The Grumpy Old Blog

I really can't get my head around malicious social bloggers. Yes, I rant and rave when twitter continually suggests I follow the altogether sweet, rather beautiful, but to me, rather inconsequential Holly Willoughby. But take the idiot (and thankfully it appears the Police have) who twitter-abused Olympic diver Tom Daley. What goes through the minds of this type of moron? Is it jealousy of a quite handsome lad making a name for himself as a superb sportsman representing his country? Is it that he sadly had nothing better to do? Or is it, as I suspect, just sheer, bloody-minded ignorance? Having seen the twitter conversation reproduced in the Independent newspaper, if the idiot is stuck for something better to do, perhaps he should consider having extra English lessons for a start. His spelling and grammar - the 140 character constraint of twitter aside - is absolutely appalling. My first reaction (aside from the sheer, wondrous amazement of watching them together - I re...

I'm a big fan of giving no longer needed or wanted, perfectly-working or nearly new stuff to charity. And with a shop from one of the country's finest hospices, St Gemma's, almost on our doorstep, they always receive first refusal. However, that doesn't stop the flood of plastic bags coming through the letterbox from a rich panoply of charities, some of which don't even have a presence in Leeds, others of which I've never even heard of. A bag dropped on the mat this morning (the 5th charity bag to so do since Friday - our area must be recognised at either extremely charitable, or extremely gullible) from Against Breast Cancer UK, and a very worthwhile charity to boot. However, it wasn't directly from the charity themselves, although they will reap minor benefits. It was from Recycling Clothes Company Limited (www.recyclingclothescompany.co.uk), and they made the bold claim that: "We will donate £75 per tonne of textiles received". Wond...

Many will remember how we had a short and extremely expensive (not for the brand ID people, who laughed all the way to Fred Shred's office) opportunity to purchase stamps and postal orders from Consignia, the suited, overpaid and underutilised powers that be having decided that to buy stamps and postal orders from a business called the Post Office was no longer sustainable. These great people felt the consumer had become fed-up visiting a Post Office, and would much prefer to visit an infinitely superior-named Consignia Office instead. Although, despite its new name, the Consignia Office would continue to sell stamps and postal orders, but refuse point blank to sell any Consignias. This lack of availability of Consignias for purchase by those members of the public wishing to purchase them from their local Consignia Offce, may go a long way to explain why the Consignia name lasted about 4 minutes before re-emerging from the howls of laughter and bucketloads of derision as the re...

Some of the financial moralists have come out with guns blazing, baying for Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne's head. "The dip of 0.7% is all his fault." "He's good on work experience but nothing else". "Sack him." "Worst double-dip for 50 years" Etc etc. Oh shut up the lot of you, you bunch of moaning, overpaid, under-talented, hypocritical wastes of space. Granted, he might preside over the most expensive fuel in Europe -  but it hasn't escaped my notice that the previous incumbents did nothing much about that themselves, did they? So come off it guys! It's not just his fault. What exactly do you want the poor man to do? It's the dishonest bankers and financially suited low lives who have got us into this particular mess. Fixing LIBOR. Gambling with our money. Offering mortgages to those who could ill afford them. Sucking millions out of us with their flatulent pay and bonuses to reward their incompetence ...

So, Treasury minister David Gauke infoms the great British public today that paying a plumber in cash to get a discount is morally wrong. It would appear that when you pay someone cash in hand to save on the paperwork or reduce the costs of fixing something, you are defrauding the state by taking money from the NHS and police force and reducing the money available for other public spending. Yes Mr Gauke, I suppose it is. But how about the billions of pounds that the wonderful Dave Hartnett from HMRC (Revenue and Customs) let Vodafone off the hook (pardon pun) with. Or the millions Goldman Sachs got away with. Then there's the small matter of the sale of the actual Revenue and Customs buildings to a bunch of parasitic, off-shore tax dodgers in Bermuda. Very sensible that one. Or the millions the government allow the private train companies to suck out of the economy in return for an appalling service - subsidies that allowed the Souter family to trouser £38mil...

