Matt Charlton

I presume you’ve all seen these strange boxes adorning public places (most mainstream cinemas, some shopping centres) that allow you to purchase movies and other bits and pieces?

Basically they’re a vending machine containing DVDs and Blu-Rays (games coming soon apparently).  There’s a touch screen, a chip/pin unit and a slot where your order is dispensed.

Last night I used one for the first time, we’d just been to see Alice in Wonderland and we were waiting for the girls to come back from the ladies room.  I’ve looked at the machines before but the prices have always been slightly off vs online retailer prices.  I noticed that they were selling Michael Jackson’s This Is It for £14.99 – I knew this was retailing for more than that online, I double checked and Amazon were selling it for £15.93 so I bought it.

With Disney being in the news the last few weeks in regards to reducing the amount of exclusivity time that cinemas have over film releases (Alice in Wonderland is coming out on DVD/Blu-Ray in 3 months time) I think these vending machines will really start to come into their own.

There is still rather a lot of debate about whether or not Hi-Def media is going to become the format of the future or whether digital downloads will win out – we all know which medium Microsoft is putting their weight behind.  As much as I like the convenience of digital storage theres nothing quite like physically owning the media, being able to physically put it into a player, storing it in a box, knowing you own it.  Digital rights Management is still all over the place, legitimate purchasers of PC Games are caused more inconveience by the copy-protection systems than the people who download them illegally from the Internet.

The future as I see it will involve a vending machine such as the POP247 box, located just by the exit of the cinema.  You go to see a film on opening night, when you come out, you buy the Blu-Ray/DVD, you own it to watch at home at your convenience.

With a trip to the cinema these days for 4 people costing an absolute fortune (3D showing, VIP seats was £43) plus your drinks/snacks its just something you can’t do every week.  It’s also something you don’t repeat for any old movie – unless its very, very good.  Last film I saw multiple times was The Dark Knight.  I think I saw it three times in total, twice at the cinema, once at the IMAX.  One of my all time favorite films.

The cinemas are worried about losing revenue – surely they get some sort of comission from these vending machines anyway – if you locate them somewhere only customers who have seen the film can use them, it cuts down on any Joe Public being able to come in and buy the film unless they’ve seen it at the cinema.  It would cut down on piracy, in a lot of cases eliminating it completely.  You’ll never stop the piracy of people who simply refuse to pay for things, but other people who have already been to see a film at the cinema and simply can’t afford to take the kids to see the film again might download a film as a stop gap until the DVD/Blu-Ray comes out.

You wouldn’t even need to do it through the vending machine, the cinemas themselves could secure exclusive rights to sell the DVDs/Blu-Rays and add an optional premium onto the ticket price for purchase of the media to take home.

I’m all for seeing certain films at the cinema, the big screen, the sound system, 3D.  I do feel burned though if I go to see a movie that I feel is rubbish.  £9 each for a basic 3D movie ticket is a little insane.  I think its close to £7 for a normal non-3D showing of a film.  I remember going for less than £3, and it wasn’t all that long ago.

I feel like I’ve rambled a little bit and this is probably non-sensical.  To sum up – give us the ability to purchase films on Blu-Ray from cinemas on release day, after watching the movie at £10 a ticket I want the ability to watch this at home again as many times as I like.  It’s the future, and this is a prediction.  I think this will be in place by 2012.

I visited the Trafford Centre yesterday.  The main reason for doing so was to allow both my wife and I to visit the Apple store.  We both have AppleCare Insurance on our iPhones and they had both been affected by a problem with the plastic casing; a small crack starting at the docking port and making its way up the back of the handset.

We got these replaced with no problems whatsoever – fantastic customer service and we decided to have a wander around whilst we were there.

I bought Sue a Sony Reader for Christmas.  It’s a Mills & Boon special edition (pink) PRS-300.  I’d had my eye on one for a while – long before I’d bought one for Sue, e-ink was something that looked fantastic.  There was a Sony Style shop at the Trafford Centre so I decided to go and have a look at the other model they have on offer – the touch (PRS-600).  I’d read a number of conflicting reviews – a lot of the negativity was aimed at the screen.  Due to the surface required for a touch screen interface, the screen was more reflective than the matte finish of the PRS-300.  I confirmed this almost immediately when I was unable to read the text on screen from a number of angles due to the florescent lighting in the store.

