The Bells.

Oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clement's, You owe me five farthings say the bells of St. Martin's.
All very lovely and very poetic, but church bells are not quite what they used to be. Well not in Chelmsford at least.
Church bells are believed to have come to use in the Christian churches about the year 400 although the sounding of bells goes back well beyond that date back into an age when the bell was the loudest sound around and could be used to call the faithful the pray or warn of impending danger.

The world has changed just a trifle since those days, yet as I walked into the town at the weekend the cathedral bells were ringing.
Against the traffic noise, the rumble of a thousand shoppers and the nearby station public address announcing the 10.15 to Liverpool Street, the sound was anything but poetic or melodic.
The bell ringers, safely protected from the noise within the centuries old stone bell tower, were desperately trying to produce their designated peel but always someone was just a little bit early or late resulting in the impression that Les Dawson was involved somewhere.
Chelmsford was listed in a recent survey of noisy cities, although its not officially a city so someone got that wrong too, and listening to the row from the cathedral bells it is no wonder. What a terrible din. In a world that is full of so much noise church bells no longer have a place, I suggest that an ASBO is needed as soon as possible.

Can you do something for me - please?

I know we all hate chain letters and definitely hate spam emails so there are no bad events if you don't do this, and once you have you don't have to tell anyone else, although if you want to feel free.

The theory goes that if everyone tells two other people something and those two people tell another two etc that within 25 steps everyone on the planet will know the information. It works on paper but reality is going to be different I am sure.
Not everyone on the planet has the Internet but come on lets give it a go and see how many hits from different places we can get on this site.
Give two people this blog address, either pass it to them on a piece of paper, email two friends or just in conversation and ask them to visit the blog and read this posting.
I make nothing out of this, the web site makes nothing and there are no hidden catches its just a bit of fun. The site hit counter will let us know how this goes.

Now here is a Great Idea

I have an amazing idea, it solves two problems in one hit. I thought of it while on holiday a couple of weeks ago and its so simple I just can not believe no one is doing it already. Its brilliant, although I know I should not say so myself such a great idea.
Oh sorry, I should share it with you so you can decide how great it is, but I get carried away at the mere thought of the idea.
My idea is this, graffiti fat people. No, not with me, well let me explain.

Thousands, maybe millions, of pounds a year is spent cleaning off graffiti from walls, phone boxes, underpasses, you name it someone will graffiti it.
Not all graffiti is bad, there is an old coal yard not far from me that displays some very good graffiti that is always worth a look when I am cycling in the area.

So, and this is the really clever bit, a lot of very fat people are an eye sore. You know what I mean, rear the size of an elephant, blotting out the light as they lumber along denting the pavements in lycra, burger fat dribbling off their chins. If I had my way I would make them stay in their houses until after dark, but my idea changes all this. They provide an enormous free canvas for graffiti artists. Granted we may need to persuade them into cotton rather than lycra so the paint doesn't run but its a win win situation.

If the graffiti is good then it will help to reduce the pain of seeing the fat people wobbling about all over the place, and if it is bad then given time it will wobble away saving the council the expense of cleaning walls.

If you are in any way offended by this idea, then lay off the burgers and go for the salad option for a few weeks and you should be safe.

The Last and Final Call

I was at the airport the other day and found myself listening to the announcements that were being made for other flights.
"Bong Bing, this it the final call for flight BMX500 to Scunthorpe, would all remaining passengers please go immediately to gate 24"
Fair enough, nothing wrong with that.
Then 3 minutes later - "Bong Bing, this is the last and final call for the last remaining passengers on BMX500 ....... " Nope, I can't take that, we just had the final call so by its very definition there won't be another call.
Yet there were a further 4 calls which got worse. "Bong Bong (OK Ill stop that bit now, take it as there) "This is the final call for the last remaining passenger Miss Dit on flight BMX500 please go to gate 24 where your gate is closing and your flight is awaiting an immediate on time departure"
Now I am not sure which part of that one annoyed me the most, we are still having final calls and they just said it was an immediate departure so that means, well immediate, so if they are waiting for the woman then its not going to be departing immediately and probably not on time, is it.
If people don't know that once they have checked-in at an airport they have to actually go and get on a place you have to wonder if they should be allowed on anyway. If they need to be called 4 times then just maybe it would be safer to leave them behind, because you only get the safety briefing once and I could be depending upon Miss Dit to remember to keep walking in the direction of the lights until she comes to an exit. I certainly hope not.

