Right: let’s just get this straight. On Tuesday night, overnight, there was what is known in meteorological circles as a ruddy great lot of snow over North-East England. As this was expected, according to the forecasts, when I’d picked up Bigger Lad from school on Tuesday, I asked his teacher whether I should check the [...]

A lot of websites, magazines, bloggers, and indeed everyone else under the sun appears to be doing some sort of “celebrity death list 2009″ where we are all given the opportunity to laud Michael Jackson’s musical achievements whilst conveniently glossing over the accusations which dogged him for a number of years. And now 2009 has [...]

Also known as the Copenhagen Summit. I’m not going to go into the scientific evidence for man-made global warming here. I’ve read arguments from both sides, and for me the crucial factor is that the vast majority of scientists, while they might disagree about the amount of man-made global warming, all seem to think that [...]

When someone loses in some sort of a contest, it is generally deemed appropriate for them to say something positive about the other team. It doesn’t even have to be particularly gushing: “We might not have got the rub of the green today, but that’s not to take anything away from team X who played [...]

Here’s the theory: get an artificial christmas tree. It won’t drop needles all over the floor, it doesn’t create waste as you don’t have to chop down trees every five minutes, over the course of a few years it works out considerably cheaper, and of course you don’t need a bucket of soil and all [...]

Our household received a voucher from a company called Naked Wines. It said: “special treat for customers of Amazon.co.uk – £40 naked wines voucher”. It also said “claim your voucher online or by telephone”; “choose your wines from our delicious range”; “next day delivery to your doorstep”, and the thing which I think is key [...]

I was a little surprised the other day when I had bought some free-range eggs (look, I’m quite happy to eat the unborn children of chickens, but only if those chickens have been kept in relatively reasonable conditions) to discovery the allergy advice given on the box. Just in case you can’t quite make out [...]

Concluding my three-part piece looking at the “wonders” of Gateshead College, I decided to have a look at their website to see whether the problems I encountered with their enrolment procedures were symptomatic of further problems, or whether this was just a one-off. At first glance, what I saw was not exactly promising: Hmm. I [...]

So, yesterday I posted about the complete shambles that was enrolment at Gateshead College, and suggested that I really wasn’t happy with what they had done. I had two separate lines of response from them. Because I don’t believe in directly naming people, I’m going to call them “A” and “B”. “A” contacted me over [...]

I went to Gateshead College last week to sign up for AS Level English on the afternoon of Monday 7th September. Quite a simple procedure, one would think. I had telephoned the previous Friday to check that there were spaces available on the course, and that I should turn up between 4pm and 6pm to [...]