Cars but no girls

Had the chance to go to Silverstone yesterday and see one of the four track test days the F1 teams are allowed. This Williams was pretty impressive even though it broken down twice and had a trip through the sand trap right next to us. It's not until you see them in the flesh, so to speak, do you realise not only how fast they are are but how ear splittingly loud they are too. And the German bloke in the red car didn't win...

360? So Microsoft have leaked the first pictures and name for the upcoming 'Xenon' console. Before you can say Next Gen Console they're all over the Interwebdodah quicker than a naked Britney video...well almost. I dunno if they're real or not as it's more secret than a very secret thing that no one talks about, but whatever the truth I reckon 'Xenon' will very smart indeed.

The Duke Spirit Was in a music shop around the corner from the London office and they were playing a promo copy of this. It's really rather good.

Old Booze Up! Saw a fantastic headline on Sky News this morning. "Tories layout five point binge drinking plan." See even this close to an election MPs still find time to go on the lash, or maybe they know the result already.

Cynical, Moi? I was interesting to hear Mr Snow and Humphries on the Today programme this morning discuss the subject of cynicism and politicians. Whilst I have some sympathy with Jon Snow’s view that we often start from the position that politicians are lying or at hiding things, I firmly believe they only have themselves to blame; hence the need for the more robust questioning styles of John Humphries and Jeremy Paxman. I can think of dozens of Ministers and Shadow Ministers who come on Today or Newsnight and don’t answer a single question, Howard’s inability to answer the same question fourteen times being just one extreme example. Whilst we get the politicians we deserve, they in turn get the interviewers they deserve.

Games... When video gaming began to become popular many believed it marked the end for board games and RPGs like D&D, however the reverse appears to have have happened. A mate of mine who works for London’s, nay Englands premier gaming store, Leisure Games in Finchley, has seen the market remain strong; so strong in fact they had to move to a larger store across the road. So I got to pondering why this might be so. Well firstly the market for RPGs and boxed games is of course much, much bigger than the traditional family games of Monopoly and Cluedo but has seen consolidation as publishers have merged or been subsumed by the bigger players. The biggest, Hasbro, now owns Parker, Milton Bradley, the war gamers favourite Avalon Hill and Wizards of the Coast who picked up the Dungeons and Dragons license from TSR. The rest of the market is split between a few European companies like Ravensburger and Days of Wonder; although there are also still hundreds of small specialist publishers. In many ways I reckon it's because of the popularity of video games that people have begun think about gaming in general and look for other ways of fulfilling the gaming itch. Board games and 'paper and pencil' RPGs offer a fundamentally different gaming experience to video games. Staring at your mates across a table is always more involving than connecting to the internet to get fragged by an anonymous spotty ‘yoof’ who's hundreds maybe thousands of miles away. And don’t think some of these games can’t complete with the console or PC titles for unit sales. Ticket to Ride published by Days of Wonder have sold over 320,000 copies, lots of video games only dream of selling numbers like that.

MG Rover...RIP. It now looks like MG Rover has bolted together their last car. For some it’s no lose, but as someone who nearly bought a 1972 Rover P5B, with the wonderful if somewhat thirsty Buick derived V8, I’m lugubrious to see another famous motoring brand disappear. The saddest thing is that as the Longbridge plant closes to be turned into flats and a retail park there really is nothing left for the MG Rover workforce to fall back on. The site was sold off a couple of years ago and leased back, BMW although sold Rover to Phoenix holdings for a tenner held onto ownership of the brand and ironically Shanghai Automotive own the IP for the 25 and the K-Series engine. Only MG brand has any potential, but without a factory and the suppliers nearby no one is going to be holding their breath. The next largest British owned company making cars is TVR, no hang on, that’s now in the hands of some spotty Russian teenager and Norfolk based Lotus is owned by Proton from Malaysia. Our contribution to volume car production? Cars made with hand beaten aluminium bodies on ash space frame chassis’…yes you’ve guessed it, it’s Morgan.

You've got mail...twice. I’m off to see a customer tomorrow, not unusual you might think it’s my job, but relevant as I’ve been invited to talk to them about replacing their Notes email infrastructure with Exchange. As an ex Lotus employee and someone who’s still a fan of Notes the conversation will undoubtedly turn to my opinion of IBM’s messaging and collaboration strategy and what it means for Notes/Domino. Now if truth be told I shouldn’t even be having this conversation, but as this organisation is being told two things by IBM they’ve asked for a second, or should that be third opinion. One bit of IBM wants them to migrate to the latest version of Lotus Notes and another wants them to migrate to Lotus Workplace; but as they can’t understand why IBM has two different messaging platforms and no one at IBM can explain either I’ll have to give my unbiased thoughts. Oh and they don’t understand why there’s two versions of Sametime either. History shows that if a software company sells two products that do the same thing it has to at some point get off the fence and back one. It’s odd as it doesn’t seem to matter with other products, BMW for example can make the X3 and the X5 and people don’t seem to worry. However after five minutes in the software industry you discover that the rules everyone else plays by don’t apply. If you’re looking at your screen with a blank expression have a read of Merrill R Chapman’s book ‘In Search of Stupidly’ and you’ll understand. You might get a way with dual strategy with a more esoteric or niche product but when it comes to things like email one has to win. Place your bets….

What ever happened to the British car industry? MG Rover went into receivership yesterday and it probably marks the end of locally owned volume car production in the UK. It is however not surprising as the simple fact is MG Rover makes cars no one wants to buy. Yes, the 75 is as good as any equivalent model but when the Rover brand is past it’s sell by date and only retired gents who fondly remember their P5B buy your cars, you know you’re in trouble. The rest of range is a joke. The 25 is outclassed in very respect by the competition and the 45 is a prehistoric Honda design at least four or five generations older than the equivalent Civic. And what has happened to poor old MG? The ageing TF has managed to keep it’s end up but the bespoilered badge engineered Rover cars are what they are, Rovers with an MG logo glued to the outside. Which leads us back to my original remarks. So who if anyone is to blame? Well I think the problem goes all the way back to the 1970s and the days of British Leyland when we made cars with names like Marina, Allegro, Maxi and Princess. All of which, apart from the original version of the last one, were turds with a wheel at each corner, so when the Japanese began to import cars that melted like a Weetabix covered in hit milk in the rain but started when you turned the ignition key we bought those instead. In a attempt to stay in the game BL began to sell off the family silver by offing Jaguar and Land Rover to Ford and BMW didn’t help by keeping the Mini brand and flogging the rest off for a tenner. MG Rover then ended up with a handful of models no one wanted, no IP, no money, a brand stuck in the 1970s, one factory and four board members who took £40 million out of the business. And lets not forget who carries the can for all this mismanagement, yep the staff at Longbridge. Funny that! But if you want to know how low MG Rover has sank take a look at this. The plot I suggest has been well and truely lost.

Vote! With the final squabbling done in the House of Commons, it now spills out on to the streets as there’s now four weeks of political double speak and false promises until the General Election on May 5th. But despite my contempt for certain politicians and they fact they only seem interested in you for this four weeks every fours years I believe is be beholden on all of us to vote, and I’ll tell you why. Firstly low turnout makes politicians lazy, as they know that they only have to appeal to dwindling number of core voters. Hence the simplistic, binary rubbish that passes as political discourse today. Secondly and most importantly if you don’t vote you can’t complain about what happens afterwards. Think of your vote as a right to whinge, beef and bitch post May the 5th.