Reading this article about larger bras costing more, and customers being up in arms (which feels like the wrong phrase, but I can't think of a better one), has given me several causes to witter. Firstly this specific situiation - for those who can't be bothered to RTFA, M&S (big UK retailer, for overseas readers) charges £2 extra for bras larger than a DD, and this has pissed off campaigners, accusing M&S of discriminating against them. M&S has come back with the arguments a) larger bras involve more detailed work because of the extra support, and b) shut up. Both seem valid to me.

One quick aside - beyond the general term "campaigners" there's no real indication in that article how many people really object that much. Yes they make reference to a Facebook group with 8,000 members (although a quick search turns up no such group - the closest one is "Bust For Justice (M&S) Share Price Drop?", which has 187 members), but a Facebook group is hardly a reliable indicator - the group "The Hardest Part of a Zombie Apocalypse Will be Pretending I'm Not Excited" has got over 61,000 members (myself included now I've just found it), but I'm fairly sure when that day comes most of those people (myself included again) will be soiling themselves, desperately trying to find the nearest concrete bunker. The woman who set up the group has bought a share in M&S so she can go to the AGM to confront the company directly - I'm fairly sure that the cost of the share, travel, etc. will probably outweigh the few quid surcharge she's going to suffer on a couple of bras.

I digress. One thought's just occurred to me, which is just to increase the cost of all their bras - that way smaller-breasted women pay a surcharge. Of course that's just as objectionable, just to a different group of women.

The cynic in me just wants to write off these protesters (however few or many of them there are) as whiners with nothing better to do. I'm sure it's not as simple as that, but I can't quite shake it. There are lots of legitimate issues to deal with in the world, and having to pay a small amount extra for something that almost certainly costs a small amount extra to manufacture doesn't seem worth kicking up a fuss about. Apparently the most popular bra size in the UK is 36C, so anyone who's into DD territory is significantly above average.

Now, being male (and not suffering from excessive moobage) I can't pretend to relate to large-breasted women (on several levels, more's the pity), but throwing the word "discrimination" around pisses me off. At worst the argument could be made that larger size clothing doesn't cost more, but I'd counter that while I'm not a bra manufacturer, I'd not be surprised that given the structural work involved in a bra, in order to make a good quality and well-supporting larger one, the design has to be tweaked a bit.

By contrast a larger shirt just needs a bit more material, which probably doesn't cost all that much given the volumes clothes manufacturers buy it in. Even if there is a difference, manufacturers clearly absorb it because it's small, or more hassle than it's worth given the range of sizes they have to sell. Now before anyone thinks "double standard", if anything that actually reinforces the point for me - the fact that they're charging more for bigger bras but not for bigger regular clothes seems like clear evidence that the costs involved are more significant. Or else the bra market so massively outweighs that for regular clothes that M&S feel they can make enormous profits just by milking large boobs. As it were.

Ahem. Ultimately having to pay more for something that costs more isn't discrimination, it's market forces. The fact that clothes companies absorb cost differences for regular clothes (or more likely just base prices on the cost of the most expensive size to manufacture, which brings me back to the idea of just charging more for smaller bras) doesn't mean they have to do that for everything if it doesn't make financial sense. Here's a radical idea - buy your bras somewhere else. If enough people do it then M&S will pay attention, and if no-one does then it's clearly not a problem enough people care about, so shut up and try addressing one of the world's many real problems.

I've resisted bringing weight into this post, despite desperately wanting to. I've got a degree of ranting built up on the subject, but will save it for another time. Thanks for reading...

Bike gears are a pain in the arse. You'd hope with all the technological advances in life that adjusting gears would be at best unnecessary and at worst involve moving a lever or two. But no. For the non-bike-riders among you, it's a pain in the arse. Front and back gears each involve two small screws, a quarter turn of which can have a surprisingly large effect. But wait, there's more. On the back there's an extra screw which adjusts the tension of the spring mechanism, and on the front shifter there's a manually adjustable...thing, which also changes the setup.

As such, the whole thing becomes a balancing act, and thinking about it I can't recall ever having a completely perfect setup. Either the back gears don't shift quite right, or something rattles, or there's chain noise, or....aaargh. Recently I've had an irritating chain noise in the position I use most often, and finally got around to fixing it. I say "fixing it" - fiddled with every possible screw and dial (by "fiddled", I mean "adjusted properly" - I've learned from bitter experience that if you try fiddling, turning a screw here or there, everything gest worse and there's no way to put it back to how it was).

And after about an hour, no more noise - but...I now can't shift from the smallest chainring to the middle one, at least without pushing the lever partway towards the next step up. But frankly that's a less irritating problem. Oh, and there's now a bit of chain noise in a different position too, but balls to it.

