Tony's Watergate

News of the arrest of Tony Blair's head of fundraising in the Labour Party, Lord Levy has raised the question of just how far up the tree the buck is going to stop in the "cash for honours" scandal, shock, horror, and whether or not Teflon Tony is facing his own personal Watergate. BBC link here.

The bottom line is that all political parties in the UK need to raise their own cash to fund their popularity campaigns, Labour are said to have spent £10 million just on billboard advertising at the last general election, which is strange as I can't recall seeing any of their adverts, so that was money well spent then.

The allegations centred on the chief fundraiser Lord Levy are that certain prominent business people were promised a medal or a title in the six monthly honours list if they donated substantial sums of cash to the Labour party, if its not illegal its dodgy and its one of the reasons why people regard the twice yearly announcements of medals and awards as a farce and a bit of a laugh.

Several members of the Labour party have been questioned by police, some under caution, some like Ruth Turner under arrest and snatched from her house in the early hours of the morning as if she was a real criminal instead of some high class street corner knock-off dvd seller, flogging off knighthoods for hard cash, allegedly.

Lord Levy is the highest one up the tree to be firstly questioned under caution and then arrested for requestioning, this time on the more serious allegation that he was involved in a cover-up and that a secret email system within the Labour party had had messages deleted from the record - conspiring to pervert the cause of justice is a far mroe serious offence than blagging money for promises and if true then its hard to see how Tony Blair will not have to carry the can in the same way that Nixon did for the 1972 Watergate scandal, where the cover-up became a bigger story than the actual misdemenour.

Could we yet see Tony Blair staring into a TV screen, slightly dishevelled, slightly unshaven, promising "My fellow Britains, I had no prior knowledge of the ..." ???

How much ?

Go on guess.

A standard size Snickers bar (not giant, not double pack, just standard size) and a packet of polo mints.

How much?

Westbound M62 Hartshead Moor Services, 10.30am this morning.

97p

The really stupid thing is - I paid.

Manchester gets the casino

There's a news item today that I just don't understand.

At 11am HM Government announced that the licence for the UK's first "Super Casino" would be granted to the bid made from the city of Manchester, which apparently came as a big suprise to the citizens of sleazy Blackpool who thought that their shit hole of a town had the required attributes to sustain an atmosphere of gangland violence and mob rule that goes hand in hand with casino's in works of fiction, and I agree with them.

Greenwich were also rather shocked that no-one else in the country wants to know about their fekkin dome anymore let alone play roulette in it, it really is about time that they tore it down and tore it up into pieces large enough to provide every Scout and Guide group with a jambouree tent.

But its not the location of the "super casino" thats puzzling me, its the concept of a "super casino". You see we have casinos a-plenty in this country and where a particluar city (like Leeds for instance) has created a demand for gambling tables, then more casinos have been built, we aren't really starved of casinos in this country - so why "super casino" ?

Well, apparently a "super casino" is one in which more than 1200 unlimited jackpot fruit machines, one armed bandits, pokkies or whatever other quaint nom-de-plume other countries have for the "put money in here, stare for a bit, put more money in here" machines.

Artists impressions show several floors full of gambling machinery, card and roulette tables, glitzy lighting, luxurious seating, hotels, fine restaurants, prostitutes, valet car parking for all the mercedes - actually they don't show the prostitutes in the artists impressions, but the rest of it looks very glitzy, very James Bond, very 1970's Martini advert.

And thats the bit that I don't understand.

I just don't understand where all of their customers come from, and I'm sure the place will be very popular, but where on earth do all of these fools and fekkwits live who will get dressed up for a night out at the "super casino", fill their wallets up with money from their own bank and credit card accounts, then walk in through the glitzy front door, look around and think "oooh this looks like a place that gives back more money than it takes off us"

I mean, who in their right mind believes that they will actually manage to walk away from a casino or bookmakers shop on any sort of consistent basis with more money int heir pockets than when they walked in ?

Obviously enough of them to make it worthwhile, never has the saying "a fool and his money are soon parted" been more true, nor "there's one born every minute", nor "look around you, you fekkwit, who do you think pays for all this gold and glamour ?"

An impossible task ?

Good Guy minister John Reid is still under pressure today, and will be for some considerable time as he continues in his quest to make The Home Office "fit for purpose".

He has likened the job to renovating an old house, you never know what problems are waiting for you until you start stripping off the old wallpaper, at the moment he hasn't even been into some of the rooms yet, let alone started removing wallcoverings - he is warning of more disasters in waiting.

His "Good Guy" image in the media comes from the fact that he is always ready for a quote and an interview and always tells it like it is, there is no hidden opinion, no problem wallpapered over with him, he's good for a soundbite, the press love him.

And so how hard is his problem, how difficult will it be for him to kick arse and get a massive government department "fit for purpose" ?

Well, it will be very difficult, if not impossible.

The problem with a government department is that they achieve nothing that is tangible.

Compare with the renovating an old building quote again - my background was in the building trade - when you start on a project you have something very tangible in front of you, a building, and something else very tangible is your quotation and order to do the job for a set price in a defined time and nowhere are timescales more imperative than in the building trade where one subcontractors half day delay can put the whole contract back by weeks.

If John Reid were in charge of a house renovation then he would be able to assess his progress on a daily basis and at the end of the contract he would know whether or not he had achieved his objective (ie is the house still standing) and he'd know whether he achieved it within the budget and whether or not he made a profit on the job - he would have a tangible way of measuring his own performance and all the sub-contractors under him in a tangible way.

Go back to a government office that has been run in a particularly wastefull and careless way for many years, maybe decades - you have your sub-contractors as different departments within that huge building, each of whom are run by civil servants who only know one way to run the department and do not take too kindly to a media friendly Scot coming in and telling them they are wrong, especially when he is so keen to tell the worlds press that they are wrong.

Out here in the real world employees jobs are rarely for life any more, most people will work for several employers during their life, only in the civil service do you regard your position in the office as set in stone, you're virtually unsackable if your job cannot be measured in any way and even if it can you tend to have an employer who would rather move you to somewhere else in the organisation than dismiss you - the most common cry in any civil service department is "think of the pension".

I have a friend who is a time served civil servant, 32 years at the desk, ten years ago he was offered a redundancy package that was far in excess of anything that he'd get out here in the real world, he was tempted and spoke to me of investing some of his money in my company and coming to work here as a partner, he was very keen on the idea in fact - but he changed his maind after a week or so of conversations with me when the realisation set in that out here in the real world you cannot depend on a salary every month, nor a pension scheme at the end of it all - you are totally responsible for bringing in the work, doing the work, completing the work to your clients satisfaction, and then most importantly getting paid for the work - only then can you pay yourself, your employees, the invoices for your vehicles, petrol, goods purchased, your tax bills, the office overheads, and maybe something for a pension scheme that is not guaranteed to pay you anything like a normal salary at some undefined point in the future.

How much easier is it to sit behind a desk, deal with work that someone else brings to you, draw your salary at the end of the month and have a guaranteed pension at the end of it all ?

Thats the attitude that is endemic in the system, that is what John Reid has to work with.

He has my sympathy, he has an impossible task.

Why, oh why do I do it ?

A lads get-together last night in The Fox.
A good turnout from the old football team, 20 or so old faces to catch up with - some looking distictly older than others even though we're all the same age, 50, and one looking spookily still only 30 years old, we suspect surgery but then again when he was 18 he always looked new-born.

Some divorced, some geting divorced, most with offspring, a few with grand-offspring, these gatherings happen too infrequently given that several of them live in other parts of the country now and one lives in Chicago, it was because he was visiting his parents here that last nights gathering was called for - his accent after 20 years in the windy city sounds plain daft.

And I drank too much beer.
And so 4.30am saw me hockling down the big white telephone, wondering why that burger I had yesterday lunchtime wasn't at all properly digested yet.

Why do I do it ?
I know I can't drink alcohol in quantity now
I know my limit is two pints of pub beer.
I know hangovers ensue if I drink even one canned beer.

