Wasn't she Leander's girl-friend?

What do you understand by the word "hero"?  Well, Greek mythology aside, the dictionary definition is "someone distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, fortitude etc."  Note the word "exceptional".  So...?? Well, there's a growing tendency to classify someone as a hero for suffering as a result of just doing what was expected of them, or, even worse, by losing their life as a result of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tragic - yes, but heroic?  The problem has been brought into recent focus in America as a result of Donald Trump, a candidate for the Republican nomination for President critising those calling John McCain - another candidate - a hero when, as Trump sees it, all he did was get captured and spend over five years in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp.  Anything but a walk in the park, but heroic? Is using the word in this way simply devaluing those whose exploits are truly heroic, as per the dictionary definition?

Brilliant!

What a nice change to be able to report a positive school story.  Ten out of ten to a primary school in Newport, South Wales.  Schools are allowed to shut to pupils for five days a year for "teacher training". Traditionally they spread these days out throughout the year, but this school intends to have these five days all together during 2016, thus giving children a whole week off in June in the hope that parents will be able to arrange a family holiday before the prices skyrocket for the summer six-week break. Like I say, ten - no make that eleven - out of ten!

Now you see it...

How crafty!  A couple of years ago Parliament voted against taking any military action in Syria. Whatever your views on the subject, you would think that that was decisive, and that no UK forces would take part in any action in Syria without a new vote approving such a move.  The Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary have both been making noises recently suggesting that they will ask Parliament for such approval - but now we learn that UK forces have in fact been involved in air strikes in Syria.  So what's going on?  Well in a ploy worthy of one of those clever street magicians, those involved are doing so not as UK forces, but as personnel "embedded" in the forces of other countries - notably the US.  And, as the Ministry of Defence explains, "when embedded, UK personnel are effectively operating as foreign troops".  Fiendishly clever, no??

Well, what a surprise!

Cardigan in Wales had a pay and display car park.  Well, the car park is still there, but the pay and display machines have all been vandalised and the council can't afford the money to repair them.  So, what's the story?  Now that people can park for free, the local town-centre shops have seen their takings increase by up to 50%. There's a moral there somewhere!

To the pure all things are pure.

This is the official flag of the Black Country.  Can't say it does a lot for me, but it was the winning design of a (then) 12-year-old girl and the colours were inspired by the description of the Black Country by an American in the mid-1800s as "black by day and red by night" - a reference to the black smoke covering the area by day, and the red glow of all the furnaces at night.  And then, one of the major industries of the area was chain-making, and so you can follow the young girl's thinking.  All very innocent, yes?  Well, there are those who take pleasure in twisting things to fit their own agenda, and a local equal rights campaigner has called the flag "offensive" because the use of the chain motif carries implications of the slave-trade and oppression generally.  Well, I suppose you see what you want to see, and his comments probably tell us more about him and his mindset than they do about the flag.  I prefer to see it though the young girl's eyes as she intended it to be.

If you wait long enough...

I've posted before about the somewhat spooky way in which topics I've talked about suddenly become newsworthy some time later.  Well the BBC's role is coming under scrutiny and a forthcoming government green paper is expected to suggest that it should stop chasing viewer figures and concentrate more on public service broadcasting.  Don't want to blow my own trumpet, but have a look at what I was saying back on 24th July 2007.

'Twas ever thus.

Apparently there are people up in arms because in a new book "Go Set a Watchman", Atticus Finch, the hero of "To Kill a Mockingbird" is revealed as a racist bigot.  For many it seems this is beyond belief.  As one tweeter put it, it is like "Spielberg doing a sequel in which ET punches Eliot in the face and steals his lunch money."  And yet as I understand it, Watchman was written BEFORE Mockingbird, even though it's been published decades after.  So will the real Atticus Finch please stand up?  I wonder if The Simpsons will do a take on this - I seem to remember he was a hero to Lisa. It does seem a bit strange to set a man up on a pedestal and allow him to remain there for years, only to then knock him down - together with the beliefs and dreams of a generation of young people - mainly I suspect, girls.  There have been suggestions that the book is being published against the wishes of Harper Lee, the author, and it would be interesting to know how she feels about all this, but she is old and reputedly infirm and in any case was always somewhat of a recluse, so we'll probably never know.

Through the looking glass...

I don't think you would want to play poker with Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister.  And yet it seems to me that that is just what he has been doing over the past months with the various organisations his country owes money to.  He's bluffed and bluffed and finally when his bluff was called, he's thrown his cards in.  We now have the crazy situation where he is now offering to submit to terms which are worse than the terms he himself persuaded his country to reject in the recent referendum. The problem now is of course, can he be believed?  Is he bluffing yet again?  I'm just glad I'm not Greek!

Music Man

The death last month of Ernest Tomlinson has robbed us of one of the ever dwindling number of composers of English Light Music,  This is a genre somewhat confined to these islands - don't know why this should be so, but no other country has produced this type of music in any notable quantity. So what is it?  Well it's been described as music which is too low-brow for Radio 3, but too high-brow for Radio 2.  You know it when you hear it - Coronation Scot, The Devil's Gallop (theme to Dick Barton),  By The Sleepy Lagoon (theme to Desert Island Discs) - you get the idea.  It had its hey-day in the middle of the last century, but as radio gave way to television so what you saw became more important than what you heard and the character of "entertainment music" changed.  If you're interested in looking further into it, try the music of Eric Coates, Ronald Binge, Ron Goodwin, Haydn Wood et al.  

Well I never!

Following the budget, people have been piling in to say that the changes it makes will disproportionally hit the poorest members of society.  Now ignoring for a moment the political and philosophical questions as to whether this is the right way to go, just look at the facts.  Welfare is being cut, and obviously this will have the greatest effect on those on welfare.  And those on welfare, pretty much by definition, will be those earning the least - so the cuts will hit them hardest.  Like I say, I take no position on whether or not this is a good or bad thing, but I do get annoyed when people look us in the eye and make solemn portentous pronouncements which are actually no more than stating the bleedin' obvious!