A load of noughts.

So what about this business of RBS Chief Stephen Hester and his £1m (well nearly) bonus.  The public - well the press really - have effectively forced him to give it up. Right or wrong?  I would just make two points - firstly "bonus" has become a dirty word, but essentially what we are talking about here is performance related pay.  You meet these targets and we will pay you such-and-such over and above your basic salary - and this is a fairly common arrangement between employers and employees at all levels.  Which leads us on to my second point - if his bonus had been £50,000 say, it's very unlikely that it would even have been commented on. It's only the fact that we are dealing with what for most people are fairy-tale figures that makes it newsworthy.  Which I am afraid raises the uncomfortable question as to whether this is all really about envy.

Woof, woof.

Can't believe there are calls for Staffordshire bull terriers to be added to the breeds banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act.  Like any breed, Staffies can be trained to be vicious, but their basic nature is playful, friendly, loveable and particularly good with children.  They are chunky and muscular and if they jump up at you - which being friendly and playful they are wont to do - when you're not ready for it they can easily knock you over, but that's about the only way in which they can be considered a danger.

Back to the drawing-board

So we've all be misled all these years, have we?  We've always been told that aircraft fly because the air flowing over the top of wing has to travel further than the air flowing under the wing, and hence travels faster, and therefore the air pressure on top of the wing is less than that under the wing - and this produces lift which keeps the thing in the air.  It now appears that we have been confusing cause and effect.  The air pressure on top of the wing is indeed lower than that under the wing, but this has nothing to do with how far the air has to travel - it's simply that the shape of the wing - the so-called aerofoil shape - creates this pressure difference.  Air at a lower pressure moves faster, so the fact that the air on top of the wing moves faster is an effect, not a cause.

A trivial question

What do you call those little tokens that you get in Trivial Pursuit for answering a major question and which you then put in your circular playing piece.  We call them "cheeses" but I'm not quite sure why - perhaps because they look something like those Dairylea processed cheese triangles?  What do you call them?

The square on the hypotenuse...

On a recent family holiday, I spent a lot of time teaching one of my granddaughters how to solve quadratic equations (I had to mug up on it first!). And I thought to myself - what's the point?  In my long life I have never, outside the schoolroom, had cause to solve a quadratic equation - nor have I ever needed to use Pythagoras's theorem or trigonometry.  So why on earth do we bother to teach children these things?  Unless they specifically want to specialise in maths, or some science subject which will require advanced calculation, all a child needs to know to get by in life is the ability to add, subtract, divide and multiply, and perhaps, just perhaps how to set up and manipulate a basic algebraic equation.  Are we wasting our time - and theirs?

Ripples on a pond

This proposed legislation in the US (see post of 18th Jan) has ramifications going well beyond file sharing.  If websites are going to be held legally responsible for the content of files stored on them then this could scupper the idea of the cloud (see post of 7/11/08) which is generally seen to be the future of home computing.  Also it would mean that if I were to say something defamatory on this blog, the defamed person could not only take action against me, but also take action against Yahoo which is the website which hosts Blogger.  This may well not be what the proponents of the legislation intend, but we've spoken before about the Law of Unforeseen Consequences.

Where's me dole?

Where do you stand on this question of a benefit cap?  Some LibDems don't like it, some bishops don't like it, and Labour is doing its usual job of facing both ways - saying they approve in principle but would do it differently.  For me, the situation is quite clear - it is unacceptable that those on benefit (which let's be clear, means that their money is coming from you and me) should find themselves in a better position financially than those who are not.  It's that simple.  William Beveridge the "father" of the welfare state, was clear that benefits should be set at subsistence level.  You shouldn't starve, but you should  "struggle to get by" on benefit - else where is the incentive to get off benefit?  And there are plenty of people not on benefit who are are struggling to get by.  The fact that there are some tens of thousands of people on benefit who are living a comfortable life is a disgrace.  The problem, as mentioned in previous posts is that successive governments have been unwilling to do anything about it, with the result that reform is now having to be introduced on a crash-bang-wallop basis which is not the ideal way of going about it.

That woman.

