your grandad

Part of my job involves encrypting files to send to solicitors - it's about 5-6 files per week and since I took on the responsibility I've sent 211, 209 completely without incident.

The first one that went wrong I put the file through WinZip, the program we use to encrypt files, but because the process to add the password is so complicated I thought the password was on the file when it wasn't. Sent out, documented discussion. Put in place what limited measures I could but then yesterday I found it had happened again (this time I attached the original file instead of the encrypted one - same name but different file extension.

Now I'm in a disciplinary meeting with words like "dismissal" being bandied around. My work otherwise is excellent.

My first reaction is to simply say that I won't accept the risk of sending them any more. Can I just use you all as a sounding board to see if that's justified?

I'm writing, and I have "at any rate, this only partially statutorialises the offence". What I'm trying to say is that it only makes part of the offence statutory, but more eloquently than that (and importantly with fewer words) are there any English language masters who can tell me a way to phrase it using an actual word, and not one I've made up? "Statutises" maybe?

I can't remember the title of the film, but I think it had the guy's name in it. He's a sort of "cheeky chappy" younger guy, lives on an estate in London and hangs around with a friend of his, they both get dragged into a bad crowd and the film is about them going separate ways. He had blond hair, and that's about all I can remember. Does anyone know the title?

It's NOT Green Street, Football Factory, any of the This is Englands, Layer Cake.

I mean, even if you agree with him, does the fact that he and his successor (whose name I've forgotten) consistenty appear on the news and say things like "the public wants..." or "British people are concerned about..."?

For a start, he's only supposed to be talking for the members of his unions (of which there's fewer now than at virtually any other point in history). He certainly doesn't speak for my views or the views of many millions of other people. I believe there's a danger that the tail is being allowed to wag the dog.

It's true that many of us are experiencing a squeeze on our living standards, but it's also true that many of us directly attribute this to the actions of Mr Barber and his government, and also think with much justification that we're going to bear this so our children don't have to pay back the money we funded our extravagance with for the rest of their lives.

I can't help but notice through listening to many of her songs, she mentions London a lot (in Check it Out, Where Them Girls At, her reversion of Girls Fall Like Dominoes, etc), but also Wales, Scotland and England. Does she have some connection to the UK in her past?

It's patently obvious that there's something incredibly wrong with the guy, but is there not a danger that by constantly repeating his opposition to European multiculturalism (which is something that has a lot of traction to the point where leaders such as David Cameron and Angela Merkel also oppose it) along with his percieved insanity, the mainstream media are linking the two together?

I was (half) watching an interview on the BBC outside the courtroom with a fairly intelligent sounding man who could not understand his "acknowledgement" of his comission of the murders and the bombing, but could not understand why he would not plead guilty. He kept making references to multiculturalism and insanity and it seemed to be the case that he was suggesting that those who oppose multiculturalism must be insane, or far-right extremists. Clearly this isn't the case - multiculturalism has opposition on the political left as well. But are the media in danger of propagating an idea that opposition to multiculturalism is an indicator of insanity, even if only accidentally?

Hello, it's another one of those questions about asking for the name of a film I half watched and now want to watch again. It's a fairly recent film (since 2000), where a woman becomes posessed. The only two scenes I remember is one that takes place in a bathroom, where spiders, or maybe snakes start coming out of the walls of the cubicles, and a selection of scenes towards the end of the film where she goes to be exorcised, and the group doing the exorcism are thrown around the room and dramatically killed by a young demon-boy, the woman is rescued from the table where she is strapped down by her boyfriend (or other male) and they are then chased around an old church, or possibly school. Sorry to be so vague.

Having been heckled by an angry socialist today when walking home, I realised that most of them were not nurses, firemen, doctors, teachers or road cleaners. I didn't see everyone, but most seemed to be office workers and bureaucrats.

It seems whenever someone defends high levels of public expenditure, they deploy the argument that "you want to fire our [nurses/firemen/policemen]!"

