English as she is spoke.

Anybody else find this modern usage of the word "grooming" to mean befriending a vulnerable person with the intention of sexually abusing them a prostitution of the language?  It's a word with a perfectly respectable history and definition which has nothing to do with anything unsavory.  But now those who look after horses or run dog and cat beauty parlours have to be careful about how they describe what they do.  Who came up with it, and why?  Is it just a matter of linguistic laziness?

Good headline, but...

Queen gets 5% pay rise, the press scream.  No she doesn't!  What has happened is that the money raised from the various properties owned by the Crown throughout the country has increased, and by an arrangement entered into a few years ago, the Queen keeps a small percentage of this money for her living expenses - the rest goes to the Treasury.  So she's not had a pay rise any more than I've had a pay rise when the value of my house or my shareholdings increase.  The timing of the announcement was unfortunate, coming as it did the day after the Chancellor announced a further tranche of spending cuts, but don't try and make it something it isn't.

Ha ha.

If you followed the recent posts about Zeno's paradoxes, you might like this one I got off the net -
A mathematician and an engineer agreed to take part in an experiment. They were both placed in a room and at the other end was a beautiful naked woman on a bed. The experimenter said every 30 seconds they would be allowed to travel half the distance between themselves and the woman. The mathematician said "This is pointless" and stormed off. The engineer agreed to go ahead with the experiment anyway. The mathematician exclaimed on his way out "Don't you see, you'll never actually reach her?". To which the engineer replied, "So what? Pretty soon I'll be close enough for all practical purposes!".

R.I.P.

So sad to hear of the death of Mick Aston, late of "Time Team".  A Black Country lad - and perhaps because of that - he had that common touch of being able to make an academic subject like archaeology accessible and interesting.  And he was only 66 - what a waste!

The clue's in the title.

Without going too far into this Edward Snowden business, I can't understand all the fuss about the revelation that GCHQ has tapped into the fibre-optic cabling network in order to intercept internet traffic.  The initials stand for Government Communications Headquarters for goodness sake - whether you agree with it or not, the monitoring of communications is precisely what they are there to do!

Old news.

I think I'm going to have to start a new series for "Well fancy that - where have you been all these years?" stories.  We had the inflated wedding prices story the other day, and now we have a Brussels survey which has found that we in the UK pay nearly 50% more for alcoholic drinks than the EU average.  Care to have a look at my post of 15.12.05?

All rise!

Yesterday's post reminded me of a performance of "Messiah" which I was involved in many years ago, and when it got to the Hallelujah Chorus, a couple of elderly ladies in the audience stood up.  You could see that the rest were left feeling rather uncomfortable, not quite knowing what to do,  So what's that all about?  Well the first performance of "Messiah" was given in the presence of King George II, and the story is that when the opening chords of the Hallelujah Chorus rang out the King got to his feet and stood throughout the piece.  Of course back then no-one would have dreamed of remaining seated while the King was standing, so everybody else stood as well, and the tradition was born.  What nobody really knows is why the King stood up.  It's usually said that he was overcome by the glory of the music - but of course it could equally be that he simply needed to stretch his legs!

To clap or not to clap?

It's one of the most vexatious issues in classical music - when should you applaud and, even more importantly, when should you not applaud?  Modern concert-going etiquette is that a piece of music should be heard out in silence, with applause at the end.  The problem arises when the piece in question is divided into movements - as most symphonies and concertos are.  It is considered "bad form" to applaud between movements, and yet it was not always so.  Back in the 18th century (Mozart and all that) applause between movements and even during movements was not only accepted, but even to an extent expected.  It seem that it was towards the end of the 19th century that certain composers - notably Mahler and Wagner - made it clear that they wished their works to be assessed - and applauded if felt appropriate - as a whole.  The one place where applause between movements is still tolerated is at the Proms, which still tend to cling to the tradition of informality which was their original raison d'être.

The moving finger writes...

So the story of the maths teacher and the young girl which I commented on in my post of September 29th last year has now played out to its inevitably dismal conclusion.  The sledgehammer has cracked the nut and - predictably - smashed it into little pieces.  Everybody loses - how utterly depressing.  I would like to think that those involved will reflect on what they did and how they might have handled it differently - but they are so self-righteous that I doubt it.

I don't eat anything green....

