Beyond the barriers.

Donald Trump says he will spend 2 million USD every week on TV advertising.  I hope that's because the advertising it expensive, I wouldn't like to think of him being beamed into all those poor American households.
The thing is, doesn't he realise that TV watchers can just switch him off?  Seems a bit of a waste of money to me, but it keeps him in the headlines I suppose.
He probably has a policy of 'one headline a week' or similar where he has a team of weirdos thinking up headline grabbing statements.

One man who has hit the headlines in the last few days is Frank.  Storm Frank to give him his full name.  He has played havoc in the North West and Yorkshire, with York and other places being badly affected.  There's talk of a 'complete rethink of flood defences' whatever that means.  I suppose the barriers have gone as high as they can.  Can't remember where it was, but someone jacked their house up last year to escape the water.  That seems like a good idea to me, you even gain a bit of room under the house (albeit potentially a bit wet).  I wonder how the planners would deal with that?

Mr Trump could probably help with the financing, but he's more than likely up to his neck in some other controversy by the time I finish writing this.

Seasons Greetings

Well, you learn something every day.  The Church of England is different to the Church of Scotland, both being based on a different flavour of Protestanism (I thing that's spelt correctly, but the spell check disagrees).  Anyway, they have agreed to work together more - must be the Christmas spirit at work.

The IAAF keeps on getting bad press and Mr Coe, sorry, Lord Coe has his hands full handling all that.  I wonder if he will manage to hang on in 2016.

There's a bit of additional noise coming from the UCI as Brian Cookson tries to put some shape around the new, clean, drug free cycling federation.  ASO (who manage Tour De France and others) are not happy with some race classifications that might undermine some commercial aspects, so we can expect public arguments whilst they resolve it differently behind closed doors.

Merry Christmas by the way.

Apple Racing

Formula 1 is leaving the BBC and moving to Channel 4, 3 years before the contract is up for renewal.  The BBC have to save £150 million (I think), so the F1 contract was probably a good way of saving most of that.  Mind you, I read that they spent 240 million on Premier league highlights, so it puts it into some sort of perspective.  They have probably dropped F1 at the right time, if not a year late, so I cannot think anyone will be losing too much sleep about it.  C4 have even promised not to screen ads during the race, so it will be interesting how that manage that - I reckon we will see much more on-screen advertising of some sort.  No more bland shirts by the presenters, expect big logos, obligatory caps and flashy watches.  I also suspect some big name brand will the a title sponsor much like the 'Barclays Premier League' or whatever it is nowadays.

Will you do the fandango?

I can't believe it's been 40 years!
How many time do I hear that nowadays?  One of my colleagues - a mere 21 years young has his own version, something like 'I can just remember when...' when recounting something that I would call 'recent'.
"Just remember"? He should be able to remember his whole life in minute detail.  He's got loads of memory space left, although he is a bit of a film fan so some will be taken up with fictitious film facts of no use to anyone.
Anyway back to the 40 year thing.  It's just that Bohemian Rhapsody was the Christmas number 1 40 years ago in 1975 and I remember it like it was yesterday.  Well, not yesterday, but what we take in as a 'major event' stays with us for much longer than the ordinary run-of-the-mill non-descript memories and gives an impression of a recent event.  Quite clever the way our brain handles memory, not unlike how some computer memory works, with the important data staying close by in case it's needed and can be grabbed quickly without resorting to searching e,g, a hard disk.  If Bohemian Rhapsody was data, I would cache it in as many places as possible.
Mind you, it's not as if the song had a huge impact on me, it was just so different than the bland mediocre pop music at the time accompanied by a cool video that would probably be seen as quite amateurish nowadays.  It was also at No 1 for what seemed weeks and weeks, although I'm not sure how long (and can't be bothered to look it up).

Less bovver.

I'm quite impressed by the latest new toy/gadget in town - the hoverboard.  Or is it hovverbord?  That latter spelling would make it less mainstream, more off the board (probably).  There must be a whole lot of electronics and gyroscopes at play underneath the shiny plastic trim to make it ridable (by the way, that's not a word according to my PC dictionary when I'm sure it should be).  Anyway, I probably won't be getting one, not because they are too expensive (are they about 100+ quids?) but I'm sure I would not be able to handle one.  My skating skills (on ice or tarmac) are pretty dismal and surely no amount of anti-tilt mechanism would be able to keep me balanced.
However, someone has mastered how to manoeuvre them, and went off with a crate of lemonade from the Co-Op to prove it.  Luckily he was caught and will be brought to justice for his audacious act.  To rub salt into it, he is also charged with riding his hovveryboard on the pavement.  They are strictly for use on private property it seems.

Dead Relations

The South Koreans seem a bit of an odd bunch.  There's plenty of detrimental stuff written about the North which hits the headlines, but there are also many curiosities about the Southerners that can be found after page 1.  The latest is a story about how they are trying to reduce the number of suicides, by using 'try out dying' training where they experience their own funeral, including lying in a coffin, clutching their own picture.  Is that odd? ..or is it just me?

Meanwhile, over in North Korea a planned performance of Kim Jung-Un's own pop group had to be cancelled for no apparent reason.  It appears that this pop group (hand-picked by the good leader) were meant to be fostering Chinese/NK relations but had to pull out at the last minute.
Still, that better than some South Korean K-Pop band being sent home from the US where there were mistakenly assumed to be sex workers.

