Authors Electric

On Thursday, UK voters will be making a decision to REMAIN or LEAVE ("BREXIT") the European Union. I'm writing this post a little ahead of time, but already I have been bombarded by so many different 'facts' from both camps (mostly speculation and educated guesses, it seems) that I am becoming quite confused. So without trying to change your mind in any way at this late stage, I'm writing this post to try to decide what the referendum means for authors like me. 'Fact' 1: Authors are self-employed. This means we do not benefit from any kind of minimum wage, holiday or sick pay, workplace pension, or other employee sweeteners. So far I've heard that Brexit might cut wages by £38 per week , but also that Brexit could mean a rise in the wages of low-paid workers . Both of these headlines seem to be based on educated guesses working from Britain's  GDP (Gross Domestic Product) forecasts, and as far as I can work out neither outcome will direct...

This month, I bought a car for the first time in ages, trading my faithful 13 year old Renault Clio in part exchange for an eco-friendly zero road tax three year old Peugeot 107. The whole process has in the meantime moved online, so there is no signing and posting off various coloured parts of the V5 logbook, no queuing at the Post Office clutching your MOT and insurance documents to buy a pretty paper tax disc to display on your windscreen, no real MOT certificate even, although you do still get a printed confirmation from the test station. You don't need any of the paper documents any more. It's all there on a computer somewhere in the vaults of the DVLA, and changes are done instantly online. You can even check the tax and MOT status of any car you fancy on the DVLA website by entering the registration and make... which could become quite a hobby if you live on the kind of road I do, with all sorts of vehicles passing up and down at every hour of the day and night. It...