daveydave

By all measures, this year has not been a good one for me and the environment. No, I'm not referring to my purchase of a 4x4, but the amount of time I've spent in aircraft. It all started with a flight back from County Clare, Ireland following a fantastic few days away for New Year. Next was Paris at the end of March. Two days later I was off to the States with work for just over a week, including several internal flight and almost 1000 miles in cars. Two days after getting back from the US I was off to Barcelona for 3 days, again with work, followed by a well earned travel breather, where any potential DVT could ease off a bit! September saw me in South Africa for a holiday and then less than 2 weeks later I was off to Korea for a conference. So having done the maths, this is what the figures look like: 29 flights taken during 2007 covering a total of 8 countries, 19 airports and (if we include car journeys) 9 US states. A total of just over 43000 miles in the air. That's ...

I meant to post about the new car when the '57' registrations came out in September (marking the car's 6 month anniversary) but obviously, I didn't quite make it. So having now owned the big brute for 9 months, what do I reckon. Without getting too gushy, I've got to say I love this car. It's roomy, comfortable, 100% reliable so far, has sufficient toys to keep me entertained during rush hour, is hugely relaxing on the motorway with its 6 gears and cruise control and is fairly economical too - a good thing at this time of ludicrously high fuel prices. There are only really two things that niggle: you really must keep the oily bits above 1800rpm when pulling away and the fact that it has a tendency to cancel your indicators at the most inopportune moments when negotiating roundabouts - a side-effect no doubt of there being no such things in Korea. But I think that's all pretty minor compared to the general niceness of the thing. I like it. Obviously I'm n...

Can anyone explain to me what Gordon Brown was playing at this week, turning up late to the signing of the EU Treaty? As usual, the Number 10 press office was quick to refute any talk of snubs etc, but honestly, are they seriously expecting us to accept that this was a simple diary mix up? That the staff in Downing Street really didn't know that this treaty was being signed? No, this can only be some half-cocked attempt to make a point to the rest of the European Union. The result however, regardless of your opinion of the treaty, is a Prime Minister that looks like a moron, and another embarrassing episode for the UK in international circles. Brown, you're an idiot. Reference: BBC News Number 10

According to our beloved government, we need to build an additional 3 million homes by 2020. No one seems to be asking why we need them. One of the reasons given is that more homes on the market will reduce prices. Housing in the UK is very expensive, one of the main causes of this has got to be the massive increase in average people investing in property, either buying second homes or buy-to-let. Building more homes without controlling this kind of investment is not going to help make property more affordable. With our population forecast to reach 70 million over the next few decades, we need to make some big decisions on where we see this country heading. Is our population getting too big? If not, how do we house everyone? Has anyone calculated how much of the current housing stock stands empty while investors wait for the right time to sell? The government seems to be doing little to tackle the underlying issues behind this perceived need and is, as usual, trying to 'fix' th...

They've all got them: BA and their Executive Club, Air France with Flying Blue and Emirates has Skywards. All the airlines of the world try to keep you loyal to their brand by enticing you with special offers for points earned as you fly, plus special privileges if you fly enough to reach the higher tiers. I confess I am a member of all the above mentioned schemes, I joined them all this year and that's mainly because I've flown so much over the last 10 months. Anyway, the purpose of this post... not sure really, but it was prompted when my Emirates Skywards package arrived this morning. Part of the deal with these things is how special the airline makes the customer feel as that, along with the actual flying experience, will be a driving factor in keeping you flying with them. They need to make you feel like a valued customer, the competition is just too great these days. So here is a run down of what I have received from each of the 3 airlines mentioned. BA was the first ...

That time of year again and after 12 months with a truly awful piece of junk (Samsung Z400) I couldn't wait to get back into the safe world of Nokia. My previous Nokia, a 6230i had been a great little phone, and I'd only chosen the Z400 because I'd had good Samsungs in the past, and it was 3G. The phone's operating system and syncronisation software are truly, truly dreadful. I could give you a long list of things I didn't like about the Samsung.... but I'll not bore you. So now I move on to a phone that's pretty much a PDA: the Nokia N95. A 5 megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, Symbian operating system all stuffed into a tidy little package. It's a lot of kit and so far it's working out fine. I'm having to relearn button combinations of course, but once I'm familiar I suspect this is going to be a gem. The only bad reports I've seen are to do with short battery life. Perhaps this is one reason why this phone comes with a free car cha...

