Shear magic!

As a life-long fan, I am delighted that George Shearing has been recognised with a knighthood in the New Year Honours List. Well, well deserved.

Hold the clone....

Cloning is in the news again following the decision of the US Food and Drugs Administration that meat and milk from cloned animals can be sold without special labelling. Some people have an instinctive dislike of cloning, but here's the question for today - if a cloned animal mates and has offspring, are those offspring clones? Because this is the reality of what is being suggested - you won't find meat and milk directly from cloned animals on sale. What will happen is that these cloned animals will be used for breeding, and it is the meat and milk from their offspring, and in turn their offspring, and so on down the line, that will appear in the shops. So will there really be any difference?

The numbers game.

Fascinating - or rather sobering - fact of the day: Number of people killed in the September 11th attack = 2,973. Number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion = 2,978.

Pay up!

Sorry about yesterday - bit of a downer, but today I'm back on top of things, or at least as much on top of things as I ever get these days. So what's in the news today? Well it seems that we have finally paid off our war debt to the USA and Canada. Only taken 65 years! It's all too easy to take the mickey out of the Yanks for their late arrival in both World Wars, but it's worth remembering that, had it not been for lend-lease, we might well not have survived to see their entry into WWII.

Personal

Oh God, this is so difficult. I've got through Christmas - not without a blip or two, but I got through it. But now it's the run-up to New Year, and wherever you look, papers or television, it's retrospective time. Here I am trying so hard not to keep looking back, but everything conspires against me. I can't open a paper without being reminded of events which happened while my wife was still alive. I keep telling myself that I must concentrate more on the future, and less on the past, but it's so, so difficult.

..on the feast of Stephen.

So - Boxing Day. What's that all about then? First you may be surprised to learn that it is a purely British - and by extension Commonwealth - thing. To the rest of the world, including the USA, it is simply December 26th, or possibly St Stephen's Day. Its origins certainly go back to the Middle Ages, but there seems to be no general agreement about why it's called Boxing Day. The most likely explanation is that this was the day when the churches opened their alms boxes and distributed the contents to the poor of the parish. A more modern suggestion would be that it's the day when you take your unwanted presents (still in their boxes of course) back to the shops to exchange them!

Oh yes, it is! - Oh no, it isn't!!

Merry Christmas - unless that is you are a traditionalist of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in which case today is only the 12th December, and you have several shopping days still to go. How come? Well, the basis of the calendar we use today is a calendar developed back in the time of Julius Caesar, and for that reason called the Julian calendar. This calendar was based upon the calculation that a year - that is, the time it takes the earth to go round the sun and get back to where it started - is 365¼ days. Unfortunately it isn't - it's about 11 minutes short of that, which means that from the outset the "paper" calendar lagged behind the "real" calendar by around 11 minutes a year every year, which very quickly built up into a serious discrepancy. It was quite some time before this was fully appreciated, but in 1582, by which time the two calendars were 10 days out from each other, the then Pope - Gregory - introduced what has become known as the Gregorian calendar, which put matters right (well, nearly). Problem was that, despite it being a sensible and much needed reform, the fact that it was introduced by a Pope immediately put the backs up of the Orthodox and Protestant countries, who simply refused to go along with it. Over time, most of them saw sense and adopted the new calendar, but the Orthodox churches have never officially done so, and although it's something which is continually being talked about, the diehards still go by the Julian calendar, and their December 25th will be in thirteen days time - January 7th to the rest of us.

Help!

Plea on the news for people to think twice before dialing 999 for non-emergency matters, particularly over the holiday period. Perfectly reasonable, but the problem is, who decides what is an emergency? There's a lot of "being wise after the event" here, with examples being quoted of people ringing 999 about things which turned out to be trivial, but the point is that, at the time, those people didn't know whether it was trivial or an emergency, so they played safe and contacted 999. They, after all, are the experts - your average man in the street is not medically qualified. I think the emergency services need to remember this.

Undecided of the West Midlands.

My filter coffee machine is starting to do strange things - I think it may be giving notice. I've been looking round for possible replacements, and being a bloke and therefore irresistibly attracted to gadgets, I've been considering one of these pod machines - you know, Tassimo, Senseo, Dolce Gusto et al. But then I keep thinking - what if the manufacturers decide in a year or so's time that the one I buy is not profitable, and to stop making them. Because you can't use ordinary coffee in them, and because one machine's pods are not compatible with any other machine (VHS and Betamax all over again!) I'd be left with a useless piece of machinery - and they're not cheap. So I'm still thinking about it, and meanwhile my filter machine continues to do strange things!

This is a service?

Aargh, it's happened - the thing you dread at this time of year - a card received from someone you haven't sent one to. It happened to me yesterday. Never mind, I thought, I'll get one into the post straight away, first class. Until, that is, I looked on the Royal Mail's website to discover that, despite the fact that there are (or were yesterday) three postal days still to go, I was already too late, as the last date for posting first-class mail for delivery by Christmas was last Tuesday! I can't help remembering when I was a lad and used to be a "Christmas relief" postman, if you posted a card to a local address in the morning, it would be delivered that afternoon, and to anywhere else in the country the next day. How things have changed.

Fog, what fog??

I feel very sorry for those whose travel plans have been disrupted by the weather, but "dense fog", "visibility down to less than 100 yards"? Do me a favour - this isn't fog, it's just a heavy mist. I'll tell you about fog - fog's when you can't see the front gate five yards away. You don't get fogs like that any more - thank goodness!

Worrying.

Does anyone else find the media approach to the arrests of two men in connection with the Ipswich murders deeply disturbing? Neither of them has yet been charged with anything, and may, in the event not be, and yet their lives are being pried into, family and friends are being pushed into giving interviews, and every detail is being paraded in full public view. I can't help feeling that we are in danger of slipping into the American way, where cases are tried in the media before they ever get to court. This is not - or at the least should not be - the way things are done in this country.

Sense of proportion?

A man who suffered head injuries as a result of a fall at work which turned him from a "devout Christian" into a sexually uninhibited character who frequented prostitutes and became addicted to pornography has been awarded £3m in damages against his employers. Now I'm not suggesting that this would have been anything other than a distressing experience - particularly as it resulted in the breakdown of his marriage - but three million pounds??!!

The demon drink.

Apparently, scientists have found that, although too much booze can damage your brain cells, the brain is capable of repairing the damage, or at least some of it. For me, this is both good and bad news. The good news is that I don't need to worry so much about the amount I drink. The bad news is that I can no longer use it as an excuse for my mental vagaries - perhaps I really am getting senile!

So this helps you? - Tough!!

I was going to post this under the "you couldn't make it up" collection - but unfortunately and shamefully, it's all too believable. A couple have been producing cannabis-laced chocolate for MS sufferers, a great many of whom claim that this significantly reduces their pain and suffering. The couple insist that before supplying their product, their "clients" must produce medical evidence that they do in fact have MS, and they do not charge for the chocolate, although they do ask for voluntary donations. So what do you think - are these good and worthy people who should be praised for what they are doing, or are they criminals who should be prosecuted? No prizes for guessing what the official line is! I sometimes think we've really lost the plot.

Here is the news

One expects certain standards - or rather, lack of standards - from the tabloid press, but something better from the BBC. On their news programme this morning, a police spokesperson was being interviewed about the Ipswich murders investigation. She was asked whether it was true that one of the women involved was pregnant. She replied that it was true, but that it had no bearing on the investigation, and was a private matter which they would rather had not been made public. So what did the BBC make their top headline in their next news bulletin? You've guessed it!
Also on the news was a report about a memorial church service held last night at which candles were lit while the names of the five victims were solemnly read out. I'm sorry, but the word which immediately sprang into my mind was hypocrisy - in view of their lifestyle the church would have had little time for them while they were alive.

Face the facts.

Will the Stevens report put an end to the conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales? Nah!! There will always be those who refuse to believe that fate alone could rob the world of (as they see it) such a wonderful person. For myself, the most obvious evidence against this being an assassination is that, if you were intent on killing someone, then this would be a most inefficient and uncertain way of going about it. So much would depend on factors over which you had no control - how fast the car was going, the precise angle of impact, whether or not your target was wearing a seatbelt, and so on. There is no way you could be certain - or even reasonably confident - that you target would die.

It tolls for thee.

Just who is responsible for the deaths of these young women in the Ipswich area? Well, obviously, the person who killed them (by the way, as it appears that they had not been sexually assaulted, has anyone considered the possibility that the killer may be a woman? It would be very unusual, I agree, but just a thought). But does the responsibility go any further than that? Why were these women "on the game"? Was it because they were desperate to get money to feed their drug habit? Why were they plying their trade in dark, dangerous, secluded places? Was it the result of deliberate policing policy to drive them away from well-lit, public areas? Our laws as regards drugs and prostitution are driven by a moral imperative which says that both are "wrong" and therefore to be eradicated, or at the very least made as difficult as possible. All very well, but if our laws had not been framed in that way, these young girls might not have found it necessary to adopt that lifestyle, and might well still be alive. So just who is responsible?

Has anyone thought this through?

Something in the paper the other day bemoaning the fact that a school was so strapped for cash that it couldn't afford enough text books to go round, so it had to photocopy them. Now I don't know whether I've missed something, but surely the cost of photocopying would probably be at least as much, if not greater than the cost of purchase?

