Money grabbers!

Oh for the days when you just turned on the telly and knew that if something was on you would be able to watch it.  What's brought this on?  Well, two things - firstly I've received correspondence from BT telling me that if I wish to continue watching their sports channels (and they now are going to be the only purveyors of European football) it's going to cost me an extra £5 a month, and secondly the news that Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May are going to produce a "Son of Top Gear" programme - but on Amazon Prime, which, surprise surprise, is a subscription channel.  Whatever you think of the BBC, the whole of their output, such as it is, is available to any licence holder without restriction.

Me and my mouth!

So first it was "bastard" (see 25th June) and now it's "piss".  Apparently Helen Mirren on breakfast television commented on a camping trip she went on with Liam Neeson where it "pissed with rain" which prompted an apology from the presenters, and she was told "we can't say things like that first thing in the morning". Really? Why not? It's yet another word with a respectable heritage going back to Middle English, and indeed further back to Latin.  Who decides these things and on what basis?  I can only imagine that the reference to first thing in the morning is a coded way of saying when young children might be watching, but really - do we think kids don't know these words, and worse?  Just whose sensibilities are we trying to protect?  

Why bother...

...writing a will?  It has always been the case that, if all the beneficiaries agree, the specific terms of a will can be altered, but now the Court of Appeal have ruled that, even where the testator makes her (in this case) wishes clear and even goes to the lengths of explaining why she's doing what she's doing, the terms of the will can be set aside and the money redistributed.  Which, like I say, makes you wonder if there is any purpose in making a will (which is generally not cheap).

Ooh look, tiramisu...

I think my wife was way ahead of her time.  When we used to go out for a meal, her attention was always very much on the sweet trolley.  Quite often she would choose a skinny main course, so as to have plenty of room left for a big pud, and she had this fantasy of a restaurant that served only desserts. And this is where she was ahead of the game, because apparently the latest foodie trend is for restaurants that serve only one type of food - so one does just cereal-based dishes, another all the variations of cheese on toast, yet another just hot dogs, and the most recent, every possible way of serving chips. so the idea of one dealing only in puddings ain't so daft.  What a clever girl!

So that's what I am??!

You may remember my problem over the census question concerning religion, where I was confused as to whether I could really tick the box for "Christian" given that I didn't really believe in some of that religion's basic tenets, and yet I felt equally uncertain about saying "no religion".  As I said then, what I really wanted was some way of saying "I believe it's possible there is a God, but not that He intercedes in our everyday life, and that therefore the Christian church is barking up a gumtree". Well, I've now discovered that there is a word that precisely covers this point of view - it's called Deism.  I can't remember whether that option appeared on the census form, but at least it gives me something to possibly write in, if we get another census.

Mixed messages

The recent death of a young girl as a result of taking "slimming pills" which turned out to be poisonous, has highlighted the obsession which many young people have with "body image" and which it is suggested is fuelled by pictures of super-slim celebrities in film, on TV and in the media.  But then in the same news bulletin was a piece about the "ticking time bomb" of childhood obesity.  Sort of smacks of damned if you do, damned if you don't, doesn't it?

Red and orange and pink and green...

Did you know that carrots were originally purple?  Occasionally genetic mutations would produce red, yellow or orange ones.  In the Netherlands, orange carrots were particularly prized because orange was (and still is) the primary colour of the country's flag, and so carrot growers there cross-bred the vegetable to produce more of the orange ones.  And over the centuries, this became the default colour.

Explanation

It seems I need to expand on Wednesday's post.  Why did I put "To our shame"? What happened was unfortunate, confused, disorganised, chaotic even, but shameful? Well if you put "Menezes" into the search box above you will see that what I considered back then, and still consider as shameful is not so much the death of Mr Menezes, as that still to this day, no-one has been prepared to accept the slightest responsibility for what occurred.  Mistakes happen, but they happen as a result of somebody doing something they shouldn't, or not doing something they should.  And yet ten years on, we are still no nearer knowing who did or didn't do what.  The police officer in charge of the whole business has, in the best traditions of British public service cock-ups, been promoted and decorated.  There's the shame.

