Tuesday 10/02/09

I think I’ve finally sussed the cause of my abnormally high blood pressure. To date I’ve been taking my BP medication before retiring in the evening, with the result that its optimal efficacy occurs at a time when my BP would normally be low anyway – i.e. while zonko. By the time I awake, a great deal of the effect has worn off, with the consequence that for the remainder of the day my BP is on an inexorable upward path till my evening fix.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I forgot to take my meds on Saturday evening and so took them instead at Sunday lunchtime. Given the fact my doctor has requested that for a couple of weeks I monitor my BP several times a day, I noticed an almost immediate reduction to a near normal pressure of 124/85. This continued into Monday, after again taking my meds in the morning. This would appear to indicate that I’ve been taking my meds at sub-optimal times and should therefore continue to take them in the mornings. The more astute among you might think that’s about as obvious as nun in a tartan bonnet, but it wasn’t to me.

The bugger of this is that under the mistaken belief it was overdosing on the e-cigar that was causing the BP to go ballistic, I’ve just ordered two bottles of zero nicotine e-liquid with which to ‘cut’ my existing medium strength e-liquid. Anyone want to swap zero for medium, or got 2 bottles of super-strength that I can mix with my zero? This is getting far too complex.

To other matters. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has denied breaking any rules by claiming second home expenses for the house she shares with her husband and children in Redditch because she stays with her sister in London, rather than using a grace and favour house to which she is entitled and would not make her eligible for the expense. Critics maintain that while she’s obeying the letter of the rules covering expenses on second homes, she’s flouting their spirit.

I’ve said this before; I don’t blame Jacqui Smith, I blame a system which puts the temptation to bend the rules in the way of people like Jacqui Smith, who after all is only human. There, but for the grace of God, go I – and doubtless thousands more. However, people in the full glare of public life should be a tad more sensitive to the consequences of being found to flout the spirit of the rules and the message that gives out to the great unwashed. Our leaders must be above all suspicion, regardless of how corrupt we plebs may be (or are).

Going back to yesterday’s post on Edward Gibbon, he makes a couple of very incisive remarks about corruption:

• Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
• Reflect how much swifter is the progress of corruption than its cure.

I’ve been taking a tour of Blogistan and reading a few contributions to the blogosphere. I’m absolutely horrified at the number of embittered women out there – especially in America - who have written about their divorces and think nothing of trashing their ex partners for no other reason than they were unable to satisfy a desperate, narcissistic, obsessive and self-absorbed need for a knight in shining armour to fix everything in their lives for them. When that knight turned out to be (as they invariably are) an ordinary human being, with exactly the same weaknesses and insecurities as they themselves have, they simply walked away from the relationship - and doubtless straight into another cycle of, “Let’s talk about me-me-me,” and, “What do I get out of this?”.

Too many people go into a relationship with no other thought than what they can suck from it, rather than realising it must be a compromise, something one has to work at and something to which one has to contribute if it is to work. They want instant gratification, an instant fix to all the difficult bits in their lives, someone who will plug a gap and a fill a need derived from total self-absorption – possibly even a replacement parent, but without the all-too-human faults of their own parent. These people don’t want a partner, they want a therapist. People need to lower their expectations and not hold their partners to an ideal that no-one can possibly achieve. Mr D’Arcy simply doesn’t exist in real life – he’s a fictional hero. Enter a relationship with expectation set impossibly high by a constant drip feed of romantic novels or by a desire for a father figure, but without your father’s faults, and you’re guaranteed to be heading for disappointment.

Some of the women’s stories I’ve read show how all too often the solution to an emotional gap not being plugged is thought to be having a family, but that merely compounds the feeling of isolation, as looking after kids is incredibly difficult and interferes enormously with one’s obsession with having the self gratified. That then leads to further resentment of the partner, whose image becomes even more closely associated with Rab C. Nesbitt than Mr D’Arcy. There’s no denying that even in families with the most New of New Men (which I believe to be a complete media myth), the brunt of looking after children falls to the mother. No – if your relationship is failing, the last thing you need in order to resurrect it is children. A trip to Relate is cheaper.

My own Blog has had a few hits from an individual in Twatt. Thought it was some irreverent person who had the technical know-how to frig the system and register any old rubbish as an IP address location. On further investigation it would appear there is indeed such a pace as Twatt, being located in the Shetland Islands. Not only that, but there’s another Twatt in Orkney (if you’ll forgive the expression). I won’t even go near the expected obvious joke about Scotland being full of Twatts. The word must have a some esoteric meaning in Gaelic and if any of my Scottish subscribers can enlighten me as to what Twatt actually means, then I’d be grateful for the enlightenment – as I’m sure would many others.

Are you a lazy blogger? Here’s a resource that my save you some time.

I don’t want to worry you unnecessarily, but there’s an asteroid heading our way.

Monday 09/02/09

Yesterday I was reading an article by Dominic Lawson. He noted that while Carol Thatcher was being condemned for likening a tennis player to a golliwog, the Theatre Royal is cheerfully hosting a performance of Oliver, which depicts a caricature Jew in a very unattractive and anti-semitic light, as entertainment.

I see Carol Thatcher has been allegedly receiving death threats. Which is worse, a racist (if the label can actually be made to stick to Thatcher, which personally I don’t believe it could), or a fascist who wants to actually kill you for no other reason than you have a different opinion to him? Racists are only misguided, fascists are monsters and infinitely more dangerous to society. Racist fascists are the worst, as evidenced by Hitler.

Remember Madoff – the chap who ran the Ponzi scheme that lost $50bn? Apparently Barclays had touted his scheme as an ‘attractive investment’ after having subjected it to their ‘comprehensive due diligence programme’. Barclays’ due diligence programme must be about as much use as a microphone was to Milli Vanilli.