Madonna's film about Wallis Simpson does not seem to have gone down too well with the critics.  Titled "W.E." (an in-joke - it's a sort of monogram of Wallis and Edward and they were often referred to as "the royal we") it seeks to tell the story of their relationship from her point of view.  She is often held solely responsible for the Abdication Crisis, and Edward is seen as just a weak man under her spell, but every indication is that that outcome was not what she sought at all.  When Edward abdicated, few people gave their relationship more than a few months, but the fact that they married and stayed together - often in somewhat socially demeaning circumstances - for the rest of their lives, seems to indicate that they had some genuine long-lasting feeling for each other.  The general consensus today seems to be that she did this country a huge favour by ridding us of a very personable but potentially disastrous King.  Our house was split - my Dad was scathing about Edward and Wallis - particularly Edward, whom he saw as in complete dereliction of his duty.  I think my Mum on the other hand thought the whole thing rather romantic.  

Headline fodder.

Anybody else feel uncomfortable about the way the captain of this cruise-liner which has capsized off the Italian coast is being tried and convicted in the media?  He may of course be guilty of all the things which are being said about him, but the proper forum for all this to be investigated is either some form of official inquiry, or possibly (probably even) in court.  The press on the other hand have their own agenda which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with truth or justice.

The mighty dollar rules...

I've posted before about the way sponsors of big events are allowed to dictate what can and cannot be consumed, sold or displayed at those events, but this surely takes the biscuit?  The 2014 World Cup is to be held in Brazil.  Several years ago, in a move designed to curb violence at football matches, Brazil banned the sale of alcohol at football grounds.  Very sensible.  BUT... Budweiser are one of FIFA's big sponsors and as a result FIFA are demanding (demanding mind you) that beer (guess whose?) is on sale at all World Cup match venues.  So they consider they have the right to override Brazilian law then?  The mind boggles!

R.I.P.

Etta James - always a bit too strident for my taste - I was more of an Ella Fitzgerald/Carmen McRae man myself, but there was no doubt about her prodigious talent or the influence she had on the world of female jazz singing.  

Pick a number

Do these politicians and government officials live on the same planet as me? Apparently inflation is at four-point-something percent and falling.  Really?  Then how come my standard weekly shop, which - boring person that I am - varies little from week to week, and which a year ago used to come in regularly at just under £40, now struggles not to exceed £50?  And whichever way you slice it, that's a increase of something like 20% or more.  Four-point-something - don't make me laugh!

Ha ha

It was autumn, and the American Indians on a remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. 

Since he was a modern Indian Chief he had never been taught the old secrets, so when he looked at the sky he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be. 

Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. 

But also being a practical man, a few days later he 'phoned the National Weather Service (US equivalent of the Met Office) and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?" 

"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the Meteorologist at the Weather Service responded. So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. 

One week later he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter?" 

"Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter." 

The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. 

Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?" 

"Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever." 

"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked. 

The weatherman replied, "The Indians are collecting wood like crazy."

The wheel turns...

I'm old enough to remember when audio cassette recorders made their first appearance, and the music industry were up in arms because people could now borrow the latest hit record from a mate and make a copy of it for their own use (OK, reel to reel tape recorders had been around for some years, but they weren't commonplace).  Shock horror!!  Then it happened again with the advent of video recorders - you could now record a film off the telly and watch it again and again. The film industry couldn't see beyond the money they would be losing.  Of course in time both the music and film people saw that these innovations were in fact business opportunities and that there was the potential for them to make far more than they might lose by any so-called "piracy".  And now it's all happening again with the internet and its ability to "stream" content to users, and you'd think that people would have learned from the past - but no, apparently.  The vested interests are trying to get legislation passed in the US which would allow them to dictate just who is allowed to see what on the net - and its affects would be felt well beyond the States.  Plenty of opposition but also plenty of money behind those seeking such a law.  Let's hope common sense prevails.

Erratum

I said that John Barrowman (Captain Jack in Torchwood, among many other things) is American.  Well it seems that he isn't - he was born in Glasgow and despite having moved to America when he was a young lad, remains a Scot.  Happy to put the record straight.

Here we go again.

