If ever you want to bring the UK to its knees don't bother with chemical or biological weapons, oh no. Just park a few snow cannons next to some major road and rail interchanges, fire 'em up and watch as Britain grinds to a halt. Maybe customs should immediately be instructed to check for swarthy looking individuals smuggling parts for snow making machines into Blighty.

As AOL Time Warner posts the biggest loss in corporate history business once again proves it doesn’t really understand what the internet is all about. At the height of the madness when anything that had a wiff of the internet about it sucked in money like a Dyson on steroids, the merger of AOL and Time Warner made sense. How could it not? AOL had a huge number of subscribers and Time Warner had the content. But internet users are a fickle bunch and much of what AOL provides can be found free elsewhere, also the internet still remains a very poor way to deliver multimedia content even with broadband. Apart for certain ‘art movies’ whose going to watch video windows no bigger than a matchbox? It also couldn’t have helped when rumours started about dodgy accounting. It’s not all bad news though, at least Steve Case and Ted Turner have managed walk away with their personal fortunes intact. Whether or not the lowly AOL Time Warner employees will be so lucky is less clear.

With all the hyperbole about share prices in the news I was wondering if there's anything to worry about or if it's just the media's usual inability to understand anything remotely involving. And what does the share price signify if it signifies anything at all? I don't know about you but I struggle with the idea that something as structurally complex as a business or organisation can be reflected in a single number. You can measure the physical things like buildings, computers and paperclips but what about customer good will, the relationships employees have, the knowledge floating between the ears of said employees and the endless list of complex human interactions that take part in business. You can't, honest…lots of people have tried. So if it can't indicate the real value of a business then shares must simply be part of an elaborate financial game that serves no useful purpose other than to keep a bunch of slack jawed, stripy shirted wearing hoorays busy during daylight hours. So not only do shares not give any indication of the real value of a business but we use this system as an economic tool to establish how well we're doing. Is it just me who thinks this is bonkers?

In the world of computer software there are few heroes and plenty of villains. Without exception one of those heroes is Lotus Notes and chips of the old block like Quickplace and Sametime. Like all heroes there is a big following and the annual get together is Lotusphere held every year in the US. Apart from the usual announcements about futures and current state of the nation it's also an opportunity to celebrate the efforts of Business Partners as they do their clever stuff with Lotus technologies. One award winner this year is Instant Technologies who has the rather dubious privilege of having an old mate and ex-patriot chum of mine working for them. Well done Carl. If you want to know more about Lotusphere you could do worse that check out the Lotusphere Web Log of the genuis that is Mr Ed Brill.

Will someone explain to me what 'Sports Utility Vehicles' are for? OK, I understand if you’re a farmer or have a job where you might need to leave the ‘Queens Highway’ to get your tyres muddy, but if you’re living in the middle of London and running the kids to school or popping down to Sainsburys what earthly purpose do they serve? They take up half again as much room when parked, they consume vast amounts of resources to run and block out the sun for everyone apart from other SUV drivers. Yes, you may well be creating a safe haven for little Jonnie as you drive him the half a mile to school, but you’re endangering everyone else’s children as you pump large amounts of noxious gases into the atmosphere and crush their bicycles beneath your pointless off road tyres. And who let someone import a Cadillac Escalade into in the UK, I saw one the other day it’s a house on wheels, it makes a Range Rover look like a Nissan Micra. If you’re charging around the desert in the middle east or driving down some ten lane superhighway in the US maybe, just maybe it makes sense, but parked outside a tiny Victorian two up two down terrace house in south west London where the roads were designed to take nothing wider than a bloke on a bike with a basket full of Hovis, I think not. I propose a change in the law. Car tax should be based not only how much CO you emit in to the atmosphere but also how much space you take up on the road, if you want to take up all that extra space you should pay for it. That then neatly covers all those ridiculous caravans at the same time.

