Don't Panic!

Shocking news this week. If you're not aware, the trial of the would be 21'st July bombers (I refuse to use that stupid americanised 21/7 term) is going on this week.






They're the people who allegedly attempted to set of explosions on London's tube and bus networks, only to see their devices fail.

Anyway, it emerges today that the sight of seeing a raving lunatic trying to detonate a bomb on a packed commuter train is enough to "cause panic".

I know, I was shocked too. People panicing in a dangerous situation. Whatever next?

Not under my (sun)roof

The local Leeds rag, the Yorkshire Evening Post, is famous for taking the side of the city's half-wits and attention seekers and on today's front page, it's standard fare.



The local media have been sympathising with this family who it's claimed have been "forced" to live in a Ford Mondeo.

It's the term "forced" though that is not only emotive, but completely innaccurate. The family have been on the council accomodation list with Leeds City Council and have gone through the system like many thousand others.

So by being in such a system, it's hard to see why they have ended up living in a car, parked up on whatever side-street they can find.

The problem is that they have been offered a home on Broadlea Hill in Bramley, but refused the property. Bramley is one of the areas focused on as part of the new "Respect" initiative and the Broadlea estate isn't exactly the most pleasent area of the city. Whenever there's a story on the local news about ASBOS's, anti-social behaviour and deprived inner-city areas, then you can guarantee that the reporters first words will be "Hi, I'm on the Broadlea estate in Bramley." It's hardly down-town Baghdad by any stretch of the imagination, it's a just typical inner-city council estate.

The family claimed that the home was "uninhabitable" and that "gangs of yobs roamed the streets".
In other words, it's a Leeds council estate.

Quite what this family were thinking they'd get one can only guess. When you are on the Leeds City Council housing lists, you aren't going to end up with a detached house in a leafy part of Bramhope or Calverley. Yes the house might have been in one of Leeds' most deprived areas, but that's a seperate issue and one which is far more important that your choice of home.

Leeds City Council, like all councils, have a finate amount of properties. If you reject one address, it's unreasonable to expect the housing department to have a range of homes on tap to offer you.

The sad fact about all of this is that this family have managed to create sympathy to their cause. They've been offered a house and turned their noses up at it. With council house waiting lists as long as they are, it's only right that they've been put to the back of the queue.

Welcome Back! Normal service has been resumed

What must be the longest Christmas break in history has just ended and I'm finally allowed back into college to start trying to learn something again.



After fighting though what seemed like three of the most pointless traffic jams this morning, I'm sat here and it's reassuring to know that not much has changed at Leeds Trinity & All Saints.

So far, the computer I'm typing this post on now has crashed twice in the space of 23 minutes, is struggling to open two windows in Internet Explorer and has made me reset my password because the IT geeks don't trust me to remember a seven character word for anything more than 28 days.

The timetables have been cocked up again, there are already a number of tutors that appear to be 'missing in action' whilst other lectures have been moved but nobody seems to know to where and when.

It's all in a days work at Leeds Trinity & All Saints.

Let's take a look at these charts

The Official UK Music Charts have undergone a lot of change in the past few years and it finally appears that those dinosaurs at the British Phonographic Industry have realised that the way to embrace the Internet is not to try and sue everyone that attempts to use it.

Music downloads had been much vilified by the BPI and copyright lawyers, who soon set after the likes of Napster and are currently going after Kazaa, and Russian site 'allofmp3'.
But in 2003, legal downloads started to take off. To date, Apple's iTunes music store have sold over 2billion tracks and currently holds the vast majority of the UK legal download market.

However, it wasn't until two years later that the BPI decided to step into the 21st century. They started to realise that people weren't interested in buying CD's in HMV or Woolworths and playing them on their Hifi. Instead, they were buying their music in their own front room, listening to it on their iPod and wirelessly transmitting the tracks around their home. And that led to changes in the charts.

First, the idea of a separate 'downloads chart' was toyed with but soon led to confusion and effectively, created two singles charts. So in April 2005, legal downloads were counted for the first time in a single, unified Official UK Singles chart. The results were almost immediate. Gnarls Barkley's single "Crazy" became the first ever track to reach number one based purely on download sales.

The only major stipulation with this system however was that the download could only chart if a physical copy was available in the shops at the same time, or the day following the song's entrance in the charts. That stipulation was removed in January 2007 and now any track, from any era, from any artist - dead or alive, can potentially hit number one.

And now I've eventually got to whatever point I was trying to make, because whilst the system has it's advantages, it's got some pretty big pitfalls as well.

The main bonus is that it more accurately than ever highlights the public's buying and listening habits. The week after the change, Snow Patrol re-entered the charts with 'Chasing Cars', a single that had previously reached number six back in July 2006 whilst rock band 'Koopa' became the first unsigned band in chart history to have a top 40 hit.
Where before, the charts were based on what record companies did to sell and market their music, it was now fuelled by consumers and truly reflected listener habits.

Well, maybe. You see whilst the new system has made the charts more meaningful and up-to-date, it's very much open to abuse.

Just take a look at this week's Official Top 40 and in particular, number 17:

17: Billie - Honey to the Bee

Now under the current system, this is a perfectly legitimate entry. The track reached number three in 1999 and thanks to downloads, has returned.

But this isn't a chart position based on music merits. Instead it's a chart position based on one of many radio station induced campaigns, in this case led by Chris Moyles on BBC Radio 1, to effectively turn the changes into a joke in the pursuit of cheap publicity.

No doubt the campaigns will quickly die off and the lazy marketing men of Britain will look for another bandwagon to jump aboard.
The positives of the new system certainly outweigh the short-term negatives caused by a few idiots and their subservient band of sheep-like listeners.

This woman is richer than you:

Makes you sick doesn't it?







The non-entity Big Brother racism row has dominated much of the news in the last two days, with over 30,000 complaints being made to the media regulator Ofcom - the previous record for complaints was a mere 19,000 for "Jerry Springer: The Opera".

The issue revolves around Jade Goody (above) and Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty and the growing friction between the pair.

