Who will replace Jason Orange in Take That?

Ladies and gentle readers, it can't have escaped your attention that over the last week Jason Orange has announced that he is leaving Take That. Sadly as a result this happened:

Fortunately for Boy Band fans of the land Gary Barlow has been on the phone to yours truly and asked me to put together a short list for replacements. I can exclusively reveal the contenders that I have provided for Gary to consider:

1. Nick Clegg

What Take That need is someone to hover in the background trying but failing to look impressive as he is overshadowed by the bigger personalities.



2. Bruce Forsythe

Its a fact of life that Take That have been going since the early 90's and as a result their fanbase has started to age. Why not bite the bullet and recruit a member to appeal to the blue rinse section of the Take Thaters? Also he's available after retiring from Strictly Come Prancing.



3. Starscream from the Decepticons

This would be an appointment to keep Gary Barlow on his toes, Gary as we all know has long been the leader of Take That and has had an easy ride since Robbie Williams mellowed. Why not recruit Starscream who was forever plotting to overthrow Megatron and take control of the Decepticons? It will certainly be more interesting for us non Take That fans to watch the internal politics as Starscream tries to recruit Mark Owen and the other one to his way of thinking.



4. Luis Suarez

Lets be honest who cares about Barcelona these days? No one thats who, Luis left Liverpool FC and quite frankly its going to be all downhill for the rest of his career. What he needs is to leave football and take his career in a new direction. He already has a fanbase that be can bring to Take That and can hopefully help them crack the lucrative South America market.



5. @fudgecrumpet off of twitter

Lets be honest in the world of Boy Bands its all about selling sex appeal and no body likes to flaunt their funky stuff on twitter more than @fudgecrumpet. Don't go trying to look for anyone sexier on social media because you wont find them.



6. WALL-E

One for the kids, WALL-E starred in a hit film for Disney a few years back and was a hit with the kids. WALL-E hasn't done much since then but is still a favourite with the kids, WALL-E has the potential to attract a third generation of Take That fans and help swell Gary Barlows offshore accounts for another decade.



Well readers, all I can do is pass this list along to Gary Barlow and wait to see what he makes of it. We will have to wait to see who of the above will be having knickers flung at them by the women of the nation at Take Thats next tour...

The Scottish Referendum by Brian Taylor aka @TannadiceLad

Ladies and gentle readers, you can say a lot about this blog but after today you'll never be able to say it never gives you exclusives. Twitters voice of the Scottish referendum Brian Taylor has agreed to ghost write this very blog where he will give his exclusive opinions on the result and what it means for Scotlands future. Without further ado I hand you over to @TannadiceLad:







































































































































































Well I can certainly say Brian has certainly given us a lot to think about and I'd like to thank him for his time for ghost writing this weeks blog. I for one will be having a long hard think after reading the above and will be back next week.

Clara Oswald "You're one of my hobbies"

Ladies and gentle readers I can't speak for you but I've been enjoying the recent series of Doctor Who, enjoying it very much. However I've been taken aback by the casualness of Clara about travelling in the TARDIS and her wish to carry on her life and her 9-5 career while travelling in time. I asked myself "is this normal?" Well lets have a look:

The first line up of companions included school teachers (at Coal Hill School) Barbara and Ian. They started travelling with The Doctor by accident and the narrative of the first two years was The Doctor trying to get them home. The TARDIS in the early years of the show was unsteerable so this took longer than modern day viewers expected. As well as wanting to get home rather than lark about in time a lot of their stories involved them trying to get back to "the ship" to escape their current predicament. Also in one notable case they we're actually kept out of the TARDIS and blackmailed to search for the Keys of Marinus when they had planned on leaving in episode one. So straight away that's two companions who never cared for travelling and wanted to get home asap.

For a few years the companions would by and large enjoy their time in the TARDIS however a number of modern day companions Dodo, Ben and Polly would take advantage of the TARDIS arriving back in the modern day to say their goodbyes to The Doctor and depart.

We now wonder into a unique area in this category as during Jon Pertwees time we actually have UNIT and arguably a full guest cast who played characters whose job it was to be companions. Liz would leave due to wanting to go back to her career in Cambridge and Jo would leave her job with The Doctor when she fell in love. For these two (and arguably The Brig who is only off duty during later appearances) being a companion was an actual job which fitted into their lives.

