The BBC, due to its unique 'license' funding, is not allowed to advertise and/or use product placement in its programmes. On the face of it this seems reasonable enough until you realise that an average half hour programme on the commercial channels lasts twenty-five minutes due to the inclusion of adverts, whereas the average half hour programme on the BBC lasts even less due to adverts for BBC videos, books, programmes, auto-biographies, Radio Times etc in the breaks. This is annoying in itself...but today I noticed that, sandwiched between the endless American cartoons on Children's ITV (and they wonder why kids are growing up thick these days), were even more adverts for BBC videos with the Christmas market in their sights. Where exactly do the BBC get off with this shit? That's our license money being spent on ITV adverts for such mindless crap as the Fimbles and Bob the Fucking Builder! I wouldn't mind so much if it the license wasn't obligatory! But to see our hard earned cash being frittered away on this sort of crud when the programmes the BBC actually produce are so dire is very frustrating!

On the upside, British Gas have finally made some attempts at restoration. The £49.00 mis-debt appears to have vanished from my meter and the amount on my Gas card swelled this afternoon by an extra £4.00. I have sat and calculated the whys and wherefors of all this and realised that I'm still at least five pounds worse off. But, ever the benefactor, I have decided to let British Gas keep it. They're going to need it a lot more than I will by the time I've finished posting my warnings against their theiving, ignorant behaviour all across the internet. In case you've missed it so far: BRITISH GAS ARE SHIT! THEY WILL LIE, SCHEME AND BULLSHIT THEIR WAY INTO YOUR HOMES AND THEN TAKE YOU FOR EVERY PENNY! STICK WITH WHATEVER UTILITY YOU CURRENTLY USE, FOLKS...UNLESS IT'S BRITISH GAS IN WHICH CASE GET RID OF THEM QUICK!

Other news...and Anne Diamond, much to my regret, was booted out of the Celebrity B List House last night. Well...when I say 'booted out', it took three fork lift trucks and a work crew not seen since the building of the pyramids to set her free.

Meanwhile several deadly black widow spiders have turned up in bunches of grapes bought from Tesco. Apparently the spiders were introduced to keep down other pests, but lacksadaisical quality control has failed to filter them out of the finished parcels. In a statement Thomas Ringpiece Sr (Head of Tesco Thornton-Cleveley's Branch) said, "Thank God they weren't bits of glass otherwise we'd have had to take the product off the shelves. As it is we can keep on selling them in the certain knowledge that at some point in the near future one of our customers will die. We've got plenty more customers though and some of them are quite old anyway."

And in the Commons today, Gordon Brown admitted in his pre-budget speech that the government would have to borrow an extra 9 billion pounds on top of the predicted 12 billion (makes my paltry fiver seem insignificant somehow doesn't it?) to get through next year. Most of this will be spent on pies and chips for John Prescott. Predictably the Shadow Chancellor, whose name eludes me for the moment being the instantly forgettable little Tory shit that he is, ridiculed Brown's handling of public finances. In a statement he said, "Gordon Brown, big fat trout! Couldn't work the budget out! What a silly man is Gordon Brown! We'll have to pull his undies down!"

And finally, the fireman's strike continues...John Prescott's offer of "a realistic one-and-a-half per cent so long as the fire brigade send him one of their calendars for Christmas", being rejected by Guy Andy Gilchrist as facitious. As yet the government's forty-per cent annual pay rise (it's easy to rearrange public coffers despite massive borrowing when you're voting for your own pay increase it seems) has gone unmentioned by the television news.