How hard is it to buy a ping-pong ball?

Seriously, how hard can it be to find a very simple, very common piece of sporting equipment in one of biggest cities in the UK and one that prides itself on a thriving retail industry?







In the office we are fortunate enough to enjoy the use of a ping-pong table.

I know at this point many of you will be reading with disgust. "A ping-pong table at work? You want to get 'yer hands dirty in a a real job and do a proper day's work" I hear you cry, and you'd be right but right now, I'm enjoying my job of manipulating Google search results and enjoying the title of the world's worst semi-professional ping-pong player.

The latter point was further demonstrated this afternoon when the sixth and last remaining ping-pong ball from this latest pack was sent flying down Wellington Street after being smashed out of an open sixth-floor window and, as far as I am aware, is still rolling along the gutter towards Kirkstall.

So because of that indiscretion, I was sent in search of a fresh batch of balls or I would incur the wrath of fellow players....I mean workers.

Now in the UK, you have a problem because if you want a piece of sports equipment, you can't go to a sports shop - at least not a city centre high-street sports shop.

For instance, you wouldn't go into a sports shop and ask for a snooker cue because
a) The 14-year-old staff member wouldn't know what a snooker cue is, and
b) a snooker cue isn't the latest chav-brand hoodie that UK sports shops specialise in.

In fact, one particular sports chain specialise in the cheap crappy chav-orientated merchandise more than others that it won national recognition over the success of it's audience targeted product range. (In fact, I've mentioned this before)

It also earned the distinction of being named the worst of the 50 biggest UK high-street retailers in the UK by consumer magazine Which? Needless to say, they couldn't provide me with a simple piece of equipment.

There's also another option in Leeds. The chav-wear emporium on the Headrow which has been "closing down tomorrow and everything must go - right now" for the past four years. This, if anything, was an even more hellish experience and if I happened to be a government employee investigation Disability Discrimination Act compliance, I'd take great pleasure in closing down said establishment.

They also, were unable to perform the function that the sign above their door claims to serve.

So, the sports shops couldn't provide me with a simple piece of spots equipment. Thankfully, a catalogue shop that doesn't specialise in sports equipment could.

It's no wonder that internet shopping has boomed.

Did I misplace a washer?

On Monday, Leeds ground to a complete halt as a burst watermain closed off the busiest part of the busiest road in the city.




I was going to write something about it, but Jerry Chicken is much more on-the-ball on a morning than I am and I just couldn't bring myself to plagerise all his hard work, so I'll just link to it instead.

Although that Michael bloke he talks about seems to be a smart chap. I propose that they put him in a position of power somewhere.

One brilliant comedian

Last night, your typical Leeds Rhinos fan should have probably been getting wet at Odsal, as Leeds went to Bradford for the fourth local derby of the rugby league season, but I wasn't. Instead, the Leeds Grand Theatre was the venue for my nights entertainment.




Geordie comedian Ross Noble kicked-off his latest UK tour "Nobleism" in Leeds yesterday evening and put on yet another brilliant performance.

For most people, the only time that they would have seen Noble would have been as a panel guest on 'Have I got News for You?' and even then, most people would only remember his as "that long-haired geordie bloke".

For men, having first seen him stand-up completely by accident as I watched TV at 11pm in a hotel in Bristol, I quickly ended up with his three DVD's. Yesterday was the first time I've seen him live

As a modern-day stand-up, there are not many better and it's a brand of stand-up that you don't see very often. Ask him what his act is and he'll tell you that it's not much more than four words on a piece of scrap paper. Almost all of it is based on his surroundings and crowd interaction. Some of his acts are so surreal it's untrue and whenever I see his acts I'm amazed at how his mind works sometimes.

He's certainly worlds apart from much more renowned comedians such as Ricky Gervais, who couldn't even begin to put together a spontaneous act on a par with Noble's. Something that Gervais demonstrated overtly in his "rabbit in headlights" performance at the Concert for Diana a few months back when he quickly realised that he'd run out of material with around 8 minutes of his act remaining and so, rather than embarrass himself in front of the royal family and a worldwide TV audience, he'd dance around on stage like a burke.

As for last night? An absolutely fantastic show and one that I'd recommend anyone to recommend although it may be offensive to people in the following groups:

• Leeds City Council
• Sex offenders
• Drug addicts
• Walt Disney
• Kinder Egg factory workers
• Nurses
• Daily Mail readers
• Customs officers
• The unemployed
• Roller Bladers
• Homosexuals
• Christians
  
• The cast of Starlight Express
• Airport Check-in assistants
• New Zealanders
• People who carry kazoos
• Muslims
• Taxi drivers
• Chesney Hawks
  
• Prostitutes
  
• Turtle lovers
• The town of Halifax
  
• The elderly
• Howard, the signing bloke from the Halifax commercials
  

There are probably more but anyway, here's an official clip from one of his previous tours, just for fun.