Do you know the difference between a fruit and a vegetable?  Lots of people don't it seems.  So - if it's got seeds, it's a fruit, simple as that.  Problem is that we tend to use the words differently when it comes to cooking and eating.  Tomatoes and cucumbers for instance are treated as vegetables for culinary purposes, even though they have seeds and are therefore fruits.  Interesting question which came up the other day is, what about peas?  The answer I think is that an unopened peapod is a fruit, but the peas themselves are neither - they are seeds, like peppercorns or rice.

Votes for women.

The name of Emily Davison is in the news lately.  Never heard of her? She is the lady who was killed when she famously "threw herself under the King's horse" at the 1913 Epsom Derby, and became a martyr of the Suffragette movement.  It is of course the centenary of that event. But does she deserve the title of martyr?  The essence of martyrdom is deliberately giving up your life for a cause, and yet it's long been accepted that she almost certainly didn't mean to kill herself (you don't buy a return ticket if you have no intention of going back) and that she was probably trying to attach something to the King's horse rather than bring it down. No question though that her death significantly raised the profile of the movement. I once worked with a distant relative of Emmeline Pankhurst who had been told that she (Emmeline) described it as "the defining moment".  So maybe it is right to commemorate her death.

I was there first - again!

A report by Which? magazine has concluded that "businesses are cashing in on a couple's big day [i.e.wedding] by hiking up prices".  Well, alright, but where have they been for the past who-knows-how-many years?  Have a look at my post dated 14th February (Valentine's Day no less) 2007.  The question of course, is now that they have come to this earth-shattering conclusion, what are they going to do about it?

Fair do's?

The official definition of a baby-boomer is anyone born between 1946 and 1964, and these are the people now being blamed for consuming more than their fair share of the welfare bill as they grow older.  So is this fair?  Well on that definition I am a pre-baby-boomer but I have to confess that I must agree that we oldies have in general been less affected by recent austerity measures than the public at large. If we take 2008 as the point at which things started to go pear-shaped, then I am certainly no worse off now than I was then, and I suspect that there would be few of you youngsters who could say that.  But is that reason to criticise or penalise us? One thing which I think you need to appreciate is that we crumblies are essentially stuck with what we've got.  Unlike those of working age, we don't really have any potential to try and improve our lot.  We are beggars at the table of the Government - we have to take what we are given.  Speaking for myself I am happy to pay my whack, but I would ask that you treat me fairly and don't hold me responsible for your problems.

Words or deeds?

Two recent surveys provide an interesting insight into the relationship between public fundamental religious beliefs and private behaviour.  When people throughout the world were asked whether society should accept homosexuality, it came as no real surprise that those most vehemently opposed were in the Middle East, and particularly Pakistan, where 98% answered "no" to that question.  But now Google has published details of where the highest proportion of searches for homosexual sites comes from, and the answer - Pakistan!  Make what you can of that.

Music Man

I've always had a soft spot for brass bands.  Can't really explain it, but they are capable of producing the most ravishing sounds - exhilarating one minute, heartbreaking the next.  I posted some time ago about how the closure of so many coalmines and steelworks has resulted in the disbandment of many of the brass bands associated with them, so I am delighted to bring to the attention of any other brass band devotees out there http://www.allbrassradio.com/ which plays brass band music and nothing else.  Enjoy!

On your marks (continued)

OK - tortoise and hare.  What was wrong with Zeno's argument?  Not that easy to get your head round, but Zeno was (deliberately to get the desired effect) dealing in distance (how far the hare travels, how far the tortoise travels) whereas what you need to think about is time.  Assuming - obviously - that the hare is moving faster than the tortoise, it will take him a certain amount of time to get from the start-line to point T, a lesser amount of time to get from T to T1, a lesser amount still to get from T1 to T2 and so on.  So we're dealing with smaller and smaller slices of time, and very quickly we're into nano-seconds and smaller, and for all practical purposes have stopped time - which is why the hare can never catch the tortoise.  It's like the beginning of the old road-runner cartoons - the hare is going at full belt but frozen in time.  A similar one of Zeno's paradoxes is that if you shoot an arrow at me it will never reach me - because first it must travel half the distance between you and me, then it must travel half the remaining distance, then half the remaining distance, then half the remaining distance, and so on and so on ad infinitum.

Do we have the right to know?

