If You Don't Like Flying, Look Away Now.

This story made me chuckle today. Just like when your car heads to that big car garage in the sky and you reluctantly take it to the local scrapper (or used to until the European environmentalists got involved), it seems airlines do the same.


As the article says, most commercial airliners have a life span of circa 30 years, and so when that 30 years is up they get replaced as it's deemed not to be cost effective to keep maintaining them.
So what happens is that you end up with these 'aeroplane scrapyards' dotted on various parts of the globe. The BBC, obviously intrigued by such a phenomenon, decided to head to Chateauroux in France to investigate.

One line in the piece interests me though. This plane graveyard happens to be at a freight airport, hidden away from the public and according to airport manager Martin Fraissignes, this is a deliberate choice.

"it's good this is a freight airport which doesn't take passengers - the sight of these smashed up planes would do nothing for their nerves."

Presumably then, Mr Fraissignes hasn't flown from Perpignan Riversaltes airport in the South of the country?

Whilst there in March for the Leeds Rhinos game against Catalan Dragons, we got a Taxi on the Sunday morning to take us to the airport. Surrounding the airport is basically just one road which which goes from the motorway around the perimeter of the airport. As you approach, you are greated with the following sights:

(pictures from http://www.airliners.net)

Now, I'm not exactly the World's best flyer myself. I can manage it and in most cases the most uncomfortable part for me is the 10-year old brat behind me who's had one too many smarties, but the idea of travelling at 500mph at an altutude of 30,000ft in what is effectively an aluminium tube isn't really my idea of fun.

That taxi ride in Perpignan didn't really help.

www.hat is going on?

The Internet is great isn't it? Today, we can find millions of pointless video clips, share all our personal information with annonymous strangers, read jokes about Chuck Norris and David Hasstlehoff, access countless photographs of fat people and of course, View from the Bar, all at the touch of a button.

Yep, the Internet is a great place, that is whilst it's working.

On Monday night, my surfing time was abbruptly cut-off without notice. After the usual trick of resetting the router, re-inputting the account details didn't work so I left it til morning. It was late and the chances were that it was probably an issue at there end and even if it was something wrong with my equipment, there was nothing I could do at 10:30pm.

So morning comes and still no Internet. Again I try a few restarts, re-inputting the account user name but to no avail. A change in leads, filters and a disconnection of the phones still didn't do anything.

So I decide to phone my ISP, Pipex. After eventually working my way through the myriad of automated answering systems my call gets "put in a queue" to be answered within the next "10 minutes or more". Whilst initially the prospect of listening to Vivaldi and Green Sleeves for 10 minutes would be considered a form of mental tourture, in some ways it was reassuring to know that I presumably wasn't the only person having trouble.

So I keep listening, and listening, and listening all the while a pre-recorded message keeps telling me how I can get help on "their extensive website" which to say is a minor irritation would be an understatement.
Why do Internet service providers (and Pipex arn't the only guilty party here) insist on directing you to a website, when the smart money for your reason for calling would be due to the fact that you can't connect? Surely the number of calls to a tech support for that reason would be hitting towards 90% and as far as the other 10% is concerned, anyone who has to phone a hotline because they can't open up Microsoft Outlook, isn't really the sort of customer I'd be overly bothered about keeping.

Then I finally got through. I explained the problem and what happened when and the fuy on the other end of the phone started asking the usual questions.
But this is where tech support people get stumped. You see, most customers would be straight on the phone the very minute their line attenuation fluctuates by more than 2db demanding an explaination. I'm not like that and actually try to work things out for myself. After all, computing is as much about learning as it is about knowing.
So when I started answering yes to the usual 'run-of-the-mill' questions like "How you reset the router?" "Have you re-entered your user name?" "Have you changed the microfilters?" "Are you using the Master socket?" "Have you disconnected the phones and any other non-ADSL equipment?" and "Have you removed any extensions?", they didn't really know where to go.

They then gave me a 'test' username, which would establish a connection with the BT exchange and verify if I had any signal drop. Firstly that didn't work the a router so they sent me away to try and source a modem from somewhere.

