R.I.P.

Cyrille Regis.  I feel really bad that it's taken me so long to do this post, but I have struggled and struggled to find the right words,  But having watched the memorial held at The Hawthorns yesterday and having listened to Brendon Batson's eulogy,  I can do no better than to repeat his closing words -

Nice one Cyrille

Nice one, son.

What do you expect?

I am surprised that others are surprised about criminal cases collapsing when evidence comes to light late in proceedings which undermines the prosecution's case.  This is evidence known to the prosecution which they are obliged under the rules to pass on to the defence, but have failed to do so until the last minute.  So, why the surprise?  If you think about it, the prosecution find themselves in a classic "conflict of interest" situation.  On the one hand, it is their job to build a case against the accused, and yet at the same time they are obliged to tell the defence about any evidence  they are aware of which harms that case.  Surely this aspect should be handled by an independent third party - a sort of modern Queen's Proctor maybe?

Moonshine.

I did a post (6/9/12) about "blue moons" which occur when you get two full moons in the same month, and is down to the fact that the lunar cycle is out of sync with the paper calendar.  But of course, it works the other way as well - every now and again you get a month with no full moon.  It can only happen in February (and then only when it's a 28 day one) and comes around about every 20 years.  And yes, this year, 2018, is one such.  There will be no full moon this February.

The road to romance?

I've mentioned before that I live close to the M6 Toll Road, and was aware that there was a local rumour that it was "built on books".  But I've now discovered that the rumour is true.  The company responsible for constructing the road found that mixing asphalt with pulped paper produced a surface that was tougher and much less prone to wear and tear.  The question was - where could they pick up paper cheaply?  And the answer was - Mills & Boon books.  Apparently, for whatever reason, the publishers of Mills & Boon titles invariably massively overestimate demand, with the result that many are left unsold , and many more discarded once read, and so there are always plenty available to whoever can make use of them.  

Take the money!

In all the fuss about the Presidents Club business, one fact seems to be being overlooked.  This was a charity event designed to raise money for various good causes.  Some charities which would have benefited (including, if I understand it correctly, Great Ormand Street Hospital) have said they will refuse to accept any donations from the event.  So the losers will be sick children?  Can't see the sense in that.

Deus ex machina (2)

This title of yesterday's post may have confused some of you.  It literally means "God out of a machine" and refers back to the habit of ancient Greek playwrights who, having got their characters into a hopeless situation would (often with a clap of thunders and a cloud of smoke) have a god or some magical character suddenly appear on stage through a trapdoor or somesuch and using their supernatural powers, sort everything out. Since then, the phrase has come to mean any device which comes "out of the blue" to solve a seemingly insoluble problem.  I thought it was appropriate.

Deus ex machina?

Anybody else find this fresh complaint which has arisen against the "black taxi rapist" and which could over-ride the parole board's much criticised decision to release him just a little too convenient?

Those were the days - or were they?

I commented some time ago about how I thought that the Labour Party attracting so many young people was down to the fact that the young have no memory of what a Labour government was really like  I think much the same thing is now going on with the idea of renationalisation..  You need to be of some age to remember British Rail, British Steel and all that.  Not that privitisation has been a resounding success, but the idea that nationalisation is a "silver bullet" for all our economic woes is very much rose-tinted-glasses thinking.

Go back to...er...

Weird case of the Home Office refusing asylum to a man, and telling him he must "go home" even though they accept that he is stateless and therefore has no home to go to.  It will be interesting to see how they get out of that!

Priorities?

Remember Greg Rusedski?  Zola Budd?  He was a Canadian tennis player, and she a South African runner.  What's the connection - they both represented Great Britain in their respective sports,  They were what were known back then as "plastic Brits" - people from other countries who chose - or were chosen - to represent GB even though they were not born or brought up here,  Their eligibility was based on them having British ancestry.  It didn't sit comfortably at the time, and I thought we'd given up on the idea.  But no - it seems we have been prepared to spend something like £50,000 trying (unsuccessfully) to get a Slovenian tennis player to represent us in the Davis Cup.  This is in sharp contrast to the relatively paltry amounts we are prepared to spend on supporting home-grown talent.

More than just an extra 'o'

I always thought that "macaroon" and "macaron" were the same thing - if I thought about it, I would have said that macaron was a posher and more sophisticated name and that they were made to look tidier and more "ladylike", when presented on a plate.  I have now learned that they are quite distinct items.  There are many differences, but the main one is that a macaroon is flavoured with coconut whereas a macaron is flavoured.with almond.

Ha ha

Man walks in to a bar looking very sad.
"What would you like" says the bartender
"Oh, just a beer" says the man 
"You're looking very down" says the bartender, "What's the matter?"
"Well, my wife and I had a flaming row" says the man, "and she said she wouldn't speak to me for a month"
"Oh, that's rough" says the bartender, 
"You don't know the half" says the man, "the month runs out tonight".

The devil in the casino.

Did you know that the numbers on a roulette wheel add up to 666?

Words

Clockwise - common enough word and we all know what it means - it's the direction the hands go round on a clock,  But have you ever stopped and wondered why?  Why do the hands on a clock go round that way?  There's no mechanical reason for it - it's equally simple to make a clock where they go round the other way.  Well, before there were clocks, if you wanted to mark the passage of time, you stuck a stick in the ground and watched it's shadow as it moved round - and which way did it move round?  Here in the northern hemisphere, it would circulate clockwise.  And you might progress to a proper stone sundial.but the shadow would still go round clockwise.  So when they started making clocks, here in Europe, which way would they automatically make the hands move?

