Britain leaves the Gold standard

Two moments today sum up the Brit attitude to failure.

Zara Philips told us, after our failure to win Gold in the horsey thing, that she was chuffed for her horse. Who gives a monkey’s about the horse?! Where is the gold?

Then, down at the pool in the evening, Caitlin McClatchey, having just come as good as last in a final, smiled a big broad smile and told us how great the crowd was and how much fun she’d had! Fun!? You want fun, go to Alton Towers! Where’s the gold!?

Olympic drug testing targets athletes with enhanced performances

No danger of Team GB getting tested then!

Olympic Holidays

As the Olympics get closer to London; I'm busting out of the city to the great wilderness beyond internet access points. I will get back in  time to enjoy my one and only Olympic event, Korea vs Gabon in the football at Wemberley. I expect to return to bedlam: cyclists and taxi drivers having it out in the Olympic lanes; american tourists barking orders for directions at humble Londoners. 'I WANT THE SAILING'; I WANT THE ARCHERY'; WHERE IS THE HANDBALL?!;  (Sorry, but that's how you guys ask for directions); snivelling members of TEAM GB pouring it all out to Gary Lineker as to why they failed to get past the qualifying heats. Lord Coe making excuses.
Actually, I hope to return to find that all those unsold tickets have been given away to school kids.

Olympic Football Tickets Giveaway.

The government, I mean, LOCOG, has withdrawn 500,000 Olympic football tickets from sale that have not moved. They will,instead, reduce the capacity of the grounds. That will make a huge difference! I am concerned that the capacity of the match I am watching, between two less well known footballing nations, will be decreased to two – my mate and I. Unless you lop half the stands off and slap a roof on what’s left, the referee’s whistle is going to echo around the ‘reduced capacity’ ground for infinity – he/she will only have to blow once for kick off and the players will stop every 10 seconds thinking he/she has blown for yet another free kick.

Fill the grounds instead! Be bold! They are plenty of people who have been excluded from these games, deliberately or otherwise:  the urban poor who won’t get near a visa card in their life; the ‘immigrant population’ everyone likes to blame for everything and who probably don’t feel too welcome but do the shit jobs; youth clubs etc, etc. Why not distribute these tickets to them so that the grounds get full of excitement and apprehension and awe! Make everyone feel included instead!

GS4 in their own words

In case you were looking for some door security for Junior’s birthday party...

GS4

Who We Are

G4S is the world's leading international security solutions group

With operations in more than 125 countries and 657,000 employees, we specialise in outsourced business processes and facilities in sectors where security and safety risks are considered a strategic threat.

·         From risk assessment to delivery, we work in partnership with governments, businesses and other organisations to provide integrated solutions to security challenges.

·         We protect rock stars and sports stars, people and property, including some of the world’s most important buildings and events. 

·         From advising on stadium building plans to crowd control and ensuring event tickets are not forged; 

·         From delivering pay packets to ensuring ATMs have enough cash to meet your shopping needs; 

·         From delivering cash to bank branches and retail outlets to managing the flow of cash for central banks and major retailers; 

·         From ensuring travellers have a safe and pleasant experience in ports and airports around the world to secure detention and escorting of people who are not lawfully entitled to remain in a country;

In more ways than you might realise, G4S is securing your world. 

But read on ....

Did you know...

Our ancestor, Night Watch Services (later Night Guards) started up with four guards on bicycles in 1935.

Today, G4S has more than 650,000 employees worldwide.

Yes, indeed, GS4, ignoring the other 649,996 employees, had secretly planned to get away with sending just a four man team on bikes to the Olympics.

Is it any wonder though that GS4 had problems recruiting? – look at the pay they offer:

Youth Care Worker I

Return to Search Results

Job Reference: G4S/TP/123328/133
Number of Positions: 2
Job Category: Other
Contract Type: Full Time
Salary: $1 - $1

Location: Palmetto, FL
G4S Region: Americas
Country:United States

G4S Business Unit:Youth Services
Closing Date: 13/08/2012

Heathrow Border Nightmare Queues

If they think the queues at Heathrow are bad, they should try getting a tube ticket or travel card on the underground at a mainline station. Tourists can spend their entire holiday down there.

