The Grumpy Old Blog

Finding more reasons to shop at Morrisons, coupled with my detestation for "every little helps",  I ambled down to my local branch this morning to check out what money they could relieve me of. As well as for a spray of mist as I chose my celeriac, fennel and herbs. Quite a surprisingly pleasant experience, apart from the other shoppers, the infernal Christmas music (covers of Christmas hits - even more infuriating) and tat, and the tattooed hordes (and that's just the women) filling their shopping baskets to groaning capacity with cheap cider, multi-pack crisps and Twiglets. Yes, roast turkey, stuffing, cheap cider, crisps and Twiglets - altogether a  very Gordon Ramsey menu. I love the way some men (and it's nearly always the men) stand and gesticulate in a "buying an overpriced coffee and sandwich in the airport on the way to Ibiza even though they drive 12 miles to save 1p on a litre of petrol" sort of manner, as if they really don't get out much...

January – the world will end on the 14th at 2.00pm, but thankfully, Microsoft will dash to the rescue and reboot the world at 2.01pm. However, several .sys and .dll files will nevertheless fail. Ebay crashes due to the level of unwanted Christmas presents people are getting rid of February – a bank will announce that it might have mistakenly miss-sold thousands of its custom ers insurance products they didn’t need at the time when they didn’t want them. Apple unveils an updated iPhone that sees very stupid people queuing outside their shops for days in their efforts to be the first to get one March – BBC 1 goes through an entire day (18th) without showing a single repeat. Licence payers are shocked, and hospital admissions soar through the roof, which is the only place to get a bed. Amazon, Apple, Ebay and PayPal announce they are going to pay what they consider is a fair amount of UK tax to make up for previous years of tax avoidance. 1% tax April – the supermarkets...

9th of November (9.11.13, odd number sequence already picked up on by some American mathematician) and I'm absolutely fed up with Christmas advertisements. I don't care if my sofa can't be delivered for Christmas, or if Ant and Dec - or was it Dec and Ant - choke on their Morrison's battered prawn, or if Aldi are flogging an equivalent Harrod's £20,000 hamper for around £500, or whether Clinique have developed a special Christmas method for parting women from even more of their money, or that the American J Crew store has opened in Regent Street in time for Christmas and is positively ripping off the idiot shoppers happy to pay same amount Sterling for a Dollar-ticketed piece of Bangladeshi crap. I don't want to buy exclusive Disney Christmas items (although Mickey Mouse and Christmas have become frighteningly synonymous since Jesus has been relegated solely to Christmas Day Church services only), neither do I want to save £1 Tesco stamps on a card to lighten my...

My reply to British Gas following the twee crap they sent cleverly disguised as a letter of justification for their price rises: Dear folks at BG Thank you for your letter from Ian Peters, Managing Director, British Gas Residential Energy, but I was already aware of the Gas Price increases from BBC Watchdog, Moneysavingexpert.com, Rip Off Britain and of course the media. Personally, I was glad of the rise in prices. I have been worried for weeks that your directors and shareholders, many of whom don't actually know what a heating bill is, might have to forgo their foie gras or Bollinger for a day or two, or perhaps even travel somewhere Standard Class. However my anxiety was completely misplaced, because thankfully, the price rise, coming as it always does at a time of approaching high consumption, should assist with easing any of their pains. I have since heard a rumour that because the gas suppliers always follow each other with price rises, you are forming a...

I present a rather off-the-wall (not that the blogs on this site would in anyway indicate to you that I might do such a thing!) adult-orientated rock show on our local community radio station. 'OK' you say. 'Big Deal'. Well my listener seems to like it! In fact he loves it. Seriously though. While we on the station joke and laugh about the strange requests (for music - please behave!) I receive for music, I suddenly realised the other week that the strange request from a listener for 'Paranoid' for his 72nd Birthday wasn't, in fact, really all that strange. When Black Sabbath, with the wonderful still-alive Ozzy first released 'Paranoid' in 1970, my sprightly 72 year-old listener would have been an even more sprightly 29 years of age. There is no reason why, 43 years later, if he was a fan of the band back in 1970, that he shouldn't be a fan now! After all, someone who supported a particular football team in the 1970's is more than li...

It defies belief the corruption, back-handing, bonuses for mediocrity, crooked Councillors, bent Boroughs, putrid planning applications and on and on and on that are reported in Private Eye every fortnight, yet no one in authority seems to take a blind bit of notice. For example, in this issue, five Network Rail directors reduced their bonuses to £350,000 after train performance targets were not met. Why are they even getting a bonus in the first place? Unless it's because of the entertainment we, the suffering public get as a result of the railways being such a continual joke. £197 one-way for a trip from London to Leeds. I'd expect part-ownership in the train for that price.  Even paying myself 50p a mile, the congestion stealth tax, parking in London and petrol, I'd still come out with money to spare. Yet Megabus or National Express can do it for change out of a tenner. OK, the journey takes twice as long. Atos, the medical con-sultants are highlighted issue after is...

