So....?

I've been down this road before more than once, but I am unable to understand why inconsequential and peripheral matters are allowed to affect the assessment of a person's ability to do a job. This time it's John Terry and the captaincy of the England football team. The publication of allegations of marital misconduct is said to be putting his captaincy at risk. Why? Surely if he's the right man for the job in footballing terms, he's the right man for the job and his behaviour in his private life is immaterial. Why should the fact that you're captain of England carry with it any expectation that you are of impeccable character - and let's face it, even before the current shenanigans his reputation was hardly snow-white. Surely all that is required is that you are a good footballer, a good communicator, a good motivator, and a leader of men.

Music Man.

Enigma Variations - Elgar, yes? And yet that's not what he called it - the proper title is "Variations on an Original Theme". So where does the "enigma" come from? Well the piece starts out with a statement of the "original theme", and in his hand-written score, Elgar wrote "Enigma" over the top of this. Explaining this, Elgar said that the theme was itself a variation on another well-known piece of music, but he always refused to say what it was. About the only definite statement he made on the subject was that it was not the National Anthem, and he several times expressed surprise that nobody had guessed it. He took the secret to the grave with him, but that hasn't stopped people speculating. "Auld Lang Syne" has been mentioned more than once, and the other day I read an article which makes a good case for "Rule Britannia". Myself, I would incline towards the slow movement of Beethoven's "Pathetique" sonata. We'll never know of course, and that is part of the mystique of this ever-popular piece of music.

Value for money.

Well, hooray for Aldi and Lidl (which I've always pronounced with a short "i", but apparently should be pronounced "Leedle" - don't like it). Perhaps the recession has a lot to do with it, but they have beaten the "big four" in a survey on customer satisfaction run by Which? magazine. I can't say I'm surprised - I can only repeat what I've said before - their stores are unpretentious, but they sell quality stuff at good low prices. And with money being tight, I'm sure more people have discovered them. I'm still a Morrisons shopper, but I regularly pop into both Aldi and Lidl and invariably come out with a basketful of stuff for under a tenner - it's great!

Might is right?

Lots of discussion over the last few days about the legality, or otherwise, of wars. Given that war is the antithesis of the rule of law, I would have thought that the expression "a legal war" must be an oxymoron. You can certainly have an illegal war, but I think the best you can hope for on the other side of the coin is a non-illegal war. Given that the difference, it appears, can be no more than the interpretation of "two or three words" in a UN resolution, I have to say that that doesn't make me feel terribly safe.

L'argent fait la loi.

Calais is in the South of England?? No, this isn't us seeking to re-establish our historic claim to the city which we held for some 200 years in the Middle Ages - this is Calais itself (or to be more accurate the whole region of Pas de Calais) which is looking to persuade competitors and spectators at the London Olympics that it's just as easy to commute from there to the Olympics site via the Channel Tunnel as it would be from the other side of London. To this end the Head of the Regional Council has declared "I consider that we are the south of England...". Queen Mary (the first, that is) must be having a quiet smile.

Keep the law out of it.

There are suggestions that this country should follow the lead of France, and seek to ban the wearing of full-face veils in public places. I've mentioned before that I find the wearing of the burqa disturbing, and given my reasons. But a Muslim friend mentioned the other day that many of his faith find the wearing of mini-skirts and low-cut tops equally disturbing and distasteful, so at the end of the day it's just a matter of rubbing along with each other isn't it, and I don't think legislation would be at all helpful.

Rien ne va plus - still more.

We've looked at this situation so far from the point of view of gambling, but it goes further than that. It underpins the Government's tax and benefits strategy. And this isn't a party political matter - governments of whichever colour know that without some intervention on their part money will naturally gravitate away from those with a little towards those with a lot - in other words, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. And this is not the result of any sharp practice by the rich or stupidity on the part of the poor - it's just our card game played out on a larger scale. It's inevitable, and this is why governments all subscribe, to a greater or lesser extent, to the principle of the redistribution of wealth.

Rien ne va plus - continued.

We've seen that the big bank will invariably beat the smaller bank, and this is why the individual punter is well advised to keep his money in his pocket. But now look at it the other way round - the casino has a much bigger bank than you, but the casino isn't just playing against you. In fact, the casino is playing against the public at large, and the public at large has an infinitely big bank, which means that the casino's bank is doomed to be broken sooner or later, and this is why casinos put a limit on the size of bets they are prepared to accept. At first glance this seems to be a paradox - the public have no chance of beating the casino, but the casino (unless it imposes limits) has no chance of beating the public. But think of the Lottery - you know your chance of winning the Lottery (top prize, that is) is millions to one against, and yet every week (well pretty well every week) somebody does win. And the situation here is the same - your chance of beating the casino is virtually nil, but (in the absence of limits) the chance that someone, sometime will do so is pretty well assured.

