The FA - Total genius

This afternoon, The FA have finally charged and fined us with misconduct, for drug testing our own players!

This goes back to the Adrian Mutu case, where we tested him for recreational drugs (performance degrading, not performance enhancing drugs!)

Apparently, in the name of being anti-drugs, we aren NOT allowed to drug test our own employees, because it undermines The FA's own "stringent" drug testing programme.

What a joke. The reality of the situation is that the FA do not want clubs testing their own players, because they cannot have their "product" destroyed when the public find out that half of the football league players are coked up to the max.

Their own "stringent drug testing programme" actually consists of a visit to clubs once every couple of years, at a predetermined time, when they pick two random players, and drug test them. Hmmmm...
"We'll be coming around at 9:00 am on Monday morning to pick two of you to be drug tested". If I were a smacked up Premiership player, I think I might get stuck in traffic for 5 minutes on Monday morning...

This ruling does nothing but prove that drugs (recreational) are a serious problem in football, and that the FA will do anything to ensure this stays hidden from the public. Surely, a club who is about to spend upwards of 50 million pounds on an employee, over the next few years has the right to see whether he's going to stick half of his wages into his arms or not?

Royal Junk Mail

The once steady decline of Royal Mail is gathering momentum this month. Just when you thought the monopoly which exudes ineptitude couldn't get any worse, they stun you with their sheer incompetence.

This is the company that is proud to lose "only" a million letters a day. Apparently, a million letters is just a small percentage of the daily traffic through the company, so it doesn't matter. Well, 365 million letters a year does matter, and would make a mountain many times the size of St Pauls Cathedral, so how can you lose that much? So Royal Mail, if a million is so insignificant a number, I'd like you to give me a million pounds of your profit please, just this once. After all, it's only a small percentage of the total amount - so it won't mater will it? Email me and I'll give you my bank details, I don't trust the company who delivers my letters, if you were to send a cheque...

The postal system has been getting worse for years. This month saw the introduction of a new method of calculating cost. Rather than simplifying the process, and scrapping second class, they have now based letters on size and weight, so a little old lady now has no idea how much it will cost to send out her birthday cards, unless she gets out some postal weighing scales and a tape measure. Not to mention, the huge increased in cost of policing this new system. Very clever Royal Mail.

So now, most people have to take their items to a Post Office to send them. Except, here's the problem. There aren't any left! They sell the buildings and close them down. Many towns are left without one. Wimbledon doesn't have one at all!

Yesterday afternoon, I was in Leatherhead Post Office. This is actually, just a counter area at the back of a newsagent now, because they closed the main post office. I wanted a car tax form. There were only five people in the queue, and 4 members of staff behind the counter. Unfortunately, it took me 28 minutes to get to the counter, because they only had one window open. The one window was staffed by a new starter, who had evidently received no training at all. The other 3 were sitting chatting.

Eventually, a monster of a woman opened another window, and I got served. "Sorry, we haven't got any of those forms. NEXT.." was the response. I told her I'd waited almost 30 minutes for that, and she said "What do you want me to do? Put up a sign for every form we're out of?". No you stupid behemoth - that isn't what I expect, I expect it to take 5 minutes, not half an hour before you tell me you haven't got any. I expect you to move your mammoth arse to the window, and actually serve some fucking customers, instead of sitting around the back shuffling stamps, when there's a queue stretching out the door and into the High Street.

Finally, Royal Mail take the biscuit this week by announcing the suspension of a postie, after he delivered leaflets to his round which told them how to opt out of the unsolicited junk mail programme which they have been thrown into.
Even though Royal Mail lose a million letters a day, rather than paying someone to go and hunt around under mail sacks to see if they can find this ever increasing mountain, they now add to the problem by taking money from private companies to deliver shit through my letterbox. Junk mail and leaflets, of the like that used to be stuffed into free newspapers. Well, I don't want it, and I don't want my postman to have to waste his time delivering it. I'd rather he spent his time getting just the post that is addressed to me, to my door, on time. Is that too much to ask? Evidently.

There is something you can do though. Send an email to optout@royalmail.co.uk and include your address. Then, they will have to stop delivering this rubbish to your house. Not only that, as millions of other people are doing it now too, it will cause them untold problems, having to create massive lists from each of these emails, and having to make sure the junk is not send to you. Perhaps, they might drop the whole stupid exercise. If this was a private company, it would have gone bust ages ago.

All we want is for you to do the job you're paid to do. Why is it so difficult Royal Mail?

Blackburn. Yawn

Back on track. 2-0 away win in a norther shithole, on a Sunday afternoon.

What more is there to say, except Blackburn is still a shithole?

