What's sauce for the goose....

Everybody and his Dutch uncle lining up to criticise Muirfield - where the Open (golf) is being played - for being a men-only club.  But you don't hear anything about the many ladies-only golf clubs which exist around the country.  Why? Because there's no political capital to be made from commenting on men not being allowed to become members of ladies-only clubs, whereas expressing displeasure at women not being allowed to be members of men-only clubs pretty well guarantees good headlines.

Pardon??

Well thank goodness, it's not just me.  At my age, you don't expect to hear quite as well as you did when you were young, but more and more lately I've found the need to switch the subtitles on in order to follow the dialogue in TV shows and films.  But it now seems I am far from alone - the BBC has reported a significant increase in the number of complaints it gets about actors "mumbling" their lines. American shows and films are the biggest problems in my book, because they don't just mumble - they mumble in American, which is even more impenetrable!  I think I've mentioned before that I had absolutely no problem with hearing Hugh Laurie in "Jeeves and Wooster" and "Blackadder" but when I watched a few episodes of "House", I couldn't understand half what he was saying!

Don't wave your knickers at the train!

How have we survived the last 43 years?  That's how long the film "The Railway Children" has been around, but apparently it's only now that someone (I stress "one") has decided that it's dangerous because it might encourage children to play on the railway lines.  Best of intentions I'm sure, but really...!  My complaint would be that it's a film I only dare watch when I'm alone, because I always dissolve into tears at the end - you know, when the smoke and steam clears, and Jenny Agutter exclaims "Daddy, my daddy" - Christ, I'm blubbing now just typing this.  Strangely, it's the word "my" that does it - leave that out and I'd still have a lump in my throat, but with it - serious waterworks!

How retro can you get?

It seems that secrets are not necessarily... well, secret any more.  Computers can be hacked, hard drives can be copied, files can be decrypted.  So the Russian secret service have come up with an innovative idea - they are reverting to typewriters! They can't be hacked because they don't store data and as every typewriter produces an individual pattern of type, any document can be traced back to the machine that created it.  The old ideas are sometimes the best you see.

Miles out, mate!

Interesting research carried out by the Royal Statistical Society suggests that we generally tend to vastly overestimate the level of what might be called "social problems" - things like the level of benefit fraud, immigration, crime, teenage pregnancy and the like.  I think much of the blame for this must lie with the media, who have long realised that pandering to people's prejudices sells papers.  What to do about it though?  Not easy - perhaps the RSS should take out regular adverts in all the papers giving us the facts - but then, we don't like to be told we're wrong, do we?

Only in this country...!

World Peashooting Championships being held in Witcham, Cambridgeshire.  Does your heart good!

The Gentlemen's Game??

Should Broad have walked?  That's the question on every armchair sportsman's lips after Friday's events.  For those from Mars, we're talking cricket and Broad is an English batsman who quite clearly hit a ball which was caught by an Australian fielder.  For some reason the umpire didn't see it and therefore turned down Australia's appeals.  Broad must have known he had hit it, so should he have given himself out as it were, rather than simply stand there and go with the umpire's decision - or rather non-decision?  In my book, he should have walked, but I'm afraid that money has tainted the game of cricket, as it has rugby football (association football has long been a lost cause) and now winning takes precedence over sportsmanship every time.  Shame, but that's the way it is - bit ironic that you have to look to snooker, which is irrevocably associated in many people's minds with dingy pub back-rooms and Woodbines, as just about the only game where a player will take it upon himself to be the custodian of the rules, and call a foul against himself even though no-one else has seen it.

Read the question!

The answer to yesterday's riddle is - a 50p coin and a 20p coin.  This satisfies the statement "One of them is not a 50p coin" - the 20p coin is not a 50p coin!  The point is that most people automatically read it to mean that neither is a 50p coin, whereas that's not what it says!

Huh?

While we're on the subject of riddles and such, I've always liked this one -
I have two coins which between them total 70p.  One of them is not a 50p coin. What are they?  Answer tomorrow.

Magic money(2)

So, did you see it?  There is no missing £1 - it's just the way the story is told that creates the confusion, and the £30 is a red herring.  The easiest way of seeing it is to do a simple cash balance - the diners between them paid £27 - and where did that £27 go?  Well £25 of it went to the restaurant to pay the bill, and the other £2 ended up in the waiter's pocket.  All the rest is smoke and mirrors.