Do you want fries with that?

Two of my grandchildren have jobs at McDonalds (not the same one) so I was aware of the fact that the chain are looking up go somewhat more tech-y and upmarket, with touch-screen ordering, more adventurous menus and waitress service.  There's been much discussion about this among the staff apparently, and the general feeling seems to be that the firm are in danger of throwing out the baby with the bath-water. McD's have made their name (and their fortune) on being a fast food outlet - with the accent on "fast".  Most customers go there for a quick tasty meal - order, scoff, go, as one put it.  It seems debateable whether that sort of customer will stay loyal if they no longer get what they're used to.  Presumably McD's have done their research, but it will be interesting to see what happens.  My grandkids are more worried about whether their jobs (such as they are) will still be there in twelve months' time.

What sort of reader are you?

It's some time since I've given you an update on my Kindle (see 36/9/12).  Well, firstly, it's not a Kindle any more - I've passed that onto my grand-daughter and I now use the Kindle app on my Nexus to read e-books.  Still buy the occasional paperback, but mostly my reading is done on the Nexus.  Interesting (but perhaps not that surprising) fact I came across the other day is that when someone compared the top-selling books as listed by Waterstones (physical books that is) with the top-selling e-books according to Amazon, they found that the anonymity provided by reading on a Kindle or such (nobody can see what you're reading) means that we download the trashy stuff to read that way, whereas the knowledge that with a real book anyone can see the cover and the title means that we tend to go for the more worthy sort of writing when buying a physical book.  Like I say, not that surprising perhaps - bit like putting your bottle of cheap plonk in a Waitrose carrier bag.

Erm.....

It seems that not remembering those "senior moments" when, for example, you find yourself in the kitchen and can't think why you've gone in there can be an early sign of dementia.  But if I don't remember them, then how do I know I'm not remembering them?  Seems a bit Catch-22 to me! 

Men not allowed.

Women-only carriages on trains?  The idea has been put forward by Jeremy Corbyn, the apparent front-runner in the competition to become the next leader of the Labour party.  This has resulted in immediate cries of outrage from feminists, saying that the idea would set the cause of female equality back years.  Actually it's not a new idea - back in the days of the chuffa-trains, most had female-only carriages. They slowly fell out of use and had more or less died out by the 1970s.  So is there a case for bringing them back?  Apparently assaults on women on public transport are on the increase - in the case of trains, maybe because many of them don't have guards any more.  I suppose the question is, would having women-only areas make any difference? Would men - particularly the "laddish" ones - respect them?  It might even make things worse - but it's certainly worth discussing.

A is for 'orses...

An ex-policeman got told off by the Department of Work and Pensions for spelling out his reference number phonetically and using "Zulu" for "Z".  He was told that you can't do that any more - you now have to use "Zebra".  Really?  Wikipedia still gives Zulu as the correct phonetic word in the NATO alphabet.  I myself go back to the "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog" days, when Z was indeed Zebra.  This, by the way is where "Roger" meaning OK comes from - back then Roger was the phonetic word for R which in the days of telegraphy was shorthand for "message received".  Romeo, which is the current word for R doesn't cut it somehow, does it?  Indeed the switch from the old alphabet to the new NATO one left some of us puzzled.  It was said to be needed because other members of NATO found some of our English words difficult to pronounce and understand.  But what baffled us was that F in the old language was Fox, and in the new NATO alphabet Foxtrot - so if Fox caused problems, how would Foxtrot improve matters?  Anyway, I think DWP need to explain themselves. 

Oh, come on...

So my generation - "middle class pensioners" - are now risking their health, not to mention endangering the future of the NHS, by drinking too much.  The equivalent of a bottle of whisky a week, say the reports.  To which my response is - only one bottle??

Hope we don't lose Carol Kirkwood!

It came as a bit of a shock to realise that the Met Office charge for their services. If I thought about it at all, I always assumed that they were a public service paid for by the public purse.  But it appears not, and it seems that the BBC, who have used them to provide their weather forecasts for nearly a century, can no longer afford them. They intend to put the contract to supply them with weather forecasts out to tender, and as from next year we may be getting our weather information from some foreign organisation.  All seems wrong, somehow.

A sad day.

