A Big Champion

Newcastle and Norwich

2008-09-05T00:42:00.002+01:00

Its been a very interesting week as both a hardened Newcastle supporter and recently adoptee of Norwich City. Interesting in a week were both clubs seemed destined to be affected by the financial side of the game.

With Newcastle and Mike Ashley seemingly forcing the hand of Kevin Keegan out of management instead of giving him the money you need in this league and Norwich City loosing the "golden" couple of Andrew and Sharon Turner so they can [I reckon] mop up their sub-prime company which is no doubt suffering troubles, the parrallels are not too hard to see.

Most Norwich fans are craving a big money person to come in and prop them up, take it over, whereas actions of the Newcastle board mean most of the Toon army are calling for the current Board to sell and move off.

With a similar thing happening at West Ham and Alan Curbishley I cannot help think that even though Norwich may not have a lot of money - the hearts and minds and wills of the current board have a great balance between making money and keeping the club afloat, along with ensuring the supporters feel connected. City fans should heed the warning that West Ham and Newcastle preach, and its going to be interesting to see if Man City make anything of themselves this year, giving their new financial backing.

House Update

2008-09-03T01:15:00.002+01:00

Well - finally there. We were meant to exchange contracts on 6th August but it was eventually the 1st of September....

To explain the delay is simple, and sad really. The house we are buying is a repossessed house. We knew this when buying it. When we went to see it, the house essentially had everything still inside, including very personal items. The bank were reluctant to exchange once these goods were still in there.

Unfortunatley the poor woman was in some denial and it was until the estranged husband turned up last week and managed to get 80% of the main house items removed that we could move forward. Even then there was some discussion about locks and access but this was eventually sorted out.

We are now left with a serious tidy up job and a rumble through quite a huge amount of stuff. The house also needs a lot of TLC and tidying but we will get there.
We are due to leave our current house and move into the new house on 18th September.

House Update

2008-08-31T21:21:00.001+01:00

There has been some progress with the house and we are hoping to exchange contracts tommorow with a completion on 18th August....

Once we do exchange I can give more detail....

football writer

2008-08-21T23:34:00.003+01:00

I read the following article tonight about Norwich City which appeared referenced in NewsNow:

http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com/full_article.asp?i=3980&w=8&a=0&part=1

I think (and have had a drop of wine) that the article is reffering at a high level that as a club moves in the financial side of things, then the sense of community that it has developed could be lossed. Couple this with the fact that Andrew Cullen is leaving (presumably better paid job) who is the Marketing guy at Norwich City, then both arguments compel to this point.

However - not being a "lowwwcul" but from Newcastle, I have witnessed first hand the sense of community that is present with regards to the club, and even though Newcastle run around with Mike Ashley can see the community in there. At the very basic level, supporting a football team whether at the game or not does promote community. It promotes a support, togetherness that is quite frankly missing generally in society nowadays. When I go to see City I sit beside a bunch of guys I would never speak to normally. They are from Hunstanton and they travel to and from there for every game - which is incredibly commendable....

Community is more than mere money, roadshows or local people running the club, it is and always has to be, the core support of the community around the area. Take for example if Newcastle (Lord forbid) they get demoted all the way down to League 2. I still think that there would be hard nosed supporters, locals, community, attending games.

Its a shame Mr Cullen is leaving, I think he will be missed. But as I have learned in my work, people you respect move on, and its how you react and move forward from that is the key to continuous success...

House Update

2008-08-20T14:51:00.001+01:00

Still nowhere forward.....

However there is evidence that something could happen this weekend with an exchange of contracts on Monday... I wait with anticipation....

House Update

2008-08-14T23:35:00.001+01:00

Still waiting to exchange contracts...
There is a fairly serious issue in the house we are buying, but cannot really go into it on here. Those that know me know what it is...

We are hoping that this weekend will produce a result but will have to wait and see?

Champion

House Update

2008-08-07T23:38:00.002+01:00

House update...

Still waiting to exchange contracts. We were due to exchange on Wednesday BUT the numptie solicitor being used by our buyers decided to send the deposit by BACS (three working days) instead of CHAPS ( on the day).

Crazy, wonder how they could get something so wrong....

Hopefully this Friday (Tommorow) will be done...

Bobby Robson

2008-08-07T23:35:00.003+01:00

I was really sad to hear the past newcastle manager, Sir Bobby Robson, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Apparently after a bought of kemo the growths remain although have stopped getting any bigger. It effectively means that there is no treatment on their return and is seen as terminal.

Such a great ambassador for sport and football, and a genuine true geordie.

