Monday Moan 73

THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT MOVES TO GLASGOW
Some commentators worried that the enthusiasm and spirit generated by the Olympics last year would not last and that people would soon forget the joy of sporting events  and the benefits that they could bring to communities and to society as a whole.

The next major sporting event in the UK is the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow next year.  From the huge response to calls for volunteers to the almost complete sell-out of tickets, it seems clear that the Olympic spirit has survived and been transferred to Glasgow.

And if you want further proof that the spirit of the Olympics lives on, then look no further than Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT transport union, who has called for extra payments for his members to recognise their importance in keeping the transport systems going during the Games.  

This barely-disguised strike threat worked wonders at the Olympics, securing lovely bonuses for people to go to work as normal, and having found the key to the treasure chest Crow was never going to forget where to find it again. 

WOULD YOU WANT TO BE A REFEREE ....... OR EVEN A COMMENTATOR?
Not content with providing the referees at the Rugby League World Cup with a natty shade of pink for their kit, the organisers also made an astute choice of sponsors ……… 

Rugby League has even fewer teams in with a realistic chance of being crowned world champions than Rugby Union.  But it still holds a World Cup tournament, in which the also-rans and minnows are given their chance in the spotlight.

The current World Cup tournament is being staged at venues across England, Wales, Ireland and France.  Wales must have hoped for some success, their 5th ranking seemingly placing them in a good position to progress from a group of matches against the USA (12th), Italy (13th) and the Cook Islands (18th).  Unfortunately for them, they lost all three matches.  The loss to the Cook Islands took everyone by surprise, including the BBC reporter who interviewed David Fairleigh, Coach to the Cook Islands, immediately after the game.  It was the Cook Island’s first victory in a World Cup finals and the reporter had clearly practised her questions on the assumption of a Welsh victory ……………  

WANT TO TRY TO SPOIL THINGS FOR OTHERS?  TRY THESE TRICKS
I went to a fabulous concert yesterday in the Royal Albert Hall, where Lang Lang, the extraordinary Chinese pianist performed a wonderful programme of Mozart and Chopin, followed by no less than 7 encores.

You really can’t beat the experience of a live concert, whatever your taste in music.   CDs and videos have made music and performance accessible to all, but being there in person is a totally different experience.

 

So why mention this in the Moan?  Well, of course, nothing is perfect!  So, if you go to a rock concert you expect the audience to be noisy, to participate, to hold up their smartphones throughout so they can upload their videos to YouTube, etc.  An audience at a classical music concert generally follows a different etiquette.  No less involved, but this is demonstrated by rapt attention, silence and sitting still.  

Only, of course it isn’t ever quite like this. So yesterday we what must have been the annual outing for the combined forces of the bronchial wards of every London hospital, who took it in turns to cough and splutter, rather than all going at the same time.  Then there were the people fiddling to find things in their bags, with periodic thuds echoing around the auditorium as having found them they then dropped them on the floor.   And whilst I can see that some people might have had to rush off at the end to catch trains home (although why book them with so little margin for error?), why did so many people feel the need to leave before the end?  Everyone knows you will get an encore or two at such concerts.  Lang Lang even announced that he had performed six at the previous concert and wanted to do more.  If the all the encores had actually formed part of the printed programme then everyone would have stayed to listen – so what’s the difference?

RULES THAT APPLY TO OTHERS BUT NOT TO YOU …………..

There is a growing list of rules that clearly do not apply to everyone.  Speeding and using a mobile phone when driving being obvious examples.

Yesterday threw up two more examples.  Those signs on trains that say ‘Please do not put your feet on the seats’ appear to apply only to those who are too old to raise their feet to seat level.  Below a certain age it seems that you must be required to put your feet on the seats as soon as you sit down – especially if the footwear within which they are contained has remained unacquainted with the concept of cleaning for a while.

Maybe these were the same people who ignored the reasonable request at the concert for people not to use flash photography during the performance.  No demand that you don’t take photographs, even during the performance, but please do not use flash.  Of course, that rule doesn’t apply to you if you feel that using flash will get you a better picture.  No, your needs are greater than those of the performer and the rest of the audience, so just carry on.

Monday Moan 58

NOW THERE’S A SURPRISE!

The award for the least surprising election result in a national election goes to .. Robert Mugabe!

