Present company excepted...

In which I lose a moustache.

2010-12-02T19:34:00.003Z

This November I grew a moustache to raise some money for prostate cancer research.
I also learned about white balance.

Day one

Day three

Day fifteen

Day nineteen

Day thirty

Can you believe that day thirty face got IDed in Asda?

I had never shaved off a 'tashe before so was a little unsure how to go about it. Despite putting in a fresh blade into my razor I feared that it would be a bit painful to shave straight away so I initially trimmed it with scissors.

Then I moved onto the razor

And now I am back to my usual babyfaced self.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Give and take

2010-11-04T19:02:00.005Z

Tomorrow is my last day in my current job.

I have worked in the same office with the same people for the last four and a half years.

Some people suggest that you shouldn't work in the same office for this long.
They say that it can lead to stagnancy.
That change is good.
I believe the biggest disadvantage of staying in the same job this long is that the ever increasing disparity between how much one has contributed to other people's leaving collections and how much one will get in their own.

Over the last four and a half years someone has left, on average, about once every two months.
On average I might donate two pounds to someone's leaving collection. If I like them I might donate more. If I don't like them I might donate less. That is what an average is.

click to enlarge

Therefore I'm screwed.

So what have we learned;

Leave a job before 28 months have passed
To maximise profit the best time to leave is after 6 months.

That is all.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC. If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Something for the weekend, sir?

2010-06-28T20:32:00.002+01:00

I have been told many times that I look like Patrick Kielty so imagine who freaked out I was when last Sunday morning he was on Something for the Weekend not only looking like me but wearing almost exactly the same shirt as me.

So I did what any sensible person would do in that position.

I photoshopped myself on to the Something for the Weekend couch recreating Kielty’s pose.

Wonder at my Photoshop skills

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Glastonburied

2010-06-26T11:53:00.000+01:00

I think my idea of hell would be to go to a music festival. Everything I have seen, read or heard about them makes me thank the Lord God above each night that I am not settling down to sleep in a tent surrounded by fucking awful people listening to fucking awful music.
Last year it was such a happy coincidence that my holiday coincided with Glastonbury so I didn’t have to suffer hours of coverage of people you would cross the road to avoid performing their music to tens of thousands of others.
And Jo Wiley.
This year the world cup and Wimbledon will hopefully keep me from seeing too much television overage of people I don’t like talking about bands I don’t know.

I think my aversion to festivals is based on the same prejudices as my hatred of people who travel. Because, in my mind at least, they are pretty much the same people.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

And did those feet in ancient times...

2010-06-24T12:49:00.002+01:00

Some people will remember yesterday for England not getting knocked out the world cup, or maybe USA’s late winner against Algeria, or the longest tennis match in history.
Not me.
I will remember 23rd June 2010 for completing a journey that TFL estimates will take one hour in just 33 minutes.
Take that BBC for letting me leave a mere 30 minutes before the kickoff.
I hate England fans.
We really have the ugliest fans in the world.
Worse even than Germans.
This is the reason I cannot watch England matches anywhere other than the sanctity of my own living room. Why would I watch a match surrounded by the chavviest of the chavs, risk getting beer spilt on me if England score and have to fight through a sea of tattoos and skinheads to get served overpriced piss poor lager?
Nah. It isn’t for me.
Show me footage of England fans celebrating a goal and I will show you a bunch of people which the world would be much better without.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

I don't like using mechanical hand dryers.

2010-06-20T21:04:00.002+01:00

I will always choose a paper towel over a hand dryer.

I saw a film at an impressionable time of my life in which someone was attacked while drying their hands, and have always had a phobia about using hand dryers ever since. From my memory they were grabbed from behind and their neck broken. Thanks to the sound of the dryer they had no idea their assailant was approaching.

This cinematic scene has stayed with me for a long time and I haven’t trusted hand dryers since.

To make matters worse the hand dryers at my place of work are the Dyson Airblade.
They claim to be the most energy efficient and hygienic handdryers in the world but they are also louder than a 747 taking off.
Even the clumsiest, most Clouseau-esque attempted assassin would be able to successfully approach me from behind undetected.
Not good for someone with already existing hand-dryer paranoia.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Big Brother: I'm coming to get you!!!

2010-06-10T21:13:00.011+01:00

Big brother used to be great didn’t it?
You know, when it was new and exciting and unique to have everyday people LIKE YOU AND ME on television.

I am trying to put my finger on where it went wrong. What made the public fall out of love with a programme about a bunch of people living in a house for three months?

Personally I think I lost interest when the show started getting longer and longer. The last series I fully engaged with from start to finish was 2005 (incidentally won by someone called Anthony who I had forgotten even existed) was the last sub-80 day big brother. Since then the series has consistently had durations in the mid 90s and viewing figures plummeted.

Click to enlarge

As well as making every series a war of attrition that takes up every night of the summer (last year’s series had 108 episodes), as side effect of this increase in length is that we have to have more and more housemates each series.

Last year we had 22 housemates. That is the same total as the first two series combined.

Click to enlarge

With more people in the house each contestant has less opportunity to shine at the start – some people manage to go completely unnoticed well into month two. The viewing public (ie me) get confused between the characters, and this isn’t helped by the way the producers insist on putting in wannabe glamour models that have no personality and who look exactly the same as each other. Yes, I know Sam and Amanda were identical twins but it was damn confusing.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

My density has bought me to you

2010-06-09T20:54:00.007+01:00

Back to the Future is a wonderful piece of cinema. It works on so many levels, from the Back to the Future you enjoy as a child for the DeLoroan and skateboards, to the one you enjoy as an adult for the echoes of Ancient Greek incest and what is has to say about the nature of fate.

But the film’s treatment of time travel is annoyingly inconsistent at best.

Let’s look at the memorable actions that Marty undertakes that have potential ramifications for his (and our) future.

Firstly let’s look at the events that are self-consistent. That is events where something Marty does seems to have an effect on the future but the effect is something which has actually been a part of history all along.

Let me give an example.

Marty plays Jonny B Goode on stage. Marvin Berry gets on the phone to his brother Chuck and who hears the song and is thus inspired to write the song. Marty’s action has influenced the events of history but presumably this must have been what happened all along. We assume that many years before Marty McFly was born Chuck Berry received a phone call from his cousin which inspired him to write the song. Only by us seeing Marty travel back in time did the pieces all fall together.

This brings up a chicken and egg situation. If Marty in 1985 learned to play Jonny B Goode from hearing the Chuck Berry song, and then in 1955 he inspired the young Berry to write the song in the first place the question has to be asked, “Where did the song actually come from?” – it has no source.

It is like a circular reference in Excel.

It simply exists.

But that is for another discussion – my point is that an action Marty takes in 1955 doesn’t change anything about his 1985 world. He didn’t leave a world with no Jonny B Goode only to return to a world with Jonny B Goode.

The same thing applies when the women who would go to be his mother comments what a nice name Marty is. This is a clever little nod to the audience implying that by travelling back in time and meeting his parents Marty has inspired his parents to name their third born child in 15 years after him.

Marty left a world where he is called Marty and when he returns to 1985 he is still called Marty – nothing has changed – his actions in 1955 must have always been a part of history. His actions had effect but nothing that hadn’t already happened in his 1985 many years before.

In this situation there is only one time line. Marty travels back to 1955 and anything he does there is what is meant to be and must have already happened in the past. In this situation if and when Marty goes Back to the Future he will travel back along the one time line to a 1985 exactly the same as the one he left.

This all works well and good until we look at the situation with Marty endangering is own existence by causing is parents not to meet. If the above situation holds Marty would have not been able to change anything that would affect his 1985. Remember anything he does must have had always happened. If the causal loop above holds then if he makes his parents not meet in the way they described to him at the start of the film, then maybe the way the described it to him in 1985 was misremembered by them, or was a lie. Anything that happens in 1955 must have already happened in his own parents past. He is changing nothing.

He could have done anything and it wouldn’t matter what he did because it had already happened. He has come from the future that was produced as a result of it. This is the same future where Chuck Berry sang Jonny B Goode and his parents called him Marty.

All the running around trying to get his parents to meet and fall in love should have been unnecessary.

But, and this is a big problem with the film, when his parents do eventually meet and fall in love, under different circumstances to how they described, this does change Marty’s 1985. We learn this when Marty eventually does get Back to the Future and his dad is a successful author and Biff is waxing his car.

The only explanation for this different 1985 is that another timeline was created at the point Biff was knocked out by George McFly, creating a whole new thirty years leading to a new 1985. Now when Marty travels forward he travels forward along the new timeline to the New 1985.

What I don’t understand is why some events that happen as a result of Marty’s visit to 1955 cause a new timeline to be made, and some don’t.

Explain that to me, Robert Zemeckis.

Where is the consistency?

Maybe Bob Gale would know.

My favourite film of all time, though.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

A Day in my life – Friday fourth of June

2010-06-06T20:47:00.003+01:00

These are my shower products. The shampoo stops me from going balder. The shower gel makes me smell nice and the conditioner gives me volume.

Fact of the day – I brush my teeth in the shower.

I iron mine and Becky’s clothes for the day.

We always sit down and have breakfast together. This normally consists of a cappuccino and something Becky has baked.

I get the lift down to the bin room. This is my job because Becky is scared of rats or squirrels jumping out at her. Putting the bins out Is Not a Girl’s Job.

I walk to the tube station.

I need to get into the first set of doors in the second carriage so I am right by the stairs when I get off in Hammersmith.

These are my fellow commuters. I like to play guess the nationality.

At Acton Town I look across to the westbound platform. Sometimes I half expect to see my doppelganger stood there.

At Hammersmith I reap the benefits of my earlier choice of carriage and am in position right by the steps.

I always think that they should build a tunnel between the two Hammersmith Tube stations so I don’t have to swipe out, cross the road and swipe in again. But they never do.

This fellow hands out the Stylist on a Wednesday, the Shortlist on a Thursday and the Sport on a Friday. What he does for the rest of the week is anyone’s guess.

On the Hammersmith & City/ Circle Line I have to get on the train last set of doors in the second carriage. Otherwise Bad Things will happen. Unspecified Bad Things.

This is where I work.

I walk through the BBC Academy, where all our training takes place. I like to notice the ridiculous training courses that take place.

This is how my desk looks first thing in the morning. I have a system. Honestly.

Popbitch newsletter read.

When I am feeling lazy I have a nasty machine coffee.

But at least once a day I have a proper nice coffee.

This is the view from the hub.

I heated up my lunch in the microwave in the hub. And in hot sunny days we eat outside.

I have no idea who these people are.

Look – the lift at BBC White City

After work if it is a nice day I walk down to Hammersmith via Shepherds Bush rather than getting the tube.

Going home the tube busier and hotter than the morning. This displeases me.

Once I got home Becky and I went to the pub for a drink. To get to the first pub we consider worthy of our business we have to walk past at least 6 other pubs for well over a mile.

Once we got home I finished the day with a gin and tonic while Becky cooked dinner.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Maybe it really is better the devil you know.

