Ha ha

Overheard in a pub (honestly!) -
My wife was watching one of those cookery programmes on the television. "What are you watching that for" I said, "You can't cook". She looked at me and said "Well you watch porn".

Book Post

(see post 18/11/06)

Douglas Adams - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - 6.5 
John Connolly - The Lovers - 7 
Lee Child - Killing Floor - 8
Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest - 9
Thomas Greanias - The Atlantis Prophecy - 5
Harlan Coben - Play Dead - 8 
Dennis Lehane - Shutter Island - 7.5 
Dennis Lehane - A Drink Before The War - 8 
Simon Brett - The Witness At The Wedding - 7.5
Janet Evanovich - One For The Money - 8

Census

Well after much umm-ing and ahh-ing I decided to put down "Christian" as my religion (see post of 23rd February).  I've really been mulling this over quite a bit since then, and eventually came to the conclusion that, in view of my history and my philosophy of life, I could not really say that I was not Christian.  What I really wanted was an option which said something like "Christian but not a churchgoer" but of course that choice wasn't there.

Response - what response?

The coroner at the inquest on the shootings in Cumbria last summer has raised concerns about the fact that paramedics were prevented from attending to victims promptly as a result of Health and Safety regulations.  I have the greatest admiration for the emergency services, but don't see how such services can function if the safety of their personnel is considered to be of greater importance than dealing with the emergency. Under those circumstances, they cease to be an emergency service.  In Cumbria, we apparently had the ludicrous situation where members of the public were trying to assist the victims, while the paramedics were held back.  This state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue - either that or we simply disband the emergency services and it's every man for himself..

Simples!!

Michael Gove (Education Secretary) has asked why it is that over 90% (his figure) of schools use Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" as their set book for GCSE English.  Couldn't just be because it's a bloody good story that teenage children can relate to, could it??

Spice of life?

Is turmeric the new wonder ingredient?  It's already known for its beneficial effects on cancer and Alzheimer's and so on, but it now appears that it can be used to detect explosives.  Is there no end to its versatility?

Land of my fathers - my fathers can have it ! (Dylan Thomas)

Apparently few of the Welsh football team speak Welsh, and are therefore unable to sing the country's national anthem before the match. The Welsh manager has decided that this is not good enough, and has recruited the current Miss Wales to teach them the words.  If memory serves, didn't someone come up with a "cod" English version which was reckoned good enough to get by provided you were singing in a crowd?  I seem to remember it started "My hen laid a haddock...." but can't remember how it went after that.

R.I.P.

Liz Taylor - what a life!
Fred Titmus - what a bowler!

'Odge up!

When is a seat not a seat?  When it's too narrow to be able to sit on it apparently.  South West Trains have decided that 43cm (just under 17 inches) is enough space to accommodate the average bum and have designed their seats accordingly.  Many passengers prefer to stand, it seems!

Taxing matters.

Little worried by this proposal to combine income tax and national insurance which would see national insurance payments abolished but the basic rate of income tax rise from the current 20% to 32%.  As a pensioner, I do not pay national insurance, so where would that leave me?  Perhaps all will be made clear - or indeed maybe the idea will come to nothing - but I, and I imagine many others, would have real difficulty dealing with a 12% rise in income tax.

How much??

120 cruise missiles at £300,000 a pop - I make that £36m, and then we have Tornado fighter-bombers flying 3000 mile round trips - can we really afford all this?

Nostalgia.

Christopher Isherwood is in the news thanks to a play about him on BBC.  Back in my childhood - I suppose I'm talking about when I'd be about 13 or 14 - we had a bookcase in the hall, full of my parents' books, which I'd dip into when they weren't about.  One was called "I Am A Camera" and it was written by or about Isherwood and his experiences in Germany just before the Second World War, and it opened this young lad's eyes to a world so very very different from the one I was being brought up in.  I don't remember noticing any particular homosexual content - but then I went to an all-boys school, so the idea of men hanging out with other men wouldn't have struck me as strange.  I do remember having the hots for Sally Bowles though!

Libya

I do hope we've done the right thing in forcing this UN resolution through, but my fear is that there will be tears before bedtime.

Respect.

