Polar bears 1, Spycam 0

Like this story about the use of cameras disguised as snowballs, ice-floes and such to film the everyday life of polar bears.  Perhaps they weren't quite as well disguised as was thought.  The bears found them, and destroyed them.  One up for privacy!  Perhaps we can introduce polar bears round here to see to the CCTV cameras?

Holy Mastercard, Batman!

I posted a few weeks ago about how I objected to being emotionally blackmailed by charities, particularly at this time of year, and now I learn that the government is considering requiring banks and retailers to ask anybody making a purchase using their bank card, or using an ATM whether they wish to make a donation to charity.  For heaven's sake, leave me alone!

Follow that bottle!

Fascinating snippet in the news about a pilot scheme being run in Dundee whereby bottles of booze are "tagged" in such a way that they can be traced back to the shop that sold them.  The idea is that if an under-age drinker is found (presumably in a public place - under-age drinking in private is not an offence, or is it in Scotland?) the system can be used to determine where the drink was purchased, and then hopefully using the store's CCTV the actual purchaser can be identified, and the appropriate action taken if necessary.  All a bit Big Brother but that's the way things are going these days, isn't it?

Football.

Gloomy days at the Molineux - Boxing Day match was a "must-win" and we didn't.  Wolves now bottom of the table, and history tells us that the team which is bottom going into the New Year rarely survives.  Irony is that we are probably playing better (if only marginally) than last year, but the luck really hasn't been with us as it was on one or two important occasions last season.  So in the words of Sir Alex Ferguson it sure is "squeaky bum time".

Sauce for the goose...

Does anybody else find it ironic that the founder of WikiLeaks is now complaining because details of the prosecution case against him in Sweden are being leaked to the press?

The day after.

In my youth, this used to be known in our house as  "Pyjama Day", because nobody bothered to get dressed.  There was something deliciously decadent about spending the day in your dressing-gown.  Can't do it these days of course - I need to go out and get my newspaper, for one thing. And then, somehow it's not the same when you're on your own.  Oh well.....

Season's greetings...

...to one and all.

Christmas trivia.

Just one item for you this year, but I particularly like the story of the Italian "Santa Claus" who is in fact an old lady riding a broomstick who goes round delivering presents to children on the night of January 5th.  The story is that she was approached by the three wise men (let's assume there were three, OK?) who told her of the imminent birth of the Christ-child, but she was too busy to go with them, and by the time she got her act together the star had disappeared and she couldn't find her way.  So she flies round to this day leaving presents at every house with children in the hope that He will be there.  And because she was late starting out, Italian children have to wait nearly an extra fortnight for their presents.  I think that's a nice story.

Underhand...

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, just what is the position these days when you're talking to journalists?  My recollection is that you could make it clear from the get-go that you were talking "off the record" and then they couldn't directly report anything you said.  And if you were just chatting generally and you said something newsworthy, the journalist might say "Can I quote you on that", and you had the right to say yes or no as you felt inclined, and if you said no, that was that.  But these days we get more ansd more cases where someone is secretly recorded and what they say is then published without even any pretence of asking their permission, and even worse, as in the Vince Cable case, this is done by journalists posing as ordinary members of the public, so you don't even realise that you're talking to a journalist.  So what's the position these days - is it anything goes?  Have you any comeback?  Is there anywhere you can go for redress?

Unwise words.

Hard to believe that as astute a politician as Vince Cable would make the comments ascribed to him recently of threatening to bring down the coalition government by resigning, but it goes further than that.  As far as the LibDems are concerned, coalition government is their Holy Grail.  Proportional representation is at the heart of their philosophy, and PR will almost always produce a coalition government.  So the LibDems have a vested interest in demonstrating to the country that coalition government works, and works well.  If this coalition fails - particularly if it fails as a result of something the LibDems do - then they might as well fold their tents and go off into the night.  They will be finished as any sort of a serious political party.  I'm sure Vince Cable appreciates this as much as anyone.

Ha ha.

Barrister to client:  "Now that you've been acquitted, will you tell me the truth.  Did you steal the car?
Client to barrister "After hearing your amazing argument in court this morning, I’m beginning to think I didn’t."

Information, information, information.

More travel disruption, more flights cancelled, more people having to spend the night sleeping on airport floors, and so on and so on.  And once again, the major complaint you hear is lack of information.  You'd really think that organisations would have learned by now that when things go awry the best thing you can do is to keep the punters informed - even if you have nothing concrete to tell them, the fact that you are talking to them and telling them what you can will help take the heat out of the situation.  I would suggest that you should be devoting a significant part of your resources to doing just that - but it doesn't seem to happen. Time after time we hear the same story - customer desks are unmanned, 'phones are not answered, there's nobody in authority to be seen.  You can't make the problem disappear, but you can sure make it worse!

Here we go again.

I really, really do try not to go over old ground, but the news that rent-a-mob are now targeting Topshop to protest about its tax avoidance policies leaves me little choice.  So once again, can I make the point that TAX AVOIDANCE IS LEGAL!!!  An idea seems to have been gaining ground that it may be legal but somehow it is immoral, so I trust all those who subscribe to this view will be closing any ISAs that they have, and be moving the money into ordinary savings accounts, where they will pay tax on the interest.  Yes folks, an ISA is a form of tax avoidance, you naughty people!  And anyway, if Topshop is forced, by whatever means, to pay more tax, who do you think will end up footing the bill?  Topshop - don't make me laugh, they'll simply pass the cost on to the customers - who are probably the very people who are protesting.  Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

Unbelievable - again.

Impossible not to feel enormous sympathy for Paul Houston, whose 12-year-old daughter was killed by a hit-and-run driver.  The driver is an Iraqi Kurd, and was seeking asylum in this country.  Mr Houston, not unnaturally, wanted him deported, but he has now been granted the permanent right to live here, on the ground that he now has a family here.  But there's more to this than Mr Houston's tragedy - this man has a string of convictions both before and after the hit-and-run, and seems as undesirable a character as you could imagine, so have we reached a stage where the fathering of a child in this country now overrides all other considerations, and gives you an absolute right not to be deported, however despicable you may be?  And if we have, how on earth did this come about?  Compare this with the story I reported about a month ago of the woman who was threatened with deportation because she was born in Canada and had never become a British citizen, despite living here since she was six months old - and she had a family here as well.  Something's wrong somewhere!

Change of mind.

Well I've bitten the bullet and bought myself a Kindle - my Christmas present to myself.  The main attractions are the relatively low cost of books, the fact that there is such a wide range of titles available and the ease and speed of access - you can see a book you fancy and be reading it within about a minute.  I still miss the feel of a "real" book, but have decided that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.  I will keep you informed of my progress.

When is a decision not a decision?

I can't quite get my head round this latest Julian Assange business.  He has applied for, and been granted bail, and that decision has been appealed.  So far, so good - but why on earth is he in jail?  He has been granted bail, and unless and until it is overturned on appeal, surely that decision stands?  Assuming he can meet the conditions associated with it, he should be out on bail - so why the hell is he languishing in Wandsworth nick?  Can anybody out there enlighten me?

Policing demonstrations.

The Home Secretary has decided that the use of water cannon is not an appropriate response to the "student" violence.  Quite right I think.  The problem is that you are dealing with three types of demonstrator - the ones who simply want to make their point by shouting slogans and waving placards, the ones who perhaps start out that way, but then get caught up in all the excitement and end up doing things they might later regret, and finally the ones who simply came for a chance to fight the police and cause as much damage as possible.  Water cannon will not be able to differentiate - only police on the ground can do that, and we should support them in doing what is a very difficult job and accept that they will occasionally get it wrong.

Ban him.

We've enough home-grown trouble makers without importing them.  I think the US Pastor Jones (he who threatened to burn copies of the Koran on September 11th) should not be permitted to come here.

Ah, the nostalgia.

Christmas is coming....  Went out at the weekend to buy a turkey crown for Christmas Day.  And that started me thinking - we are now so used to being able to pick up an oven-ready chicken or turkey at any time of year, that it's hard to realise that it's not that long ago that chicken (turkey was almost unheard of then) was just a once or twice a year treat.  And when you bought a chicken, that's what you got - head, feet, feathers, the lot.  I can see my Gran now, sitting on a chair in the kitchen surrounded by newspaper on the floor, plucking a chicken laid across her lap.  Then when you'd got rid of all the main feathers, you would screw up bits of newspaper into spills, which you would light and then burn off all the remaining "pin feathers".  Quite a performance, so perhaps not surprising that you only had a chicken at Christmas, and maybe Easter.  Rabbit was a more common meal, but that wasn't easy to deal with either - you'd hang it up on the back of the door by its feet, cut round the legs and yank the skin down to peel it off - hence the expression (round here anyway) of "skin a rabbit" when you're pulling a tight jumper off a child.  How things have changed.

Top TV.