2010-06-01T20:31:00.005+01:00

Everyone has a theory about why we do poorly at Eurovision these days.

Some people suggest that the switch away from juries towards public voting is the cause.
Some people suggest that the increase in the number of ‘Eastern Europeans’ has change the demographic of the Eurovision electorate forever, with countries simply voting for the neighbours come the big night (though I remember Terry Wogan (RIP) a few years ago suggesting that Serbia were always going to give Estonia 12 points because they were neighbours. I think he was half-cut at the time and was getting his Baltic and Balkan mixed up).
Some people suggest that the war in Iraq or Britain’s innate Euro-scepticism play a big part.
And some people suggest that there is nothing more to it than our songs have been shit.

I have a long held theory that the demise of the United Kingdom as a force at the Eurovision song contest was down to the end of the Cold War. Rather than communism being the enemy, Europe had to find a new foe and they turned on the UK via the medium of song. Enough time had passed since the Second World War for them to stop feeling guilty for their actions/stop having to cut us some slack for saving their asses (delete as appropriate). It was payback time.
But is this actually the case or was my theory the result of brainwashing thanks to reading that Daily Mail I once found on a bus?
I decided to look at the facts.

I graphed the UK’s performance (both final position and total points awarded) since the start of the contest and came up with this;

Click to enlarge

The graph seems to suggest that nose down in team UK’s fortunes was not, as I suspected, a result of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Cold War but was due to something else.
With five top three finishes and a record points score in the following few years something else must have triggered the poor run of form we have had recently.

This is born out if we look at the average points awarded to the UK per voting country. NB Because the number of participating countries has changed over the years this is a lot more a useful figure than merely using total points awarded.

Click to enlarge

Since 1975 (when the current voting system was introduced) the UK has been awarded a respectable score of 3.97 points per country voting. But this average used to be so much higher. Yes, up until 1990 we were averaging an impressive 5.34 points per country, but this did not take a downward trend until well after the fall of the wall. In fact, into the first few years of the 21st century we were still averaging almost 5 points per country.

Click to enlarge

No, it is in the last few years that the amount of points we have received has really nosedived. We have only ever received less than an average of one point per country seven times in Eurovision history. And all seven have occurred in the last eight years. Something happened in 2003 that caused this.

My theory is that what caused this was the increase in number of countries voting.
Up until 2003 the only countries that could vote in the final were the ones that had songs competing; post 2003 Eurovision introduced a semi final which eliminated some of the poorest and/or insignificant countries from taking part in the final but the eliminated countries COULD STILL VOTE.

Click to enlarge

Notice how close to the bottom we have come since the electorate was extended above beyond the participating nations.

I think the votes of these eliminated countries have skewed the vote. Voting when you are not eligible to win the competition changes voting habits – maybe these countries are holding a grudge against the UK for being one of the Big Four who automatically qualifies for the final as of right. Even though countries can never vote for their own song maybe somehow not having a song of their own causes these countries to switch how they vote. Maybe they are more likely to support neighbouring countries – natural enemies become brothers in arms – like how most English people supported the Republic of Ireland during the 1994 world cup when England didn’t qualify.

Of course this doesn’t explain how Germany managed to win this year.

I guess maybe the people who suggested that there is nothing more to it than our songs have been shit are right after all.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Things can only get better

2010-05-12T19:38:00.003+01:00

I am genuinely excited by the prospect of this new government. Although I voted blue this time, I could easily vote liberal democrat in future. Especially if they become more Liberal and less Social Democrat.

I think Tory party (especially the left of it) have really quite a lot in common with the Lib Dems. Whether on civil liberties, small government or low taxation the two parties have actually drifted closer together under Cameron & Clegg, and can stand together against the centralist authoritarian option that Labour offers.

Both parties had policies in their manifestos that I agree with, so if this coalition government manages to get the best of both parties’ promises onto the statute book then things may be pretty damn good.

My main problems with the Tory manifesto was their immigration policy, the inheritance threshold being raised and the married(/civil partnershiped) persons tax cuts; maybe Lib Dem influence will water these down or get them dropped completely. Maybe.

But what is more important is that the conservatives have adopted some of the Lib Dem’s best ideas.

Raising the income tax threshold to £10k is a great policy, and actually quite a Conversative-type idea. Economically very non interventionist and Laissez-faire.

Some of the constitutional reforms suggested will really benefit Britain, and hopefully if they put their heads together Clegg and Cameron will be able to come up with some reform of the Lords.

My solution of a Lords fully elected via a PR system should keep everyone happy. I don’t know why no-one will listen to me.

If we look at the policies of both parties;

The Lib Dems support;

European integration

Civil liberties

Tax cuts for the poorest

Cutting tax credits for the people who don’t need it

Scrapping nuclear deterrent

Fully elected upper house

Proportional representation

No tuition fees

Strong environmentalism

but

Some on the left of the party think ‘fairness’ & ‘social justice’ is reached by redistribution of wealth - potentially they are a bit left wing economically

Conservatives support;

No further integration with Europe

Strong environmentalism

Cutting tax credits for the people who don’t need it

Devolve power from the state towards the people – ‘small’ government

Low taxation and low spending

Individualism

Tough on immigration

Valuing 'family values'

Private enterprise over public sector

but

they are still a bit conservative (small ‘c’) and thus a bit questionable on equality

Now, if we take the best and remove the worst of what both parties have to offer we are left with;

~~Europhile~~

Civil liberties

Tax cuts for the poorest

Cutting tax credits for the people who don’t need it

~~Scrapping nuclear deterrent~~

Fully elected upper house

~~Proportional representation~~

Scrapping tuition fees

~~Strong environmentalism~~

~~but~~

~~Some on the left of the party think ‘fairness’ & ‘social justice’ is reached by redistribution of wealth - potentially they are a bit left wing economically~~

No further integration with Europe

~~Strong environmentalism~~

Cutting tax credits for the people who don’t need it

Devolve power from the state towards the people – ‘small’ government

Low taxation and low spending

Individualism

~~Tough on immigration~~

~~Valuing family values~~

Private enterprise over public sector

~~but~~

~~Still a bit conservative (small ‘c’) and thus a bit questionable on equality~~

I couldn't think of a more ideal political manifesto for my political sensibilities.

I am optimistic.

A progressive coalition, indeed.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

PR or not PR

2010-05-08T16:14:00.003+01:00

I find it interesting that everyone has suddenly realised that the distribution of seats in Westminster is not proportional to the popular vote. I wonder where these people have been for the last few hundred years.

But is the system really, as some commentators claim, broken?

Why should the seats in Westminster be distributed proportionally to the overall vote? To me this is akin to decided the Premier League champion not on which team won the most matches, or lost the fewest, but by which team scored the most goals.

If Westminster was divided up by the share of the national popular vote at this election then the BNP would have as many seats as the SNP and UKIP would have twice as many as both.

Depending on where the threshold was set perhaps none of the Northern Irish parties would have an MP between them. Independent local MPs fighting an election on local issues would have no chance of being elected. If Westminster was truly divided in terms of the popular vote there would be move of accountability and democracy away from local people and power would be made more centralised.

None of that sounds very democratic.

Which is not to say I am against electoral and constitution reform per se.

For me issues like the West Lothian Question and changing the House of Lord to make it fully elected and accountable to the people should be addressed before changing the method used to elect parliament.

The system we have now is simple. We all cannot be consulted on what laws need passing, so we (along with about 50,000 of our neighbours) elect someone to make those decisions on our behalf. The constituency lines are drawn up by the politically independent Boundary Commission. Whoever gets the most votes in the constituency gets to be the MP. Simple.

I guess there is an argument for an Alternative Vote system to make sure that each MP has received a vote from a majority rather than just the plurality of their constituency but the AV system is no more likely to lead to a House of Commons proportional to the popular vote than the current system.

I think the media are partly to blame for this current lust for PR by their reporting of opinion polls and voter preference. The daily reporting of polls tracking voter intention imply that the share of overall vote is an important number.

It isn’t.

The press giving this number importance it doesn’t actually have has now resulted in angry people who feel they have not taken part in democracy.

Rather than questioning the system these people should maybe be questioning themselves. If an MP they don’t support got elected in their constituency then maybe they should have campaigned or donated for another candidate. Maybe they should have handed out leaflets. Or maybe they should shut the fuck up.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

What's the bigot deal?

2010-04-29T10:55:00.003+01:00

I feel genuinely sorry for Gordon Brown and Mrs Rochdale. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to hear what people say about me when I am not there – especially as I know that I slag off everyone behind their backs so assume they do it to me too.
It is what people do.
The best thing about a party is talking about the other guests’ clothes on the way home.
So the only thing that Gordon Brown did wrong was to get caught doing what every human being does.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t very, very funny.

Remember the “Your own mother’s piss” woman from the Thick of It?

Talk about life imitating art.
Or, more accurately, life imitating art imitating life.

What Hugh says at the end about people is what politicians actually think of them.
And the politicians are right.
People are fat and awful.
But it is funny to actually hear one say it.

I like the irony that Gordon Brown’s people actually requested for the Sky radio mic so we could hear what he had to say to the people.
Talk about hoisted by your own petard.

Personally I don’t think the issue is really that fact that he called her a bigoted woman. Whether she is actually a bigot or not is immaterial (personally I don’t think she is one - unless we are living in a country where the vast majority of the working classes are also bigots, which I really hope is not the case).
What he called her is immaterial - he could have called her a Betty-from-Corrie-look-a-like-bint, or, as I thought I heard him say, a “big titted woman” and it wouldn’t have been any better or worse. The fact that he was caught slagging off someone less than a minute after he was telling her she was lovely is why this is newsworthy.

As with anything like this first there is the backlash against Brown, and now we are on Day 2 comes the backlash against the backlash. Left leaning commentators are criticising the Tory supporting press’ reaction to the story.
It would be interesting to see what reaction they would have if David Cameron has made a similar faux pas. I have a feeling though would not be so generous towards him – especially as they already portray him as being an out-of-touch toff despite having no evidence other than his upbringing.
Isn’t it more of a transgression for a labour leader, the leader of the party of the working people, to be caught out as being out of touch with the common man?

Still, there are worse things that you can do while wearing a radio microphone.

But just to reiterate what I said at the start of this piece – no-one should have to go though what poor Mr Brown and Mrs Rochdale had to yesterday, but the world is a little bit more magical as a result.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Vote for Freedom

2010-04-18T16:18:00.003+01:00

Left wing and socialist governments believe that they know better than us.
They think that individuals cannot be trusted
They think that we cannot be trusted to pay for own health insurance so make us pay into the NHS.
They think we cannot be trusted to save for our own future so will make us contribute into pension plans.
They think we cannot be trusted to make sensible decisions about waiting to have children until we can afford them so give money to families.
They think people cannot be trusted to spend their own money in a sensible way so tax more of it and them provide more services in return.
As a result people are forced to rely far too much on the state to do far too much for them.

