And the winner is...

I've little time for the Oscars (see 27/2/07) and have to admit to a secret smile or two at the goings on this time (the words "piss-up" and "brewery" spring to mind) but I still find it difficult to understand why we make such a big thing of it over here - it dominated the news on breakfast television yesterday, and I have a feeling that it would have done even without what happened.  And that poor man who has to stand at the entrance to that big party that goes on trying to catch passing "celebrities" in the hope that they will spare him a few words - I think he deserves an award for persistence!

We are not amused...

So Trump has failed his first "has he got a sense of humour?" test.  He has said he will not attend this year's White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.  This is an annual event which has been going for the best part of 100 years, and it is traditional for the President to attend and indeed to be the butt of most of the jokes,  A lot of people wondered how the notoriously thin-skinned Trump would cope with that - especially after 2011 when he did attend (as the then celebrity host of The Apprentice) and was mercilessly lampooned by President Obama and clearly didn't like it. Well, now we know - he's simply avoided the issue.

Let's do it properly!

The mummified remains of Ramesses II - arguably the greatest of the Pharaohs - was on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.  In the 1970s it became clear that the mummy needed some TLC and that this would require it being transferred to Paris. To facilitate this, the mummy was issued with a Egyptian passport, in which his occupation was given as "King (deceased)".  On arrival in Paris, the mummy was accorded the full honours appropriate to a King.

Ciao Claudio...

Should Leicester have sacked Ranieri?  Football is a hard-headed business and Leicester are in danger of relegation from the Premiership, which would have significant financial consequences.  On the other hand, Ranieri guided them to a totally wonderful and unexpected Premiership title last season, which must have brought in a significant amount of money.  The club said that the decision was "painful but necessary".  I can perhaps understand why they did it, but I think the way that they did it - casual, off-hand, apparently uncaring - does not reflect on them well. And as ever the players who have failed to perform are still there, pulling in the ackers!

Ouch!!

I'm sure most people know that "scapegoat" is a truncated version of escape-goat and refers to some person (or originally animal) who takes the blame for the sins of others.  But did you know that the expression "whipping boy" has a similar history? Back in the days when the Monarch was believed to be appointed by God, it followed that the Heir Apparent, who would one day become Monarch themselves must equally be divinely appointed, and as such could not be punished by ordinary mortals. So how to deal with the Heir Apparent if they misbehaved?  And here's where the whipping boy came in - he took the "six of the best" on behalf of his illustrious master. Actually it wasn't such a bad job - when the Heir Apparent succeeded to the throne, his whipping boy was often rewarded - sometimes with a peerage.

Made it, Ma! Top of the world!

It was fated to happen, wasn't it?  The new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police - the top cop - is to be none other than Cressida Dick, who, you may recall, was in charge of the operation which resulted in the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. Apparently the buck did not "stop here" as far as she was concerned, and her career has gone all one way since then.  I wonder if she ever ruminates on such matters?

It must be true, it's in the paper!

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, of course many of Trump's comments about the dishonesty (as he sees it) of the media are OTT, but that shouldn't disguise the fact that they contain a kernel of truth. Any thinking person must be aware that the press and television news channels have their own agendas (usually dictated by their owners) and so what they say should not be accepted unquestioningly. That's not to say they are going to tell you lies (although some of them may well be) but they will try and tweak your thinking to mirror theirs.  I may be just being patriotic but if I want unbiased news, I turn on the BBC,

I have a cunning plan...

President Trump's constant categorisation of the media as "dishonest" and disseminating "fake news" is clearly part of his strategy to supplant the traditional media as the public's first port of call when they want to know what's going on.  So what he hopes is that instead of your first question being "what does the Daily (whatever) say about it?", it will become "what does Trump say about it?".  That way he will be able to control the agenda.  He's a buffoon - but a clever one.

How are the mighty fallen.

I was sorry to read that, among all the add-ons that have been published in anticipation of the latest Star Wars film, out at the end of the year, there is a story that Jar-Jar Binks has fallen on hard times, been ostracised by his people and is now reduced to performing on the streets for children.  I know that I was in the minority - maybe even a minority of one - but I always rather liked him.

Depends on your point of view

The recent spat in the Church of England between the Bishops and the General Synod is more than a disagreement between people - it is an existential split between those that believe that Christianity is a set of immutable rules, and those who believe that the Church should reflect current thinking.  The Bible specifies marriage as the union between a man and a woman and for the Bishops, that's it - and ever shall be. Their opponents would have it that the Church should move with the times and inasmuch as same-sex marriages are now generally accepted (but not by everybody - see 3/4 /14) the Church should follow suit.  I am with the Bishops - if your religion is based on the teachings of a Holy Book then that's it - you can't pick and choose - it's all or nothing. Otherwise you don't really have a religion - what you have is simply a philosophy. 

