YOUTH ON THE ROAD

There have been rumblings recently about raising the age to hold a driving license in the UK to eighteen years. Whilst I personally consider this to be a good thing I don't believe it actually goes far enough.

For many years now motorcyclists in this country have been restricted to the size of "horse" they can ride after passing a driving test, in a bid to reduce motorcycle related accidents with inexperienced riders who are riding bikes that are just way beyond their current level of control. If the D.O.T. want to really change the rules for people driving cars on new licenses then this is surely the way to go. It is ridiculous that a seventeen year old whippersnapper can pass a driving test in a car with a 1200cc engine and then go out and buy something with a 3000cc twin turbo V6 which is totally beyond their minimal driving experience. It is time that probationary drivers were restricted to the size of vehicle they can drive, just the same as a motorcyclist. I would also consider changing the rules with regard to buses and trucks making it essential to have several years of road experience before being able to hold a PSV or HGV license. It beggars belief that someone can go from 950kg of car to 38000kg of articulated truck in one leap. It's no better than handing a child a BB gun and swapping it ten minutes later for an AK47 with a full magazine and no safety catch.

I've been driving for eighteen years and most of my friends and family would rather travel with me driving than with anybody else, but I'm still learning things every day. I've just got my first 4WD and I can go places I've never been with a vehicle before, but I've had to learn to drive again because it's a totally different driving experience. The real problem with obtaining a driving license is that everybody believes that they are learning to drive and they're not; they are learning to pass a driving test. Nobody learns to drive until the test has been passed and they're let loose to jostle for position on the road with all the others who desperately need to make a gargantuan effort to be in front of everybody else and twenty yards further down the road. Crazy, crazy, crazy.

ENDEAVOUR SHUTTLE - STS118

Just watched the launch of Shuttle STS118 (Endeavour) live on NASA TV. I haven't watched a Shuttle launch on live TV for absolutely years and watching it on-line at NASA.gov was a great new experience. It is amazing to think that the Shuttle program has been in orbit now for some 26 years, and despite the various setbacks along the way it is hard to believe that the Sun is about to set on the Shuttle program. I watched the first Shuttle launch on Tv from behind my desk at school and watching this most recent launch raised the adrenalin level a few degrees.

What an absolutely awesome ride! Eight minutes to Earth orbit and the ride of your life is worth paying for in my book. The pictures shot from the main tank camera showing Earth receding into the distance were fantastic and it reminded me of watching the film taken from the Saturn 5 launches of the Apollo program, pictures that will probably be seen again in the coming years when NASA gets the Orion project off the launchpad. It will be a sad day when the last Shuttle flight touches down because I feel that Orion is a backward step. Orion doesn't have the functionality of the Shuttle and it doesn't have the heavy lift capability of the Shuttle. NASA is going to have to rely on 1960's Russian technology for at least five years after the last Shuttle touches down whilst it recrafts its own 1960's technology to go back to the Moon and to reach out towards Mars. Retiring the Shuttle is a mistake that could prove to be very costly in the years to come, paticularly if the ISS were to develop a major problem. I sincerely hope that someone at NASA has the balls to stand up and be counted, and reverse the decision to ground the Shuttle. It still has a place and a function in the exploration of Space.

I'M STILL HERE...!!!

Hi people. I'm not posting regularly at the moment due to lack of time. I have two family members in hospital suffering from different things (one quite serious) and other family to look after which is consuming every spare minute of the day. stay faithful and i'l be back soon. Thanks for reading.... Oscar.

ALL CHANGE PLEASE...

I'll be honest, I was sorry to see Blair leaving Downing Street yesterday (27th June 2007). In spite of some of the gaffes he made during his ten years in office I quite liked the guy. The people who regarded him as Bush's poodle should remember that there is a bit of the British Bulldog inside all of us here in Blighty. It is highly probable that Bush would have nuked Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan off the face of the planet if Blair hadn't been stood behind him holding the leash. There are some amongst us who probably think that is no bad thing and I would be lieing if I said I hadn't considered it an option on a couple of occasions but there is a right way to do things. That is not to say that the right things were done but then I don't believe in appeasement either. It is right that Blair should become the Middle East Peace Envoy. He is for my money probably the greatest Statesman that this country has seen since Winston Churchill and I hope that history eventually treats him kindly.

It is worth noting that the Middle East was a British problem since the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which paved the way for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and didn't the British Government obtain control of Iraq from the League of Nations at the end of the First World War? I seem to recall from my school history lessons that British troops were involved in the ongoing struggle between the Turks and the Arabs (also during the First World War), which gave one T.E. Lawrence fame as Lawrence of Arabia. The Americans have been trying to resolve the issues in the Middle East for as long as I can remember. It is time for a British Statesman to have a go at sorting it out; we did foul it up after all, rather like we fouled up Northern Ireland and we are talking about the same person who managed to set things on the right path out there. Give the Man a break.

