Down the rabbit hole...

For a variety of reasons I lost the will to write anything for a while… again… not the first time, won’t be the last… in fact… this will be one of those times… I think… well… something like that! But I could not help but mull over the same old stories and consider, mainly for myself, how can this, the current debt crisis, be exaplained to people in a language they might understand. Thing is, I’m not entirely sure whether it is even more complex than I imagine in which case it’ll be even harder to try to make simple. I find it increasingly difficult to balance the rhetoric that I listen to. On the one hand, most people, in the UK at least, are in work. They get up every morning, they go to work, they do their job and they come home. The money they earn goes to a bank account and bills get paid. Granted, they have not had much in the way of a pay rise for some years and the cost of everything else is erroding the free cash they have so spending on the new tv and a holiday in Oz is h

So... I ordered a bag from Cocosa.com. Quite a nice DKNY overnight style bag at a good clearance price. Everything is cool, the order is accepted, the bag despatched and I await delivery. Needless to say delivery was not actually a delivery, more a notification about some guy popping around deciding that it's all too complicated to deliver so leaving a card and then me going to find the office and picking it up... that kind of 'delivery'. But enough about my issue with courier companies in this country (at this point btw, Yodel... I love you, you are the best and allow your people to use common sense and follow the customers instructions... and deliver Saturdays... cool) Anyway. I open the package and look at my lovely, shiny new bag. Only it is not my lovely, shiny new bag... it is my receipt for my bag but it is another DKNY bag. A nice bag, but not the bag I ordered. I write, politely to Cocosa. They respond, politely. They say I ordered a bag and they de

Sorry, having trouble finding anything to be 'happy' about here... A talented woman who worked her way from secretary to head of a large national organisation through talent and hard work has been destroyed because of the actions of others. Her culpability is not proven. Ironically she has been tried in the same court she tried others, that of the media... just desserts?... maybe... and maybe not, we love building people up and then knocking them down, one of our more unpleasant traits. How about shouting at, and trying to physically attack, an 80 year old man in the street... outrageous?... but suddenly ok because he runs a news organisation that feeds the salacious appetites of the very people now attacking him... How about the shock that politicians, of all persuasions, find it necessary and/or enjoyable to mix with the 'movers and shakers' of our society... their fault... or ours... or is it even a fault? And why are the family of a murdered 13 yea

Oh, by the way, you have to read to the end of the blog entry today if you are superstitious, that’s because I have put a ‘read me’ curse on the blog entry and only by reading through the blog will you un-curse yourself by reading the hidden anti-curse. It’s all very clever really, basically, you write a curse, get it approved by the Royal Society of Curses and then embed it within a paragraph of seemingly harmless drivel. That’s what I have done. The paragraph you just read contains the hidden curse and the antidote to the curse is hidden within a paragraph in the remainder of the blog… see… simple really! The curse is a money curse. If you fail to read the remainder of the blog entry you will lose a small amount of money in the next 47 hours. I can’t go into the whole ‘why 47 and not 48 hours?’ bit now, just take my word for it. Anyway, the cool thing is, this money you lose will somehow find its way to me within 65 hours after the initial 47. Cool huh! Anyway, on with the blog… I

Why is it I feel so sleepy when I get bored and so generally lethargic. It seems to become a vicious cycle. I get bored because of something I ‘must’ do and then I start to feel lethargic and lazy and seem to find almost any excuse to not do what I need to do! I could quite happily go to B&Q, buy some paint, paint a wall and watch it dry… mind you, some of the new paints only take minutes to dry and then I would be right back where I started, that is, with a task I need to do that isn’t getting done. Same with those tasks that you know, absolutely positively, that once complete nobody will ever notice or even know about, not unless you tell them! Even then, who will really care. Thing is, if we only do things that really matter and will actually serve a purpose, then we might as well pack up for half the week and go home. Great as that sounds… not sure it will actually pay the bills, and I seem to have a few of them, but heh, that’s the beauty of our wonderful capitalist society!

Steering clear of talking about projects, management teams or suppliers today. I think. But as I have just started hitting the keys who really knows. It’s not like I sit here and think about what I am going to write… bit like the way I talk I suppose. I just start my mouth up like some sort of industrial hedge trimmer and then set about forming something pretty out of a hedge… only doesn’t always look pretty… see, now five seconds ago I didn’t know I was going to write that and nor did you! How come Thailand gets some fit bird to run the country and we get Abbot and Costello? Even when we do get a woman to run the country we choose Attila the Hun or Thatcher. Not sure which of them was responsible for most deaths but pretty certain Attila killed more personally than Thatcher but you never can tell what goes on in those cabinet meetings until somebody writes their memoirs, assuming they make it that far. I say ‘choose’ although it might not exactly be choice per se. After all there

