The Grumpy Old Blog

The Vatican have just announced a brace of new patron saints: St Hopeless - patron saint of English cricket St Greed - patron saint of banking/privatised industry chief executives St Amazon - patron saint of tax avoidance (very close runners included St eBay, St PayPal, St Apple, St Vodafone and St Yorkshirewater St Laurelhardy - patron saint of railway ticket pricing St Cashcow - patron saint of car parking run by councils St Nochance - patron saint of lottery players St Alcapone - patro n saint of payday loan companies St Braindead - patron saint of tattooed and/or tongue-pierced women St Irritate - patron saint of X-Factor groups/'bands' St Parasite - patron saint of accident and health claim companies St Ripoff - patron saint of concert/event ticket vendors St Unecessary - patron saint of 4x4 car drivers who have never driven further than Sainsbury's or the school run St Gormless - patron saint of Big Brother TV programme

Right. It's just under a month into the new year - how much boardroom bullshit have you been subjected to by your clatter of under-qualified managers who are consistently over-remunerated for incredibly poor performance?: Going forward – loose, meaningless and overused To ' Action ' something - how about simply 'doing' it? Touch base - about as meaningful as ‘let's do lunch’ Circle back - to catch up later Blu e-sky thinking – like 'thinking outside the box' they both translate as 'doing your job' Brainstorm – just like 'thought showers', totally meaningless Low hanging fruit - means nothing, as no one knows what tasks are actually being referred to Get the ball rolling - simply means 'begin' Drill down - not, as one might think, anything to do with heavy machinery End of play - curious strain of kiddy-talk in bureaucratese Deliverables – the postman always rings twice, especially with your e-bay parcel Iss...

Finding more reasons to shop at Morrisons, coupled with my detestation for "every little helps",  I ambled down to my local branch this morning to check out what money they could relieve me of. As well as for a spray of mist as I chose my celeriac, fennel and herbs. Quite a surprisingly pleasant experience, apart from the other shoppers, the infernal Christmas music (covers of Christmas hits - even more infuriating) and tat, and the tattooed hordes (and that's just the women) filling their shopping baskets to groaning capacity with cheap cider, multi-pack crisps and Twiglets. Yes, roast turkey, stuffing, cheap cider, crisps and Twiglets - altogether a  very Gordon Ramsey menu. I love the way some men (and it's nearly always the men) stand and gesticulate in a "buying an overpriced coffee and sandwich in the airport on the way to Ibiza even though they drive 12 miles to save 1p on a litre of petrol" sort of manner, as if they really don't get out much...

January – the world will end on the 14th at 2.00pm, but thankfully, Microsoft will dash to the rescue and reboot the world at 2.01pm. However, several .sys and .dll files will nevertheless fail. Ebay crashes due to the level of unwanted Christmas presents people are getting rid of February – a bank will announce that it might have mistakenly miss-sold thousands of its custom ers insurance products they didn’t need at the time when they didn’t want them. Apple unveils an updated iPhone that sees very stupid people queuing outside their shops for days in their efforts to be the first to get one March – BBC 1 goes through an entire day (18th) without showing a single repeat. Licence payers are shocked, and hospital admissions soar through the roof, which is the only place to get a bed. Amazon, Apple, Ebay and PayPal announce they are going to pay what they consider is a fair amount of UK tax to make up for previous years of tax avoidance. 1% tax April – the supermarkets...

9th of November (9.11.13, odd number sequence already picked up on by some American mathematician) and I'm absolutely fed up with Christmas advertisements. I don't care if my sofa can't be delivered for Christmas, or if Ant and Dec - or was it Dec and Ant - choke on their Morrison's battered prawn, or if Aldi are flogging an equivalent Harrod's £20,000 hamper for around £500, or whether Clinique have developed a special Christmas method for parting women from even more of their money, or that the American J Crew store has opened in Regent Street in time for Christmas and is positively ripping off the idiot shoppers happy to pay same amount Sterling for a Dollar-ticketed piece of Bangladeshi crap. I don't want to buy exclusive Disney Christmas items (although Mickey Mouse and Christmas have become frighteningly synonymous since Jesus has been relegated solely to Christmas Day Church services only), neither do I want to save £1 Tesco stamps on a card to lighten my...

My reply to British Gas following the twee crap they sent cleverly disguised as a letter of justification for their price rises: Dear folks at BG Thank you for your letter from Ian Peters, Managing Director, British Gas Residential Energy, but I was already aware of the Gas Price increases from BBC Watchdog, Moneysavingexpert.com, Rip Off Britain and of course the media. Personally, I was glad of the rise in prices. I have been worried for weeks that your directors and shareholders, many of whom don't actually know what a heating bill is, might have to forgo their foie gras or Bollinger for a day or two, or perhaps even travel somewhere Standard Class. However my anxiety was completely misplaced, because thankfully, the price rise, coming as it always does at a time of approaching high consumption, should assist with easing any of their pains. I have since heard a rumour that because the gas suppliers always follow each other with price rises, you are forming a...

I present a rather off-the-wall (not that the blogs on this site would in anyway indicate to you that I might do such a thing!) adult-orientated rock show on our local community radio station. 'OK' you say. 'Big Deal'. Well my listener seems to like it! In fact he loves it. Seriously though. While we on the station joke and laugh about the strange requests (for music - please behave!) I receive for music, I suddenly realised the other week that the strange request from a listener for 'Paranoid' for his 72nd Birthday wasn't, in fact, really all that strange. When Black Sabbath, with the wonderful still-alive Ozzy first released 'Paranoid' in 1970, my sprightly 72 year-old listener would have been an even more sprightly 29 years of age. There is no reason why, 43 years later, if he was a fan of the band back in 1970, that he shouldn't be a fan now! After all, someone who supported a particular football team in the 1970's is more than li...