The reason that Immigration control at LHR and other big airports is that there is no money to be made out of this aspect of the Olympics. Everything else has an official partner - even Heathrow is an Official supplier to London 2012. Rio Tinto Zinc are the official provider of metal for the Olympic medals; Glaxo SmithKline are official providers of laboratory services to the games – this is the company that has recently been fined three billion dollars after trying to sell anti depressants to children.

What Immigration Control needs is a sponsor – and good staff – and in a hurry. Take the customer service team from a suitably firm but fair company and shove them in the little boxes to confront the tired masses from abroad – front line staff, perhaps, from an operation used to big queues of abusive, abused customers.  DWP offices? DSS office? Nah. What we need at LHR and LGW etc are Natwest Bank staff! UK Immigration sponsored by Natwest!

Legal challenge to Olympic missile sites. Who was Fred Wigg?

Council tenants will go to court over the plans to turn the roof of Fred Wigg Tower into a missile launcher. They say they were not consulted properly. The British government has a history of not consulting interested parties properly. When Britain occupied and then ruled India, large parts of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East there had been no public consultation with the occupants of the these countries. There had been no public hearing whereby plans had been put on display at the local council offices and opinions of the local ‘stakeholders’ had been canvassed. There were no twee models showing the intended forts etc. 

Under their tenancy agreements, the tenants of the tower, themselves, would not be able to put their own personal missile launchers on the roof without permission from the borough. Any missile launchers erected on the roof without written authorisation from the council would have to be removed. 
But, who was Fred Wigg?

Murray beaten by Marray!

Would you believe it!? After all that drama on Friday! Andy Murray’s mint performance over Tsonga set Muzza up to be the first male Brit to reach a Wimbledon Tennis final since Austin who lost in the final 74 years ago. It was then calculated, overnight, that the last Brit champ was Freddie Perry, 76 years ago and that the last time a Brit won anything worth talking about – a Grand Slam title – was that same title back in 1936, when a house cost tuppence and they had never heard of T in The Park. There is it Andy: no pressure! It is all there for you – history to be made; time to turn the table, put Britain back on the podium! You are there to wipe away ’74 years of hurt’, except, unfortunately you’re not. Your thunder was stolen at the very last minute by a Jonathon Marray who won the Men’s Doubles Final last night – not by himself of course but with a great Dane. Less pressure is handy, Andy!

Offices to let

W12, Central London 20 mins on underground, fast motorway nearby, big shopping centre just down the road.
Please send a stamped addressed envelope.

Goal line technology

To be frank, I do not understand why Goal Line Technology (GLT) is taking such a long time to sort out. The reason there is such a demand for GLT is because we actually already have GLT. The reason we know that Lamps’ 'ghost' goal against Germany in 2010 was in was because of the GLT we have been using for several years – TV camera and action replays. TV crews are at every Premier League match and pundits waffle on an on doing graphics over perfectly adequate clips in the highlight shows.

In any case, whatever system is adopted, Goal Line Technology should be collectively known as Lampard. In future, when there is a dispute during a match, the referee will stop the game and have a quick word into his microphone and instruct the fourth official to take a look at the Lampard. League matches will have the Standard Lampard. For poor visibility the enhancements of the Fog Lampard system will compensate. In anticipation of this I have just added Lampard to my Word user dictionary. 

England's schools 'letting down brightest pupils'

This is awfully dreadful news. According to a study a very low percentage of teenagers in England attain the highest level of maths compared to other rich countries. The consequent lack of adding up, timesing and dividing skills must go some way to explain why our banking system is full of nincompoops as they do a lot of sums in banks. 

The Shard viewing platform: £24.95 - cheap at twice the price.

Adults will be able to take in the spectacular breath-taking in views of London from the Shard for only £24.95.  Some blubbering losers have claimed this is pricey especially when the Eyeful Tower in France costs £11. The reason that is so cheap is that you only have views over Paris which is a rubbish place. But, what does £24.95 buy you these days?

