The Grumpy Old Blog

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...

I never cease to be amazed at the Iranians. Nothing is ever their fault. It's either the fault of the infidel West, Israel or the President of America. But never their fault. I could say as far as Iran is concerned, if it's anyone's fault, it's the French. They're the ones who, in the first place, sheltered, and then subsequently allowed out the barn-pot, two-shots short of a double vodka, warmongering 'cleric' Khomeini in the first place. This man's only legacy (aside form the total destruction of cultural Iran as we knew it) was to introduce the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Queda, 9/11 and all the other murderous misfits otherwise incapable of anything useful, to the world, and to turn the world against what had up to then been a respected world religion, previously attracting no derision, mistrust or disgust. Khomeini allowed Iran to replace it's modern, cultural and intelligent, pro-Western despotic leadership with a bunch of out-of-date, ou...