The main argument erupted on Wednesday night, with Jade launching an expletive ridden tyraid at Shilpa over the trivial matter of some Oxo cubes. During the argument, Jade told Shilpa to "get back to the slums"whilst fellow inmate Danielle Lloyd asked "why doesn't she just f**k off back home?"
Yesterday, Jade will probably go down as the fastest recorded time for "digging your own grave on national television" after the shows producers called her to explain her "Shilpa Poppadom" remark.

The arguments as to what is and isn't racist will go on for much longer than Big Brother ever will. The comments being made to Shilpa are overtly racist but I don't think the animosity towards the Indian actress is racially motivated.
The problem is that Jade is fearful. Shilpa is an intelligent, successful and attractive woman who has shown that she can act in a dignified manner. Jade, for whatever reason, has seen that as a threat to her.

For Goody, this is the beginning of the end. Big Brother made her and it's about to break her in spectacular style.
Publicist Max Clifford made the point on Sky News yesterday that for anyone to recover from this sort of bad publicity, they would need to be and intelligent thinker and an intelligent speaker - Jade isn't either and I can't wait for the press to tie her in knots at the forthcoming press conference should she be evicted tonight.

She's shown herself up as a culturally ignorant individual who is completely undeserving of the success that has been afforded to her through a low-rent TV show.
The politicians are wading into the argument as well, with Gordon Brown on a mission to convince Indians that we aren't all that bad. What he probably doesn't realise though is that as he speaks, there are thousands of Jade Goody's in our inner city schools and job centres.

Wii'ing in my front room

Yesterday afternoon, after being in the incapable hands of Parcel Farce for 24 hours, the Nintendo Wii finally turned up on our doorstep.




It's not technically mine though. It's actually my brothers but seeing as he wasn't around, he borrowed my MasterCard to buy it and that the package had my name on the box, it was only right that I had a quick go.

The Wii is Nintendo's £180 answer to the XBOX 360 and the soon to come Playstation 3, the so-called 'next-gen' consoles which claim to be High-Definition (even though the XBOX lacks a HDMI port and therefore won't work with the majority of HD TV's and the Playstation doesn't appear to be working at all).

Nintendo on the other hand have stayed away from the Hi-Def gimmicks, realising that not that many of us have Hi-Def anyway.

Instead, they've gone for the 'innovative game play' market and I have to say, they've certainly cracked it.
Take WiiSports for instance. It's a series of sports games that includes tennis, golf, boxing, ten-pin bowling and baseball (pictured above).
Now on your run-of-the-mill Playstation, to hit the ball, you'd just sit still and press an elaborate combination of buttons that you begin to repeat like a robot after just three goes.
On the Wii though, its far more advanced. Instead of a control pad, you have a 'motion sensor remote' which essentially, is your bat. Swing the remote and the Wii picked up on the direction and speed of the swing and in my case, that translates to missing the ball completely and striking out.
The remote also acts as your golf club, tennis racket, bowling arm and even boxing gloves.

All in all, it's brilliant and certainly a long way from the 'coach-potato' gaming geek stereotype. The game play is unrivalled and at almost £300 cheaper than the forthcoming PS3, it's stonking value. Better still, it's make the perfect centrepiece for a beer-fuelled house party.

Will the novelty wear off? Probably but that'd be the same with any console. One thing is for certain though, it's a pretty good distraction from that essay due on Tuesday!

And the 'Hypocrites of the Week' award goes to....

ITV News - and in spectacular fashion.








With nothing better to do, ITV News have decided to sent their intrepid band of "reporters" to the ends of the earth to lecture us all on global warming.

One of them is in Antarctica telling us that all the ice caps are melting, that the polar bears are getting warm and that the sea is rising. Something he continued to tell us about for a good 10 minutes.

Then they cut to a bloke in some remote coastal village in Papua New Guinea. He tried to convince us that the villagers here would be the first "environmental refugees" (no, I don't know what that's supposed to mean either).

But it was the way he said it. He was a typical ITN mellow-dramatic, sharp peaks in voice type of reporter who was making sure we know who to blame.
"These people will become the first 'environmental refugees and they know which people to blame - it's YOU!
"Not me on the other hand, who flew 11,000 miles in a 747 just to tell you that and will fly another 11,000 miles back to London where a car will pick me up from the airport, but YOU!"

OK, he didn't say that last bit but I doubt he spotted the irony in what he was saying anyway.

Hopefully we'll have some proper news today. Maybe then ITN will stop acting like a set of complete muppets. I doubt it though.

They're early this year

The annual British Airways event is about to take place yet again this, except it's happening a little earlier this year.





Normally, this annual event takes plave in the summer, the height of the holiday period and the busiest time for the UK's ariports, but the 2007 extravagansa is taking place in this winter.

I am, of course, reffering the the annual British Airways staff strike.

Every year it seems, BA staff decide that it'd be a good idea to walk away from whatever job they do. We've had check-in staff striking over various issues, baggage handlers refusing to, well, handle baggage and mass walkouts in protest at BA's decision to change food supplier.
This time, it's the cabin crew's turn to stand outside Heathrow with placards and banners.

You've got to question though, what is it about BA and employee relations? Why is it that these strikes are so commonplace? It can't be a co-incidence surely?

Enjoy your flight everybody.

(Oh, and perhaps I should disregard the BA price in my little experiment the other day?)

Planes, Trains and stupid politicians

Airlines are taking a bit of a battering lately in the fight on global warming and yet another politician has thrown in his two-penneth.



Tory MP Tim Yeo is calling for a complete ban on domestic flights. He believes, that by taxing all flights between UK airports and forcing us onto the train, we'll be saving the environment and the hole in the O-Zone layer will be healed.

The only problem however, is he's talking garbage.

Not about the aircraft CO2 thing, on that he's probably right, but he's wrong on the 'take the train' rubbish.

There's a reason why, in Britain, we don't use trains. It's because they're crowded, late, expensive, unreliable, you need to be a MENSA member to understand the fare structure and they don't work in the autumn when leaves fall on the track.

Planes on the other hand are much more comfortable and in fact, they're cheaper. Don't believe me?

