Climate protest & other Points from the news

Climate change protesters

The great unwashed drongos were out over the weekend again, this time they were in Nottingham trying to "shut down a coal fired power station".

Who do these people think they are and why are they not treated as terrorists and shot, or, I have another idea that might wake these low-life up to reality.

Let them into the power station to turn off the generators, then tell them they can all go home but to remember the journey home, in the VW camper smelling of cats, might take longer than usual because there are no traffic lights working and if they need petrol they are out of luck because the petrol stations can't pump and the service stations are all shut.

When they get home to their squats proud of their days work they can't have a cupa tea because the power is off, can't cook, cant buy food can't use the phone or mobile, cant go on the computer, can't use the toilets because the sewage treatment is out of action and oh there isn't any water either or gas.

So come on all you climate change dim-witts, with your mates stopping any new nuclear power stations being built or trying to turn off the gas ones, how exactly do you think you are going to live now.

Security undresses you at the airport

The latest security scanner to be trialed at Manchester airport strips you off so the security staff can see through your clothing.
How exciting for them, they can apparently see how well hung the guys are and if the woman with the big, you know whats, is using a wonder bra or had implants.

Within days of saying it is not a breach of our rights for someone to be using a device to see through our clothes someone has stopped them scanning anyone under the age of 18 because its an offence to make an indecent picture of a child.

Hold on, "make a picture" I thought they were just looking for explosives and knives I didn't realise that if I walked through my image would be posted on www,airportsecuritywanksite.com or some such place.

Two other things come to mind, if it is OK to scan someone who is 18yrs old then why is it wrong to scan someone who is say 17yrs and 363 days, and secondly isn't there just a chance that a terrorist might be under 18 or heaven forbid get their under 18yo offspring to carry the weapon through.

If its OK to subject me to being virtually nude as I walk past security in the interest of safety then it should apply to everyone regardless of age, or no one at all.

Everyday we get closer to the science fiction that used to scare us, and everyday we let it happen.

MPs' Expenses - They still don't understand

Funny how views of a person can change over just one thing they say. I had thought that Anne Widdecombe was one of the more sensible of the loonies in power, until she opened her mouth about expenses this week.

Anne raved that "if any other employer had changed the rules" on expenses after you had claimed them and "stuck fastidiously to the rules" then the employer would be up before a tribunal.

Sorry Anne, you and the rest of your mates have really still not got it have you.

I defy you to find any other employer in the world who would pay you expenses to clean your moat, buy a £15k bookshelf, pay to furnish a second home, build a duck house, pay for your usual daily expenses of living twice and still give you a huge salary.

If any other employer paid expenses for all these things to all their staff they would be bankrupt and out of business, or if you claimed them you would be out of a job at the least and the way some of you lot have fiddled your claims, possibly in prison.

Can you believe that some MPs are thinking of taking the case to the High Court, I guess they are not worried about how much that will cost, it will just go on expenses.

Debt Collectors - Pay what you don't owe or else!

Have you ever wondered where the saying "crime doesn't pay" comes from when crime quite obviously does pay very well.

Three years ago we were victims of identity theft and had £10k worth of fraud done on one of our credit cards. To this day we are sure that a call centre sold details because the fraudsters knew everything, and other people with the same credit card company had similar experiences. Still as the police were not interested and after a lot of hassle we got the money refunded we thought the matter was dead and gone.

Until this week. Imagine my shock when opening a letter from a phone company I have never had any contract with to be told that they had sold my debt to a debt collector and a letter from the debt collector saying pay us in 10 days or we will send the boys round. I could not grab the phone fast enough.

The debt collecting agency were, as most probably are, totally obnoxious taking the line that you owe us money and you will pay us unless you can prove otherwise.
I told them that I had never had a phone with these people and had never even visited the part of the UK where I was supposed to have lived. Then I realised that there was no point talking with them. They had put some kind of black mark against our credit rating, were demanding money that I did not owe and were threatening me but I had no redress at all. What kind of country do we now live in.

Luckily we still had the paperwork from the credit card fraud and looking through it I found an entry with a phone company, so not only had they bought a phone they had obviously set up the payments against our card and so as soon as the card had been stopped the debt began to grow.

I phoned the gangsters, oops debt collectors, again and tried to give them details of the credit card investigation but they were not interested, telling me that they didn't believe me and anyone could tell them a story like that. Well yes they could, but taking the logic he was giving me they can, and probably do, pick anyone at random and demand money, because how do you prove you don't owe something.
It is funny that they apparently have "access to information to trace us" to our home address but not to establish that we never lived where the phone was sent.

So crime does pay and the innocent get threatened and hounded.

But if Mr debt collector calls at the door I hope he has good medical insurance. I don't know why but I think he might need it.

Biodegradable

I was at Hyde Hall in Essex the other day, if you are into RHS places and have the chance it is worth a visit, and after wandering around the gardens we headed for the cafe.

The new visitors centre is a wonderful building of lots of wood and supposed to be all Eco and sustainable, although they have a metal roof which is probably not very "Eco". Inside they serve everything in or on paper plates, with forks and spoons made of some kind of re-cycled plastic.

After munching my way through a panini and cupa tea I headed for the "recycling point" and as I sorted my various articles one of the managers there began to enthuse about how the plates and cups bio-degraded in just 80 days, "just 80 days that's really good isn't it". When I am chucking out paper plates and plastic forks when the most Eco solution would be china and metal heading to washing up I can't get excited about degradable in 80 days.
"Surely re-usable cups glasses and forks would be far better" I replied, "the kitchens don't have a dish washer" un well that's not very well planned is it, doesn't she know how much energy and bleach etc is used in making paper products.
Its like Eco re-usable shopping bags, made from fibres of a plant but they forget to tell you that the rain forest is now being cut down even faster to grow the plants for the fibres. Yes really it is.

She went on about her 80 days, "and where is it bi-degraded is it on a compost heap and then used on the gardens here" I asked. "I don't know" was her feeble reply.

So there we have it, biodegradable crockery that degrades in 80 days, and if I guess right that will be in landfill somewhere, not very "Eco" after all is it.

Gordon Brown

Would you buy a used car off of this man, or trust him near small children.

It's not just me, this is a scary picture, isn't it ?

Thank you - for driving safely

I have written about road signs before, the crazy explosion of flashing speed limits signs, but the more I drive the more I see how overcrowded our roads are with useless signs.

One that seems totally pointless is the "thank you for driving safely" or "please drive safely" through our village. I love that I have been able to find the image that heads this blog entry. What is the point, do the people who ask for these signs actually think they make a difference to the speed or manner of driving. Why would they, all they do is take your mind of the road for longer than a place name alone, as you can not help yourself reading the whole sign.

Why don't we see "please drive like a total twit through our town" signs, maybe with "sponsored by Claims Direct" or "sponsored by community speedwatch". And while we are about it I have a couple more suggestions "thank you for not crashing on this motorway" or "thank you for not rubbernecking this crash and causing a 20 mile tailback". No, that would be silly, yet someone agrees to the existing signs thinking they are not in the least silly and will actually have some effect on motorists.

