Begin Rant

It's been a while since my last rant. I put this down to the lack of tube journeys and even greater lack of listening to the news. So I'm currently pretty peaceful- not the greatest state while trying to write a rant. So I'll just ramble until it comes to me:

I need some thinking time, so whatch this while you wait.



Most of my time has been spent watching le Tour, watching tennis, getting fit and dealing with recruitment agencies. I'll let you guess which one is the least pleasant.

Le Tour de France has just started so all I can say is surprise, surprise, team Silence Lotto is not a team. If you wanna know how it's done, watch Team Columbia Highground or whatever they call themselves. That's how it's done.

While I'm obviously an accomplished cyclist who is allowed to tell professional riders how to do their job, I am also an accomplished tennis player and I have one thing to say to the ATP players: "please come into the net". Sunday's Wimbledon final was the most entertaining match I've watched since Pat Rafter retired. Andy Roddick is generally known for his power but he mixed it up on Sunday and forced Roger Boring Federer to play entertaining tennis. Critiques can suggest Federer will use passing shots when you're at the net- but who wouldn't. Federer is a great player, he knows when to use the right shot but something different had to be done and A-Rod stepped it up. They both deserved the win but I am in awe of A-Rod forcing Fed-ex to play defensively.

In economic news, the UK car scrapping scheme is a joke, just as expcted. The deal was that if you scrap your car and buy a brand new car, you get a few grand off the retail price. Sounds like a fair enough idea to kick start spending until you consider that everybody drives European or Asian cars. So the money that is being spent by UK residents is going to other countries. Not really gonna kick start the UK economy now, is it? So in June, there were 15% fewer cars sold than June 2008. But of those manufacturers whose sales increased (Hyundai +91.1%, Kia +60.5%, Ford +4.0%) none have a manufacturing plant in the UK. The biggest domestic producer is Toyota, whose sales decreased 29.4% year on year. Good work. If you want to offer a stimulus package, just give everybody $900 to spend on Taiwanese big screen TVs and overseas holidays...

Does anyone else find KRudd's last Twitter update a bit naughty?



He's working with the Malaysian Prime Minister on people smuggling and he's using his phone while refuelling. I would like to have attached the clip from 'Pizza' where Pauly was using his phone at the service station and Kamahl told him off, but I can't find it. So instead I'll end this wandering rant with a clip from the man himself.