To cut a long story short, blind luck eventually got me around the problem. It turned out that the modem inside the router was on the blink. A USB router at least established a connection before it froze due to a driver error. I then this morning went and got a replacement router, although I was reluctent due to the fact that Sky will be giving me one once I've switched to them but needs a need, I've got three people in the house all wanting to get online.

So far everything seems to be going OK. View from the Bar and The One Pointer are back online folks!

Welcome to Hell

There isn't much to do on Monday's. The Boomtown Rats didn't just write a song about Monday's for nothing, nobody likes them. It's a shame then that Monday quite often happens to be my day-off.


So in my pursuit of something to do, I'll usually end up going for a wander around the City Centre, a local park or shopping centre.
But today I got the urge for adventure and decided to go slightly further and head to Sheffield and the Meadowhall Shopping Centre. That was mistake number one.

There's a good reason why Sheffield's gargantuan shopping mall is dubbed 'MeadowHell', but the fact remains that not even the devil himself could devise a method of torture so intense. Having said that, some of my family do live in Sheffield so I really should have known better.

Getting there is a pain in itself. The M1 southbound usually gets busy as you approach Sheffield and always has done, but attempting to turn off at Junction 34 is a battle even Goliath would shy away from. Firstly, J34 has a whole lane dedicated to it. That creates the problem of people from the outside trying to pull to the left whilst at the same time, HGV's try to pull out from the left to the centre lane. Obviously, it's every man for himself, so nobody is prepared to give an inch as they eye a prized space in the left-hand lane.

Having eventually left the M1, I then tried to negotiate the myriad of car parks and traffic management systems that lead you in and around the centre. Sheer luck found me a space to park and I was on my way in to the "Land of Shopportunity", or so the sign above the door told me.

The first thing that hits you about these sorts of places is that they appear to be made entirely for the benefit of retail moguls such as Philip Green, DSG and John Cauldwell. All you see are the high-street chains that over recent years have completely saturated the retail market and left consumers with little or no choice when it comes to 'shopping around' (see the trouble I had trying to buy a PC earlier this month). Phones4U and Carphone Warehouse have at least two separate units in the centre, Republic have two and the number of units belonging to Phil Green (owner of Topman, Burton, Dorothy Perkins and others as part of his Arcadia Group) must be heading towards double figures.

Having spend an hour or so and about £40, it became apparent how people don't seem to realise what little choice we have. I'm all for sucessful businesses, but I at least like to see competition having possitve impacts on product quality and price.

Meadowhell does have 'The Lanes' which is a small corner of the store dedicated to smaller independent stores and some of the products on offer were things you would never expect to find on the high street. A proper music store for one, shop dedicated to Formula 1 memorabillia and a hardware shop that was staffed by someone who looked like he'd know what he was talking about, rather than the 17-year-olds you get in B&Q who'd struggle to wire a 13amp plug.
A walk down here is very refreshing and makes my somewhat happy that Leeds hasn't gone down the 'out-of-town shopping centre' route like cities such as Sheffield, Newcastle and to a lesser extent Manchester, instead prefering to harness the attractions of the City Centre. We do have the White Rose Centre, but that's akin to a large supermarket and not much else.

Leaving wasn't so much a problem. Meadowhall's one saving grace (apart from 'The Lanes') is that it's next to the M1, making for a speedy getaway.

The Worst Product in the World?

There are times in the corporate world when ideas are thin on the ground and the net result is just a stream of crap coming off the production line.




Things like 5-blade razors, phones that play "Karma Chameleon", a remote control for a handheld games console and a 25,000 seater stadium in Huddersfield spring to mind.
However recently I've come across what I believe is the worst idea to ever hit the British retail market - sugar-free polos.

The 'mint with the hole' used to be a mixture of sugary, minty goodness. Now they've taken away half of the goodness, only the net result is much worse. Imagine trying to chew cardboard, but then think how that cardboard would taste if it was coated with tile plaster.
You could argue that it's good for you teeth. The problem is that the taste is so bad that you invariably end up putting your own sugar on, which eventually equates to about 15 times more than the total content in a whole supermarket stock room of regular polos.

Unfortunatly, it's the culmination of a new trend. Michael Moore started it by moaning about McDonalds and now, ever since Jamie Oliver has started banging on about chips, sweets and chocolate will turn us all into obese monsters, companies have started jumping on the bandwagon with their "healthy alternatives".