As the wild and wacky world of HR descends into its ever-increasing own little downward spiral of the "3D's" - Dysfunctionality, Darkness and Dishonesty - a new 'lark' is emerging to help the job phishers (the less than forthright agencies, but as they say on the BBC, "some  extremely good agencies are available") save time and effort as they cream off a huge percentage for placing someone in a job that the company HR person should have done. "Due to the volume of applications we receive we are unable to respond to unsuccessful candidates." So, by this perverted logic in customer service, if you browse in a bookshop and don't buy anything, unfortunately, the staff wont see fit to talk to you. Or "Those six tables in this restaurant aren't mine, so they can die of thirst as it's not my job". Or "You're not a parent at my school, and as the official lollipop lady here, I'm not going to acknowledge you exist,...

Like many freelancers do, I scan the People Per Hour (PPH) freelance work site - by all means register and try it yourself (click here) - to see if there's a little bit of extra work I can pick up when there's a lull in my mainstream freelancing. However, it never ceases to amazes me not only the often straightforwardly parsimonious rates people offer to pay for their jobs, but more, the sometimes crass idiocy of some of the freelancers who apply for those jobs. They fail to realise that by acceding to ridiculously low rates, they are sustaining the cheapskates who use the PPH site not as a recruiting ground for freelance professionals to help get a job done, but as a shop window to get jobs done on the absolute cheap. It seems to becoming a haven where the unscrupulous take advantage of the unwary. Let me explain. I was alerted to a copywriting job today. Looked interesting, but demanded a pound, going on near 20 kilos of flesh. The job-poster wanted someone to write,...

Graham Walker, the "wild" man of the Grumbleweeds tragically succumbed to cancer this week. Graham, together with drummer Robin Colvill (who I am delighted to add is very much alive!) were a wickedly funny and entertaining duo - not that the rest of the group were slouches when it came to entertaining people! I grew up in a house that adored the Grumbleweeds - good old fashioned entertainment, a little bit of innuendo and plenty of laughs - never for one moment suspecting that I'd ever "sort of" get to know them a little. I first "crossed swords" with Graham (in a very amusing and charity way I might add - and apologies the exact circumstances are now a little hazy) as a result of a fund-raising gig for the RNLI the late Bernard Manning had 'sponsored' at his Embassy snooker club on the Rochdale Road in Manchester ['Embassy', yet Bernard never smoked!]. What happened was that Bernard 'handed over' his club for nothing for...

I no longer go to the cinema. I’ve really had enough. It’s not the cost of a ticket at about £8, or the price of a soft drink at £9 and a bucket of popcorn at £18. It’s the social degenerates. The mobile-morons. The fatuous phone freaks. They drive me mad. Committing-murder mad. I would, ordinarily, go to the cinema to watch, and hopefully enjoy, a film. However, the new breed of cinema goer now seems to go simply to play on their phone all film long. They are totally incapable of the slightest of social graces necessary to watch a film in the company of other members of the public. The continual click-clacking of phone buttons, the flashing on and off of phone screens, the loud nudging of one of these degenerate’s friends to show them something on their phone drives me mad. Can they not just switch off their phones and put them away for an hour and a half? Is it so much to ask? Nowadays, when you walk around town, it’s a more tiring experience than it ever used...

I had a wonderful English teacher at school. Mr Blackmore. Nicknamed Moses because he had a very bushy beard, but then pupils were assuming, without any proof, that the original Moses never shaved. He was somewhat height-challenged, but in those days, dressed in his batman gown as teachers always did in the black and white days, he nevertheless commanded the respect that the threat of having the wooden blackboard duster thrown at you was always bound to command. And he also had a very unique attribute that he made Shakespeare enjoyable, giving us teenage schoolboys a laugh each time by accentuating his pronunciation of “Coriolanus”. I shall leave it to your imagination as to which bit he accentuated. I remember he started one class with a statement that was to set me on my path to a life of cynicism. He suddenly announced that “ Nothing acts faster than Anadin, so all you guys must, from now on, take nothing .” I believe – and hope – that Ian Blackmore is now a healthy pensioner...

Well hoo flipping ray. The government are at last thinking of deploying water cannons on the streets as a measure to deter the trouble-making rubbish that cause our valiant police men and women such heartbreak and physical abuse. I wrote to No 10 and the Home Secretary Kenneth Baker not long after John Major took over from Baroness (then Mrs) Thatcher suggesting how useful water cannons were in deterring the rubbish from making trouble on the streets of Northern Ireland. They replied that "no", not on my watch, i.e., "I've got an expenses scandal to built up to and the police have helmets anyway". While I realise that the average police-worrying trouble-maker on the street possibly doesn't wash voluntarily anyway (the two words they detest being "soap" and "work"), they nevertheless object to being soaked with water on a typically cold British night. So don't faff around Mrs May. Get cracking and help the police to help them...

