A Repetitive Christmas

Spending three days leading up to Christmas in bed with the flu was only marginally more disappointing than waking up Christmas morning to discover Auntie Mildred had generously sent hundreds of pounds worth of Woolworths gift vouchers as presents for the boys, but we struggled through the day nonetheless.

Children’s toys these days are more of a health & safety hazard than the HSE ever set out to create, littered as they are with plastic ties to hold them into their plastic moulded encasements.  And, just to ensure Megatron can’t escape from his box and wreak havoc on your living room before your five year old gets hold of him, the plastic ties are then selotaped to the back of the cardboard box and the toy itself is mounted to a plinth and held securely in place by several screws.

The resulting attempts to free the toys from their packaging meant that only one toy was ready for Jacob to play with before we had to open the pub for the Christmas lunch time revellers, and I had spent more time trying to get it out of its box than he will ever spend playing with it.

Still coughing and spluttering my way through Christmas Day, eventually the pub closed and we were able to sit down to relax and enjoy the drivel that the television companies thought we might appreciate over the holiday period.  Can somebody please explain how, despite the fact that most of us these days spend a gargantuan amount on receiving digital TV in to our homes, the broadcasters seem to think we won’t notice that they’ve spent all their money making a cheesy Christmas Special of Strictly Come Dancing and that, because they’ve blown all their budget on keeping Bruce Forsyth’s teeth white, Boxing Day highlights included that stunning movie Crocodile Dundee and a repeat of the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special from 1975?

I got quite excited on Christmas Day night when the little red light blinked on the Sky+ box.  “What’s that recording?”  I asked Ali as we tentatively opened presents once the children had gone to bed, me praying for a PlayStation3, her praying that I wouldn’t notice my stocking was full of bargain basement goodies from collapsed high street stores.  “I think it’s a Top Gear Special,” she replied.

“Ooh,” I cooed, “let’s watch that then.”  Knowing that Top Gear had done a new special, I automatically assumed it was their Vietnam tour, but no – instead of showing the latest and greatest Top Gear spectacle to a captive Christmas Day audience, the BBC decided it would be better to show the America trip instead.  It’s a funny episode, no doubt, with Clarkson carrying a cow on the roof of his Camaro and Hammond having to try and make it safely through the state of Alabama with Man Love Rules emblazoned in pink on the side of his pick-up truck.

But it wasn’t anything exciting for Christmas and, at the end of the day, I’ve seen it almost as many times as I’ve seen Back to the Future – and that’s a lot.

Robert Zemeckis’s hit from 1985, starring Michael J. Fox, was also voted the greatest movie of the 1980s in one of those ridiculous countdown shows that Channel 5 like to show at this time of year.  Watching as stars of the past and present gushed about the movies they remembered from the hedonistic decade of bouffant hairstyles and shoulder pads, I couldn’t help but think that everybody who watches Channel 5 and reads The Times – the demographic apparently approached for this particular survey – had clearly forgotten some of the greatest films made in the eighties.

I won’t knock Back to the Future from being voted the greatest movie of that decade – it’s certainly one of my favourite trilogies of all time, Star Wars notwithstanding – but to have Dirty Dancing voted as the second best film of the same period seemed, well, rubbish.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was voted in as the third best film of that period but then it all really went to pot.  How can you have a Top 40 of the 80’s Greatest Movies that puts Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure in twelfth place, yet doesn’t mention Ferris Bueller’s Day Off anywhere?  And if they can put Aliens – which, let’s face it, was a sequel – as the fourth greatest movie of those ten years, how can they have missed The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi out completely?

It’s almost as if they just invited a group of youngsters in to the studio and asked them which films from the 1980s they could remember, then the producers put them in the order they thought seemed best.  After all – the greatest films of the 1980s can’t include chick-flicks like Desperately Seeking Susan and Working Girl yet, somehow, manage to ignore one of the greatest cinematic moments of all time: Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

I’d get cross and go in search of the numpties who took part in this survey in order to knock them sense in to them, only Channel 5’s Top 40 Movies of the 1980s was, like everything else on television this year, a repeat.

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Channel 5's countdown of the Greatest Movies ever can be found here:
http://www2.five.tv/programmes/greatestevermovies/countdown/

Electronic Cigarette - socially acceptable or still taboo tobacco?

