I came in this morning feeling like I hadn't yet woken up only to be faced by more bad news as markets tumble - it's Armageddon out there right now. As I open my email - more bad news and delays followed by conference calls in which I am caught out by unexpected questions and feel like I am stumbling around in a daze of confusion. Yep - its a bad day at the office.

Bad days make me stressed. I can feel it in my head - its a dizzy sort of feeling as my heart palpitates and my underarms feel moist. Suddenly, I cannot seem to function normally and, as a result, I make mistakes that compound the feelings of stress.

Regular visitors will know that I am a Hull City (The Tigers) fan and have been all of my life. Last season, Hull gained promotion to the EPL for the first time in their 104 year history and so all of us Hullonians were to say the least excited. Funnily enough, no one else was.

In pre-season - no - as soon as our promotion was secured, out came all the experts and pundits to declare that Hull City would be immediately relegated and would do a 'Derby' - a reference to last seasons disasterous EPL campaign by Derby County. Hull's pre-season schedule results only seemed to confirm to everyone that this was a self fulfilling prophecy.

Funny.... people like me were quietly confident that they would all EAT their words. I didn't expect that to happen quite so soon however.....

oh how I miss the sun, warm air, bathing in the Med, drinking beer and eating good food not giving a toss about anything. That view of Capri from the hotel window, Italian traffic and scooters. It wasn't long enough... needed two weeks not one to really unwind. My tan is fading along with the memory......

Here in the Czech Republic its cold, rainy and horrible weather. Aghhhhh........

What is the world coming to?

First I read that a minister in the Nigerian government wants to ban miniskirts claiming that they distract drivers and cause accidents and, wearing one is tantamount to being naked! Is this guy serious??? See the story here.

as I am reading that I see another story in which a US judge has thrown out a rule that bans baggy trousers that allow the underwear to be seen. A 17-year old had been arrested for showing had bee held in jail on arrest overnight for showing 4 inches of...... his underwear due to his baggy trousers. The judge held the law as unconstitutional... see the story here

Getting back from a week's vacation I find I have over 5000 emails in my Inbox. It took me just about 5 hours to go through them deleting spam after spam to leave just the 50+ or so real emails. Tedious to say the least. Probably more than 1000 emails deleted during that process were promising to make me ... well... better in bed. They come with subject titles like "Size does matter to the Ladies" and "Make your Girlfriend Happier" and so on.. but I guess you get them too.

Just back from a trip to Italy.... I had always believed Italians to be suave, fashionable and sophisticated.... that perception has been well and truly busted. Many Italians, even young kids, are grossly overweight, they are noisy and often downright rude and scruffy. In fact, one observation about Naples is that it has to be the scruffiest place I have ever been. Driving there is an experience. It seems that Italian drivers ignore every sign and drive as if no one else is on the road. And those scooters... wow. I wonder how many accidents there are a day involving scooters?

Had a nice time but it truly shattered my ideas about Italy and Italians.

The Ting Tings... what a stupid name for a group or duo. I'd never heard of them until yesterday when my partner introduced them to me singing the inanely ridiculous but admittedly catchy 'That's not my Name'. But what I want to know is how did such drivel become popular seemingly overnight? They are everywhere with that stupid song... even here in the Czech Republic that song already features in radio and TV commercials....

Maybe I am getting old and out of touch with modern music but come on this song is pure tripe. I will admit it is well produced but so far as I can tell it has two chords and one line in the lyrics which are nonsense... I'm sure their wallets are getting fatter by the minute.

Led Zeppelin - Where are you?

Sometimes you have to wonder how folks in the US actually think compared to us more liberal Europeans. I run a few ads on this site. They don't pay very much but it all helps you know. I mean, I wish they would pay out more but the site doesn't get enough traffic to generate a lot of cash from a few ads. But I digress......

Yesterday I set up a new ad zone using Adbrite - you can see their ads around the site if you look. This morning I find an email in in my inbox stating that they had reviewed my site and considered it an ADULT site and would therefore be running ADULT ads on the site!! What the hell?

These days it seems we all have to have superb memories for words and numbers. Now, we are likely to have to recall multiple phone numbers for a start (home, cell, business etc.) and if this isn't hard enough what about all those BLOODY passwords!

Every damn website you join from your bank to credit card company to Digg.com requires a username and password. So, if you join say 50 sites you need 50 passwords and probably half a dozen user names... It's more than I can take!

Gary Glitter. A total disgrace to humanity. Its a shame people still listen to his records. Gary Glitter is a paedophile. About the most evilest and warped of creatures under the sun.

Chased out of every country he has ever lived in for repeated sexual offenses against children, he has been evicted from Vietnam after after spending almost three years in jail for sexually abusing two girls. He has been deported back to Britain.... not that anyone there wants the evil sick monster back.

