Left a bit, Cap'n.

I've talked before about Lichfield Cathedral whose main claim to fame is that it is the only Medieval cathedral built with three spires.  What I hadn't realised until recently is that because of this particular configuration, German pilots during the war used the cathedral as a navigation aid, and so as a result it and its immediate surroundings stayed safe from bombing.  Another navigation aid closer to where I lived was a reservoir now called Chasewater, but then known as Norton Pool. Stretches of water were useful to navigators back then because they were easier to see in the blackout - particularly if there was a moon. So enemy bombers used to congregate over Chasewater, and then fly on to their targets.   Which meant that, even though my nearby village had little strategic value, we had to put up with a lot of air traffic on its way to and from Birmingham and the surrounding industrial areas.

Manners?

I'm content, if not happy, that Muslims have a world-view which differs from mine. But when they seek to impose that world-view on me in my own back yard as it were, they go too far.  Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol. OK, I have no problem with that, but when they refuse to sit down and have a meal with me if there is alcohol on the table, that isn't on.  This is what happened in the recent visit of the Iranian President to Paris where an official dinner had to be cancelled because the French refused to take wine off the menu.  This was in France, remember - the expression "when in Rome..." springs to mind.

The goggle box.

So, who invented television?  Like many "who invented" questions, the answer is - no one person. People built on other people's ideas, until somebody eventually came up with the goods.  In this case it was a Scotsman called John Logie Baird, who was the first person to demonstrate the ability to transmit an image from one place to another.  Baird's system however was a mechanical one, using spinning disks and was soon superceded by an electronic system using cathode ray tubes, and the man mainly responsible for this was an American named Philo T Farnsworth, whose working model was hijacked by the up-and-coming Radio Corporation of America (RCA).  The Second World War put a stop to the delevopment of television and by the time it was over, Baird's system had been consigned to history, and Farnsworth had been sidelined by RCA.  So who deserves the credit?  You decide.

Brother can you spare...£145.50?

Well, I shan't be offering to pay for my TV licence.  The idea is being floated that, to save the BBC money, those over 75 who can afford it should forego their free TV licence, and send the appropriate money to the BBC.  Well, when they stop spending obscene amounts of money on rubbish programmes and rubbish supposed celebrities, I might consider it, but as that will never happen...

Seeing red??

First it was red doors, and now it's red wristbands.  Am I wrong in thinking that these asylum seekers are being a bit too picky?  I'm not looking for gratitude, but equally I object to being treated as an unquestioning free vending machine which you are entitled to use as you see fit.  If you want free housing and free meals then I should think that red doors and wristbands are a small price to pay. And of course the comparisons some people are seeking to make with the way Jews were treated in Nazi Germany is fatuous in the extreme. They were identified in order to be beaten up, arrested and gassed to death.  These people are being identified so that they can be helped by being housed and fed.

Speak softly but carry a big stick?

So just where does Labour stand on replacing Trident?  Officially they are in favour, but their leader is implacably opposed, and is looking for ways to change their policy - mainly, as mentioned the other day, by putting the decision more in the hands of party activists, rather than his MPs.  Of course, a big problem is that the Trident programme supports an enormous number of jobs.  Scrap Trident and you put thousands of people out of work.  And Corbyn's solution?  Keep the submarines (and therefore the jobs) but scrap the nuclear warheads.  But this is sort of having your cake and eating it, isn't it?  How can you justify the expenditure on the submarines and infrastructure, if they carry no real threat?  It strikes me that this is an all-or-nothing situation - either we are in the game, or we pick up our chips and leave. Nobody can ever be sure of course, but it seems likely that the fact that there hasn't been an all-out nuclear war (and I'm old enough to remember shitting myself over the Cuban missile crisis) is down to the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) approach, in which our nuclear subs have played their part.  Who knows what the next 50 or so years will bring?  I think the Scout motto applies here - be prepared.

Aegean mystery

What is our (i.e. Europe's) policy on migrants coming from Turkey?  Every day seems to bring stories of boats packed with migrants capsizing with loss of life.  And yet, we send ships out to try and find these boats and take their passengers on board and bring them safely to Greece - where they were trying to get to anyway.  So if we're doing that, why not simply provide an official ferry service between Turkey and Greece?  Why force them to put their lives at risk when, if we pick them up, we will help them complete their journey.  Am I missing something?

