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Showing posts from 2010

Our universities aren't a cost, they're an opportunity

Cameron has stated that we need to value our universities as export opportunities. He's absolutely right! So why are they still facing cuts and other economic strictures? Why aren't we pouring money into them to help them expand as any other great export potential instead of starving them of what they need to grow? British universities, and indeed other world-famous academic institutions like many of our 'public' schools, boast at least 800 years of history. Oxford and Cambridge in particular are in the world's Top 5 places to send the planet's youth. Entry competition is fierce. In pure business terms demand vastly exceeds supply. I have heard stats like 400 applicants for every place offered. So in business terms again that means there's a massive market for high quality education. BUT BRITISH PEOPLE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PAY FOR IT LIKE FOREIGNERS CAN. The 'fairness' of our system of selection requires everyone to be judged on merit alone, which

Lottery provider restricted from selling other services

I've just read that Camelot have been prevented from selling other services through their terminals. Now I realise that they were given the ability to connect virtually every newsagent / supermarket etc in the country because they were appointed by the government to provide the national lottery. Consequently if they offer anything else down the same tube, their competitors might squeal 'unfair'! But that's life! Our roads are in the mess they're in because no-one has forced service providers to share the trenches and conduit they lay. Consequently the same holes are being dug and re-dug to lay water, sewerage, gas, electricity, and comms cables without any attempt to coordinate using the same people, holes and trunking to multi-task. Why can't a water pipe also carry a comms or power cable? So here we are with a national online retailing infra-structure, paid for by the lottery-using British public, which is prevented BY LAW from being used for any other serv

Football is boring

I need to gromble about football. It's boring! Having just slept through my second 90 minute England game, I've discovered a way to make the experience marginally more bearable. Live pause the programme, and play at double speed after about an hour of pause. Many advantages: You get no sound. No bloody vuvuwhatevers (sounds like your living rooms been attacked by bees). No pratt telling you 'if only they'd score more goals, they'd be winning'. No loud-mouthed lout on the pitch giving the ref a hard time. No gum-chewing expletives from an overpaid foreign manager on the sidelines. No ads... fast forward even faster through them. Even the one that flashed on our screen during England's only goal against the USA. Brilliant timing!  No wankers at half time lolling about on sofas telling us who's having a good or bad game (we can bloody see for ourselves). And most importantly, the players look a lot more skillful while the ball itself travels FASTER. A

Grom's first gromble

When you reach 55, you realise most of your life, by any stretch of the imagination or medical marvel, is more than half gone. Now that's something to be pissed off about immediately. Bugger - what's ahead of me is less than what I've just done, and that doesn't seem like a fat lot. So my blogs are not going to be about what I had for breakfast or what I think about England's footballers (twats), they're going to be rants about things that piss me off and that need to change QUICK before I shuffle off this mortal coil... or worse, drool. Grombler? Surely a mishtake. My kids (ungrateful buggers) call me the Grom (Grumpy Old Man). No matter that pedantically I should be a GOM not a GROM, I kind of like it. It sounds pissed off. So a grom, grombles about things. Actually I think I'm a jolly positive sort of chap. I like funny stuff (although most stuff that purports to be funny, ain't). I laugh at most things (pisses off Americans mainly - good sport!)