It's True, I tell Ya, It's True

Mon, 08/05/2006 - 6:22pm
 
You may have forgotten, but…..

20 years ago, the roof blew off – quite literally – the Chernobyl Nuclear Facility.

Notwithstanding the horrors that the local Russians suffered - and still are – even we in the UK were affected.

Weather clouds absorbed the lethal caesium-137, and a week later, some 1700 miles away, those clouds let forth their rain, containing the deadly radioactive cocktail. It fell, luckily some may think, on sparsely populated parts of Cumbria and North Wales. But radioactivity is a nasty, nasty, thing when let out of the bottle, and that rainfall was absorbed into the peaty ground, and in due course, hundreds of thousands of sheep were contaminated by the mere act of grazing.

Even today, in 2006, over 400 farms, and 200,000 sheep remain embargoed, those sheep cannot be moved from where they are, as even if they are only a year or two old, the grass upon which they graze remains lethally contaminated, as do the animals.

Nuclear Energy is a thing of great wonder, but it doesn’t pay to be careless with it. It’s only a matter of time before another Chernobyl occurs.  You’ll know when it does.


I blame that woofter Branson.

In the early 80’s Privatisation phase (ah, I do miss dear Maggie) I put all my spare cash in shares, so when British Airways were privatised, it seemed to me that here was a chance to make plenty of money, and BA, ‘The World’s Favourite Airline’, were one of my chosen investment vehicles. I mean, Air Travel HAD to be the way forward, surely? It just seemed unthinkable that it would not be the case. I was right about the future of air travel, boy was I right. In 1980, 58 million passengers passed through British Airports. In 2005, the number was 245 million. (The number in 1950 was 2 million!).

So I made a fortune out of British Airways shares then? Nope! I think I paid around £2.50 each, and today, 20 years later, they are around £3.40. Yeah, I received dividends for about 15 years, but they ceased a while back, and I can’t see them resuming while BA has a £2 billion – BILLION – Pension Defecit. I have around 1,500 of them, and allowing for inflation, I’m well out of pocket. They did issue a Convertible at £1 each, paying 9% a year for 15 years, and I had 5,033 of them. That WAS a nice earner – 9% per annum! – but they matured last year, and I had the option to convert them into ordinary shares (no thank you) or cash at something like £1.40 each as I recall. (The value of the convertible is linked to the value of the Ordinary by market forces).

So what went wrong? Branson, that’s what, who saw himself as a latter day Freddie Laker, minus the brains and charisma. Damn Wooly Jumper spotted how much Lord King (the then BA Chairman) coveted the London-New York route, investigated why, and realised it was a gold-mine, and after overcoming a series of regulatory battles, elbowed his way into the North Atlantic Gravy Train via Virgin Atlantic, stitching up a few partners along the way, a trait of which Branson is overly fond.

Then Budget Airlines started, Easy Jet and Ryanair leading the Pack, and these destroyed BA’s Domestic and short-haul markets.

It has to be said, how DO Ryanair and Co do it so cheaply? And still make a damn fortune. It’s a neat trick, you gotta admit, and one I’ll examine closer in a later article.

But it’s Branson that did me. Not satisfied with destroying the BA share price, he then began to pillage British Rail (nee Network Rail), and eventually saddled us with plastic trains, or ‘Virgin’ Trains as they are badged. He owns only a minority share, but being the vain toe-rag that he is, all the trains have the Virgin brand and logo on them. Talk about narcissus complex, the man deeply loves himself, and his ex-Robert wardrobe.

Shoot him, I say.

Parenting the Cuckoo way

Peeps are often referred to as being in cloud-cuckoo land, whatever that is, and someone who’s ‘cuckoo’ is generally thought of as being a bit lacking up top.

But cuckoos are actually very clever, well crafty more like, and, though I suppose it’s all instinct, you gotta admire their guile.

Cuckoos don’t bother with all that nest-building lark, that’s too much like hard work. Look for the nest of a reed-warbler or meadow pipit, lay their egg (only ever the one) in that nest, and bugger off, job done. The mummy cuckoo never sees the egg or the chick again, and simply flies off to Africa once the autumn chill arrives.

But it gets better. When the cuckoo chick hatches – almost always before the ‘resident’ eggs hatch – he or she promptly does the decent thing, and throws all the eggs, even hatchlings, out of the nest. So when the resident Mum comes back with a tummy full of lovely worms and insects ready to be regurgitated, the young cuckoo gets the lot, and soon becomes big and plump.

I know you don’t believe any of this Cuckoo stuff, but every word is true. Nature is a weird and wonderful thing.


Chris Eubank and Michael Watson Take Different Roads

Unbelievably, it’s over 15 years since Chris Eubank almost pummeled the life out of Michael Watson. Michael received severe brain damage, and looked unlikely to escape death for some time. Recovery could only ever allow him to exist in a vegetative state, or so the quacks said. But miracles do occur, and Michael, patiently nursed by his loving family, has gradually recovered to the point where he can speak, albeit with some difficulty, and even has some reasonable mobility.

Eubank and Watson were pure giants in the ring, as was the amazingly tough Nigel Benn, who went on to live something of a life on the ‘dark side’, Marvin Haglar was another behemoth of the ring in those days, we sure were spoilt for choice.

Eubank’s boxing after-life is something of a curiosity. In the ring, he was a spell-binder, there surely has never been a boxer quite like him, apart from, maybe Cassius Clay in his early pre Mohammed Ali days. His boxing style was bizarre. No defense, arms by his side, weaving from the waist up, verbally taunting his opponents. Sometimes he refused to take his stool between rounds. But when he hit someone, they stayed hit.
 
But once he retired from the ring, he went, well, a bit doo-lally. Rarely out of the news, car crashes, arguments with the Local Authority, Celebrity Big Brother appearances, quiz-show novelty guest, even made a total tit of himself on A Question of Sport.

A giant in the ring, a total numpty out of the ring. Made a decent living though.  All things considered, either Watson or Eubank could have received severe brain-damage in that epic battle in 1990, but fate decreed it would be Michael that suffered. It would be rather nice if Eubank diverted half of his not inconsiderable earnings to Michael though, eh? I guess life is not like that. Shame, really.