What a very proper and appropriate gesture to give Wootton Bassett the title "Royal".  As RAF Lyneham is shortly to close, the part they have voluntarily taken upon themselves in the repatriation ceremonies for those killed in action overseas will come to an end.  It is fitting that the nation should show its thanks.

It's murder - Midsomer-style.

The producer of the TV series "Midsomer Murders" has been sacked for saying that the reason there has never been a black or Asian character in the programme is that "it wouldn't be an English village" otherwise.  Once again, someone pilloried for telling an obvious truth.  Black and Asians are (unfortunately) not spread evenly throughout the country, they are concentrated in the towns and cities, and there are plenty of rural areas where a non-white face is never seen.  That's the reality.  So if you're making a programme set in what is meant to be a typical English rural village, you've got to reflect that reality or lose credibility.  It would be just as unbelievable to make an inner city drama where the majority of the characters were not immigrants, or to introduce a black face into a Jane Austen style period drama - it simply wouldn't ring true.  The suggestion is that this is racist, but of course that's the standard knee-jerk fall-back position these days - it isn't racist, it's realist. 

Reality, please?

So in view of what's happening in Japan, is nuclear power "safe"?  No, of course it isn't - we've been down this path before, more than once - nothing is "safe".  It's a matter of assessing the risk, and as far as this country is concerned, the probability of what has happened in Japan happening here is minuscule.  So their problems in no way alter the arguments for and against nuclear power in this country.

Ha ha

A duck goes into a library and waddles up to the counter.  "Buk" he quacks.  The librarian looks at him quizzically.  "Buk" repeats the duck.  Well, thinks the librarian, in these PC days you have to be careful not to be judgmental or discriminatory, so she hands the duck a book, which it tucks under its wing and waddles out.  Half an hour later it's back, plonks the book on the counter and quacks "Buk" again.  Fast reader, thinks the librarian and gives the duck another book and off it goes.  Half an hour later it's back again - "Buk".  So the librarian gives it another book, but this time decides to follow it and see where it goes.  So she follows the duck through the town centre and into the park and through the park to the lake, and there on a big waterlily leaf in the middle of the lake is a frog.  The duck swims over to the frog and puts the book down on the leaf.  The frog looks at it and says "Reddit".

Do you want to be in my gang?

Difficult to understand the mindset of some LibDem supporters who are sniping at coalition policies.  You're either in this coalition or you're not.  The idea that a party who polled just under a quarter of the votes should somehow have a greater say in the coalition than the party who polled over half as many again is just fatuous.  Maybe the LibDems shouldn't have entered into the coalition in the first place, but that's an argument whose time has passed - they did and that's an end to it.  Withdraw if you want to (but that, as we've said before, would be political suicide), but otherwise shut up and get on with it!

Voting reform

I'm starting to crystallise my thoughts on the forthcoming AV referendum.  I couldn't quite articulate just why I found myself veering towards the "No" side, but then a quote from Winston Churchill brought things into focus for me.  Apparently AV was being discussed back in the early 1930s and WC opposed it saying that it would mean that there was a danger that elections would be decided by "the most worthless votes given for the most worthless candidates". Perhaps "worthless" was an ill-chosen word, but you can see what he meant.  Because votes are redistributed, if necessary, from the bottom up, then elections could hinge on the second preference votes of those whose first preference was for the Monster Raving Loony Party, or the Miss Great Britain Party, or - Gawd 'elp us - the BNP - and would you really want such people to effectively have the casting vote?  Still undecided, but I'll take some persuading to vote "Yes".

Eureka!

I've been struggling with my back garden for the last few weeks - chopping stuff down, turning the soil over and so on and when I'd finished it still looked tatty and uncared-for.  Then yesterday I cut the lawn, and Shazam! (anybody remember Captain Marvel?) suddenly it looked so much better.  I pass that tip on for what it's worth.

What's sauce for the goose...

I suppose it's inevitable that we have a biased view on world affairs, but two stories currently in the news bring this into sharp focus - on the one hand we are actively considering providing arms to the Libyan "rebels" and at the same time we are foaming at the mouth because we have discovered that Iran are providing (or seeking to provide) arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan.  Same difference?

Strewth!

