Diss, as you are probably unaware, is a small insignificant town in Norfolk. Despite it's close proximity to God's own county of Suffolk still can't escape it backward Norfolk tendencies. On 17th November 2003, a news story was brought to my attention. It seems the spirit of Scrooge is alive and well in Norfolk. It appears that business bosses sent out begging letters asking residents to dig deep to pay for some Christmas lights for the town. Now you'd have thought the the locals would have plenty of cash as the scum only charge £5 to get into games but no, the town, with a population of 7,000 managed to send in a grand total of a single £5 note.

Chamber of Trade chairman Ken Wells, proved to be the master of understatement by saying that the response was a little disappointing. If we do a quick bit of maths we will see that letters were sent to 250 businesses, posters were put up and adverts put in the local papers. In today's prices, a 2nd class stamp cost 20p. 250 letters at 20p postage each would have cost £50. Add onto that, the cost of printer the letters, posters and placing the adverts. We will be generous and say the whole operation cost £100 - so that's a lot of effort to lose £95 and they say we have bad financial control at Portman Road.

Apparently, a similar campaign to raise money to keep Darren Huckerby at Carrot Road has been abandoned.

In case you are wondering, this wasn't made up in an attempt to belittle the inhabitants of Norfolk - there is no need to make anything up as there is plenty of factual evidence. You can read the full stories on the following websites (assuming they don't delete the links).

Eastern Daily Press
Sky News