Thursday, February 19, 2009
All Change!
http://www.rantman.co.uk
Ta.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
So farewell then, Humphrey Littleton
Known as The King of Innuendo, Humph filled the darkness of the Monday night commute for many people.
Some people don't have a problem with innuendo: personally, I've got a big one.
Labels: humph, humphrey llittleton, I'm sorry I Haven't a Clue, innuendo, ISIHAC
Friday, April 25, 2008
Gordon Brown Sucks. Fact
Why couldn't GB stand up in Parliament and admit the abolition of the bottom rate of income tax was wrong but, as it's on statute, we've got to apply it. To overcome the problems that those people who will be affected will have we'll use the heating allowance/credit/etc systems to give them money back. Oh and because to put the 10p band back in will cause no end of distress and problems to these people, we'll carry on with this from now on.
I think the issue isn't just the application of the 10p tax band removal, it's the way Brown spun - something he promised his Government wouldn't do.
Labels: gordon brown 10p tax spin doctor
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Snow, the Media and Schools
Many things in the past week have disturbed me, bemused me and above all make me spit Alpen Almond Special over my radio and television...
What has particularly got my goat wrt H&FS and lack of common sense?
Rolling News Channels......aaaaaaaaargh!
Flicking through the Sky EPG in the week I saw there was a BBC News Special at 11am. Must be something urgent to stop the diy antiques gardening show.....wow!
Had Blair fallen on his sword? Had the Americans admitted that they perhaps should recognise the English coroner's system and be sympathetic to Matty Hull's family after all? Were we finally pulling troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq? No, no and no.
Aparently Worcestershire and big lumps of Wales were under a bit of snow. They overdramatised it by saying it was an impressive 10cm but let's face it, it's 4 inches people...my pen with the lid off.
I flicked over to Sky News. Now what an inspired bit of editorial direction here...get the reporter who was on ITV's Dancing on Ice to present the snowy reports. I'll explain what I saw Kay Burley report on and then you'll understand why I turned off.
A mother and her young daughter - no more than four years old - came down a hill on a sledge. Kay said "a young girl with her brother there...". So there we have it. Sky News showed wagging kids sledging whilst filmed from the van. Channel hopping later the Sky Chopper (might've been the BBC's) was up and the lively correspondent reported that visibility was next to zero. Your flying through a blizzard love, hardly a revelation eh?
Anyone ever listen to Mark & Lard on Radio 1 back in the day? They used to to a regular sketch called Vague News. I'd say it's based on Sky News, but it was far more accurate...
If your all going to report on the weather people, why not talk to OAP's and ask them about their heating bills or those in Tescos who cleared the shelves of bread and milk in case the snow lasted more than 12 hours....?
Schools
Every school in Birmingham and other parts of the country were shut by the snow. Was it because the heating systems couldn't cope or because the kids couldn't get to school? No, course not.
It was widely reported in many media sources that the main reason was in case that the little kiddles or staff slipped on wet patches in the buildings, hurt themselves and called in the no-win no-pay fellas or some small child might take a snowball to the noggin with is a H&FS nightmare leading to mitigation and so much paperwork...
The other things that was bandied about was that given the modern job market, many teachers no longer live in the area where they work and they couldn't ge to school. I live in Northampton and got to Luton okay, thank-you very much.
Here's an idea for all local authorities and the Edukashun Sekraterry...not new...not innovative...but it might just work.
If the weather is bad, all teachers should report to the nearest school regardless of local authority and type (primary, secondary, etc) and the kids should be banned from the playground - we playtime chaps...we've all been there - and a extraordinary syllabus or scheme to keep the kids occupied should be adopted.
To overcome the menace of wet floors, get the caretaker to dry the patches up and eventually as no-one is allowed outside, there won't be any wet patches. I appreciate this won't work in PFI schools as this deviates from the contract, especially if it has changed hands several times, but I think it might just work....
Who knows eh... ;-)
Brumbino.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Warning! Killer mince pie danger has to be assessed
Council bosses say posters will have to be displayed at the party in Embsay, in the Yorkshire Dales, warning villagers the pies contain nuts and suet pastry.
The cocoa content and temperature of the hot chocolate must also be checked.
Resident Steve Dobson said the rules had made the small party as difficult to arrange as the Great Yorkshire Show.
