We have spent most of the evening watching the lunar eclipse here. It has gone past the mid point of the eclipse and is now on its way back out of totality. It became a light orange when totality started from about 22:45. The night was really clear and dry, so that made for good viewing.
I have taken several pictures, so when I have had them developed. I will see if there are any good ones and post them.
Sue Hedges’ website ‘The Hedges Study‘ is back online again after a bit of a break.
Sue has been very helpful to me in the past and I will be updating my genealogy links page to include her new site.
Nearly 100 years ago today, on 7th/8th March 1907, my great grandmother’s brother, George Moulden, left London for a new life in New Zealand.
I found this information about 3 weeks ago when findmypast.com‘s passenger lists website ancestorsonboard.com added another decade to their database. They intend to provide access to BT27 Outward Passenger Lists for long-distance voyages leaving the British Isles from 1960 right back to 1890. When I first looked they had only got 1890 to 1899, but they recently added the next decade up to 1909.
We didn’t know exactly when George left for New Zealand. We knew he was here in the 1901 Census and was married in New Zealand in 1908. The new data turned up George travelling to New Zealand on the ship Corinthic leaving London with the ship’s paperwork dated 7th March 1907. He was 22, single and a groom by occupation. The ship was a steamship run by Shaw Savill & Albion Co Limited, under master Hugh F David.
After searching the internet, I found out that the RMS Corinthic left the port of London on 8th March 1907, entering port at Plymouth on 9th March, Teneriffe on 14th March, Capetown on 30th March, Hobart, then Wellington on 23rd April 1907. (I cannot find the source of this – note to self: always record the source straight away)
On Wednesday night, at midnight, the BSkyB channels were taken off VirginMedia. Virgin’s offer of independent arbitration was rejected by Sky and no last minute agreement was made.
When you select the Sky One channel, you get a constant promotion for the Virgin Central channel and the following message “Thanks to Sky, the Sky One channel is no longer available. They’ve picked up their ball and gone home. Foul play? We think so. To have your say visit virginmedia.com/fairplay. Press i to find out more. Stay tuned to Virgin Central and you can still watch your favourite shows. Press (red button) sit back and enjoy”
We had a look at what is on offer on the Virgin Central on demand channel and there are only 7 different shows at the moment. That said Series 4 of Alias is there and we missed several episodes of this when we saw it last, so we will be able to catch up on them. They need to get a lot more selection available to make it worthwhile.
On Monday, the government asked the media regulator, Ofcom, to investigate BSkyB’s controversial purchase of a 17.9% stake in ITV. This purchase was made on 17th November, shortly after NTL (now VirginMedia) had announced it was interested in merging with ITV on 9th November. This move was seen as a move to block a bid for the firm from its rival NTL. This purchase was referred to the
Office of Fair Trading, who released a statement on 12th January, which states that they believe ‘ a relevant merger situation has been created since Sky and ITV may have come under common control for the purposes of the Enterprise Act 2002 (the Act) as a result of Sky acquiring material influence over ITV’. They issued a formal invitation for comments.
Yesterday, the National Consumer Council were considering making an official complaint.
Philip Cullem, deputy chief executive of the consumer council, accused both broadcasters of “behaving like children”. “At the end of the month we’ll make a decision about putting in the super-complaint that that will help to knock heads together,” he told BBC Radio Five Live.
Whatever the outcome, it is the consumer who ends up worse off. If an agreement is reached to carry the channels again it will probably be more than VirginMedia want to pay and less than BSkyB want, so both will probably put their prices up. If VirginMedia don’t carry the channels, Sky are estimating a reduction in operating profits of up to £20m ($39.3m), so this will have to be made up from somewhere. I expect in a couple of months time, when the majority of VirginMedia customers who are going to switch to Sky have done so, and are tied into a 12 month contract, the prices will go up.
Anyway, to the ‘Thanks Mum’ from the title. Mum has Sky not VirginMedia and so still has access to Sky One and is going to record Stargate SG1, Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica and the Dresden Files for us. So, at least in the short term, the loss isn’t going to have a major impact. Who knows, maybe VirginMedia can negotiate with the US companies and provide the shows themselves without having to rely on Sky at all.
While looking at a comment I received from jmb about the area of my blog entry, I mentioned increasing the text size to make it more viewable.
However, when I started to look at my style sheet, I could see a few changes that I wanted to make.
I have changed the blog so that the title of a post takes you to the entry page with any comments on. On the entry page the categories list has been moved from the right hand side of the screen to the left, leaving more space for the post and the post font size increased. On all pages, the post area is relative to the window size, not a fixed size.
I have increased the font size used for the comments, so a magnifying glass is no longer required.
If I have broken something or you think it has improved, let me know through the comments.
The future is looking uncertain for our cable TV channels at the moment. We currently have our TV with VirginMedia (used to be NTL) who have been in negotiation with BSkyB for renewal of their contract of carriage for Sky’s basic channels including Sky One, Sky Two and Sky News.
However, it would appear that Sky are demanding a fee for these channels double the previous agreement. During the middle of the discussions, Sky chose to transmit a series of promotions claiming that the channels were about to disappear from Virgin Media’s network, so it doesn’t look like they were serious about any form of agreement.
This is happening at the same time as Sky are promoting how much cheaper they are than any other provider, launching their own broadband service at about a 1/3 of the cost of anything else in the market and withdrawing four channels from the Freeview network to be replaced by subscription channels available via a new set-top box.
It does look like Sky are determined to be the only media provider of any significance in the UK. The channel that will prove to be the decider for us will be Sky One which we watch regularly for programs such as Stargate SG-1, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Atlantis and The Dresden Files.
If we have to move to Sky in order to keep Sky One, then we will have to consider things like getting a BT phone line put back in, changing our wireless network router, moving to the top Broadband package in order to retain the unlimited download that we currently have and changing everywhere that uses our NTL email accounts. All in all, an unnecessary disruption, which will mean that we are bound to loose out somewhere along the way.
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