Can I just put in a plug for "Misfits"?  Now in its second series, it is one of the smartest things on the box at the moment.  It's crude - at times embarrassingly crude - but it's refreshingly different and a very clever and novel take on the "superhero" genre - think "Heroes" sort of crossed with "Auf weidersehen, Pet". My only problem is that I need to have the subtitles on to understand half of what Kelly is saying - just what the hell is that accent?

Well out of it.

Keep hearing that one of the main arguments against the rise in University tuition fees is that it will discourage young people from going to University and "they are our future".  Watched the supposed student demonstration in London on Thursday and kept thinking - this lot are our future?  Glad I won't be there to see it!

Bang, bang.

Birmingham have put in place a system of sensors around certain parts of the city which can "hear" gunshots and by triangulation pinpoint with reasonable accuracy where they came from.  I'm not sure that I find this particularly reassuring - it seems to me to be accepting that the war against gun crime is as good as lost, and the best the police can do is deal with the aftermath.  Certainly better than nothing and it may well result in more offenders being caught, and faster response by the emergency services, but surely we should be putting our efforts into preventing guns from being discharged in the first place?

It's a crazy world.

Did you know that you now have to be over 16 to buy Christmas crackers?  Crackers indeed!

Ha ha.

There is a rumour that the Royal Spanish Academy, who oversee Spanish grammar, are looking at the gender of some words.  Spanish nouns of course are either masculine or feminine.  It is said that one word under consideration is "computer" - should it be masculine or feminine?  The discussion apparently quickly split along sexist lines.  The men decided that a computer should be feminine because (a) nobody really understands how they work, (b) they speak a language which only other computers understand and (c) once you commit to one, you have to spend a small fortune on accessories for it.  The women maintained that a computer was obviously masculine, because (a) to get it to do something, you have to turn it on, (b) they hold a lot of data but still can't think for themselves and (c) as soon as you commit to one, you realise that if you had waited a little longer, you could have got a better model.  The women won the day!

Football.

Newcastle are at it again - unbelievable!

Not a difficult decision.

This business about the LibDems and whether they should vote for or against or abstain over the tuition fees Bill in view of what was in their manifesto seems to me to be missing the point.  A party's manifesto is a statement of what that party intend to do if they win the election and form a government - but the LibDems didn't win the election and have not formed a government so what was in their manifesto is not an issue.  They are certainly not bound by it.  Their allegiance now is - or should be - to the coalition of which they chose to be part.  The agreement which brought about that coalition allowed for them to abstain on this particular matter, so they can do that, but to vote against would be a betrayal of the agreement they entered into.  If they have any honour therefore, the choice is clear - they vote for or they abstain.

Somebody's stolen my snowman!

Item on local news the other night (and we've been here before) asking people not to abuse the 999 system by dialing it for what (in the view of the police) are trivial matters.  So the interviewer asked the police spokesman what number the public should dial for non-emergency enquiries  "0300........." (and I can't remember the rest of it) said the policeman.  And that's it isn't it?  Everyone knows 999, but how many people know - or even know where to look for - the number of their local police?  Whatever happened to that idea of having an easy-to-remember number (101 was it?) for "non-emergency" emergencies?

Slip sliding away.

The main roads are getting gritted, but the side roads and estate roads aren't, and after a few days of being compacted down by traffic, they are now turning into skating rinks.  I can accept that maybe the council doesn't have the resources to see to these minor roads, but whatever happened to grit bins?  Give us the grit and we'll see to ourselves - it seems such an obvious solution.  In my younger days, grit bins were a common sight - where did they go, and why?

Hmmm...

I have four grandchildren who go to three different schools, all local.  We haven't had that much snow round here, but there's a couple or three inches down I would estimate.  Two of the schools are open, the other is closed.  Difficult to see why there should be this disparity.  The reason given for the closed school is the catch-all "Health and Safety", which really tells you nothing.  The grandchild who goes there however tells a rather disturbing story - of course it could be wrong or simply playground gossip - but apparently if a school is open and a child does not attend, this goes down as an unauthorised absence, whereas if the school is officially closed it doesn't.  Attendance levels are one of the criteria by which a school is judged, so if the school thinks that due to bad weather a significant number of children won't make it, shutting the school protects the attendance levels and thereby the school's Ofsted rating.  Interesting...?

Strewth!

The main thing to come out of these WikiLeaks documents as far as I can see seems to be that politicians and government officials are wont to say one thing in public and another in private.  Now there's a surprise!

Votes for sale?

What about this Panorama programme then?  The team bidding for England to host the 2018 World Cup say it will damage their case.  The BBC say the programme was in the public interest.  A couple of points spring to mind.  Firstly, the content may well have been in the public interest, but the timing was a little strange - it seems pretty clear that this programme could have been put out weeks if not months ago, so why wait until the bid is just days away?  The second point is that the whole business reflects rather badly on the bid team who seem to be saying in coded language that they would rather that known corruption remained a secret than that revealing it jeopardised our bid.  On a purely personal level I hope we don't get it.  I may not be around in 2018, but Villa Park, which I assume is likely to be one of the venues, is uncomfortably close to where I live.

Compare and contrast.

This latest WikiLeaks business seems to me to be treading a fine line between secrecy and privacy.  A secret is something which you are trying to stop others from finding out about, and I think there is some merit in at least looking at your motivation for so doing and, if it is considered merely self-serving, exposing the secret for the world to see.  On the other hand, a private message which was always intended to be for the recipient's eyes only is a different matter and it can be argued that that privacy should be respected.  Think how you would feel if your personal correspondence was published for all to read.  However innocent it might be, I imagine you would feel violated. So are these latest documents secrets or private correspondence?  Tricky one.

Get in line.

Much discussion recently about who should be our next King.  Calls in the popular press for it to be William, whilst he himself is on record as saying he is content to wait his turn.  All this ignores the clear constitutional position.  Upon the death or abdication of a monarch, the next in line succeeds automatically and immediately - hence the saying "The King is dead, long live the King".  Charles - assuming he is still alive - will succeed the present Queen, whether he wants to or not.  He might then of course decide to abdicate, in which case William would then succeed him, but it would be his (Charles') decision to make - there is no provision for the succession to skip a generation as it were.

Rattle, rattle.

It's that time of year.  Scarcely a day goes by without a letter from some charity or other.  Like I say, it's the same every year, but year by year it seems to me the tone has changed.  No longer do charities beg for a donation - they don't even ask for a donation - they now demand a donation, and what's more, they want the donation to be on their terms.  They want a direct debit set up for a minimum of £5 a month for instance.  And what about those people who stand at the exit door of supermarkets and stick their collecting tins under your nose daring you to pass them without putting something in.  Don't know about you, but it really annoys me.  I decided some time ago which charities I was going to support, and I do so as and when the mood takes me and finances allow.  All these other charities are good causes, but the choice is mine to make and I will not be bullied.

Words again.

This is what Tory MP Howard Flight said - "We're going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it's jolly expensive but for those on benefit there is every incentive. Well, that’s not very sensible."  Howls of outrage, and yet...  substitute "having children" for "breeding" and you're left with a perfectly sensible comment with which many people would agree.  Who was that comedian who used to say "It's the way I tell 'em"?

Words, words...

How do you measure happiness? This is a question being much discussed at the moment, as a result of the Government's proposal to try and do just that.  I think the question is - can you measure happiness?  As I see it, happiness is a transitory state - I may be happy one moment, and not happy the next.  That doesn't necessarily mean I'm unhappy - I may be simply content, but no more.  I think contentment - or discontentment - is a ongoing state of mind, and you could measure that, but I'm not sure about happiness.

What are exams for?

Daft question?  You may think so - surely exams are a way of testing how much a student knows about a subject?  Well, they may have originally been designed with that objective, but things have changed over the years.  Today it seems to me that exams are trying to do two things - and two things which are fundamentally incompatible.  From the point of view of the government and schools, exam results are a way of assessing how well a school is performing. So both government and schools want to see as many A and A*s as possible. But exam results are also used by employers and further education establishments to try and identify candidates worthy of consideration for a job or a University or College place.  And they want results which clearly separate the wheat from the chaff - if everybody is coming to them with A and A*s how are they to differentiate?  So I come back to the original question - what are exams for?  We need to make up our minds.

Read all about it...

I'm beginning to wonder to what extent the present economic uncertainty is being generated by the media.  It seems that the glass must always be reported as half-empty - any article must always stress the negatives.  Monday's papers were all reporting that Ireland was being bailed-out by the EU and a major crisis was thereby being averted - almost glass half-full.  But yesterday it was half-empty again - was the bail-out enough?  Would it succeed?  Would the crisis spread to Portugal and Spain?  Problem is of course that such comments can become self-fulfilling prophesies.  I'm sure it helps sell papers and attract listeners and viewers, but to what extent do the media have a duty not to make a bad situation worse?  Are they reporting the news, or helping to make it?