Sarah would continue her career as an investigative journalist when travelling with the Doctor and Harry had a bit of fun (albeit he didn't know what he was getting into) but firmly departed to continue his life and work when Tom Baker arrived back in the modern day.

Tegan would eventually throw herself into travelling with The Doctor but remember the ongoing story of season 19 is The Doctor trying to get her to Heathrow for her first day at work.

Where things really take a turn is with Rose, The Doctor is now firmly able to control the TARDIS and as a result she's able to travel in time and keep in close contact with her family and friends. As would Martha and Donna.

Things turn a tad more homely when we get to Amy and Rory, akin to the Third Doctor companions they are able to travel, continue their lives, their careers and get married while travelling.

What conclusion does this bring me to? Well looking objectively a number of companions over the years wanted to continue on with their lives and were unable to because of The Doctor being unable to steer the TARDIS. Once we get to a more steerable TARDIS the companions who don't want to dedicate 100% of their time to The Doctor are able to strike up a time travel / life balance. Clara is by and large the companion whose balance has had the most of her life in it but rather than making her unique theres a case for saying this is the logical evolution of a companion and perhaps we'll see a further swing in this direction with future companions.

The Amazon.com Chronicles (Part 1)

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that over the last few years I have been working for the Internet retailer Amazon.com. I say "work" but I use the term loosely its far more accurate to say I have had the piss taken out of me by Amazon and the various agencies who have employed me. It looks as though my time at Amazon has finally come to an end and my overwhelming feelings are relief and disappointment that four years of my professional life have been wasted.

I started at Amazon in October 2010, my career had gone into a few dead ends and I was anxious to kick start it and a world wide company like Amazon looked as good a place as any. A day examining the company and career section of its website showed it had openings in areas I was experienced in and they were doing things I'd like to do. My aim was to get in the door and start applying for jobs of which I had experience to work myself back up the career ladder.

I applied for a job at Amazons Fulfilment Centre in Swansea via an agency called Quest Recruitment. I did the required drugs and aptitude test and a week later they called back offering me the position of a picker. My job would be to collect items that customers had ordered via the website. Each team had an area manager (strangely mine was a temp) and some team leaders, there were also site reps on site to represent you on behalf of the agencies. I informed the area manager and site reps that I would like to be kept aware of any job opportunities on site as I was hoping to use this job as a stepping stone. Every week the site rep would come around with each persons score and give you a form with your stats on. Mine were quite good, often between 100% and 110% dipping down as low as 85% sometimes when there wasn't much work or I was injured. For those of you who can't remember winter 2010 was quite a cold one and at one point in South Wales public transport went down and I had to walk to work, during which I slipped and fell down the footbridge going over the roundabout just before Briton Ferry bridge and did my knee in. I was still able to complete my shift and fulfil my contracted hours.

One day I was going along doing a batch of orders in the pick tower and a chap walks up and stops me. He says he's an operations manager and my area manager has just informed in that my poor scores were bringing his teams scores down and that I should pull my finger out if I didn't want to be sacked at the end of the day. I informed him that my scores were over target for this and the previous few weeks and he walked off. I had a word with my site rep and said if my area manager was going to senior management telling them I had poor scores I wanted him reported to HR. (I couldn't go to HR as HR "do not handle temps") Then the following week I was called back to the pick desk with 10 other people for the area manager to give us a "pep talk." He gave everyone their score except me and us we had to improve, I asked for my score and he said 97%. Out of everyone else in that group the highest score anyone else had was 46%. I then asked why I was included in this group and his reply was "you all started at the same time and as a group are low scoring trouble makers." I immediately told the site rep to sort this guy out.

Anyway around this time the Christmas period ended and we moved into January, also the work started to dry up and lay offs happened. In the first week of January everyone else in that "pep talk" group was laid off and we were regularly sent home after 15 minutes of work (shifts rotated weekly between starting at 6AM or 2PM). On the 17th of January I was called down to the pick desk, the area manager told me when I arrived that I was being taken on as a permanent associate and congratulated me. I was well chuffed, I thought to myself "that's stage one dealt with lets get onto stage two and hopefully get my career back on track". A few hours later I had another message on my gun, with half an hour on the shift to go I was called back to the pick desk. The area manager had gone and all that was there was a team lead and cart runner. The team lead took my gun off me and said I was to wait in the drop zone for everyone else, I asked the cart runner what was happening and he said "your going to see HR." I thought, blimey that's quick, I'm going to be signing the forms and transferred from Quest to Amazon before the end of the shift. Myself and a few others then went up to a room in HR where we met some others from other departments. A HR officer then walked in and informed us we were being laid off as the early months of they year were traditionally quiet and the Christmas peak rush was over.