Bonuses for bankers is big news. If an investment banker made a lot of money for his company, he quite rightly deserves a bonus. If an investment banker lost his company a lot of money, he deserves no bonus and possibly the sack. In any bank there will be a mix of both; each should get their just desserts, providing the ones that lost a lot of money left enough in the kitty to pay the ones that made some. If there ain’t enough in the kitty, it’s just tough luck – and in no manner can money borrowed from the government be included as part of the kitty. Does that sound fair?

Adverts for showers used to show naked women luxuriating as a cascade of stimulating water caressed their bodies. Lately I’ve noticed that such adverts have started to part clothe the models. Is this the advent of a new morality in advertising?

I’ve always wondered why the older adverts used sex in this manner, as a man has absolutely no say whatsoever in the make of shower in his home and merely buys what he’s told is needed. A man’s sole intent is to get into and then out of the shower in the shortest possible time – he’s not interested in showering as an activity for its own sake, or as part of a pampering process – so why use a naked woman to try and sell him a shower? We men merely go into the bathroom to ablute and spray the place with territorial markers that women incessantly complain about. All we want to know is that buying a new shower ain’t going to bankrupt us. Could that realisation have finally hit shower manufacturers and now they are targeting women with less sexualised imagery?

Was listening to AA Gill being interviewed about something on Radio 4 on Saturday morning. The interviewer started off calling him AA when talking to him and then later shortened this to A as the interview got more friendly. Weird! The man’s name is Anthony, not A.

This vignette from Matthew Parris writing in the Times really amused me: some 25 years ago, as MP for West Derbyshire, he was making a Christmas-morning visit to the hospitals and nursing homes in the constituency, and called in at one NHS cottage hospital where the flinty matron gave him a sherry. She and Parris stared bleakly out over a sad room of desperately fragile, often confused old people, too weak to leave, staring blankly at a television screen. “I blame central heating,” said the matron grimly. “Time was when a good Derbyshire winter would have cut through this lot like a knife through butter.”

I’m currently re-reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (unfortunately an abridged version, as the full volumes are on the boat) and am constantly amazed at the man’s incisive analysis and beautifully crafted literary style. Able to make even the dullest subject interesting though his use of language, Gibbon richly deserves the title ‘man of letters’. Here’s a link to some selected quotations from the books; I urge you to alight on just one or two and revel in Gibbon’s delightful prose.

One of my favourites: "The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful."

Hay and I happened to call in at Tesco yesterday for a few items that aren’t available at Lidl – Bic razors, Lingham’s chili sauce, etc. While standing at the checkout we were horrified at what the people around us were buying for their weekly shopping. With the exception of the odd piece of fruit, almost everything on the conveyor belts comprised pre-processed and packaged foods – vast quantities of it. Now Lidl has a reputation for its customers coming from the lower income bracket, but in general we’ve noticed that they tend to buy a greater proportion of fresh food, which seems counter-intuitive when most of the British working class simply don’t know how to cook. The only explanation I can come up with is that foreigners (especially Eastern Europeans and Africans) are more heavily represented in Lidl’s customer base and their culture is one in which good food (and hence fresh produce) plays an important role. They are more aware that buying fresh food is actually cheaper (not to say more nutritious) than buying processed convenience food which is loaded with sugar, salt and hydrogenated fat.

Another round in my war on cosmetics firms’ use of bollocky words. Saw a L’Oreal advert extolling the virtues of fibro-plastyl, which is a word invented by L’Oreal for a bean from vigna aconitifolia, or the moth bean plant. Moth bean extract doesn’t exactly sound very exotic and you might be a bit daft using the name in your adverts, whereas fibro-plastyl sounds infinitely more scientific. Given v.aconitifolia is a plant and can’t be patented, they dress it up in bollocky pseudo-scientific language to make you think it’s something they invented.

Now v.aconitifolia is a drought resistant plant and the thinking must be that if the plant has osmotic-resistant capabilities, an extract of it must do the same for the skin, which ain’t necessarily so, unless you happen to be plant. Here’s a paper that goes into the plant science, but it might as well be written in Serbo-Croat as far as my ability to interpret it is concerned, however, Hay fully understands it. In essence, as far as minimising the loss of moisture from skin is concerned, Dubbin or goose fat has a similar effect. The benefit of Dubbin is that you can use it on your leather football boots and as a lubricant for your bicycle chain – so come on ladies, buy Dubbin as a beauty aid.

High definition TV! Do any of my readers have experience of HD-TV? Is the human eye capable of discerning the difference between HD-TV and normal TV? I can’t help feeling it’s yet another bit of garbage designed to persuade us to part with our money for no good reason.

Sunday 08/02/09

The letters have gone out to the neighbours from the planning authority to alert them to the planning application – Colin has received his already (he took delivery of a half load of logs yesterday and I’m considering making a move on them tonight under cover of darkness). We’re expecting objections from one particular local family who have a reputation for complaining about everything just as a matter of principle. You know the type – members of the Rotary and Lions, twinset and pearls, lots of dinner parties, send their kids to public school, drive 4x4s and MPVs, the man of the house wears those hideous salmon pink or pea green jumbo-cord trousers with a hacking jacket and flat cap.

We went for a walk to Old Sodbury church yesterday. I think it’s called St John the Papist. Pretty as a picture – so here’s the picture:

May use is as a Christmas card next year and combine it with a round robin letter outlining all our activities during the year, along with all the kids’ exam results and pictures of us on holiday in Madagascar (not).

The snow has turned the escarpments next to the church into the Old Sodbury Ski Resort. We just need a ski-lift now. Here’s the learner slope (it’s a lot steeper than it appears and goes on forever):

The intermediate slope, where the King of Old Sodbury skis (note the many toboggan tracks):

And finally the Old Sodbury Cresta Run, which is only for the suicidal:

Hay calls this part of the churchyard shown below ‘the Narnia corner, for obvious reasons.

