Wickes - Red Herrings

This week's TV saw Wickes back with their red pencils out again, honestly, you expect this sort of filth on BBC3 don't you?

Anyroadup, (as my Mum never says), I was a bit shocked at the latest price cut Wickes are peddling, and being a boring sort of bloke - took to my calculator.

Assuming the new price - £2.15 includes 20% VAT, Wickes are selling their Sealant at net. £1.80, and again assuming they 'only' look for 20% for themselves, they will  make 30p profit at this new price (highly unlikely), making the cost to them - per tube, £1.50.

Ok, so this means the original £5.19 price tag included VAT of 86p, so net £4.33.  Cost is £1.50, so profit was £2.83 per tube.  Or 65% ?

Is it me?  Just what sort of margins are being sought up and down rip-off Britain?

Recession. Spend our way out or keep our heads down? Cycle Paths

I can usefully combine two of my current rants into one gloriously simple idea - so here it goes.

There has been a lot of talk about infrastructure building as a way of helping ourselves into job creation, materials production etc etc.  But how about if that same project lessened road misery?  Promoted health, made people happier?

Cycle Paths
Yep . . . . Cycle paths, that's what we need to build, in every single town in Britain, and once they're built, we need to connect them all up. 

For some inexplicable reason our masters seem to believe we're satisfied with this ↓

And . . . lets just get real for a minute . . . . mostly, the reality faced by UK cyclists looks like this

The rest of the world (especially the europeans) must be laughing their sandals off,  "is there NO democracy in the UK?" they ask each other, spluttering between gasps of air from the effort of trying to talk and laugh.  Before adding -  "We won't have to worry about them much longer, they'll have killed each other off in a few years time".

Seriously though, if you can glance away from the Mobile phone screen for a moment - take a look as you drive around.  There's an astonishing amount of vergeway, scrubland, wasted space by the side of a surprising number of roads - doing absolutely nothing.   Further, there is mile and miles and miles of pavement, sat there waiting for two people to use, every 24 hours or so.

If a cycle-path absolutely will not fit, then share the (widened if necessary) pavement space.

Have a look at this scheme:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroVelo

and if you've no time - just imagine this . . . . .

Windbreaks and the great british psyche?

Clop, clop, clop.
Blazing sun, not an ounce of wind, tons of space on these gorgeous Dorset beaches.

What's this noise?  It's dozens of men, clopping down the poles on their family windbreaks.

An Englishman's castle eh?  Fence divide your borders, or . . . if not at home, build one out of striped canvas and bash its poles into the sand.  haha.

Olympics

Excellent wasn't it? Brilliant opening ceremony, fantastic performances by team GB and superb BBC coverage.

But you know me, always a bit pissed-off about something - so I'm so pleased I don't need to keep hearing about "Our HAUL of medals"  and I don't like having such a pop music themed Closing Ceremony, neither of which remained anywhere near what was once the true spirit of the games.

Growth, growth, growth

I wanted to get this one off quickly.

It's an idea I've been toying with for some months, only to hear Radio4 are doing a similar piece at 9am this morning - so it seemed 8.45am (my Computer says) is a good time to fire this out.

We need to stop chasing Growth as a signal that everything is fine again.  Growth might show a country or economic area is financially stable, but as an indicator of the health of our species, or the planet - it is possibly the worst thing we could possibly wish for.  A highly simplistic argument (and hardly an argument, yet) - but I truly believe the Western World continuously barks up the wrong tree, if they can find any.

What about quality of life? What about personal TIME? What about having LESS?

Weird huh?

Another Chip on my shoulder.

Thanks to Alex who suggested this, it's something I have noticed, but didn't notice it enough to get my blogging juices flowing.
OK, the question is - have you ever been in any chip shop that hasn't got some award or other?


No?
Neither have I.

but seriously . . . . .