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Someone actually showed me the full text of the Declaration of Independence yesterday.

It's a strange document to read. It begins with a brief summary of why, sometimes, splitting up is the right thing to do. Next are the *incredibly* moving and well-written paragraphs about the "certain unalienable rights" of man, and the right, nay, the *duty* of the populace to overthrow abusive or corrupt governments. Great stuff.

Then it kind of dissolves into a laundry list of complaints about George III and loses all momentum. Especially when one is reading it directly after the full text of the Carolyn Bourne email.

No lynching, but currently 1 in 5 UK women - that's 20% - will not have kids, ever. And of the remaining 80% of women, I think we'll find a lot of their kids haven't been born yet and a lot more will be grown up already - the number of women with care responsibility for babies or school-age children isn't as high as you think. So childrearing on its own doesn't account for the difference.

I think another consideration is that the 29% figure for small businesses includes many of those women you are talking about. Women whose partners are the main breadwinners, who are running small part-time work-from-home businesses specifically because they have, say, 20 hours a week to spare and such a business can be made to fit around childcare commitments (or other restrictions) that make it impractical to forge ahead with a full-time high-flying corporate career. Voluntary NI contributions are currently

I notice they don't give any actual figures.

It could mean that last year ten cars were made in the UK and this year we made eleven and there's one half-finished. That's a 15% improvement but it's not going to save the British Car Industry. on the other hand it could mean last year was 100,000 cars and this year it's 115,100, or we could be looking at millions... without the figures we don't know how excited to be!

(And if Auntie edits the story to include actual figures after I've posted this, I'll cry.)

Because we're British, and that means we can complain, or at least argue, about anything. We even have a term for it - devil's advocate.

If pressed, I can present an argument against Children In Need, a nationwide charity organisation that raises money for disadvantaged children all over the world. The fact that I can argue it doesn't mean that Children In Need is a bad thing. It just means that, as someone once told me, I could argue both sides of a mobius strip!

I've still never been to one, largely because I'm a big wimp. I socialise better from behind the safety of a keyboard.

That said, Himself has a friend (a self-employed surveyor) who swears by them, and many conversations with him seem to go along a route of "oh, I met a guy the other week at a breakfast meeting who does that, you should call him." So he's not there to buy, and the other attendees haven't sold him their decorating/cleaning/wedding-planning/printing services, but he's promoting them on to his contacts who do have an interest in buying.

(Not that we ever have called any of these people, as we're a completely different geographic area, but...)

I use Voicehost.

A big part of that was their amazing customer service - when I was first doing my research, I was dealing with *one* person, who knew the product inside out and was able to give me a proper quote for my 'wishlist' within the hour.

Currently I'm using a free software phone, and then I pay

Is it just me, or are we very post-focused today?

I like Royal Mail. I really do.

It simultaneously has the wide strokes to get from one end of the country to the other, and the fine detail to do a daily delivery to every front door in the country.

I don't recognise your reviewer's comment of vulnerable people queueing in the elements. If I order a package from, say, CityLink (other similar providers are the same story) and I don't make it to the front door in the few seconds between hearing the van pull up, and them dropping the "sorry you were out" card through my letterbox and hopping back into the van and away (they are allergic to doorbells), then I have to find a way to travel to a depot some 20-50 miles away from my house, on a godforsaken industrial estate that is not near any public transport routes, to get my package. For Royal Mail, not only does my postie know what a doorbell is for, if I am out when he calls, I have options. I can arrange for it to be redelivered on a day to suit me, or taken to the Post Office nearest to my house (under a mile away) for me to collect, or I can collect it from the main sorting office in the town centre 3 miles away. I don't see any other provider managing to offer that level of service or convenience.

I also think RM are often used as an excuse. How many times has someone told us (or have we told someone else) "oh, I posted your cheque/birthday card/paperwork/whatever, it must have been held up in the post, bloody Royal Mail," and how many times is it actually true?

I used to work for an online shop sending out hundreds of packages every day, mostly by Royal Mail First Class. I'd say even at our busiest times there were only three or four customers a week phoning up to ask where their packages were, or to complain that their package had been damaged. That's not a bad margin of error at all. But of course we only talk about Royal Mail the handful of times each year when something goes wrong. We never mention it when it functions perfectly, because we take it for granted.

Depends what you'd call work, really.

My most difficult task each day is between 6:30 and 7:15am, which is when I have to use a selection of crowbars to separate my other half from the duvet and pillows. This is harder than any work I have ever done, and I include in that my time working in the packing department of an online store during the Christmas rush. He is not a morning person.

Then I make his sandwiches (this is about the limit of my domestic godessness) and read websites (starting with twitter and blogs, working up to the news) with a cup of tea until I'm awake and he's gone.

Admittedly that's not billable hours, but working from home I find I can't settle down at the computer and work until he is showered and dressed and bag packed and OUT of the house!

Usually I'm getting started on 'real' work or work-related activity by 9am.

I would, but I'd have to use words like "community" and "health" and "union" and "volunteering" and "social enterprise" so often that poor Steve would have an aneurysm.