Happy New Year

It's been a very busy Christmas, what with the Darling Wife returning from Singapore with The Boy and just spending time together, installing furniture and generally trying to get the house in order.

The Christmas Concert went well, and now it's time to prepare for the next concert, namely the Messiah in Chelmsford Cathedral. I haven't sung it in a while, so it will be nice to do again (one of the complaints we had when I was at university was that we did the Messiah too much, but the last time I sang it was probably the year after I left when I kept attending rehearsals.

One rather useful thing I've discovered over the Christmas break is Google's Blog Reader, which makes keeping up with my favourite blogs very simple. Now, if only I could find a way to get Firefox not to hang everytime I open Tim Worstall's blog at work.

Cheeky

A friend on IRC drew my attention to this report about Irish publicans complaining that random breath testing of drivers is hurting their income. They are demanding compensation.

So let me see if I have this straight. For years and years we've been watching ever more gruesome "Don't Drink and Drive" adverts. Despite this, plenty of fools have continued to do this, at the risk of destroying Christmas not only for their own families but for the families of the innocent people they kill. The Guards initiate a regieme of testing designed to catch the fools before they hit someone. This one actually works - in the sense that it appears it's reducing the number of people who are being fools.

And the publicans want to be compensated for the fact they are no longer serving drink to people who shouldn't be drinking.

Coming next, the local drug dealers ask for compensation for the losses incurred as the result of the most recent drug haul.