Wouldn’t it be great if we could get the smokers back in the pub again?

They’re a contentious bunch, those smokers. Single-handedly, they’re the biggest problem demographic for publicans, seeing as they were the mainstay behind so many of England’s drinking hostelries, yet equally the biggest scourge for non-smokers looking for an idyllic place to dine.

And let’s not forget that – putting supermarket prices, alcohol tax or an impending financial meltdown so severe that it might put the Vatican into receivership aside – the smoking ban is undoubtedly the single biggest culprit behind the demise of so many of Britain’s pubs.

Despite assurances from the government and several anti-smoking lobbies that once the ban was in place great swathes of non-smokers would inundate our pubs, we all knew in our heart-of-hearts that it wasn’t really going to happen. At the end of the day, non-smokers who wanted to use the pub used it regardless of whether people smoked or not; they knew what it was going to be like when they opened the front door, and went there anyway. Non-smokers who didn’t want to use the pub didn’t use it because they preferred a bottle of red plonk curled up on the sofa with the cat purring at their feet while they watched Z-List Celebrity Deathmatch on Saturday night TV.

Because of this, smoke-free pubs are still not enough to lure them away from Bruce Forsyth or Ant & Dec and therefore it’s no surprise that when it’s cold, wet and dark these days a lot of pubs are quiet, empty buildings desperately waiting for customers.

Come the warm weather and sunshine, beer gardens and smoking shelters fill up with – you guessed it – smokers who come back to the pub but, given the fact that Britain has a naturally wet and windy climate, such days don’t happen often.

Pubs, therefore, have had to change their business models – mainly towards serving more food. For some this has worked, for others it hasn’t. Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a way for the diner and the smoker to coexist in peaceful harmony?

It’s a sort of Nirvana, I understand, but if smokers could be in one bar and diners in another, Britain’s pubs would be lively, profitable establishments once again. Maybe, though, there’s a twenty-first century solution to the problem.

A customer who once frequented my pub daily but now barely ventures through the door because she can’t enjoy a cigarette with her glass of wine, wandered in to the premises today happily smoking away. Or perhaps she wasn’t. I couldn’t tell. It certainly looked like a cigarette, and smoke appeared to be emanating from her nostrils, but there was no smell, no lingering cloud.

Instead, she was enjoying an electronic cigarette. In the dim and distant past of my childhood I remember a relative using a cigarette holder that provided a nicotine fix, but without the cigarette – or the smoke. He looked like a bit of a cross between Cesar Romero’s Joker, and Noel Coward. In other words, a bit of a nob.

But it did mean he was getting his fix without affecting those around him. Today’s version is a little more sophisticated, looking more like a cross between a biro and a science fiction cigarette, running on a battery that simultaneously heats up the nicotine to provide the smoker with the flavour and the ‘hit’ and making the tip glow red. Just like a real cigarette! And all that escapes from the user’s lips is a breathy puff of water vapour that dissipates almost instantly.

It could do for smoking what the hydrogen car might one day do for the internal combustion engine.

But while the Honda FCX Clarity might be able to save the polar bears, can the Smart Smoker really do the same for Britain’s pubs? Will people be comfortable watching others ‘smoke’ while they dine, or does the Electronic Cigarette deserve to exist only in the pages of a Peter F Hamilton novel?

The problem appears to be not with the fact that this device could be the answer to everyone’s prayers, but the fact that the perception of somebody smoking might be off putting. It seems that, business arguments aside, smoking in pubs appears to have become as visually offensive as somebody using a mobile phone whilst driving.

One diner, when quizzed on whether he found the device acceptable or not, pointed out that if he walked in and saw somebody apparently smoking at the bar, whether they were just exhaling water vapour or not, he would be inclined to leave again without enquiring further.

This leaves the publican with a huge dilemma. Having worked hard to build up a food trade to replace that lost by having had the smokers banished, letting them back in with a Star Trek equivalent to traditional tobacco might mean all that hard work and expense was for nothing.

So I’m curious to hear from publicans, smokers, non-smokers, diners and from anyone who has used one of these devices: what do you think of them? Smokers, would you use one in a pub? Diners, would you eat in a place that let these be used? Publicans, would you let smokers use them? Furthermore, are they a potential revenue stream?