Papers full of the dreadful plane crash at the Shoreham Air Show when a historic jet fighter doing a loop-the-loop came down on a busy road killing at least seven people. Just awful, but also a little puzzling I feel.  I've been to the Cosford Air Show a few times, and it always seemed obvious to me that the "stunts" performed had been arranged so that if - God forbid - anything should go wrong, the plane would come down in open ground away from any houses.  Here, it seems to me, the loop-the-loop manoeuvre was always designed to end with the plane pulling out dangerously close to the road with houses on both sides and no room for error. There will doubtless be an inquiry and I will be interested to see if this aspect is explained.

Here's a funny thing...

...why is it that on calculators and computer keypads the numbers go from 1 to 9 starting at the bottom and going upwards, whereas on telephone keypads (and ATMs and card readers) they go from 1 to 9 starting at the top and going downwards?  And then, just to confuse the issue, the "0" key is at the bottom on both.  I don't have an answer, but it has been suggested that there may be a connection here with Benford's Law (see 15/9/14) in that data entered into a calculator or computer are likely to comply with Benford's Law, and therefore the lower numbers will be used more often, but telephone numbers and PIN numbers, which are essentially random, will not and therefore the more logical top to bottom layout is used.  Anyone know different?

So you're sorry, so...?

So if Jeremy Corbyn becomes the leader of the Labour party, he will apologise on behalf of the party for the Iraq war.  So...??  I was against the decision at the time and have posted about it several times since, but what use (to me at least) is an apology from a man who was not involved in the decision and indeed voted against it. Pointless, it seem to me.  Now if Tony Blair were to apologise...  But that's never going to happen, is it?

Beg pardon??

A Lancashire police force put a message on Facebook concerning beggars in a local town centre,  It read
"We would like to remind people not to give money to the males who sit next to Wilkinson's in Burnley town centre.  Begging is an offence and quite often causes upset to the elderly people going to and from their vehicles.  It only encourages them to keep sitting there and not make any effort to work, thank you."
And then a little while later a subsequent message read
"We have removed the last post we made about begging in Burnley Town Centre.  We clearly could have chosen our words better on this one and whilst we never set out to offend anyone if we have on this occasion we're sorry. Thanks."
So, am I missing something?  What was wrong with the first message?  Just who was offended - other than possibly the beggars?  The police didn't explain their change of heart, so I remain somewhat baffled.

Shame on us!

I raised the question of giving automatic asylum to those who had helped UK forces by interpreting for them in Iraq back in 2008 and the question is being raised again in connection with those who have interpreted for us in Afghanistan.  I find it unbelievable that we should throw these people to the dogs - where is our sense of honour?

The Lazy Cook

Sausage, pasta and tomato based sauce - what's not to like?  I do this in the slow cooker.  Fry your sausages and cook the pasta until al dente.  I like to use pasta tubes - I think rigatoni is the correct name.  Let the sausages cool and then slice them into rounds.  Put them and the pasta into the slow cooker.  Add some crushed garlic, some chopped onions and peppers and then a jar of your favourite pasta sauce - I think I've mentioned before I particularly like arrabbiata or puttanesca.  Start it off in the morning and you'll have a delicious meal ready for tea-time.

Which box shall we tick?

Every few years I seem to have to come back to the subject of diabetes.  I, as I have mentioned before, am a type-2 diabetic, and now it seems that I, and all the other type-2s are being blamed for potentially "bankrupting" the NHS.  This warning has come from Diabetes UK, the leading charity in the field.  So do I feel guilty? Well, no, not really.  I find the whole business somewhat Kafkaesque.  It wasn't as if I went to the doctor complaining of not feeling well, and he diagnosed the condition. What happened is that, quite out of the blue, I was called in to see the doctor who told me that, on the basis of a blood test I had taken some years previously, he suspected that I had the condition, and it all snowballed from that.  At no time have I felt anything other than fine.  I was talking to an old family friend, who is a long-retired GP and who told me that in his opinion, this was all part of a modern trend whereby the medical profession feel the need to stick labels on things.  He said that back in his day, he would have probably told me that my blood-sugar was a bit high and that I should steer clear of very sugary foods, but that he wouldn't have thought it necessary to put me on medication, and certainly would not have used the word diabetic.  So is this "huge rise" (Diabetes UK's phrase) in diabetes cases any more than a matter of semantics?

Flash, bang, wallop - what a picture!

