Ale !!!

Just some of the hand pulled ales available at one of my favourite pubs in Newark The Fox and Crown, the Hobgoblin being especially dangerous - I can personally vouch for that! In fact there's a slight blur on the second photo, I wonder why?

Farepak Fiasco

I’ve been reading about the Farepak fiasco over the last couple of weeks and shaking my head in disbelief at the whole debacle. For those that are unsure what I am on about, Farepak was a hamper company where people paid in cash amounts to a scheme to receive a hampers and food vouchers for Christmas.

I must confess to thinking hampers were a thing of the past and just not in vogue anymore but it seems they are still in demand, surely with advent of massive supermarkets and internet home shopping they are surely to become defunct?

Anyway, people do still pay into hamper schemes – by the thousands. Farepak it seems had a good reputation, they had been established since 1969 and sold electrical goods as well as hampers, they employed over 35,000 agents across the UK.

The real reason why they have gone under is unclear as there seem conflicting stories but it began with a statement from representatives of the company who said “We have conducted an immediate review of the Farepak business and it is with real regret that it has been necessary to cease trading”. The end result More than 150,000 customers mainly on low incomes lost an average of £400 each, although some lost closer to £2,000. Following that stories were rife, the boss of Farepak Mr Gilodi-Johnson, whose father founded Farepak said he regretted the situation, and blamed HBOS which the bank denied, hardly comfort for people that were going to have a bleak Christmas. The day to day Boss of Farepak Mr Clive Thompson took a holiday to Argentina whilst speculation arose as to the whereabouts of 40 million of savers money. So following that a fund was set up to help the victims, HBOS the bank that refused to support Farepak because of a 1.5 million shortfall contributed (some said out of guilt), among many others but the contributions have hardly come thick and fast. The end result being that the fund is due to close soon with the schemes clients expecting to get 15p back for every pound they paid in. Only 10% of the money lost has been recouped by donations. There is of course and enquiry under way by the trading standards though this is little comfort for the people having to find cash all over again for Christmas.

But this is was bugs me; Only 70 politicians made donations. Why is so much given in foreign aid yet little given to our own in times of need? My dear gran capped it all off for me with a phrase she often uses “Charity begins at home”. Though in this instance it sadly isn’t right, people, businesses and organisations happily donate to people abroad, because it raises their profile, yet thousands will go without this Christmas in this country. To me that is truly shocking one of the worlds most giving nations cannot give to their own in times of need.

Dawn by the Trent

I woke early this morning and decided to have a walk down by the river Trent, so camera in pocket and a warm mint to suck on I headed off into the dawn to take some photo's. The river was really serene and calm, the air was invigorating.

This first shot is near the Barge pub (on the left...and yes the pub is a real barge) as the light was just breaking, the light of the clocktower still illuminated. The next shot is a view from town lock looking back towards the castle, there's a bit more light and one if the buildings to the right is another pub called the Navigation whose windows are river level. The last 2 photo's are of the weir just past town lock.

Scenes of Winter

These are some photo's I took back at the beginning of the month when I was up on the north west coast, they show winter is definately here. In the first photo you can see a van where a man is trying to fish near his van, despite the rough sea. This was as close as I got. The second photo in a different location shows the sun trying to break through the stubborn clouds, it looked bleak but was quite beautiful.

From Decorator to Squatter

Many of the new wave of Polish builders and tradesmen claim to be hard working and reliable and I’ve no doubt that the majority are skilled and honest. The knock on effect which several of my friends have noticed who work the building trade is they are losing jobs and work in general as the influx of immigrant tradesmen continues. Mercenary employers are of course reaping the benefit of a new market of readily available and cheap labour willing to work around the clock if need be. Companies who employ Polish tradesmen can obviously charge the same prices but pay their Polish workers less, the Polish are of course happy as they earn more money here than back home but resentful as they know they don’t earn as much as British tradesmen normally do.

So, employers are happy, the Polish tradesmen are happy and you’d think the punters would be happy too – not always!

Take Surrey based graphic designer Nita Bowers for instance, who hired Polish decorators to work in here newly acquired Dockland flat, which she bought for £215,000 with a view to rent.

At first all seemed fine until she visited the flat with her estate agent to find the Polish workers had changed the locks. She was then presented with a crude document which looked liked it had been copied from the internet that stated the Polish tradesmen were demanding squatter’s right. The police were informed but said they could take no action as it was a civil matter (of course police would be much happier handing out traffic tickets for minor offences). Fortunately the tradesmen left soon after, but not until after causing damage to the property.