The thing is, these "heath crazes" are what companies thrive upon. Rather than worry about what hit their profits might take from Jamie Oliver's vendetta, it's music to the ears of marketing directors. "Healthy treats" or whatever they call them are just devices to make huge multinational corporations look all 'cute and fuzzy' and give the impression that they actually give a rats ass about your health. In some ways they do, but only from the point of view that dead people can't buy mints from the petrol station. It's just a shame people fall for it.

Healthy eating. Pah!

Kicking Them When They're Down

Watching this years series of 'The Apprentice USA' you get a strong sense of the use of product placement that goes on in the States.








Thankfully, product placement in TV programmes has been outlawed in the UK. That's why on Coronation Street, instead of asking Betty behind the bar for a pint of Boddingtons, they'll ask for a "pint". Compare that to an episode of 'Friends' for instance, where Joey comes in yelling "Boddingtons! I'd like another frosty one of those bad boys!" It's just a different world over there where not-so-sublininal advertising is king.

So back to The Apprentice. For those of you that don't know the format of the programme, it involves two teams of job hopefuls who are sent out to each perform the same task. The team that loses, either by making the least profit or by failing to impress the judges gets sent to the board room where on of them gets sent packing to the local job centre.
After Donald Trump has sent them out on a task to flog beefburgers in Times Square or convince kids into spending their money on a minature golf course there's the indignity of the board room. Here the losing side all yell and scream at each other until one person thinks "sod this, I'm shutting up". It's then up to the person with the biggest gob to stick the knive in.
Eventually, one person gets "fired" and leaves the show.

Then is when the shows producers stick the boot in. As the losing contestent does the walk of shame to the taxi, the very forst thing they see happens to be a sign with the words "Find your perfect job at Yahoo!" illuminated infront of them.
I'm fully aware how advertising works and how companies arget certain audiences, but shurely just laughing and pointing at the loser would be more subtle?

Thankfully, our version with Sir Alan Sugar is shown on the advert-free BBC.

Goodbye Blackwell

Yesterday's announcement that Leeds United had sacked manager Kevin Blackwell would hardly have come across as a suprise.







The former Sheffield United coach ended his three year stay at Elland Road, leaving the club in the relegation zone of the Coca-Cola Championship with just two wins to their name and four league goals, two of which were penalty kicks.
The clubs precarious position and home defeats to Wolverhampton and Sunderland had left the fans calling for Blackwell's head and not even a 3-1 Carling Cup victory over Barnet's second string could save him from the axe of Ken Bates.

After reaching the play-off final in Cardiff last season, United slumped to a humiliating 3-0 defeat and rumours were abound of a bust-up in the camp and those rumours still continue to circulate with regards to players seemingly not seeing eye-to-eye with Blackwell.

The problems arn't just results however. Being someone who infrequently visits Elland Rd, watching the side has been painful. Passing ability is absent, creativity has been missing for months and goals are clearly in short supply. That, coupled with ever increasing ticket prices, has driven supporters away, a problem not helped by the relitive success of the Leeds Rhinos. Yesterday's announcement was an inevitability. For a club that has always claimed that it 'deserved' to be in the Premiership ever since it's relegation 3 seasons ago, it needs a manager capable of getting it to the top flight. Blackwell, as nice a bloke as he came across to be, was out of his depth.

As for a replacement, Alan Curbishley is clearly the fans favourite whilst Claudio Ranieri, someone who has previously worked under Chairman Ken Bates, has been noticed at several United games. Bates may also be tempted to go for another old friend, Dennis Wise but Curbishley is the man in many eyes to lead Leeds back to the big time.

Supertram is Here....Well, Sort of.

Here you have it ladies and gentlemen, the answer to all of Leeds' transport problems. The "First ftr"






This is what the various transport boffins in Leeds City Council, Metro, the DfT and First Leeds claim will ease the chore of the early morning commute in the city centre and will completely make up for the city being shafted on the Supertram project.

The "ftr", which apparently is txt spk for "future" will apparently change the way in which we travel on public transport, with new levels of comfort and convienience, or so the people who sell the things say.

What they fail to mention however, is that this is meerly a single decker bus with a Max Power body kit and repulsive paint-job.

