DomDom's Ramblings

Something changed today, and I fear it may be dangerous.  I’ve not been able to ‘consume’ the news all day, but listening to the radio on the journey home told it all.

There were two stories that immediately got themselves joined together in my mind.

Firstly the news that the Brexit side had pulled out a lead over the Bremainers in a couple of extra polls.  Not surprising in my mind - I’ve always suspected that we’ll end up with a narrow leave result in the referendum.

Secondly (and somewhat sinister, in my view) is the kite-flying idea that we’ll stay in the Single Market even if we vote to leave.  Wooaaahhhhhhh!  If we vote to leave the EU, it will be a very strong sentiment to say that we want out of the whole European project, not a semantic divergence from what we’ve currently got.  I get a really strong sense that the remainers have seen the future, and they don’t like what they see.

Politicians, beware!!  That sort of petty maneuvering is the sort of stuff that ‘The People’ won’t put up with.  It’s probably not sensible to consider the implications of that sort of betrayal of the population, so I hope it doesn’t come to that.

It appears that Dan Walker has been gifted a much-vaunted position as a main presenter on the BBC breakfast programme.

Who on earth makes these decisions??

The BBC seems, for some reason, to hold some sort of special light for the BBC sports presenters.  They seem to have a very peculiar cocky and arrogant demeanour that I really, really dislike.  There must be something within the organisation that encourages this type of presenter.  In that type of position.

I remember Dan Walker a few years ago, during a discussion on radio about extending licensing hours during the World Cup saying (words to the effect of) I’m not bothered because I’ll be there and not concerned about whether pubs are open or not.  I was pretty disgusted that he’d have such little regard for the people who effectively pay his wages.

I’ve never much liked him since then.

Then I hear that this guy is a creationist.  He has deep beliefs that this world in which we live, where the evidence for evolution is SO strong, that it was ‘made’ by god in six days, and that presumably the artefacts and remains of dinosaurs and our prehistoric ancestors were ‘planted’ in the whole project.

What an absolute NUTTER!!

I wrote a wee while ago about the Supermarkets and how Asda had pushed me away with what I saw to be greed and silly ranging and pricing (and I’m not even a retailer!!!)

It was toothpaste that was the problem - it seemed that toothpaste was either £2 or £3 in Adsa, and I felt that that was taking the you-know-what!!

So I went to Lidl.

We normally spent £100 to £120 per week in Asda for the family shop - it depended whether we needed nappies or other items, but it was about that.  A good sized shop at Lidl was £55.  Now that’s a BIG difference.  The toothpaste, incidentally, was 59p.  And it seems really, bloody good.  I haven’t had to go to the dentist, and it feels really pleasing.

Then I read today that Asda have had a bit of a pup of a Christmas.  They’re going to get rid of a lot of head office posts, and I get a definite sense that they’re running a bit scared.  And rightly so.  Andy Clarke, their Chief Exec is quoted as saying “Every supermarket must adapt to the intense changes in UK retailing or they will get left behind”.

It’s not yet 2016, and the whole news agenda has gone Euro-Bonkers!!  If the referendum is going to be as early as June or July next year - it’s not going to calm back down until after the vote is done.

Here’s my advice - whatever your position is now, write it down somewhere prominent, and then do exactly that on polling day.

I say this because over the next few months, we are going to be over-loaded with a nauseating collection of BS.  There are going to be spurious claims (from both sides) that are going to cloud your judgement and leave you confused and unsure of which way to vote.  That’s going to be the point of the campaign for both sides.

It is going to come down to what you ‘feel’ about Europe.  There are ‘factual’ arguments on both sides, that we’ll never be able to prove until we’ve made a decision.  Your feeling and sense today is probably going to be right, so keep it safe, think of it as precious, and use it when the time comes.

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It’s never going to be the most important item that you put in your trolley, but there’s something emotive about toothpaste, and a trip to my local Asda on Friday made me really weary and disappointed.

Asda long ago stopped doing the Macleans Fresh Mint toothpaste that I’ve used since I was a kid (a long time ago!!).  I’ve been reduced to picking it up in bulk in various places, and more recently flirting with other brands.  I’ve often been confused by the range available and the prices charged - in Asda at any rate!

It always used to be about 60 to 80p for a tube.  That was until a whole range of super-toothpastes (according to the marketeers) started to drive this price up and up.  Asda’s own brand was generally about 25p a tube.  I was always uncomfortable about this ‘playing around’ with the ranges and prices, feeling that there was some kind of ulterior motive.