Needless to say I was pissed off, I informed them I had been told three hours previously I was being made permanent. The HR officer said I must have misunderstood what my area manager had told me, I informed her that I had been using the English language since moving on from baby talk and demanded to make an official complaint about my area manager and for him to be sacked. She said she couldn't do anything and that I should handle this via my Agency, now at this point I should say every other agency bar mine was present and as we were being made to clear our lockers and leave I had no way of getting to the agency desk on the Fulfilment Centre floor. The next day visited the Quest Recruitment Swansea branch, they said they couldn't do anything about my area manager as technically I wasn't an active associate on the Amazon contract anymore, however I did opt to put my name on the rehire list for when things started getting busy on the site.

If you'll indulge me ladies and gentle readers I'm now going to fiddle with the narrative. I would come back later in the year and the area manager not only was still there but had now been made permanent. I was told I couldn't make a formal complaint as six months had gone by. However the area manager (one Andrew Evans) wouldn't last long, it turned out his agency and Amazon hadn't performed a thorough background search on him and out of the blue Amazon would get a call from a newspaper asking about this:

http://www.southwales-eveningpost.co.uk/Dodgy-family-firms-preyed-customers/story-16819547-detail/story.html

It turns out that Andrew Evans had neglected to inform his employer that he had been done for fraud. Now I'm often one to give people the benefit of the doubt but I have to ask how a vindictive sicko who had tried to con vulnerable pensioners out of their savings can be put into a supervisory position without a background check being performed. Needless to say many complaints from temps had been made against him but they were all fobbed off. However when finding out about the above court case he was thrown out so fast his feet never touched the ground.

Well that's the story of my first stint with Amazon, I'll cover the rest of my time there at a later date.

The Big Finish Catch Up: August 2014

For anyone new to this part of the blog, I'm quite a big Doctor Who fan who also listens to the audios produced by Big Finish. I used to listen to them as they were released but over the years I've fallen behind to the extent where a few months ago I realised I was a decade behind. This part of the blog is where I review Big Finish releases (some recent some from yesteryear) that I have recently heard. Anyway last month I listened to...

The 10th Doctors entry into the Destiny of the Doctor range features Catherine Tate reading a story penned by Darren Jones. On a production front Catherine does an excellent job of recreating Donna Noble and does a very good 10th Doctor. However the story she's reading isn't up to much, I've virtually forgotten most of it when I come to write this up, bar from a tense scene with a worm it just isn't up to much. It just isn't an audio book, it feels like it was written for a two disc full cast audio release then edited to death and chopped down for the audio book format. In short in a series that has had some unexpectedly high quality releases this is disappointing.

As I've constantly said this section of the blog is me trying to catch up with Big Finishes releases, however sometimes I'll hear about a release that tempts me to jump ahead. This new box set of Bernice Summerfield stories featuring the virgin new adventures team of the 7th Doctor and Ace is one of them. To round them up to the two hour releases I'm familiar with I listened to "The Revolution" and "Goodnight Sweet Ladies." The first story is one of the best comedies Big Finish have produced with a cracking little plot that had me laughing through the whole thing. The second story is a highly emotional story that shows the dexterity of Benny with a more traditional tale for the archaeologist. At the half way point I highly recommend this box set, there is a running plot that links the stories but thankfully it doesn't dominate the stories.

The Song of the Megaptera is part of the lost story range and a story that was in contention to make it onto the screen during the Colin Baker era. The strength of this range is that it has taken stories that have become legend in fandom and given us some cracking stories of which this is one. This is a fantastic little story and would have been a cracker on TV, although it would have blown the budget. Like "The Revolution" we have a cracking plot, a swift pace and some funny characters. When a lost story works you come away wishing it could have made in on screen as a part of the TV series, theres a picture on the inside of this cover that really makes me wish it could have. In short if you can only afford to buy one or two stories from this range make this one a contender.