The clock is ticking?

A new assessment has been made of the likely outcome should Vesuvius erupt, and it has suggested that the whole of Naples and Salermo are now in the "firing line" as it were.  So we're talking of many millions of people being at risk.  It's the best part of twenty years now since my wife and I holidayed in Sorrento and when we woke up in the mornings we were able to look from our bed across the bay and see Vesuvius - best view ever.  I remember we were told back then that scientists reckoned they could give about 10 days warning of an eruption - problem was that it had been calculated that even under ideal conditions the authorities would only be able to evacuate some 30-40% of the affected population in that time.  Sobering thought. And of course Vesuvius is well overdue for an eruption.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Look at what might be!

When you watch all the shenanigans that are going on over the pond as they fight over who should be their next President, aren't you thankful that, for all it's faults, we have a constitutional monarchy?

See what you want to see?

We've spoken before about people seeing something significant in what could be simply unrelated casual events, and a couple more have come to light recently. Asylum seekers up north are complaining that their front doors are painted red, thus identifying them and making them a target for vandals and racists.  Now it may be of course that they are right, and that this is deliberate, but isn't it equally likely that the firm tasked with painting the doors of these houses simply had a load of red paint they wanted to use up?  And then there's the Oscars - much being made of the fact that all the nominees are white.  Again, it's possible that this is the result of intentional discrimination but couldn't it just be that the most deserving candidates in the opinion of those who made the choices just happened to be white?  

Words, words.

There's a nice Indian restaurant in Birmingham called the Deolali Bar - or perhaps that should be "was" because the internet seems to suggest it is shut, which would be a shame if true.  The name comes from a small village in India close to Bombay - or Mumbai as we now must call it - which back in the day was a transit camp for British soldiers arriving in or leaving the country.  Many of them leaving would be doing so because of medical or psychological problems and so the place name became synonymous with illness - particularly mental illness.  Of course as we always did, we gave it a British pronunciation, and it became our sort of slang word "doolally", meaning "crackers".

Culture wars?

Have to say I find myself somewhat in agreement with the Czech Prime Minister when he says that he sees it as practically impossible to integrate the current immigrant Muslim community into European society.  As things stand at the moment, there are just too many fundamental cultural differences between us, and neither side seems prepared to significantly alter their stance.  So is all lost?  I hope not, but I think in the way of the world, that things may get worse before they get better.  In the short term it's probably best we keep ourselves to ourselves, although that will probably just slow the process down even more.

Just because Doris Day sings it...

...doesn't make it right.  In one of my other internet personas, I write piano arrangements of popular songs (click Michael's Music and Memories on the left if you're interested) and at present I'm doing what I can with "Che (or que) sera, sera", which was a big hit for Ms Kappelhoff back in the day. Although the song-writers decided that "que" would be better understood by Hispanic Americans, it started out life as "che" and was supposed to be the motto of an Italian family in the film which featured the song, but I was surprised to find that it isn't proper Italian, and in fact it doesn't exactly belong to any language! It's supposed to mean "Whatever will be, will be" but in Italian this would be "Quello che sarà, sarà", in Spanish "Lo que será, será", and in French "Ce qui sera, sera".  So it's a hodge-podge of all three but if you go with "que" instead of "che" it is closest to Spanish.

Not straightforward

So the Archbishop of Canterbury is in talks with the Pope and the Coptic Pope (leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church) about the possibility of fixing a set date for Easter. There's no mention of his talking to the Chief Rabbi though, and as I have said before, I think that might be crucial, because as I see it, the problem is not so much the date of Easter Sunday as Good Friday which is irrevocably connected to the Jewish festival of Passover.  Another aspect is that much of the Church's calendar is based around Easter, and if you're going to change that to a fixed date, presumably you're going to have to do the same for Whitsun, Pentecost, Trinity and so on.

The Lazy Cook

At this time of year, a hearty soup goes down a treat.  So here's my quick and easy recipe -

• tin of cream of chicken soup
• teaspoon of crushed garlic
• 2 teaspoons of crushed ginger
• good handful of casserole vegetables
• desert spoonful of soy sauce
• desert spoonful of Worcester sauce

Put it all in the slow cooker and give it 3-4 hours.