Time for Coffee

It has been some time since I worked in an office, but has some one banned kettles?
Health and safety bans most things these days but surely if an adult is there to supervise its use, is a kettle really that dangerous.
My reason for asking is that everywhere I go, especially in cities and large towns, there are people in office clothes stumbling about with paper trays of StarSlops or Costaload coffees.

Obviously in a rush, so the rapidly cooling coffee is still drinkable when they get to the office, they look like demented waiters who have forgotten which table ordered the starters.
It must be quite disconcerting for office managers, or first level supervisors or whatever they are today, someone shouts out "who wants a coffee" then vanishes for 20 minutes, joins a queue at the coffee house 10 minutes away to return with 8 paper cups with plastic lids balanced precariously in folding cardboard tray holders, they fight their way backwards into the office through the super heavy sprung fire doors, shouting "coffees here" only to hear that the meeting upstairs has just finished and another 6 cups are needed.
Why has Britain, the country of "the kettles on", adopted this very American ritual for coffee.
For one thing coffee from paper mugs never tastes anything like coffee, and secondly how much does all this cost. I don't suppose you get many skinny, semi-decaf , extra foam, less fat, fair trade capuchinos with extra smile from the £2 a week coffee club I used to belong to.
I expect it has removed the arguments about who's turn it is to wash the cups, and combined with a smoke break that has to be taken standing outside the front of the office it begins to look like a real alternative to work.
But if I ever go back to working in an office I want my coffee in a proper mug, made with yesterdays milk and stirred with a dirty tea spoon, now that's more like it.

Red Mothers Nose Easter Bank Holday Thingy

Just about every day is something day and it is no longer about celebrating anything, pure and simple its about buying.
I was doing the weekly shop in well knows supermarket this week (I won't name them because they are not paying me to) when the peace of the early morning was wrecked....This Friday is Red Nose day and to help you prepare for it was have red noses, red hair spray, red heaven knows what, also we have half price Easter Eggs in case you forget you need to eat more chocolate.....and don't forget mothers day this Sunday ......
Its a shop and you expect adverts, so after my ears stopped bleeding from the disco style customer address system I picked myself up and continued shopping. Four minutes later ..... This Friday is red nose day ........... no stop please, you just told me that and besides its unlikely that even the old man who infuriated me each week snapping pieces off of the broccoli has forgotten in four minutes. Customers braced themselves against the shaking shelves, as the voice boomed that we all need some red hairspray, and so it continued, every four minutes the brainwashing to buy red things, chocolate eggs and something for mother.
Oh yes, mothers day, (sorry mum I don't do retail days as you know) the day that just about everything on the planet is a "perfect gift" and I'm in the isle with the ladies products, I dare not look, they must be on a double whammy, lets face it something for your mother and also involving - Blue - Oh no that's just in the adverts.

Is that Your Mobile Ringing

I will do my best, but excuse me if I rush off, I might get a call and obviously if I do then no matter what I'll have to go. I know I am talking to you but if the phone rings it would be so rude to keep someone waiting and it could be my voice mail, I'm sure I missed a call earlier. Oh you, well your not important if the phone rings.

Mobiles rule peoples lives, everyone is doing it, the Postman stood on the doorstep for 5 minutes the other morning chattering away, on a building site a Brickie sat on the scaffold chatting, and even the Dustman (I know, I can't call them that now but, whatever) had a phone on his belt. Whenever you have someone working for you just notice how often they use the mobile phone, especially if your paying them by the hour.
At the Gym notices advise "no mobiles phones" but this does not deter the the phone addict, mobile clutched to their ear as they try to work the machine one handed. Even in the changing room (a little scary with so many people with video phones) people chatter away at full volume in nothing but a towel giving away their life forgetting 10 people are hearing their every word. " what, never, she didn't , well I though she would say no, you don't say, I thought she is married". Then there is the mobile user who has a phone to make them look important, shouting management speak and acronyms for 20 minutes, all the time everyone else is just praying the prats phone rings to prove they are not even on a call.