Who is actually saying thank you to me as I drive past these signs, is it the local people, the council, the highway authority, or more likely the company making a killing manufacturing the sign.
We are often thanked by inanimate objects, computer screens, automatic payment devices and a multitude of do this don't do that notices, what is the point, to my mind a thank you is something that one person expresses to another not something that can be conveyed to anyone who reads it, and certainly not from an electrical device.

Which brings me to a sales assistant who was instructed by her manager not to say thank you to customers, "It says thank you on the till receipt" she was told.

Well that's the lot for this time - thank you.

Techno Kids.

Talking to a neighbour at the weekend he told me that as a reward to his son, for something, he is buying him a playstation 3. They have a playstation 2 but a playstation 3 will do whatever a playstation 2 does but better, or was that faster or in more colours or something.

What is it about technology that gets people so hooked that as soon as a new Xplaymultibox3LCD comes out they have to buy it even though they have just bought the Xplaymulti2LCD.

When computers first became the thing to have at home, as a toy, there was the ZX80 then things like the BBC computer, Commodore64 and so on. We were quite happy spending an evening typing in lines of Basic code from a computer magazine then delighting in trying to run it, changing the mistakes, re-checking it and eventually playing a game as simple as say battleships against the computer. It was excellent fun to us then so why would a child today if told to type the code first be so put off with the idea. Why was something so much fun not even be considered today.

People have not changed but technology has. I feel a little, I don't quite know what it is , annoyed or confused or something along that ilk that today any child can turn on his computer and instantly have access to the entire world but he knows nothing about computers.
I spent hours with a modified ZX80 hooked into my 2metres amateur radio kit desperately trying to get radio teletype to word and establish a contact with someone in the USA. I spent just as long writing Basic programs to make the computer do really quite pointless things but learning the fundamentals of how a computer works, how programing had to be structured etc and how a computer calculated decisions.

Do children today even know what Basic as a programming language is, have they the slightest idea how their Xbox works. Does it even matter, are we better people for having to learn computers from the start.
It goes deeper than computers it is now part of life that children and young people have to have the latest flashiest fastest gizmo as soon as it comes out even if they have a gizmo that does exactly the same thing already.

It may be progress but what progress is it, is happiness really just about the latest games machine or would my neighbour be better off rewarding his son with something less transient and less material.

I don't know the answers but there must also be a problem on the horizon in the future. Many of us played about writing computer code yet today children only play about with computers with no knowledge of its code.

Who will be the creative forces of the future when everything is switch on and play today, how long will it be before children will be taken from the maternity ward and plugged straight into a computer, how long until The Matrix comes true?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix

Broadband Tax

You could not make this up, the latest daft idea by the twits running the country is to tax everyone who has a landline broadband. As soon as they can pass the legislation we are all going to have to pay £6 a year broadband tax so that broadband can be made available to everyone. Well it is starting at £6 but like road tax I am sure that within a year or two it will be linked to your broadband speed or the size of your hard-drive and be around £100 a year at least.

Also like road tax you can guess that it won't be used for its intended purpose and will go to ensure the bonuses of some banker or BT executive.

Which brings me to another point on this broadband tax, did I miss something have BT, Virgin and the rest all been nationalised? If not then why the dickens is the tax payer going to give money to private companies yet again.

While they are at it why doesn't the government re-introduce window tax, maybe even extend it to include the windows in you car , that should raise a few bob.

OK rant nearly over, I would write more but it will probably take 5mins to upload this, it is 8pm and at this time of night my 8Mb broadband, that costs me £17.50, runs slower than an old modem (no really it does). Still when its £18 a month I am sure it will be much faster.

Right where did I put those details on wireless broadband.

Eats, Shoots and what the hell!

There is a book that sold millions of copies by a woman named Lynne Truss which professes to tell us all how to use punctuation. At the time it came out I thought what a good idea and nearly bought a copy but today I am rather pleased that I didn't waste my money.

I have never been very good with the rules of english writing and if you tell me that I have split an infinative I will find you a plaster and I don't have a clue what a prepositoion is, but I could probably google it if I cared.

My views on all this proper and correct writing stuff changed today when I listened to a pod cast by my hero of English language Stephen Fry on, funnily enough, language.

Stephen, to my mind, was the last person to be saying that punctuation and grammar doesn't matter. I doubt there are many English speaking people as eloquent as him but I always thought that he would be one of the first to complain if I ended a sentence with a, whatever it is that you must not end one with.

When you think about it, what does it matter if you have a comma in the right place or an apostrophe misplaced as long as you write something that is worth while and can be understood by the reader.

My reason for telling you this is that I won't be spending so long worrying about my punctuation and correct use of words in my blog in future.
It will have another advantage, for me anyway, I will be able to write blogs at the same time as drinking wine. Which as it happens has just been passed to me so I will close on this entry.

If you decide you have a free half hour you might wish to listen to the pod cast which is in typical Fry style an enthralling listen and covers a lot more on language that I have touched upon here. I would be pleased to read your views by way of comments to this blog. Or should that be will be pleased, whatever.

http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/12/22/series-2-episode-3-language/

Thanks for the plastic bags - Please stop!

For some reason sending out plastic bags has become the latest craze where I live, save the children, heart foundation, save the something else , protect the lesser spotted nutter, stop cancer you name it they are all sending me plastic bags.
What do they want from me in these bags, my clothes.

Some people might have unwanted clothes, but not me, other than underpants I haven't bought many clothes since my last trip to New York 8 years ago. I am not an avid follower of fashion and don't believe in throwing clothes away just because someone tells me they are "so last years colour". Having received 8 bags in a month I don't think I would have anything left by now anyway.

It would not be so bad if these bags were actually for a charity, but as a lot of them are run by con artists and nothing to do with any genuine good cause I wonder why they are not subject to the "10p a bag mate" syndrome that some of the supermarkets bug me with.

If I was a little more organised I could take the bags with me for my shopping but as I have said before a plastic bag won't save the planet.
So charity bags go straight to landfill along with my unwanted underpants, well they can have them if they really want.

Stop the broadband pirates. Yeah OK.

The twit now running the country, lord Meddlesome, (yes he is) has decided to do something about pirates. Obviously he won't be given a huge sum of money by the industry to do this will he, and he insists he is doing what is right.

The pirates he is launching an attack upon are those who download music off of the internet without paying for it. He has the solution, block the broadband access of anyone who continues to download after being told off.

A big problem Meddlingson has overlooked, not everyone in the UK lives on their own and has a dedicated broadband connection that only they use.
Perhaps a family of four with son and daughter still at home share the broadband. Both the "children" are over 18 and the son is downloading loads of music, dad has asked him to stop but he wont. So along comes Meddlinggit and cuts off the whole family.

Problem solved, well for an hour while the son goes out and buys a pay as you go dongle.
The same will no doubt happen with anyone who is cut off of a landline broadband, they will head to the shop and buy a wireless one.

