The Grumpy Old Blog

A very good friend paid me a compliment the other day. Well, I felt it was a compliment. Something along the lines of " You know a lot about some mighty strange things. What on earth is this Bitcoin and Blockchain thing? " I have to be honest, despite reading up on it over the past couple of years, I haven't a clue what either Bitcoin or Blockchain is all about. You might as well accuse me of being an arboriculturist who thinks a hedge-fund is something blackbirds save up all their hard-earned twigs to nest in. All a mystery of gargantuan proportions.  To me, bitcoin an d blockchain is something to enable the vaguely technical, otherwise bored and money-greedy who don't themselves like having to work for a living to take as many normal Joe Soaps for an untraceable ride as they can, to pay for their yachts, fancy cars, Rolex watches and designer clothes. Oh, and for the awful teeth that don't suit their face that they pay a fortune for in Turkey. Now, according to ...

In fairness, it was what the Irish call a "soft day". An extremely soft day. A "Merde Il Pleut" day. I was in Rochdale to visit a friend whom I'd not seen for a while, and cast extreme value over and above the effort it would take on a very wet Mancunian day to visit him. First impressions, I was surprised. The bus station (I'm a public transport user) was clean and unusually, didn't have that "Eau de Urine" smell we have now come to expect and enjoy from bus stations. Add in despite it being a Saturday, there were staff on duty. Any very helpful staff they were too, able to give me a quick direction that didn't involve a reverse finger version of the "V" sign made famous by neighbouring town Oldham's one-time  MP Sir Winston Churchill. One exits the bus station and is greeted by a quite futuristic and European-style tram stop, again, clean and well maintained. And a little on the impressive side, if I may say. And that's ...