So much for the cunning plan.

There's an art to packing and moving.

Basically, it involves planning out what you need to to and breaking everything down into small stages. Ideally, you'd take a room a day and pace yourself, making sure that everything had a place and that you carefully considered what needed to be where. Then nothing would be a rush and everything would have a place. There would be no last minute panics, no frantic rushes.

It's a good plan, and it would probably have worked, except that having made my plan I then ignored it.

Never do this.

So now I'm panicking a bit. Not much, because I have a whole day tomorrow for things to happen in, so it's not too bad. Yet. But because I am now blogging instead of working I think I might be in a bit of denial about what needs to happen next.

I thought blogging this might be a nice little break while I rally the troops once more to have another crack at sorting out the bedroom and living room - which, really are the two remaining places to deal with.

I fly on Wednesday. That's the day after tomorrow, and tomorrow all my stuff goes away (yikes) and the stuff that isn't going away or coming with me is garbage. There's quite a lot of it, and it is mostly actual garbage. Why have I kept so many boxes? What was the attraction in hording all these plastic bags? Whatever the reason, I think they're becoming packing material and that works quite well. I have some fragile stuff to carry with me.

The other big issue is: 50lbs per bag. It's not really very much, is it? I worry that I might have to shed some items, although to be fair I have tried to send the heavy stuff on ahead. There are issues, though, and these I have to resolve tonight.

Now, in fact.

Which is why I'm here at the keyboard, using writing as an excuse to not deal with real life much as I sometimes use real life as an excuse not to deal with writing.

Ah well. Back to work. I shall blog at you once more from England.

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The Government really needs a good firing.

That's a bit of a contentious title.

I mean the Government of the UK, or at least the bits of it that won't listen to the board of advisors that they appointed to reel the BBC in and make them behave.

HMG planned to "top slice" (whatever that means) 130 million off the license fee in 2010 and give it to ITV and Channel 4 (or just C4) on the basis that they too perform elements of public service broadcasting.

The BBC Trust have been doing some research and have discovered that the recent 5.50 rise in the fee, levied to pay for the switch to digital, needs to go away next year - after the switch is completed. I'd rather it was kept on and the extra fiver went to making a new series of Torchwood, or perhaps was used to commission some new programming in from some new writers. Maybe we could have another poetry season. However, the general public thinks it should go and the license fee should come down.

OK.

They also said that the general public does NOT want C4 or ITV getting hold of the license fee, or any part of it.

Here's the whole story including the whys and wherefores of the survey.

The Daily Mail puts it like this.

The Daily Mail is owned by The Daily Mail and General Trust, who have a subsidiary called DMG, who own a 20% interest in ITN...well, Wiki has a general list here, with appropriate caveats about trusting Wiki entirely.

Essentially, the Daily Mail's parent company is in direct competition with the BBC, both for local and national news, and has a significant internet presence to defend - a presence which is going to either have to change business models or disappear behind a paywall while the BBC continues to be "free".

The Government's response to the license fee issue was "well, we might anyway" - which is why it needs firing. The people have spoken, at least in a poll, and this should indicate that they've got to rethink.

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