Up to this week I had been waiting for the announcement of the Apple iPad – it was pointless buying an E-book Reader as well as a tablet, I’d end up with having too many devices to carry around.  After disappointment with the press conference and knowing that I wasn’t going to be picking up the iPad (at least not the 1st generation) I’d decided I wanted the PRS-300.

There were a number of options available to me at this point.  I knew that I could get the reader online from WH Smith for £139.  I knew that Sony were selling it online for £149.99 and I knew that the prices other retailers were selling it for varied from £150-£199.  I decided to see if I could regain my faith in the high street; I’d have a go at bartering like my dad used to do (when we used to bother going to physical shops and not just buying things online).  I remember one occasion he was buying a Camcorder.  Currys and Comet were both situated within a few hundred meters of each other so we went to-and-fro playing them off one another.  One shop would throw in a bag, the other a bag and some tapes, back to the first and they’d throw in a spare battery along with the bag and tapes.  It was great fun and you could end up with a real bargain. This was all before the Internet really took off.

I decided that since we were out, wanting to have a wander around anyway that I’d set myself a little challenge and try to get hold of a Sony Reader cheaper than I could online. I want to make it clear that I didn’t set out to waste the time of any of the stores involved, I wasn’t trying to defraud them or con them into selling me something cheaper than they should have been doing, I was trying to satisfy my own personal curiousity about whether or not high street shopping could still be competitive when compared against the Internet.

Here’s an account of how it went.

Sony Style

They had the PRS-300 at 149.99 – matching their online store price.  I thought this was more than reasonable considering a lot of places tend to treat the businesses as two completely separate entities.  Also they had the readers on display, both (PRS-300 and PRS-600) were turned on, had books available to read and were on the display stands that allow you to pull the unit away from the stand to feel it in your hands properly. I decided the price was pretty good but that I’d go and have a wander around the other shops to see what they were offering.

WH Smith

They didn’t have the readers on display but once we tracked down a member of staff they checked in the back and confirmed that they had one in stock at £149.99.  I asked them why they were selling it for more than it cost from their website and they attempted to explain it in terms of delivery costs – it costs them more for them to have stock delivered to the store.  (They sell it online for £139 including free delivery to either store or customer).

Waterstones

Had a nice display cabinet next to the tills – you couldn’t hold one but you could see them behind glass.  They had an offer on this weekend where they were giving away a free £10 e-book voucher for their online store with all e-book readers purchases.  Price of the PRS-300 was £179.99.  The store was busy and I struggled to get hold of anyone – we decided to leave and come back a little later.

Sony Style

Back in the Sony shop I decided to try something out.  I didn’t lie as such but I asked an assistant if there was any room for maneuverability on the price as I’d seen it elsewhere.  He told me that if I bought one today I could have it for £134.95 as they were having a sale.  I asked him which colours they had in stock.  He replied “none”.  They’d have to order one in.  Sneaky! They’d order it in and I’d have to pick it up from the store, they weren’t willing to ship to my home address.  I’d have had to go back to Manchester from Bradford, negating any saving we’d have made.

John Lewis

Managed to find the Sony Readers in the electrical department on display stands which you could lift them from to read.  Some helpful soul had decided to delete all of the books on them, you could look at the menu but not a lot else.  Price was £179.99.  It took us ages to grab an assistant, even though there were a number of them hovering around – they seemed more interested in talking to one another than helping with customer enquiries.  We found one and asked him if they were willing to price match the other stores.  He told me their policy allowed for two options – either we bought the Reader at £179.99 and their price match department would verify the lower cost, send us a letter which would allow us to go back into store for a refund, or we could do it in reverse – wait for a letter which would allow us to purchase the reader at the lower price.  Again both options meant a return trip back to Manchester.

Waterstones

I decided to go back to Waterstones and it was a little quieter, managed to grab someone and ask them if they’d be willing to price match.  They got a manager who said unfortunately not.  They then tried to sell me an Elonex E-book Reader (I didn’t even know Elonex were still in business) and told me it was only £130 and it was better than the Sony because it read more types of PDF.  I decided to let this go and we left.  Again.

