Gruts

The Co-operative Bank's smile.co.uk homepage currently includes a fun survey:

Who do you turn to for money advice?

• my old dad
• a financial adviser
• mags and newspapers
• my mates
• no one - I make my own mind up

Their survey overlooks one option offered in the bank's latest Keep Smiling email newsletter, which I received yesterday:

Your money and the stars
Take a look at Astro Anns predictions for the future. Whether its your finances or your love life you need a little guidance on, our resident Astrologer is at your service.

Yes, that's right: the Co-operative Bank—an organisation which prides itself on its ethical policy—has evidently decided that it is not unethical to treat its customers like fucking idiots by offering them the services of a soothsayer.

To make matters worse, the link provided from the email newsletter to the bank's astrology page contains embedded information in the form of a unique id code which will presumably allow the bank to monitor (through a program entitled mon.aspx referred to in the link) the clicking of the link. In other words, not only is the Co-operative Bank treating all of its customers like fucking idiots, but it is also tracking which ones actually are fucking idiots. I can see why this might be seen as extremely useful business intelligence.

I don't have a bank account with Smile, only a few ISAs. I will be moving them to another bank forthwith.

Someone with the unlikely name of Too Louche comments:

scott mills just nicked your joke and used it on radio one about 30 seconds ago

And someone with the equally unlikely name of Ginger Girl says in my guestbook [postscript: which no longer exists]:

I just heard them use your joke about the woman with the big glasses on radio one. your site is cool x x

Well, I suppose it beats being misquoted on Radio 4.

(Actually, it would appear that somebody else started the meme.)

Yesterday, we decided to be frightfully Northern and have a day out in Blackpool. I'm by no means a fan of the place, having spent an eternity of a weekend there one November a few years ago. But yesterday's weather was glorious, and the company was fairly acceptable, and, on the whole, it didn't turn out too bad.

We started at St Anne's, where the tide was out—about a mile out. But we went for a paddle anyway, and we got to see a huge flock of knots—one of the natural wonders of the British Isles.

After the obligatory ice creams, we then headed off to Blackpool proper, and had a drive along the front. After skimming some stones at a quiet beach at the north end of town, we headed back to the main drag, and had fish & chips at Harry Ramsden's.

And then we went home.

But, when we got home, I discovered that the soles of my feet were totally black. One shower, and a half-hour session with a scrubbing brush in the bath later, and my feet are a slightly greyer shade of black. I'm not kidding: I really can't shift the stuff.

I have absolutely no idea where the black came from, but I think the clue might be in the name.

A friend has asked me to help settle an argument: is Councillor Eileen Kinnear (Cons, Harrow on the Hill) wearing glasses in her official photo?

I think she might be, but it's difficult to be sure. What do you think?

I know I shouldn't laugh at my own jokes, but it's about the only thing I'm really good at…

Jen and I did a spot of landscape gardening today. Basically, we destroyed a rockery. We need a low-maintenance garden, and this particular rockery had reverted to unmowable grassland.

Unfortunately, the rockery contained some very large rocks. Fortunately, we had exactly the right tools for the job, in the shape of a hefty mattock to loosen the rocks from the surrounding soil, a trowel to excavate underneath, and a large, wooden fence-post to act as a lever.

Several rocks later, I was totally knackered, and I had developed a distinct twinge in my lower back…

Yes, my friends, I seem to have developed post-trowel-mattock stress disorder.

Ann and Bill have just been for a visit. For reasons I needn't go into, we decided to place a convoluted £4 bet at the bookmaker's yesterday. The bet was to predict the first- and second-placed horses in one of the races at Goodwood. As I don't know the first thing about gambling (apart from the fact that one should never bet on horse number 4 in Hong Kong), Bill placed the bet for me.

"Hey, 3–40, they sound like pretty good odds!" I remarked, reading the receipt. "Doesn't that mean that for every £3 we bet, we get £40 back? Or does it mean that for every £40 we bet, we get £3 back?"

"Neither," replied Bill. "That's the time of the race."

See also: System

BBC: Tories to review Human Rights Act
A commission to review in detail the Human Rights Act is to be set up by the Tories, shadow home secretary David Davis has announced. The 1998 Act has given rise to "too many spurious rights" and fuelled a compensation culture which is "out of all sense of proportion", he said.

I must admit, when I heard David Davis going on about 'spurious rights' on the radio this evening, I thought he was talking about the Tory Party. It turns out he was talking about taking away some of our human rights.

Sounds like a real vote-winner to me, but unfortunately David Blunkett is way ahead of him.

BBC: Classics deter bus station yobs
Mozart and Vivaldi have been brought in to tackle anti-social behaviour in a town in East Yorkshire. Residents near Snow Hill bus station in Beverley have complained about youths shouting abuse and urinating near their front doors. Now classical music is being piped into the bus station. The theory is that as youngsters hate the classics they will stay away from the area… A public address system with vandal-proof speakers has been installed in the bus station and along nearby Sylvester Lane. The music will fill the air between 1930 and 2330 each evening.

Apparently, shouting abuse and urinating are seen as anti-social behaviour, but playing music in the street over a public address system at half-past-eleven at night isn't.

This morning, I set myself the interesting challenge of coming up with a very bad pun involving the dream combination of chaos theory and agricultural machinery. I succeeded majestically:

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

I used to love tractors as a kid, but I don't any longer. Yes, you've guessed it: I'm an ex-tractor-fan!

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

I don't know where they come from, I really don't. It's a gift.

Postscript: For those of you who don't get my totally brilliant stranger tractor joke, this article might help.