If you were watching the results of the Premiership on Saturday that would decide who ended up champions and those that qualified for the European Champions League, you would answer “absolutely nothing” I imagine. On that score, if you will forgive the pun, I agree with you. However it is not the football itself that prompts my question, no it the behaviour of some of the individual players.

The “free for all” that most of us witnessed on Saturday at the Manchester City and Queens Park Rangers game left a nasty taste in most people’s mouths. The individual that was given the red card, and we all know who that is, has a history which is well documented and as a highly paid individual on a reported £80,000 per week; he should be setting an example to the millions of youngsters that follow the game, not erupting in violence. He then seemed to compound the problem and add insult to injury by using his mobile and going onto Twitter on Sunday evening to abuse the BBC Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer following the former striker’s criticism of his dismissal. Following that he turned his spite onto Gary Lineker. QPR have tried in vain to persuade him to quit Twitter but he has refused to do so. The result is he is now told by his club that he is free to leave. Apparently the irony is that he is contracted for a further three years at £80,000 per week, it is madness that he cannot just be sacked, I know that if I did anything similar in my work place it would be construed as gross misconduct and the door would be shown, contract or no contract, that’s what wrong with football in my opinion anyway.

You will not have any trouble finding a shower enclosure if you search the internet, but are they likely to be at the right price? I am in the middle of adding an en-suite room to my home and decided that it was well worth installing a shower to complete the addition and although I would have preferred that this be a “wet room” style, there was just not enough room in the area next to the bedroom which I am converting. A shower enclosure is going to fit nicely and so I set about searching the local stores, but frankly I was disappointed with the selection.

Next move Ken, get online and have a look at what is available. The answer is there are literally hundreds from which you can choose but some of the prices that I was confronted with frightened me. Eventually I went to UK Bathrooms and I could have kicked myself for wasting time and not going straight back to the online bathroom supplier that I had used previously, not only was the selection of designer showers plentiful, the prices were the best on the internet, this is something that I had found out when I fitted a new bathroom suite in March this year. However it is always good to check that they still remain as competitive as they did before and the answer to that is yes. I suppose the next thing will be for me to start to decorate the new area, hang on maybe I’ll look to see, oh well, perhaps not!

It’s a long way north, anyone would know that but, I was completely knocked over when I read that a major holiday company, lowcostholidays.com, listed Newcastle upon Tyne as one of the Great Gaelic Cities located in Scotland! The thought of seeing a crowd of Geordies prancing about in black and white kilts left me somewhat startled to say the least.

You would imagine that when it was pointed out to the company, by a Scotsman, that it was in England, they would have addressed the problem, not so, they insisted that it was in Scotland! In an emailed reply, the company employee Rajesh Bangera perhaps imagining that Hadrian’s Wall had something to do with the dividing line, replied: “Good Afternoon, thank you for your email. Newcastle is indeed in Scotland.” He continued: “Please feel free to contact us for further assistance, regards, Rajesh Bangera.”

The Scotsman a certain Jamie O’Neil took to twitter and posted an image of the page, which as you can imagine caused a flurry of activity from friends and followers. One follower, Thomas McCuddon replied: “Their map of Scotland was obviously used by Bonnie Prince Charlie circa 1744.” Jamie added “Don’t quote me on this, but I don’t think Newcastle airport was plotted on that map.” Newcastle Airport then took up the fun and tweeted to Jamie, “Last time we checked Scotland was about 40 miles away. We’ll look into it and get back to you.” A few minutes later they came back: “We checked. We’re definitely not in Scotland.”

This set me thinking that the company must be foreign and just got it wrong, but no, I checked on them and they are registered in England with their office in Gatwick. Aha that’s it of course, what do they say, “Civilisation ends at Watford,” well it gave me some light hearted fun this dreary day anyway.

One of the pastimes that I love, although not very good at, is a game or two of snooker and I am fortunate to be able to go to a snooker club and meet up with friends to try my hand. If you have never been to a top ranking tournament you should try to make the effort and get to one, you will be amazed at the skill which is shown by players and some of the best highlights to me have been the exhibitions by top ranking players that I have witnessed.

Part of the fun and excitement is taking part in some snooker betting and watching your chosen player, or players’, progress through the rounds. One of the high highlights of snooker for me was when I was able to get to the “Crucible” in Sheffield to see some of the early rounds of the World Championship and I have been given the dates for this year’s World Snooker Championship, this is undoubtedly the highlight of the snooker calendar, which is to take place on Sat 21 April until Mon 7 May. Held since 1977 at the legendary Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, the event draws the best players from around the world to compete for the most coveted prize in the sport. In the time honoured format, he world’s top 16 seeded players are joined by 16 more that have battled through the qualifying rounds. Naturally World Championship snooker betting is already hotting up and if you want to get the best odds, now is the time to get online and see what odds your favourite is being offered at. See you at Sheffield maybe?

As if our elected representatives don’t suffer enough humiliation, rightly many people believe, the latest piece of unique British humour came to light when I was reading through a batch of newspapers and came across a story about a certain Helena Torry who was on the list of candidates for the forthcoming council elections in Aberdeen.

Helena was no ordinary woman you see; yes she was very attractive if any of the photographs that I have seen were to go by, in fact she was very trendy with the latest sunglasses and a cute “boater” style hat perched on top of her head. No she was in fact a shop window dummy all dressed up for the part. However the Grampian Police saw it in a different light and as they say “were not amused” in fact the perpetrator, a certain lady of 63, has been charged under the Representation of the People Act. So Helena will not become a representative for the people of Hazlehead, Ashley and Queens Cross ward, which seems such a shame, she would not have to have taken her councillors fee, but would not have contributed much either, such a shame. All I can say is long live the glorious British sense of humour and I for one hope that the Scottish Court agrees with me.

