Going shopping - Do you need anything?

I was in the local shop earlier today, I had gone there for just 3 items and was looking for the shortest queue, the shop does not have a few items checkout. I spotted one with a woman being served and just one other in the line so joined the queue.
It was only after a minute or so that I realised that there were a whole load of "NEXT CUSTOMER" plastic thingies on the belt although there was just the 3 of us. Then it happened.
The woman, possibly in her mid 60s, with a 1960s painted face got our her purse, she slowly sorted through a handful of coins picking out the pennies and putting them not into the cashiers hand but onto the desk, then putting the coins away she got out the notes. She found several fivers and took one off the bunch, now where she got perfect five pound notes from is a mystery, after much fiddling she paid and put the purse back into her bag.
The cashier put the next 3 items through the till and the same woman paced them into another carrier bag. After a moment she again got out the purse and started to sort through the coins.
At this point you may be thinking that I am making a really long episode of this, well it was nothing to the time this woman took to sort out a few coins.
Then we were back to the notes then the purse back in the bag. At last she was through, but, oh for heavens sake, the next couple of items behind the next customer barrier were hers too and it became painfully clear that we had to wait for another purse session. The woman behind her and in front of me looked at me, she said nothing, nothing was needed, we were thinking the same.
Obviously this woman, when not washing and ironing five pound notes, goes to all her friends and asks if they need anything from the shop. Not only is she too daft to know that faces painted in blue, green and black makeup went out years ago she is not clever enough to do simple maths and divide up one bill after leaving the store.
Now don't get me wrong, she has every right to paint her face, every right to be a little batty, but just don't ever let her in front of you in a shop queue.

Saving the planet

Something somewhere has gone wrong.

Everywhere we look we are being told that we have to save the planet and unless we do the latest GREEN fad we are all doomed, as Corporal Fraser used to say (Don't know who he is? oh dear I am getting old).

There are some things that seem good ideas, recycle what you can, don't waste things and respect the environment but something I saw the other day just didn't seem right.
Written on a pack of dustbin bags it says "Biodegradable - this bag will degrade 30 times faster than any other" . My black bag rubbish consists of all the things that I can not recycle including the wrong types of plastic, that take a billion years to degrade, anything that's broken and has a mixture of metal and plastics etc. But now I can throw them all into landfill safe in the knowledge that although they will be there for ever the bag they are in will degrade virtually as they hit the ground.
What a great idea.
It isn't just me is it, this really is a total waste of the extra money they cost?

Happy Christmas

Its that time of year again, the time that I head for the airport to escape from, but this year we moved house and its hard to justify spending loads of money to escape Christmas.
All around where we now live people are saying to hell with global warming lets ramp up the electricity bill and cover the house with lights and fan powered snow men and see how much CO2 we can generate. Which is rather a strange thing to do for a country obsessed with wanting a White Christmas.
For those who wish to celebrate the religious side of Christmas it must get harder each year as it has become more and more retail and less and less religion. We also know its actually the wrong time of year to celebrate Christmas and that many years ago certain people hijacked a pagan festival and turned it into religion.
But what is all the hype that we call Christmas. I find it very difficult to understand why people go about for weeks before hand saying things like "If I don't see you before, have a happy Christmas". Do they mean forget the other 364 days of the year, I could not give a fig how they are for you, but have one good day. And there is the "What are you doing for Christmas this year?" Which usually starts in October. But to most people who won't be going to church Christmas is just one day; like any other one day. Even the local Spa will be open.
So as we head for that one day, that people talk about for months and plan for for weeks, the day that costs money tries patients and builds stress may I take this opportunity of wishing anyone reading my blog a happy day everyday, from the 1st of January to the 31st of December every year.
Oh, and that includes a happy Christmas

South Yorkshire's chief constable caught speeding

Yesterday a Chief Constable was in the news for speeding, he was doing 90mph in a 60 limit. This officer had also been, according to the news, "the top traffic policeman in the country", which means he held meetings rather than actually did police work.
But there is one angle that the news did not look at. If the top traffic cop was doing 90mph then you can kind of assume it must have been safe at that time to be doing that speed on that road.
The news found the usual dippy woman from some road campaign to say how "speeding kills and she should have known better", as I have said on news groups, speed does not kill; inappropriate speed kills.
There are many people who are a danger doing 20mph but I expect the chief constable will have done some police driver training and will be a far better driver than the average.
The one thing this case has highlighted is that speed restrictions are stupid. They are arbitrary and there is no actual reason that 60 is safer than 90 and the "doing 70 saves X% petrol than doing 80 or 90" is rubbish.
People kill not speed. If it was simply speed then having driven legally at up to 140mph on many roads I should have died years ago. The dippy blond doing 30 on the school run, cell phone in one hand handbag on the lap looking for dinner money is the risk, the 70year old who can not see that doing 30 in a 60 is frustrating the hell out of every other driver is a risk, the idiot reading a map driving a 38 tonne truck is a risk, not the well trained driver doing an appropriate high speed concentrating on the road.