The priceless comment, as the phone user shouted her way into the gym was " no, what, sorry I haven't been listening to you for the last couple of minutes, I just got to the gym" Brilliant!

In a world where everything is given a cost I got out my calculator, the one on my mobile, and calculated that if each worker used their phone for just 10 minutes a day, during work time, and assuming everyone was only on the minimum wage, and that they didn't work overtime to compensate the employer and didn't use it while taking a pee or in the usual coffee break (you get the picture) that time on the mobile equates to £13billion pounds of lost productivity a year. Give or take.

I'm Greener than you! A Political Panto review.

Usually by this time of year the Panto season is over but it seems one or two are still running.

"I'm The Greenest" has just opened in Westminster to cool reviews and a rather lack lustre set.

Its a weak line up, the Ugly Sister is played by Gordon Brown and the slimy evil Count in the form or David Cameron, (look behind you David, a chav with his hands in his pants is taking over the stage).
The widow is played by Tony Blair, who from the onset you just know will not make it to the last act, and while mad scientists are running about singing "feeling hot ,hot, hot" no one really knows if they are part of the panto or just invading the stage.
The script is lacking in punch and the plot revolves around who is going to save the human race from the evil CO2 and become king of Greenisgood Land.

In Act 2 Gordon and David sling CO2 pies at each other and tell everyone that they have a new ray T.A.X gun that will suck up all the bad CO2 and save the world. The Dame, entered proclaiming that CO2 was good and Gordon and David tried hard to get the audience to Boo her which just resulted in a hushed silence.
What was really needed was a big flash and some magic at this point, but there was not so much as a puffs of smoke or a genie, as the mad scientist have taken the pyrotechnics away for emissions testing.

The final scene left the audience wondering why they had paid for tickets as the Ugly sister was all set to become King of Greenisgood Land but no one knew why.

Oh, hell, sorry, what a mess , I seem to have turn on Today in Parliament rather than the panto I am supposed to review. Give me a minute and Ill re-write it.

All those with a Knighthood sign here.

There is a big fuss at the moment over "Cash for Honours" in the UK.
It suggests that by sending the Labour Party a few quid you can become a Knight or some similar tittle best suited to an era long gone.
Its all rather silly really, titles such as this or that of the British Empire, what exactly are you becoming, there is no British Empire.
Although, I think I see a way of these knighthoods actually being of some use to the country.
We are busy fighting wars in various places and, unless my history teacher was wrong, Knights go off to war and fight for Queen and country, or go on great crusades.
We don't even have to pay them because it would be just plain silly to give them their money back.
So come on Lord Coe and the rest of you, off to Afghanistan on a crusade and do something useful with your Knighthood.
There, that will put a stop to cash for honours!

Carbon Trading. YOU WHAT?

I watched the channel 4 program last night, telling me that the latest craze over global warming, being caused by CO2, is a load of hot air. But surely no, how can we have got as far as setting up carbon trading when it is all a lot of hype.

Ford are ready to re-released their gas bag cars, this time to collect the exhaust gasses, for the individual motorists carbon trading, and I am bagging up my heating exhaust to swap it for a flight to Portugal next Christmas. Now I am told the deal won't work and there is no point in trading my carbon.

I had my doubts about this all along of course, last year someone I know was paid to run a disused factory boilers in order to generate carbon pollution. The scheme meant that they could then turn the boiler back off and sell the pollution they didn't make. Its a good system, they made about a million pounds from it.
Can I believe this channel 4 revelation, can it be that it is all a scam to introduce air taxes, insurance premium offsetting and carbon footprint assessors in order to make money.
Yes of course it can and probably is. People are making a lot of money and it has created a lot of jobs.
But if you think I am wrong, send £20 to me and Ill offset the pollution you caused running your computer to read this blog. No honest I will, really!

I'm published in "The Times" you know.

