The Grumpy Old Blog

I really can't get my head around malicious social bloggers. Yes, I rant and rave when twitter continually suggests I follow the altogether sweet, rather beautiful, but to me, rather inconsequential Holly Willoughby. But take the idiot (and thankfully it appears the Police have) who twitter-abused Olympic diver Tom Daley. What goes through the minds of this type of moron? Is it jealousy of a quite handsome lad making a name for himself as a superb sportsman representing his country? Is it that he sadly had nothing better to do? Or is it, as I suspect, just sheer, bloody-minded ignorance? Having seen the twitter conversation reproduced in the Independent newspaper, if the idiot is stuck for something better to do, perhaps he should consider having extra English lessons for a start. His spelling and grammar - the 140 character constraint of twitter aside - is absolutely appalling. My first reaction (aside from the sheer, wondrous amazement of watching them together - I re...

I'm a big fan of giving no longer needed or wanted, perfectly-working or nearly new stuff to charity. And with a shop from one of the country's finest hospices, St Gemma's, almost on our doorstep, they always receive first refusal. However, that doesn't stop the flood of plastic bags coming through the letterbox from a rich panoply of charities, some of which don't even have a presence in Leeds, others of which I've never even heard of. A bag dropped on the mat this morning (the 5th charity bag to so do since Friday - our area must be recognised at either extremely charitable, or extremely gullible) from Against Breast Cancer UK, and a very worthwhile charity to boot. However, it wasn't directly from the charity themselves, although they will reap minor benefits. It was from Recycling Clothes Company Limited (www.recyclingclothescompany.co.uk), and they made the bold claim that: "We will donate £75 per tonne of textiles received". Wond...

Many will remember how we had a short and extremely expensive (not for the brand ID people, who laughed all the way to Fred Shred's office) opportunity to purchase stamps and postal orders from Consignia, the suited, overpaid and underutilised powers that be having decided that to buy stamps and postal orders from a business called the Post Office was no longer sustainable. These great people felt the consumer had become fed-up visiting a Post Office, and would much prefer to visit an infinitely superior-named Consignia Office instead. Although, despite its new name, the Consignia Office would continue to sell stamps and postal orders, but refuse point blank to sell any Consignias. This lack of availability of Consignias for purchase by those members of the public wishing to purchase them from their local Consignia Offce, may go a long way to explain why the Consignia name lasted about 4 minutes before re-emerging from the howls of laughter and bucketloads of derision as the re...

Some of the financial moralists have come out with guns blazing, baying for Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne's head. "The dip of 0.7% is all his fault." "He's good on work experience but nothing else". "Sack him." "Worst double-dip for 50 years" Etc etc. Oh shut up the lot of you, you bunch of moaning, overpaid, under-talented, hypocritical wastes of space. Granted, he might preside over the most expensive fuel in Europe -  but it hasn't escaped my notice that the previous incumbents did nothing much about that themselves, did they? So come off it guys! It's not just his fault. What exactly do you want the poor man to do? It's the dishonest bankers and financially suited low lives who have got us into this particular mess. Fixing LIBOR. Gambling with our money. Offering mortgages to those who could ill afford them. Sucking millions out of us with their flatulent pay and bonuses to reward their incompetence ...

So, Treasury minister David Gauke infoms the great British public today that paying a plumber in cash to get a discount is morally wrong. It would appear that when you pay someone cash in hand to save on the paperwork or reduce the costs of fixing something, you are defrauding the state by taking money from the NHS and police force and reducing the money available for other public spending. Yes Mr Gauke, I suppose it is. But how about the billions of pounds that the wonderful Dave Hartnett from HMRC (Revenue and Customs) let Vodafone off the hook (pardon pun) with. Or the millions Goldman Sachs got away with. Then there's the small matter of the sale of the actual Revenue and Customs buildings to a bunch of parasitic, off-shore tax dodgers in Bermuda. Very sensible that one. Or the millions the government allow the private train companies to suck out of the economy in return for an appalling service - subsidies that allowed the Souter family to trouser £38mil...

There has been much commentary in the media about the shed-loads of cash awarded to the failed and recently retired bank chief executives, as they hang their heads without too much shame in their financial services trough. Then there's the dismal senior executives in councils up and down the land who, having fouled-up in their Boroughs, leave with huge golden handshakes, only to pop up again in a different Borough, on an equally huge remuneration. And more recently, chief executive of G4S, Nick Buckles, not as yet resigned, but on a salary of £890k and reckoned to walk away with £20million should he resign. That these people are handsomely rewarded for sheer incompetence and total failure, there can be no doubt, but there are others outside these high-profile merchants. Take Frankie Cocozza (and quite frankly, I wish someone would - as far away as possible), one of the rejects form the finals of X-Factor. So well-known, that his name has to be subtitles with "former X-...

Yes. There's always some company, somewhere, that is " delighted to announce ". Me, I'm delighted about their increased level of delight, although, if truth be told, I don't, in reality,  give a monkey's banana. When I was editor of a monthly business magazine in Leeds some moons ago, I allowed the 'news' section to grow to some 8-10 pages, mainly to allow those members of the Chamber who didn't use many of the services or attend many of the events to at least see some sort of presence within the business environs of the city via their press release in the magazine. It also led to the odd free lunch now and again for some product launch, ceremony, ministerial visit or other. However, the blue pencil always went through any references to their level of " delight ". I allowed them to be totally delighted within the confines of their own offices, rather than worry their fellow Chamber members, or for that matter, me, with their del...