Currys.Digital

We decided to see if Currys had any in the shop. They had the unit retailing at £179.99, we were going to leave but I noticed they had a sign up by the tills which mentioned their price promise.  If you find it elsewhere within 15 miles/however many days they refund the difference + up to 10%.  I grabbed someone (again they were all for gathering in groups and ignoring the customer) and asked them if they’d price match a cheaper store I’d been in that day.  He went to get a manager who came over, got a reader out of the cabinet, printed off a label and took me to the till.  “That’ll be £179.99 please sir.”  “Oh, I said.  I was wanting to have it price matched with another store”.  I told him that Sony were selling them for £134.95 – he asked me if they had any in stock (drat) and I told him that they had them ready to order in 1/2 days.  He looked at me smugly and said “We won’t be price matching them then”.  I replied with “WH Smith are selling it for £149.99″ He asked me if it was the same model and the same colour, I told him it was.  He asked me if I’d told the shop assistant this, I said I had, he looked unhappy, went to find him and told him to check out the price at the other store.

The guy who I originally grabbed must have been late for lunch because he palmed me off onto someone else who went onto the net to have a look at the WH Smith Price.  They had the slowest Internet connection I’ve ever seen and it took a long time to sort out.  She saw that it was £139 online, she eventually phoned the store, got through, managed to get a price and was told £150 (price had gone up a penny!).  She checked with another manager who said that they would match the in-store price but not the web price.  I would be able to get it for £149.99 (£150) – 10% of the difference; in this case £30 so £3 off and a retail price of £147.  I asked if that was the best she could do – I told her I could order one from WH Smith today and have it delivered to my house for free on Monday/Tuesday.  I realised that it was only £8 difference but £8 is £8.  She agreed that every penny counts at the moment and said the only thing she might be able to do was offer some discount on the monthly payment protection plan for three years.  I told her I wouldn’t have the reader in three years but was going to buy it on my credit card so it would be protected that way.  I didn’t bother going into home contents insurance and things too but it’d covered under that as well.  I told her that I was very grateful for her time and thanked her but I was going to leave it. I did feel a little bad about having wasted her time.  If they’d done me a price at less than £140 I would have bought it there and then.  They’d have made a sale of £140 and I might have given them another go in the future.

As it happens, I left the Trafford Centre without a Sony Reader.

I had a good look when I got home at the WH Smith website, using Quidco I can get the reader for around £134 – 50p cheaper than the Sony shop were offering me it for.  This is an extremely good price (Sue’s reader at Christmas cost me £160) but at the moment I can’t really afford to buy it.  I could but I’d have no money left to spend on myself for the rest of the month.  In a month where you have Bioshock 2 and AvP coming out you need to save the pennies up!

I’m in no immediate rush to get hold of a Reader, as long as I have one before I go on holiday later in the year I’ll be fine.

It’s not all bad news for the high street, the Skechers shop got £120 out of Sue (after I’d run some price checks online to make sure you couldn’t buy them cheaper) and I bought a couple of iPhone cases from the Apple store spending around £60 (including £20 for a new case for Sue’s new iPhone) so we did do our part yesterday to help the retail industry.

To sum up – I think my own consumer habits have changed.  I can’t speak for the rest of the world or the rest of my generation but 9/10 I cannot bring myself to buy something from a shop if I know that I can order it online cheaper.

I understand that high street stores have overheads that online stores might not; more staff – certainly more customer facing shop staff, more costs regarding electricity, taxes, etc.  I just thought that with the economy being the way it is at the moment (even though we’re now out of the recession) that high streets might try to be a little more competitive.

I also realise that without the Sony Style high street store I wouldn’t have been able to hold the PRS-600 in my hands and confirm that the screen was unusable in bright light (making it a non-viable purchase for holiday sunbed reading).  With this case there would have been enough scope for me to build an opinion based on reviews from the web but its no match to holding the thing in your hand.

The thing that bugs me the most is that the online counterparts of the high street shops (GAME being the most prominent example) are treated like a seperate entity.  To me, there is no reason why an Xbox 360 copy of Left4Dead2 might be £34.99 online at www.game.co.uk and £42.99 on the high street.  I can use my reward card to collect (and redeem) points on purchases both online and in store.  I can return an item I’m not happy with that I bought from the website to a GAME store.  It’s silly.  With the two arms of the business being as conjoined as they are in that respect – why not do it with prices across the board?  I know it would make it more likely for me to buy a game whilst I’m in town on my lunch break.  As it stands at the moment I’ll buy it from the cheapest online store.  Sometimes this is the GAME website, other times its Amazon or gameplay.

