Bonuses.

I must confess that, as an ex-Civil Servant, I've never understood bonuses. I had a friend who worked in the banking industry, and he happened to mention to me one day that he'd just had his bonus, and I said "What's that then?" and he said "It's a lump sum payment I get on top of my salary" and I said "What for?" and he said "For doing my job well" and I thought "But that's what they pay you for!". The idea of being paid extra for doing what you should be doing anyway always struck me as slightly crazy. And now it seems that you can get them without even doing a good job - no understandee!

A tangled web.

I've been thinking about this business of Carol Thatcher and that word. And what I keep coming up against is - who decides (or more to the point, is entitled to decide) what is offensive and on what basis? If I decide for whatever reason, that I find the word "sheep" offensive, does that mean that nobody should be allowed to use that word in my hearing, or - even more bizarrely - in circumstances where I am not present, but might hear about it? Obviously basic good manners says that you should not say something which you know will offend someone within earshot - but what if you don't know that it would offend them, or you are later accused of offending someone who wasn't even there? As far as I am aware from what I have read, the only person present who took exception to what was said was Jo Brand (and there's irony, if you like!) and the people who are now jumping on the bandwagon are those who have simply heard about it. Which of course also raises the question of who leaked this into the public domain, and what responsibility they bear for the consequences. Obvious parallels have been drawn with the Jonathan Ross incident, and it was amusing to see the BBC trying to justify a distinction in the way the two were treated. All down to apologies, apparently. Well sorry but my cynical mind says it's far more likely to be down to ratings. The Beeb couldn't afford to sack Jonathan Ross because he gets them big audience figures, whereas Carol Thatcher doesn't so she can safely be thrown to the wolves.

Ha ha.

Once again, I have to thank my Civil Service retirement magazine for the following, which are apparently genuine answers to a school science test -

Q. Name the four seasons
A. Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.

Q. How can you delay milk turning sour?
A. Keep it in the cow.

Q. What are steroids?
A. Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.

Q. What is puberty?
A. It's when a boy says goodbye to his childhood, and looks forward to his adultery.

Q. What is artificial insemination?
A. It's when the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow.

Two pints and half an ounce, please.

The case of the milkman who was supplying his elderly customers with cannabis on the side to aid their aches and pains highlights the absurdity of the current law which allows morphine - a class A drug - to be supplied on prescription, but bans altogether the supply of cannabis, which, whatever the legal position, is now de facto a sort of class C+/B- drug. There are many people suffering from conditions ranging from arthritis to multiple sclerosis who find they get relief from their pain and discomfort by taking cannabis and to deny them this relief, or to force them into illegality in order to get it, is cruel and unconscionable.

Is it fair?

As a pensioner who relies (thankfully not exclusively) on income generated by my savings, I would like to add my voice to those complaining about the way we who have acted responsibly and saved rather than borrowed are now being penalised by low interest rates designed to help those who have acted irresponsibly and borrowed rather than saved. Makes you wonder why you bothered, doesn't it?

Golly gosh (can I say that?)

It would appear that the little rag doll that I, and I imagine most of my generation had when we were kids, and which was ubiquitous on the labels of jars of jam and marmalade, is now persona non grata (Sigh...)

Snow - what snow?

Two inches of snow, and everything grinds to a halt - we've heard it time and again over the last couple of days, and we've had sound-bites and letters from people who have lived in Canada and Scandinavia and Russia and so on laughing at our inability to cope with, what to them, would be no more than a sprinkling of snow. Well of course, we could cope with it if we chose to do so, but the cost - initial and ongoing - would be significant, and you have to ask whether that would be a sensible use of resources for something which would be used for just a few days every decade or so. What I think would be more sensible, would be to have a regional or national plan for dealing with these occasional events. We could simply have declared a regional "non-day" for yesterday for example, and then nobody would have had to consider struggling to get to work - which many didn't manage anyway. We already do this sort of thing for schools - it's just an extension of the same idea.

IT - trouble again.

There's a theory prevalent in the Civil Service - and maybe other places too - that in order to manage, you don't need to know anything about the particular process you are managing. Management is an art unto itself, goes the thinking. As far as I am concerned, this is utter twaddle. It certainly does not follow that just because you have come up from the shop-floor you will be a good manager, but certainly if you haven't come up from the shop-floor then it's very unlikely that you will be a good manager. I was reminded of this in reading a story about Government's IT projects being way over schedule and way over budget. I've commented on this before, and I'm sure that a big part of the problem is that these projects are being managed by people who have no experience of computers and computer programming. If you don't know how it works at nuts and bolts level, then how the hell are you supposed to make sensible decisions? You are thrown back on relying on the advice of "experts" who almost certainly have a different agenda from you. You'd think we would have learned by now!

Remember the mnemonic - A=OK, E=evil.

I despair, I really do. Jack Straw, who is the current Lord Chancellor, despite not being a Lord or a judge, is to bring forward proposals to penalise members of the House of Lords who "avoid paying tax". This may be a slip of the tongue, but given his position, he should know better. Tax avoidance is perfectly legal. It involves no more than arranging your affairs so as to minimise the amount of tax you have to pay. I assume what he really meant was to refer to those who "evade paying tax", that is fail to pay the taxes which are due from them. Sloppy, Lord Chancellor, sloppy.

What druid?

Storm in a teacup around here over Birmingham City Council's decision to omit all apostrophes from street signs - so St Paul's Square will now be signed St Pauls Square for example. Although I'm a bit of a pedant myself who still writes 'phone rather than phone, it seems to me to be much ado about nothing. And in many respects it simply reveals misunderstandings about place names. Should it be Druid's Heath or Druids' Heath for instance. Answer - neither. It's got nothing to do with druids - singular or plural. The name in fact refers back to the Drews family who were farmers there 150 or so years ago. As far as the general matter of apostrophes on signs is concerned, I think we need to remember that language is our slave, and not our master. It is there to do a job, and provided it does that job satisfactorily, that's all that matters. If we are looking for a certain place or street, then provided the sign sufficiently identifies it, the presence or absence of an apostrophe is pretty immaterial.