House Update

2008-07-22T23:06:00.002+01:00

Well today we got our Mortgage offer which is great news. Nothing untoward in it either.
We also had to pay for searches for a HIP on the property we are buying which is quite annoying, because it should be the responsibility of the seller, however our solicitor deemed that the information was not enough information to guarantee certain things and protect our buy.

Apart from that no other news, was hoping for exchange of contracts this week, but is likely now to occur next week, which will prove interesting......

House Update

2008-07-21T21:05:00.002+01:00

One or two bits and bobs happened today, bit too private to post here but nowt serious...
On a practical note, we are hoping for exchange of contracts on 25th July, but this would appear ambitious.
We have answered all the questions we were given on Friday and handed them in, as well as our deeds signing (or something).

House Update

2008-07-20T08:00:00.002+01:00

Nothing much new to report....
We had a list of odd questions from our buyers solicitor which we need to answer, frankly some of them are quite odd...

One is relating to a planning permission we got for extending the front of the house. We didn't do it because we couldn't afford it and its clearly obvious we didn't do it - but even after two visits to the house, they were asking for confirmation it "wasn't done".... wierd...

On and on.......

Claire is the new Fern....

2008-07-17T23:59:00.002+01:00

For a long while I have always had a thing about Fern Britton. In fact I even applied for (and failed) but did attend a recording of Ready Steady Cook. (On another note the famous guest on the programme was non other than Suzzane Dando whom just a week later was shot dead)....

Anyway, here is Fern......... (Ah she is gorgeous with or without tummy stapling)...

And here is Claire Richards

If you don't know whom she is, she is Claire of the former band Steps.....
I saw her on Celebrity Masterchef last week and wondered who this vision of beauty was. I couldn't believe that it was Claire from Steps and she looks so much nicer than what she did before.... Hurrah, Claire is my new Fern.........

Well, maybe........

House Update

2008-07-17T23:56:00.001+01:00

So....

Survey on the house we want to buy is done.
Survey is complete on our house.
We had to send a full months bank statement, pay slips for June and latest mortgage statement to our new new Mortgage company.
Tommorow for various reasons of reposession the house we are buying is advertised for 1 week (normal practice apparently).

Hopefully that this will be all ok. I don't believe that we will get our exchange of contracts this week or next but will wait and see.....

Moving Homes

2008-07-14T19:32:00.002+01:00

Well, for those that are around us you know all about this, but I thought that something I could blog on was a belated blog about house moving....

So to catch up where we are here is a quick synopsis....
We had been looking initially to move to a slightly better part of the City, Beatrice Road, in Norwich for those that know it. However after much thought, we have decided to move (try to move) to Thorpe St Andrew as its the closest we get to church and school without being in Dussindale. (Not that there is anything wrong with Dussindale off course, just not our bag)...

So what have we done and where are we with things....

We initally put an offer in on a house for which was accepted BUT they wouldn't take it off the market until we had sold.

At the same time, another house in a similar place came on the market which was a lot cheaper for good reasons which I don't want to go into here (sorry).

We went and put in a silly offer on this house and it was accepted.

10 days later our house came off the market sold and we had in that process negotiated another £2000 of the house we were buying.

So now we are looking at exchanging contracts in two weeks and completing around 2 to 3 weeks after that.

I will post anything that happens .... (although unlikely to post tommorow as I am away on business).

Today - the only thing that changed was that we received (after a long while) the Building Completion Certificate in the post for the structural work we had done on our house.
We have filled out the house agreement (agreeing that we split the house equally if we get divorced).
And thats that.

Cullum v City

2008-07-11T07:24:00.002+01:00

Its been announced that this morning, all negotiations between city and cullum have been terminated because they couldn't agree a deal.

Frankly this is good news. There were serious misgivings I had about this deal...

1. To "embarrass and expose" the city board through the EDP is appalling, which is what Cullum has tried to do.
2. £20 million for new players would be great, but lets not be under any illusion this is a heart decision, its a business decision. Clearly it was thought NCFC could be bought on the cheap, especially in the current financial climate. The reality is he is a business man, and this was an attempt at a good business deal...
3. Delia and Michael have been great for the club and I am sure that if they had received an offer that was in the interests of the club first, they would not hesistate to step aside and support from the stands. If they feel its not good enough, and Andrew and Sharon Turner think it not good enough, then thats good enough for me.
4. Cullum's insistance on Majority share holder status means clearly one thing - he has to have more than 31% of the stake - that means he has to offer to buy out everyone who has shares or loans in the club. Since the current market value of shares and loans to the club, plus £20m for players is realistic, this comes to £56million - he is woefully short.
5. Its interesting that when City were at the lowest ebb last season, he wanted to do some deal. Where was he when we were in the premiership, why not finance support then. Again, proof to me this is about a "canny" attempt to make a good deal for himself and NOT the club.