Déjà vu?

A psychology exam at an American university concluded with this question -
"Here you have the opportunity to earn some extra credit on your final paper grade.  Select whether you want 2 points or 6 points added onto your final paper grade.  But there's a small catch: if more than 10% of the class selects 6 points, then no one gets any points.  Your responses will be anonymous to the rest of the class, only I will see the responses."
The setter said he has been including this final question since 2008, and only once had less than 10% of students opted for 6 points.  He said his objective was to teach students that "if too many people overuse a common resource then everyone in the group suffers, not just the selfish ones".  But what immediately struck me was that this is simply a slightly different slant on the Prisoner's Dilemma - see the series of posts in December 2011.

In memoriam - 10th anniversary

Jean Charles de Menezes.  To our shame.

Caw, caw...

Why all this fuss about culling seagulls?  They're not an endangered species (quite the reverse) and they're ruthless scavengers and a down-right nuisance - and not just at the sea-side, they come right inland to scavenge at land-fill sites.  We get them here in the West Midlands, and we're about as far from the sea as you can get. They're not even particularly attractive birds, so I have no problem with fighting back against them by whatever means are at our disposal.  Darwinian "survival of the fittest" might even eventually result in them reverting to their traditional role of herring gull and plying their trade out at sea.

Wasn't she Leander's girl-friend?

What do you understand by the word "hero"?  Well, Greek mythology aside, the dictionary definition is "someone distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, fortitude etc."  Note the word "exceptional".  So...?? Well, there's a growing tendency to classify someone as a hero for suffering as a result of just doing what was expected of them, or, even worse, by losing their life as a result of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tragic - yes, but heroic?  The problem has been brought into recent focus in America as a result of Donald Trump, a candidate for the Republican nomination for President critising those calling John McCain - another candidate - a hero when, as Trump sees it, all he did was get captured and spend over five years in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp.  Anything but a walk in the park, but heroic? Is using the word in this way simply devaluing those whose exploits are truly heroic, as per the dictionary definition?

Brilliant!

What a nice change to be able to report a positive school story.  Ten out of ten to a primary school in Newport, South Wales.  Schools are allowed to shut to pupils for five days a year for "teacher training". Traditionally they spread these days out throughout the year, but this school intends to have these five days all together during 2016, thus giving children a whole week off in June in the hope that parents will be able to arrange a family holiday before the prices skyrocket for the summer six-week break. Like I say, ten - no make that eleven - out of ten!

Now you see it...

How crafty!  A couple of years ago Parliament voted against taking any military action in Syria. Whatever your views on the subject, you would think that that was decisive, and that no UK forces would take part in any action in Syria without a new vote approving such a move.  The Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary have both been making noises recently suggesting that they will ask Parliament for such approval - but now we learn that UK forces have in fact been involved in air strikes in Syria.  So what's going on?  Well in a ploy worthy of one of those clever street magicians, those involved are doing so not as UK forces, but as personnel "embedded" in the forces of other countries - notably the US.  And, as the Ministry of Defence explains, "when embedded, UK personnel are effectively operating as foreign troops".  Fiendishly clever, no??

Well, what a surprise!

Cardigan in Wales had a pay and display car park.  Well, the car park is still there, but the pay and display machines have all been vandalised and the council can't afford the money to repair them.  So, what's the story?  Now that people can park for free, the local town-centre shops have seen their takings increase by up to 50%. There's a moral there somewhere!

To the pure all things are pure.

This is the official flag of the Black Country.  Can't say it does a lot for me, but it was the winning design of a (then) 12-year-old girl and the colours were inspired by the description of the Black Country by an American in the mid-1800s as "black by day and red by night" - a reference to the black smoke covering the area by day, and the red glow of all the furnaces at night.  And then, one of the major industries of the area was chain-making, and so you can follow the young girl's thinking.  All very innocent, yes?  Well, there are those who take pleasure in twisting things to fit their own agenda, and a local equal rights campaigner has called the flag "offensive" because the use of the chain motif carries implications of the slave-trade and oppression generally.  Well, I suppose you see what you want to see, and his comments probably tell us more about him and his mindset than they do about the flag.  I prefer to see it though the young girl's eyes as she intended it to be.