On a different tack, 10 Downing Street is now under the control of a Stalinist control freak with delusions of grandeur and OCD. Gordon Brown has no mandate from the British public to sit in the seat of power that he now occupies. It is bad enough that we are funding the Scots to the tune of around 5000 pounds a person and that Scottish MP's are allowed to vote on matters of state that only affect England. Everything that we have to pay for the Scots get for free. The Scots already have their own First Minister sitting in their own parliament. They don't need another one sitting in the English Parliament. It is time for a change in the Law so that if a sitting Prime Minister resigns his or her a position the reigning Monarch has to dissolve Parliament and call for a General Election. There is something very wrong when someone can assume the ultimate position of authority in this country unopposed and unelected.

Go back to Scotland Gordon. We don't need you this side of the border.

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.

Many years ago, a British comedian called Tony Hancock broadcast a sketch called The Blood Donor on a BBC Radio programme called Hancock's Half Hour. This coming Friday(1/6/2007) a Dutch television station, BNN, are going to broadcast a live show called The Big Donor. The trouble is that this show is anything but comedic in its content. It is very real and it is the latest creation from reality TV producers Endemol who brought us Big Brother, which is about to start its eighth series in the UK despite the controversy surrounding the recent celebrity edition of the show.

The Big Donor is television at its very worst and BNN claim to be broadcasting it as tribute to station founder Bart de Graaf who died of kidney failure five years ago, and also to highlight the challenges of finding donor organs for transplant. A 37 year-old woman with a terminal illness is to choose a recipient for her kidneys from three patients awaiting transplant surgery, and her choice will be aided by the public who will be able to send text messages in to the show (duration 80 minutes) to "advise" her on her choice. This kind of TV beggars belief! Two people in need of transplant surgery are going to end the evening knowing that their chance of finding a donor match may have passed them by and that they may not get another chance at being able to live a normal healthy life. I'm surprised that Endemol and BNN haven't arranged for the transplant surgery to be done on live TV when the time comes, or maybe an eight week long reality bonanza aired three times a day to enable the public to watch the 37 year-old donor as her life ebbs away.

I cannot believe that the donor is being given the power to make a decision about who is to receive her kidneys on her passing. The only persons qualified to make this decision are the doctors and the surgeon who will do the transplant, and there is still no guarantee that the recipient's body will not reject the organs at a later date. Instead, we will see a decision based on anything and everything but the medical needs of the intended recipients, and a decision that should be made in private, not aired to a nation on live TV. Endemol and BNN are playing God with the lives of four people, exercising the power of Life and Death in the name of informative entertainment, and they are overstepping the mark by a country mile. Endemol in particular have been pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in television and I personally feel that this time they have really gone too far. I don't pretend to know anything about either Dutch or International Law, but as far as I know, the trading of human body parts for transplant is illegal. Endemol will certainly profit financially from this programme, the only question is whether they can be seen to be profiting from a trade in human body parts, and whether anyone in a position of authority will do anything about it.

With the new series of Big Brother starting today (30/05/2007) in the UK I would suggest that all contestants beware. Viewers may be asked to vote on which body parts are to be removed from the contestants prior to their respective evictions from the Big Brother House. Anything is possible where Endemol are concerned. They are certainly not strangers in the Broadcasting Regulator's office and I'm sure that they already have their next appointment booked. With the furore of the racism row surrounding the recent celebrity edition of Big Brother still hanging in the air it is possible, just possible, that Endemol have sewn the seeds of their own destruction. Tonight they will make the first of three public apologies about the celebrity edition, not because they want to but because the Regulator has stamped his foot and told them to do so. I suspect that they may be the first of many. Endemol should have no place in television and the best way to vote is by switching channels.

CUTTY SARK

I was appalled yesterday (21/05/07) morning when I turned on Sky News to see the pictures of Cutty Sark ablaze in her dry dock at Greenwich, in London. I grew up in London and have been on board the ship several times, and she had been a regular part of my childhood as I crossed the River Thames between Woolwich and Greenwich. At that time Sir Francis Chichester's yacht Gypsy Moth IV was on display nearby. It is perhaps fortunate that it is no longer there, otherwise that might have burned as well.

It is strange that with all the strife in the world that is broadcast on rolling news channels that the loss of Cutty Sark has hit me quite hard. Watching the ship burning on TV was quite an upsetting experience and it has left me feeling like a part of me has died. I hope the fire was an accident and not Arson as the police think it may have been. If somebody fired this piece of history I hope they are proud of what they have done. The picture on the front of today's TIMES (22/05/07) of the burned out hull shows just how devastating the fire was. It is fortunate that a large part of the ship's timbers, the masts and rigs, and parts of the superstructure including fixtures like the figurehead had been removed as part of the restoration project that had been started six months ago. At least these will survive to go back into the ship if it can be rebuilt.

