Baroness Scotland Idiocracy

The current Baroness Scotland nonsense is as clear cut a case of Idiocracy as I have ever seen...

Nuclear Iran

I'm not quite sure exactly what Iran is doing at the moment re the nuclear thing. If they are trying to make a nuclear weapon then I think that that is a very bad thing.
BUT...who the hell are we, the USA, France or anyone else to tell another country what they may or may not have??!!
We after all have these weapons.
I'm no fan of Iran and as I say I think Iran with an atom bomb (or whatever it is that they're called nowadays) is a bit of a potential disaster (a hell of a potential disaster actually), but who exactly elected the USA, France, GB, Russia, etc as the worlds judge jury and police.
There's something not quite right and very hypocritical about it all.

An Inconsequential Post

This is a short and rather inconsequential post but here goes.
Why, after having done the washing up and having searched around in the washing up water in the bowl with your hand for any remaining utensils (and definintely not finding any), why after this when you tip the bowl up to empty the water out there is always a teaspoon lurking in the bottom of the bowl as the last dregs of water swirl away down the plughole!?
Never a knife, or a fork, or a knife and a teaspoon - or even two teaspoons. But always one solitary teaspoon.
Why is this?
Maybe it's just me.

Eddie Izzard's Marathons

Well done Eddie Izzard! But am I allowed to criticise him?

It seems not, looking at the press today, everyone is falling over themselves to heap praise on him.
What he's done of course is an amazing physical feat. But one that has probably permanently damaged his health.
An amazing physical feat yes, but at the risk of being howled down he has NOT in my opinion run 43 marathons in 52 days.
His 'marathons' have been taking an average of 10 hours!! Now walking pace is about 6 1/2 hours.
Say no more.
I know he's speeded up of late to about 5 hours and I repeat an amazing physical achievment but in my view it's been little more than a sponsored walk/trot.
I'm narky about this because I'm a runner (10k) in training for a half marathon and if I complete a half marathon then I'll be over the moon and I feel Izzard (or in fairness to him it's probably the press more than him) is diminishing the achievments of real runners who train hard and properly.
Sour grapes perhaps...

In Defence Of The Postmen

The main issue at the heart of the postal dispute is this:

Years ago when a postman finished his delivery early he would return to the office and be made to sort mail until his shift ended then go home.

If he finished his delivery late he would book overtime for this.

Of course this booking of overtime was obviously open to abuse as no-one knew if the postman really was late or just swinging the lead.

So Royal Mail came up with a solution called 'job and finish'.

Job and finish was this: if you returned to the office early having finished your delivery then you could go home early, but if you returned to the office late you did not get overtime for this.
So, it saved the firm a fortune in overtime and postmen also got to go home early on quiet days.
But soon after all of this Royal Mail stopped taking on full time postmen. Every time a full time postman left/retired/got the sack he was replaced by a part timer on (say) a thirty hour contract and the remaining full time postmen would then absorb the ten hours of work (between the forty hour job and the new thirty hour postman).
This of course led to a gradually increasing workload for the remaining full time postmen.
Fast forward about five years to today and in most delivery offices the full time/part time ratio is about fifty fifty.
You can imagine the increased workload.
Where in the past there was a 'swings and roundabouts' approach to things (you'll make time somedays lose time others) now it's a case of 'you'll lose a little time some days and a lot of time others'.
If a postman asks a manager to be paid for the extra work he has to do (some days up to three hours) he's told 'job and finish' - you'll make up the time on quiet days, which of course now is rubbish.
So postmen are now working probably about forty five hours a week for forty hours pay - which is okay if you're salaried but postmen are NOT they are contracted to be paid by the hour.
So there you have it. The actual CRUX of the dispute.
There are other things going on of course and management and the union will fall out all day long, but for postmen it's all about being forced to work for nothing.
How do I know all this - well it's because I am a postman of course!!

Dig Deep for the Greedy Bankers

I may be wrong but (it has been known) it seems to me that bankers/banks destroyed their own businesses and brought the country to it's knees by their arrogant greed. The government then bailed them out (but they are still as greedy and arrogant as ever by the way with record bonuses this year) and now to pay for that bail out we have to endure savage spending cuts which will amongst many other things inevitably hit hospitals and schools.
So, to put it simply, greedy fat pig arrogant bankers are to be bailed out by our children and the sick.
Is that putting it too simply??
And this is supposed to be  a Labour (Socialist?) government!

We're All Suspected Weirdo's Now

There's a lot of discussion in the media at the moment about the CRB checks everyone who has just about anything to do with children will apparently have to have.

These checks are of course designed to see if people are convicted paedophiles.

One thing that's struck me about all of this (and I have not heard discussed) is why are there so many convicted paedophiles walking amongst us? (and are we all under suspicion? - of course we are!)

Once someone has been convicted of such crimes I think they should lose their liberty. There is no cure for paedophilia so we must remove them from society.

Wouldn't that be easier than checking (and suspecting) every man and his dog?

And morally right to boot.