Parlez-vous Globish?

When I was much younger, I fancied myself as a linguist. I have to say that experience has proved to me that I'm not really that good, but one of the languages I looked at was Esperanto, which for anyone not aware, was an attempt to create an artificial universal language. It still has its devotees, but hasn't really taken off - mainly because English has arisen as a de facto universal language, partly because it's what the Americans speak (well, sort of) and partly because it is the language of the internet. Problem is that different countries have developed their own versions of English (what at one time we would have probably called "pidgin") and they can't necessarily understand each other that well, even though they claim to be speaking the same language. Now a Frenchman has come up with the idea of formalising a simplified form of English, which he calls Globish. Part of his idea is a reduced vocabulary of just 1500 words. You can look up a list of these words at http://perso.orange.fr/yvanbaptiste/audioglob/index.htm
and I have to say they make for somewhat strange reading. Would you have included words like activist, campaign, fertile and sympathy for example. Good idea, but not sure about the detail.

Heads I win, tails I win.

The Home Secretary has said that a terrorist attack over the Christmas period is "highly likely". So if there is one, he'll be able to claim credit for foreseeing it, and if there isn't one he'll be able to claim credit for forestalling it. Now there's clever!

Not before time

My daily paper is advertising a "Free Gordon Ramsay Calendar". So they've locked the foul-mouthed bugger up at last then?

Respect.

Have you seen the story about Josie Grove? If you haven't, you'll find it on the net, and I'm not going to try and tell it here - I can't type when my eyes are full of tears. It makes me extremely sad, extremely angry and enormously, enormously proud - of what I'm not really sure. Perhaps just proud to belong to the same human race - to be associated, however obliquely, with a young lady of such maturity, serenity and courage. My problems pale into insignificance beside those of her and her family. They will be constantly in my thoughts.

Stating the obvious.

So knife amnesties have no appreciable effect on knife crime? Now there's a surprise! That's not to say there is no merit in them, but anyone with half a brain could work out that the only people likely to give knives up under such amnesties would be those who had little or no intention of using them.

Credit where it's due.

Remember Headingley 1981 - 3rd test against Australia? For those who don't, Australia batted first and made 401-9 declared. They then bowled out England for 174 and enforced the follow-on. England made a better fist of it in the second innings (mainly thanks to Botham) and made 356, but this left Australia with only 129 to get to win. But we bowled them out for only 111 for a famous victory. As I recall, everybody was saying "Well done England" and not "How could Australia have lost - they were rubbish". Now the reverse has happened in the second test over there, and is anyone saying "Well done Australia"? Are they buggery - no, it's all about how rubbish we were, losing from an apparently invincible position. We are a small-minded and self-centered race when it comes to sport, aren't we?

Good will toward men?

With the festive season fast approaching, the question once again arises - who is it for? Some years ago, Birmingham decided to call it "Winterval" and was roundly criticised for doing so. I couldn't understand why then, and I still can't. Christmas is Christmas - nothing can change that, and Christians will celebrate it as such, but does that mean that only they are entitled to have a good time? What about those of other faiths, or indeed those of no faith? Are they supposed to stay indoors and hide themselves away? The Winterval idea was an attempt to make the point that this is a time of good cheer for all who want to take part - each in their own way, and according to their own beliefs, or non-beliefs. Those who insist that it's Christmas or nothing would exclude all those who hold views different from their own - hardly a Christian attitude - and perhaps they should be reminded that it was originally a pagan festival anyway.

Why is why the hardest word?

The Eddington report makes it pretty clear now that road pricing is inevitable. The only way, we are told, of easing congestion - by hitting you in the pocket if you travel on busy roads at busy times. Quite apart from the fact that this discriminates against the less-well-off motorist, perhaps the question which should be being asked is why motorists find themselves sitting in traffic jams on busy roads. They're certainly not doing it for fun! Could it have anything to do with the fact that most people work in towns and cities, and most workplaces start work and finish at about the same time? All things which are out of the control of the poor commuter, who is the one who ends up spending their time queuing to get to work and then again to get home, and who will now it seems have to pay for the privilege. Perhaps dispersal of workplaces and staggering of start and finish times should be looked at first?

Maths 101.

I've posted before on the dangers of misusing and misunderstanding mathematical data. In a recent case a defendant was convicted on the basis of DNA evidence. The prosecution maintained that DNA had been found at the scene of the crime, and that there was only "one chance in a billion" that it was not that of the defendant. How they arrived at this figure was not explained, and I have the feeling that it was just plucked out of the air for effect, but even if we take it as accurate, there are more than 6.5 billion people in the world, which means that there are probably 6 or 7 people out there who would fit that DNA profile. So in the absence of any other evidence you could say that there is only a 15% chance that they have got the right person. It all depends on the way you look at it, doesn't it?

Keep a sense of proportion.

We do seem to have gone overboard about this Polonium 210 business (I have to admit I thought polonium was what my Mum used to put on my sandwiches!). Obviously the whole business is very worrying, but as I understand it, you would have to have been pretty intimate with Mr Litvinenko to have picked up anything vaguely approaching a worrying amount of radiation, so why we're making such a big thing about insignificant (health-wise, that is) traces found here and there is beyond me. All we're doing is risking worrying people unnecessarily.

Dear Auntie...

The question of the TV licence fee is in the news again. I am old enough to remember when the only telly available was the BBC (and you only got it between about 7.30 and 10.30 in the evening at that!). Back then it was quite logical to have to pay for this service - as indeed you had to pay for wireless (radio) before that. But today? Why should the BBC be subsidised by the licence fee, when there are so many competitors who have to find their own money by advertisement or whatever? I think the BBC do a marvelous job, but I can't see any reason why they should not have to fight their own corner, like everybody else has to do.

Hidden agendas?

Tony Blair has expressed "deep sorrow" at Britain's role in the slave trade back in the 18th century. Quite right too, but this it would seem is not enough for some, who are demanding an apology. What's the difference? I think we're just playing with words here, and in particular asking Blair to do the impossible. He cannot truly apologise for something which was not of his own doing, and any suggestion that he should apologise on behalf of those involved in the slave trade back then would be an hypocrisy on their behalf because I am quite sure that those involved, if they were able to speak for themselves would see, by the standards of their time, nothing wrong in what they did, and that therefore they would have nothing to apologise for. I can't help but feel that those demanding an apology have their eyes more on the opportunity which that would open up for claims for some sort of compensation.

Catch-22

Here's another for the "you couldn't make it up" collection. We are all constantly being told to shred any document which could be used by crooks to steal our identity - right? Well, a local council here in the Midlands has told its residents that they can't put shredded paper out for recycling, as it clogs up the machine! But more than that - they have also told them that they can't put it out with the non-recycling rubbish either, because it's paper!! Quite what they are supposed to do with it, I don't know, but I know what I'd be tempted to do with it, and it involves councillors and various intimate orifices!!!

Cross purposes

When I first read about the lady who was forbidden by BA from wearing a cross on a chain round her neck, my sympathies tended to be with her, but the more you read, the more you become aware that there is a history here of antagonism between the lady and her employers centering around her Christian beliefs, and her insistence on promoting them in the workplace. So I'm afraid she has lost whatever support I had for her. People are entitled to hold strong views - religious or otherwise - but not to thrust them into inappropriate areas. You will probably have guessed by now that my working life was involved with the law, and to me the five most depressing and scary words in the English language are "It's a matter of principle". When you hear those, you dive for cover, because you know that rational argument is going to be useless.

Know your instrument

Read an article the other day about George Formby. Great performer but the article referred to him as playing the ukelele. Well, he didn't - or at least the instrument with which he is most associated is not a ukelele, it's a banjolele, or banjo-ukelele. The true ukelele looks like an undersized guitar. It's what Marilyn Monroe played (or pretended to play) in "Some Like It Hot".

Eyesore.

Beauty, they do say, is in the eye of the beholder. The town of Walsall here in the West Midlands has a new Art Gallery which has apparently drawn cries of admiration from the critics. To me, it is a hideous building, completely unwelcoming and totally out of character with its surroundings. It looks for all the world like an overgrown public toilet. But like I say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Bad decision

I'm extremely disappointed that the European Court has ruled against the idea of being able to buy drink and cigarettes from other EU countries by phone or over the net without having to pay UK tax on them. Quite apart from the obvious financial aspect, this is yet another example of the blatant discrimination which continually exists in this country against anyone living to the north of Watford. If you live in the south-east, it's no problem to hop across the channel and take advantage of the cheap prices over there, but for those of us here in the Midlands, and even more for those living further north, it's something not to be undertaken lightly. And what about the disabled or housebound? Here was a chance to level the playing field, and they've muffed it. I do wonder if Gordon Brown twisted a few arms!

The long and short of it.

I can't resist passing on a quote from my daily paper. Commenting on the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes wedding, where Cruise appears to have grown - or Holmes shrunk - by a few inches for the photographs, the paper asks what's wrong with short men, and goes on to list several "vertically challenged" men who have none-the-less had no problems in attracting women - Mussolini, Mickey Rooney, Dustin Hoffman and Napoleon, to name but a few. So it concludes that height doesn't matter, and ends with the immortal words "It is better to have loved a short man, than not to have loved a tall". Nice one.