Forgive me if I use rough figures, but there are roughly 150,000 police in the UK, along with 1.35 million doctors, nurses and other 'non-management' NHS staff, around 50,000 firefighters, and around 550,000 teachers. I'm sure there are other vital NHS professions, but there are 6.037 million people working in the public sector, and doctors, nurses, teachers and firefighters comprise only 2.1 million of them. What are the other 3.937 million doing, and why is it so important the taxpayer continue to fund their more-then-generous pensions?

I mean, if we came and camped on their front drive (if any of them actually had a drive) and wrote slogans complaining about the rise of statism, tax and spend and governmental fiscal irresponsibility, they'd probably have been fed up within minutes. Are the City of London Corporation right that they should allow other people to use the pavements we pay for (and they don't) now?

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

Is that an argument against the idea of the benefits-lead welfare state, or for it? If you translate it to be "Give a man money and he'll subsist for a day, give the man the skills to work and he'll subsist for a lifetime."

http://www.politicalcompass.org/test

The results can be somewhat surprising. I've noticed I'm closer to the Liberal Democrats than I thought (although I'd still never vote for them).

Economic Left/Right: 3.12

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.38

I know the whole debate is a storm within a teacup (as Osborne doesn't currently have any plans to change it) but what actually is the point?

Is it to punish the rich, as many argue? Or is it to raise money for the government?

The way I see it, is that if it is supposed to be a revenue generator for the government, it's a deeply ineffective one, as most economists agree that more revenue in the medium- and long-term could be raised by lowering the rate to 40p. They also agree that, contrary to the presupposition that higher tax rates mean higher tax takes, there is a more complicated relationship betwen tax rates and the revenues generated (the tax curve, and economics that's a bit complicated for me to understand), and many also think that 50p is 'beyond' the optimum tax rate, and therefore the government is losing money.

But of course - that'd be a 'tax cut' to the rich, and would mean, individually, they actually end up with more money. To certain sections of society, this is wrong and immoral, despite the government also being better off.

In that case, the next logical question is to ask whether there space for the government to reassess the tax rates for all the other tax bands. I'm not a tax expert, but 20p, 30p, and 40p sound like very conveniently rounded tax rates that haven't been fine-tuned to offer value to taxpayers and the government. Could there be space to lower, for instance, the 40p rate to 37p, the 30p rate to 25p, and the 20p rate to 15p (provided, of course, that the new rates prove better revenue generators).

It seems to me that the top rate of tax will be pursued with wild-eyed determination whether it works or not, because it's a way of taxing the rich in a way that seems to be politically advantageous (for one of the parties, at least) but actually not making economic sense.

So, once again, is the 50p rate about raising money or raising votes?

I've read a few questions on this today, and I've been thinking: if Scotland and Wales are allowed to be independent, why not Dorset? Why can't we declare our villages landlocked republics?

The borders are just as arbitrary and the rationale is just as reasonable, and if Scotland or Wales gains independence, it would presumably set a precedent whereby any part of the UK can lop itself off and become it's own country...

Firstly, please leave your political opinion at the door (except opinions over pro- or anti- democracy).

The unions have announced they're going on coordinated strikes over the autumn and winter ostensibly because of planned pension reforms, but we all know they're striking over the whole palava - cuts, wage changes, benefit changes, the lot.

Is this fair? After all, the government have been elected to perform a series of changes to the economy and how it works. That's a given. What right have the unions to bully their way into overruling the government, and what does it say about the state of democracy in this country if they succeed?

It's not just unions - I'm sure there are examples of right-wing extremist groups calling for an end to immigration whose principles fly in the face of democracy and the government is equally paying them the amount of due they deserve - nothing.

Of course I'm not calling into question their right to strike, but do they really have the right to strike in order to overturn the decisions of a democratically elected government?

Before you say no (and I'm inclined to agree with you, on this point), think about this.