Whilst I don’t want the high street shops to disappear, I’m not going to spend any of my hard earned cash with them if I can save money, spend it online and get the product I want 1-2 days later.  I’ve never been in such a rush that I’ve had to have something there and then.  (we’re talking electricals here, reptiles and other non-electrical impulse buys are excluded from this statement)

Thanks for reading

I’m sat here using my Spotify premium subscription to the max this evening, listening to some Michael Jackson stuff.

Feeling quite sad at the moment really.  We should have seen him at the O2 last month – we’d have been there on the 10th so pretty much a month ago.

I remember when I managed to get one of the pre-sale codes and then when I managed to get the tickets ordered.  We were on the floor, 2nd block back.  Amazing tickets.  It was going to be the experience of a lifetime.  I’d booked a hotel in the Docklands, we were all set and then we watched in horror as news filtered in over twitter that he’d had a cardiac arrest and then that he’d sadly passed away.

No matter what you thought of the guy, and despite all the negative press and stories over the years, you can’t deny that he had a profound effect on the world of music.  I remember my mum listened to him a lot when I was growing up.  He’d always been one of her favorites.  She still loves the music now.  I remember watching Moonwalker – the Smooth Criminal routine still impresses me to this day.  Michael turning into a car was a bit strange but I guess compared to the other things he had happen in his life it wasn’t all that outlandish.

It’s still wierd to think that he’s gone – listening to his music and you almost forget, then you remember and it feels so sad that someone so talented had their life cut short.  I know there were doubts about his ability to do all 50 concert dates but I didn’t see it playing out like this.

Anyway – enough random blog posting.  Just thought I’d write about how I was feeling at the moment.

Well – it’s been interesting, I’ll say that much.  I think it must be coming on for what, nearly 2 weeks since my last blog post? *checks*.  Oh my.  May 25th.  That’s disgraceful.

Some blog this is, it might as well be a monthly magazine, shame theres no content or pretty pictures.  Meh.

Anyway – interesting couple of weeks.  I’m no longer welcome on KAPS paranormal ghost investigations, but I won’t go into that here suffice to say that the owned didn’t take too kindly to me taking part in the setting up of a new paranormal investigations group called Crypt Kickers.  Website is on http://www.cryptkickers.co.uk and we can be followed on Twitter @cryptkickers We are also on facebook.  Come sign up for the forum!

She also cited my past blog posts (where KAPS were mentioned in only a positive light) as being an issue.  Apparently my blog posts about Fright Nights, another paranormal investigations company upset the owner due to me implying that their insurance didn’t cover guests when KAPS’ did – this was pointed out to me as untrue and I removed it as soon as I was made aware.

The funny thing about this blog, well it’s maybe not so much ha ha funny as odd funny is that it’s mine.  I can do what I like with it.  It’s full of personal opinion and not a lot else (unless its quoted or referenced specifically).  I understand that I can’t write things that could be construed as libellous or slanderous because I could theoretically get taken to court, blah blah.  Other than that, I have free reign and that’s always been the case and I’ll write about what I like.

Maybe in the future, I’ll be writing about exactly what happened with KAPS, maybe I won’t.  Either way, it’ll all be truth and it’ll all be my own opinion.

So, anyway – back to more important things, we’ve set up CK, it’s going really well and we’re laying down a bunch of groundwork and there’s a lot up in the air at the moment, we can’t reveal all that much at the moment due to potential issues with certain people trying to possibly cause problems – not something we want at the moment.

As a result of this, my weekends and evenings have been pretty rammed full of website setting up and maintenance, forum maintenance and just general geekery.  I haven’t had much time for anything else.  We’ve got so much TV to watch I don’t think some of it will ever be seen. At least I managed to get through 24.  Really enjoyed that.

I was away in Manchester yesterday with work, we had a conference.  It was a great day and I ended up being chief photographer.  That was nervewracking.  I haven’t picked up the camera for months and I was faced with going somewhere I had no idea was or what awaited me.  I took the tripod with me just in case – good job too, a lot of the conference was in low light.  Luckily I found myself a little alcove and set up in there for most of the day.  Managed to come away with some shots that I’m really proud of.  Hopefully work will be fairly happy too.  My shoulder is killing me – carrying around the slingshot with 6 lenses in it was maybe a little overkill but I used most of them!

What else has been going on?