Doh.....

It seems that some schools are dismantling their wireless networks, as there is some suggestion that the radiation from these is causing "loss of concentration, headaches, fatigue, memory and behavioural problems". Really? Obviously there was no such thing as a wireless network back when I went to school, but I well remember the symptoms! Get real!

Rob-dogs!!

Have you seen this business about NI contributions and pension entitlement? At present, you only get a full old-age pension if you have at least 44 years (39 for women) of contributions. If you are coming up to retirement age, and have fewer years than this, the Government will write to you, pointing this out and advising you of the facility for making top-up payments to increase your number of contributions. They have been doing this for years. Now they have stated their intention to bring in legislation to require only 30 years of contributions for a full pension. So where does this leave all those people who had 30 years or more, but have been making voluntary extra payments to bring them up to the old limits for a full pension? The answer seems to be - with egg on their faces! Revenue & Customs have said there will be no question of a refund - they say these letters were not "advising people to make top-up payments, but merely telling them about the consequences if they don't". What a scam!

Smallest room.

Today is World Toilet Day in Singapore - just thought you might like to know.

Book post

I'm an avid reader - nothing heavy, thrillers mostly. I thought I might share with you occasionally details of what I read, and what I think of them. I've been keeping records for years now, and developed a somewhat idiosyncratic marking system. Although marks are given out of 10, the way it's developed is that 7 has become the mark for a reasonable read, better than 7 is good, 6 and 5 are dodgy, and less than 5 is a no-no. I have to say that I tend to go for authors I have enjoyed in the past, so most marks tend to be in the 7 or above region. So on that basis, here are my last ten -
Patricia Cornwell - Predator - 6
Alexander McCall Smith - Morality For Beautiful Girls - 8
John Sandford - Naked Prey - 7
Peter James - Dead Simple - 9
John Gardner - Angels Dining At The Ritz - 7
Mary Higgins Clark - A Cry In The Night - 7
C. J. Sansom - Dissolution - 9
Michael Connelly - The Lincoln Lawyer - 8
Alexander McCall Smith - The Kalahari Typing School For Men - 8
Kathy Reichs - Monday Mourning - 9

Magyar master.

You have to be getting on in years to remember the England-Hungary football match which took place in November 1953 and which changed for ever the way the game was played in this country. The result - Hungary won 6-3 and showed us a completely new approach to the game, based on keeping possession (which, shock-horror, sometimes involved passing the ball backwards!) and playing through defences rather than relying on high crosses and headers. What I most clearly remember was that they could easily have scored another 3 or more goals, but having established a winning lead, appeared to decide they didn't want to humiliate the country they saw as the cradle of the game. They were gentlemen, and non more so than Ferenc Puskás, their captain, who himself scored one goal of sheer magic. I doubt your like will come along again. RIP.

Stamp, stamp!

I am really annoyed...! I have just bought a new all-in-one printer/scanner thingy. Having spent the best part of an hour installing it, I now find it won't work with some of my software. I go onto the printer manufacturer's help page on the web, only to find that this is a known problem! I think it disgusting that hardware is sold with known incompatibilities with commonplace software without this being made clear to any prospective purchaser. Had I known about this, I might well have decided against purchasing this particular item for that reason. Like I say, I am really cross.

You can bank on it...

So First Direct (HSBC) intends to start charging a fee for having a bank account - and this on top of indications that fees for credit cards are probably coming back. Don't you feel sorry for the banks? HSBC for instance, only managed profits of £11.7bn last year. No wonder they need to start charging!! Pass the sick bag, Mabel.

Am I bovvered?

Well the Head of MI5 certainly laid out a disturbing picture in a speech last week - 30 known terror plots, some 200 terrorist groups operating, 1600 individuals under observation. Pretty scary, no? Well, perhaps, but you need to bear in mind that this is part of the same intelligence service which (so we were told) was sure that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and the same intelligence service which has to take its share of the responsibility for the tragic Stockwell shooting and the massive high-profile raid on a house where it was convinced a chemical explosive device of some sort was being constructed but where, in the event, nothing was found. So let's be concerned, but keep our feet on the ground - OK??

Nostalgia isn't what it was.

I've had Sky TV for a few years now, but since I've been on my own I've been flicking more than before, and it's amazing just what you can find. I've recently come across re-runs of "Drop the Dead Donkey", and how well they stand up! Why did they ever stop making it - it was, and still is brilliant. Stephen Tompkinson's frenetic, desperate-for-a-story reporter is a little classic, but all the cast are simply great, as was the writing. I'm sure it would still work as well today. Please bring it back??

Oops....

In a scenario reminiscent of the film "Charade", an unknown voter in the recent US elections posted their ballot paper in using a very rare stamp which could be worth half a million dollars. I would imagine the burning question now is - just who does it belong to? It could be the voter (if they could ever identify themselves), or the person who spotted it, or it could be argued that once posted, it became the property of the US mail service, i.e. the Government. I know where my money would be!

We will remember them

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - not!!

Go on, smile...

Yesterday was Guinness World Record Day. I was going to go for the apathy record, but I couldn't be bothered. Well, I thought it was funny!

Exploding cake??

When my wife was alive one of our favourite holiday destinations was Majorca - Puerto Pollensa to be precise - and when there what would you have for breakfast other than ensaimadas, those gorgeous fatty pastries which are a speciality of the Balearics. So I was highly amused to see that this delicacy had caused problems for the airports who couldn't decide whether holiday makers who wanted to bring the jam filled variety back home were breaching the restriction on liquids or not. It seems sanity has prevailed, but really.....!

This is how it used to be....

Here in the West Midlands we have a little National treasure called the Black Country Living Museum, where old buildings and workplaces have been lovingly recreated for people to visit and experience. Unfortunately this doesn't sit too well with modern regulation. The result, for example, is that visitors can watch bread being baked in a traditional bakehouse, but the bread cannot then be sold - or even given away - because the premises don't comply with current health and safety rules, so it has to be fed to the pigs or ducks, or simply thrown away! There are traditional "two up and two down" houses there where you're not allowed to go upstairs because there's no fire escape. You do sometimes really wonder how people of my generation ever managed to survive, don't you?

A big number by any standards

I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said that Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language. Certainly there is much room for confusion over words like "hood", "jelly", "fag" and such like, but for the most part these are not likely to cause much more than amusement or embarrassment. But what about "billion"? To most Brits (and to most of the rest of the world) this means, and has always meant, a million million, whereas to an American it means a thousand million. Not exactly a minor distinction. Apparently it's all down to the French, who back in the 15th Century defined a billion as a million million, and that was taken on board by the then civilised world, but then, some 200 years later and for reasons nobody has ever been able to understand, they changed their mind and redefined it as a thousand million, and this is the definition which was adopted by the then newly emerging United States. Just to really confuse the issue, some 60 years ago the French readopted their original definition of a million million! In the 1970's the British Government decided to adopt the American billion in all official Government documents, but beware - there are still those (like me) who stick to the original definition.

Inquiry - what inquiry?

So Parliament has wimped out again. Once more, self-interest has won out over the duty of the Commons to hold the Executive to account. And then they wonder why there's so much apathy about politics. Ah well, plus ça change and all that....

The numbers game.

Whoever it is who runs the saynoto870.com website deserves a medal, but isn't it a scandal that such a site has to exist? For anyone not aware of what's going on - and has been going on for years now - when you ring a telephone number starting with 0870, you will be charged between two and three times more than to a normal non-local number, and part of what you pay will go to the company you are phoning! No surprise then that more often than not when you call such a number you have to spend time going through an automated menu, and then be put on hold before you finally speak to a person. The point is, of course, that it is in the interests of whoever you are calling to keep you on the line as long as possible - the longer you're on, the more money they make. How this was ever allowed to happen in the first place is an outrage, and even more outrageous is the fact that Ofcom, who are supposed to look after our interests, have spent years looking the other way, and even now, when they have finally grasped the nettle and decided to do something about it, nothing will change until at least 2008. What a disgrace!

Tick, tock....

Well, it's coming up to changing the clocks time again - I've had a moan about this before - this time last year in fact. The more I think about it, the more the whole thing seems to be an unnecessary faff. The idea of putting the clocks forward really originated in World War I, and was a perfectly sensible measure designed to maximise the amount of war work which could be done in daylight - you have to remember of course that the standard of artificial lighting back then was pretty poor. Much the same considerations prevailed in the Second World War, when we had the blackout to contend with, so Double Summer Time was introduced, with the clocks two hours ahead of GMT. But what's the rationale today? Certainly factories and offices no longer rely in any way on daylight to do their thing. The usual explanation is that it's for the benefit of the farmers and others who work outdoors, but what I can never understand is that no amount of tinkering with the clocks can alter the amount of daylight available, so how does it matter when that is? In the depth of winter say, you've got somewhere between 6 and 8 hours of daylight, depending on just where you are in these islands, to do whatever you've got to do, so what difference does it make just when that starts and finishes? Please can we take a sensible look at this?