By any measure, this summer has been a good one for me and the game of cricket. I made it to my first Test match, first trip to Lord's, saw my first Twenty20 game and went to my first international championship. So the cricket-watching year kicked off for me back in June, with a trip to the Riverside to watch England vs West Indies in the 4th Test. We were very fortunate to see anything as the Friday had been a washout and there was only half a day played on the Saturday. Sunday however, was a nice day for cricket. It's always quite something to see the big names in the flesh and certainly seeing the likes of Michael Vaughan, Shiv Chanderpaul and KP playing at Chester-le-Street was great. Our batting performances late in the day were rather less entertaining, but you can't have it all. Next was two domestic Twenty20 games against Leicestershire Foxes and Lancashire Lightening. I must say, this is a great form of the game and certainly when Durham captain Dale Benkenstein ho...

It's been a while since I created a blog - and this time I've created one with a purpose. Of sorts. To tie in with my forthcoming trip to South Africa and the Cricket twenty20 World Cup, I've made a new blog that will act as a diary of sorts while I'm over there. Those of you out there of a cricketing persuasion can have a look here .

We all know that Sky has done its bit for sport - for good and ill. Those who choose to pay for the premium sports services that Sky offers undoubtedly enjoy very fine coverage of a wide variety of sports. However, for those of us who do not like to pay £600 a year for telly, there is little regular coverage outside of football. Yesterday, there were two semi-finals played. Had they been FA Cup related there would have been an almighty uproar that there were no highlights shown on any terrestrial channel. Because they were cricket matches, no one will bat an eyelid. It's sad really, cricket is supposed to be the second most popular game in this country and yet, during the season, it does not warrant a weekly programme along the lines of Match of the Day. Channel Five broadcast very enjoyable highlights from England test matches, but there is a whole county structure in place that never gets any real coverage. Can you honestly see Match of the Day only being broadcast when the nat...

I've gone and done it, I've bought tickets for the Cricket twenty20 World Cup in South Africa. The only time I've ever been to an international sporting event such as this before was the European Football Championships in 1996 and that was in England, so doesn't really count. A couple of posts ago I raised a few points about the Cricket World Cup in the West Indies and the price of tickets in particular. So, it's fantastic to see that the organisers have pegged the prices down - quite unbelievably so. I've bought seats for 4 group matches and 4 super-8s. 8 matches, including games featuring Australia, South Africa and England for a total of 340 Rand. That works out at around £24. Well done Cricket South Africa for making the games affordable for all. I just have to sort out flights and hotels now and then sit back and look forward to a couple of weeks in Cape Town. References: Introduction to twenty20 on Wikipedia Cricket South Africa Cricket 20

I have an excerpt from a speech for you: "I have been looking at the various objectives and reasons that the government have given to the House of Commons for making war on Iraq, and it really is desirable that when a nation makes war upon another nation it should be quite clear why it does so. It should not keep changing the reasons as time goes on. There is, in fact, no correspondence whatsoever between the reasons given today and the reasons set out by the prime minister at the beginning." Makes interesting reading doesn't it. Although I must admit to some deception on my part. You see, that paragraph is not from a speech on the current Iraq war, but one about the Suez crisis made in 1956: I have substituted Iraq for Egypt in the first sentence, yet the whole still holds true. Sobering.

