Damned if you do......

Hefty daily doses of Vitamin D can dramatically reduce your chances of developing certain cancers, apparently. But wasn't it only a few months ago that I remember reading that hefty daily doses of Vitamin D could cause liver damage? I'm confused.

A bulging net.

I don't take much interest in football anymore - not since it gave up any pretence of being a sport, and became just a money game - but to the extent that I do follow a team, then it's my local team, Wolverhampton Wanderers. It's hard to believe that back in the 50's Wolves and their near neighbours and deadly rivals West Bromwich Albion were the top teams in the land. Since then, I've followed Wolves through thick and (mainly) thin. This season, they are once again underperforming, with no realistic chance of doing any better than maybe scraping into the play-offs. But on Wednesday night they booked their place in footballing history by becoming the first team in English football to score 7,000 league goals, so let's hear it - Up The Wolves!!!

Coincidences.

Perhaps for want of anything better to write about over the Christmas/New Year period, the papers have picked up on the story of a man who claims to have found an image of the Virgin Mary in a stain on a piece of pottery. This is a classic example of seeing something significant in a random chance event. Given that the pottery is stained, then the stain has to take some form or other. Look at it this way - if I take a well shuffled pack of cards and deal out four cards, and they turn out to be the four Aces, then, assuming I've not cheated, you would probably be amazed, and if you were a good statistician, would point out that the chance of this happening was 4/52 x 3/51 x 2/50 x 1/49 = 24/6497400 or 1 in 270,725. So now I put the Aces back in the pack, shuffle again, deal out four more cards, which turn out to be the 2 of Spades, 7 of Diamonds, King of Diamonds and 10 of Clubs. Do you consider this amazing? Probably not, and yet the probability of dealing those four cards (or any other named four cards) is exactly the same - 1 in 270,725. The difference is simply that four Aces have a particular significance, whereas the second four cards have none. So the stain on the pottery could have ended up in any of who knows how many ways, all of them equally improbable. But you are unlikely to say "Oh, look at this stain - it looks a bit like a dead bird under a sort of upside-down W", whereas if it resembles something which has significance for you , you will think you've seen something special.

Is it April 1st already?

I studiously try to avoid commenting on matters outside the UK, which I feel I am not competent to talk about, but I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a report that President Bush's Christmas message included a reference to his armed forces who "...are working to...advance peace...around the world". This has got to be a wind-up, surely?

Site of the month

Prize for best Christmas site goes to NORAD, the North American air defence organisation, who used their radar network to track Santa on his way round the world delivering presents. Kept my grandchildren reasonably quiet all Christmas Eve evening, which is no mean feat! Apparently they've been doing this for some years but this is the first time I've come across it, and it gets a well-deserved five stars from me.

As Tiny Tim would say...

Highly professional and well-presented Queen's speech, as usual. But did my ears deceive me? Did she, as Head of the Church of England accept, however tentatively, that other faiths may have something worth saying? If so, God (whoever he or she may be) bless her. I was brought up as a churchgoer, but the one thing I have never been able to accept is the idea that salvation (whatever that is) is only open to Christians - all others are damned. I mentioned that I was at a funeral the other day, and the vicar gave the usual reading - you know the one "In my Father's house are many mansions..." Well actually she used one of the new translations, but I have always preferred the language of the Authorised Version, but the bit that always grates with me is "...no man cometh unto the Father but by me...", which as far as I can see means that something like seven out of every ten members of mankind are doomed to eternal hellfire. Even as a child, I remember being confused as to how a religion which preached love, tolerance and forgiveness could take such a stance. If there's any hope for the world, the major religions have got to come to terms with, and accept each other. I have the greatest respect for the Queen, and if she has taken a first small step in this direction, then my respect is increased a hundredfold.

My seasonal message

A happy and peaceful Christmas to one and all.

A sure thing

A couple of years back I had a small friendly bet with a mate that the new Wembley Stadium wouldn't be ready for the 2006 Cup Final, as was the original plan. Loser to buy the winner a bottle of Scotch. I've got my glass ready.......!