Confused....

Man wins big lotto jackpot - several million - wife from whom he was divorced ten years ago says she is entitled to a share.  And gets one - though apparently not as much as she wanted.  But why?  I've argued this before - why following a divorce should either party have any claim on the other's future assets?  Child maintenance of course is a separate matter - what we're dealing with here is a claim by one spouse for a share in money which the other spouse has come into - by whatever means - after their marriage has ended.  I just don't get it.

Unbelievable!

A 65-year-old woman, who has lived in this country since she was 6 months old, married and brought up a family here, has now been told that she is an illegal alien.  All this because she was actually born in Canada, and has never applied (nor it would seem up until now, had any reason to apply) for British citizenship. She has now been threatened with deportation unless she does so.  That in itself would be bad enough, but just to put the icing on the cake, she has to pay £840 for the privilege.  She has described the situation as "absolutely stupid, ridiculous".  Frankly, I feel she is showing admirable restraint - I would use far far stronger language.  Surely someone in authority ought to be able to sort this out.  It reflects very poorly on us as a nation.

Foot in mouth.

I think Lord Young's "never had it so good" statement was not so much inaccurate as simply ill-judged and badly expressed.  The point he was making - quite correctly - is that those on a variable-rate mortgage have seen the cost of servicing that mortgage drop dramatically as a result of interest rates coming down to an all-time low, and that this has put significant money into such people's pockets.  What it ignored was that for a lot - maybe even most - people, such comments are academic, because they are in rented property, or on a fixed-rate mortgage.  And of course for retired people like me, low interest rates simply mean less return on our savings.  I don't think selective reporting helped, but he sure could have chosen his words better.

Season of mists...

Have I mentioned before how I hate this time of year?  I don't know what Keats was on when he wrote his famous ode, but I can't find anything to raise my spirits when it's dark to get up, as often as not it's wet and windy, the garden looks a mess, it's dark again come tea-time, and winter's round the corner.  Ugh!!  Mind you, to be fair, Keats' poem is more about harvest-time so probably relates to late September / early October rather than mid-November.  Still, I'm depressed - roll on Spring!

Out of the spotlight.

I would imagine the Chandlers - the couple recently released after being held by Somali pirates for over a year - would be quite grateful to Prince William and Kate Middleton.  Were it not for the announcement of their engagement, the return of the Chandlers to the UK would have been the front page news, and they would have been hounded by the press, and if I read them right, this is something they would not have enjoyed.  So it's an ill wind...

OMG...

....they've really gone and done it,  Wills and Kate that it.  So now we're in for Gawd knows how many months of sick-making mawkishness.  I wish them all the best but would really like to go to sleep and wake up when it's all over!
P.S. I did like Prince Charles' off-the-cuff comment "They've been practising long enough".

Ha ha.

This from my local paper -
A British couple were driving on holiday in the US, and they were approaching a  place called Kissame.  They were discussing how it would be pronounced - is it Kiss-a-me, Kiss-ay-me, or maybe Kiss-aim?  They stopped there for something to eat and the husband said to the waitress "We were wondering how you pronounce the name of this place - could you say it very slowly for us?".  The waitress gave them a strange look and said "Buuurrrggerrr Kiiinnnggg".

Formula One

Despite the best efforts of the TV commentators - particularly Eddie Jordan - to convince me otherwise, I have found the current season frankly rather boring.  With no refuelling, the majority of races have been effectively decided in the first few laps - often indeed the first few corners - and thereafter been decidedly processional. The exceptions have been the few rain-affected races, but overall I have not managed to generate any real enthusiasm.  So, what of the overall result?
Vettel - not really a terribly convincing champion - it should have been so much easier for him.  For most of the season he was in the fastest car and he was on pole no less than 10 times, but amazingly only managed to turn 3 of them into wins.  The title is his, but the jury is still out, I feel (and I seem to remember making the same comment last season).
Alonso - I know I shouldn't feel that way, but I was rooting for anybody but him to take the title.  He hasn't got a particularly good history with me, as the posts on previous seasons will show.  I have to admit that he got the best out of what for much of the season was a rather ordinary Ferrari, but the fact that he found himself in with a chance at all owed more to good fortune and cynical manipulation of the rules than to his driving.
Webber - the one I feel most neutrals wanted to win.  Had to play second fiddle to Vettel and yet led the standings for much of the season.  If only he could have kept it on the island in Korea...

Music Man.

Recent programme on the telly about the life of Edward Elgar, who regular readers of this blog will know is a favourite composer of mine.  Can't understand this general obsession with probing into the private lives of artists - just sometimes it helps to understand why they produced a particular work, but for the most part it just seems to be intrusion for its own sake.  Why can't we just accept that Elgar produced a lot of good music, some really great music, and every now and again some absolutely sublime music - what more do you need to know?

Home truths.

Maybe just coincidence, but several times over the last few weeks I've come across that thought-provoking quote from E. M. Forster - "I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country".

By George, I think I've got it!

I am struggling to see the connection the Chinese are seeking to make between our wearing of poppies to remember our war dead, and the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century between our two countries.  The poppy tradition only goes back to the First World War, best part of a century after those rather shameful trade wars.  But whilst writing this, I've just had a thought - is it poppy = opium?  That makes more sense.

The morning after...

So now it's over.  The bugles have sounded the Last Post, the Scouts and the Guides have marched off wondering what it was all about, the old men sporting their medals have planted their crosses and walked away with their memories, and, if my personal experience is anything to go by, many if not most people have got on with their lives without giving it much of a thought. So how long do we go on with this official national act of remembrance?  We don't after all make a big thing of remembering Crécy, Agincourt, the Spanish Armada or even Trafalgar.  I don't think there are any veterans of WWI left now, and not that many of WWII.  Have we reached the stage where it should be for individuals to decide for themselves whether or not - and if so, how - they wish to mark the day?

We will remember them.

Went the day well?
We died and never knew.
But, well or ill,
Freedom, we died for you.
Went the day well?

John Maxwell Edmonds

No easy answer?

Apparently, according to George Dubya's memoirs, the use of "waterboarding" on prisoners in the US prevented, among other things, attacks in this country.  So does that make it right to use such techniques?  He certainly thinks so - as he saw it, and presumably still sees it - his job was to protect America, and to that end, anything goes.  So what do we think?  Let's get one thing out of the way from the start - waterboarding is torture.  Whatever his legal advisers may have said, putting someone in immediate fear of an unpleasant death is torture by any civilised standards.  So we then come down to the age-old dilemma of - do the ends justify the means?  If doing something bad produces a good result, does that justify doing the bad thing?  Even more so, does it justify continuing to do the bad thing in the hope of producing more good results?  Philosophers have argued about this for centuries, and I don't claim to have the answer.  I do think however that it pays to concentrate more on whether the "good" thing really was all good, rather than looking at the bad thing which is obviously bad.  So as a result of torturing these individuals, potential attacks may have been prevented, but equally it may have resulted in many more people becoming "radicalised" and as such a future threat to this country.  So is it really such a "good" result?  It's a bit like the "does prison work" argument, isn't it?  Short-term pluses versus long-term minuses.  At the end of the day it's a moral argument and we must all make up our own mind - or stick our heads in the sand and hope it goes away.

No free lunch?

Much fuss being made over the Government's plans to force the long-term unemployed to do "unpaid manual work" like picking up litter or tending for public parks and gardens.  I have no particular views on the rightness or wrongness of such a plan, but I do take exception to the idea that such work would be "unpaid" - what about the benefit they are getting?  At present they are effectively being paid for not working, so at least this way they would be doing something for their money.

Ha ha.

As someone who could well do with losing a stone or so, I liked this one -

Mr Smith was overweight and went to the doctor for help.  "What I want you to do" said the doctor "is eat normally for two days and then skip a day.   Do that for a fortnight and then come and see me again, and you should have lost about five pounds"
Two week later Mr Smith returned to the doctor, who weighed him and was amazed to find that he'd lost twenty pounds.  "Good heavens" said the doctor "and you did that just by following my instructions?"  "Yes" said Mr Smith "mind you those third days were tough.  I thought I was going to die!"  "What" said the doctor "from hunger?"  "No" said Mr Smith "from skipping!".

Watch this space!

So any candidate in an election who tells lies about any of his/her opponents is now likely to find themselves up before an Election Court with the possibility of the result of the election being declared void.  Now that should make future general and by-elections interesting!

The Lazy Cook

I posted on April 24th about new potatoes.  I am grateful to my daughter for the following tip - you don't have to fog up your kitchen by cooking them on the hob, you can do them in the microwave.  Put them in a bowl, cover them with boiling water and give them between 10 and 15 minutes (depending on the wattage of your microwave) on full power.

Here I go again!