But even if the government is doing this for our own good, why is this A Bad Thing?
Aren’t we better having a big public sector which has everyone’s best interests at heart rather than a big private sector run to get make profit?
Well, no.
As a libertarian I hold people’s liberty and freedom above everything else and the one thing a big state reduces above all else is freedom of choice.
Let me give an simple example. I had several bad experiences in Asda in Hounslow. I swore never to go bad and have shopped in Tesco (though not the Hammersmith Metro one) ever since. The free market gives me significant power as a consumer. Although both Walmart and Tesco have a profit as their ultimate goal, to maximise this profit they have to provide a good service otherwise they know I will go somewhere else.
But if I had a bad experience with, for example, the NHS, what could I do? I cannot take my business elsewhere. And because of this there is no incentive for them to provide a good service. There are no consequences for their actions.
Yes, at the next election I could vote out the government that has provided the poor service and hope the next lot will provide something better, but that could be 5 years away.
That is barely democracy.
Real democracy is not what happens when you go into a polling booth in three weeks time.
No, real democracy is what happens every time you make the decision of where to shop and what to buy. Every time you choose to keep you car insurance with Admiral for another year you are voting for them. Every time you buy Walker’s instead of McCoys because they have introduced world cup inspired flavours you are voting for change.

A large state gives the individual less power, less freedom, less choice and less liberty. We sign over our powers to whoever is voted in for the length of a parliament and let them make our decisions for us. I don’t know about you but where it comes to making decisions about my life but I would much rather I was making them than 660 people in Westminster.

That is why a party that supports a big state is a party who is against freedom.
And why I will be voting for a party who wants a smaller state.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

The cinema is too expensive.

2010-04-14T19:01:00.004+01:00

I haven’t been to the cinema since May 2008 when I went to see Indiana Jones 4.
That is almost two years.
The strange thing is that I love films and love the experience of going to the pictures, the problem being I just never seem to be interested enough in anything to justify the expensive and time it takes to go to the cinema.

According to this my nearest cinema is Richmond.
Tickets there are £9.70
For the Americans amongst you that is close to $15.
Incidentally, the average cinema ticket price in the states is less than $8.
And if I wanted to go to see a 3D film (which is pretty unlikely as I have prejudged them all as shit) the tickets are £12 each.
TWELVE POUNDS.
I cannot justify that expense for a film that is most likely to be shit anyway.

I could always use the famous Orange Wednesday buy one get one free offer, but who wants to go to the cinema on a Wednesday after work? By the time we have got to Richmond and eaten it would be about 8-30pm. Add to that three hours for the trailers and the film and would wouldn’t be leaving Richmond until 11-30.
The H37 bus takes about half an hour so we would be getting home at midnight.
On a school night.

So even if I found I film I was interested in seeing I would much rather wait for it to come onto Film4 in about 5 years time.

It is odd that I would happily pay ten pounds for a cocktail in a nice bar or over twice that for a meal but am not happy spending a tenner on a cinema ticket.
I think it has a lot to do with perceived value.
When I was a student I used to go to the cinema quite often. It cost me £3.70. Even when I stopped being a student and started to pay full adult prices it was £5.20.
And now ten pounds? Almost 100% inflation over 6 years seems excessive.

Even if we can blame it on the fact I moved to London since then that still doesn't change the fact that I place a value on a cinema ticket of about a fiver. I cannot help it
Especially as in 9 months I could pick the film up on DVD for £4. Back when I used to go to the cinema a lot, videos used to cost over ten pounds. If I wanted to see a film, seeing it in the cinema was better value.
The fact now you can go to an actual theatre for a price comparable to a cinema ticket seems a bit out of whack.

It is a real shame.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Boring election chat

2010-04-07T19:10:00.002+01:00

A general election has been called.
This is exciting.
I like elections.
I am a news junkie but sometimes find BBC News channel a little dull and very repetitive when there is not much going on in the world. Luckily during an election campaign there should always be something for them to report on, even if it is David Cameron saying offering change in a slightly different location to the previous day.

Becky and I have booked the day after the election off so we can stay up all right and watch the results roll in.
I think those of you who have been reading me for any amount of time can probably work out which way my allegiances are probably going to swing this time, but I still haven’t 100% made my mind up. Try about 99%.

I get very frustrated with the way some people vote though. People who always vote for the same party no matter what annoy me. Surely someone in their 50s who has voted Labour all their life can see that the party today is nothing like the party of the 1980s. What precisely are they voting for? They voted for nationalisation, nuclear disarmament and tax & spend in the 1980s and are now voting for privatisation, Trident and austerity.

Just because you have voted for a party all you life doesn’t mean that you always have to. In the end people like that are probably just voting for the party’s name. Or maybe the colour.

I guess just as bad are people who vow that they will never vote for a political party on principal. Oh, I could never vote Tory after what Thatcher did to the miners. Political parties can change. Remember that in the USA the Democrats were the party of segregation and slavery before becoming what they are today.

Everyone should really check out the partys’ manifestos and vote for whomever they agree the most with or maybe whoever they trust the most.

Simples.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Time is precious

2010-03-27T17:43:00.004Z

I am always amazed when people voluntarily do things they clearly don’t like.

I don’t read Richard Littlejohn or anything the Daily Mail because I don’t like them.
I don’t watch any soap operas or anything on BBC3 because I don’t like them.
I don’t go to nightclubs because they play loud awful music to loud awful people.
I try to avoid Will Mellor wherever possible, although annoyingly I do keep finding myself in his presence.

Time is too short to spend time doing things that will put one in an angry frame of mind, especially when they could much more easily be avoided.
I value each and every person who reads this blog, whether they read it because they find my irrational thoughts amusing and interesting and take them with a pinch of salt the are meant to be taken with, or whether they read because they get offended and riled by it, either are fine by be. All are welcome.

Though I do find the logic behind deciding to read a blog you don't like a bit confusing, especially when the blogger himself doesn't take what he says seriously!

I should apologise for my last blog post though. I did notice several spelling mistakes in it that my proof-reader missed.
For that, I am terribly sorry.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Children are the future. But not mine.

2010-03-25T21:41:00.002Z

I think I have made my point of view clear about pregnancy, and babies and children in the past, but I am not sure I have ever gone in to the details of when I have such a problem with it.

I guess the first issue to tackle is with pregnancy itself.
I openly admit to having an almost paralysing fear of pregnancy. The whole process just seems so unnatural and sickens me a bit.
I get freaked out when I see them on the tube or waddling along the street
Something growing inside you? For nine months? That just isn’t right, is it?

And the bellies? They are just so… urggh.
So round. So out of proportion.
I am against fat people in general and unlike most people I make no exception for pregnant women. Fat is fat, whether is thanks too many Burger Kings or too much unprotected sex.
Pregnant women do not glow. They are not blooming. They are fat.

But you know what makes me fear pregnancy more than anything? I am worried that it will change Becky.
You know, I quite like her they way she is. Pregnant women incessantly talk about their hormones, and how they change them. I don’t want Becky to change. I don’t want to have to put up with listening to the sickening pregnancy lexicon of trimesters, folic acid and buggies. I want to have someone to share wine with and eat soft cheeses and raw eggs with.

Unfortunately the birth is not just the unpleasant end to this period; it is also the beginning of another one, namely parenthood.
I think my worries about being a parent in some way link in to my final point about pregnancy. It changes people. And it changes them for the worse.
At the moment I am the most important person in my life. Becky knows that and I hope she feels the same about herself.
But when you have a child that is supposed to change. Your offspring becomes the most important thing in the world. I don’t want that to happen. The day I stop thinking about number one is the day I cease to be me and turn into the type of person I hate.
Or, alternatively, you have a child that doesn’t change who you are. You continue to look after yourself first and everyone else second. And you have become Karen Matthews.
Even if I had a child an managed to remain the same as I am now without becoming a monster vilified in the press, what about my wife?
It is a fact that can probably be proven scientifically that once women get the mother hormones they change for the worse. They get fat, the sit around the house in sweets, they watch soap operas and Loose Women and they complain about their husbands. It is no wonder that men have affairs.

I like our little life. I like being able to go out to restaurants on a whim. I like going on three holidays a year. I never want that to end.

Plus I find babies really quite ugly little things. Puppies and kittens are much cuter. All babies look the same, like Winston Churchill.
They are useless little fuckers too. Cry, shit, vomit. Cry, shit, vomit. That is no way to spend the first few years of life.

In our flat at the moment we only vacuum once every few months, and only then when we are having a visitor. We leave our recycling (mostly wine bottles, funnily enough) to pile up in the hallway for weeks before taking down to the basement. I leave annoying washing up items for a week until I need to use them again. God knows how long our bed covers have been on. If we had a child social services would take them away anyway.

Economically and politically I am a libertarian and believe in low tax and low spend and the state no getting involved in peoples lives, so it really annoys me that my taxes get spent on paying people to have babies in the form of child benefit and tax credits. Obviously I don’t blame the people for accepting these benefits, and I sure as hell would in the same position, but surely the wider question of should the state be funding people’s lifestyle choices needs to be answered.

While spewing my views about to children and people who have them to anyone that is willing to listen, I am always greeted with the argument,
“Well it is different when you have a child of you own”.
There is some real backwards logic to that statement. If you only grow to like children when you have one of your own then why would you have one in the first place?
Also that adds more weight to the argument that having a child changes people. And I quite like who I am, thanks very much.

Luckily as time goes on Becky is becoming more and more anti having children herself.
Considering she studied childcare and actively wanted to spend time with them at one point in her life, it is really quite a propaganda achievement by myself.
When we got married we came to the mutual agreement that we would wait five years before thinking about having children. This September we will be three years into this, and she is less keen than ever.
In fact, inspired by Sam Cam, she recently said that she wants to wait into her mid thirties which gives us almost another ten years of no children.

Result.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Holiday without travelling

2010-03-17T19:18:00.002Z

I really enjoy to travel.
I probably enjoy it more than anything else.
When I am not on holiday, I am either looking forward to or planning the next one, or getting itchy feet to start planning.

So what is my problem with people who go travelling?

Firstly let’s cover the semantics. When I say go travelling I am not talking people who go to multiples destinations in one trip.
On my last main holiday I stayed in Milan, Lake Garda and Venice.
The one before I went to New York, Vegas, Cancun and Havana.
And on the one before that I went to Nimes, Avignon, Cannes, San Remo and Nice.
But on none of those trips would I say I went travelling.

No way.

I went on holiday.

To me when someone goes travelling they stay in hostels, they are unable to bathe in their usual manner, they live out of a backpack, they go off the beaten track and try to find themselves. To me these are both what constitute travelling and what I hate about it.

