Too much for my poor brain

I thought I'd devote today's post to Chinese New Year, as that's today, but having researched the matter, my head is spinning and I'm no nearer a full understanding of how it is calculated.  It seems officially it falls on the day of the new moon which is closest to the beginning of spring except of course that we're not talking about the beginning of spring as we here know it, but the beginning of spring according to the Chinese calendar, which is around February 4th.  And then, we're not talking about a new moon as we see it, but as it is seen in China, which will be slightly out from ours.  Apparently the one definite thing you can say about it is that it cannot fall earlier than January 21st nor later than February 21st, and the easiest way of calculating it is to say it falls on the second new moon following the winter solstice (December 21st).  This will be correct nearly all the time. Of course, it's easier just to google it!  Anyway kung hai fat choi.

Hear both sides?

Stonewall, which is a gay rights group, paid for banners to be displayed on the sides of buses saying "Some people are gay.  Get over it!".  Not surprisingly there were those who found this offensive, so some of them got together and made up their own banners saying "Not Gay!  Ex-Gay, Post-Gay and Proud.  Get over it!".  And this offended some gays.  Six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, right? Well no, apparently.  The first (pro-gay) poster was allowed, but the second (anti-gay) was blocked by the Mayor of London.The matter is currently before the Court of Appeal to decide whether the Mayor had used his power improperly.  Surely there is no intrinsic difference between the two? Each statement is as valid - or invalid - as the other.  All a bit childish?

Elementary my dear....

I've heard of deduction and also induction (although I have always associated that with magnetism and electricity) but I'd never heard of abduction (as a logical term) until the other day.  So what's the difference?  Apparently it's all to do with cause and effect.  If A produces B, and B must be the result of A, then if you observe B you can deduce that there must have been an A.  If the light is on (and you don't have a timer or motion detector or some such) then you can deduce that somebody must have pressed the switch.  If you have a situation where B is almost always (but not exclusively) the result of A, and you observe B, then you can induce that there was almost certainly an A.  If all the lights are out in the street, you can induce that there's been a power cut - although it's just possible that everyone's main fuse has failed independently .  If A is usually followed by B and you observe B you can abduce (if there is such a word) that there might have been an A.  So it's what might be called an intelligent guess, but it is a guess none-the-less and certainly shouldn't be acted on without some corroboration. So that's cleared that up then???

What the.....!

Weird story has surfaced of HSBC customers being asked to explain why they want to withdraw large amounts in cash, and in some cases provide proof of what they intend to do with it.  I first thought this must be some kind of spoof, but to my horror (I bank with them) HSBC have confirmed that this was a new policy introduced at the back-end of last year, although they don't seem to be quite clear as to the reason. They have suggested that it's something to do with money laundering but of course this ignores the basic fact that my money is mine, and what I do with it is no business of theirs.  How much are we talking about?  Well that too doesn't seem to be clear - one customer said that they had been told they couldn't withdraw more than £1000, whereas another said the limit was £3000. Perhaps the strangest aspect is that in a statement the bank has said that this policy is for the protection of their customers - so they might refuse to let me have my own money for my protection??  Apparently they are reviewing the situation, and I should think so too!

Music Man

Captain and Tennille (Daryl Dragon and Toni Tennille) who were big pop stars in the 70s have apparently divorced, although both are now getting on in years, and there are suggestions that this is the result of health problems, but this news has resulted in some very disparaging remarks from the younger generation - "their music sucked and still sucks" being among the mildest.  Well, let's see - their stuff was tuneful, with interesting harmonies, and you could hear every word of the lyrics. And today? - no melody, and usually based on three - or if you're really lucky, four chords, and the lyrics make no sense, which is just as well because you can't hear them anyway.  I make no bones about it - I was and still am a Captain & Tennille fan - for me, it's modern pop (I can't bring myself to use the word "music") that sucks.

Mini-Me

Not quite sure I see the point in the big supermarkets opening up "convenience stores" - which as I understand it are small local high street versions of their shops. And yet, clearly I am not seeing the full picture because more and more of these convenience stores are opening - indeed Sainsburys have now reached the point where they have more convenience stores than full-blown supermarkets.  We haven't got any (yet) round my way, so perhaps that's skewing my thinking. Indeed, the only local experience of that type was when Asda took over the Netto shops, and as far as I was concerned as a shopper, that was a disaster.  My nearest Netto wasn't really that close, but it was well worth a visit because of its low, low prices, but now it's an Asda selling stuff at Asda prices - a good 20+% higher than previously.  Not surprisingly I don't go any more.  So for the time being I remain unconvinced.