At the risk of flogging to death a hobby-horse of mine, it seems to me that the present debate about which prisoners should and shouldn't have the right to vote says at least as much, if not more, about our approach to the use of imprisonment as a punishment as it does about the electoral process.

Oi - behave yourself!

Following on from yesterday's post, Professor Nutt's report also considered the effect of alcohol and drug taking on society in general rather than simply on the taker, and here you cannot really argue with the report's finding that society is much more widely affected by alcohol-fuelled behaviour than by drug taking.  Again though, I'm not sure this has anything to do with any difference between alcohol and drugs as such, but is more down to the fact that people tend to drink in public, but take drugs in private, so anti-social behaviour as a result of alcohol is there for all to see, whereas any such behaviour as a result of drug taking tends to take place behind closed doors as it were.

There's lies, damned lies and....

Suppose you have two activities, A and B, each of which carries a 1% chance of harm - in other words about one in every hundred people who engage in these activities is likely to come to grief.  Now suppose that a million people engage in activity A, whereas only 20,000 people take part in activity B.  Statistics will indicate that some 10,000 people have come to harm as a result of activity A, and about 200 from taking part in activity B.  Presented with just these figures you might come to the conclusion that activity A is far more dangerous than activity B, whereas, as we have seen, the risk associated with them is identical.  I haven't read Professor Nutt's report on the comparative harm caused by alcohol and various other drugs, but certainly as reported in the press, he seems to be saying that because far more people end up in A & E or at the doctor's or in hospital or dead as a result of drinking alcohol than do as a result of taking heroin or other drugs, that alcohol is more dangerous than these other drugs.  But of course, it is exactly what you would expect - given that both drinking alcohol and taking drugs carries a risk to health, the fact that far more people drink alcohol than take drugs means it is inevitable that more people will cause damage to their health by drinking the former than taking the latter.  It may be that Professor Nutt covers this point in his report, but if not, it's a basic statistical error.

I'll put a spell on you...

My granddaughter dressed up as a witch for Hallowe'en and we got talking about witchcraft and I spent most of the time trying to correct her assumptions which (no pun intended) were for the most part based on modern misinformation.  An awful lot of the supposed "history of witchcraft" has been reverse-engineered as it were.  Yes there were pagan religions in this country well pre-dating Christianity but there is no evidence that any of these were called witchcraft or wicca or anything like that. The idea of witchcraft was essentially a Christian invention designed to (a) demonise those who didn't subscribe to Christian beliefs and (b) help explain (at least to the satisfaction of Christians) the existence of evil and suffering  - these were clearly the work of the Devil and as they happened in the real world required real-world agents of the Devil to bring them about, hence witches (and to a lesser extent warlocks) were born.  There was also a healthy dose of misogyny here - the Church was (and to a certain extent, still is) terrified of the idea of women having power and so any woman who "put herself about" or who seemed to the Church to be trying to usurp it's claim to have all the answers ran the real risk of being accused of witchcraft just as a way of keeping them under control.

There is précis, and then there's....

I know newspapers have to have arresting headlines in order to attract readers, but is this going too far?  Referring to the "ink cartridge" bomb threat, one paper's headline claiming we were "Seconds from Lockerbie II" went on to say the bomb was "primed to bring down plane over UK, says Home Secretary".  Really?  Let's see what she actually said:  "The target may have been an aircraft. Had it detonated, the aircraft could have been brought down. The device was viable and could have exploded.  We do not believe that the perpetrators of the attack would have known the location of the device when it was planned to explode."  Not quite the same thing, is it?

English as she is spoke.

A recent news bulletin referred to a package which the authorities said was "potentially suspicious".  I would suggest that you can't have anything which is potentially suspicious - it's either suspicious or it's not.  The word potentially means having the potential to become something which at the moment it is not, so "potentially suspicious", if it means anything at all, means that it's not suspicious at this point in time, but may become so in the future - which could apply to just about anything, and so is meaningless.  If you have reason to believe that the package may be dodgy, then it's suspicious - simple as that.

Lateral thinking?

Nobby Stiles (don't you dare say "who's Nobby Stiles?"!) puts his World Cup medal up for auction.  It is bought by Manchester United - his old club - for £188,000-odd and will have pride of place in the club's museum.  So far, so good and a nice story, but what occurs to me is why didn't he offer it to the club privately in the first place?  I'm sure it is probably where he would have wished it to go, and that way both he and the club would have avoided having to pay commission to the auction house.  They're the ones coming out of this rubbing their hands!

My old man said follow the van...

I don't know whether I'm getting hard-hearted in my old age, but this row over housing benefit got me thinking.  If for whatever reason I found myself unable to afford to continue to live in my present home, I would have to leave and move to somewhere I could afford.  It's something I would not wish to do, and indeed it is something I would find very difficult to do on an emotional level, but it would have to be done.  I would not expect the State to come along and say "Don't worry, you can stay where you are, we'll make up the shortfall".  And yet it seems to me that that is exactly what the situation is regarding these people on housing benefit.  The cry is that if their housing benefit is capped many of them will have to move home because they will not be able to afford to live there any more.  But surely the point is that they can't afford to live there now - they are only able to do so because they are being "subbed" by the State.  If they have to move as a result of their benefit being capped it will simply highlight the reality that was always there, surely?

Kindling a further interest?

It was about a year ago that I posted a fairly negative comment about e-books, but one aspect which did somewhat attract me was the concept of the e-book lending library.  The idea is that instead of having to physically go to your local library and look for books, you would go to their web site, search for the book you wanted and then download it onto your e-book reader.  And the really neat part of all this is that you wouldn't have to worry about remembering to take your book back or face the possibility of a fine, because the book would be automatically deleted from your reader once the loan period was up.  Brilliant!  But wait - it seems that publishers are not keen on the idea and are threatening to restrict or withdraw access to the e-books they publish.  This needs sorting out - not least because libraries, like all public services, are going to have to make significant savings, and web-based e-book lending would be an obvious way of achieving some savings.

R.I.P. - The Emperor

So what about the shooting of this stag - supposedly the largest wild animal in the country.  Are we right to feel uneasy about this?  Or is it just another example of what I have referred to in the past as Disneyfication - the idea that animals think and feel as we do, and therefore should be treated as we would wish to be treated?  No, I think we are right to feel uneasy - not simply because an animal has been shot, not even because a magnificent example of his kind has been shot.  After all, the culling of deer is something that goes on all the time - with no natural predators their numbers have to be controlled by selective killing.  But this is killing from necessity - no-one takes any pleasure from it  Whereas, if the reports are correct, some "sportsman" has chosen to shoot this stag - and even perhaps paid good money to do so - simply because he could, and in order to have him as a trophy, and I think many people would find that extremely distasteful.  I certainly do.

TV - my head hurts!

Am I alone in thinking that "Fringe" has taken a step too far?  The idea of a parallel universe full of doppelgänger was OK provided the two were kept apart but now we have "our" Olivia Dunham over there and "their" Olivia Dunham over here it has, at least for this viewer just become too much to handle.  It may be that Americans can pick up on the nuances to be able to tell whether we are dealing with "here" or "there" but (unless they show that shot of the zeppelin) I can't and what used to be a good sort of new-style X-files has just become too complex.  And as for "The Event".....!!

The Lazy Cook

I have a cafetière - you know, one of those jugs with a plunger that takes the grounds down to the bottom.  So here's an idea - put in half and half of ground coffee and drinking chocolate, and you end up with a sort of poor man's mocha.  I like it.

Music Man

Somebody has started a Facebook campaign to have John Cage's composition called 4'33'' installed as Christmas No 1.  The joke (at least that's what I assume it is) for those who are not conversant with the piece, is that it consists of four minutes, thirty-three seconds of silence.  I think it was Stravinsky who said "I look forward to hearing his longer works"
.

It's not fair!

Following on from yesterday's post, the burning question seems to be whether or not the cuts are fair - the Government say they are, the Opposition and various single-interest groups say they are not.  To me it's a pointless argument - of course they're unfair, the whole bloody situation is unfair!  We find ourselves having to pick up the tab to get ourselves out of a mess that was not of our making - how can that be anything other than unfair?  Indeed the fundamental problem didn't even originate here - we imported it from across the pond.  So let's stop this silly idea of fairness or unfairness - it's all about sharing the pain, of ensuring that the unfairness is spread about as evenly as possible.

The axeman cometh.

I suppose I should say something about these spending cuts, as the news has been full of little else since Wednesday when they were announced.  The problem is that I'm a pensioner, and as such on the face of it am in the fortunate position of being little affected by them.  On the other hand, perhaps that allows me to look at things in a more dispassionate way.  And the first thing which strikes me is that people - including the media who really should know better - are reacting as though these cuts are going to happen in full tomorrow, whereas the Government have made it clear that this is a five year plan (and doesn't that have a wonderfully old-fashioned communistic ring?).  So you have to look at these figures over a five year period - still pretty draconian but perhaps not as earth-shattering as some are making out.  The other rather depressing thing is that everybody seems intent on fighting their own corner, with little regard for the bigger picture - it's all about how this will affect me or those I represent rather than whether it is right for the country as a whole.  Perhaps if I were more personally involved I might feel differently, but I hope I could keep a sense of proportion.