Damned by association

"Gas-guzzling 4 x 4s" are in the news again, with proposals to penalise them by charging them more for on-road parking. Problem is that when this item appeared on TV, the accompanying pictures were not of 4 x 4s at all, but of people carriers, such as the Ford Galaxy or the Renault Espace, and indeed most people do not differentiate between the two types of vehicle. But whereas there is little or no reason for an urban dweller to run a 4 x 4, the same does not go for a people carrier. I have a friend (yes, I do have friends!) who has three school-age children, and who child-minds two, and at times three toddlers. So do the maths - there's no way she can get them all in a standard car. For her, and others like her, a people carrier is a necessity.

Progress report

Six months now, and still trying to come to terms with what's happened, and this new unwanted life which now faces me. What I have found of some help is a quote from the late Queen Mother of all people. What she was doing talking about bereavement I don't know, but apparently she said "You don't get over it, but you do get better at it". I've found this of real practical assistance because it gives me something achievable to aim for - forget trying to get over it, I never will, just concentrate on getting better at dealing with it. And I think I am - I still have my moments, when for no apparent reason it all sweeps over me, and I break down and howl like a baby for a few minutes, but such incidents are becoming fewer and when they're over, I'm able to look at myself and say "Just what was all that about then?" So I'm still truckin' as the saying goes, even if I haven't yet got out of second gear.

Don't answer back!

I know nothing about the modern pop scene, but my attention was caught by the story of a girl pop group who were singing at a football match when they were subjected to foul-mouthed abuse from a section of the crowd. They responded in kind. Result? They were arrested and fined. Unfortunately it seems to be a commonplace these days that you get punished for retaliating, whereas the instigator gets away with it. Somehow it just doesn't seem right.

Nasty smell.

Some 80 years ago Parliament acted to restrict the right of the media to publish salacious details of divorce proceedings. In 1969 Parliament made a well-intentioned but half-hearted attempt to get away from the idea of a divorce law based on fault to one based on the purely factual concept of irretrievable breakdown. How sad then to see the McCartneys' dirty linen being so publicly washed. Of course, they are both public figures, and there may therefore be an element of the "there is no such thing as bad publicity" principle involved. Whatever, I find it depressingly unpleasant.

I yam wot I yam!

Big news story about research which has shown that people are throwing sensitive personal information out with their domestic waste, and about how this could be used to steal their identity. I certainly religiously shred any document which has any sort of reference number connected to me on, but what I can't understand is that it is suggested that you should also shred anything with your name and address on. Why? My name and address is a matter of public record - if you want to know who lives at my address you don't need to rifle through my wheelie-bin, you simply look my address up on the electoral register. If you only have my name and want to know where I live, you need look no further than the telephone directory, so I can't see the point - or have I missed something?

Remember Raquel Welsh in a fur bikini?

My younger grandson, like most kids of his age I suppose, is heavily into dinosaurs, and I was trying to give him an idea of just how long ago it was they were around. He had the idea - probably from various films - that they co-existed with primitive man. So I came up with the concept for him of a time machine which enabled you to travel back in time at the rate of one year every second. So in just a minute or so you could be back in the middle of the Second World War. Ten minutes would take you back to the time of Chaucer - five or so minutes more to the Battle of Hastings. In just over a hour you could be watching the building of the pyramids or possibly Stonehenge. But to get back to the dawn of homo sapiens will take you getting on for five days, and to that of our earliest human ancestors the best part of two months. And the dinosaurs? What do you think? A few more days? A few more weeks? Well to get back to even the last days of the dinosaurs - the point at which they became extinct - would take a little over two years, and to the point at which they first appeared, no less than seven years! The results surprised even me, so I thought I'd share them.

For whom the bell tolls (again)

A new report suggests that more than 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the US/UK invasion of 2003. The Americans dismiss this finding as not credible, and the US commander in Iraq has said that he has "not seen a number higher than 50,000". So that's OK then......

What are you hiding?

Jack Straw's comments on Muslim women who cover their faces by wearing what I now understand are called the Niqab and the Burqa have predictably polarised public opinion. I have to say that I always feel slightly uncomfortable when I come across such women - particularly those wearing the Burqa, where the face is completely covered, with just a mesh over the eyes for them to see through. But why? Straw bringing the issue out into the open has made me think about this, and I've come to the conclusion that, for me, it's not anything to do with it being a statement of difference or anything like that - it's simply that I associate people covering their faces with a wish to conceal their identity - usually for nefarious purposes. It's what kidnappers, bank robbers and terrorists do, so that's the basis for my feelings of unease - completely irrational I know.

Big Bin is watching you....

Have you seen this business of some Councils equipping their wheelie-bins with micro-chips, with a view to charging households according to the weight of rubbish they put out for collection? How is this going to work without some account being taken of how many people are in the house? I now (sadly) live on my own, and my bin is rarely more than a third full - my daughter and her family number five in all, and they regularly have to get up and stamp on their bin to get the lid to go down - how can we be judged on the same criteria? And even supposing every household is given some sort of nominal allowance based on the number living there, what happens if they have friends to stay for a week, resulting in more rubbish than usual? I just can't see how it can work equitably - and I bet it will not result in any reduction in Council Tax!

Lateral thinking.

As a one-time Civil Servant who spent more hours than I care to think about struggling to find ways of meeting (or at the very least, appearing to meet) more and more unrealistic Government targets, I was tickled pink to read about South West Trains' approach to the Government's demand that they reduce overcrowding - they're taking out some of the seats so that there's more standing room! Brilliant, folks, absolutely brilliant!

Not cricket (3)

So the Pakistani captain has been found not guilty of ball-tampering, but guilty of bringing the game into disrepute by staging a protest against being accused of ball tampering - so he's been punished for defending himself against a charge of doing something which it has now been decided he didn't do. Does anybody else find this ludicrous??

Old wine in new bottles

I suppose, as someone staring 70 in the face, I should be all in favour of this new anti-age-discrimination legislation, but as someone who for many years ran and recruited for several offices, I can see things from both sides. There may be jobs where age doesn't matter, or even where it is a positive plus if you're looking for knowledge and experience, but if you're looking for someone for a post where you will have to invest a great deal of time and attention in training them, then you will want to try and ensure you get a good return for your efforts, and someone who may only have a few years of work left in them may not fit the bill simply because of that. There is also the question of health - older people may well be less likely than the young to take casual days off sick, but are far more likely to have long-term problems and absences, and perhaps to find certain aspects of a job too physically challenging. In my view, employers should be left to be able to choose who they consider the best person for the job, unfettered by legislation.

Go on - take a chance!

Lot been said and written over the past few days as a result of Richard Hammond's high-speed accident while driving a jet-powered car for a TV programme. I think there may be something in the view being put forward that TV programmers feel that they have to be continually "pushing the envelope" and outdoing what they did last time, and that this necessarily leads to more and more extreme things being attempted, but the phrase which keeps cropping up, and which I find annoying is "risk-analysis". Was a sufficiently full risk analysis carried out? Well, as far as I can see there were all sorts of emergency vehicles and personnel on hand, and indeed it seems probable that the fact that they were there and able to give their prompt attention quite possibly saved his life, so the only other factor would appear to be - should he have been allowed to do it? And what this comes down to is, should a mentally sound adult be prevented from doing something on the ground that he/she might get hurt or killed? On this basis, no mountain would ever have been climbed, the Channel would remain unswum, and we would still have men with red flags walking in front of our cars.

I know - let's remake "Casablanca"!

Just finished watching "The Flight of the Phoenix" - the new one that is. Not bad, not bad at all, but what kept running through my mind was - why did they bother? The original was and still is a classic. The new one really adds nothing to it, so WHY? When you think about it, all the remakes are of successful films, whereas logic suggests that if you're going to remake a film, you should look to a previously unsuccessful film with potential, otherwise what's the point? Perhaps the point is that people who remember the original will go and see the remake out of curiosity as much as anything - in other words you're trading on the success of the original to make money. Or am I just being cynical again?

Belt up!!

Well, in common I suspect with many other people, I've had to shell out for a booster seat in order to be able to continue to do the school run with my grandchildren. A couple of points arise from this. First, the publicity has been pathetic - if I (a) hadn't heard a rumour a few months ago, and (b) hadn't got access to the Internet, the first I would have heard about it would have been a news item in the last few days, giving me virtually no time to do anything about it. Second, if this is a safety issue, and apparently been under discussion for some years, why haven't car manufacturers taken it on board and come up with adjustable seats and/or seatbelts for children? Finally, my cynical side wonders whether there's any connection between those who have promulgated this law, and the manufacturers of child seats and boosters!

Simply the best?

Following Michael Schumacher's decision to retire from Formula 1 at the end of the current season, there is much discussion about his place in motor racing history, and in particular how he should be judged in the light of his various "bad boy" moments. For me, he is without doubt the best racing driver I have ever seen, if only because of his ability to get the best out of a bad car, or one with problems. There are many drivers who can shine when put in the fastest car, but Schumacher was and is the only driver I have seen who could shine when not in the fastest car. Who can forget 1994 in Spain, when he came a close second despite the car being stuck in 5th gear for most of the race. Who else could have done that? What I find slightly disturbing is that when talking about the ruthless side to his nature, comparisons are invariably made with Ayrton Senna - perhaps the only other driver worthy to be mentioned in the same breath - as though somehow Senna was whiter than white. Does nobody remember 1989/90 and what happened between him and Alain Prost? Fair do's, folks!

