundreds”, not a “hundred”, then it implies his contract in the club gets extended, i.e. he has done a satisfactory job as head coach.

ODAY I made this important announcement about something that had been brewing since last August, i.e. 12 months ago. I won’t comment on this any further at this time.

It already seems abundantly revealing that some people squirm, realising they made have made a critical error – one they will pay a lot for.

Today we plan to stay home. I want to publish many articles. Soon, maybe as soon as next week, this blog will reach the 3,000 blog posts milestone. That will be newsworthy. This blog began in 2004, i.e. 22 years ago.