Quick - shut the gates!

Another schools story - hot on the heels of the one about the parents who were fined for taking their children on holiday in term time, we learn that a couple of schools in the Milton Keynes area are proposing to fine parents whose children are consistently late in arriving in the mornings.  Opinion seems to be divided as to whether this is a good idea or not, but to me it simply seems to be yet another example of the attitude that children exist for the benefit of schools, whereas of course it should be the other way round.  A little more humility wouldn't go amiss - teacher is not always right you know.  And an afterthought - where does the money thus collected go??

Don't be nasty to me...

Stan Collymore is holding Twitter responsible for abusive tweets - including apparently death threats - that were posted following his assertion that Luis Suarez "dived" to get the penalty which saved Liverpool from defeat in Saturday's match against the Villa at Anfield.  My first reaction is that if you put yourself on Twitter you must accept the consequences.  As I've said many times, freedom of speech, if it is to mean anything, must include the freedom to offend.  If you don't want to be offended, then don't put yourself on Twitter - simple as that.  But should Twitter be held responsible for what people put on there?  To me, this is like saying that the wall is responsible for any graffiti which might be on it.  If there were indeed death threats, then that is a matter for the police, not Twitter.  Other than that, to use the old saying "If you can't stand the heat, keep out of the kitchen".

Barnpots of the world, unite!

Remember the story of the Iranian cleric who maintained that earthquakes were caused by women acting promiscuously?  Well we now have a UKIP councillor writing a letter to his local paper claiming that the recent storms and floods are a result of the legalisation of same-sex marriage.  He quotes the Bible as saying that any nation that acts contrary to the Gospel will "be beset by natural disasters". Perhaps they should get a room?

Fast food?

Couple of stories on sort of the same theme - one from over there, the other from over here.  US first - a branch of McDonalds in Queens, New York has taken exception to a group of pensioners who have taken to spending most of the day in their establishment - spinning out their coffees and bags of fries and such.  The police have been called to move them on, but apparently they just walk round the block and then go back in and start again.  So what about over here?  A coffee shop has opened in Shoreditch London where the drinks are free, but you are charged for the time you spend there at 3p a minute. So obviously not the place to go for a leisurely drink and a chat.

R.I.P.

No tears, because both lived long and productive lives.
Bert Williams - goalkeeper in the Wolves team of my youth, which (hard to believe now) swept all before them.  Also regular England goalkeeper in the early fifties. Nicknamed (by the Italians I seem to remember) The Cat, and a thoroughly nice bloke.
Chris Chataway - athlete, TV presenter and politician.  My abiding memory is of the 5000 metre race at White City in 1954 when he came through in the last few yards to beat the apparently unbeatable Russian Vladimir Kuts.  I remember my mum and me screaming at the telly, and falling into one another's arms at the end.  Sort of stuff that sticks with you for ever.

Here we go again!

One of those ever-recurring themes in this blog is that of school terms and family holidays. Apparently things are much stricter since the beginning if the current academic year.  Prior to that, parents were able to apply to take their children out of school for ten days to go on holiday, and unless you came up against a particularly arsey head teacher, permission was usually granted.  Since last September however, heads have been told to refuse permission except in exceptional circumstances - whatever those are.  A couple where the father is unable to take leave during the six week summer break have been fined getting on for £1000 for none-the-less taking their children away from school on holiday to Rhodes last autumn.  So who's in the right?  Is anybody in the right?  Is this just a stupid rule that doesn't take any account of what real people living real lives have to cope with?  Everybody is taking an entrenched "holier than thou" position, but surely there must be something wrong with a rule that potentially means that there will be couples who can never again (at least while their kids are at school) have a family holiday all together without breaking the law?  Interestingly, the couple in question say that, from a purely economic point of view, they came out on top - their fine was less than the money they saved by taking the holiday in term-time!

You - no, you - no, you.....

Following the recent storms, a tree on property A has been blown over and landed on property B causing damage.  Who is responsible?  Common sense and my (admittedly old and possibly out-dated) legal knowledge says the owner of property A.  But they - or more to the point, their insurers - say that as all the damage is to property B, it is for them (or their insurers) to sort out.  Meanwhile the occupant of property B has to put up with the fact that they have a tree poking through their kitchen ceiling or wherever.  Make you sort of wonder why we bother with insurance, doesn't it?

