Yearly Archives: 2006
Rant: Water Water Everywhere…
Over the last month, water companies across the south have been imposing hosepipe bans (and taking the opportunity to increase tariffs and press the Environment Agency, to approve compulsory water meter installation).
While it is certainly true that the last 9 months has been an unusually dry period and this, combined with a significant level of consumer waste has made a bad situation worse, the root cause of the problem is undeniably years of underinvestment in the water infrastructure.
+13Rant: What a Charlie!
The latest home office fiasco has demonstrated why Charles Clarke is earning his nickname: “Jockstrap” (because he is full of b*llocks).
Not content with inadvertently releasing over a thousand foreign prisoners, it’s now clear that the Home Office freed 288 foreign prisoners after they became aware of the problem last summer! In all, the home office released 1023 offenders between February 1999 and March 2006. They included those guilty of serious offenses including drug dealing, rape, murder and pedophilia.
+21Centrex site nominated for New Statesman award.
Just been told that the Centrex Website has been nominated for a New Statesman Award (Modernising Government category).
Might have meant a bit more to me if the boss had included me in the congrats memo (instead, in typical style the kudos included 2 other managers: one of whom was a permanent project obstacle and the other of whom did sod all!) – oh well – that’s a contractors lot I suppose…
+11Tony’s To Do List
A page from Tony’s diary
Pacific Tour Notes
Things to Remember:-
- Australia – Give pep talk to Howard’s “blokez” encouranging the Ozzies to stay on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
+13New eBay category: Labour Peerages
Welcome to eBay!
eBay Account: tonyandhiscronies
Item Number: L4B0URRL14R5
You are bidding on the right to make a substantial, unsecured loan to the UK Labour party, in exchange for nomination as a peer in the house of lords.
This is a rare opportunity to be part of a classic English institution, until death (or a colostomy bag blockage) takes you. Only a limited number of seats in the House of Lords are available*1 so bid now to avoid disappointment.
+14Rant: Guantanamo Bay – (way past) time to close it!
Here in the UK, at least one senior minister (Peter Hain) has also called for the camp to be closed and has intimated that Downing street is – at the very least – uncomfortable with what is happening in Guantanamo.
For the rest of the thinking population throughout the supposed “free world” Guantanamo has come to symbolise the worst hypocrisy of the current US administration.
+22Rave: Wire Daisies “Just Another Day”
Photo Credit: by Brian Marks CC-BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Having fallen out of touch with much of the UK music scene in the mid 90′s, (during the period I shudderingly refer to as “Clubbing and Remix Hell”) I’m enormously pleased to see the return of a growing number of original new bands emerging in a renaissance of the UK music industry.
Chief among my favourites has to be the Cornwall-based Wire Daisies. Their debut album “Just another Day” is a milestone in Indie music and rightly went straight into the iTunes charts in September 2004 when it was launched.
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