We don't want your business, leave us alone

Once again, a quick scan of the letters page in the Yorkshire Evening Post reveals numerous complaints about the state of public transport in the city and, in particular, the sheer incompetence of First.

Tales of vanishing services, non-existent customer service, poor standards of driving, punctuality, poor cleanliness and unacceptable driver attitudes towards customers are only the start of it and unfortunately, these experiences aren't in the minority if my own experience of rush-hour travel in Leeds is anything to go by.

It's the first time that I've not had access to an employee car park since starting my new role and so it was an ideal opportunity, or so I thought, to do my bit for the environment, cut congestion and save a few quid in the process.

How wrong I was.

The day starts by being crammed into a single-decked vehicle on some of the busiest commuter routes in Yorkshire with less leg-room than that found on a Ryanair flight. I'm then carted around every estate in West Leeds in the sweltering heat, because said vehicle has completely inadequate ventilation.

I arrive in the city centre and have to fight my way to the front of the vehicle because the inadequate seating facilities force other paying customers to stand in the narrow gang-way. Driver of said vehicle drives past my required stop due to his lack of observation and/or customer service skills.

Come 5:30pm, and I've got to cut short any idea of overtime - public transport clocks-off at 6:00pm despite the fact that much of Leeds' economy is based on retail and a thriving nightlife - both industries that work well after six.

So it's out as close to 5:30pm as possible and race outside to the bus stop which, thankfully, is right outside the office.

Now this is the bit that confuses most drivers, as they seem to struggle with the idea that bus stops tend to be on the left hand side of a dual-carriageway. Most drivers, for whatever reason, seem to move into the right hand lane (or to give it it's official term, the overtaking lane) well before said bus stop, making embarkation impossible. Quite what they think they are going to overtake at 5:30pm on a city centre road is beyond me, and the First customer services team are yet to answer my query.

I'm forced to walk to another stop to catch another bus but because that is a single-decked vehicle, I'm forced to wait further before I'm ready to repeat the morning routine, albeit in the other direction.

And for all this, I hand over £14 of my hard-earned every week.

I'd really like to say that I hadn't made up these experiences, but they have all happened in the space of just four weeks. I've genuinely given First Leeds an opportunity to prove that they can do something right, that there is more to them than just PR stunts and that they are capable of providing a viable alternative to driving myself into work. They can't do it, to the point where there services are simply unusable.

They don't want my business. No other private company could treat their customers with such contempt and expect repeat business, but then again, no other business would be allowed to build such an anti-competitive monopoly on an essential public service.

It's a far cry from other cities, not least London, which proved to me on Saturday that public transport can efficiently and safely transport more than 84,000 to a sporting event on a North London industrial estate, and then set them on the way home again. Compare with the two train carraiges offered by First Transpennine to transport Leeds and Bradford rugby league supporters and the majority of a 65,000 crowd back to West Yorkshire from Manchester.

These are problems that could all be solved quite easily. It just takes a bit of thought and some focus and the minute that First stop messing around with pointless PR stunts claiming to be the "ftr" (sic) of travel, the better. Rather than seeing their customers as an inconvinience, see them as customers and treat them as such.

As it is, I won't be using another service operated by First. Unfortunately foor the city's transport planners, that means yet another one-occupant vehicle adding to the congestion problems. It's not costing me much more in contract parking and to be honest, what little extra that it does cost is certainly money well spent.

But perhaps I should be careful in passing judgement on First's services, given that they've come up with a rather novel way of dealing with customer complaints.
Rather than acknowledge the complaint and address the issues raised, First have decided that they'd rather sue anyone who dares to question their means.

Nice to see that they care.

You've got a friend

If there's one thing that makes you a proper bloke, then changing a flat tyre in the rain is surely up there.


The deluge that hit Yorkshire yesterday didn't make for a pleasant evening on the pop but nevertheless, we ventured up to Headingley where we would watch whatever rugby match was on the TV (Wigan v Catalans as it was) before heading into town.

Now the four Bramley lads all jumped in a taxi and each argued with each other over how much we each owed to pay the driver the £6 fare - the done thing in these parts.

Now our mate Stephen on the other hand, lives in Pudsey and so decided to get a lift up from his mum who refused to drive him anywhere until Coronation Street had finished.

Now before we go any further, please bear in mind that our mate Stephen is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Bright enough guy that he is, it's fair to say that he lacks a few 'life skills'. It is also worth noting that our mate Stephen will do absolutely anything to get out of buying a round.
Got that? Good, we can continue.

