Supreme irony

Zanu-PF accuses MDC of vote rigging (reported on BBC News 24 in ME)

EU calls on Mugabe to accept the will of the people

All said with a straight face

Shock, Horror, Some foreign nationals are cheating the nationality test

Was the headline on the 4pm radio 5 news.

Well, bugger me with a wet lettuce, I would never have imagined that would have happened.

Good news, sensible lending returns

and everyone focuses on first tome buyers, again:

The UK's largest mortgage lender, the Halifax, is targeting buyers who can
pay larger deposits.
It said new deals would see borrowers who put down a 25% deposit getting a deal with a lower rate than those with less money to put down.

Seems fair enough, lower risk gets better deal. Isn't that sensible lending?

But the highest loan-to-value (LTV) offer will be 95% from Monday, compared
with the previous high of 97%.

More sense returning then. Only lending to people who have shown they can save and that they can live without the money needed to make the repayments.

The squeeze on first-time buyers, who are often short of money to put down
as a deposit, echoes other lenders in the market.

First-time buyers must find at least 5% of a property's value for a deposit in deals being offered from Monday, rather than 3%.

Taking the average Land Registry house price of £185,616, that is an increase in the minimum deposit of a typical home from £5,568 to £9,280

.
Good. If you can't afford to save that much money then you shouldn't be considering taking out a mortgage of £185,616 that requires a repayment of c£1,300 per month (25 years repayment mortgage @7%). This is the sensible lending everyone has been asking for and all they are saying is that to get the mortgage all you have to do is save the equivalent amount for 6 months or so.

I really don't understand why the beeb is making such a fuss of this.

Procol Harum ruling is overturned

Its an arcane legal about a song that makes no sense; but who cares its an opportunity to listen and enjoy a real classic - or it would be if the ISP here would let me!

Brown to review last budget changes

Over 12 months after Brown's final budget he is now promising to review the income tax changes he made.

Gordon Brown has moved to quell a backbench revolt over the abolition
of the 10p income tax band amid fears it will hit some low-paid families. Mr
Brown has assured former Labour whip Greg Pope - who tabled a Commons motion calling for action - he will look again at the impact of the changes.
...
In his final Budget as Chancellor last year, Mr Brown paid for a 2p cut
in the basic rate - to 20p - by abolishing the 10p lower rate.

We're supposed to have some of the brightest minds in the treasury and Cabinet and 12 months after a budget when delayed measure is just about to be introduced we are told it will be reviewed.

The sooner we get a chance to throw out these useless bastards the better?

On this day

in 1934, Yorkshireman Percy Shaw laid the first "cats' eyes" along the centre of the road at an accident black spot near Bradford.

In defence of BA and T5

Well sort of, its a rant about twats who comment when things go wrong

In time honoured tradition I will declare and interest ands say that I am regular BA passenger and have always been treated well. When consulting I was taking in the order of 30 flights a year, or maybe more at the peak, both long haul and short haul. I also had the advantage of travelling business class, which helps.

I was a bit dismayed to see the fuck up that happened at T5 because as a traveller I knew I would be affected, but listening to some of the vox pop comments and even those of so called experts has left me somewhat exasperated. As someone who has been involved in major projects I know all too well that it is the smallest things that catch you out.

Its amazing how many people with PhD's in Hindsight have been trotted out to say how they would have done it differently and they would have had practices. Did they really think that the PM's running the show didn't think of that - twats. As it happens they have been doing practices at T5 for over a year. Mind you the first ones were a mess.

I even heard one idiot who complaining that he was told that his baggage might not arrive and did he still want to travel? he did and his baggage didn't get there (as if this is something new). It then turns out that he put his laptop in the hold and had to buy a new one and was "going to take BA to the cleaners". Are people really that fucking stupid? I have never come across an airline that would make you check in a laptop.

I heard one person holding up the new HK airport as an example of how it should be done. I travelled through there 2 days after it opened and it was a real mess:

Three days after its much-trumpeted opening, Hong Kong's $20 billion airport
is lurching from crisis to crisis. Just as the airport seems to be reducing the
chaos in the passenger terminal, computer glitches have all but paralyzed its
air-cargo operations.

Today, Hong Kong International Airport's main cargo handler said it would extend until Saturday an embargo on all exports and imports carried on passenger jets.

Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Ltd. first imposed an embargo on Tuesday, after it
began to lose track of shipments, causing containers to pile up next to its giant terminal.

But everyone's forgotten that now and it much more fun poking fun at ourselves.

Hilary Benn talks shit on Radio 5

I just tuned in to Radio 5 on the web so that I could catch the news and sport and caught the smarmy bastard being interviewed, well fed lines so he could make ministerial broadcasts. He talked ignorant shit on CO2 and then on Gordon Brown.

I need to go and puke.

Travelling tales

Now that I am settled it seems that the people who control ISP's here are a bit schizophrenic on blogs and the beeb. In the past few days I have had blogs blocked and then readable and then blocked again. I could read some that were private URL's like The Devil and Timmy. Today appears to be the first day I can write to my blog though, possible to do with it being the weekend?

Same goes for the beeb, I am listening to R4 and the other day listened to R5, but sometimes I can't even get to the news and sport pages.

I managed to pick up something before I left and the journey was quite bad. I won't bore you with the details but having the runs when you are stuck in transit and on planes is no fun.

Interesting country, so few women about but the men are very friendly and welcoming and I am enjoying working with them. As expected the landscape is flat and the streets very scruffy with litter everywhere.

Last night I visited one of the famous compounds where the ex-pats live, the security to get in was intense and tighter than getting in to a barracks in Derry at the height of the Troubles. It was a strange atmosphere and I'm sure it suits some, I would be stir crazy withing days, even though it has a 9 hole golf course. The Great Wiseone wouldn't last more than a few hours before wanting to kill someone.

Well, lets hope I can do a bit of blogging while I'm here. Although its the weekend here I still have work to do and of course in the UK the day job still needs doing.

On this day - Falklands

Its the first full day of the Islands being under Argentine control and like many I am still getting my head round the idea that the Falklands are in the South Atlantic and not somewhere near the Hebrides.

The UN demands that Argentina withdraws and starts a dance that shows how ineffectual it was, and still is.