Without in any way going into the morals, rights or wrongs of leaving three young children alone and sleeping whilst you were at a Tapas Bar a hundred yards away, you have to feel desperately sorry for the parents of Madeleine McCann, Kate and Gerry. It is now close on five years since the tragic story broke and although there have been many reported sightings, none of these have led to Madeleine being found. It was therefore, good news when I tuned into the radio this morning to hear that on Wednesday, Britain’s biggest police force said that as a result of evidence uncovered during a review “they now believe there is a possibility Madeleine is still alive”. According to Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood from Scotland Yard’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command, he has told reporters that they genuinely believe there is a possibility that she is alive and have urged the urged Portuguese authorities to reopen the search for her amid the new “investigative opportunities.

To remind you of the events on that fateful night, Kate and Gerry leave their three children asleep in their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz Praia da Luz while they dine with friends at a nearby tapas restaurant. Nothing is amiss when Mr McCann checks on the youngsters at just after 9pm, but when his wife goes back at about 10pm she finds three-year-old Madeleine missing. It was after this that Jane Tanner, one of the friends eating with the McCann’s, later reports seeing a man carrying a child away earlier that night. The police have issued a new “age progression” image of the toddler, which they say showed what she would look like today at the age of nine. Let’s all hope that this brings the result that is hoped for by all.

We have not had a party for a long time and so with the able assistance of my long suffering partner, whose idea it was anyway, we decided to organise a party, not for any particular reason, but just to have a party! Naturally we all enjoyed the usual crop of fun and games, and as often can happen at party’s there was large quantity of alcohol consumed by both me and my friends.

The one thing that caused the most hilarity though, was a gadget which an old RAF colleague brought along, it was a beer bong. Now if like me you have never heard of one before I suggest that you take a look. They can be great fun at a party and they do help you to get a suitable amount of your favourite ale down at a pace which suits you. There are even double headed beer bongs and I can bet that they will be fun too. It seems that you can buy the beer bong at Shiva and the site is well worth a look if you like to have harmless fun at home. My friend confessed that the beer bong had been bought for his son’s 18th birthday by a friend and he confesses to using it every weekend! Well I have to say that you are guaranteed a laugh!

One thing that has always bugged me when booking a ‘plane ticket is that there is no relationship whatsoever between the price that “no frills” airlines advertise on their web pages and the amount that you end up paying. One of these “bugbears” is the charge that is made for using a card online. Just how are you supposed to pay for your ticket online if you do not use a card?

I could justify a small charge being made for using a credit card as most outlets have to pay the credit card company a percentage of the price. This can be upward of three percent, but for major operators it is more likely to be around one to one and a half percent, for a debit card it is insignificant, just pence per transaction. So for most airlines I would think that, say a return to Paris from Newcastle by Easy Jet or Air France, the cost is in the region of £100 and the cost to them using a credit card from the card company would be £1.50 at most, so you have to ask why the near £10 charge? Well we all know the reason why, don’t we!

This is apparently the latest move by the bosses of Flybe to revive their fortunes after it was forced to issue a series of profit warnings last year following a sharp decline in the UK domestic aviation market. It is a step in the right direction, let’s hope others follow.

Looking through the television programmes to do some forward planning to add to my recorder, I came across a new BBC Two series that is looking at the “seventies” which is to be broadcast on Mondays at 9 o’clock, suggesting this was really quite a good era. This seems a bit surprising to me as, although I was at school at the time, I seem to remember it as being a period of endless strikes, a three day week and uncollected rubbish during the winter of discontent in 1979, lying on the streets.

Of course any look back is subjective and I shall look forward to viewing the series. The programme is presented by historian Dominic Sandbrook and in the pre programme notes he is suggesting that this was the decade in which British people found themselves newly affluent, secure, and ambitious to own their own homes.

Of course the years following on from World War2 were difficult, the country was effectively broke and we lost our place in the world trade rankings, manufacturing declined and the British Empire dissolved into the Commonwealth, a grouping of fully independent countries, no longer a guaranteed market place for British goods and a source of cheap commodities.

Of course the 1950’s saw television introduced to homes, did the swinging 60’s actual swing or was it the mini-skirt, which surprisingly few women actually wore, and the Pill, which most women never took. However it is the 70’s which, when we see old footage on the TV, usually shows the decade of the donkey jacket, and of the Austin Allegro and men on strike warming their hands around braziers, who would want to remember that? Well I’m looking forward to see what the programme shows and wonder what you think the best decade was.

Studying at home or doing some extracurricular activity is more than just commendable, it is the road to success in many cases, particularly if you have been left behind academically speaking. Many people misguided believe that once you have left your school or university behind, studying is a thing of the past, well not if you want to get ahead in business it isn’t!

At my place of work most of us do some course work which will enable us to get further up the ladder and today you can get plenty of help online. There are numerous places where you can get essay help, many will give good example essays to guide you through the principal of good writing, in fact you can even get your essays marked by teachers who are expert in your chosen subject.

Adding to your qualification, or successfully gaining one, is without question the road to better employment, either with your current employer or a new one if you are looking for new challenges. I have never stopped in my desire to continue to add to my knowledge and I for one will continue to see what available to study to keep the wheels turning and my foot on the ladder of success.