Tick tock.

Regular readers, if there are any, will know that from time to time I have the tendency to get diverted down some philosophical side-street, like picking over a question such as "what is truth".  Well the other day I was reading an article about time, and the writer described time as "what separates then from now", and I thought - yes, that's clever.  But the more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that you can argue that there is really no such measurable thing as "now".  If you say the word "now" by the time you get to the "ow" bit, the "n" is already in the past.  If "now" exists, it is an instantaneous point in time so small that it is incapable of holding anything of consequence.  When we say "I am now" doing something, what we are really saying is that we have embarked on that something and are committed to it for the immediate future.  So I would say that time is what separates the last split second (past) from the next split second (future).

Nul points all round?

So our gamble with Englebert Humperdinck didn't pay off, did it?  At the risk of being seen as a bad loser, is there any point in continuing to take part in the competition - indeed has the Eurovision Song Contest itself had its day?  The songs (I use the word loosely) no longer seem to reflect current tastes, as witnessed by the fact that it's many, many years now since any Eurovision song became a major hit.  And it's been obvious for just as many years that the voting has little relevance to the songs, but is driven more by nationalism and politics.  And it's an expensive business to put it on (there's this story that the Spanish entrant was told that under no circumstances should she win, as Spain could not afford to host next year's show!).  So given all that, I think it's fair to ask - just what is it for?  Is it time to put it quietly to bed?

Déjà vu?

A fountain in a town in Germany has been put out of action by rats gnawing through the electricity cables feeding it.  So....?  Well what makes this newsworthy is the name of the town - Hamelin!  No?? Well this is where the famous medieval pied piper did his thing.  A case of come back - all is forgiven??

Not them again??!

What is it with Somerset County Council?  The other week we had the story of them posting a 47 mile diversion as a result of closing a half-mile stretch of road, and now traders in Burnham-on-Sea (same neck of the woods) have been told that they cannot hang bunting between their shop fronts and the lampposts on the pavement to celebrate the Jubilee, because said lampposts have not been "stress-tested" to ensure they are strong enough to support the bunting!  Is it something in the water down there?

Chance would be a fine thing.

Apparently the Chinese authorities have issued an edict that there must be no more than two flies per stall in their public toilets.  Worth a laugh, but I'd be quite prepared to accept the flies if we just had public toilets over here - they've all been closed down over the years, which can make life difficult for an old codger like me who can't "hold it" quite as well as he once could!

Just an idea.

It may seem almost treasonable to say so, but would we be better off if we were in the Euro?  I ask because it seems that what eventually happens to the Euro as a result of all the shenanigans in Greece and suchlike will affect us significantly and yet because we are outside the eurozone we have no say and virtually no influence over what will in fact happen.  It's like being a passenger in a driver-less car speeding down a steep hill with no way of getting into the driver's seat.

Crazy.

There's this video on the net of a Welsh university student downing a pint of whisky in ten seconds.  Quite apart from the obvious danger to his health, what immediately came to my mind was - what a waste of good whisky!

When the going gets tough....

...we buy more lottery tickets it seems.  Camelot have revealed that sales are up some 12% on last year, and although they put this down to good marketing and the extra publicity that has come from a series of really large wins, it seems equally likely that in a time of deep recession people are more likely to "take a punt" on getting a life-changing win.  I'm still waiting mind you...

Simple solution?

A man goes to a cemetery in Bristol to tend to the grave of a relative.  He is appalled by the general state of the cemetery and over several years spends thousands of pounds of his own money on repairing headstones, cutting back the undergrowth and replacing the cemetery gates.  He has now been forbidden by the church authorities from doing any further work on anything other than the grave of his relative on the ground that under ecclesiastical law he needs a permit to do so.  Of course, the immediate question which springs to mind is - why the hell don't they give him a permit then??