If anyone out there is actually reading this blog (not you Mark ) then thank you very much!
I mean that because there are millions, probably billions, of blogs on the web and if you have read mine, especially if its a return visit, then it makes me feel that I have done something worth while.
As the first entry said I didn't really understand blogs when I started but this one now is becoming a mish-mash of grumbles as well as observations.
Last week I picked up the paper and was shocked to see there on the front page a glaring mistake. No it can't be, I read this paper because I trust it and I know it tells me the news. But last Tuesday it got it wrong. The news they printed was not correct and I lost all faith in The Times to be the paper to trust.
Trusty laptop at the ready, I wrote a long email to the Editor explaining the error of their ways and low and behold on Thursday my letter was published. There was no sorry from the Editor for shaking my trust in the paper but I take it that by publishing my letter that he meant to say it.
So now when you read my blog at least you know you can trust my comments because they have been published in The Times. :-)

New Improved!

I have already admitted to be in the 40 somethings so it is permissible for me to say that I remember TV ads from the early 1970s.
Although these days as soon as the ads come on we reach for the mute button on the remote, ads are more much fun when you play guess the product, but I do occasionally hear them and wonder what is new in the world of advertised products.
Take one product, Head and Shoulders, in the 70's this was new and improved, now over 20 years later its still new and improved. Setting aside my concern that if something is new can it also be improved, I have to wonder at what crap we were being sold in the 70's if for every six months since the product has had to be reformulated. Back then Head and Shoulders cured dandruff and left hair clean, now it cures dandruff and leaves hair clean but there must be more to it because now its new.
Hair and washing products seem to be the most revamped and reformulated products in the world; New VO5, new Vanish, new Finish,New Domestosser, New advert.
Today we have dish washer powder that protect the glass, cleans the plates, removes dandruff, and kills 99% of all known germs yet leaves you hair feeling so soft that you can see the whiteness.
Next time they tell me its new improved I think ill demand proof.

Hey can you turn it up any louder?

I long ago joined the ranks of the "Grumpy Old". And that was confirmed in the early hours of this morning when I was awoken by the bass of some idiots car sound system.
Obviously arriving home not giving a dam that they were waking half the estate at 3am, probably of the opinion that they had every right to blast the world with their tuneless noise at whatever time they want.
People who drive everywhere with the same track of noise at full volume don't ever think of anyone but them selves. Much of the younger generation live in a state of permanent noise.
How strange it must be going about with a group of people you never talk to, they meet up, get into a car with noise at full volume, drive to a pub or club that has the noise at a similar level then head home at 3am with the same noise in the car. They never get to talk to each other and the evenings total conversation must be along the lines of a yelled "you having another lager?"
According to a recent survey Chelmsford is the 35th noisiest city in the UK, although whoever did the survey got that wrong because Chelmsford is not a city, its no wonder when we have a generation of people who think unless your ears bleed the music isn't loud enough.

Essex Police - Not Fit for Purpose.

The Essex Police are very good at saying how wonderfully well they are doing at tackling crime and making "Essex Safer". Its all smoke and mirrors.
In the last week I have twice had the need to phone them and so far, to use statistics that they love, they have a 100% failure rate. I had the misfortune to call them to report a serious crime, but I might as well have been reporting a missing sparrow. To be blunt they could not give a sod and didn't take the report.
The most amazing thing I guess is that I actually bothered to try to report the crime, after all another person I know tried to report a theft a few weeks ago to be told "how do I know you didn't do it yourself". That reply can work for any offence you try to report so its pretty clever.

But here it becomes even cleverer, if they refuse to record crimes reported to them, or at least make it so amazingly difficult to report them, recorded crime falls.
My second call to them involved me calling the local station, being transferred to the main control room, being transferred back to the local station, holding the line for 10 minutes before being cut off.
Another friend called them to a disturbance in the early hours of the morning outside her house, the police attended and proceeded to have an argument with the very drunk person involved who told the officers to F### O## , the police officers said to the drunk "we have better things to do than argue with you" and actually did F O leaving my friend to call for a neighbour to help remove the drunk from her doorstep.
So that's 4 incidents and still 100% failure rate.
You can't get better than that!

No More Mr Nice Guy.