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We have all, at some time, achieved greatness and magnificence through hindsight. We have obtained CBE's, OBE's and other wonderful accolades, been to afternoon tea with H M the Queen and even appeared on the BBC's One Show, all without the necessity of lowering ourselves to being a useless, snivelling, senior public-sector executive. All thanks mainly to hindsight. Well not really. I just like having a go at the pathetic honour-chasers (we all know one of those in either local government or a local voluntary organisation don't we? You know the sort - does none of the work but grabs all of the glory). Had I the Tardis, (you know, the Time and Relative Dimension in Space machine Dr Who drives around Time in - saves a fortune in parasite, er, I mean parking fees), I could return and correct some of the great errors of my ways  -  through hindsight. Most I wont mention here, as being of the plain stupidity and male pride type, I don...

For heaven's sake - if you see the "We have got 239 boxes of iPhone 5's that can’t be sold because they have been unsealed. Therefore we are giving them away for free" message doing the rounds, just avoid it!  That's almost £150k's worth of phones being disposed of free because the seal is broken on the box!!!!!! They are after your email or mobile details so they can either flood you with spam, or try and get personal details and fleece you with a credit or debit card deposit for unusually high postage ( or they'll just try and clear out your bank account, max your credit card or steal your identity ). Come on. Be realistic.  Who in their right mind would give an iPhone 5's away for free because the box is unsealed? I don't see any of the mobile phone shops, retailers or for that matter Apple themselves doing it! Have you seen any similar offers from any other retailers? Dell giving away laptops because the box seal is broken?...

To the Teachers' Union of Ireland on their boycott of Israel Dear Sir/Madam So, you're helping to turn the land of saints and scholars into a land of saints and racists! Maintaining the underlying continuence of being the only neutral country in Europe that takes sides. Your boycott of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, is at the very least totally misguided, at the very most, ignorant and abhorrent racism. You are making total fools of yourselves, supporting the arch anti-semitic agitator and libelous Jim Roche (I don't see him raising objections that his soul-mates the Taliban prevent girls from having an education, or that there is repression in Bahrain in the run-up to the Grand Prix!), who, plainly has so much time on his hands that should otherwise be used to better effect in promoting the cause of Irish Education. If he is so worried about Palestinians and the Gaza strip, he should actually be less of a coward and take a ticket (preferably one-way; I...

A question for you, especially if you are a guilty party in the following. Is there any particular reason why some recruitment consultants copy and paste direct application job advertisements from, as an example, the NHS job website, and then claim them as "my client", who they can't mention and which salary details they haven't any idea of?  Is this not wasting applicants' time and immorally raising their hopes?  I'm sorry, but it's the height of irresponsibility, and needs addressing.  Even a volunteer, mini, "charter" for applicants in agency recruitment advertisements (rather than the usual, unqualified "we are a leading recruitment consultancy" nonsense) might help separate the wheat from the useless. Perhaps something along the lines of: "This is a genuine employment position and we guarantee that we are working solely/in conjunction with x (* see 3rd paragraph below) on filling this position." There sh...

It's behind you (oh! no it isn't - oh! yes it is etc.). It doesn’t seem like such a long time ago, and yet it's nearly with us again. In fact, it's always nearly with us again. Or is it just that it never went away? The Festive lights are switched on in August.....or is it next week? Those annoying advertisements for less than useful products from Tomy and Fisher Price, all featuring Santa with a smile that make you want to vomit, clutter up the advertisement breaks on children’s commercial television for months in advance. The Post Office are quick to remind us of the last days for posting to obscure islands off the coast of Tasmania, but beggar if they can succeed in getting a first class letter from London to St Albans tomorrow before they impose another price rise. Or before one of their raft of ivory-tower, HR-infected managers, who wouldn't know a post round if it hit them in the mouth, comes up with another “fabulous” idea to make the life of the over-worke...

Had a fantastic morning preparing for England's win in rugby. Or will it be a win in Derby? Well, it's not that I will be attending the match, or that I might even watch it on television – in fact I don’t even know if or when they are playing - but I could tell something might up judging by the copious amount of Carlsberg Lager people were buying from the supermarket when I popped in at 7.30am. I had been instructed by the wife to purchase some "low fat" (could have sworn that is the name of our local Chinese Take-Away) red cheese, and found out something that made me slightly suspicious, not that I might be in any way cynical when it comes to supermarket shopping, you will understand. All the red cheese - the normal, the "Be Good" to yourself, the simply red cheese (presumably the stuff Mick Hucknall buys), the super-duper "Taste the Difference" and the Con You Sir, oops, I mean Connoisseur red cheese contained EXACTLY 33.7g fat p...