Bags again.

I consider myself a reasonably tolerant man, but I get more and more incensed these days at the way we are fed what at best can be described as misleading information, and at worst, downright lies. I've talked about plastic bags before, and they're in the news again - it seems it will only be a matter of time before shops and supermarkets are legally bound to charge us for them. For a start, this strikes me as sexist - men are going to be hit harder than women, because men do not carry bags around with them as a matter of course in the way that many women do. But the main point is this myth that is propagated as justification for such a charge - that plastic bags have to go into landfill because they cannot be recycled. Read my lips - yes they can!! Plastic bags ARE recyclable. So rather than a knee-jerk charge for them, the question which should be being asked is - why aren't they being recycled? And I imagine the answer would be - money. Most local authorities would say that recycling plastic bags is not economically viable. And if that is in fact the case. then let's have a discussion based on that - why is it uneconomic, could it be made economic, and if not, should the cost involved be borne by us all through central or local taxation, or solely by those who use the bags. But at least let's discuss the matter based on fact, not untruths.

Music Man

So, having had a day or two for the dust to settle, just how do we rate Michael Jackson? I think the first thing is to differentiate between Michael Jackson as an individual, and Michael Jackson as the public face of a media package. When you went to see a Michael Jackson show, or watched one of his videos, or listened to one of his records, you were getting the Michael Jackson package - which owed a tremendous amount to the people behind the scenes - not least for much of his career, Quincy Jones who was his producer during his heyday. So, great entertainer - yes. Great dancer - yes. Great singer? Not really. He had a rather thin and reedy voice, which is why he didn't do much ballad work - even with the benefit of electronic enhancement, his voice really wasn't up to it. What he did, he did well, and those behind him ensured that he was given material which played to his strengths and away from his weaknesses. Yes - the Michael Jackson package was certainly pretty awesome, and that is the way he will be remembered.

Plus ça change...

Having seen the England Under-21 team throw away a 3-0 lead, it would seem that our future as a mediocre footballing nation is in good hands!

R.I.P.

Blimey, they're coming thick and fast! Farrah Fawcett - because - I suppose like most males of my generation - I remember seriously lusting after her, and Michael Jackson for - if nothing else - "Blame It On the Boogie".

Music Man / R.I.P.

Steve Race. I play the piano (badly) and he was one of my idols. His calm and considered approach to jazz piano resonated with me, and I tried - oh, how I tried - to emulate him. He and George Shearing were my idols. So long, mate, and thanks for the music.

Who lives in a house like this...?

I am a subscriber to, and a supporter of English Heritage, who do a tremendous amount of good work, but I do not necessarily agree with all their views. In particular, their attitude to UPVC windows and satellite dishes. Houses are for living in, and the idea that the inhabitants should have to put up with cold and draughts and a restricted television coverage, just so that passers-by can admire their property from the outside, strikes me as a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.

English as she is spoke.

An article I was reading the other day referred to a tornado which had "...wrought havoc across the state..." This is a common error. The past tense of the verb to wreak, meaning to inflict something (usually damage) on someone or something, is wreaked. Wrought is the old form of the past participle of the verb to work - now really only used in relation to metal which has been formed ("worked") by hammering, as in wrought iron. It sounds as if it should have some connection to wreak but it hasn't.

Andy Murray

Why do we put so much pressure on our sportsmen? We're already expecting Murray to get to the final at Wimbledon, now that Nadal doesn't stand in his way, and anything less than this will be seen as an abject failure on his part. I hardly think this helps the young man, and I have to ask whether this is really the way the ordinary man/woman in the street is feeling, or is it just media hype to help sell papers? Either way, and despite the fact that I have never been able to find any great enthusiasm for him, I wish him all the best.

Stone me!

Summer solstice, and we have the usual sight of Druids holding their ceremonies at Stonehenge. Now I've no problem with that, but what I do baulk at is this idea that they put about that Stonehenge is somehow "theirs", and that they therefore have some sort of absolute right to use it in this way. The history of Druidism either only goes back 500 years or so, or is lost in the mists of time, depending on who you listen to, but what we can be sure about is that either way Stonehenge is much, much older. So it's no more theirs than anyone else's.

Spelling bee.

