A paper hat, a joke... and a fine?

It's illegal to sell Christmas crackers to anyone under the age of 12, it seems.  Yes, really - under an EU directive (what else?) crackers are classified as low-grade fireworks and therefore age-restricted when it comes to sales.  Of course what has happened is that shops have erred on the side of caution and refused to sell them to any young person who cannot produce proof of age.  Playing right into UKIP's hands?

To what end?

I'm always looking for the "why?".  Motivation fascinates me - particularly when it's not obvious.  So what about these recent computer hacks - particularly those affecting PlayStation and Xbox.  Where's the pay-off for the hackers?  Who are their real targets?  Surely not the unfortunate kids who have not been able to use their Christmas present games consoles?  Or are they just collateral damage in a war between the anarchist hackers and Microsoft and Sony?  Or perhaps most worrying and terrifying is that maybe this is just a case of "I'm doing this simply because I can, and I don't care who gets hurt in the process".  So - principled, unprincipled or merely amoral?  I don't know.

Two and two makes...

City Link parcel delivery service has gone out of business with the loss of some 2000 jobs.  Their vans are standing idle and their workers looking for things to do. Meanwhile, Yodel - another parcel delivery service, is having to apologise for delays in delivering Christmas packages due to unforeseen demand.  Join the dots, someone?

But we've always...

Mentioned foxhunting in passing the other day, and of course it's now that time of year where the pros and antis trade verbal blows with each other.  It's now ten years since legislation made it illegal to hunt wild animals with dogs and yet attitudes do not seem to have changed.  Hunt meets still go on - and indeed seem more popular than ever - although today they are theoretically chasing a man-made trail rather then a real fox.  And hunt saboteurs continue to monitor and disrupt.  I've made my attitude plain in previous posts but one of the arguments consistently put forward by those in favour of hunting is that it is "tradition" - which seems to me to be one of those "it means what it means" words.  A tradition is something which has gone on for a long time - nothing more, nothing less.  It certainly carries with it no suggestion of right or wrong.  You can have bad traditions, good traditions and meaningless traditions.  So I don't think that particular word adds anything useful to the argument.

The name's....er....

So the question is - can you have a black James Bond?  One of the things to have come out of the recent leaked e-mails from Sony is a suggestion that Idris Elba "should be the next Bond".  Only problem - he's black. No questioning his acting ability or that he could carry off the part, but....?  The issue seems to be - to what extent do we owe a duty to Ian Fleming to be true to the books he wrote? He certainly portrayed Bond as white - but then it could be argued that he wrote M (Bond's boss) as male, whereas the role has been played over several films now by Judy Dench.  So if one character can be fundamentally changed, why not another?  I have to say I would find it difficult to accept a black James Bond, though I can't really explain why.

Whoopee!

So what does Boxing Day mean to you?  The sales?  Football matches? Race meetings?  Foxhunting (if you're posh)?  It's certainly a busy, busy day for many people.  This was of course traditionally the first day of the "twelve days of Christmas" festivities.  At one time, Boxing Day football matches would be arranged to be local derbies so players and fans didn't have to travel long distances - although that idea seems to have gone the way of all flesh.  For many people - perhaps you - it's the day to relax after the stresses of Christmas Day.  So, a day to be enjoyed.

Season's greetings.

Merry Christmas to all our readers (are there any?).

Not fair!!

I'm going to have a whinge - I feel like a good old whinge.  Went shopping the other day and being the time of year it was, I had to search for a parking space and ended up best part of 100 yards from the shop door. And my legs were having one of their not so good days, so it was a bit of trial to get there and even more so to get back. And right outside the shop were the usual disabled and mother and child parking spaces. And as I was shuffling along, that got me mad.  Think about it - the majority of disabled badge holders are in wheelchairs, so unless the pushers are themselves disabled, why do they need to be able to park near the door?  And toddlers are usually in pushchairs so the same applies.  I have no problem with giving them extra wide spaces - indeed I think we should all be given extra wide spaces - but why should they get preferential positioning?  What about us "not disabled, but getting on in years and legs don't work so well" types??  End of whinge.

And the viewers said...

I have sympathy with those who are criticising the award of BBC's Sports Personality of the Year to Lewis Hamilton rather than Rory McIlroy.  I didn't watch the programme (it's got far too X-Factor-ish these past years) but had I voted I would definitely have gone for McIlroy.  Not that I've got anything against Hamilton - I'm a Formula One fan and pleased that he won the drivers' championship, but as I'm sure he would be the first to acknowledge, his success was as much down to the car he was driving as to his driving prowess.  McIlroy's success on the other hand was 100% down to his own skill.  But then it was decided by a public vote and golf perhaps does not have the same "wow" factor as F1.  I think a panel of sports writers might well have come up with a different result.