The following photos are memorials in the churchyard to a number of Hay’s relatives:

Percy, who was the son of the Thomas and Edith of the previous photo, and Caravan’s uncle, didn’t get a headstone as he was killed in Zantvoorde, Belgium, in 1914 and is buried in the British Cemetery there.

There are heaps more Dashes in the churchyard, but they’re not easily unearthed. Inbred as hell though - all the Dash family have a lower lip resembling the Habsburg Lip, but not as pronounced.

The photo below shows where the dead have been poking their hands up through the ground:

Hay wants to be buried in the churchyard when her time comes and she wants me there too, but I’m not 100% sure when. My old man was cremated and his ashes were despatched somewhere in Holland by mum on a whim, just as she started to go bonkers, so my brother and I never found out where. I would have liked to have had a permanent memorial to him; somewhere special where I knew he was buried and where I could go to think about him. It would be nice to leave such a memorial for my kids – and to be a part of history - and the Old Sodbury churchyard is the perfect spot.

Hay has a habit of vacuuming the ash and soot up from around the wood burner every now and again, but doing it while it’s lit. Yesterday she made the mistake of doing it while not only lit, but with the ash box lid removed. She managed to suck a burning ember into the vacuum cleaner’s bowels, the ember then set fire to the dust inside the cleaner and the vacuum draft turned the whole thing into a smoke generator. The caravan stank of burning dust for hours.

Religious orders in Britain are giving people the chance to "try out" becoming a nun or a monk for a weekend. The Roman Catholic church is hoping to slow a decline in people choosing monastic life by arranging the weekends at Worth Abbey in West Sussex. During their time at the abbey, they rise at dawn and eat in silence while listening to a reading and walk to the church for prayers five times a day. Not exactly my idea of Heaven! Perhaps the authorities should make one such weekend compulsory for all youngsters before leaving school. It would give them a taste of what prison life is like and might just put the few recidivists among them off offending.

I learned yesterday that a student obtaining just 18% in an OCR exam board chemistry paper can obtain a C grade and a consequent pass. You may not be aware of this, but the old O-level is still alive and well, but not in the UK. The Cambridge Board, well known to those of us who did O-levels in the early ‘70s, promotes them as "established qualifications that keep pace with educational developments and trends, recognised throughout the world, by academic institutes and employers, as a mark of quality and evidence of real ability". Pupils in the UK, however, are prohibited from sitting this British exam because it is said to be old-fashioned: more likely because they don’t have sufficient knowledge to do them. It’s strange that Singapore, who use the Cambridge Board’s O-level exam, should stick with a system so vilified by educationists here for not meeting the needs of the 21st century.

Here is a question from a 2005 GCSE history paper set by the AQA board, and an O-level questions from the Cambridge Board's specimen paper for the same year:

The GCSE candidates were asked: "What does Source A tell us about the main aims of the League of Nations?" "Source A", printed immediately above the question, said: "The League of Nations aimed to keep peace through collective security and to encourage disarmament."

The first question for O-level candidates was: "Show how the peace settlement of 1919-20 changed the European boundaries and reduced the power of (a) Germany and (b) Austria. To what extent were German-speaking people disadvantaged by the peace settlement?"

Defenders of the GCSE system neatly deflect any criticism by saying we should not denigrate the achievements of today’s students as it will demoralise them. It’s a fallacious argument and a red herring – we’re not criticising the students, but the idiots who develop the GCSE curriculum and the exam questions. The GCSE exam is systematically failing our children in the pursuit of the illusion that standards are improving and government is responsible for that improvement. When will the emperor’s new clothes be shown for the vacuous garbage that they are? When will a political party take the bull by the horns and educate our children to the standards we enjoyed under the O-level system?

Saturday 07/02/09

Jeremy Clarkson has apologised for calling Gordon Brown a one-eyed Scottish idiot. Clarkson said: "In the heat of the moment I made a remark about the prime minister's personal appearance for which, upon reflection, I apologise." So it’s purely the one-eyed bit for which he apologises (personal appearance) and not the Scottish idiot bit, which has nothing to do with Gordon’s appearance. However, Gordon Brown is, to all intents and purposes, blind in one eye and thus Clarkson was commenting on a documented fact. Brown is Scottish, which is also a documented fact. Whether Brown is an idiot is debatable and thus a personal opinion, to which Clarkson is entitled. So what exactly is Clarkson apologising for? I would suggest it’s more the manner in which what he said was said, rather than its veracity; the manner in which his disability and his nationality are in some way linked to, or possibly the cause of, his idiocy, which could be interpreted as discriminatory.

A Salzburg insurance company has placed adverts for staff stipulating they must be born under Capricorn, Taurus, Aquarius, Aries or Leo. They claim the requirement is based on statistical research proving that such individuals are harder working. The advert breaks no discrimination laws, as they only cover race, age, religion and gender and it must be logically assumed that within groups of people born under certain star signs there are old and young people, men and women, etc.

For the last 13 years, Marks & Spencer has been fighting the VAT man as to whether they are entitled to reclaim the VAT charged on teacakes. On Thursday the issue was finally settled when the High Court when their Lordships decided that a teacake was a biscuit (on which there is no VAT) and not a cake (on which there is VAT). They are therefore entitled to a full refund of £3.5m.

Call me stupid or call me old fashioned, but I’d have thought that the clue was in the name – teacake. Lexicology is obviously not their Lordships’ strong point. Anyway, given that the VAT was in fact passed on to customers, we should form the Teacake VAT Pressure Group and reclaim the VAT we spent on teacakes at M&S, as it’s really the customers’ money and not M&S’s. Have you still got your receipts?