Break the mould?

A female Doctor Who?  Why not??  It's not like James Bond, where you are to a certain extent constrained by the books in which Fleming describes his main character in some detail.  There are no books on which Doctor Who is based and it is a fundamental characteristic of the Doctor that he regenerates from time to time so why not as a woman?  Indeed, let's go the whole hog and have him regenerate as a black woman! How about Naomie Harris?

What's in a name?

Yesterday - the Beatles song - is one of the best-known and most covered songs of recent years.  It sounds so "right" that you would think it more or less wrote itself, and indeed it seems that the melody did come to Paul McCartney pretty well fully formed in a dream.  But the lyrics were another matter and he and John Lennon spent months trying to come up with the right words,  and while they were at it, they gave it the working title of "Scrambled Eggs".

If it's not one thing...

First it was Spanish vegetables - now it seems it's Italian olive oil.  Inclement weather in the Med is once again the culprit although if I understand it right it's not the cold, but more an excess of humidity that is the problem this time.  This has led to outbreaks of a type of bacteria which attacks new growth on olive trees and eventually kills them, Can't win, can you?

They're all at it!

However much we may deplore it, we're used to the idea that holiday firms put their prices up when the schools are on holiday, but now it seems that airports are catching on to the idea.  Most of the major airports are putting their parking prices up for the summer, starting at Easter.  So not only will you pay more for your holiday, you will pay more for leaving your car while you're away.  The airports say it's all down to supply and demand, which seems to me to simply mean they will charge whatever they think they can get away with.  Mind you, one airport official has said that this is simply the flip-side of lower and lower airfares.  The airports have to run as a business, and "...drop-off charges, fees for baggage trolleys, fast-track security and sometimes eye-watering car park rates are the price you may pay for getting to Spain for £14.99".

I'm not sure...

Remember the one about the economy and the length of women's skirts?  Economy doing well - skirts get shorter; economy doing badly - skirts get longer.  Well it seems the trend for this season is for skirts to have zig-zag bottoms - so-called "hanky hemlines", and it is suggested that this represents the economic uncertainty the country is going through at present as we struggle to come to terms with leaving the EU. Interesting?

Caw, caw!!

I've posted about this before, but I cannot for the life of me understand how seagulls can be classified as an endangered species.  The situation is certainly not helped by people deliberately feeding them, but there are hundreds and thousands of the damn things and they present a real menace to human beings and their nuisance is not confined to the seaside - if you live near a refuse-tip you will know all about them! Apparently their "endangered" status is down to the RSPB and I think they should be required to justify it or allow us to fight back!

This is getting silly!

We talked a little while ago about hate crimes - well now we've gone even further down this murky road with the invention of what is called a "hate incident".  So just what is that?  Good question, but it seems it's anything which somebody says or does which somebody else takes exception to alleging it has "hate" overtones.  And the real farce of all this is that the police are obliged to record as a hate incident any occurrence "... which may or may not constitute a criminal offence, which is perceived by the victim or any other person, as being motivated by prejudice or hate" (the emphases are mine). So you can get the ridiculous situation (which actually happened) where someone took exception to a speech made the Home Secretary at the Conservative Party Conference last year where she discussed the possibility of requiring employers to give precedence to British applicants when filling a vacancy. Somebody saw this as racist and reported it to the police who, as they were bound to do, recorded it as a hate incident.  Totally bonkers! Where will this stop?

Ba-ba-bummm...

In the recent post about Dame Vera Lynn, I mentioned "crooning".  Very much a word of its time, it's little heard today, but its importance in the history of popular music cannot be overstated.  In the early days of the 20th century, if you sang in public, you needed a BIG voice in order to be heard at the back of the hall.  But as every singer knows, there is a trade-off between volume and expression.  The louder you sing, the less you can convey the nuances of the melody and lyric.  So when, in the early 1920s the microphone came along - or more precisely, the amplifier that came with it - suddenly you could sing softly and still be heard by those in the cheap seats.  And this type of singing became known as crooning.  Of course, as ever, there were those who pushed it too far, and crooning quickly became associated with a mushy, schmaltzy type of delivery   Certainly Dame Vera was not a crooner by this definition, and, surprisingly perhaps, Frank Sinatra maintained that neither he nor Bing Crosby were crooners. Come the middle 1950s there was the inevitable backlash when rock 'n' roll brought back a loud and raucous style.  But it was the microphone that changed everything.

