Wipeout wiped out.

Sorry to hear that the BBC is to axe the "Wipeout" series of gameshows.  They were silly but good fun.  Of course in TV these days it seems there's nothing new under the sun - these were really just an updated version of "Jeux sans frontiers".  But they passed a pleasant hour or so on a Saturday tea-time.  

You couldn't make it up.

Motorist driving along starts feeling ill, so he pulls up on some waste ground for a breath of air.  He is approached by a clamper, and is explaining why he has stopped when he collapses.  The clamper rings 999 on his mobile and the paramedics turn up. They call for an ambulance and the driver is taken to hospital.  You can guess where this is going can't you?  After the ambulance leaves, the clamper clamps the car!!

How much??

50p for a second-class stamp?  Bloody hell, that's ten bob in real money!  I shall really have to think seriously about my Christmas card list - it's going to cost me about twelve quid just to post them.  What is life coming to?

Somebody's been at the silly pills!

A council worker faces disciplinary action for taking it upon himself to lower his town hall flag to half-mast in honour of the six soldiers killed recently in Afghanistan.  It appears that in the view of the Council this amounted to "gross misconduct".  That would be bad - and silly - enough, but it gets worse - he also faces sanctions for failing to carry out "a thorough health and safety assessment" before lowering the flag. Who appoints these idiots??

Let's be realistic...

...political parties need money to do their thing.  And for the most part, people are not willing to shell out money unless they get something in return.  So provided there is no evidence of policies being specifically altered as a result of donations I cannot see anything inherently wrong in donors being rewarded by the perceived kudos of having dinner with the Prime Minister or whatever.  It's not as though this hasn't always gone on - Labour governments have traditionally cosied up to the unions and Tory ones to big business.  Such is life.  All a bit of a storm in a teacup as I see it - and the alternative of course is public funding, and who wants that?

You can have this one for free.

The Chancellor's decision to impose VAT on the sale of hot food has had a detrimental effect on Greggs, who sell warm pasties, pies and sausage rolls.  Their shares have taken a hit, and they fear they will have to put their prices up as a result.  So here's an idea - sell your stuff cold (no VAT) and then provide microwave ovens for your customers to be able to "nuke" their purchases up before they eat them.  Where there's a will, there's a way!

Wrong brand.

In my naïvety I thought the decision to rename the Ricoh Arena (where Coventry City play their football) as the City of Coventry Stadium for the football matches being held there as part of the Olympic Games was to assist foreign fans travelling there by giving it its geographical name.  How dim am I?  The reason quite simply is that Ricoh are not official sponsors of the Games and therefore are not allowed to advertise.  Presumably if it was called the Coca-Cola Arena that would be OK.

Read that again....!

Must be the quote of the year - Bob Crow, general secretary of the union representing London tube workers defending the union's decision to turn down London Underground's offer of an £850 bonus for working potentially longer hours during the Olympics says that to accept it would be "failing the travelling public".  So going on strike or work to rule would be to their advantage then?

Watch carefully

There is a fantastic (I use the word advisedly) story that the Barcelona player Lionel Messi used his dribbling skills to send a message to the Syrian rebels as to the route by which they could smuggle arms into the country.  So I've watched a couple of Wolves matches on the telly recently and it's now clear to me that the team was in fact sending secret signals to the unemployed of the area as to how to avoid finding a job!

Black gold?

As a once regular, and now occasional visitor to the Canary Islands, how do I feel about the news that the Spanish government is to give permission for offshore oil drilling in the area?  The perceived danger of course is that some sort of accident could result in spillage which could devastate the tourist beaches and ruin the local economy.  But the local economy relies at present on tourists who get there by boat or plane, both of which use oil for fuel, so it works both ways - you need the oil to get the tourists.  So provided the drilling platforms will not be visible from the beaches - which I am sure they will not - it strikes me as being a fair trade-off.  Of course, if I lived in the Canaries, I might well think differently.

Show me the money - again.