There has been much commentary in the media about the shed-loads of cash awarded to the failed and recently retired bank chief executives, as they hang their heads without too much shame in their financial services trough. Then there's the dismal senior executives in councils up and down the land who, having fouled-up in their Boroughs, leave with huge golden handshakes, only to pop up again in a different Borough, on an equally huge remuneration. And more recently, chief executive of G4S, Nick Buckles, not as yet resigned, but on a salary of £890k and reckoned to walk away with £20million should he resign. That these people are handsomely rewarded for sheer incompetence and total failure, there can be no doubt, but there are others outside these high-profile merchants. Take Frankie Cocozza (and quite frankly, I wish someone would - as far away as possible), one of the rejects form the finals of X-Factor. So well-known, that his name has to be subtitles with "former X-...

Yes. There's always some company, somewhere, that is " delighted to announce ". Me, I'm delighted about their increased level of delight, although, if truth be told, I don't, in reality,  give a monkey's banana. When I was editor of a monthly business magazine in Leeds some moons ago, I allowed the 'news' section to grow to some 8-10 pages, mainly to allow those members of the Chamber who didn't use many of the services or attend many of the events to at least see some sort of presence within the business environs of the city via their press release in the magazine. It also led to the odd free lunch now and again for some product launch, ceremony, ministerial visit or other. However, the blue pencil always went through any references to their level of " delight ". I allowed them to be totally delighted within the confines of their own offices, rather than worry their fellow Chamber members, or for that matter, me, with their del...

The sub-headline on the front page of the Sunday Times business section for an inside story was "Get fit like Paris Hilton..." I do not want to get fit like Paris Hilton. I do not care about Paris Hilton. There is absolutely nothing she does that either contributes constructively to my daily life or increases my knowledge bank. And I certainly don't wish to read about this vacuous, pseudo-celebrity in my quality Sunday newspaper. And as for getting fit. I suspect her antidote to this is to throw some of her family millions at it and get someone else to get fit for her. Neither do I wish to hear about her friends, those overpaid, underweight, miserable beings called models. They are nothing but wooden clotheshorses elevated by the media to the position of rotary garden driers, glorified because they have struck it lucky having peraded around in the sewn rags and bits of affixed stray wool classed as "designer clothes" in front of people who embrace fa...

So the purple capped and topped Olympic Brand Marketing Police (fondly referred to as “Knob Heads” - by me, at least) are monitoring the UK to ensure that businesses during London 2012 who advertise should not include a list of banned words, including "gold", "silver" and "bronze", "summer", "sponsors" and "London". Under specially introduced legislation for the London Games, they have the right to enter shops and offices and bring court action with fines of up to £20,000. This is appalling and unacceptable. I was unaware it could be possible to ban the use of "gold", "silver" and "bronze", "summer", "sponsors" and "London". They are common dictionary words available to anyone who can write English. And a kebeb shop in Stratford that has been there over 20 years having to blot out its name because it is called “Olympic Kebabs” is a national disgrace. Someon...

I admit that I use Facebook. And furthermore, I admit to being an early user of Facebook. Not long after Facebook started, a website I was honorary webmaster for (local youth club) a few years ago, put their volunteer workers' profiles on-line in a question/answer format, one of those questions being: Facebook/Myspace? I had a look at these sites, and, as someone happy to make satirical replies about all and sundry, I was hooked. Yes, at times, I act my IQ rather than my age, but it has reunited me with a number of people from my past, who, unlike some, I am delighted to get back in touch with! A particular example is a friend from college (in Dublin) who I hadn't seen for 30 years. I had a flying visit to Dublin and was able to meet this man, potentially one of Dublin's finest opticians and a gentleman to boot, for lunch and a chat. However, what does amuse me is the varying levels of communication represented on Facebook. Peoples' literary or grammatical abiliti...

It's really quite amazing. You head off to the shops at 9.00am. The newsagent has been open for 3 hours. The baker has been open for 2 hours, as has the local supermarket. But the banks. Well, they're not open yet! 9.30pm is their awakening time. If you're lucky, or if they're not "undertaking staff training" - this is their terminology for finding new ways of holding the public to ransom or fiddling with public money while the PC programme burns. So you try the hole in the wall, but there's no cash available. Then when you do finally get into the bank just before lunch, despite there being eight 'tills', only three are open. And the queue of people you now have the luck to head (this will be the only success you will have with your bank this year) extends around the block.  Banks are completely fabulous. Whatever the situation here, the problems in the Japanese banking system are getting worse.  With thanks to the Sunday Times of l...