Mr Dobson said he learned of the regulations after writing to Craven District Council to ask if he could use a car park outside Embsay village hall to hold the free party for the community.
Bureaucracy 'gone mad'
He planned a fireworks display, mulled wine, Santa's grotto and free mince pies made by members of Embsay and Eastby Women's Institute.
"It is bureaucracy gone mad", Mr Dobson said.
"The council gave me a huge list of things we had to do. I wrote back, a little bit tongue in cheek, asking if I really had to risk assess free mince pies and a brass band, and they said yes.
"I also understand that Santa may need a Criminal Records Bureau check.
"For a small Dales village we found it a bit of a joke really.
"It's gone from us hoping to use a bit of council property for a community party, to needing the same sort of planning we would have to put in for the Great Yorkshire Show."
Mr Dobson said it he was now considering moving the party to private land elsewhere in the village.
Craven Council's director of community services, Jonathan Kerr, said: "We support these community events and we try to help local communities organise them and make sure they are as safe as possible."
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Bookcase 'trap' killed US woman
Mariesa Weber, 38, is believed to have fallen over and become trapped as she tried to reach behind the bookcase to adjust the plug for a TV set.
Her family spent nearly two weeks searching for her, fearing she had been kidnapped from the house she shared with them in Florida.
Ms Weber may have died of suffocation, a local police spokesman said.
Her death was not being treated as suspicious, the spokesman said.
Ms Weber's parents last saw her alive in the family house on 28 October.
Unable to locate her after that, the family contacted the police, fearing she had been abducted.
Her body was eventually discovered when her sister noticed a foot protruding behind the bookcase in her bedroom.
"I'm sleeping in the same house as her for 11 days, looking for her. And she's right in the bedroom," the woman's mother, Connie Weber, told the St Petersburg Times newspaper.
The family told the newspaper they had noticed a strange smell from her room but had blamed it on rats.
They told the paper their daughter's light weight and petite frame may have contributed to her death.
"She's a little thing," her mother reportedly said. "And the bookcase is 6ft tall and solid. And she couldn't get out."
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Doncha just love authority?
Monday, November 06, 2006
Make meetings exciting with the new and exciting Bullsh*t Bingo!
Synergy
Strategic fit
Core competencies
Turbulent environment
Out of the box
Pushback
Bottom line
Revisit
Take that off-line
24/7
Out of the loop
Benchmark
Value-added
Proactive
Bandwidth
Win-win
Think outside the box
Fast track
Results-driven
Paradigm
Empower (or empowerment)
Knowledge base
At the end of the day
Touch base
Mindset
Client focus(ed) or Customer focus(ed)
Ballpark
Game plan
Scenario
Leverage
Cascade
Sequential or sequentially
Blue-sky thinking
Get our ducks in a row
Brain dump
Think outside the box
Joined-up thinking
Drilling down
Push the envelope
The helicopter view
Low-hanging fruit
Stakeholder
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Drivers cannot leave roundabout
New traffic lights on the roundabout on the A444 have No Left Turn signs to stop drivers exiting onto entry roads. But the same signs were also put up at the correct exits meaning that once drivers were on the roundabout they could only leave by breaking the law. Coventry City Council said it was covering the signs in the short-term before their permanent removal. A council spokesman said the signs had been installed together with traffic lights as part of a road safety scheme that is not yet complete.
"The current advice on the installation of traffic signals at roundabouts does suggest that where the entry and exits are separate that No Left Turn signs are installed to advise drivers not to drive down the entry arm of the roundabout, however the advice is not always relevant.
"In response to the concerns that have been raised, the city council is proposing to cover the signs in the short term and eventually remove them."
The BBC Again
The Virtual Bonfire
Now some rugby club down in Devon applied for a licence for a public display this year. The council said that due to H&FS requirements, they would have to hire a multitude of properly certified stewards, hire two fire marshalls, keep an exclusion zone around the bonfire that was so immense no-one could feel it's heat and fill in copious amounts of paper work. So much paper-work indeed, that the rugger-buggers came up with a plan that was so cunning, it could have been thought up by a wiley fox....
They went round a mates home, had a fire there, filmed it then projected it onto a big ole screen on the night and still managed to have the fireworks. No H&FS crap or forms then...beggars believe it really does.
