The Grumpy Old Blog

A few years ago, some unbelievable, half-witted numbskull invented the altogether irritatingly meaningless term 'pre-loved'. As a term, it is so frighteningly and shamefully stupid that whoever invented it really needs to be either forced to re-sit a national English examination, or made to sit in a dark room and listen to a Little Mix interview played over and over again. A couple of years ago, the financial news correspondents on television and in newspapers were cock-a-hoop about the economy and banking institutions having, needing or wanting a 'haircut'. More meaningless nonsense. Unless there was an inference that the overpaid clots in finance who brought the UK to its knees in 2008 with their abject greed were barbers. Which is not really very fair to the purveyors of scissors and combs who attempt to keep the nation's hair in order. As 2016 comes to a close, those in the media and the people they interview have been busy-busy making 'binary' decis...

I had a flashback to some 25 years ago when I worked in Guiseley, a small town just south of Otley (famous for Thomas Chippendale) in the Leeds Metropolitan Borough. It is famed for being the origin and headquarters of the world-famous Harry Ramsden's fish and chips, at one time "the world's biggest fish and chip restaurant" and connected to the parents of Harry "Sooty, Sweep and Sue" Corbett (as well as Silver Cross Prams, Shires Bathrooms, Greenwood's Menswear, Compton Lighting and Wendy Wools). On one occasion I was in the then recently built, and at the time, flagship Morrison's Supermarket, a flagship to the extent that Sir Ken Morrison regularly turned up to service behind the deli counter. On that day, I was in the cash-out queue behind a young mother with her twin children in a double buggy (yes, it was a fine, locally-made, Silver Cross double-buggy!). Now bearing in mind this was before the digital revolution that now sees most young moth...

Three weeks of Christmas advertisements suffered thus far, and not one mention of Mary, Joseph or the infant Jesus. Just message after message telling us in incredibly sincere and twee language how much the supermarkets are putting in all their grandest of efforts to ensure we can put on a microwave-to-table family spread fit for a king.  Just like last year. And the year before last. And the year before that.  Seeing they start making more of a fuss of "the big day" Christmas each year than most host countries do for the Olympics, perhaps Christmas should be held just once every four years, thereby giving us three wonderful "big day" free years, thus making Christmas really, really, extra special. As I said, they never seem to mention Jesus any more, so if it's to be so commercial that the founder doesn't even warrant a mention any more, why not slim it all down? The furnishing companies with their 365-days-a-year sales are busy telling us there is st...

What things have Councils across the UK got in common? Actually, this is more about those things that annoy the public who pay for them from their hard-earned cash and whom they are meant, as a result, to serve to their alleged best Here are a couple of aggregated points: Most councils have senior executives on six-figure salaries, many larger than that of the Prime Minister, with inflation-busting increases every year while those at the coal-face in a best-case scenario receive no increase, while in a worse-case scenario, are shunted off to the Job Centre Most councils do things simply because they can, and get away with them because they have the law on their side, regardless of how reprehensible or morally offensive those things are. It is almost impossible to have their decisions reversed. That the members of the public who fund them have to turn to their MP, the media or to consumer programmes on television or in newspapers for action is utterly reprehensible It is so diffi...

I am fed up with mobi-morons walking the streets with their heads stuck in their phones. It's so much that I'm fed up with the mobi-morons' sad lives that they have to glue to their phones 24-7. No. It's more to do with the fact that as someone who doesn't walk around with his own head stuck in his phone 24-7, I fail to see why it should have to be me who has to watch out for them and give way to, or walk around them on the path in order to allow them to uninterruptedly maintain their heads stuck in their phones. And why, as someone who is a little more senior, should I have to stand on a crowded tram so that some youngster who isn't aware of anything going on around them in the world that's not on their little 5-inch screen can sit there and Facebook, Angry Bird or hunt for Pokemons? And the amazing things one notices while standing in a tram. Many of those on their phones  don't actually have anything constructive to do on their p...