Hay was livid yesterday. She’d heard an interview with Dave from Essex, who had chosen not to immunise his kids against MMR due to the possible risks. Dave, who obviously knows more about immunology than a professor of immunology, thought it best for the body to fight disease ‘naturally’. I guess that must run to cholera, yellow fever and typhoid too, in which case I wouldn’t like to sit next to Dave on a plane returning from a holiday in India. Dave went on to say he’s not prepared to gamble with his kids’ lives. That’s despite the fact that 10% of kids who get measles having serious complications (diarrhoea, pneumonia, encephalitis and corneal ulceration) and a 3 per 1,000 mortality rate. I’d call that gambling with your children’s lives.

Some more art appreciation:

If you didn’t get that one, just Google “The Last Supper” and “disembodied hand”.

Beardsley provides endless possibilities for ‘amendment’, although he can be very rude at times

Friday 06/02/09

Given my left eye is now fully recovered from the burst blood vessel I was going to replace the Chairman Bill logo above. However I quite like the red-eye effect, so I’ll leave it in place for now and work on another burst blood vessel so I match the logo in all aspects. Will have to do something about the jaundiced Simpsonesque skin colour though.

I deleted my Facebook account yesterday. Most of the friends I have on Facebook know me anyway, so what’s the point? Could I care less that Dominic is walking the hoover, Jessie is eating her poodle or that Fred is chatting up some tart in Florida? In any case, it embarrassed the hell out of my 21 year-old niece who is busy partying while at university somewhere in the northern wastes and had expressed alarm at having to start censoring what she said on Facebook due to her uncle being amongst her friends.

I ask you, how the hell can a 21 year-old girl have 442 ‘friends’? I have about 5 close friends with whom I have the kind of relationship whereby it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t get to speak to each other in 5 years. Add to that say another 20 friends slightly more toward the acquaintance end of the friendship spectrum, and some 200 odd business acquaintances in whose personal lives I have not the slightest interest.

A Christian political party (anathema! – actually that’s a good name for a Christian political party) has taken a leaf from the atheists in that they’ve shelled out £15k to advertise on buses the message that there definitely is a God. They seem to have gotten round the ‘truth in advertising’ problem they complained about in respect of the atheist bus campaign, so I guess we can look forward to the atheists responding by dropping the word ‘probably’ from their adverts and a subsequent round of recriminations.

Thought for the day: what does it take to become a schismatic atheist? Are you a heretic atheist if you deny the existence of God but believe in ghosts?

Got home last night to find the latest bum fodder delivered by our local Jehova’s Witness and occasional doorstop. She’s not a bad old stick, she just happens to believe a load of old tosh that’s about as believable as a political party manifesto, a Christian political party manifesto to boot – miracles for all, higher taxes on the Godless, NHS to provide faith healing!

The latest edition of The Watchtower tells us that the earth is definitely finely tuned by God for the purpose of supporting life – specifically us. In scientific circles this is known as the anthropic principle, or in expert nomenclature - a load of old bollocks. Unfortunately for Jehova’s Wotsits, all of the evidence at our disposal contradicts this belief; in a nonanthropocentric universe there is no need for supernatural entities to explain life as we know it and the anthropic principle seems to reverse known causes and effects. Steven Jay Gould, the eminent palaeontologist and evolutionist, likened the anthropic principe to saying ships were invented to house barnacles, which I think is a neat analogy.

It’s art appreciation time again. This month it’s some Old Dutch Masters and a Velazquez that I’ve updated.

Peter Paul Rubens does know how to draw bums of Olympian proportions, doesn’t he?

Talking of bums; I think I’ve previously mentioned that in August 2009 we’re celebrating my old school’s 150th anniversary by holding a huge reunion at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, hoping to attract some 1,600 old boys from around the world (yes, stay well clear of Liverpool in August). As part of the event we’re trying to recruit an old boy who can still handle a bugle and play reveille and the last post at the grand dinner. There are a few volunteers in their mid to late 50s, but what with the high-fibre diets they’re on as a precaution against bowel cancer, they could suffer what a mate in Birkenhead reliably informs me is colloquially known in St Helens as glassblower’s bum. I don’t think you’ll find reference to it in the British Medical Journal or The Lancet, although cello scrotum and guitar nipple were indeed featured a number of years ago.

Just a wild unconnected thought: have you noticed how when the media uses the words ‘public sector’, they always have to slide the adjective ‘bloated’ in front of it?

Three times this week I’ve had to pull over to allow some idiot driving less than 20 feet behind me in treacherous conditions to pass. White Van Man x 1 and Aggressive Young Woman In MPV x 2. This morning I put a shovel in the car as a precaution against getting stuck – it was a bit touch-and-go on the slopes here yesterday.

Talking of death-wish drivers; the family of two people killed by a 73-year-old driver has called for all over-70s to sit further driving tests. Channon Kevern, 12, and her step-father Terry Stubbs, 29, of Fawley in Hampshire, died on the A326 at Dibden Purlieu near Southampton, on 23 August. Ann Larke was making a U-turn when she hit the pair's motorcycle. In a statement the victims' family said: "Nobody should ever have to bury a child and grandchild. It's the worst possible thing to go through. We believe that every driver over the age of 70 should have to sit a hazard perception test and medical, to prove their competence to drive on our roads.”

Older drivers are not a problem. If they drive a lot of miles a year they are very aware. If they drive a few miles every year, their exposure to the public roads is limited. Statistically drivers between the ages of 50 and 70 are the safest, with those above 70 not too far behind. Apart from the White Van Man, the current problem is Young Professional Man and Woman having earned their first company car and texting or phoning whilst driving. If you’re going to call for the over 70s to have to face constant tests, the stats would logically dictate we simply don’t allow the under 25s anywhere near a car in the first place.

PS - there's a typo in the text for the picture of Charles V / Matt Lucas. That should be 'thought' and not 'though'.

Thursday 05/02/09

I stand corrected – yesterday was the 5th anniversary of Facebook, not the 4th.