Secrecy breeds conspiracy.  There's an organisation called the Bilderberg Group (named after the hotel where it first met) which holds annual meetings to which people of influence in North America and Europe are invited.  No official guest-list is published, and no communique is issued detailing what was discussed and what decisions, if any, were agreed.  And it is this complete lack of publicity which has led some people to to see it as a sinister organisation cooking up agreements behind closed doors which may affect us all.  The counter-argument is that, because it is private, it allows people to speak their minds without having their words picked over - and possibly distorted - by the media.  I'm fairly relaxed about it, but many people aren't, and indeed it was the subject of a recent question in Parliament.  So - how do you see it?

Hello?....Hello??....Hello???

The Telephone Preference Service is supposed to protect you from cold calling, which to many people is at best a nuisance and at worst a cause of anxiety or even fear.  But it seems it doesn't work very well - and indeed this is my personal experience.  I am signed up to it, but I still get unsolicited calls on a regular basis - many from overseas, which are not bound by our rules.  So what to do?  Well, for a relatively small fee you can sign up to Caller Display, which allows you to see the number which is calling you, and if you don't recognise it, don't answer it.  For a bit more money, get an answering machine, and let any such call go through to it, and then you can listen to any message at your leisure and with no pressure.  Mind you, if you're feeling particularly bolshie, answer the call but don't say anything, and then put the 'phone down somewhere and let the caller waste their money talking to nobody.

Something smells....

We haven't had a wheelie bin story for some time, but here's a rather disturbing one from Manchester.  A family with two children under two years old who, not surprisingly are still in nappies, found that their wheelie bin was too small to accommodate their household rubbish, including a week's supply of disposable nappies, and applied for a larger one. The response of the council?  No - you should be using "real" cotton nappies.  Now you can argue the pros and cons of disposable versus real nappies, but is it a proper function of a local authority to seek to dictate which you should use?  The disturbing aspect of all this is that it appears the council have some sort of deal with a local company producing cotton nappies, and therefore have a conflict of interest.  When my kids were little, we didn't have the choice, and as the person responsible for laundering the nappies (happy memories of plunging hands into a bucket of freezing cold water in which they were soaking in Milton and wringing them out) I would have given my eye teeth for disposables!

It's painful to watch, but...

Do we arm the Syrian rebels?  No, no, no.  Have we learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan?  When will we stop thinking we have some sort of God-given right to interfere in other countries' affairs?  We have a natural dislike of dictators and a natural tendency to support the underdog, but this is nothing to do with us.  This is for the Syrians and their neighbours to sort out.  It's a horrible mess, but when a house is on fire you don't throw petrol on it!

On your marks...

If a tortoise and a hare have a race, which would win?  The hare, right?  Well, maybe, but an ancient Greek philosopher called Zeno maintained that provided (a) the tortoise was given a start, and (b) the tortoise didn't stop, not only would the hare not be able to overtake it, it wouldn't even be able to catch up with it.  The argument goes as follows - the hare starts from scratch, the tortoise starts from some point further up the course - call it T.  The race starts.  Sooner or later the hare will reach point T, but by this time the tortoise will have moved on to another point - call it T1.  The race continues and sooner or later the hare reaches point T1 - but the tortoise will have moved on to another point - T2.  You get the idea - each time the hare gets to where the tortoise was, the tortoise will have moved further on.  So the hare can never catch up, let alone overtake.  Rubbish of course, but why?  Where's the flaw in the argument?  I'll give you a few days to think about it.

I can hear you!

Should we be concerned about the so-called "Snoopers' Charter" and the revelation that we're making use of American technology which scours the Internet for suspicious communications?  Well, yes and no.  The security services have traditionally had the power - under the authority of a warrant - to intercept and read mail, listen to 'phone calls and bug properties, and it could be argued that what is now being sought is simply upgrading those powers to cope with modern technology.  So why do we feel uncomfortable with it?  One answer I think is social networking.  It's a relatively modern phenomenon but the sort of casual and informal chat that used to go on over the garden fence or down the pub and was essentially private, now tends to be done on Facebook, Twitter and the like and is there for all to see. And then there's the question of the authority under which this is done - the American data-gathering may be legal under American law, but is it under ours? Our protection always was that before we could be snooped on, the authorities had to go before a judge and convince him to issue a warrant, but what's the position now?  So like I say, yes and no.

Introspection.