Er...........?

One of those "where's the story?" stories.  A 20-some-odd year old pregnant woman is tragically killed, but is being kept alive artificially because her baby is still alive and apparently developing normally.  The fact that this is Ireland, and that Irish law requires it seems to me to be irrelevant. Unless there are things we are not being told, why on earth wouldn't you seek to save the baby?  I keep reading the story and thinking - am I missing something?

Shake, rattle and roll.

If you're opening a bottle of champagne, what shouldn't you do?  Shake it - right? Well, apparently not so - it may seem counter-intuitive, but shaking the bottle, provided you then wait about three minutes before opening it, actually decreases the pressure inside the bottle, and therefore makes it less likely that you will get an explosive shower of foam.  So there!  My wife once did an instore demonstration for Cordorniu I think it was and I remember the trick she taught me for opening fizzy wine - hold the cork and turn the bottle, not the other way round.

Psst! You wanna black market pie? Good price?

We're used to the idea of ruthless businessmen trying to corner the market in some desirable commodity with a view to hoiking up the price and making themselves a fortune.  When you hear of such stories you tend to think in terms of gold, diamonds, oil and the like.  But pork pies??  And yet the Competition and Markets Authority which keeps an eye on such things has expressed concern at the purchase of Kerry Foods by Pork Farm, suggesting that it will put too much of the manufacture of pork pies, sausage rolls, scotch eggs and the like in the hands of one company with a reduction in competition and choice and possibly an increase in price.  So beware the pork pie monopoly!

D'oh!!

Heard of the Darwin awards?  No, neither had I but apparently they are given posthumously to people who have killed themselves in a particularly stupid way, thus removing their genes from the human gene pool and therefore supposedly benefiting human evolution - hence the reference to Darwin.  All very tongue in cheek of course, but now someone has done some research and found that of the 318 people who have won the award since 1995, 282 were men and only 36 women.  As the criteria for getting the award is to have done something outstandingly idiotic, this is put forward as proof that men are more stupid than women!

England playing tonight? Tough!!

So now Wimbledon looks as if it's going the way of other of the sporting "Crown Jewels" with the news that BBC are looking to hive at least some of the matches off to BT Sport.  International football matches, test matches, formula 1 - more and more often these days if you want to watch these events you will have to shell out for pay-tv.  Sign of the times, I suppose, but you can't help but feel that those who are sports fans and can't afford (or are unwilling ) to pay over and above the basic licence fee are getting a progressively worse deal

Swings and whotsits...

So the oil price is plunging.  Good news for me as a motorist, but bad news for me as a holder of investments which include oil shares.  Seems you just can't win!!

How do you detonate chocolate spread?

I think we're all familiar now with the ban on taking more than 100ml of liquid aboard an aircraft in hand luggage.  Whatever we think about it, we are aware of the rule. But did you know ('cause I sure didn't) that the ban extends to gel-type products, which I think most of us would not think of as liquid. So toothpaste, face cream, marmalade and the like are all equally caught by the regulation. This came to my attention when a woman flying from London to Edinburgh had a couple of jars of Nutella which she had bought as Christmas presents confiscated as breaching the rule.  One thing which occurs is that such items are often sold by weight rather than volume - how on earth do you convert grams into millilitres?

Management 101?

Seems totally unbelievable that there was no backup for the computer system which runs the national air traffic control centre and which failed last weekend effectively grounding all UK aircraft and causing chaos for some 120,000 would-be travellers.  I think I've mentioned before that I saw an essential aspect of management to be constantly asking "what if?" and trying to ensure that all the bases were covered. Clearly where computer failure would produce such a catastrophic situation you would surely have another independent system (or maybe more than one) running in parallel and ready to cut in and take over should the need arise?

I baptise thee...

Came across that old idea on the net the other day that "you can't change your Christian name".  Now I think I've mentioned before that, under English common law, you can call yourself whatever you want provided that by so doing you are not breaking the law or seeking to do so.  So how can you reconcile those two statements?  Well, the answer is in the wording.  Your Christian name is the name you were given at your christening, or baptism, and as a christening is a one-off event, it follows that the name you were given then you are stuck with as your Christian name for life. Well, that's not entirely the end of the story.  At your christening, your godparents make certain promises on your behalf.  When you become of sufficient age, Christian dogma allows for a ceremony called confirmation whereby you confirm those promises on your own behalf.  Now there is a theory - don't know if anyone's ever done it - that at confirmation you can if you wish revoke the name you were given and choose another one.  But the point is that you need to differentiate between your first name - that is the name by which you are known to officialdom, and your Christian name (if indeed you have one) - the name by which you are known to the Church.  The former can be changed whereas the latter (subject to what is said above) can't be.

