Tour de farce

Here’s a question.  What country does the Tour de France start in?  Easy isn’t it…. Belgium apparently.  If my memory is correct, the Tour de France has even popped across le manche and seen a bunch of lycra-clad drug takers pedal their way through a part of the UK.,

All of which is curious.  France is a pretty big country and cycling has lost most, if not all its credibility.  So why are they taking their tour to different countries?  Publicity I suppose.  And if I have noticed, then it must be working.  But all it does is draw attention to a ludicrous event.

Although maybe this year some of those brave Brits will get a bit of publicity – as long as they manage to pass their drugs tests.  I suppose you have to admire the fitness levels of people that can relentless pedal thousands of miles up and down hills and mountains in extreme heat.

But at the end of the day, cycling is a bit like athletics.  No matter how extraordinary the feat of the athlete involved – you wonder what is behind it all.

The extraordinary thing about cycling is how popular it seems to have become.  Wherever you go you will see lycra-clad men and women huffing and puffing their way  up hill and down dale – usually on some expensive piece of kit.  You know the sort of thing… a colour scheme that speaks volumes to those in the know – and a foreign sounding logo that is more expensive the more unpronounceable it seems to be.

BBC pay

I rather rese4nt paying the BBC licence fee.  Why should I fund their largesse when  they could generate funds through better marketing – not to mention a bit of advertising.  I am not overly interested in how much they over-pay their alleged ‘stars’.

I am much more interested in all the patronising gits who sit on management committees.  The ones who decide what biscuits to have with tea… and should it be lady grey tea or earl grey?

But I guess the BBC has to show lip service to reality now that public service excesses are being marginally trimmed.  So BBC director general Mark Thompson has backed plans to publish stars’ earnings in pay bands, but said revealing individual wages would be “wrong”.

On Thursday, the BBC Trust called for earnings made by the corporation to talent to be made public.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, Mr Thompson said revealing exact earnings should be kept private.

He also defended the BBC’s plan to overhaul staff pensions, saying “times are hard”.

Last week the BBC announced plans to change its pension scheme in an attempt to tackle a £2bn deficit.

“Times are tough for everyone and pension arrangements, across the public sector, are going to be looked at very hard over the coming months,” Mr Thompson said.

And therein lies the problem.  Anyone can look at something hard.  It takes a bit more willpower to actually do something about it.

Anyone for frozen eggs?

Some startling news on the BBC today.  Women in their late 30s are freezing eggs because they are still hunting for “Mr Right”, research suggests.  It makes you wonder what has happened to romance.

A study of women at a Belgian clinic found half wanted to freeze their eggs to take the pressure off finding a partner, a fertility conference heard.

A third were also having eggs frozen as an “insurance policy” against infertility.

Many students would also consider the procedure to focus on a career before motherhood, a separate UK survey found.

The study of nearly 200 students showed eight in 10 doing a medical degree would freeze their eggs to delay starting a family.

Among sports and education students half said they would consider it.

Egg freezing is still a relatively new technology, which enables a woman to save eggs for future IVF treatment if needed.

The chance of success is better with younger, healthier eggs, yet most women currently choosing the procedure are in their late 30s and opting for egg freezing as a “last resort”.

The average cost of egg freezing is around an eye-watering £3,000 per attempt and some women may have to undergo up to three cycles in order to preserve a good number of eggs.  Personally (and admittedly I am not a woman) but I can think of a lot better things to spend my money on.

Money, Money, Money

Did you see the astonishing financial news this week that British banks are allegedly amongst the best (and best-off) in the world?   How can this be?  These are after all the reckless institutions staffed by utter incompetents that the taxpayer bailed out.

To my mind, banks are dull utilities.  And somehow those dull utilities have metamorphosised into utilities with a casino attached to them.  Yet at the end of the day. I really want from my bank is someone I can rely on to manage my current account.

There can be few businesses more bomb-proof than banking.  When the markets are on the up it’s a licence to print money.  When the markets are on the down – well it seems much the same.  And when the worst comes to the worst and you destroy the global economy with reckless greed and incompetence.  Well the government bails you out with someone else’s money.

As gravy trains go, banking is rich in every sense of the word!   But if anything, there is a financial career that is even more rewarding for failures.  The strange world of the independent financial adviser.

Common sense would dictate that a financial adviser who has to use other people’s money to make money is not very good.  After all, if he or she knew anything they would surely be rich making the best use of their own advice?  But in my experience, a financial adviser is just an individual who charges commission for losing you money when the markets are bad – and doing the obvious when the markets are good.

How often do you hear about independent financial advisers who make their clients money?  Or recommend a pension scheme or an insurance policy that they do not get a walloping great commission on ?   I suppose there is a first time for everything – but I think we’ll see pigs flying before the truly independent financial adviser is discovered.

Indebted to dect phones

If you like gizmos, you’ll love what you can get to go about your everyday business nowadays.  Time was when you just got to use bic biros and a pencil sharpener – and one of those plastic tube things to shuffle your paper clips around. But now you have the chance to pick and choose from a bewildering range of telephones.

