Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

Everything is bad, bad, bad in the news at the moment. First there was volcanic ash. Now, apparently, there is all sorts on the way which is going to be horrible for your holiday. There is bad weather, and bad traffic, and the bad combinaition that these two combine to create — and

Now, on top of everything, the BBC is reporting that there will be horrible amounts of engineering work taking place on lines used by most of the major UK rail companies.

And even the AA themselves are predicting bad news. Roads will be congested to kingdom come as people visit DIY stores and garden centres, according to the story.

But then — should we not expect busy and congested roads when holiday season comes around? It’s part of the holiday experience. It’s to be expected. And bad weather — weather is weather: it’s not that that makes the holiday. Not really.

Of course it’s not very nice if it rains constantly while you’re abroad, but while you’re travelling?

My biggest worries abroad have always been financial ones. I remember going on tour while I was at university, and I just expected to be able to take my card out there and use it. But the first time I tried, it simply didn’t work. I wouldn’t want to carry too much cash in any case: it’s protecting your money abroad that can be a difficult thing.

Centenary Way in Manchester has apparently been named the UK hotspot for ‘crash for cash’ accidents. The idea is, I suppose, to go there especially with the intention to crash: these car insurance fraudsters deliberately stage accidents to claim compensation.

It sounds a strange idea to me, but there you go. It obviously works for them: Direct Line estimates that such scams total £350 million each year — which, when you think about it, is quite a shocking amount. Of course, I knew car insurance fraud was quite prevalent these days, but I didn’t know it was to the tune of so much money.

The company goes on to say that it compiled its rankings through analysis of insurance data, and with information from “coordinated nationwide investigations” by the car insurance industry.

The north of England seems to dominate the list, with junctions in Burnley and Stockport making up the top five, and another location in Lancashire at number nine.

I suppose it all adds to the difficulty of other people to make car accident claims for compensation — as well as how expensive it is for young drivers to get insured on their cars. When my younger brother was trying to insure his first car the other month, some of the sums he was being quoted were ludicrous.

But then, however unfair it seems, I suppose the amount of young drivers who crash every year force them into raising their prices.

The speed and power of Twitter has never been more evident to me than now, on the way back from work.

Who knew 140 characters could do so much? Well, I had seen the speed of it before: shocking news stories spread like wildfire on Twitter before any major news channel breaks them.

But Neil Gaiman just proved it all again. Neil — best-selling author of The Graveyard Book, Coraline, and American Gods (among numerous others) — has edited a book of short stories from all sorts of wonderful writers.

When he announced on Twitter that he would give away a number of copies to the first 50 to re-post his message, naturally, I re-posted it. Or re-tweeted it, as it’s known.

Unfortunately, so did hundreds of thousands of other people. I was not in the top 50: I could tell by how long it took to try and count my way to #1 (I gave up after a few seconds). But the line stretched on long after me, as well.

All this was in a matter of minutes. He posted it, I saw it a few minutes later, and within a few more minutes, the poor people in charge of sorting out who won what, and who to give what to, were bombarded by a storm of messages.

There is a definite power to Twitter. When you’re famous, anyway, and have over a million followers. It is seen when Mr Gaiman posts a link, and those waves of people click on it, and crash the website. But it is also seen in the way they help charities, or foundations, or people in need, if they are that way notified.

It’s like having your own army, in a way. On your phone. In your pocket.

Tim Tebow’s college career is, arguably, and very probably, the best the sport has ever seen. And this video shows you why — in a roundabout, humorous sort of way.

But the reason I like it so much is not just because it’s done in such a funny way – Tim Tebow’s foetus stiff-armed his illness away when he was in the womb, apparently – but because so much of it is so true. At least in my opinion.

Every time I hear someone criticize Tebow’s irregular throwing motion, I chuckle a little bit inside. Because to me, it’s like saying you don’t want Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi on your team because they kick the ball in slightly odd ways.

It even sounds ridiculous. Aren’t high school and college supposed to form a bit of a bridge into the professional league? Players are going before him — players who have achieved nowhere near as much as Tebow on the field — because of his throwing motion.

They say he holds the ball too low; that it will be easy to knock it out. But the reality is other players in the league have unorthodox throwing motions, and they have had MVP calibre seasons. And when the ball is in a quarterback’s hands, no matter where they hold it, it is easy to knock it out for a fumble.

Somehow, the last few words in the video seem to sum it all up perfectly.

The second episode in the new series of Britain’s Got Talent is on today, and I must admit, I’m quite looking forward to it.

Every week, there’s something about it. I don’t know what it is — I’m not normally into these singing shows, and I’m not sold on X Factor — but there is a charm, and something slightly funnier about BGT than the others.

Perhaps it’s acts like this amazing dog, which was on last week. When it first came on, I was worried that the act would be ludicrous, but it was hilarous, and actually very well done.

And equally, acts like this one are wonderful and truly remarkable.

Sometimes people just come along and blow you away, and you had no idea that something could blow you away. Last year, there was a fantastic saxophone player who moved one of the judges to tears with his music — and that dancer last week made the hairs on my neck stand up.

There’s certainly something about it. I have no idea who or what will be performing this week, but it is almsot guaranteed to be entertaining.