Put your own house in order.

I seem to be doing an awful lot of posts about the law lately, but I can't let the recent comment by the Police that they are going to target "reckless drivers who use legal loopholes to avoid conviction" pass without comment. Let's be clear - if an accused person is acquitted, whatever the charge, it is because the prosecution have failed to prove their case. This may be for lack of sufficiently cogent evidence, or it may be because some necessary procedure was not complied with, but either way, it is for the prosecution to come up with the goods, and if they don't, the defendant walks. To suggest that somehow when this happens the defendant is at fault is farcical. If the law is too complex then it is for Parliament to sort it out, otherwise it's up to the Police and prosecution to do their job properly. We still do work on the presumption of innocence, don't we?

A bad move?

So a man has been convicted of a murder of which he had been previously acquitted, thanks to a new law ending the long-held double jeopardy principle which says you can't be tried twice for the same offence. Much understandable rejoicing by the family of the victim, but there's an old saying "hard cases make bad law", meaning that when you bend, or even worse, change the law to produce what you perceive to be justice in a particular case, you have to bear in mind that English law is founded on precedent, and that the change you have made will have repercussions well beyond the case in question. I hope that, sometime in the future, we don't regret what we have done.

Knee-jerk policing?

"Police have stepped up patrols in the Moss Side area of Manchester following the fatal shooting of a teenage boy yesterday". Why do the words "stable-door" and "bolted" spring to mind?

Rough justice.

Did Barry George kill Jill Dando? is the question being asked in some of the papers following the BBC's recent programme. Wrong question. There are only two ( or maybe three) people who possibly know the answer to that, and one of those is dead. No, the question is - should Barry George have been convicted of the killing of Jill Dando? We have a system - imperfect as all human systems are - whereby the prosecution lay their evidence before a group of impartial people - the jury - and if that evidence, having been tested under cross-examination, convinces the jury, they will find the accused guilty, otherwise not guilty. So the question is, was there sufficient evidence that a jury, doing its job properly, could say "we are convinced he did it". The evidence looked weak at the time, and the fact that the verdict was only by a majority of 10-2 certainly suggests that the case was far from clear-cut. But that's the way the system works. Like I say it's not perfect, and we have to accept that people will be convicted who didn't do what they are accused of, just as there will be people acquitted who did do what they are accused of. The thing is, what do we do when we think something might have gone wrong? The BBC programme didn't really come up with anything new - it basically simply highlighted the weaknesses of the original case, on which a jury has already delivered a verdict, a verdict which has been upheld on appeal. So where do we go from here? Tricky one, this.

A green cheese factory?

Space exploration is in the news again as a result of the deliberate crashing into the moon of a space probe that had ended its useful life - in an attempt to establish a better understanding of the moon's composition. This, one report suggested, might help in the eventual construction of a manned colony on the moon. What on earth for? Why would we want to spend billions of pounds (or dollars more like) on such a project? It's not as if we haven't got better things to spend that sort of money on. There was perhaps some dubious merit in the original race to the moon - back in the days when the US and USSR were playing the "my rocket's bigger than your rocket" game, and the moon was simply a prize to be gained and displayed in your trophy cabinet. But those days are gone, thank goodness, and with them that sort of reasoning. So any future attempt to put a man on the moon has I think to be looked at on a cost-benefit basis. We know the cost will be enormous, so will someone please explain what the benefits will be?

Reality check.

A film due out shortly suggests that Queen Elizabeth was unable to comprehend the outpouring of public grief at Princess Diana's death in 1997. Well - so was I, and I still am. It is obviously a tragedy for anyone of her age to die in that way, but this ongoing attempt to make her into some sort of modern-day saint is repulsive. All the more so when you remember that a few days following her death Mother Theresa of Calcutta died virtually unnoticed by comparison. I hold no particular brief for her either, but really folks - wake up and smell the coffee!

Statistics again.

News item - divorce rates for last year are down by 8%. What does this mean? I've muttered before about using percentage figures in isolation, and here's a case in point. The actual drop is from around 167,000 to 155,000. Not really all that significant. Also the statistic is pretty meaningless unless you take into account current attitudes towards marriage. These days, when "trial" marriages are accepted as the norm, couples tend not to actually get married until they are sure about their compatibility - so fewer divorces. Indeed, perhaps the surprise is that, given the way society has changed, divorce rates have continued to hold at around the 150,000 - 160,000 mark since the 1980's.

Loony Tunes

So it's OK for Tom and Jerry to knock seven bells out of each other, provided they don't smoke? I'm glad I'm getting towards the end of my stay in this crazy world!

Not cricket (2)

What a mess this ball-tampering thing has turned into. What on earth prompted the ICC to make public correspondence which the sender had made perfectly clear was to be confidential? What a breach of trust!Who would want to work for such an employer? Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter, the ICC have by their strange behaviour deliberately muddied the water for any future inquiry. Nobody comes out of this looking good.

Spring will be...

...a little late this year, says the song, but it appears that the reality is that Spring is starting earlier and earlier. And Autumn, it would seem, is getting somewhat later. All very interesting, but should it be a matter for concern? It's certainly made the news, and the suggestion is that it's happening so rapidly in evolutionary terms that some species of both plant and insect life may fail to adapt in time. I have to say that, if it's a choice between the survival of some insect or flower and a longer period of warm weather, I know which I would choose!

Rest in peace - all of you....

The other item which caught my attention whilst on holiday was the decision to pardon those executed for cowardice during the First World War. I really find myself torn over this - on the one hand it is clear that today many if not most of them would have been diagnosed as psychologically damaged and not responsible for their actions, but on the other hand what you have to ask yourself is whether or not they were wrongly treated according to the laws and understanding of the day - and that is not so clear-cut. I have mentioned before that I am implacably opposed to the death penalty, and that my views were crystallized by the Craig/Bentley case back in the 1950's. I was among the first to raise a glass when Derek Bentley was eventually pardoned in 1998, but that was a different matter - even by the legal standards of 1953 Bentley was probably wrongly convicted, and definitely wrongly executed. Perhaps today's pardons are more directed to the surviving families than to the men themselves, and I can go along with that.

Not cricket

Nemo judex in causa sua is a Latin tag meaning that no-one can both make an accusation and be the person to decide whether it's true or not. And yet, this appears to be precisely what has happened in the final test between England and Pakistan. One of the umpires has (a) suspected that the ball may have been tampered with, and then that same umpire has (b) decided that the ball HAS been tampered with. Whatever in fact happened, this is a blatant denial of natural justice, and if, as has been suggested, the umpire was simply applying the laws of the game, then those laws need changing.

Please proceed to the non-departure lounge.

So what's been going on while I've been away? Well I suppose the major news item has been the terror alert and the effects it has had on air travel. You can't but feel sorry for those who have had their travel plans disrupted as a result and possibly had their one holiday of the year ruined. From the point of view of the "terrorists" - if indeed they are proved to be such - they would have seen it as a win-win situation. Either they would have succeeded in their plan, or if not, they would create massive disruption, which is what in fact has happened. Much opprobrium has been directed at the airports, but I think this is a classic case of not being able to have the penny and the bun. Consumer demand for cheaper and cheaper travel has resulted in airports not being able to afford any redundancy in their systems, which means if any but the smallest thing goes wrong, they just can't cope. Actually I think they did quite well to keep going at all, but this of course is no consolation to those caught up in the chaos.

Return of the wanderer

Been away for a fortnight on holiday with the children and grandchildren. Nice place, good weather, but a struggle to keep my end up. Think I managed it - hope I managed it, and the grandkids had a great time, which is the main thing. The rest of us drank too much, tended to get maudlin and ended up most nights crying on each others' shoulders. It's a great life if you don't weaken!

Farmers are never satisfied....

I wondered how long it would be - this time every year you get headlines in the paper, saying that the hot weather/ cold weather/ wet weather/ dry weather has had a detrimental effect on the harvest, and that we should expect significant increases in vegetables prices this autumn. Nothing changes, does it?

Will we never learn...?

I have so far studiously tried to avoid commenting on the Israeli-Lebanon-Palestine conflict, but the latest news that we (Brits) have failed to join with the majority of the rest of the world in calling for an immediate ceasefire makes me ashamed. Whatever the rationale, the brutal fact is that scores of innocent people - on all sides - are being killed every day the conflict continues. Assuming there is a ceasefire in, say, five weeks' time, what are we supposed to say to the families of those who, make no mistake about it, will be killed during those five weeks, and who otherwise might not have been? It may be nearly four hundred years since John Donne wrote these powerful words, but they are as apposite today as they ever were: "...therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

Joined-up thinking.

Every now and then, there are articles and letters in our local paper from local traders bemoaning the fact that fewer people are choosing to come into town to shop, and preferring out-of-town centres. They are invariably supported by comments from local councillors extolling the virtues of town centre shops and the local market. Could it have anything to do with the fact that these same councillors were responsible over the years for a series of traffic planning measures which have made it progressively more difficult to drive into town, and progressively more difficult - and expensive - to park when you do manage to get there? Do me a favour!

Not a lot of people know that....