Look Dad - that's you!

I was extremely surprised that the BBC decided to make a drama based on the infamous "kidnapping" of Shannon Matthews back in 2008.  Surprised because most - perhaps all - of the people involved in the incident are still alive, and I'm sure not all of them are happy to see themselves portrayed - perhaps not flatteringly - on screen. Historical drama is one thing - even of things which happened within living memory - but to dramatise something involving people who are still very much alive and kicking I think takes things too far.

Right on !

I don't know whether Speaker Bercow was simply speaking for himself or believed he was speaking for the House of Commons the other day when he suggested that President Trump was not worthy of the honour of addressing Parliament - but he sure as hell was speaking for me!

I publish the banns...

Well, perhaps not for much longer - the Church of England is considering doing away with the requirement to formally announce forthcoming marriages as part of the church service on three consecutive Sundays.  At the moment it's part of their responsibility as ex officio registrars to ensure that couples seeking to marry have that fact advertised where they live, so that if there's anything "iffy" about them marrying, someone will come forward and tell about it.  But of course this relies on everybody knowing everybody else locally, and their family's histories and so on, and everybody regularly attending church.  And whereas this was the case way back when reading the banns was first introduced, it certainly isn't the case today, and given that all forthcoming marriages are in any event posted on the message boards of registrars' offices, reading the banns seems to have outlived any usefulness.

Some sunny day...

Interesting to read that Vera Lynn (now a Dame of course) may have been the "forces' sweetheart" in WWII but she was apparently initially anything but flavour of the month with the top brass or with many MPs and bureaucrats who thought that her sweet sentimental style of singing, and her choice of songs with lyrics emphasising the sadness of separation from loved ones (We'll meet again etc.) would have a detrimental effect on morale.  They would much rather have had someone with a strident voice singing "up-and-at-'em" songs.  Luckily it soon became apparent that she was in fact good for morale and even though "crooning" generally was frowned upon as an American "fad" (there was even, believe it or not, a crooning ban on the BBC at one point, though it didn't last long) she maintained her popularity and continues to do so to this day.

What would The Fat Controller make of it?

Train fares - complicated or what?  I think most of us are now aware that if we are travelling from A to C going via B, it may well be cheaper to buy a ticket from A to B and then a separate ticket from B to C - this makes no sense to us as commuters (presumably it must do somehow to the train operator) - because it is exactly the same journey.  But the ultimate idiocy of this sort must be the case of the man who occasionally commutes from Preston to London at a cost of £350 and who found that by catching the train (same train) at the earlier stop of Lancaster he would only have to pay £93, a saving of over £250 for travelling some 25 miles further!!

¡Está nevando!

Papers full of stories about the limited availability of fruit and veg as a result of the unseasonally cold weather in Spain.  Good to be reminded of how reliant we are on other countries for what we can buy in the supermarkets, but what struck me is - if this is the result of a relatively minor disruption in supply, what will happen when we leave the EU?

Hot water or cold?

In the early days of the First World War, we Brits designed a heavily-armoured tracked vehicle which we felt would revolutionise trench warfare.  Obviously we wanted to keep this a secret during development, and so the necessary parts were shipped in crates marked "water tanks".  And as a result, the finished article became known as a tank.

Death In Paradise

Just about the only programme I watch on "real" TV these days - it's taken over from the late lamented "New Tricks" as the television equivalent of comfort food.  I was upset at first when Ben Miller gave way to Kris Marshall (who I still have difficulty not seeing as the "idiot son" in My Family) but over time have come to accept him, but now I learn that he is to leave and once again I shall have to grit my teeth and wait to see whether the change works.  Positives are that (I presume) the rest of the cast will stay the same - particularly Danny John-Jules (Cat from Red Dwarf), and Ardal O'Hanlon who is to take over from Kris Marshall has a good track record with me from My Hero.  So we shall have to wait and see...

Words

The word "nigh" (the end is nigh) is now considered archaic, but it used to be common parlance, and had a comparative - nigh-er. and a superlative - nigh-est. Over the centuries, nigh-er became "near" and nigh-est "next".

I'm ready - or am I?

Was Ethelred II (10th century King of England) unready?  That's how history has it - he is known as Ethelred the unready.  Certainly his reign (there were actually two of them, but that's another story) was nothing to write home about.  The country was under pretty well constant invasion by the Danes and Ethelred's attempts to buy them off  - the infamous "danegeld" - only served to make matters worse. Anyway, back to the main question, and the answer is no - Ethelred was no more unready than his predecessors and successors.  The word used of him was "unraed" which, although it looks a bit like unready, actually means "badly advised".