Then, on Friday, it became clear.  The Asda stuff was £1 a tube, the brands were all generally £2 or £3.  These were the prices - not the range of prices.  Someone’s clearly not happy getting 80p a tube any longer.  It’s a bad move, in my opinion.

Now I’ve never really shopped at Aldi or Lidl.  No particular reason, I’ve just not had the motivation to try them out.  I do now.  Given the growth of the German interlopers, I’d have thought that the biggies might have tried to do all they can to keep their shoppers in their own stores, not give people a reason to go elsewhere.

Well Asda, I don’t know how much these German upstarts charge for toothpaste, and I don’t know what the range will be.  I’m sure the range will be a good bit smaller than Asda, but I’ll live with that.  By this time next week, I’ll know what the toothpaste situation is in a store other than Asda, and I suspect that I’ll probably do the larger part of my shopping there at the same time.  As a consumer who had so far stayed loyal (albeit through laziness) to one of the big supers, I’ll be one of the many who seem to be shifting.

It didn’t need to be this way, Asda.  I’d have probably continued to do my weekly shop with you, but you made me feel like you were ‘grabbing’ with your toothpaste shenanigans, and I suspect that my £120 a week shop will largely go elsewhere.

I love a bit of irony!!

There’s an ad on LBC at the moment for some bank or other that seems to be voiced by Nick Hewer (sp??).  In it, he derides celebrity and people who are ‘famous for being famous’.  The line that kills me every time is the bit where he suggests snootily that this group includes ‘stars of reality TV’.

Err Hello!  Is this the same Nick Hewer who was a nobody until he came to be known for being on the Alan Sugar reality TV programme??  The one who is genuinely famous for being famous?

Now I’m not a taxi driver, and I don’t live in London.

I have, however, listened to an awful lot of London’s black cabbies whinging and whining about Uber.  They don’t half get angry about it!

Last week, I read an article on the BBC website about a musician who was looking to see how he might make a living from his music.  He refered to a band called Hot Chip, who have recently released their sixth album, but the lead singer wasn’t making enough money to buy a flat in London.

It got me thinking that there are some similarities between these two groups.  The music industry was changed magnificently with the advent of digital storage and transmission.  The music industry carped on in a similar fashion to the present day taxi-drivers at the time.  BUT.  There wasn’t a great deal that could be done, and so they changed.  They started to make their money from live performances.  The internet couldn’t mimic that!!

Now the taxi drivers arguably have it coming from two directions.  Firstly, in the past some people spent an awful lot of time and effort learning all of the streets of London, and the best way to get from A to B.  They were pretty special people, and they earned a good deal of money for having done ‘The Knowledge’ - as it is/was called.  The SatNav has completely kyboshed this knowledge (and The Knowledge) and has meant that any old fool (even me, with my Lancashire mindset) can do the same thing (furthermore, a SatNav will tell you the best way to get there, without taking a few expensive extra turns to inflate the fare!!). 

There are coutless stories of where SatNavs have gone wrong, and how they’ve directed people the wrong way up a one way street etc etc etc, but largely they are pretty good, mostly.

Secondly there is the whole ‘idea’ of the internet, which changes - completely - the flow of information.  It lets people see where a taxi is, and not be entirely at the mercy of an ‘ignorant’ cabbie who doesn’t stop to pick you up because he can tell that you’re only going down the road and are therefore a piddling, little fare.  The internet gives the power to the consumer - not the provider.

OK, I’m probably being a little unkind to cabbies, and probably over-simplifying the issues at play here - but that’ll be my Northern take on the situation.

The Cabbies need to do a couple of things.  Firstly stop carping!  You can’t change the development of techology.  You can’t sit King Knut-style trying to wish that the internet (or Uber) didn’t exist.  It does.  Get used to it.  Secondly, think about how the music industry have changed - because they’ve had to.

They have used their strengths - those that can’t be easily copied.  Your knowledge (rather than your Knowledge) is valuable to lots of people.  Your iconic vehicles will always be popluar.  Your ability to ‘think’ about a route rather than simply take the ‘data-driven’ best route could be invaluable.  For god’s sake, don’t think that your average fare isn’t going to go down.  The internet is going to make sure that that happens.  Get used to the idea that the world is changing around you (around us all, for crying out loud) and work out what you can do that any old fool with a SmartPhone can’t.

What a strange and bizarre week it has been for the movement of people!

The picture of that poor young boy in the surf has certainly changed the media coverage of the happenings (people have been losing their lives for such a long time now - adults and children - without this focus of the media) and has ifluenced what governments do, too.