I’m getting quite a few hits on the blog from people with BlackBerries. I’ve got a damned good idea who one, or possibly two of them are.

Thought you might like to see how Johnny Foreigner operates his trains in inclement weather. A salutary lesson in how to get it right, regardless of whether you have the wrong type of snow or not. The bugger who drives that should be cloned and used to man the West Coast Main Line and Great Western could do worse than order some 20 of the locos. Oh hang on though – the driver is foreign and there would be wildcat strikes on the railways if British drivers weren’t used. Perhaps British drivers could be genetically modified by having some of his DNA integrated with theirs. I suspect the clip is Canadian.

If you look back to the Captain’s log entry for star-date Monday 26th January, you’ll see that the prior weekend was a life-defining milestone event during which I was overcome by a seemingly rational (and probably age-related) desire to don a balaclava. Well, it’s going from bad to worse. What with the cold weather of late, the lino floor in the kitchen area of the caravan is as warm as a refrigerated marble tombstone in Castle Dracula. This prompted me to root out a pair of slippers that Hay bought me about a year ago and which I’ve never worn out of fear of looking like a bloody pensioner. Now there’s a Holy Trinity of early-onset pensionerhood – the balaclava, the slipper and the pipe; thank God I ditched the pipe before succumbing to the other two members of the Trinity. It’ll be long Johns and Ladro figurines next.

Other signs of impending pensionerhood include:

• An overnight loss of musical knowledge,
• Mispronouncing celebrities’ names, such as Jeremy Paxton, Alexi Styles and Angus Deighton,
• Socks with sandals,
• Clark’s shoes,
• Net curtains,
• Small dogs, especially of the miniature ornamental variety,
• Those hideous rubber mats with suckers on them you put in baths,
• Hand rails in the loo,
• Crepe bandages,
• Sherry,
• Cotton wool in your ears in winter,
• A chain for your spectacles,
• Pushing your reading spectacles up onto your forehead and forgetting they’re there,
• Those key rings you whistle at to find,
• Using old Christmas cards as shopping lists,
• Watching Last of the Summer Wine, Monarch of the Glen and Strictly Come Dancing,
• Not being able to send an SMS,
• Those TV dinner trays with an integral cushion,
• Using thimbles,
• Not knowing what day it is,
• Mixing up your kids’ names,
• Eating more tinned food – especially soup, and
• Finding Facebook tedious, difficult to operate and virtually useless.
  

The BBC needs a bit of a shake-up. Jonathan Woss is back at his desk after having made a highly offensive remark, on-air, at which someone took great offence. Carol Thatcher, however, is sacked because someone so arrogant as to presume that they know what all black people would be offended by reported a private comment that no black people either heard or complained about. Her comment described someone as 'looking like a golliwog'. If the person in question does, in fact, bear a resemblance to a golliwog, then how can the comment be considered racist? If you Google image Gael Montfils, who is the subject of the remark, I think you’ll find that in some photos he does indeed resemble a golliwog, if for no other reason than his hairstyle. This raises the question of whether a golliwog, which is a caricature, is any more racist than Barbie, which is also a caricature.

What I find acutely disturbing in this whole episode is the fact that in all of its reports the BBC has not once quoted what was actually said and merely states that, ‘Thatcher referred to a tennis player as a "golliwog" backstage during filming’. Referring to someone as a golliwog (i.e. calling them a golliwog) and saying they resemble a golliwog, which I’m given to understand was what was actually said, are two very different things. I’m inclined to agree that this appears to be some form of vendetta against Thatcher. Never thought I’d be defending Carol Thatcher, who I dislike almost as intensely as her brother.

India is planning to develop cheap laptops for its schools and students. I wonder if they’ll plan to have the call centre in the UK? Talking of call centres – where do Indian call centres stand in the row about UK companies employing foreign workers?

I mentioned to Hay last night that Woolies had been bought by the Barclay twins to turn into an on-line business, with a deep focus on the Ladybird brand, which has been around for donkey’s years. I mentioned that all the girls at my primary school wore Ladybird underwear. She asked how I knew, to which I replied that it was obvious when we played doctors and nurses.

Wednesday 04/02/09

Why does White Van Man insist on driving 5 yards from my rear bumper on icy roads?

It was pointed out to me yesterday that Jimmy Knapp couldn’t head the Conservative Task Force looking into ICT in schools, as he died in 2001. However, being dead is not necessarily a bar to positions of political responsibility – as evidenced by the House of Lords.

Following on from yesterday’s post about the so-called proselytising nurse; I had a quick shuftie at the National Secular Society’s website, as they lodged a complaint about her offering to say a prayer for a patient. They’re promoting de-baptisation, which, if you ask me, is the sure mark of a nutter. If you don’t believe baptism confers anything meaningful on you in the first place, then de-baptism is going to achieve even less and is just an exercise in having a good rant about nothing (something with which I’m intimately familiar).

I’m all for campaigns to eliminate the negative influence of religion in developing the policies of government, public service, etc., but a person’s private belief is their own affair and if you want to say prayers to the Magic Teapot on my behalf, then all power to you if it makes you feel good. As long as you’re not preventing me doing what I want to do because of your belief system, then what you do in the privacy of your own home, temple or stone circle is no concern of mine. Tell me I can’t go to the loo more than 3 times a day because your god has a problem with it, or that your god says I must stone someone for having committed adultery, then you’re guaranteed to get my back up.

Currently I do not believe in a god, but present me with concrete evidence to the contrary and I guarantee I will change my mind. Some religious people are on record as saying that even if shown proof-positive of no God, it will still not shake their faith. That’s because their view of their god is so integral to their view of themselves that they can’t step aside and view themselves (or their god) objectively. To do so would be a denial of the last thing they can hold on to - themselves.

