An Interesting Week

It's been an other interesting week, Harry Wales went to the most far flung corner of the world and didn't take any bananas, Harry Rednap went from being a tax dodger (alleged) to being Super hero and the England Football Manager in all but name in the length of time it took some unnamed person to say, "Not guilty".Fabbio had a bit of a misunderstanding, (should have gone to 'English for Beginers' classes) and went home to be given the Italian equivalent of a wooden spoon. Then, closer to home came the a)scandalous b) embarrassing c) non news item d) so what? (take your pick) news that 1300 Torbay Council workers have parking permits, provide free by the council, that they, the workers can use in any car park in the Bay.
Scandalous because the council have just increased the number of Pay and Display parking areas in the Bay causing traders and motorists and an anti Parking Meters group to be up in arms saying no one will come to the Bay because they have to pay to park on the sea front.
Or embarrassing for the council because they have just put all these extra pay and display machines up and their staff can park for free all over the place.
Or a non news item because the council have been providing these permits for years. I can remember an item about 4 years ago in the Herald Express about people complaining they couldn't get into the car park by the Town Hall because it was full of council workers' cars.
And so what? I imagine most councils give their worker similar permits as do private companies. If you work up at the hospital and don't get free parking in the hospital grounds then it's your unions fault, not Torbay Council's. Also, from my point of view it's a so what attitude as I don't ever put any money in those pay and display machines, AKA parking meters and I have never got a parking ticket in all the years I have lived in Torquay.
And to round of with a sporting matter lets feel for all those people effected by that French Farce that was played out on Saturday evening in Paris. It probably cost about 20 million euros to stage and had it been tried in say, South America would probably have ended in a riot. Personally if I travelled from Dublin to watch a rugby match that was called of 4 minutes before the kick off I would have been tempted to throw the odd can of Guinness (empty of course) on to the pitch. Which says a lot for the restraint showed by rugby fans.
Then there was the restrain showed by a certain Liverpool player who should have shown less restrain and shaken hands with all the Man U players. Then there was the lack of restraint shown by the hand shake less Man U player celebrating his team's win in a style players usually employ when pretending to be injured, i.e. overacting to the nth degree.
Hope next week is just as interesting.
And one other small anniversary, on Friday my partner, Geoff and I had a nice meal and a glass of champagne to celebrate 43 years living together.