What interesting and entertaining things are happening in the world today then… Looks like the Strauss Khan case is taking an interesting twist. Although is it an unexpected twist? It is almost certain that the naughty chap shagged the poor unsuspecting maid like a scene from a 1970’s 8mm blue film. Who would have thought it! Guess it does raise a number of questions which will now have to asked and answered. Did she have sex and then regret what she had done and tried then to cover her guilt by making up a story? Did the NYC police department trip over themselves to arrest Strauss Khan purely because of the adrenalin rush of such a high profile character and of course the need to race onto the hot tarmac, lights blazing and sirens screaming, with a dramatic slide of the patrol car into the path of an already taxiing 747 bound for Paris to seize the evil criminal before he made his dramatic escape? Or perhaps the more serious questions about whether she might have been assaulted

I wrote this in response to a blog entry by a guy who runs MediaSift in Reading who wanted to chat to me about a role... I say 'wanted' in that very 'until I post this' kind of way! Not that it's bad, it is what I believe and have tried to do over the years, it's just I sense a difference in 'philosophy' between the two of us in some subtle ways... but we'll see... or not... as the case may be :)))) ---- Wow, interesting blog. However… please stand back whilst I shoot myself in the foot! I don’t agree with some of the assertions or views, but I do love a good discussion and experimentation so thought I might share. If I had this £400 I think I am unlikely to buy the ‘star programmer’ a new laptop by way of reward. Not sure I would give them the cash either. Instead I might empower this star team member to make their own choice. Perhaps having a range of rewards that can be ‘purchased’ and the individual can have whatever they would like. An

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Been back to my to-do list and most of my to-do list was to-done so went through all the emails I sent in the past two weeks and started adding things that people have either not done which I asked them to or where they simply ignored me. But that’s all very dull. How about tennis… what surprise is there to be had from today’s matches. Hopefully something shocking, just to keep me awake! Having said that, there are meetings to be had this afternoon but nothing of any great consequence. I could ‘touch base’ with some of the PMs but it’s always such a depressing experience. anyway I don't have a baseball bat on me and the taser has not been charged up recently! I wish to direct my fire... and/or ire... at, on and towards ParcelForce... you are without doubt the most crap delivery team I have ever had the misfortune of nearly, but not quite, being served by. Following the whole 'nearly being given my case of wine' fiasco with Naked Wines they have now decided they wou

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Can’t help but feel I, like quite a few other people, am watching a slow motion car crash happening. Not only is it going to be a car crash, but a pile up… maybe quite a big pile up… in fog… with trucks and cars and probably a few sheep involved as well… definitely quite a big car crash this one! Not entirely sure when it is going to happen but certain that it is going to happen! Oh yes, the car crash that is the Greek financial meltdown is coming to a bank near you!   Can’t help wonder what happens next. Certainly it is going to hit Greece hardest. At least at first. And when I say hit, it’ll be a little like David Hayes giving Arthur Askey a right hook! I noted that somebody somewhere commented it was ‘outrageous’ there were suggestions bodies such as the ECB could step in and determine which   assets within Greece should be sold off so that Greece could repay its debts. Well, I guess it’s not that outrageous really. If anybody else borrows excessively, gets into trouble and is

Can't be bothered to rant about anything today. Sure there is lots I could rant about. I just cannot be bothered to do so. So, as I sit in a meeting taking notes, well, writing this blog whilst giving the appearance of taking notes, I reflect on ants rather than rants. They clearly have a number of similarities. Certainly in percentage terms it can be seen ants are 80% of rants. Therefore they must be very closely related. Indeed as I consider this further I find that they share exactly the same number of vowels and this I conclude must mean something. I am certain now that ants came first. I suspect some Greek chap was listening to his local politician having a rant about something to do with... the damned Gauls breaking down fences all over the northern territories... Only he did not recognise it as a rant as the word did not exist, although as history will show it was just about to come into existence. This Greek chappie continued to watch and decided there was no fitting word

So, what’s happening in the world today, anything interesting? I was mildly amused, I suppose, that China now has an aircraft carrier and that everybody around the globe is worried about this alarming escalation in arming for potential world domination. I even noted one correspondent concerned about how this would lead to an arms race with the US! Well… that’s interesting isn’t it! For a start, China has bought a second hand, unfinished hulk from the Russians which, as a hull, was based on an outdated design and which was empty inside. In a few years it will be fully fitted with the best Chinese, previously enjoyed, technology and will have undergone sea trials. Knowing the state of the Russian navy and of ship building in the still largely state owned yards, it will have sunk by the end of 2012! Even if it does survive, I guess our American cousins could always hang a Greenpeace flag on the side of it and then the French will sink it whilst claiming not to know what happened and sh

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I thought I would once again try my hand at writing a blog! It is one of those things I don’t expect anybody to read but is a form of cathartic act for me. I can even use words like cathartic and not care whether anybody is paying the slightest bit of attention! I used to keep a blog before. But in that time I had a sparring blogger who kept me honest! Through our joint support of each others blogs we were quite happy to just know that even if nobody else bothered to read the ramblings of the seriously disturbed we would know that we had read each others! Of course… nothing ever lasts… except plastic that is, plastic will last longer than the earth… in fact, one day, some weary space traveller will drop by and find the earth completely wrapped in a giant plastic wrapper. And on that wrapper there will be a blue and white logo and Tesco written above it… definitely from the value range! So… this morning as I drive to work in the rain, which is good, I like some rain, helps with the