Fecking Politicians

It now emerges that our former Prime Minister is to be paid $5 million per year for his part time job with US investment bank JP Morgan. For this price the senior management at the firm will get the chance to meet him around four times a year to listen to his opinions on “world affairs”.

With both parties being coy about the exact amount and what the bank are getting for their money it is pretty hard to be definitive about what is going on.

Since leaving office he has “earned” £500,000 from lectures and a £5 million advance on his memoirs so he is in no way short of a bob or two. But I hear you say, the poor man has a £3.5 million mortgage on his mansion in London and a further £500,000 on two flats in Bristoi, not to mention the wife and kids to support.

All politicians leave me with a bad taste in the mouth, they get elected on promises about only wanting to serve the people but then they start to cash in with lucrative directorships, or consultancy roles either while still in office or after their departure.

What is the world needs is more Anarchism which is defined as “a doctrine urging the abolition of government or governmental restraint as the indispensable condition for full social and political liberty.”

Not convinced that it would work but it has got to be worth a try given what we all have to endure today.

Cider 102 - Thatchers Gold

Tastes better from the bottle than the can but this was the last of the Hogmanay stash and even from the can it tastes a lot better than all of the mass produced ciders.

Gold is what I would call Thacher’s quaffing cider, in bottled form it comes in at 4.8% abv and many a fine warm afternoon has been spent shooting the breeze with family/friends downing a few of these.

Out of the can it is a tad stronger (5.3% abv) but retains the same great taste and as with all of their fine produce contains no artificial flavourings or sweeteners.

As it says on the can it is medium dry and has a good taste of apples as it slides over the palate.

Don't Panic

A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is heading for a collision with the Milky Way! It is moving at a speed of 150 miles per second.

Fear not though, it will not hit us for 20 to 40 million years, phew what a relief. Read the full story here.

Sir Edmund Hillary

He died today at the age of 88 and for most people around the world will be remembered as the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest. After scaling the peak, he later told a fellow explorer at base camp: “Well George, we knocked the bastard off.”.

He was also the first man to climb that mountain and reach the South and North Poles.

He formed a life long bond with the people of Nepal and in that country will be remembered for the charity that he established in 1964. It has built more than 30 schools, set up clinics and hospitals, built bridges and airstrips all in a quest to improve the life or Nepalese people.

By all accounts he was a a quiet unassuming man and in a time when the word hero is applied all too casually this individual is one of the few to whom the term can be genuinely applied.

Hüsker Dü

Now it is time for some hardcore from one of my favourite eighties bands, once again I came across them through the late great John Peel and was blown away by their energy and also their lyrics.

They never achieved the success that their consistent body of work deserved but there can be little doubt that they influenced/inspired a number of bands who came after them.

First up is Could You Be The One (from their last release the double album Warehouse Songs and Stories) and that is followed by Makes No Sense At All.

Also own a few Bob Mould solo albums but that will make for another post at some future point.

Shopping Channel

A service provided for those readers interested in the height of fashion culled from today’s paper.

First up is an article on handbags for people with bags more money than sense.

And finally, we have the iTaser - listen while you stun (the Zappa reference in the music list is a caustic comment on his hair). Available in a "tasty" leopardskin print - to go with a matching handbag?

Trojan Box Sets

Think that I may have mentioned my 30+ years of infatuation with reggae/ska/rock steady or Jamaican music in general.

Anyone wanting to explore these amazing genres of music could start in no better place than Trojan’s fine box sets. Each one comes with 3 CDs by various artists and they are amazing value for money at around £10 over here or $22 in the US. Buy a couple and decide for yourself which artists that you like.



Or head on over to their web site here and select Trojan Radio and listen to some tracks for free. If you like dub music I can recommend Tommy McCook Meets The Aggrovator’s King Tubby Dub - a classic.

Tommy was a brilliant saxophone player and a founding member of the Skatalites, never heard of them then check this out. It opens with an interview with the great man himself, then has a ska track, another brief interview and closes with a rock steady number.

Sin City

Caught this movie again on Sunday night and was impressed at how good it looked on the small screen. Directed by Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Desperado etc etc) and Frank Miller it is based on the graphic novels of Frank Miller and features 3 separate story lines in the dark and looming city of the title.

It is shot mainly in black and white giving it a film noire look, but there are striking uses of colour throughout which beautifully highlight events. The stories are all pretty violent so this is not a movie for the squeamish, however it is well written and the violence is present to support the narrative.

Great central performances from Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke and Clive Owen are supplemented by a very strong supporting cast who are too numerous to mention but Elijah Wood’s cannibal portrayal is a real eye opener.

Here is the trailer for it.

The good news is that 2 sequels are currently in production and should appear next year.

Gratuitous Snow Pics

Had a couple of nights where it gone down to -10° C and there were a few instances of -3° C being reported at 4 PM by those of us with outside temperature devices in their cars. However in the main it was overcast and cold in the Easterly winds that seemed to prevail for most of our stay.

That is until we got to Thursday morning when it started to snow and must have dumped around 2 inches until it packed it in sometime in the late afternoon.

These three shots were taken on Friday morning after the others had set off on their journeys South.





Yes those are dog tracks in the snow, Big Sis was accompanied by their 15 year old black labrador who is one chilled out dog - the only time he gave me any trouble was on the two mornings when I had to persuade him that he really needed to move from in front of the log fire to go his bed in the cooler kitchen annex.



What is it with corporations and Easter? Popped into the off sales on Thursday evening and they had Easter eggs for sale on January 4th for fecks sake! When we challenged the sales assistant about this he had the good grace to look sheepish and muttered “nothing to do with us, we never asked for them they just got sent in with this weeks resupply”.

So one season closes and the build up to the next holiday commences, these companies just see these seasons as an opportunity to extract as much cash from consumers as they can before moving on to the next “sales opportunity”.

Back From The Hills

Made it back early yesterday evening after an interesting 10 hour drive, the main road South had been closed due to heavy snow and a white out the afternoon before. Driving in those conditions is very disorientating and not an experience I would care to repeat - I got lucky and temperatures rose overnight so all I had to face was 260 miles of heavy rain and standing water on the roads before I hit dry conditions for the last 300 miles.

A lot less scary than the trip up when I was slowing down for a roundabout at the end of the motorway and at 200 yards hit a mini lake which covered the windscreen with water, total loss of vision and while braking I was trying to remember how far in front the other car had been. Rain finally cleared around Birnam and as I cleared the top of the Drumochter pass the sun came out to welcome me home

Big Sis and husband, Hairy nephew and Irish Lass arrived on Saturday afternoon (West Country dudes bearing copious quantities of Thatchers cider products) to stay with me in our Mother’s house. Eldest Niece, partner and baby Lewis turned up to stay in their rented house at around the same time.

Hogmanay dinner was roast beef (cooked on the bone - no BSE fearing wussies here) and there were nine of us around the table. I laid the table and then Big Sis announced that we had no napkins, use kitchen roll I said so she artistically twisted them into the glasses.



Starting wine bottles are shown below, everyone enjoyed their meal and we were able to face the New Year in an almost sober state. An early morning finish to the celebrations followed but that was the pattern for the week until we hit everyone else’s last night on Thursday.



All in all a really fun week in the hills tempered only by the thought that it would be the last one spent in that house. The estate agent called us on the 31st asking if she could give someone a second viewing on the 2nd - that got kicked into touch due to the amount of debris we had generated coupled with the non existent mornings that some of us were having.