R.I.P. - and more

Roger Lloyd-Pack - who brought us the sublime character of Trigger in "Only Fools and Horses".  He may have gone, but Trigger will always be with us, thanks to the nostalgia channels.  One of Trigger's famous boasts (he was a roadsweeper) is that he had used the same broom for 20 years - "it's had 17 new heads and 14 new handles". Which isn't as daft as you might think - some 2,000 years ago the philosopher Plutarch was discussing whether a ship which over the years had had, one by one, every bit of its parts replaced, remained the same ship.  The (very philosophical) question of course is what do we mean or understand by "the same"? As an extreme example, consider a river.  Is it the same river today as yesterday? The water's different.  Hmmm.

Where???

As a kid I could never understand why Americans referred to "Paris, France" until I realised that there are many towns and cities in the US named Paris, so they have to be specific about which they are referring to.  This came to mind the other day when I read a story about a local couple who booked a flight from Birmingham to Trinidad only to find when they got to Birmingham International Airport that their tickets were for a flight to Trinidad from Birmingham, Alabama!

Time for a change?

Anybody think Labour should appoint Chuka Umunna as their leader - like yesterday? He's personable, articulate and persuasive. Of course, if he were appointed leader whether he would be able to retain those characteristics is debatable, but it would surely be worth a try, and an improvement on what they've got at the moment.

Where's our Jimmy?

Fascinating article I read the other day which suggested that one of the most important sociological changes of the last century or so was the introduction of domestic central heating. The idea is that prior to that there would be one room in the house where there would be a fire and in the winter, and even for the most part at other times of year this would be the room where the family would gather and interact. Central heating meant for the first time that individual members of the family could spread themselves throughout the house and do their own thing in their own space. And this, according to the author of the article, was the beginning of the breakdown of the common extended nuclear family.  Interesting?

Smart move??

Am I being cynical in thinking that the reason this policeman who claimed to have heard the alleged "plebs" exchange between the government Chief Whip and policemen at the gates of Downing Street is now pleading guilty to having lied is so that he will not have to give evidence and be subject to cross-examination?  This way, we will never know why he lied, which might have been very interesting.

Nothing surprises me anymore!

Did you know that you can buy taxidermy kits for mice over the internet?  Yes, really!  It seems that there's a bit of a craze for gutting and stuffing dead mice and then arranging then in "cute" poses.  And where is this going on?  London, would you believe?

I'll have the beef stew...

A restaurant in Leeds which has been there for over 30 years, and which has made a name for itself as the place to go for steak tartare, has shut because the council have decreed that it cannot serve its signature dish unless the beef mince is pre-cooked, and raw egg is not used.  The council maintains that it has not banned the restaurant from putting steak tartare on the menu, but merely insisted that it not be prepared in the traditional way.  Which seems to me to entirely miss the point - if it's not prepared in the traditional way, then it's bloody well not steak tartare, is it?

Benefits Street

Did you watch it?  I didn't, so what brings me posting about it?  Well, it's sort of my neck of the woods - Winson Green, Birmingham - and it seems to have stirred up a lot of controversy concerning the extent to which it does, or does not represent the area and what goes on there.  So like I say I didn't watch the programme and other than having driven through it a few times I have no personal knowledge of the area, but I do know a man who knows a man who lives a couple of streets away from the road which was featured and who says - his words - it was "absolutely true to life".  So I pass that on for what it's worth.

X marks the spot.

The Electoral Commission has suggested that voters should have to prove their identity at the polling station before being allowed to vote (passport, driving license etc.).  We've talked about this before and, whilst a perfectly sensible idea, it completely ignores the main problem with electoral fraud, which is not people turning up at polling stations pretending to be someone else (I'm sure it happens, but very infrequently I would think).  No, the biggest problem is the postal vote. I'm simply rehashing what I've already said, but at the heart of our voting system is the principle of the secret ballot, and postal voting is just inherently incompatible with that, and I don't see any way of rectifying that situation.  If we are determined to expand the use of "home voting" then maybe we should look at mobile polling booths - like mobile libraries - which come round to your house and at least ensure that when you mark your cross you are on your own and nobody gets to know where you put it.  

Of course I'll come shopping with you, darling...

