February 2008 Archives

When I was a cub reporter on my first newspaper I made a mistake at work. I wrote something about someone which wasn't true. I wrote it in good faith and with the best of intentions but because it wasn't true they sued the newspaper.

My editor eventually settled out of court for a few grand and I got a damn good bollocking for cocking up and costing the company money. He later told me I was lucky to keep my job over the mistake.

In the real world, the world of market forces that's how it should be. If you make a big enough mistake you should be out on your ear. Not in the cushy world of the public sector though.....

How do you warm up a TV audience for a football match?

Dunno.

But neither do Gary Linneker and Alan Shearer

Just how much stuff do we throw away. Time for some uncomfortable facts.

What's the best soap on the box?

It's got to be Corrie but, after an impressive run of stories, Emmerdale is catching up and can now lay claim to being pretender to the throne.

EastEnders? Not even in the running.

I'm feeling slightly guilty for complaining in my last blog about my youngest son being lazy and only interested in snowboarding.

I think I must have jinxed him because the day after I wrote it he fell head over heels on the dry ski slope and broke his thumb.

Get rid of even more junk mail before it arrives
When I last wrote about opting out of direct mail by using The Mail Preference Service I stated that it cannot stop unaddressed mail.
Well, there is a way you can.

What happens when former sidekicks become the boss? They stay sidekicks.

Kevin Whately was brilliant as Lewis to John Thaw's Morse in the long-running cop show but he is underwhelming in the spin-off.

ANOTHER day another person dying or fighting for their life at the hands of feral youths on the rampage.

Some blame the binge drinking culture, others drugs, some poverty and yet others the break down in traditional families.

Of course there is some truth in all of the above.

Yet in Japan and other Asian countries there is poverty and heavy drinking and yet these cultures do not have the same levels of youth disorder that seems to plague our small island.

In Japan, of example, violent crime is virtually non-existent compared to our New Jerusalem of Britain.

Why? Is it because they are taught to show respect for their elders and, just as importantly, themselves and others?

Don't like waste incinerators?
Join the Incineration Watch news feed and get the latest news on what's happening in the world of waste incineration and news on the people that are trying to stop them being built.

There are two ways that we have traditionally dealt with the problem of waste. We either put it in a hole in the ground (landfill) or we burn it (incineration). Landfill is documented as far back as 5000 years ago at the Minoan palace of Knossos in Crete. Incinerators have been around since 1874 when Britain opened its first waste incinerator, although burning of waste in an open fire goes back to stone age times.

DANIEL Day Lewis is a muppet.

Yes, you heard correctly. I have just likened one of movieland's most prolific stars to a puppet from a 70s TV show.

And you may be wondering what on earth a certain Mr Day Lewis and a pretty bad telly show - albeit with a funky theme tune - has possibly got to do with motorsport.

Well......it's all thanks to that multiple world champ Valentino Rossi and a bunch of notoriously scathing MotoGP fans.