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.

Oh yeh?

The Royal Mail is saying that town and county names are no longer necessary when addressing envelopes - all that is required is a house number, street name and postcode. So why is it that several times every year I get mail for someone who lives in a house with the same number as mine and in a road with a similar name, but with a completely different postcode?

TV Times.

Having slagged off the recent series of Doctor Who, I am delighted to give a plug to the BBC's new series Sherlock, a modern-day reinterpretation of Conan Doyle's characters. This is all that Doctor Who should have been and wasn't. Of course, the irony is that the same writer is involved in both series - so perhaps the failure (for me) of Doctor Who really was more down to Matt Smith after all?

Where now for off-beat knick-knacks and incense sticks?

Given the recent and current economic climate, it was inevitable that some retail stores would go to the wall, and it was pretty obvious that those trading in areas where there was a lot of competition would be most at risk. So it was not surprising to hear that Ethel Austin had gone into administration - there are an awful lot of similar cheap and cheerful clothes shops around. But they seem to have dragged Au Naturale down with them, and that's a great shame, because that leaves a big gap in the market place - Au Naturale was very much a one-off type of shop. I for one am going to miss it.

Compare and contrast.

I've posted before about our illogical approach to prison sentencing - here's another example. A man convicted of handling stolen property (not stealing it by the way, just attempting to sell it) has been sentenced to eight years in gaol. Eight years?? Why?? Purely it seems because the stolen item was a rare and valuable Shakespeare first edition. By comparison, the average sentence for the offence of handling is about 12 months, and indeed that for manslaughter is only around five years. Crazy, isn't it?

Sarah's Law.

Although made with the best of intentions, I have a specific reservation about the practical effects of this law which allows parents to check up on anyone who has access to their children to see whether they are on the Violent and Sex Offender Register. My concern is that the Register is not a database of fact - i.e. this person has been convicted of such-and-such an offence - but includes those who are "simply thought to be at risk of offending". Given that you cannot put the genie back in the bottle, the danger is that such people will be demonised despite never having done anything wrong. You may argue that this is a price worth paying for better protection for our children, but I personally have my doubts.

What is truth? - continued.

Here's another thought experiment. Suppose we have a time machine and we hop into it and go back some 300 years - let's say to the year 1700. We're here in what is now the West Midlands - would have been Staffordshire back then - and suppose something momentous happened in London. Let's say the King dies, quite unexpectedly. It would be at least something like 18 hours before we here became aware that this had happened. That's the minimum time it would take a rider, riding a succession of fast horses over rutted tracks, fields, hedges and ditches and stuff, to get here with the news - always assuming that he came straight here. Now the question is, during that 18-hour period, is the King alive or dead, here where we are? The obvious answer is, he's dead but we don't know it yet. But when you think about it, that's an answer we can only arrive at in retrospect, once we know he's dead. What is the situation during that 18-hour period? I would suggest he's alive - we have no reason to think otherwise, and I go back to my basic premise - reality (truth) is the sum total of the information available to us. Until the news reaches us, the status quo exists - he's alive. The upshot of all this is that information travels, and therefore reality (truth) travels. You can imagine the news of the King's death spreading outwards from London like ripples on a pond - the truth of the matter would be different depending on how close, or far away, you were from London. So the truth can be different for different people - spooky eh? And I've not finished yet!

Who are the real losers?

There's been much discussion about whether Formula One is a team competition or an individual one following Ferrari's decision to instruct Massa to let Alonso overtake him and go on to win in the last Grand Prix. Opinion "in the paddock" seems to be divided, despite the fact that the rules are clear that this sort of thing is not allowed, but there's one aspect of all this which seems to me to have been overlooked. In common with all sporting events, there is a lot of money gambled on Formula One races, so surely they owe it to those punters to make sure the races are run honestly. What about all those people who put money on Massa to win? They will feel - and rightly - that they have been cheated. Ferrari have been fined, and may indeed face further punishment, but that doesn't get these people their money back!