Back bites - Thursday 1 June 2000

Where do the good and the great go

What is the common factor between Royal Ascot week, The Royal Variety Performance, the Water Rat Annual Grand Ball and the Movement for Innovation annual conference?

No prizes for the correct answer! Four categories of people attend them all:

a) Those who belong there.

b) Those who think they belong there.

c) Those who feel it is their duty to be there. and, d) Those who want to be seen to be there. Congratulations M4I you have made it!

Under the hammer

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has posed a pretty stiff challenge for some of its young members. Today (1 June), 11 hopefuls from the UK and Ireland will battle it out to find the best auctioneer. The competition aims to encourage young chartered surveyors and surveying students to take up a career in Britain's auction rooms flogging off property.

Under the hammer is the Millennium Dome. CJ can imagine the auction ending: "Going once, going twice, sold to the man at the back for 10p."

All at once

Mathematicians at Leeds University have managed to work out why buses always turn up in threes. Excellent news this. But Back bites feels there is a greater challenge to be met - namely, why don't many trains turn up at all? Some help in this department would be of considerable benefit to vast numbers of long suffering commuters in the UK. However, an already declining situation looks like it is going to get even worse. It seems Railtrack may not be able to pay for the upgrade to the West Coast Main Line or, quite possibly, the second phase of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link either. This is not the forward kind of movement the great British public would like. Instead, with this kind of backsliding they'll be ripping up existing track, saying they can't afford to run any trains at all.