Did you know that all those people who flew - and some of them are still flying - St George's flags out of their windows, or on poles jutting out from their houses were breaking the law? It seems that under the Town and Country Planning Regulations of 1992 you need local authority permission to fly a flag in any other way than on a vertical flagpole. Just thought you might like to know!

Here is the news

Israel is bombing the shit out of Lebanon, Hezbollah is mounting rocket attacks on Israel, Iraq is fast descending into civil war - if it's not already there, Afghanistan is a disaster back in the hands of the Taliban - and the front page story in the Midlands own Sunday newspaper? The wife of a local chipshop owner is having it off with the teenage help! Nice to see someone has their priorities right.

Personal

Today would have been my wife's 65th birthday. Happy birthday darling - I am with you always, as I know you are with me.

Amo, amas, amat.....

There's been much discussion lately about the value, or otherwise, of learning Latin. I took Latin and Greek at school and can't really say they've been of much use to me, except perhaps in giving me a better understanding of my own language. For example, as the 1990's came to an end I got a lot of street cred for being unhesitatingly able to spell millennium. Simple when you know it comes from the Latin "mille" (thousand) and "annum" (year), and then you have no problem knowing that it has two l's and two n's. As my Gran used to say "No knowledge is ever wasted".

Bang, bang - whoops, sorry!

So the CPS have decided there should be no prosecutions against any individual police officer for the killing a year ago of Mr Menezes in the mistaken belief that he was a suicide bomber. As one who, admittedly many years ago, studied law, I find this a strange decision, and probably one motivated more by political than legal considerations. Murder, when you strip it down to its essentials, is the intentional killing of another person, and you couldn't get more intentional than what happened to the unfortunate Mr Menezes. So the only possible defences the officers concerned could have are justification or necessity. But these are both common law defences, and as such should properly be matters for the courts to rule on, but the CPS have decided that they shouldn't be given the chance. This, I'm afraid, will forever leave a nasty taste in the mouth that this is more about not wanting the full facts about what happened that day brought out in court and exposed to cross-examination. There are so many questions that we now probably never will know the answers to. Certainly a health and safety prosecution is unlikely to satisfy anyone.

When the kissing had to stop

Ludicrous story here in the Midlands of a vicar who has been censured by the Church for kissing a 10-year-old schoolgirl on the forehead - or cheek, depending on which paper you read. He was helping the girl who was struggling with her maths work, and when she finally got it right, gave her the kiss in congratulations. His Bishop has forbidden him from having any more contact with that or any other school, and to give up his post as school governor. How pathetic!! I have mentioned in the past that I play the piano from time to time at my local primary school. On one such visit a little boy came up to me and said "can I have a hug please?". Of course, I gave him one, but what will I do if that happens again? What the hell sort of world is this turning into?

Diving? I thought I was watching football!

Now that the World Cup's over, I've been thinking about my feelings towards the game as it is played these days. Anybody following this blog will not be surprised that my thoughts are basically negative. This World Cup has to rank as the most unsportsmanlike so far. It now seems an integral part of the game to try and con the referee into giving you a free kick, or better still, a penalty, or into showing an opponent a yellow (or better, red) card. Not that this is new - I remember writing to "The Times" during I think it was the 1990 World Cup complaining about Klinsmann performing a "triple agony roll with pike" following the slightest of touches by an opponent. The letter wasn't published, by the way. This time, Portugal have been pilloried as the major team of cheats, but I don't think they were any worse than several other teams - perhaps just not so clever at doing it. The problem is similar to that of drug taking in sport - do you do it because everybody else is doing it, and if you don't do it, you will be putting yourself at a severe disadvantage, or do you stick to your principles? For myself, I would rather have a team that loses with dignity and can hold its head high, rather than a team that wins by underhand means.

A sad tale made even sadder...

Here's the situation - a devoted married couple, both in their 80's, are in poor and worsening health. They decide to go out together by both taking a drug overdose. When they are discovered, the husband is dead, but the wife is still alive, though only just. She is rushed to hospital where the medical staff do all they can to save her. Why??? What possible good can come of it? If she survives, she will be faced with the same health problems as before - if not worse - and without the husband she loved and who supported her. How cruel is that? Did anyone for one moment consider what she would have wanted?

Nothing new under the sun

I see the Office of Fair Trading has decided to investigate the business of school uniforms at some schools only being acceptable if they have been purchased from certain approved suppliers, despite virtually identical articles being available at cheaper prices from other outlets. Quite right too, but what amazes me is the implied assumption that this is something relatively new. Of course there was no OFT when I went to secondary school in 1948, but I remember my parents complaining bitterly at having to buy my uniform from the most expensive shop in town - they being the school's only official stockists.

True confessions

Maybe it's time to talk about it - maybe, I'm not sure, but it's been more than two months now, so maybe. Why did I go "off air" for a few weeks? Because my wife died, that's why. My wife - my love, my life, my whole being - was taken from me by a particularly aggressive cancer which took less than ten weeks to progress from first vague indications to the final act. How do you cope with that? Well in my case, you don't. You go to pieces. You weep, you rage, you see other couples and hate them for being couples. You look for a light at the end of the tunnel and realise that there is no light - the tunnel goes on for ever. And yet in many ways I'm more fortunate than many - I have family who live close, and are keeping an eye on me. I see my grandchildren regularly throughout the week (I do the school run) and that keeps me geed up. So I'm surviving - but no more than that. Just going through the motions. I hope you don't mind if I occasionally use this blog as a form of catharsis to get my thoughts out in the open.

The Humpty Dumpty approach

The death of a young Asian prisoner at the hands of his psychopathic cell-mate was surely a terrible thing, but the inquiry into it has once again focused attention on the expression "institutional racism". Am I alone in finding this an unacceptably sloppy use of the language? An institution is an organization created for a specific purpose. An organization is by definition organized - in other words it functions by a set of rules, written or unwritten. For an institution to be racist therefore, its rules have to be racist. A classic example would be the old apartheid government of South Africa, or certain Gentlemen's Clubs back in the early part of the last century, both of whom had rules specifying different treatment for different races. But the Police or the Prison Service don't have racism written into their rules and so to my way of thinking cannot be institutionally racist. If what you mean is that racism is rife within an institution, then there are plenty or words you can use - endemic, pervasive, systemic, widespread, general, rampant, sweeping, and so on and so on. So why use an inappropriate expression?

Down the drain.

You may have seen the story in the papers of the woman who was sent to prison for refusing to pay her Council Tax. Her beef was that her local authority had allowed her street to degenerate into a no-go area where drug dealers and yobs proliferated. The council's response was to say that they had put more than £750,000 into improvements in the street. A bit reminiscent of the Government's answer to recent criticisms of the NHS, pointing to all the extra millions they had put into the Health Service. Why is there this assumption that money equals improvement? As one who was involved, on a very small scale, with Civil Service finance, I can assure you that there is no such connection. What matters is not how much money is directed at a problem, but how that money is managed. A well managed small sum can work miracles - a badly managed large sum will make no difference. It may even make matters worse!

Seeing red.

I've suggested before that perhaps we need to reconsider the penalty kick, but what about red cards? Particularly red cards as a result of two yellows. Clearly transgressions need to be punished, but being reduced to ten men in the last five minutes of a game is a different kettle of fish from being down to ten men after half an hour. Is it time to take a leaf from Rugby and introduce the sin bin? Sending a man off for ten or fifteen minutes would seem to be a far more equitable solution. After all, it is now accepted that football is a spectacle as much as, if not more than a sport, so surely you have to look at things from a spectator point of view, and there's little doubt that sending a man off, particularly in the early stages of a game, more often than not ruins it as a spectacle. And people who have paid good money to watch a match - money which the game relies upon for its continued survival - surely deserve more consideration?

Flags

Interesting programme on the other night about the Union Flag, and whether it has any relevance these days. With its connections with conquest and colonialism, it's disliked, if not actively hated by many. The Scots and Welsh see themselves as Scottish and Welsh rather than British, and the only people who actively embrace the Union Flag are the BNP and the more extreme Ulster protestants - neither of whom come close to representing the views of the man on the Clapham Omnibus. I have always certainly seen myself as English first and British second, and yet if I had a flagpole, I would - except perhaps on St. George's Day, or when England were involved in some sporting competition - probably fly the Union Flag rather than the flag of St. George. Complicated, isn't it?

Ing-er-land

The media would have you believe that we are among the favourites, but am I alone in thinking we have little or no chance in this World Cup? We're not rubbish by any means, but we're so predictable and one-dimensional in attack. High balls into the box in the hope that Crouch or somebody can get on the end of them, and shots from distance - that's more or less the sum total of it. No real penetration - no guile. I hope I'm wrong, but frankly I can't see us getting past the quarter-finals.

The number of the beast.

So we've survived June 6th without any apocalyptic events - apart from the opening of a rather unnecessary remake of the film "The Omen". Of course, there are those who believe that the true demonic number is not 666 at all, but 616. Doesn't have quite the same ring though, does it? Of course, this whole numerology thing is complete tosh, because, even if you accept the basic premise, there is no agreement on what the relationship is between numbers and letters - or more to the point, you can use whatever system you wish. Which of course means that you can come up with whatever answer suits your fancy. A politician's dream!!

