How to count without...well, counting.

Imagine you are throwing a party.  You have hired the local community hall and round the walls are stacked a load of fold-up chairs.  As more and more people arrive you start to worry about whether there are enough chairs for everybody. What to do? Well, you could try counting the number of people there - difficult if they're all moving round, which they probably are - and then counting the number of chairs, but an easier solution is to get everybody's attention and then ask everybody to get a chair and sit on it.  If you are left with people still standing you know you've got more people than chairs, if everybody is seated and there are still chairs unused you know you've got more chairs than people, and if everybody is sitting down and there are no chairs left you know you've got the same number of chairs and people,  But the point is that you haven't counted - you still don't know how many people are there or how many chairs. Have a feeling this could be the start of a series of posts.

How can we use this to our advantage?

I am getting seriously pissed-off (technical expression) with the way people twist what other people say for their own ends.  Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was invited to a discussion with a group of students and the subject of same-sex marriage - to which he is known to be opposed - was raised.  He was asked what right the state has to tell two people who are in love that they can't get married. His reply - well we don't allow siblings to get married.  Well, we don't, do we?  But what's in all the papers?  "Philip Hammond accused of likening gay marriage to incest".  No he didn't!!  He simply pointed out that there were indeed circumstances where the law forbade two people to marry. Just grow up!!

A boy named Sue?

It's a funny old world - apparently in Iceland you can't just call your child whatever you want.  Believe it or not, there is a list of allowable names and you have to choose from that list.  A mother who called her daughter by a name not on that list has had to live for the past 15 years with the fact that her daughter is officially known only as "Girl".  They (mother and daughter) are hoping that Iceland's main court will rule in their favour and allow the daughter to adopt the name her mother gave her.  Surprisingly, there are other countries that also have lists of "approved" names.  Mind you, given some of the crazy names some celebrities here and in the US have given their children, perhaps it's not such a bad idea?

...or are you just pleased to see me?

We're all familiar with the funny story of the man with a gun in his pocket who accidentally shoots himself in the foot, but how about this - a security guard in Trinidad and Tobago was carrying a gun in his pocket when it went off accidentally and shot him - there's no delicate way of saying this - in the penis.  Lots of comments along the lines of "going off half-cocked" and such-like, but the one that really amused me was "well at least he proved he wasn't shooting blanks".

Cutting it fine?

When is a foot (as in 12 inches) not a foot?  When it's a Subway sandwich apparently.  Somebody posted a picture of one of their "footlong" subs, together with a tape measure showing that it only measured 11 inches.  Now a couple of men in the US are planning to sue Subway claiming that both have been sold subs of less than 12 inches.  Bit reminiscent of when the penalty for selling underweight bread in this country was so severe that bakers would err on the side of caution and add an extra bun, loaf or whatever to an order to make sure they gave too much rather than too little.  This of course is where the definition of a "baker's dozen" as 13 comes from.  Subway are trying to make out that "footlong" is merely a description rather than a guarantee of length, but I don't think that will fly and they may have to do something similar and ensure that their large subs are always more than a foot, in which case we may find the definition of a "Subway foot" as say 12½ inches entering the dictionary.

Not guilty - we think.

A couple of years ago I posted about a decision to refuse compensation to a man who had spent six years in gaol for a murder in respect of which he was originally convicted but then had that conviction quashed and two subsequent new trials failed to reach a verdict, and I questioned whether the adage "innocent until proven guilty" actually meant anything.  Now we have the case of Barry George, who was convicted and later acquitted of the murder of Jill Dando, and who also has been refused compensation for the eight years he spent inside.  Same considerations apply as in the earlier case - indeed even more so, as he was specifically found not guilty at the retrial, but his case raises an even more worrying concept, because, if I read it right, the court's decision was based on the fact that, in the court's opinion, there was sufficient evidence at the retrial on which a jury could have reasonably found him guilty.  But the fact is they didn't!  So does that mean that trial by jury - the cornerstone of our system - isn't worth the paper it's printed on, and that their decision can be ignored if it doesn't suit?

Sign of the times?

