Woke up at 5:30AM this morning. It’s funny how your body clock and mind works isn’t it ? I remember at school I used to always have problems getting up for school, and my parents would always hassle me. Come the weekend, I’d be up really early and getting my parents out of bed ! I guess there is some psychology at play here- something about not having pressure to do something making you act in a more favourable way. I’m sure if I picked up a textbook there would be a term for it. So this morning, even though I didn’t have to get up at 6AM, I ended up getting at 6AM anyway.

Watching the news made me think we’re heading back to a 1970’s Britain:

Strikes ! I really can’t understand how utterly stupid the unions are, actually it extends beyond stupidity to political suicide. They pump tons of money into the Labour Party, then stir up strikes (British Airways and Trains) that will heavily impact the political media over the next few weeks in the run up to General Election (and possibly, likely ?, result in Labour loosing the election). Just read the front cover of the Daily Mail today to have an idea of how things are going to play out over the next weeks !

Daylight Savings ! Well, we change the clocks this weekend and as usual there is the news report about why we shouldn’t just keep the time to 1hr ahead. Same old reports.. Someone in the South saying it would be great for trade and they could keep open later- I’ll discount that one since retailing in the UK is a shambles and I don’t think it’s the dark that is causing trade problems, it might be useful if shops actually opened at useful times. Then we have the farmer in Scotland who thinks it would be bad for him. I just imagine in the filing cabinets of every major news organisation in the UK there’s a folder marked ‘Clock Change’ that gets found the Wednesday before the clocks changes and results in a frantic effort to fly reporters to opposite ends of the country and solicit opinion.

Weather Reports ! Poor Carol Kirkwood on BBC Breakfast News. She thought she had a job where every weekday she’d get to roam the UK outside giving weather reports. Now she’s stuck in the studio. However, you’d think they’d actually be able to take 6 virtual screens and put then together without a visible black line between them ! Sorry, that’s the Engineer in me coming out, but everyone else seems to be able to do it !

However, the award of true “1970’s moment” goes to the local Anglia travel report this morning:

Junction 8 of the M11 closed due to the matrix signs (the electronic signs that provide notices at the side of the road) being stuck on ‘Closed’.

Yep, there isn’t actually anything wrong with the road, but the sign is stuck on ‘Closed’ therefore it has to be. Mmh, nobody ever heard of a black sheet to cover the sign ? I’m sure there’s some health and safety nonsense preventing this from happening.

Welcome to 1970’s Britain !