The circus comes to town

I don't know about you, but I'm already fed up with the Olympics, and there's still more than two months to go.  Why can't we just let things happen as and when - why do we have to trail them over and over again?  Why do we have to dress them up with froth and bubble?  The TV and the papers have been pushing it since the beginning of the year, and the tempo is steadily increasing as the date gets ever closer.  I turned on the TV on Saturday morning for the news - except there wasn't any. Instead we were treated to an hour of a presenter trying bravely to make something out of the arrival of the Olympic flame at Land's End, which clearly wasn't going to happen any time soon and we had to watch interminable pictures of the helicopter bringing it, and interviews with anybody she could lay hands on - turgid wasn't the word.  Although it's not by design, I shall in fact be in Lanzarote for most of the Games, and I can really understand those who have deliberately booked a holiday abroad in order to get away from it all.

The final curtain

So Mr al-Megrahi has died.  And with him has probably died any remote chance we might have had of finding out who was really behind the Lockerbie bombing.  The truth may well be out there, as the X-files used to assure us, but it's doubtful whether it will ever now see the light of day.  All very depressing.

ένα καφέ παρακαλώ

There's this crazy idea going round that, if Greece does in fact leave the euro, all Greek euro notes will become invalid.  Crazy because there is no such thing as a Greek euro note - a euro is a euro is a euro.  Notes are printed in countries throughout the eurozone, so there will indeed be notes that were produced and printed in Greece (you can tell them because the serial number will begin with the letter Y) but this doesn't make them "Greek" and fear not, they will continue to be worth their face value irrespective of whether Greece remains in the eurozone or not.

Oops, sorry....

Those who continue to call for the reintroduction of the death penalty should look at the case of Sam Hallam, who has spent seven years in gaol for a murder which it is now accepted he had nothing to do with.  As has been said before, the justice system is run by human beings, and human beings make mistakes - in a society which has any pretensions to being civilised, the system has to allow for this.

May the HB with you.

I am currently using a Faber-Castell pencil, one of a pack I bought some time ago. I'd never really thought about the manufacture of pencils, nor had I considered that Faber-Castell might be a real person's name.  But there is in fact a Count Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell who is the boss of the pencil making company and, wanting to make a point (no pun intended), he climbed to the top of his castle (castle!!) and chucked a load of his pencils down onto the cobbles below then invited people to chose a pencil at random, which he would then slice open to reveal the lead still all in one piece.  So I shall never look at my pencil in quite the same way again.

Chink, chink

The concept of legal tender has cropped up in these pages before.  The basic idea is to provide for a way for a debtor to pay his creditor which is fair to both parties, and therefore is to be accepted without question.  Most of the rules in fact are there to protect the creditor from unreasonable behaviour by the debtor - so for example if I were to turn up at your private house at two o'clock in the morning to pay off a business debt, you would be entitled to turn me away on the basis that that is neither the time nor place for such a transaction  In a recent case, the courts held that a creditor was entitled to refuse payment of a debt of some £800 which the debtor tried to pay all in small coins - pennies, tuppencies and such.  Of course the creditor could have accepted payment in that form, but the legal tender rules mean that he wasn't obliged to.

Footie update

Referring back to my post of the 17th June last year, the man who walked out on Birmingham City to become Aston Villa's manager has now been sacked by the Villa after a season in which they narrowly avoided relegation.  He was never a favourite of a lot of the fans, and I imagine that there will be many people in both camps saying "I told you so".  And Wolves of course went down with barely a whimper.  We now have a Norwegian manager who nobody's ever heard of.  Hope springs eternal....

Ding dong bell....

Your cat gets stuck up a tree - who ya gonna call?  Well, the fire brigade of course, it's traditional.  But maybe not anymore, at least not here in the West Midlands. The WM Fire Service is going to start charging for dealing with non-emergency situations - and we're not talking peanuts.  £412.80 per hour per fire engine, no less.  So poor pussy may have to find its own way down!

Wot I lernt at skool tooday.