Fractals etc.

The death of Benoit Mandelbrot the other day brought back memories of my ZX Spectrum taking about half an hour to produce the famous "Mandelbrot set" and of how I would sit there fascinated watching it emerge line by line.  Now on my current computer it takes just a few seconds.  My other memory concerning his work was the answer to the question "How long is the coastline of Britain" - and it turns out that it's infinitely long.  It all depends on how detailed you want to be - the more detail you are prepared to accept, the longer it is, and as the amount of detail is infinite, so is the length.  Fascinating stuff he came up with, though I didn't understand a tenth of it.

Friends and neighbours.

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel has declared that multiculturalism - at least in Germany - has been a failure.  So what about here?  The original idea was integration - people coming here from other countries and cultures would become British by osmosis as it were.  But that didn't work, mainly because immigrants tended to band together with there own sort, and you quickly got areas of towns and cities (usually at the bottom end of the market) which were predominantly Asian, or West Indian or whatever, and obviously if you are living among others of your own race there is less need to be able to speak English or to comport yourself in a "British" manner.  So multiculturalism was born - each to his own, everybody free to do their own thing, and everybody respecting everybody else's right to do so.  Except human nature doesn't work that way - you very quickly get a tribal attitude, a feeling of "us and them".  So no, I don't think multiculturalism is working - but don't ask me what the answer is!

It's a snip!

There are representatives of an American charity going round London offering £200 to any drug addict who agrees to be sterilised.  The logic (if you can call it that) appears to be that such people are unfit to become parents, and the charity is therefore preventing the putative future abuse of the children these addicts might otherwise have.  It's certainly true that you can look at some families and say "these people should never have been allowed to have children" but identifying such people in advance is an entirely different matter, and doing so by categorisation smacks horribly of the Nazi "untermensch" philosophy.

Book post.

(see post 18/11/06)

Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not - 7
Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor - 6.5
Linwood Barclay - Fear the Worst - 8
Imogen Robertson - Instruments of Darkness - 9
David Baldacci - True Blue - 8.
Dan Brown - The Lost Symbol - 7
Stieg Larsson - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - 8.5
Tom Rob Smith - The Secret Speech - 7.5
John Hart - The Last Child - 8 
Simon Brett - Murder in the Museum - 7

The Lazy Cook

My latest acquisition is a slow cooker - actually I'm sure we used to have one years and years ago, but I don't know what happened to it.  Anyway it's a useful piece of kit - you just bung everything in first thing in the morning, turn it on and by tea-time you've got a nice tasty casserole.  There are lots of recipes on the web, but the basic idea is that you chop meat and vegetables up into bite-sized pieces, and put those in with some garlic (optional), some herbs and spices (the packet casserole mixes are a good time saver here) and some liquid - water, wine or stock.  And that's it.  You can fry the meat off for a few minutes first to seal it if you like otherwise the flavour tends to go into the liquid rather than stay in the meat, and one little tip from personal experience - don't overdo the liquid.  My cooker is 1.5 litres (more than adequate for one) and I've found that around 150-200ml of liquid is plenty.

Never mind the result - how much profit did we make?

The shenanigans at Liverpool FC just go to prove - if indeed further proof were necessary - that football has ceased any pretence of being a game, and become simply a business.  And it's only on a business level that you can make any sense of what has been and is going on.  Sad, really sad, but the writing's been on the wall for years now, though perhaps never in such large and vivid letters.

I can make you a star...

It seems the Chilean miners will become celebrities as a result of all the publicity surrounding their ordeal.  Haven't seen any sign of Max Clifford yet, but it can only be a matter of time!

Ha ha.

I've got these pills that are supposed to help prevent memory loss.  Problem is - I've forgotten where I put them!

What do you mean - it's no good?

I am sure Sir Philip Green is correct in saying that the Civil Service could save a significant amount of money by negotiating central contracts for goods and services (but isn't that what HMSO used to do?).  A word of warning though - there will be a natural tendency to go for the cheapest option, and the words "cheap and nasty" spring to mind.  I remember my Department deciding to negotiate a central contract for photocopiers - so every office would have the same make of photocopier - there would be big savings on the cost of maintenance and repairs.  Problem was, these photocopiers were, to put it bluntly, crap - and the worst aspect of this was that some offices had already had these photocopiers in the past and knew how rubbish they were, but "them up there" didn't know that - or didn't ask! - so we were lumbered with them.  And this is the problem with centralised contracts - the people negotiating them are so removed from the shop floor that they may, with the best of intentions, make bad decisions which everybody is then stuck with for the duration of the contract.

I want justice!

When something bad happens, it's human nature to demand that someone is held responsible.  Two stories in the news illustrate this from two different perspectives.  Firstly there is anger that two Iraqis put on trial for the murder of a group of military policemen in 2003 have been acquitted - indeed one newspaper speaks of "betrayal".  The brutal fact is that if the evidence is not there you can't convict, and in a situation of mob violence - unless someone is prepared to blow the whistle - it will always be extremely difficult to determine exactly who did what - remember PC Blakelock?.  Then there is the inquest which has opened on the July 7th bombings in 2005.  Here we know exactly who was responsible - problem is, they're dead.  So we search for someone else to pillory - in this case it's the police and/or the intelligence services who will find themselves subjected to "wise after the event" scrutiny.  Pretty pointless really, but like I say, human nature.

Phew!!

Well - was I lucky?  When we went on holiday to Lanzarote in May, I was put in charge of getting our foreign currency, and I used Crown Currency Exchange, and it all worked well and by ordering in advance I got a really good rate.  So I was upset to see that they had gone into administration. But the hairs really stood up on the back of my neck when I heard that they were known to be having problems as far back as February - so they were iffy when I was dealing with them.  And - I suspect like many other people - if I thought about it, I assumed that if anything did go wrong, I would be protected under some scheme of other.  To find that I wouldn't have been....  like I say, was I lucky?!

Let's not be silly.

Today of course is 10/10/10 (whichever way you look at it).  So does this make it special?  Nah!!

Joined up thinking.

You can't have your cake and eat it too - I fully support the Culture Secretary's comments that people who have children they can't afford to support should not be able to look to the public purse to bail them out.  However if you're going to take this line then it is an essential concomitant that abortion is available on demand, without any preconditions.  Many of these "problem" children are the result of unplanned - and maybe unwanted - pregnancies, and if you're going to withdraw financial support, you've got to allow such mistakes to be rectified.

Just what is it?

I am struggling to understand this concept of the Prime Minister's "Big Society".  If it simply means people looking out for each other more - a sort of return to the spirit of the war and immediately post-war years - then all well and good, although I have to say that that spirit was driven more by necessity than altruism, and although he may see the necessity today I'm not sure other people do.  But his idea seems to go beyond that - it's more that people should seek to take a greater part in local matters - and quite apart from the question of having enough time, the danger as I see it is that the sort of people who are most likely to push themselves forward will not necessarily be the most suitable or desirable, and as by definition they will not be elected, how the hell do you get rid of them?

Child benefit.

There's an inversely proportional relationship between cost and fairness.  The fairest systems are the most expensive - the cheapest systems are the most inequitable.  So it depends on what your priorities are.  Clearly the coalition's priority is to save money, so they've gone for the cheap and simple approach of saying that higher rate tax payers will lose their child benefit, even though this will produce perceived unfairness in some circumstances.  The alternative (assuming you accept the principle that child benefit should no longer be universal) would have been means testing, which, while producing a fairer result, would have been horrendously expensive.

R.I.P.

Norman Wisdom - what is there to say?  Probably the finest physical comic since the silent film days.  And as far as one can tell without knowing him personally, a thoroughly nice bloke.  I imagine Albania will be declaring a period of official mourning.  A life well lived.

Harvest Festival

If you watch the BBC news then you're probably already aware of this, but it came as a surprise to me to learn that what we think of today as the celebration of Harvest Festival in churches, with fruit and vegetables piled round the altar only goes back 150 years or so and started in a small church down in Cornwall.  Of course, man has marked the getting in of the harvest with celebration and jollity since time immemorial, and the Catholic Church used to (and perhaps still does) have a festival called Lammas (a contraction of Loaf Mass) when bread baked with the new season's flour is brought to church to be blessed.  The report on the BBC was concerned with the fact that these days less and less fresh produce is brought to church, and what you are more likely to see is tinned and packaged stuff.  The reason for this, to me at least, seems obvious enough - people simply don't grow stuff in their own gardens like they used to.

No No NO!!

