Well, its happened, not only do the American's have to deal with having George W Bush as "Commander and Chief" they now have to confront Sir Terry Leahy as "Commander in Shite". Tesco have trumpted the beginning of its US campaign with the opening of Fresh & Easy in Florida Avenue in Hemet, Califorina, poor ba#t#rds.

Apparently, "Tel boy" is'nt happy with gleaning £16.7bn from its UK operations and $11bn from its international operation's its now set to spend $250m in opening 250 stores accoss the US, $1m a store, quality is apparently rife in this strategy. Additionally Leahy would pursue "everyday low price, strategy", keeping prices low on the basics such as milk ans sugar as low as possible rather than using promotional price cuts, coupons or the loyalty cards,why the different strategy in the US?.

No doubt in time Fresh & Easy will morph into the Tesco that we know and grossly dislike on this side of the Atlantic, Vannilla Cornet,will be become the norm and once the Tesco self check-out becomes the norm , I feel that we will have much more in common with our American brothers, I am sure that they will say what the feck did we send so many of our sons to Europe in the in 1940's in order to suffer this shite. Every little helps my arse.

Dermot Mannion,chief executive of Aer Lingus has decided to blame the world for the €1.2m reduction in Aer Lingus profits for 2006. Explicitly, he cites higher fuel costs and the terrorism alert in the UK last August, but failed to cite himself and his managements lack of strategic/operational management skills.

So that we can all digest the spin in this announcement lets just bullet point the key figures, to avoid ambiguity,

• Pre-tax profits down from €91.6m to €90.4m
• Total Revenue up by 11% to €1.1billion.
• Total passengers up 7.3% to 8.6million
• Load Factor dropped from 81.4% to 77.6%
• Short Haul passengers up 9% but available seats up by 20.6%
• Long Haul Passengers fell by 4.4%
• On Board Sales and Car hire up 34% to €63.4m
• Fuel cost up by 44.4% or €61.7m
• Staff costs increased by 8% no figure given as what figure is now.
• €16m spend on defending itself from Ryanairs takeover.

Lets have a closer look shall we,

• Pre-tax profits down €1.2m not so bad really
• Total Revenue up €100m or 11% again not so bad, good actually.However no account of how much fuel surcharge is contained in figure.
• Total passengers up about 585,000 again well done
• Load factor down 3.8%, not good given capacity grew in short haul by 20.6% thereby giving the impression that new/existing routes are'nt commercial or the airline is now a bus service and will go without passengers. If capacity is up and passengers are down relatively, this would have to mean that you and me are paying more.It would also suggest that rather than use and exploit the existing routes unprofitable expansion appears to be a chosen strategy. Additionally Long Haul suffered a 4.4% fall and would suggest expansion of this un-commercial/un-profitable piece of the business needs to be called into question.
• On board Sales and car hire up, who gives a shite, this is an airline.
• Fuel costs up 44.4% or €61.7m again how much was recouped via surcharges would be a nice statistic to have.
• Staff costs up 8% to what from what?, given that apparently there is a "operative" busting his/her arse earning €110,000 pa. How will the proposed pay freeze of top management affect this figure in 2007? if at all.
• €16m on defending itself from Ryanair. No, now costs €16m anyway the capitalisation of Aer Lingus increased about 28% or say €300m due to the approach, not a bad return but not a return generated by Mannion et al.

So, its first set of accounts issued to the financial world as a plc, and like its management they are as deep as a puddle. No mention of the massive JetBlue deal, appears the discussions with unions are "positive" despite the union saying that essentially "thats boll#*ks". The Union also went on to say that the credit for these figures were down to the €110,000pa employees, and the flotation was a "disaster", I expect the unions to give back its shareholding any day now.

Success has many facets, in Aer Lingus's case its charging too much, changing fares quietly whilst announcing reduction in fuel surcharges, paying too much to one member of staff, never answering the phone to customers, talking shite, and finally preparing to become another Eircom.

I have just completed my 5km morning walk. On returning to the Car Park I noticed an foreign registered car a few places up from where I had parked my car.As I had just completed something healthy I decided to have a cigerette just in case I had prolonged my life expectancy.

When I was sitting there listening to "Deacon Blue" comtemplating the issues of the day, I noticed the woman in the car was attempting to change a toddlers nappy on the back seat. As a parent I along with my wife have completed this task on numerous occasions, and I can sympathise with anyone who has to do it.

After a few minutes the task was completed to the roars of the child, who was by now contesting the fact that it had to be out back into its car seat, the woman simply threw the nappy on the ground. I called to her "you are not going to leave that there, are you?, to which she replied "f&*k off and mind your own business".

I was outraged and walked up to where the nappy was and picked it up and put into the bin that was 10 yards away with the two looking at me. I just d'ont get this what gives people the right to think that they can simply throw their litter, or in this case a substantial load, anywhere?. Respect for anything is gone, this place has a view of Galway Bay, with Blackhead in Co.Clare providing the backdrop, and yet people feel compelled to soil it with their actions. For feck sake put it the bin and a have a little respect for yourself and others.

Now for a piece of advice, if you are the proud father of a little girl,as I am, when she says that she need's to "go pee pee" while you are driving on a long journey for feck sake ensure that there are'nt any hidden nettles in the spot you allow her to go, it makes for a very upsetting remainder of the journey. The thing to watch out for from a boys perspective is the electric fence hidden by the hedgerow, thats a personal one from about 25years ago.

And finally if you have a boy of any age and they keep missing the bowl put a wine cork in the loo, they'll spend hours aiming at it and trying to sink it. This applies to any age and any state of sobriety.