So how will the great clean up proposed by Meddlingtwit work. Probably the same way as everything done by the labour government, hype and headlines but no real action.
It was revealed this week that one in 5 young people are driving on the road uninsured and don't care about being caught so will the risk of having to go wireless on the web really deter anyone.

You do have to wonder why his priority is preserving the profits of the music industry. Don't you?

Don't always buy whats on offer !

I caught the end of a TV program yesterday, I have no idea what it was called but it was telling people to buy only the food they need and not to throw half of everything away. In the end they cut a families food bill from something like £22k a year down to £10k.

I have no idea how people can waste 50% of their food but apparently it is a common problem, I guess some people are born stupid, me?, I just learned it over the years.

Making the most of your money while shopping is not just about buying the food you actually need, rather than one for you one for the rubbish bin it is also about seeing our way through the maze of cons and misleading displays in the supermarket.

I shop in Sainsbury's, I tried Tesco just not me, Asda way too chav and Waitrose is only for people with too much money, so I go once a week to Sansbury's. They are the master of shelf cons and while I felt sure I had written about this before I can't find it so here goes (again).

Sainsbury's has many ways to catch you out but I will only cover a few. The most simple is the price per Kg and price per 100g. On the same shelf they have several brands, the most expensive will be prices say 57p per 100g and then next to it a cheaper item in bigger bottle/packet/tin so higher item price but actually £3.75 per kg. Its obvious that the £3.75 is the best value but how many people fall for the trick.

This week apples were a good con, last week a bag of 1Kg of apples was £1.48, this week a bag of apples was shown as "now only £1", but wandering to the scales I found that the bag was also "now only" 800g so any thought of saving 48p is gone and you are actually saving just 18p.

At this time of year forget apples at Sainsbury's head off to a local orchard farm shop.

Their next ploy is the "ONLY £1" for the packed meat, yes it might be only £1 but its price by weight is far higher than other similar meats right next to it.

Their most sneaky pricing con at the moment is in the wine section where there are loads of signs for 50/o off, I can't show it here but they have the signs printed so that an eye scanning the shelves reads it as 50% off, by the way they set the % sign. Otherwise who would care that there is 20p off a bottle of wine when others are half price or less.

Although good food may cost less at Sainsbury's if you read the shelf carefully you can save even more, every little helps!

( Please be aware that other supermarkets are available, some store may charge for your visit, cars parked for more than 4 hours will be charged £70, all customers shop at their own risk, no responsibility will be taken by the store for children left in locked cars or pets seated in the shopping trolley.)

Don't take the piss!

While in a certain DIY store, oh what the heck I'll name it and hope they are not as childish as Carpetright staff, while in Homebase today I needed to take a pee so sought out the customer lav.
The men's had an "out of order" sign on the door so I reached for the handle of the disabled to hear the little lady who was mopping the corridor yell at me "that's disabled people only".

Yipes, I didn't realise that cleaners doubled up as the toilet police these days. I turned and replied to her. "you are joking aren't you, the men's is out of order so what do you expect me to do" , "Sainsburys is across the road", was her amazing reply. "yes and I am shopping here" .
If it was not for the fact that the lady was obviously a cleaner because a lot of other occupations would have been beyond her capability, I could have happily engaged her in a discussion on how much disabled one has to be to use a homebase disabled toilet, is a slight limp enough, or do you have to have lost a leg maybe, do you have to be in a wheelchair or would they accept crutches. Still as I was, how shall I say, not predisposed to talking too long before I used the facilities I didn't engage her any more than necessary.

"Well as long as I leave them clean does is really matter what toilet I use" , "are you really busting" she asked, one question too far so I opened the disabled and did the necessary.
To have left it clean would have required a few bottles of bleach and a sponge so I left it as I found it.

The cleaners attitude may have scared off other people, who would no doubt have been rushing away to "sainsburys" or the nearest bush, but it raises an interesting issue. Just because some one does not look disabled why has she the right to decide they should not be allowed to use a disabled toilet. There are many conditions where a person might wish to use a disabled toilet simply because there is access to a secluded wash basin, no don't worry I am not about to go into more detail.

Still next time I am in Homebase and need to take a pee maybe I should pop upstairs, they have a whole selection of toilets in the bathroom department.

Sexting

Apparently police and child protection agencies are "increasingly concerned" about the number of children who are sexting. What the heck is sexting, well its when you send a mobile phone naked picture or video of yourself, or an intimate part of yourself, to someone. Some survey or another has found that 1 in 4 11 to 18 year olds has received a sext. Um, did I lead a sheltered life, was it just me or when we were kids didn't we just swap picture cards of cars, planes, sportsmen etc.

The article I read went on at length about how the child online exploit agency and the police are worrying, doing this or that, warning, protecting and generally fussing.
Something occurred to me, there was no mention of parents responsibility.
If you have an 11 year old child, and for some obscure reason buy him or her a mobile phone with the capability to send and receive pictures, (why would you) wouldn't you keep an eye on what they are doing, wouldn't you check who they are texting, who they are phoning and especially who they are sending pictures or videos to. And if you don't take just that small bit of interest in your child shouldn't the child protection agency be asking you questions pronto.

I maybe behind the times, I realise that soon a mobile phone will be seen as an acceptable christening gift as long as it is the latest model so perhaps I should chill out a bit on matters such as these.

In fact, yes to show that I can be modern and liberal in my thinking I will join in with all the young people of the world but I will go one step further, instead of a picture of me without any clothes on, here is a picture of my clothes without any me. Enjoy!

Points from the news.

Fear will be spreading in the corridors of Westminster again as the Swine flu pandemic loses its front page appeal MP's can become targets once more. Some of the things coming out of that place are positively insane.
One of the latest crackpot ideas is to send graduates on glorified holidays at taxpayers expense, these "gap years" will, they say, help the graduates become more employable and complete holes in their CVs. The sceptics in the country, count me in, see it as a way of keeping them off the dole figures which are already heading skyward. Still at least a lot of young people who have spent the last 4 yrs pissed out out of their heads won't have to worry about sobering up for at another year. I just wish I was "under 24" the criteria for joining this new government holiday scheme.

Moving rapidly on, people in fuel poverty can look forward to a nice government hand out, with new heating systems and environmental projects set to be paid for for them. I wonder if these poor people in fuel poverty are the same ones I see, unwashed t-shirts covering huge beer guts, as they queue for "40 B & H please luv" as I pay for my paper. Has no one told them that £40 a week is £160 a month on cigs, far more than I pay on gas an electricity even in the coldest winters. Fuel poverty, yeah right, these people need a lesson on money management not a government hand out.

And so to the final point in this instalment of ramblings, the next prime minister of the UK David Cameron, who as I am sure you will have also read, dropped himself into some trouble on the radio recently, while talking about Twitter he said "too much Twitter makes you a twat". Seems a quite reasonable comment to me and in actual fact the regulators had not received a single complaint by the time I read about it. David, presumably at the suggestion of his advisers decided to apologise, which simply highlighted the problem in my view, but here is my point, if David has to say sorry for saying twat, shouldn't Gordon say sorry for being one.