 

Apparently, some people thought there was a genuine election taking place in Zimbabwe.  After all, didn’t Mugabe himself say that if the vote went against him then he would accept the people’s verdict and stand down?  Surely that showed he was committed to the democratic exercise of freedom to vote for whoever you wanted?

 

International public opinion of Mugabe remains as divided as ever. It all depends upon your pre-conceptions, of course, as it does with all high-profile figures, including politicians. But surely there ought to be unanimous condemnation of this most brazen of all dictators?  Not for election rigging, not for murdering his own people, not for economic mismanagement of his country, not for stealing land from its rightful owners or any of the many other charges against him. No, the one thing that should unite us all is his appalling abuse of power in wearing such comical clothing. 

 

OK, maybe someone said he should try to be a more colourful character – but they can’t have meant him to do it like this.  I assume that the problem is that nobody has the courage to tell him how ridiculous he looks, because they know what would happen to them if they spoke out. 

 

And you thought 'The Emperor’s New Clothes' was just a fairytale!

 

 

IN A ROUNDABOUT KIND OF WAY

We all have our pet hates about the way other people drive.  We, of course, are exemplary drivers who never put a foot wrong – it’s the others who don’t know what they are doing.

 

My current pet gripe is with the way so many drivers appear not to know, or observe, conventions at roundabouts.  First there are those who insist on indicating that they are turning right when, in fact, they are going straight on – the 12 o’clock exit on a conventional four road roundabout.  There I am, expecting them to continue to go round the roundabout, and then they cut in front of me in order to go straight on. Why do they do this?  I have no idea.  

 

Worse than this, however, are the drivers who approach in the left hand lane when there are two approach lanes, and then actually do want to turn right (the 3 o’clock exit), forcing their way across traffic that has legitimately assumed they are going left or straight on.  This happened to me three times within about twenty minutes recently – I began to suspect a conspiracy, but concluded that it was just plain idiocy instead.

 

An instructor once said to me that you needed to be aware of other road users at all times. I asked him to expand on this and he said that I should assume they were all idiots who drove as though there was nobody else on the road. Sound, if rather dispiriting, advice.

 

 

WHERE IN THE WORLD SHOULD I GO????

Edward Snowden had an interesting choice to make when he decided that it was imperative he should spill the beans on the dastardly actions of his native USA.  Where should he seek to hide from their law? Where would be a good place to seek political asylum?

 

Cuba?  Long history of housing those on the run from the USA. Pretty good weather. Not too far for people to come to visit him.  Maybe Brazil?  Nice beaches, great weather, World Cup and Olympics coming up soon?  Maybe Venezuela or Ecuador?  Good opportunity to meet up with other like-minded people, but possibly lacking the kind of political freedoms he’d want to enjoy.  How about Iran or North Korea?  Absolute commitment to the anti-USA cause, but lifestyle probably not what he was seeking.

 

So, it has to be Russia then.  The land of the free, the place where anyone can oppose their own Government safe in the knowledge that the President will not order their arrest and trial on a jumped up charge.  Just ask Sergei Udaltsov, Yevgeny Urlashov, or Alexei Navalny.

 

An obvious first choice – if you are a national of Cloud Cuckoo Land.

 

IT’S NOT JUST ITN

In Moan 56 I had a go at ITN for its choice of items to cover in its new programmes. You might have thought they were an exception to a general rule that News organisations usually stick to reporting the news rather than trying to make it.

 

Unfortunately not,  as yesterday's main BBC News programme demonstrated.

 

A total of 18 mins 50 secs of news time started with a piece on the Catholic church in Scotland and its ‘apology’ for abuse uncovered in an earlier BBC investigation.  Read the newspapers today and you could waste a large part of your day in an almost fruitless search for this item – it’s hardly mentioned anywhere.  Yet the BBC decided to spend 22% of its main news programme on this issue.

 

The next largest chunk of time (20%) was devoted to the day’s sporting round-up – an essential part of any news programme.

 

Then we had four topics which were each given around 12% of the total time.  First, a piece on the new Iranian leader and what this might mean for Iran’s relationships with the USA.  Second a report on the outcome of the Zimbabwean election. No argument with these as news items.

