grumpyf1

Never forget... How quickly we forget. This week, we’re all vexed about the amount of plastic packaging we use, and applauding Iceland for saying they’re going to phase out the use of it on their own-brand products by 2023. I was delighted to see some of my Tesco fruit and veg arrive loose in a brown paper bag when our delivery arrived at the weekend. First time ever, mind. But it was only a couple of weeks ago that disposable coffee cups were the enemy of the environment, and column inches were filled discussing the potential effectiveness of a ‘Latte Levy’ of 25p per cup for these single-use villains. I’ve got another suggestion to put forward, which you can ponder whilst you enjoy your next Taxachino. How about a priority queue? You bring your own re-useable cup along, and by waving it in the air (and maybe in the increasingly angry faces of the cup-less) you get to move up the queue until you are behind other ever-so-slightly-smug cup claspers. Apart from the warming dr...

What kind of sorcery is this..?! Comedian Sarah Millican is on a 100-date tour of the UK at the moment, and recently dropped in to deliver her Control Enthusiast show to an appreciative audience at The Forum, in Barrow. One of them had even “missed my regular bingo session” to attend. What higher praise is there? You know you’ve made it when that happens. Sarah clearly enjoyed herself too, taking to Twitter after the show to say “What a glorious crowd” the Barrovians were. She also included a picture of her “lovely dinner” – a couple of fried eggs, with a pile of chips and beans. Fair enough – it looked delicious. In fact, it’s making me hungry just thinking about it. I do have one perplexing problem with this gig/food-based scenario though; the eggs and chips are in half of one of those polystyrene boxes, whilst the beans are in the other half. The two half are hinged together. There’s no cross-contamination. Eggs and chips are bean-free. The beans are devoid of egginess and...

Carillion? Oh. Bugger... It’s shocking to hear that Carillion have gone into liquidation, and frightening to hear that their pension fund is in the red to the tune of nearly £600m. I really liked their 1985 hit “Kayleigh”. Perhaps they wouldn’t be in this situation if they hadn’t agreed to such large retirement payments for former lead singer Fish and... Marillion? Oh, right – I see what happened there. The band build monolithic brooding rock songs, and the construction giant has it’s fingers in a worryingly large number of pies, but forgot to keep an eye on the piggy bank. With 20,000 staff in the UK alone, and over twice that worldwide, their financial meltdown is a huge concern for their many employees. It’s a big worry for the rest of us too, as it looks like we’ll be “doing a banks” again, and bailing them out of the £1.5bn hole they’ve dug themselves into. As their portfolio includes contracts for services such as hospital and prison maintenance, and cleaning and dinn...