Site of the month

Life must go on, they keep telling me, so......
If you've been following my book posts you will know that my tastes veer towards what might be termed the "trashy" end of the market. My literary phase, such as it was, was several decades ago - today I just want a fast, easy, entertaining read. Unfortunately, book reviews in the papers tend to ignore these sort of books - even when you get a section headed "Thrillers", the books selected for review tend to be somewhat on the literary and heavy side for my tastes. So I was delighted to find - and to recommend for those of you of similar mind - http://www.lovereading.co.uk/ which has no pretentions, and which allows you to choose your genre, and then lists the current most popular books of that type with a short synopsis, and even in many cases, a short extract. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Josie Grove

It is finished. There are no adequate words.

I want to thank...

What's all the fuss about the Oscars? It's an incestuous love-in whereby those in the movie industry vote for each other. It obviously has relevance if you work in that industry, and it probably has some interest for those celebrity followers who read "OK" and "Hello" magazine. But it means little to me, or I would imagine, to most ordinary people. So why does it feature so heavily in the news - and not just on the day, but for days before and after? Boring...........

Rugby Union

Thank you Ireland.

Nice idea, but....

Interesting story about Israel's original and founding kibbutz finally giving up its communist ideals and opening itself up to capitalism. It always seemed to me that communism was based on a fine and worthy but ultimately flawed premise - that, given the opportunity, people would work hard for the common good. And the fact is that it just doesn't work that way. People are basically selfish - they will work hard if they can see there is something in it for them, but otherwise they will just bumble along, doing enough to keep themselves out of trouble, but no more. Socialism, which is just a watered-down version of the same idea, suffers from the same weakness. This is what Margaret Thatcher realised - if you want a strong economy, you've got to give the fat cats their head, even though that may bring with it less than pleasant consequences.

Just gimme the facts.....

Public Service Broadcasting - what's that all about then? Well apparently, according to the Head of BBC Television News, it's about getting awards. It seems he is furious that the Corporation got only one prize at the recent Royal Television Society Awards, whereas ITN got seven, Channel 4 and ITV got five, and Sky News three. He has made it clear that this is not good enough. And there I was thinking that they were there just to give us the news, not go chasing gongs.

In memoriam

Two stories in the local news linked by a desire to remember the unremembered. Firstly a memorial has at last been raised in West Bromwich to Madeleine Carroll, the local girl who became a Hollywood star, but who has been basically ignored in her home town until now. The second story is of a local man's attempt to get the sunken wreck of the "Lancastria" designated as a war grave to prevent divers looting it. Considering that some 4,000 or so bodies are still down there it's a disgrace that he's having to try - you'd think it would be a question that shouldn't need asking, although the fact that it's almost certainly in French territorial waters may complicate the issue.

Whistle - what whistle?

Should Man U's goal against Lille on Tuesday have been allowed to stand? Lille obviously didn't think so, and indeed for a moment there seemed the possibility that they might have walked off the field in protest. Man U on the other hand, saw nothing wrong in what they had done - "quick thinking" was how they saw it. My view is that this highlights a problem created by the rules of the game being so vague as to allow more than one interpretation - and here we had a case of the two teams working to two different interpretations. Can a free kick be taken before the ref has blown his whistle? On the one hand, you have Law 5 which gives the referee power to stop the game to award a free kick (no mention anywhere in the Laws of a whistle, or how he is supposed to do this) but the Law is silent on how, and indeed whether, it is up to the referee to restart the game. Law 13, which deals with free kicks says "the ball is in play when it is kicked and moves" which at least suggests that it is for the side taking the free kick to decide when to take it. Most referees however require you to wait for a restart whistle, and here the confusion arises. Whatever the outcome of the inevitable investigation into what went on following the goal, I think consideration needs to be given to clarifying the rules, so everybody knows where they stand.

We've got your dabs, mate.

The suggestion that all fingerprints collected for ID card purposes will be checked against prints held on file in respect of unsolved crimes has met with angry opposition on the grounds that it would be an invasion of privacy and a breach of human rights. I have always found the idea of those who have broken the law having rights of any kind in relation to their crime a very strange concept, but what does bother me is the unspoken assumption that fingerprint evidence is reliable. There are plenty of cases - both in this country and abroad - where expert evidence that a print found somewhere was that of a certain person has been demonstrated to be wrong. So the danger is that this will result in more people being accused - and possibly convicted - of crimes they haven't committed. Before going down this line, I think we need to look seriously at the current "16-point" standard for print identification.

What's today?

Pancake Day of course, but just why do we eat pancakes today? Well, it's actually all about tomorrow - tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and that's the first day of Lent. Lent is traditionally a period of self-denial, but back in the Middle Ages it was far more strict than today, and among the foods forbidden during Lent were fat, eggs and milk. As there was no refrigeration back then, there was no way of preserving these ingredients for the forty days of Lent, so you used up all you'd got left today, and one easy way of doing that was to make pancakes. In some parts of the world today is called Mardi Gras, which is the French for "Fat Tuesday" - same idea. On the same theme, meat was also not to be eaten during Lent, and in other parts of the world, the run-up to Lent is called Carnival, which comes from the Latin - carne (meat) and vale (farewell). Back then you would also go to Church today and confess and get absolution for your sins so as to start Lent with a clean sheet as it were. In the vernacular of the Church, you would be "shriven", hence today is also called Shrove Tuesday. And that I think is enough!