If you wait long enough...

I've posted before about the somewhat spooky way in which topics I've talked about suddenly become newsworthy some time later.  Well the BBC's role is coming under scrutiny and a forthcoming government green paper is expected to suggest that it should stop chasing viewer figures and concentrate more on public service broadcasting.  Don't want to blow my own trumpet, but have a look at what I was saying back on 24th July 2007.

'Twas ever thus.

Apparently there are people up in arms because in a new book "Go Set a Watchman", Atticus Finch, the hero of "To Kill a Mockingbird" is revealed as a racist bigot.  For many it seems this is beyond belief.  As one tweeter put it, it is like "Spielberg doing a sequel in which ET punches Eliot in the face and steals his lunch money."  And yet as I understand it, Watchman was written BEFORE Mockingbird, even though it's been published decades after.  So will the real Atticus Finch please stand up?  I wonder if The Simpsons will do a take on this - I seem to remember he was a hero to Lisa. It does seem a bit strange to set a man up on a pedestal and allow him to remain there for years, only to then knock him down - together with the beliefs and dreams of a generation of young people - mainly I suspect, girls.  There have been suggestions that the book is being published against the wishes of Harper Lee, the author, and it would be interesting to know how she feels about all this, but she is old and reputedly infirm and in any case was always somewhat of a recluse, so we'll probably never know.

Through the looking glass...

I don't think you would want to play poker with Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister.  And yet it seems to me that that is just what he has been doing over the past months with the various organisations his country owes money to.  He's bluffed and bluffed and finally when his bluff was called, he's thrown his cards in.  We now have the crazy situation where he is now offering to submit to terms which are worse than the terms he himself persuaded his country to reject in the recent referendum. The problem now is of course, can he be believed?  Is he bluffing yet again?  I'm just glad I'm not Greek!

Music Man

The death last month of Ernest Tomlinson has robbed us of one of the ever dwindling number of composers of English Light Music,  This is a genre somewhat confined to these islands - don't know why this should be so, but no other country has produced this type of music in any notable quantity. So what is it?  Well it's been described as music which is too low-brow for Radio 3, but too high-brow for Radio 2.  You know it when you hear it - Coronation Scot, The Devil's Gallop (theme to Dick Barton),  By The Sleepy Lagoon (theme to Desert Island Discs) - you get the idea.  It had its hey-day in the middle of the last century, but as radio gave way to television so what you saw became more important than what you heard and the character of "entertainment music" changed.  If you're interested in looking further into it, try the music of Eric Coates, Ronald Binge, Ron Goodwin, Haydn Wood et al.  

Well I never!

Following the budget, people have been piling in to say that the changes it makes will disproportionally hit the poorest members of society.  Now ignoring for a moment the political and philosophical questions as to whether this is the right way to go, just look at the facts.  Welfare is being cut, and obviously this will have the greatest effect on those on welfare.  And those on welfare, pretty much by definition, will be those earning the least - so the cuts will hit them hardest.  Like I say, I take no position on whether or not this is a good or bad thing, but I do get annoyed when people look us in the eye and make solemn portentous pronouncements which are actually no more than stating the bleedin' obvious!

Uh??

A legal curiosity - indeed a double curiosity.  A man has appeared before a Scottish Sheriff Court on a charge of hamesucken.  This is an ancient offence for which the punishment at one time was death. It is defined as "pursuing someone into their home to assault them".  So all very archaic and oldy-worldy, but why the double curiosity?  Because on the facts as reported the offence was not committed.  What distinguishes hamesucken from simple breaking and entering is the word "pursuing". And yet it appears that this was a case of a 93-year-old woman who was awoken at 2 a.m. by the presence of a man in her bedroom who then went on to attack and rob her.   So robbery, assault, GBH and all that - yes, but not as far as I can see, hamesucken.  Be interesting to see where this goes.

Awkward...

