The Grumpy Old Blog

Retail DFS will buck the new year trend for sales by not having a sale at any time during 2016. Instead, they will just maintain their normal retail pricing structure of 50% off everything. Christmas 2016 decorations, selection boxes and mince pies will go on sale in all the supermarkets from January. The Friday of every week will be designated a special sale day by the marketing people - Grey Friday, Techno Friday, Lunatic Friday etc Education Christian Faith Schools in Birmingham will announce that their new school uniform dress code will consist of a nun's habit for both male and female students alike. The nun in question will be livid. The Nation Union of Students will announce that anyone with an IQ higher than 40 will not be allowed to join Politics Donald Trump invades the Isle of Man. Dublin builds a wall around the city to keep residents in. Michael Foot returns from the afterlife to lead the Labour Party and immediately helps it shoot up seven poi...

I was totally dismayed this morning. Those of a certain age (in the UK) will remember the weekly ritual of popping into the newsagent (for those on their phones 24/7, a newsagent is a place that sells newspapers and banned substances such as cigarettes and cans of sugar masquerading as fizzy drinks - if you want to know what a newspaper is, google it on your phone) on a Friday for their weekly fix of the New Musical Express. Diving into its tabloid newsprint multi-ring, nitrogen-containing compound (dyes) covered pages that on the one hand ensured you were fully-up-to-date on Alice Cooper's follow up to "School's Out" and whether Debbie Harry was shooting a calendar topless, while on the other, you covered your shirt in ink. You could also check when and where Ian Dury tickets were going on sale, a mere four weeks before the event, by ticket collection in person, at the price on the ticket and with no booking fee (as was the case for all major acts in t...

There is no doubt that airports can be quite amusing places. That is apart from being told by a burly security supervisor at the x-ray gate that thanks to the only contribution Yasser Arafat ever made to society, I had to remove my belt, shoes, watch and place my AK-47 in the tray provided. Watching people going around their travel ‘business’ in airports and on board the aircraft is hilarious. There are those who are plainly not very good at it, continually checking all manner of minutiae with the other members of the party. “Do we go to the gate?”, “Have we time for a beer?”, “I MUST get a pizza”. There are those who have plainly not done it much before and like their fellow travellers to be made fully aware of the exact opposite, as they point and gesture to the monitor shouting out their destination and boarding gate at every passing opportunity to one and all around them. There are those who think they are something special – despite the fact they are travelling via bu...

We all detest booking fees. Or at least I certainly do. Those hidden extras which totally negate the "from £9.99" ticket price that is written extremely large while the "plus booking fee" needs a microscope to be seen.  The instant translucent coating painted over the so-called  transparent price-ticket. There is the straightforward daylight robbery fee that the wonderful concert ticket agencies place on their tickets, as if the profit from exclusively filling an arena with 15,000 ticket-payers nine-months prior to the event is not enough.  One single event from a nationwide series of concerts producing in excess of £100,000. £1million in profit from fees for a series of just 10 major venues.And that's before their profit from the tickets themselves. And in the days before the internet, the venues had to put in a much greater effort to sell their tickets. All without booking fees. Of course, sheer greed and the ability to get away with it le...

Yes, it's that time of year. With the advent of dark days where daylight is at a minimum, hordes of wonderful HR people throughout the land are emerging, clipboards under their arms, to "reach out" (i.e. irritate) staff in organisations nationwide. They arrange staff meetings where they don't just take minutes, but take hours. Proving that personnel is not a word, but a sentence. Yes, it's annual review time. The time of year where acres of pointless questions occupy reams of paper, all printed-off despite the twee "don't print this unless you have to" messages. Reams of paper that are filed in the HR office, never again to see the light of day, apart from any of the ideas from staff that can be stolen, adapted and used by the HR department claiming them as their own. These annual reviews are by and large totally farcical and completely irrelevant. There is no proof that anyone actually takes any notice of them. "Where do yo...

One of the most useless travel ‘must haves’ has to be the faux business class offered on short-haul flights, rail travel etc, although it has to be said that some long-haul flight share some of the irony treating travel as something it plainly isn’t. Fake boarding the plane. They call out business-class, or in the case of the budget airlines, idiot-class, to board first, followed by women with young perambulated offspring. What this means is, instead of reading a little longer in the comfort of the airport lounge and its slatted, haemorrhoid-inducing seating, you are rushed on to the plane ahead of the other passengers. Now I appreciate the purchased-teeth, four-wheel-drive, electric gate brigade from, say Cheshire, love strutting their stuff in airport lounges, safe in the knowledge that the remaining cattle class passengers are fully aware they have paid for the privilege of being referred to as business class and are called to board the plane before anyone else. ...