Staying in hostels;

Firstly let me admit my ignorance on the subject. I have never stayed in a hostel.
No, let me correct myself. I stayed in a hostel once on a school trip to Germany aged 11, the same trip I accidentally cracked Peter Quinn’s head open by closing a door on him. But that hasn’t influenced my thoughts on hostels. My prejudices were already well developed by that point.
I don’t have to have been in Auschwitz to know it was bad, and I don’t need to have stayed in a hostel to know the same about them.
When I go away I want to stay somewhere better than where I live at home. At home I don’t have clean sheets every day, a daily maid cleaning up after me, the ability to have food and drink delivered to my room 24/7 and a bar on site. I don’t have any of these things at home, so my only chance to ever experience them is by staying in a decent hotel when I go away.
But Mike hotels cost so much more then hostels. You can stay for so much longer if you stay somewhere shit.
You could use the same argument for not having a Tiffany’s ring when you could buy several hundred rings from Primark for the same price. Sometimes in life it is good to pay more and get something of better quality.

Inability to bathe properly;

I am about to enter my third week without hot water.
And it reallyisn’t a nice way to live.
People who go travelling have to put up with unclear hair and sweaty bodies for months sometimes.
Nein danke.
Incidentally this is the same reason also one of the reasons I shall never go to a music festival or go camping. I value my own and my companions personal hygiene.

Backpacks;

Probably the main visual difference between someone going on holiday and someone going travelling is their baggage.
When I travel I take a suitcase.
When people go travelling they take fucking great backpacks that are bigger than them. And they insist on wearing them on the Piccadilly Line to and from Heathrow during rush hour getting in my way and hitting me in the face whenever the train makes a sudden movement.

Going off the beaten track;

Now this title is misleading. Going off the beaten track can be ok in some circumstances. Though the beaten track is normal beaten for a reason.
What I really dislike is when people insist on trying to find the real wherever.
What do you get when you find the real wherever you are?
Why, you find a bunch of other annoyingly snub middle class western travellers who were all looking for it too. Well done. Let’s all felate each other as a reward for finding it. Except because it is full of annoyingly smug middle class western travellers it is no longer real anyway. So you have to look somewhere else.
Surely the moment a traveller with a fucking great backpack arrives somewhere it immediately stops being real?
But if you ask me finding the real wherever is not something to aspire to anway.
If you came on holiday here and wanted to see the real London, you would get up at 7am, commute over an hour to get somewhere just 5 miles away, sit in an office looking out over the A40, earning more money than you ever have but not be able to spend it because you are too lazy and tired each night to do anything and the city is too damn expensive anyway.
Either that or the real London is living with a bunch of other foreigners, sleeping four to a room in a house that looks like it lived through a nuclear winter, working in a Subway but getting paid cash in hand because you are here illegally, your heart jumping every time you hear a police car because you don’t want to get arrested and sent back home to somewhere you will be raped, then tortured, then killed.
That is the real London.
I’d take two days in a nice hotel over three weeks of that, thanks.
Yes. The real wherever is never as good as the fantasy five star version of the same place.

Finding yourself?

Anyone who goes to Thailand to find themselves is a fucking idiot.
If you want to find yourself then look in the sodding mirror.

Sometimes if I have been sat at my desk in my skinny jeans too long, if I get up to go to the toilet, I occasionally have trouble finding myself at the urinal. But then I reach a little deeper and do eventually find myself.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

I am piste off

2010-03-12T20:24:00.002Z

I don’t get skiing.

I have never done it (apart from that one time I went dry-slope skiing at Swadlincote in Derbyshire) but that doesn’t stop me from having very strong feelings towards it.
As a sport, hobby or method of transport it seems pretty shit. But a tolerable kind of shit that doesn’t really impact on my life in any way.
However, it is when people go on skiing holidays that I get really angry.
Strangely until I moved to London I had never met anyone who had ever been on a skiing holiday, but when I did I discovered that I instantly hate anyone who has.

Going on holiday that is centred on one activity seems a really waste, whether it is snorkelling in the Red Sea, surfing in Newquay or skiing in the Alps.

Plus I am sure skiing is fucking hard.
You all remember my ice skating experience. I imagine skiing is much the same.
Only rather than for an hour it lasts for a week.
And rather than going Cromwell Road you have to go overseas.
And rather than ten pounds it costs hundreds.

How does one even find out if skiing is for them? I could book a holiday tomorrow and after flights, hotel, equipment hire and lift passes(?) I could easily be £500 quid in the hole.

So what happens if I get there and it turns out I can’t ski? What a fucking waste.
I am sure the only people who can actually ski are people who did it as children, when Daddy spent his annual bonus on taking the family away to some picturesque but fucking boring place every year. Just like those people who can ice skate did it as children, the same applies to skiing.

But Mike, I hear you cry, it is not about the skiing – it is all about the Apres Ski!
I think this just reinforces my prejudice against skiing.
How good can it be if the best thing about it happens when you have finished?

I can sit around at home and drink hot toddies or egg nog thanks very much.

Let’s imagine that I actually enjoy spending an evening or two sitting around a fire with my utter twats of friends, talking about how fucking great we are because we can ski.
Go on.
Imagine it.
Now what?
I get bored and restless spending more than a couple of days in even the most cosmopolitan of cities, so imagine what I will be like stuck surrounded my mountains and snow and knob-jockeys with nothing to do except be all smug about the fact I am on a skiing holiday.
By day three I would be crawling up the walls with cabin fever.

Or should that be chalet fever?

I do like the word skiing though. The ii is pleasing.

I might talk about my prejudices against hostels and people who go travelling (as opposed to go on holiday) next time.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Educate, inform, entertain?

2010-03-02T18:46:00.003Z

So Mark Thompson gave a speech to staff this morning to announce this.

This is the latest in a number of announcements about the BBC’s future in light of recent criticisms, controversies and complaints.

Commercial broadcasters complain that the BBC has an unfair advantage over them because of its guaranteed income.
Some viewers complain that they don’t want to pay a compulsory tax for services that they do not use, like digital radio.
Others complain that they never watch anything on BBC that couldn’t easily have been made by ITV, so why should they have to pay for something that they could get for free elsewhere
Newspapers, websites and magazine publishers complain that the BBC has stepped far outside its remit by expanding into media it was never designed to.

The question at the heart of all this is What is the BBC for?

Personally, I believe the BBC’s main role should be to fill the gap which is left between the nation's broadcasting needs and what the commercial sector is able to provide.
The BBC should be there to take the risks that commercial pressures mean other broadcasters can’t take.

The BBC (or BBC Worldwide which, let’s face it, is whole owned by the BBC) should not really be in the market of producing magazines, part owning other TV channels, commissioning programmes or even distributing content (which means I am doing myself out of a job!).

I love the BBC, and what it stands for, but fear that at the moment it doesn’t offer licence fee payer true value for money as well as stifling fair competition in a number of markets by crossing into territory that commercial broadcasters, distributors and publishers already operate.

My suggested next steps are radical but I shall share them anyway;

Licensing successful BBC programming to other British broadcasters. Something like Strictly Come Dancing is format that has been licensed around the world with great success. But does it really still need to be on BBC 1, taking up airtime on Saturday and Sunday night. If the BBC licensed the format to ITV, they then could use the income to reinvest in new programming and new talent to fill the schedule, rather than letting it’s programming become stale.

BBCWW to be broken up. I don’t believe that there is anything that they do that the commercial sector cannot undertake.

Digital radio? Why it is the new Betomax, of course. The BBC should get out of it I have a DAB radio and despite being able to see the Croydon and Crystal Palace transmitters from my flat can not get good reception on it.

The BBC would better fulfil those Reithian values by making Radios 1 & 2 a place where you can find interesting, new and exiting music. Forcing people into the ghetto of DAB to listen to it is like apartheid or something.

Quit the obsession with trying to engage 16 – 25 year olds unless it is going to be with quality programming. And by quality I am not talking about Two Pints of Lager… ,Fuck Off – I’m a Hairy Woman and Snog, Marry, Avoid?. The BBC is better than that. Once E4 stops showing Friends then they can have a whole channel devoted to that shit.

People often ask me how many people work at the BBC. I always answer about half of them. I am sure we could lose a few of the ones that don’t

I love BBC sports coverage, but does the public really need to fund coverage of things like the World Cup when other channels are more than capable of doing so? Sports coverage should be kept to minority sports no-one else wants. And be done cheaply. - I am talking to you BBC Winter Olympics coverage.

The BBC does great drama, but enough with the Jane Austin adaptations, please.

Does Eastenders need to be on quite so often?

I know from first hand knowledge how much Talent (sic) get paid. And it is too much. If agents try to get more money for their clients, then let them go elsewhere. The BBC is in a unique position to nurture new talent and should do that rather than keeping established ‘stars’ in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Book off

2010-02-26T19:16:00.003Z

I never read for pleasure.
Well that is obviously a lie.
I read the Metro, the Standard, the Stylist (this week’s feature on maternity leave is fascinating) and the Shortlist on the tube.
But I never read books.

Books, in my unhumble opinion, are a dying media. Like semaphore or digital radio.
In this disposable MTV world in which we live, how someone can commit themselves to 400 plus pages is beyond me.

I would go as far as saying I have never fully enjoyed a book.

The main trouble I have with books is their length.
How long does it take to read the average person the average book? Ten hours? Maybe twelve house?
We have but three score years and ten on this planet; why would I want to spend a large portion of that reading?
The longest movies are three hours long and even that is considered way too long to sustain a single story arc, so what makes authors think they can string to out their work to four or five times that length?
Ego, that’s what.

My other main problem with reading is that I have terrible trouble keeping track of who’s who.
With a film it is easy. You see that the anti-heroine “Catherine” has blonde hair and is played by Sharon Stone. Nick is played by Michael Douglas out of Wall Street. Oh, and look the police man is played by Newman from Seinfeld. It is easy.

Whenever I read a novel I always forget who is who.
Yes, the characters get described when they are introduced but for the rest of the book they are pretty much referred to only by their name.
The time I have spent flicking back to earlier chapters trying to figure who the fuck the author on about is as good a use of time as counting beans in a can.
And what’s worse, I have read tens of pages in books thinking the author is writing about one character when I have just got the name wrong and they are talking about someone else.
Jeez, I think to myself, why is he doing that? That seems really out of character.

Every book should have little one line descriptions of the characters inside the front cover for people like me to refer back to.

Unfortunately, people judge you when you say you don’t like to read books.
They think you are thick, uncultured philistine.
This is very prejudiced of them. Someone who doesn’t watch television is thought to be clever and interesting and different, yet someone who doesn’t read books is considered as thick as someone who treats those scratchcards you get free in magazines as their ticket to riches.
So what I like to do is read the synopses of the books you should have read on Wikipedia. This gives me enough knowledge to allow me form an opinion and not come across and a complete caveman.

Although I personally don’t get it, I guess I can accept that some people like to read.
What I really don’t get is why people buy books.
Well when I say books, I really mean fiction. Buying a reference book, a cook book or an anthology of newspaper columns is understandable.
But fiction? Nah.
Never once have I read a book and thought to myself I will want to read it that again at some point in my life. In fact I have often wished I could go back in time and stop myself from making the decision to read it in the first place.
Personally I think most people who keep books no intention of reading again.
They are simply showoffs.
The books on their shelves are trophies to mark what they have read, and are simply there for other people to be impressed by.
People like that are the type who have dinner parties. And friends.
They sicken me.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Mandatory field not completed

2010-02-25T18:57:00.005Z

I hate website forms.

