Some thoughts about socks, washing machines and use of the workplace computer

What is it with men and socks? Our friend Colin recently put a photo on his blog of his collection of “orphan” socks. My husband comes up with a similar collection at regular intervals. As I pair socks up after washing it is not uncommon for me to find that what appear to be pairs of socks of the same colour are in fact a collection of odd ones. Now, I have numerous pairs of socks, in a range of colours and patterns. If I end up with “orphan” socks it is usually because one of a pair has worn out, and only rarely because the washing machine has eaten one. Of course, it is quite possible that the washing machine only likes men’s socks!

Our daughter has been bringing copious amounts of washing to do at our house as her machine decided to break down. I am not surprised at it doing this. It was probably the washing machine equivalent of a nervous breakdown. Brought on, no doubt, by having to deal with the washing created by a household comprising of three adults (we now count the oldest grandchild as an adult), two adolescents and a baby!

Her washing machine is very clever. When something goes wrong with it, there is a panel which lets you know which component is faulty. She has one of those washing machine repair insurance policies and so she contacted them to organise a repair. She gave them all the details, including the machine’s self-diagnosis, hoping thus to expedite matters. But no, they said that a repairman had to come and look at it to assess the situation.

On Saturday, therefore, a repairman came, looked at the machine and, without running any kind of tests, agreed with the machine’s self-diagnosis. Naturally he did not have the relevant part in his van and he will return on Wednesday to fix the thing. This means that our daughter’s insurance policy will have paid for two visits, one at a Saturday rate of pay for the repairman, instead of just one. Presumably is is why such policies’ premiums go up year on year!

Here’s an odd little item of news from today’s paper:

“More than 24,000 attempts were made to access pornographic websites in the Houses of Parliament since the general election, according to official data.
The figure of 24,473 attempts represents about 160 requests per day on average from computers and other devices connected to the parliamentary network – which is used by MPs, peers and staff – between June and October last year.
It comes amid a sex scandal in Westminster, during which Theresa May sacked her de facto deputy Damian Green, after he made “misleading” statements about allegations that police found pornography on computers in his parliamentary office in 2008. In his resignation letter, Green continued to deny “unfounded and deeply hurtful” claims that he downloaded or viewed the material. The data, released after a freedom of information (FoI) request by the Press Association, shows a spike in September in the number of attempts to visit the sites, with 9,467 requests from both the Houses of Lords and Commons that month.
Parliamentary authorities say the majority of attempts are not deliberate.”

A number of things occur to me:-

•  MPs do not have enough work to do if they can spend time trying to access pornography from the workplace. 
• We are electing the wrong kind of people to parliament. 
• In view of the last line of the article, MPs need better IT training.

That’s all!