This site is under reconstruction

To see our collection of vintage guitars for sale, the music alley and blind alley pages, please visit our new site at guitarhaven.co.uk

While the reconstruction is happening, I want to take this chance to air my views on a couple of points, not that anyone is going to take much notice.

Have you heard the latest joke? Ebay appears to have complained to the government that mobile users are not spending as much as they should on Ebay because the connection speeds are too slow.

What Ebay are really doing is saying is Look, we are breaking the European laws that stipulate all websites should be accessible to all including the disabled.

As a totally blind and disabled person I used to use Ebay a lot to buy and sell guitars etc. and as a source for birthday presents for the family as I am housebound. Unfortunately, over the last few years, Ebay has become totally non accessible using my screen reader software and as I cannot afford to pay the £500 required for an upgrade which may or may not make a difference, I no longer use Ebay except occasionally when I can get a sighted person to look for me.

I would say without a shadow of doubt that the reason mobile users are getting poor connection speeds is the amateurish way the Ebay pages are written. There is no need for all the Java script they now use plus of course the popup advertisements etc. which all slow down the connection for what you really want to get to.

There is nothing wrong with using xhtml and css which is more than twice as fast and totally accessible to screen readers. For an example take a look at elderly.com in the U.S.A. which is where I can search for a guitar with no problem, read all about it and if required, purchase it without any sighted assistance.

Ebay should be prosecuted under European law and told to piss off when complaining about connection speeds which are in general a problem of their own making.

THE STATE OF BRITAIN

I wonder if any politician has ever thought of introducing a policy of, If it's Made in Britain then it's exempt from V.A.T. because in theory this would give manufacturers a 20% window on imported goods. This would enable more small business ventures thus getting people off the dole. The loss of revenue from vat would be more than offset eventually by the amount of dole not being paid out plus extra income tax coming in. Apart from manufacturing, a lower V.A.T. rate could be introduced for things like electrical goods that are assembled in this country using imported components that are no longer made in this country. I'm sure something along these lines could help get Britain working again.

Another thing that worries me is electricity. Nuclear power stations are a threat to our existance because once started they can't be stopped judging by the recent events in Japan and lets face it Britain is a small island and we do have earthquakes which seem to be getting more common. I don't remember any in the 50's,60's,70's,80's or 90's but there has been 3 in recent years.

The latest thing seems to be spending millions on wind turbines to produce electrity but they reckon we need hundreds of them around the island. What a load of tossers politicians are. Anyone with half a brain can see that they are a threat to wildlife, would disrupt the air currents at a staggering rate and if another Hitler wanted to invade all he would have to do is destroy the wind turbines, which we could not defend, to make Britain incapable of producing anything to defend ourselves with because we have no electricity.

To my tiny mind, the way forward is wave power. Being an island, we are surrounded by water which has a constant movement. This movement needs to be used to drive some sort of generator and being situated close to the coast, could be defended should the need arise. I believe there places investigating this option in Scotland and America. Why say more?