Look North featured a piece the other night on a recent “initiative” by Bradford NHS to blow £33k on teaching receptionists at doctors’ surgeries how to be polite.
I am not making this up; in times when money is tighter than ever, some publicly-funded, brainless twerps have agreed that the only way to tame Rita the Rottweiler, sat out on the front desk painting her claws, is to send her on a charm course.
My doctors has a touch screen where you “announce your arrival” and sit down, which seems a bit limited if your arm is hanging from it’s socket.
How on Earth does it cost £33k to teach a bunch of adults how to be polite? And how do morons get to positions where they can piss public money so easily down a consultant’s drain?
And here’s food for thought? As most of the current bunch are middle-aged women not brought up plugged into several devices simultaneously, how will the mute lot following them cope with actually speaking?
Sexing It Up
Not a lot has gone right at Morrisons since Sir Ken hung up his boots. As Philips leaves for pastures new, out of the window with him go the misting fruit and vegetable displays as well.
Nobody was quite clear why these were introduced. There were suggestions that it was to keep the produce fresh but isn’t that why we buy it in the first place? Surely, Morrisons had not been selling us rotten veg all these years?
The reality was that this was nothing more than a gimmick, dare I say it, an attempt to “sex-up” the weekly veg shop. And savvy shoppers know that when something is sexed-up, then the customer normally pays for the dubious privilege.
The term itself can mean many things; for instance it could mean very shit film (Fifty Shades) or dossier full of lies (Ain’t No Bombs Here).
Imagine though what went through Albert and Edna’s minds, fifty years shopping with Sir Ken, when they first saw the sexy veg.
“‘Ey up Our Lass t’cucumbers are on fire!”
“Bugger me too…I’m not buying those sprouts if their doing that already!”
Sky’s The Limit?
In a week when Sky and BT agreed to increase the amount they pay for live football by an eye watering 71%, consider this staggering piece on perhaps the dumbest creature on the planet – the footballer.
“On average, a Premier League footballer takes home somewhere in the region of £2.3m a year…”
On a weekly basis this is almost twice the average annual wage in Britain today.
In Europe, the figures quoted Germany’s Bundesliga at £1.46m, Italy’s Serie A £1.3m and Spain’s La Liga players have to struggle along watching the Euros on £1.2m a year. Still, at least the sun shines over there.
The new deal starting in 2016 is estimated to bring in around £3bn per annum and some forecasters are predicting the average annual salary to hit £5m by 2020.
Perhaps not surprisingly though is the fact that “…40 per cent of retired footballers (are) declared bankrupt within five years of retiring…”
The article suggested this figure is for footballers in general but recent examples have included Premier League players and it is a depressing picture.
As is the assertion that “…the collective debt owed to HMRC…by retired players is somewhere in the region of £300 million.”
As the average footballer has the brain of a parrot then drowning them in cash is hardly likely to achieve much long term good for either the individual or society as a whole. The only likely beneficiaries are owners of Ferrari dealerships.
Football has long resembled a runaway gravy train with all manner of parasites – agents and pundits in particular – clinging to it as if their lives depend on it…which they most likely do.
Many people – myself included – have no interest in the vastly over-rated Premier League but as a Sky customer (though not Sky Sports) I am still helping to fund this and I thoroughly resent it, prompting me to get active with my subscription.
Latest figures for Sky as at May 2014 indicated 10.61m households are customers; let’s say that’s around 20m people.
Contrast this with the largest recent audience commanded by football at 1.65m and this suggests that a modest number of Sky customers are being subsidised by the rest of us.
Note too BT Sport’s highest figures at around half that of Sky. Sooner or later this bubble will burst and come crashing down faster than an Italian in the penalty box
Oh what people power could achieve here and it could happen a lot quicker if people began to vote with their “off” buttons.
Immigration In A Nutshell?
As the Daily Mail was taken it was Hobson’s Choice at the local refuge – Kent’s Fitness – the other day and so to The Sun I turned.
Within these pages not known for incisive comment – especially from the likes of Magnificent Mandy from Margate – was an article that was the clearest exposition of the hot topic of immigration I’ve ever read and written by a Labour Party donor too, believe it or not.