Every time I fill one in I always end up having not completed a mandatory field, not entered my phone number in the correct format, not ticked the box to confirm I have read the terms and conditions (which, let’s be honest, none of us every do) or not entered my state or ZIP code.

On the whole I am quite good at dealing with that tiny italicised red writing you get after trying to submit an invalid form, mocking my incapacity to fill in the right information in the right boxes, like a bad teacher marking my work.

See me.

But what drives me to the verge of murder is the stupid little bit at the bottom that makes translate some cursive text into typeface.
I mean this type of thing;

I give myself brain ache trying to establish whether it is a 9 or a q or upper case or lower case, and still always get the wrong.
Sure, you can click on the button to hear the words being read to you but that is meant to be used by the blind or partially sighted, not the simply confused.
Pressing on that button is like parking in a disabled space while not being disabled.

To make it easier for us rather than making me type drub and igid (which sound like characters from In The Night Garden) why use words like drug and incest instead?

I wouldn’t misread that.

What bothers me the most is that I don’t what is it for.

It claims to be for some kind of spam protection, but I am not so sure.

Maybe somewhere on a giant central government computer my IP address is logged as having many failed attempts, and as a result I am marked as expendable come a nuclear war.

Or something.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Crisps

2010-01-25T21:07:00.006Z

I love crisps. Or, as an American might say, chips.

Actually I do also love chips, or as an American might say, fries. But that is not my point. Not today.

I love crisps. Crisps are amongst my favourite foods. Maybe that is overstating it, but they are definitely amongst my favourite snacks.

Salty. Fatty. Tasty. Yum yum.

Crippy crips

But for how much longer will I love them?
Crisp manufacturers are on the verge of losing my business by reducing the saturated fat and salt content in their products. Although they may be bad for some people, saturated fat and salt taste good. Really good.

It is a shame that just because some porkers eat a whole multipack of Walkers in a single sitting and then get fat, the crisp manufactures feel pressured into reducing their fat and salt levels in all their crisps under the auspice of showing social responsibility.
What ever happened to personal responsibility?
I am a firm believer in consumer choice which goes hand in hand with consumer responsibility. Unfortunately this situation is reducing it as full fat full salt crisps are damn near impossible to get hold of.

It is a damn shame.

This toning down of tasty, crispy goodness spoils crisps for the rest of us. The members of society who can stop at just one packet.
It isn’t fair.

Sure the manufactures claim “Same Great Taste, Half the Fat”, but that is bullshit. Crisps are starting to taste like exactly what they are; chemically treated dried potato sweepings.

"Same great taste!" my ass

Maybe I should take up drugs instead.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Dogs must be carried

2010-01-07T20:25:00.003Z

I love seeing dogs travelling on the tube.

I like to imagine what the dog must be thinking.

What is going through his little dog brain?

Has he any concept of what is going on?

Every time I go up an escalator on the tube there is something I see that makes me laugh.

The sign at the top and bottom of each escalator, as well as saying no smoking and to hold you child’s hand, says “Dogs must be carried”. There is also a helpful picture of stick man holding a dog

Now, to me this implies that you are not allowed on the escalator without a dog in your arms.

As if there should be a TFL employee at the bottom with a basket of puppies handing them out to everyone going up who is not carrying one.

I think what they really mean is “If you have a dog with you, you must carry it”.

Or something like that.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Skating on thin ice

2010-01-05T20:17:00.003Z

Becky and I have been ice skating.

And this is what I have learned from the experience;

Ice skating is fucking hard.
Really fucking hard.
And not at all enjoyable.
Never again.

I have never felt as much hatred as I felt towards people who were actually managed to skate more than a foot away from the side.

Becky and I were absolutely and totally awful at it. We slowly dragged ourselves around the perimeter of the rink looking literally like Bambis on ice.

I mean, who would have thought ice was so slippery?

It was neither romantic nor beautiful.

Like I said, never again.

I am glad I have done it, but really. No way.

But what I didn’t get was how 95% of the other people seemed quite capable at it.
I tried watching their movement, their motions of their feet.
But when I tried to recreate it I fell.
How the hell was everyone else able to successfully skate yet Becky and I weren’t?
Do people secretly attend classes throughout the year in order to be able to skate when these winter rinks pop up?

Whoever invented this pastime is a idiot.

It is not even it is like something that would get easier with practice. I would need hours of lessons a week from a professional to be able to get from one side of the rink to the other relying on something other than luck.

We spent most of our allocated hour in the Ice Age 3 children’s rink, but that was just as bad.

Never again.

I hated it.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Argos, in the middle of our street

2009-12-22T21:18:00.004Z

Today I ventured down to Argos in Shepherd’s Bush to pick up a ******* for Becky.

If I was organised I would have ordered online and had it delivered in plenty of time.

But I am not, so instead am venturing into an Argos store years after swearing I never would again.

My issues with Argos are numerous.

I hate the concept behind it. The picking your item for a catalogue, paying for it and then waiting at your collection point until you item appears? It just isn’t right. If it worked more stores would do it.

I hate the fact that the estimated waiting time bares no resemblance to the actual time it takes for your item to appear.

Needless to say it was longer than four minutes

I hate how it is the total antithesis of John Lewis.

I hate people who patronise it. They really are the dregs of our society. Sometimes I think it would be better for the Department of Social Security to give our tax money directly to Argos rather than passing it through the pram-faces and crack-addicts that hang around every Collection Point.

I hate how you don’t know if the item you buy has been sat in the council house of said people for 29 days before being returned to the shop under their 30 day money back guarantee.

I hate how when I tried to return a digital camera under that selfsame guarantee I was told that cameras were excluded from the offer in case I had taken any explicit picture and saved them to the camera’s internal memory.

I hate how you have very little idea of the actual dimensions of the item you are buying until you have already paid for, queued up for and been handed it. It is then you have to get the coffin sized box back on two tubes and a bus at rush hour.

I hate it.

Oh, and I hate the staff.

But what does interest me about Argos is what goes on behind the scenes.
I knew someone once who worked in the back room of the Stoke on Trent branch of Argos and described it as something like the underground mines in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with hundreds of slave children working their fingers to the bone.
What goes on at the top of that conveyor belt is truly a mystery.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Feel the force

2009-12-08T20:07:00.003Z

Is gravity on earth always constant, like the speed of light in a vacuum?
Or does it vary?
I guess it must vary every so slightly, for example when the sun is closer to us, the gravitational pull it will have over objects on the earth will be slightly higher than usual; and this should mean that objects will fall to earth slightly slower than the standard 9.8ms^-2 , because the sun’s gravitational pull is fighting against the gravitational pull of the earth.
And when the sun is further away the opposite applies and objects fall faster.

Whether that is the explanation or not, gravity seems extra strong today.

Exhibit A: Last night at precisely 3-31am, the clock in our living room fell from the wall and crashed onto the TV stand underneath it.
In my sleep it sounded like Armageddon.

Exhibit B: This morning, whilst I was putting the dry washing up away, an espresso cup threw itself out of the cupboard to its untimely demise on the kitchen floor.

Exhibit C: Less than ten minutes after picking tiny shards on porcelain off the kitchen floor I opened the fridge only for a FULL UNOPENED BOTTLE OF PINOT GREGIO (rrp of ten English pounds) to roll forward, off the shelf and down onto the same floor, smashing in an orgy of wine and glass.
I almost cried.

Exhibit D: Also this morning my BBC ID badge threw itself from its lanyard (first time I have ever typed that word) onto the floor of a busy Hammersmith & City Line train without warning.

So the force is strong today.

Either that or I have a poltergeist.
Or am just very clumsy.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

A free paper has left me paper free

2009-11-26T19:26:00.002Z

Since the Evening Standard became a free-sheet and the Londons Lite and Paper became no more I have found it difficult to get hold of any paper in the evening.

The crux of the problem is that to get hold of the paper I have to actually go into a shop, pick it off the shelf and walk out with it.

And I really don’t feel very comfortable doing this.
I know it is free paper that you don’t have to pay for, but the fact I am walking out of a shop with something without paying for it feels… well… wrong.

I don’t know why the publishers didn’t just employ the same immigrants who used to hand out the Lite and Paper to do the same with the Standard.

Anyway, all that means that I am left without paper on the way home.
Left alone with my own thoughts, left wondering how many of the people with whom I am sharing a carriage would be missed if they never returned home that day, left deciphering the airport codes on the Heathrow bound baggage.

And I don't like.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Fair's fair

2009-11-24T20:35:00.004Z

So what is the deal with Fair Trade? Fair on whom, is probably what we should be asking ourselves.

* Is it fair to disincentivise efficiency by guaranteeing a price well above the market rate?

* Is it fair to encourage more production of already over produced staples?

* Is it fair to make producers to become reliant on only one purchaser for their magic beans?

* Is it fair to make me pay ten pence more on a cup of coffee under the notion of it being ‘fairtrade’ for only one pence of that to actually make it to poor farmers?

* Is it fair to tell people that the average worker in bongo-bongo land only earns the equivalent of a dollar a day, without going into the relative purchasing power parity of the currencies? (for all we know you might be able to buy a mansion with a couple of dollars in whereeverthefuckia)

Nah, the only thing it is fair on is the conscience of the cappuccino sipping guardian readers who buy it.

Plus I like to taste blood, sweat, toil and tears in my coffee.
Not literally. Obviously.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Oh say can you see...

2009-11-19T20:43:00.009Z

I love the Marseillaise. That is what a national anthem should be.
Anything that mentions "bloodied banners" and "slaughtered sons and wives" is okay by me.
It is so much better than God Save the Queen.

We really do have a very poor excuse for an anthem.
The words are not even about the country, or the people. Judging by the title of the song the plot seems to be about an octogenarian over-privileged lady being saved by a probably fictional character. The rest of the country can go to the dogs.
We could be invaded, enslaved or wiped out entirely but all is OK if the Queen is sitting on a Caribbean island earning 20%.

It has been a while since we have had a war with the French, and judging by European history we are well overdue for one, but when it happens I would be inspired so much more by

“Allons enfants de la Patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé!”,

than the dirgy

“Gaaaard saaaave aarrrre graaaacious queen”
We mean it man.

But even though it is bad, at least with our anthem we can all join in.
The American anthem has the rousing tune and inspirational words every good anthem should have but unfortunately this is all negated by the awful renditions of it Americans seem to love. An anthem should be song to unite a nation in one voice, perhaps on the battlefield or at some kind of sporting event.

It should not be an effing X-Factor audition.

Of course it is funny to laugh at other cultures, but I really don’t know how anyone could find Mariah’s warbling inspirational. Plus it is impossible to sing along too.

This sounds like it should be over end credits of a Disney film.
As a rule no-one should ever be able to dance to a national anthem. And should never include "clap your hands' y'all". This is a worse attack on America's values than 9/11.