2 + 2 = 5? You've passed!

The news that GCSE examiners are being encouraged to ignore mistakes when marking papers will inevitably lead to accusations that exam results just don't mean anything any more. So are exams easier than when I took mine, some 50-odd years ago? They're certainly different, but what's even more different is the method of teaching. In my day, you were taught the subject, and the exam was a test of how well, or badly, you had understood what you had been taught. Today you are taught to pass the exam, and your exam result is more a measure of how well the teacher has performed, rather than any indication of your understanding of the subject.

Braveheart...?

The Scottish First Minister has come in for some stick for publicly saying that he would not be supporting England in the World Cup. But why should he? There has always been a healthy rivalry between Scotland and England where football is concerned, just as there has equally been between Wales and England in the case of Rugby (Union). Apparently a best-selling T-shirt in Scotland is one which says: "I only support 2 teams - Scotland and any team that England plays". I'm sure if Scotland had qualified the majority of English supporters would be rooting for their opponents. That's the way it is and always has been. Unfortunately, there's always an idiot minority who take things too far, and apparently an Englishman living in Scotland has had his windows put in for displaying the flag of St. George, and has been publicly abused in the street for wearing an England shirt. Mind you, you have to wonder whether it was a terribly sensible thing to do. Shall we all just grow up?

Own goal?

Incandescent fury in the media at the sentence handed out to a paedophile who abducted and abused a three-year-old girl. Even the Home Secretary has weighed in to criticise it. Much is made of the fact that the man concerned could be released in just under six years. Of course, the important word here, which has mainly been ignored, is "could". This is simply the earliest point at which he could be considered for parole - there is absolutely no guarantee that he would get it. But let's look further into this. The judge's basic sentence was "life", but the judge is then bound to set a tariff - essentially the maximum the prisoner will serve - this he set at 18 years. You may argue whether or not that is long enough, but it's certainly a long time. However, the judge is then bound to give a discount for the fact that the accused pleaded guilty at the earliest possible moment. This is one-third, reducing the term to twelve years. He then has to reflect the fact that, subject to good behaviour, all prisoners (other than true "lifers") are considered for parole after serving 50% of their sentence - hence the six years which has caused the outrage. But as you will see, the judge was simply following the rules. And who makes the rules? A body called the Sentencing Guidelines Council. And who appoints the members to that council? The Lord Chancellor, and (you've guessed it) the Home Secretary!!

The law is what I say it is...

I had, and still have no problem with the Prince of Wales' marriage to Camilla - not before time is my reaction, but the question of whether their marriage is legal or not raises some interesting questions about how such issues are decided. We now know that, only ten years ago, the then Government was advised that members of the Royal Family could not be married in a Register Office, and indeed the Act which introduced the concept of civil marriage states quite clearly that it does "not extend to the marriage of any of the Royal Family". Pretty clear, wouldn't you say? And yet last year the Lord Chancellor quite blithely advised Parliament that "we are clear" that the Prince was free to marry in a Register Office. How did he manage to square the circle - well he didn't really try to, he simply stated that in his opinion past views on the matter had been "overcautious". Like I say, I wish the couple all the very best, but it should be a matter of some concern that a Government law officer can simply ignore the clear wording of an Act when it suits him.

Acceptable?

Much rejoicing in the media at the news of the death of Al-Zarqawi, but did you notice in the small print, the fact that the air strike which accomplished it also killed six others, including a child?

IT = It's trouble!

I've commented before on how we seem to be oblivious to lessons we should learn from the past. The latest example is the new NHS super computer system. It was supposed to be up and running by now, but the latest news is that it will probably not be in service before 2008. And the cost - well it started out at something like £3bn, was later uprated to twice that, and the latest estimate has ballooned to something like £20bn. Why am I not surprised? Because we've seen it all before - and not just once. The Home Office computer system, the DVLA system, the Court system, the Tax Office system, and many others - they all went horribly over schedule and over budget. And at the end of the day, none of them have really delivered as promised. So why should this one be any different? Why oh why don't we learn from history?

Wot, no E-numbers?

My grand-daughter goes to nursery. It was her birthday the other week, so her mum baked her a birthday cake, and sent a chunk to nursery for her friends. Except that nursery wouldn't allow it to be handed out because it was home-made. A shop-bought cake would have been fine. The logic? Well, I'm not sure there is any logic to it, but it seems to be all about the risk of the nursery being sued if anything in the cake were to make any of the children ill. With a shop-bought cake they could argue that they had taken reasonable care by consulting the list of ingredients, and ensuring that nothing listed there would cause a problem, and if it did in fact make anybody ill, they could pass the legal responsibility on to the cake manufacturers. What a strange, sad world we live in!

What goes around.....

We are constantly being exhorted by advertisements in the press and on the TV to recycle, but a series of letters in the paper makes it clear that just what you can recycle and how varies considerably from place to place, and often seems to make no sense. Where I live for instance, you can recycle paper (not Yellow Pages however!) but not cardboard. So at what point does paper become card? Just how thick does it have to be before it becomes unacceptable for recycling? You can recycle glass bottles, but not the tops. You can recycle tins, but have to take the labels off first. And in some parts of Yorkshire, it would appear that you are provided with a recycling box, but there is no collection - it's up to you to take it to the recycling centre! If they want people to take recycling seriously, this all needs sorting out.

...not sauce for the gander

So the House of Lords has ruled that, on divorce, wives are entitled to "compensation" for loss of earnings as a result of giving up their career prospects to look after the home and children. Seems reasonable, but there's an unwritten assumption here that only women make career sacrifices for the benefit of the marriage. I'm sure I can't be alone in saying that, had I not been married with a relatively young family, my career would have taken a different course, and I would probably have ended up in a far better paid job. Problem was it would have meant moving to London, or commuting from here in the Midlands, and clearly either way it would have had a big effect (and after discussing it, I decided a detrimental effect) on my wife and children. So I passed it up. Like I say, I'm sure there are plenty of other husbands who have made similar decisions. So how is that taken into account? Who compensates us?

Shuffle, shuffle....

I had little time for Charles Clarke as Home Secretary, but I think he was pretty poorly treated by being sacked in the wake of the "deportation of foreign prisoners" affair. After all, he's only been in post just over a year, and the problem goes back way beyond that. He certainly didn't handle the way the news broke very well, but the punishment seems out of all proportion to the offence. And now we have John Reid, Gawd 'elp us! The words "frying pan" and "fire" spring to mind.

The real NHS

The Health Secretary got a lot of stick for suggesting that the NHS had just had its "best year ever", despite stories of job cuts and ward closures. I've recently had first hand experience of my local NHS hospital , and my take on this is that the standard of care is good, but the standard of attention leaves a lot to be desired, and this is purely down to staffing levels. The ratio of staff to patients simply isn't sufficient to allow for an acceptable level of response most of the time. You soon learn that you need to know you need something about 10 minutes or so before you actually need it - that being about the average time delay between asking for something and it happening. So if this is the "best ever"........!!

The prodigal returns

Well, I'm back - sort of. Not my old self - never will be again, but I'm a survivor. Can't guarantee daily posts but will do my best to maintain some sort of continuity. Plenty gone on over the last month, mostly government ministers making fools of themselves. One thing that caught my eye was the almost hysterical reaction to a statement by a senior civil servant in the Home Office that he hadn't "the faintest idea" how many illegal immigrants were in the country. Now think about that for a moment. An illegal immigrant is one who has snuck in, and not gone through official channels - so how could anyone have any idea how many there are? The civil servant was simply giving an honest answer - the only honest answer he could possibly give. So why the furore?

Apologies

If anybody is following this blog, I apologise for the sporadic nature of my recent posts, but personal matters have I'm afraid taken my life over recently, and I have found, and indeed am still finding it difficult to find the time, or the will, to maintain regular daily posts. I hope to resume in due course, but for the time being, I hope you will bear with me.

K.I.S.S.

The best systems are the simple ones. The more complicated they get, the more likely it is they will go wrong. The Tax Credit System is horribly complicated, and I'm not in the slightest surprised that it's in trouble. But even the basic principle is barmy - you pay people money for this year on the basis of what they earned last year. If this year they earn more, that creates an overpayment which you then ask them to repay. But by their very nature, these are mostly people at or near the breadline, who spend money as they get it, so how are they supposed to repay? If there's one thing worse than a complicated system, it's a silly complicated system!

I must be getting old.

There's nothing quite like nostalgia. The news that the BBC is to axe "Grandstand" brings back floods of memories of settling down on a Saturday afternoon to watch events you would never otherwise have seen, or even known took place. Anybody remember hill-climbing at Shelsley Walsh for example? I suppose in this commercial world where money can buy the exclusive rights to just about anything, it was inevitable that the Grandstand approach would ultimately run out of events worth showing, but they led the way back in the early years, and Saturday afternoons will never be quite the same again.

What the.........!!

Funny how things come in clusters - like buses. Another for the "You Couldn't Make It Up" collection: a bloke here in the Midlands lives next door to a piece of council land which had become a local rubbish dump. Fed up with the eyesore, he decided to do something about it, and spent some £1500 on clearing the site up. So what happened? The Council wrote to him ordering him to "re-instate the land to its original condition, or face criminal or civil proceedings". I'm just lost for words.

