Ha ha

- How do you think the unthinkable?
- with an itheberg.

Diversity?

If you are an employer - particularly if you are a public service employer - to what extent, if at all should the make-up of your staff mirror the make-up of the public at large?  The question has arisen because the BBC have a target that, by 2020 half their workforce will be female, 15% from the ethnic minorities and 8% lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender - this being apparently the way the general population of this country breaks down.  But we've been down this line before - if you're interviewing someone for a job, surely the overriding consideration has to be - are they right for the post?  Their gender, sexual persuasion and where they were born is surely immaterial. What worries me is the possibility that someone absolutely 100% right for a job may lose out because they are a straight British female and you need a man/lesbian/hindu to make up the percentages.

Beam me up, Scotty.

The transporter is such an integral feature of Star Trek episodes that it's interesting to learn than it was never part of the original concept. Gene Roddenberry, who created the series, intended that the USS Enterprise would land on the planets it visited,  But apparently this would have involved unacceptable expense in constructing the necessary sets, so the transporter was introduced as a cost-saving measure as it (originally) involved no more than basic fade-out fade-in technology.

Hillsborough

Can't say I'm surprised by the jury's findings - indeed you have to wonder if they would have dared find otherwise.  To me, it seems that we have simply substituted one whitewash for another.  At least, let's hope that this is now the end of it - but I fear not.

What's in a name?

Suggestion that the M6 Toll Road should be opened to motorists toll-free when there are serious hold-ups on the M6 itself.  There have been a couple of occasions recently where an incident has resulted in the M6 coming to a complete standstill for several hours and this has resulted in the idea being looked at again.  Of course, those of us who remember when the road was first proposed, and indeed while it was under construction, will recall that back then it was called the BNRR - the Birmingham Northern Relief Road - and it was sold to us on the basis that it would do precisely what is now being discussed, that is, be a relief road for the M6.  Don't hold your breath though - the official line seems to be that the M6 would have to be closed for a period of days rather than hours before the Toll Road would be opened for general use.

Personal

Grief is the price we pay for love.

Give the lad his due.

So, 400 years since the death of Shakespeare and much is being written about him. And of course, the question of the authorship of his works comes to the fore again. So let's get this straight - during his life, and for many, many years after his death, there was absolutely no suggestion that he did not write the plays and poetry published under his name.  It was not in fact until the mid 1800s - a couple of centuries after his death - that people began to question how it could be that a person of such humble birth and upbringing could have written such magnificent works.  And that's it really - this was (and continues to be) class snobbishness, pure and simple. It's no coincidence that those put forward as the "true" authors of Shakespeare's works are (with the possible exception of Marlowe) all members of the aristocracy.  The idea that a lowborn lad from a no-account Midland village could produce such works of genius was anathema to a London-centric Victorian society with its rigid ideas on class and "knowing your place". Just keep in mind that his contemporaries had no doubt he was the author - and we shouldn't either.

Earth Day

Google usually keeps me abreast of notable anniversaries by replacing their usual masthead with some doodle or other.  So yesterday apparently was Earth Day.  A day, according to Google, for "demonstrating support for environmental protection". Sort of "save the planet" stuff then?  So what actually happened?  As far as I can see some countries signed up to a treaty to limit the proliferation of greenhouse gasses, but that seems to be about it.  Symbolic is I think the word, which usually means being seen to do something which doesn't actually involve doing anything.  Or am I getting more cynical in my old age?

Fancy that!

One of those "surely everybody knew that?" stories surfaced on the BBC news the other day.  Some research has shown that most bullies were themselves bullied as children or otherwise had an overstrict upbringing.  But I thought this was common knowledge.  If somebody lashes out at you, the temptation is to lash out yourself at someone weaker.  I remember my son, when he had a menial job at a local supermarket, explaining how the shit would cascade down from up on high, until it reached him at the bottom of the chain when, as he put it, "I would go into the storeroom and kick the broom". Certainly when I was at school we had bullies, and in one case for sure it was a boy who we later discovered had a very unhappy home life - didn't make it any easier to deal with at the time, mind you.

R.I.P.

Victoria Wood - one of a kind and taken far, far too soon,  That I am still here and she is not just ain't right, somehow.

Nul points?

Very much a case of - which came first, the chicken or the egg?  The producer of the Eurovision Song Contest has accused the late Sir Terry Wogan of totally spoiling the contest by poking fun at the contestants and their songs.  He makes the point - quite correctly - that back in the 60s and 70s, the UK invariably used to be there or thereabouts, but then things changed and we became one of the also-rans. However he seeks to connect this with the fact that it was at the beginning of the 70s that Wogan took over presenting the show and, as he sees it, his rather irreverent style of commentary convinced the British public - and the BBC - that the Contest was not to be taken seriously and not worth putting any real effort into it.  Of course, you could equally well point out that it was around this same time that "performances" started to become more important than the songs, and tactical voting became more blatant.   So was Wogan the cause, or simply reflecting the reality?

Pack it in for Heaven's sake!!

