Mark Stammers's blog

I travel into London each weekday morning from the South Coast of England. A journey that should take and hour and a half. I've been making the journey now for over eight years so I'm pretty used to the routine, but the recent levels of service of my train operator Southeastern has caused me to see red.

This week thousands of parents and children faced the elation or the despair of receiving their secondary school allocations.

Well done if your children or grandchildren got the school you wanted for them, but many of you will be extremely unhappy with the local education authority's decision and will be considering your next step. Appeal, settle, or find the money to send your son or daughter into private education.

Let me say I sympathise with you. My son has luckily been allocated his first choice, but it was a very different story two years ago with his sister. The education authority ignored all three of our chosen options and placed her in the nearest school to us. A school which had a dreadful reputation for educational standards and behaviour of the pupils.

The Northern Rock debacle has finally led to the UK's first true nationalisation in 30 years or so.

So what are the real consequences of this move by Alistair Darling?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!

That just about sums up my annoyance at the high-pressure cold-calling I am suffering since buying my iPhone.

I have mentioned in previous blogs that I am somewhat of gadget geek, so when O2 recently improved the minutes package that comes with the eponymous device I took the plunge an signed up.

I may have thought twice if I had known the barrage of calls I would suffer from a telesales company flogging mobile phone insurance.

Microsoft's new operating system Vista is causing problems for PC World,