Apparently teachers have been told “...not to ­highlight more than three incorrect spellings. This is so children’s self-confidence isn’t damaged.”  Bit weird - why three?  I get this silly mental image of a child being told they've spelled a word wrong and going "so what" and then a second word and saying "OK then" and a third word and replying "not to worry" but then being told they've spelled a fourth word wrong and going to pieces and screaming and banging their head against the wall.  Spelling either matters or it doesn't it seems to me.  There is a school of thought which says that provided the reader understands what the writer is saying, any incorrect spelling is immaterial.  I'm old-fashioned - the occasional mis-spelling can be overlooked but consistent spelling mistakes are to me the sign of slapdash mind, and a slapdash mind usually belongs to a slapdash person.

You couldn't make it up!

This story caught my eye because it involves a village close to Brean Sands, which was our summer holiday destination for several years on the trot when the kids were little - I don't know whether you still can, but back then you could drive your car down onto the beach and set up camp for the day - ideal for us back in those days.  Anyway, Somerset County Council are closing a half-mile stretch of road in the nearby village of Highbridge for resurfacing.  They have of course set up an official diversion.  So what makes this a contender for our "unbelievable stories" collection?  Well you expect a diversion to take you somewhat out of your way, but this diversion is no less than 47 miles long!  'Spose it gives you a good excuse to be late for work.

You can't turn back the tide.

A report has suggested that by the end of this century, anything up to 90% of the world's languages will have become extinct.  Should we be concerned?  After all, language is just a tool for communicating with other people, and this is simply an example of the survival of the fittest - those languages which do this best will survive and those that don't, won't.  I've spoken before about my love of the Welsh language, but the fact is that as a communication tool it's of no use to you outside Wales, or even up to a point, inside.  Of course the danger is that as a language disappears, so to a certain extent does the culture and tradition associated with it. But then again, that's the way of the world - nothing stays the same for long.  Perhaps we should make some effort to try to record these traditions before they disappear - particularly where they only exist in oral form, but other than that just let matters take their course.

Go, girl, go!!

I posted back in 2010 about how sad I felt at the idea of Cadbury being taken over by Kraft, so all power to the elbow of Felicity Loudon, the great-granddaughter of George Cadbury who founded the company, who has decided to sell her house (well, mansion) to fund a new chocolate manufacturing business in his memory.  She has said that her aim is to go for something quirky which a child would want to buy. I'm sure the Americans won't "get it" but I would really like to see her succeed and give Kraft a bloody nose.

Why seek to change history?

We used to have an Empire - fact.  We no longer have one - fact.  One of the most common type of honour given to the ordinary man or woman in the street is the MBE, OBE or CBE - all of which are ranks of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. So given that we no longer have one (an Empire that is) does this any longer make sense - should we replace it with something more relevant to our current position in the world?  Or should we embrace our past - the good and the bad of it - and leave things as they are?  Like I say, we had an Empire - fact - why deny it?

SW19 - that would be Salford West then?

The BBC moved much of its business, including its sports section, from London to Salford as a cost-cutting exercise.  Of course when it comes to covering sporting events in London - like Wimbledon - they now have to send staff back from Salford to do it.  Apparently covering Wimbledon this year will cost £70,000 and this is likely to rise to something like half a million in years to come.  Law of Unforeseen Consequences again?

Worro, titch!

Well, there's a good news story!  At 5'6" (if I hold myself up straight) I've always wished I were taller - my wife (God bless her) always used to wear flat shoes when we went out together so as not to appear taller than me.  But now research has shown it seems that shorter men live longer than taller ones - so there's some advantage after all to being vertically challenged.

What's that? There's a match on?

How are the mighty fallen!  It's not that long ago that the F A Cup Final was one of the great sporting fixtures of the year.  Can you remember when the BBC's coverage lasted most of the day, starting around 10 o'clock in the morning and including all sorts of F A Cup Final-themed programmes (It's a Cup Final Knockout, anyone?).  It's now only shown on ITV (no disrespect folks, but you don't have the cachet of the BBC) and this year they moved the kick-off time from the traditional 3.00 p.m. to 5.15.  The name remains, but the magic has gone, I feel.

