Ahh Those Loveable Scousers

And so to Anfield tonight for the annual love-in that is the Liverpool v Everton derby match. This is when forty odd thousand scousers gather together and hurl abuse at just about anyone that comes into their line of vision. One set of supporters will wittily refer to one of the opposing players who was badly disfigured in an accident as "the Elephant Man" whilst the other set will regale us with hilarious ditties about the parentage of one star's youngest child. My sides are aching just thinking about it.Golly what fun there is in store! I am sure that the japes in the crowd will be matched by the players, one of whom will inevitably end up getting himself sent off. And to think I have paid £70 for the pleasure of all this. You've got to hand it to the fans haven't you? They really are a lovable bunch of scallies.



Had a very pleasant weekend. The weather was sunny enough for me and Marion to go for a couple of walks around town and the suburbs. But even the sun shining brightly could not lift the gloom of the rows of empty shops and buildings that is now Lord St. I don't want to sound like a doom monger droning on constantly about the demise of the town but the recession is ripping the heart out of the centre and, if the downward spiral continues it will soon reach a point of no return. It doesn't help that people have to pay to park (even on Sunday) and that on-street parking is restricted to two hours. There's no charge to park at the Trafford Centre (mind you they should pay you to go there). My solution to save Southport would be to create free town centre parking, compact the shopping centre by offering grants to encourage the few remaining shops and businesses on the extremities of Lord St to relocate to the centre and then shorten the street by either converting the empty units to housing or, more drastically, knocking them down to create parks or parking. It's all pie in the sky I know but who wants a beautiful wide boulevard of Victorian architecture but boarded up premises?

I started betting on Dancing on Ice but there is very little interest in the show amongst the bettors on Betfair so at the moment I can't get anybody to take the bets that I have laid. Perhaps more will have a punt as the show progresses but, having watched it on Sunday, I can't see a huge audience.

Marion is avidly reading the Bridisco Administrators' report. It says that there is nothing for the unsecured creditors but, when arriving at these figures, it values two properties at £11.5m but in a footnote mentions a figure of up to £20.5m. That's a cool £9m difference and, if that was the sum realised, there would then be £9m for the unsecured creditors and a dividend of about 30p in the pound. Of course that's before any administrators' expenses so maybe 1p in the pound and another couple of million for the accountants.



Read in the papers at the weekend that you can now be fined over a thousand quid in India for being in possession of a plastic bag! Now I really applaud all green initiatives but that's a bit steep isn't it? Wouldn't be much fun if you were a plastic bag manufacturer. That's your business and livelihood gone overnight. Mind you looking at the photo, the Indian government has got a point.

When we were out walking on Saturday we passed a bus shelter with one of those new government Change 4 Life ads. The message was "Couldn't you walk?" Now that's fair enough but I would be a bit unhappy if I ran the bus company. OK I can understand the "smoking kills" messages on fag packets but plastering bus shelters with ads that effectively say "Don't get the bus" is a bit mean on Arriva.

And finally talking of buses I see that a driver refused to drive the atheist bus last week and instead of getting the sack was told that he could drive another bus in future. That's a bit of a dangerous precedent. Maybe a driver doesn't like "Oliver". Can he change to a bus advertsing "The Sound of Music"? or "Cats"?. All the ad said was "There may not be a God" and we all know the opposite to that. So what's the problem?

Here's a bit of humour from MOTD2