 

The last two items cannot be said to fall into the same category. First we had the unappetising follow-up to the earlier decision to have half an hour of prime time television devoted to the unveiling of the name of the actor who will become the latest in a long line of people to play the part of Dr Who.  Shameless plugging of its own programme – bad enough that there was a separate programme on this, but at least if you switched on for that you knew what you were getting.  But on the main News programme?  Come on.

 

And then there was the obligatory ‘light-hearted’ end to the programme, this time taking the form of a piece on a Japanese robot being sent into space.

 

So that’s 22% + 12% + 12% (46%) on things that were not news at all. Plus 20% on sport. So, 34% left for the real news. 

 

It’s news Jim, but not as we know it.

 

But at least the BBC can still make us laugh with its unintentional mistakes.  Best of all was the sports report on Stacey Lewis winning the Women’s British Open Golf Championship – those watching with the sound down might have thought there had been a major gender breakthrough from the photograph that accompanied the piece.

Monday Moan 52

 

Here comes the sun ……

What a lovely picture, as Julian O’Strange and Ricardo Patino got to meet face-to-face last week in London, after developing a close relationship via email and video-links despite being physically separated by the vastness of the oceans between the UK and Ecuador.  It is thought that if all goes well in their courtship, O’Strange will be moving to Ecuador on a permanent basis in order to fulfil his life-long ambition of avoiding having to face the consequences of his actions.

 

It was, of course, a shame that the weather in London failed to allow the happy couple to sunbathe together, as had been their fervent wish.  But a cheery wave to the waiting media was enough to assure us all that this love-story will continue to entertain us for a long time to come.

 

Incidentally, a reader of the Moan has questioned the use of a photograph of the lovely Dick Emery in previous articles about O’Strange.  My immediate reaction was to think that the humour I was trying to inject had been lost on my reader (s) but, on reflection, I am grateful for the query as I now realise that O’Strange has moved on with his life and now wishes to put forward a different image. So, here's a sneak preview of the picture that will accompany any future piece about the self-confessed whistle-blower and alleged sexual offender....

........Julian seemed surprised to be called by the Moan .......

 

 

Farcical Farage

Some people seem genuinely surprised that Nigel Farage has been revealed to be just the same as all the other politicians he and whoever else is covered by the UKIP banner continually portray as just looking out for their own interests.

 

I’m not sure why anybody should be surprised to hear that he has been saying one thing whilst doing another, that he has been criticising others for finding ways of paying less tax whilst he has been doing the same.  Whatever you might think of him, he is like the vast majority of people in this country to the extent that he wants to minimise his tax bill and maximise his returns.  Nothing wrong with that – all perfectly legal.

 

But to be ‘caught out’ quite so obviously clearly was not part of his grand plan.  His fumbling and unconvincing responses to questions were so laughable that they made some of his earlier public pronouncements seem positively statesman-like in comparison. 

 

In days gone by, he and Boris would have had to live in different villages, since there was only ever room for one idiot.

 

 

Educational standards slipping (1)

Although they quickly rectified their mistake, the Daily Mail suffered the equivalent of the embarrassing wardrobe malfunction they are so keen to highlight almost everyday amongst the more glamorous of female celebrities.

 

Following up the story about Nigella Lawson being ‘playfully’ throttled by her admiring husband, they came up with this spelling ‘fail’ this morning.........

 

Having spent so much time criticising falling standards of education you have to admire them for coming up with a graphic demonstration to prove their point.

 

 

 

Educational standards slipping (2)

It seems that it is not only spelling standards that are slipping – simple mathematics are under threat too.

 

The BBC’s cricket website is a favourite of office-workers everywhere as a means of keeping up with the developing drama of a game that inconveniently usually takes place both during and throughout the working day.  The recently-ended Champions Trophy saw England again fail to win a tournament having reached the final game.  But they might not even have got to the final had they been forced to overcome the South African total the BBC calculated after their innings in last week’s semi-final.  Obviously fearing that the 175 runs the South Africans mustered would not be enough, someone decided to set England double that number to win.........

Howzat????

Monday Moan 49

Anyone got more money than sense?

A not-overly impressive picture appears one day on a wall. It is proclaimed as a work by ‘Banksy’ – the most well-publicised graffiti-merchant (sorry, street-artist) around. It is unsigned. Then it disappears, together with the wall on which is was painted, before re-appearing some time later at an auction, where it was expected to be sold for something in the region of £1 million.