Hmmm.

Oh yeah – it’s mine and Sue’s wedding anniversary next Wednesday, I’ve booked the day off and I’m taking her out for a meal.  Other than that, I have no plans, maybe I’ll take her to the cinema, maybe go bowling.  It might be nice to recreate our first date sort of thing.  We went to see Rugrats at the cinema. awwwwww

I’ve got to go to the Trafford Centre on Saturday – my iPhone seems to have developed a physical fault, the left hand side appears to be coming away from the body, its clicking when pressed and I’m getting some distortion on the screen.  No way is that going to last another 12 months, I’m going to take it over and see what they say.  Hopefully they’ll replace it with a refurb for me.  I might take out applecare for it whilst I’m there.  I’m also going to let Sue have a play around with the macbooks that are there so she can figure out what size screen she wants and things.  I think she’ll really love one.

I was using my macbook pro earlier (I’m using it now, but that’s not the point  – I’m blogging, this is something I can do on my iPhone for god’s sake) – I imported the photos to iPhoto and decided I wanted to view them in a slide show, I press play and it starts playing music and gives me funky transition effects.  I can then export this as a mov file, stick it on a disc, burn it as a dvd – it’s all just so easy.  I always used to put macs down, they were always the lesser machine, always the thing people used when they couldn’t use a pc.  A pc for babies, etc.  I was wrong.  This is the best machine I’ve ever owned.

The other good thing about it is that there are no vents on the bottom of it, which means I can sit like this in bed and type with it on my knee and not a)burn my legs b)set something on fire.  It’s all good.  The other thing is that it seems to have a semi decent wireless card on it.  My netbook one isn’t very good – I sit/lie on the side of the bed which is directly next to the part of the wall where the hot water tank is – big metal thing with metal pipes, it just zaps the signal.  This thing is uploading to my webspace, playing some music from last.fm and letting me blog straight to the web.  Yay.

I’m sure there was something else I was going to write about.  Oh yeah that was it – Work conference.

We had a guest speaker there from a company called Mindstore – Klaus Nigel Pertl.  He was fantastic.  He talked about taking time out, relaxing, making time for the real thoughts to come through and things.  It all made sense and I’d love to go on a Mindstore training course proper, sounds like a lot of good advice.

One of the talks given by a school talked about a stereotypical student who goes to the cinema on a Friday night, goes home and tweets about it/posts a review on a blog.  Gets up the following morning and plays on his Xbox 360 with people from all over the world, watches a video sent to him by his friend on youtube, video conferences with an uncle who lives abroad and is staying in Saturday night so spends it talking to his friends on facebook.  Gets up and goes to his mates house and watches a blu ray on his PS3.  It went on further with more examples. Anyway, the point of this paragraph is – this student was me.  That was my weekend.  It’s scary.  I’m so plugged in, so wired to the net, to technology it scares me.

When I take a step back and think about it, it worries me.  Technology seems to make things easier, it can also make things harder.  Spending too much time with technology can make it hard for me to relate to people again.  I mean people are weird.  At least machines generally have a reason for going bananas.  Anyway – I need to take a step back.  I need to stop spending so much time on the laptop and I need to maybe change the e-mail fetch period to maybe an hour rather than 15 minutes.  I don’t need THAT much access to my email.  It’s nice and all but I don’t need it.

We’ve booked a week away in October, a week in the countryside there won’t be any 3g signal, hell theres hardly any 2g signal.  I might even read a book.  You never know.  I think I need to maybe try some meditation and deep breathing exercises.

I hate that my parents were right about time flying as you got older – they weren’t kidding.  I want my life back! It’s this whole time perception thing and the flaw of how we measure time.  You know how the summers used to stretch for what seemed like months when you were kids – that sort of thing, look it up – it’s interesting reading.

The funny thing is – personal life is crazy at the moment, but I’m really enjoying work – loving it.  I need to find a balance somewhere!

Anyway, I came to bed early, and I’ve spent an hour typing stuff, I’m going to go to sleep now.  More frequent mind dumps to come over the coming days.

*cue the Ghostbusters theme music*

Why do people choose to pay (a lot of) money to spend all night wandering around in the dark in a building with a group of like minded people, often with little boxes that have flashy lights (I like flashy lights) whilst calling out to ghosts and spirits to make themselves known?

