Bad Coffee 3

 I have a question for people who sell coffee for a living (by this I mean the companies not the poor person standing around behind the counter barely earning minimum wage); have you ever actually tasted coffee? I only ask because I have had several very bad cups of coffee this weekend.

 I, as you know, have spent the weekend at the Hay Festival and have been paying a lot of money for things but does the cost of things relate to the quality? Hell no.

 A standard coffee and a cappuccino that actually managed to taste of nothing at all. Now, come on, you have to be impressed by that. Ground coffee was used and milk (and chocolate dusting powder stuff in the cappuccino) but still they tasted of nothing. How is this possible? Aren't there laws of physics that cover this sort of thing? I really do resent paying any amount of money for coffee that tastes of nothing.

 I promise you that I am not being snobbish amount these things, I use instant coffee a lot at home but it tastes of something. When I make ground coffee it really tastes of something wonderful.

 The third bad cup of coffee I had this weekend was no real surprise as it was served to me in Pizza Express. A double espresso was ordered and duly supplied to me. If you put 2 teaspoons of instant coffee in a very small cup and added some hot water this is pretty much what my beverage tasted like, so much so that I think that it is strongly possible that this is what happened. At least it tasted of something I suppose but this is not what an espresso should taste like.

 The important question is where does this put them on the table? Well let's have a look,

 1) TGI’s, Tower Park, Poole

 2) Wetherspoons, Dorchester

 3) Pizza Express, Hereford

 4) Service Station somewhere in the North that I can’t remember the name of

 5) Toni and Guy, Dorchester

=6) All the coffee served at the Hay Festival

=6) Slug and Lettuce, Bournemouth.

 It wasn't all coffee drinking at Hay though, there was also some avoiding of rain, oh and some people giving some talks and taking questions. The most interesting and entertaining speakers, that we saw, were Andrew Marr, AC Graying, Greyson Perry, Amanda Galsworthy, Robin Ince (actually at a different festival down the road), Giles Coren, Adam Hart Davis and Audrey Niffenegger, fantastic, one and all.

 The only downside of the festival for me, if you ignore that tutting and pointy elbows of those who suffer from Middle Class Entitlement Syndrome, was camping. I hate camping. I understand that it is the only way that we can afford to go for 5 or 6 days but what really galls me is that Significant Other really likes it.

 We went to the End of the Road festival a couple of years ago she had never camped before. My plan was that we would camp, it would be cold and rainy and rubbish, she would hate it and we would never have to do it again. This didn't work, she bloody loved it.

 I do have a question for the people of that area, what is it with you and rude shop names?

Ok, so the owner of the Daisy Chain may not know the sexual connotation of their name and, maybe, the owner of the Scissor Sisters hairdressers may have heard of the band but not that it is a slang term/euphemism for Lesbians but there is no excuse for The Spread Eagle.

Diana Watch

 The Daily Express really does live in a little puddle of its own reality and it has proved it twice this week.

 
  Firstly they were kind enough to provide another fine Princess Diana headline,

 

But early in the week that proved that they have learnt nothing from our lovely financial crisis,

Tossers.

Violence is pretty much always wrong, it is very difficult to justify it without sounding like a bit of a thug but I think we may have a case here where it may just be possible.

 A Saudi Arabian has beaten up a policeman in the eastern Saudi city of Al-Mubarraz. This may just sound like a night out in an English city but this has caused a little bit of a stir as Saudi woman are supposed to do as they are told.  

 The lady in question was walking in a park with a male escort; this act may have been illegal because it is against the law for unmarried men and woman to mix. Now I think that that is going to make meeting someone a little harder but hey, it’s not the worst human rights violation that happens in that country. Anyway back to the story. They were approached by a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, basically the Saudi religious Police, who wanted to know their relationship to each other as this may have been an illegal fraternization.

