Today’s idea is to open a chain of bars which specifically targets families. A lot of pubs allow this during the day but kids aren’t allowed in after 7-8pm. My new bar would, and in fact it would specifically target that family market. This new kind of bar wouldn’t be a place for drunkenness. It also very definitely wouldn’t be a crèche where you can punt your two-year-old in a tank of plastic balls while you get tanked on cheap lager. Just a nice bar to socialise with friends and family where you can have that European culture if you want it. The choice would be yours.

The market I’m sure is there.

It has been noted that in the past I may have sang out loud while on route home after a night out. I may have even sang “Hey Hey We’re the Monkees” while doing the walk with my friends. What I didn’t do however was hang around daily being a constant pain in the arse to residents.

As I get older I notice more and more young teenagers (sometimes younger) with nothing to do other than hang around the local pizza shop, getting pissed and generally make a nuisance of themselves until the very early hours of the morning. We all ask “where are the parents?” But the sad answer probably is that the parents don’t give a hoot.

My thinking then jumped to a computer game I love. The “Call of Duty” games allow you to go into military combat and experience maybe just an inkling of what war might be like. My favourite bit is always using the Sniper Rifle. Then my mind married these two things up.

Drawing together on my experience of sniping in Call of Duty and my severe intolerance of tracksuit wearing, drunken gypos who cause nothing but bother in all the towns and cities across the UK (and no doubt every fecking where else) I propose the following:

If you want to be an arse in the street and cause no end of problems – that’s fine. As long as you consider it fair that you may be shot. Selected persons will be posted on street rooftops and if they spot repeat offenders causing bother, threatening others, fighting, putting people in danger and generally being a feckin arse – they’ll get shot – probably in the leg.

I can supply a complete White Paper if the government want to investigate this further. I’m not sure if this latest policy would make me ever so slightly right wing, and if this thinking has come with age?

Tower Bridge Premier Inn - Congestion Charge Problem

A bonus (we thought) was the hotel had a car park.  What was only mentioned in the small print (now that we’ve checked) is that the car park is 50 yards inside the London Congestion Zone.  We arrived on a Friday and left late on Monday and now we have 2 fines for £60 each.  That’s £120 for travelling 100 yards within the congestion zone.

The website for the Premier Inn does tell me that the hotel is within the zone – in the small print, but what I’m annoyed about is that the staff didn’t mention it when we checked in and out.  I asked specifically about car parking but the congestion charge wasn’t mentioned.  Surely that’s a must especially when you have non-Londoners staying regularly.

Word of advice about the Natural History Museum too. We made the mistake of going on a Saturday and the queues at the main entrance of the building were huge. There is however a side entrance which we simply strolled in! There was however a huge queue for the dinosaur exhibit, so we actually returned on Monday to see that. Pick a quiet day and go early to avoid the crowds.

We followed that advice for Madame Tussauds Waxworks on Saturday morning. We queued for just over an hour (after getting there only 15 mins early – tired bunch we were!) and we had free tickets for the kids. I would’ve been pretty annoyed if we didn’t. As an exhibit on its own it’s pretty average. There actually aren’t that many waxworks! Flickr photos to come so you’ll see how good/bad the waxworks were. To be absolutley honest – I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have vouchers.

We all climbed aboard the London Eye on Friday evening and got a great view of central London. The boys were pretty amazed that there was no countryside to see even when you’re that high up.

On Sunday we visited Liz Windsor but I think she was having a nap because her blinds were down, so we all went and had a very pleasant time in St James’s park listening to a brass band play, while Londoners sat back in their deckchairs and took in the sun and music. Very chilled.

More info and picks to come when I get them all uploaded to Flickr.

• connect to the newer database (appdb)
• connect to the older database with diff logical name (oldappdb)
• ensure the current working database is the newer (appdb)
• create the incremental db from there

Job done!  test