Don't mention the dog!

Plans are in hand apparently to remake the film "The Dam Busters" (why??), but problems have arisen over Guy Gibson's dog. Anyone who's seen the original film, or read the book will know that the dog's name reflected the fact that it was a coal-black Labrador. Unfortunately, it is also a word which now, despite the best efforts of Richard Pryor (God bless 'im) cannot be freely used because it might cause offence. To whom, exactly, I'm not quite sure, but there are those who are prepared to find offence in anything - remember Mary Whitehouse? Agatha Christie wrote a book which has had to be retitled because it contained this word. I'm sure you all know what the word is, so isn't it silly to have to keep tiptoeing round it just because some brain-dead morons use it as a derogatory generic name for people of a certain colour. Why don't we all just grow up?

Yorkshire puddings, Chelsea buns....

So now you can't call a pork pie a Melton Mowbray pie unless it's been made in Melton Mowbray apparently. Of course, I'm looking at things purely from a consumer's point of view, but it does all seem rather silly and trivial. I can see that if a product is specific to a place or an area, because it depends upon some ingredient which can be found or grown only there, or some process which can be carried out only there, then it is perfectly justifiable to protect its identity in law, but where we are dealing simply with a recipe using common ingredients, or a process which can just as well be carried out in one place as another, then its name simply reflects the recipe or the process. An Eccles Cake is what it is because of the ingredients from which it is made, and the way in which it is made, and not because of anything specific to the small Lancashire town of that name. I would suggest that the acid test should be - what would the reasonable consumer understand from the name in question. If I buy a Melton Mowbray pork pie, do I really think I am getting a pie which has been made in Melton Mowbray, or do I think I am simply getting a pie made in a certain way? Speaking for myself, definitely the latter.

One man's meat.......

Grandchildren are getting really excited as Christmas draws near, and it's certainly a magical time for them. But not for everyone. Went to a funeral earlier this week, and now for one lady, Christmas-time will always be associated with the death of her husband. Sobering thought.

Oh no - the flag's up!

Do you understand the offside rule? It seems that most people - even most football supporters - don't. And yet the basic principle is very simple and straightforward. If you are ahead of the ball when it is played, there must be at least two members of the opposing team between you and their goal - or at the least you must be level with the most forward of them. No problem, eh? Well if they had left it at that, there wouldn't have been, but they had to complicate the issue by introducing the concept of "active" and "passive" players. Take the Arsenal/Chelsea match last Sunday. Arsenal felt badly done by when a van Persie shot beat the goalkeeper all ends up, but the goal was disallowed for offside - not against van Persie, but against Henry. Arsenal argued that Henry was not involved in the play and should therefore have been designated a passive player, and the fact that he was several light-years offside should therefore have been ignored. My opinion? Get back to the basic rule. These are highly-paid professional players who know the rules, and presumably are in control of their feet and can count up to two. Why should any allowances be made? - if they get themselves into an offside position, they should take the consequences. Let's do away with these unnecessary complications. Do you remember Brian Clough's comment when an earlier test used to be whether a player in an offside position was interfering with play or not - "If they're not interfering with play, what the **** are they doing on the pitch?".

Education, education, education.

The Prime Minister's plans for school reform are coming under fire - mainly from his own party. Personally, I've always found it rather strange that it's perfectly OK to provide special schools and specifically tailored teaching for the educationally sub-normal, but the idea of doing the same for the educationally super-normal produces outrage and cries of elitism. Why should our brightest kids not be given every opportunity to achieve their full potential? I thought we'd got rid of the politics of envy, but apparently not.