I'm with Boris
I live in a row of terrace houses and my neighbours and I share a driveway. Our houses are on the route from the Co-Op to the estate. As me and a neighbour happened to leave for work at the same time we spotted a bunch of flowers that looked like it had been dropped on the way home form the shops.
I suggested she take them into the house and shove them in water. Being old school, she said she'd leave them by the wall and then whoever had lost them had a chance to find them. If they were still there when she got home then she would take them in.
When she got home there wasn't her bunch of flowers...oh no...there were around 12. With cards saying 'Sorry for you loss', 'With deepest sympathy' and so on. Even though we live in the middle of a village where a thing like a road traffic accident might have been noticed, people took it upon themselves to lay flowers.
Up the road in the OAP bungalows last winter, an old dear was only found when the paperboy moaned to his boss that he couldn't get to the door for milkbottles. Is it me or the world f***ed?
Oh and with the flowers...something else happened involving the local constabulary but they came back to apologise so that's staying secret...(lol...didn't tell them PC W, you're safe!!!!)
Why oh why oh why...
Now yesterday, old-soldiers aged 70-90 had a chink in the rope of their flag-pole which meant they couldn't raise the Union Flag on Rememberence Day. The local 'grunts' at the firestation offered to come over with a ladder and sort it out....until one of their senior officers cited H&FB (Health & F***ing Safety) as a reason to not help....what if a fireman fell off the ladder. FFS. An old 84yo sergeant offered to shin up and get stuck so they'd rescue him and as your here lads...
In a well known supermarket by me, okay Tescos, some poor punter managed to drop a bottle of wine by the till. Luckily he hadn't paid for it, but it landed in it's base and so wine was spilt and glass was over the floor. Now you and me at home? We'd delicately collect the glass, we may put on gloves to do this - cos being safe is different to H&FS - pop it in a dust-pan the mop up the wine with a cloth and then clean the floor.
What did the Stripey Ninja's do? Close the till (fair enough)...the till to the left, the till to the right and moved on about 80 people trying to pay to other overcrowded tills and fenced off all three tills and had about 12 people keeping punters out of the area.
They then sent some bloke with what looked like a baby-roadsweeper down. This think is motorised but he pushes it (or does it pull him?) and it basically is supposed to Hoover the floor. A tannoy went out that due for reasons of H&FS tills 9, 10 & 11 were closed for essential maintenance. Oh and Hooverman? He went and got a dustpan, squeegy and mop & bucket. By the look on his face, he felt fencing off 100 sq feet of store for a small spillage was overkill too...
Aaaaaaaaaah!
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Firm bans 'ageist' birthday cards
Greetings cards passed around the office and signed for a colleague's birthday have been banned by a company in Bournemouth.
Alan and Thomas Ltd said they stopped the card signings, as jokes or comments about someone's age could be offensive under new age discrimination laws.
The firm's boss, Julian Boughton, said they had taken legal advice.
Directors of the Bournemouth-based insurance brokers will instead send a card on behalf of all staff.
But speaking to BBC News, one former member of staff who did not wish to be named, said the move was "extreme".
They told BBC News: "I think it's a bit draconian really, over the top and quite ridiculous.
"I don't see how a jokey birthday card can be seen as discrimination or harassment. And I wonder if they actually asked the staff what they think."
Buying cakes
The company said legal advice was sought after the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 came into force this month.
Mr Boughton, managing director, said: "Having considered the potential exposures for our employees and our business, we have taken the decision to change the practice of issuing a generically signed card for any given individual's birthday.
"Instead we have decided that the company will send a card to each staff member on their birthday, signed by the directors."
But not all birthday traditions have been banned.
Mr Boughton added: "We certainly still encourage the practice of buying cakes!"
LACK OF COMMONS SENSE RATING: 10.0
I'm 37 you know.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/6040196.stm
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Tesco's Milk
He brought me the label back. The front is a lovely green with white writing and says "Fresh Welsh Milk". The back is all white with green writing and gives product information and how to contact Tesco if we fancy a chat.
It also gives an allergy warning, which thoughtfully Tesco's have made stand out in bold, red type.
It say's simply "Allergy Warning. This product may contain milk".
Lack of common sense rating: 10.0
Do I need to sayt owt...?
