Death of Detroit an evolutionary necessity?

The so-called ‘Big three’ (Ford, GM and Chrysler) have gone to Washington, cap in hand begging for a bailout and it looks like Washington has said no.
There have been many irate bloggers questioning why it is fair to bailout finance companies but not the auto industry. Personally I think, hard though it is, the most [...]

Deal or No Deal as Religion

The UK version of ‘Deal or no Deal’ strikes me as a perfect allegory to explain why people cling to religion despite it making not a jot of difference to their lives. So bear with me and imagine one episode of Deal or No Deal is an entire life.
BECOMING A BELIEVER
At random a contestant is [...]

Image versus Reality

Much has been written recently about the ’scam’ called Lapland New Forest. This was where an enterprising family set up a Winter Wonderland theme park attraction and charged everyone £25 to get in. Sadly the image the park had projected did not match up to the reality and this led to some very angry punters.
The [...]

Rewarding sleaze – Mandelson returns to British cabinet

Peter Mandelson has been invited back into the fold of British politics by PM Gordon Brown. The move has surprised many observers as it is common knowledge that Brown and Mandelson fell out in 1994.
Mandelson is currently serving as an EU trade commissioner and is not an MP. To take up the post Mandelson has [...]

Financial Bailout take 2

A reader wrote to me (yes I have a reader) and asked what I thought of the second version of the Bill to tackle America’s financial woes (Thanks Juniper44!)
I have spent some time poring over the revised legislation and of particular interest to me is Section 503 whch reads:
“Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden [...]

Dear America

Dear America
As your father I feel I must write to ask you about some of your recent behaviour. I have heard from some of your friends (Bumped into Canada in the wine shop the other day, lovely chap) that you might be going a bit off the rails.
He told me you are hiring private security [...]

End of the world on Monday

Monday will see the activation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and, if the nutters are right, will cause the immediate and total destruction of the world. I hope it’s after lunch.
The LHC is a massive particle accelerator built under the France-Switerland border. Atoms (presumably snails and cheese atoms) are propelled 27 miles in underground [...]

No going back

Just looking at the calendar and it has been a whole year since I packed in the 9 to 5 (or 8 ’til 8 to be accurate) and took some time out for myself. Soon I will have to get back into the mainstream of society and do things like work, pay a mortgage etc. [...]

West side story

Tonight the WoH and I walked half the length of manhattan, in the dark at 10pm at night. Now, we have watched a lot of TV and movies where New York is depicted as a city where stepping outside will get you knifed by a drug crazed hobo. So why take this huge risk?
Well NY [...]

I’d like to thank…

We are more than halfway through our trip now and I thought it timely to issue a vote of thanks to all those who have helped make it so ’special’.
First of all my eternal gratitude goes to SCREAMING CHILD and your faithful companion IDIOT MOTHER who have gone everywhere with us on our trip round [...]