I took to the dark web yesterday, not to obtain illicit drugs, fake Euro notes or to purchase live ammunition. No, rather than mess around with a proxy server and have to log out of my LinkedIn connection that is on auto-connect with my current browser (i.e. then have to look up what the password is again when I want to log back in), I simply used the dark web browser to anonymously look at the profiles of some of the people asking me to be their connections on this here LinkedIn. The reason for this carry-on was because when you do look at someone's profile on LinkedIn, it registers with that particular someone that you have looked at. And some of these 'someones' not only look a bit shady, but I can't find even the slightest connection between me and them that would be to my - or their, unless their ultimate aim is to try and extract money out of me - benefit. One request in this week was from a 19-year-old girl studying German at the University of Lagos, an ins...

I was sent a story today by a friend who knows my feelings on the subject - that is, about one of the consummately greatest of all British activities, namely, queuing. It seems some Danish Professor or other has come up with the theory that those who queue the longest should actually be served the last. He claims it makes purchasing something altogether more efficient and smooth through the idea of 'contra-queuing' (whatever the devil that may mean). 'Serve the people at the back of the queue first', he says, with profound wisdom. Altogether very professorial, albeit demonstrating a somewhat keen lack of understanding of the purchasing psyche. The Nobel Prize-chasing Prof suggests that if, for example, a popular entertainment act was to announce a tour, with tickets going on sale at 11am one morning, using the theory of 'contra-queuing', no one will want to be first to buy said tickets. So no one will turn up 14 months in advance and venues will...

I went to Ikea (pronounced Ick-yar by the Sarf Manchester bleached/purchased teeth community in their efforts to try and keep up with the new advertisement pronunciation). My son required a wardrobe, although why he can't sleep in a bed like other computer science students is beyond me. I also wanted a sofa to match my eyes, but Ick-yar don't do bloodshot. A N Y W A Y . . . Saturday is NOT the best day to head to Ick-yar Ashton-under-Lyne, not that any day is necessarily the best day to head to Ashton-under-Lyne. By the way; to those of you living in a country that doesn't have an Ashton-under-Lyne (a conurbation within Greater Manchester in the north of England), believe me, you are not missing anything. Absolute mayhem, with fighting, cursing  and blood-letting over trolleys, and that was just the staff. Now. Some questions for the more regular (must be the fibre)  Ick-yar visitors. 1. Why do people who are buying large items of furniture reverse into parking...

The up and coming budget, which I know has you all riveted with excitement (rumour has it rivets will be subject to a RAT [Riveting Added Tax] of 23% seeing as they are running out of things to tax), is actually the first Conservative budget for almost 19 years. Here are some other spoilers: ITVbe will be subject to a BTT (Bad Taste Tax) of 14%, or if the Kardashians are featured in any programmes, the tax will be increased to 19% A new rate of 0% corporation tax is being introduced for the first time for Amazon, Apple, ebay, Boots, PayPal, Uber, One Direction and er . . . . oh sorry, silly me . . . . they already don't pay any corporation tax in the UK Trees fall into the income tax net for the first time, along with daffodils and small yappy dogs such as Jack Russells To ease the strain on the NHS, Euthanasia, which is being made compulsory for the over 90's and all residents of Birkenhead, will be subject to a tax of 40% Inheritance Tax is being ab...

A letter to Qantas: Dear Qantas I read recently that Qantas is to stop offering meals with pork content on certain Middle Eastern routes for fear of insulting those passengers of Islamic origins, a very noble gesture indeed. However, I feel there are certain other ethnic passenger groups that you now need to consider for the avoidance of insult, although why Qantas has not considered these before now, or at least at the same time as the concern for Islamic passengers, is altogether rather puzzling. Sikh and Hindu passengers - beef foods and foods containing derivatives of beef Jewish passengers - will no doubt welcome the banning of pork foods, but are also concerned about the serving of seafood, fish lacking fins and scales, and the concurrent serving of milk and meat foods during any one meal Vegetarians - any meat or fish foods or those contains derivatives of meat or fish Coeliacs - serving of foods containing wheat Vegans - serving of any meat, fish or dairy foods Reforme...

Well, the Cambodians are lovely and hospitable. The Thai people are lovely and hospitable.  The British, Australian, New Zealand, Russian and American tourists are by and large well-behaved, although to be brutally honest, the Americans can be a little loud both of voice and check trousers.  And the Chinese. Yes, the Chinese.  What can be said about the Chinese that won’t have Chairman Mao turning in his ashes’ pot? They are noisy, rude, inconsiderate, thoughtless, and, if China was to get nuked, all that would remain would be hordes of Chinese people glued to their mobile phones.  They mobile at breakfast. They mobile on the plane during take-off and landing. They mobile while eating, shopping, crapping and probably even in their sleep. They mobile while walking busy streets, an oriental equivalent of the living dead. They mobile on tours, on excursions, when having things explained and while the tour guide is trying to get them back on the b...