Third world country

What do you understand by that?  I imagine you take it to mean a poor, under-developed country. And yet, that's not how it started out.  The phrase originated in the Cold War era, when the United States and Western Europe was considered the First World, the Soviet Union and associated countries the Second World, and any country not affiliated to either of them, a third world country.  So in the beginning it was a political rather than a social designation.

Have you got a minute...?

It seems the reason the opinion polls got it so wrong in the run-up to the last general election is that they asked the wrong people!  The suggestion is that, although they asked people at random, they only asked people who were there - who were at home when they called or telephoned, or who were walking in the street or shopping mall when they were conducting their interviews.  And although it's rather non-PC to suggest it, prospective Conservative voters were more likely to be at work earning a crust and therefore not at home or wandering around, whereas those who were, were more likely to be prospective Labour voters. In other words, as it has been succinctly put - Labour voters are easier to find.  Interesting theory??

Westminster blues?

What are MPs for?  The theory is straightforward - they are there to represent their constituency in Parliament.  Does that mean that they should do what the people in their constituency want?  Problem - how do they know what they want?  Clearly there will be those who want one thing, and others who want something different. So - referendum?  The majority carries the day?  But then, why have an MP at all if he or she is simply going to announce the result as it were.  Anybody could do that - a computer program could be written to cope with that.  Surely we elect an MP to do what they consider is in our best interests - even if it is something we personally disagree with. Why am I going on like this?  Because it seems to me that Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, is intent on bypassing his MPs and putting his party's policy decisions in the hands of the party's national executive committee, who are of course elected by the party members, so not even representative of the electorate at large.  So. like I say - what's an MP for?

Music Man - R.I.P

Ironic that a few days after posting about Pierre Boulez, I have to say much the same about David Bowie, Frankly he didn't do much for me, but that doesn't mean he was not a very important and influential figure in the recent history of popular music, and an idol to many. Strangely, the two songs I do remember him for were both collaborations - Dancing In The Streets (with Mick Jagger) and Under Pressure (with Queen). Don't know whether that's significant.

Hedy Lamarr

Came across this name the other day, when searching for something else.  I suppose there's maybe 25-30% of you out there to whom the name means anything. And if you're male and of an age - like me -  chances are that you remember her for a film called "Ecstasy" which if you were very, very quick (and you needed to be) allowed you to catch what was probably your first glimpse of female pubic hair.  But I digress - there was far more to the lady than that. Apart from a serious acting career, she was co-responsible for designing a system which protected Allied torpedoes from being jammed by the Germans in WW II.  She died in 2000 at the age of 85, but I still treasure the memory of her running naked though the woods back when I was a youngster.

Ha ha

- People keep accidentally asking me to buy meat for them.
- By mistake?
- Not you as well!

Information overload??

Going over old ground again, I'm afraid.  With the new government advice on drinking, the question has arisen as to what the safe level of drinking is.  And of course, the answer is, there isn't one. Everything we do - and I do mean everything - has a risk factor attached to it.  It may be a risk of illness, injury or death, but be sure, it is there.  Whether we realise it or not, we spend our lives in a constant state of risk assessment - how likely is it that this (whatever I'm doing or thinking of doing at the moment) will hurt me - either immediately or in the long term?  To the extent that "safe" means anything, it is that the risk is so small that we are prepared to ignore it.  And it is a personal thing - what I am prepared to consider safe, you may not be.  The question really is whether having more information improves the quality of your risk assessment or simply makes you more confused and worried!

Bags of rubbish?

It used to be wheelie bins that risked needing their own sub-blog, but pointless school regulations are fast catching up.  Most recent case is a secondary school in Cheltenham where girls are being sent home for turning up with designer handbags. Quite what the objection is is not clear - the headmaster has advised parents that students should have bags which will accommodate text books and A4 folders, but why this requirement should exclude designer bags is not obvious - to me, anyway. I've said it before - can schools please remember that their primary function is to teach and keep their noses out of peripheral matters which have nothing to do with teaching.

Music Man - R.I.P.