Somethings annoy me more than others, maybe these things are trivial, but it was clamping down on the trivial things that gave the Mayor of New York a way to conquer the major problems.
One of these trivial incidents happened to me yesterday. I was walking along the road and was confronted by a car parked on the pavement, unfortunately not an unusual occurrence around here, by the side of the car was a woman and a man. The car was blocking three quarters of the pavement and the woman opened the car door therefore completely blocking the path. As I walked onto the road to get around the car I said to the woman "Ill walk on the road then shall I". Bearing in mind that neither of us had met each other before and she was the one in the wrong she turned to me and replied "Ignorant git why can't you use the other pavement". Well, quite obviously because I am going this way and actually you are the one parked on the pavement.
What struck me about her bad attitude is how did she know that I would not turn around and punch her in the face or walk back and slam her door closed on her so I could get past. In this world where unprovoked violence is in the news every day how come she was so sure she can call a complete stranger an ignorant git without any reprisals. Am I that obviously a 6ft tall softie.
There she was, some kind of site surveyor in her yellow plastic safety helmet, full of her own misguided sense of importance committing an offence calling people names.
I really hope we meet again next time I walk past, we need to have another word - no more Mr Nice guy.

Keywords..... The GCHQ Rumour

There is a rumour that every email we send and every web page written is scanned by massive computers deep inside GCHQ or Langley or wherever such things are done these days.
If certain "Key words" are present then our further activities are subject to scrutiny by the grey people who sit in dark room and never see the light, reading page after page of email and web blog on the off chance that we may be planning to smuggle 200cc of water on the the next flight to Glasgow.
The fun thing to do would be for everyone to have an email signature containing as many keywords as they can using white text on a white background, thereby not annoying the email recipients but having a great time with the government mail scanners.
Here are a few to be getting on with (scandal, immigrant,Terrorist, gun, assassinate, blow up, kill, 9/11, Bush, Blair, Nuclear bomb, Washington, Dirty Bomb, Smuggle, Drugs, take over. revolution, attacks ), no really they are there.
The theory also goes that if you put these key words into you emails and blogs then more people will know about you when they search on these words.
I shall just have to wait and see if that one is true.

No thanks, I don't need one.......

I phoned British Gas to book a service for the heating, before I could get a date and time I was offered cheaper gas and electricity, nope sorry I don't think it will be, an additional service to cover things I probably don't have, because, "we have just introduced a new range of services covering accidental damage by one legged mice who could be eating your wiring as we speak", nope its probably expensive.
Please, no, stop , thank you, I just want to book a boiler service.

It is not just British Gas though, I phone the bank they want to sell me a mortgage and car insurance, I phone the credit card company and they wanted to sell me some new card protection at only twice the price I can find it elsewhere.
No one can say "what is it you would like" and then after they have listened, provide what I phoned for and simply say "thank you good bye" , it always has to be "is there anything else I can help you with today", well actually yes the car needs cleaning and there is rather a lot of moss in the lawn, but I don't suppose they actually meant help me, they mean sell me.
It doesn't stop there, when I don't phone people they phone me, double glazing , conservatories, a chance to win a trip to Baghdad for doing an online survey.
Does every phone call need to sell something? ....No thanks I don't need one and if I do I'll call someone!

Take Notice!

There is a building site which has put up a notice along the lines of "No Parking Vehicles causing an obstruction will be reported to the police and a fixed penalty notice will be issued". This got me wondering when it was that builders took over control of the police and the making of laws.
It is near on impossible to get the local police to take an interest in major crimes, but according to one builder they will, on their say so, issue a fixed penalty to any vehicle that dares to be obstructing by their site. The fact that the builders boarding is blocking an entire length of footpath seems to have escaped their attention.
In this country we love our notices, on any stretch of road there are plenty giving growing concern to various groups that these notices are not only taking driver attention from the business of driving but also making quite a mess of the scenery yet.
It was only when driving in mainland Europe that I began to realise how many signs there are everywhere. Trying to navigate through town in a non-English speaking country I found myself dependant upon pictures on signs to as most written signs, unless totally obvious, were just adding to my confusion. And that is how we are going everywhere. Hundreds of signs telling us information that we probably don't need, or that take us so long to read and comprehend as we drive past that we have missed two restrictions and a prohibition sign.
The most amusing use of signs has to be in Cambridge around the "Backs". Signs proclaim everything from no cycles, no access, no running, no eating, no having fun, to only students attending a certain College may sit on the grass. Obviously once you have been to a college you must develop a certain type of posterior that allows you to sit on grass without damaging it.
During the summer I was sitting on an unrestricted piece of grass laughing at the men in bowler hats running about yelling at a lad who's punt pole was in the centre of the river while his boat was hitting the bank, the men in bowler hats were reminding him of the notice that he could not moor up. Suddenly another urgent notice is ignored and one of the men in a bowler hat runs across the lawn, obviously he has training in running on lawns, shouting at a group of Japanese looking tourists. "Can't you read, can't you read, get off the grass". The so called grass was dead parched mud and weeds and the man in the bowler had made the group walk 50 metres back, turning them away from the path a few feet in front.
My final bug with notices is that people do not care what they put on them. "Strictly no parking" is that different from "No parking" and "Keep clear at all times" is that different from "Keep clear". And the door with "Keep Closed" could that have more easily been built as a wall?