Or are they as risible as the fortunes of the plug-in electric car?

Google Zeitgeist ranks Facebook "Most Searched"

In a year when most banks found themselves more precariously balanced than Northern Rock, Ferrari launched its first ugly car since the 328 GTS, Georgina Baillie discovered her Andy Warhol moment, Jeremy Clarkson accused lorry drivers of murdering prostitutes and Jennifer Aniston decided to launch a pin-up calendar for 2009, it seems slightly strange that the top searched for term on Google in the UK for 2008 is, wait for it, Facebook.

As if you couldn’t guess the web address for yourself anyway, Google’s recently released list of the top search terms for 2008 include ‘Facebook’ as the most searched for term in the UK, ‘iPlayer’ as the fastest growing search term in the UK, and ‘Sarah Palin’ as the fastest rising global search term.

Despite the Beijing Olympics, Barrack Obama or even the Large Hadron Collider spelling the end of the world, terms such as ‘YouTube’, ‘Bebo’, ‘Hotmail’ and even ‘Heath Ledger’ outranked some of the most defining moments of this year.

As the world sunk in to financial meltdown and Alistair Darling sought refuge in a reduced VAT rate and increased duties on fuel and alcohol, it seems that the web generation sought solace in online games and eBay.

Yes, it’s that time of year when Google announce the top search trends of 2008, the fastest rising and most popular search terms of the year. Located at Google Zeitgeist, local and global search terms have been ranked in order of popularity and the results are, well, quite mundane.

Given that this year has seen the first black man elected president, a black Formula One World Champion, the financial collapse of a country and the demise of Russell Brand, not to mention the fact that a lot of people out there probably type ‘Angelina Jolie Naked’ (or something similar) in to the search box on a regular basis, the fact that ‘iPlayer’ is the fastest rising search term and ‘facebook’ the most popular is quite disappointing.

Zeitgeist means Spirit of the Times, so one can only assume that in our decadent society Google have cleaned up some of the smuttier search references, and who can blame them for wanting to eradicate all the requests for ‘Sarah Palin’s Breasts’ but it’s heart-warming to see that ‘cupcakes’ were the most searched for recipe and ‘Gordon Brown’ the most searched for politician.

The UK’s favourite search terms are listed below, or you can visit Google’s main Zeitgeist page to feast your eyes on what the rest of the world has been searching for.

Next year, however, let’s try and make the results more exciting than social networking sites and iconic Apple telephones. Given the state of the economy, I’m already searching for a low cost Blackberry Storm, cheap Ferraris and an Icelandic bride.

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It's been a big year for the Internet.

From BBC's iPlayer to Facebook to YouTube, many of the top searches in Britain this year have been for our favourite websites. We also see three web-savvy politicians come tops in searches

Fastest Rising

1. iplayer
2. facebook
3. iphone
4. youtube
5. yahoo mail
6. large hadron collider
7. obama
8. friv
9. cam4
10. jogos

Most Popular

1. facebook
2. bbc
3. youtube
4. ebay
5. games
6. news
7. hotmail
8. bebo
9. yahoo
10. jobs

Politicians (Most Popular)

1. gordon brown
2. david cameron
3. barack obama
4. tony blair
5. sarah palin
6. john mccain
7. george osborne
8. alistair darling
9. boris johnson
10. nicolas sarkozy

Recipes (Fastest Rising)

1. cupcake
2. meatballs
3. rocky road
4. crumble topping
5. eaton mess
6. pork belly
7. rhubarb fool
8. lemon posset
9. honey comb
10. beer batter

Finance terms (Fastest Rising)

1. icesave
2. hot uk deals
3. natwest
4. hmrc
5. hbos
6. money saving expert
7. halifax
8. barclays
9. rbs
10. lloyds tsb

Hottest tickets (Fastest Rising)

1. aasis
2. leonard cohen
3. ac/dc
4. the ashes
5. steve coogan
6. sos
7. oliver
8. gladiators
9. tina turner
10. nickleback

Own Your Own Formula One Team

As the dust settles over Honda’s shock decision to quit Formula One with immediate effect, the big question remains: who is going to buy the team that has been put up for sale this week?