I've little interest in Charlie Sheen and don't watch "Two and a Half Men", but was gobsmacked to read in the press that he gets (or rather got) £1.2m for each episode.  Over a million pounds for every episode - and apparently he considered himself underpaid at that?  Ye Gods - by comparison our top footballers are on the breadline!!

Two sides to every coin.

Everything has a down-side you see.  It seems that cardboard made from recycled paper and card can - or more probably will - contain mineral oils from printing ink, and that these can be dangerous to health.  So all this recycling we are doing, like most aspects of human endeavour,  has plus points and minus points.

The Lazy Cook

I've become a fan of sweet potato recently.  Only very distantly related to the potato, they can be regarded as a substitute, and in general anything you can do with a potato you can do with a sweet potato - boil, mash, fry, whatever.  I particularly like to cut them into wedges and shallow fry them as an accompaniment to practically anything.  If you've not tried them, I think you're in for a treat.

Hits and misses.

As a spectator, I've never been able to see the attraction in basketball.  One team goes up one end and scores, and then the other team goes up the other end and scores and so on.  Boring.  I'm sure it's skillful, but a game that is determined more by failing to score than by scoring doesn't do anything for me - imagine that we decided to replace football matches by a 90 minute penalty shoot-out - once the novelty had worn off, I couldn't see that attracting the crowds.

Movie night in.

One of my rare plugs for a film - "Shutter Island" is showing on Sky Movies at the moment and it's well worth a look.  The best twist ending I've seen since "The Sixth Sense" - indeed a double twist ending which leaves you not quite knowing what to believe, leading to quite a few discussion groups on the Web with opinion sharply divided.  A much more ambivalent ending than the book, and the sort of film you feel you need to watch again to see whether there were any early clues that you missed.  Absorbing.

Repeat performance?

I posted in January about what I saw as the foolishness of the coalition not fighting by-elections during this parliament as a coalition - in other words putting up a single candidate to represent both of them.  It's happened again - in Thursday's Barnsley by-election the Conservatives came third and the LibDems sixth, but combine their vote and they would have come second, which given that this was a rock-solid Labour seat was always the best they could have hoped for. It just seems so obvious to me.

An equitable solution?

Fuel prices - the Government say that reducing or foregoing a rise in fuel duty is not on because it would cost too much. But surely when they originally did their sums they couldn't have factored in the steep rise in the cost of oil as a result of the shenanigans in the Middle East, so there must be a windfall element in the tax they are getting on fuel at the moment.  Wouldn't it be fair to give that back to the motorist?

Look but don't touch?

What should we in the UK do about what's going on in Libya - should we in fact do anything?  It is becoming increasingly clear that things are not quite so black and white as the media would have had us believe.  Gaddafi clearly is not without support, particularly in the west of the country, and it's worth remembering that prior to the Second World War what is now being referred to as west and east Libya were different countries - or maybe tribal areas would be closer to the mark, so the present split has historic overtones.  Cameron is talking about no-fly zones and arming the "rebels" but it has to be asked what right do we have to interfere in another country's affairs just because we have a preferred outcome?  For once the US seem to me to be taking a rather more "concerned onlooker" approach rather than rattling sabres.  Give humanitarian assistance by all means, but keep away from the fight - that's for the Libyans to sort out.

It's a mad mad mad mad world.

If you are an insurer, and statistics clearly show that one group of people present a significantly higher risk than another group, you would be crazy not to reflect that fact in the premiums you charge for insuring against that risk.  But now it appears that if those statistics show that men are at a greater risk than women - or vice versa - this ceases to be a statistical issue and becomes a matter of sexual discrimination and therefore it is illegal to charge different premiums.  Sheer insanity!  What next?  Everybody to be charged the same premium on a life policy irrespective of age?  What about those people who are charged high house insurance premiums because they live on a flood plain or on the edge of a crumbling cliff?  The insurance business is all about discrimination - your premium is based on the degree of risk you are perceived to pose - greater risk, higher premium.  I really think we've lost the plot.

Phew...!

Well what a good weekend for us armchair sports fans.  Three entertaining rugby matches in the Six Nations, a gripping World Cup cricket match between India and England which finished in an amazing tie, and then Birmingham, against all the odds, beating Arsenal in the Carling Cup final.  And the Wolves won as well - feel quite worn out!