The only other surviving example of a tea clipper like Cutty Sark is the City of Adelaide, which has been left to rot on a slipway at the Scottish Maritime Museum, Irvine, Ayrshire, for the last 16 years. I have to say that it is very coincidental that a meeting is to take place next week in Edinburgh with regard to dismantling City of Adelaide due to failure to secure the necessary funding (10M Pounds) to restore the ship. The loss of both ships within a week would just be too much and herein lies a problem. The money in the restoration fund for Cutty Sark would restore City of Adelaide which is now probably a more viable proposition. City of Adelaide was still afloat up until 1990 when she sank at her moorings. The ship was salvaged and left on the slipway where she still stands today. The trouble is that City of Adelaide doesn't have the same heritage as Cutty Sark. The cost of repairing Cutty Sark is now going to increase by at least 5M Pounds, and that is assuming that the iron hull is salvageable from what is left in the dry dock at Greenwich.

The vision for the future of Cutty Sark was a good one. I just hope that the ship still has a future and that it can be rebuilt for the enjoyment of future generations, just as I enjoyed it as a child. The icing on the cake would be for funding to become available to restore City of Adelaide as well. 10M Pounds is a drop in the proverbial ocean when you consider the amount of money that changes hands for football clubs and players. Someone out there has the money to save these two ships for the Nation. It would be even better to see City of Adelaide made seaworthy again and sailed in the Tall Ships Race that bears Cutty Sark's name.

Somebody make it happen.

CABLE SHOPPING CHANNEL JARGONBUSTER

If you really want one of these you need to get on the phone now because we don't have many left.

Somebody please phone in and order one, we've got shed loads left in the warehouse!!

I've actually got one of these shirts myself...

I wouldn't be seen dead in this you Saps!

These jumpers are really great. I'd buy one of these and wear it myself.

This is the ugliest piece of clothing I've seen in ages.

This is an absolutely stunning, stunning gold ring!

My kid got a better looking ring than this out of a bubblegum machine last week.

A wonderful Californian white wine, ideal with outdoor food at this time of year.

OK to put on your chips or to clean the BBQ but don't drink it!

The quality of this Bathroom Suite is absolutely perfect.

What a load of old shite...!!

This is an incredibly stylish piece of jewellery.

This is what a tacky piece of Chav Bling looks like ...

What an amazing use of color in these Bedding Sets. They will really bring the room to life.

This will make your bedroom look like an explosion in a paint factory.

Follow me over here with the camera and we'll take a look at our next item. I'm actually very excited about this piece.

Come over here with me. I've got another dead horse to flog before we go off air at midnight.

This really is one of the most sturdy and robust bedside cabinets I've ever seen on Bargain Basement TV.

It won't last long, but so long as it doesn't fall to bits before the money-back guarantee expires we don't care!

MILKING IT.

There are some things that we need and the people that make these things know it. they also know how to charge for these things, knowing that we pay up or suffer. Razors are a good example. Disposables are cheap enough but so are the results. Good quality replacement blades however, cost an arm and a leg. These things are turned out in the millions at next to no cost, yet the retail price defies description. It's called Profiteering and we put up with it, and the biggest profiteers of all are Central Government, particularly when it comes to Duty on cigarettes, fuel, and alcohol.

Anyhow, this particular gripe has been pulled out of the hat after a trip into town to purchase some sunscreen. There has been a big thing of late about the need to cover up in the sun and to regularly apply sunscreen because of the rapid rise in reported cases of skin cancer, mostly due to over exposure to the sun. Various scare tactics have been used by companies that would like us to buy their products, but having just purchased some sunscreen I can see why skin cancer is on the increase. The last bottle of sunscreen that I purchased cost around six pounds. It seems that the current asking price is around fourteen pounds for 200ml (around 7fl oz in old money) for something that is apparently going to save our lives. Only, it isn't. It's ultimately going to cost lives because not everyone can afford to pay stupid money for a bottle of sunscreen that will only last an average family a few days.

Profiteering on this scale at the expense of public health really is criminal. It won't be long before the Government of this fine nation finds a way of charging us a Suntan Tax to pay for the rises in cases of skin cancer treatment on our terminally ill National Health Service. Not so long ago we all received a crappy little booklet telling us what to do in the event of a national emergency (Tesco's running out of Gin and Tonic etc). I wonder how long it will be before we receive another one telling us what to do in the event of waking up to a gloriously sunny day.

• If it's sunny, proceed to the nearest drugstore.
• Select your favourite sunscreen and take it to the till.
• Pay for your sunscreen and pay your suntan tax.
• Return home.
• Apply as much sunscreen as possible. Don't forget, we need you to buy another bottle very soon.
• Enjoy the rest of the day indoors because it's too hot outside, or maybe it has just started raining.

