Sing if you're...

Are you happy with your lot?  Not an easy question methinks.  'It depends' is probably a suitable answer for me. 
There you have it, not much to say but better than nothing.

Tighten Up.

'Austerity isn't working' is the rallying cry, or at least was, used by more left wing leaning politicians and man in the street unhappy with the George Osbourne had been dealing with the economy.  We now have a new chancellor of the exchequer, and it will be easy for him to distance himself from the past by simply stating 'no more austerity'.  Easy.  Except that the 'Austerity' label was simply that - a label, a convenient tag to attach to anything that would have been unpopular with the voters.  So all Phillip Hammond has to do if find a new catchy phrase to hang his policies on - something like 'anti-austerity package' that will bring over a few left wingers but there again it will upset the other side of the party.  So what to do?  Maybe steer clear of anything linked to the austerity word.  Watch this space.

The Whole Thing

I'm a big fan of Christmas pudding, and no matter how much I have consumed from the starter/first course, I always have room for Christmas pud.  My mother has a similar taste profile, so no doubting where I get the 'I like pudding' gene from.
Evidently, it's almost time to get mixing the sticky mixture so I'll be encouraging my good lady wife to get her mixing bowl out.

A dictionary of 50,000 surnames and their origins have been published so I eagerly read the article proclaiming this hoping to find a link where I could enter mine and get the result.  No such luck, although I could fill in a form for my local library to purchase a copy.  Pretty sure where mine comes from though - it's of Danish origin meaning hole.  Dark and damp, that's me.

Premier Noise.

I'm not a regular football match attender, although I have been to a few games over the years.  My local team (Grimsby Town) was a must go to when I was 16 after I started earning my first real wages.  It involved a 3 mile walk to the train station (unless I could bum a lift from my dad), a fairly short train journey and then a another mile to the ground.  When we got there, we would stand at the back of the Pontoon and  make as much noise as possible, which involved banging the corrugated sheet walls or stamping on the wooden terracing, both included shouting encouragement/abuse as appropriate throughout the game.
..so I was surprised to read that the Premier league have a problem with quiet crowds.  It seems that money, as usual, is the root of this evil.  More season ticket holders mean more fat cats attending which keeps the 'grass roots' fan (i.e. a poor people) out of the grounds who are more likely to be the noisy enthusiastic amongst the crowd.  I'm not sure how they can reverse this, as a full stadium is an owners dream, with or without noise.  Maybe they will have to resort to taped chanting/cheering/booing as used in TV sitcoms.

Ice Ice Baby

'It will be a success of titanic proportions' (or similar).  A very carefully thought out description that Boris Johnson used to describe the Brexit process.  Maybe it was a bit harsh, and not subtle enough, but got the headlines I guess he wanted.
The word titanic has certainly taken on a different meaning since her fateful voyage all those years ago.  Until the iceberg did the damage, titanic was just another adjective but will probably never go back to being just that.  It has a whole new meaning nowadays, and I expect other words associated with disasters yet to happen will suffer the same fate.  Hindenberg springs to mind as another word associated with disaster (albeit geographic not adjective) as is Aberfan and many others, but will we see another titanic-like event?  Not that I want anything to befall anyone, but accidents/incidents do happen.  Will we see a yet to be created huge aeroplane called Gigantic disappear in the Arctic or similar, thereby giving us another disaster of gigantic proportions?

Bit of a blogging break for me now - holidays for a week.

Very Admiral.

There's an intriguing article in today's paper about Admiral insurance using your social media posts to ascertain how big a risk you pose and therefore how much discount you will get on their insurance policies.
Whoever dreamt this up must has been watching too many films or is on some sort of medication.  I can't believe they actually think this is an accurate method to determine someone's driving profile.  Their algorithms are supposed to calculate how many times you 'dither' by using words like 'Maybe' or 'tonight' instead of 'x o'clock'.  What a load of tosh.  Watch out for an increase on Facebook profiles setup with the sole purpose of getting lower insurance premiums.

Sorely Missed

I'm rather relieved that my 31 day Runtober has come to an end - my legs are feeling quite sore and I would struggle to continue, so these folk who have long run streaks (commonly known as streakers) have my admiration.