An acquaintance of mine always used to shop in Waitrose.  As far as I know her circumstances have not materially changed, but at the beginning of last year she confessed that she had mainly transferred her allegiance to Sainsburys.  And then just after Christmas I saw her with a full trolley in Aldi!  Says it all, I think.

Well...er....um..

Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Letwin has been criticised for saying that the Government has no idea how many Romanians and Bulgarians will come to this country when they get the right to do so next year, and will not know until after they come.  Well, that's obvious isn't it?  Short of asking every citizen of those countries what their intentions are, there is no way of knowing.  We can make a guess, but that's all it would be.  Once again somebody being pilloried for telling an obvious truth.  No wonder people in the public eye are becoming more and more unwilling to to make any sort of definitive statement.  Safer to dissemble.

It's in the job description!

Headline in most of the papers yesterday was of Prince Harry's statement that he had "killed Taliban".    So??  As co-pilot gunner in an Apache attack helicopter in Afghanistan, isn't that exactly what he's supposed to do?

Yessss!

Well thank goodness.  We have been bombarded lately with stories about how eating this or that is bad for you, how obesity has become the "new cancer", how you should cut down on alcohol and fatty foods and so on and so on.  And now we have a study from an American University who have followed the fortunes of some 450 pensioners for five years and concluded that once you reach 75, what you eat or drink has no noticeable effect on your future health or life expectancy.  And I'm 75 so that was just what I wanted to hear!

Yum, yum.

What did you eat on Christmas Day?  Are you a turkey traditionalist, or did you go for a goose?  Funny how things have changed over the centuries - if you had goose you would probably be seen as "posh" and yet a couple of hundred or so years ago, goose would have been what the common man would have had (think "A Christmas Carol") whereas turkey was uncommon and expensive and only for the rich.  Or maybe you went for the more exotic, and had a three- or four-bird roast? I have to say that the thing I look forward to most at Christmas dinner is not the poultry at all, whatever it may be, but a slice or two of a nice baked ham with a honey or marmalade crust.  Why we only get that at Christmas I don't know but it works for me.

The little darlings!!

Police in Durham accused of being "killjoys" for issuing a warning that kids could be arrested for throwing snowballs.  But look a bit closer and you will see that they are specifically talking about snowballs being thrown at cars, at houses and at people "who do not want to be involved in snow games",  So what they are really saying is that anti-social behaviour doesn't cease to be anti-social behaviour just because it involves the throwing of snowballs - and I don't think you can argue with that.

Does it come under "sundries"?

Most people have a mistrust of lawyers, particularly when it comes to how much they charge and for what.  But how about this - it's an American story but I imagine it could just as well have happened over here.  A lawyer is representing a woman in divorce proceedings - they start having an affair.  So far, so bad, and would amount to professional misconduct both over there and over here.  But the real kicker is that he then went on to charge her at his usual hourly rate for the time they spent having sex!  So as somebody succinctly put it - she got screwed twice!!

I could bost a cuppa!

Tea of course is made from the leaves of the tea plant and is claimed to be the most widely drunk beverage in the world after water.  If the leaves are allowed to ferment, it's known as black tea (what we usually drink) and if they are not, it's called green tea - and you can also have all sorts of teas from partly fermented or specially treated leaves.  And then you get herbal teas which are not strictly teas at all, but tisanes (Hercule Poirot anyone?) and can be made from just about anything - and some of them taste truly revolting.  Why am I going on like this?  Because the latest idea is tea made from coffee leaves - yes really!  Full of "goodies" apparently.  Not entirely a new idea - has been drunk in various parts of the Middle East - but new to us.  What are they going to call it - Toffee??

All a question of taste

The news that some supermarket beefburgers have been found to contain horsemeat has been met with disgust in some quarters.  The ethics and taboos of what we are prepared to put in our mouths has always fascinated me.  We don't eat dog, but it is a commonplace food in South-East Asia.  We don't eat cat, but the Chinese do.  And we don't eat horse, although many on the Continent - particularly France - do, and indeed we ourselves did not all that long ago.  There were several letters in the press in the run-up to Christmas expressing outrage that some shops were selling reindeer meat, although we eat venison readily enough, and it is essentially the same animal.  And as for eating each other...!