But on New years Eve in the same pub I managed five pints with no ill effects.
So last night I had six pints.

No drunkeness, no staggering about, no slurred speach, I was fine.
Went to bed just after midnight, no spinning room.
4am awaken with the certain feeling that the liver has packed up and gone home, no more alcohol processing tonight old love, and we've still got a couple of pints in the stomach causing havoc.
The brain starts nagging, "you've got to get rid of whats left, I'll make your head hell in the morning if you don't"
And so you lie there and think "it'l be alright, I'll turn over and go back to sleep", and you turn over and it all sloshes from one side of your stomach to the other and the brain nudges you awake again and gives you one last warning, "get rid now or I'll make you do it"
And still you resist, but it won't settle.
And after 20 minutes of concentrating and willing it to go away, suddenly the alarms go off and you get the ten second warning to make it to the bathroom.
Muscles that you never knew you had project the unwanted stomach contents out into the pan and all you can do is crouch there and wait for it to stop, three and four times it repeats until surely there's nothing left.
And after it stops you're left exhausted, snot running out of every orifice on your face, even your eyes, but it suddenly feels much better, and you turn to an imaginary person in your head and tell them "I feel much better for that".

A hearty breakfast, lots of strong black filter coffee and I'm just hunky-dory this morning.

Why do I do it though ?

News Scratchings...

England Cricket Coach Apologises

England cricket coach Duncan Fletcher who is curently leading the England cricket team on a tour of repeatative arse kickings in Australia today apologised for coaching a team of non-cricket players and then selecting them to play for England, at cricket.

Yesterday a game that was supposed to be a day/night game (ie it starts in daylight and finishes under floodlights), was all over so quickly that they didn't have to switch the floodlights on and the last five England batsmen only scored seven runs between them.

But its ok Duncan, no need to apologise.

We all think its hilarious back here, when someone says "England Cricket Team" you should see how we laugh.
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News of the World in phone tapping shock horror

British sunday sleaze newspaper The News of the World senior royal reporter Clive Goodman was jailed yesterday for tapping the mobile phone accounts of three royal aides in an attempt to drum up stories for his shite newspaper editor, who also resigned in the scandal, shock, horror, heads must roll, tragedy.

There are two suprising facts hidden in this story, the first being the question "why ?" - why would anyone want to buy a newspaper on a sunday morning that contains details of where the Princes William and Harry are going to be next week, and the second being the wages that News International are prepared to pay for the privelidge of employing the "security expert" who helped Goodman to listen in on another persons voicemail messages - £105,000 per year plus £500 a week in "expenses".

If Rupert Murdoch is interested in intercepting my voicemail for me then I'll do a deal for around half that price.
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Nicole Kidman in Zombie Car Crash Horror

And in a complete non-entity of a story, well overpaid actress Nicole Kidman, who's claims to fame include, erm .......google it, was yesterday involved in a terrible, horrific, well bad car accident which resulted in, erm, a street light sustaining some minor damage.

Shown in all its spine-chilling, horrific, detail all across the news channels yesteday, viewers watched in horror and shock, with chilled spines, as the truck on which sat the car that dear Nicole was pretending to be driving with zombies a-plenty hanging off the roof, swerved around a Los Angeles street corner, skidded a litle bit, and hit a lamp post, which was broken.

Poor, dear Nicole was helped from the car, that is the car that hadn't actually hit the lamp post but which had been on the truck that hit the lamp post, thats the car that she was inside whilst lots of stuntmen zombies were on the outside, thats the Jaguar car thats built like a brick shithouse that she was inside and wearing a seat belt - she was helped gingerley (see what I've done there, ginger huh ?) into an ambulance and rushed to hospital for a checkover where nothing at all was found to be wrong with her.

So - News editors question to the reporter - "Where the fuck is the story then ?"
Answer - "There isn't one but the film company want to pay us some money to advertise their forthcoming shite film"
Reply from News desk - "Put it on the front page"

More Government ineptitude - or is it ?

Balls-ups within government departments are scarcely off the newspaper front pages these days, and this week has been no different.

John Reid is an unusual politician, like Gordon Brown he is a politician that most members of the public actually like and respect, he is a good guy and has earned a reputation as a trouble shooter within government, flitting from department to department kicking arses and getting things sorted - so they gave him the Home Office to sort out, and it needed sorting.

Within days of taking up his new office desk John Reid declared the Home Office "unfit for purpose" and confirmed the stereotype of a government department being bogged down with red tape and over-burdened with hapless pen-pushing civil servants who shuffle papers from desk to desk in an effort to escape notice and wait for their handsome retirement stipend, to be correct.

Earlier this week, and for the second time since he arrived at the HO, John Reid passed a decree that HM Courts should not send anymore villians to jail for the time being, as there is no more room at the inn for them, the prison cells are full to bursting and short of accidently shooting a few of them there is little chance of finding accomodation for miscreants anytime in the near future.

Of course it all gets a bit political then, take a look at the excellent Magistrates Blog for an idea of the machinations of the courtroom and criminal justice situation, but in a nutshell, judges don't like being told what to do, especially when they think they are right and see that the public will think they are wrong not to send everyone who appears before them to goal.

And so yesterday when Derek Williams appeared before Judge John Rogers QC on a charge of downloading child pornography, Judge Rogers made it abundantly clear that in releasing Williams on a non-custodial sentence he was doing so on the express instructions of Home Secretary John Reid, Pontious Rogers washed his hands of the outrage caused when releasing a sex offender back into his community by pointing at John Reid and shouting to the baying crowd, "He told me to do it".

And boy how the newspapers have reacted.

"Brainless" screams The Sun's headline with "Peado free thanks to Reid" as the tag.
"Joke Justice" bellows The Mirror using words like "pervert" and "fiasco" in its outraged storyline.
"Reid attacked over child porn ruling" even the normally staid BBC News website wades into the scrap


But - none of the news agencies are reporting one very pertinent fact this morning. I only heard it while a representative of the parole officers association was being interviewed on TV - the offence for which Williams was charged carries a recomendation of between six and twelve months in prison - and he has already served eight months in a remand jail waiting for the trial.

So in sentencing him to a further six months suspended, Judge Rogers has already taken into account the remand time and will have mentioned this in court during his summing up - but this only slightly important part of the story has not been told in any of the press reporting this morning.

Could this be because it spoils the whole "outrage and indignity" headline ?

"Judge Releases Pervert In Correct Decision Shocker" wouldn't sell many newspapers this morning would it ?

We get the press that we deserve.

Government will never solve anything

Two polarised news reports today show why Westminster is simply a House for Gobshites, a place where supposedly sensible level headed people gather together to talk nonsense and achieve little for five years, and then some of them are lucky enough to get to do it again for another five years, and so on...

News report #1 describes how, two years on from a declaration to halt the startling rise in obesity in young people, fookall has actually been achieved.

Yet another government commission (thats what government does well - it sets up "commissions" and "reports" really, really well) reports that "There is no clear leadership among departments who have been confused and dithering" and that clear guidance is needed and lots more money thrown at the issue.

Chairman of the committe Ed Leigh, on TV this morning, insisted that with a complete lack of any descernable data, government inspectors should go into schools, weigh these overweight pupils and bring the parents to account - he sounded like a very level headed person who you'd trust implicitly to look after your childrens health and not the sort of person who wishes to embarrass, shame and disrespect anyone for being overweight - a wonderful public servant, no really.

News report #2 describes how yet another government commission has come to the conclusion that children in schools should be taught compulsory lessons in "British values", whatever they are.

They suggest that these "British values" lessons should include such gems as our nations history (I thought they did that in "History" lessons) and our reputation for "tolorance and respect " and just when I started thinking about some of the things that our British ancestors did to peoples of other nations in building this nation and its reputation of tolorance and respect I actully do read that the commission is suggesting that "British" lessons should include topics such as the slave trade and its part in our empire building.