Cannot believe that the question of giving the police the right to strike is even being discussed.  I would go completely the other way and make it illegal for firemen and ambulance crew to strike as well.  These are the emergency services for which we have the 999 system and it is essential that they are there when we need them.  As a quid pro quo their conditions of service have to be protected from the vagaries of economic or political interference but we can't have them holding the country to ransom whenever they feel like it.

R.I.P.

Tony Curtis - to my way of thinking never really got the respect he deserved.  Perhaps because he was seen as simply a "pretty boy" (which he most certainly was) his talent as an actor tended to be rather overlooked.  But his range was immense and he was one of those rare actors who never turned in a bad performance (OK, so he took some time to lose his Bronx accent - everybody remembers "Yonder is de castle of my fadder" but even then his acting was good).  Best thing he ever did?  Has to be "Some Like It Hot" - a perfect film in every way.  And, thank goodness, film stars never really die because we can always slip a DVD into the player and then they live again on screen.

Ryder Cup.

It's Wales, it's October and it's pouring down with rain - well, who'd have thought it!

Half a job?

No real surprise that Milliband D has decided not to join the Cabinet.  The real surprise to me is that he has not gone the whole hog and resigned as an MP.  If his reasons are honest - that he doesn't want to be a distraction to his brother's leadership - then it seems to me that he's likely to be as much, if not more of a distraction on the back benches than he would be in Cabinet.  You know the old saying that it's better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.  Can't help feeling that, whether he wants it or not, he's going to find himself the focal point of any future "anti-Ed" brigade.

Even Newer Labour?

Bit of a strange speech by Milliband E at the conference I thought.  It may be the result of selective reporting by the media, but it seemed to me that he spent most of his time rubbishing pretty well everything that the last three Labour governments had done.  Not that I didn't agree with much of what he said, but it does raise the question of just what party he is intending to lead.  Can you really be leader of the Labour party if you have specifically divorced yourself from what that party has done and stood for in the past?  Tony Blair realised that the party had to be rebranded if it was to convince the electorate that it was not just same-old, same-old, but he was careful to make the point that this was still Labour - just New Labour.  He didn't seek to get rid of Clause 4 and other baggage on the grounds that it was wrong, simply that it was outdated and irrelevant in the 1990s.  But in his anxiety to confess that the party has made mistakes in the past, Red Ed seems to be seeking to shut the door on what has gone before, in which case can it still really be considered to be the Labour party?

First things first.

The Deputy Governor of the Bank of England has exhorted us to go on a spending spree to boost the economy.  Great - give me the money and I'm your man!

Bye bye Labour?

So it's Red Ed, and on the basis of the speeches he made during the campaign, and the fact that he was not the first choice of either the MPs or party members, but succeeded on the back of the union vote, I can see nothing but trouble ahead for both him and the party.  I think Labour's only faint hope is that the coalition become so unpopular as a result of the spending cuts they are going to make and the consequences for jobs and services, that they are able to win the next election by default as it were.  But it's a very faint hope!

Oh yeh?

A friend sent me this gem -
Seen on a packet of breakfast cereal - GREAT NEW COMPETITION.  £10,000 TO BE WON.  NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. (See inside for details).

Do we really need it?

A couple of years ago I questioned whether the Olympic Games had any real relevance these days when there are so many international sporting competitions being held almost continuously every year.  So the same argument goes in spades for the Commonwealth Games.  I suppose you could argue that it's an opportunity for athletes who would otherwise never get a chance to come away with medals, but just what satisfaction do they get from an award at a Games where the big competitors - notably the US, Russia and China - are not represented.  I've got a certificate saying I won the fathers' sack race at our local primary school in 1975 (most of the others fell over) but it hardly counts as a high point in my career!  Given how much these get-togethers cost, isn't it time to reconsider their usefulness in today's world?

Shine on...

...shine on harvest moon, up in the sky.  So goes the song.  But just what is the harvest moon?  Quite simply it's the full moon that occurs closest to the autumnal equinox (early on 23rd of September this year).  And this year is a bit special because the two events coincided, which is something which only happens about once every 20 years.

Explanation - of a sort.

I've been researching this business of passports being required on internal UK flights (see last Monday's post) - and perhaps I should have done this before originally posting, but there you go. I was relieved to find that there is absolutely no legal requirement to provide identification on internal flights, but it seems certain airlines - notably the cheap carriers - do require you to prove you are who you say you are, and it is a matter for them as to what proof they are willing to accept. Many will be satisfied with any form of photo ID, but some will only accept a passport. And the reason for all this it appears is nothing to do with security as you might think, but is purely a commercial matter. Because their fares are so low, they see a danger that people could buy up lots of tickets, and then sell them on at a profit, so they feel the need to satisfy themselves that the person presenting the ticket is the person who purchased it. This does of course mean that if you're not a passport holder, you need to check before buying a ticket from a low-cost carrier that you will in fact be allowed to board the plane.

You're joking!

Delhi much in the news at the moment, what with all the problems over the Commonwealth Games, but what caught my eye was that the chief minister of that fair city has been put in charge of cleaning-up operations, and her name, believe it or not, is Sheila Dikshit! Don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Ha ha.

Had to pass this one on from my 5-year-old grand-daughter -

Why did the banana go to the doctor?

'Cause it wasn't peeling well!

What is truth - conclusion.

I've been trying to think of a neat short way to wrap this discussion up, but it's not easy. I hope I've convinced you that truth is simply one aspect of reality, and reality depends on information. Different people can be in possession of different information, depending on the frame of reference within which they are working, or perhaps on the speed at which information is capable of moving in their particular circumstances - a blind person, for example has to rely on what they hear, which means that their information may well lag behind that of a sighted person. So there is really no such thing as The Truth - there are Truths, plural, and each truth is as valid (or invalid) as any other. If this makes you feel uncomfortable, you can take solace from the fact that it is unlikely to affect your every-day life. For the most part, we are all working within the same frame of reference, and in general the speed of information is the same for all of us. But it's worth bearing in mind that, in the words of the song - it ain't necessarily so!

What the....?

Am I missing something? Reports in the press say that Frankie Dettori was refused permission to fly from Stanstead to Prestwick over the weekend because he didn't have his passport. Since when have you needed a passport - or for that matter any form of ID - to travel within the United Kingdom? Has Scotland become independent without telling anyone? Does this just apply to travel by air - and if so, why? Just what is going on?

Leave me be!

What the hell is "aggressive secularism"? How can secularism be aggressive when it is essentially a negative concept? Secularism is like the floor, and religion - or indeed any other system of beliefs - is a rug placed on it. What you can see is the rug, but the floor is still there, and if the rug is taken away, or begins to get threadbare and develop holes, the floor comes into view again. To suggest that this is "aggressive" behaviour by the floor is laughable. I assume what the Pope really had in mind was atheism, which is a positive philosophy, and certainly has found a rather strident voice recently. Secularism is simply an acceptance of things as they are, without the need to adopt any particular philosophical stance - religious or otherwise. The aggression comes from those who demand that everybody sees things their way - whether it be the Pope or Richard Dawkins.

Why change a winning team?

Yet another report suggests that glucosamine and chondroitin don't have any effect on painful knees and hips. Well all I can say is that I used to have big problems with my right leg - specifically knee and hip pain, and I've now been taking G&C tablets for about ten years, and the problem has disappeared. Maybe just a coincidence, but I'm not risking a return to the bad old days, and will continue "taking the tablets".

Special needs.

A report suggests that a significant proportion of schoolchildren assessed as having "special needs" are in fact just victims of poor teaching. Not surprisingly, this has produced howls of outrage from teaching unions. I think the real problem stems from our unwillingness to accept that children - like all of us - are individuals, and don't necessarily fit into neat little niches. Schools are sausage machines, designed to turn out a specific product from "average" raw material. When that raw material - that is the young child - is not average, schools struggle to cope simply because of the way they work, and this is so whether the child is above or below what is considered to be the norm. The reality is that every child has special needs because every child is different - unfortunately our education system is not designed to cope with that.

Ha ha.

A clergyman was walking down a country lane when he saw a young farmer struggling to load hay back onto a cart after it had fallen off. "You look hot, my son," said the cleric. "why don't you rest a moment, and I'll give you a hand." "No thanks," said the young man, "my father wouldn't like it." "Don't be silly," said the minister, "Everyone is entitled to a break. Come and have a drink of water." Again the young man protested that his father would be upset. Losing his patience, the clergyman said, "Your father must be a real slave driver. Tell me where I can find him and I'll give him a piece of my mind!" "Well," replied the young farmer, "he's under this load of hay."

