Sad news

I'm deeply saddened today by the sudden death in a road accident outside Brisbane, of the 19 year old brother of one of Lori's school pals. Lori is heartbroken and I feel for her.

However I am totally at a loss to even begin to comprehend how the young man's family must be feeling. Having seen Lori travel to Australia herself last year and work through her 1 year student visa, I know that we never managed to put away the parental concern that she was okay. She could 'phone and re-assure us daily that everything was fine, but all parents know how you still worry. It's part of the job to worry! When she walked through the door at Manchester airport I think I hugged her for at least 2 minutes. The thought of his parents not now being afforded the same joyous moment is extremely distressing.

Very sad indeed.


nick

Mole update

He's done it again! He's actually created a molehill around my sonic repeller!!


nick

Will no-one rid me of this meddlesome beastie?

MOLES! No not the sort that lurk around the corridors of a Govt department, nor those that we have on our skin…not even the former Rangers striker Michael, who still gets to play the occasional half game at Feyenoord. None of them......no, I’m plagued with one of these fine creatures who is currently enjoying sparring with me and making my garden a passable lookalikie for the opening scenes of ‘Private Ryan’!
I’ve tried or am trying just about everything I can to rid me of him. I have traps, both humane and er…rather inhumane, a sonic repeller, smoke bombs, mothballs, a musical widget from a birthday card, a kids beach windmill and in desperation, the car exhaust. I haven’t touched any of these with my bare hands either. To avoid him getting a whiff of my scent I’ve only used garden gloves, yet still he taunts me. Every morning like clockwork another mound appears, thereby spreading more pebbles across my grass than along the entire beach at Brighton. He must have chuckled himself stupid when he made a molehill not 6 inches from the sonic repeller. That was a fine waste of £18. Another £7 for the humane trap and £6 for the vicious one make mole hunting a pricey pastime.

Somewhere down there I can just picture his little world resembling a scene from ‘The Borrowers’. His wardrobe with several pairs of moleskin trousers hanging up and protected by the mothballs my wife suggested and which I was daft enough to buy. The kids beach windmill connected below ground to a generator and supplying him with limitless free power to warm his little home and the musical widget sitting in the corner of his room like some state of the art hi-fi.

I'm even prepared to do a deal with him too. If he gives himself up by way of the humane trap, I promise to take him somewhere nice and release him where he can carry on his tunnelling ways to his heart's content.


nick

Too many negatives against the Old Firm moving South

There can’t be a stronger reason not to consider the development of the Old Firm joining the English Premier League than this. Until such scenes are a thing of the past, it’s madness to suggest allowing them to play every other week in a league that has worked so hard to make going to football safe(r). Yes I appreciate that Celtic were not involved and yes I know that there are still those who seek to cause trouble at Premier League grounds. However, allowing the two Leviathans of Scottish football into an English League is as daft an idea as allowing Feyenoord and Ajax to play in the Bundesliga and then hoping that the hooligans will behave themselves!

The downside is that genuine football fans are deprived of a unique development that would add some spice to the fixture list. But that’s always the net result of the hooligans actions, the genuine football fans lose out. Who wants to take their kids to watch a game with such a potential time bomb ticking? I also wonder how some of the smaller SPL clubs would feel about their bigger pay days vanishing from their fixture list, especially if the Setanta television money dried up due to a smaller, less attractive product available.


nick

A strange way to complain.

The cult of celebrity appears to have taken another turn for the worse as Max Clifford reportedly now represents a woman slapped across the face in the G20 protests. There’s a correct procedure to go about reporting such matters in order to complain. If you seek the assistance of Clifford, you are no longer appearing to take that route, but many will be thinking she’s after making a quick buck out of the whole unfortunate episode, perhaps even planning to appear on the next series of Big Brother! Looking very demure and speaking in a quiet tone, I smell all the hallmarks of Clifford in the interview. It all just seems wrong and rather tawdry, particularly bearing in mind the dignity shown by the family of Ian Tomlinson in the aftermath of his shocking death.


nick

Why aren't they ejected from the Course?

It takes a unique type of moron to aggravate people all around the world. I would suggest that the halfwits who constantly yelled 'get in the hole' at absolutely every putt during the final round at Augusta, totally met the criteria for 'idiot' and should be thrown off the Course!


nick

Simple pencil marks, but so welcome.

I went to see a former colleague at our local hospice this morning, but sadly due to fatigue, his Doctors had understandably decided that he was not able to receive non-family visitors. Thoughtfully the hospice in Wrexham provides little cards to fill in with a message and they were passing it on to him, so anyone reading this who knows who I'm talking about, please still go if you planned to and write out a card.

I came home and feeling rather glum, decided to dive into the long overdue decorating my wife has planned for our dining room and that meant the removal of the old wallpaper first. After a few minutes of steamer work some old pencil markings came into view and it was a joy to find that they were where I’d marked the girls heights back in 1996 when they were 9 & 6 and how I'd then covered them over with wallpaper. It’s strange how such a simple action a long time ago suddenly re-surfaced today of all days and how just a few pencil marks can lift the spirits when they needed them lifting most!


nick

Fat cats want the cream AND the milk!

Can’t say I’m shocked by the number of Local Government officers commanding ridiculous salaries . However, I’m saddened that these obscene amounts of money paid out really do take away from the grass roots of public spending. Here in Wrexham we had the bizarre situation of forking out for numerous Strategic Directors, not one of which even paid the Authority the courtesy of actually living within it. Consequently somewhere in the region of £500,000 flowed out of the county every year without a single penny of it returning via Council Tax. They even received a free parking space each!

Certain officers could then expect to boost the income with certain ‘add ons’ that almost come as part of the job. Being a Chief Returning Officer increases the basic pay with a very handy extra £18,000 pa and appointment as a Clerk to an Authority such as the Fire or Police Authorities would also add a minimum of the same amount again.

When some of us would question the amounts paid for these luxuries we’d be told the usual mantra, ‘that’s what they could command in the private sector’. Not sure if that’s true, but certainly those in the private sector are held far more accountable for their failures. Indeed the ‘exit door’ is shown far more often to those in the private sector when they fail to achieve improvements and targets. Strange thing is, whenever our Authority looked for savings cuts (and that’s annually under the LibDem Alliance), it’s the folks at the sharp end delivering services to customers who fear for their livelihood. Somehow the fat cats always know they are safe!


nick