I have just completed my own exit poll for the General Election , an exit poll based on canvassers entering and exiting my front gate. Results are as follows: CONSERVATIVES - gingerly opens the gate, closes it behind them, gingerly pushes the leaflet through the letterbox ensuring it goes all the way in, gingerly opens the gate once more, exits the garden path and then gingerly closes the gate behind them LABOUR - opens the gate, steams in, noisily forces three identical leaf lets through the letterbox leaving one sticking out, then steams out leaving the gate flapping LIBDEMS - can't actually open the gate so gives up after 18 minutes of trying UKIP - from the public pathway, throw leaflet after leaflet, for a random selection of prospective candidates over the gate at the letterbox, hoping that one might magically make its way through the letterbox. Gives up after 18 minutes and 72 leaflets GREENS - Won't come through the gate as it is imported from Israel ...

Ah. As they say in China. Ah so. The approaching General Erection. Ah so. Private Eye is a great (pardon the approaching, unintended pun) eye-opener as to how the 650 of them (minus the really good and great amongst them, for example Jim Murphy and Alan Johnson to name but two - please note MPs from other other parties are also available from the aforementioned 10%) just have an eye on their five-year, £67060-a-year plus expenses cushty job - unless they get a knee up into the Lords, where they are paid to wear extremely silly wigs, sleep or play Candy Crush. They really don't give a stuff about the rest of us, forever saying "I believe" or occasionally, the even more creative "we believe" at every available opportunity, compromising their Saville Row suits just for the mere few weeks of Purdah to kiss the proletariat's snotty babies or to don high-vis jackets and hard hats and pretend they actually know what is going on in a village bakery. After 7th ...

So Big Dave has been to see Her Majesty to dissolve the government. On the suggestion of Anjem Choudary, he used Nitric Acid rather than the usual Astonish products from his local pound shop, although the Duke of Edinburgh did object to him racing up and down the corridors of Buck House on a Domino Pizza motorbike. All the politicians have wheeled out their headache pills - "I believe" (geddit?) - and there are reports that the sales of Johnson wipes have increased dramatically as canvassers head off to kiss dribbling babies and have toddlers throwing up all over their suits. The public will soon be deluged by politicians charging around in their battle busses (National Express 561 to London) knocking on doors shouting, "I don't know who you are or what you do, and I don't really care. Just give me your vote." Labour will say the Conservatives shouldn't blame UKip for the LibDems being so appalling to the SNP who shouted at the Greens for giving out to P...

What is it with current advertisements on television? Is it that the advertisers themselves are selling such absolute rubbish, or is it simply they don't realise they have saddled themselves with completely uncreative and useless advertising agencies? Meanwhile, Sir Martin Sorrell is waltzing to the bank with $53million for his past year's troubles. I wonder how many awful campaigns his company WPP has come up with recently? Or have they been responsible for originating or copying any of those I'm about to mention? I can't imagine the viewing rooms being full of company directors all wetting themselves with delight at the unveiling of new campaigns like these below that are of such monumental piss-poor proportions. The malaise set in with mobile phone operator O2 and their positively appalling "Be more dog" campaign. Totally meaningless, not to mention grammatically incorrect. Then moneysupermarket.com, already accused along with other comparison sites...

Very depressing news. It would appear that some of the "uneducated masses" who have flocked to Syria on a 'Jihadiholiday' are less than impressed with the brutality of the IS regime and its management. Leaving behind good honest regular meals such as Chicken Cottage and Subway (Halal) in favour of sweet and sour gravel and camel dung au lait is not going down too well. Also, not being allowed to glue to facebook, instagram and twitter (there's the thing to do - bomb the reg ion's phone masts into oblivion) 24 hours a day in favour of praising the local kebab shop Alah's Akbar is really not going down too well at all. Plus, not being allowed lippie, having to wear a black bin-bag 24/7 and the only available TV being "Stars in their Semtex" , "The only way is Sharia", "Breaking Backs" and "I'm an Ayatollah get me out of here" is slightly aggravating some of the nice young female suicide bombers ...

So the publicly-owned (i.e. bailed-out by the Government during the banking crisis of 2008) Royal Bank of Scotland announces its 7th successive annual loss, this time one of £3.5billion, for 2014, as near as makes no difference now a total loss of £50billion over the seven years. Yet the bank is still to pay out bonuses from a pool of £421m, which, hey, big deal, is some 21% smaller than it was in 2013. So despite 7 years of losses on a scale that you and I can’t really com prehend, it continues to hang on to its HR-orientated pathetic statement of ‘bonuses and salaries to attract the best’. Any fool can take a huge salary and enormous bonus for helping to sustain a 7th successive annual loss that’s the equivalent total of the combined GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of Afghanistan, the Bahamas, Cyprus, Greenland, Iceland and Malta. Yet no one does anything about continually rewarding total and abject failure.