Wave after wave...

So are we being "swamped by migrants"?  This was the phrase used by the Defence Secretary, who I bet wishes he could go back in time and reconsider his choice of words. "Swamped" is a very emotive word, but is it justified?  Well, I could take you to places not a million miles from where I live, where you would be hard pressed to find anyone over the age of about 8 who was born here in the UK.  And I'm sure if you were to find such a person, they might well feel "swamped" by those who have come here from elsewhere. But I could equally take you just a few streets away to where just about everybody is 100% white and British.  As we've mentioned before, this is simply a case of "birds of a feather flock together" - migrants associate with their own sort as do non-migrants.  So "swamped"?  Depends where you are, doesn't it?

Negative reinforcement.

Although it seems harsh and uncaring, I think we are right to say that we will no longer assist in rescue operations for would-be immigrants who get into trouble in the Med trying to get to Italy from North Africa.  It's similar to our long-standing stance of refusing to negotiate with kidnappers.  You do not do anything to encourage behaviour of which you disapprove.  Simple as that.

Don't get it.

Sometimes difficult to understand the attitude of "experts" towards what seem to be common-sense decisions.  It has been suggested that those who are terminally ill and who agree, should be able to be treated with unproven drugs.  What's the worst that can happen?  They're dying anyway - difficult to see how things could be any worse than that, and it's possible that the drugs might be beneficial, and certainly the exercise will provide data which would otherwise be unavailable.  And yet, a respected scientist has said that such an idea is "too risky" and might end up doing harm.  To whom? Can't really see how you can do any great harm to those who are already dying. I would certainly volunteer to be a guinea-pig in such circumstances - what would I have to lose?

Rigid rules?

You do sometimes wonder, don't you?  The question of whether there should be a life-guard on duty at a beach should surely be decided on the basis of how many people are using the beach, rather than on what the date is?  Whether or not, had there been a life-guard on duty, the recent tragedy at Newquay in Cornwall might have been avoided is open to question, but there seems to be little sense in having the beach supervised up to the end of September and then ignoring the fact that half-term week falls at the end of October and that will be a popular time for surfers to go there.  Sort of smacks of the "computer says no" syndrome, doesn't it?

No - not the dance!

A story about refugees on a British base in Cyprus, whom Britain refuse to accept responsibility for, had one of them saying "we are in limbo".  So what exactly does that mean?  Well it's all to do with Catholic dogma, according to which you cannot go to heaven unless you've been baptised, and if you don't go to heaven then you automatically go to the other place.  But this produces a problem - what about all those who have lived a blameless life, but did so before Jesus was born and the (Catholic) church came into existence and therefore had no chance of being baptised? What about children who are stillborn, or who die unbaptised in very early infancy before they are capable of sin?  Are they to be condemned to Hell?  And so the concept of Limbo was born - a sort of neither here nor there place where such souls can rest easy for eternity - not accepted into Heaven, but not subjected to the torments of Hell.  

It's no secret!

I wish politicians would stop treating us like idiots.  The PM has gone into table-thumping mode over this demand by the EU that we pay an extra £1.7bn into the European kitty.  Yes, it's an eye-watering sum, and it will detrimentally affect our economy, but why the shocked surprise?  This is an exercise which is carried out by the EU every year at this time.  We knew that, and we also knew the figures that they would be working on - because it was us that provided them.  So we could work out for ourselves (and I'm sure we did) what the outcome would be.  It doesn't make things any better, but please, stop taking us for fools.

A bus stop is for _____ to ____ at.

Wolverhampton (Wolv'ram'tn) is just down the road from me and it seems that buses there are being ticketed by traffic wardens for stopping at... bus stops.  How about that then??

What's the matter with you? Well now...

What are we to make of this scheme to pay doctors £55 for each diagnosis of dementia they make? Just who gets the money?  If it's the doctor personally - that is as part of his salary - then the cynic in me says that a lot of people who are perhaps merely old and forgetful are going to be diagnosed just to get the money. And if it is going to go to the practice to help with treatment, then once again my cynical side says - is £55 really going to make any significant difference?  Can't imagine that £55 gets you much these days.  And my final thought is - should you really be paying doctors to do what they should be doing anyway?

I'm feeling peckish...

Made myself a corned beef sandwich the other day (and very nice it was too) and (I had never really thought about it before), wondered where this word "corned" came from and what it meant. Coincidentally at much the same time, I saw a recipe which called for corned mutton.  So what's the story?  A standard way of preserving meat before the days of refrigeration was by soaking it in brine - that is, salted water. "Corn" was an old English word for "grain".  Today we would refer to "a grain of salt" - back then it would more likely have been "a corn of salt".  So corned simply meant salted. The beef would be treated that way and then boiled.  In other parts of the world it is called salt-beef or bully-beef (from the French bouilli = boiled).  Ooh, I'm feeling like another sandwich!

