The BBC managed to have our Birmingham high jumper Tom Parsons changing colour in a preview piece earlier this week and yesterday their commentator told double gold medallist Usain Bolt that the 2008 Olympics would be remembered for him and US swimmer Michael Phelps who picked up eight golds.

Nice to see our cyclists, sailors and rowers and of course Rebecca Adlington in the pool made such a big impression then. Waste of time them turning up really.

It was a statement to match that from Mexico in 1968 when David Hemery won the 400 metres hurdles in a new world record time and David Coleman famously gave the commentary: "It's Hemery, Great Britain! It's Hemery, Great Britain!...Hemery wins, in second it was Hennige and who cares who's third?"

Well most of Britain actually David, it was our own John Sherwood.

At least Coleman had the excuse that his faux pas was in the heat of battle as Hemery stormed home. The latest gaffe was in the mixed zone some time after the race had ended.

Its all a bit subdued at Colmore Circus after the news that one in 4.3 will be losing their jobs here at the old Post & Mail. We are not quite sure who the 0.3 is although I can tell you Paul Fulford, our estimable, small but perfectly formed, restaurant spy, denies it is him.

Journalists are cynics by nature and love a good conspiracy theory so there have been enough rumours to choke a donkey, to quote a former Mail editor, about impending changes. When the announcement finally came it was, in a strange way, a relief that we finally knew what the future held, good or bad, for pretty well all of us.

Talks of new opportunities, new beginnings, securing the business and the like are abstracts, divorcing the company and its newspapers from the human element, the people who work here. The reality is that 65 people or so no longer have a job.

Some will eventually leave satisfied with offers that are made, others will go hoping to find a brighter future elsewhere. We just all hope that no one has to leave by a decision that was not theirs in the making.

Old hacks like me have seen it all before in the industry both among journalists and the decimation of printers in the 1980s here and elsewhere but that hardly makes it any easier. Share prices, profits, dividends, bonuses, yields and all the city speak that surrounds companies these days doesn't mean that much to someone wondering how to pay the mortgage and tell their spouse and kids they are out of work.

Looking for someone to blame we could start with the bankers whose greed and arrogance in creating their own South Sea bubble in virtually worthless mortgages started the whole credit meltdown and I suspect you would be hard pushed to find any of them have lost their jobs or even their bonuses.

Environment Minister Phil Woolas has been around spin so long that it must be like living on a top. He is claiming Prince Charles is somehow condemning the third world to starvation by questioning the wisdom of heading down the very rocky road of genetically modified crops. Then he challenges HRH to come up with evidence that GM crops are taking us towards environmental disaster.

A Government looking after our interests - after all it is us they represent - should be working on the basis that unless GM crops can be proved to be completely safe they should be banned not the other way round, you can use them until someone proves they are unsafe, by which time it could well be too late. This really is a case of guilty until proven innocent.

As for the third world starving argument, that is a red herring the size of a small whale. One of the major players in GM crops developed cereal strains which were resistant to its own weedkiller, effectively cornering the market in both seed and means to grow it in areas which can afford both - which cuts the third world out of the equation. We are talking multinational corporations chasing profits not charitable trusts wanting to help the poor and it is most unlikely strengthening the corntol of giant corporations over agriculture is going to do much to help the starving, many of whom go to bed hungry because they are poor not because there is no food available.

It is not as if genetic engineering is an exact science. No one is quite sure what is being developed or what the effect will be when cross breeding occurs with plants in the wild, or whether it might affect the life cycle, breeding or health of pollinating insects. Mess up that little ecosystem and disaster would be an understatement. Then, as an added bonus, the first indication of any health problems in man caused by genetic crops will not surface for 10, 20 or 30 years long after those responsible have retired to look after their wallets.

If we heed Prince Charles, and many eminently qualified scientists, in taking stock of GM crops before unleashing them on the world, even if they are completely wrong and GM crops are the savioour of mankind then the earth stays as it is. If, on the other hand, the Government listens to big business over common sense, which sadly is its usual course of action, and it all goes belly up then we will have a disaster on our hands which cannot be reversed - Pandora's box mark II.

Unless Mr Woolas is totally stupid I am sure he will not personally guarantee that GM crops are 100 per cent safe with no side effects on other plants, humans, insects or animals, and if he does give such a guarantee it is not going to be much use as he will be out of office and probably working for some giant agro-chemical firm by the time the fan has been swamped.

Anyone noticed that apart from being the murder capital of the world it seems Midsomer is also the fete and carnival capital?

What a surprise to find A level pass rates have gone up for the 26th year in a row this time to more than 97 per cent for the first time while 25.9 per cent of our successful students ended up getting an A grade. On the present rate of progress I reckon that by 2012 we should find 123 per cent will be passing A level while 114 per cent of the passes will be at A grade.

As usual anyone who happens to mention that the exams appear to be getting easier year by year, are less challenging, far less demanding and, to put it bluntly, dumbed down to the point where their value is questionable will be rounded upon and attacked by the usual squawks and screeches and pointed fingers of the fashionable classes then accused of being some sort of ist or other and showing some signs of various isms which is usual way our current leaders deal with dissent.

Critics will be accused of demeaning the efforts of thousands of pupils and hard working teachers yet our falling place in international educational tables and the numbers of schools looking for alternative exams tends to paint a rather different picture. People pointing out the glaring deficiencies in our exam system are not letting the children down, that job is being done rather well by meddling politicians and trendy educationalists.