In closing Polish prime minister Lech Kaczynski who visited Downing Street a couple of weeks back said ‘Britain was now the destination of choice for his “feckless” countrymen’. Sounds like the Polish government are as apathetic as ours with dealing with the current situation then as its recent been revealed that many coming here to work are claiming benefits back home as well as here.

Having a break

Not been blogging so much of late, mainly because I've not had much to say really. I have been spending a lot of time on my lovely aqua limited edition Playstation 2, playing my fave game Disgaea 2 - cursed memories. Here's the opening movie from the game, for anyone who is interested....... which I'm sure won't be many, apart from my friend Pat of course who rushed out to buy it as soon as it was launched.

Oh go on have a look, it's pretty, with a cute Japanese girl singing !

Jackson Dropped

I sat watching the ‘Return of the King’ the last part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on Sunday night and thinking how the series of films has never really worked for me.

I think director Peter Jackson did a good job of all three films; most of the actors are excellent with a couple of exceptions. The setting of New Zealand is also idyllic.

So why doesn’t it all work for me?

Firstly they should have made the Hobbit first, the book being the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy should have been the opener, and this could have been used as an ideal platform to set the scene before the trilogy of films and be used to explain previous events. Instead Peter Jackson uses flashbacks in the trilogy and wastes valuable time in doing so, this time could have been used to include scenes and indeed whole episodes of the trilogy he omitted. Ok, so we know the books are vast and it wouldn’t be practical to include everything but he misses the scouring of the Shire chapter out and that’s not only one of my favourites but it’s a fitting end to the whole story as the hobbits through experiencing their adventures have to deal with one last twist of fate at the end of the book. The last chapters are where the hobbits come of age so to speak, where they come into their own without the help of wizards and rapid arrow shooting elves.

For me there are just too many pointless bits in the films and too many important bits left out. That aside the films are still amazing and a great technical achievement, maybe I’m just too fanatical about the books and a bit of a purist.

So, I was surprised to see this snippet of news today that states Peter Jackson will not be working on the prequel film ‘The Hobbit’ to read why click here.

I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing? Needless to say I should be signed as the star!

Only in America

Japanese and Americans are going mad for the new next generation console from Sony, the Playstation 3. It was realeased in Japan a couple of weeks ago to patient disciplined queues outside Japanese shops, Gary my friend that lives in Hong Kong rang me at 5am the other Sunday to tell me he'd managed to bag one in down town Hong Kong that must have been imported, of course he paid a hefty price for it, then again he is loaded with cash.

However in America when the Playstation 3 was released it was a much different story, there have been incidents of robberies, shortages, selling on ebay for extortionate prices and even attempted murder. YouTube has videos of the queues, where it was literally every man for himself in a mad chaotic scrambles, which are quite disturbing to watch. Only in America!

I love game consoles but there's no way I'd queue up or camp out over night to get my mits on one. The Playstation 3 is released over here in March 2007, I'll be happy to wait, and even then I won't get one on launch day.

Dutch Courage

Holland has is one of the worlds more liberal societies, having been there a couple of times and sampled it I can confirm that. It’s a lovely place, lots of culture and a very laid back approach to life.

I guess I was a bit taken back yesterday when I read the Dutch government had backed a proposal by the immigration minister Rita Verdonk to ban the wearing of Burqas. She said ‘it was important that all people in the Netherlands were able to see and identify each other clearly to promote integration and tolerance.’

At last a European country with balls and pragmatic sense. In these heady days of suspicion, racial conflicts and terrorism this seems a wise move to me. Of course the civil liberties people are up in arms about it but Ms Verdonk insisted the burqa was not an acceptable part of public life in the Netherlands.

France recently passed a law banning religious symbols, including Muslim headscarves, from schools. Italy has banned face-coverings, resurrecting old laws passed to combat domestic terrorism and Some German states ban teachers in public schools from wearing headscarves, but there is no blanket rule against burqas.

I don’t see how people can really complain in Holland, after all, it has one of the most easy going and open cultures in the world and this law is merely one of common sense.

Let’s just hope Britain now follows suit and passes similar practical laws, this is Britain after all, and not some Islamic state.

To any religious readers out there, this blog was typed in a very agnostic and sensible frame of mind and not an anti muslim one.

