Sure. And those costs would then be offsettable against your profits for the purposes of paying tax on the bitcoins mined. You have been declaring them as taxable income, right?

It's worth bearing in mind that this is the second time that the Lib Dems have killed this particular bill. Also that their members are pretty virulently pro-privacy, and that the party currently has the balance-of-power in Parliament.

I'm sure something similar will be proposed again, but I'd be waiting until after the next election (2015) before it's likely to be passed.

Problems of schools gaming the stats not withstanding, this isn't a good approach. Your friends and family will have only anecdotal evidence of some schools at some periods of time; reputations tend to catch up with actual quality in the long run, but this can take several years.

In short, your algorithm is an excellent way of finding out what some people like you thought were good schools some years ago - it's not an efficient way to find out where your kid might be best off in the future.

Oxford's campus-wide wireless LAN project, OWL, operates like a hotspot scheme with open access points and a redirection to a login page for temporary credentials when you open a web browser. If you're a student or faculty member, you can instead use Cisco Anyconnect to access the university VPN and bypass the login screen.

Not only does the university support Anyconnect on Linux clients, it also provides guidance for setting up an entirely Free Software alternative for those who would rather not download the official software. It's really quite good.

Further details at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/wireless/

There's actually quite an extensive economic literature on what the optimal economic term of copyright might be. See for example Pollock, R., 2009. Forever Minus a Day? Calculating Optimal Copyright Term. Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 6(1), pp.35-60.

The short answer is that the rational term is much lower than the present one - of the order of twenty years or less. The majority of works make no money that long after release, so the average economic value of the longer term is tiny, especially when the net present value of the income is calculated at a reasonable discount rate.

The school trips part of your argument (at least) is bogus. At state schools in Britain, nobody is obliged to pay for school trips (see http://www.education.gov.uk/popularquestions/childrenandfamilies/parenting/a005627/i-have-received-a-letter-from-my-childs-school-asking-for-contributions-towards-a-school-trip-do-i-have-to-pay) and merely being unemployed isn't going to stop you getting the begging letter.

It's worth pointing out, for those who don't know much about the British parliamentary system, that the title of this post isn't true. One of the Parliamentary Select Committees has recommended that the NHS should stop funding homoeopathy. This is not a decision and will not automatically result in the money being withdrawn. This should be seen as the starting of a conversation on the issue in Parliament. In reality, the government has effective control over public spending and unless and until the Department of Health decides to change the way its money is spent then there will be no change in practice.