Big boys toys

Really big. I mean HUGE. A new military hovercraft has come into service and it's the biggest there has ever been. It's 57 metres long, weighs 500 tonnes, has five (yes five) 10,000hp gas turbine engines and positively bristles with guns and missiles and is even stealth capable. It looks exactly like the kind of military vehicle that is badly drawn by small boys everywhere and I have to say, hands in the air, I think this is bloody marvellous.

So whose is it? The Yanks are the obvious choice because everything they have is usually bigger and better (so they say - personally I think the HMMMVEE, or however you spell it, is a crock of poo), but it's not them. How about the Brits? We invented the hovercraft after all (or at least Sir Christopher Cockroft did). Nope. It costs money therefore it's not ours.

I'll tell you who it belongs to. The Greeks. "The say what now?", I hear you cry. Yes the Greeks have a military too and for some odd reason they feel they need this leviathan. I'm not going to argue because frankly it's too cool not to exist, so as long as it's in the hands of someone not renowned for fighting wars (at least, not in the last couple of millenia) then that's fine by me.

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Thoughts on London Village

Ahh London. Nary a week has gone by since I ridiculed the actions of Westminster Council and I am in the very borough (or whatever) that I poked fun at. Why? I am on a works induction course, all three days of it. Today was the first day and I wasn't impressed. Not only was most of the course irrelevant to me (and so will most of the rest of it be) but I am in a city which I dislike more than any other I have ever visited (including Bradford, a town I found to be dirty, run down and thoroughly dislikable. Mind you, the people were invariably friendly which was a huge saving grace and one which London most certainly can't lay claim to).

So, I don't like London. Why not? Well personally I think it is dirty, unfriendly, expensive and staffed by surly and even down right rude people. Also it takes two hours to get here at some ungodly hour (well, if I'm travelling for work at any rate) on an uncomfortable train that stinks of burning every time the damn thing slows down and where it makes no odds if you've booked a seat or not - you still won't get to sit down because some ignorant fuck thinks that they can sit wherever they choose even though there is a reserved label on it.

Add to that the prices for, well, everything, the fact that every bloody restaurant adds on a 10% service charge "for your convenience" whether you like it or not, and frankly you come up with the seventh circle of hell staffed by shitheads working for unscrupulous crooks. Granted tonight I was on for free something-or-other (I couldn't make out what it was through the heavy Italian accent) but judging by the way the waiter was standing and looking at me it may well have been a good rimming, which I'm only too happy miss out on.

The final straw? I'm staying at a hotel in the West End (so the blurb says but frankly it could be anywhere as my geography of London is pretty shit). Just 100 yards or so away are the offices of BBC Radio 1, Regents Park the same distance the other way and Oxford Street just 10 minutes walk away. The basic price for this room at well in excess of £200 per night (although I'm sure my employer got a corporate rate). Now, the only truly good hotel I've stayed in was the Cumberland at Marble Arch which really was quite nice: Good, well decorated and appointed rooms, good food (their eggs Benedict really was excellent and there was a Gary Rhodes restaurant which served pretty decent grub). Sadly, this one is, well, shit. Despite smoking in public places being banned last year (or the year before, I forget which) which I thought extended to chuffing in hotel rooms, this rooms absolutely reeks of stale smoke. Now granted that maybe I am wrong and you are allowed to smoke in hotel rooms, but there's no ash trays in here. I must find out and mention it to the office next time they're booking me a room. Oh, and I appear to be directly over a tube line which is really REALLY getting on my tits.

Anyway, only two more days to go then I can get away from this dump and back to civilisation.

Disclaimer: I did actually find a pub serving Westons Organic Vintage Cider on draught on the way back from the restaurant so all is not entirely lost but seeing as the inhabitants of this place simply have no idea how cider should be served since their idea of sophistication is a bottle of Magners, it wasn't the best.

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In other news

Lets go crazy with the posting today.

Some crazy kids at Westminster Council have decided to copyright the design of the street signs which you find all over that part of London in order to protect the image of the area as a top class tourist destination. Exactly how? Well, they claim it will prevent dodgy street hawkers punting hooky gear with slightly iffy copies of the street names on them. Wow. I'm sure that'll really help London's image more than, oh I don't know, cleaning the streets properly, not ripping everyone off for pretty much everything, getting rid of the miserable cat-voiced car-hating communist who runs the city like a personal fiefdom or maybe, just maybe, having public servants who aren't surly and unhelpful. Yeah, I can see the relief etched all over the faces of global tourists everywhere now they know that their souvenir fridge magnets will be proper licensed replicas, keenly priced to reflect the not-at-all obscene cost of licensing the design.

Any readers in central London - that's your tax dollars that is.

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Get over it

This gentleman seems genuinely proud of the fact that he gave up his job in order to attend every single day of the Diana and Dodi coroners inquiry with the words 'Diana' and 'Dodi' painted on his forehead and cheeks respectively. He even thinks he'll go down in history for it and that there will be a portrait of him in Kensington palace in a hundred years time. I have just one word to describe him:

Twat.

'Nuff said.

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