Ready, Set, Go!

Unhappiness will not shorten your life, but what you are unhappy about might.  That's one of the conclusions by some university who have monitored a million women aged around 60.
Sounds like a sensible conclusion.  Other surveys have concluded differently, that misery = an early death but now we know that to be untrue, it makes me quite happy.

The IAAF keeps getting adverse publicity, first from the doping revelations and now the French are investigating how the World Athletics champs were awarded to Eugene in the US - the home of Nike.  Even though Sebastian Coe exudes a very polished exterior, he has to find some good answers to justify how they won that bid, given that he was a 'Nike Ambassador'.  I assume this is not a voluntary post, and given Lord Coe's other 'fortunate' business dealings during the Olympics, I hope he hasn't overstepped the mark.

Off he went to the circus, trump, trump, trump.

Dear old Donald Trump, he doesn't mind what he says does he?  I see him as the old, cantankerous member of the family, spouting out extreme views as he mumbles to himself in the corner, and no-one paying any attention to him.
Unfortunately, reality is not quite like that.  There appear to be more than a handful of Americans that seem to concur with his views, which makes him a bit more dangerous than old Uncle Hector in the corner.  With a bit of luck the Republicans will quietly lean on him to clam up and he will disappear from the political scene.  If we're unlucky, he'll be voted for in a few key Southern states and have to endure him all the way to the presidential election.

More fun from the build up to he BBC's Sports Personality of the Year.  The inclusion of Tyson Fury onto the shortlist has not gone down too well given his ability to enrage women and the LGBT community.  The latest incident is where a BBC presenter stated that 'you cannot be a dickhead AND win sports personality of the year' live on air. 

What is it with all these public people speaking what they think?

Tales of The Riverbank

The Super Soaraway Sun has had to eat humble pie when it found out that a story about the (freelance) reporter where he claimed to have travelled from Turkey to Paris evading passport checks was actually... incorrect.
The freelancer forgot to add the bit where he had his passport checked in Zagreb, but what the heck, let's put it over a 2 page spread anyway.  They are now 'changing how they deal with freelancers'.
Of course, no full time Sun reporter would do such a thing would they?

Another heavy shower, another burst river bank, another reason to blame someone somewhere.  The environment secretary has taken the unusual step of stating the obvious - 'when it rains, you get wet, don't blame me'.  I paraphrase slightly, but you get the drift.  I do have some sympathy with her, but than again I also do with the affected house owners.  What the solution is I don't know, but I get an impression we are not going to build however high they have to be walls around rivers, and we are not going to make people move out of houses, or even get people t voluntarily give their houses up so we can expect more good intentioned politicians saying 'the right thing' and residents lambasting them for doing nothing.

Left a bit...

Labour won their existing safe seat of Oldham West with a reduced majority, so does this mean that the new Jeremy Corbyn style is going to be a winner?  He will be hoping so and spared no time in travelling up there congratulating the winning candidate.  Strange how he wasn't here for the announcement, I suspect exit polls were not showing quite the same margin of win.
Anyway, I guess the lefties will be pleased with that result, and given the flurry of condemnation over those Labour MPS that voted for air strikes, could be that there will be a general swing to the left but it will take time.

And when are they going to start building more houses?  We seem to have a constant increase in the population, coupled with a very modest rise in housing stock.  You would think that market forces would be encouraging development to match the demand, but that does not appear to be happening.  Prices to rise by 4-6% in 2016 according to the Halifax, (although looking into the future is not the easiest thing to do).  Mind you, could be we have Labour councils building council homes soon.

Pressing Engagement.

94.5% of the country's electricity from renewables.  That sounds like a good news story, so why haven't all countries done that?  The star pupil is Uruguay, a country of less than 5 million people, but not known for being very rich in resources (well, not as far as I know anyway).  They have decreased energy prices over the last 10 years as the renewable kit has been installed without having to add supplements to local bills like out own government have decided to do.  They don't even have any nuclear plants in the mix.  Let's hope our venerable leaders take notes and get some tricks and tips at the ongoing climate talks in Paris.

Ironing is so last year, according to an article in The Guardian.  I'm pleased to hear this, because no-one in my house enjoys that job, least of all me.  Evidently I have to feel comfortable in that 'crumpled look' before I ditch the ironing board completely.  I wonder if that would have looked good at yesterday's funeral I attended.

Taking it personally.

I'm not sure about the BBC's 'Sports Personality of the Year' award.  They have just announced the shortlist, all of them worthy sportsmen/women in their field, but I can't see why we have this annual ceremony each year.  My theory is that now the BBC has cut down to the bare minimum of sports on TV, they have to hype up a ceremony that I expect no other broadcaster cares about.  Its an ideal opportunity to splash a relatively small part of the sports budget about without doing much, and as luck would have it, it encompasses about 12 sports all at once  - what a bonus!  They can then sit back and feel like that have covered all those sports.  Then there's the 'personality' tag that accompanies the title - what a misnomer!   So, expect loads of hype and not much action for this year's event.

The air strikes debate wages on, but has been overshadowed by Jeremy Corbyn's difficult position as Labour leader without the authority to lay the law down with his cabinet.  I guess we'll see more of these situations, and until these slightly more right wing Labourites move on, he's stuck with this type of situation as far as I can see.
However, he managed to row back from a damaging 'split the party' type of scenario, to a bit of a cop out of giving everyone a free vote.