First it was Gary McKinnon (see post dated 4/9/08) and now our extradition treaty with the US comes under more scrutiny and criticism following a ruling that a young man who has never been to the States and who almost certainly has committed no offence in this country (and certainly has not been charged with one) can be extradited to face trial over there.  There has to be something wrong with an arrangement that produces such a result, surely?  Let's hope it is overturned on appeal.

Please Miss.....

I'm sure you know the old adage "those who can, do; those who can't, teach".  Bit unflattering but like many of these old sayings, there's more than a grain of truth in there.  A lot of teachers are where they are not out of any sense of vocation, but simply for want of anything better.  Not surprisingly, many such teachers tend to be not very good, and as they have no passion for the job, the children they teach are not inspired and don't learn much. The Education Secretary has plans to make it easier to get rid of such underperforming teachers, and despite the understandable opposition of the unions, this is clearly a right move.  The welfare of the child should be paramount, and kids only get one shot at school, so if that means more bad teachers find themselves out of a job, I'm sure most parents would go along with that.

Madame from Armentières??

I'm obviously behind the times, because apparently "fräulein" as a form of address for an unmarried woman in German has now more or less gone out of use, and it seems that "mademoiselle" in French may be going the same way.  As a mere man I don't quite understand this, although the thrust of most of the comments (from women) I have read are along the lines of "my marital status is nobody's business but mine".  Typically in English we seem to have gone for a compromise solution by introducing the new neutral title "Ms" for those who do not wish to declare themselves as "Miss" or "Mrs".  At least it solves the problem of how you address a reply to someone who has signed a letter simply "Jane Smith" or whatever.  Mrs and Miss by the way are both diminutives of the same word - mistress.

Yum, yum.

When the going gets tough, do we look for comfort food?  Greggs, who specialise in takeaway pies and pasties has apparently seen sales rise significantly towards the back-end of last year.  Is there a connection?

It's my life, damn it!

Happy or healthy - it seems you have to make a choice.  Over the last few years there have been a series of reports linking something or other to an increased risk of an illness or a reduction in life expectancy - and it's invariably something nice that you would not willingly give up.  Of course, you can take a lot of no notice, but the problem is that others do and it may - probably will - affect what you can buy.  Crisps have become like cardboard these days, as they've reduced and reduced the amount of fat in them.  I used to love my supermarket's cajun chicken ready meal because it was made with chicken breast with the skin on, but guess what - the skin has disappeared.  They also used to do a very tasty sweet chili pork noodle dish which is no longer to be found, and when I enquired about it I was told it had been taken off sale as it no longer complied with the store's "healthy eating" policy.  So - happy or healthy?  I know which I would choose - if only I were given the choice!

Och aye??

I've been down this road before, but the question of a referendum on Scottish Independence has raised its head once more, so once more I ask - why should the decision be restricted to the Scots (however you choose to define them)?  Surely it is a matter on which we are all entitled to have our say?  If you are seeking to break up the United Kingdom, that is a matter which affects all members of the UK and on which we should all have a vote.  The current Scottish approach smacks of nationalistic arrogance.

Beware colourful language!

I've been tempted on quite a few occasions recently to post about racism and racist comments, which are much in the news at present, but I've held back for fear that my observations might be seen as - well, racist.  But I am struggling to come to terms with the Diane Abbott business.  In the course of a Twitter conversation she tweeted "White people love playing divide and rule. We should not play their game", and this apparently was considered so offensive that she was forced by the Leader of the Opposition to make a public apology.  So how was that a racist comment?  I can only presume because she used the words "white people".  So stereotypical perhaps, but racist?  Do you get it - because I sure don't?

HS2

I have no particular axe to grind about the idea of creating a new high speed line between London and Birmingham. I do not travel by train, and the proposed line runs nowhere near my home.  So perhaps I can look at the proposal with an open mind.  And I find it difficult to believe that cutting some 20 minutes off the travelling time between those two cities will in any way repay within any meaningful time frame the enormous cost of constructing the new line, not to mention the disruption which will be caused.  So personally I don't think the case has been made.

Pride must have its pinch

I'm not sure about the idea that the NHS should foot the bill for those who have had non-essential cosmetic surgery and are now for whatever reason regretting it and seeking to have it reversed.  I suppose if the NHS paid to have it done, then they have a case, but if they had it done privately, then surely their first (and perhaps only) port of call should be the private provider.