 The young man collapsed to the ground for reason unknown when questioned by God’s rule enforcer on earth (although God did also tell us to go forth and multiply which becomes a little more difficult if you can’t meet chicks) and at this point the lady, who until recently had been having a nice walk in the park, suddenly attacked the Hai’a. She, apparently, punched him repeatedly leaving him requiring hospital treatment for bruises across his body and face.

 Now, like I said earlier, it is hard to justify violence but how pissed off do you have to be to do this? This is years of institutionalized oppression and misogyny finally boiling over into one action of rage, either that or it was just a bit of PMT! (That was a joke, a joke using irony. It was an ironic joke about misogyny)

 Will this be an example to other woman in Saudi Arabia to rise up and demand more freedoms? Let’s hope so then they to may have proper political representation like we do here, ok we only have 4 woman in the Cabinet but hey, that is one more than Afghanistan so I think the point stands.

President Obama has set up a Presidential commission to investigate the oil leak in Gulf of Mexico. This comes as sheets of oil have started washing up in marshes and on beaches in remote areas of south Louisiana and “experts” (I hate that word) say that BP has massively underestimated the amount of oil spewing from it’s fractured well a mile under the surface of the sea. They say it could be up to 10 times as much as the BP estimate of 5000 barrels a day.

BP also admits that their stop it leaking plans are going less than well. They have been trying to siphon on the gushing oil into tankers on the surface but the amount that they have been able to collect is dropping, from 5,000 barrels on Wednesday to 2,200 barrels on Thursday. Let us again remember that they are losing an estimated 50,000 a day into the sea. They still have no plan to cap the well.

 The way the companies involved blamed each other when they were hauled up in front of a Senate hearing and what we have learned about the contracting and subcontracting is the best argument against privatised Nuclear power that I can think of.

 Would you like a nuclear power plant built and run by the cheapest bidder? Oh and the maintenance carry out by the cheapest bidder who sub-contracts it out to another company, who were also the cheapest bidder. And then remember that all of these companies have to make a profit. Do you really think that corners would not be cut?

 Oh and then the Nuclear power plants will have to decommissioned by a private company, who will sub-contract it out, and the nuclear waste will then have to be stored, which we can’t yet do safely for the long term and by “the long term” I mean the thousands of years until this stuff is safe.

I am try to keep it short now so lets move straight on to this weeks awards,

The Award for Just Being Funny,

Some men, a bouncy castle and an International sailing regatta, what's not to find funny,

The Award for Just Being Funny 2,

It’s not been a good couple of weeks for Princes Charles; firstly his mother still isn’t dead (despite a joke on this very subject from a BBC Radio presenter) so he still isn’t King. Then the Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health was closed down because of alleged fraud and money-laundering, oh and promoting bollocks, and now Prince Charles is named in a legal proceeding for his part in interfering in the development of the Chelsea Barracks.

  Lord Rogers (one of luddite Prince Charles’ least favourite architects) designed a really rather lovely conversion for the barracks in steel and glass for the Candy Brothers who where working with a Qatari company all or partly owned by the Qatari royal family.

 When Prince “interfering, unelected busy body” Charles saw the designs he decided to write to the Royal family of Qatar personally saying that his “heart sank” when he saw the designs, this is probably because they look like buildings for the 21^st century and not the 17^th and 18^th, the ones he like the best, what with the power of the Royal family back then and all.

 Lord Grabiner QC, representing the Candy Brothers said “He urged Sheik Hamad bin Jasim to reconsider the plan before it was too late and attached a scheme by a different, classical architect he preferred," That really sounds like interfering to me. 

The Qatari company pulled out of the deal because they didn’t want to openly disagree with Prince Charles with the say-so of the Qatari Royal family.

 Nick and Christian Candy are claiming the Qatari company breached the terms of their contract and must now make the payment that was due when Lord Rogers' scheme won the approval of planners.

 Whilst I am still chuckling to myself about Prince “ooh and nasty looking housing estate will look lovely just here on my land despite the fact that we will provided no extra essential services for these houses” Charles’ little problems have a look at the nominations for this years RIBA Awards, click here to view them, this is the sort of imagination we need in our domestic and public building.