At last.

Rejoice - total victory!  The Home Secretary has said that in view of the vote in the House of Lords last month (see post dated 10/12/12) the government will legislate to remove the word "insulting" from Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986.  Shame it's taken so long for common sense to prevail and of course it doesn't help those who have fallen foul of it over the years but, as my Gran used to say, we should be thankful for mercies, however small they may be.

Bad dog!!

Welsh rugby (union) player had to pull out of his team's trip to France to play a Heineken Cup match because he found that his dog had chewed up his passport - much hilarity in the press along the "dog ate my homework" lines.  But the story does raise some interesting points - like for instance, why for a journey like this do you need a physical passport anyway?  All the necessary information is on the Home Office computer database and is, or could be made easily available to the airline and border authorities.  Passports are a useful - if expensive - form of ID but other than that surely all you need to leave the country or get back in again is evidence that you have been issued with one and that it is still valid.  The more I think about it the more I wonder if this isn't just a governmental cash-generating scheme.

Does it come with a flake?

You have to give credit to a young man in Glasgow who was after a new "taste sensation" and took as his inspiration the two staples of Italian food - pizza and ice-cream.  So he came up with the pizza cone - an ice-cream cone shape made of pizza dough and and filled with peperoni, spicy chicken, mushroom and such. Effectively it's a pizza in a hand-held format.  I think it's a great idea - not so sure about the price though - £2.70??  Depends on how big they are, I suppose.

What's in a name?

What goes around, comes around, they do say.  Seven years ago almost to the day, I posted about "iffy" names - names which passed without comment in years gone by, but which are inclined to raise eyebrows (or worse) today.  One I mentioned was the American football team, the Washington Redskins - redskin now seen as an offensive word to native Americans.  So to bring the story up to date, it appears that the team do not in fact currently play in Washington, but may wish to move there at some time in the future, and the mayor of that city has said that they will only be allowed to do so if they change their name.  Their history (originally as the Boston Redskins) goes back to 1933 and I would imagine the vast majority of fans of the game don't give the name a second thought.  Another example of a small tail wagging a large dog?

Oops!

One of those "really...?" facts - apparently one in ten of mobile 'phone users has at some point dropped their 'phone down the toilet.  The mind boggles!  But help is at hand - Sony are set to introduce a waterproof handset.  Of course what I find intriguing is what were these people doing?  Texting while having a pee, perhaps? 

Get your Marigolds on.

The papers tell us that the Queen has advertised for a live-in washer-up at £14,000 a year.  Actually that's not bad when you consider that effectively your bed and board is provided.  But of course this is just the papers' "take" on the story.  When you read the small print as it were, the job is actually to be part of a team "responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of the Staff Restaurant..." so you won't be washing up the Queen's prize china, and anyway, surely to goodness the palace has dishwashing machines?  Always pays to look behind the headlines.

Good intentions, but...?

The coalition (mainly at the behest of the LibDems) has introduced a Succession to the Crown Bill, the main purpose of which is to enact that the first-born child of the monarch is first in line to succeed to the throne irrespective of gender,  It also seeks to change the present law whereby anyone in line to the throne who marries a Catholic has to renounce their right to succeed.  I've commented on this, and the complications which might arise, before and I am pleased that the Prince of Wales has also pointed out the unintended consequences which the Bill might have if it became law.  It seems strange that those who drafted the Bill do not appear to have consulted the Royal Family, nor those constitutional experts who would have been able to point out the anomalies which might arise.  Back to the drawing board perhaps?

Give us a day off - I'm knackered!

Many Churches up in arms because a High Court Judge has ruled that Christians do not have the right to refuse to work on a Sunday, on the basis that keeping Sunday as a "day of rest" is not a core component of their beliefs.  Of course the immediate knee-jerk reaction is "What about the fourth commandment - remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy...".  Well yes, but the commandments well predate Christianity - they were rules for the Jews, and the Jewish sabbath was and still is Saturday (well strictly the time between sunset on Friday and the first visible stars on Saturday). So if you're going to rely on Biblical authority then it's Saturday you should be refusing to work on.  No coincidence that in many languages the word for Saturday has obvious connotations with sabbath (sabbado, subbota, sabbaton etc.). So how come we designate Sunday as the sabbath?  Because we're wrong, simple as that! Keeping Sunday as the day for worship is one thing - nothing wrong with that (and the obvious connection is that Sunday is the day Jesus rose from the dead), but calling it the sabbath is just plain wrong.  Actually this all had nothing to do with the Judge's ruling, but I thought it was interesting.