Pierre Boulez - it takes all sorts, and the fact that I can find nothing attractive or worthy in his "music" does not mean that he was not an important figure - perhaps one of the most important - in 20th century classical music.  And I'm sure he would have taken that last sentence as a compliment, because he is on record as saying that he had no time for composers who wrote to "please the public". If you want an idea of the sort of stuff he wrote, go into the kitchen, collect up your pots, pans, cups and glasses, and then bang them together and throw them round the room.  I feel he will be remembered in the long term more as a conductor and theoretician than as a composer - but I could be wrong. 

Hairy!

Did you know that in the Navy you have to make an official request to grow a beard? And then, you have to grow a "full set" and present yourself for inspection to the Master at Arms, who will decide whether or not you are allowed to keep it.  Apart from medical or religious reasons, beards are not permitted at all in the Army or RAF, although moustaches are.  There's one exception to this - there's a particular traditional post in the Army called Pioneer Sergeant, who was a sort of blacksmith cum logger cum path-clearer cum general hardware operative and who was allowed to wear a beard on parade, and carry an axe in place of a rifle. And by the way, the rule in the RAF is that moustaches must not be wider than the mouth, and therefore the famous "handlebar" moustache is not in fact allowed!

Yipee!

Good news for a change on the nutrition front.  The list of "superfoods" which are praised as being healthy and good for us now includes black pudding.  Way to go!!

Six eights? Quick now!

Not sure about this idea that all primary school children should be tested on their times tables.  I think the question is whether times tables have any real relevance in an era when we all have access to electronic aids when doing calculations.  After all, learning your times tables is simply an exercise in memory - it doesn't make you a better mathematician, any more than learning a poem off by heart makes you better at English.  I get the impression that this is very much a matter of "I had to do this when I was a kid, so it must be the right thing to do".  But of course the world has changed dramatically since then.  My memory automatically tells me that six eights are forty-eight - so what??

Ladies and gentlemen... and those who aren't sure?

"Gender" is very much a word of the moment, it seems.  An MP is calling for references to gender to be removed from passports and driving licences, and there is a suggestion that anyone should be able to officially change their gender by simply filling in a form - a bit like changing your name by deed-poll.  If I understand it correctly (and maybe I don't) a distinction is being made between sex and gender. Your sex depends upon what sticky-out or dangly bits you have, whereas your gender is more a psychological issue - it's how you feel.  And the problem arises where these two are not the same.  I don't think this is a new phenomenon (as a child, I had a mate who much preferred playing with dolls and dressing up) but recently in the modern spirit of minority rights it seems we must make special arrangements for those who feel their physical attributes do not accurately reflect who they feel they are.  Not sure, mind you, whether this is a good thing - it might make those who are mildly confused about their identity even more confused and unsettled?

Auld lang syne

Yes, we all sing it at New Year, but what on earth does it mean?  Well, first off, it wasn't, as is commonly thought, written by Rabbie Burns. although he is responsible for bringing it to public attention,  He was the first to admit that he copied it from much earlier sources.  My dad always told me that it meant "for old time's sake" but I don't think that's quite right - it actually translates from old Scots as "old long since", which I think actually means something more like "old times past".  The whole poem is telling us that, maybe particularly at this time of year, we should remember old friends, and good things which have happened to us.  January is named for the Roman God Janus who had two faces - one looking back and one looking forward, and auld lang syne reminds us that it's just as important to look backward and remember as it is to look forward.

Here we go again...!

I get a bit cross when I have to go over old ground - a pub in Wales which has been there over 150 years has had its Facebook page banned for "racist or offensive language".  So what has it done which is so terrible?  Well, the answer is it hasn't done anything - the problem is its name which, as it always has been, is The Blackcock Inn.  And some idiot apparently found this offensive, complained to Facebook, and there you are.  So, old ground?  Yes, I've complained before about the way recent legislation and regulation has more and more put the question of whether an offence has been committed in the hands of the "victim" rather than the legal system where it should be.  And this is a similar situation - somebody finds the name of this pub offensive, and therefore it officially becomes offensive, irrespective of how unreasonable or silly the original finding was.  You could say that whoever made the complaint just has a dirty mind!  An injection of common sense is required I feel.

'Twas ever thus.

The New Year's Honours List - and the usual outcry when, as some people see it, the unworthy get rewarded, and equally when, as some people see it, those who deserve recognition are overlooked. Same every year.  Just go with the flow folks - we're never going to get a list that everybody agrees with.  Perhaps the more pertinent question is - has the honours system any real relevance in the 21st century?