Most pets don't last long. Dogs ten years, cat maybe a bit more and as for those wasters like hamsters, gerbils and mice you're lucky if they can be bothered to last three. However if you want longevity with minimum maintenance you can't go wrong with goldfish. Yes goldfish. I recently heard of a man who has one approaching its mid forties. His father had purchased the aquatic companion from a shop in 1960 and it had passed to the next generation when the gentlemen in question died recently. The secret to Piscean long life? Apparently fish flakes, a regular change of water and no stress. To think this goldfish has lived though man landing on the moon, the assassination of Kennedy, the 1966 World Cup, Thatcherism, two and a half decent Star Wars movies and he can’t remember any of it!

My wife surprised me this morning by striking up a conversation about String Theory causing me to pause over my Marmite on toast. Unlike the Mrs I'm one of those people who'd tick the box marked "don't know" when as asked about this, but she enlightened me about particle physics and even managed to mention Deepak Chopra, although I'm not sure how he got in there. Apparently those with the word ‘physics’ in their job title are fascinated by the idea of a Unified Theory, something that can explain life, the universe and everything. They originally reckoned Newton had sussed it, as his ideas seemed to explain stuff that was very big like planets and small like apples. As Newtonian physics became inadequate it spawned two new ideas, the General Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics that unfortunately are incompatible when one is used to explain the other, a bit of a problem if you’re looking for a single theory of everything. Then in the mid-eighties something called String Theory emerged as a possible way to explain things that happen at very small scales where neither quantum mechanics nor gravity can be ignored. But what is it? At something called the Planck Scale which is about 10^-33 centimetres, or about a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimetre, the different particles we learned about at school are replaced by one fundamental building block or a ‘string’. These can be closed in a loop or open like…well a string. Now this gets a bit freaky so stay with me. As the string moves through time it traces out a sheet or tube depending on whether it’s opened or closed. In addition it is free to vibrate and the different ‘notes’ these vibrations create represent the different particle types, one note makes the string appear like an electron another a photon or even a graviton. And it's the graviton that gets the physicists excited because now they have a way of understanding of how large celestial objects interact along with tiny stuff like atoms. They are however still some way from connecting all this things together to everyones satisfication, I for one won't be happy until it explains why some people don't like Marmite and others do.

Now I like to use the odd big word as much as the next person, well OK maybe a bit more, but I struggle with mindless jargon. And there’s a lot of it about. Politicians, business people, your manager at work, even the local council now seem to spout endless gobbledegook. However jargon like anything else has its place, it can for instance provide and sort of linguistic shorthand for experts to get across complex ideas to each other; but when it’s used by people without any regards for the audience then a recourse to violence seems appropriate! Some plain speakers over at Plain Text have some handy hints to keep the level of violence to a minimum. But why do it in the first place? Two basic reasons as far I can see. One, you’re trying to hide something, usually the truth. Or you’re trying to seem more important than you actually are. Come to think of it you’re probably doing both. So the next time you're 'envisioneering the low hanging fruit to optimise downsizing' keep 'em peeled!

For those of you who don’t know or care Transport for London, I’m presuming these are the guys who run the transport system in London although you never know, is about to introduce congestion charging. London has without doubt one of the worst transport systems in Europe as anyone who has visited any other major city in Europe can testify. Years of under investment by governments of all flavours have made travelling around London, apart from about 45 minutes just after lunch, a test of patience, diplomacy and sheer bloody mindedness. During the day it will now cost £5 a day to drive your four wheeled vehicular convenience into the centre of the capital. As you can imagine this has kicked of a storm of protest, but in the absence of any other ideas even divisive ones like this need consideration. Something has to be done and it would be a typically British thing to do nothing until London was one big car park, some would say it’s almost that now. On occasion making a bad decision is better than making no decision at all.