We have a government who want us to remain in the EU.  The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a senior member of that government and is also campaigning for us to remain in.  We now have a report from the Treasury saying that leaving the EU would make us all significantly worse off.  The Chancellor is effectively in charge of the Treasury.  Surprise??  I've said it before - I get the impression that both sides in the debate are getting more and more desperate and their claims more and more outlandish.  Rather than have another 10 weeks of this rubbish, I think we should declare a moratorium until maybe a week before the referendum date. 

(Un)prepared??

Sad to see the Villa get relegated.  Regular readers will know that "my" team is Wolves, but I had an older cousin who regularly used to take me to see the Villa's home matches when I was a kid, so I have a soft spot for them as well. Difficult to see them coming straight back up with the set-up they have at present - indeed there is a greater probability that they might go straight down to League One.  Let's hope that Lerner can find a buyer who is prepared to put the money in, and that they get a manager who can spend it wisely.  Ironically, they have just re-designed the club badge which used to be a stylised lion with the word "Prepared" below it. The new badge just has a slightly differently designed lion, but (perhaps significantly) they have dropped the word!

Take two...?

I imagine there must be many films where the original script has been changed as shooting has progressed. Indeed I remember reading somewhere that the script of "Casablanca" was pretty well rewritten day by day and not even the actors knew how it was going to finish.  But now we find that in the original script of Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi was supposed to survive his light-saber fight with Darth Vader and escape with the rest of them.  This is courtesy of the bloke who played Chewbacca who still has a copy of the original script.  I wonder if the change was at the behest of Alec Guinness who made no secret of the fact that he disliked the film and his character and maybe wanted out?

Brexit - and then...?

All the talk seems to be about what leaving the EU will or won't do for us.  It seems to me that little or no thought has been given to what us leaving the EU will do to the EU.  There seems to be an unspoken assumption that if we leave, we will have to deal with an EU which is the same as it is now, just minus us. But I wonder if this will be so.  There are certainly voices within the EU suggesting that if we leave, there could be a domino effect leading to a partial or complete breakup of the Union. I'm still of the opinion that on balance we are better staying in, but I think the "outers" owe us more than vague promises of what they hope might happen if we leave, and in particular how we would deal with what might be a fractured Europe.

Look at what he's got!!

I thought that the politics of envy had more or less died out in the 70s or 80s, but it appears not.  As far as I can see, the fuss about the PM's and Chancellor's tax returns has little if anything to do with how much tax they have paid, but far more about how much they are worth.  In other words, it's all to do with how well off they are, or are perceived to be.  I suppose the argument concerns the extent to which someone worth hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of pounds can appreciate the problems of someone with little or no savings living hand to mouth.  And it's a reasonable argument, but a rather pointless one. Power and wealth tend to go hand in hand so those in authority over us will always tend to be better off than we are - and the experiment of various countries with Communism didn't change this equation. So have a moan if it makes you feel better, but it ain't going to change mate! 

Safe space?

What the hell is a "safe space"?  It's an expression I hear more and more these days, but it's not explained and the assumption is that "everybody knows" what it means. As it seems to be mostly associated with Universities, I asked my grand-daughter who is in her third year at a Midland University that perhaps I'd better not name.  In essence, she said, it's the opposite of open discussion.  It's a way of shutting up anybody who disagrees with your point of view.  You get some particular place or event officially designated a safe space on behalf of some group (usually feminist or pro-LGBT) and then you can forbid entry to anyone who you think might seek to say something you don't want to hear.  It's a sort of comfort blanket for whacky weirdos (her words, not mine).

If you wait long enough...

What goes around, comes around, folks.  If you refer back to my post of 29/10/12 you will find me talking about the refusal of the BBC (or more accurately, the Director General thereof) to have a statue of George Orwell outside Broadcasting House on the grounds that he was too left-wing.  Well now, three years later, it seems the Corporation have had a change of heart. and are proposing an 8ft statue of the broadcaster and author to be erected.  What would the man himself have made of it? Well, he was no great fan of the BBC, once describing it as "something halfway between a girls' school and a lunatic asylum", but he was a great believer in the need for it - one of my favourite quotes of his was "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not wish to hear".

School dinners?

Apparently rice pudding is making a come-back.  Thanks to featuring in an American sit-com, this bane of schoolmeal desserts is becoming chic again with Waitrose reporting that ready-to-eat rice pudding dishes are "flying off the shelves".  Can't say that it would be my first choice of dessert, although my particular hate at school was sago pudding (frog-spawn).  Wouldn't say no to a turkey twizzler though.

Let's have some real news.

Apart from the newspapers looking for a story, and those seeking to make political capital out of it, is anybody really interested in the Prime Minister's financial affairs? There seems to be general agreement that he has done nothing illegal or even vaguely improper, so once again I am struggling to see what all the fuss is about. 

And poor Holywell fell at the second - ah, well.

O, mein papa...

Headline story apparently is that the Archbishop of Canterbury's dad is not who he thought he was. Am I alone in thinking - so....??  (Closely followed by - why??)

We're back...

...after a nice week in a big house right by the Menai Bridge.  Lovely views.  A good time was had by all.  And my silly system pick for today's Grand National is Holywell.

R.I.P.

Ronnie Corbett - tears down here, but there will be laughter in Paradise.
And we're off for our traditional family Easter holiday.  See you in a week.