One for the road?

A Scotland Yard Commander with special responsibility for alcohol abuse has suggested that it should be an offence to buy a drink for someone who is already drunk.  Interesting idea, and made with the best of intentions, but completely impractical.  For starters, it takes no account of the fact that drunkenness is a cumulative process - you may be OK when  I buy you a drink, but that drink may be the one that tips you over the edge into drunkenness.  Have I committed an offence or not? Then - define drunk.  This is obviously aimed at the rowdy, fighting drunks, but not everybody is like that - for plenty of people alcohol makes them mellow and friendly - are they to be treated the same as the yobbos?  Like I say - impractical.  

Someone has to be to blame?

I remember when I studied law, many, many years ago, one of the strange things that cropped up was, if it snowed, to think twice before you cleared the pavement outside your house. Why?  Because if you didn't, and someone slipped and hurt themselves, that was their bad luck - an act of God.  But if you did try to clear the snow and then someone slipped and hurt themselves, you could be sued for not doing a good enough job. Thought about that when listening to those flooded out up north blaming the Government for not providing good enough flood defences.  Bit bizarre in any event to be holding the Government responsible for the weather, but would you have preferred that they had done nothing??

Interesting career opportunity?

HMRC (the taxman to you and me) is apparently setting up a task force to look into strip clubs and escort agencies to make sure that the owners, and those who work there, are paying their tax.  I have a feeling that they won't have too much of a struggle to find staff for that!

Formula 1

My usual round-up of the season.  Again this year I've struggled to work up any real enthusiasm.  Not sure what the answer is though.
Hamilton - dominant until the last few races - by which time the championship was won.  
Rosberg - disappointing until the last few races - by which time he'd lost his chance. Failed to turn enough pole positions into wins - 4 from 7 as against Hamilton's 7 from 11
Vettel - got the best out of an ever-improving Ferrari.  Have a feeling he might be the one to beat next season.

Ha ha

For the first time in a long time, my pensioner's magazine has come up with a half-decent joke -
A teacher is doing a lesson on self esteem and confidence.  "Right class" she says "I want anyone who thinks they're stupid to stand up".  The children all look at each other but everybody remains seated, until after a few minutes Little Larry stands up. "So, Larry" says the teacher "you think you're stupid?"  "No Miss" said Larry "but I didn't like seeing you standing there all by yourself!"

What's in a name?

So the PM has determined that we should call our enemy in Syria Daesh - which he pronounces Die-esh.  The Americans tend to pronounce it "Dash" - but then, they have a habit of always coming up with their own pronunciations  - Eye-raq for Iraq and so on.  But apart from that, just what should we call this would-be Middle-Eastern caliphate?  It started out life as the Islamic State, then it became the "so-called" Islamic Sate, then ISIS or ISIL and now apparently to be on-song we must go with Daesh.  Does it matter?  Apparently the terrorists themselves don't like the name, which is perhaps why we've decided to use it, but what we call them is surely a side-issue.  I am reminded of a John Le Carré story (was it "A Little Town In Germany"?) where more time was spent on discussing what code-name a spy operation should be given rather than how it should be run.  Now we've decided to go in, let's just get on with it, whatever we call them.

Syria - the final verdict?

So it's "bombs away"?  Found it rather awkward to be siding with Jeremy Corbyn (though not fully agreeing with his arguments) but on balance I think we've made the wrong decision, for reasons I gave the other week.  Apparently this makes me a "terrorist sympathiser" but there you go.  Not a clear-cut matter and no question there are serious points to be made on the other side, but perhaps the crunch question is - do I feel any safer now?  And the answer is a definite - no, quite the reverse.

She's behind you!

Speaking of pantomimes, have you seen that the Bristol Old Vic is putting on "Sleeping Beauty" this Christmas - but with a twist.  The main character is not to be a princess, but a prince - Prince Percy. It will be he who pricks his finger and falls into a deep sleep, to be awakened by a girl heroine.  Well I suppose in the interests of opposing gender stereotyping I could just about accept that, but Prince Percy???

I'm cross!

A pantomime in Norwich is having to change one of the costumes of the "Dame" because it features several red crosses on a white background ("she" is supposed to be a nurse) and they have been told that this infringes the rights of the British Red Cross, whose emblem that is.  But hang on a minute - red cross on white ground - isn't that the cross of St George?, and that belongs to us all and well predates its use on ambulances and such.  I'm sure the producers of the pantomime don't want to get into any legal shenanigans but I'd be inclined to tell the Red Cross where to get off.

Need any help with your packing?

A famous art forger who has done time as a result of his activities has written a book in which he claims that a chalk drawing generally attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci and valued at £100m is in fact his work and depicts a check-out girl with whom he used to work at a Co-op store in Bolton back in the 70s.  If this is proved - or even just accepted - to be true, the work becomes pretty well worthless. But we've been down this road before - it's the same drawing!  How can it be that one minute it's worth £100m and the next, nothing?  I've said it before - doesn't this just point up the ridiculous pretentiousness of the art world?