Wolves or Hull (this is not a football-related article)

Make sure you watch Channel 4 News tomorrow - noon or evening. Wolverhampton's academic redundancies will feature as part of a piece on whether this fair city has really become the worst city in Britain, taking the crown from Hull on a number of indices.

Me? I'm stunned it's not my beloved Stoke.

The clocks struck thirteen

Won't be blogging much today - I'm stuck in MC331 waiting for you all to collect your essays.

I'm still feeling utterly miserable about the elections, amongst other things. Yesterday, I should have phoned my local MP or branch and joined in with the process of recovery, indefatigably knocking on doors, putting forward the case for a hard-left turn, persuading people to see the light.

Instead, I bought a massive sack of Marmite-infused cashew nuts (thus proving that industrial food can be a good thing), a box set of all the decent-ish Star Trek films (1-6) and went to bed at 7 p.m., to catch up on the weekend's newspapers and some sleep. I didn't even listed to any news later than Channel 4's at 7, which is unprecedented for me: usually I take in The World Tonight on Radio 4 from 10-10.30, then turn over to Newsnight from 10.30-11.20, then the midnight news on Radio 4. Sometimes I'll even listen to the World Service news at 1 a.m too. That's how I know stuff.

By the way: if you eat at Café Rouge or Bella Italia, make sure you give the staff a tip in cash, but be careful. These restaurants, and many others, keep the tips to make the staff pay up to the minimum wage if you pay by card, and they're sacking staff who mention what's going on. From October, staff will legally be paid the minimum wage (currently £5.72 for over-21s) without counting tips. Of course, in a civilised society, everybody would be paid enough without tips, but being a waiter is a horrible job (as I know from experience), and they deserve something extra.

(title of the post is from 1984)