And this doesn't sound like the same song.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

I am just browsing, thanks

2009-11-18T21:02:00.002Z

I am fed up of being approached by people who work in customer service asking me if I need any help or if I am looking for anything particular.
Here is a useful piece of advice for you; 99% of people don’t need any help and are not looking for anything in particular, or, if they are, they would like to find it by themselves.
And if I happen to be the one person in a hundred who would like your help then I will come to you.
I am not scared to ask.
I don’t need to be prompted.
Leave me alone.

This is why I try to shop online. In the privacy of my own living room I can sit in my underpants shouting obscenities at internet when I get my Verified by Visa password wrong again and the only person that has to witness it is my wife rather than a shop full of morons.
Shopping online is how shopping should be.

I cannot understand why there is still a demand for actual shops and the inevitable interacting with other humans that goes with them.

Come the revolution and it will all change. And the inquisitive shop assistants will be the first against the wall.

Actually, I will show a little humanity here and say I do feel sorry for the poor people who work in shops. I do know it is not their choice to approach shoppers and ask them if they need help.

It is the people who run shops who are the real villains of the piece.
They seem to think that is productive and acceptable for their staff to bother members of the public who were happily minding their own business up until that point.

The poor minimum wage saps on the front line are merely just following orders.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Yesterday was my birthday...

2009-11-17T21:06:00.003Z

I share my birthday with the odd combination of people.

Highlights include;

Emperor Tiberius,
Fascist Oswald Mosley,
Burgess Meredith, who played Rocky’s Trainer,
Jocky Willie Carson,
and mental boxer Frank Bruno.

It is like the worst ever line up for Tonight with Jonathan Ross.

Mainly because three of them are dead so they wouldn’t have many anecdotes.

My birthday is also, apparently, International Day for Tolerance. That seems somewhat ironic.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

The Sun doesn't shine for me

2009-11-10T21:23:00.004Z

Something is angering me.

This is.

For those of you who are too lazy or morally opposed to click into The Sun’s website it is the story of the Grieving Mother of one of Our Boys^TM who wasn’t happy with the spelling and presentation of a commiseratory letter she received from our Prime Minister. So she told The Sun.

As a man with poor spelling and handwriting myself I can sympathise with Gordon Brown’s disability. As a result I would always choose to type a letter rather than handwrite one, but for Gordon that could have easily come across as impersonal so it wasn’t an option for him.

There is no obligation for a Prime Minister to write to the family of every killed soldier – this woman should be grateful that the PM takes time to do this for each and every bereaved family. Read what he said – it is really from the heart. I am no fan of Brown but I think the letter showed a real human side to him.

But what makes this whole non-story even worse is the next chapter.

As a result of the above “outrage” the PM phoned Mrs ~~James~~ Janes to discuss her concerns, spoke to her for 13 minutes (which is a significant length of time for someone with a country to run) all the while she was secretly recording the conversation. This recording was handed over to the Sun who have released for public consumption and dissection.

Let me remind you that this was private conversation.

Aren’t there laws against that?

I am sure we can all agree that bereaved parents are both annoying and irrational in equal measure (Sara Paine, the McCanns, any of these military parents who appear on the news media – more on them later) but we can forgive them.

I can forgive Mrs ~~Jones~~ Janes because she has suffered a loss and for each parent who want their relatives to simply rest in peace there are always ten more who want what they refer to as "justice".

But what I cannot forgive is The Sun for exploiting the grief of this poor woman in order to take cheap political shots, and, ultimately, to sell papers.

If you want insults to war dead then take a look at the banners down the left hand side of the Sun’s website. Offering Page Three Girls A –Z and X Factor Exclusives next to stories about Our Boys^TM dying in the middle-east like they are part of the same entertainment world is pretty low if you ask me.

But the whole war reporting thing is getting to me in general.

Yes, stories about what Our Boys^TM are up to in our next unwinnable war are definitely newsworthy but is it news to have daily interviews with friends and family of the deceased?

I don’t really blame the families themselves but do our news bulletins really need to feature the tear-filled faces and stories of widows and bereaved parents of soldiers every day.

Yes “little Jonny” may have had a “heart of a lion” but is it news? I acknowledge it is pretty impressive that someone who had undergone an unprecedented heart surgery such as that had managed to make a career as a soldier, but enough already.

I know I am speaking the unspeakable by not fawning with deference and respect for Our Boys^TM but I am sure I am not the only person who thinks that by getting killed soldiers are just doing their job.

Yes it is sad that a father/husband/son is killed in a far away country of which we know little but how come no-one is questioning what type of person chooses to leave their child/wife/family to join the army and risk dying in the first place.

Parents of Our Boys^TM are forever telling us how proud they are of their sons. I tell you that if any of my children were to join the army I would be devastated. I would much prefer them to get a proper job, one which lets them give a month notice to quit, that any foreign travel was limited to the developed world and that carry a minimal risk of death.

Even if they my children were intellectually sub-par, like most of our squaddies seem to be, then maybe they could become a builder or something.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Lighting the way

2009-11-08T22:00:00.004Z

Last week the light bulb in our hallway went.
“No problem”, I hear you say, “just replace the bulb, Mike, you idiot”.

Unfortunately, that is easier said then done.

You see when our flat was built three years ago the builders, like the builders of all new build properties are obliged to, put in special light fittings.
These light fitting are designed to take only energy saving light bulbs. But not just any energy saving light bulbs. They take a very special kind of three pronged bayonet light bulb called a “BC3”.

A BC3 next to a normal bulb

This special kind of light bulb is not available on the High Street, but has to be ordered from the internet for the approximate price of eight English pounds per bulb.

Thanks to this government legislation home builders are legally obligated to put in a certain number of light fittings than cannot take normal light bulbs. Under the guise of saving the planet the government are leaving people with no choice but to pay over the odds for a niche product.

And I, for one, resent this.

What if I was an old person with no access to or inclination to browse the internet for bulb research and purchase? I would be literally left in the dark.

How many old people are going to have to fall down the stairs before the powers that be decide this policy is just stupid?

To be honest I am not a big fan of energy saving light bulbs in general. They save energy because they are much less bright that normal light bulbs. It is not my imagination that the dull light from these bulbs lacks the sharpness and luminosity of normal incandescent bulbs. In fact, a consequence of this poor quality lighting is that every night we are forced to have three lamps and two ceiling lights in our living room. All of these are probably producing the light of one normal light bulb, but use more energy.

But unfortunately all of our futures will be a little darker as regular incandescent will be banned in 2011. At least regular two pronged energy saving bulbs are cheap (12 for 99p in 99p Stores at the moment) but this does me no good as THEY WON’T FIT MY LIGHTS.

Well, I solved the problem by rewiring the offending light fittings this afternoon. And am now basking in 100 watts of incandescent light.

Take that, society.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

This is an old revision of this page

2009-11-05T22:00:00.002Z

While watching ITV’s coverage of the Champions league last night it struck me that Marcel Desailly seems to be shrinking.
At the peak of his career he was a man mountain of a centre back. But last night he looked like a shadow of his former self.

In fact he looked like a mini-me version of the 1998 Desailly.

Look how much smaller he is that Andy Townsend.

According to Wikipedia Desailly is 6 foot 2 and Townsend 5 foot 11, but Andy Townsend’s Wikipedia entry is notoriously unreliable.

I mean how could they remove my assertion that he was famed for his use of contact lenses as a player simply because I didn’t cite a source?

The reason that I didn’t cite a source was because I couldn’t find one, but at least I tried.
Sometimes I think that they don’t give anecdotal evidence the clout it deserves.
I mean wouldn’t the world be a more magical place if we all knew the real reason behind Evan Davies’ wonky eye?

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Jimmy Carr-bombed

2009-11-04T22:00:00.001Z

I got confused between this story and this story and thought that Jimmy Carr had been caught pissing on an amputee soldier.

One of my favourite JC jokes;

"I live near a remedial school. There is a sign that says, slow... children. That can't be good for their self esteem. But look on the positive side, they can't read it."

It is funny that nobody complained about that at the time. Seems like disabled kids are fair game but disabled soldiers are not.
And that is racist.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

That's Asda price

2009-11-03T21:25:00.005Z

Let me tell you about the eighth circle of hell.

In Dante’s Inferno this circle is reserved to punish those who commit deliberate knowing evil.
It is divided into different ditches with each class of the fraudulent being punished in a different way for eternity in each ditch.
Pimps are whipped by Demons.
Flatterers are steeped in faeces.
Corrupt priests are buried head first and their feet set on fire.
False prophets have their heads turned backwards and cry so many tears they cannot see.

You get the picture.

And, yes, all are pretty bad.
But Dante never had to do a big shop in my local Asda. Otherwise he would have had that in there somewhere too.

I can safely say that it is the worst place on earth, not only now but in history of our planet.

Black Hole of Calcutta? Easy
The trenches of Ypres? Peasy
Building a bridge over the River Kwai? Japaneasay.

Now I am a big fan of supermarkets. There is little more pleasurable than doing a shop in a pleasant supermarket. But Asda Hounslow is anything but that.

Why?

• You need a pound coin for the trolleys. I never have one because I like to spend my money on nice stuff not trolley deposits, so I end up having to carry a basket containing several tins of tomatoes, several more bottles of wine, a leek, celery, fresh basil and parsley, washing tablets, 500g steak mince, weighing my arm down to such an extent that my right arm is now actually longer than my left. How much trolley theft goes on these days anway?

• The meat counter is Halal only. Now I am all for the Muslims. They are a good bunch and never do anyone any harm, but I want sausages from a counter not from a packet.

• If you want to have a social gathering and a chat with a friend I suggest a living room, coffee shop or an open space of some kind. I do not suggest an already too narrow supermarket aisle when both of you have trolleys the size of houses and too many children.

• The building is too damn small for both the population it serves and the number of aisles they insist in squeezing into the building. This causes a number of bottle-necks, most notably by the checkouts. The gap between the check outs and the nearest aisle is barely one and a half trolley lengths. This means that when the queue is long than two shoppers (naturally avec gigantic trolleys and children) it blocks the exit from the aisle nearest the checkout.

Not nearly enough room

• Customers have to validate their parking but only about a third of checkouts have a machine to do the validating. This cause a lot of time being wasted in the passing back and forth of parking tickets.

• Customers who clearly have no job (and I can tell this from appearances only – it is a gift I have) insist on shopping between 6-30pm and 7pm, the same time that people on their way home from contributing to society also do their shopping.

• I make sure I have enough cash to complete the purchase of my selected goods before attempting to do so. This is what any right minded person does. What people who shop at Asda Hounslow do is choose a seemingly random selection of products (three packs reduced bananas, two packs reduced gammon, two bottles of whiskey, four Mr Muscle Oven Sprays) and hope they have enough money. Which they never do. And then the poor checkout assistant has to ring for a supervisor to void whatever transactions are necessary to get the price down to whatever level they can afford. This is not a souk and you not in Morocco. Comprend prix fixe?

Yes, this is normal shopping.

• Or some people seem to have the habit of attempting to pay with some kind of credit card that perhaps may only be valid in the Islamic world. I mean, what type of credit card has the holder’s photo on it?