But I have a better idea - merge the two commissions together and put Ed Leigh in charge of the resultant waffle and bullshit report - teach tolorance and respect in schools by sending in the weighing scales police and forcing pupils to be weighed in front of their classmates who will all be allowed to point and make fun of the really fat ones and then maybe the black kids could be made to clear up afterwards.


With idiots like Ed Leigh working on our behalf in parliament we can thank god that these commissions and committees actually never achieve anything except write a couple of hundred pages of crap, which is then presumably shredded as none of their suggestions ever make it out onto the streets.

City flogs off its airport

First of all an explanation.
Yes I know that is not a picture of Leeds/Bradford Airport
But Google Images think that its a picture of Leeds Bradford Airport
So thats good enough for me.
Its Scarborough actually.

Leeds Bradford Airport is up for sale at the moment and current estimates are that it will fetch up to £150 million, which is good news for the citizens of both Leeds and Bradford as we each own 40% of the shareholding - the remaining 20% is owned jointly by the councils of Wakefield, Calderdale and Kirklees.

Of course being as very old as I am, I remember it when it was Yeadon Aerodrome and anything that flew out of it had propellors and not jet engines, as a young boy it was always our big adventure day to pack up some chocolate and a bottle of pop and ride your bike across the farmers fields to the airport (its about one mile away as the crow fly's) where you could stand at a viewing area and watch, well, watch aeroplanes fly to exotic places that weren't very far away as Yeadon Aerodrome wasn't very big in those days.

If you were very brave you would ride your bike around to the main road which ran across the end of the runway where you could sit on a low stone wall all of ten feet away from the runway and wave at pilots as they screeched to a halt just yards from your seat - the runway wasn't very long in those days either.

When the first jets started to land at Yeadon it was even more exciting to sit on the wall at the end of the runway, the jets needed every last inch of runway to land on and depending on which way the wind was blowing you could often see the whites of the pilots knuckles filling your field of vision as the nose of the BAC 1-11's stopped inches from your nose - if they were taking off from your end of the runway you'd often get a pilot to open his little window as they were positioning ready for take off just in front of you and he'd shout at you to bugger off or get fried in his jet exhaust - often was the time that we'd sit there holding up the flight until a security land rover would hurry across to clear us away.

Its all changed now, the runway bridges the main road and security fencing stops kids from sitting just yards away from where the big jets land, its a busy local airport and we in Leeds look to have a windfall of around £60million coming our way, some of which will be used (we've been promised) to build a concert and indoor sports arena for the city - unbelieveably the fourth largest city in the UK does not have an indoor arena (we've got an impressive outdoor one though) and so we regularly miss out on the top touring acts such as Kylie, WestLife and , erm scrap that plan for an arena will you ?

Theft and greed on the beach

TV News channels love this sort of story - the MSC Napoli, a huge container carrying cargo ship gets into trouble in the English Channel en route to South Africa and is deliberately beached off the Devon coast to stop it sinking in deep water, from whence around 200 containers fall off its deck into the sea and are washed up on a beach.

In a scene from a Disney pirate movie the populations of local villages, follwed half a day later by chancers from all over the country, arrive on the beach to break open the huge containers and see what they can snaffle before the police get there - at this point the TV News crews set up camp and film lots of jolly people driving pickup trucks onto the beach and making off with BMW motorbikes and , erm, well thats all really.

Full story here

About a dozen BMW bikes were snaffled from one container but for the majority of the folk on the beach there wasn't much else that could be gainfully hoisted away - thousands of boxes of nappies were scattered across the beach, there will be a hell of a shortage of nappies in South Africa in the coming weeks as hopeful Devon parents picked amongst the rubbish strewn beach to find a nappy that hadn't been ruined by imersion in sea water for 24 hours - its a wonder that the tide came in at all last night given the absorbtion power of the hundreds of thousands of Pampers that were lying around.

Good old GMTV were of course one of the first on the scene and in a nearby pub this morning spoke to three lads who had one of the motorbikes, they of course promised faithfully that they would report their find to the police whilst they sniggered behind their hands, as all property washed up on a beach in the UK is property of The Crown and should be reported to Her Majesty's Receiver of Wrecks - I bet he's sat in his office today staring at the phone wondering if it will ring at all.

Other than that the only other stuff that GMTV could find on the beach worth having was various assorted tractor parts, some wing mirrors and an airbag for a BMW car, all stuff which had been salvaged by a big daft looking lad who seemed quite pleased with his haul but a little unsure about what it was he'd got and what he was going to do with it - apparently someone is already advertising one of the BMW airbags on eBay, don't all rush at once to put bids in will you ?

Strangely enough the one thing that remains untouched on the beach is hundreds of huge barrels of sherry, probably because the police have been out telling everyone its dangerous chemicals - I bet the police christmas party this year will be a good one.

So thats the top and bottom of the biggest story on the UK TV News networks today, a beach covered in litter from pillagers and thieves and the news crews all waiting around for the police to come and fight with them to clear them out of the area - if there was owt worth selling on there the police would have cleared it days agao.

Iraq reporting and our attitudes towards the armed forces

I read on another American blog site last week that the rumours there were that here in the UK we are blaming our armed forces for the situation in Iraq and that servicemen who return to this country are being treated badly by the general population and worse, when they leave the forces they are denied public housing.

There may be some truth in that last bit as anyone who applies for local authority housing has to join a waiting list and is assesed on a "needs" basis - an unattached male in his late twenties wouldn't be at the front of the queue regardless of what his previous occupation was - and a quite shocking statistic that I read in the authors preface to a novel recently is that up to a third of all homeless people on the streets of London are understood to be ex-servicemen.

Be that as it may, the rest of the rumour is incorrect and some way off the mark, I haven't seen any evidence in any of the written or televised press of anti-armed services reporting, on the contrary all of the reporting that I have seen has been full of praise for our armed services and acknowledgement that they are carrying out an impossible task in the face of very hostile opposition, without complaint or argument, simply because they were told to be there and thats what they do - they follow orders.

Its the ones making the orders that are under fire in the press, the politicians who took the decision to follow George Bush into Iraq and Afghanistan and the political wrangling within the Ministry of Defence that allows front line soldiers to go into combat situations without the correct equipment, getting themselves killed on our behalf in the process - the politicians take the flak in this country, and rightly so, they have yet to face the consequences of their decisions at the ballot box.

To make the point this weekend this quite remarkable news report came out of Afghanistan and is typical of the sort of reporting that we see on our TV's and in our newspapers, I recommend that everyone watches it and prays that they never find themselves in the position of the parents of L/Cpl Mathew Ford or indeed the father of one of the marines involved in the rescue who must surely be wishing that his son wasn't quite so much a hero.


EDIT : The video link above is on the BBC web site and as such might be moved around in its location at the whim of the BBC - this is a link to a text news report of the incident.

Scraps of paper

Scraps of Paper - Eric Bogle
These days my life seems somehow like a tired old cliché
A bad movie scene that just goes on and on
With dialogue like " It's so sad how fast time slips away"
Or "You never really miss them until they're gone"
Funny how those old clichés come true
I never thought I'd miss him, but I do

My father died in summer, and all he left behind
Were little scraps of paper, little scraps of rhyme
I read them and felt something inside me break
And angrily cried out "Too late, too late!"
Surely there must be something better?
Surely there must be something better?

He and I were always strangers, searching for someone
I was looking for a hero, and he a friend
So while I searched for my father, he was looking for his son
So strangers we remained until the end
But the man who wrote his heart into those rhymes
I know he could have been a good friend of mine

So I sit here where he lived and died as the ghosts around me weave
And evening shadows lengthen on the wall
And in this dark and empty room it's so easy to believe
That he never lived at all
But the little scraps of paper in my hand
Proved he lived to me - the father and the man

© Eric Bogle

Been playing that song a few times tonight and apart from it being a very poignant and very beautiful song it also easy for me to relate to - and its time to write in the autobiography about how my own dad died.