Alphabet soup

We've talked before about the basic stupidity of the concept that putting certain letters in a certain order can cause offence, or even outrage. Did you know that there is a town in Austria called F***ing? There is, I kid you not. Further the German term for a light ale is Hell, so some enterprising German firm has had the idea of marketing a light beer called "F***ing Hell" - it even intends to produce a range of clothing under the same name! The EU have given its approval, saying that the name "cannot be considered reprehensible merely because it may have an ambiguous meaning in other languages". Apparently the Mayor of the town in question is less than impressed at this hijacking of his town's name - particularly as the town has no brewery, nor any plans to have one.

It's a date.

Why did I put "9/11" in inverted commas in my post last Thursday (and indeed in this one)? Because to me, and I would imagine to most of you, 9/11 as a date means the 9th of November. This American style of putting the month before the day has always struck me as slightly strange and illogical. It's rather ironic that our own terrorist atrocity took place on July 7th, so it's 7/7 whichever way you look at it.

Playing away...

It must be a journalist's dream when a headline writes itself. Following the latest Wayne Rooney shenanigans, his wife has left him (if only temporarily) taking their young son with her. The son's name is Kai - yes, I know, me too - but this means that any article concerning Rooney can now be headlined "No woman, no Kai"!

Tax isn't taxing....ho, ho!

There's very little solid information coming out as to why some 6 million people have paid the wrong amount of tax over the last few years - most of them paid too much, but a significant number paid too little and will now be asked to cough up the balance. From the little that is being said, it seems that the problem is with the PAYE system and stems from people being given the wrong tax code - but it's far from clear whether this is the result of the Revenue being given incorrect information, or whether it is simply a matter of the Revenue making mistakes. Given that the situation seems to have come to light as a result of a computer audit, rather than from inspectors going round checking up on people, it seems likely that it is the latter. Unfortunately, the Revenue's position is and always has been that the responsibility for ensuring your tax affairs are in order lies with you, and not the Revenue, and therefore even if it's their mistake, it's your responsibility!

Only in England...

I'm always on the lookout for examples of English eccentricity and so I was taken by the Knutsford Great Race which is held every ten years in the Cheshire town of that name and is a race for "penny-farthing" bicycles. It attracts entries from all over the world it appears. Great!! By the way, penny-farthings weren't originally called that - they were called "ordinaries" - the name penny-farthing appears to have come along after the event as it were. And for those who don't go back that far, a farthing was a small coin worth a quarter ("fourth-ing") of an old penny. If memory serves, it used to have the image of a bird on the reverse side - was it a wren? Penny-farthings had their heyday in the 1870s, but within a decade or so had given way to the early forms of what we would recognise today as a bicycle.

My name is Bond.....

Another for the "Well I never" collection. One in four of us, it appears, use a false name when registering on an internet site. No surprise to me - given the amount of spam and phishing and such that goes on, it seems to me a perfectly reasonable precaution to take. And no, before you ask, David Random is not my real name!

Wrong target?

There's a church in the US it appears, that intends to mark the anniversary of "9/11" by burning copies of the Koran. Seems somewhat of a self-defeating exercise in that - if it has any effect at all - it will probably be that of exacerbating the very extremism it is seeking to condemn. And anyway, Muslim extremism has little or nothing to do with the Koran - you might just as well blame football hooliganism on the match programme or the FA handbook.

Pecuniate obediunt omnia.

Unfortunately, we have to accept that sponsorship is now part of everyday life. Even the Colosseum in Rome is looking for a sponsor, we hear. But there are two ways of doing this - I am just about willing to accept something like "The F.A. Cup sponsored by E-ON", but what gets my goat is when the sponsor takes over the product - did you know for example that football's Northern Premier League is now the Evo-Stik League? How would you feel about "the McDonald's Colosseum"?

Who pays?

Much discussion as to whether the taxpayer should foot the bill for the Pope's forthcoming visit. The question seems to be - is this a state visit (in which case the taxpayer pays, no argument) or is it a Papal visit (in which case the Church would normally meet the cost). The Vatican is of course a state in its own right, and the Pope is its head, but he is also head of the Catholic Church, so in which capacity is he coming? He was invited to come by Gordon Brown - presumably as head of state of the Vatican - but it's clear that a major purpose of his visit is the beatification of Cardinal Newman and the celebration of Masses in Glasgow, London and Birmingham. The reality is that the costs are in fact being shared between the public purse and the Catholic Church, which seems fair enough.

What is truth - continued.

Going off slightly at a tangent, the 17th century philosopher Decartes spent some time thinking about this question and came to the uncomfortable conclusion that he could not be sure about the existence of anything. The chair on which he was sitting, the table at which he was sitting, the room in which he was, all the people he came into contact with - indeed the whole of the world as he knew it - could simply be figments of his imagination. Or he might be dreaming, or some supernatural being could, for whatever reason, be fooling him into thinking that these things existed (shades of The Matrix here). But then he realised that he could not be a figment of his own imagination - to have an imagination, he must exist. Equally if this was all a dream, he had to be dreaming, and to be dreaming, he had to exist. And if he was being fooled, then once again if he didn't exist, there would be nobody to fool. So he realised that the one thing he could be sure of was his own existence. The very fact that he was capable of thought meant that he must exist. He encapsulated this idea in the phrase "I think, therefore I am" which is often given in Latin as Cogito, ergo sum, or in French (for he was French) as Je pense, donc je suis. So in Cartesian terms, the only truth is - I exist!

Does God believe in Professor Hawking?

So has Stephen Hawking done away with the need for God - using the word in its widest meaning? I don't pretend to understand half of what Hawking is talking about, but I keep coming up against this fundamental problem - however you slice it, there must have been a time when there was nothing followed by a time when there was something, and according to my (perhaps imperfect) understanding, this contravenes a basic law of physics, and therefore, by definition, must have been a super-natural event, and therefore caused by some supernatural entity. So it seems to me that we can't get away from the need to have "God" as the original creator of everything.

Dog in the manger - part II.

Well apparently I was wrong (see post of 11th August) - Southampton it seems are continuing with their ban on press photographers at their ground, and requiring anybody wanting photographs of a game to have to buy them from the club. The Swindon Advertiser has resorted to Subbuteo figures to give their readers a flavour of the highlights of Swindon Town's recent match against the Saints. I really can't see Southampton winning this particular fight.

Hic!

According to excerpts published in the press, Tony Blair in his autobiography confesses to having a Scotch or G & T before dinner and half a bottle of wine with his meal most nights, and considers that this was a problem. Well all I can say is that if he was a problem drinker, I am right down there in the gutter!

Another one down the drain.

August was the coldest for 17 years it seems. So the private forecasting service which earlier in the year confidently predicted a good summer, and specifically that the beginning of August would be really hot (see post dated 23rd March), has proved as fallible as the Met Office. Why don't we stop listening to these people, and simply take every day as it comes? Might just as well.

Cricket, lovely cricket(?)

Let's stand back and look at this objectively. It is not against the laws of the game, or a criminal offence, to bowl a no-ball. If it can be proved that a no-ball was bowled deliberately (for a monetary consideration or any other reason) then that could be seen as bringing the game into disrepute, and the International Cricket Council could impose such sanctions as it thinks fit - against the bowler, or indeed the team. For a criminal offence to have been committed it must be shown that as a result of the deliberate no-ball somebody has been defrauded - that is, has lost money as a consequence. What we have at present is an allegation that money was handed over to a "fixer" who then arranged for no-balls to be bowled at specific times during the match. Certainly this brings the ICC into play, but at present as far as I am aware there is no evidence of anybody being defrauded as a result. Of course, what it does raise is the question of whether other aspects of this and other matches have been "fixed" and doubtless this is what the police are looking into. For the immediate future, it is for the ICC to decide what, if any, action to take.

Oh no - not again!

I fear Ed Milliband is in danger of becoming the Michael Foot of the 21st century. Elections are not won from the extremes - left or right. Labour's "core vote" is not sufficient to do the job - if they are to come back electorally they have to attract voters away from the other parties. I can understand the unions liking what he's saying, but I'm afraid it looks very much like electoral suicide.

What is truth? - continued.

One of my abiding memories is of a family meal years ago at a pub up in the Malvern Hills somewhere. It was one of those perfect days - the weather was perfect, the food was perfect, the company was perfect - which is why it has stuck in my memory. And when we'd finished eating, we took the rest of our drinks out onto the patio at the rear of the pub. Like I say we were up in the Malverns, and from the patio you could look down on the countryside below, and see for miles. And there in the distance was a man hammering in a fence-post - I could see him swing his sledgehammer onto the post, and then maybe a couple of seconds later, I would hear a faint "thwack". It's a well-known phenomenon - compared with the speed of light, sound travels slowly, so you see the man hit the post well before you hear it happen. So I'd had a good meal and a couple of beers and it was a warm afternoon, and you can guess what happened - my eyes started to close. So now I was sitting there listening to the "thwacks" as the man continued with his work. At the time I was just enjoying the moment, but later it occurred to me that there were two different realities going on here - with my eyes open, the man hit the post when I saw him do it, but with my eyes closed, he didn't hit the post until I heard it. So, what's the truth? When does he hit the post? More to come, I'm afraid!