Perhaps he speaks the truth?

"I am not a racist" proclaimed Donald Trump.  A racist is one who treats people differently because of their race.  Well you have to say that Trump appears to treat everybody with equal rudeness and contempt, so I suppose on that basis you have to accept that he's not a racist.

Ummm...

I don't like repeating myself  (see 26/5/06), but the Government is coming under criticism for its failure to identify the number of illegal immigrants coming in to the country.  So - illegal immigrants are those who have not gone through the channels and been documented.  So how does anybody know how many they are?  Pick a figure!  Your guess is as good as anybody else's.  To see Government's inability to come up with a figure as some sort of "failure" is ludicrous.  

Equality?

Much talk at the moment about equal pay for equal work for women.  Can't really argue about that, provided that equal work means equal work.  Take the case of police dog handler.  To become one such, you have to take a fitness test, which entails inter alia carrying your dog up a 70 yard uphill course.  A female candidate claimed that this left her legs feeling like jelly and maintained that it was unfair on women and therefore discriminatory. As far as I am aware, the pay for dog handlers is the same, irrespective of gender.  So what price equality?

The missing link?

I've had occasion in the past to comment on connections between things being made by other people which escape me.  Here's another one - part of Melbourne Park which hosts the Australian Open Tennis Championship is named the Margaret Court Arena in honour of the Australian player of that name who dominated the women's game in the early 60s.  Billie Jean King - one of the other major players of the same era, has now gone on record to say that Court's name should be removed.  And why?  Nothing to do with tennis  The problem - as King see it - is that Court, who is now a Minister in the Pentecostal Church has spoken out against homosexuality.  King makes no secret of the fact that she is lesbian, and takes exception to Court's pronouncements.  So what's that got to do with tennis?  Can you see it, 'cause I can't.

Keep going, Betty

Remember The Golden Girls?  Betty White is the only one still standing.  She will be 96 (d.v.) in a few days time.  And to what does she arrtribute her long life?  Junk food and vodka!  Way to go, girl!!

Dumb and dumber?

I don't know which I find more worrying - that the Americans voted for Trump as President, or that, according to the polls, if Oprah Winfrey were to stand against him, she would win!

Seen on Ebay...

Wedding dress for sale - worn once, by mistake,

Pass...

Papers this time of year seem to be full of little else but holidays and diets.  As one whose traveling days are over, and who has long since resigned myself.to being overweight, there's not much for me to get my teeth into and blog about.  There's always of course the political shenanigans and Brexit but I'm sure you're as bored of hearing about that as I am about thinking of something meaningful to say, so... that's it for today. 

Flash, bang, wallop - what a picture!

I mentioned Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras the other day.  Very much "Big Brother" stuff, but that seems to be the way things are going these days.  So it's a bit worrying (to say the least) to find that they are far from infallible.  Quite apart from deliberate attempts to fool them, a report by the official surveillance "tsar" suggests that something like 3% of their photographs could be "misreads" - a small percentage to be sure, but it represents about a million occurrences a day - each of which could result in an innocent driver receiving a summons, or being caught up in a police investigation.or some such.

I do - now where's me jewels?

Did you know that protocol says that only married women are allowed to wear tiaras?  So Kate can but Thingy can't - not yet anyway.  

I yam wot I yam!

Donald Trump is a "stable genius".  How do we know?  Because Donald Trump has told us so!

J'accuse!!!

Scarcely a day goes by lately without someone being accused of doing something bad to someone else.  Understandable perhaps when the accuser is the person wronged, but take the case of the chef who has had death threats for "spiking" a vegan's meal. As far as one can tell. the vegan ordered a pizza off the main menu which contained mozzarella cheese, which is a no-no for vegans.  The chef fulfilled the order, but then unadvisedly perhaps tweeted what she had done.  So who is now bombarding her with hate tweets - not, as far as one can tell - the person who ordered (and presumably ate) the pizza, but vegans generally, who weren't even there.  If I were the chef, I would apologiise to the diner concerned - if indeed an apology is in order (after all, they ordered it presumably knowing what the ingredients were) - but stick two fingers up to the baying mob.

Sorry.

Ministers - including the Prime Minister herself - are queuing up to apologise for the NHS's performance over the Christmas and New Year period.  Now there are plenty of things they could justifiably apologise for, but I'm not sure that this is one of them.  Let's consider the evidence - the efficiency of the NHS relies basically on four factors (1)  the number of doctors, nurses and technicians available (2) the number, size and convenience of hospitals and other facilities available (3) the quality of the technology used and (4) the number of people seeking to use it. The government is directly or indirectly responsible for 1, 2 and 3, but 4 is in the lap of the gods.  In preparing the NHS for the winter, the government have to guess  what the likely demand will be.  I think this time they guessed wrong - simple as that.

Mine's bigger than yours...

Nuclear button, that is.  Can you believe it?  Trump and Kim Jong-Un behaving like schoolboys in the playground.  It would be funny if it wasn't so serious.

Not me Miss, please Miss

So the demonstrations in Iran have nothing to do with the Iranian government, but are all the fault of enemies of the country stirring things up.  How do we know this?  Because Ayatollah Khamenei has told us so.  I am irresistibly reminded of the words of Mandy Rice Davies - "well, he would say that, wouldn't he?"

All made of green cheese?

There are getting on for 150 moons in the Solar System.  By convention, they are all named after classical gods or Shakespearean characters - all but one.  This one is ours and is simply called The Moon.  

Happy New Year...

...to the old, long life and treasure.  To the young, all health and pleasure. (Ben Jonson)