We didn't have a father/son relationship, my brother had a father/son relationship with him but at the time that I should have been having one I was always working away, from the age of 18 I only ever came home at weekends and then after a few years not at all - when I did eventually come back to live in Leeds at the age of 28 it was as his business partner not his son.

And thats how it worked for us, we worked together all day long with no favours given and none expected, we were critical of each other in turn and we often had opposing views on how the business should be run, sometimes those differences would never be resolved.

I had a rule though, still do, when the office door closes and I come home then my home life starts, I never bring work home and hate to talk about work when I'm at home, hate people ringing me about work at home won't even speak to Suzanne about work at home - and she is now a partner in the business too.

My dad didn't work like that though, after he'd given up golf he didn't realy have any other interest apart from the business that he had created, even when he'd retired and I was buying the busines from him in monthly installments he still came down to the office and found work to do - and all this time he would come around to our house at nights and he'd ask me business related questions, never father/son stuff, always business - I hated it, but never told him so.

So that was our relationship for 15 years, when his car pulled up outside our house on an evening or weekend my heart would sink and I'd pretend to be busy doing something else. Then he died at christmas 1998 and I came to realise that it was probably my fault that we never had the mythical father/son relationship, if I'd told him about the rule at home then I'm sure he'd have found plenty of other stuff to talk about, plenty of other reasons to come around to our house, not least his two grand-daughters who he gave money to without question, and those two little sods never failed to ask him.

He and I were always strangers, searching for someone
I was looking for a hero, and he a friend
So while I searched for my father, he was looking for his son
So strangers we remained until the end

Very close to home those words...
And now we are nearly ready to sell his business
But more about that later.

Looks like we made it...

Well, we got there today, attempt number three.

Drove right around the car park again with no spaces to be seen and was just about to abort the mission again when...right there in front of me, and old codger puled his Nissan Micra out of a space, I had to brake to prevent running into him or else I'd have driven right past and pretended I didn't see the space.

So what was it all about then ?

She "just wanted to look"

What is this game that women play ?

"Just want to look" is no good reason to force a man to drive right the way across Leeds for three weekends in the vain hope that there may be one parking space free.

"Just want to look" is no good reason to spend an hour inside the store doing the Ikea shuffle, the old peoples walk where your left foot moves no more than its own length in front of your right foot, then repeat right to left several thousand times around the store, following the yellow brick road and the person in front, all stopping whenever someone twenty yards in front wants to point at something or feel some net curtains.

We left having bought some cups for 19p each, thats all.

Its a miracle !!!

Huzzah !!
Its a miracle !!!
We're back on line at the office - BT relented
I've still cancelled their service from the 31st though.

But thats not the miracle, oh no.
This is the miracle.

The bloke who was confined to a wheelchair in 1994 but who has been running competitvely since 2001 and has done several marathons, why they had to jail him yesterday I do not know.

OK, so he was drawing invalidity benefit and had told the DSS that he couldn't walk more then 55 yards and was permenantly confined to a wheelchair, but still...

Haven't they heard of miracles ?
Aren't our courts based on a belief in God ?
Don't witnesses have to swear on the bible any more ?

Surely a system that promotes the bible as all that is good and proper would believe a defence of The Almighty giving a crippled man the ability to selectively run marathons whilst still confining him to a wheelchair for the rest of the time in some sort of bizarre punishment ritual ?

I know I would if I were the judge.

Just how long do you need to be in to win ?

Remember back in November when I sent off my 1950's Premium Bond to the National Savings and Investments people ?

It was bought for me when I was nobbut a wairn by GeorgeJews, my dads elderly billiards mentor (full story on the jerrychicken biog site) and has been in the monthly draw since 1959 - thats a draw every month where thousands of numbers are extracted from the database by a steam driven government computer who's only task since 1957 has been to draw the numbers once a month.

The nice people at the NS&I place in Blackpol advised me that the bond was indeed registered to me personally, so that was a relief as I'd been worried that if it was registered to my dad then I'd have to share my fortune of all the wins down the ages with my brother, but now it was all mine.

Well they could have told me how much its won I thought, so I went onto the NS&I web site where you can type in your account number and check all of the prize draws since Noah was a lad, just what I need I thought, I'll do that straight away I thought, except that the nice people at the NS&I office hadn't told me my account number, bollax.

Its how civil servants work you see, I hadn't asked them for my acount number so they didn't tell me, I asked them if it was still a "live" bond and if it was in my name, they answered those questions but didn't then go on to think "well maybe he'l need his account number too".

So I worte to the nice people at the NS&I office in Blackpool again and this time I asked them for my account number.

The letter came back today - it tells me what my account number is.

The letter also tells me that my premium bond has not won anything.

So thats 48 years that its been in the draw and its won nothing, nada, zip, zippo, nilch, fook.....all.

I knew I was unlucky, if I play the national lottery I get excited if I get one number on my ticket, when the national lottery first started I had this great plan to buy ten tickets and put every numer in the draw on them so that I was bound to win something, after all if you've got all the numbers on yoru tickets then you must win something mustn't you ?

The answer is no, I won fook.....all that day too, I had six of the ten tickets with one number on each.

But surely, surely if you enter a numer in a prize draw and leave that number in the prize draw for forty fookin eight fookin years then surely, for christ sake, surely you have to win something ???

Even one pound would be a start, its cost me 60p in fookin stamps just to find out I've been conned for 48 years.

I wonder if the Guinness Book of World Records are interested in my feat ?

"The worlds unluckiest raffle ticket"

Yes, its a bit windy out there...

Following on from the "ITV News is sensationalist crap" shock, horror, dramatic revelation, we have high winds this morning in the UK.

"Big deal, so what, its January" I hear you say.

"Yes" I reply, "but these are, erm, big winds, rain, a smidgen of snow in the very far, far north of Scotland, terrible storms lashing the country, its not safe to go outside, lock your doors and windows and hide beneath the kitchen table..."

So says GMTV this morning.

GMTV, the morning tv franchise on the ITV channel has always led the way with sensationalist reporting and so it is with no suprise that we switch on this morning to find a whole plethora of reporters stood on seafronts and high streets in moderate wind and a bit of rain, trying to convince us that this weather is of armegedon proportions, "this wind", (reporter holds up wind meter as if to prove his case) "is gusting at nearly 70mph".

So thats a normal January wind then ?

Over to a reporter stood at the furthest north point of the very far north of Scotland and he's marvelling at the appearance of three snowflakes which, according to him, have drifted in the high street and will cause traffic problems this morning, "this is shocking weather" he informs us, shouting into the microphone whilst clutching his sou'wester to his head - I know, its shocking, snow in January, in Scotland, how awful.

Four tv crews are around the country this morning on GMTV, all trying to outdo each other with how bad the wind and rain is today, well folks, we've seen worse, what more can I say.

GMTV, a franchise of ITV, shocking us on a daily basis, for our own good.

Wanted - Story with dramatic headline

I need a story, a dramatic story with an equally dramatic headline to feed to ITV News, I just have this ambition to see a story of mine get the headline act on News at Ten.

It doesn't have to be true, it doesn't have to be feasible, it can be a story that even two year old kids in day care nursery will listen to then scream "bullshit" at the tv screen, it doesn't matter, if its dramatic and it has a dramatic headline then ITV News will publish.

Fellow Rhinos fan and blogger Michael over at "View from the bar" has described the current ITV News hypocrisy far too perfectly well for me to snaffle his lines, so have a read then come back...



...ok ?

Well they've gone one better than that, right here.

According to ITV some scientists in a self-proclaimed group called the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, (no, me neither), have nudged their own invention, a Doomsday Clock, two minutes further on towards midnight so that it now stands at (according to ITV News) just "Five Minutes to Armageddon".

Why ? Who ? What ? Where ?
Can there be a more pointless piece of self publicity ?
Can there be a more pointless piece, full stop ?

Who are these people, what do they aim to achieve, why do they seek publicity with a silly little gimmick like a "Doomsday Clock" ?

What is the significance of five minutes ?
Does a minute represent 50 years, 10 years, one year, one minute ?