Am I the only one who finds listening to George W Bush a rather odd experience? Indeed his command of the English language is not quite what it might be for a man who runs the world last remaining superpower, but then he looks like a cunning linguist when compared to fellow party member Donald Rumsfelt. Check out the Donald Rumsfelt Sound Bite of the Week, very funny! One can even understand why he has such a strange view of the world; I’m mean what do you expect from a man who’d never been overseas before he was elected. OK, OK, I use the term ‘elected’ loosely. What I find odd is the cadence of his voice and the fact he can only talk in short sentences. After about two minutes I stop listening to what he’s saying and all I hear is ‘blah, blah, blah’. Surely I’m not alone…

More madness from America. The cover of the seminal Beatles album ‘Abbey Road’ has been digitally modified to remove the image of a cigarette Paul McCartney was carrying when the photo was originally taken. Apparently the picture of Paul’s ciggy might encourage the impressionable minds of America’s youth to take up the evil weed. I suppose they have a point, look at the number guns they see in films and on TV and the number of people killed by guns every year in the US; strange though they seem to think that’s OK.

Middle England was shaken to it's core this morning, no it wasn't the prospect of the upcoming bun fight with the a certain Mr Hussain, but the news that Deila Smith was going to retire from the world of celebrity cooking. The middle market tabloids wrote obituary like pieces on the woman who taught millions to boil an egg and emptied supermarkets of cranberrys. Not surprisingly they got it wrong. Whilst the career of Ms Smith is of little interest to me directly, what I do find of interest is that if the media can get something as trivial as this wrong what about the important stuff like the aforementioned bun fight?

The weight loss industry is massive, almost as massive as the people who spend millions of pounds, dollars and euros supporting it, but what strikes me most is that it seems to be all about denial, you know the story 'don't eat this don't eat that'. The reason I mention this is that before christmas I begun to lose a bit of weight but the festivities combined that the aforementioned trip to Barcelona have meant that the waist line is in danger of expanding again. I promise to start running again....honest

I'm not a big fan of management and business books, most of them are useless and should be used to start a large bonfire on which we can also toss the vast majority of self help books as well. Ones to particularly avoid have 'Ten Steps to Whatever' on the front cover. Thats not to say they are all bad. Peter Block's 'Flawless Consulting' for example is full of really useful information, although the title still makes me feel a little queasy. The first random page I opened had this missive... "Maintaining control is at the center of the value system of most organizations. There is a belief in control that goes beyond effectiveness or good organizational performance. Many managers believe in maintaining control even if keeping control results in poorer performance.' I really don't know where Mr Block gets his mad ideas from....

With the almost everyone making a bid for the Safeway supermarket chain I think it's only right that I make known I intend to do the same. I'll be canvassing my colleugues and friends for the necessary funds because as they say 'Every Little Helps'...sorry that's someone else.

Just watched the 1964 Frankenheimer film "Seven Days in May", any film with with both Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas has to be worth a punt. As I have discovered it came hot on the heels of "The Manchurian Candidate," thought by critics to be one of the most gripping political thrillers of its day, and would you believe it director John Frankenheimer managed to top it with a film that is widely regarded as the best political thriller ever made. The film is based on the novel by Fletcher Knebel, and is the story of an attempted coup of the U.S. government by members of the president's own joint chiefs of staff. Sadly you won't find it in your local Blockbuster...'tis a pity 'cos films this good should always be available to rent.

Sunday mornings don't you just love 'em. This is partly due to Radio 4, which for those who don't know its an island of intelligence in a sea of radio pap and Sunday has a particularly compelling line up. At 8:45 Octogenarian Alistair Cooke does his usual sterling job of getting to the heart of whats going on the land of George Dubya, even if you really don't care. This is followed by 'Broadcasting House' hosted by the rather brilliant Eddie Mair, if only all news reporting was more like this. Lastly, although most people won't admit it but I will now, is the Archers, there I said it....I like the Archers and so does my mate Stu Crump.

If you have never been to Barcelona you really should. Even when the weather is colder than normal the sun shines, the beer is great and despite the meat and two veg crowd I work with the food is great too, although being a business soiree it got a bit repetitive. I don't know about you but travel for me always raises questions and this trip was no exception: 1) Why is that over paid executives believe that just by speaking we should find them interesting? 2) Why are shoes so much cheaper in Spain? 3) Who invented the word 'leverage'? Oh and by the way the girls are cute.