Don't understand.

It is obviously right and proper that Shaker Aamer, who has finally been released from Guantanamo Bay after being imprisoned there without charge or trial for nearly 14 years, should receive compensation for what he's been through.  But why should it be the British taxpayer who foots the bill?  As I understand it, he was captured, arrested or whatever by the Americans, Guantanamo Bay is an American prison and it is solely down to the Americans that he has not been released until now.  So why are we paying?  

Ha ha

Why do Marxists only drink horrible tea?
- because all proper tea is theft!

Ve haf vays...??

The make-up of police forces should reflect the communities they serve, says the Home Secretary.  In particular, she says that the number of black officers is "simply not good enough".  But there's an underlying assumption there that people can be forced into particular jobs.  If black and Asian people don't want to become police officers in sufficient numbers to satisfy whatever quota is acceptable to the Home Secretary, what then?

G & T in peril!

Bad news for us drinkers - a fungal disease is killing off juniper plants in Scotland.  A 2015 report has found that something like 80% of plants are in a bad way.  Why the concern? Well Juniper plants produce juniper berries, and juniper berries are what gives gin its distinctive flavour.  You can get the berries from elsewhere in the world, but aficionados reckon Scottish berries are best.   

Rules of the game?

When I was at school we played "rugger" ('cause we had pretensions to being a "posh" school), but we did at times play football, and my recollection is that we were taught that the only physical contact allowed above the waist was a shoulder to shoulder charge.  So why was Coloccini sent off in the Sunderland v Newcastle match at the weekend for shoulder-charging an opponent?  Have they changed the rules, or what?  And just to be clear - I have no interest in either team and thus no axe to grind.  Regular readers will know I support Wolves (Gawd 'elp me).

Sorry??

It is said that Tony Blair has finally apologised for the Iraq war.  But has he?  It's all to do with an interview which he has given to CNN in America.  The interview has not yet been aired, but a transcript of it has been put out.  He's said that he's sorry "for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong".  And yet, that's not the question that I at least want him to address.  The question is - did he know (or even suspect) that it was wrong?  Did he mislead Parliament - and us - by presenting as fact things that he knew to be untrue, or at best dodgy?  And his apology comes nowhere near to answering that question.

Can you work it out?

For various reasons I needed to know when half-term week would be in October next year.  And I had a thought - I picked a holiday cottage at random from a well-known site and looked at the prices for a week in October 2016.  Here's what I found -
W/B 3rd October - £846
W/B 10th October - £845
W/B 17th October - £825
W/B 24th October - £1387
W/B 31st October - £836
I wonder which is half-term week??

There you are - see?

So a Subway foot-long is now going to be a genuine 12 inches (see post dated 27/1/13) and apparently the counter-staff are going to be provided with rulers to prove it, if necessary.

Well I never!!

I think we should inaugurate a prize for the most "un-news" news story - that is to say a story which is doing no more than telling us what everybody already knows - stating the bleedin' obvious as it were.  So, I offer this as a starter for ten - "Bookmakers are refusing to take bets from successful gamblers".  Yeh, and Queen Victoria's dead.

Rugby Union

Do we feel sorry for the Scots, who were leading Australia in a World Cup quarter-final with a couple of minutes to go only to be undone by a dodgy penalty decision which resulted in a one-point victory for the Aussies?  Oh, come on - they're Scots!!  But were they robbed, as some of them insist? The late great Bill McLaren (himself a Scot), who was the BBC commentator on rugby matches from the 1950s right through until the turn of the century was wont, when referring to a controversial decision, to recite Law 6.A.4.(a) of the rules of the game: "The referee is the sole judge of fact", or as it has otherwise been put - the referee is always right, even when he's wrong. So no, they weren't robbed - just unlucky,