Ippoippo

Somebody kill me now! I feel quite strange having agreed with the Daily Mail.

This week the Daily Mail has been running a “Banish the Bags” campaign. Now, that’s something I kinda agree with. Yes, sometimes I forget my reusable bag when I go out, but hey, that’s my fault.

However, it bloody typical of the tabloid media (and as far as I’m concerned, the Daily Mail is a tabloid), they’ve decided to take the credit for M&S deciding to stop giving away bags for free.
Uhh, no Daily Mail. M&S had already been trialling this in some parts of the country for a month now (certainly in Bath), and they’ve decided to go national with it (hurrahh!!). This has got NOTHING to do with your campaign.

Chicken shortages

Despite what the supermarkets were saying, it does indeed look like that the Chicken Out and Channel 4 TV shows have had an effect on our buying habits.

This was reported (on the front page no less) by the Independant here and here.

Well, that was well planned

I’m sorry, but I did chuckle at the naivety of this chap.
The basic aim was walk from Bristol to India, without money, relying on the goodwill of people. OK, sounds a bit crazy, but an interesting challenge, but I’m sure plenty of people would be willing to help him…

BUT, he forgot one big factor. Language.

But, because he could not speak French, people thought he was free-loading or an asylum seeker.

You would have thought he would have planned for that??!!??

He now plans to walk around the coast of Britain instead, learning French as he goes, so he can try again next year.

OK, so then, in a year’s time, you head of for France… get some nice people to help, you carry on your merry way and then… shit, I’ve now arrived in Germany/Italy/Switzerland and I can’t speak German/Italian!
This could take some time!

“Akira” is getting the live-action big screen treatment courtesy of Leonardo DiCaprio

Why, what is the point? Nothing against DiCaprio, I just can’t see why this needs to be turned into a live-action film.
It may well turn out to be OK, but it certainly won’t be a revelation of a film.

Meanwhile in China

Ahh, good old football rivals… looks like it was a bad-tempered game with China-Japan. (Japan won 0-1… woohoo).

Yep, apparently there are ‘Big’ reserves waiting to be tapped.

According to figures from the Department of Trade and Industry, there are 13 trillion cubic feet of coalbed methane gas in South Wales, not all of which is economical to extract.

Gerwyn Williams, chairman of UK Onshore Gas Group, which has a licence to explore more than 200 sq km of South Wales for methane, said there are ‘very substantial’ amounts of gas in South Wales.

Sounds great doesn’t it.
OK, lets do some maths…

• 13 trillion cubic feet of coalbed methane
• Natural gas calorific value 10.992kWh/m3 (used to approximate Coal-bed Methane value)
• 1 cubic metre equivalent to 35.31 cubic feet.
• There are 1,000,000 kWh in a GWh.
• UK Electricity Consumption in 2006 stated as 1,046,348GWh

So:
[ ( 13,000,000,000,000 / 35.31) * 10.992kWh ] / 1,000,000 = 4,046,899GWh
4,046,899GWh / 1,046,348GWh/year = 3.9 years.

Yep, 4 years only. Kinda makes Mr Williams following comments seem rather stupid…

Mr Williams claimed the impact of the new reserves could have an effect on the price of people’s gas bills in Wales, as well as improving security of supply.

OK, lets play devils advocate here. Lets assume Wales keeps all this gas to itself (f**k off England, Scotland and N.Ireland!)… then I reckon we’d have about 70 years worth of Gas there. (Population of Wales being 3 Million, compared to 60 Million for the whole UK).

Bloody ****ing Tesco.

Tesco have reduced the price of a ‘standard’ chicken to £1.99.
Obviously, animal welfare groups aren’t too happy about this.

Now, I wonder what Tesco’s motivation is behind this. Organic and free range sales have apparently been going up in most supermarkets. In our Sainsbury’s nearby, I notice that they are pretty much sold out all the time. There always seems to be a glut of standard chickens. Now, I don’t have the figures, but it has been suggested that sales of Standard stuff has gone down as well, with some people starting to become more willing to buy free-range chickens, and less often if they are on a budget. All very good.

Now, is this move by Tesco’s them trying to win back the lower budget chicken buyer, or is it them just trying to offload an excess stock of standard chickens because people are trying to buy Free-Range or not at all? Who knows?

But, even if you ignore the ‘ethical’ arguments over the treatment of chickens, this move is still inherently bad for the country because of the pressure it will put chicken farmers under, and eventually further reduce the money they make. At the moment, Tesco are probably taking a hit on this move. But this could force the other supermarkets to join in a price war, which would start to but pressure on the farmers.