• £1.42 each or two for £3? That isn’t a good deal.

• A few weeks ago I bought some Salt ‘n’ Shake Crisps and they were months past their sell by date. Months.

But what makes matters worse is that there no alternative within miles. This god-awful store has a local monopoly.
You know that footage of the Soviet Union with people queuing for bread? Well I experience it three times a week in 21st century London, only much more annoyingly.
Yeah I could go to the Tesco Metro in Hammersmith I pass on the way home but I have already spoken about that.

Actually Tesco have applied for planning permission to build a new store a hundred yards from this Asda. And I, for one, am supporting them.
In fact I have the full intention of writing to Asda making some of the above points to them (though admittedly less profanely) and warning them if they don’t up their game they risk losing my precious business forever.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

This is a new Houns-low

2009-11-01T18:58:00.009Z

Yesterday I was very disappointed to learn that Pizza Express in Hounslow is no more.
This was what greeted us today.

What makes this especially galling is not that a good restaurant is gone from our nearest high street but that the only restaurant is gone from our nearest high street.

Yes, sure, we have the Nandos, and the faux Nandos Frangos but both if these are establishments where you have to order at a till and pay when you order. To me this is barely one step up from McDonalds.
For me a restaurant is somewhere where a waitress takes your order and brings you your food and where you settle the bill at the end of the meal.
Pizza Express is the only place in Hounslow that meets these criteria.
Sorry, I meant was the only place.

Admittedly Pizza Express was very much out of place in TW3. The most middle class of all pizza restaurants trapped in between an ethnic grocery store selling vegetables only normally available in Islamabad and intimidating coffee shops jam-packed full of middle-eastern men shouting at each other in an unknown tongue.

So what does that leave us with on Hounslow High Street? Well, for starters it is the only place I have come across that has two pound shops, two 99p shops, a 98 pence shop and a 90 Pence + shop.
Every other shop has annotated signs. What was once Shoe Express, now has a hand made sign placed over the word “shoe” making it read Carpet Express.

And all these pop up shops (as well as probably not being VAT registered) have stalls out front selling phone cards for cheap phone calls to the Indian sub-continent or a substance called Crazy Corn (though if it was really crazy it would be spelled with a K) which smells worse than Auschwitz.

Yeah. So I now every time we want (or need!) to go out for a meal we are faced with bus ride to Brentford, Teddington, Chiswick, Twickenham, Richmond or Kingston.
This displeases me.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Going postal

2009-10-29T19:06:00.005Z

So we are at the start of three more days of industrial action by the postal workers.

And my view of the situation will not surprise any of you, dear readers. But I what I won’t do is let that stop me from sharing the reasons I disagree with this action, and with union action in general;

Lack of progress for society

The specifics of this dispute seem to revolve around a “walk sequencing machine”. This new piece of technology reduces the need for as many postal workers, thus leading to redundancies and lower costs which should mean either a reduction in the cost of stamps (surely a good thing?) or generating bigger profits for Royal Mail all of which get fed back into the treasury’s tax kitty (another good thing?).
Obviously the Communication Workers Union don’t agree that either of these are good things.
It seems to me that most trade unions are against technological progress. They are essentially modern day Luddites, and if an equivalent of the CWU were around in the 19^th century the industrial revolution may not have happened.

In the public interest?

Yes I know what you are going to say – that unions are there to protect their members rights, so why would they be in favour of potential job losses? This is a fair point but what really annoys me is that they always try to sell their disputes and subsequent strike as being somehow in the public interest.
When, in reality, they are not.
They just piss off the public.

From a free market perspective

I see the labour market as exactly that, a market. There are employers who buy (demand) labour from workers who sell (supply) it.
The equilibrium where supply and demand meet is price.
The trouble with unions is that they effectively become a cartel on the supply side of the equilibrium, skewing the price in the market.

In, for example, the grocery supply market if Tesco, Asda and Morrison’s joined up together an agreed not sell bananas for less than a 50 pence each then, upon prosecution, each of them could be fined up to ten percent of their worldwide turnover. Lefty social commentators would be up in arms.

But if the employees of Tesco, Asda and Morrison’s joined up together and agreed not to sell their labour for less than £6 an hour the same lefty commentators would be hailing them as champions.

But what is the difference?

Is there one?

The price someone is paid for their labour should be decided by supply and demand, not by the strength of a union in that particular sector.

Get a new job

Unions are always complaining about the employers doing something or other they don’t like. It is almost like they believe the employers are there for the benefit of the workers, not the other way around.

If I was unhappy with my job, felt under threat of redundancy, was bullied by management, felt underpaid or wasn’t happy with my terms & conditions, what would I do?
I would do what any sensible person would do. I would look for a new job.
We live in a wonderful world today. We have free movement of labour. I could get a job anywhere in Europe without a work permit. I have lived in the north, south, east and middle of

England

already in my life. So here is a radical idea for these people who join unions because they hate their jobs and complain about their “treatment” or pay or conditions – rather than trying to change how your current employer acts why not get a job somewhere else? Somewhere that treats you as you would like to be treated. Or if that place doesn’t exist go into business yourself.
If everyone did that then the market would dictate that the original employer would have to change how they operated.
Sure, I have had shit jobs in the past, and you know what I did? I didn’t try to change that job to make it better. I got a different job. A better one.
One of the problems with this country is that a lot of places (probably ones in the north) have generations of people who work (if they work) their whole life in the same factory as their fathers and grandfathers did. And they think this factory somehow owes them something.
Here’s a newsflash fellas, they owe you jack.

So quit moaning, and get on with life. If you are fed up with your job, get a new one. Have a bit of ambition to live somewhere different and do something different to what your parents did.
Don’t try to take a sad job, and make it better.

It is always the public sector

This is yet another argument against the public sector running service. Royal Mail has a monopoly on letter delivery for personal customers, leaving the public with no alternative when industrial action occurs. If Royal Mail was a real rather than a faux company, with shareholders and commercial pressures to appease then I think both sides would have to settle their differences by now, because the public would be deserting for their competitors in droves.

Ironically, the mere threat of privatisation itself can lead to strike action.
And do you know why? Because these public sector workers are firstly worried about having to work (and I mean really work) for a living and secondly they are worried they their oh so privileged position as having the whole of society over a barrel when it comes to strike action will be lost.

How do I show my lack of support for a strike?

People who, for what ever deluded political belief, support striker can show their support by beeping their horn as they pass a picket.

But there is no way to passing motorists to show they don’t support the strike.

I suggest we introduce a new system where they flash their lights. Or boo at them.

Or, failing that, write a blog about it. Yeah, that’ll work.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Fanning the flames

2009-10-26T20:17:00.003Z

My aim in creating this blog was to have a public deposit for some of my writings in the vain hope that someone like The Spectator would find it in cyber space and like it enough to offer me a lucrative job as a columnist.

But no.

Instead I have become the victim of an orchestrated flaming campaign by, as far as I have managed to work out so far, a community (?) on livejournal.

Obviously all the comments I have received so far have been spinelessly anonymous, but they seem to centre on my receding hairline.

Ouch.

I wonder about people sometimes. Through tracking tools on several of my web presences I have worked out that one of these flamers must have got my name from my blog, googled it to find my flickr, from there found Becky’s flickr and searched through that for a bad picture of me, downloaded it FLAGRANTLY INFRINGING COPYRIGHT in order to create this wonderful surrealist depiction of me.

Some people clearly have too much time on their hands.

Would it be petty of me to report them to “tinypic.com” for infringing my wife’s copyright?

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

I predicted a riot

2009-10-23T11:41:00.006+01:00

As you may or may not have been aware there was a bit of a barney in W12 last night.

The good news was that I work in the White City building which is a hundred yards further up Wood Lane than TVC where the great unwashed were gathering and protesting.

The bad news was that I had to get past the crowds of dreadlocks and placards to get to Wood Lane tube station in order to get home.

Quite how I ended up trapped in a dead end road with only a Thin Blue Line separating me from a baying mob of hippies, socialists and, for some reason, unions until last night I don’t know.

I felt like a scab during the minors strike.

Or maybe British soldier in Iraq.

Anyway, here is the BBC news footage of me bravely running away from trouble, gallantly protecting my assistant Sarah.

We are the two who walk to the right of the police van.

I like how the police seem to appear from nowhere.

Oh, and I also like how they cut from the back of Griffin’s head to the back of mine.

Here are my photos from behind the police line, followed by the others from of the protest after we escaped.

My favourite is the guy with the Tesco bag.

I haven’t seen so many wasters since the last (and only) time I have been to Camden.

They really don’t do themselves any favours with their personal grooming or attire.

And, precisely, why were they protesting against the BBC? No-one has given me a satisfactory answer on that yet. Yes most right-minded people agree that Griffin is either odious, idiotic, or both.

And, yes, him personally the party he leads do deserve to be protested against, but for making the decision to invite Griffin on the BBC (for once) didn’t deserve the scorn that was poured on it

I wonder what these protesters would think if the BBC made an editorial decision banning Hugo Chavez or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from their airwaves? I bet they would be the first taking to the streets complaining about freedom of speech.

Double standards, my unwashed friends.

So onto the actual programme.

And Griffin was bad. Really bad.

And inarticulate, confused, incoherent, irrational. And uncharismatic.

For a Cambridge graduate he seems pretty dumb.

But that said, and as entertaining it was seeing him floundering, the programme could have been better.

Too much time was spent on Griffin and the BNP’s policies. Too much quoting his previous speeches and comments back at him and asking him to respond.

Question Time should be about asking politicians and opinion-makers their thoughts on the news stories of the day.

I guess it was a symptom of the programme itself being the lead news story of the day, but the programme could have been controlled better by Dimbleby.

It did turn into a bit of a witch hunt against Griffin and, as much as he deserves it, it content suffered as a result.

Whilst they were talking about the Muslim faith, I would have liked someone to ask about the Hijab given Jack Straw’s comments about it in the past.

I would have liked a postal strike question.

I will end to two further observations.

Has Germaine Greer been on the sun-beds because she was looking very tanned?

And why all the fuss about having the dad from Family Guy on the Question Time anyway?

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

This town is (not) coming like a ghost town

2009-10-22T20:55:00.004+01:00

When I take a day off during the week I imagine that the streets are going to be deserted.

Hounslow High Street will be like 28 Days Later.

The world will be my own personal oyster.

Tumbleweeds blowing down the street.

Maybe a few students or retired folk but no-one else that counts.

But no.

When I am out of the office on a weekday the streets are thronging with people. People of all ages, races and genders. People with push-chairs the size of small cars.

But who are these people?

What do they do, apart from provide me with annoyance?

These are not tourists. I know this because the only tourists that Hounslow gets are lost ones.

I also know these are not people like me. They are not talking a day off work to, I don’t know, maybe pick a parcel from a sorting office.

These are people for whom every day is a day off.

When I am out and about on such days I feel like I should wear a badge telling them “I am not like you. I am better.”

