If someone is 'dead on time', why are they subsequently described as 'The Late......'?

Football is not a matter of profit and loss

It's far more important than that.
Well, that's what you'd glean if you asked fans of the clubs that occupy the upper echelons of the English Premiership. (As long as you refrain from using words like 'echelons'.)
While lesser teams make do with pumping high balls into the opposition's penalty box, the more fashionable clubs benefit from wealthy benefactors pumping high finance into their coffers.
More money pays higher wages which attracts better players which, in turn, draws bigger crowds.
There seems to be the vestige of some logic in this economic model.
But there isn't. At least, not on the scale that money is being paid to modern day footballers.
Last week signalled the closure of the transfer window.
Before it shut, Andy Carroll, who had only played half a season of Premiership football, moved from Newcastle to Liverpool for something approaching £40 million. He replaced FernandoTorres who had been shipped out for £50 million to Chelsea.
There's not another business like it and the owners could not have made their fortunes had they conducted their core businesses in that way. So what's their game?
Is it a tax loss? Is it ego? Or is it simply men and boys and the size and value of their toys?
This week we witnessed an even more significant event.
A pub landlady from Portsmouth fought for her right to beam in top UK games via Greece.
If Sky cannot dictate where we buy their viewing packages from, revenues will fall and so too will the money that they inject into the game.
Were the bubble to burst, the rich owners are wealthy enough to walk away. The fear is, by then, many fans will have walked away too.
For the future of football to be worth a punt, we need to start thinking more about the punters.
Today and tomorrow.
Otherwise, you won't need to be a prophet to forecast a loss.

Stuff his contributions. Let's have retribution.

If any alien beings had spent yesterday observing planet earth's social networks, they might well have wondered what the hell was going on.
Activity was frantic.
It was merely a reflection of the goings-on in the English Premiership transfer market.
Had they paid more attention to what was going on in the Bank of England, they would have been even more perplexed. That's because yesterday was the day that the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street chose to put an extra £1.4 million into the pension pot of its Governor, Mervyn King.
Coincidence or clever timing?
So when he retires in 2013, Mervyn King will collect a pension equivalent to £198,200 in today's money.
In his defence, the figure is also based on his own contributions.
I wonder if that includes his contribution towards making Britain the busted flush that it has now become.

I was laughing all the way to the bank

It was a different matter when I got there.
Thieving bastards.

There has to be merit in a meritocracy

Have you ever asked yourself, if you were to enter Mastermind, what would be your specialist subject?
Mine would be fuse boxes.
But whatever you go for, there is a degree of fatuity about so many of the subjects that contestants choose.
How can I be impressed by someone who has devoted their entire recent life to learning every available fact about paving stones, for example?
Far more impressive is a credible performance in the general knowledge section where you are liable to be asked anything from aardvarks to zebras, astronomy to Zoroastrianism or from AA Gill to Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Scrabble competitions are no different.
Contestants study seemingly endless lists of words with the sole aim of scoring more points.
Personally, I just don't get the point.
To encourage education, wouldn't it be far better in Scrabble if you could challenge your opponent's knowledge of the word they've just played? If they don't know its definition, then instead of accruing points, they get deducted.
And therein lies a metaphor for life in Britain today.
Too many people are rewarded for being thick. They should be punished.
Except where it comes naturally.
Me? Why fuse boxes?
As a kid, I spent many a lesson in the school corridor.
How thick is that?
Thick of me. Thick of my teachers.

Sexism? Let's have some realism.

Before I do anything else, I'd like to put my cards on the table.
My first card is of the 'get well' variety.
Britain is sick. Parts of our society have become morally debased and for too long now we have failed to respond to ever-increasing doses of political correctness.
The next card I'd like to put on the table is a picture of Jimmy Johnstone, the ex-Celtic winger and Lisbon Lion.
I collected it as a boy. I was once a Celtic fan and remain an ardent football fan.
Sadly, football is where so much of our moral turpitude manifests itself.
And while there are many decent people who attend football matches, if I were a recruiting sergeant for boors, I can't think of a better place to go.
The next card is my driving licence.
I would personally like to chauffeur Andy Gray from the Sky studios should he need to return to collect a few personal effects. Just so long as he doesn't collect any more of his obscene £1.7 million salary.
And that's where the realism should come in.
As good as he might have been at his job, I fail to see how Sky could justify paying him even half that amount.
Never mind the salary cheque, I think Sky should take a reality check.
Yes, Andy Gray is a boor who escaped the terraces for the comfort of the studio and the even greater comfort that his salary provides.
Yes, the comments he made were crass in the extreme. But the reaction - which is yet another overdose of political correctness - was out of proportion almost on the same scale as his salary.
And yes, things will be a lot brighter without a Gray Sky.
But I still think we have missed an open goal.
Wouldn't it have been far better to fine him £150,000 (not much more than a month's salary) and donate that money to the people who are fighting sexism where it really exists?
As a centre forward, Andy Gray was undoubtedly great with the head. Maybe he should start using it again.

Don't let anyone tell you they cant spell

That's hypocrisy.

Women used to fall at my feet...

...but I wash them more regularly now.

I used my dongle in a dingle but my connection was prone to dangle

The Curate's Egg. An alternative definition.

It's when your priest has a real apse.

It's nip and tuck at the BBC

Wrinkle, wrinkle, you're no star
The wonder is you got this far.

Ageism? The BBC are raven mad!

No more Autumnwatch - Producer reckons I've got crow's feet.

I've stopped digging

When the time does come
All said and done
And six feet below I lie,
I hope it's asked
Not why I lived
But why I had to die.

If an actor talks awfully, should he be in The Archers?

And how should he take his bow?

Elton John's latest accessory

Children are not commodities, but you are still dealing with futures.

A millionaire soon. A secret millionaire? Never.

It might go against popular opinion but I think that Julian Assange should rot in jail.
Why? Well, I just don't like the look of the guy.
(You really don't want me on your jury.)
Now I appreciate that this in itself might not constitute a significant enough body of evidence to convict him, but let me try and build a case.
He's Australian.
Remember, this is all circumstantial.
He looks like he has a cold and slippery 'wet fish' handshake. Admittedly, that is mere suspicion on my part.
He gives journalists a bad name. You can't achieve that without malice aforethought.
And when interviewed, his sentences last even longer than the one that I would like to impose upon him.
On a much more serious note, he has had a dalliance (or two) in Sweden that has led to some very serious allegations.
Far be it for me to make light of these matters, I do wonder if he would be pursued as vigorously as is the case without undue pressure being brought to bear from other quarters.
But that doesn't concern me.
I say let's pursue him anyway and if he's guilty, then let's nail him.
As the driving force behind WikiLeaks, he is the self-appointed arbiter of what he considers to be safe in the public domain
Who does he think he is?
As the recipient of two thirds of the organisation's salary budget, he is patently a self-seeking parvenu.
I now learn that he has signed a book deal worth $1.5 million in order, he claims, to fight his case and to keep his organisation afloat.
If he were a true martyr to his cause, he should hand the money over to genuine freedom fighters and then hand himself over to the relevant authorities.
Julian Assange. Aged 39.
Life, they say, begins at 40.
For him, I say, it should begin at Wormwood Scrubs.

Are Public School boys more likely to stick to their principals?

Gastroenteritis

Is it just another name for motion sickness?

I use alcohol as a crutch

So why does it always leave me legless?

The tide is high but I'm holding on

Hang on. That's a turd I've got my hands on.
And the moral of the story is:
In life, look after No. 1. Forget about No. 2.