Spills and spoils

Far be it from me to be a pedant or a grouch, but this made me growl last night. I'm as much of a fan of value for money as the next person, but when Tesco put a handy tear-off strip around their Colours washing powder, and then fill the box up way above that line, so that the act of opening it means that you have to a) hoover and b) do about seven colours washes immediately, I start thinking "Maybe Tesco are dicks." That said, the incident gave me an opportunity to use my Black & Decker Dustbuster, which made me very happy.

On a separate matter, I was reading a story in The Guardian today about which of the Miliband brothers (if either) should be the next leader of the Labour party. As usual, I scrolled down through the comments at the bottom (almost always the most enlightening part of any article) and was gobsmacked to read the following by a commentator called RapidEddie:

"So the choice is between two brothers who both went to the same university to study the same degree? But I'm forgetting. The other name in the frame is James Purnell, who also studied PPE from Oxford. Oh, and Ed Balls (PPE degree from Oxford). I think this is New Labour's idea of diversity."

As if that wasn't shocking enough, a few scrolls down, and TangerineDream added this:

"If they want a bit of female diversity, they could always choose Jacqui Smith (PPE Oxford), Yvette Cooper (PPE Oxford), Ruth Kelly (PPE Oxford). If they wanted a bit of unelected dark-knighted-ness they could always choose Peter Mandleson (PPE Oxford). And hey, if the proles want a bit of a change we could always elect David Cameron (PPE Oxford) ably assisted by William Hague (PPE Oxford), and if we really wanted to push the boat out we could go crazy and go for a crazy liberal like Chris Huhne (PPE Oxford). Is it any wonder that all our politicians say the same thing? The most influential political figures in British politics are the Oxford PPE lecturers."

Blimey. Be interesting to see what would happen if we banned all Oxbridge grads from running for parliament. Might shake things up a bit. And I'd have more of a chance of getting elected then. Mwah ha ha ha.