The Scottish SPCA is upset that the RSPCA has been collecting money north of the border and spending it on animals in England. I can hear the cry now: “Scottish money for Scottish cruelty.” Why on earth is there a separate Scottish SPCA? Surely if it merged with the RSPCA there would be some considerable admin savings that could be devoted to a greater number of animals? Oh, hang on – that would mean some directors being made redundant, so it’s not a viable option, is it?

A major independent report on childhood says that the aggressive pursuit of personal success by adults is now the greatest threat to British children. It states that children with separate, single or step parents are 50% more likely to fail at school, have low esteem, be unpopular with other children and have behavioural difficulties, anxiety or depression. I have personal experience of this.

There is no need what-so-ever for a child from a broken home to feel anxious, providing both parents communicate, put the children’s interests before their own and work together at sharing the responsibilities. All too often, the resident parent (which usually happens to be the mother) makes that impossible by running away, not facing up to their responsibilities and alienating the children from the non-resident parent.

In a number of jurisdictions it’s a recognised condition – Parental Alienation Syndrome or PAS – and is punishable by law. The condition is recognised in the US and Canada, but not the UK, where family courts have an atrocious reputation for failing non-resident parents, hence the need for organisations such as Fathers-4-Justice. In a recent case in Canada a mother was jailed for alienating her children from their father.

Detractors of PAS say that, though presented as a reliable concept, the syndrome lacks scientific validity and thus reliability. The lack of scientific validity may well be true, but that’s only because no-one has yet bothered to study it in any depth. There’s no denying though that parental alienation exists and extreme, obsessive, and ongoing parental alienation can cause terrible psychological damage to children extending well into adulthood.

Lady Justice Hale stated: It is my unhappy experience, borne out by other anecdotal evidence and confirmed by the Official Solicitor's department that there seems to be an increasing number of cases coming before the family courts where contact between a young child and the absent parent has become bedevilled by stubborn opposition to contact being shown by the child which may, or may not, be evidence of some implacable hostility on the part of the other parent.

Lady Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, retired President of the Family division, (the top UK family court judge) stated: There is, of course, no doubt that some parents, particularly mothers, are responsible for alienating their children from their fathers without good reason and thereby creating this sometimes insoluble problem. That unhappy state of affairs, well known in family courts, is a long way from being a recognized syndrome requiring mental health professionals to play an expert role.

It’s little wonder that in 40% of divorce cases the absent father loses contact with his children after as little as 2 years and desperate fathers resort to donning Superhero costumes and abseiling down Gordon Brown.

The saddest aspect of parental alienation is that the resident parent is so utterly convinced of their moral rectitude that they are blind to anxiety this sets up in the children and its adverse long-term psychological damage. If not blind to it, they defend themselves by ascribing the cause to the non-resident parent.

A major diplomatic incident has occurred. It’s on par with the infamous Laura Ashley bog paper incident of 1984. The government has been criticised for displaying the Union flag upside down at the signing of a trade agreement with China.

Who but a total nerd would notice? How can you even tell unless you’re 6 inches from the damned thing? Believe it or not, the upside-down Union flag is a maritime distress signal, but given that it’s almost impossible to determine whether it is in fact upside-down at any distance, I pity any sailor that actually had the poor foresight to use it. If the natives have a problem ascertaining which way up it should be, then what chance does a foreigner have? For the life of me I can’t understand why the flag can’t be given major axis symmetry by removing the double fault line in the cross of St Patrick. Come to think of it, what is the cross of St Patrick doing on the flag in the first place? I thought Eire was an independent country with its own flag.

Today is the 4th anniversary of FaceBook. I’ve been struggling with it for just over a week now and find it slow, intensely frustrating and as much use as an upside-down Union flag. The irony of these networking systems is that the more they proliferate, the less use they become.

Tuesday 03/02/09

There were reports yesterday that a Taliban suicide bomber had killed 21 policemen in a police station in Afghanistan. The Afghan authorities stated that the dead policemen had been ‘martyred’, which is an intriguing use of terminology that puts the authorities on the moral high-ground and reclaims a word loaded with connotations of moral rectitude and that, till now, has been almost exclusively associated with terrorists. Perhaps Muslim clerics should follow up the Afghan authorities’ tactic with some PR on how suicide bombers are not in fact adhering to the principles of Islam and can in no way be called martyrs or even Muslims, being barred forever from entry to their heaven by their indiscriminate actions. Our news media should perhaps also follow suit and also refer to all innocent Muslims who have succumbed to suicide bombings as ‘martyrs’.

While on the subject of the power of words, there’s a young people’s Christian organisation called the Urban Saints. They used to be known as The Crusaders but changed their name relatively recently out of respect for Muslims, for whom the crusades were a bloody episode of history that is best forgotten (despite them having won). That said, there’s a delicious irony in the choice of name in that the Pope who preached the 1st Crusade in 1095 was called Urban II. I wonder whether the choice of name was intentional.

Back to more anarchic matters:

Following on from yesterday’s post about Carol Vorderman heading Cameroon’s maths task force, I’m wondering what bit of lunacy he’ll come up with next in pursuit of the popular vote. Here are some Curriculum Task Forces and suggested popular leaders:

English Language – Liam Gallagher,
English Literature – George W Bush,

Note: the above two can occasionally effin’ swaperificate - like.

Physics – Pope Benedict MLCCXXXVIII,
Chemistry – Amy Winehouse (also doubling up for Cookery),
History – David Irving,
Modern Foreign languages – anyone from Liverpool,
Music – Lisa Simpson with Pete Doherty as backup,
Geography – Jade Goody,
Art & Design – Shane MacGowan,
Information & Communications Technology – Jimmy Knapp,
Citizenship – Any Tory tax exile.