My eldest daughter is three, and to imagine the situation with her involved brings a terrible cold chill to the deepest depths of my heart.

There are two things that occur to me:-

Firstly, if there were a civil war in Great Britain, I’m pretty damn sure that I’d know which side I was on, and I’d bloody well fight for what I believed in.  I wouldn’t hot-foot it over to America, or Australia.  I’m too much of a Brit to even consider leaving.  This is where I belong, this is my home, and I’d defend it to the end.

The second thing is that this going to be self-perpetuating.  Like an internet fad going ‘viral’, the instant exchange of information will motivate many, many more who see western Europe as the promised land to head on over.

So, I did the Spartan Super race last Saturday at Heaton Park in Manchester.  It was hot, and a bit too sunny, and if I were a whinger, it was probably not the best day to do it.  I love doing this sort of stuff, though - and it’s really interesting to see what’s on offer.

Over the last 12 months or so, I’ve done a few of these events and Saturday’s experience brought me to have an opinion about them as a group.

Last August, I did the Tought Mudder race in Skipton.  It was brilliant! It was too expensive, spectators had to pay to watch (FFS!!), and in parts it was too damn busy, so you had to hang around and wait for some obstacles.  At the end, however, I was utterly buggered but when you looked at the course, you could really see where your money went.  There were some pretty spectacular obstacles, and some must have clearly taken a great deal of effort to use.

Then in October, I did the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ at Sport City in Manchester.  Now I only did this to aid a friend’s team.  It was a group of ladies, and myself and one of my Tough Mudder buddies were along to do the lifting, shifting and chivvying of the said ladies.  I don’t mean this in anything other than a respectful and friendly way.  But the course was a bit ‘temporary’ and, if I’m honest, just a little bit disappointing.  Climbing through an articulated trailer, and wading across a canal isn’t very impressive.  I was chuffed to finish, but I felt a little bit cheated, somehow.

Last Saturday’s Spartan showed, I think, the state of these events.  Already cut from two days to one, it was still a very quiet day.  If you’re going to put on one of these events, you have to make sure that people have a sense of its ‘worth’ as you’re going around - and some barbed wire slung over a stream, or some wooden broom handles with steel spike attached with some bales of hay to chuck ‘em at, just don’t cut the mustard.  For £75 I want more - much, much more.

So, in the future, before I chuck a load of money at an event, I want to be sure that most of the money isn’t going in to the pocket of the organisers!  There’s been a real clamour to get involved with these endurance events, but from experience, I think that there’s too many event organisers who are relying on people’s blind decisions to get involved.  No More!  I think that these events will dwindle away until those getting involved have a definite sense of the money spent going in to the design of the course, and to the size of the challenge.

Well chaps, we lost the last election by veering off to the left (rent controls, huge minimum wage, price controls of markets, incessant blathering about zero-hour contracts) so next time, we’ll go farther to the left because that’s what people want!!  Ha, Ha, Ha!!!

The truth of the matter is, Labour haven’t won an election on a ‘leftist’ ticket since 1976 - that’s nearly 40 years, for god’s sake.  Tony Blair managed it by being a right wing leader who attracted Tories.  There just aren’t enough socialists around to get them back into government.  Veering even farther to the left won’t help them a bit.

Was it Einstein who described insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results’?

From a pretty (read : VERY) poor list of four candidates, the only one who has ANY chance of electoral success is Liz Kendall, and I’ll bet my mortgage on her being the first out of the leadership race.

Come back in 2020 and call me an idiot, but the Conservatives would have to do something REALLY, REALLY silly to not get re-elected against this shower of sh!t that Labour are putting forward.

Could you ever - in a month of Sundays - imagine Ed Miliband as your Prime Minister??

His over-worn ‘I don’t care what people think about me’ phrase belies a very important problem that he has....You should care!  You absolutely fucking should care what people think.  People (me, at the moment more specifically) think you’re an absolute knob who shouldn’t be in charge of the local tanning shop, never mind the institutions of this country and the nuclear button, for god’s sake!

I’m disappointed with the pair of them tonight. I don’t believe Dave and I can’t take Ed seriously.

Politics, we have a problem!

The big problem is actually Alex Salmond, and he’ll be the decider in this election.  Al is going to have me voting for Dave, even though I don’t really want to.  I’m going to do this because Ed would need Al, and Al would get too much out of the resultant deal.

I haven’t even seen Wallace yet, and this is terrible!

