Minty Bit Stronger

With the  Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols mouthing off about the 'Shambolic' plans to make Gay Marriage legal... And former member of the Hitler Youth,  Pope Benedict XVI reiterated his opposition to gay marriage, saying it was destroying the very "essence of the human creature". I decided I should get involved. All I want to say is in this handy little Graphic. Enjoy:-

So, here I am. Sat in the gruesome hospital waiting area. I note the walls are painted a weird shade of glaucoma and the chip wood furniture is the colour of bile. Between the shiny black circles of prehistoric chewing gum I can see what might have once been a mauve carpet. I'm not sure. The ceiling panels have those peculiar 'coffee stains' which make no sense as coffee stains cannot end up on a ceiling. What ever else they are I dread to think. A 12 month old copy of Tatler is on the MDF table besides me and judging from it's frayed pages I estimate it is the most infectious thing here. I sanitise my hands. Again. Why am I here? Well it's not just any old hospital... It's an eye hospital. I, dear reader, am writing this post with two throbbing eyes and one thumping headache. I hope that shows that I am a committed and selfless blogger. After a traumatic examination from my optician I was referred here. She said 'go ASAP', I waited til after work....

Recently my customer service experiences have been the worst of my entire life. I have been left with my blood boiling, teeth grinding and murder in my eyes. Offenders included the Royal Mail, London Underground, Tesco, Automat, Royal Greenwich Council, South Eastern Trains, M&S, Santander and serial fuck-up BT. Rather than bore you with each complaint in turn I preferred to write about where I think it all went wrong and how we can get good service back. Good customer service is not exclusively served by dead-eyed, smiling Americans in Disney-esque uniforms. It is not something false, over-the-top or designed to illicit gratuities. It has been a method of adding value to a customers interactions with a business. These failing individuals are the faces of the business and when they mishandle our requests they damage the reputation of the company. Good service creates the illusion that a company cares and bad service shows the reality of a company that doesn't. I t...

I came across this info-graphic today and it got me thinking about the the power of these big brands. I was reminded of the scandal surrounding Nestlé breast milk. The boycott that followed was and is ineffective against such a powerhouse company. Nestlé can freely get away with marketing baby formula to sub Sahara Africans where access to clean water is often impossible. Over 1 billion dollars have been spent on formula by African mothers with perfectly good, sterile breast milk. A huge amount of money on something they simply didn't need. But Nestlé had spun a clever marketing strategy first telling mothers the powdered formula was better then giving them free samples. When the babies were on the free sample the mothers would often stop lactating and be forced to start buying the powder. (This is the same tactic used by drug dealers). In areas where sanitary water was an issue the powdered formula would be mixed with what ever water was available and often diluted to make i...

I am inspired by many great people and consider myself relatively well informed historically. I however am often at a loss to find a comprehensive history of major Gay historical figures. This is simply because from the start of the Christian era homosexuality has been frowned upon in most cultures of the world. It has been criminalised, ignored, wiped from the record and in some cases eradicated or imprisoned. Horrifically, after the Jews were liberated from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany many homosexuals forced to wear the pink triangle (pictured above) were re-imprisoned in Allied prisons. Because of this persecution and because of the ‘lost history’ I wanted to highlight three homosexuals who I believe have had a positive, lasting and inspiring effect on the world, (and me). Alan Turing Staying with WW2 and our battle with the Nazis I want first to look at a quiet mathematician from Maida Vale. During the Second World War at Bletchley Park we as a nation we...

My mood has been as black as it comes today with wave after wave of bad news grinding me down. One of my grievances is a battered pound coin has ironically managed to cause £135 worth of damage. My house manager, a gruesome Italian man who looks slightly like The Penguin, has been waddling in and out of my flat for days trying to establish why the washing machine is Kaput! Finally an engineer was called who discovered the errant coinage and issued a bill of biblical proportions for his heroic work. In addition to this excessive billing he scrawled some advice on the invoice suggesting we don’t overload the socket in the washer room… Oh thanks – is that how the pound coin got stuck? We overloaded the socket! Thanks, Einstein! Practically, invaluable advice aside I’m still utterly hung up on the fact that as soon as I have the vague sniff of some extra money in one nostril I have an epic cash nosebleed out the other. Maybe I’m over reacting and maybe I should just junk up on some leve...