Nobody knows for certain that it was painted by ‘Banksy’. Nobody knows who ‘owned’ it. Nobody knows who took it.  The auction was organised after it was ‘agreed’ that it would be sold to an American bidder for £900,000 unless a higher bid was made.  The cry went up (from the auction house amongst others) for Britain to get its act together and pay the money needed to keep the painting in this country.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I can’t help feeling that the world has gone mad.  This just seems crazy on so many levels. It’s not fantastic art. It seems like a con in so many ways. The BBC and other media have done their best to drum up interest – why?  And when did vandalising by spray-painting graffiti in a public place, where perpetrators would be fined if they could be identified, turn into street-art, where the perpetrators would be lauded as artistic royalty?

But, in the spirit of the day, I am prepared to get my spray can out and produce a rather mundane, clichéd picture on a wall near you for a mere fraction of the amount being fleeced for this ‘Banksy’ from people who should know better.  I’m not a greedy man, so shall we say £100,000?

Saving 'your’ money?

My local Council has produced a glossy handout for every household in its area asking residents to “Stop throwing your money away”.  Like many others, I am sure, I was intrigued to read on and find out how I could save some money.

Unfortunately, the headline appears to have only a tenuous link to any money-saving possibility for residents.

It seems that ‘our area’ (unidentified) has been found to be one of the lowest performing in all of the district in terms of recycling.  This, incidentally, despite the evidence of overflowing recycling boxes on our pavements on each collection day.  OK, must be all the other roads in the district that are under-performing.

The story continues; the Council collects the recycled items and sells them. This money helps to pay for the collection of the material. Material that could be recycled but is instead just thrown away is sent to landfill – which costs the Council money. So, anyone not recycling is throwing money away.  

It’s a long-winded explanation that, in the end, offers no real incentive to residents to recycle more items beyond an implied suggestion that if more waste could be sold then perhaps our Council Taxes might be lower.  Implied is the word – no direct link, no promise that money saved will not be spent on something of no benefit to the mass of residents.

If you want people to change their behaviour then some kind of incentive would help.  But if that is too difficult to administer then at least be a little more honest in your communications with residents.  And maybe recognise that low levels of recyclable materials left out for collection may not mean that we don’t care. It may be that we care so much we have already changed our buying habits and no longer purchase things that need to be recycled – like newspapers (read online instead), or fruit and vegetables in unnecessary packaging (choosing fresh produce and placing in reusable bags or single paper bags rather than polystyrene or cardboard cartons wrapped in plastic).

  

Hard to know who most deserves our scorn?

Once again the media is full of stories about politicians who appear to be forever on the lookout for opportunities to line their pockets whilst already being paid large amounts of public money to do their jobs.  This time it’s a Tory MP, two Labour Lords and an Ulster Unionist Lord, but in truth the party labels mean nothing here. It’s a behavioural thing that crosses party lines.

It’s too early to say whether what these people have done wrong is really serious or not – the full details have not been revealed.  All of them are protesting their innocence, saying that they believe what they have done is within the rules.  There will be an investigation at the end of which they will discover whether or not they are right and have been unfairly cast as villains, or they are wrong and must face the consequences.

What we do know, of course, is that the ‘evidence’ of their wrongdoings has been provided by the very media that set each of them up in sting operations designed to catch them out by offering them inducements.  The BBC, the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph each set out to create stories, rather than uncover existing stories.  So there’s a fine line being walked by them as well as the politicians.  At least two of the ‘victims’ of the stings are claiming that the day after the interviews that appear to show them breaching lobbying rules, they contacted the people who were trying to sting them to say that they had reconsidered their positions and now no longer wanted to pursue their discussions.  We shall see if this is true, but if it is then we have, of course, been given a doctored version of events rather than the full picture.

It’s a tricky one:-

(a)  do we accept the view of The Independent that this is “a welcome reminder of the value of an unfettered media”; or

(b)  do we see this as another example of the media creating and manipulating the news, rather than reporting events that are happening independently of their own promptings?

Julian Assange – is he still here?

The news that Julian Assange is still here in the UK came as something of a surprise to me – out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. 

Now we hear that Ricardo Patino, an Ecuadorean Minister, is to visit Assange in London soon and that he has offered (offered rather than asked for?) a meeting with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary.