Manchester

I was up in Manchester again recently (these pics are a few weeks old) and had a little more chance to explore this time around. The first photo is of the Pennines, once your out of Sheffiled and heading towards Manchester there's some awesome scenary. This photo is taken from the train but there were loads of pictures that didn't really turn out or I wasn't speedy enough with the camera.

This next Photo is a short distance into Manchester from Piccadilly station, I kept wandering further in and checking my watch and keeping my bearings, I didn't have lots of time and soon had to head back to the station, but exploring is fun!

The next photo is for Pat who loves cranes (for some strange reason!) plus I wanted to show him I can take top crane photo's too, jeez I'm sounding as bad as a train spotter here! I love the way the photo turned out, as a silhouette against the fading day. There seems to be a lot of building work going on in Manchester - so any crane spotter would be spoilt for choice!

Quote Of The Week

Labour veteran, long time member of parliament and hero of mine Dennis Skinner at the Queens speech in parliament yesterday as the Queen approached Skinner replied to Black Rods invitation, with "Is Helen Mirren on standby?". The quip brought laughter from the House of Commons, being in reference to the portrayal by Helen Mirren of Elizabeth II in the 2006 film, The Queen.

100% English

I watched 100% English on channel 4 Monday night presented by the alleged culture expert Andrew Graham-Dixon. Basically the programme involved several real life and celebrity volunteers who agreed to give a sample of their DNA for examination to ascertain if their ancestral roots where of British origin.

During the programme I giggled at various instances, such as when the woman who was heavily into the Anglo-Saxon past and had even set up an organisation to recognise the English as an ethnic group had her results back. The results showed she was of Romany / East European origin with some Northern European etc, she wasn’t best pleased and later threatened legal action against the programme, claiming the DNA findings to be inaccurate. Other results followed, Lord Tebbit , journalist Gary Bushell and also Carol Thatcher (that’s Maggies daughter for American readers) with differing results and ethnic origins.

It wasn’t till after the programme that my brain started ticking, first impressions were that presenter Andrew Graham-Dixon had been quite smug about it all, whilst looking serious on presenting the results you could see there was an inner gloating about him. This was mainly due to the fact he’d mostly managed to get the participants to reveal their patriotic or racist thoughts before the DNA tests, only for them to later find their origins weren’t as English as they might have thought. Most were incredulous as most of their immediate family or a few generations back were English, it’s just that the DNA is traceable back for literally hundreds of years.

Andrew Graham-Dixon also kept using the phrase ‘Do you consider the black footballer Ian Wright to be English?’ This grated on me, because though Ian Wright was born in Woolwich and is very proudly English I’m sure he has over sea’s roots and is equally as proud of them too.

So how do you define being English? It’s surely a contentious and debatable subject to some.

People that came here back in the 50s/60s to work here and supplement the service industries and growing need for labour probably consider themselves English, though will always revere their origins and roots. Let’s face it, they came here, worked hard and integrated and contributed to our culture, they have the right to call themselves English and be proud of it.

There’s lots of other ways people may consider themselves English, a lot of people try and flee here from the third world, or oppressive regimes, they openly dream of living in England and becoming an English citizen. There’s people that are born here but have foreign parents etc and the lists and arguments to be considered English goes on.

What made me angry after the programme was the fact people were belittled to some extent for purely being patriotic, ok so their ancestry may come from other parts of the globe but in their hearts you could see they regarded themselves as English and why shouldn’t they?!

Also, how accurate is DNA for that sort of thing? How much does the guy in the street know about DNA? Sure we know its good for finding murderers etc and cloning but that’s only what we read or see on television, I have to confess to finding some aspects of it ambiguous, though I readily admit this is due to my lack of knowledge on it.

And finally, its well known we are a mongrel nation to a large degree, we are hardly unique in our genetic make up. I have French/Irish roots from a few generations back but I will always consider myself English and be proud of it, why should anyone be humiliated and be made not to feel proud of our heritage, ways and culture?

So, in retrospect, the programme sucked.

It's Back !!!

Yep my fave game 'Disgaea' is back and in the shops erm.......... today, only it is 1:10am as I write this and the shop is shut ! *starts getting excited*

Babe of the Week No.6

Yep, babe of the week time again, and I seem to have a thing for redheads at the moment! This time its 'Jam' from the video game website Fragdolls

Girls, video games, girls, video games, girls video games, jaffa cakes, girls, video games - drool !!!