Congestion charging and the case of the London Sewers

As I walk into town I past the queues of traffic that are heading in the same direction, the main road is probably about a mile and it is not uncommon for me to arrive at the end of the road well before the vehicles I pass at the top. Some of the drivers are wise to this and the entrance to our estate is used by some as a park and walk or park and bus scheme. But I have to wonder how when the local council eventually join the band waggon and install its first congestion charge things will be better.
We have bus and cycle lanes, which are also for the use of BMW's , Chavs, Mercedes, mothers on the school run, white vans and 4x4s. These lanes don't help to keep the traffic moving because of unauthorised users trying to push back into the main lanes causing delays and no small amount of road rage.
The transport system around here, like many other places, is a mess.
Enter the latest weapon to reduce road congestion, a Congestion Charge. Note the word "Con"
The great idea is that those of us who have registered our cars correctly will be tracked, recorded and charged to drive on the roads and this will reduce congestion and make the world a better place. Those many millions of people driving about in cars un-registered will simply go about the roads for free.
Reports I saw say that about £53 billion is made from vehicles each year and £7 billion is returned in some way back to transport, which leaves me wondering where the rest goes.
We are told in order to stop us driving we need to pay more and that will save the planet.

In London for many hundreds of years there was a problem with the sewage; sewage originally from a word meaning sea wards where it was ultimately heading.
The sewage in London was causing deaths, illnesses, very unsavory conditions and a generally nasty pong about the place.
It took years before a solution was found, ideas such as making people responsible for the piece of sewer flowing past their property and fining them if they failed were tried but had little impact. Sewers were little more than a gully flowing along the streets and places where cesspools from under houses could empty into.
With today's system of dealing with things the solution to streets full of human poo is simple, tax people for having a crap. Obvious that will solve it, won't it?
Yes you can take the tax you collect and spend it on other things so everyone wins, the sewage will be gone and the government will be rich. But hang on, unless the entire population becomes constipated there is just a chance that the roads will still be flowing with poo.

No, hang on, I don't think I have totally lost the plot, well not yet. I think that today's roads are a bit like the sewers in London back before the Victorians took control. No amount of tax or responsibility on the people solved the problem. It was only solved when they had the sense to build new big, underground, sewers.
Roads today are the congested overflowing sewer of pre 1844 London. The way to solve the problems is not more tax and congestion charges trying to remove people from the roads, what is needed is new roads, more bypasses, more motorways and more investment. After all there is £46 billion pounds a year "unspent money" collected from motorists.

A word about cats.

