A load of noughts.

So what about this business of RBS Chief Stephen Hester and his £1m (well nearly) bonus.  The public - well the press really - have effectively forced him to give it up. Right or wrong?  I would just make two points - firstly "bonus" has become a dirty word, but essentially what we are talking about here is performance related pay.  You meet these targets and we will pay you such-and-such over and above your basic salary - and this is a fairly common arrangement between employers and employees at all levels.  Which leads us on to my second point - if his bonus had been £50,000 say, it's very unlikely that it would even have been commented on. It's only the fact that we are dealing with what for most people are fairy-tale figures that makes it newsworthy.  Which I am afraid raises the uncomfortable question as to whether this is all really about envy.

Woof, woof.

Can't believe there are calls for Staffordshire bull terriers to be added to the breeds banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act.  Like any breed, Staffies can be trained to be vicious, but their basic nature is playful, friendly, loveable and particularly good with children.  They are chunky and muscular and if they jump up at you - which being friendly and playful they are wont to do - when you're not ready for it they can easily knock you over, but that's about the only way in which they can be considered a danger.

Back to the drawing-board

So we've all be misled all these years, have we?  We've always been told that aircraft fly because the air flowing over the top of wing has to travel further than the air flowing under the wing, and hence travels faster, and therefore the air pressure on top of the wing is less than that under the wing - and this produces lift which keeps the thing in the air.  It now appears that we have been confusing cause and effect.  The air pressure on top of the wing is indeed lower than that under the wing, but this has nothing to do with how far the air has to travel - it's simply that the shape of the wing - the so-called aerofoil shape - creates this pressure difference.  Air at a lower pressure moves faster, so the fact that the air on top of the wing moves faster is an effect, not a cause.

A trivial question

What do you call those little tokens that you get in Trivial Pursuit for answering a major question and which you then put in your circular playing piece.  We call them "cheeses" but I'm not quite sure why - perhaps because they look something like those Dairylea processed cheese triangles?  What do you call them?

The square on the hypotenuse...

On a recent family holiday, I spent a lot of time teaching one of my granddaughters how to solve quadratic equations (I had to mug up on it first!). And I thought to myself - what's the point?  In my long life I have never, outside the schoolroom, had cause to solve a quadratic equation - nor have I ever needed to use Pythagoras's theorem or trigonometry.  So why on earth do we bother to teach children these things?  Unless they specifically want to specialise in maths, or some science subject which will require advanced calculation, all a child needs to know to get by in life is the ability to add, subtract, divide and multiply, and perhaps, just perhaps how to set up and manipulate a basic algebraic equation.  Are we wasting our time - and theirs?

Ripples on a pond

This proposed legislation in the US (see post of 18th Jan) has ramifications going well beyond file sharing.  If websites are going to be held legally responsible for the content of files stored on them then this could scupper the idea of the cloud (see post of 7/11/08) which is generally seen to be the future of home computing.  Also it would mean that if I were to say something defamatory on this blog, the defamed person could not only take action against me, but also take action against Yahoo which is the website which hosts Blogger.  This may well not be what the proponents of the legislation intend, but we've spoken before about the Law of Unforeseen Consequences.

Where's me dole?

Where do you stand on this question of a benefit cap?  Some LibDems don't like it, some bishops don't like it, and Labour is doing its usual job of facing both ways - saying they approve in principle but would do it differently.  For me, the situation is quite clear - it is unacceptable that those on benefit (which let's be clear, means that their money is coming from you and me) should find themselves in a better position financially than those who are not.  It's that simple.  William Beveridge the "father" of the welfare state, was clear that benefits should be set at subsistence level.  You shouldn't starve, but you should  "struggle to get by" on benefit - else where is the incentive to get off benefit?  And there are plenty of people not on benefit who are are struggling to get by.  The fact that there are some tens of thousands of people on benefit who are living a comfortable life is a disgrace.  The problem, as mentioned in previous posts is that successive governments have been unwilling to do anything about it, with the result that reform is now having to be introduced on a crash-bang-wallop basis which is not the ideal way of going about it.

That woman.

Madonna's film about Wallis Simpson does not seem to have gone down too well with the critics.  Titled "W.E." (an in-joke - it's a sort of monogram of Wallis and Edward and they were often referred to as "the royal we") it seeks to tell the story of their relationship from her point of view.  She is often held solely responsible for the Abdication Crisis, and Edward is seen as just a weak man under her spell, but every indication is that that outcome was not what she sought at all.  When Edward abdicated, few people gave their relationship more than a few months, but the fact that they married and stayed together - often in somewhat socially demeaning circumstances - for the rest of their lives, seems to indicate that they had some genuine long-lasting feeling for each other.  The general consensus today seems to be that she did this country a huge favour by ridding us of a very personable but potentially disastrous King.  Our house was split - my Dad was scathing about Edward and Wallis - particularly Edward, whom he saw as in complete dereliction of his duty.  I think my Mum on the other hand thought the whole thing rather romantic.  

Headline fodder.

Anybody else feel uncomfortable about the way the captain of this cruise-liner which has capsized off the Italian coast is being tried and convicted in the media?  He may of course be guilty of all the things which are being said about him, but the proper forum for all this to be investigated is either some form of official inquiry, or possibly (probably even) in court.  The press on the other hand have their own agenda which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with truth or justice.

The mighty dollar rules...

I've posted before about the way sponsors of big events are allowed to dictate what can and cannot be consumed, sold or displayed at those events, but this surely takes the biscuit?  The 2014 World Cup is to be held in Brazil.  Several years ago, in a move designed to curb violence at football matches, Brazil banned the sale of alcohol at football grounds.  Very sensible.  BUT... Budweiser are one of FIFA's big sponsors and as a result FIFA are demanding (demanding mind you) that beer (guess whose?) is on sale at all World Cup match venues.  So they consider they have the right to override Brazilian law then?  The mind boggles!