I'm a private sort of person, so up to a point I can empathise with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge who are getting irritated with photographers stalking them looking for candid photographs of their children - specifically Prince George at the moment. But, through no particular fault of their own, they have to accept that they, and their children, are celebrities, and therefore fodder for that part of the media who deal with that sort of thing.  Annoying, yes, but it goes with the job. They claim that their main concern is protecting their children - but from what?  The whole point of these "candid" shots is that the quarry should be unaware of the fact that they are being photographed, so where's the harm to George, at least while he's still a little child? Like I say, I can understand their irritation, but it's part of being members of the Royal Family, and that isn't going to change, so they need to come to terms with it.

Words, words, words...

Ever come across the phrase "low dudgeon", or "moderate dudgeon"?  No, of course not - dudgeon always has to be high.  It's an example of what is sometimes called a "stormy petrel" expression, where you get two words which always appear together - like stormy petrel.  It's like you can only shrug your shoulders, the only thing you can do with aspersions is cast them, only arms can be akimbo, and so on.  A closely associated concept is what are known as "fossil words" - archaic words which now only exist in set phrases, like "amok" which is now only found in "run amok", or "dint" as in "by dint of".  Funny language, isn't it?

Hic!

A woman in Yorkshire is being prosecuted for moving her car from one part of her front garden to another while over the drink-drive limit.  She did this so that the bin-men could get to her wheelie bin, but this is immaterial - the crucial point is that the whole manoeuver took place on private land, where, to the best of my knowledge, the rules of the road do not apply.  To add to the confusion, the prosecuting authority say that she is not being accused of drink-driving, but of "attempting to drive while drunk".  What the...!

You want chips with that?

Is there anything you can't deep-fry?  A chip-shop in Lancashire has put chipshakes on the menu. And yes, they are battered and deep-fried milkshakes.  The milkshake is frozen first and the frying means that in the finished article the inside has turned back to milkshake consistency.  Eat your heart out, deep-fried Mars bar!

Blessed are the poor in spirit...

Big hoo-haa about a forthcoming Songs of Praise programme coming from the church the migrants have set up in Calais.  Obviously this is a hot potato and can (and will) be seen by many as left-wing pro-migrant propaganda.  But take a step back - this is an overtly Christian programme - pretty well all that is left these days of what used to be the "God hour" on TV between 6 and 7 on a Sunday evening.  Now regular readers of this blog will know I have little time for organised religion, but there are plenty who have, and surely reaching out to these people (who, whatever you think about them, are struggling) is exactly what Christians should be doing?  This isn't propaganda - whether you agree with it or not, this is Christianity in action.

Take a pound of flour...

Well my prayers were ignored (see 10/10/14).  The Great British Bake Off is back - and on a Wednesday.  Help!!!

You fill up with pasta before running a marathon, so...

I'm getting a bit confused by this "drugs in athletics" business.  It all seems to hinge on blood-doping, which I think it can be argued is not doping at all.  If I understand it correctly, it involves blood being taken from a competitor a couple of months before a competition, and then re-injected a few days before said competition.  The competitor's body will have made up for the blood taken in the interim, so the re-injection will increase the number of red blood cells, which enables the competitor to take in more oxygen and thus keep going longer.  So, performance enhancing, which is why it's considered unacceptable, but it's the competitor's own blood - it's not altered or added to in any way, so how is this different from eating a specific diet, or even following a specific exercise regime with the goal of boosting your energy levels? I seem to remember it was Vladimir Kuts (or his medical team) who first developed the technique in the 50s, so it's hardly new.  If the blood is enhanced or treated in any way, then that's a different matter, but simply giving an athlete some of his/her own blood back?  Not sure!

Horses for courses?

What do we make of the demise of Kids Company?  It's clear that Camila Batmanghelidjh, its founder is a charismatic character, and I have no reason to doubt that she sincerely wanted to do the best she could for disadvantaged kids, and I equally have no doubt that she now feels devastated that those children now find themselves cast adrift.  She is on record as blaming "rumour-mongering civil servants and ill-spirited ministers" for the collapse and even sees herself as the victim of a smear campaign by the government and the media.  The lady doth protest too much, methinks?  Doubtless all will be revealed in due course, but at first blush there is a feeling that the organisation was run as a one-man (or rather, woman) band, and instead of using her undoubted talents simply to fund-raise and be the charity's public face, Ms Batmanghelidjh interfered in areas outside her expertise, and in particular the financial side of things - which is basically where it all went pear-shaped.  And the moral is - stick to what you know, and appoint other experts to deal with what you don't.

