Steve Litchfield

What's with all these new Internet domains? It was bad enough having to register your name and company with .co.uk, .com, .net and .org. Now there are .eu, .org.uk, .me.uk and a hundred others. I really can't be bothered with keeping up with the rest of the pack on this one. It's just too costly and too much hassle. The agencies concerned are doing it to rake in more money and that's it. It's a cash-making exercise. As to finding a company on the web by guessing its URL - it's 10x faster these days just to type it into Google. My main site ( http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk ) has one URL and one URL only, and it's staying that way. If people want to find me, they will... (Actually, I've also got www.3lib.com , but only because a kind customer gave it to me)

Now look. The whole point of having multiple checkout operators in supermarkets is so that multiple queues of people can be served in 'parallel', i.e. all at once. If there's a problem with one queue, it shouldn't affect the others, otherwise the whole system breaks down. Which is why supermarket huddles are so frustrating. Mavis: "Alice! This customer has some vouchers (or whatever) I don't recognise!". Alice leans over, abandoning her own customers: "Hmm... I haven't see that before, either. Gladys?" Gladys peers over from aisle 3's checkout: "Yes, you just have to press D and then 56.... oh, hang on, I'll show you." We now have three people sorting out the one problem and noone's getting served. I've seen this syndrome in banks, post offices and many other establishments where there are more than one operator. And it drives me mad. Look, if there's a problem, call in a manager, or the cleaner, or 'phone a ...

It all comes down to sheer selfishness, I suppose. But I'm staggered at the way 80% of the population of this country seems happy to throw down their fag ends, sweet wrappers, crisp packets and so on, without a thought as to what'll happen to them. Imagine if there was no-one to pick it all up? The planet would soon be knee deep in rubbish - I wonder at what point people would notice and start being conscious of their own throw-away habits? In many areas, councils pay people to go around picking up litter, but if we didn't make a mess in the first place, the money could be reassigned to schools, hospitals and other worthy projects. Litter makes me mad...

Now, listen up. The whole point of advertising is to get the message of a patricular brand of something scross, whether it's Carlsberg beer or a Vauxhall car (spit) or the latest perfume. So why do my wife and I end up playing the "Guess what this is an advert for" game every night? What on earth's the point in a company spending an obscene amount of money creating and paying to show an advert that's so arty that the thing it's advertising is only shown in the last two seconds? And those last couple of seconds are so tenuously linked to the preceding twenty-eight that although people might remember the arty advert, there's no way they're going to remember the brand, completely foiling the point of doing the advert in the first place. What a waste of money and time.

Bah Humbug. Oh, how I hate this time of year. Not Christmas itself, I'm all up for the season of goodwill and remembering the Nativity, and so on. But the now inevitable torrent of houses lit up with garish Santas and gaudy reindeer, each animated and with strobe-like accompaniment from gardens full of beads of lights, is just all too much. And pray tell me what a Star Wars advent calendar, a Santa in a helicopter and a parachuting reindeer have got to do with the birth of a penniless and naked baby Jesus in a stable in Israel 2000 years ago? Not an awful lot. Christmas for most people round here seems to be about time off work to get plumped up and drunk a lot, present buying hassles, office parties and the aforementioned gaudy light shows.