Another international sporting event, another poor England performance. We really haven't performed particularly well for the past few months, team spirit seems to be lacking, and rather a lot was put on Michael Vaughan's shoulders: cetainly too much for a player who had been out of the game for a year. A word or two on the tournament itself. The thing really was far too long, a result of corporate interference I'm sure, and the tickets were too expensive and the security just too anal. So, instead of a Carribean festival, we ended up with a pretty souless event that seemend to drag on for aeons. A word in ICC's ear: drop the Super 8s, just go from group to knockout and let's get things flowing a bit better for 2011; drop the bloody prices so we have some spectators. Oh yes, and get the umpires to read the rule book. Now moving on to watching the games on the telly - or rather, not watching any games on the telly. Sky, of course, had the whole tournament sewn up so ...

Every now and then you see something nice, something that isn't sad, annoying, tragic, etc.. Basically, most of the stuff you see on the news these days. I know I'm 8 months late (no big surprise there!), and you've probably all seen it before, but I still wanted to highlight this video on YouTube . It made me smile.

If you like highly stylised films this is the one for you. The director has done a very good job of making it look like a comic book conversion with the grainy cinematography and excessive use of slow-motion. Plus a lot of the acting was ropey, or over-done to fit the style... I'm not sure which. Just not my cup of tea unfortunately. Having said that, there were some nice comedy touches in the script and some nice effects, but I'm pretty sure Xerxes was not that camp in real life! Overall: it was ok I suppose.

I'm a tad late with this post - I've had the new car over a month now - but I've been busy (see another post that I may get round to writing at some point). Decision: the Kia Sportage. It was the only car I tested out in the end: I liked it, the deal was good, job done. I went for the 2.0 turbo diesel in top XS specification: it has many toys - climate, cruise, cd/mp3 player, heated front seats, leather, sunroof, etc... Plenty to keep me occupied in the slow-moving traffic of rush hour. I also took the decision to get a black one, which looks good, but is a slight pain to look after. That is, you actually have to wash it now and again - silver cars hide a multitude of sins. And so, despite saying I wouldn't buy another brand new car, I find myself in charge of a rather large 07 plater. On the whole it's been so-far-so-good, although I have only clocked up 500 miles. Everything is working and it's comfortable. You do need to keep the turbo spinning for safe exits...

This doesn't seem to have been particularly well broadcast, but the UK is getting a new £20 note on the 13th of March. For banknote geeks amongst you, it is the first of the new F series of notes (current notes are all series E) and features Scottish economist, Adam Smith on the reverse. Trying to get clear images of the thing is proving remarkably difficult. The Bank of England's own site shows the current note in excellent detail - so you know how to spot a forgery. But I can not find any useful images of the new one - so you can recognise it as proper money when you first get one. The best I could do - after a lot of hunting around - was an image of the back of the new note on the BBC News site (link at the bottom of this post). A week on Tuesday, these new notes are going to start popping out of cash points around the country (south of the border anyway) and I suspect it's going to come as a bit of a surprise to most people. It doesn't seem like the best way to rol...

I missed this film first time round, and having watched it this afternoon I'm wondering why. A simple story about a robot (both iron and giant) arriving on earth and befriending a young boy. Stories and rumours start to fly around, especially when cars and other metal objects appear to have large bite marks out of them. In a similar fashion to ET, the government arrives to get to the bottom of things. Once the cause of these occurrences has been identified, the army arrives en-masse and reverts to a fairly typical approach: we don't know what it is, so let's smash it. I won't go into details of the final stages of the story, but of course everything turns out pretty well in the end. As a non-Japanese animated feature people may dismiss this film as one for the kids, but this would be a mistake. It's a wonderful, heart-warming film. References: The Iron Giant on IMDB

Idi Amin was a dictator, a mass-murderer and a nutter. Forest Whitaker is an actor, an excellent one and nails Amin's character beautifully. This is an interesting story, a mix of fact: the Amin is a nutter bit; and fiction: the young Scot, Nicholas Garrigan, becoming the dictator's personal physician. Garrigan accidentaly lands the role of personal doctor to Amin and initially can't believe his luck. Amin seems like a joy to work for, gifting him an nice home and Mercedes convertible. As time passes however, and Garrigan becomes closer to the dictator, he realises what the man is capable of. Too late. Whitaker is truley brilliant in the role of Amin and a very strong cast backs him up all the way. It is very well directed at a hectic pace at times, making this a thoroughly watchable film. It doesn't go into great detail on what Amin was responsible for during his time in power, so this is no Hotel Rwanda, but a definite must-see nonetheless. References: The Last Ki...