There’s a new hobby in town, I say new – it’s been around for a long time, some purists would say hundreds (if not thousands) of years but its only in recent years with the advent of programmes such as “Most Haunted”, “Ghost Hunters” and other such shows which are often shown on Living TV that this has become massively popular.

There has been a plethora of companies spring up in light of this, offering normal people the chance to have “a Most Haunted-esc” experience.  Generally this will entail having a group of people meet in a place, you’ll have a team consisting of mediums, historians, hosts and gadget folk and you’ll investigate said place for evidence of a paranormal nature.

I’ve been on a few of these events now, whilst I haven’t seen anything as such and I’m still firmly on the fence, I want to believe.  I want there to be something there.

The main thing for me personally is I find it fun.  In fact no, there are two elements to it.  I have the fun side, the part of me that enjoys being scared shitless, wandering around a dark building with a bag full of gadgets – I also have a part of me that’s interested from a spiritual point of view.

Now I’m not religious, although I was brought up a Roman Catholic, I hated going to church, I found the whole thing mind numbingly boring.  I have nothing against people who worship whatever deity they see fit though – each to their own and all that but its not for me.  Whether or not I’ll be a hypocrite when I’m lying on my death bed I’ll see.

I guess I fell out with religion proper when my grandad died – it hit me pretty hard and I lost all belief in any higher power – the whole “if there was a god, my grandad wouldn’t have gotten cancer and died” argument.  Sounds silly now, but it made perfect sense to me when I was younger.

Years later, I was forced to do a Religious Studies GCSE at school and I purposefully failed it – writing stupid answers to questions.  I say I failed it, I still managed to get an F, which is technically a passing grade – I regret that now, it was a stupid thing to do – but it was my way of rebelling.  Yay for fighting the power!

So – now, back to ghost hunting – I want to believe that there’s something there after we die – I want to know what happens.  It’s the big question isn’t it – what is there after death? where do we go? what do we feel?  When you start to go down the road of thinking about these questions, your brain goes into meltdown and you don’t have any answers – I can’t believe that when we die, theres nothing there, just nothing – I’m sat here at the moment writing this blog post, I’m sat on a sofa – it’s a lovely sunny day outside and I can hear the traffic on the road outside.  I’m conscious.  I’m consciously writing this and I’m conscious and aware of my surroundings and whats going on.  I’m not willing to accept that when we die, theres nothing.  I’m hoping that these events will maybe help me to find the answers to some of these questions and If not – I’ll have fun scaring myself shitless.  It’s all good.

Although I want to believe, I’m a massive skeptic, and thats nothing to do with the size of my (now shrinking) body mass index – theres just the logical part of my brain that questions everything – if theres a noise – what could it possibly have been -  building cooling down? another member of the team wandering around elsewhere? – The initial shock of a noise happening might make me jump (and inevitable mutter a curse word of some description, okay well shout/scream) but there has to be a logical explanation doesn’t there?

We’ve started to amass a range of Ghost Hunting equipment.  We have an EMF meter with a needle that whines to let you know there is some Electromagnetic field somewhere nearby.  I also have a K2 meter which is also an EMF meter but has flashy lights.  We’ve got a torch each (very important – needed when moving from room to room and walking up and down stairs in an otherwise pitch black environment).  I’ve also got a pocket radio which has been modified to allow non-stop scanning to assist in hopefully making some EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon).

Whats funny about the equipment we have is we’re a little bit like the Ghostbusters at the start of the film – you come up against something downstairs in a library and you can take measurements, take photos but other than that (GET HER!!!!) – and we know how that turned out.  Whilst I know the proton pack and trap are theoretical movie gadgets, I’d still feel a little safer with an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on my back – you know what I’m saying right? I quite like this hobby, it gives me something to do with Sue – funnily enough my brother and a couple of friends are really into it too.  Whilst I don’t agree with the way that Most Haunted do things sometimes theres no denying its opened up the door for people to carry out investigations into the unknown.

Now the main downside of these events is the cost – they can cost from £30-£70 per person, per event.  Thats an insane amount of money to be spending.  Its a good night out, don’t get me wrong but still, its not the cheapest night out – I’m sure you could spend the night getting jolly in Leeds at a fraction of that – the fraction might be 2/3 but still, its a fraction nonetheless.

It’s not cheap, and if we’re going to continue to investigate we’re going to have to find a cheaper way to do it…