Britalian

Actor David Jason has caused a stir with an attempted joke he told live on air during the Christian O’Connell show a couple of days ago.

The most interesting thing about it is the incredible overreaction from Absolute Radio who have made him apologise, despite not receiving any complaints about the joke at all. Apologise for nothing, old man!

Try to make sense of these comments from Absolute:

The comments made by David Jason were unacceptable and Christian O’Connell distanced himself from them live on air.

We consider the views of our listeners to be very important and have received no complaints about these comments.

We will continue to monitor any complaints and Christian O’Connell will issue an on-air apology in tomorrow’s breakfast show.

How can you continue to monitor complaints when you haven’t had any? Whoever wrote that wants lynching for ridiculous use of the English language to try and generate a scandal where none exists.

Perhaps Absolute are so scared by the failure of their relaunch that they are trying to drum up some controversy or portray themselves in a favourable light after BrandRossGate.

You can guarantee though, that O’Connell, the world’s funniest man (in his own opinion) has said some far more offensive things on the radio. In fact, I find the fact that he is on the radio offensive.

Maybe Absolute would like to allocate someone to continue to monitor complaints like that. They would certainly be busy.

I just had a call with the support team at Three who advised me that they do not have a roaming agreement with any provider in Switzerland so the new Pay As You Go sim I bought from them would be useless over here.

I was only looking to port my existing number to a non contract SIM.

I find it amazing that in 2009, a company that claims to be a major telecoms provider does not offer users any service at all in a country at the heart of the European mainland and one of the world’s financial centres.

The BAA has finally been held accountable for failing air passengers for years. For making us feel like an inconvenience for wishing to travel and treating us like fools, the BAA has been ordered to sell Gatwick and Stansted airports.

Perhaps now these airports can be operated by companies who will welcome passengers and make air travel enjoyable again. I hope the BAA will also up its game with some much-needed competition.

I have to tip my hat to Arsenal. The London club have issued a pamphlet to fans travelling to the Champions League game away to Roma.

At first I expected the usual “Italians will stab you, don’t go around in groups of less than 50″ advice but this is just an intelligent guide to the areas to avoid.

It highlights routes that are mainly used by hardcore Roma fans to get to the Stadio Olimpico and also to stay clear of areas like the Campo Dei Fiori (which has most of Rome’s late night bars).

It worries me what the Roma fans will do if they get eliminated. The 2009 Champions League final takes place there and UEFA have already warned that any acts of violence will mean that the game is moved. I think the Roma fans will take the attitude that if their team won’t be in the Rome final, then nobody will.

Apparently the Bank Of England is considering using something called Quantitative Easing to ease the financial swamp which seems to be preventing banks from lending to business and individuals.

At present, banks are hoarding cash in order to offset losses already incurred, or due to be incurred, on the pumped-up, worthless assets they hold.

So, to encourage the banks to use their cash to lend to the public and businesses in the form of mortgages and loans, the Bank is considering ‘inventing’ the existence of more money and using that to purchase these bad assets from the banks.

Freeing up this cash held on deposit should increase the amount of lending available to the public, hopefully kicking off the property market and demand for goods and services.

The policy had limited success in Japan so what do you think?

Could this be the easy way out that the UK Government is looking for?