T'was the night before Christmas...

... and there was feck all on the telly.









Christmas TV always manages to scrape the barrel of the television archives and this year is no exception.

Aside from some big-name film that can now be found in the £3.99 bin at Blockbuster, Christmas TV, especially Christmas Eve television, tends to involve repeat after repeat after repeat of Blackadder, however many versions of A Christmas Carol that currently exist and The Santa Clause.

This year, a thumb through the TV guide reveals nothing, absolutely nothing worth watching.

Aside from the 'Christmas Eve specials' of various soaps designed at the 'OK Magazine' reading share of the audience, the film offering consists of either 'Pirates of the Caribbean; Curse of the Black Pearl' on BBC One or back-to-back showings of the chav favourite 'The Fast and the Furious' and '2 Fast 2 Furious' on ITV2. I've no idea what ITV1 are showing as they try to expand their audience of complete morons.

BBC Three has 'Football Gaffes Galore' - probably the same DVD that you'll be getting for Christmas tomorrow followed by wall-to-wall Little Britain.

The only saving grace is a 'Father Ted' marathon on More4.

So Christmas Day.... what have we got? Shrek 2 and Finding Nemo? That might work. ITV1 are showing some crap from X Factor and I've not idea what the other channels are showing.

Oh, and there's the Christmas speech - whoop-de-fecking-doo.

Is it any wonder why we're so good at binge drinking? Drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol is far more preferable to a night in front of the box.

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.

Another addition to the list of 'Things I can't do very well'

Having stayed up till 5am this morning to watch Ricky Hatton pound his Mexican opponent into the canvas, today was always going to be a very lazy day.











And so having spent all day either in bed, or on the settee, it was time to do something at least remotely constructive.

And to the pool hall we set sail. This was the same pool hall where I had a run-in with a hypocritical Leeds City Council traffic warden last April. Said hypocrite handed me a penalty notice which a recent legal precedent has ruled it illegal, resulting in a nicely worded correspondence heading off to our local parking enforcement office - but that's another story.
At this time on a Sunday however, there is no parking restriction and so with our local authority's orange-clad brigade of vultures out of the picture, we had nothing to fear.

I was accompanied by my mate Oli (the one who was unwilling to change a tyre last week). Now we don't regularly go to pool, indeed my membership had expired, but rumour had it that Oliver was somewhat out of form and so I would provide the perfect opportunity to get back into the winning habit.

That is because I am completely shit at pool. My coordination skills are limited and rather than plan my shots with military precision, my tactics tend to involve hitting any available ball as hard as possible on the basis that a series of ricochets will down something.

In a first to eleven game, the losing margin was somewhere in the "11" area.

Now you know that the IOC have lost it

Whilst all around you are losing their heads, you should lose yours as well so as not to look stupid. That's presumably the motto at the IOC.





Now in some respects, I can accept that the chairman of the IOC's coordination committee Daniel Oswald quite likes the newly unveiled London 2012 logo, after all, that would be a matter of taste. He thinks that it's modern, dynamic, youthful, all the usual meaningless phrases that marketing people tend to come out with when trying to justify an excessively large invoice.
I on the other hand, as well as most of the British public, think that the 2012 logo shit but each to their own.

The worrying thing comes a little later though:

"We were delighted to have confirmation that the legacy aspect of the Games was what it was promised at the time of the bid," he said.

"This legacy is very important and we really consider London will be a model for future host cities of the Games.

What? Are you serious?

A games that is already predicting an increased budget of £9.3bn, has an aquatics centre that saw it's budget double overnight and a games policed by a force that doesn't have enough qualified officers, all of which before a brick has been laid is a 'good model' for future games?

It all comes from the IOC visit to London to check up on how the preparation is going. Given that the IOC, as an organisation, is a law unto itself, my only expectation is that this turned into a lunchtime back-patting session, just dragged out over three days.

Nevertheless, Ken Livingstone can't help but take this opportunity to have a dig at the doubters following these baffling comments:

Mr Livingstone guaranteed the 2012 Olympics would be the "most successful since Barcelona in 1992 in terms of regeneration and legacy".

"As the next three Olympic Games follow London, we will still be getting the legacy benefits in terms of housing and employment," he said.

He added that London would be able to meet all its Olympics targets and would "stage the greatest Games ever".

"It is time for the pessimists and purveyors of doom to start looking at the facts as laid out today and join the rest of us in backing London," he said.

As for the 'most successful legacy since Barcelona', he's probably right. Just as Barcelona turfed more than 50,000 gypsies from Montjuic Hill back in 1992, London will leave a legacy of local residential areas being bulldozed to make way for luxury apartments, leaving behind increased house prices and the dismantling of a community to be replaced by a wealthy clique.

But we should start looking at the facts? I am looking at the facts Mr Livingstone. The facts are that in 2002, the DCMS published the 'Game Plan' report which claimed that "hosting events is not an effective, value-for-money method of achieving ... a sustained increase in mass [sports] participation".
Another public think-tank found that "there is no guaranteed beneficial legacy from hosting an Olympic games ... and there is little evidence that past games have delivered benefits to those people and places most in need".
The facts also state that this Olympics is already over-budget by a considerable degree and that the London 2012 committee has produced an unpopular, epilepsy-inducing branding campaign.

Still, best to stick your head in the sand, assuming you haven't lost it yet.

We're Rubbish

Football, Rugby, Tennis, Athletics...... like with any sport England seems to compete in, we're also rubbish at Cricket.










In a must-win Cricket World Cup match with South Africa in Barbados, we could only muster 154 runs from 48 overs.

Thankfully, the South African innings was soon over and done with, 157 runs on the board in less than half the number of balls.

At least now we can go back to a life with no unjustified optimism and hysteria surrounding our nation's sporting prospects.

What's the next International event that we can be disappointed about? Surely another England football fixture is around the corner?

I Told You Trains Were Rubbish

But did you listen? Well, probably. In fact, you probably knew anyway.







Still, lets all laugh at Virgin Trains, who have now resorted to asking passengers to repair their faulty fleet.

One thing that I would question though is this:

Mr Gaskin told train staff he had some plastic cable ties and a tube of superglue in his briefcase.

Another passenger, who was a former Network Rail engineer, climbed on to the front of the engine and tried to fix the loose windscreen wiper blades but was unsuccessful.

Who on earth carries a bag of cable ties on a train journey?

Clearly not Mr Branson