Funny how things pop up every now and again - the "i before e except after c" rule has suddenly made the news, though I don't quite know why. The problem is of course that it's not a very good rule - there are a whole host of exceptions. Actually, when I was at school (in Dickensian times that is!) we were taught -
"As a general rule
When the sound is ee
It's i before e
Except after c"
which I think is a much better way of putting it, and makes the point that it is just an aid, not an invariable rule.

He who pays the piper...?

What a mess Formula 1 is getting itself into! It's interesting and not a little instructive that the current dispute seems to be between the FIA (i.e. Moseley and Ecclestone) and FOTA (the body representing the teams). This may all be part of a cunning plan by Ecclestone to get rid of Moseley, but the one body which appears to be unrepresented and unconsulted in all of this is arguably the most important one - the paying spectators!

And the answers are...

So how many did you get (come on, be honest!)

1. Harry
2. Lucia
3. Reginald
4. Marion
5. Alfred
6. Helen Mirren
7. Doc
8. Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
9. Nana
10.St. Mary Mead

P.R. (5)

The essential element in an Additional Member System is that MPs are elected more or less as at present, but that Parliament is then "topped up" with additional MPs so that overall it is more representative of the support for the parties. The system which is being talked about at present is the "AV plus" system thought up by a Commission set up under Lord (Roy) Jenkins in 1997 to look into the question of PR. Under this system, MPs would be elected for individual constituencies using the ATV method (see the first post in this series). But then voters would also have a second vote for a bigger multi-member constituency, and these seats would be allotted taking into account how many MPs a party already had within that larger constituency, and favouring those parties which were under-represented. The actual methodology is rather too complicated to go into in detail here but Google "Jenkins Commission" if you are interested in the nuts and bolts. The Commission's report in 1998 was kicked into the long grass by the Government (it was felt that on the whole it would disadvantage Labour), and it remains to be seen whether there is any more enthusiasm for it today. And that finishes this look at how PR might work if ever we go for it.

Whose money?

A news story says that the Chairman of the BBC is fighting back against plans to "slice off part of the BBC's £3.6bn licence fee" for other purposes. I would think he would know better. I am old enough to remember when ITV first started up in the mid-1950s, and it was only a matter of time before there were people saying that they shouldn't have to pay the licence fee as they "never watched BBC, only ITV", and they were told in no uncertain terms that the fee was a licence to have a television set, and had nothing to do with what you did or didn't watch. And that's just as true today - it is not and never has been the BBC's licence fee - it's the Government's licence fee and is theirs to do with as they please. Certainly it has always been given to the BBC, and therefore it is reasonable that an expectation has arisen that this state of affairs would continue, and I think if the Government intend to make changes, they must give the BBC sufficient notice to enable them to adjust to the new reality, but for the Chairman to talk of it as their money displays a woeful misunderstanding of the situation.

Fingers on buzzers

OK - pub quiz questions about names. You can of course Google the answers, but play fair and see how many you know unaided. I reckon 5 or more would be pretty good -

1. What was Bing Crosby's real first name?
2. In the opera "La Boheme" the heroine sings "They call me Mimi, but my name is..." what?
3. Jeeves and Wooster - we know Wooster's first name is Bertie, but Jeeves?
4. John Wayne's real name wasn't John. What was it?
5. ...and Benny Hill's wasn't Benny. Any ideas?
6. Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov - you know her, but not by that name. How is she better known?
7. Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey, Sleepy, Grumpy, Happy and...?
8. What does the bank's name HSBC stand for?
9. What's the dog's name in Peter Pan?
10.What's the name of the fictional village where Miss Marple lives?

Answers will follow

Second thoughts

I'm the first to admit when I've got something wrong, and I'm beginning to think I was wrong about 20-20 cricket. I've been a bit scathing about it in the past, but recently faute de mieux I've been watching the World Cup matches and come to realise that there's much more to it than simply swinging the bat and hoping for the best. I now see that it's a game of subtle tactics both from the batting and the fielding point of view. What has come as most of a surprise is the way spin bowling plays such an important part - quite the opposite of what you would expect. And then there's flexibility in the order in which you send your batsmen in - yes, I think I got it wrong.