Just as a basic experiment, I've got train and plane fares for a one-way trip from London to Manchester, the sort of trip hundreds if not thousands of business people make on a regular basis. As part of this, I'll need to be in Manchester before 9:00am on March 20th (a date picked completely at random). They say you have to book in advance for the decent train fares, so I'm giving them more than a fare (geddit) chance.

Here's how they each got on:
First let see how the eco-friendly public service train did. National Rail offered me a single ticket from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, leaving the capital at 6:20 and arriving in Manchester 2 and a half hours later at 8:50 via Virgin trains for the princely sum of £42.00.
Now for the airlines. There's actually a choice of three airlines, all vying for my business, so that should keep the prices competitive.
Firstly, British Airways, our national carrier. They'll offer to take me from London Gatwick and get me to Manchester by 8:10 for the fee of £39.10. That's already better than the train but I think we can do better.
Bmi are next up. This time you leave Heathrow, and land in Lancashire at 8:15 but for more than £10 less than BA - £29 to be exact.
But we're not done. This route has a new kid on the block, low-cost carrier Jet2. There London Gatwick to Manchester service comes in at an amazing £3.99, but before you get excited, that excludes taxes. That makes the £3.99 fare a £24.99 fare, still the cheapest of the three and more than £17 cheaper than the 'good for the environment, public service, publicly subsidised' train service.

And that's the crux of the problem. We're deciding to fly because, at the end of the day, we save money. The logical solution therefore in such case would be to lower your prices, improve your service and become more competitive would it not?

Not if your a minister. Improving services would cost money whilst lowering fares would hit the shareholders of the various private enterprises that have their fingers in the National Rail pie.
So instead of lowering the cost of rail travel to encourage the fliers and even motorists onto the trains, what you do is create a new form of taxation to deter people from taking to the sky's or the motorway network.
Except that doesn't work either so then you have to resort to making stupid statements like this one and quite quickly, you're back to square one.

The only saving grace is that we haven't elected this idiot, not yet anyway.

It's Football, but not as we know it

You don't need me to tell you that David Beckham's move to Los Angeles Galaxy is the biggest sports story of the week.








After being left out of the England squad and finding himself on the fringes of the Real Madrid first team, Golden Balls has decided to bend it in America for the next five years.

Today's newspapers have picked up on the small matter that the former England captain will become the best paid sportsman in the world, with a selection focusing on the fact that he snubbed numerous offers from English and European clubs who, in all honesty, could get nowhere near the financial package that the LA Galaxy and MLS have put together.

In truth, it shows how different sport is in the US compared to elsewhere. In Europe, we're just getting to grips with the fact that sport is now a commodity, sports clubs are businesses with a desire to make profit and that clubs no longer had the social responsibility that we once perceived they had.
It used to be that the owner of the local football club was a sheep-skin wearing, cigar chain smoking local factory owner on an ego trip. Today football clubs are run by a consortium of wealthy businessmen looking to sell tickets to other wealthy businessmen - and we hate it. We hate the fact that a season ticket can cost the equivalent of six months rent, we hate travelling across the country at some unearthly hour because a game has been moved for television coverage and we hate sticking a dish on the side of our house and paying some Australian bloke £50 a month to watch football on TV.

In the America though, it's a whole different ball game. Sport stateside has always been about the dollar. Fans in the UK were in uproar when Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes, proclaiming the death of lower league football and dubbing the new MK Dons "Franchise FC". Stateside, it's common practice. Club, sorry, franchise owners have commonly moved teams across the country looking for the next captive market. Once they've bled that market dry, they'll move to the next town where the mayor is willing to build a state-of-the-art 80,000 all seater stadium.
Even college gridiron is huge. It's unthinkable to think in this country that a clash between Leeds Metropolitan and Preston Polytechnic would attract crowds surpassing those for Manchester United vs Chelsea, but in the US they'd be calling a crisis meeting if that weren't the case.

And that's why Beck's is going to the US. What he'll actually draw from Galaxy for kicking a pig's bladder around a field will be small fry (in a sporting sense anyway). The difference will be made up from exploiting 'Brand Beckham'.
Image rights for a man like Beckham are huge regardless of where you are. Take that image to a nation that lives for celebrity and you've got a massive earning potential. The Beckham's have known that for years. The various pre-season tours to US, the MTV Awards apperance and the Soccer academy have all been efforts to raise his stock in the land of opportunity and LA Galaxy's season ticket sales less than 24 hours after the announcement are testament to that.

There is no denying that the critics will pounce on Beckham for this move. To make the move from one of Real Madrid's 'Galácticos' to a Galaxian in a sport which registers into insignifcance in it's respective country smacks of putting cash before credibility.
But Beckham has realised that his days at the top are numbered. He is making a move to a place where he will be adore just as equally as he was in his days in Manchester and Madrid.

Yes, it may well be a marketing move by the MLS and LA, but that probably says more about the attitude to sport in the US than it does about Beckham.

Well, that was a waste of everyone's time

The Consumer Electronics Show will have packed up and left Las Vegas by the end of today, so what fantastic new inventions will we be seeing in our homes in the next few years?





Errrm, not much actually.

The CES used to be the place where we'd all get a glimpse of the latest technology, the sort of thing we'd never seen before but yet, something we could buy within a few years time in our local Dixons.
We saw the VCR in 1970, Pong made it's debut in 1975, people looked in awe at the CD and camcorder in 1981, gawped at the processing power of the Commodore 64 a year later and applauded the DVD in 1996.

This year though, we haven't seen much, nay anything new.
Just look at one of this year's 'Best in Show': Ford and Microsoft have collaborated to create what they believe is ground-breaking, must have technology that will allow you to select mp3's, reply to text messages or make phone calls just by shouting at your dashboard.
The only problem is that isn't new technology, not in the slightest. Top Gear viewers may remember Jeremy Clarkson venting his frustration at an identical system in a Mercedes CL-65, before sending the German voice-activated sat-nav to Warsaw. In other words, a CES award winner is a technology that has been commercially available for a good few years, just with a minor tweak. You can even go down to your local dealer tomorrow and pick up a Ford Fiesta with bluetooth already fitted.