Swine Flu Help Line

Thank goodness for our government, what would we do without them.
Every newspaper, radio and TV news, gossiping queue in the co-op and gaggle of parents outside the school gates is talking about swine flu. I defy you to find anyone who does not know all about it, yet yesterday the government launched a call centre staffed by 1500 people to give help and advice. Could this be the start of the end for GPs in the UK. Why would we need them if you can be safely diagnosed by a call centre, which no doubt in time can be outsources to India.

If you phone the help line this is what you might hear :-

Click, Hello, welcome to the government swine flu help line provided to you free by your government, which cares about you. Calls are free from most land lines although some operators may charge. Calls from mobiles will be charged at you contracted rate and may cost a considerable amount, something your government is trying to change for you.
While every effort is made to deal with your call promptly there may be times when the volume of calls will necessitate a short wait, please be aware that this wait would be longer under a government run by David Cameron.

In order that we can route your call to the appropriate person please select from the following list.
PRESS 1 if you would like to speak to one of our totally untrained advisor who can read to you from a hastily prepared script.
PRESS 2 if you think that you have swine flue and would like to be sent a prescription for an anti-viral that will not make you better but has side effects that will take your mind off of the flu.
PRESS 3 if you phoned this line for something to do.

PRESS 4 if you phoned this line just because you saw the number in The Sun or Daily Mail.
PRESS 5 for everything else.

After your selection you may get :-

Thank you, all our advisors are busy dealing with other people at the moment but as your government cares about your welfare all callers will be answered in sequence, you are caller number five thousand nine hundred and three. We know your call is important to you, your government has trained over 1500 staff to read to you from their screen and you will be connected to one of these otherwise unemployable people as soon as possible.
(long pause)

We are sorry for the delay and thank you for your patience, if you would like to listen to the calming voice of Gordon Brown telling you not to worry about swine flue, rather than Eine kleine Nachtmusik please press 1 now.

(long pause)

Sorry for the continued delay, you are now caller five thousand nine hundred and four, your call will be answered as soon as possible.

Of course there is another option, if you think you have the flu, go to bed, drink plenty of water, take paracetamol and if you experiece difficulty breathing call an ambulance. There you go, free advice and you didn't even have to wait for it.

Swine Flu

Yes, yes , OK I get the message, a lot of people are getting the flu and it can be nasty, now for the love of sanity give it a break will you.

Am I the only one who thinks that we have heard enough, you either catch it or you don't, there is not a lot you can do about it; no really there isn't.
A couple of weekends ago I thought I had it, crikey did I feel grog, then a few days later, right as rain. I think its unlikely that is what I had, I mean it was over way too fast but should I phone someone, fill in a web page or something so they can correct the statistics.
Every day they tell us how many people have it, but they might be wrong, what if I am not counted and I did have it, or if I am counted and I didn't have it, that would totally mess up the news. Its such a worry.

I am not the only one worrying, some people are taking it to extremes. I was shopping and saw a woman who every time she touched a shop door or anything, out came the "no water needed" hand cleaner. Walking out of the car park it was fling the door open then grab the hand spray. I might be wrong but I predict a huge rise in dermatitis and other hand skin complaints this autumn. So many people are using it that the whole shelf in Tesco was empty and a notice "no more until 27/7". Yes I know, its good to wash your hands, but after every contact with anything seems a little OTT

At least this week we have found out why there is so much swine flu news, have you heard, swine flu is going to cause the UK economy to shrink by 4.6% .

So there you have it, nothing at all to do with my good mate Gordon at no.10 or even the other twit at no. 11, well that's a relief.

Global Warming, Yeah Whatever !

A couple of months ago some bright sparks told us to paint our houses white or die of heat stroke in a long hot summer, didn't they?

I am glad that advice came from the Department of Health, so I knew that being a government department the advice was useless.

It's 17th July, torrential rain is hitting the conservatory roof and its 15.5 deg. outside. I am well pleased that I didn't spend money on white paint, I am also sure that the talk of global warming is total twaddle.

Lets get real. The experts can not forecast 3 months ahead, so why would anyone trust them on anything further off.
There is something else that has occurred to me. Scientists say that the world is warmer now than it was 100yrs ago. But, how do they know. I can tell you that it is 15.4 deg. outside because of a very accurate electronic thermometer, but 100 years back there were no digital thermometers and taking the temperature was considerably less accurate.

If they were talking of a jump in temperature of say 5 deg maybe we could trust old records, but we are not. We are talking of 0.7deg, apparently. Hold on, we are taking average temperatures here too. (Since I started writing this blog the temperature has dropped 0.3 deg.) So it is not possible to compare the average temperatures of 100 years ago, or even 10 years ago unless you take them at exactly the same time and location for every reading. Even a few minutes will make a difference.

How has global warming become the new religion, why did anyone take notice of someone who failed to become president just because he made a film. Which, by-the-way, is one of the most boring contrived films ever made, and unless you are bored flying long haul somewhere I would not bother watching.

The temperature is now another 0.1deg lower, conclusive proof that the earth is getting colder, (which it actually has in the last 3 years) and with just this data from today I can tell you that if things continue at this rate by Friday week it will be minus 317deg in my back garden.

OK, so maybe my methods are not completely accurate on this , but I was right not to paint the house white, wasn't I!

Thank God for scientists!

There are times that I read something and wonder why on earth they need to do that. This week was one of those times.

With all the problems in the world, the illness that needs to be cured, the CO2 to be cut and the planet to be saved, scientists have done the equivalent of finding a way to make clover for my lawn in a lab. They have, presumably, spent millions of pounds on this man made breakthrough and can now solve a very real problem.

The problem, like the lack of weeds in my lawn, does not exist but they have taken delight in telling the world that they have produces artificial sperm in the lab. (I think that is the first time I have ever typed "sperm")

This breakthrough is wrong on so many levels. Why do these clever people feel the need to play God in this matter. Is there actually a shortage of sperm that requires it to be made in a lab.

I have the Monty Python song in my head now "every sperm is sacred" rejoicing in the the fact that a certain religion does not waste it, but there are a few hundred million other men enjoying themselves not caring about waste I am sure.

I don't understand the science but they seem to need a human embryo to produce the artificial sperm, Um, doesn't that mean they need sperm in the first place.

Of course there could be another explanation how sperm came to be on the scientists bench, think Clinton and Lewinsky.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kJHQpvgB8

Nature Notes

Have all the nature experts left the UK and started reporting via the Internet to unmanned labs. What else could explain why they seem to be getting a lot of things wrong.

According to these experts swifts are scarce this year and it is caused by both global warming and a lack of nest sites; because all the old barns have been converted to nice energy efficient hermetically sealed homes.

I wish someone would tell the swifts, because as I sit in my garden I look up and see a sky positively full of them, a hundred maybe, the jet fighters of the bird world performing aerobatics catching bugs.