The worsening state of the global economy and the collapse of the automotive market place are the main triggers behind Honda’s decision to pull out of this most decadent of sports, announced to the world on Friday morning by Honda’s Chief Executive Officer, Takeo Fukui.

The decision leaves almost 700 people based at the team’s headquarters in Brackley – not to mention Britain’s ‘other’ driver, Jenson Button – fearing for their job security in these precarious times.  And Honda’s not the only team suffering: several Formula One teams are mooting pessimistic forecasts for their teams’ financial futures; most notably this week, Ron Dennis – McLaren’s boss and co-owner – said that he feared the team’s revenues could fall by more than a third as the recession takes its grip.

The decision by Honda to pull out of the sport leaves team bosses Ross Brawn and Nick Fry with the quandary of trying to find a buyer by the end of the year.  Brawn’s family ties to Ferrari have had him making confident statements that a supply of Ferrari engines could be guaranteed to power the car, while Fry has been shouting that at least three serious contenders have come forward with offers for the team.

It would be a good buy for any prospective purchaser, too.  After two years of racing with recalcitrant cars that simply weren’t fit for the purpose, Honda invested heavily in their 2009 car, which was designed to meet a myriad of new rules coming in for next season to improve competitiveness.  With Ross Brawn heading the team, a man almost single-handedly responsible for Ferrari’s recent dominant form, Honda finally have some steerage and that was enough to convince Button, a driver whose results don’t accurately reflect his ability, to extend his contract.

Couple that with one of the best Formula One facilities in the industry, not to mention the biggest and best wind-tunnel, and the Honda team is certainly a viable opportunity.  Prior to Honda’s announcement of its withdrawal from funding the team, you could have confidently predicted that they would be challenging Ferrari, McLaren and BMW for podiums and possibly even victories in 2009.

So the big question remains: who is going to buy Honda’s racing team?  Well, for a start, you could.  A small group of desperate F1 fans have joined a group on Facebook created specifically to purchase the team.  As the racing team did not run in debt, and all Honda wish to do is free up the cash it was spending on running the team each year so that they can carry on developing environmentally friendly cars like the FCX Clarity, all they’re asking for the whole kit and caboodle is a solitary £1.00.  But any buyer would need to guarantee at least £40’000’000 to run the team in its first year, and this is where the Facebook group’s big idea comes in.

PR Agent Peter Bowles proposed the plan, calculating that if 400’000 individuals each paid £100 they could buy the squad and create The People’s F1 Team.  All you’ve got to do is sign up to the Facebook group – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=50515517089&ref=mf – and, if they reach their target, agree to stump up £100.

The group is in desperate need of more members, however.  At the time of writing, just 175 people have signed up to the project so, if you fancy getting in on the action, sign up to the group quickly.

Who knows, if it works then by next Christmas you could find yourself sharing a glass of bubbly with Button at his Monaco home...

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Sign up to The People's F1 Team by joining the Facebook group here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=50515517089&ref=mf

What Next For Jenson Button?

Jenson Button arrived in Formula One in 2000 amidst a chorus of accolades that announced him as the successor to Damon Hill, that he would be Britain’s next Formula One World Champion.

Hot on the heels of his position as Top Rookie Driver in Formula Three during 1999, Button was awarded a test for the McLaren Formula One team and also tested for the now defunct Prost Formula One racing team before being awarded a drive in the BMW-powered Williams F1 car for 2000.

He finished eighth overall in his opening season and impressed pundits with his qualifying and race performances at several events throughout the year, most notably at Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps circuit, where he qualified third and finished fourth in a rookie year blighted by media frenzy.

But unlike Lewis Hamilton, who entered F1 at the start of 2007 amidst similar ballyhoo and won the Driver’s Championship this year, Button’s career since his days at Williams has been a little more indistinctive.  Now he faces an undeserved and mediocre exit from the sport he loves.

The world of Formula One has been shocked this morning by the unexpected announcement that Honda is to quit the sport at the end of this year.  Staff were told in a hastily arranged conference yesterday that they would not be competing in the 2009 season unless a buyer could be found, and that the team would close in March.