Perhaps that’s what’s so good about it: it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Yes, ultimately, the winner must perform in front of the Queen, so of course there can’t be anyone too whacky going through. But it is fun, and it is entertaining, and some TV shows lose sight of that these days, I think.

I watched the NFL draft last night — my first live draft, despite following the game for years. It was the 75th anniversary, and it was more exciting than I anticipated. Although it did last for a long, long time.

Of course, there were some predictable picks. Sam Bradford going first to the St. Louis Rams was about as safe a bet as could be. But there were trades, and surprises, and uncommonly big drops for some uncommonly talented athletes.

One of the biggest was Dez Bryant, the top receiver in the draft, who fell to the mid-twenties — and wasn’t even the first receiver taken. And Jimmy Clausen, who, by many of the so-called experts, was predicted to go within the first 10 picks, fell right out of the entire round.

I suppose it shows just how important character is to NFL teams and coaches now. They don’t want their players to run dogfighting rings; they don’t want their players to cause rifts in the locker room; and they want a quarterback – a leader – who the team and the organisation can believe in, even when things get tough.

But the pick I am happiest about, and the player I am most excited about, is Tim Tebow. Here’s a guy who is regarded by many as the very best college player in the history of the game. He had 80 scholarships out of high school, and had a phenomenal college career — and, what, because he throws the football in a bit of an unconventional way, he’s suddenly going to be a failure?

Sounds like rubbish to me. I said all along he would be a first round pick, and I took pleasure in saying “I told you so!” to my friends who were so adamant he wouldn’t get drafted till much later.

It’s going to be a lot of fun following his career. Something tells me the critics will be eating their words before too long.

I got a scare earlier today. It came in the form of a call from the college where I’m doing my post-graduate course. After a minute or so of security questions and hoo-hah, they said that there had been a problem with my payment.

Of course, it follows that I was a little worried. Here I was, in the middle of my course, and something was wrong with payment..

I decided to look up information on loans online, because I have a habit of Googling things when I need quick answers to problems, and more often than not there are other people who have gone through, or are going through, the same sort of situation.

There are a number of IFA’s — or independent financial advisors — on the internet, where you can search and ger reviews on all sorts of sites and solutions. And it’s things like that that can come in handy in a hurry.

Sometimes these can be better than the actual search engines. On Google, results can often be riddled with things you might not want to find. For example, house insurance quotes came in abundance when I searched on there, even when I didn’t specify anything like that as keywords. And private medical insurance, too.

But before I panic too much, I think I should perhaps get in touch with the bank and see exactly what the problem is. It migt just be that they are staggering the course payments, and I didn’t know about it.

In what is quite an interesting move, when you think about it, the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) recently signed two video game designers from US games developer Infinity Ward.

It’s interesting because while the CAA has a history of excellence, but its clients are people like Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, and Will Smith. Footballers like David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo are also enrolled, alongside American sporting superstars like LeBron James and Peyton Manning.

But video games? The move puts them right up there, with all these famous faces. I doubt something like this has ever been done before. Certainly, if it has, I haven’t heard about it.

But then, it’s easy to see the duo’s appeal.

Modern Warfare 2 sold 4.7 million units within the first 24 hours of release, generating over $400 million in worldwide sales. But the snowball did not stop there: by January 2010, it had taken over $1 billion. On April 21 this year, the Guinness Book of World Records officially recognised Modern Warfare 2 as the biggest, highest-grossing media release of all time.

There is no more anonymity about them. Their talent – and probably the fact that they made $1 billion in two months – has been recognised in an almost mythical way. And their work has been recognised as art, and as brilliance. Whether the series will ever be the same again without its two top talents is another question altogether.

This banker made £4 million in bonus money, according to reports. And that sort of money, in any field, is astonishing. It’s just staggering.

But then I think that — well — this is banking. And in banking, bonuses are how they make their money — or the big money, anyway. And if they weren’t paid such bonuses by their companies, they would just be lured elsewhere by other companies willing to pay them such bonuses.

That’s just the way of the world.

But it also got me thinking — what sort of bonuses do we, who are not bankers, have available? There are pension schemes, of course, and health plans, and company cars or phones in a lot of cases.

Some businesses even offer group health insurance. But are these enough? And, regardless, are they genuinely good deals, good offers; or are we just being thrown scraps, as it were, to entice us or keep us quiet.

And what about things like pension schemes? I have a friend who, having worked for twenty years or so in London, and earned a lot of money while he was there, has a laughable pension plan that won’t be much help at all when he retires.

Are you happy with what you’re offered outside of regular pay? Are you happy with your pension? It would be interesting to hear…

I thought it fitting to write about a funny little website, which I have stumbled across only now. It is Help.com’s list of funny metaphors used in high school essays across America.

Technically, I suppose, a lot of them are similes rather than metaphors, but they are nonetheless hilarious, and really brightened up my evening.

I particularly like this one: “He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.”

But, equally, they are all funny. And some of them are wonderfully accurate and concise: “The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.” You would struggle to write something better than that.

In a way, it is a sort of revolution: a complete disregard for everything that is pretentious and uptight about writing. Sometimes, through using simple images, and uncomplicated sentences, you can create something truly brilliant. And, in this case, routinely funny.

I think that I might take one of these lines as inspiration for a story or something. Or, at the very least, come up with some of my own similes and metaphors along the same lines.

What a brilliant little website.