It is not only at my home in Essex that this is happening, on holiday in the Peak District we were buzzed by hundreds of swift skimming the air over the dam, swerving at the last second to avoid us as their wings whizzed past our ears. They are positively abundant this year, where are the experts looking.

And another thing, butterflies are apparently scarce too, not here they are not. I walked along a footpath yesterday and all manner of butterflies were taking off in front of me flitting to the side and landing back behind.

Perhaps the explanation for the experts mistakes is to do with funding. Maybe unless they publish all manner of bad things related to "global warming" they won't get any government grants.

Anyone who speaks out against the Emperors new clothes CO2 theory is already seen as an heretic and obviously hell bent on the destruction of the planet, I guess the nature lobby have fallen in line too.

The world is run for Drongoes.

The world is now run to cater for drongoes, people who need to be told everything.
Even the BBC had joined in and every time a presenter says something he has to explain for the drongoes. For example, they say "you can call us on 0500288291" then Say "calls from landlines will be charged at your standard bla bla bla , calls from mobile may......" yes OK we know you told us that 20 times in the last hour. If they mention a publication it is immediately followed by "other so and so publications are available" and it goes on.

Is this for the drongoes who think the paper shop only sells the Daily Mail, if so why do they have to subject the rest of us to the same. Drongoes are probably still trying to work out how to tune the radio in anyway.

There are notices for the drongoes too, mind the hot water tap is hot, mind the stairs they are , well stairs , mind the hot coffee and even mind the edge of the cliff.
Stop telling people these things, if they want to fall off the edge of a cliff let them, if they are too stupid to know not to who needs them on the planet anyway.

What adds to my annoyance with all these warning is when the notice is written by a drongo.
In Sainsburys they have a notice on some metal railing where boxes are stored, it says "Due to health and safety don't climb on these rails". That is not a proper sentence, what does it even mean.

My final rant about catering for drongos has to be "pear cider". It is apparently the new trend with a company called Brothers advertising it (other pear ciders are not available).
No No No, cider is made from apple juice, what they are selling is perry, a word that has been around for years and until recently was even included in the licencing acts.
But they are advertising to drongos who think perry is a 1980s style of T-shirt so they call it pear cider. What next, grape whiskey?

The question is, if they are too stupid to know what perry is, is it safe to let them drink alcohol anyway.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=drongo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drongo

Banking Rip Off

There is no point having savings in a bank, the interest rate is so low you might as well put it under the bed where you know it is safe.
But hold on, I have spotted an advert for a well known bank, (I won't name it as my in box has only just recovered from the abuse and obscenities I received from Carpet-right staff when I said they were crap, which kind of confirmed my point) but lets just call them Sand-and-air bank. They are offering a whopping 6% on money in a current account for one year, OK you have to be over 50 to take this account out but 6% is massive at the moment.

Lets read on, um, I see yes, you get 6% only on the first £2500 you have in the account, and there is the small matter of a £10 per month fee.

So let me get this right, 6% of £2500 is £150 interest, less the fee of £120, which you don't pay on most current accounts, leaves £30 interest less tax.
If my maths is correct that is an interest rate of 1.2% which if you forget to close the account after the year you lose in 3 months with the fee. Not such a good choice after all.

I guess that the Sand-and-air bank hope people over 50 don't read the small print.
Maybe in Spain reading glasses are not readily available. Oops has that given the bank away.

Points From The News

Gordon Brown goes on, and on, and on.......

It is a strange world at the moment, one country is building nuclear bombs another is starving, one country has been invaded to boot out their dictator and then there is the UK and Gordon Brown.
Last week millions of people voted and showed that they think that Gordon could not manage the local Spar, yet this week the one eyed Scottish idiot is still there. What is more he has appointed Alan Sugar to advice the government. Sugar a man who made his money being a bully and walking all over anyone who got in his way. In other words a man exactly like Gordon.
Gordon has also appointed Mandleson to the government, but hold on isn't this guy a crook and someone who has not been elected to government by anyone in England, in other words a man exactly like Gordon.

Lets poison the water supply

There is a little known plan by some in government to poison all our water supply. Its is not even illegal but they want to make it illegal for water companies not to add the poison. That's just crazy you may think, I agree.

The plan is to put fluoride in all drinking water, fluoride the poison that if drunk can cause all kinds of serious problems. The reason for doing this is to help the teeth of children from poor families. Well that's OK then, lets poison 60million people to look after a few who can not be bothered to brush their teeth.

In some areas they already add fluoride, in one such area before they started adding it they held a survey in which 74% of 10,000 people said they didn't want it.

Oh well that's democracy for you.

What a load of SH*T

We have just driven home on a stretch of road where rich people live. How do I know that they are rich people, well actually it is because of horse manure. Yes that's right, they must be rich because they have horses. As you drive along this stretch of road they are all selling bags of horse shit but at different prices. The lowest at the moment seems to be 20p a bag "please return bags".

You have to wonder who it was that thought it a reasonable idea to actually ask people for money to take away their horses shit for them. And who was the first idiot to agree to pay for it, thereby setting a precedence and making it OK.

Why should I pay to do someone the enormous favour of taking a load of unwanted crap off their hands, can you imagine ever doing it for other kinds of the same. Maybe I could save money on the water rates and get rid of the toilet, crap in a bag sit it by the front gate with a little sign and ask others to take it off my hands for £1. YUCK ! OK no , sorry very bad image there.

Yet some how it has become OK to have sacks of horse muck sitting on the front of your very expensive house.

Hold on though, horse muck is not the most expensive poo you can buy, I have a box of organic fertiliser in the shed, its actually chicken crap, it smells so bad that I can't use it on the garden this time of year for fear that someone will call the council thinking the drains are blocked. This crap was about £2 for a box, so weight for weight that is far more than the 20p a sack of horse poo.

Although I guess you need a lot more chickens to get a bag of poo than you need horses for a sack load I still think that the compost heaps at the top of the garden will provide all the organic matter I need for the vegtables.
I really don't know why I bought the chicken poo, anyone need a box, if so let me know and Ill mail it to you.

It's OK, Panic Over!

Thank goodness it arrived I had been worried for days thinking that maybe mine was lost or perhaps we had been forgotten. I was ready to phone friends and ask them if they had received it yet, but now I don't have to worry any more.

I heard the letter box go and, as I have done for days, hurried to the door, yes oh yes its here. I am saved. The long awaited has arrived and now I can relax. The panic is over and all the answers are here, I now have all I need to survive.

I have to read it carefully and understand all that it tells me so I put the kettle on to make coffee, then I will sit down and read every word.
As the kettle begins to warm up I open it up and begin to read, before the kettle reaches boiling I have finished it. But hold on, this is not what I expected, it doesn't tell me anything, it might as well be a blank piece of paper, every thing on it has already been said a hundred times on the TV, radio and in the papers. There must be more, this must be a mistake.

