Just a quick message to thank all my friends and family for their Christmas wishes and for the presents received.  Thanks also to Louise & Vernon for arranging our exclusive Christmas lunch yesterday at the Bacchus Restaurant, Bromsgrove.

I hope you all had a great day too.  It’s back to work for me today; the start of our sale, so I’m expecting it to be a very busy day.

The FOUND Magazine website from America, describes itself thus:

“We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids’ homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles - anything that gives a glimpse into someone else’s life. Anything goes…”

I find some of the finds in this collection of ephemeral items are quite funny, and some, thought provoking. What do you think?…

UK Chancellor, Alistair Darling, announced his 2008 Pre-Budget report today.

Amongst government measures intended to beat the recession, Value Added Tax is to be cut from 17.5% to 15% from 1 December 2008 until 31 December 2009. Alcohol and tobacco prices will not fall, as duty on them will be increased to match the VAT cut.

The government’s plan is to boost the economy through greater spending. Cut VAT now, to convince us that prices are going to go up later, thus encouraging us to spend, spend, spend.

But will these measures work?

Many people have borrowed heavily recently, and may now be tempted to pay off debt.  Others may save up for a rainy day rather than buy more goods in the shops, conscious of the fact that higher government borrowing now, will eventually have to be paid back.

Whoo, TV Choice magazine, in conjunction with Fisher-Price, is running a prize draw competition with 10 winners each receiving a collection of talking Mr Men and Little Miss soft toy characters from the current Mr Men Show on TV.  I must buy a postcard tomorrow and enter

I remember reading the Mr Men stories by Roger Hargreaves when I was young.  They first appeared on UK television between 1974-1985 with narration by Arthur Lowe.  Some artistic license has been taken in adapting the books for the latest TV show made in America.  There have been some name changes, character design alterations, the addition of some entirely new characters and even the gender reassignment of some of the originals

“Somebody needs a tickle” - Mr Tickle
“Touch me and I’ll bite your arm” - Mr Grumpy

I asked Tomeo to load up jtonline.info on his Apple iPhone at lunch time today, and I was pleased to see that this blog seems to work as intended on the Safari browser (thanks Tom).

It wasn’t a very extensive testing session, but confirmed to me that XHTML compliant code and the recent change from a Flash based photo slideshow to the current thumbnail layout, has been worth the time it’s taken to do.

So, I’ve viewed the blog successfully in IE7, Firefox and iPhone Safari. Hmm.. I haven’t tried IE6 yet…