Pot, Kettle, Black ...

Aimlessly surfing, my browser's just alighted on the site for the low cost airline Easyjet. At the bottom of the homepage, they bill themselves as " The Web's Favourite Airline" - a clever parody of British Airways' slogan " The World's Favourite Airline".

The only problem is that this is the same EasyJet whose parent Easy company is wont to sue anybody using the word "Easy" in the title of their own business's website, accusing them of trying to pass themselves off as part of the group.

Stelios, is this not just a touch hypocritical?

Oh No!

I just caught a snippet on this morning's TV news bulletin. Apparently a pub not too far from here, the Woodman's Arms had a fire last night and has been quite badly damaged.

The original building dates back to, I believe, the 15th or 16th century and I hope it'll not lose any of its character when it's repaired. I don't go in there often, but it's a lovely place for a quiet lunchtime pint.

Reasons to be cheerful

A recent survey has indicated that Britain is one of the world's least religious countries. I suspect that my view will be a little controversial, but I regard this as a good thing...

At least there's one less thing to argue about.

Strange Bedfellows?

Being a bit of an old prog-rocker, I was delighted over the weekend when a friend drew my attention to a superb band called Mostly Autumn .

They have an upcoming SACD, " Live At The Grand Opera House" which I plan to buy on release and I've just looked up the details. The HMV site shows it and lists some other items which might be of interest. Two of them ( records by Barclay James Harvest and Roger Hodgson) I can understand, but I can't see the connection for the third.

This is an incisive drama entitled " Debbie Does Dallas" , which isn't neccessarily the first thing you'd connect with the others I would have thought!

A Little Suggestion

A little while ago, my wife was pestered at our front door by some downy-cheeked sprog of a salesman. I think he was attempting to persuade her to switch to a different electricity supplier, but whatever the product, she wasn't interested and said so. As is so often the case in these situations, the sales-twit semed to have trouble realising this, though I suspect that the firmly slammed door probably put the message across.

Why do we have to put up with this?

There's a mail preference service which can stop you from being deluged with junk mail and it works pretty well. There's also an equivalent telephone service, which too is very successful. Can I then propose a "doorstep preference scheme" whereby you could indicate whether or not you wished to be plagued by spotty little herberts trying to sell you stuff that you don't want?

I'd sign up like a shot!

Got your number...

There's a nice Jaguar round gere that I've seen a lot lately, with a distinctive personalised numberplate - K19 . This has "rung a bell" with me for no reason that I've been able to think of until last night when I glanced at my DVD rack.

K-19 was the number of the first Russian ballistic missile carrying submarine and a recent, and very good, film starring Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford was made about its rather unfortunate first voyage.

The K-19 was also known as the "Widowmaker" - not an association I'd like with any car of mine!

How well do you know your kids - a cautionary tale

This lunchtime I bumped into an old friend of mine - one we've not seen for a year or so. After a while the conversation turned to his children and our jaws dropped to hear that his fifteen year old daughter has left home and is pregnant. Very surprised at this I said to my friend that I'd have thought that his kids were the last I'd expect this to happen to.

"Yes" said he "that's what we thought".

Parents, never assume that no harm can befall your children...

Oh Mr Potter

Psion boss David Potter suggested a couple of days ago that the company will launch a couple of consumer-oriented PDAs later this year. I've had three of Psion's earlier products, culminating in my current and much-loved Psion 5MX.

The series 5 is quite a tool, though I suppose it's getting a bit long in the tooth, so on the face of it, this announcement is good news. However, I'm a little concerned about the use of linux as the PDA operating system. The earlier Psion organisers used their own OS - EPOC, and quite simply they were the most stable and reliable pieces of computing kit I've ever used. I have no issues with linux, but I'd like to know how it could improve on EPOC in this sort of usage...

Dawn Patrol

Every morning from Monday to Friday, before I go to work I take the dog around the block for a short pre-breakfast stroll. This is usually at about 06:30 in the morning, so through the winter this means that I go out well before daylight. To be honest, this is a bit of a chore, especially if it's cold/wet/foggy or generally inclement.

However, this morning I did notice that it although the sun hadn't then risen, it was starting to get light. Looks like spring's on the way...

Are you sure, Mr Minister?

I'm a little disappointed to read that ministers have decided against a ban on smoking in public places, opting instead for voluntary agreements. This is a complete waste of time - by and large smokers do not and to be fair, cannot, voluntarily agree not to light up.

Apparently the reasoning behind this decision is that it would be unenforceable and deeply unpopular. The first part is undoubtedly true, but as to the latter - surely the large non-smoking majority of people in this country would not object to being spared from the carcinogenic byproducts of this filthy practice?

I have seen the future...

I love watching films, however, I don't like going to the cinema! We don't have a decent cinema here, so it's about a twenty-five mile round trip to the nearest good one. Even once you've got there you have to mill about in the foyer whilst waiting for the doors to open, then there's the interminable wait through the trailers and adverts, getting out of your seat every time somebody walks past, and so on - it's all too much hassle!

Feeling like this, it's no surprise that I was a fairly early adopter of the DVD. We have a fairly good 5.1 surround sound setup, so the only thing that will really make me go to the cinema now is wanting to see something on a big screen.

However, my days of doing this are numbered. Over the weekend, a friend of mine borrowed a projector from his office and coupled it up to his DVD player - result, a movie picture with a diagonal of more than six feet - the proper cinema experience in the comfort of your own home!

This is something I'll buy into at my first opportunity. It's only a shame that I can't see much likelihood of doing so by September this year.

Why does that matter? The original three Star Wars films are going to be released then on DVD!

Yo! Stupid

I've just got round to watching an interesting BBC programme called Crisis Command, the idea of which is to take three people as "ministers", face them with a crisis situation and see how well they would deal with it.

One of the would-be ministers was a chap called Simon Woodruffe, founder of the Yo! Sushi restaurant chain, and he did say at the end of the show that he's considered entering politics.

Mr Woodruffe, as you and your two ministerial colleagues took decisions that would have resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, the loss of the Houses of Parliament through a 9-11 style airliner crash, and the flooding of a large part of London's tube network - resulting in an economic cost to the country in the order of £50 BILLION, I suggest that you're way out of your depth. Please stick to faffing about with raw fish...

Could I have done better? Well, for the record, I made the correct call on the decisions they were faced with seven out of seven times. Reading all those Tom Clancy novels has clearly stood me in good stead!

Shut the Door Behind You

Yesterday the boss of the British-American Racing Formula 1 team threatened to move his team abroad in the wake of a European Directive against tobacco advertising. Now we find the FIA supremo Max Mosely floating the possibility that Formula 1 might quit Britain altogether.

Am I the only person who's getting more and more frustrated with the F1 circus's tobacco addiction? For decades most of the cars have looked like rolling 'baccy billboards, and now we're seeing traditional European venues losing their races to be replaced with Grands Prix in other countries such as China and India. I'm sure that it's coincidence that such places have much more lax tobacco regulations...

You never know what you've got 'til it's gone

There's a little corner shop conveniently around the corner from us. It's an electrical and household shop and very useful. If you need an odd sized light bulb, battery, bin bag or something of that ilk, they invariably have it in stock. Over the seven years that we've lived here, I reckon they've saved me a fortune in petrol by not having to drive along to one of the DIY superstores which have proliferated around the edge of town.

I'm afraid that until last week I took the place very much for granted, until we noticed that it was closing down, which it duly did yesterday. I hope that the proprietor is going on to a prosperous retirement and it's beginning to dawn on me just how useful little local shops like this are. Do we really want to buy everything from out-of-town retail behemoths?