But no, there is nothing more to it. The government information leaflet on swine flue turns out to be as much use as a chocolate T-pot.

DNA - A little bit Innocent

The way laws are written is often confusing, sending you to pages of information just to complete one sentence with entries such as "subject to section 5 sub-section 4a of regulations 3 the meaning of [term] shall be taken as ....." and so on.

It is written like this so that lawyers, barristers and the like can make a lot of money from clients who simply don't have time to read 20 books to understand if it is ok to do some small act.

Recently an E.U. court has told the UK that it is unlawful to keep the DNA of people who are not convicted of a crime. But rather than do as they are told and remove the DNA the government has come up with an intriguing solution:-

Get arrested for a minor offence and found innocent and your DNA will be destroyed after 6 years. Get arrested for a serious offence and found innocent then your DNA will be held for 12 years before it is destroyed.

Hold on. If you are innocent you are innocent there are no degrees of it. Should we now expect court verdicts along the lines of, "your honour we find the defendant a little bit innocent of murder and a lot innocent of manslaughter and completely innocent of any thefts".

Those in favour of the new scheme say that people who are arrested for an offence, and found innocent, are more likely to commit another one. Hold on they didn't commit the first offence, remember that's what innocent means.

The usual drongos were on the radio saying "if you have done nothing wrong then you have nothing to fear". Yet despite what some would have us think DNA from crime scenes is not totally reliable. Perfect DNA is seldom found so a DNA trace could result in a 1 -1000 hit rate. This means if everyone in the UK was on the database there could be 60000 suspects for a single DNA sample left at any particular scene. So you stand a 1 in a 1000 chance of being wrongfully arrested.

Now tell me there is nothing to worry about.

Flu Pandemic

"Mortuaries and emergency services are to be put on alert and told to prepare for up to three-quarters of a million deaths from a flu pandemic." "Emergency planners have begun to look for sites for special mortuaries, each capable of storing 1,000 bodies"

That's scary stuff, you would be forgiven for thinking that it was today's headlines. But no, this is a headline story from March 2005, the last time we were all going to die a horrible death, that time from bird flu.

It is very confusing with the WHO doctors (Dr. WHO?) trying to whip up panic, and today the threat level is 5, no, I have no idea what that means to us either.
The government is even thinking of stopping some sporting and music events. Something isn't right.

I don't believe we are being told the whole truth, is this another government way to hide a new piece of big brother legislation while everyone is looking the other way, or is it really serious. Do we panic or not, where is Corporal Jones when you need him.

At my Gym its almost impossible not to see the TV screens and Sky news are loving it, every few seconds the "Breaking News" is scrolling across "Mrs Miggins was heard to cough and maybe all the customers of her pie shop are now infected" and the like.
One thing that stands out on all the news reports is the lemmings wearing face masks. I really want to spread the word that if you put your right finger in your left ear and walk about saying iggle you won't catch flu. People would do it, because for no rational reason they are all buying and wearing face masks.

There is so much to write about this flu PANDEMIC, why are people calling it swine flu when no pigs have it, but ill finish this blog entry with one more point that confuses me.

We are told to make sure we wash our hands properly, but we are also told that the virus can live for two hours on surfaces, the problem is this, I wash my hands, turn on the taps, lots of soap, good wash, rinse, then oh, um, the taps on, but I and hundreds of other have touched that before washing hour hands. I'm stuck. Do I turn off the tap and re-contaminate my hands or leave it running. It makes little difference if I am in a public toilet thought, because after all my careful hand washing I now have to touch the toilet door handle anyway.

As I said before, its all very confusing. I called the swine flu help line for advice, but all I got was crackling.

Swine Flu. We are all going to die!

Like it or not we are all going to die.
No, no, not of swine flu, didn't you see the full stop in the title.
I can not give you a cast iron guarantee that we won't all die of flu but it is rather less likely that the panic mongers would have us believe. Although, if it gets me I want someone to edit this blog with an appropriate comment or two.

I am more worried today than I was yesterday, because Gordon Brown has got involved with one of his famous predictions. "We are among the best prepared countries in the world". Well that's done it, we were the least likely to suffer in any recession, and boom and bust was over. On is past record maybe we are all doomed.

Give it a couple of days and Alistair Darling will be telling us when it will all be over, probably by June I expect.

Still every cloud has a silver lining, there is no chance that surgical mast makers will suffer in the recession this year, despite them being almost useless at preventing you catching flu.
There are also 30million doses of an anti viral drug that will definitely keep some companies in profit.

Still at least we are safe in the UK, for as the USA and other countries begin to prepare their anti-viral drugs for distribution, any day now every household here will receive a leaflet from the government. Now which would you rather have ?

The Financial Crisis - Solved

This blog is stolen from someone, I don't know who because I heard it from someone who heard it on the radio. For those, like myself, who didn't hear the original Ill endeavour to explain the basics of the idea.

With the exception of a few bits of gold, that good old Gordon didn't sell off, there is actually no money in the UK, no really there isn't.

Look at any note in your pocket and you see that it says "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of". Not that the note is actually £5, £10, £20 or whatever just that someone will pay you it.
Try walking into you bank handing over a tenner and saying "please honour the promise and give me ten pounds in gold or coinage" and see what you get. The whole point of currency is rather eroded these days and the promise on the note as relevant as an Alistair Darling prediction.

Before I digress I had better move back onto subject.
If you are reading this blog on a Windows computer then the chances are it has a bit of software called "system restore". This allows you to effectively wind back time on your machine, if for example you try to load something that trashes everything you already had. It takes your computer back to any date in the past prior to the moment you sodded it up.

There is no money, (see above) but there are huge computers all over the world that hold ones and noughts that we translate into having money. When you buy something, pay money into an account or draw out cash from a machine, somewhere a computer will be updated. Even if you pay the local shop, eventually it becomes just another entry in our cyberspace banking.

The financial crisis didn't happen in reality, if it did there would be fields full of the "lost billions" stacked as far as you can see, but there isn't. Those of us who lost money on savings can't go and watch it drifting in a soggy mess off the coast somewhere or see its dying embers in a colossal bomb fire, because all that happened was a lot of cyberspace numbers just went blip.

So, and this is the clever bit, all that has to be done is a huge "system restore". Wind back the banking computers to the time immediately before it all went lumpy bits up.
The missing billions are returned.

Budget 2009

This week the labour party get another chance to sod up the country. It is budget time again.

Despite the fact that these are the people who took the country at full speed into an economic crash, because they didn't see it coming, for some reason we are expected to trust them with the country still.

Darling is apparently going to announce £15 billion of "efficiency savings". Stop, hold on, efficiency savings. He is intending to become more efficient to the sum of 15 billion pounds. This isn't just making people return the Bic before you issue a new one, or stopping people from unfolding paper clips. This is saying that they have been wasting 15 billion pounds.
I keep saying that amount because I can not comprehend how any organisation has been allowed to be inefficient to the tune of £15 billion. Who the blinkin heck has been running things.
No sorry forget that question, we know the answer, its the same bunch setting this weeks budget.