What is justice?

And the answer is that it's one of those Humpty Dumpty words - it means whatever you want it to mean.  The question has arisen again because a professional footballer, who was convicted of rape and released from prison having served half his sentence (which is standard procedure provided you've behaved yourself whilst inside) is due to go back to playing for his club.  So "[He] gets early release and a new contract... victim gets scarred for life..." as one blogger put it.  Fair?  But that's another Humpty Dumpty word.  I imagine there are plenty of people who would like to see him have his bits chopped off and be thrown in prison for life.  On the other hand there are those who point out that the girl involved was blind drunk - indeed this is the basis of the conviction, that she was too drunk to have consented - and must accept some responsibility for getting in that condition and for anything that happened as a result. The waters are somewhat muddied by the fact that the girl, who has apparently moved away and tried to change her name, has been "outed" on the internet (no suggestion as far as I am aware that the footballer had any hand in that) and that he is appealing his conviction - which of course is his right under the law.  So - justice??  The verdict, as they say, is yours.

Death by a thousand cuts?

So the proposal is that smoking should be banned in public parks.  It is of course already banned in public places indoors, and there are constant calls for it to be prohibited in cars and houses where there are children present. Which of course raises the question - just where can you smoke these days?  And is this the real strategy - to make smoking illegal by the back door as it were, by restricting, bit by bit, the places where you are allowed to smoke, until there's nowhere left?

R.I.P.

Lynda Bellingham.  Difficult to write this because I'm crying.  I was so rooting for her to make Christmas.  For me, she'll always be the Oxo Mum.

...and Mummy made the gravy...  Best advert ever.

Vive la différence!

A guaranteed way of getting up the nose of someone from Wolverhampton or Dudley or thereabouts is, when they tell you where they're from, to say "Oh, you're a Brummie then?".  Birmingham and the Black Country may be close geographically, but are light-years apart in terms of - for want of a better word - culture.  We call them "brummies" because (I think I've already mentioned this) one of the older names of the city was Brummagem.  They call us "yam yams" because in Black Country speak "you are" becomes "yo am" which contracts to yowm or yam, as in "Yam a roit dipstick!"  We have a healthy disrespect for each other - hence to call somebody from Willenhall, say, a brummie would be seen as an insult.

Ready to rumble?

One of the less attractive aspects of our Parliamentary system is the way - particularly as a general election gets near - that the parties look for any way of slagging off the opposition, even if it means misrepresenting what someone has said, and ignoring a valid point that has been made.  At the moment, everybody is having a pop at a Government Minister who it is alleged has said that disabled people are "not worth" the minimum wage.  The Opposition are frothing at the mouth with rage, the Prime Minister has been forced to distance himself from the remarks, and all and sundry are lining up to give him a kicking.  So what exactly was he saying?  It seems to me that it was this - there are people who are so disabled that they are incapable of performing even the most menial of jobs. Nonetheless, these people - or at least some of them - would like to feel valued, would like to do something to make it worth getting up in the morning, would like to have some interaction with their fellow man. At present, employment law makes it impossible for an employer to offer such a person any sort of "job" - even if it's just turning up every now and then and making the tea - without paying them the minimum wage, which would clearly not be justified in such circumstances.  So can anything be done about this?  This was the question being asked it seems to me, and I would suggest it is a topic worthy of discussion.  But then - there's an election coming isn't there?  Put you hob-nail boots on and get your pitchfork out...

Are you taking the piss?

Only a couple of days after the last school story comes the almost unbelievable one of a secondary school in Kent where pupils and banned (note the word - banned) from going to the toilet during lessons unless they have a doctor's note.  Indeed the toilets are locked up except during official break times.  As someone with a rather weak bladder who well remembers the embarrassment of having to put my hand up to "be excused" at school,  I can only imagine the even worse embarrassment of being refused and wetting myself.  Is this just an exercise by the school of power for power's sake?

I'm not talking to you...

Talking about Lady Godiva the other day brought to mind the saying about being "sent to Coventry" which means to be ostracised, to have your very existence ignored. A common expression here in the UK, but its origins are a bit of a mystery. Best guess is that it is a reference to the Civil War when Royalist soldiers captured here in the Midlands would be sent to Coventry and imprisoned there.  And as Coventry was a staunchly Parliamentarian city chances are that they would have been treated with disdain and contempt.  We know the expression has been used in that way since at least the mid-18th century, but it gained most currency in the 1950s and 60s when workers who refused to come out on strike would be treated this way.

Teacher knows best.