Remarkably, I seem to be in the 99.99% of the global population without swine flu, although as far as the media seems to be concerned, if you're still alive to read/watch their updates you should count yourself lucky. Perhaps the most wrongly amusing story related to this so far is the fact that Egypt's culling 300,000 pigs, despite the fact that there's absolutely no scientific reason to, especially since at last count they didn't even have anyone infected! Even the UN's said they don't have to, and yet Egypt seems to be playing the part of a small child with their fingers in their ears chanting "la la la".

It may be a general aversion to pork, or an overreaction because when it came to bird flu, which they actually were affected by, they were slow to react and they had a few deaths. Still, it's enjoyably typical of everything surrounding this story, including recent reports of hospitals being overwhelmed by the "walking well", who have a bit of a sniffle and are suddenly convinced it's swine flu. That's even before you take into account the fact that apart from the initial wave of infections in Mexico, which was initially blamed for about 150 deaths, subsequently revised down to...7, everyone infected feel a bit crap for a few days then gets better.

Sigh. I swear that the world's filled with people who believe the first thing they read and never think to question it or seek out more information before blindly reacting. Yes, swine flu was/is a bigger threat than bird flu or any number of other half-arsed doom-laden scenarios the media frequently brings up, being an actual virus, actually transmitting from person to person. However, that doesn't mean you should immediately panic and run around like a headless chicken. Or perhaps more accurately, headless pig. That's a simile which for some reason seems more unpleasant - ultimately they're both decapitated animals, so the fun factor's limited. Unless you're into that sort of thing. Freak.

Update: I'd be remiss if I didn't modify this. Turns out the 1918 flu pandemic started with very mild symptoms, then 4 months later kicked into gear and killed 50 million people. So yeah, overreactions at the moment are ridiculous, but you never know, it may yet kill us all.

I'm currently a single man, reflected on my Facebook page, because I have no particular shame about it. I'm slightly taken aback though by the volume of ads I see on Facebook for "single girls", "looking for a date?", "meet a girl like this!", and just now, rather scarily, "Chinese Women for Love".

One site was plugging "girls date for free", which I'm sure may appeal to some men and women, but the cynic in me just has doubts about it - it'll surely be swamped by women who have no qualms about throwing themselves into a gigantic pool of other women (powerful image), despite the knowledge that the numbers of available men will probably be tiny. Plus any men on that site will most likely only be on there because they figure the ratio of women to men will be so in their favour that they can't fail to find someone, anyone, please, etc.

I think it just sums up my general attitude to online dating - of course it works for people (no-one I know directly, but a few friends of friends have had success), but my overwhelming feeling towards it is that the online dating world is full of desperate flawed people, clutching at the final few straws available to them before age takes its inevitable lonely toll.

Chirpy, I know. And the stupid thing is that I know that's not a particularly fair, or indeed accurate way of looking at it, but it's a constant niggling thought in the back of my head I can't quite shift. So I'll continue to trawl the bars and back alleys of the real world for desperate flawed people, because that makes it easier to pretend I'm not one of them...

Well, the site's a mess, the code's half-finished, I've not particularly thought things through, it's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tanks of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. OK, some of those last bits aren't entirely true, although I've actually got some sunglasses next to me which I could put on just to up the truth quotient, but frankly I can't be arsed.

I've had this site being half-worked on for such a long time that I've finally figured balls to it, it's at least functional, so rather than perfect it before going live, I'll feel far more motivated if I know it's up, with people looking at it in judgment. So welcome to my half-finished, half-thought out collection of witterings.

This is actually one of two sites, loosely connected, but the other one exists in no way...yet. The basic theory is that the other site will consist entirely of amusing/entertaining links which I stumble across over the course of a day. Yeah, hardly original, but I come across a lot, and I feel an urge to share.

This one will be the wordier of the two - partly thoughts and opinions on the links on the other site, plus those prompted by...anything else which occurs to me - likely to be a mix of films, politics, news, life in general... Yeah, it's a broad definition, I know. The inspiration for this site was the realisation that being self-employed and working from home (my main job's running another site, but I'm going to try and keep it separate), over the course of a day I tend not to speak to anyone!

That sounds more pathetic than I mean it to - I've got friends, family, and a flatmate, so it's not like I'm cut off from the world. But during general daytime hours there's no-one around to vocalise thoughts to, so I figured a blog made sense. The statistic I came across recently was that the average office worker spends 45 minutes a day chatting to co-workers - it's that window this is meant to fill.

In due course things will get proper tags so you can filter out posts which are more likely to interest you, a way to contact me, comments on posts, and an RSS feed if you're REALLY keen to keep track of my ramblings, and more, but for now this is fairly basic.

Oh, and the reason for the name...well, I just like that phrase. A nice mix of kind-hearted abuse.