Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Dead Horse

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

From the Times Best of the Blogs 2011

A note of advice to the G20 leaders:

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation says that: ‘when you discover you are riding a dead horse, best strategy to dismount.’

However…..In Government more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

  • Buying a stronger whip
  • Changing riders
  • Appointing a committee to study the horse
  • Arranging a visit to other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses
  • Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included
  • Reclassifying the dead horse as living impaired
  • Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse
  • Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed
  • Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horses performance
  • Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would increase horses performance
  • Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses
  • Rewriting the performance expectations for all horses
  • Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Sorry – just had to share this.

Mike C

My God, I’ve never seen one so BIG

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Obviously I’m used to hearing this phrase – being a ‘man of the world’….but I actually found myself SAYING the phrase myself yesterday. I was of course talking about a stand of Japanese Knotweed in Swansea.

I had been invited down to Wales by a surveying company to give a CPD presentation on the wonderful weed and had stayed overnight in the St David’s Hotel in Cardiff. I then travelled from Cardiff to Swansea along the motorway.

My God.

I have been dealing with JK for some time now (circa 20 years) but have never seen so much of the stuff.

On the motorway central reservation, on the slip roads, in gardens, in schools, in the hospital, in the leisure centre, in the verges….bloody everywhere… Including the car park of the surveying company!

I started to worry that the surveyors would be a team of experts with highly technical questions – but no – the first person I spoke to had no idea what JK even looked like …let alone that the car park was full of it!

…and this dear reader is the problem we all face.

If surveyors don’t know what it looks like and the Local Authority don’t know what it looks like – then how the hell are we ever going to get it under control?

Mike C

Snooker Diving…

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Well it’s been twenty two years since I last went ‘abroad’.

 

My passport had expired years ago and moths had nibbled the edges of the aged cardboard cover. The photograph looked nothing like me, I was slim, had hair and didn’t wear glasses….

 

The reason I haven’t holidayed as much as I should is that I am a control freak. It’s not something that I am proud of its just the way I am.

 

There are changes afoot though – I am in therapy – and the team at Japanese Knotweed Solutions want me to go away! That didn’t sound right – they want me to have a holiday – not just ‘go away’.

 

So please take this blog as advance warning that Mike Clough will be leaving the country at some stage this year. I have been told by the powers that be (that would be my wife) that I need two weeks in the sun with NO CONTACT with the office….(I had Monday ‘off’ and answered 23 Blackberry e-mails which didn’t go down well with Mrs. C).

 

So – a slightly different blog this week – no ranting – the therapy must be working then.

 

Readers can look forward to some tree hugging and general love to all the other Japanese Knotweed eradication companies…

 

….yeah right…when some bunch of shits step in and pick up a half done project for a main contractor that doesn’t pay their bills – what f-ing message does that send – you dummies.

 

Mike C

 

Ps those of you wondering about the ‘snooker diving’ – that’s what my wife wants to do when abroad – she may be confused with ‘scuba diving’ or maybe she knows something I don’t.





E: jk@sltd.co.uk
T: 0161 723 2000




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