Transport secretary hates travelling by train

Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin has disclosed to the Sunday Times that he is infuriated by disruption to his regular journey from Derby to London.

“I use the train most weeks to go from Derby to London and I use it on the Sunday and sometimes it drives me bloody crackers,” he said.

He singled out delays caused by engineering works as particularly frustrating.

This is an interesting statement, the man in charge of public transport isn’t happy with how the trains are running, if only he could do something about it.

What’s even more interesting is that this news comes on the same day that the Public Accounts Committee has stated that the estimated benefits of the planned HS2 high-speed rail link are dwindling as costs rise, and say that the Department for Transport is failing to present a “convincing strategic case”. This means that there is no evidence that HS2 will do anybody any good.

Thankfully there is a way to rectify the situation, scrap HS2 and invest the 40 odd billion set aside to pay for it in our existing rail networks, if the government does that then Mr McLoughlin will never have to worry about his train being late in future, oh and save some of that money to sort the roads out as well while you're at it. 

Graduate ‘made to dance’ at Currys interview

A university graduate says he was left humiliated after being asked to dance to a Daft Punk song during a job interview at an electronics superstore.

Alan Bacon, 21, thought working at Currys in Cardiff would be ideal given his love of cameras, and he spent a week preparing for the interview.

Is this some sort of stunt by companies in Britain that for the first week of September they’ll all act like complete morons, first c2c suspend one of their employees for rescuing a women from the train tracks and now Currys make people dance to a Daft Punk song during a job interview, what is going on.

Thankfully Currys have seen sense and apologised and admitted that the dance segment of the interview was “not part of the official recruitment process,” really I’d never have guessed that.

It’s a well known secret in the electronics industry that being able to bust a move or two makes you a better salesman, what next will Currys issue a memo to all their sales staff instructing them to grind up against any customers who spend more than five minutes browsing in a particular section of their stores.

Despite the apology Mr Bacon didn’t get the job, but frankly I think he had a lucky escape. 

Rail worker suspended after rescuing disabled woman

A rail worker who saved a disabled woman from train tracks shortly before a train was due has been suspended by his company for 'breaching safety rules'.

Alan Chittock, 50, jumped to the rescue with three other people, hauling the wheelchair-bound woman, who was in her 70s, to safety last week at Southend Central Rail Station.

Onlookers described Mr Chittock as a hero, but his employer, c2c, said that the father of three, had not followed the correct procedures for an incident of this nature.

That is the biggest load of bollocks I’ve ever heard, so judging by their reaction to this event c2c obviously have a procedure in place that when anyone has fallen onto a train track at a busy station, all c2c employees must do nothing and watch as some poor soul gets run over by a train.

Mr Chittock did the right thing and his employers should be rewarding him, and consider themselves lucky they have an employee like that, not making him face some bullshit disciplinary inquiry.

I can’t believe that when his superiors heard about this their immediate thoughts were, he’s not followed the appropriate safety procedures right launch an inquiry and suspend him until further notice.

c2c get your priorities right. 

New FA chairman sets bold targets

New Football Association chairman Greg Dyke says England should aim to reach the semi-finals of Euro 2020 and win the World Cupin 2022.

But in a wide-ranging speech, Dyke warned England may not be able to compete seriously on the world stage without changes in the domestic game.

“English football is a tanker that needs turning,” he said.

It was very interesting and refreshing listening to Dyke outlining his plans for the English game in the next few years, but I don’t think announcing that England should win the World Cup in 2022 was a good idea.

But finally an FA chairman has finally acknowledged, and pledged to do something about, the key problems in English football, starting with the ever declining number of English players in the Premier League.

 Dyke has said he would consider a quota system but I think that should be a last resort option, instead we should look at why Premier League clubs overlook English players and there’s two reasons for this cost and academies.

The amount of money English players cost is for some reason much more than foreign players of a similar quality, and that puts clubs off buying them, just look at this transfer window as a glaring example of how home-grown players are over-priced. 

Bale was signed by Real Madrid for £85m, yet they paid £80m for Ronaldo, who they signed at the same stage of his career, despite the fact that Ronaldo had achieved much more and was a much more complete footballer at the time. There’s a fairly obvious solution which is to meet with the clubs and advise them to stop charging over-inflated prices for a player just because he’s home-grown.