Cars, lorries, buses and trains are disrupted by ‘severe weather’. Bloody hell – the temperature hasn’t dropped below -2 degrees, for God’s sake! In Canada they have to plug their cars into electricity supplies overnight so they don’t freeze solid in temperatures of -20 and yet still they manage to function as a society and everyone gets to work. What is it about our weather or organisational capabilities that makes everything grind to a halt, even when we have several days notice? The media has been full of reports of ‘arctic conditions’ – the arctic is a bloody sight colder than -2C.

I wonder how many company bosses will analyse which departments that have not been able to get into work due to the weather have had the least effect on the smooth operation of the business and use the data to selectively cull them? HR (remember, we used to call them ‘personnel’); now there’s a prime example of a department that could easily stay at home for a few weeks with no ill effect on company efficiency. In fact, no-one would probably notice their total absence. I’d suggest that the HR department could function perfectly well staffed by part-timers working say 1 week in 4.

US Super Bowl fans in Arizona got a surprise when their TV coverage was interrupted by a pornographic film. According to reports, the clip showed a woman unzipping a man's trousers, followed by ‘a graphic act between the two’. What’s wrong with that? Didn’t Rolf Harris make a whole career from a graphic act?

Drunken sailors have been removed from the lyrics of a famous sea shanty by the government-funded Bookstart project, which encourages parents to read with their young children. The original version of What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor includes, "Shave his belly with a rusty razor", “Slap him around and call him Suzie”, “Give 'im a taste of the bosun's rope-end”, "Stick him in a bag and beat him senseless" and "Put him in the hold with the captain's daughter". These innocuous and enjoyable maritime activities have been replaced with sadistic and twisted tortures like, “Tickle him till he starts to giggle”. Bookstart has dismissed accusations that this is a politically-correct attempt to avoid the alcohol references, saying that it was a case of re-cycling a familiar tune for reading events that were based on a pirate theme.

Alcoholic sailor, part-time blogger and Sean Connery impersonator, Chairman Bill, commented: “I find thish totally unacsheptable. Drunken shailors are now being treated like pariahs and shacrificed on the altar of political correctnesh.” A few bottles of whiskey later he added: “To be brudally honesht, Wha Sha We Zu Wi Th Drunken (hic) Ssssailor was never a nurshery rhyme. It wass a rhythmic shipboard shong that was shung when hawshers and halyards were being pulled in unison.” He then promptly threw up in the scuppers.

Did you know that according to Endsleigh Insurance, Hull is the best city in which to own a car if you want it nicked, while Swindon is the worst. Could it be because there are no cars worth nicking in Swindon.

Monday 02/02/09

I’ve found some of David Lowe’s music on YouTube. I Know Jayne and Dreamcatcher (the last one being very Moby). Wish I could find ‘Designer Jazz’ for you – but this will have to suffice.

You know the Rent-a-Peer thing and all the corruption stories? Ken Clarke is quoted as saying that to take money to alter legislation for the benefit of people paying you a fee is corruption. I thought that was called politics, although I get what he’s aiming at. It all depends on the size of your constituency – or in the case of the Lords, the size of the bung.

It’s strange how people achieve cult status whilst remaining relatively unknown. John Martyn, the musician and guitarist who died last week, is being lauded by all the Sunday papers and various commentators. Has anyone ever heard of the chap before? Can’t say I recall his name or any of his music. Looked him up on Wiki and am still none-the-wiser. It’s not even as if I’ve been living in a cave with Obama Bin Laden for the last 30 years either.

John Updike also died. While I’m more familiar with Updike’s name, I can honestly say, hand-on-heart, that I can’t name a single one of his books, much less say I’ve read one. It was only after looking him up that I realised he’d written The Witches of Eastwick - and the only reason I’m familiar with that title is by virtue of the film. Again, it’s not as if I’m not well read. It could be, however, that I’m not a great fan of the novel (especially the Great American Novel), it being more the kind of territory that the female of the species inhabits.

I suppose these people’s status could come down to their huge influence on those who create more popular music and writing. You could say Martyn was a musician’s musician and Updike was a writer’s writer, and they influenced the more popular proponents of those art forms. Basically it must come down to the artist’s relationship with the audience – in popular art (be it music or literature) the relationship of the audience to the artist is passive and they are spoon-fed (mainly rubbish); in good art the relationship it is more active in that the audience has to invest something of themselves – an emotion or some thought – in the work. I could be talking complete, pretentious bollocks though.

Talking of pretentious bollocks, I’m glad to see Roger McGough is being touted as the favourite to assume the mantle of Poet Laureate. Both popular and good – in my humble and very subjective opinion.

We went to the Blue Zucchini in Tetbury again for a spot of late lunch yesterday. Unfortunately the baked cheese was off the menu, which upset my chakras no end and had my inner feng-shui all of a doo-dah.

The owners, Peter and Pernille, are 100% dedicated to the place and fully involve themselves with the customers, rather than lurking in the background and treating it as no more than a financial enterprise by hiring others to front it. If something on the menu or wine list is not available they will make up for it in some manner, be it through a free drink or dessert, which shows concern for, and empathy with, the punter and ensures (s)he will return at some future date. They deserve to succeed, and doubtless will. If only more businesses operated with the same concern for those paying their salaries.

I was greatly amused yesterday by the specials board which advertised the provenance of the meat they use. Read it to the bottom and bear in mind that Pernille (Mrs P) is Norwegian.


On the way to the restaurant I was giggling at Hay for some reason. She queried me and I told her she was my muse and that I found her ‘musing.

A Christian Community nurse, Caroline Petrie from Weston-super-Mare, has been suspended for offering to pray for a female patient's recovery after having put dressings on her legs. The patient mentioned the incident to another nurse who reported it to the health trust, with the bizarre result that the nurse in question was suspended without pay pending an enquiry. Now I may be an agnostic with atheist tendencies, but if some nurse offered to slaughter a chicken and recite a few ritual words on my behalf which she thought would aid recovery, I wouldn’t dream of being offended or complaining. If the nurse was naive enough to think it would make one iota of difference, the performance of the rituals would probably be more beneficial to her than me anyway. How anyone – even if of another faith – could be offended is beyond me. At least the woman was showing concern. There was a time when practically every nurse was a nun – it’s where the profession originated.