This is a little cheeky but I am, sort of, friends with a couple of members of this band and they are going to re-release their EP so here is an advert for it,

You can buy it on itunes or go to their myspace for more details.

There will definitely be no Diana Watch next week as I will be attending the Hay Festival with significant other. Yes, it is a little pretentious but it is also rather fun. We are camping for 5 days so let’s hope that the weather remains nice. Oh and we are also popping in to the Hay Philosophy Festival just to add to the pretentiousness of our, rather long, weekend. Although to be honest we’re only going there because Robin Ince is playing. Books and walking in the Welsh countryside, who could ask for more?

 Have a lovely week and I’ll be back later.

Diana Watch

“Alan Bennett didn't want it so he gave it to me.”

Hello again, sorry it's Monday and you're only just reading this. Well I'm sorry it's Monday all round really as I had the nicest weekend. We spent Saturday and Sunday at the Hay Literary festival at Hay on Wye. A lovely time was had by all, helped by the excellent weather. I was in Wales and I was hot. I'm not sure if this has happened to me before.
We went to 4 events during our time there. We spent to see the Early Edition with Marcus Brigstock. We saw Sarah Walters promoting her new book and significant other got her copy signed. Today we saw the philosopher AC Grayling talking about our declining civil liberties and Simon Schama talking about his new book at tremendous speed. All of them funny and entertaining. It is a bit middle class playground but if you can get past that a good time will be had, unless you are a middle aged, middle class bloke in a linen jacket because you'll fit right in.
We took a few pictures to try and capture some of the atmosphere, see what you think,














Because there has only been MP expense based news again this week I'm only going to do some awards,

The Award for Nice Thing For London to do of the Week,

Boris Johnson, not a man who I agree with that much although he is entertaining, is going to place 30 odd pianos on street corners around our capital city so that people can have a bit of an ivory tinkle when they want. How nice is that? Just leaving some pianos, bolted down obviously, for people to play.

The Award for Newspaper Phrase I Would Advice You Not to Google,

This goes to the News of the World who described Susan Boyle for Britain's Got Talent as an “Hairy Angle”. Don't Google this, it's not pretty, unless you like that sort of thing of course.

The Award for Most Embarrassing Data Loss of the Week,

This goes to the RAF who lost a hard drive earlier in the week. It contained the personal details of many of their staff. Now this would be bad enough, a military service loosing data, but it isn't that simple. The hard drive also contained RAF files on officers and their more interesting habits and personal peccadilloes. The files contain details of senior RAF staff who have had affairs and have been caught taking drugs and many other fun things. The files were, of course, not encrypted. Oh dear, oh dear. But it is very funny.

The Award for Advertising Campaign That Encourages the Biggest Waste of Your Money of the Week,

So this could go on the spray on hair I saw advertised on the channel “Dave” last week but there is one that is so ridiculous it can not be beaten.
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the Volvic challenge. For those of you not familiar with this advert, some bloke says that he has been asked to drink a 1 and a half litres of water per day. You get a sort of video diary and he says he feels better at the end of the 2 week challenge. Now, there is nothing wrong with that. Being well hydrated is good for you. It aids weight loss, it's good for the skin etc. The problem is the nonsense ad speak at the end of the piece that insinuates that there is something special about Volvic that makes it different for other water. Well, yes there is. The price. The cheapest Volvic I could find was £2.20 per litre meaning that per day the Challenge will cost you £3.30. Tap water on the other hand, which has higher standards of cleanliness than bottled water, is about £1 per 1000 litres so drinking the recommended amount will cost you about 0.15 pence per day. £2.20 per day Vs £0.0015 per day. The choice seems pretty clear to me.

I'm sorry about the lack of proper news this week but I promise that I try harder next week, as long as we don't have to suffer MP's expenses too much.