Secondly the academies of clubs should either be limited to the number of foreign youngsters they can sign or shouldn’t be allowed to sign a foreign youngster under the age of 18, because it’s ridiculous that clubs, particularly the big ones, scrap it out to the death with each other to sign 12 and 13 year olds.

 If either of those doesn’t do the trick then a quota would have to be introduced, and it should be something along the lines of all 20 Premier League teams should have at least six home-grown players in their starting XI, and at least 10 home-grown players in the 18 man match day squad. 

Not sure how it would work in Europe because that’s UEFAs territory, but something like this should be introduced in the Premier League should other measures fail.

One final thing if England is to seriously challenge and get to the last four or win a major tournament then a winter break should be introduced, just look at the record of the national team and compare them to our closest European rivals, whose leagues all have winter breaks, since the formation of the Premier League.

Spain has won a World Cup and two European Championships.

Germany has won a European Championship and has been to the last four  and beyond on numerous other occasions.

Italy has won the World Cup, been to another World Cup final and two Euro finals.

France have won the World Cup, Euro’s and got to another World Cup final.

And England? One semi-final.

If Greg Dyke maintains the same kind of passion and determination we saw yesterday then by the time he’s done English football should be in a much better place.  

Force claimants to work for benefits, government urged

A US-style “work for the dole” scheme could save £3.5bn a year in welfare costs, a campaign group has said.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) said only the “extreme sanction” of stopping claimants who refused to do 30 hours' activity a week from receiving benefits would force them to find work.

For most claimants, that would mean 30 hours a week of community service, charity work, approved training, work experience or “meaningful” job hunting with officials.

This isn’t really forcing people to work this seems more a test of a person’s commitment to working and finding a job, and if it’s put onto practice properly then this could really work.

For a start it would save a fortune on community maintenance and it would stop those looking to milk the system and reward those who are genuinely trying to find work.

It would also give those looking for work a great sense of self-satisfaction as they would be helping their local community or a charity and would give them something extra to their CV.

Throw in the fact that it could cut £3.5bn in welfare costs and you’ve got a scheme that should be introduced at the earliest possible opportunity. 

University launches online course with TV show

Can zombies be the stuff of serious academic study? And could they be shuffling towards a new type of future for higher education?

In what is being claimed as the biggest ever experiment in "edutainment", a US television company is forming a partnership with a top-ranking Californian university to produce online courses linked to a hit TV show.

This blurring of the digital boundaries between academic study and the entertainment industry will see a course being launched next month based on the post-apocalypse drama series the Walking Dead.

Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, seriously why?

I’m all for adapting and trying to find new ways of doing things but this is just ridiculous, how can you have a course that is based a TV show that’s about zombies?

What makes this worse is that the institution involved here is the University of California, a high ranking reputable university with Nobel prize-winning researchers; why would they do it, what could they possibly get out of it?

All they’re doing is wasting their time and resources, making themselves look ridiculous, and they’ll, rightly, be accused of dumbing education down.  

If this course proves a success then others based on other TV shows could be launched in future, god that’s depressing, hopefully this course will fail spectacularly and everyone involved will come to the realisation that it was a huge mistake and it will never be tried ever again.  

Parliamentary porn consumption laid bare

More than 300,000 attempts were made to access pornographic websites at the Houses of Parliament in the past year, official records suggest.

It is unclear whether MPs, peers or other staff are responsible, House of Commons officials said.

Well, well, well, isn’t this an interesting development, no wonder nobody cared or paid much attention when David Cameron announced he wanted to introduce a block on pornography, he was clearly unaware that most of those who work in the Commons were too busy trying to crack one out.   

No wonder it takes so long for politicians to actually get things done, judging by these numbers while most workers have a daily dose of coffee to perk them up and prepare them for the day ahead, but it seems those in the Commons have found a more hands on way.    

Arsenal complete £42.4m Ozil signing

Arsenal have completed the £42.4m signing of Real Madrid and Germany midfielder Mesut Ozil to break their club record by £27.4m.

Ozil, 24, has signed a five-year deal.

“I am thrilled to be joining a club of the stature of Arsenal and am looking forward to playing in the Premier League,” he said.

I don’t believe it Wenger actually did it he spent and spent big and brought in a proper big name star and not some unknown teenager for a fiver.