Damned clever, these Chinese!  Apparently big stores in China are starting to open up "husband cloakrooms" where wives can deposit their husbands while they go on a shopping spree.  Said cloakrooms have comfy chairs, TV, wi-fi and some even have a bar.  Everyone's a winner - genius!

Take the baubles off first!

What do you do with your old Christmas tree?  Stash it somewhere until the council deign to start collecting garden refuse again (and that's April round my way)?  Take it down the tip and then spend the next 30 minutes vacuuming all the pine needles out of your car boot?  Well in Weidenthal in Germany they hold an annual Christmas tree throwing championship, with competitions for distance and height, and of course all the trees are disposed of at the end of the day. What a good idea.

Ha ha.

A psychoanalyst shows an inkblot to a patient and asks what he sees.  "A man and a woman making love" replies the patient.  The psychoanalyst shows him another one.  "That's a man and a woman making love" says the patient.  When he makes the same response to a third blot, the psychoanalyst says "You're obsessed with sex".  "Me obsessed?" replies the patient "you're the one with all the dirty pictures!".

What's in a name?

In Welsh "f" is pronounced as "v".  So the Welsh village of Y Farteg is pronounced Uh-Varteg, but the villagers have decided by a large margin not to use the Welsh spelling but to retain the Anglicised version of Varteg - and you can perhaps see why.  Mind you, I remember when I was younger we used to go blackberry picking at a place down Evesham way called Wyre Piddle, and I don't recall the locals having any problem with that.

Over the top men!!

Oh God, that bloke Gove is at it again.  It's not that he's an idiot - indeed I'm sure he's very clever - but he's a classic example of the old adage that you should "put brain in gear before opening mouth". His latest rant - and I don't think that's too strong a word - is against what he sees as a "left wing" bias in the way the First World War is portrayed.  So "Oh, What A Lovely War" and "Blackadder Goes Forth" and anything else (Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen??) that suggests that the War was anything other than an unmitigated success and an example of brilliant generalship is to him a travesty designed to "denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage".  I don't remember either of those shows or any of that poetry denying that those that fought were not patriots, honourable men and courageous.  Doesn't alter that fact that on all available evidence, the whole thing on both sides was for the most part a shambles and many, if not most who died, did so pointlessly.

Oh, come on....!

I've not been affected by flooding, and the high winds, although a nuisance, have not caused any real damage and the lights have stayed on.  I feel sorry for those who have not been so lucky, but most of them seem to accept that this is the price they pay for living where they do - which tends to be in the sort of nice places where we all like to go on holiday.  But there are always those who seek to find someone to blame for their misfortune, and it certainly seems that some of the power companies and local authorities have fallen short of the mark, but to blame the government - or even more bizarrely the Prime Minister personally - goes too far.

Sherlock

So... he's back.  Wad'ya think?  I'm sorry, but I felt cheated, disappointed, angry.  I don't know what I really expected, but I didn't expect to be played with, led down the garden path and taken for a mug. There was a feeling that the writers were being clever for the sake of being clever rather than with any intent of moving the story forward.  Let's hope that, now that that episode is out of the way, normal service will be resumed.

The headless man.

No, not a ghost story - this is another for us oldies who remember 1963.  The Great Train Robbery, the assassination of JFK and... the divorce case between the Duke and Duchess of Argyll.  In support of his case, the Duke produced several Polaroid photographs of the Duchess in various compromising situations, including a famous one of her performing what was delicately referred to as "a sex act" with a man whose head was not shown.  Much speculation then and since as to who it was - Duncan Sands, then Defence Minister, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. were favourites, but now her daughter-in-law has come out to say that it was in fact her then current lover, Bill Lyons, sales director of Pan Am.  Bit of a let-down, if true.  

Oh no - he's come to pillage!

Happy New Year.  Looking back through previous posts I noticed that a couple of years ago I mentioned "first footing" and the fact that I was not allowed to go first footing as a young man because I had fair hair back then, and I wondered what that was all about.  Nobody really seems to have a definitive answer, but the best guess - and I find this really interesting - is that it may go back to folk memories of the Vikings, who being Nordic, would probably mostly have been blond-haired. So a fair-haired man was to be feared, or at the very least, not trusted, and as your first footer effectively was supposed to determine your fortune for the year, you would want to play safe by ensuring he had dark hair.  My hair went from fair to dark over the years, and now what there is left of it is silvery grey - so I don't know where that would leave me today!