Phone fatigue

Whereas a few years ago...

...the urge to throw my mobile into the ground and stamp down on it hard would be around a weekly occurrence, it is now a feeling I'm getting at least once a day.

Either phone manners and common sense have evaporated almost entirely, or I'm now so tired and grumpy that I'm constantly on a razor-edge, or both.

If it isn't giving me cancer of the ear or the brain through all the microwave radiation, it's significantly sapping my will to live.

Just when...

...there's thousands of people in real distress through extreme weather events, just when an area that has twenty or more cyclones a year is saying that they've never seen the likes of what's just hit them, some of the major players in climate change are revising their targets. Downwards, in terms of the improvements they were looking to achieve.

Our minister or secretary of state or whatever he is for the environment is in the pocket of the GM lobby and out shooting badgers of a night.

There's a great article in the paper...

...written by an intern earning a few quid in the evenings serving tables. She was at the Lord Mayor of London's do, where our prime minister somehow, between starter, fish and meat courses, pudding and cheeses, all with wines, and finished with desert wine, port, brandy and whisky, managed to squeeze in a speech made standing in front of a gold-plated chair.

About austerity. The speech was about austerity.

Or, in layman's terms, about why mugs like me are going to have to work until we fall over to bail out their mates that actually pull the strings and decide what goes on.

Cheers, Dave. Easy to have a work ethic when you're trousering millions a year in wages and bonuses and the taxpayers will stand you a huge pension.

The All Blacks on Saturday

The biggest game of 2013. Now, I always want England to smash them out of sight. For a number of reasons:

• They're like an international Mn United, always on the receiving end of helpful refereeing decisions, yet always bemoaning their lot.
• They cheat. As much or more so than anyone else, yet have these media-invented haloes. See the spear tackle that ruled Brian O'Driscoll out of the Lions Tour and Zinzan Brooke's uncanny ability to change his stride pattern in order to stamp on an opponent's ankle.
• The haka. By all means have your silly dance and shout, but if that's your choice, omit the national anthem. Time for opponents, particularly at home opponents, to say “sorry guys, no time for that baloney, let's get on with the game”.