With this signing Arsenal are sending out a proper statement of intent that they want to compete for the top top names, spend big, and build a team that might actually win something, and as an Arsenal fan I’m actually went to bed after the window shut excited for the first time in a very long time.

While Ozil alone won’t make us title or champions league contenders, what it will do is send a message to any other transfer targets in future that we are serious about challenging the like of United, City and Chelsea, and that we can be a force again.

In the last few years we’ve been in decline selling Fabregas, Van Persie etc. but in signing Ozil we’ve halted the slide and are now making our way back up, and in the next few windows if we add another top name of the same calibre as Ozil each time then we can become regular contenders again rather than scrapping and scraping for 4^th.

As pleased as I am that we signed Ozil, I think he’ll be a perfect fit for us, I was disappointed that we didn’t do a little more to sign a striker as we haven’t got too many options in that department, and I still can’t believe we let Higuain slip away.

I’m also surprised we didn’t sign another defender but you can’t have everything, and so much for all these financial rules and regulations as all 20 Premier League teams bought in at least one player and spent a record £630m in the process.

You can clearly see they’ve had an effect and made clubs act much more sensibly with their finances and scale back their spending . . .  what a joke.

Gareth Bale signs for Real Madrid in record deal

Real Madrid have broken the world transfer record to sign Tottenham forward Gareth Bale.

The Wales star has agreed a £300,000 per week, six-year deal after sealing an £85.3m (100m euros) move which eclipses the £80m Real paid for Manchester United for Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009.

Well finally the deal has been done and we can now look forward to plenty of clubs scrambling around looking to do last minute deals today, particularly my club Arsenal.

Obviously as an Arsenal fan I’m glad to see our rivals sell their best player, but I think the amount of money involved is a joke how can anybody, with a straight face, say that Bale is worth more than Ronaldo?

When Madrid signed Ronaldo in 2009 he was world player of the year, and in his last three seasons at United they’d won the league three years in a row and won the champions league, with him being central to everything and he scored 90 goals to boot.

How can Bale who had a great season at Tottenham last season where he scored 26 goals and helped them finish 5^th be worth more? It’s all wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Another two deals involving Tottenham highlights just how ridiculous player valuations are and how stupid the transfer market has become.

Spurs signed Soldado from Valencia, at 28 he is in the prime of his career, in his last four seasons in Spain he scored over 100 goals, he’s proven himself in the Champions League, and he’s lead the line for the Spanish national team, and Spurs paid £26m for him. Great piece of business and as an Arsenal fan I could only look on with envy as he was the kind of player we need, and still do.

Yet Spurs then go on to sign Lamela, who very few people were aware of, who had his breakthrough season last year scoring 15 times for Roma, half as many as Soldado scored for Valencia, and at 21 isn’t the finished article and has plenty of room for improvement, yet Spurs paid £30m for him, how can that be?

As an Arsenal fan I do wish we’d be more pro-active in the transfer market and spend some of the cash we’ve been stockpiling for the last few years, but when you hear about the ridiculous price tags clubs put on their average players, let alone star names, I can understand why Wenger is reluctant to buy.

Although I must admit he’s not doing anybody any favours by cramming all his deals through at the last minute.  

Cameron losses Commons vote on Syria action

MPs have rejected possible UK military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to deter the use of chemical weapons.

David Cameron said he would respect the defeat of a government motion by 285-272, ruling out joining US-led strikes.

The US said it would “continue to consult” with the UK, “one of our closest allies and friends”.

I was quite surprised to discover that the government were defeated in this vote, and the result of it does pose some interesting questions, for example, how are we going to look if the US and France do intervene at some point in the near future.

Once the result was in Cameron tried to be magnanimous saying it was clear Parliament didn’t want military action and that the government will “act accordingly”, but when dealing with a regime like Assad’s once military action is off the table there isn’t really much for you to do other than stand by as others get involved.

The reason why Cameron was defeated in this vote was simple; he held it too early, the government motion was in support of military action if it was backed up by evidence from UN weapons inspectors that chemical weapons had been used.

But that investigation is still ongoing and their findings won’t be public knowledge until next week, so wouldn’t it have made more sense to hold it then, Cameron has lost this vote because he’s tried to rush it through and in doing so has lost the support of too many MPs.

It will be interesting what happens next particularly seeing how the US and France respond in the wake of this news.