I have no doubt that there are many fine teachers but they are lumbered with targets and league tables, political correctness and a curriculum which is designed for passing exams rather than encouraging teachers to teach and to provide an education.

As for the kids. Many work incredibly hard but when all but three per cent pass and more than one in four get an A grade what chance is there of the best being give a chance to shine or the rest being able to show a reward for hard work.

Einstein and Homer Simpson would both get an A in history if the question was what colour was Alexander the Great's white horse.

Yet another store has joined the green profit wheeze by charging for carrier bags - T K Maxx will be donating profits to the Woodland Trust.

Now before the accountants who now run the world in the name of profit had their conversion on the road to the bank, shops and stores bought billions of carrier bags every year so customers could carry away their purchases. The bags, from the way they fell apart with more than half a dozen items to carry, must cost fractions of a penny but multiply that by 80 billion or so and we are talking quite a few bob sitting uncomfortably in the column in the balance sheet stained by the tears of the suits clutching their business studies diplomas.

But, after slipping into the nearest phonebox and emerging with their underpants over the trousers as Ecoman, they announce that charging for carrier bags will save the planet and to show this is an altruistic gesture for the good of mankind, all profits will go to charity.

Profits mind, not all the 5ps or 10ps handed over for bags. Thus retailers are in a win win situation. If significant numbers of customers take their own bags then retailers will save money by not having to buy as many and instead of having to stand the cost of those they do have to buy they will be selling them at a huge profit.

Take out the cost of bags and the inevitable handling and admin charges, plus the interest on money sitting in the bank until it is handed over the charity and it becomes a useful little cost saver.

It was always on the cards when the likes of Aldi arrived charging for bags. They were honest about it. It was to help keep costs down. More upmarket retailers were wary of following suit and antagonising customers but paint it green and we swallow it.

I am sure charities will benefit and any reduction in plastic bags can only be a good thing but I just wish just for once that the population were treated as adults and did not have to put up with smoke, mirrors and spin.

You have to wonder if the BBC have any staff left in the UK as they cover every cough and snort at the Olympics. We are still on the sports that pop up on telly every four years and then, as far as TV are concerned, go into hibernation in some cave in the hills until the next Olympics but there still seems to be a BBC person on every street corner and a commentator and tame expert, plus interviewer, with every GB competitor.

Watching presenters enthusing about names and people they had never even heard of until they were handed a press pack with their media centre bacon buttie and coffee that morning can have its moments though as they pretend they have intimate knowledge of the 60kg auto gear change 68 spoke synchronised space hopper mountain bike balancing world championships held in a field in Latvia last March - we came 17th after being penalised for an undersize mullett.

But if the BBC thinks it is worth spending some £3 million in licence payer money - that's 21,505 colour licences by the way and that is without the exes and incidentals for the 437 people in Beijing on the world's biggest jolly - then it would seem only logical that it has some sort of interest in the sports it studiously ignores - apart from Cowes Week and Henley of course - for 206 weeks out of every 208.

We have sent out news readers - perhaps the light is better for reading in China - and all manner of media luvvies yet once they are back and we have endured the documentary equivalent of the holiday snaps and videos the sports they have been enthusing about and waving the flag for will be dropped like stones.

Some sports are not televisual, some are far more interesting for participants then spectators but if the Beeb is happy to shell out millions and fly two jumboloads of staff to watch them they could at least give them a mention, perhaps in a magazine round up between the repeats - sorry, second chances to see - and endless variations on the celebrity theme, celebrity brain surgeon or 747 pilot or whatever. After all they are not exactly awash with any other sport as they pick over the bones left by Sky, Setanta and even the commercial channels. A sport is for life not just the Olympics.

A friend was telling me that he had been to a pub quiz the other night where the winners of a jackpot had been disqualified for using mobile phones which is good news. Most pub quizzes these days are like a Nokia convention.

The mobile phone has become the scourge of pub quizzes. We used to have a team who enjoyed taking part and but as the level of cheating increased it became a dubious pleasure. I must be honest, once we saw a roomful of screens light up below table level on a particularly difficult question, we did delve into the recesses of the mobile internet ourselves at times. Once it became obvious you were competing with whoever had the fastest connection to Google the fun and indeed the competition had gone out of it.

When teams started holding mobiles up to speakers in music rounds to find song, artists and chart position from specialist sites and actual knowledge became a worthless commodity then it was time to move on.

One of the final straws was when several teams managed full marks in one round including a question which involved knowing W B Yeats first names were William Butler. When it came to the tie break with a member of each of the winning teams having to go up to answer a question it was a different story. With their intimate knowledge of the poet, and no phone, two had him as a contemporary of Shakespeare, one had him outliving Larkin and Betjeman by more than a decade and we won by being a couple of years out.

I cannot see how phones can be banned nor can I see any hope of honesty winning out in pub quizzes so I, the people in my team and quite a few other I know, no longer bother.

Life is full of mysteries. A simple question I have never managed to get answered is why, if speed cameras are such a deterrent, does the revenue go up year after year? None of these tax collecting partnerships of police and local authorities seem to have an answer.

It seems that in 1997 and the dawning of the age of Cool Britannia 713,000 fixed penalty notices were issued to drivers but by last year it had reached 1.8 milliion a year. I don't think you need a double first in maths from Cambridge to work out that as a deterrent the speed camera appears to be as effective as off licences are in deterring drinking. Mind you with more than £106 million a year revenue coming in, flash by flash we probably already have our answer.

Anyone find a touch of irony in Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi launching a law and order, crime fighting drive?

Pot and kettle perhaps?