Rather than actually do anything remotely constructive, First have most probably just handed a standard single decker to the first group of burburry cap wearers they found on the local retail park on a Sunday night, given them a few quid to 'do it up' and then sold the resulting mess to unsuspecting local transport authorities who are looking for something possitive to say after wasting some £40m of public money. Hence why the ftr is now in Leeds.

Having seen the actual thing driving around Pudsey, I can assure you that the image above does not even begin to tell of the horror. Perhaps First's plan to get the ftr round town quicker is to frighten other drivers off the road with it's ghastly purple tube.

But for all the fanfare, what First haven't realised is the actual problem with transport in Leeds - it's them.

Thatcher's image of privatisation was one of having the freedom to choose who we recieve our public services from. Everything from the buses and trains to gas, electricity and even the post. We would have had a plethora of private companies offering to serve us and the competition whould make it better for us, the consumer.
And in some ways she was right, we do have a choice. We can either use First, or we can walk. First's monopoly in Leeds means that they can do what the hell the like. They can charge what they want, because there is nobody to start a price war with, they can turn up when they want, because nobody else will arrive and they can go where they want because, well, there's nobody else is there?
Supertram had the bigwigs at First defacating in their pants, mainly because unlike everything else, they wouldn't have been able to get their grubby mits on it and muck it up like they would have wanted to.

Listen to the fanfare of the ftr all you want, but if you don't you won't get very far.

Friends Reunited

One of the things about living in the same area that you went to school in is that it's quite often you come across old school mates.








Well, I say "mates" but to be perfectly honest, anyone I actually would consider a mate I still keep in contact with anyway through various means. The rest I couldn't really care less about. Still, you say Hi to them when you bump into them. I see a few of my ex Rugby team-mates from time-to-time as well, one of which is now plying his trade in Super League for the Wakefield Trinity Wildcats first team and will even represent England later this year whilst another plays for Dewsbury.

Having gone to school in Pudsey whilst living in Bramley, I still see many people, most of which I still go to College with whilst like I say, anyone else I actually wanted to stay in contact with, I did through the magic of telephones, email and the pub.

But today was interesting. As I walked back along Bramley Town Street towards the junction with Broad Lane, I happened to catch a familiar face grining at me from the back of a car. Nothing exciting about that you might think and you'd be right, ordinarily, it wouldn't be very interesting. Except this car happened to have a uniformed man sat in the front seat, blue lights on the roof and the word "Police" on the side. Obviously, it would be unethical, unfair and illegal to name said individual or speculate why they may have been sat in the back of a police car with their hands behind their back, but if you predicted that scene to me a few years ago, I wouldn't have batted an eyelid.

It's always good catching up with old aquaintences, but who needs Friends Reunited - just visit your local constabulary's office.

Targetting the Wrong Group

Sometimes there are ideas which just strike you as stupid the moment they are mooted. Ideas such as spending £100m on a football team to get to the Champions League for instance, but quite often, so-called government advisors also come up with suggestions which don't exactly stack-up.


The government's 'Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs' has suggested reducing the legal 'drink-drive' limit from 80mg to just 50mg, completely doing away with the "two-pint rule" and making it practically impossible to legally be able to get behind the wheel after having any alcohol. On the face of it, that seems a good idea. Reducing the drink-drive limit will surely reduce drink related accidents (or increase convictions)? But that's where the good idea turns to a catastrophic failure. The ACMD want the limit reduced, but only for Britain's public enemy number one; the under 25-year old motorist. Oh, and they want to ban us from driving at night as well.

Without opening a whole argument on age discrimination or even Human rights, the ACMD probably haven't realised that they are preaching to the converted.
Drink driving was 'the done thing' more than 40 years ago until the introduction of the breathaliser in January 1966 and even then, the chances of actually being caught were minimal. Pub car parks were always full to bursting on Friday and Saturday nights and even today, pub's that attract the "older" clientele still have fairly sizeable car parks. Even today, most people of 'that age group' (i'll be carefull how I word this!) still believe firmly in the 'two-pint rule' and some just blatently ignore it.

Contrast that to Britain's most hated demographic. We've been brought up to a point where drink driving is despised in our eyes. From an early age, we've been subjected to hard-hitting marketing about the consequences of drink driving, both from a legal perspective and a safety perspective and in many respects, we're have a rare situation where the younger are telling the old how to behave.

