Word reaches my little outpost that the holder of a British Passport was acknowledged last night as having given a good performance as someone who doesn't. The implication being that the country should rejoice en masse; this is not a view to which I subscribe, unless the non-holder of the British Passport has declared a public holiday? Please let me know if this is the case as I wouldn't want to miss out. Has anyone asked Colin Welland his view on this achievement? From what I understand the film industry in this country is the beneficiary of significant tax breaks which is something I have never quite understood. It was not so long ago that when the car industry in the Midlands was getting flushed and the heirs of Thatcher wanted to chuck some cash at it, hands were thrown up and the big, bad bogey man of Brussels, and his legislation, were trotted out as the reason that this was impossible, yet these self aggrandising freaks continue to have their paws in the tax honey pot. I suspect that I would miss cars just a little more than I would miss films and whilst I don't know a single one, I would miss car workers far more than artificial contructs that inhabit celeb lists A-Z generated by the ability to, eventually, do the job they are paid to do. No retakes in my job. No tax breaks either.

Not posted recently, mainly because if I was being honest in posting my feelings over the past couple of weeks it would have been little more than a stream of obscene invective, aimed mostly at Microsoft. Bought a new PC, very tasty piece of kit, Athlon 64x2, 2 Gb RAM, 320 Gb SATA II hard drive. Came with XP Media Centre installed, but I was ready with my Vista upgrade DVD. The upgrade process is about 3 hours and it failed 4 times, couldn't install it side-by-side, wouldn't allow be to partition so in the end I had to do a clean install. So it's all running fine now, for about the next two weeks unless I can find a phone number for MS as when I try to activate it online it tells me I can't because I've got the upgrade version and I can't do a clean install, already spent plenty of time chasing a phone number in addition to the failed upgrade attempts. I hope when I do find one it will be an automated process because otherwise I know that when some MS cubicle monkey tells me I can only upgrade I will have to explain that I can't because the MS designed upgrade process won't fucking work!!!!

Novastor's backup software doesn't work despite claimimg to be 'Vista ready', and Paragon don't have a Vista compatible version of Partition Manager available either.

Between them they are really taking the edge off getting the new machine.

Off to Iraq then H, want to be a proper soldier?  OK, fair enough but what is the nature of the threat, do fleeting thoughts cross your mind just as you are slipping off to sleep?  Could you be exposing yourself to 'a fate worse than death', the ultimate conclusion being death but the prologue being 'worse than'?  I'm sure everyone knows the scenario, being captured, physically and mentally abused, paraded in the media and ultimately dispatched.  It would certainly be costing me sleep but I would also be considering the contingency planning for this eventuality.  I think it's fair to assume that somewhere in the squad you are to command there will be someone with special forces training, either known to you or not, maybe more than one.  How will they be briefed?  Will one of these be sanctioned to carry out the ultimate 'blue on blue' in the event of inevitable capture?  Who knows but it would be enough to have me reaching for the mogadon.

Watch your back.

Just a quick missive to Messrs. Woolmer and Moody and the people who bump their gums on their behalf . The last time I checked there was no England coaching vacancy. Both very good coaches, Woolmer has done a very good job with Pakistan and I’m sure Moody would make a good England coach also but until the present incumbent walks or is pushed; shut the fuck up.

The award for the obscure alchemy of being so lightweight as to make helium appear as osmium goes to Jeremy Vine! Congratulations Mr Vine, what do you have to say? No, forget that, I have no interest whatsoever in what you have to say.

I have been vaguely disappointed by Jezza, the sub-Paxmanesque Newsnight retread, and his lunchtime Radio 2 show for quite sometime but usually exercise the simple censorship of tuning to another radio station but yesterday I tried to stick with it as he was having the benefit of a visit from a cabinet minister bestowed upon him, one Patricia (‘Pat’ as she was familiarly referred to in a number of trails) Hewitt. This was a mistake on my part as the irritation factor soared to previously undreamt of levels, initially with Hewitt, but then quickly with Jezza as he as he failed, miserably and signally, to nail the asinine responses she provided to virtually every question posed.

The absolute best bit of Jezza’s show is the when he turns up, to pimp his offering, at about 11.30 on Ken Bruce’s show and attempts to bandy words with Bruce. Coming out at the small end in a battle of wits with Bruce should really tell me all I need to know. During the puff for his interview with ‘Pat’ he was moved, with unexpected prescience, to observe, whilst asking listeners to phone in, that their questions were so much better than his. D’yer think? You didn’t have any fucking questions worthy of the name!

I am aware of the heritage of the time slot he inhabits, it was previously occupied by one Jimmy Young, the man who wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to a gerbil let alone a politician, but I was expecting just a little more than the puerile, populist pap Jezza continues to pedal.

So the interview starts and Vine smarms and fawns over this woman as if he’s hoping that he can ingratiate himself to the point where she will leap across the desk and sit on his face. This would have made for great radio as it would have shut up at least one of them. The calls come in, reasonable and reasoned questions for the most part, which generally receive an answer clearly designed as a response to some completely different question or the stock response, ‘the final decision has not yet been made’. So will you be coming back on the show when it has? No? I didn’t think so. She’s very proud of the recruitment of 85000 nurses since 1997 and equally proud that the NHS has been at the forefront of the development of techniques and procedures that mean time spent in hospitals has been slashed, and therefore the number of beds required. Oh and the number of nurses. If there is a problem with a specific hospital then it is not as a result of her policy but that of the local PCT. PCTs that have been funded at unprecedented levels she is at pains to point out ad nauseum but fails to mention that they are obliged to fund pay settlements and PFI initiatives at equally unprecedented levels. GPs are openly saying that they screwed HM Govt. (and we humble taxpayers) with their last deal so we know that they feel like pigs in shit and don’t care if they get another rise during the life of this parliament or not. She was allowed to get away with it when asked about the removal of weekend cover with the response that ‘we paid them all more not to do it and paid those who will do it even more’!! That’s OK then. If you kick up because you can’t get an appointment then ‘Pat’ with withhold a small payment in respect of some ‘patient satisfaction’ metric. Er, hello, if they don’t care about their patients not getting through to them now, why are they going to care after you have taken away a few of their beans? They are rolling in it and know it. How is having less money going to encourage them to employ more staff or upgrade their phone systems.

I endured the bullshit, smarm and twaddle for about 25 minutes until, for fear of starting to bleed out of my eyes, the usual censorship tool had to be applied.

Lightweight.