Then there's the Blu-Ray - HD-DVD battle. This battle has been going on for a while, mainly fuelled by the announcement of the Playstation 3.
The manufacturers were getting wary that people weren't buying either model because they didn't know which version would become the norm (hands up, who bought a Betamax recorder?).
So LG came along and some boffin in their creatives department decided "Why not have both?" and hence, the BH1OO. It's cheaper than a Blu-Ray player, will do twice as much as a Blue-Ray player and so, in theory, it's the one to buy. Debate over, no news story.

The only thing that actually sounds of any interest is the 'One laptop per Child' scheme, basically a £50 laptop designed to make computing accessible to those in third world countries. It's a superb idea, but one that's got lost amongst the gimmicks from the multi-nationals.

And that's been the problem with CES. The whole show hasn't been about inventions, it's about compressing as many stupid ideas into one to give the impression of a new invention. I don't want my PC to control my central heating via a touch-screen panel linked to my XBOX 360. I don't want to transmit videos from the internet via WiFi to watch on my cooker. I would like a stable Microsoft operating system that isn't riddled with security flaws, but that doesn't sound quite as fancy.

If you are going to argue a point, at least know what you are talking about.

Stupid people can be funny sometimes, but it's even funnier when stupid people think they are clever.






This evening I had the pleasure of enduring one such idiot, who seemed to think that he could lecture me on the European Convention of Human Rights.

Having studied the said convention as part of my Media Law & Regulation assignments, so I like to think I know the basics at least. Anyway, those of you from far-off lands and America will have no idea of what human rights are, so let me explain.

It's basically eighteen 'articles' which include:

• The right to life.
  
• Freedom from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment.
• Freedom from forced labour or slavery.
• The right to Liberty and to a Fair trial.
• Freedom from facing retrospective crimes or penalties.
• A Right to Privacy.
• Freedom of conscience.
• Freedom of expression.
• Freedom of assembly.
• The right to marriage and family.
• Freedom from discrimination.

Now this particular baffoon was intent on convincing me that by refusing to allow him to use our private toilet facilities, I was "infringing his human rights".
Initially I couldn't be bothered arguing with him. I'm a firm believer in the phrase "Never argue with an idiot, he'll only drag you down to his level, then beat you with experience." At that point I was prepared to ignore him and dismiss him as one of these stuck-up pillocks who feels he has a right to talk to retail staff through his nose, but he kept pushing me for an answer, so I gave him it:

"Well no to be honest sir, I don't agree with you. I cannot see how me refusing to allow you to use our private toilet facilites on the grounds that it presents a security risk infringes one of the eighteen articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, unless perhaps if you could convince a judge that urination as an act of expression."

At that he seemed quite taken aback that what he must have seen in his eyes as a "shop-serving minimum wage monkey" knew so much more than him about one of the most complex and controversial legal statutes in history.
Anyway he retired, tail firmly between his legs.

Only not quite, he then returned a few minutes later to shout across the store, "I've just gone against your wall, how do you like that?!"

Nice to see that I am still part of a civilised society. Perhaps he'd be quite dissapointed to know that every evening he's out-done by the tramp who shits in our skip.

Do we still care?

Does anyone in the UK still care about the Eurovision Song Contest?









OK, so Terry Wogan probably does after presenting the show for the past 312 years but apart from that, it's hard to find anyone who gives Eurovision the time of day.

Well Morrissey is apparently a fan as well and not only that, he doesn't like the fact that the UK doesn't win it anymore.

We had a fairly good spell in the late 90's. The UK won the thing in 1997 and came second in 1998, the first time that telephone votes from the public were used.

But since then we couldn't care less, partly because the UK song's points totals have barely scraped into double figures apart from 2003 when we got the dreaded 'nul points'.

But it looks like a case of Morrissey to the rescue. The former Smiths frontman wants to write the next UK entry after Daz Sampson's chav-fest last year came fifth from bottom. He believes that the problem isn't with an anti-UK attitude on the continent or an uncanny knack for countries in the Eastern block to vote for each other, but with the standard of music.

Regardless of what is actually the problem, I can't understand why artists don't avoid this poisoned chalice like the plague.
The chances of a UK entry winning are slim to the point of non-existent and when our entry does land back at Heathrow without the silverware, we'll all be demanding answers, heralding the death of British music and actually pretending to care - and it'll all be your fault.

Anyway, the chances of Morrissey reading this are pretty small and the chances of him taking on board what I say even smaller so Morrissey, if you do take on this thankless task, wake us up when you're finished.

Missing Prisoners

News is out today that our esteemed leaders have absolutely no idea how many prisoners have escaped from prison.






Apparently, around 700 inmates have gone AWOL in the past year but they have no idea who those 700 are or where they've ended up. And as daft as it sounds, there's no electronic record available to log lost lags but never fear, one is on the way (no doubt one which will develop thousands of bugs, be as secure as an open prison and will be outsourced to a tin-pot IT firm)

Perhaps there's even more irony given another high-profile escape this week.

One Small Step for Man

When you were a kid and used to dream about technology in the future, what did you think of?










The Flying car would have to be up there, robots that do menial tasks would be on anybody's list and surely and maybe even hover shoes?

Well today we are one step closer to the latter at least. Boffins at Electrolux haven't quite come up with hover shoes, but they have gone one 'o' further with their 'Hoover shoes'.

Long story short, they're shoes that vacuum the floor as you walk.

Feel free to insert sexist jokes in the comment's box ;-)

Bargain Hunt

Retail figures have been released in their droves recently and they aren't making good reading.








Aside from a surge in Boxing Day, footfall in UK shopping malls have fallen by about 7%, with entertainment stores barring the brunt of the drop. Woolworths and HMV are shaking whilst Music Zone have called in the administrators.
Elsewhere, sales at Next have also fallen although I've no sympathy with them. Any store that calls it's staff in during the early hours on Boxing Day just so that it can open it's doors at 5:00am to appease senseless sales shoppers deserves all the misfortune they get.
Across the board though, Internet shopping has boomed, which will probably explain why Music Zone might end up going the same way as Beanos in London.