I see Cameroon has recruited Carol Vorderman to head a task force to assess teaching methods in England, how to tackle the "fear" of maths and if tests have got easier. Now given Vorderman’s class of degree (in engineering) can be derived by adding 2 and 2 and subtracting 1, I’m convinced that Cameroon’s choice has more to do with gaining PR and column inches than anything else. I ask myself whether populist, sound-bite initiatives like this are really going to achieve anything in the long run.

The Welsh Assembly is seeking powers to compel service companies in Wales to provide their services bilingually. What a huge retrograde step that would be. Apparently only some 14% of the population speak Welsh on a daily basis, and less than 25% understand a word of it, so adding to the bureaucratic (and hence financial) burden for what is undeniably a minority seems totally daft – especially in today’s economic climate. Driving through Wales is a bloody nightmare due to traffic slowing to a crawl as confused drivers try to disentangle the English from an unintelligible mass of dissonant consonants on road signs.

Sunday 01/02/09

Saw Mother yesterday morning. Absolutely no recognition on her part at all and I could have been the coal man for all the interaction there was. Every time she started to speak she went into stutter mode.

Called round to see my oldest childhood friend, John, who was at his old man’s house due to him having died earlier in the week. John, who is a professional builder of sorts, gave me some advice as he cleared out bags of cement and sand from his MPV in order to fit some furniture from his dad’s house into it; always carry some sand and cement in your car, as you’ll never know when you’ll need it. John has a bag of each in his VW MPV, has never used it in 20 years and it always gets in the way of him carrying stuff in his car. However, he’s reluctant to remove it as he maintains he’s guaranteed to need it the instant he does so. It’s been in his car so long that the cement has set and is useless except as ballast and as obstructions to getting furniture into the car.

The Lords have been arguing about the efficacy and safety of energy-saving light bulbs. Proponents say they save the planet as they use less energy. If the government wants to save energy they should switch off the gazillion watt lighting along motorways. As I was driving to Southport at sparrow’s fart yesterday, I was horrified at the sheer waste along parts of the M5 and M6. If it’s OK for vast stretches of the motorway network to be unlit, then why for God’s sake do they illuminate similar sections in other areas? Please give me back my incandescent bulbs and switch off the motorway lights! That should enable a few coal-burning power stations to close.

Regarding these walkouts at energy plants across the UK: given the £ is now on parity with the €, how on earth can it be cheaper to employ Italian construction workers? Regardless of the legality or ethics of employing non-UK labour, there’s more to this than meets the eye - you mark my words. Perhaps I sense the vague smell of corruption and back-handers.

Took delivery of the banana flavour e-liquid yesterday. It tastes just like those yellow banana shaped sweets – the ones made out of the same sugary stuff as Barratt’s Shrimps. Imagine me, a hardened smoker who used to frown on anything that didn’t taste like a crematorium at full blast, smoking sweeties.

The other day I heard a jazz-fusion track on Grand Designs (the link is for any non-Brits), which I absolutely adored and had to get hold of. Through the application of interweb research I discovered that the chap who writes the music for Grand Designs is David Lowe with the track in question being called ‘Designer Jazz’. Not being able to find the individual track on iTunes (or anywhere else, for that matter), I went to Lowe’s website and bought the entire CD of Grand Designs music for a fiver (how sad can you get?). The CD arrived yesterday and the minute I started playing it Hay began doing a voiceover à la Kevin McCloud as each track started. I’ve therefore re-titled the tracks as per Hay’s voiceovers, which perfectly evoke the mood of the music:

• Track 1: Opening Titles
• Track 2: “Contemporary rural barns are not everyone’s idea of a Grand Design; however…..”
• Track 3: “Foundation work finally started in June – a whole 5 years later than scheduled.”
• Track 4: “Colin, the builder, has worked day and night to get the frame ready for the roof and is shagged out.”
• Track 5: “It’s been 10 years since Badger & Hay started and, amazingly, everything is back on schedule.”
• Track 6: “The weather has turned against them – it’s been hammering down for 2 months and all work has stopped.”
• Track 7: “A break in the weather means they’ve finally topped the house out and all is back on schedule for the build to be completed in another 5 years.”
• Track 8: “It’s been 3 years since I last visited Badger & Hay…….”
• Track 9: “It’s not everyone’s taste, but it works for me - the juxtaposition of old and new; the harmony of the design with its environment; the way they’ve brought the outside inside.”
  

A man who uses his home in Bradley Stoke, near Bristol, as a studio for adult films has been confronted by protesting neighbours who are not at all happy about where he runs his entirely legal business (yes, I was surprised that it’s legal). A neighbour who lives nearby said: "Why is this going on? Why is this allowed? There are little children round here." The pornographer replied: "When you look at the house, you can't actually see that there's anything going on.” That neatly disposes of the legality and depraving influence arguments.

Another neighbour (the husband of the aforementioned neighbour) said: “If you've got pornography here now, you're going to have prostitution next, you're going to have drugs.” Ah – the old thin-edge-of-the-wedge argument! A fallacy if ever I heard one. On that basis they shouldn’t allow pensioners near the area – it’ll be dead people littering the streets next! How about pets? Allow pets and the next thing you know packs of feral dogs will be attacking the neighbours! Laundry? No – before you can say egg foo yung there will be a Chinese laundry opening on the corner and the place will be overrun with communists!

One neighbour, surprisingly, raised a logically valid argument – that it’s affecting house prices. However, if you insist on picketing the offending house and attracting every newspaper, radio and TV reporter in the country, then trashed house prices is a self-inflicted injury as well as a self-fulfilling prophesy.