P.R.(4)

So it can be argued that STV produces a "fairer" result than either FPTP or ATV - although you can certainly come up with scenarios where this isn't so, and there is an argument that STV tends to favour "wallpaper" candidates who have no strong views (or at least don't express them) on anything, and are therefore more likely to end up as voters' second preferences. But the main problem with STV is that it needs bigger, multi-member constituencies which some would say dilutes - or even breaks - the link between a voter and his MP. At present, I know who my MP is - whether or not I voted for them - but under STV I could be represented by 3 or 4 MPs covering a far larger area, and it might be more difficult to know who to approach if I felt the need. So there have been various attempts to come up with some sort of hybrid solution which keeps the one-to-one link between the voter and their MP, and this has led to a form of PR known as AMS - the Additional Member System, and we'll look at that next time.

Bad maths.

The Government has unveiled its latest strategy for eliminating child poverty. All very worthy, but what took my eye was the definition of child poverty - its a family with less than 60% of the average wage coming in. Now we've been down this line before - by the very way averages (whether mean, median or mode) are calculated, there will always be those above and below that figure. Which as far as I can see, means that there will always be some families with incomes below 60% of the average - in other words, child poverty, as defined by the Government, will always exist! What matters of course, is how much those families are pulling in - once again, we've confused actual income with comparative income - back to school folks!

Height-ist?

We're used to the idea that you can be too small to go on some rides at fairs and in theme parks - it's a constant source of annoyance to my 12-year-old granddaughter, who is a bit of a titch and is therefore barred from some attractions she would like to go on. But now comes a story of a restaurant in Gloucester, where you only qualify for the discounted kids' meal prices if you are under a certain height. My granddaughter is all for going and filling her face!

P.R. (3)

So - STV. Voting is the same as ATV in that you rank the candidates in order of preference. But we're now dealing with multi-member constituencies, so we need a different way of deciding who is elected. And the way it's done is to divide the number of votes cast by the number of seats to be filled, plus one. So if 100,000 votes are cast, and there are 3 MPs to be elected, we divide 100,000 by 4 (3 + 1) and come up with 25,000. We then add one to this number and this becomes the quota. Any candidate who receives 25,001 votes or more is elected. But if, as is most likely, we don't end up with three candidates reaching the quota of votes what then? And this is when it becomes a bit complicated! Unlike ATV where votes are redistributed from the bottom up, with STV they are - at least initially - redistributed from the top down. Suppose candidate A gets 40,001 votes. They are obviously elected, but they have got far more votes than they needed for that, so the 15,000 surplus votes they have got are redistributed to those voters' second choice candidates. But hang one - which 15,000 votes? The answer is that all candidate A's votes are redistributed but on the basis that they are now only worth a 15000/40001th (just under 0.4) of a vote each - I told you it gets complicated! If there are no surplus votes, then we proceed as with ATV by eliminating the candidate with the fewest votes and redistributing their votes on the basis of second preferences. Still with me? More to come...

Democracy??

I'm sure Churchill said something about democracy being a pretty poor system of government - until you considered the alternatives. It's true enough that any form of government has its faults, and as far as our system is concerned, we are seeing one of them in all its naked glory at the moment. Governments are elected to govern on behalf of the whole country, and yet, despite the clearest indications that the country as a whole don't like this Government, and would prefer to see them out, party political interests have taken over. A Labour spokesman on television the other day sort of gave the game away with a Freudian slip when he said "...what our people want us to do is sort out the economy, clear up the expenses mess etc...". I'm afraid I gave in to my baser instincts and shouted at the TV "Never mind your people, what about the people!" Let's be clear, what we have at the moment is not a case of the Government clinging to power - it is the Labour Party clinging to power. And just to put the record straight, this is not a partisan rant - had this blog been running then, I would have been making a similar point about the Major government in its final months.

Formula 1

So what are we to make of the current F1 season? Things have been really turned upside down haven't they? I would imagine Honda are scratching their heads and wondering why with all their resources they couldn't do what Ross Brawn has done on a shoestring by comparison. And I would think that David Coulthard must be feeling pretty miffed that after several seasons flogging his way round in an underperforming Red Bull car, he has no sooner retired than the car has taken on a new lease of life, and is now up there at the front of the grid. What this season demonstrates - if indeed it needed demonstrating - is that it is the car rather than the driver which matters. Last season's big names are all struggling and a new set of faces are making the headlines. Does the apparent stranglehold of Brawn/Button make the whole thing boring? Not for me it doesn't although I can understand why it might do for other people. Can't imagine that Ferrari and McLaren will not pull something out of the hat before the season is over. No, for me, this is exciting.

