Boss Radio

You know how it is, you post an innocent opinion or comment on a website and someone thinks they should have a word or two with you about it, then someone else joins in to either defend you or point out where else you've gone wrong, and if you have any sense you never visit the website again and stay well out of it, but...

Yup, nowadays the website will keep writing to you to say that someone has commented on your post, or joined the discussion, or even glanced in the general direction of a computer that would display your original post if he or she should care to look for it, and the email provider always displays just enough of the message for you to think "By George, I must put this person straight immediately!", and there you are. In a discussion, and desperately trying to avoid it turning into an argument.

So, I got involved in a discussion...

And it was in the course of this discussion that someone opined that they could guess what my opinions on everything would be because I was a typical lefty labour party supporting woolly-hearted socialist. It was the "Hearted" bit that struck me, thus rendering me unable to forget the conversation. Did the poster really mean "Hearted", or did they really mean "Headed"?

I thought I should be told.

Alas I may never get an answer to that particular question as several people joined in predicting my opinions on everything. Some of them surprised me. I will happily admit that, all things being equal, you'll find me supporting the person, animal, insect, germ, plant, or inanimate object at the bottom of the pile, and if that makes me in anyway woolly, then woolly I shall be. Unfortunately my correspondents had run into my right-wing side.

One of them used the word "Virtually". Ooh, that's sooo annoying, 'virtually' is an underdog word.

'Virtually' started it's life as a superlative of 'absolutely', and 'absolutely' is a word which needs no superlative. Who needs a word meaning 'absolutely absolutely'? 'Absolutely' itself only survives by the skin of its teeth because it has other uses, albeit there are other words that duplicate those other uses (Like 'yes'), 'virtually' only survives because its mini-me and minimini-me, 'virtual' and 'virtue' do have their values.

So what has happened to poor old 'virtually'? Well it got caught up in biznis-speak. People were heard to say silly things like "This hospital is virtually germ-free", meaning "This hospital is absolutely absolutely germ free", or in other words "This hospital has not one germ on its floor space, not one crack or crevice has escaped our attention, you could crawl through our sewers and drink the water. All mice, cockroaches, rats and other vermin have been exterminated and their fleas vaporised, no bird will attempt to land upon our roof for fear of our thermo-nuclear deterrent, and we have guards on all doors lest any germ should attempt to sneak in disguised as a patient".

The problem being that we all knew it was a lie, firstly because we can only be sure we've killed all known germs and secondly because we know that those concerned in the interview are themselves walking germ hootenannies, and thus poor old 'virtually' was devalued into a management alternative to 'almost'. Nowadays virtually everyone uses it in that context.

Tell me you don't feel a bit sorry for it.

Judge-led enquiries? Please, pause whilst I scoff. Who needs judges when we have MPs?

There'll be Conservatives asking questions, they'll be the ones who are always bearing in mind that the banks fund 55% of their party. There'll be Labourites in full probe mode, always remembering in the back of their minds that these are the b@$#@£ds who sabotaged them right before an election. There will probably also be the odd Liberal or two trying to be incisive without upsetting anyone and always carrying the nagging knowledge that these are the guys who never gave them any money. And finally there may be a real minority candidate if they can find one, who will feel that they have something to prove and nothing to lose, and who will in any any case firmly believe that all bankers should be shot.

I can hardly wait.
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Not that judges would be any kind of guarantee of quality. For example, Crown v Levitt. Levitt was a 'businessman' arrested by the serious fraud office on charges of deception amounting to £65m. It also cost almost one and a half million quid to bring him to trial. Levitt cunningly agreed to plead guilty on a "Specimen charge", and was sentenced to, wait for it, 180 hours community service.

Two thugs, in an unprovoked attack, beat a young man senseless with an iron bar. For reasons known only to himself the judge decided not to send them to jail, the boy's father then swore at the judge and hit one of the men. The judge immediately sentenced the father to 3 months in prison. He might have gone harder on him were it not for the fact that he had less than a year to live due to terminal cancer.

The former owner of Walsall Football Club was found guilty of fraudulently acquiring £90m of the money investors had put into his company. The judge decided against prison because he said he'd received "Moving" letters from the man's friends and colleagues.

Ernest Saunders, former head of the Guinness liquid refreshment empire, was found guilty of theft, conspiracy, and false accounting. The trial set we-the-people back to the tune of £20m, in return for which we got him put away for two and a half years. Except that after 10 months he was released on the grounds of 'pre-senile dementia'. He suffered an instant recovery, trousered £150,000 tax-free from Guinness and jetted off to work as a consultant in Switzerland.