I can't say I'm surprised though. This sort of thing was going to happen anyway because of the rises in cost of living, utilities, blah de blah, but some of it will be down to the sales themselves.

January sales have always been over-rated. The gormless and the ignorant lap them up but for the rest of us, feelings are fairly indifferent.
Sales are the perfect way for shops to get rid of the junk they don't want. Whether it's last seasons clothes or discontinued electronics, you'll see red sale stickers adorning it throughout January. Disappointingly, that £2000 plasma TV you've had your eye on since November will still have the same price tag on it after you found out that Santa couldn't fit it down your chimney.

Then of course, there's the buy-ins. These are items of cheap tat that the retailer buys in a few months before January for absolute peanuts from a supplier that wants rid of them. Throughout that time, they stick a massively marked up price tag on it. Come Boxing Day, people stand in amazement as that "£55 t-shirt" (wink wink) gets reduced to £5.50, not realising that the profit margin is still more than healthy enough for the companies shareholders.

An hour long browse around Leeds should just that. Only moderately busy shops but clothes racks full of tat.

Thankfully, they'll all be over soon.

The Worst TV Advert in the World?

Happy New Year folks! It's January 2007 and amongst other things, that means it's time for the January sales.






January sales tend now tend to take place in December rather than January, as over-eager company directors decide that they need to get the mad rush in as of Boxing Day to make their end-of-year figures look slightly better.

The net result is that on from 5:30pm on Christmas Eve (the time that all large shops must be closed by on Sunday) we're bombarded with adverts from furniture warehouses about their "Biggest sale ever starting Boxing Day 9:00am"

But the adverts are often terrible, this year being no exception. DFS are infamous for crap adverts but this years prize goes to 'Land of Leather'.

Using Chesney Hawk's "The One and Only" in any commercial is effectively signing your own death warrant to start with. The only situation that song actually ever works is a 3:00am in the Student's Union. Any other time is just unforgivable. I'm sure there's probably some old English law somewhere that says that if you find someone with that track on their iPod, you are legally allow to perforate their ear-drums.

If that wasn't bad enough, the voice over is just despicable.
In Britain, you could quite easily come up with a list of the most irritating celebrities on TV. You would then lock that list in a safe somewhere to prevent any advertising exec from thinking of using them on your commercial. Keith Chegwin would be on there, Jodie Marsh would be there somewhere as would Nikki from Big Brother but number one with the bullet would be former children's TV presenter Timmy Mallet.

Timmy Mallet personified everything that was wrong with TV in the early 90's with his programme "Wacaday". He was, quite frankly, an idiot.
Today he makes his living doing student gigs around the country, selling pink mallets to drunken freshers for £15 a hit. So on that basis, there is absolutely no way on earth that you would ever consider this fool for a TV commercial, unless of course you are Land of Leather.

So not only have you got a terrible song to your advert, it's accompanied by the most detestable man ever to grace British television.
For this reason alone, Land of Leather's January sale should be boycotted post-haste.

Where the Future is Just Too Complicated

For what seems like forever, football managers the world over have been campaigning for the introduction of advanced technology to be used in the game.






Saturday's match between Manchester City and Bolton stirred up the debate once more, as the blues had a Paul Dickov header ruled out, with Bolton boss Sam Allardyce claiming that, despite TV replays proving inconclusive, the correct decision would have been reached "within a minute or two".

The supporters of video technology point to other sports where video replays are used to good effect. Cricket, both codes of Rugby and American Football all take advantage of video replays to determine the right course of action. The doubters however, argue that in the above sports the video referee is only used in cases where the ball is already out of play whereas in football, play could continue for several minutes without stoppage following a goal-line incident.

But one sport has the answer to the very same problem that football is struggling to solve, and has had it for decades.

Forget the notion of slow motion cameras, ultasonic chips in the balls, logic gate devices or Andy Gray's virtual picture, in the low-tech sport of Ice Hockey they've been using old-fashioned human intuition to make that crucial decision.
Behind each goal is one bloke with a button. When he sees the puck cross the line, he hits the button to illuminate a big red light. What on earth could be simpler?

It'd be even easier in the beautiful game too. Rather than the goal official being sat a good few yards behind the goal as they are in the NHL, our referees can get close to the action.

You know it's so simple, it just might work.

It's Just One Big Reunion

Merry Christmas everyone! Santa has been and emptied his sack, left me a brand spanking new iPod and other paraphernalia and I'm sat here now after being stuffed with turkey.





I've so far managed to lay-off the booze, for today at least, instead choosing to go out in Pudsey on Christmas Eve night for copious amounts of alcohol.

Having gone to school and sixth form college in the town, it's fairly common to see the old school mate now and again but never before last night had I crossed paths with so many familiar faces.

In just a few minutes of setting foot in the first of many Pudsey hostileries, I'd come across a friend who I had previously gone to school with, done A-Levels with and worked on this film with. Having spent a gap year trekking across Australia, she's now preparing to go to Nottingham Trent University, two years after she'd originally planned.
There were plenty others that I could go on and on about, ex school-mates, ex rugby team-mates, I could go on.

It was just hard to believe that a boozy night in a few ropey pubs and bars would be like a real-live version of friends reunited.

Happy Christmas everyone!

That is So Unfair!

See that person there? That's Kevin the Teenager. One of the most popular characters from the TV show "Harry Enfield & Chums" which took pride of place on the BBC's comedy line-up in the late 1990's.


He was a comedic depiction of the typical teenager as any parent of teenagers would testify and his trademark line "That is SO unfair!" is one of the most remembered phrases in modern TV.

And today it emerged that the Sun is now edited by Kevin the Teenager.

The television licence fee, the primary source of funding for the BBC, will increase by £3.95 to £135.45 per year for a colour television licence. The increases were actually less that the BBC's requested "above inflation" increase for what it claimed was needed to cover spiralling costs, the relocation of BBC Sport from London to Manchester and concerns over the cost of the digital switchover in 2012 whilst the National Union of Journalists supported the BBC's request over concerns of job losses.

But not everyone is happy. The BBC funding has always been a sore point for commercial media organisations who would love nothing more to be as respected and trusted as Auntie, but who are bound by commercial pressures and the whims of their advertisers.