Euros? That'll do nicely!

If you're planning on visiting the Vatican City in the near future, be sure you take cash with you.  You can no longer use plastic following a ban by the banks on the grounds that the Vatican does not comply with EU regulations designed to prevent money laundering.  Bit weird really, because Vatican City is not part of the EU - but Italy is, and the banks are Italian, so there you are.

Farewell Stale Solbakken.

So that didn't last long, did it?  Six months and Wolves have yet again sacked their manager after a bad series of results, culminating in an embarrassing defeat in the FA Cup by non-league Luton Town.  I just hope this time that they have a plan - which they clearly didn't have when they sacked Mick McCarthy.  Of course, whoever takes over will inherit the same load of players playing the same crap football - but hope springs eternal!
Stop Press -  well, it appears they did have a plan, because they have immediately moved to appoint Dean Saunders.  Fingers crossed - things can't get any worse, surely?

Nostalgia

Was in a second-hand shop the other day and came across a toasting-fork.  A toasting-fork!!  Who the heck uses a toasting-fork these days?  Time was when if you wanted toast or crumpets or muffins you had to spike them onto such a fork and then sit right over the fire for five or ten minutes getting burnt knees and cheeks, but then along came the electric toaster - the early ones weren't much cop, but they were a boon.  Of course few people these days have open fires, so I rather suspect that when I next visit that shop, the toasting-fork will still be there!

Sombre story

Terrible event in this area when a cattery was destroyed by fire with the loss of some 15 cats.  I have a friend with a couple of moggies who regularly boards them there when they go on holiday.  Although their cats were not there at the time, they are devastated at the news.  And I can only imagine at the grief of those who have lost their pets.  So so sad.

Hold on a minute!

Stocktaking time at the zoos.  Easy enough to count the elephants - not so simple when it comes to fish and insects.  Which reminded me of an article I once read entitled "How to measure a fish" - the point being that it's pretty well impossible to accurately measure anything which is moving.  In order to accurately measure anything you need to be able to fix the position of both ends at the same instant in time, and of course with a moving object by the time you've established exactly where one end is, the other end will have moved. Which, by the way, is the basis of Einstein's relativity concept that a moving object will always be measured as shortened in the direction it is travelling.  Of course, you can always cheat by taking a photograph and measuring the image.

Tunnel vision?

Worrying story of Mo Farah being detained by US Customs as a suspected terrorist. Perhaps not that surprising that they didn't know who he was - Americans generally have little interest in non-US sports and sportsmen - but far more worrying is that the simple fact that his name was Mohammed and he was born in Somalia was enough reason to haul him in.  Talk about stereotyping.

More than he bargained for?

Great seasonal story of a young lad who got a metal detector as a Christmas present, went out to a nearby field to try it out, it started beeping, so he got his spade and dug up - a WW II bomb!  Luckily it turned out to be a blank - probably dropped by the RAF as part of a training exercise.  But I bet that's one boy who will not easily forget Christmas 2012.

Dilemma?

Does the US First Amendment trump the Second or vice versa?  There is a UK dimension to this I promise.  Piers Morgan - ex-editor of the Daily Mirror is now a TV host over there, and used his programme to criticise gun control - or lack of it - in the light of the school massacre the other week.  As a result, he was subjected to a lot of vitriolic abuse on Facebook and Twitter, and a petition was got up to have him deported back here to the UK.  So, as he himself has pointed out, the First Amendment protects his right to say what he likes, so where does that leave those who object to his comments about the Second Amendment?  Of course, the irony is that someone has started a petition over here to "Keep Piers Morgan in the USA" on the basis that "no one in the UK wants him back"!  Happy New Year by the way.