UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

Thinking of you and your's Will.

Xx

Thanks. The funeral went well - or as well as these things can ever go. It's a sad time, but there is a strong sense of rightness about it. The young should bury the old, and not the other way around. And it was a relief that the MIL was no longer in pain, or confused because of all the painkillers they were giving her.

I am very grateful to folks who wished us well. Nice to have friends.

Glad it went well Will, and you're right, Herodotus said "In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons."

A subdued blog today. It's a little thank you to my Mother in Law, who passed away just before Christmas.

https://willonce.wordpress.com/2016/0...

Can we really get excited about storm Nigel?

https://willonce.wordpress.com/2016/0...

Good timing.

Just sat down with a fresh cup of coffee.

Ah, you've not said what makes a storm a storm, have you?

Something about wind strength, is it? I dunno. I'd have to google.

Naming them with profanity would be fun.

'Storm Dickwad'

'Hurricane Shitstick'

It has something to do with the severity of the warning. The storms with "watch out!" warnings get named. This from the Met Office website:

"A storm will be named when it is deemed to have the potential to cause 'medium' or 'high' wind impacts on the UK and/or Ireland, i.e. if a yellow, amber or red warning for wind has been issued by Met Éireann and/or the National Severe Weather Warnings (NSWWS)."

Ancient names would be funky. Storm Beowulf. Storm Zeus.

But not Nigel. Please not Nigel.

Poor Nigel.

I wonder if there's a storm name generator app out there yet.

I bet there is.

Patti (baconater) wrote: "I wonder if there's a storm name generator app out there yet.

I bet there is."

They could allow readers and writers to name storms after favorite fictional characters. Storm Jane (Eyre). Storm Peter (Wimsey). Storm Frankenstein. For a fee, of course. Or a lottery.

I love the idea of fictional characters as storms. I suppose the big problem is that the Met Office have to name the storm before it happens. They don't get the chance to see what the storm is like before deciding what name would fit.

It's a bit like the naming your kids dilemma. Sure you could give your son a name like Butch or call your daughter Petal, but you don't really know if that is how they are going to grow up. Unless there is a boy named Sue thing going on.

Today's blog is about an adventure with a squirrel:

https://willonce.wordpress.com/2016/0...

Love it!

Will wrote: "About a squirrel"

He will tell his little squirrely offspring about the day he stared death in the face, Once and twice, and lived to tell the tale of how he met their grandma on just this very story, and how they would not be alive if he hadn't.

Alicia wrote: "Will wrote: "About a squirrel"

He will tell his little squirrely offspring about the day he stared death in the face, Once and twice, and lived to tell the tale of how he met their grandma on just..."

Sounds like a children's book in the making...

We would need to be a little careful when talking about the roadkill side of the equation...

Will wrote: "I love the idea of fictional characters as storms. I suppose the big problem is that the Met Office have to name the storm before it happens. They don't get the chance to see what the storm is like..."

Loved it!

Gingerlily - Mistress Lantern wrote: "Alicia wrote: "Will wrote: "About a squirrel"

Sounds like a children's book in the making.."

Alas, I cannot draw a squirrel.

Will wrote: "We would need to be a little careful when talking about the roadkill side of the equation..."

No roadkill; kids still cry at Bambi.

Almost - but survived. Very important. Any squirrel-drawers out there?

Having a rant about the UK lottery

https://willonce.wordpress.com/2016/0...

Biggest scam in the world.

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Biggest scam in the world."

'Twill make you poorer. I can guarantee that to at least three digit accuracy - Will did the math.

I was always impressed with the lottery. John Major managed to tax innumeracy.
I'm actually over a thousand pounds up on the lottery. I've never bought a ticket :-)

One funny thing about the lottery is that it would be illegal if it wasn't sanctioned by the Government. In the days of Al Capone a lottery (known as the numbers) was one of the tricks that the gangsters used to make money - along with prostitution, protection rackets and alcohol smuggling.

You don't have to be all that cynical to think that most of government is a protection racket run to provide jobs for the bureaucracy :-)

Shhh, Jim.

Will works in the bureaucracy.

Patti you misunderstand. We all exist to serve the needs of the state

Yes silly me. Of course we do.

Speaking of bureaucracy, I've not told you the latest here, have I?

We can no longer buy booze with cash. Must use a bank card! No official reason was given but we all reckon it's so the gov't can make sure it's getting every single kopek of tax owed.
Taxi driver from the airport was freaking out over the increase in cost of fags. I just checked and they're the equivalent of £1.60 for 20.

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Biggest scam in the world."