When talking about the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson, I said that Manchester United were my favourite hate team - but why?  Since I wrote that, I've been thinking about it, and come to the conclusion that perhaps I am treating them as a scapegoat for the sins of the many.  But they seem to encapsulate all that (in my opinion) is wrong with modern football.  Their fans (or most of them) owe no real allegiance to Manchester or the club as such - they are simply hanging onto the coat-tails of their success.  And that success brings money which can be used to buy more success.  And so it goes on.  But the one incident I remember which turned me against them was many years ago when they were playing a team containing Eusabio - a Portuguese player of the old school.  Man U's goalkeeper (Stepney??) made a marvellous save of a shot from from Eusabio, and he, being the gentleman that he was, continued his run to go up to the goalkeeper and congratulate him. The goalkeeper simply ignored him and moved out of the way. Perhaps unfair to judge the whole club on the basis of the actions of one man, but that did it for me. I wanted nothing more to do with them.

Mirror, signal....

So the police are going to crack down on those who "hog" the middle lane on motorways.  Has anybody considered that if they are successful in this endevour, it will result in loads more drivers pulling out into the middle land from the slow lane, which in my experience can be a hazardous manoeuvre to undertake.  Would they be solving one problem to simply create an even worse one?

Doctor - who??

Can't say I'm sorry that Matt Smith is bowing out of Dr Who - whether it's down to him or not, since he took over from David Tennant, for me at least the programme has gone downhill.  The plots have been more confused and disjointed, and Matt Smith's portrayal of the Doctor as more "quirky" has - for me - just come across as annoying.  Let's go for maturity next time, please.  I'm sure he wouldn't be interested, but I have always thought that Rowan Atkinson would make a marvellous Doctor.

I don't owe you a living!

It is understandable that businesses want to make as much money out of their customers as possible, but clearly if they go too far, their customers will desert them, so they tread a fine line in setting their prices between maximising their profits whilst not alienating potential purchasers.  But I think they need to keep one truth in mind - that they are there for the benefit of their customers, and not vice versa. And customers want best value for money, so if someone else is doing whatever for less, they have to deal with it and not seek to blame their customers or their competitors.  Why am I going on like this?  Because apparently high street stores are lobbying the Treasury to impose extra taxes on online retailers who can undercut them price-wise because they don't have to pay so much in rent and rates.  Tail trying to wag the dog!

He's back....!

They talk about remarriage after divorce as " the triumph of hope over experience". So what are we to make of Mourinho coming back to Chelsea?  Is it an acceptance of the fact that they made a mistake in getting rid of him in the first place?  Have he and Abramovich kissed and made up?  Or is it simply that they've realised that he's the best of a bad lot, as it were.  Watch this space.  And as a P.S. I wish Wolves' new manager Kenny Jackett the best of luck.  Let's hope this time we've got it right.

Something must be broken

We have a welfare system which means that no-one should go hungry - no-one should be left with insufficient money to put food on the table.  I've posted before about the basic concept that the level of benefits should be set at subsistence level - but subsistence level means the level at which you can subsist - that is, continue to exist.  And yet it seems that thousands - hundreds of thousands - of people are depending on food banks to keep the wolf from the door.  I think we need to find out why.  As I see it, it means one of three things - either the level of benefit is too low - i.e. below subsistence level, or people are not managing their benefit properly - for whatever reason they are spending their money on other things, and not having enough left for food, or lastly, that the system is not getting the money to people in time.  I have no idea which of these (or which combination of these) is the reason, but I think we need to find out - there is no place for food banks in a properly run civilised society.

Long time since.

Sixty years ago today since the Coronation, so there won't be that many of us who remember it.  My main memory (I was 15) is that not too many houses had television back then, and those like us that did, invited all the neighbours round to watch, so we had a houseful.  My other memory is of the Queen of Tonga who captured everybody's hearts - or at least mine - by smiling broadly and obviously enjoying herself as she was driven to and from the ceremony in an open carriage despite the pouring rain.  I've since learned that it rains a lot in Tonga, so she was used to it.

Hey - who's the boss around here?

Ooh - is the Pope's infallibility being called into question - and by his own church? In a recent sermon, he declared that everybody was capable of redemption (that is, being saved from going to Hell) and not just Catholics - indeed, even atheists.  This of course runs completely contrary to basic Catholic teaching, and led to a Vatican spokesman issuing a "clarification", restating the basic position that in order to be saved you must accept and be part of "the Church as founded by Christ" - that of course to the Vatican means the Roman Catholic Church.  So, as a practising agnostic who was baptised into the Church of England and confirmed in the Methodist Church, where does that leave me?  And more to the point, where does it leave the Pope?