Thursday, February 21, 2008

Virgin Media are still shit

I have been amused to see that the end of our road is now adorned by a billboard announcing that Virgin Media (officially supplier of multimedia to the Wooley household) are the only broadband supplier with super-fast cable broadband. Unsurprisingly, ever since said billboard has gone up my connection has been slower than an arthritic snail. Hello, ASA?

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

New Math

News from the US reaches me of a revolt against trendy Math(sic) teaching. Apparently parents can't cope with the fact that their little ones are being taught differently to how they where. Anyway not of much interest in and of itself, except to add to my list of stories that prove there is nothing new in the world, as the following song written in the '60s by a Mr. Tom Lehrer proves.




PS. other stories that provide a flimsy excuse to post Tom Lehrer songs gratefully received, (although not So Long Mom (Song for World War III) if we can avoid it please Mr Putin) .

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Muppetry of the highest order

I'm not sure who are the biggest muppets in the story of the £2m given to the wrong Newcastle. The official who got confused between Newcastle-under-Lyme and Newcastle upon Tyne and gave the small potteries town £2m of the Geordie's LABGI money, or the officials at Newcastle upon Tyne for not being sure enough of their figures to not have forced CLG to rectify it sooner. In my experience when you underpay somebody to the tune of £2m they generally jump up an down on your head until you put it right, not merely 'query' it.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Don't you want me?

Blogging is likely to remain light for a while yet but I had to break radio silence to protest about the latest attempts by the US Government to discourage anybody foreign ever going to the US ever. As the other half is a US citizen, and currently living in the US (this week at least), I have a vested interest in travel across the pond being as easy as possible. But trying to look at this objectively
surely there must be a point at which treating everybody who turns up at your front door like a common criminal starts to become counter-productive? How many tourists and investors, especially those nice gulf based gentlemen who have just bailed out half of Wall Street, want to be poked and prodded by the trained gorillas who man US immigration every time they fly into the 'land of the free'.

Of course freedom loving, visitor welcoming, data protecting Europe is throwing open its doors to one and all, isn't it? *heddesk* as the American's would say.