So this was the week when Bigfoot once again made the news. But is it a hoax or is it real? Apparently DNA results point to a hoax returning mixed results of human and opossum! Gosh though it would be nice if something like that could be found.

As regular readers will know I am a Hull City fan and I am pleased to report that they won their first game and are now the only Premier League team to be unbeaten in that league!!!

A nice summer cold is going through my house and I caught it. It's a real buggerhoo too. Eyes watering, coughing, sneezing but absolutely tired out even lifting a finger.... I wish someone would come up with a cure for the cold. I'm dropping vitamin C and Zinc but it doesn't seem to be helping....

Oh well. I am miserable....

I will begin this tirade with the statement - I am not Jewish. I am not anything but me. I believe that organized religion is a way to shackle people to a set of thought patterns and keep them controlled. I also think that religion has been hijacked by politicians and those with an axe to grind.

So to my point.

I lived in the US for around 18-years. I enjoyed it immensely and in the process became a US citizen without losing my UK citizenship. It made sense, I was living there, working there, building pension there and I wanted a vote there too. US citizenship is something some people would kill for of that there can be no doubt and it does offer some nice advantages especially when combined with an EU passport. I mean I can walk into the US or any EU country with relatively no hassle and start working there without anyone's permission. Not bad.

OK, I promise this will be my last 'Hull City' post for a while. But, I can't help wanting to rant a bit about the media and Hull City. Hull were promoted to the Premier League just last Saturday and within minutes, all sorts of media folks were predicting that Hull City will be relegated back to the Championship after a single year. They (rightly) point to the gap between the two leagues and how fewer than 50% of promoted teams last more than 1 year.... but my god, can we celebrate just a day or two before you start wringing your hands and spelling out disaster and doom?

I am developing a keen hatred for banks. Just recently I tried to pay a bill using my debit card of course, despite having the cash in my account, I couldn't pay it because it exceeded the limit on my card! Banks like to keep your money, charge you fees and not let you have access to your own cash in the name of security.

Here in the Czech Republic, I tried to deposit a paper check. It was in US Dollars and on an American bank. It was a small amount - around $120. First off the bank here said that they could process the check for me - it would take 30-days (everything is now done electronically here). I agreed reluctantly and then they told me it wasn't a check but a bill!. I said look it says pay me not Please send us money... Well, 20 minutes of arguing and phone calls later, they reluctantly agreed to take the check having finally determined that it indeed was a check. Three weeks later an SMS notified me that the check was deposited in my account. It was around 1500 Czech Crowns. All seems well. Until I get my statement and see that they charged me 500kc for the processing!

Next Saturday Hull City will play Bristol City at Wembley in the English Championship play off final. It's a momentous occasion for Hull. Will our wait be over and, after 104-years of soccer, will Hull City finally achieve the Premier League? It's a game with 60 million GPB at stake for the winning team as well - it is apparently the richest game in soccer - full stop.

Religion. One of the three topics that should never be raised in polite company! So here goes....

Yesterday I paid some money off a credit card. It's not one I use anymore but I am carrying a balance and trying to pay it off. In fact, I chose not to receive statements but just log on and pay it monthly. Why would I need statements? I'm not using the card. But yesterday I noticed something fishy. My balance wasn't going down as fast as it should be. So I look at my on line statements and find I am being continuously billed by two companies $29.95 per month.

Luckily, the telephone numbers are on the statements so I call them. I call and call and call with no answer. Eventually, one does answer. It is a service that I believed I had canceled over a year ago but according to them I did not. I ask to cancel and am told I can only cancel on line. I tell them I don't recall my account details to log on to cancel. They tell me they can't help me.

I demand that they cancel. They say then to log on and cancel on line. Are we going in circles here or what? after 20 minutes I am exhausted by the circles. They won't cancel my billing and I can't cancel the billing AND they deny I ever canceled in the past so won't refund my money. By the way, the company concerned is Innoport. The service was for phone number forwarding.

What is it about owning a BMW (or Audi, or Benz) that apparently makes you think that the law doesn't apply to you? I haven't done true statistical analysis but it seems to me that whenever I am driving at the speed limit there is a BMW inches behind me attempting to push me to go faster and, at the earliest opportunity, whizzing by me to zoom on down the road like a rocket. Even if passing puts me, them and everyone else in danger?

I have owned several Benz myself and I know that you feel safe and it also feels that you are going slower than you are in such a car but come on....

It seems to me based on observation that many drivers of luxury German vehicles simple believe that they are beyond the law. Because they drive such a car, they are entitled to be the bully of the road, shoving everyone else out of the way rudely in there need for road dominance.