Get real.

I posted around this time last year about what I saw as the unrealistic expectations of some LibDem voters and how in my opinion this had translated into a slump in their vote in the local elections.  This year doesn't seem to be any different for them, but this time it's the Tory voters (or rather non-voters) who I think need to wake up and smell the coffee - much though they may wish it to be so, this is not a Conservative government, it's a coalition, and their desire for the government's policies to be "more Tory" has to be seen in the light of that reality.  So were last Thursday's results a positive move towards Labour, or merely an anti-government protest?  I would guess more the latter than the former - I still see Labour's stance as more negative than positive - "we wouldn't have done that", rather than "we would have done this".  And the low turnout - low even by local elections standards - suggest a general apathy towards politics in general. So all parties have work to do.

A foregone conclusion?

So the Commons committee looking into the 'phone-hacking business has delivered its report, and concluded that Rupert Murdoch is not "a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company".  Whilst they are of course entitled to express an opinion, I don't think that Murdoch's fitness to hold office was part of their remit, and they are indeed straying into ground properly belonging to Ofcom.  And given that some members of the committee were known to be hostile generally to Murdoch, the report has to be read in that light.  I don't hold any brief for Murdoch who certainly comes across as a person you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of, but I think the committee's conclusions have to be seen as somewhat partisan.

They think it's all over...it is now!

"Ask and it shall be given you", says the Good Book.  Well I asked (see post of 28th April) and it has been given me - the FA have announced that the new English football manager is to be Roy Hodgson. Bit of a surprise, but perhaps the FA have finally come to the realisation that managing a national side is not simply the same as managing a club side on a larger scale, but requires a rather different skill-set, and Hodgson has a proven track record as a manager of national sides.  And maybe Harry Redknapp can now get back to concentrating on the job he was doing so well with Tottenham.

Bit of a dilemma?

The British Olympic Association's stance on imposing a lifetime ban on competing in the Olympics on any GB athlete who tests positive for a banned substance has been declared invalid by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and as a result Dwain Chambers (see post dated 18/2/08) becomes eligible for selection for this summer's Olympic Games.  Opinion seems to be sharply divided as to whether this is a good or bad thing.  I can't make up my mind - on the one hand my natural inclination is to give anybody a second chance, but I can also appreciate that if anything but a long-term ban is imposed there will be a temptation for sportsmen (or women) to take drugs on the basis that if they're caught they can serve their four years or whatever and still have something of a career left.  Of course, the fact that Chambers is eligible doesn't automatically mean that he will be picked, although, as I understand it he is currently our best 100 metres runner, so it would be difficult to ignore him.

What do you mean, we're too late?

The driver of a private ambulance carrying an urgently needed liver for a transplant operation has been fined and had points on his licence for exceeding the speed limit. And the justification?  Because it was a private ambulance it was not classified as an "emergency vehicle" and therefore did not fall under the exemptions allowed for such vehicles in section 87 of the Road Traffic Regulations Act 1984.  What a "jobsworth" decision - surely whether a vehicle is treated as an emergency vehicle or not ought to depend on the function it is carrying out rather than what type of vehicle it is.  I hope whoever made that decision never finds themselves desperately waiting for an organ transplant, while the organ in question carefully tries to pick its way through to them sticking to the speed limits - they might take a different view of things.

Confused - you will be!

What strange minds some people do have.  You've probably seen the latest advert from confused.com who are car insurance brokers.  It's a 30 second animated cartoon and for about two of those seconds you see a couple of (very cartoonish) girls in bikinis jumping in the air and if you're very quick - and you need to be - you see a rather overweight lady's dress riding up and showing her pink knickers.  So it's a cartoon for heaven's sake - and yet it seems some people have taken offence at what they see as one of the bikini girl's "large" breasts (which you don't see anything of - just the bikini top) and the sight of knickers, and have complained to the Advertising Standards Agency.  Some people need to get a life!