Roger Seelig, also a part of the Guinness scandal, didn't wait that long to get taken not well. We-the-people funded his defence, to the tune of $400,000. The judge then abandoned the trial because Seelig was apparently "Bewildered" and "Unable to think straight". So bewildered was he that he promptly landed a job as director of Norman Hay Ltd.

It's amazing what you pick up if you watch Have I Got News For You for long enough.

Jimmy Carr finally commented on the furore he caused, for just about long enough to call Cameron something beginning with 'C'.

He has something to complain about. According to Private Eye the reason he was picked on was probably that he was once at a social evening attended by then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He wasn't a friend, but he was a friend of someone who worked as a spin-doctor for the Labour party, and that was enough for his £3.3 million scheme to annoy the now-Prime Minister David Cameron, whilst Tory donor Gary Barlow's £26 million scheme seems to have escaped his notice.

But then, stuff like this does seem to escape Cameron's notice. Michael Ashcroft, who has invested around £10m in the Conservative party, is also a... well, supporter of tax havens, and previous Prime Minister Tony Blair moved his financial organisation's tax date back from 31st May to 31st March in 2010, thus avoiding making an unwanted acquaintance with the 50% tax rate.

They're all in it together.


Where would this blog be without 'I' and 'Private Eye'? I might have to start thinking for myself or something.

I've got a simple scheme when it comes to keeping the old petrol tank fed, fill it to burping once every 400 miles. For the last two days I've been driving mum around and about enjoying the summer-tease, and all over the place there are idiots 'topping up' their tanks. There's been at least one punch up, and a roundabout jammed by people queuing on it in the wrong direction, and hardware stores are selling out of jerry-cans which people are filling and storing at home

They're doing it because idiot politicians, including the prime minister, told them to. Unite, the union representing fuel delivery drivers, has taken a vote to strike and the result was a fairly large yes. OH NO! DON'T PANIC!! EVERYONE FILL YOUR TANKS, PUT ON YOUR SAFETY HELMETS, HUNKER DOWN IN THE BUNKER AND TRY TO LOOK NORMAL!!!

There are only two available explanations for this inexplicable behaviour.

1/ The entire conservative side of the government have absolutely no idea of how the anti-strike legislation their predecessor passed, works.

2/ They're deliberately trying to scare us into thinking that Trades Unions are run by satan and his minions.

Having taken the strike ballot the union now has to declare the dates of the strike, giving at least 7 day's notice. Since at the moment the union/employer negotiations haven't even started, it seems unlikely that they will be declaring any dates just yet. I'm guessing that anyone topping up their their tank right about now will have used it up long before the shirt hits the farn.

Of course, it is just possible, with the recession recovery plan currently in reverse gear, that the chancellor of the exchequer is trying to squeeze a little more cash out of us. All those cars wasting petrol driving around in search of somewhere that can sell them some more, then queuing up, burning more of their valuable juice, must be bringing in quite a useful little windfall.

Listen guys. Stop it. Now. Trust me, I'm not a politician.

Norman Lamont (Conservative) dreamt up the Public/Private Partnership, confusingly referred to as PFI, but the idea was pinched by New Labour. Nothing new there then.

Gordon Brown thought it was a great idea and went on a spending spree. Actually, 'Spending spree' isn't quite correct since it didn't cost him anything. Private companies would build and maintain infrastructure that the public purse would normally cough up for (Hospitals, schools, libraries...) and the organisations using that infrastructure would pay them rental and maintenance. After 30-35 years the buildings would become public property. What's not to love?

The Liberals had always found plenty not to like about PFIs, and the Tories pretty quickly came to agree with them (About as long as it took for them to be replaced in government by New Labour, coincidentally). Both of the Cleggaron were scathing in their attacks on the system, and the public and the press agreed.

About the only good thing you could say about Brown's PFI offensive was that it happened during a period when interest was low, inflation was low, and like it or not, Brown was keeping the economy on an even keel for longer than any other chancellor before him had ever managed, and might still be if he'd had the sense not to challenge the Peter Principle and step up into the top job.

Imagine my surprise then, when I discovered that the coalition are to sign off even more PFIs this year than Brown had. It seems they've changed their minds. PFIs are a great idea again.

No they're not. Especially at a time when the loan rate is gastronomical (It's eating money...). Governments can always borrow money at lower interest than private companies, and with the economy in this condition the 'private' half of the agreement is going to have to charge swingeing rental rates just to cover the interest payments.

Still, the coalition needn't worry. The real beauty of the PFI is that you get it today, you pay for it later. It's a gigantic hire-purchase scheme. They'll be long gone by the time the brown smelly stuff hits the twirly thing.