Ha ha.

I'm obliged to a couple of characters called Will and Guy for the following -

A man is taking a walk in Central park in New York. Suddenly he sees a little girl being attacked by a pit bull dog. He runs over and starts fighting with the dog. He succeeds in killing the dog and saving the girl's life.
A policeman who was watching the scene walks over and says, 'You are a hero man, tomorrow the newspaper headlines will  read: "Brave New Yorker saves the life of little girl'.
The man says, 'But I am not a New Yorker!'
"Oh ,then the headlines will read: "Brave American saves life of little girl",' the policeman answers.
'But I am not an American!' says the man.
'Oh, what are you then?'
'The man says: - 'I am a Saudi!'
The next day the newspaper headlines read: 'Islamic extremist kills innocent American dog.'

R.I.P.

Margaret Whiting - one of that clutch of female singers who so enlivened my existence when I was doing my National Service in the mid-50s with their wonderful performances of the "standards".  Pretty well all gone now - thank the Lord for recording technology.

Music Man

Holst's "Planets Suite" ends with Neptune floating mysteriously away into the void of space - so what about Pluto?  There is no Pluto (not in the original) because when Holst wrote the piece, it had not yet been discovered.  Or had it?  For some time astronomers had been aware of "wobbles" in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, and some of them - in particular one Percival Lowell - had become convinced that this was being caused by a further planet out beyond Neptune.  Lowell called this "Planet X" and devoted his life to finding it, but he died disappointed.  In fact he did find it - or rather among the hundreds of photographs taken by his observatory during his lifetime there were a couple showing Planet X - but nobody realised this at the time or for many years afterwards, and not until it had been officially "discovered" by another astronomer called Clyde Tombaugh.  There was a public discussion about what this new planet should be called, and eventually Pluto was chosen.  It is a very small planet - smaller than our moon - and indeed it has been suggested that it's not really a planet at all, but one of Neptune's moons that has somehow escaped its gravitational pull.  In 2000, the English composer Colin Matthews was commissioned to write a new movement representing Pluto to add to Holst's suite, although it has to be said it has not been universally welcomed, and is seldom performed.

Ha ha.

A man and a woman were having dinner in a fine restaurant.  Their waitress, taking another order at a table a few paces away noticed that the man was slowly sliding down his chair and under the table, with the woman acting unconcerned.
The waitress watched as the man slid all the way down his chair and out of sight under the table. Still, the woman dining across from him appeared calm and unruffled, apparently unaware that her dining companion had disappeared.
After the waitress finished taking the order, she came over to the table and said to the woman, 'Pardon me, ma'am, but I think your husband just slid under the table.'
The woman calmly looked up at her and replied firmly, 'No he didn't.  He just walked in the door.

Smile, you're on Candid Camera!

I think this business of Andy Gray goes further than simply the fact that he holds views with which many (but by no means all) people would disagree.  What's really the point here is whether you are entitled to have what you intend and believe to be a private conversation without the risk of what you say being broadcast to all and sundry.  It's got far more in common with newspapers hacking in to people's mobile 'phones, and reporters posing as ordinary members of the public secretly recording what MPs say than it has with football and women assistant referees.  The question which hasn't been answered - indeed as far as I am aware, hasn't been asked - is who recorded this conversation and why, and who put it into the public domain, and why.  When I'm having a private chat with family or friends, do I really need to check for hidden microphones or cameras?  Because that's really what's at issue here.

Flag up, or down?

The offside law is in the news again following all the fuss about the female linesman (sorry, assistant referee) in the recent Wolves-Liverpool game.  What always amazes me is how often TV replays show that the official - male or female - has got it right.  When you look at it, it's pretty well an impossible situation - you need to be looking in two different places at the same time.  You need to know when the ball is passed, which means you need to be looking at the passer, and at precisely the same time you need to know where the person who will receive the ball is, in relation to the defenders, which means you need to be looking at them.  I have heard it said that a lot of linesmen (let's call them that, OK?) rely on hearing the sound of the ball being kicked and keep their eyes on the putative receiver, but even so it's a very difficult thing to do.  And this business of active and non-active players doesn't help....

