Grombles

Have just been listening to the BBC trying to squeeze the last ounce of opinion out of a bored and disinterested public about the chancellor's Autumn Statement - or budget as we used to call it. One mother in Huddersfield said something which goes right to the heart of the difficulty we're in and the problem we face in the next general election. She said "There's nothing in it for me. It's their debt they're trying to reduce, not mine." And there's the problem. In fact two problems. Firstly she expects all budgets to have 'something in it for her'. Benefits good, tax bad. The second issue is that the average voter does not understand that it's her government. Her state. Her debt. I was half expecting something like 'it's the bankers fault, let them pay it off'. Pointless trying to explain public finance to her. All she knows is how much money she personally has and how far it will stretch. Fair enough. Most people can't t...

I have just received this 'viral' email: The Real Miss America There's a Proud Papa out there somewhere. This 19 year old ex-cheerleader now an Air Force Security Forces Sniper, was watching a road in Pakistan that led to a NATO military base when she observed a man digging by the road. She engaged the target (she shot him). It turned out he was a bomb maker for the Taliban, and he was burying an IED that was to be detonated when a U.S. patrol walked by 30 minutes later. It would have certainly killed and wounded several soldiers. The interesting fact of this story is the shot was measured at 725 yards. She shot him as he was bent over burying the bomb. The shot went through his rectum and into the bomb which detonated and he was blown to pieces. The Air Force made a motivational poster of her. (Folks, that's a shot 25 yards longer than seven football fields) and the last thing that came out of his mouth ..... was his ass! If You Can Not Stand Behind Our Tr...

Kicking the back of my seat in aircraft, at concerts and especially at rugby matches. The bastard behind me knows I'm getting really angry, doesn't he. Do they have to bribe their kids to keep it up for so long? Mate - what's wrong with "Darling, please don't kick the seat in front of you. The man in front is about to rip your little head off'"? Slow drivers. I've just sat through 4 hours of a Hampshire police sponsored Driver Awareness course explaining why it's bad to speed (it was my wife's fault I was there... Minutes after I unwisely and inexcusably told her to 'shut up' over a small tiff, I went through a speed camera I hadn't spotted. 'Didn't you see it?' she asked. 'No. Why didn't you warn me?'. 'You told me to shut up...'. Doh.). Back to slow drivers. They're dangerous because I might die of neural atrophy if I can't get past them. The irony is that while I'm risking another s...

If young people can't find work locally, they need to look further afield - as previous generations have always done. But they can't afford to drive and they can't afford to leave their parents' homes. Something has to change. I've just returned from a Driver Awareness course. Hampshire police offered it to me as an alternative to 3 points and a £60 fine (despite the course costing £85). In true Grombler fashion I have to report it was plainly my wife's fault I got caught. We'd had a small row whilst I was driving with her in the passenger seat. I might have told her to 'shut up' or something like that. After the speed camera had gone off she piped up "I thought you'd seen it. I did". "Well why didn't you bloody well warn me?"... "You told me to shut up".... Wife 2, Grombler -£85. Unbelievably for the first time in 40 years of driving I am the proud possessor of a totally clean license (although it's only...

I've blogged before about this, but now Sir Howard Davis (appointed to oversee government analysis and recommendation)  is about to read my blog, I thought I'd better bring it up to date. So in case you missed it, here's the earlier post . My plan is simple. It can be actioned immediately (not in 20 years after countless enquiries and consultations). It needn't cost anything. And at a stroke it instantly starts boosting our sorely needed export drive. Why is this so urgent? Because the people we want to export to can't get here by direct flights (but they can get to most of our competitors in Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and New York). And we can't quickly and cheaply get to them. Do you remember the brilliant British Airways ad where a British businessman is talking by phone to a prospect in New York who is flicking through a document and making positive noises. The call ends and the Brit excitedly announces to the team clustered around him "he liked ...

Should have listened to the wife. "Buy an iPad" she says. "No", says I, "Androids are more popular so why spend £600 on an iJobs that's incompatible with the rest of the world when I can spend £150 on a tablet that's faster and does everything any iJobs can do - and it's part of Google not Jobble". Big mistake! (But don't tell her) We'd already experimented with a Samsung Galaxy Android phone and gave up trying to sync it with Outlook (let alone get it to dial a phone number). Everything seemed deliberately hidden behind fiddly little pictures and horrible little icons that suggested nothing. Swiping and clicking and dragging and tossing in the air and shaking it and using a combination of feet, hands and shouting at it to see if there was some hidden control to make it do things I thought it might, drove us mad. We sent it back to Vodafone and paid over the top, again, for another iJobs. But I wasn't going to be sucked into a...

I clicked on my iGoogle bookmark. Instead of the usual array of bits and pieces, I got this: Seems openness can backfire sometimes.