A quick couple of phone calls, a few minutes of late night scribbling – and the result? Why, it’s Boriswatch on the BBC! Happy Birthday, Boris…

You really couldn’t make it up.

Around this time every year, a little employment rage hits your estimable wibbler.com host. Early Easter rush starts, reports BBC News. “People won’t be back at work until Tuesday morning!” they crow.
Allow me a moment to rant.
I work in IT for a company in the retail sector, an area which is admittedly very competitive. Shops barely shut on any day of the year, and this company’s ones are no exception. Last minute Easter trinkets to buy, presents to get, all opportunities that can’t be missed.
So they need all the help they can get, staff-wise, for minimal cost. And this is the meat of my gripe.
“Good Friday is a normal working day” they announce from deep in the bowels of Head Office. “What?”, we query – surely that fact it has a special name means it is anything but a normal day? “Nope”, they proffer, “Good Friday is a public holiday, not a bank holiday. No day off, no extra money. Like it or lump it”. And this, coming from the very same Head Office that is taking a day off on Good Friday.
I know of no other retail company that, if their staff have to work on Good Friday, doesn’t compensate them for doing so. What’s more, almost every other sector does have the day off – meaning anyone battling public transport to get to work is going to face an uphill struggle. Quite possibly literally.
Rant over. On the plus side, I only saw approximately 15 cars on the road this morning – my loathsome morning traffic jams were nonexistant…

Anyone trying to get tickets for Glastonbury 2004? Bit difficult, according to the BBC. Well, try this – the wibbler.com Glastonbury loophole. You can thank me later…
disclaimer: I’ve never used it, as the idea of spending ?110 for three days spent knee-deep in mud and whacked out on spliffs doesn’t appeal to me. However, if you’re worried, don’t use the link…
Update: the loophole has been discovered by the ticketers, so it’s a no go now…

BBC drops Oxford vs Cambridge boat race. Good bloody grief. “Why?” I thought. Loads of people watch it. And then, over at The Guardian, a different take on the story: BBC sunk in boat race row. Seems that ITV have won the rights – funny how a little spin goes a long way…

Windows source code (the copyrighted stuff behind all Microsoft software) has been leaked, according to the BBC. Hoax? Nope – to the delight of any geeks around here, here’s the proof in popup image form…

Blair obviously thinks he’s on to a winner with these Inquiries. First the whitewash, now the obscure-question-that-nobody-asked Inquiry. We all want to know the reasons we went to war, and why Blair made the decision. So what does he do? Order an enquiry into intelligence services that, whatever the outcome, doesn’t even touch any political decisions made by him. I’m in awe of the audacity.
But back to the great white Hutton Report. Tim, of bloggerheads fame, has started a campaign to support the BBC in its troubled times:

Click it. Go on. And as Expat says, “The BBC is a venerable institution providing a service to the world, and to have it crippled or eliminated on the basis of an increasingly questionable government investigation would be a travesty.” A travesty that Rupert Murdoch would be pleased about – his media empire loyally reporting the BBC’s demise in America is enough to make you retch…

Tired of Realplayer hogging your computer with spyware and adverts? There is another way. Uninstall it, and read the following (originally from here):
“The BBC made a unique deal with Real Networks which disposes of their spyware tactics. Basically, if a user clicks on a link (this one) to download Real Player from a BBC website, the referrer script sends them to a page where they can download an expiry-free, spyware-free and nuisance-free version of the player. It’s because the BBC have such a stringent public service remit, that it was offensive to charge people a license fee for BBC content, then make them pay all over again for the facility to view/listen to it.”

BBC names Alistair Campbell as new director general.

A good Hutton-based point from Edward Heathcoat-Amory:
“Hutton attacked the BBC hierarchy for allowing one of their journalists to criticise the government on the basis of one uncorroborated report from a source … But he was only too happy in another part of his report for the government to make the 45-minute claim on the basis of – yes – a single uncorroborated report from within Iraq”.