My, my, my....

It is being suggested that Welsh rugby supporters should be banned from singing "Delilah" when supporting their national team.  It has become something of a rugby anthem for the Welsh in the same way as "Swing low, sweet chariot" has for the English.  The objection is that the song is all about a man killing his unfaithful girlfriend and as such could be considered as "promoting domestic violence".  Well, it's a point of view, although I can't see it finding too much favour with the crowds at the Millennium Stadium at Cardiff.  If we are to throw out all songs which include references to conflict or violence, we shall sadly deplete the repertoire.  And what to replace it with?  Ar hyd y nos?  Lovely song, but hardly stirs the blood, does it?  I think things are best left as they are.

Problem solved?

This is a continuation of yesterday's post.  Romeo and Juliet was written sometime in the 1590s and was not an immediate success - indeed Samuel Pepys described it as "the worst that I ever heard in my life".  So initially it was very little performed. After the execution of Charles I in 1649 the Puritans closed all the theatres and it wasn't until Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 that theatreland sprang to life again.  One of the first popular plays to be put on was The History and Fall of Caius Marius by one Thomas Otway. This was set in ancient Rome but was a shameless rip-off of Romeo and Juliet - it even contains the priceless line "Oh Marius, Marius, wherefore art thou Marius?"  But by now the idea of balconies had spread to Britain, so when the heroine Lavinia has her conversation with Marius in the garden below, she is described as being in the balcony.  And when Romeo and Juliet was revived soon after, it took up this idea as being far more stageworthy, allowing Juliet to be outside and fully visible to the audience.  And there you are.

Verona - we have a problem...

If I say "Romeo and Juliet" to you, what's the first thing that comes into your mind? I imagine for many if not most of you it will be the balcony scene - you know "...but soft, what light through yonder window breaks,,,".  And that quote in fact contains the word which is the nub of the problem. My Complete Works of Shakespeare - a Christmas present from my Gran when I was 15 - has the stage direction "Juliet appears above at a window".  So in Shakespeare's original text, there was no balcony - Juliet was inside, behind a window.  Indeed the word "balcony" and the concept of an upstairs outdoor terrace was unknown in Shakespeare's time.  So how come any production of the play almost inevitably has Juliet standing at the balustrade of a balcony? How come you can go to Verona and see the Casa di Giulietta complete with balcony? It's a bit complicated, so I'll leave that until tomorrow.

Where's yer grammar? Upstairs - were's yourn?

Apparently the go-ahead may be given for the first new grammar school for 50 years. I've had my say on this before (see 31/5/07) and I think once again we are missing the big question.  We shouldn't, in my opinion, be talking about the pro's and con's of grammar schools and the 11+ selection system. What we should be discussing is why the comprehensive model hasn't worked the way it was supposed to.  There was nothing wrong with the theory, so why has it not worked in practice? If it had, there would be no need to be talking about new grammar schools.

Statistics, statistics...

Much has been made of a comment by a BBC correspondent that the Chancellor's planned cuts would take us back to the levels of the 1930s - notorious for the Great Depression and the Jarrow March. The Prime Minister has accused the BBC of "hyperbolic" coverage.  So who's right?  Well, they both are.  The BBC are correct that the cuts announced in the Chancellor's statement would take the government's spending as a proportion of GDP to a little over 12% - the lowest since the 1930s. What of course this doesn't take into account is that GDP today is significantly different in both scale and composition to back then so you are really comparing apples and pears.  Perhaps the BBC, as a supposed neutral commentator, should have made that clearer?

Ooh - look at her!!

I would feel somewhat embarrassed and uncomfortable if I were in a restaurant and a woman nearby started to breastfeed a baby.  This does not make what she is doing in any way wrong - simply that that is the way it would affect me.  I would imagine there are a fair few people who would feel the same.  Given this, should nursing mothers give any consideration to the feelings of people like me? All this arises because a mother breastfeeding her baby in Claridge's tearooms the other day was asked by staff to cover-up with a napkin. Don't think for me the napkin would have made any difference - it's more a matter of whether this was an appropriate place for such an activity.  The danger is that this will turn into a feminist/party political issue. Nigel Farage has already come in for some stick for making what seemed to me quite reasonable off-the-cuff comments on the matter. Isn't it just a case that there are certain things which perhaps you should think twice about doing in public?  Isn't it just a case of good manners??

Read on...

Thank goodness common sense has prevailed.  The High Court have ruled that the ban on sending books to prisoners is unlawful (see post of 29th March).  Let's hope the Justice Secretary shows equal common sense by accepting the ruling and not appealing it.

Income twenty pounds, expenditure twenty pounds nought and six...

