A Monday Curate's Egg

Remember Professor Colin Pillinger, he of the unsuccessful Beagle 2 Mars Lander? Here’s a picture of him:


Poor bugger has gone and contracted MS and is in a wheelchair now. Well anyway, I was watching Jackson Browne’s Glastonbury session on the TV on Sunday afternoon and spotted him in Browne’s backing band.


The session went better than the Beagle 2 mission.

I suppose I must pass comment on the England Germany match yesterday. Hideous, wasn’t it? I thought it was going to start like the famous 39-45 match, but it was not to be. Is it possible that the England team is having too many celebrity dinners, too many shopping trips and has lost the discipline that teams of yesteryear had? Oh well – best forget about it and hope Holland can rescue the family honour.

I’m not a football guru, but I’m firmly of the opinion that one should always ensure one is playing for the side that scores the most goals – you may disagree, but I'm convinced it's the only way to win.

Manual cars! Why do they exist? I really cannot understand why people actually want to sit there playing with a gearbox when driving – it’s distracting and certainly has the potential to make texting extremely dangerous.

Here’s an idea I thought of over the weekend. We all know that budget cuts are going to hit the public sector hard, which will have a knock-on effect on the private sector and in all likelihood send us back into a spiral of recession. So rather than making 25% of public sector staff redundant and having to pay them Jobseekers’ Allowance, offer them the opportunity to remain in work, but at minimum wage. Once the deficit has been sorted, they will return to the proper level of pay.

The benefits are that it will ensure public services are maintained while the budget is cut, and secondly it gives those who are selected some self-respect and hope, rather than no hope at all. On the negative side, employers may simply continue with a 2 tier pay system, even after the deficit has been addressed. I wouldn’t put it past the current government.

Does anyone remember the days of yore when your mum and dad would dress up to go shopping in town? Mine certainly did when I was a tiddler in the mid 60s. Dad would put his suit on and mum would get her best dress out. No-one makes the effort anymore – me included.

Did you hear about Oscar, the cat that had its back paws severed by a combined harvester and prosthetics fitted by a veterinary surgeon in the ground-breaking operation? We’re wondering whether we can get Kitty upgraded with similar bionic equipment – a kind of Kitty 2.0 XP.