What's in a word?

Oh Lordy, why do I find myself coming to the defence of Gordon Brown again? He's in deep do-do this time for calling an elderly lady a "bigot" - except he didn't, he referred to her as "a bigoted woman" which in my book is not quite the same thing. Leaving aside the question of whether a politician of his experience should ever have been caught out by an "open microphone", a bigoted person is someone who holds strong (not necessarily extreme) views on things and will not be moved from them. And this I think was Brown's grouse - what was the point of having me talk to this lady when clearly nothing I - or for that matter, anyone else - could say was going to change the way she thought. Waste of time. A bigot, on the other hand, is a word which has taken on certain unpleasant connotations of racism, antisemitism, homophobia and the like. It's another example of the media putting words into people's mouths which have never in fact been used. Not GB's finest hour by any means, but let's not make things worse by misquoting him.

If we don't hang together...

Hung parliament - good or bad? Our only experience in recent years was in the 70s and that certainly was a mess, and not a good advertisement for the idea. David Cameron has been lambasting Nick Clegg for his (Clegg's) insistence that electoral reform will be his price for working with either of the other two parties should neither have a clear majority following the election. This, said Cameron, would lead to a permanent series of hung parliaments with the LibDems holding the balance of power. Readers of this blog will know that I am not in favour of a "tail wagging the dog" situation, but I've been thinking about this. And I think there's a difference between a hung parliament under the first-past-the-post system, where each party has their eye on the next election, and positioning themselves for best advantage when that happens, and a situation where - as it would be under PR - they know the next election will produce another hung parliament, and therefore there's no point in trying to score political points off the other parties, because they're going to have to continue to work together for the foreseeable. So if we really have moved into an era of three-party politics (and I'm not yet convinced that we have) then I think that PR will be essential to make it work properly.

Personal

Yes, for those of you who enquired, Sunday was the fourth anniversary of the death of my wife, and no, I did not mark it, as I have on previous years on this blog - if only by not posting on that day. This was a deliberate decision on my part. When you think about it, the whole idea of anniversaries is rather strange. The idea that I would think about my wife more, or miss her more, just because of a date on the calendar, than I think about her and miss her every single day is frankly fatuous. So April 25th is just another day I have to get through without her. I wish I could be more positive for any of you out there who have recently lost a loved one, but the bald fact is - in my experience anyway - that it doesn't get any better, it just gets easier. The screaming pain becomes a dull ache, but it's always there. I originally gave myself five years to "get over it" and I think I'm on track for that, but I've long since accepted that "it" will always be there, and it's more a matter of learning to live with it rather than any idea that it will go away.

Are we there yet?

Did you watch the London marathon on Sunday? If so, you might have wondered why the course distance for this event is set at 26 miles and 385 yards (42.195 km in new money). Why not a nice round number? The marathon is of course based on the (probably mythological) account of a messenger who was said to have run from the battlefield of Marathon in ancient Greece to Athens (about 26 miles) to bring news of victory, and having done so died of exhaustion. When the modern Olympics were founded in the late 19th century, a marathon race was included. Initially, there was no fixed distance - it just had to be a course of around 26 miles. In 1908 the Olympics were held in London, and for various reasons - not least in order to have the finish line directly underneath the Royal box - the course measured 26 miles, 385 yards. This race generated enormous public interest, because it was the race where famously Dorando Pietri, an Italian runner approached the finish line in the lead but in a state of complete physical exhaustion and was helped for the last few yards by officials - and as a result promptly disqualified in favour of the second-place American runner Johnny Hayes. This generated a series of rematches between the two of them, which were of course held over the same distance, and so when in 1921 the relatively new IAAF decided to set a standard length for the event they chose to accept this rather strange distance.

Burning question of the moment.

How the heck do you pronounce Eyjafjallajökull??

Pants on fire!

Isn't it funny that we have defamation laws to protect people from the damage caused by others telling lies, we have an Advertising Standards Authority to protect people from being misled by untruthful adverts, but it appears that in politics, and particularly in electioneering, anything goes. I'm afraid that I've long since adopted the strategy of disbelieving on principle anything a politician tells me. You know the old joke - how do you know when a politician is telling lies? It's when his lips are moving!

The Lazy Cook

Current season's new potatoes are starting to appear in the supermarkets. You can get them ready washed in bags. Cook them as soon as you get them home. Tip them into a saucepan of salted water, bring to the boil and and leave them boiling for 15 minutes. Get a knife with a sharp tip and give the biggest you can see a poke. If the knife goes in easily, they're done. Drain them in a colander and tip them into a bowl. Drizzle a little olive oil over them and shake to coat them evenly. They'll keep in the fridge for at least a week - maybe longer, but mine are always eaten well before that. Lovely on their own, or with mayonnaise or a little knob of butter. And then you can slice them and sauté them with some onions and garlic - if you add some chorizo and turn the heat down and give them 10 minutes or so for the oil from the chorizo to infuse with the potato and onion you've got a really delicious yet simple dish. Here's to new potatoes!

Pointing the finger

When in doubt blame the government, is the mantra by which many people live their lives. So naturally, the fact that there was a week of no flights to or from British airports has to be their fault? I commented the other day that I couldn't see why planes flying away from the affected area should be grounded, but in general I don't think the government had any choice but to impose the ban they did. After all, this isn't like a car which if it breaks down, you pull into the side of the road and call the AA - if a plane's engines fail, it falls out of the sky, simple as that, and almost certainly all on board die. The government had to act on the best advice they could get. Where I think they can be criticised is their apparent failure to realise the knock-on consequences of the ban, and to have any strategies in place to deal with them. It may be there were things going on behind the scenes that I wot not of, but the impression I got was that they were playing it day by day, crossing their fingers and hoping it would sort itself out. When they did finally get round to doing something, it was too little too late and they still didn't seem to have any cohesive plan - it had all the hallmarks of something worked out on the back of a fag packet after a few beers. So the ban wasn't their fault, but the chaos that followed most certainly in part, was.

Level playing field?

The LibDem "surge" has increased public interest in how our voting system works. We've talked about PR and the various ways it might be introduced before, but what the current discussions have highlighted is the extent to which the present system favours the Labour Party - not because of what they are or what their policies are, but simply because their vote is heavily concentrated rather than being more uniformly spread. The fact is that if all three major parties each got an equal share of the vote, Labour would end up with something like twice the number of seats of the Conservatives and three times the number of seats of the LibDems. And of course, it is perfectly possible for Labour to come third in respect of votes cast, but still have more seats than either of the other two! Effectively the system means that a Labour vote is "worth" more than one for the Conservatives or LibDems. Whether this state of affairs will be allowed to continue rather depends on what the outcome of the coming election is, but it certainly makes you think, doesn't it?

Ha ha.

Watched "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" over the weekend. This was the film that provided the template for "Up Pompeii" with Frankie Howerd, and I have to say that it wasn't as slick and funny as I remembered, but it still contains some really good one-liners. Here's my favourite -
- That's the brute who raped my country, Thrace!
- He raped Thrace?
- And then he came and did it again! And then again!
- He raped Thrace thrice?