Blue in the Face

I'm happy to see that someone has actually managed to point out what I've been saying for years about the housing market in the South West i.e. :

Higher than average house prices * lower than average wages = catastrophe

If my wife does manage to get a teaching job down here then we'll at least be able to qualify for a shared ownership property but what about everyone else that doesn't?

A shortage of new housing (and complete lack of council housing) has meant that those who do build new homes down here can charge what they like regardless of the prices in the surrounding area.

The bit that pisses me off the most is the jammy toe-rags that managed to get a house for 50% of its value 10 years ago (or more) and have watched it more than treble in value since. All they've done is take out huge loans against the equity and spent it on flash cars, flatscreen tvs and designer clothes. My generation will never get that kind of opportunity and we're effectively paying for theirs.

I moved down here in 1997 when you could get a three bedroomed maisonette for £30,000. The same ones are now selling for £120,000+

Roughly 70% of Plymouth's housing is either ex-council or ex-armed forces. That gives you an idea of how big the boat I've missed was.

Thanks to PC Bloggs for the link.

More Sports Thoughts

England are out of the Cricket World Cup. The media are already calling for Duncan Fletcher to be sacked but given that the man looking most likely to replace him before the World Cup started was murdered there, I don't really see the point. No point replacing him for the sake of it.

I for one wasn't surprised that we didn't make the semi finals. England had a fantastic run of form in test cricket in 2004 and 2005 but at the same time we were consistantly getting beaten in the accompanying ODIs.

Having said that we did go into the World Cup on the back of a rare ODI series win - in Australia of all places. The reason we couldn't build on that was less to do with the Fredalo debacle and more to do with us dropping the in-form bowler that got most of the wickets (Plunkett), in favour of Mahmood who despite offering some variation of pace, gives far too many loose deliveries to be able to play in a World Cup.

Then there's the issue of the batting order. Todays result will surely mark the end of Michael Vaughans ODI captaincy. I'm a great admirer of Captain Fantastic but he's consistantly failed at one day level and you can't afford to have any slack in the line-up. If you don't perform, you're out. It's that simple.

If banger makes a (much welcomed) return to England this summer then I'd line them up as follows:

Trescothick
Strauss (Cpt)
Pietersen
Collingwood
Flintoff
Bell
Bopara
Nixon (Wkt)
Dalrymple
Plunkett
Anderson

If Trescothick doesn't quite cut the mustard then I'd promote Flintoff to the opening spot (If he's going to get out cheaply then he might as well do it at the start) and have him open with either Mal Loye or Ed Joyce. The best ODI sides attack from the start in the compulsory Power Play. England have to follow suit. I'd put Bell down the order as (until today) he was good at getting in and not giving away his wicket. If England do have the inevitable middle order collapse then he could at least save the sinking ship.

I've left out Panesar as he hasn't quite done it with the white ball yet and he's something of a liability in the field (putting it mildly).

On a seperate sporting note I would like to say a fond farewell to Juan-Pablo Angel.

Thanks for the years of loyalty, effort and all round professionalism. You have a better football-brain than the rest of David O'Learys 05/06 strikeforce combined. Shame about your legs though.

Good luck in New York.

I guess I'll have to find a new hero to worship at Villa Park. The smart money is on Gabby: Local lad, lightning fast, scores goals; what more do you want? Of course he'll be my first sporting idol that's younger than me but I guess that's something of an inevitability as you get older.

Open Prison

I for one felt somewhat overjoyed after watching last nights Panorama.

Ever since I started working in the public sector (two years next month) I've noticed a bad attitude towards us from Joe Public (via the press). There is this bizarre misgiving that the private sector is automatically better than the public sector and that we're all lazy/useless/greedy/overpaid*.

*Delete as applicable (If possible)

The example of privately run prisons is one that shows this myth of private sector superiority isn't true. The prison guards are paid 25% less than they would get in the public sector but the company paid to run the prison is paid more than the prison would cost the taxpayer if it were a public asset. It doesn't take a genius to work out where the difference in money goes.

But for some reason Joe Public is happier feeding some inept private company than they are in paying someone a fair days pay for a decidedly unpleasant job.

How exactly is privatising the prison service in the public interest anyway? It's not like a prisoner is something you can get a return from like you can with telecomms, utilities, transport etc. They will only ever cost money, so why waste it on a multinationals profit margin?

My favourite bit of the whole programme was when the prison officers admitted they didn't inform the home office rep of any 'incidents' as the company would get a fine for it... Now there's an incentive to improve things.

The private sector invasion isn't limited to prisons either.
There are an increasing number of consultants popping up where I work and yet some of us are twiddling our thumbs because we've not got enough to do. Hardly cost effective is it?

There seems to be this government belief that simply by involving the private sector, everything will magically improve. It won't as the private sector will cream the government for everything it can get.

Just look at the NHS IT fiasco. The private sector knows that any government will throw good money after bad rather than cutting its losses and pulling the plug.

There is no magic wand for the public sector. If you simply remove it and contract everything out then you pay more and have less control.

I'm not saying the public sector is perfect (far from it) but it exists for a reason. Would the government seriously contemplate privatising the police or the armed forces?

Live Ache

I don't bother arguing the undeniable fact of global warming (a.k.a. Climate Change *).

However I do dispute the major causes of it. My personal opinion is that it has less to do with whether or not your car is a hybrid or you recycle paper and more to do with that enormous ball of fire that moves from East to West every day.

In fact burning paper is better for the environment that recycling it, provided the paper was sourced from managed forests.

Needless to say I've been getting increasingly annoyed with the medias obsession of linking every story they can with global warming. I'm surprised that Private Eye haven't come up with an Ecophiliacs corner.

So when I heard about Live Earth I was neither surprised nor impressed.

How exactly is a series of enormous concerts held in front of thousands of people going to help save the environment?

Each concert will require several megawatts of power - are they going to put up temporary wind farms to produce it?

And the crowds will be flocking from all over the country to see it, emitting carbon along the way.

In short it's a somewhat hypocritical statement to make.

*The term Climate Change implies that the climate has at somepoint stayed the same. It hasn't. When you study a bit of geology you very quickly learn that the British Isles alone has had every type of climate going over the billions of years that the Earth has existed.
The climate of the Earth will continue to change long after humans and their SUVs have gone the way of the dodo.

Celebrity Big Hostage

The media coverage for this whole Iran hostage crisis has been annoying to say the least. I'm not referring to the story itself but the blatent sexism within the media.

They do reports about gender inequality one week and then start blathering on about how one of the 15 hostages is a mother.

They keep mentioning her name yet the 14 male prisoners are virtually anonymous.

It's been doubly annoying in that the local news covers the story too. Faye Turney lives in Plymouth so they keep referring to her as being from Plymouth (She is in fact from Shrewsbury) and so are constantly talking about her. Two of the men are also from the South West (I can't remember their names as they're very much b-list hostages) but they've only been talking about them in the last 24 hours or so.

The only plus side of the local news is that it has informed me that all the hustle and bustle happening on my street is because of this. I'm about 400 metres away from ground zero.

I go running past that construction site all the time... Did 6 miles on Friday just gone, plan to do 8 miles this Friday so I'm just about on target for the end of May.

Gotta go now as I've got things to do before the penultimate episode of Life on Mars starts at 9.