ThunderDragon Blog

It seems that a lot of people do. Why, I have no idea. Boxing Day is a day for sitting back and relaxing, not for queueing and shopping.

Christmas Day is for eating, drinking, being merry, and opening presents. It is a day for families. Boxing Day is for relaxing and recovering from the excesses of the 25th December.

Today I have done pretty much nothing other than sit and watch TV - catching up with yesterday’s most watched programme via iPlayer, which we missed when it was first played.

So why anyone would spend the day traipsing round the shops is beyond me.

No, not the show or the result, but the reaction.

The Strictly Come Dancing voting system for the final was made perfectly clear, and is perfectly simple. And the way in which the show works is that it is in the end down to the viewers - and the viewers wanted Tom Chambers (that guy from Holby City) to win, rather than Rachel Stevens (that girl who used to be in S Club 7) or Lisa Snowdon (that model who does that breakfast radio show). That is the very reason that John Sergeant managed to stay in for so long even though his dancing was so bad that it almost came out the other side.

The final was decided entirely by votes - if Tom hadn’t been top choice of the viewers, he wouldn’t have got through to the final two; it was democracy in action.

And if you watched the three show dances, Tom and Camilla’s was by far the best:

No, not that el Gordo - as if Gordon Brown could bring a slice of hope to anyone! - but this El Gordo, the Spanish lottery.

Spain is expected to come to a halt as millions of people stay glued to their radio and television sets as the world’s richest lottery is drawn.

Known as El Gordo, meaning “the Fat One”, it has a total prize fund of $3.2bn (£2.14bn; 2.3bn euros) split into thousands of cash prizes…

Many punters had queued for hours to buy what organisers are calling “a slice of hope” in these troubled economic times.

The notoriously complicated draw for El Gordo will take place over several hours on live television with 13,000 tax free cash prizes at stake.

There is, however, one similarity between Gordon Brown and El Gordo the lottery:

For most players, El Gordo will come to a big fat nothing

UPDATE: Mr Eugenides had the same idea.

You wouldn’t have thought that the words “flame-broiled meat” would be included anywhere near the description of a fragrance… but it has been managed:

American fast food chain Burger King is marketing a men’s fragrance with the scent of meat.

Called Flame, the company says the spray is “the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat”. (BBC)

Who, exactly, is going to buy a fragrance based on the description of “flame-broiled meat”? That’s the last thing people want to smell like, a fast-food burger! Surely the only people you’d attract are the wrong ones?

It appears that finally common sense has prevailed:

An indefinite opt-out has been agreed by European MPs in Strasbourg to allow the continued use of the mile for roads, the pint for draught beer, cider and bottled milk, and the ounce for precious metals.

Other items, such as fruit and vegetables, can also be sold using imperial measures, as long as traders use “dual labelling” by supplying metric units alongside traditional pounds and ounces. (The Telegraph)

Europe is not and cannot be homogeneous. The history of areas cannot just be discarded. And it would seem that the EU is finally learning of these very simple facts.

The pint is the perfect size for beer/lager, and what difference does it make if vegetables are sold in pounds and ounces or grammes and kilogrammes? The same size is the same price either way. And he use of miles is so ingrained that the tansfer to kilometres would be both stupid and massively costly, with the replacement of every single speed sign and the reprogramming of every single speed camera in the UK, not to mention the inevitable confusion over car speedometers…

The EU should completely stop trying to make us all the same and instead understand that differences between people exist, and always will.

George W Bush was attacked by rogue shoes in Iraq, but managed to duck and avoid them. The shoes were thrown by an Iraqi journalist who was using the shoe-throwing to show his contempt for the out-going President.

To be fair to Bush, his response to the incident was actually quite good.

And now an online game has been made, where you act as a member of the secret service and have to shoot the shoes away to protect Bush. The wrong way round for the most amusing game that could be made from this incident, really… [play it below]

2008 will be the longest year since 1992, as it becomes one second longer.

A ‘leap second’ will be added onto the final minute of 2008 because the planet is gradually slowing down as it spins on its axis…

Earth’s trip around the sun is about 365.2422 days long, which we round down to 365. Every four years, during a leap year, the inaccuracy is corrected by adding a day in February. (The Telegraph)

Not that any of us will care on New Years Eve…

BBC Headline: Poverty chief ‘paid nearly £1m’

The head of a government-owned body which helps to tackle poverty in developing countries earned £970,000 last year, it has emerged…

Established as the Colonial Development Corporation in 1948, CDC is responsible for channelling investment into many of the world’s poorest countries by supporting promising and growing businesses there…

Pay and levels had been compared with those of other senior staff in development finance institutions, pension funds and private equity “fund of funds” - but that was changed to a comparison with the private equity firms only, where pay was significantly higher.

Mr Laing’s pay went up from £383,000 in 2004 to £970,000 last year while average remuneration for senior executives was £435,000 in 2007.

So the head of a government-owned body whose aim to help poor countries develop is earning nearly £1 million per annum. However much of an “exceptional” performance they may or may not have acheived, that is a pay cheque several magnitudes too high.

Especially since their development philosophy is basically persuading other fund managers to be ‘ethical’ and invest in poor countries. And it has £1.4 billion in the cash in the UK, which is actually [just about] more than it actually disperses, with net assets of £2.7 billion. Of which a lot of only goes to countries such as China, India and South Africa, which really aren’t that poor but are well on the way to becoming major economic powers in their own rights.

Were this a private company with the same aims, it would be no worse than a severe case of hypocrisy. But as it really is not much short of an insult that the CEO of a publicly-owned company is getting paid so much doing a job that is supposed to be helping the porrest of the poor.

That is, Great Britain translated into its “true name“.

What other “true names” can we think of…?

Apparently John Prescott was the first choice for Strictly Come Dancing as the comedy relief character subsequently taken by John Sergeant with great aplomb.

Thankfully, Prescott didn’t take up this offer. After all, we’ve already seen his attempts at dancing…