Oh, these dificult questions.

As a result of the VAT increase, will my local "Pound Shop" now have to become the "Somewhat More Than A Pound Shop"?

The Lazy Cook

"Faggots and pays" - a traditional dish in this part of the country.  Of course, they have to be real faggots - with the greatest of respect to Mr Brain, what he sells are spiced meatballs, nice enough and I often have them, but faggots they are not.  My late mother-in-law made great faggots, and there's  a local butcher where you can get the genuine article, but they've rather gone out of fashion these days - bit of a shame really.  Haggis is a similar product, though much bigger and made from bits of sheep rather than pig, and bulked with oatmeal rather than breadcrumbs - I only tasted haggis the once, and was rather disappointed, but then perhaps, as with faggots, the commercial product is a pale reflection of the real thing.  "Pays" by the way, if you haven't guessed, is local dialect for peas.

Bang??

Betelgeuse, one of the stars in the constellation of Orion is due to go supernova, and when it happens it will be very visible from the earth - indeed it has been suggested that it will outshine the sun.  Question is - when will it happen?  There have been quite a few suggestions that it will take place this year, although other astronomers have poo-poohed the idea. Of course, as assiduous readers of this blog (are there any?) will be quick to point out, it's far more likely that it has already happened - Betelgeuse is more than 500 light-years away, so we are seeing it as it was 500-odd years ago.  If it does "happen" this year, then it probably took place back when Henry VIII was doing his thing.

Can't do right for doing wrong.

It's very easy to give when the going is good - much more difficult to take away when the going is not so good.  When we're used to having something - maybe even come to rely on it - when it's taken away we feel it badly.  There's that old saying "what you've never had, you never miss" but if you have had it, you do miss it.  Several stories about this at the moment - all this business about the lack of respite care, people up in arms about proposed library closures, complaints about the removal of EMA (the weekly sum given to some children to encourage them to continue at school after 16), the high cost of fuel (despite it being in real terms no more expensive than it was back in the 50s) and so on and so on.  We all look at the world through our own eyes and we all have our own ranking of what the priorities should be.  Who'd be a politician when times are bad, eh?

So there!

Scientists in South Korea have determined that "man 'flu" really does exist.  Are you listening ladies?  As Spike Milligan is quoted as saying."I told you I was ill".

Let it slip??

There was a spokesperson on the box the other day complaining about the way secondary schools are being assessed this year based on the new "English Baccalaureate" - the complaint being that this was introduced retrospectively, that's to say the schools didn't know about it in advance.  Could there be any clearer evidence that schools now teach to the exam and the league tables rather than teach the subject?

Hic.

I knew we paid an exorbitant amount of tax on alcohol in this country, but until these new proposals that shops should not be allowed to sell alcohol at a lower price than the tax paid on them, I didn't know just how much.  I now know that the tax on a litre of vodka is £10.71, which works out at just under £7.50 a bottle.  As whisky has a somewhat higher ABV than vodka, presumably the tax is even higher.  Ye Gods!

Poke, poke.

I've got a new mobile 'phone - well, not new exactly.  What happens is that the grandkids have to have the latest and greatest - it's a matter of street cred - so their old 'phones are passed up the line to us earlier generations.  And I've now got this touch-screen one.  Now I'm a pianist - not that I play very much these days - but as a result I have got supple fingers and good manual dexterity, but I'm finding it extremely difficult to operate the touch screen - I keep hitting the wrong thing.  Text messaging in particular is a frustrating chore.  Why this should be I don't know - I am persevering but at the moment much prefer my old 'phone - problem is that the only person who knows how to switch the sim card over is my eldest grandson, and he's away at University!  Oh well.....

R.I.P.

Nat Lofthouse - games played for England, 33.  Goals scored 30.  'Nuff said.

I can fold my arms, but....

