Returning late from work I stopped into Tesco and couldn't resist buying a vanilla creme coronet from the bakery to cheer myself up. I had to take a picture of it because I can't yet find the words to describe the trauma of finding a center filled with green mould (see picture below). The best before date was today. Is there any scientist out there who can explain how you can get green mould inside a pastry "fresh from the baker" at Tesco?

When you go into the B&Q at Fratton Way, Portsmouth you have two choices. You can pick a trolley up at the entrance or, if you are only looking for a few things, you can go inside and end up trying to carry everything in your arms, because for some bizarre reason there are no shopping baskets

Once you've passed through the one way security gate it's too late to go back and grab a trolley. You have to go to the exit at the other end of the warehouse and then back around to the entrance again. You don't really believe your eyes. There must be baskets. You look left and right, and repeat the process a few times, beginning to feel more than a bit stupid. There must be baskets. There are lots of orange B&Q  buckets, but there are no shopping baskets. When you turn towards the cash registers there are still none, not even an empty basket tidy. There are none of those either. B&Q at Portsmouth just don't offer shopping baskets.

As I went up the central aisle for the fourth time looking for nails, my arms awkwardly cradling three tubes of flexible polyfilla, two paint rollers, one tube of wood paint, one UPV cleaner and one pipe tidy I wondered why on earth there weren't baskets, why they didn't have a map somewhere and why, instead of having a fancy coffee shop they couldn't just concentrate on the basics of customer service first, like having a shopping basket..

Monster is a jobs board, which in the UK is billed as a leading careers website. The marketing gump on their web site includes the following statements

• It's committed to connecting organisations with individuals
• helps you explore the possibilities and find the opportunities that are right for you
• Offers innovative technology and first class services
• Changes the way people look for jobs and employers look for people
• Contains a searchable database
• Is part of Monster Worldwide Inc., (NASDAQ: MNST), a member of S&P 500 index and the NASDAQ 100.

They are currently spending god knows how much on their "monster works for me" global add campaign. Rob Brouwer, CEO, Monster UK & Ireland, comments "It's aim is to encourage and motivate candidates towards a positive career move in 2007 based on their own individual needs or desires - the reason they go to work".

Call me old fashioned but for me one of the key reasons people go to work is to be paid, but with all this "innovative technology" and "searchable database" thingy there is no way to filter your results by how much you would like to be paid or a minimum salary requirement. Everything is jumbled in together and it's a hit and miss whether the optional keywords field will successfully filter out what you don't want. The chances are it will also filter out the jobs you do want as they simply may not contain the chosen keyword.

The search structure is basically ten years old Web 1.0 ("very 1998") and you can't find anything on it unless you're prepared to set up camp for the day and "pan for gold". It would make far more sense to use some of that TV money to add new search parameters or new table columns or tables to the database. In fact, such small changes might only take a week of development work for one person, I'm sure this cost is probably less than the cost of one TV advert.

Rob, I am certainly motivated towards a positive career move, your marketing team have devised a good add, I just wish that when I peeled that label off there might have been some "innovative technology" and a "searchable database".

I received the following content in an email today. Here it is:

"The government's proposal to introduce road pricing will mean you having to purchase a tracking device for your car and pay a monthly bill to use it. The tracking device will cost about £200 and in a recent study by the BBC, the lowest monthly bill was £28 for a rural florist and £194 for a delivery driver.

A non working Mum who used the car to take the kids to school paid £86 in one month. On top of this massive increase in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know where you are at all times. They will also know how fast you have been going, so even if you accidentally creep over a speed limit you can expect a NIP with your monthly bill.

If you care about our freedom and stopping the constant bashing of the car driver, please sign the petition on No 10's new website. 

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/ "

Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, once called British Airways "expensive bastards". Having recently spent almost £300 for a one hour flight from London Gatwick to Cork I would have to agree. Except it wasn't with BA I booked the ticket, this was Ryanair. Despite booking the ticket seven weeks ahead of the flight date this is the ridiculous price I had to pay over Christmas for the short haul flight.

The Boss of the low-cost airline has also been quoted to say, "No, we shouldn't give you a bloody cup of coffee. We only charge 19 euros for the ticket."  However, even if you pay close to £300 you still have to pay for your own coffee (incidentally, the average price for a BA flight is £178).

Low cost airlines are superb, as long as they remain low-cost, but if you have to pay above average prices for no frills then you don't ever get a sense of customer loyalty. Since Go was absorbed into Easyjet and Barbara Cassani its CEO left the low-cost airline industry any sense of customer service vanished with her. It certainly doesn't exist in Ryanair.