Hindsight is a wonderful thing



CONDOR has left Weymouth for a berth in Poole which is not in imminent danger of collapsing into the harbour.


They leave behind them much papering over of cracks and I’m not talking about the vastly increased bill for repairs which has risen from £50,000 to more than £2 million.


Some years ago decisions were taken to siphon cash off from the profitable harbour account and use it for projects elsewhere instead of squirreling a few £noughts away to meet big harbour repair bills in the future.


Yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but now we have to live with that decision, something the Harbour Board – which doesn’t control harbour cash — has been warning about for quite a while.


Now the profit has hit the fan amid stern comments that all councillors bear equal responsibility for earlier decisions.


Fortunately the council, faced with being left ferryless under the eyes of the Olympic world, has come up with a novel solution.


Alexandra Shackleton, the replica lifeboat produced at Portland to mark Sir Ernest Shackleton’s epic rescue voyage nearly a century ago, is to be pressed into emergency service to fill the gap left by Condor.


Of course, and in the best traditions of harbour profiteering, the council will not be paying the oarsmen but asking them for a fee per hundred strokes for upholding the honour of Weymouth as a transport port.


And the public response from potential oarsmen to the council over the whole sorry saga?.....Rowlocks!




How very in keeping with the spirit of the Games!



I HAVE finally decided that there is no hope left for this country.


My despair has been caused by the news that the single biggest threat to British athletes winning a medal in the Olympic and Paralympic sailing events at Weymouth and Portland is... shaking hands with someone!


Medical experts apparently feel that pressing hands could lead to our super fit Olympic team members running the risk of catching rudder rash or some other bug which might threaten their chances of a medal.


All doctors voicing such advice need to be given a serious lecture on two points.


Firstly, the Olympics takes for its symbol five intertwined rings to represent the unity of the five inhabited continents... and there isn’t much unity in snubbing a handshake.


Secondly, when the Olympic movement got its act together and first properly regulated the sport it was for the 1908 Olympics where Great Britain won four sailing gold medals and finished top in a year when typhoid, cholera, tetanus and other diseases and illnesses were much more serious and much more common than they are now.


Surely any attempt to abandon handshakes for the clinical pursuit of glory does nothing for the true traditions of the Olympic ideal never mind making us a laughing stock with everyone else taking part. I for one hope all our athletes ignore such inappropriate advice.






All stickered up


IT HAS been said that you never see the accident coming which has got your name on it.


Nothing could be truer for a number of town centre motorists who, never mind accidents, couldn’t see anything at all coming up behind them for the sheer number of stickers plastered all over their rear windscreens.


Half a dozen stickers were quite common and I could have driven a 30-ton tank up behind one motorist without being seen because he actually had 11 stickers which totally obscured more than half his rear windscreen.


What is it with these people who feel it necessary to pointlessly advertise the fact that they’ve seen everything from Lands End to the Lions of Longleat?


I can’t see it cutting much ice with the police who, on finally getting a car to stop and asking the driver why he ignored their blue flashing lights, are unlikely to be too impressed by a response that: “Sorry officer. You were obscured by my No Excuse! sticker.”


Far more likely is that officers will kindly help such motorists to add to their collection, not with a sticker but with a ticket.





The joy of a giant sandcastle


SHRIEKS of delight poured from one group of children when they dashed across Weymouth Sands to take advantage of the biggest sandcastles they had ever seen.


So big were the constructions that they stretched for hundreds of yards and were over eight feet high in places.


The children did everything from jump and roll to slide on the mountains of sand which had been delved from the shoreline in an annual operation to reclaim sand sucked off the beach by winter storms.


The unusual sandy sight has now gone, evenly distributed on to the main beach to restore its depth.

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