So Stephen meets us in the Skyrack and heads to the bar, unusually, without being prompted. As he's there, the phone stats ringing. The wallet soon goes back in the wallet and he heads outside - his mum has got a flat tyre, or so he tells us.

A few minutes later, my phone starts ringing.
"My mum's got a flat tyre"
"How bad is it"
"Errrm"
"Could you get it to a petrol station"
"Errrm.... can you come and have look"

Now at this point, my drinking buddies thought I was mad but like good mates and proper blokes, undeterred by the monsoon outside, two of us set out to help a friend in need, under the firm belief that such an act of kindness would result in a few free 'taxi rides' in the near future.

We arrived on scene to our mate Stephen standing around on St Michael's Road looking like a drowned rat whilst his mum sat in the car with the heating on.

The tyre was almost destroyed but unfortunately, Stephen looked at me expecting to impart some good news like "it'll get you a a garage" or something equally optimistic. There was no chance. In the wall of the tyre was a hole the size of a ten pence piece and it turns out that she hit the curb at some point. My mate Oli (who had joined me to assess the situation and assist with the tyre replacement) put on his best 'dodgy car mechanic' impersonation and told him " yep, there's yer problem". "Oh, I didn't notice that" he said worryingly.

It was an unpleasant experience, the rain was unrelenting, it was getting dark, a stream was racing down St Michael's Road and we were more dressed for going to fancy bars than for fixing car. But like the good people that we were, we had to help our friend and so we did.......






... we told him to phone the AA and then went back to the pub.


This was about 8:30. He then met us in a city centre bar at about 11:00pm.

More arena meetings

Leeds City Council love to have to host functions.






It means they can hire out some fancy conference room at a posh city centre hotel, have a flamboyant lunch with some expensive Fair Trade coffee whilst putting it on a decent sized expenses account.

So when you like to have these meetings, open days, conventions or whatever you like to call them, it pays to have a few good excuses for one and at the moment, there's no better excuse than the Leeds Arena, or more to the point, lack of one.

A meeting has also taken place today to discuss the development of the Elland Road site, currently a half-modernised home to an ailing football team, some industrial units and a vast spread of wasteland that gets used as a car park for 25 days of the year next to a motorway. It's a complete eyesore as you approach the city and there are few worse ways of saying 'Welcome to Leeds' as you come downhill from the Pennines.

And it's probably no coincidence that the two 'events' have taken place with just 24 hours between them. The council want an arena, they want to improve the Elland Road site - two birds with one stone. Oh, and Leeds United chairman Ken Bates wants to stick in his two penneth as well.

A city centre location is up for discussion as well, a bloke from London has even offered to pay for one, but when he was sounding out his plans, the council seemed more interested in turning the Town Hall into a world class venue. That bloke seems to have vanished in these parts and I can only assume he got fed up of the heel-dragging from our elected leaders.

Long story short, Leeds doesn't have an arena. It effectively rules the city out of hosting indoor sporting events, conferences and major indoor concerts. Outdoor venues we are well catered for and Leeds has successfully hosted major acts in the past at Temple Newsham, Roundhay Park and Millenium Square. This weekend sees the O2 Wireless Festival at Harewood House and the annual Leeds Carling Festival will be coming to Bramham Park this August Bank Holiday. That's OK when the weather's fine, but when the winter comes, Leeds is very much off the radar, with loiners having to make the trip to either Sheffield or Manchester.

Hopefully, something fruitful has come of all this. Leeds has been crying out for a venue like this, be it just for conferencing and pop concerts, or if it is to also play host to an ice hockey - Sheffield Steelers have been crying out for a proper derby clash. My only worry is that the usual 'feasibility studies' continue for a good few years to come to the point where nobody cares anymore.

A week on public transport

As any semi-regular reader might have guessed, I'm not a big fan of First Leeds. There are few companies who treat their customers with as much contempt as this band of incompetents and it's a travesty that they operate almost every single bus service in Leeds.




If they spent just half as much on running their services as they do on PR spin, then the majority of Leeds' transport problems would be solved at a stroke, but that's for another day.

In an effort to increase their monopoly further, they've taken trying to convince the public to ditch their cars so that they can continue to clog up the roads with those stupid purple "ftr" eyesores and so they have taken to producing "the diary of a car quitter". The problem is that it's completely inaccurate.

And so on their behalf, I have taken to rewriting their diary for them.
Step 1: Ensure that your job does not involve any working outside the hours of 9:00am and 5:00pm. Outside these hours, a bus in Leeds is only seen on the changing of the tides. Forget any notion of going out after dark. Working outside the city centre? Good luck!