God help us!

I know the man holding the box is Gordon, you don't believe Darling gets to make decisions, do you ?

New Speed Limits

I have written about speed limits, speed cameras, and those stupid flashing signs that tell you to slow down or that its a 30 limit before. To continue in their effort to spoil driving the government is set to lower speed limits in an attempt to "save 1000 lives a year".

The plan is to drop a lot of the 60mph de-restricted roads to 50 and many of the 30 limits, especially near schools, to 20. Funny, because we all know that when children are going in and out of schools there is little change of doing 5mp past anyway because of all the 4x4's and people carriers parked ready to take little Chav and Chavney 400metres home.

If it was about saving lives, or stood any chance of working how fantastic it would be. But it won't save lives and its not about that anyway. It is about other things.
Firstly it is about raising money, if they lower the speed limit there is more chance of people exceeding them so more fines.

The second point is a little less obvious and connected to another government announcement. Remember that they plan to give a £5000 incentive to people to buy electric cars? OK, I know there are no cars that will be eligible for the grant, but ignore that for the moment. Imaging there were and the roads were busy with millions of electric cars. What will be needed.

You are off on holiday, its 300 miles to Cornwall and your electric car does 50miles per 1 hour charge what do you need, you got it, millions of electric sockets on the route.
To connect you dead battery car to a socket you need an extension cable, the chances of you running out of power right by are socket are slim so you will connect to the closest one.

Yours won't be the only car on charge so there will be cables all over the road. Snagging your bumper on this jumble of cables, especially near schools where children could easily be caught up in them, will be a major new road safety hazard.
So the obvious solution, you got it, slower speed limits.

Old Car Trade in - How to make money from it!

The word is that the government is about to announce a scheme to pay £2000 towards a new car if you scrap your old car, which is over 9 years old. This is going to save the planet.

How quickly the planet is saved depends on how many miles a year you drive your new car. As making your new car and re-cycling your old one will produce a massive amount of carbon you might have to drive the new one about 300,000 miles before the planet wins.

The great thing about the scheme is its potential for making money so I am off out to buy up as many old wrecks as I can. Under the scheme the plan is this:-

1) Buy a wreck over 9yrs old for £100 and register it in your name.

2) Scrap the car and get the £2000 off voucher

3) Buy a basic new (or under 1 year old) car for £7000

4) Sell the new car straight away, maybe even back to the dealer for £7000 less VAT £1050

5) Pocket £850

Repeat as above.

At last the chancellor has proposed something really useful.

G20 Summit

There is something called a G20 summit starting tomorrow. One person who knows this, because he thinks it is all about him and how he is about the save the world, is Gordon the wonder PM. Tomorrow he will stand before elected world leaders and woffle on again like a demented drunk refusing to leave the bar.
The trouble is that it is all in his imaginary world, the one in which he is always right and is so powerful that he stands up an the world goes WOW!

In the real world we know that the summit will do nothing to solve the world crisis because, with the exception of Obama, all those attending are responsible for it. Yet deluded Gordon still maintains that the G20 with "rise to the challenge" in the same way as he "abolished boom and bust" and placed the UK well to work through any recession.

Most of us have not been invited to the G20, we are just paying the alleged £5million an hour it is costing the UK to host it, with its champagne receptions, big dinners, back slapping and Gordon going on and on about how great he is.

There is one conciliation, some top executives in the City have apparently been told to stay at home for the day because of expected demonstrations. So at least for one day they should not be able to crash a bank or building society.

Jacqui Smith - It's OK to Lie and Steal

The latest Jacqui Smith debacle says it all about the way our country is being run, or not run, by this government. Not only does Smith fiddle her expenses but the prime minister says "its a personal matter".

No Gordon, it is not a personal matter, anyone else in the country would lose their job for fiddling expenses claims. If this attitude is alright for the home secretary then where does it stop, oops I am sorry I got caught nicking from Debenhams, here ill pay now its not theft.

Yet again she is claiming for something that everyone else has to pay for from their normal wages, an internet package for goodness sake, just part of the £157,000 of expenses she has been paid. Is there anything that an MP actually pays for from their basic salary.

It highlights just how stupid Smith is in that she doesn't even know how much she usually pays for her internet, if she did she would have know not to claim for the movies.

Her husband can't be all the ticket either, they have an internet package yet he is still paying for his porn, oh but that's OK because its on expenses, isn't it.

Don't Ask The City Analyst

The rate of inflation is down today, or is that up, hurray, or boo, or whatever we are supposed to say when they announce these things on the news.

Apparently the rate is "more than expected" or was that less that predicted, by the city analysts. This got me wondering what these people actually do, and more to the point why.

I imagine they skulk about in dark basements wearing pullovers with leather patches on the elbows and glasses held together with elastoplast, but other than that I can't guess.

They didn't predict the banking crash nor the stock exchange falling over, the jump in oil prices in the summer or the fall of the Pound against the Euro, and today they didn't get the inflation rate right either.
You would expect that if your job involves looking at a single digit number and calculating by how much it will change in a month there would be a risk you could get it right by accident. But time and again the geeks in the basements are "surprised", "caught out" or just plain wrong.

The only reason for predicting these thing seems to be so that other people can "give a warning" as the news always seems to be of city analysts warning that this that or the other will happen.

Despite all their working out, giving warnings and predicting we are still on a sinking ship with a mad Scot at the helm.

Its not rocket science, so Ill have a bash at predictions for the next 6 months:-
Inflation will rise to above where it was predicted to fall below in the previous 12 months with GDP falling less that was first predicted in the last half of the first quarter of last year. The trade deficit will be below the water line in most regions with a general scattering or barnacles over 3%. There is a warning that house prices will move and mortgage lending will continue.

OK,OK I know its all rubbish, but at least I know its rubbish.

Mortgages and Endowments.

I have an endowment mortgage and a fixed rate one at that, so I am stuffed. Like so many others I am now paying way above the present Bank of Brown, sorry England, interest rate and stuck with it for another 4 years.

My mortgage endowment won't pay off my mortgage and when everyone was taking action for mis-selling my company was sending me letters saying how well it was going, all on target to pay out as expected.

Do I keep throwing good money after bad, hoping that things will improve, or do I say enough is enough and cut my losses.

I phoned my endowment company and spoke to a guy with the thickest Indian accent you can imagine, he was using the cheapest telephone head set and sounded as though he was in the shower, of course I don't know that he wasn't.

I am good with accents but it took total concentration to understand what he was saying and I still failed, so I waited until he finished speaking and asked my question.
He launched into reading his screen something about FSA, 4%, 8% , agreed standards, could go up as well as down, any figures quoted were only valid for 2 seconds and then only if there was a ding in the month or was it an R. After 4 minutes he stopped talking.
So how much will I get, I have no idea but all the numbers he said were well below what I was told 22yrs ago.

