Left a bit, Cap'n.

I've talked before about Lichfield Cathedral whose main claim to fame is that it is the only Medieval cathedral built with three spires.  What I hadn't realised until recently is that because of this particular configuration, German pilots during the war used the cathedral as a navigation aid, and so as a result it and its immediate surroundings stayed safe from bombing.  Another navigation aid closer to where I lived was a reservoir now called Chasewater, but then known as Norton Pool. Stretches of water were useful to navigators back then because they were easier to see in the blackout - particularly if there was a moon. So enemy bombers used to congregate over Chasewater, and then fly on to their targets.   Which meant that, even though my nearby village had little strategic value, we had to put up with a lot of air traffic on its way to and from Birmingham and the surrounding industrial areas.

Manners?

I'm content, if not happy, that Muslims have a world-view which differs from mine. But when they seek to impose that world-view on me in my own back yard as it were, they go too far.  Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol. OK, I have no problem with that, but when they refuse to sit down and have a meal with me if there is alcohol on the table, that isn't on.  This is what happened in the recent visit of the Iranian President to Paris where an official dinner had to be cancelled because the French refused to take wine off the menu.  This was in France, remember - the expression "when in Rome..." springs to mind.

The goggle box.

So, who invented television?  Like many "who invented" questions, the answer is - no one person. People built on other people's ideas, until somebody eventually came up with the goods.  In this case it was a Scotsman called John Logie Baird, who was the first person to demonstrate the ability to transmit an image from one place to another.  Baird's system however was a mechanical one, using spinning disks and was soon superceded by an electronic system using cathode ray tubes, and the man mainly responsible for this was an American named Philo T Farnsworth, whose working model was hijacked by the up-and-coming Radio Corporation of America (RCA).  The Second World War put a stop to the delevopment of television and by the time it was over, Baird's system had been consigned to history, and Farnsworth had been sidelined by RCA.  So who deserves the credit?  You decide.

Brother can you spare...£145.50?

Well, I shan't be offering to pay for my TV licence.  The idea is being floated that, to save the BBC money, those over 75 who can afford it should forego their free TV licence, and send the appropriate money to the BBC.  Well, when they stop spending obscene amounts of money on rubbish programmes and rubbish supposed celebrities, I might consider it, but as that will never happen...

Seeing red??

First it was red doors, and now it's red wristbands.  Am I wrong in thinking that these asylum seekers are being a bit too picky?  I'm not looking for gratitude, but equally I object to being treated as an unquestioning free vending machine which you are entitled to use as you see fit.  If you want free housing and free meals then I should think that red doors and wristbands are a small price to pay. And of course the comparisons some people are seeking to make with the way Jews were treated in Nazi Germany is fatuous in the extreme. They were identified in order to be beaten up, arrested and gassed to death.  These people are being identified so that they can be helped by being housed and fed.

Speak softly but carry a big stick?

So just where does Labour stand on replacing Trident?  Officially they are in favour, but their leader is implacably opposed, and is looking for ways to change their policy - mainly, as mentioned the other day, by putting the decision more in the hands of party activists, rather than his MPs.  Of course, a big problem is that the Trident programme supports an enormous number of jobs.  Scrap Trident and you put thousands of people out of work.  And Corbyn's solution?  Keep the submarines (and therefore the jobs) but scrap the nuclear warheads.  But this is sort of having your cake and eating it, isn't it?  How can you justify the expenditure on the submarines and infrastructure, if they carry no real threat?  It strikes me that this is an all-or-nothing situation - either we are in the game, or we pick up our chips and leave. Nobody can ever be sure of course, but it seems likely that the fact that there hasn't been an all-out nuclear war (and I'm old enough to remember shitting myself over the Cuban missile crisis) is down to the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) approach, in which our nuclear subs have played their part.  Who knows what the next 50 or so years will bring?  I think the Scout motto applies here - be prepared.

Aegean mystery

What is our (i.e. Europe's) policy on migrants coming from Turkey?  Every day seems to bring stories of boats packed with migrants capsizing with loss of life.  And yet, we send ships out to try and find these boats and take their passengers on board and bring them safely to Greece - where they were trying to get to anyway.  So if we're doing that, why not simply provide an official ferry service between Turkey and Greece?  Why force them to put their lives at risk when, if we pick them up, we will help them complete their journey.  Am I missing something?

The clock is ticking?

A new assessment has been made of the likely outcome should Vesuvius erupt, and it has suggested that the whole of Naples and Salermo are now in the "firing line" as it were.  So we're talking of many millions of people being at risk.  It's the best part of twenty years now since my wife and I holidayed in Sorrento and when we woke up in the mornings we were able to look from our bed across the bay and see Vesuvius - best view ever.  I remember we were told back then that scientists reckoned they could give about 10 days warning of an eruption - problem was that it had been calculated that even under ideal conditions the authorities would only be able to evacuate some 30-40% of the affected population in that time.  Sobering thought. And of course Vesuvius is well overdue for an eruption.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Look at what might be!

When you watch all the shenanigans that are going on over the pond as they fight over who should be their next President, aren't you thankful that, for all it's faults, we have a constitutional monarchy?

See what you want to see?

We've spoken before about people seeing something significant in what could be simply unrelated casual events, and a couple more have come to light recently. Asylum seekers up north are complaining that their front doors are painted red, thus identifying them and making them a target for vandals and racists.  Now it may be of course that they are right, and that this is deliberate, but isn't it equally likely that the firm tasked with painting the doors of these houses simply had a load of red paint they wanted to use up?  And then there's the Oscars - much being made of the fact that all the nominees are white.  Again, it's possible that this is the result of intentional discrimination but couldn't it just be that the most deserving candidates in the opinion of those who made the choices just happened to be white?