Puffing Billy

In a recent case, a judge has ruled that smoking may amount to contributory negligence - at least, smoking since 1971 when health warnings first started to appear on cigarette packets. He made no distinction between people who started smoking after 1971, and those who started earlier and continued after 1971 - indeed the case in point involved a man who started smoking in 1955. I think the distinction should be made, because as a one-time smoker myself, I know how difficult it was to give up, and I can empathise with anyone who has tried and been unable to do so. Those who chose to start knowing the risks can certainly be considered as knowingly putting themselves in harm's way, but I feel it is a little hard to assume that anyone who continued smoking after 1971 was doing so by choice. I, by the way, gave up in 1965 - not because of health considerations, but because, as a newly married man, it was costing too much.

In my young day....

As a senior citizen, I am often drawn into discussions by my contemporaries about how terrible the world is these days, and how much better it was when we were kids. I usually find myself saying something like "Oh yes, it was so much better when we didn't have 'fridges so the milk went off before you had a chance to drink it, freezing cold in the winter with no central heating, draughty windows, no hot water until you'd raked out last night's ashes and got a fire going. Those were the days!". No, in my book life is infinitely better these days, certainly on the practical front, but there's no doubt that attitudes have changed and that it's a very different world. This was brought home to me again the other day when our local paper published a notice for people to cut out if they wished and put in their front windows saying "No carol singers, thank you". When I was little I used to go out on my own on Christmas Eve (not before) and sing carols (at least two) at every house up and down our street, and get maybe 6d (2½p) a time. These days people are unwilling to open their front doors to strangers after dark, even if they can hear the singing over the noise of the television. It was, I think, a more open and innocent world in my young day, but a better one...?

Housey-housey

If the first sign of madness is talking to yourself, where does shouting at the television rank? There's a programme on in the afternoons called "The House Doctor" where an American lady helps people who are finding difficulty in selling their houses. This invariably involves a certain amount of redecorating, and what she calls "decluttering". Prospective buyers are filmed giving their comments before and after. Makes for reasonably good television, but are these prospective buyers for real, or are they told what to say? I suspect the latter, but if they really are genuine and unscripted, then you do wonder about their intelligence. Who in their right mind would walk into a room of a house they were considering buying and say "Oh, I don't like all this furniture". This is the point at which I have to stop myself screaming at the screen "You idiots, if you buy the house, this will be an empty room". And "I don't like this wallpaper" has me wanting to shout "Well, change it then - you're almost certainly going to have to anyway". Surely what any sensible prospective purchaser is looking at is the potential, rather than the actuality. The worrying thing is that apparently the House Doctor is successful - houses which have not sold tend to sell after her ministrations, which seems to suggest that the average prospective buyer is in fact pretty stupid.

We are sailing, we are sailing....

It's coming up to Christmas, and the booze-cruise business is booming. Readers of this blog (are there any?) will know that I am basically pro-Europe - not wildly so, but essentially because I do not see any sensible alternative. But there are aspects which drive you silly, and the disparity of taxation is one of them. I regularly holiday in Spain and the Canaries, and when I'm there I can buy a litre of brandy for half the cost of a standard 70cl bottle of exactly the same product here, and a litre of basic table wine for less than a quarter of the cost of a bottle here. The difference of course is the tax. So just where is this "Common Market"? It makes no sense.

Resquiescat in pacem

I keep a database of books I have read - purely a practical matter, so that I know what I've read, and what I've enjoyed - and what I haven't. My latest read was Ed McBain's "Alice In Jeopardy", and as I've been reading McBain for as long as I can remember, I thought I'd check up and see how old he is - must be getting on, I thought to myself. But I just wasn't ready for the news that he had died. July apparently, and he was 78 which is a good enough age, but dead? No more 87th Precinct stories? Carella, Kling, Meyer Meyer all silenced? Somehow it just doesn't seem possible. As John O'Hara is reputed to have said on being told of the death of George Gershwin "I don't have to believe it if I don't want to".

Two breasts good, two balls bad?

