Perhaps this time as we are in the build up to the 2012 Olympic Games is a good time to consider where sport is and where it is headed in the future. It seems to be going the way of every other business where profit is more important than the customers or the sport itself. The fans, as customers, are only useful as financial sheep to be fleeced by the money men and the idea of sport for the pleasure of the sport is limited to Sunday leagues and joggers.

The latest example of money talking in sport is the remarkable changes in the TV coverage of F1 in the UK. The BBC had an exclusive contract until 2013. Suddenly and out of the blue, it seems, they have changed all that and come to an arrangement whereby SKY get the rights to show the whole of every F1 race in the calendar for 2012 onwards while the BBC will show half the races live and then highlights of the other 50% of races later in the day.

Money can surely be the only reason this has happened. A shortage of money at the BBC which is struggling to make cutbacks and a surplus of money available from SKY who seem to want to buy up the rights to every sport under the sun in order to force people to spend money to watch what many consider part of our culture.

We are not talking about pennies here either. If you currently do not have SKY TV you will have to fork out around £500 to watch the whole season of live F1 races. If you want to watch it in HD it will cost another couple of hundred pounds or so. This is a serious cost to supporters who have been fans for many years. Only some of those diehard fans will be able to afford it or justify such a high additional expense.

The BBC appear to have tried to make the best of a difficult situation where they just could not justify the cost of continuing an arrangement where they had the exclusive transmission rights. The BBC has to make some severe cost reductions over future years and they have decided that the full cost of TV rights for live showing of F1 racing was too much to pay.

This seems to be the way all sport is going. The profits available from Pay TV allows SKY to outbid everybody else and the money is just too appealing for sports bodies to see the difference between what is good for sport or making money. They see the pound notes in front of their eyes and cannot resist the lure of it even though that may be damaging to the sport.

It seems highly unlikely F1 is going to gain a single viewer through this deal since anyone who had SKY TV could previously watch the F1 races live on the BBC. It seems highly likely that F1 will lose significant numbers of viewers through this deal. F1 is an exciting sport for fans but not once the race has taken place and you have heard the results. Once the result is known there is not much point to watching how it happened and in these days of 24hr news and information on the Internet it is hard to avoid hearing the results.

I think this is a sad event for F1 and a sign of the times that sport is now a just another business selling a product. No longer is it about fans enjoying sport. It is all about the money. F1 is a hugely expensive sport but its success depends on the enthusiasm of its fans to support it, watch it and make it worthwhile for sponsors to spend the large amounts of money needed by the sport. Without the fans it is nothing so when the fans feel cheated and betrayed it must be damaging for the sport.

Even the Olympics is now tainted with the smell of money in everything it does. Sponsors decide what can and cannot be used to purchase tickets, what drinks should be available and even what T-shirts you are allowed to wear, if they get really picky.

As sports fans we have two choices. We either succumb to the power of the accountants and the money men or we walk away and ignore the sports that previously enthralled us but now want us only for our money. I have been a fan of F1 for over twenty years and have hardly missed a race. Suddenly I feel that journey is coming to an end. Do I really care who wins? I did but now it seems less important. I will no doubt watch the occasional race but I will not care as much and I certainly won’t be choosing to pay extra for the privilege of being a fan of a sport.

Practice handling your tools in your workshop or garage. You don’t want to be learning how to use a power driver or a saw when you are working on the roof installing solar energy capture panels. Safety is more important than energy saving so know your tools and how to use them when you are on the ground first.

Get a tool belt if you don’t already have one. When working on your roof a toolbelt or tools backpack will keep your nails and screws safe and ready to use in the pouch and you can also get tool belts that can secure your electric drill or power screwdriver so you keep your hands free for holding on and staying safe.

Know your tools on the ground. Make sure you have the right tools and a toolbelt to hold them and be safe while you install your solar energy recovery system panels.

While we all suffer from stress that does not mean we all suffer from depression but in many cases we do. They say that one in four people will experience depression in their lifetimes and I can believe that. We all go through certain very difficult to cope with periods in our life and depression is only one small step away for even the most determined of people.

Understanding some of the tell tale symptoms of depression will help you be better prepared and if you catch it early you may be able to make the changes necessary to avoid suffering with depression.

Depression is all down to how we think and how we see the world through our mind. If we can change the way we see things we can cope with stressful events in a more productive way and maybe avoid suffering from depression.

I experimented over the years with non-stick pans that lost their non-stickiness, aluminum pans that were light and easy to use but they warped and would never sit flat on the stove.

I bought expensive branded pans and cheap throw away pans but I was always disappointed until one day I decided to try cast iron pans and I have never looked back after that.

To put it in the simplest of terms I’ll just say this. One simple statement of fact, cast iron cooking pans are the business. There is nothing to touch them in my opinion. Once seasoned with cooking oil they are almost completely non-stick. They never warp or bend so they always sit flat on the stove. They spread the heat beautifully so you never get those heat spots that cause food to burn on the center of the pan and they last a lifetime.

How come we fell for all that marketing stuff about modern lightweight pans? Cast iron pans are the only way to go as far as I am concerned and it is just a shame that I never discovered that years ago.

Don’t make my mistake of the past. Go check out cast iron cooking sets and treat yourself.

Golf has always seemed to be mucj more of a sport to participate in rather than simply one to watch, to me at any rate. I just don’t get it. Why do people want to watch other people playing when they could be playing golf themselves?

I enjoy the occaisional game of golf but have never been a man who would make my partner a golf widow but it is a challenging game and we all need lots of practice. There are lots of different training guides and golf training ideas for improving your game and I would benefit from a bit of study with them but I doubt I would learn much from watching the professionals play but maybe, one day when I am rich I will visit one of this big golfing events and see if I have it all wrong.

Let me guide you through the way timeshare works is that a whole bunch of people each own a period of a week or more for the same property. If you own the first week in July that is your property for that week regardless of if you choose to use it or not. You can leave it empty but that seems like a waste of money.

You can usually let friends and family use the timeshare property for a vacation if you cannot go yourself. You may be able to rent out the property for your period of ownership or you may choose to swap your week with someone else who owns a timeshare property somewhere else.

The benefits of timeshare are mainly that it is cheaper than owning a whole property and it needs little management from you. The downside is that it fixes your vacation in one place but you may be able to do a swap and try different places around the world.

The tyres made available for this race helped make it a great race because they were more subseptible to wear and damage causing the teams to try different strategies and have plenty of pitstops.

The tyre supply company may not want this sort of publicty but race fans will love it.Let us hope we get more races where the tires are marginal and require careful management.

The F1 season has been great so far and let us hope we continue to have these fascinating and exciting races right up until the end of the season.

Nevertheless, travel insurance remains an important item to be arranged when you make any travel plans. Most of the travel insurance policies will give you reassurance that if some sore of disaster befalls you while you are travelling there should be some help available.

An annual policy makes good sense if you travel several times each year but if you only go away once you might consider some of the shorter term policies which are likely to be cheaper.

I bet you have items in your closet that you have not looked at in a year. I certainly do and most other people will too. We have those items of clothing and accessories that we keep just in case, for that special day when they would be just right but somehow that day never arrives.

If you haven’t used something in a year, the chances are you will not use it this year either. Package it up and put it in your attic or storage space if you must or throw it away or recycle it if you can bring yourself to do that but get it out of your closet.

If you can be strong and throw away the dresses,coats, jackets and slacks you don’t use you might double the space in your closet. Surely there are better things to keep than the clothes you don’t wear.

Go on, be brave. Have a great springtime clear out with a good session of closet organizing which will allow yourself to see what you have got and easily sort them into different color sequences so you can find things quickly and simply.