Who is the threat ?
What is the threat ?

You see I am nobody's news editor, place me in the news editors chair at ITV News and tell me to edit tonights bulletin and I'd be crap at the job - but if one of my reporters handed me the piece that you can see in the link (above) then those are just some of the questions that I'd be firing at him after just a few seconds thought, the last question would be "do you know where to pick up your P45 on the way out of the building ?"

The story is a pile of crap, the world has lived with a nuclear threat of one sort or another since 1945 and will continue to live with the threat that we have the capability to blow each others arses to kingdom come if we wish and the eaisest way to stop other people doing it to us is to have one ourselves and stop a third party getting hold of the recipe.

Global warming is said to be just as big a threat as a nuclear armageddon, well, no it isn't - warm winters aren't going to wipe out an area the size of Yorkshire in ten seconds flat, some ice melting at the south pole will not cast a cloud of radiation over the southern hemisphere that will contaminate all of our food supplies for 50 or more years, its not as bad as all that - personally I'm enjoying this tropical winter that we've found ourselves in, I haven't had to scrape the ice of the car so far and thats just fine and dandy by me.

So, where do I start ?

Story with a dramatic headline wanted.

It belongs to us anyway...

In archives released to public view yesterday it was revealed that shortly after the second world war the French Prime Minister Guy Mollet had discussions with his British counterpart Anthony Eden with a view to France becoming a part of the British Commonwealth (as strapped for cash as it was) and even for Britain to have sovereignty over the French with them adopting our Queen as their head of state.

A couple of things spring to mind within a few seconds of reading that, the first being that France must have been in a parlous state to view Britain as the answer to all their problems, Britain as the great provider in 1956 was a non starter struggling as we were to come to terms with the $4.3 billion loan from the USA and Canada which was negotiated in 1946 to help rebuild this bombed-out shattered country - but as was revealed last week, part of the loan arrangement was that the British pound be freely traded on the foreign markets, and within three months of shit-kicking from the US Dollar the pound was almost worthless, it is estimated that almost a third of the Dollar loan was spent just in propping up the Pound on the money markets.

Its acknowledged now that there was a wider conspiracy in the US Senate to finally stick the boot into the Commonwealth of Great Britain and they saw an opportunity to do us once and for all and at the same time to ensure that the US economy would dominate for generations to come, as it still does, ironically it was the British Commonwealth that was viewed enviously by our Gallic neighbours and sowed the seed of the European Economic Community in their minds.

But in 1956 the French wanted to be British and what a shame that we didn't let them in, I'm sure Eden probably had more on his plate, like taking sweets off ration for instance (just in time for my birth) and the French suggestion was met with a polite, but firm, "Au revoir Pierre, or Guy, whatever".


But of course we had been there before, Britiain has owned considerable parts of France for some time - see the bit on the map (above) on the Atlantic coast from where it joins Spain almost right up to where the sticky-out bit starts ?

Thats Aquitaine that is, and it was British for, oooh, about 300 yars from 1152 until 1453 when France nicked it back - Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine it was who divorced her French husband to marry Henry II of England who obviously only had one think in mind from the marriage - a quarter of France.

Their two sons Richard and John became arguably the best known kings of England for completely different reasons, anyone who has watched Kevin fekkin Costner in "Robin Prince of Thieves" will know of how Richard was the good guy who went to fight in the crusades against the nasty muslims leaving his brother John to look after England who turned out to be a right bas'tad though...actualy, maybe "Robin Prince of Thieves" didn't cover that part of the Robin Hood storyline...anyhoo, it wa a shit film.

So, where were we...

Ah yes, we've owned big lumps of France in the past, during Henry VIII's reign we were always fighting France for bits of French territory and we owned a big lump around Calais for some time - and if we weren't fighting them then we were marrying them for exactly the same reason, the Kings of England, France and Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries were right two faced bas'tads, signing treaties with each other one day, marrying their daughters the next, then declaring war on them at the weekend, even Henry Kissenger would have had his work cut out in those days.

So whilst it would have been a nice idea from Franglais to have been formed in my birth year its for the best that we were kept apart, its one of those things that should really never happen, for the same reasons that siblings aren't allowed to marry, it just doesn't feel right somehow.


For more plain history for adults who didn't pay attention during history lessons at school, you could try the fledgling "plain history" pages on jerrychicken.co.uk.

On the night shift...

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible ...

I've screwed up...big style.

Doh !

I've cancelled the broadband connection down at the office.

Without arranging for the new connection to be made yet.

Doh !

Thought it was funny when the connection vanished at 11am this morning, by noon when it hadn't re-appeared I started to recall some paperwork that I'd ignored in the run-up to christmas, routed around in the "must do immediately" pile and found at the bottom, a red reminder to pay BT for the broadband connection dated 8th Dec.

Fuckpigs.

The bas'tads have cut me off.

Which is actually what I told them to do back in November, they were supposed to do it on Jan 31st, which is the same date that Eurotel, our landline, mobile and everything else telcom-wise provider is scheduled to take up the broadband service, its the last little bit of remaining stuff that we have with BT and its only because I've ignored the fact that we're still, or rather were still with them.

So they trumped my ace and cut me off today instead of waiting - bollax.

Its a tad inconvenient trying to run a business without email and more importantly not having an internet conection to play on, christ almighty I might have to work to fill in the time tomorrow - fortunately the NTL connection at home is only two minutes away so thats alright then - but I'll be posting on here on an evening from now on instead of the morning - until further notice.

Eurotel said they'd try and speed up their connection but they're waiting for the MAC code from BT now, whatever that means - rang BT and they tried to persuade me to stay with them, I pointed out that Eurotel charge the same monthly fee as they do for an 8meg connection, BT's is only 2meg, the BT operator said I should be on an 8meg connection too but they haven't been too fast at stepping forward to offer upgrades in the past - Eurotel contact me every quarter to keep us right up to date - the BT man stopped trying to keep me when I asked him why they'd cut me off three weeks early, fortunately he didn't have access to the account and couldn't see the 75 day overdue bill so I got away with that moment of sarcasm.

Bugger, what the hell am I going to do for eight hours in the office tomorrow ?

Wonder if the Playstation 1 console will work on the TV in the workshop ?

M&S go carbon neutral...

News today that Marks and Spencer, that bastion retailer of the British high street aims to find itself "carbon neutral" within five years.

No I don't know what that means either.

But that link does - it says that a home or business which does things to reverse the effect of them simply being here on the planet can be called "carbon neutral".

No, I'm still lost.

Basically it means that every time M&S send a truck out from one of its warehouses to a store, then that truck is producing carbon emissions and so M&S will have to do something to neutralise those emissions, by, erm, planting trees for instance - in fact the only "for instance" that anyone can come up with to reverse the effect that you've just made, is planting trees.

M&S make big claims about checking the source of all of their products and reducing transportation distances - which is hilarious when you consider that M&S used to source all of their garments in the UK until ten years ago when they were responsible for the closure of dozens of manufacturers and thousands of jobs in their quest to source cheaper from the far east.

But even if you buy 10,000 pairs of knickers from down the road instead of Taiwan, you still are producing carbon in getting them to your outlets, so they'll reduce their carbon footprint but never will they completely erradicate it or neutralise it without planting a tree.

We're going to be over-run with fookin trees in this country within five years.

Don't ask me to go there again...

With the house move on the horizon and all, it is decreed that we need to visit Ikea for wardrobes and stuff.

Ikea in Leeds is right across the other side of Leeds from where we live, a 40 minute drive (at least) and its located on the worlds busiest retail park where the worlds worst drivers gather to queue their cars on the worlds worst traffic system every weekend.

I hate going to Ikea, but if theres one thing worse than me hating to go to Ikea then its queueing - I do not do queues - if a shop wants my business then it had damn well better have a parking space available for me within two minutes of me arriving - or I go.

