Axed

Grange Hill 1979/80
Originally uploaded by jem.

I thought it had gone along time ago, so it’s amazed me to hear on the news tonight that the BBC has axed Grange Hill.

It seems that it no longer represents the way ’students’ are today – no of course not, the BBC couldn’t possibly show a true representation of school life today, it would be too rude, violent and uncontrollable for children’s afternoon television!

Still, sad that Grange Hill is going after 30 years – 30 YEARS, Bob that makes me feel old!!

Blue Monday

Blue
Originally uploaded by Ms. Moll.

According to the Daily Mail (no, I didn’t buy it, someone left one in the lounge at the hospice), today is the gloomiest day of the year – hell, every day this year has been gloomy – it couldn’t get much worse!

There is even a stupid formula – [W+(D-d)]TQxMxNA – what a load of crap!

Well, if you are interested this is what it means –

W = weather – rain, sleet and cloud make these January days feel so gloomy

D = debt – that mountain of festive bills is barely offset by your next pay cheque

T = time – three weeks into 2008 – just enough for monotomy to set in

Q = quit – most of us have now given up on those tricky New Year’s resolutions

M = motivation levels – generally very low at this time of year

NA = need to take action – overwhelmed by the need to do something to lift the gloom

Add to these D x 2 = dying father and depression.

The formula was devised by a psychologist who is an expert in depression and he has used it to pinpoint today as ‘Blue Monday’.

You wouldn’t let your children play with lions or tigers – would you?

Schnitzer
Originally uploaded by m3evo2.

Then why are people so surprised when a dog turns on a small child? Yet again a baby has been killed by a dog, in this instance a rottweiler.

There is to be an investigation in to how this could have happened, the dog of course has been killed – like it was the dog’s fault!?

According to the television news the family are ‘devastated’ by the loss – then why did they allow a potentially dangerous dog and young children to be near to each other?

The stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. We don’t need to ban these dogs, what we need to do is ban these idiots from owning them.

Is this really newsworthy!?!

Okay, so Facebook is the newest, bestest, most popular thing since…….heaven knows! And I can honestly say that if it wasn’t for the social networking site (and Flickr) I don’t think John and I would have got together…..but……

…..is the fact that they have removed the word ‘is’ from the status update really worthy of an article in a daily paper – Oh! wait a minute – it’s The Telegraph – I knew there was a reason I didn’t read that paper – it’s full of crap! (and before you ask, no I wasn’t reading the paper to find this, I followed a link on Flickr!)

Seems a bit late

Sainsbury’s have recalled several of it’s tuna products – fine, that’s good as they had the potential to make some customers ill as they have high levels of histamine.

But for Bob’s sake!!! Today is the 10th of November and the affected packs have a USE BY (not best before) date of November 4th and 5th

- so if anyone still has them in their fridge by now they would smell pretty rank, and if they’ve already eaten them it’s to bloody late!

I guess that there is a possibility that some of them might be in people’s freezers – but you’d think that a recall like that would be made before the use by date ran out – not 5 days later!?

$1 or $1,000,000,000,000?

Originally uploaded by Refracted Moments™.

I don’t pretend to understand these things, but how can it be right that countries in which the majority of the population live on less than $1 a day are being sued for billions by businesses in the developed world?

So called Vulture Funds buy up the debt, usually for a tiny amount, and then sue the country for billions (the debt plus interest). In one case a fund paid $3m for an old Zambian debt, sued for $55m and a London judge allowed them to win an award of $15m!!

These are not corrupt governments, or despotic rulers, these are large multinationals represented by top London law firms. Companies such as British firm Biwater who are using Tanzania after being thrown out of the country for not running a water system properly.

This is just a prime example of greed for greeds sake – when will the human race wake up and see what we are doing to each other?

Despite the debt cancellation under the Heavily Indebited Poor Countries Initiative, of at least 11 of the 32 who have benefited have been targeted by these sharks.

Fantastic!

Originally uploaded by Joshua Davis (articnomad).

I can’t believe that the American military can be so bloody stupid – actually perhaps I can (

What the hell do they think they are doing flying nuclear-armed missiles around their country?

It completely chills my soul that anyone could think this a good idea.

When will we ever learn that these weapons are just not necessary, not needed and will probably get us all in the end (if globe warning doesn’t do so first).

Strike

So, the Post Office workers are on strike – no postal service for the next 5 days or so. That’s helpful.

What I don’t understand is what they hope to gain from it?? They go on strike, which means that no-one can post anything, which means they use a different service (if they can find one), or they change to email and fax more, so the post office gets less business, and in the long run the post office goes busted!?!

They say they aren’t striking about pay, but about the threat of closure of the post office and the lack of help from the government – but surely they must see that they are hastening exactly the thing that they are trying to stop?

It will only end in tears, and in the long run those who will loose out are those who need the service more than ever. Post Offices across the country are closing, these are often the focal point of a community and the only interaction that some people get. The services which are offered by the Post Office are being eroded away by the Government – Fred and I make a point of using our local Post Office as much as possible. I love getting letters and parcels in the post and would hate to think of that coming to an end.

sizes

ladies, ladies
Originally uploaded by Ms. Moll.

It’s a step in the right direction, but still only a drop in the retail ocean, and not far enough in my opinion.

John Lewis have announced that they will be using a ‘limited number’ of size 14 mannequins in their Peterborough store to test ‘how customers respond, and how they work in the visual landscape’.

If it goes down well they will be ‘rolled out’ to the 26 other stores. To be honest I can’t believe that many people will notice! The average size in the UK is 16, so size 14 is still a lot smaller than the majority of customers (except perhaps in Cheshire where the footballers wives live on a diet of vitamin pills and champagne).

Despite the fact that eighty percent of John Lewis’s sales of swimwear are size 12 and above, they still use size 10 mannequins!! It seems crazy that they think that people can get a fair idea of what clothes really look like when they are displayed on the equivalent of a 12 year old girls body.

It’s a move in the right direction, and certainly one that the British Fashion Council should take note of – they refused to ban size 4 (size 0 in the US) models from British catwalks for London Fashion week.

OED entries

The Guardian this week reported on the latest revision of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the new words it has included. The headline was the inclusion of the ‘Jaffa cake’, they say it has become iconic and is used as a nickname (?), but surely the bottom line is that it’s a brand name devised by McVities.

So, what other words have the included, and do you have any idea what they might mean? Comment if you know (no cheating if you read the article in the paper!), or want to guess!

Addy

Cattle class – okay, so that one is easy

Garburator

Get your ya-yas out

Heaviosity

Semifreddo

Wairua – for those of you who speak Maori

Obviously Microsoft haven’t got wind of the fact that these are words as they were flagged by spell checker.

It offered these alternatives –

Addy – Add, Eddy, Daddy, Paddy, Adds

Garburator – Carburettor, Graduator, Arbitrator, Granulator

Ya-yas – yo-yos

Heaviosity – Heaviest, Heavyset

Semifreddo – Semiarid, Semidried

Wairua – Walrus, Warier, Waurika, Ware, Wire

But then when I was a student Word spell checker didn’t include ‘matriarchal’, but did have ‘patriarchal’!!