Time for him to put up and shut up. If he is a true supporter and just wants to help, why not give a donation of X amount to support the club. He could have become the main sponsor as well, and gone "over the top" in the amount and financed the club that way.

I wonder where Andrew and Sharon Turner sit in this, maybe they are likely suiters and a deal is in the offing there. Unlikely, but who knows.

Time to move on, support city as we move into pre-season, on the ball city............

Facebook and photos

2008-07-10T13:05:00.005+01:00

A couple of things...

I recently joined facebook, here is the link to my profile:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1322140813

I also have formally set up my photowebsite but need to upload more photos:

http://www.dwmphotography.co.uk

Start again

2008-07-10T13:05:00.002+01:00

Someone had pointed out to my wife the other day that I hadn't been blogging...

Which is true. So I thought I would start to write up some stuff again and keep on top of it.

More to come.

Customer Experience

2008-01-19T08:11:00.000Z

One of my roles currently at work is monitoring customer experience, which is more than just the experience you and I get with BT...

This post though is to tell you how impressed I was with the customer experience I had at the Carphone Warehouse [CW]

My phone with 02 was coming to the end of its 18 month contract and I had seen some deals on the internet with CW. So I went to the new store at the Riverside complex to see what they could do. The deal, which I found incredible was for new customers, was a free Playstation 3 (other options were WII's, XBOX's and other things). So I went in and spoke to Matt. He advised me that there was every chance the deal wouldn't be on in February when my contract officially came to an end (with 02 you can upgrade a month early). So he advised me once we had found the right playstation deal, to ring up 02 and ask to go on their lowest price plan so for the last month I would pay the lowest amount possible, take out my new plan with Orange, and ask for my PAC code.

They did all the telephone ringing for me in the store getting through the miriad of "Press 1 for, 3 for, 5 for". We did all of this, got my PAC code, got my new contract and ordered my free playstation for free.

In short, I am on the same tariff price as with 02 but now with Orange.
I am getting 500 mins a month, and unlimited texts.
A new sony ericsson phone (which is great).
A new Playstation 3.

The playstation had to be delivered and when I did the deal it was 3pm in the afternoon. Matt at CW advised it would be delivered the next day - naturally I was dubious. However, 11am the next morning a courier arrived with the PS3 which included 1 game and 1 blu ray dvd as well.

Fantastic - great to see a company keeping its promises and delivering customer experience like that.

I was about to order a new TV, a Sony Bravia HD at the end of this month but was going to get a cheap upscaling DVD player with it. However, having a PS3 was icing on the cake really, as it does upscaling and plays DVD blu-ray (which I think is going to become the winner in the HD DVD / Blu Ray battle - like the old Betamax / VHS battle of old).

So true............

2008-01-06T01:20:00.000Z

BT Broadband

2007-12-15T11:11:00.001Z

This is a test....

BT Broadband

(Random I know)

Images of Cromer

2007-11-28T09:22:00.000Z

Introducing Raymond Holmes

2007-11-27T23:29:00.000Z

Hi

If you read my blog - please drop by my best friends blog, Raymond Holmes.

Raymond is a superior worship leader who taught me everything I knew ;-) ayeeeeee

I have known Raymond for around about 14 years. Do pass by and drop a comment and make him feel welcome.

Dave

Recycling

2007-11-26T23:36:00.000Z

Well, for the past four weeks we have been giving recycling a go. Emma had watched a programme on TV some time ago that was based around a rubbish dump and living of it (don't sound pleasant). Anyway she was shocked at the amount of stuff that is dumped that can be recycled, so we started.

In overview, we recycle tins, plastic bottles, glass, card and paper. I think in reality its the plastic bottles like soft drinks and milk bottles that take up so much room and we do go through an amazing amount - unfortunatley they don't recycle at doorstep for these, the rest they do.

We have seen our rubbish bin reduce from full to less than a third full, just incredible if not a bit frightening.

Max M

2007-11-25T00:39:00.000Z

Hi

In the spirit of Black and White.
Here is a photo of Max I took while he where in a local woodland with some friends.
I just love the expression on his face.

2007-11-16T00:53:00.000Z

Emma doesn't like the picture in black and white, but I particularly like it so I thought I would share ......