Ikea Leeds have an outside car park and a multi-storey car park, that is to say its multi by the power of two floors, or maybe its three, I honestly don't know how many floors its got but its more than one, the important thing is I've never found a fuckin space in that fuckin car park yet - and I've fuckin tried - I've given them far more than the allocated two minutes on several occasions and still they fail on the car park front.

Two weeks ago we drove all the way across Leeds to Ikea, for wardrobes and stuff, bad mistake, the New Year sale had just started, people were abandoning cars up to a mile away and walking, in the car park itself murders were being committed as each time a car left four others fought over the space, we arrived, drove around all of the floors (more than one) drove around the outside car park, drove around the fuckin staff car park, drove around and around for ten minutes - then drove all the way back home again, theres a nice waste of two fuckin hours of my life.

Today I decided that we should go to Ikea, for wardrobes and stuff.

We arrived, we queued through the worst retail park with the worst traffic management system in the world, we got to the Ikea multi (certainly more than one) storey car park and drove and queued up and down the aisles with not one glimmer of a space, except three times when Suzanne shouted out "theres one there" pointing behind us to a row that we'd just passed where the car behind us was now reversing in.

We tried all the fuckin floors (however many there are), no spaces, we tried the outside fuckin car park, no fuckin spaces, we tried the staff car park, no fuckin space, and so we drove all the way back home again, yet another fuckin waste of two hours of my life and I'm running out of hours in my life now, I should be making good use of what I've got left not queueing all the way to fuckin iIkea then queueing all the way back home again.

So in future, if I ever mention a trip to Ikea, you have my full permission to shoot me, Ikea and their wobbly wardrobes can stick their flat pack concept where the sun don't shine, we'll go to MFI, I know where theres a branch that is on a shabby run down retail park that doesn't get customers any more and you always have your pick of the 2000 car park spaces.

No, I'm not telling you where it is.

My life, my life...

In an act of selfish, self promotion, ladies and gentlemen, today I present to you the new and revised jerrychicken.co.uk web site, the web site of my life, its my autobiography (in progress) and its just here.

If you've been there before it's now 50% bigger with new stuff, new stories, me history writing and a stack of new, old photos - and it easier to sift through all of the gubbins on there now, give it another go, its me, just me.

Why ?

Like the intro says, I just want to leave a flavour of me behind when I step out of the ice-filled tent telling my comrades "I'm going out, I may be some time", I want my offspring to know what it was like to be me in the latter half of the 20th century and maybe one day four or five generations down stream from me someone may point and say "that idiot is related to me you know"

It started with John Boyd, a one-time presenter on BBC Radio Leeds and the regular sunday morning spot on his show that involved a local history geek by the name of John Gilligan who each week would pick a road or a factory in Leeds and describe it history and the part it played in building this fine city of ours.

I'm a sucker for local history.

A friend of mine used to lecture part-time at Leeds University on local history at one of those night school classes that anyone can subscribe to and he is now a respected author on the subject of Leeds and a senior member of the Thoresby Society - the group of similar history geeks that has done so much to preserve our knowledge of our fore-fathers and indeed save some fine old building s from the developers hammer.

So this John Gilligan on Radio Leeds then, he once said something very profound on the sunday morning show, he said that everyone, everyone, should keep a diary, if only for the fact that it would make life much easier for people like him in future when they are looking back at our society and trying to decide what sort of people we were.

His almost exact words were that historians know so much about (for example) Queen Victoria (1819-1901) that they really don't need to know anymore, you can read her daries and other courtiers diaries any time of the day and find out what she had for dinner at Balmoral on any specified day of her life - but how much more interesting woul dit be if for example we could read the diary of the cook who had made that dinner, or the scullery maid, or the girl who turned Her Majesty's bed down every night, or the man who cleaned her toilet out after she'd gone back to London ?

We, as humans, don't want to know lists of dates or political shilly-shallying and nit-picking - what we are all interested in is other, ordinary peoples lives and how they compare to ours.

Its why blogging is so popular.

And its why I started writing jerrychicken.co.uk.

Bury it in a big hole...

You see, I can't see the problem in burying rubbish in a big hole.

When ah wor nobbut a lad our school used to force us at gunpoint to do cross country running in the vain hope that it would somehow make us all super fit athletes and blow some of the cigarette smoke out of our young lungs.

Neither aspiration came to fruition but we actually grew to enjoy our cross country runs after we discovered, just down a small path and through some trees, only a small diversion off our supposed route, an old quarry that the council had just finished filling to the brim as a landfill site.

Part of the quarry wall was still standing at one end and the rest of the landfill had been covered with a couple of feet of roadstone hardcore to cap off all of the household rubbish and presumably pretend that all was fine in the world and at some point in the not too distant future the council would be able to sell the rubbish tip to a developer for a new housing estate.

Non of those council machinations bothered us, the filled in, capped-off quarry made a great battleground for throwing stones at each other.

As word of our intense battles grew week on week, more and more boys volunteered for the cross country runs so that eventually a passer-by, walking down the quiet country lane would hear yelps of pain, whoops of joy and the crack of roadstone upon bones as a hundred or so young twelve year old boys clad in running vests and shorts gathered for an hour in an old quarry to throw stones at each other.

Old Sinbad Simpson the PE teacher was delighted by his cross country ideals, fortunately he was too bone idle to follow us on the route that he insisted we use, if he had then he would have been puzzled to discover no-one actually running upon it, apart from Johnson and Denton the school swots who took cross country running too seriously - we dragged them into the quarry one day and gave them the stoning of their young lives.

So back to todays topic...

British rubbish is being sent to China for recycling and "green" people are getting into all sorts of a lather over it, claiming that sending rubbish halfway around the world, and then quite likely sending the recycled stuff all the way back again - is sort of defeating the object of being green in the first place.

I agree.

Landfill is a much better option in this country.

I've heard the argument that we're fast running out of landfill sites to landfill - absolute tosh - theres loads of holes to fill in this country, and if they can't find holes, why not use a genuine valley or two ?

Filled with household rubbish and capped off with two foot of roadstone, Wharfedale will serve the next generation of cross country schoolboy runners with stone throwing practice for decades to come, then we can build houses on it.

I really should be running this country you know.

While away the hours...

One web site that can alwasy be guaranteed to provide. oooh. minutes of entertainment, is the British Pathe archive.

Originally a Parisien photographer and fledgling filmmaker, Cahrles Pathe came to London in 1902 and set up a business of movie theatres, owning more than 200 in England, France and Belgium by 1909 whilst also manufacturing the cameras and projectors - Charles Pathe was a busy man.

The name "British Pathe" though is synominous with cinema newsreels, something which the company specialised in and produced for genrations of British families for whom a television set was either impossible (not invented yet) or a far distant luxury - most people would go to their local cinema at least once a week (often much more than that) and inbetween the two-film presentation they'd be treated to the Pathe news clips.

Some years ago with the aid of National Lottery funding the British Pathe newsreel film catalogue was made availble online and for private, non-commercial use you can, by giving the minimum of details, download and view any of their hundreds of thousands of old newsreel clips.

Some of them have obvious personal interest - the clip of the 1968 rugby legaue challenge cup final is a favourite of mine and the staff at the Pathe web site must be sick and tired of running along the library shelves to get the correct reel to download for me (thats how it works isn't it ?) , but you can have lots of fun by simply searching for completely random subjects too.

For instance last night on some anonymous teatime tv chat show they showed a clip of the first bananas to arrive in the UK after the second world war - a whole generation of children had grown up not knowing what a banana was due to the wartime import restrictions and a very self important narrator explained this on the film and then in a very condescending manner handed a banana to a young girl and aksed her to eat it - she obviously thought he was some sort of pervert or one of the "dirty men" that her mother had warned her of and it took a lot of persuasion for her to nibble just a tiny little piece off the top of the exotic fruit and then declare to the camera in a very carefully scripted way "mmm, its delicious !"

