Get it sorted!

I have enormous sympathy for Debbie Purdy, who is seeking assurances that if she goes to Switzerland for an "assisted suicide" and her husband travels with her that he will not be prosecuted for aiding and abetting her act. The problem arises because of the nonsense created by the Suicide Act 1961, which stated that suicide was no longer a crime, but that assisting someone to commit suicide was - so now it is illegal to help someone do something which they are legally entitled to do. Work that one out if you can! In any other area of the law, it is perfectly proper for you to delegate someone else to act for you where you wish to do something legal but are incapable of acting yourself - if their actions are queried, the only question would be whether or not they were carrying out your clearly and voluntarily expressed intentions. Here Debbie Purdy could not have made her wishes more clear. The courts have said it is a matter for Parliament, but somebody needs to sort it out. It is indefensible that people facing this sort of desperate situation should have this further worry heaped upon them.

The Lazy Cook.

It's getting towards the time of year for mulled wine - and it's really dead simple to do. Rule number one, buy cheap plonk - it's a waste of money to use anything decent. So, all you need is a bottle of house red and a piece of muslin - an old hanky will do. Into the muslin/hanky put a teaspoon each of ground cloves, ground ginger, ground cinnamon and two of brown sugar and tie up tightly. Pour the wine into a saucepan - preferably non-metallic - and add your spice parcel and a couple of bay leaves. Heat up gently - do NOT allow to boil! - and there you are. Prost, as they would say après-ski.

Where does the buck stop?

The Brand/Ross/Sachs business was puerile and distasteful in the extreme. But my understanding is that this was a pre-recorded programme, which means that someone else took the ultimate decision to broadcast it. They, whoever they may be, bear their share of the blame.

There's a plum in my salad!

Scientists have developed a genetically modified tomato which tests on mice suggest can provide a significant degree of protection from cancer. How long it will be before it is available to the general public - indeed whether it ever will be available - will not only depend upon further testing, but also on whether it can get approval from what is a very rigorous EU inspection procedure. And there's a further problem - the genetic modification means that the tomato is purple. Will this make any difference? There seems to be some evidence that purple is an acceptable colour for fruit, but is not a popular colour for vegetables (purple carrots have not been a great success). And most people would classify a tomato as a vegetable, even though it is actually a fruit. So we'll have to wait and see!

It's the silly season...

Why should something which has gone on for eighty years without any problem suddenly become unacceptable? This is what has happened in Newbridge, a small town in Wales, where the organisers of the annual Remembrance Day parade have been told by the local council that they must change its traditional route. The reason given? I'm sure you've already guessed - elfnsafety! And apparently it's not just Newbridge. Pity we didn't have Health and Safety inspectors in 1914 - nobody would have been allowed to leave their trench. Now that would have been worthwhile!

Down, down, down.

Have had to watch the value of my investments drop dramatically over the past week or so. When I was coming up to retirement we had a talk by a very good financial adviser, and one of the things he said which has stuck with me was "As far as investments in stocks and shares are concerned, you've not made a profit until you take it, and equally you've not made a loss until you accept it. If you can possibly avoid it, never turn a paper loss into a real one". So I keep muttering to myself - it's just a paper loss, it's just a paper loss....

Ha ha.

This comes from a chat group, courtesy of someone calling themself LP -

Gordon Brown was visiting a primary school and he visited one of the classes. They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked the Prime Minister if he would like to lead the discussion on the word “tragedy”.
So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a “tragedy”.
One little boy stood up and offered: “If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field & a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a ‘tragedy’”.
“No,” said Brown, “that would be an accident.”
A little girl raised her hand: “If a school bus carrying fifty children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a Tragedy.”
“I’m afraid not,” explained the Prime Minister, “that’s what we would call a great loss.”
The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Gordon searched the room.
“Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of Tragedy?”
Finally, at the back of the room, a small boy raised his hand…In a quiet voice he said: “If the Air plane carrying you and Mrs Brown was struck by a “friendly fire” missile and blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy.”
“Fantastic!” exclaimed Gordon Brown. “That’s right. And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?”
“Well,” says the boy “it has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either!”

Shame on us.

It's one thing to be evicted from your house for failing to pay the mortgage - it's quite another to be evicted from your country because somebody else wants to use it as an air-base. And yet that's exactly what happened to the inhabitants of Diego Garcia and the other islands of the Chagos archipelago back in the 60s. Since when they and their descendants have been fighting for the right to return. And now the House of Lords has ruled against them. Not exactly our finest hour, I feel.

Two plus two is...er...

I like this idea of Google's of not letting you send e-mails late at night or at weekends without testing you to see whether you are compos mentis by requiring you to work out a few maths sums first. Of course, if you're stone cold sober but arithmetically challenged, you're in trouble.

What's in a name - again.

When I was little, pikelets for Sunday tea was a weekly treat. We used to buy them loose from the local baker - they were thick and round with holes all over the surface, and you toasted them (in front of the fire back in those days) and smothered them with butter and sometimes honey. So just when did they become crumpets? That's what they're called in all the supermarkets these days. Ask for pikelets and you're met with a blank stare. To my generation, "crumpet" has a completely different meaning!