Has anyone pondered how we arrived at a time when gratuitous sex and violence is a day-to-day feature of life? Turn on the TV, go to the movies or buy a PC game and the thing that strikes you immediately is how did we get here?

The popularity of maim, kill and torture movies like 'Hostel', the free availability of videos on the Internet that once might be described as 'snuff' movies that show people being killed and the volume of freely available hard core pornography must surely be having an impact on society?

It wasn't long ago that some of the PC games now available for teenagers would have caused incredible controversy. Not now, it seems we simply now accept games depicting murder, drug dealing, crime and sex as simply fantasies.

But how did this happen? How did this all inadvertently creep up on us to the point that for man people all of this is acceptable? How is it that mainstream society now simply shrugs its shoulders and accepts it? When will the backlash begin?

I read that Al Gore (my hasn't he aged and got uglier?) is heading up yet another 'Global Warming' campaign.... yawn. Don't you love this guy getting richer and richer off of this issue? But scrutinize his real behavior - his carbon footprint so to speak - and we find him traveling around in private and public jets guzzling gasoline, jet fuel and issuing carbon like there was no tomorrow.

He is a pompous ass and takes us all for fools while he laughs all the way to the bank in his push for a one world government (that is really what this is all about). I wish someone would show him for the idiot he truly is ("The father of the Internet!"). Al - do us all a favor - retire and stop boring us you old (carbon dioxide exhaling) wind bag.

So for years it was advice to take vitamin supplements for your health. Now, a series of studies finds that vitamin E can cause lung cancer if taken in excess and asthma if deficient, as can beta carotene. The latest study shows that smokers are more at risk.

Does anyone in the nutrition business actually know what they are talking about? I begin to suspect not. Surely a normal and healthy diet is simply the best way to ensure health but even there these clowns argue over what is healthy and normal.

My advice - forget it and live your life... vitamin supplements are just another craze design to separate you and your hard earned cash anyway....

Growing up in the UK I was pretty much paid to go to College. The UK Government paid my tuition and provided a grant each year for me to live on. It wasn't much but I managed thanks to some overdraft help from the bank. During my postgraduate period I was able to work as a lecturer too and make more money. But how things have changed!

I now have a son at a private college in the US. It's over $40,000 a year. Despite the fact that the College has awarded him a few grants, it is still an onerous stretch to pay. Each year, I take on new parental student loans and by the time he graduates I will have a second mortgage.

But as US interest rates decline now is a great time to consolidate my student loans - yours too.

In the UK these days it seems you need a license to do anything but the latest idea touted by a think tank takes the biscuit. It seems that in order to purchase tobacco products you will need a license purchased for 10 GBP - at least that's the idea being floated at the moment. Next, I suppose you'll need a license to fart based on the idea that farting is a major source of global warming gases.

The UK under its perpetual Labor Government seems to be more and more like a police state on a daily basis as basic rights get eroded under the guise of global warming or some other such nonesense. Can you imagine James Bond - Licensed to ... smoke? It makes no sense and just created another layer of beaurocracy. What happened to personal choice and liberty - freedom of speech? Under the Labor Government, such things are being slowly but surely eroded - smoking today, what tomorrow? Using the bathroom?

Dictators seem to adore the sound of their own rhetoric don't they? But it's in the way that they talk that you can tell them for what they are - tin pot dictators. Here are the five ways to recognize a tin pot dictator like Chavez of Venezuela, Ahmadinejad of Iran, ex Iraqi dictator Hussein, Kim Jong of North Korea and all of those other past, present and future nobodies;

1. Playing with fire
Tin pot dictators just love weapons of war, buy them by the billion dollars worth even as their own people starve or while their country has a GDP equivalent to the village of Withernsea in East Yorkshire, England. It doesn't stop there though, they love to play war mongering and deliver threats to their neighbors and even resort to using their amassed weaponry often on their own citizens;

2. Uniforms

American Football was the top CNN story when I logged on this morning namely the Superbowl. Who cares? American Football is a bunch of overpaid, over exposed, macho men with silly degrees in landscaping and recreational studies who push each other up and down a field. It's also a spectacularly unsuccessful US export to a world that watches soccer - also football.

It's all over the Internet the last few days that a German airline has introduced nude flights for nudists. The mind boggles. Can anyone please explain to me why on earth you would want to be fly naked? I mean, they can only strip on board the plane and have to dress again before disembarking, alcoholic drinks will apparently not be served and they will have to sit on special seat throwaway seat covers. Sounds like fun and well worth paying a premium for - right???

I can understand nudism. No really, I can. It can feel great to swim naked, walk naked but don't you think that shopping in a supermarket naked and flying naked is pushing it a little far? What do people get out of this experience? Beats me....