General nonsense | Steve Middletons blog

Thank you from the Prime Minister

The Prime Minster, David Cameron, has written to everyone involved in helping deliver a successful and safe Olympic Games. A copy of his letter is attached below. While I thank the Prime Minister for his acknowledgement and kind words, I am certain I won’t be resting on his or anyone else’s laurels! Thanks all the…

So impressed by Compare the Market

I don’t normally use my blog to ‘advertise’ other company’s products – for one, my blog is independent of commercial interest. If I did introduce advertising or worse blogged about products in a way destined to influence my readers (perhaps for some sort of commission), people would quite rightly stop reading it. I wouldn’t blame…

Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow unveil new mental health strategy

Yesterday Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow unveiled a new mental health strategy in which more focus will be placed on dealing with mental health problems at an early stage. The new mental health strategy for England promises an extra £400m for therapies, such as counselling, to increase access to them by 60% by 2015. It also…

It should be free to shop local

What do North West Labour and Conservative controlled councils have in common? They think it’s OK to charge their constituents to shop locally. Salford Council has charged for it’s car parks for a good few years now. So even if you just want to pop to Salford Shopping City for a few minutes, perhaps to…

Keep warm this winter for free*

Six inches of snow outside and, brrrr, it’s bloody cold. For most of us that means staying indoors all week, working from home if possible, and turning the heating up another degree. But for a few households, that extra 1 degree can significantly increase your gas/electricity bill – which in the current (financial) climate, adds…

Roger Berry and Richard Carvath

Late last night (about 1am), I was made aware of a completely ridiculous and baseless accusation from Richard Carvath that I and/or Norman Owen have been involved in a blog-comment discussion over on the Swinton South Liberal Democrat site. Apparently this claim has been made to Richard Carvath by an “anonymous electronic communication”. I would…

Spam

For some reason I’ve been hit by hundreds of comment spam this evening, so apologies if you post comments and they don’t come through straight away – I’ll work on fixing it all tomorrow. Off to bed now.

Twitter off-line, how will the world cope?

This was supposed to be a humorous blog post about the fact that Twitter is currently offline and I was wondering how it will be possible for all those iPhone and Blackberry users to tell their followers what they are doing in 140 characters or less. It was then that I was reminded that Twitter…

I didn’t expect that…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfQu9OBfQVI I’m not sure what is more surprising about this video, the fact that Susan Boyle’s voice is just amazing, or that I was informed about this by my favourite American author (Peter David). I’ve heard that even Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are big fans. And no, I don’t watch Britain’s Got Talent (do…

Town’s bars have licences reviewed

Back in January, I wrote about a bar in Oldham that had introduced a new promotion, All you can drink, £5.99 I condemned this promotion at the time and am glad to see that the Liberal Democrat controlled Oldham Council has decided to review the licences of all the pubs and bars in and around Yorkshire…

Hazel Blears, oh so vain.

I recently had cause to write to my local MP, Hazel Blears, with reference to the shocking decision by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme to deny Christies Hospital a refund of £6.5m of donated money that was lost when two Icelandic banks collapsed. Whilst I did expect…

Who watch the Watchmen?

In an effort to forget the woes of the recent by-election in Pendlebury, I elected (no pun intended!) to take the other half for a meal and film at our local cinema. Regrettably, I selected ‘Watchmen’ despite the wife warning me the feature had not received particularly good reviews. I generally do read cinema reviews…

I’ve got a queasy feeling

For the second time this week I’ve woken up feeling ever so slightly queasy – probably something I ate. So it was appropriate that I would read, whilst browsing The Times Online, a letter written to the editor. Sir, “Quantitative easing” is far too cumbersome a phrase. I suggest that we truncate the phrase into…

Will I finally receive my bank charge refund?

About 2 years ago I sued my bank, Barclays Bank plc, in the Salford County Court for thousands of pounds worth of ridiculous bank charges (and accrued interest over time) that they had debited from my account over a 6 year period. They callously removed funds from my account on a regular basis for going…

Red Dwarf lands in Coronation Street

What a sight that would be if it actually happens? I for one would pay real money to see Starbug land in the middle of the street! I was reading that the new Red Dwarf series started filming (to be shown on the Dave channel over Easter) at Granada Studios in Manchester, including on the…

All you can drink, £5.99

While I’m not one to be out every night drinking my brain cells away, I do like the occasional tipple, but I was quite astonished that The Tokyo Club in Oldham has stooped to a new low. All you can drink for less than £6. I can’t get lunch for less than that these days…

An opinion on most things

Welcome to my new blog. As I was creating this I was reminded of the time a researcher called me from Sky News to see if I was interested in appearing on The Martin Stanford show. This was a short lived experiment by Sky, a kind of “call-in show with webcams”. I had previously appeared…