Disgraced sprinter Dwain Chambers claims he has been made to "feel like a leper" on his return to the sport having served a ban for failing a drugs test.

The 29-year-old yesterday won his battle to be part of the British team at next month's World Indoor Championships in Valencia even though the UK Athletics selection committee were "unanimous in their desire not to select him".

He's a cheat.  A two-year ban wasn't enough. Would we have been happy seeing Ben Johnson representing Canada after his cheating was made public, or Justin Gatlin or Marion Jones representing the US again?  What about the other athletes who are competing for the UK, do they want to be tarnished with the same brush as Chambers?  What about the athletes who aren't competing, because Chambers has their place in the team?  

Do we know that the drug cheating he did didn't have any long-term residual effects that are benefiting him now? Do we really know that he's 'clean'?  Lot of questions, and sadly they'll continue whilst cheats like Chambers are allowed to compete in Athletics.  It's a sport that does its best to prove it's clean - but then rules like this make a mockery of that.

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There you go.  I've written it in black and white (or even a burnt orange colour if we're being pedantic).  The MMR vaccine does not cause autism.  Studies have proven this.  

One study, of only 12 children, supported the link between MMR and the increased risk of the development of autism.  This has been discredited by the scientific and medical experts.  However, none of the studies that prove the absence of a link have caused the media hysteria that accompanied this 'rogue' study.

I don't see front-page headlines in the press supporting and highlighting the proper scientific studies proclaiming "MMR does NOT cause autism", and  "Get your child vaccinated with the MMR jab and help prevent an outbreak of measles".

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Well I don’t know exactly what it’s like where you live, but in central London you can’t move without some poor sod thrusting some form of printed matter at you as though their lives depended on it. (I wonder if their loved ones are held captive ….and finger’s are at risk if they don’t manage to shift 5,000 copies a night?) These free newspaper touters are not only annoying but they’re also environmentally unfriendly.

On my way to and from work last week I set out to collect whatever free literature was offered to me. In just 5 days, I collected the following (see picture). I made it a rule not to accept copies of the same publications in the same evening. This is because my route home takes me past five London Nite vendors and 4 London Paper vendors – so in practice I would have ended up with more than 45 copies of the same publication!!

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Over the last week, we've had a little bit of mist in the mornings, during the rush-hour drive to work.

Not really fog - not thick enough, you can still see cars a good distance ahead. 

So why do so many people insist on using their fog-lights?  It's like the've got a a hardly used Christmas present that they get to bring out twice a year at the first opportunity.  

All it does is make driving more dangerous, as the fog-light is so bright it's distracting, and it often masks the brake lights when they come on.

If it's one of those rare occasions where fog-lights are actually needed - please switch them off when the fog has cleared.  There's no need to drive around with them on for the next two weeks.

Then there's the other idiots, who drive with no lights on at all - like they're in stealth mode or something.

It's a shame common sense isn't part of the driving in the driving test.  There'd be far fewer people on the road for a start…

I've been getting annoyed recently with the number of football commentators who continue to criticise the defence of Liverpool.  As a Liverpool fan, I feel it's my duty to put people straight when they repeat the banal comments of a football commentator as though they are the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  The same I've had to do for ages with regards to the abilities of Peter Crouch (but that's another rant entirely). 

Apparently, the Red's zonal marking that Rafael Benitez introduced is the cause of our defence leaking lots of goals.  But this is merely another factoid that has been repeated enough times so people have accepted it as fact…

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Just read an alarming article on the BBC website: Letters 'key to a woman's heart' 

Men should boost their literacy skills and revive the forgotten art of writing love letters, a survey suggests. Of 2,000 UK women interviewed for the Department for Education and Skills poll, 77% said they would prefer a letter to a romantic text or e-mail.

The obvious argument about statistics to one-side for a moment - trying to improve literacy skills by convincing men to write love letters - is a bit like trying to increase the number of mechanics by convincing women to perform an oil change! Let's face it, it isn’t going to happen - and for a number of reasons:

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Here's an example of how someone can get accessibility and usability horribly wrong through not using common-sense and thinking about what they are designing and how it will be used.

Virgin Trains Toilets

Have you used the new Virgin Trains? They're pretty good. Fresh, nicely done out. Pleasant decor (for trains anyway), comfortable chairs, plug sockets to power your laptop, mobile phone, etc. Saying all that, there's one area where Virgin Trains have got something that should be very simple, badly wrong. I'm talking about the toilets. To try and make them accessible for all passengers, they have made them large, with sliding doors to make access easy. An excellent idea, and a thumbs up. But where they have gone wrong, very wrong, is with the door locking mechanism. (more…)