Rien ne va plus.

Here's a simple game - we take a well shuffled pack of cards, and turn them over one by one. If the turned-over card is red, I give you £1 - if it's black, you give me £1. This is as fair a game as could be - there are an equal number of red and black cards, so by the time we've been through the pack, we should be back where we started. And yet, it is virtually inevitable that I will take all your money and you will end up with nothing - how come? The answer is that you start with a bank of £5, whereas I start with a bank of £10. The game is fair, but there are bound to be runs of red cards and runs of black cards, and because I have a bigger bank than you, I am better placed to survive a series of unfavourable runs. You will almost certainly run out of money well before we've been through the pack. This is why anybody who hopes to make serious money betting at a casino is doomed to failure. Even if the games are fair (which they're not - the casino always has an edge) the fact that the casino's bank is so much bigger than yours means your chances of success are slim to none.

Ha ha.

Here's an oldie but goodie -

Jake was getting fed up. He lived in a small village and his father was well known for - how can I say this - putting it about. Every time he got interested in a girl, his father would take him on one side, and explain with embarrassment that he couldn't let the relationship develop, because the girl was his half-sister. This had happened several times, and Jake was getting really depressed. His mother had noticed his bad moods, and asked him what was wrong. Eventually he plucked up the courage to tell her. To his surprise, she burst out laughing. "Oh, don't worry about that" she said "you see, he's not your father".

Peace be with you.

In a recent post, I used the word "pace" which comes from the Latin and has developed a meaning something like "yes, I know there are other points of view and I respect them, but this is how I see it...". But how do you pronounce it? Nobody really knows how the Romans themselves spoke their language, but the best guess is that they would have said pah-key. Church Latin on the other hand - not surprisingly - tends to use an Italianate pronunciation, and would say pah-chay. Other than the Church, the main use of Latin in this country is in the law, and - although not everybody agrees - the more usual approach there is to pronounce all vowels as "open", so it would come out as pay-see. The reality is that this is one of those unusual words which are written but rarely if ever spoken out loud - so when reading to yourself in the privacy of your own head, you can please yourself!

Sad.

Like many round here, I am extremely sorry to see Cadbury fall into the hands of an American company. It's not just a case of yet another Midland firm coming under foreign ownership, but with Cadbury it's more a case of ethics. Cadbury has a history of paternal care for its workers, and indeed for the local area in general, based on the Quaker beliefs of its founder. The fear is that the new owners will not necessarily see it that way, and will simply look to maximise their profits. To us around here, Cadbury is not just another company, it's an integral part of the community, and that's what we fear we're going to lose.

What can we ban next?

Anybody noticed how the killjoys have moved on from smoking to drinking as their "sinful activity" of choice? Scarcely a day goes by without some report or other being waved in our faces about the perils of the demon drink. And the Scots seem to be at the head of the queue for condemnation. Apparently they drink the equivalent of 46 bottles of vodka a year - oh, come on, that's less than a bottle a week! And then they're all more or less permanently smashed on Buckfast Tonic Wine it seems - to the extent that the monks of Buckfast Abbey are being criticised for continuing their century-old tradition of making the stuff. Just lay off, folks!

Serendipity?

Don't know if that's the right word, but while I was lolling in my chair last night enjoying a tot of Bruichladdich (which for the uninitiated is a peaty single malt from the Isle of Islay) and re-reading the Sunday papers, I came across an article about that very same distillery who have come up with a clever way of using the waste from their distillation process to create methane gas which they then use to power their machinery. I felt compelled to have another tot to toast their ingenuity!

The reality is...

HM Revenue and Customs have spent a lot of money on advertisements assuring us that "tax doesn't have to be taxing". Well, I don't know how they would describe the fact that if you ring them up, there is nearly a 50% chance that you won't get through, and even if you do, you'll have to wait on average something like two to four minutes before you can speak to a person. I'd call that pretty taxing!

How are the mighty fallen.

There's this sort of knee-jerk reaction that when a team is not doing well, you look to change the manager. Not too sure about the logic of that myself, but given that it is so, it seems amazing that Benítez is still in charge at Liverpool, given their pretty disastrous season so far. Mind you, I read somewhere the other day that he would have been sacked months ago, but the club simply can't afford the compensation they would have to pay him. Anybody know if that's true?