I suppose it's a sign of the times but I think it's a shame that as from next year the Grand National will no longer be shown on the BBC.  At least it will still be shown free-to-air, though you do wonder whether it is just a matter of time before you will have to pay to see it.  All sports these days are prepared to sell themselves to the highest bidder and the potential losers are the thousands of armchair supporters.  Like I say - sign of the times, but I don't have to like it.

And on the seventh day...

Sunday opening restrictions on shops will be lifted for the Olympics it seems, and it has been suggested that this relaxation may become permanent.  The churches not surprisingly are opposed.  Certainly it is not that long ago that Sunday was marked as special - one of my abiding childhood memories is of being stranded by accident in Machynlleth on a wet Sunday with absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to go - but is it realistic today to treat one day of the week differently from the others?  Those who wish to keep Sunday as a day for church-going and spiritual contemplation will not be dissuaded or deflected from this aim by the fact that the local supermarket is open all day.  It's really a matter of "live and let live" isn't it?

Not quite what they had in mind?

Oh the irony!  For decades now the Civil Service unions have been agitating for regional pay - there has always been a London allowance to reflect the fact that London prices tend to be higher than elsewhere and the unions have consistently argued that a similar arrangement should apply to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and the other large cities.  So now the Government are proposing regional pay, but on the basis that public sector pay in certain parts of the country is significantly higher than that in the private sector, and should be frozen until such time as the private sector catches up.  The moral seems to be - be careful what you ask for!

Told you....!

Government figures suggest that 37% of those on sickness benefit are in fact fit to work, and that another third could return to work with support.  Without being too smug about it, you might like to read my posting dated 25/1/06.

Kick a man when he's down.

One of the topics I keep returning to is that of hospital parking charges.  With the coming of the new financial year, many hospitals are increasing their charges - substantially in some cases.  This has led to renewed calls for parking at hospitals in England to be free, as it already is in the rest of the UK.  The Government say this is not possible as it would "cost" the NHS some £100m a year.  This seems to me to be rather like saying that it would be wrong to require a thief to stop stealing on the grounds that he needs the money!

Which comes first?

I may have fallen into my own trap of confusing cause and effect - the so-called post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.  I posted back in 2008 about the fact that married couples seem to prosper better than couples who simply co-habit, and suggested that this was sufficient reason for the government to encourage couples to marry through tax breaks and such.  But now listening to what someone was saying the other day, it may not be as simple as that - the suggestion is that it is not being married that makes the difference so much as the characteristics of those people who tend to get married.  Such people, goes the argument, are more likely to be self-assured, more likely to have a clear vision of the direction they see their life taking, and more likely to be resilient in the face of difficulties, and these are all traits which will benefit them in life generally, so any success they have may come from the sort of people they are rather than simply the fact that they are married. Interesting.

Boots on the ground?

A report on last summer's riots suggests that a big part of the problem was a lack of police numbers.  Smacks rather of a political statement to me, given the current arguments about cuts to police budgets.  I think a more pertinent cause might have been lack of intelligence - I don't think we public generally appreciate how much the police rely on intelligence to know what's going to happen, or likely to happen, and to have the manpower in place ready to deal with it.  I think the riots caught them by surprise.  Indeed the probability is that the police are always going to struggle to deal with anything which happens spontaneously.  They could perhaps have reacted quicker but I think they were caught on the hop.

Just a bit of fun??

So after it's been running for around seven years the Gambling Commission have suddenly decided that the game show Deal or No Deal may be breaking the law? The show does not have a gambling licence (which would also require it to be broadcast after the 9.00 p.m. watershed) and without one, the Commission suggest that it falls fouls of the law because it is a gambling game which contains no element of skill.  Well, is it?  Firstly, is it a gambling game?  The essence of gambling is that you wager a stake in the hope of winning more - in other words, you can win or you can lose.  But in Deal or No Deal the players do not have to put up any stake, and therefore stand to lose nothing.  The Commission's answer is that when at the start of the game, you chose a box, you are thereafter wagering with whatever is in that box, and therefore are in a win/lose situation.  If that is in fact a valid argument, I think the answer - although it may rather spoil the game - is to have a box with £0 in it.  But then, is there any skill in the game?  I would suggest that there is, or at the very least there is the potential for skill.  When the banker makes you an offer, you know which boxes have been opened, and what amounts are still available to be won, and can therefore use your skill to make an assessment of whether the banker's offer represents better value than continuing with the game.  But perhaps the real question is - the Gambling Commission having been around for some five years - why has it taken them so long to raise the issue?