Thankfully, the government has dismissed the idea out of hand. If you are going to reduce the limit, then do it properly.
This Labour government have played with young people before and got their fingers burnt. Blair and Co have so far 'pushed their luck' with young people, particuarly with the introduction of University top-up fees thinking that it was a 'safer' way of raising funds working on the pretence that young people don't vote. They came unstuck, certainly in Leeds anyway. The Headingley Ward and Hyde Park & Woodhouse wards combines to create one of, if not the, biggest student areas in the country. Of Leeds' 220,000 students, the majority live in Headingley, Hyde Park or Woodhouse and Labour eventually realised that, losing it's seats to the Liberal Democrats.

Now it seems, they are being careful. Young drivers do lack the experience but they still hold the same qualification as every other (legal) driver on the road, despite having to go through a much more stringent testing system.
Depending on who you listen to, it's only young people who are ever involved in accidents. Come on people, give it a rest please.

No Rugby for you Here

Some of you may have noticed a lack of Rugby League content of here lately. That's because I've decided to move it to it's own dedicated blog. It's been listed in the links section for a while now, but I figured that not all of you would look there. In fact, I know few of you look there, because my stat counter shows that very few of you have found it by clicking the link on here. So because of that, I'm thrusting this advert right infront of you!

If you haven't visited it yet, I think you should.

Happy reading!

Where in the World can you buy a PC?

Having worked in retail for five years, I know that not everything runs smoothly.







These days, a customer expects to walk into an electrical store, have sales staff fall at their feet before they have stepped on the doormat, expect to speak to an expert on the subject in question and they expect the whole logistical system to work like clockwork.

It doesn’t work like that.

Staff budgets are tighter than a lap dancer’s thong, experts won’t work for £5.20 per hour and retail logistics departments are run by buffoons sat behind a desk from 9 until 5 – that and DHL.

The time has come lately for my brother to require a laptop computer to assist in the completion of his A Levels and hopefully, subsequent university course. So yesterday we spend a good while searching various websites for laptop deals, reviews and prices. After finally concluding our search and picking a certain Compaq unit, I set off for the local PC World superstore, brother in tow.
On our arrival the laptop of choice is inconspicuous by it’s absence. After having to wait ten minutes for a sales advisor, we are told that said laptop is indeed out of stock but there was one at PC World in Burnley. Not thrilled by the prospect of a 120 mile round trip across the M62, we asked him to check Currys (all part of Dixons International). We were told that Currys at Birstall, less than five minutes down the road had two, ready and waiting to unleash their 1.7 GHz processing power.
So a trip to Birstall and again, it proves fruitless. They do indeed have two computers in store, but one is obviously the display model whilst the other happens to be in ‘un-saleable’ condition. At this point, most people would start shouting various expletives, obscenitys and "minimum wage monkeys" at the sales assistant in the vain attempt that he'd say "Oh wait - I'll magic one from thin air!" but I'm more understanding. The guys in both shops were doing their best, they'd just been let down by some muppet getting paid a lot more than they were who hadn't done his job properly.

Disappointed but not yet defeated we cross the road and head to Comet.
In here we find an even better system. It’s 2GB of RAM as opposed to the Compaq’s measly 1GB and it’s got twice the graphics power of the Compaq’s 128MB offering at the same price.
Again we here the line ‘not-in-stock’ but there are some at Huddersfield. Desperate times call for desperate measures so tomorrow I’ll be making the half hour trip. Unfortunately the said laptop also happens to be a Comet exclusive (according to Pricerunner anyway) so I can’t do the ‘sod you then’ thing and take my brothers not-so-hard-earned elsewhere.

This is what happens when you let a small group of powerful retailers take hold of the market. The problem is that the more powerful the business, it usually means the more idiotic are the people running it.

I'll be Avoiding the TV Today

We all know what day it is today and what happened five years ago so I'm not going to go into detail about it.









It's just a shame that the UK and US media don't feel the same way.

It's one of the disadvatages of having sattelite TV, having a choice of about 30 news channels of various languages, 21 documentary channels and a plethora of entertainment channels. Then of course to top it all off, you've got the BBC there as well.