The accents on those old films are hilarious, everyone sounds just like the Queen does now (note for non-UK residents - no-one speaks like the Queen does in this country, we all have our own accents and dialects) but the subjects of the Pathe films were obviously pre-selected for their Queens English cut-glass accents and word perfect, well scripted delivery to camera, even scruffy oik, working class people speak like the Duke of Edinburgh in Pathe films and if you look closely enough you can see where dirt and grime has been smeared on the actors face just before the shot was taken for that "working class man in the street" look.

I recommend the Pathe film library to the house - do a search for "bananas" and scroll down until you get to the monochrome ones.

PS - For complete British sycophancy you simply must do a search for "Windrush" and view the "Ingrid Bergman/ new immigrants" film - your toes will curl I promise you !

Roald Amundsen - who he ?

Captain Robert Falcon Scott's last letter to his wife before he died of, erm, cold, is exhibited at the Scott Polar Research Institute Museum in Cambridge from the 17th January.

But first a question to the rest of the world outside of the UK - have you ever heard of Roald Amundsen ?

No ?

Ha!, didn't think so, no-one has, he's only known inside his native Norway as the hero who was the first man to arrive at the south pole, while here in the UK he's the bas'tad who beat Scott of the Antarctic to the pole - a quest which ended in trgedy for our national hero who, along with his team of fools, died on the way back.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott is a great British hero, he has all the qualities of a great British hero, he has a hero's name, all hero's have names that no parent would consider giving their child - would you call a child of your's "Falcon", no of course you wouldn't, not unless you wanted that child to be an explorer and national hero.

He also had that other great British attribute, the desire to go and do something so totally futile and so incredibly dangerous that all sane humans will stand around, shake their heads and mutter, "he's a nut, or a hero, I can't decide which".

The British nation love futile gestures, our history is littered with them - The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854 when a Brigade of Dragoon Guards charged on horseback armed only with swords and complete buffoonary into fifty Russian field guns, not suprisingly they failed in their endeavour, were cut to smithereens by the guns, but have been held in esteem as great British heros ever since, we love heroic failure.

Like wise Scott of the Antarctic and his 1912 mission with four mates to walk to the south pole clad in canvas clothing to claim the south pole for the British Empire - as if we'd need some ice - all went well for the intrepid heros until they arrived at the pole to find that they'd been beaten there by an anonymous bas'tad Norweigian a month earlier - "oh bollacks" Robert Falcon Scott was heard to mutter, "there goes my hero status".

Turning around to head back to their iced-in ship "Terra Nova" the party of five were hit by terrible ice storms and in temperatures of 70 below freezing they managed to lose Petty Officer Edgar Evans who fell during a storm and was left in a coma.

Another, Captain Lawrence Titus Oates (see, another heros name, who would use the name "Titus" on a child), suffered from terrible frostbite but our heros would not abandon him to his fate on the ice and slowed the pace down despite the urgent need to get to a food and fuel dump just 11 miles in fron tof them - they had one days hot food ration left and two days cold food when an ice storm hit them and confined them to their one tent for four days at which point Captain Lawrence Titus Oates made his famous last statement "I am going outside, I may be some time" - what a truly heroic and futile hero he was - and he lived just a few miles away from where I'm sitting right now.

The remaining futile, foolhardy and yet true British bloodstock fookin idiots took to their sleeping bags and died of , erm, cold-ness some time later after which an adoring nation took them to their busom and celebrated their idiocy in a thousand boys book of daring-do - every British schoolboy for the next millenium will know of Scott of the Antarctic and his completely pointless ambition to reach the pole first.

All of which shows the English Cricket team in a different light -a rriving in Australia for their bi-annual thrashing and humilation at the hands of antipodeans who seem to be playing a different game to our lads, we can at least feat their arrival back on these shores at some point in the future as true British futile heros, no-one does futility quite like the British.

A new game to play...

I don't know why this suddenly needs posting here but it does before the thought leaves my mind...

"Spot the Kydd" is a great game that is played in our household on many a sunday afternoon when all that is on TV are those crap British films from the 1940/50/60's - the only aim of the game being to spot where Sam Kydd makes an entrance.

And he always does.

If the film was made in England between 1940 and 1982 (when he died) then Sam Kydd will be in it, his IMBD entry lists 232 film and TV series appearances but do not think that it must therefore be an easy game to play, many of Sam Kydds roles were minor, very minor, so minor that its impossible to understand how he ever made a living at this acting mularky.

If you are struggling to find the Sam Kydd moment in a likely film then stop watching the main action for a moment and watch the passers-by in the background - Sam Kydd often plays milkmen, whistling as he delivers a pint to a doorstep down the road then never appearing again in that film - spotting him takes some doing but after a while you will become adept at "spotting the Kydd" and like me will find it impossible to take your eyes from the screen during a particularly crap sunday afternoon British film until you've achieved your objective, at which point you can finally turn the film off content in the knowledge that he's been and gone.

Or is it just another of my fixations ?

A new definition for hypocrisy...

hy·poc·ri·sy /hɪˈpɒkrəsi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[hi-pok-ruh-see] –noun, plural -sies.

1.	a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.

2.	a pretense of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude.

3.	an act or instance of hypocrisy.

Heard on the radio today an anonymous bishop of somewhere proclaiming that the pending Act of Parliament that will outlaw discrimination against people on grounds of sexual orientation will in itself be discriminatory against people of christian, jewish and muslim faiths.

In other words he wants the right to continue his discrimination against a section of society without that section of society having the ability to claim discrimination.

He went further to claim that he was speaking on behalf of an "all faith group" who were devastated that their preaching of the evils of homosexuality will soon be viewed as morally wrong in law and that christians, jews and muslims the world over were united in the belief that it was right to condemn "this minority group".

This would be the same christian, jewish and muslim groups who have been trying to wipe each other off the face of the planet for the last two thousand years then would it bishop ?

"All faith group" my arse - religious demoninations hate each other with an intensity that is only matched by their apparent hatred of gays, and now they are running scared of being exposed as hypocritic fear-mongers who enjoy nothing more than to spread lies and prejudice about a group of people who they view as "different", "wrong" and even "evil".

Bottom line is that the proposed new law, which is already inplace in Northern Ireland and therefore odds-on favourite to be law here soon, makes it illegal for anyone or any organisation to discriminate against a person on grounds of sexual orientation - so for instance a hotel could not refuse to offer a room to a gay couple, a organisation could not refuse to carry out work for a gay couple simply because they were gay and a church hall could not refuse to hire out a church hall for an event on the grounds that gay couples might be there.

Basically it is the same rights enshrined in law that black people have had in this country since the racial discrimination laws were enacted in 1968, before that time it was considered quite acceptable for hotels to refuse rooms to black people, and if not acceptable it was certainly legal, we now look back at that time and shake our heads in disbelief and wonder why it took so long to legislate.

One day we will look back at these times, shake our heads in disbelief and point at religious organisations and correctly accuse them of gross and intense prejudice and hypocrisy while they sit and wonder why no-one takes them seriously anymore.

UK Music Charts

There is lots of speculation in the press today that the UK Singles Music Chart could soon be packed full of "oldies", and in particular we could soon see a whole top ten of The Beatles singles soon.

All of this is due to a small change in the way that the UK's weekly singles sales are calculated. Last year the rules were changed to allow internet downloads to qualify as sales when the charts were calculated, but only if the download was of a song that could also be currently bought as a single in the music shops, ie invariably the only downloads that counted were of current releases.

Now, after the rule change, all download sales will count regardless of whether you can buy the track it in a shop, in a single format - a simple rule change which of course blows the whole record sales thing wide open to every single piece of music that is available on the internet - and that means any album track that is available, not just those that were commercially released as a single.

Which is good news of course.

Lazy reporting in the press though, but thats no suprise - you see none of The Beatles tracks are currently available for download, either as The Beatles or individually, I should know, I've been looking for one of George Harrisons albums on legal t'interweb sites for years now.

That may change in future of course as record companies look to embrace the medium of download sales, something that they've been keener to ban in recent years, theres nothing quite like money to encourage a complete 180 degree spin in attitudes though.