I guess if you work for as company, you don’t have much say in your choice of telephone systems for business. But if, like me, you work for yourself – the world is your oyster.  You may even feel that you might want to change your BT phone.  After all – there are plenty more to choose from.

I particularly like the pone system that lets you give off the pretence that you have an office – and then divert to your mobile.  Then it is only the fact that mobiles are not supposed to be used on the golf course that may give you away.

So the first thing you should do when you  have a say in what telephones you can use – and buy is find a site where you can look wistfully and even buy digital dect cordless phones. Just imagine – never again need you be tied to your desk by a phone with a cord on it.  Isn’t progress wonderful?

In fact the only thing I do not like about business telephones is that most of the calls you get are ones you do not want to get.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply get on with doing your job?  But no, thanks to the telephone, now you can be interrupted at any time of day by some hopeful trying to sell you something.

Some days the calls just go on and on.  It’s very difficult to stay polite.  I remind myself that the nuisance caller is simply doing their job – but I suspect being rude would be better for my sanity.

Vuvuzela adds buzz to world cup

The BBC is considering offering a ‘red button service’ in a bid to appease complaints surrounding the sound of the vuvuzela.

The noise of the plastic horn has become a hotly-debated issue since the start of the World Cup in South Africa last Friday.

On Tuesday morning the BBC confirmed it has received 545 complaints from viewers who find the continual sound of the vuvuzela distracting during matches.

The Corporation has now confirmed it is investigating several options, including stripping out most sound except commentary when showing the games on its red button service.

A BBC spokeswoman said: “Using the red button service is only one of the options that we’re considering. A decision will be made later in the week.”

World Cup bosses have confirmed the horns will not be banned in South Africa, saying they reflect “the sound of Africa”.

http://g.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/blog/dirty-tackle/post/Vuvuzelas-might-yet-be-banned-from-World-Cup?urn=sow,247947

Some 20 years after being introduced to the game in the early 1990s, the instrument came to prominence on the world stage during the 2009 Confederations Cup. TV stations were upset by the “goat being slaughtered” timbre, while players complained that they couldn’t hear themselves think over the din. “It doesn’t allow you to concentrate and it’s unbearable,” Spanish player Xabi Alonso said at the time. FIFA head honcho Sepp Blatter, however, pooh-poohed calls to ban the vuvuzela for World Cup 2010, insisting that we should not attempt to “Europeanize” the African tournament.

The vuvuzela is clearly much more than an irritating novelty; it’s a divisive issue that is threatening the health of fans, affecting the quality of performances and ultimately putting people off of tuning in (will you honestly feel enthused to watch Slovakia vs. Paraguay knowing you’ll have to endure 90 minutes of the sound of an angry beehive going through a blender?).

Yet at the same time, Blatter is right (for once) when he says we should not impose Western values on South Africa. A ban would rob the tournament of part of its cultural identity, leaving thousands of locals perplexed: could you imagine being told by an international body that you could no longer drink beer at American football games, or fall asleep during baseball? The South Africans wouldn’t take too kindly to having a national institution removed.

As a compromise, perhaps the vuvuzela could be adapted so it isn’t quite so loud? Or maybe it could be adjusted to produce a nice noise like the sound of John Mayer gargling honey?

The addiction of on-line shopping

I hate shopping.  I rarely if ever go to the shops – and when I do I try and get out of the shop (or shopping centre) again as quickly as possible.  Oddly though, I rather like on-line shopping and can peer wistfully at retail web sites again and again.  So what is the difference?  And why are we so ready to assume that your money is safe in on-line purchases – and you’ll get what you want?

Most strange of all I guess is that I even buy fish on-line.  My father has a pond of pampered koi carp in the back garden and I thought it would be an excellent idea to get him a new koi for father’s day.

It strikes me as somewhat unusual, comical even, that there are white vans zipping around the country with live fish going off to their new homes.  But indeed there are.  And after a chat with the delivery driver I now know that there is a special way to transport fish in a van.  They have to travel sideways.  Apparently, if they face forwards, they keep on travelling when the van brakes.

So koi carp might be a somewhat unusual on-line purchase – but there are a lot of places where you can buy unusual gift ideas.  In fact I suppose that the internet retailer who does not need a real shop can take a few more chances on stocking something bizarre, on the off-chance it will catch on.

When you see all the style gurus letting you know what they deem to be trendy, more often than not, these are gizmos and gadgets that you wouldn’t touch with a barge pole if you went into a shop and saw how ridiculous they are in real life.

On the other side of the on-line coin – how many times have you or I bought something on-line – but only after having a good look at the item in a local shop?  Which kind of shows you that we don’t quite trust on-line purchases as much as the figures suggest.

The other day I saw what must surely be the ultimate father’s day present.  DuoFertility is a fertility monitor which can help you be a father.  It’s high-tech, stylish and expensive.  What more could you want?