The spotlight, fame, autograph-giving, fortune, the high-life, in fact everything associated with stardom is about to come my way. Yes, I'm about to star on the lower screen of a TV advertisement for a deodorant as one of the 79% of 221 people surveyed who agreed. With their guff. Mitchum, the deodorant people, collared me in my local supermarket in connection with this potential fame-making opportunity. A nice looking young lady, clip-boarded, rather microclimatically clothed to make a man of my age look at her twice, with the added value of no tattoos and all her own, rather than a set of purchased, teeth. In exchange for the aforementioned spotlight, fame, autograph-giving, fortune and the high-life I was actually given a bottle of Mitchum roll-on deodorant, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. I was asked a series of bland, tick-box questions (disguised as market research) about my deodorant-buying habits. I didn't have to lie to the aforementioned microclimaticall...

Well, to all my dear American friends, I have a suspicion you are shortly going to get the President you deserve. A slight saving grace is that the second term for President Obama has meant there is now not so much of a bar, but more of a skewer to be raised by his successor. On the one hand, one candidate seems to have a continual bad hair day, while the other enjoys a continual bad hair do. That the largest democracy in the world has to choose between Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber, seems to make the human pot-noodle, Kim Jong-un, somewhat of an attractive proposition. Of course we in the UK can't talk. We are in the unenviable position of having a leader of Her Majesty's Opposition akin to a school teacher who, despite being a teacher for the past 30 years, decided some 30 years ago at the start of his teaching career that he hated children. One, for the first time in most of our living memories, who is not referred to as the "Honourable Leader o...

I can't stand drivers: . . . . who don't know and can't judge the width of their own car . . . . in front of me who swing out onto the other side of the road to turn left . . . . who leave huge gaps between cars on busy roads because they are so busy chatting/phoning/sleeping . . . . who leave it until the very last minute to indicate as they approach the junction you are waiting to pull out from . . . . at a T-Junction who sits there for hours waiting for the road to clear totally of any traffic, and that includes the truck half a mile down the road approaching from the left, and a car half a mile up the road approaching from the right . . . . at a T-Junction who doesn't a least try to nose out in busy traffic . . . . doing 52 mph in the centre lane of a relatively empty motorway . . . . in cars beside me in heavy traffic with all the windows open as they listen to some angry chap on their CD shouting to the backing of someone manufacturing self-assemb...

The internet gurus keep warning us that if we continue to use adblockers, it will break the internet. For those of you perhaps not too familiar with internet parlance, adblockers are little extensions you can add to your internet browser that run automatically to prevent intrusive and nearly-always unwanted advertisements popping up on your screen or when you are browsing the World Wide Web. You know the sort – those that pop-up for the accident claims you've never had accidents for each and  every time you type the letters “acc” of the word “accountancy” into your computer. When not using adblockers, as you go about your web searching, your social media meandering, or your visit to a real media site, big brother, who is of course watching you all the time, picks up what you are either searching for or looking at and, hey presto, a “relevant” advertisement pops up on your screen. It’s all quite clever really. Except there are only so many times you can be asked whether you h...

Local election day in the UK, where many Britons head off to the voting station to put an "X" beside the name of someone they don't know representing the political views of a party they know nothing about. And that's just the candidates. Just back myself from the high-tech plywood and nails that I believe is officially called a "polling booth". Plainly the local invigilator must have worked in a bank, as the little voting pencils were very technically Sellotaped to a piece of string in the booth. The iPad generation hasn't enveloped the political voting system just yet, despite many councillors spending vast sums of local council tax-payers money on iPads and Samsungs to assist with a larger screen to play Candy Crush on as they attend vital Council meetings. The local school kids have been kicked out of their play-school hall to accommodate this. I was bitterly disappointed that only four names appeared on the ballot paper, none of whom was ...