If the reason for 'defence' spending is to spend money in order to secure the UK from invasion, to maintain air superiority over the UK and the overseas territories, then it's probably a good idea to compare the UK's defence spending compared to our geographic area. In that case, the figure for the UK is that in 2011, we'll spend $612,196.12 per square mile (based on a defence budget of $57,424,000,000 and a total land area of 93,800 square miles).

I'd say that was quite a large number in its own right, but compare it to some other military powers:

United Kingdom: $612,196.12/sq. mile

United States: $181,086.10/sq. mile

China: $30,628.45/sq. mile

France: $247,897.61/sq. mile

Germany: $339,768.79/sq. mile

Russia: $7,965.56/sq. mile

Now, I appreciate this might be a moot point because the whole point is to be able to project power - defending one's territory is no longer a priority since the nuclear deterrent has become active. Equally, the figures do change somewhat when military spending is compared to population, rather than land area, but it does it not say something about a) themassive costs of the military and b) is the UK still, despite government cutbacks, spending enormous amounts of money defending ourselves?

Like I said, I think the military deserves every penny of it personally, but it's food for thought nonetheless.

I peruse these boards quite a lot, and time and again I see questions asking how someone from X country can best emigrate to the United States, and it's usually answered with either "marry an American" or "emigrate to Canada and then walk across".

Why is this? I don't want to turn this into a list of the things that are wrong with America, but I can't honestly see that the situation there is any better than the situation in Europe or elsewhere, certainly on the jobs front, but also on the economic outlook in general.

Have people been conned into thinking America is the land where the streets are paved with gold through Hollywood films that all-too-often view America through rose-tinted spectacles? Or is it the old situation of "the grass is always greener"?

I ordered a laptop from PC World who were exceptionally slow at dispatching it (they say to expect it within three working days, but they only dispatched on the morning of the third day) and it's now being delivered by DHL.

The person I'm ordering it for is hoping to take it with him when he starts to move his stuff into his university halls of residence on Wednesday, so I've been tracking it quite closely. I got a message last Friday that at 23:50 it arrived at the Lichfield Depot (20 miles from here). Of course, DHL don't deliver on weekends (unless you want to pay extra) and today has been a bank holiday. Should we expect it tomorrow (Tuesday) or do we have to wait yet longer?

Because after listening to his speech today, I'm more confused than ever. He seems to be a bag of conflicting opinions. He says he encourages wealth creation - and yet he supports the 50p tax rate which is a barrier to it, he doesn't support deficit reduction, or at least he purports not to (his manifesto says he'd cut £7 for the coalition's £8, and yet he spoke at the TUC rally campaigning against ALL cuts and compared the marchers to Gandhi).

Even more ironic is that he claims to support wealth creation and likes to be seen (limply... apparently) glad-handing businessmen, all of them Tories anyway who don't support him because of the reasons above.

He says he no longer wants his party to be the party of those "ripping off society", but then is encouraging his MPs to vote down the Coalition's reforms to welfare despite him and many of his MPs acknowledging they are exactly what they would have wanted to do.

I should point out (if you haven't realised already) that I don't like him or his party, and would never vote for them, but I would appreciate having some idea of what their policies - or even feelings - on certain issues are.

I'm trying to get back into cycling again before I go on holiday over the summer. When I put my bike away (an embarassingly long time ago) I took the cycle computer off the bracket (a wireless one) and put it somewhere safe.

So safe, in fact, that I can't remember where it is. I thought that rather than trying to find it, a fruitless exercise in my house, I'd just buy another one. Bearing in mind the magnet, the wire and the bracket are already in place, can I just buy another wireless unit and place that computer on the bracket without any compatibility issues, or will I have to remove the bracket and replace the whole thing?

There was me thinking we might have avoided bankruptcy at the last election, and suddenly they're all back again demanding the government abandon sane economic policies and resort back to the self destructive pre-election ones we thought had gone.

And looking at some of the YouGov polls to do with spending cuts, it seems the problem's become widespread again.