Not sure how I feel about positive discrimination. David Cameron is intent on having more women as prospective Conservative MPs, and to this end has decreed that all future candidates are to be chosen from a centrally produced list, 50% of which will consist of women. If this means that women will be included who deserve on merit to be chosen, but who might otherwise be discriminated against by mysogynistic male-dominated selection panels, fine and good. But if what this means is that able men will be pushed off by less able women, simply to keep the percentage of the sexes equal, then this can't be right, or good for the party.

TV Times

Last night I watched "My House in Umbria" on one of the Sky movie channels. Not my choice - my wife's, but I found myself enjoying it. Of course, the real star was the ravishing Umbrian scenery, but it served to remind me what a talent we have in Maggie Smith - sorry Dame Maggie Smith, and what a talent we have lost in Ronnie Barker.

24 hour news channels

I'm not sure about the way the television news channels handle "breaking news" stories. Turned on the TV this morning to hear about the oil depot explosion in Hemel Hempstead. Obviously of great importance to those in the immediate area, and of interest to the rest of the country, but it soon became clear that little was known other than that the explosion had happened and that the police were treating it as an accident. So then we had hours of waffle, phone interviews with anyone they could get hold of - none of whom could add anymore factual information - and commentary from a correspondent about a mile away who had nothing to report on other than what he could see, which was what we could all see on the screen. This was obviously an important story, but there must have been other news, and surely the better way of handling it was to keep going back to it on a regular basis, but otherwise continue with the other news. As I write, it is still the only story being reported on - and this five hours after the event. Sense of proportion required I think.

English as she is spoke

Did you see that report yesterday about an escaped chimpanzee who became dangerous and had to be killed? Tragic story, but what about this quote from a spokesperson at the zoo concerned - "...the animal became extremely aggressive after having been tranquilised...". Hmmm.

Vee haf vays.....

The House of Lords has ruled that evidence which has, or might have been obtained under torture cannot be used in legal proceedings in this country. This on the basis that torture is an "unqualified evil" which "can never be justified". Right decision but unnecessarily convoluted reasoning in my opinion. The UK courts have always taken a rather more robust line on improperly obtained evidence than, for example, the US. The UK line has always been that the admission of evidence is to be judged on how relevant it is and how likely it is to be true, irrespective of how it was obtained. So if a murder weapon is found in a suspect's house, it would be completely illogical not to allow it to be introduced in evidence, just because the circumstances in which it was found amounted to an illegal search. The illegality of the search is a matter that can be dealt with separately. So as I see it, the justification for not allowing evidence where there is knowledge of, or a suspicion of torture, is quite simply that such evidence is inherently unreliable - end of story.

Do as you would be done by - again!

A big car-boot sale near where I live is being forced to close because of threats of prosecution due to some of the stallholders being discovered selling "dodgy gear". Piracy is theft, proclaim the local Trading Standards Officers. Really? Just what is being stolen from whom? As far as I can see, if I buy a hooky copied CD, the only way this can be considered as theft is on the basis that I am thereby denying the producer of the legitimate article a sale. But as, I suspect in common with most people who buy pirate copies, I am doing so specifically because I am unable or unwilling to pay the price being asked for the legitimate article, they wouldn't be getting a sale in the first place. So who's losing out? Before they start complaining, those who produce regularly pirated goods should ask themselves why, and examine the way they price their goods, and seek to control the market. One of my grandchildren asked for the DVD of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for Christmas, and I had to explain that, as it had only recently been released in the cinemas, the DVD would not be out for some time yet. But why not? Because they can make a lot more money by forcing anyone who wants to see it to have to go to the cinema, that's why! As I've said before, those who deliberately rip people off are in no position to complain if they are ripped off themselves.