The Sun today ranted on, with it's usual plethoric use of BOLD CAPITALS, that such increases in the TV licence fee have no place in their idealistic immigrant free, human rights devoid world.

Apparently the BBC wastes my cash on programmes that I don't want to watch, or so says an inaccurately written piece of garbage. You know that the "journalist" in question (term used very loosely) is talking rubbish when he claims that none of the BBC's rivals receive any TV licence funding - not a single penny, completely oblivious to the fact that Channel Four are currently benefiting from a £70m cheque from the very same fee.

The poor audience figures are cited as a primary reason why the TV licence should be cut. What isn't mentioned is that public broadcasting is not about attracting audience ratings, it's about meeting the diverse needs of the populace. Producing trash TV to appeal to the lowest common denominator is the realm of ITV, not the BBC whose remit is to produce quality entertainment, informative and educational programming.
Now your typical Sun reader would be pretty confused as he read 'quality', would understand to a degree the word 'entertainment' but then would be completely lost by the time he reached the words 'informative' and 'educational', so would your typical Sun columnist.

The other sore point is the BBC website. Rather than having a quality website with accurate journalism and outstanding feature writing which can be read across the world free from advertising, the Sun would prefer us to be bombarded with adverts for 'online casino' and 'big money bingo'.

But none of this is surprising. The owner of the aforementioned rag happens to be Rupert Murdoch, the very same individual who owns Britain's biggest multi-channel broadcaster, BSkyB.

Murdoch, who has made no secret of his dislike for the BBC and it's funding is essentially telling us that whilst we should be outraged at being asked to pay £135 a year to watch quality news, documentaries, sport, entertainment and of course, Kevin the Teenager, we should still be racing to the phone to pay even more to watch the proverbial TV wheelie bin containing "Cirque de Celebrite", "Sexcetera" and "Eurotrash".

But what Murdoch or the Sun won't be telling you is that tonight, the BBC will allow you to watch both sport and a movie for £10.96 per month. Mr Murdoch on the other hand, will charge you nearer £50 for the month for the same privilege.

Now, who was ripping off who again?

Don't Do Anything

Stay inside, lock all your doors and windows, unplug the phone and keep the kids safe in their bedrooms.











Today being told that we're all going to die again by police chief Ian Blair who claims that the terrorists are onto something. OK, so we were all going to be horribly killed back in October, but this time it's for real and we should all stay inside.

Apparently, there is no "concrete intelligence" to suggest that anything specific is going to happen anywhere specific over the festive period. But still, we're in grave danger and rather than running the risk of being confronted by a complete lunatic, we should just put our feet up in from of the Christmas TV.

Not only that, even if you weren't blown to pieces by a religious extremist, you'll probably die from the inevitable flu pandemic which threatens to wipe out the entire population.

And even if you were stupid enough to want to leave the house after all these justified and accurate warnings, you wouldn't get anywhere. The plane's aren't flying, the roads are clogged up and the trains, well, they never run anyway.

Just stay at home at don't do anything, OK?

Off the Record

Time for a quick straw poll: Whilst you've been doing your Christmas shopping this year, how many of you have been to a 'proper' record shop?

I'm not talking about the likes of Virgin, Music Zone and HMV, I mean 'proper' record shops.






Beano's, Europe's biggest second-hand record store is set to close it's doors for the last time after seeing business fall in recent years. After competing with the multi-national chains and the Internet, the Croydon store has decided to throw in the towel and sell-off it's remaining stock.

It's just a shame that independent retailers are being ousted this way. Surprisingly, Dave Lashmar doesn't blame the rise of the Internet for his businesses decline. As someone who has always maintained that shops still have an edge over their electronic counterparts, Lashmar has resisted the temptation to branch his business onto the world wide web.
The web however could well be the death-nell for numerous independent music dealers. If we're not importing chart CD's from the VAT-free haven of Jersey or raiding eBay auctions, we're downloading music from legal, illegal and "miscellaneous" channels.

At worst, we're going into supermarkets and HMV and handing our hard-earned to anonymous shareholders who staff their stores with minimum wage workers, many (but not all) of whom will know little of the subject matter and who wouldn't be able to provide you with gig tickets for the next event at the Cockpit or Students Union.

In Leeds, we're lucky that we've still got two 'real' record stores. We've got Crash Records on Eastgate which is held in high regard in the music scene and we've got the lesser known Jumbo Records who still seem to be doing a strong trade despite having to compete with the nearby high-street chains of HMV, Virgin and Music Zone.

Hopefully these stores will still remain for years to come. The owner of Beano's is more critical of the decline of the local area, as evidenced from the number of people who 'used' to shop in Croydon. The same can't be said of Leeds.

Here in Yorkshire we have the biggest financial district away from the capital, much of that being based on the fact we have a successful city centre and retail district, one that attracts tourists from across the North.

Whilst most of us have shifted our spending patterns to supermarkets and computers, it's still a shame to see true retailers vanish in this way.

The Hazy World of Pro Football

Not that it's anything new in professional football, but the referee for last night's Carling Cup quarter final between Liverpool and Arsenal couldn't see a thing.




That's not because he was useless, it's because the Anfield pitch had become shrouded in the Mersey fog, much to the dissatisfaction of Rafa Benitez and Arsene Wenger, who for the first time claimed he could actually see something on a football pitch.

As the crowds walked home, the TV crews packed their cameras and the Arsenal team headed back to the airport, the arguments raged into the night about fixture congestion. Liverpool and Arsenal must now reconvene their Carling Cup semi-final engagements and meet again in the FA Cup in addition to fulfilling their league requirements. In short, the two sides are looking at 7 games in 22 days. Not surprisingly, messieurs Benitez and Wenger are far from amused.

They could have it worse though. Don't let the '7 games' thing fool you. Last night was not intended to be anything other that a reserve team kick-about in a third-rate competition. Neither side is a supporter of the Carling Cup contest (until it suits them) and neither side had any intention of fielding a first eleven last night, nor will they for the rearranged fixture in January.
So that realistically means six games in 22 days or in simpler terms, 2 games a week with a day to spare.