Two years ago if my endowment grew at 4% it would pay out well over my needed sum, yet now a growth of 4% will be well under my needed sum. Something doesn't add up. It must be that counting has changed since the bankers screwed up the system. Perhaps 4 is the old 1, which could be good news if my mortgage is calculated using the same math.

It's not our fault, is it, we trusted people to advise us about our finances and it turns out that they were at best wrong and at worst crooks.

Strange how the same crooks who crashed the financial system are the ones who moved the call centres to India so no one can find out what is happening to their money.

Jade Goody is not news!

Here I go about to upset someone, still that's life or rather in this case its death. I have said before this is my blog so Ill write what I wish.

For some reason the Prime Minister's publicity office has seen fit for him to "lead tributes" to the dead Jade Goodey.
Why Gordon should think it necessary to speak about her above the 1200+ other people who died in the UK today I am unsure. Could it be an idea that if he comments on everything then people will begin to say "wow that Gordon Brown bloke knows whats going on in the country". Well fat chance of that Gordon, we can see through that plan and your still an out of touch bumbling "one eyed Scottish idiot".
For the Prime Minister to be getting involved in this kind of soap opera nonsense, when he has crashed the economy of the country putting thousands out of work, is beyond belief.

I digress. The point is it is only a tragedy for the friend and family of Jade Goodey, most of us don't give a fig and still see her as the overweight less than average intelligence no-body who got famous because too many people think the Sun is a newspaper.

I would not wish cancer on anyone, but she was not the only one to die of it today, she is just the only one who had a publicist and the only one who, for some reason I can not begin to understand, was followed in every step of death by the news media.

I never knew her and never wanted to. Other than to her family she was no one special.
She was not brave or courageous she was just doing what anyone who has a life threatening condition does, try to live, and she was allowed to do that by making millions of pounds and depressing and upsetting millions of innocent people who didn't know her either but were made to suffer her every problem.

For people now thinking I am out of line and "don't I know it is wrong to speak ill of the dead", no it isn't. If that's your attitude then I expect to hear you say Adolf Hitler was a really nice bloke who did a lot for the barbed wire industry.

Another one bites the dust, although I expect there is still plenty of money to be made by Max and others, oh Goodey!

The Post Office Bank

I am wondering if I have been living in a parallel universe, where everything that is a new idea here has been tried already.

How can it be that a Post Office Bank is a fantastic new idea, the old post office Giro Bank book I have has entries of me paying in my hard earned £1 pocket money in the early 70's. Has the whole country gone gaga and decided to follow the government trend of announcing old things as new to look good.

An article about the "people's bank" (that is what it would be named) suggested that it would be good for small businesses and also "for the 3 million people in the UK who can not get credit".
No No No, hold on there! The Post Office Bank is to lend money to people who are a credit risk? Isn't this exactly why we are in this mess, because banks lent money to drongo twits who didn't pay the money back.

A better announcement would be that loan sharks are to be employed to run the countries banks.
It would stop any future banking crash if the low life, sorry I mean sub prime borrowers, knew the bank manager would be round to break their legs if they spent the repayment on vodka and fags, they would darn well keep up payment then.

A local post office bank would certainly be useful then, its hard to walk far in a leg cast.

Sainsburys Self Check-Out

I was in the local Sainsburys store, when heading for the check-outs I noticed how few staff they have these days, especially at 9.00 am when I am usually ready to head out of the store.

Instead of helpful people they have an array of self service tills.

The small self service tills have been about for a time and are good when you are buying a few items, but the new system is a re-vamped till that you operate yourself with the help of a very annoying recorded voice. Having seen the chaos that other shoppers were in trying to use the new systems, I headed as usual to a queue which happened to be beside the row of self service.

Because I was near several of these I could hear all of the systems helpful commands but as they all merged into one this is a brief idea of what I heard:-

"Unexpected item on belt - Authorisation required - Have you swiped your Nectar card - unexpected item on belt - have you swiped your card - please remove item from packing area - authorisation required - thank you for using sainsburys self check out - please insert your payment card or select cash - thank you for using your unexpected item on belt - please insert your belt into the authorisation card - have you swiped your belt on the self service unexpected item - please select payment belt and insert your assistance into the nectar thank your belt into the sainsburys" Arghhhhhhh.

How do the staff that attend these tills actually stay sane.

If the trend to remove staff from the store continues the logical step is to ask us to stock the shelves before we shop, or maybe we could drive the delivery lorry, stock the shelves select our items then check ourselves out.

Or maybe I should just grow my own produce. If nothing else that seems a quieter option.

Community Speed Watch

When I was a kid, if you went running to teacher saying that Jonny had written the rude word on the blackboard (we still had them) or that Sally was responsible for the snapped pencil in the box, it was called telling tales. No one liked you for it, and the friends of anyone you told on would get you at play time.

These days telling tales seems to be positively encouraged, but not by children, this time it is by adults.

The police in parts of the UK don't do policing any more and have been replaced by various groups to do it for them. The most obvious are PCSOs (totally useless) but another group of people are the drongoes who join Community Speed Watch.
They come to mind after a report on the local news saying that some are being verbally abused. You don't say, welcome to the real world guys.

Community speed watch, if you don't know, are set up by the police to stand at the side of the roads and wave speed detection devices at people. They pretend to be community minded but are actually just sad. If you drive past a community speed watch groups, at a speed above the limit, they will write down your number and tell the police. Oh I'm scared already, but not for the reason you may think.

Speeding drivers should be caught, but by the police not a group of sad people who need to get a life. Once they tell on you, you get a letter saying that you were seen speeding. That's it.

If you are caught speeding by a traffic cop you know that the person doing you is a good driver and will go before a magistrate, or judge, to tell them what you did wrong if needs be.
Get caught by community speed watch and you have no idea if they are one of the worlds worst drivers or even totally mental. Why does that matter, simple, hand held speed guns are corroboration of excess speed not proof. Hence they can't prosecute you because that would mean the mad gits from the speed watch going to court and proving to everyone that they don't really know what they are doing, in court or at the road side.

It's not often that I want to see people being abused but if they insist on making themselves available they are surely fair game.
Be careful what you say to them though, they will tell on you.

University Challenge Explains the Recession

I saw the last few minutes of the University Challenge final, I had not intended to watch it but it happened to be on before something I wanted to see.

I can not decide if this quiz is funny or sad, in the modern meaning of sad, but I do know that the whole thing was hilarious. How awful the guy on the end must have felt being left out of consultations and being patted on the back when he dared to answer a question, and with little miss know-it-all saying "well done" if one of her team knew an answer before her.

Never mind the quiz, what is far more interesting is the controversy that has surrounded the final, especially how it explains a lot of what has caused the crisis that we now see the world in.

One of the team members that declared "studying chemistry" is actually working for Price Waterhouse Coopers.
So, the lie telling chemist is working for an accountancy firm, that makes perfect sense.
Look at the top people in finance in this country, the chancellor, the bank bosses, the ex-chancellor, none of them have any qualifications in finance and it has not done them any harm has it.

OK they have collectively trashed the world financial systems but they are doing alright Jack.