Had I given it any thought I might have imagined that he had been spirited away by the authorities once the press furore had quietened down after the initial excitement of him giving press conferences from the safety of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. But of course, that will not happen, and whenever he is moved or chooses to move we will be subjected to wall-to-wall coverage of everything that follows, whether he manages to escape to his Ecuadorean bolt-hole or he is arrested and sent to Sweden to face sexual offences charges.

Bet you can’t wait.......  

Monday Moan 37



Latest from Sainsbury's on wasting food

Sainsbury’s have kept their promise to investigate my complaint about wasting food (see Moan 36 last week) and have sent me this further response:-

 

“I’ve contacted the store and spoke to our Customer Service Team Leader, [……].  She’s sent her apologies for this matter and informed me our bakery department should close at 5pm on a Sunday.  She also said there has been a shortage of colleagues at our bakery lately.  However, this doesn’t mean our bakery department should close early.  [……] will therefore feed this back to our Bakery Manager, […..], when he’s next available.  He will investigate this further and work hard to try and resolve this as soon as possible.  We’ll also continue to monitor any further comments regarding this to see if anyone else has had a similar experience.  As this isn’t the kind of visit we want our customers to have, I’ve arranged for a £10 gift card to be posted to you for the inconvenience caused.  Perhaps you can use this to buy something nice on your next visit." 

 

Oh dear.  What to do now?  Obviously, the £10 voucher is intended to buy my silence.  It may not be a life-changing amount of money, but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it? 

 

Indeed it is – and that’s a worry.  I wasn’t looking for compensation, I wanted an answer to why good food was being thrown away. Unfortunately, three replies later, I am no nearer getting an explanation from Sainsbury’s than I was at the beginning.  It doesn’t matter to me that they might have had staff shortages and so decided to close early the day I was there. I’m puzzled by the apparent mystery over when the Bakery Manager might next be available. But neither of these things are relevant to the issues I have raised unless Sainsbury’s were to be telling me that the actions I observed were in breach of their procedures and they wanted an explanation from the Bakery Manager before taking further action.  Nothing of this nature has been said, and so I assume that the actions I witnessed were perfectly OK as far as the company is concerned.

 

Powerless to extract a proper response from the company, I shall spend my £10 voucher on food which I will then give away to the first homeless person I see on the street outside.  A small gesture, perhaps futile, but it’s all I can do.

 

 

Not a protest vote?

So, the Eastleigh by-election result saw the Lib Dems retaining a seat against the odds – those odds including being widely ridiculed as a political force, mainly it seems for behaving like grown-ups and accepting responsibility by going into coalition with the Conservatives. The Lib Dems then made their task much harder by having an MP lie to protect his driving licence and continue to lie in order to try to stay out of jail – almost certainly to no avail. And then the forces of political opportunism threw in a late additional ball and chain for the Lib Dems in the massive form of Lord Rennard and multiple allegations that he has behaved inappropriately.

 

In fact, as with most by-elections, almost everyone could claim to have done well.  The Lib Dems actually won, UKIP got their best ever result in a by-election, the Conservatives failed to take a very winnable seat but did avoid complete catastrophe, and Labour managed to improve its share of the vote despite coming in a rather bedraggled fourth.

 

The thing that strikes me most about this particular by-election, apart from the fact that the Lib Dems won, is the nonsense of UKIP's loudly repeated statements that this was not a protest vote and that it should now be taken seriously as a political force.  These positions seem to overlook some  rather obvious facts.  For example, any party whose public face is represented by ex-Conservatives Nigel Farage and Neil Hamilton starts from a position of difficulty if it wants to be taken seriously. And given that the party’s popular appeal is based almost exclusively on its populist opposition to things rather than on any positive policies (anti-immigration, anti-Europe, anti-gay marriage, etc), its whole appeal is based on the notion of protest - why deny it?

 

 

What’s the point?

There were 14 candidates in the Eastleigh by-election. Yes, in addition to the 4 ‘main’parties, another 10 people paid out their £500 deposits and found 10 registered electors in the constituency who were prepared to sign their nomination form.  These 10 candidates mustered just 1,756 votes between them.

 

I know it’s a democracy and anyone should be entitled to stand for election provided they meet the various rules involved. But it’s all a bit of a joke isn’t it, when we are supposed to take them all seriously?    Or is that the point – it is just a joke?