Money, money, money.

To many disgruntled shareholders out there, hiding anonymously behind their Chubb alarm systems, the Barclays and Glaxo fines are unjust. Capitalism didn’t get us where it has without breaking a few eggs. It is ruthless. We kill animals for meat. We legitimately obliterate massive forests, dredge the oceans and fill the atmosphere with toxins.  It is the business end of business with a lot of shirt pulling and holding going on in the box often unseen or unpunished. When push comes to shove, Capitalism and the pursuit of profit has no space on board for morality. If we let morality get in the way, we’d still be mooching about in fig leaf undies looking for berries. Except that is not what the disgruntled shareholder thinks. They are just pissed off they aren’t gonna get some more money.

Glaxo fined £1.9 billion by US government.

GalxoSmithcline Beecham: another great British company extolling the values of proper British people. They go into Team GB, representing upstanding Britishness alongside Barclays, Boyle and Carr. 2012 was a year for showing off Britain to the world and, boy, Glaxo has really shown us up for what we are. Andrew Witty, Glaxo’s CEO said, "We have learnt from the mistakes that were made,". Perhaps he refers to the mistake of getting caught. Glaxo have also said that they’ll pay the fine out of cash resources.  Could it be that they have all this cash in the bank because of other recent upstanding behaviour? They have avoided paying loads of tax by being ‘lent’ billions by a subsidiary in Luxembourg in a scheme not too dissimilar to the one enjoyed by Carr. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17993945).

Jersey

Jersey: a tasty potato, a comfy jumper and, as we all now know, a tasty and comfy hidey hole for your never-to-be-paid income tax. In the real-life documentary that followed real life detective Bergerac about his detecting business, the policeman would regularly be dealing with all tax avoiding Brits eating potato based meals whilst wearing chunky knit jerseys. Jersey is not to be confused with Cardigan, a place in Wales, or Maris Piper but it can be confused with the Bahamas, Luxembourg, Cayman Islands etc.

Jersey is an island just off the south coast of England in France, close to St. Malo, and, along with Sark and Guernsey, could well be the Malvinas of the future. The island is a British Crown Dependency and enjoys all the benefits of being a part of the United Kingdom except that it isn’t. Likewise it enjoys all the benefits of being in the EU except that it isn’t. While participating in free trade with the EU, it is not covered by the EU’s rules and regulations for Financial Services that apply to, off the top of my head, money laundering or the movement of capital. And, it keeps all those benefits to itself with it an immigration policy similarly inconsistent with that of the EU. Of course its citizens enjoy passport free goings and goings in the Common Travel Area (The British Isles and Eire).

Jersey is particularly disposed to people with lots of money and hence it is great for celebrity spotting. In fact a very common sight on the island is a top comedian laughing all the way to a bank.

Shareholders

Vince Cable has accused shareholders of banks for being negligent. He has suggested they need to get a stronger grip as the UK banking system is rife with incompetence and corruption. Cable is referring to the liars in Barclay's orchestrating rates (libor) – specifically LIBOR. Shareholders, while collectively owning a business, are not individually liable for financial misconduct of the board. Cable is either very naive or thinks every reading his analysis is gullible. He says the fine will be passed onto customers and shareholders. Hardly. The latter will just receive a lower dividend – they won’t have to pay back the dividends they were paid when the bank was profiteering from the ruse.

Do shareholders care about how a business is run when their only interest is the dividend? Profit is generated by a variety of good and bad means. Barclays has been revealed in the last few years to have generated profits by mis-selling insurance and now by manipulating LIBOR. Other companies off load employees to retain profitability while oil companies get up to all kinds to keep the profits flowing. Any headline in the business sections about companies bending the rules belies the fact that shareholders will have benefitted. There are shareholders in high profile multinationals that have bought shares so as to attend the AGMs so that they can deliver an attack on the activities of the company. They are few and between.

Shareholders only care about their investment and return. They will watch companies – such as Cadbury’s -get sold off to make a killing on the buyout. Their only issue with Barclay's right now is the share price.