With the high profile separation of Tom Cruise and his orange crate from Katie Holmes appearing all over the media, Scientology is once again back in the news. I have always said, each to their own with their beliefs, and whatever makes people happy, providing they leave me alone, I've no worries. However, a belief in little green men, thought up by a science fiction writer (L of the Ron Mother Hubbard) who openly said "the best way to make a million is to start a religion" and who himself disappeared off in a camper van around Western America in 1980, defies belief. The current chief executive of the business, a David Miscavige (puns on the "Miscavige of Justice" are no doubt rife) is also of the less-than-tall community. Rumour has it that the two of them often compare orange crates before standing up at one of their cult conventions to extoll the virtues of parting simpletons from their hard-earned cash. The money would be far better spent on the home...

Why should the motorist, who already pays more indirect taxation on driving for a smaller re-investment in transport than anyone else in Europe (not to forget the other indirect taxes such as council tax, water rates, TV licence, housing stamp duty, licences for functions, driving tests and licences, passports, licences for scaffolding, licences to operate a cherry-picker, licences to drive a taxi, business rates, planning permission, corporation tax, licences to sell alcohol/cigarettes, death duty [on already-taxed income], birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licences] etc etc etc), have to fork out further for the privilege of parking outside their own home ( reminder : a home they already pay council tax on)? It will come to the stage where shopkeepers and store managers will lose so many customers that they will either retreat to the relative safety of their local out-of- town shopping centre or retire to the relatively tax-free haven that is the car boot sale, and ...

Maybe I'm just getting older and more miserable, but are quiz shows on television, and in particular on the BBC, - which I might add you and I fund to the tune of almost £200 a year each - becoming more inane and ridiculous? They all seem to follow the same format - a slick-witted presenter presiding over to two teams of "B" stars comprising of the same, old, second-rate stand-up comedians and unemployed soap stars, just because it’s one particular agent who holds sway over the BBC light entertainment department. The format, presenters patter and audience reaction is identical, whichever the show. It's just a great pity the programmes on the BBC aren't as good as their link advertisements between those programmes. Back on commercial stations, banking advertisements have become so solemn, customer-friendly and twee. As the banking institutions take their long-suffering customers even further for a ride on their single journey of increasing dishonesty...

For a change, an 'informationary' blog rather than my usual ranting and raving. Some of you will be aware of my two favourite English-speaking countries, namely Australia and the good ol' US of A. The former I was introduced to thanks to Vauxhall Motors, the UK division of General Motors, enjoying as I did, two sojourns to the wonderful city of Melbourne. The latter, I regret not being a little younger and perhaps more 'liquid', as I would otherwise be writing this from Tamarac in Florida. My first experience of Florida was as a 'semi-resident' in as much as we stayed with friends in, coincidentally, Melbourne (downtownish Miami) for two weeks, stepping into a hotel - a Days Inn - for only two nights of the entire holiday at Disney with the kids. The second trip was to New York for a landmark wife's birthday, where we stayed in resplendent luxury in the Waldorf Astoria for 10 days, a mere $8 ride (then) from the Carnegie Deli! (Food glorious food...

It seems to be coming a regular feature of the British way of life. The banking chiefs (not the ordinary, customer-facing members of staff, you will note), not content with their huge and immoral remunerations and unwarranted honours from HM The Queen, continue to line their pockets unhindered and unconcerned. The banking chiefs get found out. The FSA (Financial Services Authority and not the Food Standards Agency, although I suspect given the use the former has been, the latter might in all probability be more effective in these matters) does nothing, having forgotten, once again, to put its teeth in that morning. Yes, read all about their tranche of successes in Private Eye magazine every fortnight! The banking chiefs get away with it. Already on hefty 7-figure salaries, through the kindness of their own hearts, and as a wonderful, thoughtful, empty and meaningless gesture, forgo their annual bonus because of the absolute hash they make of things. Big deal, as th...