Boro again

I had the misfortune last season of going up to Middlesbrough to watch us get tonked 3-0.

Times have changed, and Steve McClaren is now the national coach, and Gareth Southgate, unlicensed, unbadged, and illegally in charge, is now the Boro manager.

I was on the phone to my Boro mate on Monday. We were discussing Southgate, and the conclusion was...nice guy, but a loser. Not a loser like that, but...in my own words "He's a Tim Henman"

Anyway, someone obviously got onto him, and told them some Chelsea upstart had called him Tim Henman. This made him mad, and he set out to show me up...and he did. A very poor Boro side, again turned us over! With ten mins to go we were a goal up, but they got 2 in the final ten, and finished us off. We did look woeful, and certainly there are parts of the team that need to be worked on, but it isn't exactly game over....Although, the way you hear some of the "fans" go on, you'd think it was time to sack Jose and start all over again!

And we're off

The opening game of the season is usually the Samba game in the UK. Sunshine, shorts and shades as we enjoy the last of the Summer. This Summer wasn't bad, some pretty good hot spells, but then August arrived, and so did the rain and cloud. So the first game was more of a hat and scarf match!

Man City were the opponents, well, were meant to be. It was almost as if they didn't turn up, must do better would be the verdict. A relatively easy stroll in the park for a 3-0 win, with Cech, Makelele, Ballack and Joe Cole significantly missing, not to mention at least another two defenders required.

A promising start...

Captain Fantastic

England v Greece. A friendly, and Steve McClaren's first game in charge. Also John Terry's first game as full-time captain of his country!

JT opened it perfectly, with a goal on the 15th minute. We've known for years that JT is the best captain around, now the rest of the country can see it too.

Frank also scored, and Freak Crouch bagged a brace to put the score at 4-0 at HT. The game finished 4-0 and the team looked good, possibly having something to do with the players actually just being played in their correct positions. Shock horror - it works!

These are good players, with good club managers. The international manager shouldn't need to do much more than motivate them. Hopefully Steve Mac will grasp this concept early on.

He did make a point of dropping David Beckham from the squad. Harsh in my opinion. He is still a lot better than some of the players in the squad. I agree he may not fit into the team now, but he should be replaced by Aaron Lennon, not "Stevie-G" on the right. He'll be back in the squad though...At the moment, he just needs to pay the price of being Sven's bum-boy for the past 5 years!

The season kicks off this weekend. Half the Chelsea squad are still either injured, or unfit, so we'll see how a tricky 3 opening fixtures against Man City, Boro and Blackburn turn out.

New MINI MKII

The new updated MINI was fully introduced to the world this week, and it looks.....OK.
Cleverly, BMW have not changed much, because not much needed changing. It is an icon, and to change it too much would undo the work they did making it the car it is already.
They realised this, and most of the exterior changes were to comply with ridiculous Euro legislation - you know the sort of thing, if you hit a pedestrian at 75mph, the bumper should have honeycomb in it - because it's really going to help...

Most of the changes are to the interior. The Cooper S supercharger has been dropped in favour of a turbo-charger.

I'm not entirely convinced by it, but like the original, it will no doubt grow on people. To the untrained eye though, most people would not be able to spot the differences between a new one and a MKI if it drove past them, which will certainly help residual values of the current model.

So, there is unlikely to be much of a hit on the second hand prices of the current model. Good news. And if you're in the market for one, you need to visit www.onlyminis.com. A new site specialising in used MINIs for sale.

Think about it, Kenyon

Last night, Stamford Bridge hosted a "friendly" against Celtic. Hmmmm great decision number one. Which brain of Britain in the club thought the idea that a "friendly" against that soap-dodging scum was a good idea? Serious indication that nobody in charge at the club has the first idea about it's history.

Second great decision was to charge 40 quid per seat to see it. FORTY POUNDS? I paid less than that to see Chelsea v Barcelona in the Champions League quarter finals! I refused to pay it, and so did a lot of other fans thankfully. An attendance of 20,000 was registered, including in the region of 5,000 Shittic fans, and after the decision to put them on general sale (despite an earlier statement to the contrary) too, which means we probably sold around 5,000 tickets in the run up to the game.

With any luck, we'll get an equally embarrassing attendance on Sunday in Cardiff.

Perhaps, the wankers in charge will listen this time and think twice about charging us 40 quid to see some shit friendly, while at the same time happy to write off hundreds of millions of pounds in player contracts and giving world class players away to rivals.
Crespo departed for the second time this week, on a 2 year "loan". No doubt we're paying his wages, accommodation, for his haircuts etc. This club has had its priorities wrong for a long time. The piss poor gates last night will probably change nothing. Why are we not surprised?