I don't know about you, but when I have one of those chocolates that come wrapped in foil, I just have to smooth the foil out and then fold it and fold it again and so on.  And this always reminds me of that old conundrum - how many times can you fold a piece of paper in half?  It used to be said that however big a piece you started with, you wouldn't be able to fold it in half more than seven times.  The problem is not the size - it's the thickness.  Each time you fold it, it becomes twice as thick so after seven folds it's 128 times as thick as originally and this is what will defeat you.  Actually a smart young lady from California worked out that if you folded a long thin piece of paper end to end (think unrolled toilet roll) you could do better than that, and she actually achieved 12 folds!

Coalition tactics.

I really think the coalition need to consider fighting by-elections as the coalition - in other words putting up one candidate to represent both of them.  Had they done this in the recent by-election they would probably have won.  As it was, they split their vote and lost.  Come the next general election they go back to fighting each other, but for the duration of this Parliament it seems crazy not to field a single candidate.

Book Post

(see post 18/11/06)

Thomas Greanias - Raising Atlantis - 5.
Michael Connelly - The Scarecrow - 7.5 
Mary Higgins Clark - Before I Say Goodbye - 6.5
Lee Child - 61 Hours - 8 
L. C. Tyler - The Herring Seller's Apprentice - 8
Timothy Frost - The Abigail Affair - 6.5
Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Played With Fire - 8
Stephen Leather - The Basement - 7.5
Simon Brett - The Hanging In The Hotel - 7 
P. G. Wodehouse - My Man Jeeves - 7

Hot potato.

Bankers' bonuses - what are we to make of it all?  Several points - firstly this is in great part the "politics of envy".  This is the "Old Labour" philosophy of "if I haven't got it, then you shouldn't be able to have it either".  Next, market forces.  I'm sure we've been down this road before, but if you want Wayne Rooney playing for your team, then you're going to have to pay Wayne Rooney prices.  It's not necessarily that Wayne Rooney wants it (though he probably does, and his agent almost certainly does), it's not even that Wayne Rooney is worth it, it's simply that if you don't pay it, someone else will, and you won't get him.  That's how markets work, and it's as true in the banking industry as anywhere else.  Then I can't help thinking that it's all got a lot to do with presentation.  If you learn that Mr X has a salary of £3m a year, you may cough and splutter but in general you'd probably accept it.  But if Mr X's salary is in fact £500,000 and you learn that he's getting a bonus of £2.5m, somehow that would seem far more unacceptable, despite the fact that the overall effect is identical.  And lastly, don't forget that 50% of these bonuses will be coming back to the Treasury through income tax.

Sauce for the gander...?

Virgin Atlantic is refusing to pay airport charges to BAA claiming that they did not get the service they were paying for during the recent disruption caused by snow and ice, particularly at Heathrow.  I think they should be careful,  I do not get my TV, broadband etc. from Virgin Media, but I know a couple of people who do, and they regularly complain about what they perceive as bad service - so are they entitled to withhold payment?

H M's head.

The government has had to legislate to ensure that British postage stamps will continue to feature the monarch's head following the proposed sell-off of Royal Mail's postal service - probably to a Dutch or German concern.  British stamps are the only ones in the world which do not include the name of the country, and the image of the monarch has traditionally been used as identification, and the fear was that, as this simply is a tradition and not a requirement, it could be dropped following privatisation.  Of course, whether or not the service should be sold to a foreign buyer, is another matter....

Hmm....

Remember Marathon, the chocolate bar?  Don't get them any more.  Well, yes you do of course, it's just that they are now called Snickers.  They simply changed the name, the bar remains essentially the same.  This came to mind when listening to Nick Clegg talking about control orders - it seems we are going to replace control orders with --- well, control orders, but they won't be quite the same and they'll be called something different.  Can't see that that will satisfy anybody, whichever side of the argument you favour.

VAT increase

I'm no keener on VAT going up to 20% than the next person, but I think these headlines about "VAT increase hitting the poorest hardest" are mostly just party political point scoring.  When you think about it, it's got to be based on the premise that the poor and the rich spend their money in the same way on the same things, which is an obvious nonsense.  At the lower end of the income scale, it stands to reason that a greater proportion of income will be spent on the staples, which for the most part are VAT exempt, so the increase will have no effect. That's not to say that the poor will not be affected by it, but probably overall by no more than the rest of us.