How many millions of gallons of this stuff is manufactured every year? Surely it can't be that expensive to produce? furthermore, why does it have to be repackaged every year? How long does it take someone to redesign a plastic bottle and how much does it cost? Add to this the cost of retooling and new screen printing to make said bottle. HELLO! Planet Earth to Sunscreen Man. Just leave the f***ing bottle alone and stop ripping us off! It doesn't matter if the bottle is shorter, fatter, and a slightly paler shade of whatever colour. Does the product work and is it affordable, that is what matters. And Mr Sunscreen Man, when you're sunning it up on a Maldive beach, think about all of us who can't leave our own houses on a sunny day because we can't afford your products anymore, and remember who put you on your beach in the first place because you're taking the piss!

FICTIONAL REALITY

I read an article recently on Yahoo News that has been lurking in the back of my mind ever since. The article was written about a group of scientists that had been researching the possibilities of making an Invisibility Cloak as per Harry Potter. The bottom line was that said scientists had taken the fictional prop penned by JK Rowling and made it a reality. As I read the article it was passing through my mind that well paid research scientists must have something better to do than try and bring a literary device off the page and into the real world. However, further reading revealed all. One day it could be used in a military capacity to hide military hardware on a battlefield.

I have to wonder whether any of the scientists involved in this project were part of the team that proved it was possible to teleport atoms from one side of a laboratory to the other, in much the same way that Gene Roddenberry had people teleported from the star ship Enterprise to the surface of whatever planet was in whatever episode of Star Trek. I am sure that one day US forces will find a way of teleporting in and out of whatever their hot spot of the week is, armed with copies of Luke Skywalker's lightsabre and Ripley's pulse rifle, hiding under their personal Harry Potter invisibility cloaks. Meanwhile tanks and aircraft will be hidden from view using a version of the Klingon cloaking device. It is very possible that George Bush Jr already has a Penseive like Professor Dumbledore's, because his head seems to be remarkably empty at times. It used to be said that "war was the mother of invention", but it seems that the roles are reversing and invention is becoming the mother of war. It wont be long at this rate before politicians start reading about fictional battles and start looking into the possibilities of taking them off the page and fighting them for real. Who needs Virtual Reality when you can have Fictional Reality.

WASTED MONEY AND NATIONAL PRIDE

I was somewhat astounded to see a policeman drive past me today in a brand spanking new 07 reg BMW X5. Police forces across the country are regularly complaining that budget constraints prevent them from doing their jobs and providing necessary resources yet Sussex Police have managed to add yet another luxury vehicle to their ever expanding fleet of luxury Sports saloons/estates and SUV's. An X5 is not a cheap vehicle in standard road trim and I shudder to think how much public money has been wasted on purchasing this bazza'd up Bavarian Land Rover rip-off. I suspect that it isn't the only X5 to have been added to the Sussex Police fleet either. I can understand that Sussex Police will have a need for a certain amount of off-road vehicles but they are already in possession of Land Rover Defenders for that kind of work. A BMW X5 is a symbol of how much money you've got to waste on a vehicle to go posing around the town, and Sussex Police don't have any money to waste.

I think it is fair to say right now that I have a problem with local authorities spending public money on over-priced, German-made vehicles. Call me jingoistic if you will but we had a national car manufacturer in the shape of MG Rover who built a car that was considered by the people in the "know" to be quite a good car, and that was the "75". The Touring estate was an ideal base for a general purpose emergency response vehicle that would have been usable by all three emergency services. To be fair to the Fire And Rescue, and the Ambulance Service, they both seem to run fleets of quite ordinary cars like Ford Mondeos and Vauxhall Vectras but the Plod seem to consider themselves special and have to have the most expensive luxury cars they can lay their bent hands on.

Central Government could have saved MG Rover if the Home Office had had control of the budgets for new police vehicles instead of allowing the umpteen police forces across the country to spunk money away like it doesn't matter. If you go to Germany you will find that the Polizei drive German-made vehicles, go to France and the Gendarmes drive French-made vehicles, go to Italy and the Polizia drive Fiats. Come to Great Britain and you will find we are not so great after all because the Plod drive round in cars made anywhere but Great Britain, and we don't have a national car manufacturer anymore. "And why not?" I hear you ask. Because our glorious leaders took what was left of our national motoring heritage and sold it down the river to a German rival, specifically BMW who asset-stripped MG Rover and left it to the wolves.

Just to finish up, I put the evening News on the television after I started writing this, just in time to see Mr Des Browne MP (Government Minister for Pathetic Excuses) climbing into the back of a nice new ministerial car. Surprisingly enough it was a BMW. It is not surprising that the people of this Country have very little national pride when even our egotistical Leaders don't have any.