From one of the biggest donors to the party that likes to deny it was the one that opened the floodgates came this.
Simplistically, he used the analogy of Britain as a huge bank of assets (factories, machines, houses etc) with a value estimated here at £7.2trn. The argument followed that some 60m of us share these – although clearly not equally – at around £120k per head.
Immigration flows he estimated are circa 400,000 per annum and the accepted wisdom is that immigrants do make a net contribution to society. His point was though, that this contribution was far from £120k per head and could never be on a broad average.
So, the only way for us to keep pace with 400,000 new people each year and maintain living standards is either to create more wealth – which we are not – or to buy it i.e. borrow more – which we can’t either unless you believe that daft little Scottish woman.
Consequently, even though immigrants produce more than the millions of our indigenous scroungers who breed like fertilised rabbits and spend their benefits on plasma televisions, as population increases faster than the state can cope, everybody’s share of the pie diminishes over time.
And here’s the flip-side; cutting benefits is only of limited effect because of the double-whammy of depressed wage rates and the surge in the private landlord meaning rents only go one way. The State compensates here via tax-credits and housing benefits.
So here are the summarised manifestos of the main three parties just to make it easy for you.
Conservatives – more cuts, depressed wages, higher rents and G&Ts all round for our pals. Paid for by…borrowing.
Labour – increased pay for the little people, more spending and Nirvana. Paid for by…even more borrowing.
Lib Dems – wait and see who wins above then sell out for another five years of saying what we would have done if we had a clue.
Happy?
{This article contains a shameless plug for Kents Fitness who provide no payment other than warm shelter, free coffee, comfy sofas and SKY Tv for your author}
Hammer Time
Progress with my new drill at last as I managed to figure out how to open the case and charge the battery; there may still be a spot on Daytime DIY TV for me yet.
Suspiciously, I pressed the gaudy yellow button and it whirred smoothly into life; don’t you just love those Chinese fellows?
I’ve not dared screw anything yet as it’s just far too early; we really should get to know each other better!
Spineless Crooks
BBC’s Panorama this week was a half hour expose on the modern day crook – bankers. Not the people that serve you and I daily but a small minority clearly holding the belief that they are invincible in their Canary Wharf glass towers.
The Bank That Cheats detailed years of criminal activity by Britain’s biggest bank – HSBC – perpetrated on behalf of it’s wealthiest clients. Yes – one of our most respected businesses was acting not unlike the Mafia, save for any “hits”.
Headed by the now Lord Green, who was rewarded by a peerage and a job in Government for robbing the same Government, HSBC in effect ran a criminal activity for years. It’s akin to Don Corleone becoming President of the USA.
Laughably, Green is an ordained Priest and has just written a paper advising the Church on how to manage itself. With all that happened on his watch at HSBC you may conclude he either lost his moral compass or is a complete incompetent; a mix of the two may be true.
And guess how many prosecutions so far? That’s right…none. How many are likely? Well, largely because both main parties have dirty hands here, neither has managed to claim any moral high ground preferring to spat like primary school kids.
And they preach “fairness” to “hard working families”; what a bunch of spineless, arse-licking cowards this lot are. Of course, you would have thought that allegations of this seriousness would demand a response from Britain’s biggest bank.
As ever, nobody had the balls to front up and all we had were pithy statements garnered in legal speak claiming all was well now. Utter bollocks…which is not legal speak but far closer to the truth.
A New Frontier
Would you believe it? My old man, aged 77, has just gone and got a smart phone amounting to recklessness beyond his years. I suspect he thinks it has an App that will rouse my mum from her armchair whenever he needs a cup of tea and ring him when Countdown starts.
It’s all a bit dispiriting this extravagant lifestyle he seems to be pursuing in his dotage, frittering away my inheritance and dreams of a villa on the Costa De Bradford – Ilkley.
New car, new phone; the way he is going soon it will be Veuve Clicquot and caviar butties in Critics’ Corner for the old boys. Still, it might make my batting look a bit better.
Fifty Shades of Apathy
A poll in the T&A to ascertain what proportion would be going to see the film is currently running at 91% “No”. It would appear we in Bradford know all there is to know.
Have a good bonking weekend!
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