Every little helps (with apologies to Tesco)

The Government's proposed scheme to allow people to get 95% mortgages underwritten by the state to buy new-build properties has been dismissed by critics as a "gimmick" designed mainly to help the construction industry.  So in the present economic situation, this is a bad thing??

Same difference?

Coming back to this business of same-sex marriages (see post of 1st March), is the argument simply a matter of semantics?  As far as I am aware, civil partnerships between same-sex couples have all the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed (if that's the word) by married couples.  So we come back to - what constitutes a marriage?  And more to the point it seems, who "owns" the word.  The Church are in there with their boots blacked, and there are plenty of Biblical quotes that support the idea that it is the union of man and woman, and equally plenty of quotes which seem to discountenance same-sex relationships.  So is that the definitive answer?  There appear to be vicars, priests and bishops who are willing to bless same-sex unions in Church, but does this make them marriages? Like I've said before, I think what we need is some other way of describing such relationships - in other words, yes, it's just a matter of semantics, and as such the arguments can go on for ever....

Orrite, darlin'?

It's almost traditional - an attractive female walks past a building site and gets admiring calls and whistles from the lads.  Well, perhaps not for much longer, because we've signed up to a European convention which requires us to outlaw any behaviour which "[violates] the dignity of a person" and what the lads are doing would almost certainly potentially fall into that category.  What is not clear is whether it is down to the female concerned to decide whether she feels her dignity has been violated (I know some girls, and indeed ladies of more mature years, who find such attention somewhat flattering) or whether - as I suspect - it will be open to anyone around to decide that their dignity has been violated and to initiate a criminal prosecution.  It's turning into a very intolerant world, isn't it? 

Ha ha

My retirement magazine came up with this one which I liked.  Actually, I've thrown the magazine away by now, but this is how I remember it - 
A barrister is defending a man on a charge of murder.  No body has ever been found.  He decides to use this fact to play a trick on the jury.  "Ladies and gentlemen" he says "I will prove the defendant is not guilty.  In precisely one minute the person supposed to have been murdered will walk through that door".  The jurors' eyes all turn to the door indicated.  A minute passes and nothing happens.  "OK" says the barrister "I made that up.  But the fact you all looked at the door shows that there is reasonable doubt in your mind that there ever was any murder.  I invite you to acquit".  The jury go out to consider their verdict and come back to announce they have found the defendant guilty.  Later the barrister buttonholes the jury foreman.  "How could you have convicted?" he says "I saw you all looking at the door".  "Yes" says the foreman "but your client didn't!"

Pays to keep a low profile.

One of the more bizarre predictions to come out of Einstein's general theory of relativity is that the higher above sea-level you go (strictly, the further you are away from the centre of the Earth), the faster time passes.  But thanks to two extremely, extremely accurate atomic clocks this has now been shown to be true - even though the clocks were positioned with one just a foot higher than the other, the higher one ran faster, albeit infinitesimally, than the other.  This of course means that if you live on the top floor of a tower block, you age faster than someone living at ground level!

Show me the money

The idea of re-writing the Ten Commandments to reflect modern language and thought has much to commend it, although replacing "thou shalt not steal" by "prosper with a clear conscience" seems to me to be rather dodging the issue, but the thing that struck a decidedly bum note with me is that, if you want to study these new Commandments it will cost you.  You'll have to shell out for a book or DVD or "tool kit" - anything from £30 upwards.  I don't recall God charging Moses.  Is this prospering with a clear conscience?

