The Anonymous Widower

Are Adverts Pointless?

I’m just watching the Tour de France on ITV4, as I put together the next couple of IKEA cabinets for my kitchen.

The adverts are completely aimed at the wrong person.

1. There has been two different companies trying to sell me Funeral Insurance. Why would I want a funeral and anyway, I won’t be going or remember it. We should just post our bodies to the nearest hospital for dissection practice or a pet food factory to do something useful.

2. There are also adverts for Skoda cars. I don’t drive and have no interest in the sort of boring cars bought by plebs. Or in any car forv that matter unless it doesn’t pollute my walking space.

3. Santander Bank. Only idiots, bank with Head Offices in other countries. Remember Iceland and Scotland!

4. Petplan, Pets are for the lonely and conservative.

5. Loans. I don’t need to borrow money.

6. Car Insurance.  See point 2.

7. Barbecues. I hate them!

When somebody invents a television that doesn’t show adverts or trailers in live television, I’ll buy one.

July 15, 2015 Posted by | Sport, World | , , , | Leave a comment

History Repeats Itself

The BBC is today showing a clip on Breakfast Time, where their Transport Correspondent, gets a ride on the new Class 800 train from Hitachi, as it runs round the test track.

But it is already suffering from the same problems that dogged the British Rail trains of the 1970s and 1980s. According to this document on a web site about the Advanced Passenger Train, the drivers blacked the train for twelve months because it was single-crewed. The writer claims this was a factor in the abandoning of the project.

So what was last week’s strike on First Great Western about?

Crew levels on the new trains, as is reported in this article on the BBC.

We may be in the twenty-first century, but some people and their attitudes are still in the nineteenth.

July 15, 2015 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , | Leave a comment