So they're living in sin!

Watched "The African Queen" the other day - great film, but there comes a point where Charlie and Rosie are about to be executed as spies and they ask the Captain of the German ship they're on to marry them - which he does, and then delivers the priceless line "I pronounce you man and wife - proceed with the execution".So what?  Well, the idea that the Captain of a ship is ex officio authorised to marry people is a myth, albeit a widespread one.  It probably has its origins in the early days of sail, when ships could be at sea for months at a time.  As has been mentioned before in these pages, prior to 1753 there were no rules about how you got married and I'm sure back then ships' Captains did perform marriage ceremonies on board, and if challenged such marriages would almost certainly have been declared valid, assuming there was no suggestion of duress, but since that date you have to be authorised to perform a marriage ceremony and ships' Captains aren't, and as this takes place in 1914...

Answers on a postcard please

Further to yesterday's post, the question which immediately springs to mind is why did the CPS decide to prosecute?  The CPS have to consider two things - firstly, is there a realistic chance of the prosecution succeeding?  This is usually taken to mean a better than 50-50 chance.  Here there would be no problem - there was after all decided case law going back a hundred years or so.  But secondly, they have to be satisfied that prosecution is in the public interest, and here It would be interesting to know their reasoning.  Back in 2001 the Ministry of Transport published guidelines for the use of speed cameras - specifically they said that such cameras should be easily visible from a reasonable distance, painted yellow and no longer hidden behind bushes and such.  The reason for this, as stated by the Ministry, was to give the motorist the opportunity to regulate their speed before passing the camera.  So what was this man who was fined doing other than precisely that?  In which case how could it possibly be seen as in the public interest to spend significant amounts of public money and take up significant police time in prosecuting him?  Anybody from the CPS prepared to comment?

What a waste of time and money

A motorist who flashed his lights to warn oncoming traffic that there was a police speed-trap ahead has been fined for wilfully obstructing the police in the execution of their duty.  So apparently it's an offence to encourage others not to break the law??  Crazy!

Don't be fooled...

... VAT may be increasing by 2.5% - from 17.5% to 20%, but that does not mean that the cost of an article which attracts VAT should increase by 2.5%.  The actual effect on the cost of such an article should be an increase of no more than 2.13%. Look after the pennies...

It all depends...

...on how you look at it.  The BBC reports that the government are introducing measures to enable local councils to reduce parking fees in town centres, but when you read the small print as it were, the reality is that the measures are simply removing current government imposed restrictions on parking charges which will allow councils to charge what they like for parking, and the cynic in me says that it's far more likely that this will result in higher charges rather than lower!

The wonder of words.

One of my favourite ready meals from my local supermarket is Cajun Chicken, and when I buy it, I am always reminded of the fascinating (to me, anyway) derivation of the word "Cajun".  It goes something like this - when settlers were colonising the Americas in the 17th century, many of those from France settled in the north of the territory - what today is Canada - and in particular in an area known as Arcadia.  Somehow this quickly lost the "r" and became Acadia, and not unnaturally, its inhabitants were known as Acadians.  This was a period when England and France were more or less permanently at war, and it was only a matter of time before the English sought to turf the French out of North America, or at the least to subjugate them.  The Acadians refuse to submit to English rule and migrated to other more congenial parts of the continent.  A great many of them ended up in Louisiana, and over the years "Acadian" morphed into "Cajun".  And there you have it.

Has he got his K yet?

As the New Year's honours list has just been published, it's worth telling the story of the Order of St Michael and St George, which is traditionally used to reward top civil servants for their good(?) work.  It comes in three ascending flavours - Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) Knight Commander of the Order... (KCMG) and Knight Grand Cross of the Order... (GCMG).  Within the lower echelons of the civil service - below stairs, as it were - CMG is referred to as "Call me God", KCMG as "Kindly call me God" and GCMG as "God calls me God".  You may have heard this in an episode of the TV comedy "Yes, Minister" but it didn't originate there - I can attest to it being in currency many years before that.

Happy New Year.

Can't resist this quote from Mark Twain - New Year's Day -- Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.