Where is the real problem?

So now even the PM and his deputy are at it - pledging to do more to stop tax avoidance by large companies.  I am totally fed up with making the point that tax avoidance is perfectly legal, but I think what Cameron and Clegg are saying goes further than that and raises more questions.  Cameron in particular is having a go at the use by large companies of "fancy corporate lawyers" - in other words the case he is seeking to make is not a legal but a moral one, that it is unfair that large companies can afford to employ said "fancy lawyers" to find loopholes in tax legislation for their clients, whereas Joe Bloggs cannot.  Of course what underpins his comments is an unspoken acceptance of the fact that tax law is so hopelessly esoteric and complex that there are bound to be loopholes for those clever enough to find them.  Perhaps he should direct his efforts more to making tax law simple enough that we can all understand it and the fancy lawyers become surplus to requirements, and then the moral problem he perceives would cease to exist.

Meeow!

Are cats intelligent?  Well all I can say is that my moggy has been giving me some very strange looks since I left the daily paper open on the table at the story about a Chinese businessman who died of suspected poisoning after eating slow-cooked cat stew at a restaurant in Beijing.

R.I.P.

Ronald Searle - surely one of the greatest cartoonists of our age.  One of those people who could, with a few strokes of  pencil or pen, create an unforgettable image.  Although known mainly for St.Trinians, some of his most powerful images come from his time in a Japanese POW camp in the Second World War.  What a talent!

Gun control

Once again we have a situation where apparently the owner of a licenced firearm has used it to kill people.  I am ever minded of the TV comedy series "The Thin Blue Line" where Inspector Fowler (Rowan Atkinson) explains why he has never approved an application for a gun licence.  I can't remember the exact quote, but it goes something like "The first question on the form is - do you wish to own a gun? And anybody who answers 'yes' to that is clearly someone who should not be allowed to have one".  Many a true word is spoken in jest!

Food, glorious food.

So the Government is to send out leaflets to us all to try and persuade us that we can eat healthily on a budget, and the thrust is that you can cook a healthy meal for four for under a fiver.  There seems to be an unstated assumption here that people want to cook.  I can only speak for myself, but I buy ready meals because they are just that - ready to eat with minimal effort.  As you will know from my occasional posts under the title "The Lazy Cook" I am not averse to cooking, but it's not something I want to do regularly - just now and then when I feel like it.  I imagine there are many more of you who feel the same.  Those who like cooking will doubtless read the leaflet and maybe take inspiration from it - those who don't will simply bin it.  It would perhaps be more sensible to try and persuade the manufacturers of ready meals to offer cheaper and healthier products?

Great Expectations

Did you watch the BBC adaptation over Christmas?  What did you think?  I thought it was good, even though I've always had problems with the story - mainly because we're obviously supposed to empathise with Pip (aren't we?) and I find him a generally unsympathetic character.  The story is all about manipulation - he is manipulated throughout by Miss Havisham and, unknowingly for most of the time, by Magwitch.  It is only in the last few pages of the book, and in the last few moments of the adaptation, that he becomes his own man - or does he?  I've always had the feeling that Estella would be pulling his strings for the rest of his life - whether or not they got married.  Dickens himself apparently had doubts as to how the story should end - his original ending was completely downbeat, but he then wrote a second ending which at least allowed for the possibility that things would turn out well, and that is the version in general use.  And although for me, Miss Havisham will always be Martita Hunt, I thought Gillian Anderson was superb.

First footing

Although mainly associated with Scotland and Hogmanay (and the origin of that word is really obscure) the tradition of first footing was certainly alive and well in the West Midlands when I was a kid.  To be done properly, the first footer had to be the first person to enter a house once the clock had struck midnight on New Year's Eve. They should be a "stranger" - that is not a member of the household, and they must bring with them a loaf of bread and a piece of coal - thus providing the house with the two main essentials of life, food and warmth.  They must say as they enter "Peace be upon this house and all within" and the response from those in the house should be "Amen to that".  I was never allowed to be a first footer myself because back then I was fair-haired, and tradition required that the first footer had dark hair.  The practice gradually died out with the advent of television and access to a more structured celebration of New Year - Jimmy Shand and all that.