The Lazy Cook

If there were a competition for the most universal dish, then I reckon eggy bread - french toast, pain perdu, call it what you will - would come high up on the list. Just about every country and everybody has their own version of this. The basic idea is simplicity itself - beat up some seasoned eggs and milk as you would for scrambled eggs, then dip a slice of bread in the mixture on both sides, and fry until golden brown. Yummy. So to the variations. Try adding cinnamon and/or nutmeg to the mixture. Some people spread the resulting slice with jam, peanut butter, Marmite, you name it. If you're posh, then you can use brioche or panettone rather than bread. Then rather than a single slice of bread, you can do it to a sandwich - cheese is nice. Many people prefer a slice of this to ordinary fried bread with their "full English". And then of course you can smother the whole thing with honey or maple syrup. Watch the calories though!

When is a repeal not a repeal?

The local man who paraded in Bedworth on Armistice Day last year wearing a load of medals he wasn't entitled to has been prosecuted and convicted under s.197 of the Army Act 1955 which makes it a criminal offence to "...without authority, use or wear any military decoration...". Despite the outrage expressed by some ex-servicemen, given that he's clearly a Walter Mitty type figure this does seem rather like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but more to the point is whether the 1955 Act was still in force at the relevant time. The Armed Forces Act of 2006 repealed the 1955 Act in its entirety, and came into force on 31st October last year, whereas the Armistice parade was of course on November 11th. There doesn't appear to be any question of any offence being committed under the 2006 Act, so should the prosecution have been brought at all? The waters are considerably muddied by a provision in the 2006 Act which, notwithstanding that that Act clearly repeals the 1955 Act, appears to allow the 1955 Act - or certain aspects of it - to continue in force from year to year subject to the annual issue of a Statutory Instrument. Wonderful drafting and a lawyer's dream!

Did you know....?

One of my Gran's sayings was "No knowledge is ever wasted", so here's a couple of things I've learned over the last few days:-
Had an optician's appointment over the weekend, and took the opportunity to clarify exactly what long-sightedness and short-sightedness is, and the answer is that the "long" or "short" relates to what you can see clearly. So a long-sighted person can see distant things (long) clearly, but the closer anything is, the more blurred it becomes, and a short-sighted person can see close things (short) clearly, but distant things are blurred.
And then as a result of watching a programme about the Simpsons, I now know that Matt Groening's name is pronounced "Greyning" - as he himself puts it "to rhyme with complaining".

Gordon Bennett!

Popped to a local supermarket over the weekend, and it was bedlam! Car-park choc full, had to go round three times before I found a space, and the shop was heaving. Presumably panic buying because of the weather, and the forecast that there is more to come. But why? Surely just about everybody these days has a fridge, and most have a freezer, so what's the problem? I could certainly survive for about a fortnight if push came to shove - there would be certain things I would run out of, but I wouldn't starve. And it wasn't just older folk who maybe are hard-wired to think in terms of shortages and such, but plenty of youngsters as well. Just couldn't understand it. I by the way, had just gone to get some yoghurt and kitchen roll - hardly life and death stuff. Wished I hadn't bothered!

Ha ha.

Two Irishmen are standing looking up at a flagpole. A blonde walks by and asks them what they are doing. "Well" says the one "we're supposed to be finding out the height of this flagpole, but we don't have a ladder". The blonde takes a spanner out of her bag, loosens a couple of bolts, lays the flagpole down flat, gets out a tape-measure and announces that it's eighteen feet six inches. Then she leaves. "Isn't that just like a blonde" says the second Irishman "we need the height, and she gives us the length".

3.1415...

What is this fascination with the number pi? Over the centuries men have striven to calculate it to more and more decimal places. In the days of pencil and paper the record stood at something like 700 places, but since the advent of computers it's all gone silly, and the latest claim is by a Frenchman who says he has calculated it to 2.7 trillion places - and he only stopped there because that was as much as his hard disks could store. But why would he - or anyone else - bother? After all, it has been said by those who know much more about this than I that knowing pi to just 46 decimal places would be sufficient to calculate the distance round the known Universe to within the size of a single hydrogen atom. It seems that these days the attraction has less to do with pi itself, and more with writing better and better computer programs to perform the calculation.

Brrrr....