Yet despite this, the avid supporters of our national game deem this excessive but lets look at what supporters, players and coaches of other sports have to endure.

The Edmonton Oilers of the NHL Ice Hockey league will have taken the ice no fewer than 14 times between December 2nd and 31st. The LA Lakers are even more hard done by, appearing in 16 games in the same period, four of which take place with less than a 24 hour turnaround. And lets not forget that in the States, travelling to away fixtures is about equivalent of European footballers jetting across the continent rather than making a simple bus journey across the city or at worst, a 45 minute flight from London to the North West.

But still, lets show some sympathy for our elite band of millionaires who might have to put in a little extra graft this Christmas

Savage Garden ought to be Rich by Now

Having just got back from the local gym where I had the misfortune of enduring MTV Dance blaring across the room, I couldn't help but notice how dance music is, quite frankly, terrible.

Not only that, but it's not actually 'dance' music. Any half-wit can make a dance track with just a current song, some simple equipment, a Page 3 model and a 15-year old chav.
Granted, these arguments are hardly new. Dance music has always been pretty pants and cover versions are always bad. The only cover version I'd say was better that the original was Natalie Imbruglia's 1997 rendition of Trena Rayne's "Torn". Apart from that, they're all pretty dreadful.

But anyway, here's the perfect recepie for a night-club No1. All you have to do is take a good song that was really popular but hasn't been played in a while. Savage Garden's 'Truly, Madly, Deeply" would be ideal:



Then, take your 15-year old chav (two if you can find enough of them) and give him an electronic drum kit and a sampler and just tell them that they can push any buttons they want.
Come back ten minutes later with a video camera and a Page 3 model. Take the tape that the 15-year old chavs have recorded and then film the aforementioned woman dancing to said tape.

The result should be something like this:



Think of a 'club name' to make you sound brilliant, give said tape to MTV and hey-presto, you'll be rich!

I only hope Savage Garden made Cascada and Co pay through the nose for a copyright licence.

Fish Shop Etiquette

When visiting the local Fish & Chip shop, it is important to remember the proper standards of behaviour that befit such establishments.





When entering the said building it is only proper to wait in line, get to the counter, order fish and chips (but always refer to them as 'once', 'twice' or 'three times' etc depending on how many lots you want) and then leave.
If you are the awkward sort, you may order 'special' items such as chicken nuggets but only on the pretence that you shout your order over the counter to the fishmonger who will have them ready by the time you get to the front.

You do not, under any circumstances whatsoever do the following:
Enter the shop and wait in line until you reach the counter. Once you get to the counter, read off a list of various special items, including chicken, pineapple fritters and the like. Proceed to complain that said items will take 5-10 minutes to prepare and then cause a queue to reach half-way down the A657.

In fact, it's time fish and chip shops were banned from selling anything other than fish, chips and Dandelion and Burdock.

Making Your Mind Up

The world is falling apart, the oceans are getting deeper and we're going to have to learn how to swim by 2014 if we don't do something now.




At the risk of sounding like Jeremy Clarkson, I'm not entirely convinced by this 'go green' campaigning that's been doing the rounds.

My scepticism isn't exactly diluted by our elected band of leaders either who don't seem to be in unanimous agreement over which direction we should be heading in.

Take Gordon Brown's "green taxes" from a few weeks ago. According to him we should all leave our cars at home and stop taking advantage of the 5p flights offered by Ryanair, easyjet and Jet2. Doing such a thing is bad for the environment and for being so evil, we should all be made to pay for our transgresses. Apparently, £10 extra in airport tax is all that it will take for us to repent our sins and avoid an eternity of damnation.

Now all that would be fine if our glorious leaders didn't keep contradicting themselves.
I could happily accept that by driving to work I'm killing the West Vietnamese gumbo tree and that for doing so I should treated with contempt, if I didn't then see the 'Two Jags' Deputy Prime Minister jumping in a limousine to travel less than 250 yards to give a speech on using public transport.

So today's news that the government are pressing ahead with their airport expansion plans which include new runways at Heathrow and Stansted (a major base for low-cost airline Ryanair) doesn't really convince me to join Greenpeace and race to the Toyota Prius dealership.
On one hand Gordon Brown is telling us not to fly because that's naughty but on the other hand, Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander is increasing the supply of air travel and therefore encouraging an increase in demand.

It can't just be me who's confused by the plans to introduce green airport taxes and expand airports to fuel an extra demand in air travel, but I'm sure that there is a perfectly logical explanation.

Poor Wayne

Wayne Rooney is in the news again and he's not a happy bunny.










The Manchester United and England forward is spouting his mouth off because the Premiership's referee's won't look after him and protect him from all the big bad opponents and that it is affecting his game.

"For some reason refs think I should be able to protect myself without their help," says the 21-year old. Well yes Wayne, you should. You're a big boy now and you've got to learn to look after yourself.

What he fails to understand is that he actually brings it on himself. He's a good player no question but he's also easier to wind up than a jack-in-a-box. Opponents the world over know that a little rough-housing here and there will put him off his game and make him lash out. Make him do that and you've beat him.

Quit whinging Wayne and get on with it.

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.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy Birthday to me indeed. Thank-you for caring.










This day in 1985 some child who would go on to bore you all with inane ramblings on an Internet blog named 'A View from the Bar' was born.

Here's some other interesting things that have happened today:

Of course, John Lennon was shot dead in New York in 1980, it's Constitution Day in Romania and Sammy Davis Junior was born in 1925. The US declared war of Japan in 1941 and in 1976, the Eagles released Hotel California.

And seeing as it's my Birthday, I have no will have objection if you decided to buy me presents.

Bargain PC World

According to the website of computer retailer PC World, the company is now up for sale.






Potential buyers can purchase the retail giant, which makes a sizable contribution to it's parent company's £7bn annual turnover, for the bargain price of £30!

Buyers are also advised that an extended warranty is available at £6.95 per month whilst home installation is another £34.99.

It's Art I Tell You

It's not like looking at a painting in Leeds Art Gallery or admiring some abstract steel structure in the local park. We are talking of course about....err.......lapdancing.




