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I broke Spark's support centre

The war in Ukraine could actually produce a significant improvement in the health of the planet, or it could almost destroy it.

I think we can all understand exactly how, if the conflict escalated into an exchange of nuclear strikes between Russia and the West, it could damage our ecosphere significantly.

Less obvious perhaps are the beneficial aspects to the war, should it not go nuclear.

Right now Russia exports a hell of a lot of oil and gas to the world.

As we've recently seen, Europe and even parts of Africa import massive quantities of fossil fuel from Russia and all that fuel eventually contributes to the levels of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

Since the Ukrainian conflict began, many of those countries currently dependent on imports from Russia have committed to abandoning the arrangement and most are looking towards replacing the lost energy with renewables.

The EU today announced that it has pledged 300 billion Euros towards ending the reliance on Russian gas. Although 12bn of that is to source oil and gas from alternative sources, the balance is targeted at increasing the level of renewable generation from wind, solar and other sources.

This has enabled the EU to lift its goals from 40 percent to 45 percent renewable energy by 2030.

I guess we can all be thankful for that because according to a UN report published this week, Key climate change indicators hit record highs in 2021.

In other, quite separate news, politicians in the UK are responding to change as only politicians can.

Faced with dramatically changing retail spending habits in the wake of the CV19 lockdowns, the UK government is still considering adding a sales tax to all online purchases so as to "rebalance" the retail marketplace.

This proposal was actually mooted a year ago and was put out to public consultation earlier this year.

Trust politicians to want to halt progress by way of taxation!

Also today: crypto continues to crash. It's starting to look as if the future of crypto currencies is not as rosey as we were originally promised. Increased mining costs, huge "heists" with losses measured in hundreds of millions of (real) dollars and wildly fluctuating value has sidelined a lot of the interest in crypto.

Even if it does regain some of its former appeal, it looks as if governments are out to heavily regulate these alternative currencies and in doing so they will remove some of the aspects that once made them so desirable (anonymity and freedom).

Have readers sold down their immense Bitcoin holdings or are you still hoping that by the end of 2022 you'll have enough to buy another pizza (inflation being what it is and all that)?

Finally, I fear I have broken Spark's call centre.

When my latest invoice appeared it showed a $14.95 charge for "hardware postage and packaging".

Nope, I'm not paying that!

After several days of waiting for a callback (apparently everyone has died from CV19 at Spark) I did receive a call.

The young man asked me for my full name and date of birth. I told him my name and then the day and month of my birth.

"What year were you born?" he asked?

"I can't remember" I replied, "I was just a little baby at the time".

Now I'm used to giving smart-arsed replies like this but I wasn't ready for the response.

The poor guy cracked up big time. He was incapacitated by laughter and took a good 20 seconds to actually reach the point where he could string two words together.

Honestly... it wasn't that funny but he obviously thought it was.

"I was born at a very early age" I added... just for effect.

Big mistake... he cracked up again and I could hear people in the background asking "are you okay?".

The rest of the call was very pleasant although I could tell he was on the verge of collapsing into fits of giggles again.

Long-story short... it was raining in Manila yesterday and Spark is obviously outsourcing its support these days and the charge on my bill was canceled.

Sorry for causing so much disruption <Evil Grin>

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