bleungberg.com

BBC World News 0100 GMT edition:

-Traces of radiation on three BA planes

-Iraq and Bush ’snubbed’

-Cystic Fibrosis for Fraser Brown

-Castro may die soon

-Sudan in the shits

-Nato disagreement

-Turkish anger at EU ditherings

The only light item was the French Presidential election.

(tut)

Some people think it’s weird for a bloke to carry a bag and a bottle of water everywhere with me. In truth, I hate doing it. However, I am a thirsty person in general, and I always prefer to be replenished regularly than having to fork out unnecessary money for an environmentally unfriendly bottle. Plus, it’s useful if you’re stuck in mid-tunnel on the London Underground during the height of the summer.

This ‘burden’ is thus a nuisance and a life-safer, and quite often, has totally ruined my night out for not for the first time in my life, I was refused entrance into a club in Hoxton last night because ‘I had a water-bottle in my bag’.

And not for the first time - and certainly won’t be the last - I chickened out of reasoning with those buff, menacing but thick-as-shit doormen.

I reckon this has happened to me three times already in the last couple of years. Every single time, the same happens: I queue up, knowing my bag would be searched, and I tell the person in front that I wouldn’t be allowed in without having to dispense with my bottle(s) (yes, on occasion, I carry two). Every time I refuse though I did empty the content right in front of the bouncers once - much to their annoyance - and still got refused entry.

Given the poor reputation they have for needlessly beating people up, I’ve never mustered the courage to argue or reason with them. Put simply, I am not about to sacrifice my 75ml Spa Reine bottles (especially imported from Belgium) just to go into a club and pay extortionate prices on drinks, bobbing along to tunes I don’t care much for.

All this begs the question - why the no water bottle policy?

It can’t have anything to do with fertilisers in bombs as this peculiar policy has long preceded those bomb plots which gripped the UK airports last summer.

It’s not as if these places don’t have cloak rooms either. Put simply, if I was willing to go into a club, it’s highly unlikely that I’d want drink bottled water all night. If I do, I’d stay at home.

Club and bar owners naively assume that people with bottles would go in, won’t buy a drink, thus not having to spend a penny.

Well, bollocks to that. They imagine that all these clubbers with bottles would go into the toilet and refill their bottles with undrinkable water.

Have they ever considered those of us who happily put our bags in the cloak room and then head straight to the bar?

What these jumped-up little bar and club owners have done is to deprive themselves of a few more quids in revenue. Had I been allowed in tonight, I would’ve paid for the cloak room, walked over to the bar and spent an obscene amount of money on drinks for a few hours or so.

Instead, a stupid no-bottle-past-the-door-policy meant these bastards never took a penny off me. And if this stupidity continues, they never will.

bleungberg.com was conceived somewhere on the autobahn in Germany in the dying days of October 2006, hours before the clocks went back for winter time.

Over the coming months, we at bleungberg, based in London, will be doing our best to chronicle this ever-changing planet, from the rise of faschism on American TV, to the latest Martha Stewart’s kitchen utensils to harness racing from Oostend, Belgium and updates of Nigella Lawson. Everything which should be covered, will be covered - where time allows.

Tough luck if you were searching for Bloomberg or Ljungberg and ended up here.

Hope you like it though.

bleungberg.