I'll stick with what I've got.

Sky have been bombarding me with literature extolling their new High Definition service. To enjoy the wonders of this new service, all I need is a new HDTV - anything from about £1000 upwards, a Sky HD box - £299, installation costs of £60, and an extra subscription of £10 a month. Yeh, right!

Ooh, me back!

The Supermarket I go to regularly has just had a make-over of its car park, with the result that it is now impossible to park within about 30 yards of the entrance unless you are disabled, or a parent with a toddler. Now I've no problem with special arrangements being made for such people, but what about those of us who are getting on in years and, although not disabled, do on occasion find walking any distance a bit of a struggle? Where do we fit into the great scheme of things? Nowhere, it would seem. How about special parking places reasonably close to the door for the "able-bodied but elderly"?

The perils of emulsion

Going further down the "You Couldn't Make It Up" line, have you heard about the bloke who was not allowed to board a bus because he was carrying a tin of paint? Brand new unopened tin, apparently, but it seems paint under new health and safety regulations is classed as a "hazardous article". The farce of it all is that if the tin's in a bag, then that's OK. Who the dickens thinks these things up? Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks is beginning to look quite sensible!

You couldn't make it up!

The last series of "Doctor Who" included episodes based on the premise that the Government of this country had been taken over by aliens posing as Ministers. Have you looked at Charles Clarke, our beloved Home Secretary lately? Could he in fact be a Slithereen? It would explain a lot. Have you seen his latest piece of idiocy? He is suggesting that people who have been convicted and imprisoned but subsequently had that conviction overturned on appeal should not be entitled to any compensation. So if I'm taken away from my home and family and locked up by a criminal, I would be entitled to compensation, but if the same thing is done to me by the state, I wouldn't be. It appears that I would be classed as a "victim" in the first case, but not the second. Is the man sane?

Is gatso?

There's a basic contradiction with speed cameras. If they're doing their job properly - that it deterring motorists from exceeding the speed limit, then they will raise little revenue. But the fact that they are raising, and continue to raise, considerable revenue means that they are not doing their job properly. And if they're not doing their job properly, what's the point of having them?

I'll see to that, dear......

We're spending more and more on DIY apparently, and yet how many of us are really competent at it? The number of bodge jobs you see - and not just small jobs. There's a bloke near where I live who is building an extension to his house. He's doing it himself - has been in fact for the past two years - and making a right pig's-ear of it. And what's the point? Far from adding to the value of his house, he's actually detracting from it. Best get a man in, and if you can't afford to do so, put it on the back burner until you can.

Who would have believed it!

Do you get as annoyed as I do at reports which come out with conclusions that are so gob-smackingly obvious that you cannot understand how anybody could justify spending good money on getting them? The latest is this one that says the poor are more likely to be burgled, more likely to be stressed by it and less likely to be insured against it. Would anybody honestly have thought different?

God and Mammon

Today is apparently the only Sunday when shops are forbidden to open. Why? In fact why are there any restrictions on Sunday opening at all? Why should one section of society with certain views have any right to curtail the activities of those who may not share their views? I don't object to those who wish to treat Sundays as a special day. I don't object to being awakened on Sunday mornings by the ringing of church bells. Why should they object if I wish to go shopping? Live and let live, that's my philosophy.

There's no place like....

I've always wondered why people choose to go away in this country on Bank Holidays. You just know that the roads will be choked, the trains will be overcrowded and running later than usual, it will take you at least twice as long as normal to get where you're going, and when you get there the place will be full of other holidaymakers. And then you'll have similar problems getting back! Best to stay at home I reckon.

A Pyrrhic victory?

Woman on the news celebrating her "victory" over her local Health Trust who had refused to fund a drug treatment for her on the grounds that her case was not exceptional. But it remains to be seen just how much of a victory this really is, because when you examine the judgment, you find that the court's verdict was based simply on their finding that it is unlawful to discriminate between patients. In other words, if a treatment is available, then it must be made available to everybody who would benefit from it - or to nobody. And of course it is those last three words which are crucial. Health Trusts may now well be faced with saying "There is treatment available, but we simply can't afford to provide it for everybody, and therefore, following this judgment, nobody can have it".

Loony Rooney?

I'm not a Rooney fan, but I think this business of his gambling losses has to be kept in perspective. £700,000 may seem a hell of a lot of money to you and me, but it probably represents no more than a couple or three months income to him. Still by no means a trivial matter, and clearly, however good a footballer he may be, he's obviously a lousy gambler!

Good health!

Pharmaceutical companies are being accused of "inventing" diseases so that they can sell more drugs and thus make more profit. I've no doubt there's some truth in it, but of course in order to succeed, it depends upon the public being willing to believe they are not well. We're not just talking hypochondria here - the fact is that good health is a very subjective thing. There is no doubt that the health of the nation has improved dramatically over my lifetime, and yet doctors' surgeries are as full as they ever were. If a 1950's doctor were to be presented with a modern day doctor's list of patients, I imagine that he would spend much of his time saying "What have you come to see me for - there's nothing wrong with you". What has happened is that, as people's health has improved, so their expectation of what constitutes good health has gone up as well. So we're just as much to blame as the drugs companies.

Folic folly

Big hoo-haa being made over the question of whether or not folic acid should be added to bread, to cut the risk of babies being born with certain defects. The main opposition seems to come from those who object on the grounds that this is "compulsory medication". I wonder if these people realise that flour is already "enriched" by law with certain additives, so the principle is well settled. Anyway, anybody who objects can always stick to wholemeal bread, because that will not be affected.

This is news?

Papers over the weekend full of stories about Prince Harry going out on the razz with some of his mates to celebrate finishing their Officer Training Course, and ending up at a lap-dancing club. So? Am I missing something?

National disaster.

You might wonder why anyone would choose to bet on the Grand National. It is after all the biggest lottery of any horse race. Fallers and loose horses can ruin the chances of the best of them. And yet, it has this fatal attraction - people who know nothing of racing, and who never otherwise go into a betting shop will study form and put their money on their fancy. If you work in an office, bet you had a National sweep. I have this crazy system just for this race. This time it gave me Innox. Great choice - fell at the first fence! Ah well, there's always next year.

Gospel truth?

Have you read about the Gospel of Judas? Fascinating stuff, and I have no real opinion on its authenticity, but what is clear once again is that the New Testament is in fact a highly selective compilation of writings designed to promote a certain image of the life of Jesus which the Church wished to disseminate. It perhaps comes as a bit of a surprise - shock even- to those who take the New Testament as being the last word on the subject, to realise that there is much other material which was simply left out because it didn't fit the picture which the Church wished to put forward. So spin isn't new, you see.

Beauty in the eye of the beholder.

Always nice when you find your judgment is shared by others. A list of the "100 Most Beautiful Women Ever" puts Audrey Hepburn at No. 1. Couldn't agree more. Grace Kelly No. 2 - again for me spot on. Not sure about Cindy Crawford at No. 3 but certainly wouldn't argue with Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe at 4 and 5. But Brigette Bardot down at No. 31? You cannot be serious!

Growing old gracefully.

Why on earth are they tarting up the Sphinx? Surely the whole point is that the Sphinx is ancient, and it should look it. It should show the ravages of time. What exactly are they trying to do?

How safe is safe?

We all know Sod's Law - "if it can go wrong, it will go wrong", but this is just an eye-catching way of presenting a much wider truth - if it can happen, it will happen. A thing - anything - is either impossible, in which case it can never happen under any circumstances, or it is possible, in which case, make no mistake, it will happen, sooner or later. Probability is a measure of how long we are likely to have to wait before it happens. It's worth bearing all this in mind when someone tells us that something is "safe". Following the death of a young lad from measles and a general increase in the disease, doctors are once again pushing the MMR jab and assuring us that it is safe. But this doesn't imply a complete absence of risk - simply that the risk can be regarded as negligible, and that the dangers associated with not having the jab are massively greater than those which may result from having it. This is what parents need to be aware of when making their decision.

La plume de ma tante...

One can have some sympathy with President Chirac in his attempts to maintain the status of the French language and to fight against the hegemony of English, but it is, I'm afraid, rather like Canute trying to hold back the tide. I can't help but feel that much of the problem, historically, lies with the Académie Française and its insistence over the years in attempting to maintain the "purity" of the French language. One of the reasons English has been so successful - apart from being the language of the USA - is that it absorbs words and ideas from other languages like a sponge. It's a mongrel language, with minimal grammar, and an ever changing vocabulary. It is capable of being all things to all people - that is its strength. The French language sees itself as a thing of beauty, with heavy reliance on correct grammar, and - if the Académie had its way - with a strictly controlled vocabulary. That is its weakness.

Success (n), define.

Story in the papers over the weekend about the intention to use airport-style scanners at tube and railway stations to detect people carrying knives. This follows a trial of such measures in London which the Transport Secretary described as "extremely successful". Statistics published show that some 10,000 people were scanned, 68 knives were seized and 100 people arrested - presumably some for reasons other than carrying knives. So 1% arrests and less than 1% where knives were discovered. Obviously it's better than nothing, but given that this was targeted and not random scanning, I would hardly describe such a result in such glowing terms.