As I was walking my little granddaughter to school yesterday morning through the snow, it occurred to me that I hadn't posted anything about the weather - but what is there to say? It's perishing cold and the side roads and footpaths are treacherous with compacted snow - it's been like this off and on since well before Christmas, and looks set to continue for at least another week or so. People are harking back to the Winter of 1963 but for those of us long enough in the tooth, the Winter which really stands out is the 1947 one - mainly because of the amount of snow that fell, and also because national power shortages meant that we suffered pretty well daily power cuts around teatime, and there was precious little coal to be had, so we spent most of the time huddled round what fire we could muster trying to keep warm. So as I sit here in my centrally heated house looking out at the snow, I count my blessings!

Please don't ask me another..!

One of the joys (?) of being a Grandad is that you are expected to have an answer for everything - and what's more, to be able to explain it in simple grandchild terms. So when my younger grandson said "So what's this dark matter stuff then?" I came out in somewhat of a cold sweat. The best I could come up with was this :- There's a known relationship between mass and gravitational force. We know that an object of a certain mass will produce a certain gravitational force. Look at that the other way round, and this means that if we detect a certain gravitational force, we can calculate the mass of the object which must be causing it. Scientists (don't ask me how) can calculate the total gravitational force in the Universe, and the fact is that there is not nearly enough observable mass to account for it. So there must be mass which we can't see or detect - it just has to be there to make the calculations add up. And because scientists are never happy unless they can label things, they've called this invisible mass "dark matter". And now I'm going home!

Left, right...

This proposed Muslim march through Wootton Bassett - should it be prevented? It will certainly be offensive to many people, and it will certainly be provocative - that indeed is their purpose in marching. But is that reason enough to ban it? After all, we're supposed to be fighting for our way of life, and our way of life is based - among other things - on the idea that everybody has the right to speak their mind. Are we to deny this right to those whose views we find distasteful? And, as I've mentioned more than once in these pages, it is right and proper that the civilian casualties of our wars should not be forgotten - not that I think that this is anything more than a peripheral purpose of the march. No, let them march, and if you want to express your aversion to what they're doing, then ignore them - let them march through empty streets with a minimum of media there. Just ignore them.

Interesting...

It seems that the full-body scanners which the Government intend to introduce in all UK airports could well breach the Government's own child protection legislation.

"What do I put in here?"

Letter in the paper the other day complaining of the use (or misuse as the writer saw it) of inverted commas. As someone who does tend to use them a fair bit, this made me think about just why I do use them. The most obvious use of course (and as far as the writer of the letter is concerned, the only justifiable use) is to indicate reported speech - in other words to clarify that he words inside the inverted commas are not mine, but someone else's. Pace the writer, another use which I would have thought was well enough established, is to indicate a word or phrase which has taken on a special meaning above and beyond the word or words themselves - as for example "credit crunch", "fat cats" and so on. But then, I also tend to use them to highlight words which, despite having a dictionary definition, in general usage may be construed differently by different people - things like the "right" of free speech, and then again to indicate a word which I know is not quite right, but I can't think of a better one. I accept the letter writer's criticism, but inverted commas are so damned useful!

Bring it on...

According to one of yesterday's papers, the producers of "Big Brother" are concerned that the programme might be taken off the air if two of the contestants who, if the media are to be believed (?) are at daggers drawn, start fighting. Come on lads, get to it!!

Watch what you say.

As from yesterday, in the Republic of Ireland, if you make any statement which could be construed as "grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion" you can be fined €25,000 under their new blasphemy laws. So that's the end of all those priest, rabbi and presbyterian minister jokes then? Oh, Dave Allen - where are you when we need you? And it's all right for priests and nuns to abuse young children but not OK to call their beliefs into question? If God created us, he presumably meant us to use the minds and intellects He gave us. Medieval thinking in the 21st century - unbelievable!

What's the date?

Funny thing - time. Just when did 2010 start? The Australians were having their knees-up and watching their fireworks when it was only mid-day on the 31st here. Of course it's like that all the time, it's just that New Year calls our attention to it. At any given time, for half the earth it is one day, whereas for the other half it is the day before - or after. Even today we find this a little strange - back in the 16th century when Magellan and his crew returned to Europe having sailed round the world, they were astonished to find that those on shore insisted that it was Thursday, whereas their own meticulously kept log showed it to be Wednesday - they had of course crossed the "date line" (although back then the concept did not exist), and had "lost" a day, hence the discrepancy. Phileas Fogg in "Around the World in Eighty Days" was fooled the other way, by not realising that he had "gained" a day and therefore had not lost his bet, as he had thought.

Ring out the old...

A new year, a new decade. There's been little to celebrate over the last ten years, either on a personal level or a national or international one. However much we may like to, we cannot shut the door on what has happened - we just live in hope that things will get better, and as Oprah Winfrey (I think) said, a new year is just another chance for us to get it right.