Anyone for Tennis?

Wimbledon is kicking off and the jingoistic BBC is in something of a quandary.  First of all there is the small matter of the world cup.  Secondly, the brave Brit forever fated to fail heroically is in fact a dour Scot.

It’s all rather amusing.  Every four years the nation gets completely deluded by the England football team and their over-indulged, over-rated and utterly overpaid players.  We know in our heart of hearts that they are not very good.  We suspect they are not even particularly interested in playing for England.  But for some reason the nation’s media gets into frenzy about our world-class players and their smooth path to World Cup glory.  Until the wheels drop off in the first competitive match.

It’s all a bit different with tennis.  I think even the BBC realises that nobody is that bothered with tennis.  I make this blithe assumption because the middle-class leisure pursuit that is tennis gets no coverage whatsoever for 50 weeks of the year.  Then we get saturation coverage for two entire weeks – unless there is a world cup on.

Tennis strikes me as a particularly daft game.  It’s OK for a couple of yahoos to swat a yellow ball backwards and forwards at the club on a balmy evening.  But look what happens when things get serious.  You need about half a dozen line judges, a plethora of ball boy and girls and an umpire.  Technology seems to have replaced the bloke who sits on a chair with his finger on the net – but you have to admit – that’s an awful lot of extras for two people.

So once again I know that no Brit has won Wimbledon since 1936.  And once again I know that there is no danger whatsoever that this grim sequence will be broken.  At some point soon, Andy Murray will loose and become Scottish again.  But for now, even he must be somewhat pissed off to become a token plucky Brit.

RSPCA gets bad case of die-a-rhea

Appalling news of bird cruelty in the East Anglian Daily Times.  A South American ostrich called a Rhea was callously shot and killed – by the RSPCA.  The local had got quite used to seeing the Rhea poking around in the fields, doing what Rheas do, eating what Rheas eat,.  Then along came the RSPCA to ‘rescue’ it with a lethal dose of tranquiliser.

Now granted the RSPCA didn’t deliberately kill the unfortunate bird.  Well at lewaqst they said they didn’t.  But quite how you decide on the dosage of powerful morphine-based sedative to dart into a rhea I am not so sure.  I bet the gun-toting Suffolk gent roped in to do the dirty deed had not been in that situation too many times before.

All of which makes you wonder… why?  Granted having an ostrich on the loose on the bridle paths of Suffolk might be somewhat unusual – but let’s face it. It was a domestic bird.  I suppose it might have a bit of a kick, but whatever rheas eat – I bet a bit of it was all the hungry rheas needed.  Or a look at another rhea.

I bet we won’t be seeing this sad little tale on any tear-jerking TV special any time soon.

Bloody Sunday, Bloody Whitewash

The Bloody Sunday killings were unjustified and unjustifiable, the Prime Minster has said.

Thirteen marchers were shot dead on 30 January 1972 in Londonderry when British paratroopers opened fire on crowds at a civil rights demonstration.

Fourteen others were wounded, one later died. The Saville Report is heavily critical of the Army and found that soldiers fired the first shot.

Prime Minister David Cameron said he was “deeply sorry”.

He said that the findings of the Saville Report were “shocking”.

A huge cheer erupted in Guildhall Square in Derry as Mr Cameron delivered the findings which unequivocally blamed the Army for one of the most controversial days in Northern Ireland’s history.

BBC legal affairs correspondent Clive Coleman said the decision whether or not to prosecute the soldiers would not be straightforward.

There needed to be sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction – not an easy test after 38 years.

“If any defendent believes that the passage of time makes a fair trial impossible, they could argue the prosecution was an abuse of process,” our correspondent said.

“Any prosecutions would also need to be judged to be in the public interest.”

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Cameron said what happened on Bloody Sunday was wrong.

The Prime Minister said:

• No warning had been given to any civilians before the soldiers opened fire
• None of the soldiers fired in response to attacks by petrol bombers or stone throwers
• Some of those killed or injured were clearly fleeing or going to help those injured or dying
• None of the casualties was posing a threat or doing anything that would justify their shooting
• Many of the soldiers lied about their actions
• The events of Bloody Sunday were not premeditated
• Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein, was present at the time of the violence and “probably armed with a sub-machine gun” but did not engage in “any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire”

Mr McGuinness denied having a sub-machine gun. When asked about the Saville finding that it was probable that he had the weapon, he replied: “No”. He said the report had cleared everybody in the city.

The head of the Army, General Sir David Richards, said he fully supported Mr Cameron’s apology.

“The report leaves me in no doubt that serious mistakes and failings by officers and soldiers on that terrible day led to the deaths of 13 civilians who did nothing that could have justified their shooting,” he said.

General Sir Mike Jackson, who served in the Parachute Regiment on Bloody Sunday said: “The Prime Minister made a fulsome apology and I join him in so doing.”

But he said the Army’s service in the 20 years after Bloody Sunday should be recognised.