 

Trouble is, it’s hard to know which of them is serious and which of them is just having a laugh.  For example, isn’t there a lot of commonsense in the idea that the European Constitution could be sorted out by going for a long walk, on the basis that walking is good for the constitution?  Surley you'd vote for the party that said that?  But would you vote for a party with a policy that if you got into an unfortunate situation and went slightly overdrawn and the bank slapped a £30 charge on you for being a couple of quid overdrawn, provided you repaid the money in a few days you would get that penalty charge back?  Doesn’t that sound like fiscal irresponsibility? Would you vote for the party that wanted to scrap the Bedroom Tax, because spare bedrooms are very handy for storing bondage gear, watching porn on the internet or sleeping with your pet cat when you can’t stand sleeping with your spouse/partner anymore because of their unacceptable behaviour in the bedroom?  And then there was the party that wanted to defend the right to asylum – presumably so that there would be somewhere to house the other candidates?

 

In the end I had to admire the party that observed that an election with 14 candidates was always going to squeeze its share of the vote. As a result, it didn’t view its 30 votes in quite as negative a light as you might suppose. In fact, it took heart from this solid foundation of support and declared that its new aim was to work for the last to be first.

 

Ambition and a target - that's what it's all about, isn't it?

 

A great career change?

A few months ago Frankel, arguably the greatest ever racehorse, retired after winning all of his 14 races. I wonder how many conversations there were in bars all over the country where punters said they wouldn't mind being retired to stud, being asked to 'cover' 200 mares each year, and being paid £125,000 a time for the pleasure?

It doesn’t always work out, of course.  He might be a failure in the potency stakes.  He might turn out not to be that interested in mares, having been trained to ignore them until now. Although I doubt that he’ll find himself being retired from stud and sent back to race again, as happened to another highly-rated horse once.

 

But let’s hope he doesn’t suffer the indignity of the stud we were shown on BBC’s ‘Countryfile’ yesterday, who was fooled into thinking that a replica horse was the ‘real deal’ and got so excited that the amorous session with the dummy lasted only a few seconds.  Of course, the fact that this particular stud failed to spot that his dream mare did not have a head or legs might make you question whether he deserves any sympathy.

 

And all this before the watershed.  Good luck to the parents who had to explain it all to their curious children.

Monday Moan 25

Christmas noise

It’s started – Christmas noise is all around us.  I am no Scrooge or Grumpy Old Man (honestly) but my patience and good nature are being sorely tested at the moment.

 

Can’t a person step out to do some shopping without their eyes and ears being assaulted by flashing lights and deafening noise from a PA system?  Twice last week I ventured out to local shopping areas.  On a late afternoon,  I chanced upon the build-up to the switching on of the festive lights.  Every child within a radius of 10 miles appeared to be there, mostly in their buggies, which made walking around for the rest of us such a pleasure, and almost without exception crying or shouting or making some other noise at high volume.  Within a few minutes of finding the relative tranquillity of a shop I then heard loud music from a PA system outside.  At least, I assumed it was just outside since it was so loud, but when I left the shop there was nothing to be seen, apart from a phalanx of buggies rushing along the road obviously on a mission to get somewhere important.  Swept along by the tide, I turned the corner to see a makeshift stage on which a young lady, apparently from a local radio station, was addressing the crowd in what can only be described as Radio DJ Estuary English, babbling along about nothing in particular and desperate for some interaction with the massed force of buggies assembled in front of her. 

 

What with that and the fairground rides and light-sabre sellers and tacky merchandise on hastily erected stalls and I was soon beating a retreat, saving my cash for another day.

 

I thought that other day might be last Saturday.  This time, partly because of the atrocious weather, the venue was a shopping centre.  It was crowded, but then it was raining and shopping centres are where people go in such circumstances.  It was noisy, but then that’s the nature of indoor shopping centres. It was full of what seemed suspiciously like the same buggies as I had encountered a couple of days earlier, but there was more room for manoeuvring round them so things didn’t seems so bad. There was a band of carol singers at one end of the mall, so I moved away fairly quickly. But once down the other end the loud music started and then I spotted another makeshift stage.  Surely lightning couldn’t strike twice?  Oh yes it could! Admittedly it was a different young lady and a different local radio station, but the approach and effect were the same – too much noise, too little enjoyment, and I was out of there as quickly as I could.

