£1,000 rail fare

The first £1,000 rail fare has been 'discovered' in the UK.
It's Newquay in Cornwall to Kyle of Lochalsh (right) in Scotland - and I daresay it's not a direct connection.
This is a 704-mile journey by road.
The petrol costs would be around £150 and you could buy an old banger for about £100. Then since you could MOT, tax and insure it for £200 you'd surely have to be mad to buy this ticket.
Are there enough mad folk out there to make it worth their while offering this?
There's probably a journalist planning his trip right now.

Happy to be grumpy

Apparently being grumpy is good for you.
This has made me happy.
But am I now unhappy because I am no longer grumpy?

Wilshire's Nazi gaffe - the real tragedy

The latest in the 'they just don't get it' series is the extraordinary claim by Tory MP David Wilshire - a man under investigation for paying his own company £105,000 with our money.
He said: "The witch-hunt against MPs in general will undermine democracy. It will weaken Parliament - handing yet more power to governments. Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler's gas chambers."
Let's get this straight. He is comparing the investigation into dodgy expenses claims by MPs to the holocaust.
Sorry David, I don't think any MPs have died at the hands of brutal thugs. His remarks are beyond contempt.
In The Times Rachel Sylvester says: 'In the week of the anniversary of the gunpowder plot, most voters would like nothing better than to blow up the House of Commons, stoking the fire with tables and chairs purchased from the John Lewis list.'
And that's putting it mildly.
A more reasoned response to the crisis comes in the FT from Philip Stephens.
He suggests giving MPs a pay rise to £90k from their present £65k.
Of course he's right - I'd propose a higher figure - but there's no chance they'll get an increase.
Ultimately we will all suffer with low-grade representatives in parliament - we are the victims, not Wilshire and his like.

Simon Mann and Mark Thatcher

Simon Mann's release from prison in Equatorial Guinea must be making his old mate Mark 'Scratcher' Thatcher very nervous.
Mercenary leader Mann, and others including Nick du Toit, were the fall guys for a failed coup of the oil-rich African state. Mann said at his trial that the Wonga Coup was funded by Sir Mark, Margaret's boy, and Lebanese millionaire Eli Calil.
Calil said of Mann after the former SAS man's trial: 'It was his lack of professionalism, his lack of discretion, his lack of judgement that caused this situation.'
I would imagine that after five years inside the Black Beach jail that Mann and his fellow dogs of war may be feeling some bitterness toward Thatcher and Calil.
In a letter to his wife before the trial Mann said: 'It may be that getting us out comes down to a large splodge of wonga.'
The wonga, if it ever arrived, seems to have taken a long time to do the trick.
We've not heard the last of this.
Here's the original Sky News report after Mann was jailed.

The worst sports kits in history

The Telegraph website has produced a picture montage of the worst sporting kits in the light of England rugby's purple away strip.
However, how any review of the subject can ignore Coventry City's legendary brown away kit is beyond me.
In the picture the offending outfit is modelled by the lovely Ian Wallace.

Frankie Boyle, Adlington and the BBC

This whole anti-comedy thing is getting a bit much.
I can see Rebecca Adlington's point but her spokesman has said the BBC Trust rebuke for Frankie Boyle is not enough.
Come on.
Frankie's one of the finest comedians of his generation and this ridiculous witch hunt could drive him out. We've already lost him from Mock The Week.
The furore's not doing Adlington any favours either and is sure to provoke a backlash from Frankie fans.
It's also drawing even more attention to the original remarks (see below).

Nutt's not the nut

Prof David Nutt has given his two-penneth in The Observer and it should make for uncomfortable reading for this shambles of a dying government.
He highlights the fact that this government turned drug classification from a medical decision to a political one.
A bit like the interest rate issue in reverse.
As a result he felt he had a right to express an opinion.
He was wrong.
As the Obs says: 'Nutt's sacking was another milestone in Britain's progression from a great Enlightenment country into a place where prejudice reigns. Big Media has played its part, but so have timid, callow politicians.'