Take a good look

I don't know whether our mainstream politicians are being duplicitous or merely disingenuous, but this idea that they're putting forward that those who have voted for the BNP don't really believe in what they stand for is hogwash. Come with me and I will introduce you to plenty of people who not only agree solidly with the BNP's ideals, but who have thought that way for years - long before the BNP, in its current incarnation, came into being. You can label these people as extremists, and loathe their views, but to simply ignore them or treat them as non-thinking followers of a fad dangerously underestimates what's actually going on.

P.R. (2)

The basic idea behind proportional representation is simple enough - the number of MPs a party has should reflect the number of votes they got. At the last election (2005) Labour got 36% of the votes cast, the Conservatives 33% and the LibDems 22%. Under ideal PR conditions then Labour should have got 36% of the MPs, Conservatives 33% and LibDems 22% - in reality Labour ended up with 55%, Conservatives with 30% and LibDems with 10%. You can see why the LibDems are so in favour of PR! We've looked at how ATV works, and seen that this is not really PR, just an arguably fairer method of First Past the Post (FPTP). Indeed PR cannot really work with any system which produces just one MP per constituency - what we need to have is bigger constituencies returning several MPs, and then we can consider (gulp!) STV - the Single Transferable Vote - which is far from easy to explain, but I'll try next time.

D Day...

...6th June, right? Everybody knows that. Well, maybe, maybe not. D Day was the code name for the day scheduled for Operation Overlord (the landings in France) to start, and this was meant to be June 5th 1944. This was the date everybody was working towards. In the event, bad weather meant the landings had to be postponed for 24 hours. So the actual invasion started on June 6th, but it can be argued that D Day was always June 5th. Fascinating Fact No. 547...

Doh!

I have to admit I was a bit taken aback by the size of the ballot paper when I went to vote in the European Parliament election yesterday. Apparently UKIP, who appear last on the ballot paper - it's done in alphabetical order - have complained that some people who wished to vote for them have been unable to find where to put their cross because the polling station staff fold the form before they give it to you (so that when you have finished and refold it, it will fit into the slot in the ballot box) and it would seem some voters don't realise they have to fully unfold it to see all the candidate parties. I'm not sure what this says about the intelligence of some would-be UKIP voters...

Ha ha

Another one from my retirement magazine -

A passenger in a taxi tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him something. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus. drove up over the curb and stopped just inches short of a large plate-glass shop window. For a few moments, everything was silent in the cab, and then the driver said "Please don't ever do that again - you scared the living daylights out of me!". The passenger, who was also frightened, apologised and said that he didn't realise that a tap on the shoulder could frighten him so much. The driver replied "I'm sorry, it's really not your fault at all. Today is my first day driving a cab. For the last 25 years, I've been driving a hearse".

Should we care?

Apparently the cuckoo is becoming a rarer sight or sound in these islands. Various reasons have been put forward for this - global warming (obviously!) and pesticides and other changes in farming practices heading the list. This may be a matter of concern to the RSPB and bird watchers generally, but should the rest of us be concerned? It is not, after all, a native bird - it migrates here from Africa for the summer and then returns, and as is well known, it has some rather nasty social habits. If you could ask the opinion of other birds, I imagine their reaction would be "good riddance!"

R.I.P.

Danny La Rue - what a trooper!

Couldn't make it up!

We haven't had one of these for some time, but here's a worthy addition. Workmen were painting new double yellow lines on a street in London. There was a (legally) parked car in the way. No, they didn't paint round it - they carefully moved it (it was a little car), painted their lines and then replaced it. A little time later, along comes a traffic warden and arranges for the car (now of course on double yellows) to be towed away! This would be bad enough, but then it apparently took the owner of the car several weeks and the intervention of the local MP to persuade the council that they had done anything wrong, and to write off the fine and return the car. A classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing - or even that the left hand exists! One would like to think that lessons have been learned - but I doubt it.