Absolutely. I did it for years and once got 4 numbers up - and only got £14, i.e. £4 more than for the much easier, though not easy, to get 3 numbers. Gave up in disgust after that.

Just think how much people could accrue in a savings account over the years if they squirrelled the money away.

Heard earlier that the gov't hasn't paid out the monthly pension to the elderly here for last month.

I can see civil unrest happening.

I'm gonna have to sort out a getaway bag like we had in Nigeria.

I feel the need for some more calculations! Excuse me while I get my spreadsheets out.

By my (very rough) reckoning, the British public have paid around £120 billion to the National Lottery over the 20 years it's been running.

That's around £2,300 per adult (assuming that all 51 million adults in the UK played the game).

If you bought £10 worth of tickets every week for 20 years, it would have cost you £10,400. Instead of playing the lottery, if you had invested that £10 per week in a savings account, you would now have:

£14,117 (at 3% interest) or
£17,474 (at 5% interest).

The only risk is that the interest rates might fall (as they are at the moment). But you are guaranteed to have more at the end than when you started.

The only way to do better than that with the lottery is to win either the jackpot, the new million raffle or five numbers plus the bonus ball. All of these are so unlikely that you might as well forget it. The jackpot was 14 million to one. It's now 45 million to one.

But it gets worse. Many of the people who pay the lottery also have debts. The average UK household debt is £10,000 per household, made up of personal loans, credit cards and overdrafts. These debts will nearly always carry far higher rates of interest than the 3% to 5% I've assumed for savings accounts.

If you are constantly in debt then every extra penny you spend accrues interest at the highest rate you are paying. If you had constant debts that were costing you 10% a year, then a £10 per week lottery habit would cost you ... wait for this ... £32,652 over 20 years.

If you had credit card debts at a high annual rate (say 20%) then your £10 a week lottery tickets would cost you a staggering £133,715 over 20 years. Subtract from this a few winnings, say £100 per year, and you are still throwing away more than £131,000 over a 20 year period.

Gulp.

Jim is exactly right. The only real way to win the lottery is never to play it.

Wow!

Will can I please copy that onto my Facebook? I'll credit you, of course.

Of course. Those little £10s per week do add up over 20 years and a thousand Saturdays, don't they?

My father would occasionally buy a lottery ticket when he retired. He didn't buy one every month
But anyway there was an actuary in the paper pointing out that your chance of winning the lottery was known. As was your chance of dying before a certain date.
He produced a table which basically said when in the week you had to buy the ticket to have more chance of winning the lottery than you had of dying before the lottery was drawn.
My Dad discovered he was someone who should only buy as late as possible on Saturday.
Rather put him off :-)

Oh and just to say, I think you're spot on with your figures, or at least they confirm my preconceptions which amounts to much the same thing :-)

We're having such fun with the lottery that I thought I'd write a little parable about Mickey and the Devil.

https://willonce.wordpress.com/2016/0...

Love the Rocky Horror reference.

One of your best blogs, I reckon and you've written some stonkers.

But is 20% 17 grand?

Oops - that was a typo! Fixed now.

Glad you spotted the Rocky Horror reference.

Now it's fixed, I can share it on Facebook. :)

I knew there was a good reason I don't play the lottery.

I had four goes, won a tenner on the fourth, and quit while I was six pound up.

I wonder. I wonder if there is a story to be told about Mickey and the Devil? So let's go back, way back, to when they first meet...

https://willonce.wordpress.com/2016/0...

Lovely, Will.

Mickey has my sympathies. It is not often you get the Big Guy to take you on personally.

I hope you've got some more Mickey stories percolating. I'm liking him.

seems like you've acquired a 'character' :-)

I've got this mad idea.

There's a book I've wanted to write for some time. It brings together all the self-help and management books I've read - and I have read a lot! - and boils it down to one simple concept.

But I don't want to tell it as a straight self-help book. They can be awfully dull and/or preachy. So the plan is to tell it as a story. A parable of Mickey and the Devil.

I have no idea if it will work, so I'm going to write it out as a blog. Then if it all hangs together I'll package it up as a book. And if it doesn't work, it can just sit there on the blog.

More to come.

Yay!

Well that's how Tallis sort of happened :-)

And it has the positive side that you're building an audience as you write.
Which is how 50 shades of grey took off, apparently she'd got her audience through fan fiction

Like it.

Here's the next installment, in which Mickey wants a shazam and the Devil provides one ... after a fashion.

https://willonce.wordpress.com/2016/0...

Cash porn?

Financial fornication is coming up next.

And, yes, there will be some cash porn.