This leaves the potential grid for next season with just 18 cars – less than half the number of cars, for example, that took part in the 1989 season.  Of course, back then, not all cars got through rigorously controlled qualifying times but after Super Aguri’s demise at the start of 2008, Honda’s departure leaves the pinnacle of motorsport with a severely depleted grid.

The shock, however, does not come from the fact that a team is folding.  In these difficult times it would not have been a surprise if Vijay Mallya had announced that he was closing his Force India operation, or even – at a push – if the last stalwart of the privateer teams, Sir Frank Williams, was to announce he was selling up, but Honda F1 is a major manufacturer with a global presence, and their decision to quit because of the current restrictive economic climate has sent ripples through the industry.

Honda may have had a fairly ignominious time since coming back in to the sport with British American Racing in 2000, where an egotistical management announced that they would win their first season.  Tawdry results followed until Honda took complete control of BAR at the end of 2005 and in 2006 they achieved their solitary win with Button at the Hungarian Grand Prix.   That year they finished fourth overall in the Constructor’s Championship, but since then their recalcitrant cars have failed to achieve more than mediocre success.

The team’s hopes had been pinned on a successful 2009 season.  Massive investment was made in to the development of the new car, the recruitment of Ross Brawn – who had been instrumental in the dominance of Ferrari and Michael Schumacher in the early part of this decade – and a levelling of the playing field with new rules for next season had the team and its management feeling confident and buoyant about good results next year.

Despite this, Honda’s hasty announcement to withdraw from the sport has left a team which, technically, is in a very strong position for next year, but financially unsound.  As car sales fall globally and with more and more countries demanding greener, cleaner cars, Honda has decided that development of the FCX Clarity is more commercially viable than running a Formula One team.

Already this year they have had to close several manufacturing plants around the world and if a manufacturing giant such as themselves is feeling the pinch, the worry in Formula One has to be that other manufacturers may use Honda’s exit as an excuse to follow suit.

Honda’s biggest rival in car sales is Toyota, who have one of the biggest budgets in Formula One.  They must surely now be looking at their own position and accountants will undoubtedly be working round the clock to justify the viability of remaining in such an expensive and decadent sport as Formula One – especially one dominated so extensively by just two big, global brands: Ferrari and Mercedes.

As the worldwide economic crisis continues to bite, Honda feel they can spend the £150million a year it currently costs them to compete in Formula One elsewhere but, if a buyer cannot be secured for the team, almost 700 people employed by Honda Racing F1 in Brackley may find themselves on the hunt for a new job.

Team Principles Ross Brawn and Nick Fry are making positive noises in the press that they feel the team will continue next year and an engine supply from Ferrari has even been mooted, presumably negotiated by Brawn and based on his still-strong connections to the team.  But, if it doesn’t happen, what next for the team’s drivers, Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button?

Barrichello’s future has been the centre of speculation since the end of the 2008 season, with Honda having been rumoured to be keen to replace the aging Brazilian with the nephew of the late, great Ayrton Senna.  Bruno Senna had tested for the team and the feeling was that he may well have landed himself a Formula One seat with Honda for next year.

Jenson Button’s future was more certain, however, having recently signed a new contract to compete with the team again – Honda were simply waiting to announce this at the same time as they announced who his team-mate would be.

So is Button deserving of such a discreditable exit from the sport?  Despite the superlatives used to fanfare his entrance to the sport, the Briton has very little in the way of trophies to showcase his enormous talent.  Much of the early part of his career was spent in psychological battles with Jacques Villeneuve, who felt the young upstart who regularly had the measure of him at BAR-Honda should show him more respect (Alonso/Hamilton, anyone?) and by the time Jenson had matured enough to show just how strong his driving ability was, he was locked in to a contract with a team whose cars were sliding the wrong way down an increasingly competitive grid.

If Brawn and Fry manage to secure a buyer for the team and a supply of Ferrari engines, Button’s chances of staying in the sport are good, but his chances of competing for the front of the grid remain pedestrian at best.  If a buyer isn’t found, and with all but a seat at Toro Rosso tied up, Jenson faces at least a year, if not longer, sitting by the pool of his Monaco home.

One can’t help but think that if Honda’s marketing division had spent more time focusing on putting sponsor’s stickers on their cars rather than trying to promote environmental friendliness in a sport that flies in the face of all things ecological, they might just have done a little bit better.