Last week, representatives of the Tyne & Wear PTA, Nexus, subitted a £600m, 20 year investement plan for the Metro light rail system. The Tyne & Wear Metro was built in the late 70's and opened, in stages, from August 1980 - the first such system in the UK, outside of London. I used Metro almost from day one, and for the following 18 years, until work took me away from the reaches of the network. It was a fantastic system in the early years, but like most large projects in this country, suffers from a lack of sufficient investment and a lot of the existing infrastructure needs replacing. It has the potential to be great again, but it is also forecast to cease operating in 2012 should the necessary investment not be made. Hence the proposals delivered to Downing Street. I cannot stress how important it is that these proposals are accepted - Metro caries something like 130 000 passengers every working day. Just imagine (those of you who know and love the roads around Tyneside...

Having finally got my grubby mits on a digital camera over Christmas, I thought it would be a plan to review how I publish my pictures on the interweb. I have been using flickr for a while now, but I've hit the limit of the free service and it is time to pay. Before doing that, however, I thought I'd take a look at Picasa from Google. So far so good for Picasa. The client software is excellent and allows you to manage your web albums very easily. I'm going to run with it for a while - until I reach my free limit of 250MB - and then decide which way to go. For those of you who like looking a other people's poor attempts at photography, you can see some of mine on flickr or all of them on Picasa .

I've harped on about this in the past, but the time is rapidly approaching when the Jimny must go and something must replace it. Now, I've thought about all sorts of possibilities, from cheap run-arounds to executive saloons. Latest thinking however, is for another 4x4 - boo hiss from the green brigade, but I like the high seating position. So, I started making a shortlist. The Freelander is out straightaway because it's too expensive, I don't like the look of the X-Trail from Nissan, and I'm not sure why I'm not considering the CRV or Rav4. The Suzuki Grand Vitara is on there, because it looks smart. Others that sneaked on the list over the weekend were the Hyundai Tucson and the Kia Sportage. That's the 3 for now, although very much subject to change of course! First thing you need to do is get yourself a big pile of brochures, and this is where you start to score the competing companies. So far we can sum up performance thus: Suzuki GV 5dr : a smart looki...

I can't hold off any longer. It was all over weeks ago, but you like to think there may be a chance, however small that we may snatch even a draw. It wasn't to be. The last 5 wickets collapsed, leaving the Australians a meager score to reach to achieve a well deserved whitewash. It's so very disappointing to see such little fight and passion from the England team. There were moments - Collingwood's 206 in the 2nd test, Harmison's 4/48 in the 3rd test, Monty's 5 wickets in the same innings - but they were few and far between. We were comprehensively outplayed by a far superior team. So now we move on to the post-Ashes inquest. I suspect this will be run by those who ran the team and therefore produce no useful outcome. The press will be up in arms for a while before returning column inches to football. Nothing will be done, no real changes at the top, no radical overhaul of the way the game is run. And come 2009 we will be no nearer regaining the Ashes than we wo...

A little while ago, I had a minor rant about the design of Ford's PAG cars. I was not particularly complimentary in places, particularly about Jaguar. At the time, the first photos of the new XK had been released and I wasn't sure about it but, sensibly, decided to wait until I'd seen it in the flesh before going for the jugular. Fortunate for me that I did. As it turns out, the new XK is a rather good looking vehicle with a welcome, fresh look at interior design. (I.e. no bloody wood). Of course, such a car is well beyond the financial means of mere mortals such as I, so I must rely on those offerings further down the range. At the moment, there is nothing there that I would consider buying new. X, S and XJ are fussy, throw-back designs that have, quite rightly, not sold well thus leading directly to Jaguar's current financial predicament. However, the new XF concept has just been shown to the press and boy, what a stunner. It is expected that this car will form the ba...