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...