Here we go again

Speculation in the press and on the telly about what will be in the budget this month.  Many predictions contradict each other, which is a sure sign that these people are just guessing.  Based on a long lifetime of budgets, I would be very surprised if whatever the Chancellor puts forward leaves me significantly better or worse off - I think I've mentioned before that it tends to be "give with one hand, take away with the other". Actually the main plus point for me is that, thanks to inflation running at something like 5% last September, I should get a helpful increase in my pension.  Mind you, I've already received notice that some of my regular monthly payments will be going up significantly - like I say, give with one hand, take away with the other!

Confusion

There's one of those petitions on the Government's website - you know, the sort if they get 100,000 or more signatures it triggers the possibility of a debate in Parliament.  It was about giving a posthumous pardon to Alan Turing who was convicted of gross indecency with another man back in 1952 and subsequently committed suicide.  I've posted about this before (12/9/09) and perhaps in view of what I said then you won't be surprised that I enthusiastically added my name to the petition.  But then I thought - however much I might despise the way he was treated, how could he possibly be granted a pardon?  Like it or not, he was correctly convicted under the law as it then stood. So it seems to me that the petition is doomed to failure.  Gordon Brown when he was PM offered an apology for the way he was treated, and that is the best we can hope for.  The petition, by the way, currently stands at a little over 31,000 signatures.

Goal-line technology

Apparently Sepp Blatter has become a convert, so it's going to happen.  Some say it will spoil a game where traditionally the referee's decision has always been final.  Some say that without controversy, the game will lose its appeal - its passion.  I think you've got to be more hard-headed about this - it's not about the game, it is (regrettably) about money.  Take the current season - it is becoming more and more apparent that relegation from the Premiership is probably going to come down to three clubs out of five (and my club Wolves is unfortunately one of them).  So that's life, but relegation for any club is a massive financial hit, and the thought that this might depend on a dodgy goal-line decision by an unsighted referee just isn't on.  Where such enormous sums are involved we owe it to the clubs to ensure that a goal is a goal is a goal, and equally that a goal is not given where the ball has not wholly crossed the line.  Of course you could argue for technology to be used for penalty/free kick outside the box decisions as well, and maybe that will come in due course, although that's more difficult because it doesn't depend on where the ball is, so will need some sort of different approach.  On balance though, it's a step in the right direction.

Royaume Uni dix points?

The BBC's decision to choose Engelbert Humperdinck to sing for the U K in this year's Eurovision Song Contest may seem at first sight rather strange, but could in fact be quite a smart move.  Although his glory days over here are behind him, he is currently well known and popular in some of the Eastern European and Scandinavian countries who do not traditionally vote for us, so we might garner a few extra points on the back of his popularity in those areas.  Anyway, we can't do much worse than the last few years, can we?

You couldn't make it up, shiver me timbers.

A young lad with a passion for playing pirates has a skull and crossbones flag flying in his back garden.  Or make that "had" because the local council have insisted his parents remove it or face a fine.  It seems that under the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisement) Regulations (England) 2007 you are not allowed to fly any flag other than a national, supranational or county one without planning permission.  The mind once again boggles.

It's there - no, it's there - no it's there AND there!

Moore's Law dates back to the 1960s and states (putting it simply) that the speed at which computers work will double about every two years, but the news from IBM that they have created computer components using "quantum technology" if true will soon put this in the shade.  Theoretically, a quantum computer will be able to do an infinite number of calculations all at the same time.  And this is not, as you might think, good news.  The technology that keeps your bank details safe online and that protects your PIN number and such like, is based on encryption methods which rely on the fact that it would take so long to break them that nobody would ever bother trying.  But a quantum computer could break them more or less instantaneously - and where would that leave us?  I hope somebody is working on an answer.

Words - again.

Marriage is in the news again, thanks to a bit of a spat between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Equalities Minister.  It is of course all about same-sex partnerships - should they be called marriages?  I've had my say (see post dated 28/11/05) and I stand by what I said then.  However, as I have also mentioned on several occasions in these pages, language is a living thing - a constant work in progress - and if enough people start to call these relationships "marriages" and that usage comes to be generally accepted, then the word will change its meaning to reflect this, and in time dictionaries will follow suit.  I don't agree however with the Equalities Minister who suggests that this is a change which could be brought about by legislation.  I don't think you can - or should try to - force a definition on people by law.