Yes Mr Micawber, it really is that simple - give out more than you're getting in and you're going to be in trouble.  I am constantly amazed that people can't see that. Following the Chancellor's Autumn Statement there have been the usual cries of "foul" from the Opposition and those who will be disadvantaged. Understandable, but what's the alternative?  And the answer is - tax rises.  Nobody wants to talk about it but that's the reality.  If we are to continue to hand out money at the present rate, then revenue will have to increase significantly to pay for it.  As I have said many times before, Government has no money of its own - what it has is what it gets from us.  So do you want to pay more in income tax, VAT, petrol duty and so on? I guess the answer is no, but if so you have to accept that government spending will have to be curtailed.  It's difficult and painful to take away from people that which they are used to getting but as Gran was wont to say, you can't have the penny and the bun!

Match and more...

I think I've mentioned that I'm a Morrisons shopper, and they've recently introduced a storecard under the above title which compares their prices with other supermarkets - including Aldi and Lidl - and gives you points for any difference which are then converted into money-off vouchers.  Now there are two ways of looking at this - my granddaughter (the 9-year-old - see post of 25th November) said "if they're trying to match their prices with Aldi and Lidl why don't they just sell their stuff at Aldi and Lidl prices?"  And that's a very good question (told you she was smart) - when you think about it, they are effectively admitting that you could shop cheaper elsewhere - which you would think is the last thing a supermarket would want to say.  But the other side of the coin is that by giving you the difference in vouchers they are ensuring that in order to get your money back you have to continue to shop with them - you can't use the vouchers anywhere else.  I'm sure they must have done their research and done the maths and reckoned that the latter aspect outweighs the former, but it's a funny do, isn't it?

Would you believe it??

Can you sexually harass someone who doesn't exist?  It appears there is at least one person who listens to the BBC who thinks you can, because they have written to the Corporation complaining about the way Samantha - who keeps the score in the radio comedy show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue - is constantly subjected to "schoolboy sexist so-called humour".  Well, there's no doubt that she is - for example it has been said of her that she has "scored on more desks than she can remember" and that she enjoys going out to see horror films with men because she likes nothing better then "sitting in the back row and being given the willies for 90 minutes".  So - unacceptable?  The point is, of course, as any aficianado of the show is well aware, Samantha is a completely fictitious character, who simply exists to be the butt of the contestants' jokes.  Clearly the complainant (and as far as I am aware there was only the one) doesn't really appreciate what the the programme is all about.

Ha ha

This from my pensioners' magazine -

A young man was doing his shopping in the supermarket when he became aware of an elderly lady staring at him.  When he got to the checkout, he found the lady was immediately in front of him,  "I hope you didn't mind me staring" she said "but you look so like my late son".  "That's OK" he said. And then she said "I know this will sound silly, but it would mean so much to me if you would say 'Goodbye Mum' as I leave the store."  So as she was going out of the door he shouted "Bye Mum" and she smiled and waved back.  Feeling virtuous that he had brought some pleasure into her life, he went to pay for his stuff,  "That'll be £121.85" said the cashier.  "But I've only got five items" said the man.  "I know" said the cashier "but your mother said you were paying for her things too,"!

Why 10 isn't really a number...

I've mentioned before that the way we count is really down to the way we're made - we count in tens because we have ten digits.  If the Good Lord had created us like the Simpsons, with a thumb and three fingers on each hand, we would count in eights (by the way, did you know that the only character in the Simpsons with a full complement of fingers is God himself?), so counting, Simpsons-style would go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 - and then what?  No, not 8 - it would be 10.  Just as, counting in tens as we do, there are (ignoring zero) only 9 digits, so in eights, there are only 7.  10 is not really a number, it simply represents one of whatever base we are counting in plus 0.  So in binary (base 2) 10 is 2 in decimal.  In hexadecimal (base 16) 10 is 16 in decimal. And in octal (base 8 - the Simpsons way) 10 is 8 in decimal.  So 10 represents a concept - not a fixed number.

Cricket, lovely cricket?

Following the tragic death of Phillip Hughes, has the time come to outlaw the head-high bouncer?  It was of course us who started it all with the (in)famous "bodyline" series against the Aussies back in the 1930s and the objective was simple - to stop Bradman scoring.  Not necessarily to get him out, you understand, but simply to try and prevent him getting runs.  And therein lies the nub of the matter - the head-high bouncer is not normally bowled with any realistic intention of getting the batsman out, but to restrict his ability to score and - more recently - simply to intimidate.  So should any ball which reaches the batsman above chest height be called a no-ball?  Of course that wouldn't necessarily stop a bowler bowling them - it might be thought worth losing a run or two to put the fear of God into a batsman - so maybe some more drastic punishment might be needed.  Or is it in fact a legitimate tactic and we need to accept the death of Hughes as just sheer bad luck?