Labour's "Cadbury law" - another stinker from the Brown bunker

According to the BBC, Labour is to propose a "Cadbury's law" in its manifesto, restricting takeovers of British firms on "public interest grounds".

The report says that the manifesto is to contain proposals to ensure that if a company is designated "strategic", or if the national interest is concerned (i.e. the Government of the day thinks that intervention will be popular), two-thirds of its shareholders will have to vote yes to a takeover.

This is another piece of economic illiteracy by Labour and its chums in the Lib-Dems. If political interference is allowed to dictate whether acquisitions can go ahead, owners of companies will be prevented from achieving a fair value for their shares. A big proportion of the owners of companies are the pension funds. These have already been devastated by the removal of the dividend tax credit, weakened by raids from the Pension Protection Fund, and softened further by the recession fuelled by Labour's boom-to-bust policies.

This proposal is another stinker from the bunker of Brown's zombie administration. Let's hope it doesn't happen.

Absolute joy - a week's holiday

I thoroughly enjoyed my week's holiday, though it was busy from finishing work on Friday night until going back ten days later. Two trips (one overnight) to my late father's house to continue with the preparations to put it on the market and to meet an estate agent, three full length Rugby matches refereed, together with about two dozen 7s matches over four days at the National Schools Sevens, nine items sold on Ebay, a curry evening with Ruth's colleagues from the maths department, a pretty exciting Grand Prix and a trip to Broadcasting House to watch the recording of The Now Show for BBC Radio 4.

Almost all of these were an absolute joy. Even the house clearing effort progressed well, and apart from poor weather and lots of mud on the Thursday, the Sevens were great; talent, speed, skills and some really close,exciting games, and the chance to referee some fantastic teams.

The event in the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House was fascinating too, not least for the contrasts with a TV recording. Last autumn, we saw BBC2's Mock The Week at Television Centre. The studio was completely rammed with lights and cameras - over 100 gantries above our heads, and I may have counted ten cameras used during the show, each with its own cameraman. We were in our seats for a full three hours to produce a sub 30 minute programme, plus a few segments for the Christmas show. This was in the end exhausting and I'm sure that the cast struggled to raise many laughs after the two hour mark.

The Now Show seemed much lighter on its feet, though maybe more of it was scripted. Just a microphone each (one set lower for John Holmes), and we were out within 90 minutes - less than an hour's recording, and could easily have taken more.

The Radio Theatre is worth a closer look. Art deco, with bas relief sculptures round the sides at floor level - the floor has clearly been raised by some six feet. Wikipedia says that the sculptures are by Gilbert Bayes, though much else around the building is by Eric Gill. Sadly there is no mention, let alone photographs, of this work in the National Archives article, which however does show his work at Lords Cricket Ground, amongst others.

This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://blog.johnlholden.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://blog.johnlholden.com/feeds/posts/default.

Hampshire Rugby Clubs

Just updated my Google Map of Hampshire Rugby Clubs with the changes that I'm aware of for the season 2009-10.

The map includes

• Member Clubs of Hampshire RFU including the Channel Island clubs


• Associate Clubs of Hampshire RFU


• Associate Schools


• non-Hants clubs that play in Hampshire leagues or merit tables.

Please let me know if you spot any errors or omissions.

RBS Six Nations 2010

As I can't find a calendar file to download for the RBS Six Nations 2010, I've made one myself that you are welcome to use.

It's available in several formats:

vCalendar file (.vcs)
Excel(.xls)
Comma Separated Variable(.csv)
XML(.xml)
HTML file
Zip file of Time & Chaos Transportable Records (.ixl)

The start times are all shown as Greenwich Mean Time. Where a separate KO time is shown, this is the local time for matches in Paris and Rome only.

Looking forward to a great tournament, but Stade de France on a (cold?) March night could be a very tough place for England to finish their campaign.