Liked this one I saw on the Net - "I've missed a special delivery and need ID to go and collect it. Problem is the delivery is my passport, and I have no driving licence"

Kemo sabe

Did Indians really say "how" as a greeting?  Well, some of them sort of.  The idea that there was one "Indian" language is of course laughable.  There were a great many languages, but in a lot of the "plains" languages (middle America) the word for "hello" or "greeting" was "ho" "hao" or something such. And that where it comes from.

A rose by any other name...

Shrewsbury - how is it pronounced?  As spelled, or Shrosebury?  I worked there for a time, and was always told that those who lived there pronounced it as Shrewsbury, and only outsiders pronounced it as Shrosebury.  But then, you can look at old maps going back to the 18th century where it is spelled Shrozebury so who's right?  And does it matter?  Can't we just accept it for the lovely historic market town it is?  A lot of fuss about nothing?

No cookies, no friends

I'm sure you've heard about the response of Siri (Apple's "chat-bot") when asked what is 0 divided by 0. But can you divide by zero?  Isn't the problem that zero is not really a number, and if you treat it as though it is, you will get silly or weird results. So what is zero?  It's the numerical equivalent of nothing - it represents a lack of something.  In mathematics, a lack of quantity, a lack of value, a lack of number. And given that the division sum a/b asks the question "how many lots of b are there in a" this clearly only makes sense if b has a value.  If b is zero, then the question makes no sense.  Which is what Siri says, albeit in a humourous way.

D'oh!!!

There are stupid ideas, and then there are really, really, really stupid ideas. Someone has developed a case for an iPhone which looks like a hand-gun, complete with pistol grip and trigger.  Taking any bets on how long it will be before somebody using such a case is shot by someone (probably a policeman) who mistakes it for the real thing? Moves afoot to prohibit its sale here in the UK, but of course you can't control the internet.  Ranks about 110 on the stupidity scale I think

Best say nowt?

A lorry driver working for a local firm who was on his way back from a trip to France was alerted by noises coming from the back of his vehicle.  He stopped and notified the police.  They turned up and when the back of his lorry was opened up 13 illegal immigrants were found hiding there.  You would think the driver behaved correctly and should be applauded - yes?  Well, no apparently.  The firm has been fined some £18,000 for "failing to carry out the necessary checks".  There's got to be something wrong here, surely?  As was pointed out, had the driver simply opened up his lorry and let them go no-one would have been any the wiser.  So this is one of those areas where you are punished for doing the right thing?  Crazy!

Greece

Anybody else think that the worst outcome of Sunday's referendum in Greece for the rest of us would be a "yes" vote?  If it's "no" then the position is pretty clear cut - Greece more or less immediately booted out of the eurozone, and maybe the EU as well.  But "yes"?  The Greek government would almost certainly have to resign and call a general election, and that takes time.  And what would be the position in the interim?  The EU would have to provide some sort of financial aid for the Greek banks and probably write off or defer some of its debt, just so that it could continue to function in the short term.  In other words just what Greece has been asking for over the last few weeks!  And so the situation would continue to stagger on.  It's a funny old world...

River deep, mountain high.

So is it Mont Blanc or Monte Bianco?  Is it in France or Italy?  The border between the two countries certainly runs along the mountain range, but there are several points at which its actual course is a matter of dispute - the mountain being one of them.  The matter has come to the fore again following the construction and official opening of a new cable-car by the Italians - an event which seems to have been deliberately snubbed by the French.  There have been suggestions that the summit of the mountain should be declared joint French/Italian territory - but this of course is far too sensible an approach to have any chance of success.  So the dispute rolls on...

I resign...

So when is a resignation not a resignation?  First it was Nigel Farage who, having failed to win the seat of South Thanet at the last general election, resigned as leader of UKIP.  But then it seems his resignation was not accepted by the party and so he remains leader even though he's resigned.  And now we have Sepp Blatter who a few weeks back stated he had decided to "lay down [his] mandate" as head of FIFA and said he would "not be a candidate" for re-election.  But now he is saying that that did not amount to a resignation and that he remains head of FIFA until such time as there is a re-election contest - which, as head of the organisation he will organise and control the timing of. Clever, no??