It also raises the question of how this will affect the credibility of the UK Singles Chart, a credibility that has been completely lacking in substance for many years now, well, ever since Louis Walsh and his cohorts flooded the market with pretty boys singing cover versions - Louis and friends should have been hung from lamp posts years ago for single handedly bringing the whole of the UK music scene into complete disrepute, somehow he's got away with it and is even now still pushing the "boy band" format as an credible music genre - go find another cow to milk Louis, your time is nearly up.

The main question is how will new bands get a fair hearing in the charts if, as predicted, everyone is really downloading "old stuff" - how will a chart full of hits from ten years ago help a new band who cannot break into the market ?

Publicity thats how - record companies will have to get off their fat arses and start promoting again rather than let word of mouth build up the few ten thousand sales needed to currently get into the charts - promote your best acts and they will stand shoulder to shoulder with anything thats gone before.

Let me draw your attention to my post from saturday when I reviewed some of the Napster top ten tips for 2007 - at least two of the bands on that list, Fried and The Gossip stand comparison with any (proper) R&B performers that now qualify for the newly formatted UK Singles Chart, I've gone so far as to say that the two female vocalists in those bands stand comparison with Aretha Franklin, and you can't compare higher than that - both of those bands will do well in a head-to-head on download sales - if they are sufficiently promoted and if the crap producers that write the playlists for 90% of the UK radio stations actually bother to do their job and research the fledgling market properly.

TV programing for Tomorrows World...

News that the old BBC childrens programme for adults, Tomorrws World is returning, if not in quite the same format as in days of yore, will be greeted with whoops of joy from technophobes and "huh ?" from the rest of the population.

The golden days of Tomorrows World were in the late 60's when chief presenter Raymond Baxter ruled the roost, a headmaster type figure, Baxter had been a WWII war hero, a spitfire pilot - and it showed. Tall, ramrod straight, coiffed hair in a permenant wave, Baxter had the classic BBC accent and had perfected the method of speking down to people in a way that made you pretend that you understood what he was talking about even if you didn't just so that he wouldn't get annoyed at you and give you detention.

He was joined on the programme by a man who did voiceovers to the film clips, a mysterious man who's face we never saw but who's voice would be instantly recognisable in a lift - that mans voice was the voice of the 60's, hip, trendy, I bet he wore a polo neck pullover and drove an E Type Jag and pretended to be a photographer when he chatted up the dolly birds in trendy London night clubs - I bet he once shagged Princes Margaret too.

Sorry, I got carried away in that last para.

Baxter finally got an on-screen co-presenter in the guise of James Burke. If Baxter was the headmaster then Burke was the fashionable, easily excitable, fresh faced from college, new English teacher, the one who wants to be friends with the sixth form boys and thinks that school teachers can carry off flares with a cardigan.

James Burke also headed up the BBC's presentations of all of the Apollo space missions and eventually had several of his own series presenting the history of science and discovery - these were classic BBC years and have always been what the BBC is best at.

Over the years Tomorrows Word presented the vision of what todays world would be like, I always imagined that in the year 2000 we'd all have a pair of boots that enabled us fly by means of small rockets located in the heels, and James Burke encouraged us to think in this manner. Little did we know that life in the year 2000 would be pretty much as it was in 1968, different shaped cars maybe, a few more TV channels here and there, but fundimentally the same, no rocket boots, no-one living on the moon, no-one living in floating apartment blocks way up in the stratosphere even, you still can't drive your car across the Thames without the use of a bridge, and you can't buy those inflatable boots in the shops that enabled you to walk across the Thames.

Since Tomorrows World left our screens some years ago the closest that we have come is those John Stalker adverts for motorised garage doors, "On days like these who wants to struggle with a garage door ?" in which he resurects the Raymond Baxter condescending tone for commercial gain, so it will be with some enthusiasm and a small dash of voyerism that I try and catch the new Tomorrows World insert into the News24 channel, presented by Maggie Philbin who had a spell in the original format after leaving The Multi Coloured Swap Shop when Keith Chegwin started showing more than a passing interest in her (and who can blame her, I wouldn't like Keith Chegwin to even glance at me).

I'll never take her seriously though, when was the last time she flew a spitfire in combat ?

Music Tips for 2007...

See the album in the picture ?

Buy it.

Last night I decided to have a look and a listen at the Napster top ten tips for 2007 and to listen to a couple of bands that had been suggested to me by others (results below), but one band stood head and shoulders above the others - Fried.

Unfortunately Napster only has two tracks by the band but you only need two tracks to recognise extreme quality when you hear it.

See that bloke walking behind the girl ?

Thats David Steel that is, former bandylegged, weird dancemonger, songwriter member of the Fine Young Cannibals and the story goes that he spent five years auditioning and searching for a female singer to do justice to his songs - and he's hit upon a real talent with New Orleans gospel singer Jonte Short (also in picture).

Reviewers have spoken of similarities to Lauryn Hill and Macy Gray, she's better than both of them put together Listening to those two short tracks on Napster restored my faith in the modern day use of the music phrase "R&B" - most usage of that word is superflous, the users not actually comprehending what the phrase means - Jonte Short has both rythmn and blues and soul, lots of soul, soul ouzes its way through every word - a comparison to Aretha Franklin would be in order if and when I finally manage to hear more from them.

I recommend this band to the house without hesitation.

The rest of my reviews ...

Napster Top Ten Tips for 2007.

The Rumble Strips - my notes say that the lead singer sounds like Kevin Rowland from Dexy's Midnight Runners, this should tell you everything you need to know - they are not bad and are worth another listen but not stand-out at the moment.

Scott Mathews - very good, listened to eight tracks of his last night and not one let me down, very laid back style, very easy to listen to, well worth looking out for.

Rishi Rich - a bangra influence, its crap.

Fields - interesting, my notes say 80's tech meets 60's "telstar" synthesizers - won't be looking them up again though.

30 Seconds to Mars - again worth a listen to but nothing special, bland is a word I use often where a band does not have a stand-out singer at the front - bland fits this band.

MSTRKRFT - absolute shite, this is the sort of all encompasing techno crap that you hear being played far too loudly in bars that you have to pay to get into, where everyone thinks the music is great but no-one has a clue who it is and they certainly don't buy the stuff deliberately except for those compilation albums called "Ibiza Banging" or similar where you get four cd's for eight quid and all forty tarcks are identical - avoid this steaming pile of crap.

Director - they were interesting, their dads obviously wore sta-prest trousers and loafers and payed a non-stop diet of ska in the house when they were kids because the influence is definitely there, as is some 60's psychodelia, worth another listen definitely.


other bands that were recommended to me last night...

The Gossip - excellent, very comparable to the band "Fried" that I mentioned right at the start, in fact I stacked up a Gossip track right above Fried last night and they drifted from one straight into the other, its suprising just how alike the two female singers are - and both have R&B and Soul in quantity - I strongly recommend this band.

Just Jack - interesting, you wouldn't object if you heard them in a bar, but bland, nothing particularly stands out about this band.

Arcade Fire - very good, at last a band with a singer with a distinctive voice, listened to several tracks of theirs last night and was not disappointed - recommended.

Cold War Kids - another distinctive vocal, another fine band, well crafted, well produced, I like these.

Two Gallants - likewise, another good find, they are on my "listen" list for sure.


One more artist that I've had recommended ...

Eric Bogle - a Scottish/Australian folk singer, completely different to all of the above, but writes some beautiful evocative songs, "scraps of paper" and "the band played waltzing matilda" are two of the most soul searching story songs that I've heard in many years.


So there you have it, my take on Napsters (and others) recomendations for 2007, enjoy...


PS - ONE BIG WORD OF WARNING !!!

If you're looking for an album by the band "Fried" then check the sleeve notes, you are looking for the soul band Fried with the lead singer Jonte Short - there is a heavy thrash band called "Fried" as well - they are complete unadulterated shite and you do not want to assault your earbuds with anything of that sort.