I’m not keen on tourist traps. I never have been.  But there is something so endearing about Whitby, the fishing town in North Yorkshire (well East Yorkshire really) that trades healthily on its Bram Stoker/Dracula roots and the somewhat famous Mermaid fish and chip restaurant. The Mermaid has long-since been equalled, if not now in some instances eclipsed by other fish and chip establishments in the town serving equally good fish and chips, although the town’s fish and chip legacy very much still remains somewhat with the Mermaid. There is now a plethora of cosy tea rooms, as well as shops selling the wonderful tat so often missing from our regular high streets – funny fruit bowls, freaky flowerpots and silly signs to hang on the bathroom door suggesting wild and wacky ways of warning people that your eldest son is in there flatulently on his mobile Facebook. And all reasonably-priced to boot. And there’s also the Captain Cook Maritime Museum. Perhaps it...

More news about the the trees being proposed for Prestwich village, which is a small suburb of Manchester not far from Blackburn, but thankfully for residents, inconveniently far enough away that people in Prestwich can easily avoid it. My contact in Bury Council (Sir Frederik Scuttle OBE DipEd PhD SFA WTF) informs me that their HR department invited famous hypnotist Paul McKenna in to the Council last week to provide "training" for union members, Green Party members and var ious green welly warriors, all of whom eat organic cardboard, recycle their bicycles and own allotments so far from home they have to drive in their often smoke-belching MOT-failures to get there. For reference, here is a picture of one of the "trees" they now "believe" are being planted. All potentially in the ground. And for those thinking of taking a cycle path through Prestwich. Take care! Be afraid. Be very afraid. You will find them and they will kill you. ...

On the tax front, instead of arguing amongst themselves in political debate and trying to score against each other as to whose fault it is that google pay only 3% corporation tax, just cross-party cooperate. Both political parties are at fault. Bring the appalling Lin Homer (she quickly jumped ship after her ennoblement) types at HMRC to book to make the tax system sensible. Instead of all the guff that serial tax evasion consultants such as KPMG and Deliottes (I know it's le gal) can extract from the tax code's 11,520 pages, reduce it to just one sentence.  "You operate a corporation in the UK that takes money from UK taxpayers, then you pay 20% corporation tax." And stop engaging these consultants for public sector work until they stop helping companies evade tax. Simples

Having not done too much exercise since New Year start, and with one of Europe's largest intra-urban parks a mere four minutes away from my front door, I thought, with the lovely mild, dry weather, a brisk walk was in order today. As one used to sharing a seat on the tram with the tram lunatic, little did I realise that today I would pick up the park lunatic. I took off my jacket to inspect the back of it, and there certainly wasn't an "I welcome walking with the park lunatic" notice attached. How I assessed the lunacy of my sudden accompanier, was when he sidled up to me and said "Hello" in the manner of  Philip Green ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmDkPvy7ALY ) from "Britain's Got Talent". I knew in my bones I was in for a memorable walk. Without much further ado, he was straight in with "People say I look like Rhett Butler. What do you think?" Personally, I think John Prescott looks more like Rhett Butler than he did. I wa...

Right, so if the UK leaves the EEC, it would appear that, amongst other things: 1. The 70-odd (some very!) UK MEP's and their entourage of expense-collecting mandarins and hangers-on will continue, business as usual and uninterrupred for many years lining their pockets, with the 70-odd potentially able to vote on things of absolutely no consequence to the average now non-EEC UK national. 2. The UK resident who has exhausted many other legal avenues and seeks justice from the European Court as a last rersort will now have to whistle. At least this changes the status of Morecambe, which up to now has very much been the last resort. 3. Many consultants from companies such as the ususal suspects KMPG, Deliottes etc will die in the stampede to join the gravy train charging £2,000 or more a day for consultancy services on existing trade agreements that will all become null and void when we leave the EEC. Meanwhile, while the consultants fight to the death to get to their bank accoun...