 

I still have money to spend at Christmas, but I think I will do most of my shopping online in the peace and quiet of my own home.

  

 

What’s the point, and what’s the cost?

The EU summit last week to discuss the budget for 2014-2020 was as predictable as it was disheartening.  Get the EU’s 27 leaders together to agree a budget?  More chance of winning the lottery than that they will agree anything at the first such meeting.  It’s all a rather weary charade isn’t it?  We all know what the respective positions of the member countries are and we all know they will not be able to agree. But we still have to go through the nonsense of these important people drawing up outside the building in their limousines, getting out, walking over to state their prepared positions to the waiting press, and then disappearing inside for the summit.  Two days later they will all emerge to give press conferences to say they are determined to stick to their positions, that the others are inflexible, that the European Commission has not worked hard enough to come up with an acceptable package, and then they will all disperse to their respective countries to play out the next round of the charade for their domestic audiences. 

 

They will be back.  And so will the circus that surrounds such events, including hordes of journalists and camera teams from every broadcaster in the EU, eager to catch the utterances of these god-like leaders and then play them back to us during the evening news bulletins as if there was something happening that was really newsworthy.

 

I’m fed-up with it all.  And I want to know how much all this costs – not just the costs of the summits themselves, but the preparations beforehand, the travelling and accommodation. And I want to know the cost involved in the assembling of the world’s press at such events.  How much do the BBC, ITV and Sky spend on sending their own teams to relay back to us the news that there is no news, only what we all knew already?

 

Someone ought to call a halt to it all.  Make a stand. Save some money. Demand that we all stop pretending that the meetings are anything more than a charade along the way towards eventual agreement.

 

 

Spot the difference

Now that I am a man of leisure I get time to look at things in more detail.  Some might say this results in me finding things to moan about that really aren’t worth getting bothered about.  They may be right, but isn’t that the attitude that allows people to get away with things that ought not to be allowed? 

 

For example, now that I shop more than I used to I have noticed how confusing everything is when you are trying to assess the value of what you buy.  Picking just one thing at random, I decided to buy some biscuits for Christmas last week – buy early and then avoid the hassle later, I thought.  I spotted a box of Crawford’s biscuits that appeared to be the same as the one I bought last year – yes, that would be an easy option, so into the basket it went.

 

But when I got home and put it side by side with last year’s, all seemed slightly different.  Instead of 12 varieties of biscuits we now had only 10.  It took some forensic examination to discover that the ‘missing’ biscuits included jammy dodgers – how could they!  Further close examination revealed that the weight of biscuits included in the box was actually more this year than last.  Curious. My initial instinct was that since the price was unchanged from last year this must mean the box was better value this time.  Fortunately, my wife was on hand to add the appropriate note of caution, suggesting that removing the jammy dodgers and one other ‘exotic’ biscuit meant that the weight gain could only have been achieved by increasing the proportion of plain, boring biscuits, so the overall value was diminished.

 

Far too complicated for me – just what the manufacturer’s intended, no doubt.

 

 

Didn’t he used to be good?

Watching Match of the Day last night we had the now familiar discussion after any match involving Chelsea of what was wrong with Fernando Torres and when was he going to rediscover his form.

 

The experts flap around looking for reasons why Torres no longer looks like he knows how to score goals. They remember him as he used to be and wonder who or what can spark him back to life.  It’s all very repetitive and pointless.

 

My wife interjected – “why are they bothering with this, he was rubbish at Liverpool and he’s rubbish at Chelsea”.  She was right, of course.  Although I should add that he was only rubbish at Liverpool after his two knee operations in 2010.  Might be a bit of a clue there, perhaps? Prior to that he had been a real goalscorer, but he never recovered this form.

 

Liverpool made one of the most astute transfer deals in recent years when they sold this crocked Torres to cash-rich Chelsea in January 2011 for £50m.  Laughing all the way to the bank?  Not quite, because the gloss of this clever deal was almost rubbed out by their decision to blow £35m of it on Andy Carroll – so Newcastle were actually the astute dealers in this little exchange.

 

Anyway, the point is that Torres might one day discover the form that once made him a great striker, but don’t bet too much of your money on it – the English game is full of ex-Liverpool strikers who lost their touch but were still purchased by a succession of clubs dazzled by their former prowess – think Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen, for example.