I can’t see that this is going down well, and once Big Ed comes on it’s going to get worse...I know!!

Paxo has been OK, and I think he gave Dave a bit of a tough time  - I hope Mr Miliband gets a comparable going-over.  It shouldn’t be difficult!

Kay Burleigh was terrible!  Clearly over-awed by the situation, she seemed to be more interested in pouting for the camera than chairing a decent Prime-ministerial grilling.

Well, I'd be willing to bet that Merkel and Hollande are going to look pretty silly when history looks back on their little jaunt over to have a chat with Vladimir.

As a world, we're just being tested and probed and our limits are being felt.  It's not a million miles away from the way that my three year old behaves.

The big problem is that we (and by we I mean 'The Western World') won't do a single thing.  We haven't done it over Georgia, we didn't do anything over Crimea, we're not doing anything over Ukraine either.  Once he's tested these, he'll move onto another country.  It'll probably be one of the Baltic states, and even though they're members of NATO, we'll not do anything there either.  I suspect that we'll not do anything until the old Soviet Empire has been (not so) gently taken back over.  Until he gets to Germany, and then we'll wonder why we didn't do anything earlier.

We'll wring our hands and beat up the politicians who 'let it get that far', but Barack will be long gone, the world will have changed immeasurably and the Soviets will be taunting us with their nuclear weapons once more.

Putin is a horribly dangerous man, and we need to 'man up', put our woolly, wishy washy peace-mongering to one side and show that we won't let him take Eastern Ukraine or ANY other country that he's likely to take.

Lord Above! I had the misfortune to see some of the much-hyped, and predictably awful Top Gear tonight. What a bummer!

Racing downstairs with a baby crying for a feed (3 ½ months old, you see) I flicked on the telly, started warming the milk and then sat down without a remote in sight, never mind within reach. It was Top Gear – I winced ever so slightly.

Now I haven't seen Top Gear for quite a while, as I'd become horribly sick of the scripted, clearly planned bullshit that they regularly put out as a TV program. I'm not against scripted planned telly, by the way, but when it is that, they ought to be clear that that's the case – Top Gear go to great lengths to make it appear to the casual observer that it's spontaneous and pseudo-anarchic. It's plainly not!

They seem to have gone to even greater lengths this time – almost like they're trying to see how far they can go before people realise that it's all 'tush'. I suspect that they've gone a good deal further than they thought they would. Ever.

The sight of Jeremy Clarkson feigning tears as he re-told a story that suggested he drove from London to Sheffield in under an hour to catch his father's final breath (I think he suggested that he'd pretty much driven the distance at 180mph) was a moment worthy of Piers Morgan. That tender moment when he touched his eye before the voice started to break....he'll get no BAFTA nominations as best actor, that's for sure!

The crossing of a bridge that looked pretty sturdy to me – there were an awful lot of suspenders for that to be anything other than a pretty hefty construction – only to find a dead end at the other side was just plain silly. I'd have a word with Google Maps if I were you!

And the arrival of the little fella with a whole cow strapped to the top of the car was pretty much a re-run of the American one (which I think was the last TG I had seen) which even then was obviously a visual stunt.

I didn't see the 'mob' bit that we've had thrust down our throats by the TG publicity team, and I won't because what I did see confirmed my thoughts about the program. If you're happy to suspend your common sense and take this as edgy and 'dangerous' telly then you're welcome to it. If you're willing to watch it and take it just as entertainment – a bit like a cross between The Only Way is Essex and Coronation Street, then again – take it and keep it.

How on earth do we end up with a predominantly right wing printed media - and horribly left wing television and radio news coverage??

I'm really struggling to get news coverage that 'speaks' to me.  I spend many hours each day in the car, and 5 Live has become so desperately bad that I can no longer listen to it.

I cannot (could not, certainly) have thought for one moment that I would ever, EVER think the almost unthinkable thought, "come back Richard Baicon, all is forgiven!!"

How on earth can the Spurs owners think that sacking Villas-Boas is a good idea??

Fair enough, they've had a couple of shocking results but they're SEVENTH in the Premier League!

Could you imagine such short-sighted management in the world of business?  Could you imagine Marks & Spencer or Vodafone ditching bosses for not growing sales and profits every month??

Sensible business owners know that long term success comes witha level of stability and not just brilliance.

I'll predict that Spurs will have a steady decline through the rest of the season as this sort of crazy decision making increases the levels of insecurity at the club.  They had a good manager and didn't have the balls to trust him and stick with him.