Well, that's what the Norwegians think of it anyway.

After an appeal, the owner of Diamond Go Go Bar in Oslo have won a case to make lapdancing clubs across Norway exempt from the 25% VAT rate on the grounds that strip-tease is an art form.

Good on-em I say. When you live in the most expensive city in the World, you've got to have a little fun now and again!

The War on Christmas

This morning that bastion of truth, honesty, straight thinking and well produced journalism, the Sun, set out on a crusade against what it claims is the 'War on Christmas'.






Every year we get stories in low-rent rags such as the Sun and Daily Mail about how anything remotely festive is banned because "it offends religious minorities." Heck, there's even a book about it.
Today's Sun has even printed a list of cases, even printing words in BOLD CAPITALS to make sure that I understand them and are equally outraged.
The argument falls down though when they list what has/hasn't been banned. Here's a snippet:

A COURT banned a millionaire from putting up his annual charity light display.

So, banned because of religious minorities, or "banned" because (presumably), he didn't get the planning permission that is required to erect commercial illuminated displays?

A SANTA was prevented from touring a town because his sleigh does not have a seatbelt.

In other words, A SANTA was prevented from using public roads in an un-roadworthy vehicle. Presumably the Sun would be happy for a drunken 16-year old to drive an un-taxed, un-MOT'd F-Reg Fiesta laden with presents through a village square on the proviso that he wore A SANTA costume.

There's more where that came from and I dare say that we've not heard the last of the Sun's campaign to allow people to break the law just because it's Christmas.


And the outrage hasn't stopped there. The right-wing press are creaming themselves over Channel 4's decision to allow a fully veiled Muslim to deliver their Christmas speech.

For you non-Brits, a bit of background knowledge is probably needed:
Every Christmas day, families used to gather around the TV as the Queen delivered her Christmas speech to the nation. It had to be done, usually because your Gran was a devout supporter of the monarchy. Today however it's different and support and interest in the Royal family has continued to wain. Buckingham Palace lost a lot of public support over their actions following Diana's death and a catalogue of gaffs have never seen them recover their image to what it once was.
Channel 4 spotted that and each year at the same time Her Majesty went on air, they broadcast their "alternate speech". Previous years have seen the Beckhams, the Simpsons, Ali G, Sharon Osbourne and Ali G address the British public and this year will see a woman known only as "Khadija" step in front of the camera.

Of course, we are all supposed to be outraged by this. I mean, how dare a national television network broadcast images of a veiled Muslim into the homes across of a multi-cultural and so-called 'racial tolerant' nation such as Britain and how dare they give a non-Christian an opportunity to give their views on the most 'Christian' day of the year (despite the fact that Christianity stole Christmas from the Pagans). Interestingly, nobody seemed to care when Sasha Baron-Cohen (as Ali G) appeared on our screens a few December 25th's back, despite the fact that he is Jewish.

So today people, as you go about your daily business, remember to be outraged.

Vacancy: Football Manager, Location: Anywhere in Yorkshire

Yorkshire's job centres have been pretty busy so far this football season, with all four of the county's Championship managers being handed their P45's.




Firstly, Leeds United manager parted company with Kevin Blackwell. After guiding them to a Championship play-off final last season, the former Sheffield United assistant left Leeds staring relegation to League One in the face and Chairman Ken Bates wasted no time in giving Blackwell the boot and bringing in his old mate Dennis Wise.

Exactly one month later, Sheffield Wednesday boss Paul Sturrock was kicked out of Hillsborough after leaving the club in 21st position and another month went by before Barnsley manager Andy Ritchie joined South Yorkshire's dole queue.

Today, Hull City's Phil Parkinson has completed the quartet after just six months and four wins from 21 games in charge at the KC Stadium.

The league tables don't make enjoyable reading either if you happen to be a Yorkshire sports fan. Of the three relegation spaces, two are occupied by Leeds United and Hull City, Barnsley lie just two points above the drop zone. Sheffield Wednesday can look down on the rest of the region with their comparatively lofty fourteenth league place.

Away from the Coca Cola Championship, things aren't exactly rosy either. Sheffield United are holding their own in the Premiership but in League One, Doncaster Bradford and Huddersfield are struggling, whilst Rotherham are looking nervously at the relegation trap door behind them. In fact, only 2nd place Scunthorpe have anything to crow about.

Quite clearly, we're not that good at this football lark. Perhaps we'd be better off sticking to Rugby instead.

Don't Have Fun This Christmas or You'll Make us Mad

As millions of Britons hit the high street this December in the run-up to Christmas, Her Majesty's Customs Officers can't help but step in and spoil the party.



Whilst most of us will head to the local City Centre or clog up the Ring Roads queuing for the car park to gargantuan out-of-town shopping centres, thousands of others will leave Blightly alltogether and head to the States.

Not only will they take advantage to the favourable tax rates (as low as 5% in New York against 17.5% in the UK), but they are now encouraged by the fact that a £1 coin will get you almost $2 ($1.98 to be precise). That gives us Brits massive spending power on the other side of the Atlantic.

But the Customs officers aren't happy. Not content impounding cars from cross-channel ferry "booze-cruises" and in some cases, selling the vehicle without the owners knowledge to pay for an alcohol and tobacco duty bill that has already been legally paid within the European Union, they now take great enjoyment in pointing out that we aren't allowed to stock our suitcases with cut-price iPods, laptops and designer jeans from across the pond.

The legalities of it are that any item with a value in excess of £145 (although there is no definition whether that 'value' is retail or trade value) is subject to tax when you land at the UK airport.
There are obviously ways around this. For instance, a laptop computer, camcorder or iPod can easily be disguised as something you took with you in the first place, provided that the customs officer doesn't stumble across the packaging in another suitcase but it's hardly practical to go opening Christmas presents you bought for your granddaughter or teenage son.

Most of us would hope that common sense would prevail and that customs officers at Heathrow will realise that a 58-year old woman with an iPod and pair of Levi's for her grandson isn't a major threat to the economic stability of the nation but then again, perhaps we have too much faith in them.