The car is king

My family often accuse me of being a grumpy old man, and maybe justifiably so. Certainly I seem to find a lot in the news to mutter about. How about congestion charging, which it seems is definitely on its way sooner or later? I have seen successive governments over my lifetime quite deliberately create an environment in which, for most people, a car has become an essential piece of kit - and now suddenly car use is being portrayed as antisocial and to be discouraged. Talk about being two-faced! Public transport is put forward as the acceptable alternative - I can only think by people who have never used it. And I know whereof I speak - I passed my test when I was 17, but didn't own my first car until I was nearly thirty, and prior to that used public transport on a daily basis. And this was in the days when it was infinitely better, cleaner and more reliable than it is today. Once having my own car, I realised what I'd been missing. And it's not just a matter of convenience and privacy. The other week I travelled into Birmingham by bus (well buses actually - two of them). This is a journey which would take me between 25 and 35 minutes by car depending on traffic. And by bus? 1 hour 10 minutes there, and 1 hour 17 minutes back. So a trip that would have taken me about two hours in total by car, took getting on for twice that long. Time I could have better spent doing something else. And it was raining, so I got quite wet into the bargain. Public transport - bah humbug!

Who can explain it?

Isn't it strange how the manner in which a person is killed affects how we feel about it? The inquest opened yesterday into those British victims of the tsunami last Boxing Day. Top news story, with many interviews of relatives and friends. Hour-long programme on prime-time television. And yet, why are their deaths any more terrible and tragic than the hundreds or possibly thousands of other people who have been killed accidentally over the past year? If a plane crashes killing a hundred or so, it seems to have massively more impact than the same number of people killed in individual car crashes. Like I say - isn't it strange?

Forbidden fruit

It has been suggested that the Government will increase the age at which you can buy cigarettes from 16 to 18. As any parent knows, the worst thing you can do if you want to prevent a teenager from doing something is forbid them to do it. Basic psychology. So such a move would simply make smoking more attractive to under-18s. Shooting yourself in the foot, really.

Get your facts right!

Oh dear, I'm going to nit-pick again! Report in the papers of a lad who was turned off his bus to school because the driver refused to accept a Scottish £5 note. Clearly this was something which shouldn't have happened, and the bus company have quite rightly apologised, but the report then went on to say that Scottish notes are legal tender. Well they aren't - simple as that, but this also shows a complete misunderstanding of what legal tender implies. If you are in debt, and you offer payment to your creditor in legal tender form, he/she is obliged to accept it, or suffer in costs if they later sue you for the debt. The rules relating to legal tender are quite complicated, but the crucial words here are "if you are in debt" - legal tender has no relevance unless you are. So when you offer to buy something in a shop, or buy your ticket on a bus, or whatever, you are not offering to pay a debt, and therefore legal tender doesn't come into it. If your offer to pay does not suit the shopkeeper, busdriver or whatever (for example offering a high-value note for an item worth pence) they are perfectly entitled to refuse it. So the bus driver was within his rights, however unwise he was to do what he did.

Don't mention the....

Sometimes interesting to look back at things that happened on this day in past years. So it was on December 3rd 1988 that Edwina Currie, then a junior Health Minister, told the country that most eggs were infected with salmonella. She was so roundly castigated for saying this from all sides that it led to her enforced resignation. So why is this interesting - because she was right! It took some thirteen years for there to be an official admission, but the fact is that she was sacked for telling the truth. And that should be a matter of interest, not to say concern, to everyone.

What goes around....

Isn't it funny how old ideas are taken out, dusted off, given an izzy-whizzy name and sold to us as something new? Ever heard of "synthetic phonics"? No, me neither but apparently it's the completely revolutionary idea of teaching children to read by getting them to learn the sound individual letters make, and then building up words by putting these sounds together. Well wow - how on earth did they think of that? But wait a minute - isn't this exactly how I and my generation were taught sixty-odd years ago? And for that matter, my own children thirty something years ago - and indeed, as far as I am aware, my grandchildren currently? So, however it may be presented to us, it's certainly not new.

Public money down the drain

So the costs of the 2012 Olympics are already running over estimate - now there's a surprise! These days little or nothing seems to come in on budget or on time. Certainly not government projects. Every indication that this will be another Millennium Dome or Diana Fountain - except that it'll be a damn sight more expensive! Watch this space.....