Fuel for thought

I'm very torn on the whole fuel tax / car duty thing. On the one hand, I resent paying a penny to the government since they will almost certainly waste it on something dumb, but on the other hand, if you're going to tax things then it may as well be fuel. No-one can avoid the tax -- unless they are farmers -- and it's easy to collect. In fact, I'm sure that car tax should be scrapped and rolled into fuel duty as well. I think that car discs should display insurance, not car tax.

If the current trend continues, however, and travel by car becomes too expensive for ordinary people, then the total tax take will surely start to fall, won't it? Fortunately, now that I've joined the ridiculous government "let poor taxpayers fund a nice bike for middle class people" scheme, I'm hoping to reduce the government's tax take even further by leaving the car at home once or twice a week. Let's see how it goes...

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

This is the life

French air traffic control are on strike, so I'm stuck on the tarmac, sitting in airless 737 with a bunch of other tired, bored, angry people who want to go home as much as I do. British Airways don't tell us there's going to be at least an hour delay, naturally, until we're all sitting on the plane. Since I'm being forced to traveller cattle-class by a mean and joyless conference producer, there's nothing to eat or drink either. What a total waste of time, especially when I have so much to do. I can just about type, with my laptop jammed up against the seat in front, but it's at an angle that is making my wrist ache: I can feel the pins and needles starting already, so I'm not going to get much work done. If I were a veal calf, aggrieved campaigners such as Carla "it's the people who are the problem" Lane would be waiting to for me at Gatwick.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Longest night

I was woken up in the middle of the night by howling wind, rain lashing against the windows and water splashing from a broken gutter on to the driveway. At first I was puzzled, since I didn't think that there was monsoon season in Britain any more, but then I remembered: it's nothing to do with global warming, it's the strange cosmic impact of Wimbledon, which starts tomorrow. Better get the raincoat for work tomorrow.

When I was woken, I was dreaming that the government had come up with a mental scheme to pay for comfortably-off middle class people like me to buy really fancy bikes and have them funded by the taxes of those on minimum wage. But when I woke up it turned out to be true, so like everyone else at work I've bought an expensive bike. I fully intend to attempt to ride it to work at some point in the future.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Next stop Valhalla

I'm pretty sure I heard the station announcer at Waterloo refer to a train to Isengard and Chertsey. This would seem to be a fairly unusual rerouting, even for South West Trains. Perhaps there are engineering works at Asgard.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Oranges and total lemons

I'm so jealous of the Dutch. The useless English football team failed to qualify for the European Championship, so they've all gone off to somewhere in Italy for Wayne Rooney's wedding. Meanwhile, proper footballers are fighting it out in Austria and Switzerland. I was in Amsterdam last Monday night, when the Dutch beat (in fact, battered) the current world champions, Italy. It was 3-0, and the Italians were lucky to get 0. Everywhere you looked in Amsterdam there was bright orange, carousing in the streets, happy drunken people (with none of the menace that would be associated with same in the U.K.) and flag-bedecked bicycles and mopeds going up and down the road. Brilliant, but tinged with bitter envy from the Brits in the bar.

I noticed an interesting sartorial difference between our two great nations when in thrall to international football competitions. In Eng-ger-land, everyone goes to the pub to watch a big match wearing the national team shirt. In Holland, everyone goes to the pub dressed in orange: orange dresses for the ladies (or jeans, T-shirts and hi-visibility jackets with bright orange stripes), orange shirts and pants for the men, but relatively few team shirts. Wearing the colours is paramount, wearing the official Nike £50 team shirt isn't.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Don't be Vague

Don't be Vague
Originally uploaded by Citizen_Dave

I'm somewhere in The Hague. Round the corner from the Museum of Communication, in fact. And how pleasant is The Hague on a day like today, with the sun shining and the Dutch team steaming through the European Championships.

Many years I ago I used to live here, on the coast right next to the Kuurhaus. What a mistake it was to chose an apartment in the summer, when it's all jazz festivals and dinner overlooking the beach. Come autumn, the wind comes sweeping in from the North Sea and it's like living on Jupiter.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

One up the Khyber

Surely I can't be the only one. If I hear on the news about Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, in my head I picture noted English actor Kenneth Williams. That’s because he starred as the Khazi of Khalibar, the head of the Pashtun (I assume) opponents of the British Raj in the greatest film of the Carry On series (in fact one of the greatest English films of all time) Carry On up the Khyber. It’s a natural mistake to make: The Khyber Pass (the geographical feature, not the restaurant in Woking) which is central to the story, is indeed on the border of modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, so the confusion – a result of my brain’s limited capacity – is understandable.

I won't direct the delicate to a dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang to point out what "Khyber Pass" means in the East End vernacular, and therefore the double entendre in "up the Khyber". That would be indelicate."

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Iced, iced, baby

You think your job is tough? I suspect the head of PR for the Icelandic Tourist Board would be happy to swap with the Corporate Social Responsibility guy at Al Qaeda right now. As you may now, they (together with the Norwegians) have been going out a limb (well, fin) a little with their sea-farming:

The United States on Tuesday urged Iceland and Norway to cease exporting whale meat to Japan, which they have resumed for the first time since the early 1990s despite a United Nations ban.

[From US urges Norway, Iceland to end whale meat exports | Reuters]

Oh no, what now! Well, not long after they outraged just about everyone -- except the Japanese -- by starting to kill whales again, the hardy folk of that beautiful, remote, volcanic world found the first polar bear seen in Iceland for 20 years. And shot it. Way to go sagadudes! Take my advice and put the kitten-throwing competition on hold for a while...

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]