So far, Sky News have dedicated their time to showing how what happended in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania has changed the world, (or Afghanistan at least) the same sort of features they have carried on this day for the past four years, CNN seem to be more intent on showing archive footage and I can't be bothered with Fox this morning.

At first I thought the BBC had been somewhat restrained in jumping on the bandwagon. I haven't yet seen anything about 9/11 on News 24 and although they did show a documentary at the weekend, it was actually very well put together. They have however let themselves down with BBC Online. A story and a feature about one of the most important events in modern history I can understand, but digging out old 'Have Your Say' discussions they've become as bad as the rest. In fairness, the BBC 'Have Your Say' sections are moderated, just not moderated for stupidity. I'd post some examples, but you could easily find them for yourselves.

National Geographic have already shown their 'Inside 9/11' documentary, as good as it might be, for more times than I care to remember and they'll no doubt want to show something tonight, if only to launch tomorrows opening episode of the new series of Seconds from Disaster and this evening more than any other I'll be avoiding ITV News, the video version of The Daily Mail.
In the press, The Mirror has it's 'moving 7-page memorial suppliment' whilst the coverage in the Times is somewhat more sparse, preffering instead to publish extracts from the autobiography of a 25-year-old.

Yes let us remember, yes let us appreciate that 3,000 people lost their lives in the most significant terrorist attack ever to take place and yes let us realise that the world is now a very different place to what it was five years ago. But please don't keep showing the same images infront of me year after year.

Today, their is no news. Five years ago there was news, but not today. Everyone at Reuters and PA can go home early this afternoon.

Yipee! A Celebrity Endorsement

Some of you may already know that Robbie Williams is currently on the Leeds leg of his UK tour. The former Take-That pop act will be performing infront of 90,000, all of whom have paid a sizeable amount of money to stand in public space tonight and tomorrow night, as well as a fairly sizeable TV audience.







Now normally, that wouldn't have anything to do with me, or me being at work on Wednesday, but this time was a bit different.
For any of you going to Robbie's concerts this weekend, look out for some of these. They'll be 200 of the buggers scattered around Roundhay Park.

I'm no real Robbie Williams fan, some of his stuff isn't bad but I wouldn't buy tickets to his show (although my boss did manage to blag two free tickets for tonight) but as celebrity endorsements go, surely that's up there with the best? Obviously, Mr Williams himself didn't come in and by them, it was one of 'his people' but still, it made a dull day slightly more interesting.

How to Ensure a Mass Gathering of Idiots

Late night TV in Britain has always left something to be desired, but late night TV on Sattelite has always left even more to be desired.





Bring up any programme guide and you'll be bombarded with offers of Barely Legal Teens, the 23rd repeat of the day of The Vicar of Dibley or a one of those stupid Quizcall things.
But then of course, there's the football phone-in, 'You're on Sky Sports'.
Sports phone-ins have never really attracted Britain's intelligentsia, but put one on in the middle of the night and you have a recipe for disaster.
I can never really understand the attraction as a viewer, of watching a group of drunken, half-brained fools argue and shout with a couple of ex-pro football players and I certainly don't understand the attraction in paying £1 per minute to argue and shout at said ex-pro footballers.

Sky have hardly tried to take the programme 'upmarket' either and if they have, they're going the wrong way about it by keeping Steve Claridge on there, probably the most self-important person ever to grace a television screen since serial arsehole Rodney Marsh got sacked for making an sick joke about the Tsunami that was completely unfunny to anyone who's brain-cell count consisted of more than a one digit number, which speaks volumes that he found it funny at the time.
A whole hour of moronic moaning at referee's, proclaiming how England are going to win the World Cup and play-ground arguments about how one over-paid prima-donna is better than another over-paid prima-donna.

Perhaps it's all a Government conspiracy to cut down on worker fatigue and get us all to bed earlier, or perhaps it's another money making ploy from Sky, by putting absolute rubbish on it's main channels and getting us to pay £42 to phone up those dolly birds on Quizcall.

I Have a New Banner

Having got board of the no-so-interesting pain white text at the top, I've decided to jazz up my header at the top. Pretty good eh?

In fact I think it's so good, that it's making me hanker for a nice cold beer, even if it is just 10:45.