12-year-old boy at a school in Hampshire has to take his lessons in isolation because he's wearing the wrong type of shoes.  They are all-black and lace-up but are not "polishable" - i.e. they are trainers. There are more and more stories lately about children being punished for not conforming with the school's uniform policy and I make the same point I have made before - the real issue here is almost certainly between the school and the boy's parents, but of course the school have no power over the parents, so what do they do?  They take it out on the boy!  Unfair, unfair, unfair!!

Whooo - hooo. Spooky!

Had a rash of ghost sightings round here in the West Midlands area lately.  The story of the "Grey Lady" who is said to wander the grounds of Dudley Castle is well enough known, and now a visitor has taken a photograph which seems to have captured the fuzzy image of woman in a doorway - mind you, this was daytime and the castle was open to visitors, so I'm not sure why this should be seen as that significant.  More troubling - if you're that way inclined - is a rash of sightings of "the black-eyed child" on Cannock Chase. Unlike the Grey Lady, there is no particular back-story here, and sightings only really go back thirty years or so.  Also sightings of ghostly black-eyed children are common in other parts of the country, and indeed abroad, Cannock Chase can be rather bleak and desolate, and of course is where the bodies were found of three little girls who were murdered back in the 1960s, but any connection with that is tenuous as the black-eyed child did not first appear (as far as is known) until some 20 years later.  You may want to think twice before venturing out on your own after dark!

The naked truth.

A pub in Geneva called The Lady Godiva has been sent a solicitor's letter saying it must change its name because it is infringing the copyright of a Belgian chocolate company which patented Lady Godiva's identity some years back.  So this is a dispute between Switzerland and Belgium (or actually Turkey where the parent company is) so should it concern us?  Well, yes, because if the chocolate company win this battle, there is no reason why they should not demand that those using the Godiva name in this country - even in Coventry - should stop doing so.  But Godiva was a real historical person, even if her naked ride may be a fiction, so can you claim ownership of her name?  "Intellectual property" is a fractious area of the law, and the matter may well hinge on the question of confusion.  If you trade under a name which could be confused with the name of another trader, and that other trader has trade-marked that name, then they can demand that you stop trading under that name.  So is it likely that a pub could be confused with a chocolatier?  That may well be the crucial question.  Mind you, if they try it on with Coventry, I think they will have a massive fight on their hands!

Ha ha

I think I've mentioned before that Nick Owen, a presenter on a local television news programme, is a constant source of groanworthy jokes.  Here's another of his -
     -  What do you call a judge with no fingers?
     -  Justice Thumbs.

Playing with fire?

Strange goings-on at the LibDem party conference.  Nick Clegg seems to have decided to re-invent his party as the "save the ship" party - only we LibDems in coalition can curb the excesses of a Conservative or Labour government.  Dangerous policy it seems to me - they could just as easily be seen as the "millstone round the neck" party.  If either of the big boys come out of the next election with insufficient seats for an overall majority I have a feeling they will decide to form a minority government and dare the LibDems to bring them down.

The Great British Bore - I mean Bake Off

Thank God that's finished!  I mentioned before that I go round to my son's on a Wednesday evening, and they have been watching it for the past few weeks, so I have as well - mainly through gritted teeth.  I find the presenters infuriating - why have presenters anyway?  They add nothing to the programme - indeed I get the impression they feel like spare whotsits at a thingumy and are simply trying to justify their existence.  Then the judges - they may be, and presumably are, experts in their field but their expertise doesn't really show.  For the most part their remarks came across as banal and trivial.  "I don't think this sponge  works" for example - hardly adds to the sum of human knowledge.  And then the bloke who has swept all before him over the past few weeks mysteriously crumbles in the final - which I'm afraid just raises the question of whether it was all a fix.  You can just hear it, can't you - "Come on, you've had your moment of glory - quite a few of them actually - it's time to do the noble thing and think of the ratings". I have to say that my daughter-in-law and granddaughter were rooting for what-ever-her-name-was, although whether this was just the feminine vote going to the lone female up against two men or not, I don't know.  Anyway, when it comes back - as I fear it will - please schedulers, steer clear of Wednesdays!

The robots are taking over...

Apparently supermarkets are extending the use of their self-service checkouts - I suppose you can't blame them, you don't have to pay wages to a machine.  I never use them - or to be more accurate, I have only ever used them once or twice when I was accompanied by one of my granddaughters, who insisted we do it, and led me by the hand.  Why don't I use them?  Well, firstly my shopping tends to include booze of one sort or another, which means that I would have to find an assistant who can press the appropriate button or whatever to verify I am allowed to buy it, but mainly because I am very wary of the "computer says no" syndrome.  It would be very embarrassing (to me at least) to have to find someone to sort out a problem at an automated checkout, whereas at a manned checkout any difficulty can be dealt with without too much of a fuss.  Or perhaps I just like the human interaction - you know, "cold this morning isn't it?" sort of thing.  I'm not a luddite - I even have a smartphone now (although I don't use - or understand - a tenth of what it can do) but I can't bring myself to even think of using one of those checkouts.

