TV Scheduling

Apparently, Wimbledon starts today.

So at the moment we have :

1. The World Cup
2. Wimbledon
3. Big Brother

What the hell? Which kind of numpty fuckbag came up with having all of that shit at the same time?

Additionally there’s also some rugby thing, and probably other bits too.

And don’t forget there’s also the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on 11th July – the same day as the final of the World Cup. Doh!

New Speaker

I notice in the hustings for the new Speaker for the House of Commons, Ann Widdecombe said

the next Speaker had to be “known” to voters, and had to be someone ‘trusted’ by the public

So – not a politician, then?

More Research Required

I’ve just received one of the funnier spam emails of late…

I am Todd Williams, I am a staff of Natwest Bank Plc,U.K.i have a veryUrgent Business proposal of (£18,500,000.00 Million Pounds)for you to handle more details of this transaction,Please reply: im-a-fuckwit-spammer@emailaddress.info Kind Regards, Todd Williams(Mr.)ACCOUNTS OFFICER

That’s it in it’s entirety – and the only change I’ve made to it is the email address. Other than that, it’s exactly how it was received – piss-poor punctuation, grammar etc. all intact.

But the best bit of it (in my opinion) is the idea that in the current economic climate, some muppet in Nat West bank would have £18.5million to play with at all.

And seriously, what kind of fucking moron would you have to be to respond to a spam like that?

Fred Goodwin, RBS, and that Pension

I know I’m going against the flow here (now there’s a shock) but I have to say, I really don’t understand the current media (and public) loathing of Sir Fred Goodwin, and his immense pension .

Now first of all, personally I think that getting a pension of near-as-dammit three-quarters of a million quid per year is utterly fucking obscene in the first place. (And particularly when I look at it in the context of “that pension for one year is three times the amount of our sodding mortgage“) But at the same time I realise that payscales are pretty much utterly fucking obscene when it comes to chairmen of multinationals etc. anyway.

In Goodwin’s case, I also kind of understand that people are pissed off that he’s getting paid that much for what he did.

However, from the corporate perspective I can fully understand that he was worth that much to RBS as a chairman.

After all, he managed and steered the bank during its growth phase, to the point where RBS bought up NatWest and Ulster bank (among others) as part of its expansion plans. Under his leadership RBS went from being a little provincial bank to being one of the world’s top five banks. And he was paid in bonuses and salary for that growth.

Then when the bottom fell out of the market, and it was shown what arrogant twats the banks had been, he managed to get the government to buy up a massive share of the bank, thus protecting it from going bust.  I’m sure that having managed both of those things, the board of RBS figured he was absolutely worth what they paid him as a severance and pension package.

The fact that the Government then failed utterly to understand what Goodwin’s severance deal and pension would be is actually more of a sign that the Ministers and MPs involved were totally, utterly, criminally clueless – after all, it looks like he could’ve been fired with “just” a 12-month-salary payment, instead of the severance deal.

As I see it, it’s those Government Ministers and MPs we should be angry with for allowing the Goodwin deal to go through, rather than with Goodwin himself for doing what any corporate multinational chairmen is paid to do – protect and build the company.

Delayed Construction

Today, the BBC is making some kind of big story out of the fact that the new visitor centre at the top of Mount Snowdon is going to be delayed until next year. The reason? There’s been a lot of bad weather while they’re building the thing.

The authority said progress on the scheme had been “remarkable” considering the conditions, including snow, heavy rain and winds regularly gusting over 80 mph.

Now my problem with this is simple – surely all the bad weather detailed above is exactly what you’d expect when you’re on the top of a mountain that’s some 3,560ft (nearly 1,100m) above sea level. What the fuck did they expect on a mountain top in Wales? Perfect sunny weather for two years?

So I just don’t see why it’s such a big thing – it would be far more newsworthy if the thing had been opened on time. In fact, it would be far more newsworthy if Carillion, the contractors, had actually planned the project and timescales correctly in the first place. Common sense, competence and professionalism breaks out? That’s a story that would be front page news at the moment.

Corrections

When you’re looking at a ‘news’ site for the town you grew up in, how pedantic is it to email the editor and suggest that they use a spell checker?

In the case I’m thinking of, they’d managed to mis-spell “Helicopter”, which is fairly impressive in the first place.

And if, when you’ve sent in that suggestion and they respond saying thanks, but with the first two words being “Quiet right”, would it be really snarky to point that out too?

After all, this is a site that is trying to make out it’s a news site, and the epitome of local journalism for that town, yet they manage to get at least one spelling error per day…

Or should I just leave well alone?

Bridge Jumping

I thought I’d written about this before (although, on searching, it looks like I might not have done so) but in my opinion, the May Day celebrations at Oxford’s Magdalene Bridge have always just struck me as something that should be filed under “Darwinistic”.

Fair enough, the traditional bit involving the Magdalene choir singing at dawn on May Day is pretty cool. But the people (generally students) who then take it upon themselves to jump off Magdalene Bridge into the Thames (sorry, Isis – one assumes that ‘Thames’ is just a bit too common for Oxford) where it’s all of two or three feet deep just deserve to be damaged.

In fact, I’d consider aiming to get some kind of insurance absolution, on the lines of “Anyone who jumps off this bridge is responsible for their own actions, and should not expect to be able to claim for damages or injury caused under any circumstances”

Considering that these people are supposed to be intelligent, you’d think they could figure that out for themselves, wouldn’t you?

Homeless

Most people won’t be surprised by this, but on occasion I can be very uncharitable. Not just when watching things like Relocation Relocation (and Dear GOD, Relocation² brings out the uncharitable bastard in me) but also when faced with – in particular – Big Issue sellers.

I don’t know why – I think that the Big Issue is a fantastic idea- but I just never give money to the people selling it. I’ve done work with a charity for the homeless, and I do a fair amount of work with other charities, with more coming up over the duration of this year. But when it comes to actually giving money to people who are homeless, I just don’t.

A lot of it is that I really don’t like the idea of paying people to remain homeless – of giving money to someone because they’re homeless, and perhaps of contributing to a tax-free income. At least with the charities I deal with, I know that the people who benefit truly are homeless. When someone is just on the street, well, you don’t know. I’ve seen a couple of “homeless” people, even in Cambridge, who pack up their begging gear, stick it in a car, and (I assume) then go home. It’s a tax-free income based on peoples guilt.

So I don’t know. In some ways I feel like I’m really cynical and uncharitable (and OK, I am) but not all the time. And at least I try to balance that out by doing some good stuff with places where the money and work will go to the truly deserving people.