You'll just have to google it!

Sad to read about the demise of the book version of the Oxford English Dictionary, but if there is one area where the internet scores over the printed word, this is it. As has been mentioned over and over again on this blog, language is forever evolving, and this means that printed dictionaries are doomed to always be chasing the fire - whereas the internet is far more capable of reflecting subtle changes in meaning as they occur and can introduce new words as and when they come into fashion. The OED has simply accepted the inevitable.

Drives you mad.

I remember Jasper Carrott in one of his one-man shows talking about running a marathon and of how he was warned about hitting THE WALL - and that's how he told it, putting the expression in verbal capital letters, and then of how everything was going well until he hit THE WALL, and so on. I am reminded of this whenever we come back off holiday down in the Southwest, except it isn't a wall you hit, it's THE MERGE. For those not around here, this is where the M5 joins the M6 - and you can just imagine it, two of the busiest motorways in the country just coming together. You've driven all the way up from Devon or wherever with no major holdups, and then you hit THE MERGE. Everything grinds to a halt, and if you get through it in 20 minutes, you've done well. Every time I mouth a few well chosen obscenities to whoever thought that one up.

How very true.

A tweet the other day offered a sad reflection on modern attitudes and values. It read something like "Pakistan, if you want the world to take notice of you, just stick a cat in a wheelie bin!"

Ha ha.

Coincidentally, I've come across this joke twice in different places over the last week or two, so I think it's trying to tell me to share it -
A man says -
"My wife and I have found the secret of a happy marriage. Twice a week we go out to a nice restaurant, eat a good meal and have a few glasses of wine.
I go Tuesdays - she goes Fridays!"

What goes around...

Apparently we are not using our libraries as much as we used to, and this, coupled with councils' need to make savings, has led to the idea of library services being handled by other outlets - pubs and supermarkets have been mentioned. But if memory serves, didn't Boots used to run a lending library many years ago? Nothing new under the sun, you see.

I have a cunning plan...

One of the (many) points of disagreement between the coalition partners is over Trident - or rather the question of its replacement. Which got me thinking... You may remember an episode of the comedy series "Yes, Prime Minister" , where the question of actually using our missiles was under discussion and Jim Hacker is presented with a series of escalating scenarios (...the Russians invade West Germany - you press the button? No? OK, the Russians invade Belgium, Holland and France - you press the button? ...and so on...) making the point that it is virtually impossible to imagine a situation in which we would actually initiate nuclear war, so Trident's raison d'être is purely one of deterrence - the so-called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) approach - if you launch nuclear missiles against me, I will launch mine against you, and although I may be razed to the ground, you will be too. Which means that we don't actually have to have a nuclear capability, all that is necessary is that other countries think we have it. After all, this is a strategy which served Saddam Hussein well for a good many years, even though it backfired against him in the end. So the plan is clear - we announce that we are going to develop Toasting Fork (son of Trident - geddit?) , we debate it in Parliament, we make all the necessary noises and go through all the appropriate motions, but we don't actually do anything, and spend the money instead on other more worthy things. As the meerkat would say - Simples!

The body in the woods.

Conspiracy theorists have had a field day over the death in 2003 of Dr David Kelly, who was reputedly the source of the BBC's claim that the dossier making a case for the invasion of Iraq had been "sexed up" in an attempt to make going to war more publicly acceptable. He was found in woodlands with a slashed wrist and having taken an overdose (though probably not a fatal one) of painkillers. There was no inquest, but an inquiry was ordered by the Government and this (the Hutton Inquiry) determined that he took his own life. Strangely Lord Hutton later ruled that all the evidence from the inquiry should remain secret for 70 years. Like I say, meat and drink for conspiracy theorists, and many of them have gone somewhat OTT, but there are a couple of points which I myself find strange and a little disturbing. Firstly Dr Kelly was not wearing gloves, and yet there were no fingerprints on the knife with which he supposedly cut his wrist, nor on the bottle containing some of the pills he had ingested. Secondly all the evidence is that he was a devoted family man, and yet he had made arrangements to meet his daughter that evening and it seems inconceivable that he would not have left some message of apology for her. There are calls for a proper inquest, which might help clear the air. Let's hope we get one

Another fine mess...

I'm sure there's a myth or a fable or something where some starving unfortunate is taken to a table laden with food, only to have it snatched away just as he is reaching for it. We seem to have got into much the same situation with University places don't we? A generation of kids have been brought up to believe that if they carry on at school after 16, work hard and get good A-level results, they will be able, if they wish, to go to University. But what's happened? An awful lot of them have done just that only to find that the Universities are full and there are no places for them. How has this situation arisen? Is it the result of "dumbed-down" A-level papers resulting in a plethora of A and A* grades? Is it down to more students being encouraged to take
"soft" non-academic subjects to inflate a school's position in the league tables? Is it simply the result of insufficient forward planning? Whatever, those who find themselves out in the cold this autumn have every right to feel angry.

Le retour

Nice cottage. Weather could have been better but didn't stop us doing anything. Went to Corfe Castle, Swanage and Poole and to Beaulieu to see the motor museum which was quite something. My abiding memory though will be of the number of animals just wandering around all over the place - not just horses as you might expect, but cattle. donkeys and pigs - all just strolling around in the road and on the grass verges. Very rural to a townie like me.

Les adieux

Well I'm off for another week with the kids. Nothing exotic this time - a cottage in the New Forest. Hope the weather holds up. Feeling quite positive about it this time. Will report back.

Justice?

Are you really innocent until proved guilty? That's the basis on which our criminal justice system is supposedly grounded. Unlike Scotland, we don't have a "not proven" verdict, which essentially means "the evidence isn't strong enough to convict you, but we're pretty sure you did it". So what do we make of the refusal to grant any compensation to Sion Jenkins for the six years he spent in gaol? The facts are that he was tried and convicted of the murder of his foster-daughter, but that conviction was later quashed on appeal and a new trial ordered. At that new trial, and again at a second new trial, the jury failed to reach a verdict, and so, as is normal in such circumstances, the prosecution dropped the case, and Mr Jenkins walked free. The guidelines for granting compensation state that it should only be paid where someone has been shown to be "clearly innocent". Where does that leave Mr Jenkins? His original conviction was quashed, so we can forget that one, and at both new trials he was not proved to be guilty - so according to the rules, he's innocent. I'm not quite sure what adding the word "clearly" is supposed to achieve - you're either innocent or you're not. It rather smacks of "not proven" doesn't it?

Dog in the manger.

Southampton Football Club have been left in bad odour following an attempt to make money by banning press photographers from their ground, and making newspapers wanting to show photos of the match, buy them from their "official" photographer. Pretty stupid really to go up against the power of the press, and The Sun newspaper in particular retaliated by refusing to use their name, and headlining their report on Saturday's match, which they lost to Plymouth, "Opposition 0, Plymouth 1". A local newspaper had the bright idea of sending a cartoonist to the match to do sketches of the action. Thankfully Southampton seem to have seen sense and backed down.

Yet again...

The decision by Oxfordshire to switch off their speed cameras has reignited the debate about just how effective - or otherwise - they are. I've posted before about the fact that if speed cameras were doing what they are apparently designed to do - reduce the number of motorists exceeding the posted speed limit - the amount they generate in fines would reduce and slowly dwindle to zero. But this doesn't happen, quite the reverse in fact. On the other hand there are studies which show that there is a small but significant reduction in the number of accidents which take place at speed camera sites. So what do we make of this? My take is that it suggests that speed cameras have little effect on the speed at which motorists drive, but the fact that they are there does have the effect of making them drive more carefully. Which goes to support the theory that I have put forward more than once on this blog, that it's how you drive that matters, not how fast you drive.

Not seeing the obvious?

The images coming out of Pakistan of the flooding there are tragic and disturbing, but what I can't get my head round is that this isn't some natural disaster that's come out of the blue - this is the monsoon which happens every year at around this time. And Mother Nature is a fickle old girl, so it is inevitable that there will be years when you will get heavier than usual rain, just as there will be years when you don't get enough rain - and either of these events will produce problems - flooding from the first, and crop failures from the second. So my point is - surely you make sure that you have strategies in place to deal with these eventualities. The impression I get is that Pakistan just wings it and hopes for the best. Back to the drawing board perhaps?

Here we go again!

So the ContactPoint database (see post of 28/1/09) is to be scrapped. Can't say I'm sorry, but I think the scrapping is itself a cause for concern. Firstly, it seems that this is yet another example of a government computer program which has cost a fortune, and simply failed to deliver. Secondly, the government say that the data is being destroyed "using government-approved security standards and processes". Given their track record over data confidentiality, this hardly fills me full of confidence.