It's my life...!

It seems if you have half a bottle of wine a day you are a "heavy drinker" or even, heaven help us, a "mild alcoholic".  Well, that puts me in my place - which is obviously right down there in the gutter!  So the next time I go to see my doctor, I fully expect he will mention this new drug which is supposed to block the receptors in the brain which register the pleasure you get from drinking, thus reducing the urge to have "another one".  I shall politely but firmly say "No, thank you".  Why?  Well lots of reasons - not least that I am 77 and by their definition have been a heavy drinker (or, God help me, a mild alcoholic) for at least the last 40 years, and am in pretty good physical health for my age, so clearly my body can cope with that level of alcohol. But that's not the main reason.  I demand the right to choose - to choose when and what I eat and drink and do generally, and I would object to that choice being interfered with by medication.  I am in control of my body, and wish to remain so.

Silver medal.

Pub quiz question - which fictional character has appeared in the second most number of films?  No prizes really for guessing who comes first - Sherlock Holmes by a distance, but second?  My team thought maybe Frankenstein's monster, and we were on the right lines, but the correct answer is his mate, Count Dracula. By the way, the non-fictional character who has appeared on film most often is Napoleon Bonaparte.

Be careful what you wish for...

I remember about 20 years ago, my wife and I seriously talked about going to see Hong Kong while it was still "British".  We never made it, but I still have a soft spot for the region and so am a little troubled by what is going on there.  My natural instinct is to support those out on the streets in the name of democracy, but I wonder if they have really thought through what they are doing.  Hong Kong is part of China, whether they like it or not and unless they are seriously looking for independence (which would be a whole different ball game) then it cannot be in their interests to have a Chief Executive who is completely out of tune with the government of the mainland.  So the idea that China should "vet" candidates for the post is really no more than common sense which gives HK the best chance of maintaining the special status which I am sure they - and China - want to keep. 

Smoke and mirrors??

The Justice Secretary has indicated that a future Conservative government would repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and replace it with a Bill of Rights.  The avowed purpose of this is to "stop British laws being overruled by human rights judgements (sic) from Strasbourg".  Strasbourg is where the European Court of Human Rights sits. But is this just sound and fury?  I claim no special knowledge of human rights legislation, but I am an ex-civil servant and can read a statute and as far as I can see such a change would have little effect in practice.  The idea that our laws can be overruled by the European Court is a fiction.  The Human Rights Act makes it clear that Parliament (Westminster) is sovereign.  Also the Act makes it clear that although our courts (and those of the other EU members) have to "have regard to" judgments of the European Court, they are not ultimately bound by them.  I have a feeling that this is not so much a fight between Westminster and Strasbourg as part of the ongoing battle between successive governments in this country and the judiciary, who have a habit of coming up with decisions which frustrate what government is trying to do.

Times change...

So Tom and Jerry now has to be shown with a warning that some people might find it racist.  We've been down this road before - there was the time when the Commission for Racial Equality wanted to ban a Tintin book and then there was the BBC's decision not to re-run the comedy series "It Ain't Half Hot, Mum".  I'm simply repeating what I said then, but are people really so stupid (and I think that that truly is the appropriate word) that they cannot understand that views and attitudes are forever changing and that things of the past need to be accepted as "of their time".  What happened, happened - you can't rewrite history (unless you're North Korea, that is).

Join the dots...?

Couple of Government "initiatives" announced over the last few weeks.  1. GP's surgeries to be open seven days a week. 2. Everybody to have their own personal GP. So doesn't that mean that GPs will have to work - or at least be on call - seven days a week, fifty two weeks of the year - or am I missing something?

Separated by a common language...

Food is one of those areas where English and American often use different words. We say aubergine, they say eggplant.  We say courgette, they say zucchini and so on. But the one which can really cause confusion and end up getting you something other than what you thought you were going to get is "chips".  In America, these are the deep-fried wafer thin slices of potato which we know as crisps. Our chips, as in fish and chips, are french fries to them.  Why - who knows?  But I would argue that our words have the better derivation.  Both originate from the Latin.  Chip comes from cippus which means a small pillar, which of course is (sort of) the shape of a (British) chip.  Crisp on the other hand comes from crispus which means curled or wrinkled, which accurately describes our crisps.  So I think this is one of the areas where we can claim the linguistic high ground!

Two sides to every coin...

Are you enjoying this unseasonal warm weather?   Well not everybody is, it seems. We're not shopping as much as we normally do at this time of year, and in particular shopping for clothes.  So the High Street isn't happy.  Mind you, I reckon the first touch of colder weather and we'll be out buying jumpers and looking for a warm winter coat, so it's a case of - hang on in there folks.