I should also get to join the “My time is more precious than yours” checkout queue.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Griffin vs free speech

2009-10-16T21:01:00.006+01:00

Each morning this week scruffy looking, spotty, dreadlocked, soap-dodging, student types have been stood on Wood Lane handing flyers like this to me and my fellow BBC employees on our way into work.

For those of you too to lazy to click on the above link, the flying is encouraging a protest against the decision to allow the racist leader of a racist party on the BBC’s leading television political debate programme.

Personally I think these protesters have the right idea in protesting but surely it should be directed at Griffin himself rather than the BBC for giving him a “mouthpiece”. Every leader of every elected political party in Britain has appeared on QT, so why should the BNP be treated any differently, simply because we disagree with their views. That, I am afraid, is a slippery slope.

The Beeb is legally obliged to be politically neutral, so banning a political party from their programme would surely be against their royal charter?

But there are wider implications to this than these insular BBC ones.

If the BNP and Griffin are treated differently from other parties then this will allow them to claim that they are being denied free speech and (rather ironically) to become martyrs for liberalism and give them some kind of moral high ground

A mystique will be created around them.

They will be able the bill themselves as the underdog that the mainstream doesn’t want you to know about.

This would be a Bad Thing.

To defeat people like this you need to engage them in debate, point out the flaws in their arguments, the hypocrisy of their views and the ignorance and backwardness of their opinions.

I bet 90% of the people who voted for them at the European elections have no idea what the BNP really stand for or believe. Next Thursday they will get the ‘truth’ direct from the horse’s mouth, and hopefully given enough BBC branded rope Griffin will hang himself.

On the other hand the traffic on Wood Lane is going to be effed up all day on Thursday, the tube station is going to be overcrowded at the point I am leaving work and there are going be police and people who look like big issue sellers everywhere.

This will displease me.

So, in conclusion, screw Griffin and the BNP’s right to free speech, I value a hassle-free journey home more.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Taking the Michael

2009-10-13T21:16:00.007+01:00

Michael has been the first or second most popular name given to male babies in the U.S. for each and every year since 1954.

It is also my own name.

But cannot stand every other person I have ever met called Mike or Michael.

Or Mick.

They are normally weird, annoying or wet.

I know what you are thinking. This is some kind of deep-seated psychologically-damaging jealousy harking back to the day I started school and I first met someone who shared my name and I realised for the first time that I wasn’t unique.

But I can assure you, it isn't.

No way.

This is peer reviewed yet to be disproved research.

Think about other people called Michael.

Michael Jackson
Michael Owen
Michael Schumacher
Michael Howard

Yes, all are successful, but all are a bit weird or wet.

Or there is something of the night about them.

Think of any other Michaels or Mikes you know.

Aren’t they a little odd?

They are, aren’t they?

The name Michael means “Who is like the Lord?”

Note the question mark.

It is important.

It changes the meaning from a potentially blasphemous statement (Michael : Who is like the Lord!) which would be cool, to a question that Sister Ignatius may have asked me at school (“Michael, who is like the Lord?”)

Which is just weird.

Who has a name as a question? No wonder we Michaels are all weird.

I not only hate every Michael I have met, but am also prejudiced about every Michael I have yet to meet.

Michaels I have known;

Mike B*** – Weird housemate from uni, who none of us knew and was drafted in at the last minute.
Michael T******** – Weird friend from uni who once, in confidence, told a friend that he had contemplated killing himself on the train tracks. How we laughed when that confidence was broken to us within hours.
Michael W****** – Someone from school who may have had learning difficulties
Michael C**** – from primary school. Grew up in a home. Was the original “flea bag”. Kids can be so cruel.

In fact, I would go as far to say that I have the wrong name.

My parent’s second choice was Daniel.

Dan.

You see that is better already, but still has the potential to be a bit wet.

I am going to give my son a cool name.

Something like Trent, or Burton.

Both of which, as well as being cool names, are also homages to my Midlands heritage.

Do you sometimes wonder if life would be different if you were given a different name by your parents?

If I had been called, for example, Danny would my life have turned out the same.

With exactly the same nature and nurture as I did have, would I be that different had I been called Brad?

Would people have reacted to me differently for the last 29 years if I was Sam?

If other people have the same prejudices about Michaels as I do then maybe I would have had a very different life had I been a Charles.

Shakespeare asked the rhetorical question, “Would a rose by any other name not smell as sweet?”

I think it would smell much worse had they been called a Michael.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Fashion Fail

2009-10-09T19:20:00.014+01:00

I am fully aware this may make me come across as quite superficial but I really dislike it when people don’t dress well.

And I am not talking about people don’t share my sense of style – I admire someone who makes an effort to look what they consider as good even if they epically fail in doing so.

What I hate is when people don’t make the effort at all.

It is really quite selfish of them.

As I am quite certain they don’t look in the mirror, the only people really effected by them dressing so poorly is people like me, the poor sap stood opposite them on the tube having to pick metaphorical holes in their clothing getting myself all annoyed.

In these days of disposable fashion, lack of money is no excuse for dressing poorly, it is just laziness. And selfishness.

I spend a lot of time (probably too much time) wondering where they manage to find some of their clothes. They look both new and out of date at the same time.

What thought process goes through an immigrant twenty-something’s head when they buy these clothes?

I have never seen clothes like this in any shop – they must hunt around from shop to shop for these really bad, ill-fitting clothes, see it and think “yes – this is me”.

Well it isn’t you. It isn’t anyone.

And while I am talking about fashion let me discuss a worrying new trend in clothing. Back in the day, when I was a mere slip of a lad people dressed their age.

I mean there were always a few muttons dressed as lambs but on the whole if you were 40 you dressed like a 40 year old should, if you were 30 you dressed like a 30 year old should and if you were 20 you… you get the pattern.

If I was to draw a rudimentary graph to represent this linear relationship it would look like this;

But in recent times people (and let’s face it I am really talking about women) are dressing in exactly the same way as each other, whether they are 14 or 40.

This trend really gets to be a problem when women who are old enough to be my mother are wearing skinny jeans and fitted tops that make the most of their breasts.

There is little more disappointing than checking out a hot chick from behind only to find facially she looks like Dot Cotton rather than Fearne Cotton.

Having this happen is far more disturbing than checking out a hot chick from behind only to find she is, mathematically speaking, young enough to be my daughter, which is also possible with this universal dressing.

If I was to graph this current trend it might look like this;

And I fully appreciate that I am 30 in five weeks time and I still dress like a 17 year old sometimes.

But I am a hypocrite, so it’s allowed.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Every Little Helps

2009-10-07T21:06:00.009+01:00

So last night I went to the Tesco metro in the Broadway centre in Hammersmith. Every time I go there I swear I never will again, but like the lure of the siren song, I can never resist for long.

I tend to go when the wait for the next Piccadilly line train is more than ten minutes. I think to myself that it will be an efficient use of time rather than spend said ten minutes listening to the female station announcer (who gets more authoritarian by the day) warning me to stand back behind the yellow line, I will do my shopping.

But I am never in and out in ten minutes. No matter how small the shopping list I always spend at least one half of one hour in there.

But last night was the worst ever.
The general public, being the sheep they are, all simultaneously decided the end of human civilisation as we know it was nigh, and stocking up on basic provisions was the done thing to do.

And before anyone points on the irony of me being one of these sheep I am fully aware I am being a total hypocrite.

So after a very efficient bit of shopping (4 x tinned tomatoes, 500g steak mince, one loaf bread, 2 x red onion, one fresh parsley plant, one fresh basil plant, one 500g fresh spaghetti, 1 pint semi-skimmed milk – all found and basketed in less than 7 minutes – an impressive feat in such a poorly laid out store) I set about trying to find the beginning of the queue, which was practically out of the door.

Now, in this particular branch they always have two queues – the longer one is for the regular normal checkouts; whereas the other, shorter queue is for the self-checkout.

Whenever I am presented with this dilemma I always make the same mistake, I always go for the self check-out lane, but let me take a moment to explain my decision making process to you all;

Although the shorter queue, the self check out queue, relies on the general public’s ability to operate the tills but for some reason, and despite my utter disdain for the public, I always have misplaced trust their ability do to this.

The longer queue can never be joined. It is not in my nature to do it. A bit like the reason I cannot say no to free stuff no matter whether I want it or not. It is not in my DNA.

So I join the self checkout queue.
And of course it moves at the pace of a geriatric snail.

People who clearly have jobs (and good jobs, which require suits and everything) cannot grasp the simple concept of operating a self checkout till.

This is the job that the very-slowest-of-the-slow-fresh-off-the-boat-from-a-country-that-doesn’t-even-have-money-or-electricity immigrant can do.

Yet whomever was in the queue ahead of me couldn't hack it.
If these people are not confident in their abilities to have the necessary basic motor skills required maybe they should have joined the other fucking queue.

If I have to hear “Unexpected item in the bagging area” again I will kill.

So after standing in the queue for about ten minutes I had a realisation.
A moment if clarity, if you will.
I had forgotten something.
My bit of shopping was not as efficient as I so cockily thought it was. I had not picked up the tuna sandwich filler.

What do you do in a situation like that?
The way I see it there are a few choices. I could;

Walk out the queue, get the sandwich filler, and rejoin the queue at the back with my tail between my legs, hoping no-one had seen.
I could ask the person next to me in the queue to “save my place” whilst I went to get the sandwich filler, and rejoin in my current position, but risk being thought of as a tit.
Throw my basket in the air, rushing out the shop laughing manically, pushing items off the shelves as I ran.

I settled on option b. But believe me I was quite glad to have the queuing time make my decision as it was a very close run thing.

But deciding on option b gave me another dilemma; which fellow queuer should I ask to save my spot. And I wasn’t stood in the best company.

In front of me stood a rather attractive girl, who may or may not have been of the Slavic persuasion. Now, I am sure her English would have been impeccable, but I was worried about her not understanding the concept of the place-saving. I mean they did the whole ethnic-cleansing thing a few years ago. They have a different moral code to the rest of us.

But behind me in the queue stood a dwarf.
An actual, real life dwarf.
As well as being a dwarf he may have been a bit mental as he had chosen to queue up to buy nothing but a simple mars bar, which would have been available in a million other shops with smaller or no queues.

After much mental anguish and physiological to-ing and fro-ing I decided on the dwarf.
And he was actually very accommodating.
I left the queue for no more that 30 seconds and made sure I made no eye contact with anyone else when I retook my place, for fear of getting a disapproving look.

Eventually a frustrating aeon later, I got to the front, and naturally worked the checkout machine flawlessly.

So here endeth this modern day fable but let’s take a moment to see what we have leaned;

The shortest queue is not always the quickest
Dwarfs are trustworthy, even if the are mentally disabled
Always thoroughly check your shopping list before thinking about queuing
Never underestimate the frustrating incompetence of the general population
Time is relative. An hour in Tesco Hammersmith can seem like the length of the first world war

I would like to think someone else is writing in their blog about some handsome well dressed knob-jockey of a twat who had to leave the queue in Tesco last night and had the cheek to rejoin in the same position.

But they won’t
Because I am better than them.

Or am i?

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.
If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.