Step 2: Stand in the cold for a minimum of 11 minutes for your "every 10 minutes" service. Of course, there is no timetable attached to the bus stop and so you have to pay 50p to use the text messaging service. This "instant" message will only be received by you once you have boarded the bus you were seeking information on.

Step 3: Gasp as you realise that the required fare is comparable to that of a 2:00am Friday night mini-cab journey.

Step 4: Upon realising that no seats are available, you find yourself crushed in a steel container between at least two people. One of which will invariably have a body odour problem whilst the other will be a 14-year old playing drum 'n' bass music from a mobile phone speaker. Reminisce about how you used to be able to sit in comfort in an air conditioned car listening to your choice of music.

Step 5: Endure approximately one hour of your stop-start journey encompassing unfathomable diversions through every housing estate in West Leeds. Step 6: Arrive at your destination and vow never to do that again.

I actually think my version is better than First's.

Christmas on the Buses

Today sees all of Leeds' buses stay firmly locked away in the garage as drivers at First Leeds take industrial action over pension reforms.

In most cities, when one company goes on strike there would still be some form of bus service, albeit a skeleton one, as other operators pick up the pieces. Not in Leeds though.

In the 1980’s, bus travel in the UK changed. Rather than having a centrally funded public transport system that covered every nook and cranny of the City, local transport authorities in every UK city barring London were then ordered to sell off the contracts of all routes to the highest bidder. Cities like Sheffield and Manchester got lucky; contracts were split between multiple operators in addition to the cities Supertram scheme but in Leeds, First got away with the loot. Only Arriva operate any real competition but only through routes than run through East Leeds en-route to Wakefield.

London was never sold. Public transport in the capital was like the family silver that you do not sell, no matter how garish it is. Today in the ‘big smoke’ you have a fully integrated rail, bus and underground system. You can buy a rail ticket and if the train doesn’t show, you can use that ticket on the bus which is never more than 6 minutes away, regardless of who operated it.

Compare to Leeds. You buy a train ticket and when the train doesn’t show, you’re stuck there until it does. You could try and catch a bus. But that usually doesn’t show either and even if it does, you can’t use your £3 train ticket, you have to buy a £3 bus ticket instead.

Keeping London public also gave the transport boffins in Westminster something to point to when we all claimed public transport went wrong. As far as governments are concerned, if public transport worked in the capital (and it does – brilliantly), then public transport everywhere else must work (and it doesn’t) Privatisation on the bus industry was designed to give us, the travelling public the choice as to who to buy our services from and the idea was that this increased competition would improve services for us all.
And in Leeds we do have a choice, just what Thatcher wanted us to have. We can use First Leeds, or we can walk. So when First drivers don't go to work, we don't go to work.

So today the local radio stations have sent an army of reporters to find bemused commuters stood at bus-stops and have had various vox-pops from the streets of Leeds of people saying how much of a disgrace it is and pointing the finger one way or the other.
Radio Aire are firmly attacking the drivers, but seeing as they have various advertising agreements with First, they were hardly going to blame the operators. BBC Radio Leeds has been a bit more balanced, but it has to be because we pay it to be.

So who is to blame?

The dispute is over a final salary pension scheme. First want rid of it; the drivers want to keep it. First Leeds’ directors, who will no doubt continue to enjoy a final salary pension, insist that because we are all nasty and mean enough to start living longer, then it’s employee’s should start paying for that privilege. The drivers disagree and today they stand outside the various garages waving placards and will do so as well on Saturday 23^rd December and Christmas Eve.

First’s propaganda in the media has venomously attacked it’s employees in a deliberate attempt to turn public anger away from it’s own inabilities and onto the drivers.
It’s persistent mention of an “pay offer above the rate of inflation” is laughable irony. This is a company that makes a huge fanfare about how generous it is when it suits them, but keeps themselves eerily quiet when they also impose “above the rate of inflation” fare increases to supplement 2005’s £115.2m profits.

Reader’s here will know that First are hardly my favourite company in the world and at the risk of sounding subjective, they’re going to get the blame from me. Strike action is almost always the last resort of employee’s, especially at this time of year. Whilst trade unions are no angels, First have evidently dug their heels in too far. For a firm that is often bemoaning the recruitment problems it faces (even after the increase in Eastern European workers), they are hardly endearing themselves to potential employees.
First’s slogan “transforming travel” rings true. They have systematically dismantled and meaningful services and replaced them with packed vehicles running profitable routes as it suits them. The result? We have today’s situation where one operator’s inabilities bring the whole city to a standstill.

Happy travelling people.

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.