I was having an early spring tidy up in our garden today, it's not an especially large garden but I like to think it's rather well laid out and we have spaces for sitting etc when the weather is suitable. As I walked up the sorry excuse for a lawn, more moss and mud than grass this time of year, there was one thing that hit me. Cat piss!
The top half of the garden was overpowering.
As a kid we lived in the country and I had two cats, not both at the same time, the first dropped dead and the second got its self caught in a rabbit trap and after several weeks limped home half dead on three legs so the vet from up the road finished it off, for a fee. I think that's when I first began to hate cats. Then it was that they let me down, they were supposed to be a pet for a young child but they just made me sad by getting dead.
Back to today, the top of the garden has been "marked" by one or all of the 10 or so cats that live in the surrounding 400 metres of the estate.
There are far too many cats in this area and all of them seem to like to toilet in our garden. I even have to clear up cat doings from the very small piece of grass out the front of the house almost daily. "Cats don't do it on grass" one owner told me, oh yes they bloody do!
Our back garden has more anti-cat devices than the average garden centre sells and none of them work, and so the locals cats have sprayed all over the top of my garden again.
Its the most awful smell and I really don't see why as a non cat owner I should have to put up with it. I don't have a cat, I don't like cats and I don't want them in our garden. I don't even want them to walk through it, not even if they are on the fence. Yet for some reason cat owners are not responsible for their pets in any way at all once they have opened the door and said "Off you go shitty, go have a nice dig in someones garden" It makes no sense at all that someone can let an animal they own into my garden to do as it pleases and they have no responsibility for it at all.
I read a while ago of an elderly gentleman who had electrocuted a cat in his garden ,good man. It was destroying his plants, and some magistrate, no doubt a cat owner, had fined him a hefty fine and threatened him with prison for having the audacity of protecting his own property against the vermin that are cats. The article also included a piece from the mother of the young child owner saying how devastated the girl was and that the man was a monster for killing the cat. Oh come off it the victim here is the gentleman who sees his hard work and plants messed on and dug up. Lets face it cats die as I found out as a kid, its what cats do, and the more around here that go to kitty heaven the better my garden will smell.

Banks. The black hole of payments.

I paid a credit card bill the other day, but as always nothing is that simple in the world of banking.
The bill was due to "arrive by" the 11th Feb which fell on a Sunday, but I guess the credit card company know that.
In the age when people ran banks and I stood in line to hand over my cheque and bill to make a payment then paying on a Sunday was obviously not an option, I didn't mind the hard working bank staff having a day or two off, but now the only time I am likely to see person in the bank is when I need money to travel abroad.
We all know computers run banks, every time there is a problem its a "computer error" or the "computer is not running at the moment" but I didn't realise until paying the credit card bill that computers are the only things that still don't work Sundays.
I want £x to reach my account on 11/2/07 I tell the bank. That's a Sunday the bank tells me, yes I know but its the date on my credit card bill so I must be able to pay it on that date. Nope it will have to be paid on the 9th. So how do I pay it on the 11th as the credit card company say I can. You can't its not a banking day.
So it needs someone to actually move the money does it, no, the computer does it automatically, and when was the last time "Error 404 this is a Sunday" popped up when I turned on a computer.
Ok, Ill pay on the 9th then, no, not that easy it will have to leave my account on the 6th. Well that's 5 days before the bill is due I would rather pay it on the 9th, but if you pay in on the 9th it will reach the credit card company on the 14th.
I can fly to Australia in 23 hours, I can send an email there in about .5 of a second but the bank can not get the electrons representing my £x from their computer to the credit card company computer in under 4 days, are they using smoke signals or something.
Where is my money and the billions of pounds of other peoples money that is on its way between banks and credit card companies, washing around in a pond somewhere, taking a short break or, just possibly, making the bank a few million on the overnight money markets more likely.

Oh come on, Blogs. What a waste of time........

Blogs, Now someone tell me what is this all about. Everyone is doing it, but why, and what does it achieve ! ?
OK, if I am off on some fab holiday or doing something really really exciting then just maybe someone might take a passing interest but who otherwise cares what I did yesterday, where I am going today, or who I had dinner with last night.
What does it matter, and who is going to read it anyway?

I really can't see the point of spending ages writing a blog that, lets face it, its unlikely to be read by anyone other than me because, to be honest, I don't actually think I do much with life that will be of interest to anyone else.

But then there is Mark, he's saying "I've got a blog look at it, why don't you start one" And I am thinking, well I don't have anything to say that would interest other people.

Then again I think maybe I will start a blog and just see what happens. I am the first to admit that I have an opinion on everything, name a subject and Ill have an opinion, well true my opinion might change the next day and will certainly differ from most people's opinion on a given subject but that's just me.

Take for example punctuation and grammar, I bet someone well educated would cringe already at my use of the comma, I just like to put one where I think it fits, and I never remember where apostrophe's go with 'S' but anyway if you are the sort of person who worries about these things then maybe its best if you read another persons Blog.

So, well here begins my Blog of observations on life, AKA the ramblings of a 40 something Englishman.

- Blimey there is even a spell checker on this Blog site - now that is a bonus for the man who had an American as his English teacher.