Foreign Perspectives

In times gone by saying that you were involved in a “cottage industry” meant that you were doing something like making quilts at home or perhaps making cute little craft items. Essentially, working with your hands by and large.

These days a cottage industry is quite a different beast.

Yes, there are still many people around making those quilts and craft items but you’ll see them sold online these days. In fact, that aspect gives you more contact with the original maker of such items than most people would have had in the hay-day of the cottage industry. In the past, they’d have sold most of their items via buyers whereas now they can sell them to you directly.

However, these days there is a whole new class of cottage industry. It’s not uncommon to come across an ebay seller in the most unusual places. I’ve bought several items from a place based in the Shetland Islands myself which is about as far from “civilisation” as you can be. Likewise, there’s a number of places based in Point Roberts, the little bit of land forgoten about when the treaty definining the border between Canada and America was signed.

Similarly there are the likes of myself making something of a living from writing. There have, of course, been writers pottering away for a long time but the Internet has made that much more of an occupation open to everyone than it ever was in the past. After all, realistically I’d never have had a hope of getting 35,000 readers a week for my writing yet that’s the number I’ve had in the last week for this blog.

Some might say that these Internet based efforts aren’t a cottage industry. How could they be with so much technology? Yet, that craft item you bought also used technology, it’s just that the technology used to produce it was older.

It looks like the UK government is shaping up to provide yet another unconditional guarantee with an open-ended cost for the taxpayers.

Last time it was Northern Rock for which they have kindly guaranteed that everyone in the UK will pay £1300 to support a bank that should simply have been allowed to fail. This time, it’s potentially even more than that as they appear to be about to guarantee that they will cover any losses incurred by any of the 25 million people who are not potentially at risk to identity fraud thanks to action by the government.

Still, at least they are directly responsible for that this time around.

Every time that the issue of ID cards comes up in the UK, there are questions asked about how securely the information collected will be held and every time the government says “trust us”.

Well, today we’ve seen just how much we could trust the government with our information. Not that far at all as it happens as they’ve just managed to lose the complete ID records of just about everyone in the UK. Had it been anyone other than the government that had lost it, those places providing ID theft solutions would be advising everyone to change their bank accounts. When you’re talking millions of people, that’s not really a runner of course.

Still, there are encouraging signs in this fiasco. For one thing, it’s a great example to refer the government to when they say that the ID card information will be perfectly safe. And, of course, it’ll be a brilliant excuse to use when your bank claims that you’ve overspent on your credit card as you’ll be able to say that your identity was stolen.

Perhaps TNT aren’t the best company to use if you’re sending really valuable items in the post!

Don’t know why, but today is turning out to be the best day for income from the blog ever and by a long way too.

If I’m quick enough, it looks like I might be able to double my previous record at a stroke.

Still, no doubt tomorrow will be pretty dry in comparison as indeed was the weekend.

Poor little John is scared to go out of doors at the moment as he can barely stand up in the wind at the moment!

So far we’ve had no snow though sometimes it has seemed cold enough for it. That’s a bit misleading of course in that the wind chill factor makes it seem a good deal colder than it really is and in fact this morning it was actually warmer outside than it was inside the house!

It is pretty dreadful weather for this time of year though. Ordinarily, we’d not be expecting such severe winds until February and even then only for a short period rather than for days at a time as we’ve been having lately.

I’d like to say that we’ve been using all the time indoors to get caught up on the Winter schedule of activities but instead we’ve been busy organising our Christmas holiday over the last week or two. Still, at least that’s booked now so we just need to source a turkey to take to Spain at some point in the next month or so (Wendy won’t get it in Spain as they do unspeakable things there including leaving the head on!).