Air-con on...

One for the "stating-the-bleedin'-obvious" collection.  A couple of Dutch scientists have worked out that your average office air conditioning unit is set at a temperature which is comfortable for men, but a little too chilly for women.  They explain this by pointing out that women have a lower metabolic rate than men, but surely it's simpler than that - it's just a matter of dress.  Most offices still require men to work in a suit, shirt and tie, whereas women tend to go for more lightweight gear, like skirts and blouses, so naturally they feel the cold more.  A jumper usually does the trick.

Odd decision??

Do you live in an odd-numbered house?  I do, and apparently if I lived in Leicestershire I would, as a result, get a second-class service from the police.  The Leicester police force have taken a decision that, where "low-level" crime (such as attempted burglary) is concerned, they will only respond if the house number is even. Their justification is that it is part of their response to cuts in their budget forcing them to examine ways of delivering their services with fewer staff. OK, point taken, but surely if you are forced to pick and choose which reports you respond to, it should be done on some rational basis, and not on something as arbitrary as a house number?  And what about houses with no number, which simply go by a name?

R.I.P.

George Cole - one of our great comedy character actors.  Arthur Daley of course, but for those of us old enough he was Flash 'Arry in the early St Trinians films - indeed I always saw the two characters as the same.  Arthur Daley was simply what Flash 'Arry grew up to be. Thanks for the memories.

Chicken and mushroom, or beef and tomato?

I seem to remember posting some time ago about a vending machine which dispenses freshly cooked chips, although I haven't heard any more about it since, but here's a definite - there's a vending machine in Nottingham which produces hot Pot Noodles - complete with a fork!  Nottingham is of course a University city, and it is being suggested that this is aimed squarely at students - particularly when staggering home late at night from the pub.

What's that thing up there?

I know that this blog's title refers to "current affairs in the U K" but there are sometimes things which happen outside these islands which are sort of global in their ramifications and therefore fair game for comment I feel.  One such concerns an American homeowner who shot down a drone which was hovering over his back garden where his daughters were sunbathing.  He has been arrested and charged with the US equivalent of criminal damage.  Now let's ignore the question of American gun law, and also the possible voyeuristic aspects of the incident, and the question becomes - do you own the air over your house and therefore have a right to defend it?  With the proliferation of drones, this is going to become an important issue.  Well the common law position is that if you own a piece of land, you own everything above and below it "from heaven to hell" (ad coelum et ad inferos). Statute law has limited this basic right and in particular the Civil Aviation Act of 1982 limits your ownership of the air above your property to a "reasonable" height (generally considered to be around 500-1000 feet).  So if a drone comes low over your house, yes, it's probably trespassing - of course what you are allowed to do about it is a different matter, and in this country shooting it down is almost certainly a no-no!

R.I.P.

Cilla Black.  Can't say I really rated her as a singer (although "Anyone who had a heart" was a brilliant song), and her TV shows were not to my taste, but clearly, judging from the obviously heartfelt and sincere tributes being paid to her, she was a very nice person in a industry not known for niceness, and her genuine "rags to riches" story shows what can be done if you have the determination (and a smidgen of luck).  Tarra, chuck.

Horses for courses?

So the 2022 Winter Olympic Games are to be held in Beijing, a city not exactly known for snow.  Of course, this isn't seen as a problem, they'll simply manufacture as much as they need.  I can't help but feel that this somehow devalues the whole thing - shouldn't the Winter Games be held somewhere with a winter sport heritage?  Be a bit like holding the Superbowl at Villa Park.

Just a thought...

Is it worth thinking about opening an immigration office in Calais?  There's a suggestion that a significant number of these migrants are skilled workers or professionals with a good command of English and would probably be welcome here. If this is in fact so, they could be identified over there, provided with a visa and travel over here legitimately.  Doesn't help the others of course, but it might reduce the numbers. 

What's in a word?

I suppose it's natural for those who want to have a pop at the Prime Minister to scrutinise his every word in the hope of finding something to criticise, but was he wrong to refer to the migrants in Calais trying to get over here as a "swarm"?  Well, it's true that the expression is most often used to refer to insects, but my dictionary also defines the word to mean "an aggregation of persons or animals, especially when in turmoil or moving in mass", and that, to me, pretty well describes what is going on over there.