Austerity?

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I just loved the banner to one of the Guardian’s articles today - Liberté, égalité … austérité?

It relates to the clampdown by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on ministerial perks. He has told ministers to tighten their belts and has cancelled his own summer garden party as part of the cutbacks.

It seems that France has had its own spate of scandals over ministerial perks, and ministers have now been told to rein in their excesses. Such as one minister who charged €12,000 for cigars during a 10-month period, another who hired a private jet for an official trip to Martinique at a cost of €116,500 and the sports minister who criticised the French football team for living it up in a five-star hotel in South Africa during the World Cup, while she and five of her staff were booked into an even more expensive hotel.

Sarkozy has also said that he is doing away with 10,000 government vehicles and 7,000 official lodgings used by ministers, officials and other state employees. Austérité indeed!

However, Sarkozy is not giving up the presidential weekend retreat at Versailles or the state's seaside residence in Provence or the holiday home, the Chateau de Rambouillet. Nor will he be giving up the specially adapted Airbus A330, recently acquired at a cost of €180 millions!.

I suppose though, that abandoning the annual garden party is a type of Presidential austerity!
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One Way Of Avoiding Traffic Jams

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If you’ve got £130,000 to spare then there is one way of avoiding traffic jams in future, for one American company has produced a flying car.

The ‘Terrafugia Transition’ is a light sport aircraft that can convert into an automobile which has been given approval by the US Federal Aviation Administration. Weighing in at 1,440 lbs, the two-seater craft can convert to an automobile by landing and folding its wings. A major benefit of the designation of this aircraft is that it requires a licence which can be obtained after only 20 hours of flying time.

In use as a car, it can can fit in a ‘standard’ garage and drive on roads at normal speeds. In aircraft mode with its wings folded down, it can engage its rear-facing propellor and take off carrying a maximum of 450 lbs with a cruising speed of 115 mph and a range of 460 miles. So far, seventy people have paid deposits on the craft and, once into production, it is bound to attract more buyers.

So now in addition to crowded roads we need to watch out for crowded skies! But only in America!
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Goal?

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It is for debate whether the disallowed goal in the England v Germany match would have made any difference to the end result, but already there are increasing calls for technology to be used to monitor goal lines in the same way that it is already used in other sports.

Cameras are one option that has been suggested. Another is to install a chip in the ball which will react with sensors behind goal lines. Of course, if there is mistrust of technology for this particular sport, there is a much simpler and possibly less expensive solution.

That is to appoint a couple of junior or trainee referees just to keep watch over goal lines in major tournaments. But they would need to have perfect vision!
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Silly & Pointless!

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There is much that the EU does for us which is said to be good, though I can’t think of anything offhand. But there is also much that is total and utter tosh.

It seems to me that the EU regulators must sit down now and again and dream up ways of irritating people with their pointless, and often ignored, rules. Take for example, their directives that bananas should be sold free from abnormal curves, that cucumbers ought to be sold straight or their proposal that carrots should be designated as fruit since the Portuguese make jam from them.

Now the regulators have decided that eggs and other products should be sold by weight and not number. How daft can they get? Can you imagine any British housewife asking for half a kilo of eggs or a French mademoiselle asking for a kilo of croissants?

The latest rules are buried away in no less than 174 pages of amendments to the original 75-page proposal to simplify packaging of foodstuffs and which were carried by MEPs last week. The new rules will prevent suppliers from showing the number of, for instance, oranges in a packet but their weight.

The Food Standards Agency has already said it will oppose these silly rules, a stance that is applauded by a number of lobbyists including the editor of The Grocer Trade magazine. He is spot on when he says, ‘You couldn’t make it up, could you? It would be funny if it were an April Fool’s joke. But it’s not, and it will potentially cost the industry millions, while confusing consumers no end.’

Perhaps Prime Minister Cameron and his coalition team can bring some commonsense into this silly and pointless situation?
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Not Fit For Purpose!

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This afternoon’s humiliating defeat for the English football team in their match with Germany shows that, despite the vast amount of money spent on the manager and players, the team and their play were useless.

The footballers may individually be brilliant in their home teams, but they never came together as an English team. Where the blame for this lies will be a matter of debate for some time to come.

Even supposing that the disputed second English goal had been allowed, Germany showed themselves to be the better team. As did the teams in the previous games.

‘Not fit for purpose!’ seems to be the appropriate indictment in the circumstances.
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The Importance Of Cash

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It doesn’t seem all that long ago that in order to get cash one had to queue up in the bank and present a cheque made out to ‘Cash’.

This was how we did it in the early 60s when I started work and I remember those tedious lunchtime bank queues every week and the superior looks of the bank clerks as, in the days before computers, they checked your hardcopy account to see whether there was enough in it to fund your request. These were, it has to be said, the times when a fiver would keep a young, single man going for a week.

Those were the days when everything was done on a cash basis. Credit cards had not yet been invented and so whatever you did, barring the more expensive purchases which could be done by cheque by those with bank accounts, had to be done in cash.

They were the days also that the government imposed strict controls on taking sterling abroad. You were limited to just £25 per person, whatever the length of your trip, and if you wanted more than that you had to get yourself some foreign currency or take a chance on not getting caught with more in your wallet. Happily, those were also the days when, for a young married couple, £50 was enough to fund the expenses of a fortnight’s holiday.

There was one year when my wife and I took a two-week break in Italy with my brother- and sister-in-law and had a super time visiting all the sites around Rome and Sorrento. Food and wine cost very little and with a double currency allowance - which was noted in the back of our passports by the bank - we lived like royalty. However, the reckoning came when we had to pay our final hotel bar bill and discovered that we didn’t have enough cash between us to settle it.

There was only one thing for it, and that was to telephone the bank and ask them to telegraph me £20 care of the hotel and, after some anxious waiting, it arrived in time for us to settle the bill and have a few pounds over for the last couple of days.

As the years have passed, we’ve quite forgotten just how important cash in one’s wallet used to be and, without it, you could often come to a temporary and embarrassing standstill. These days we’ve almost become a cashless society. Indeed, so far have we come since the 60s that some banks have imposed a minimum of £300 on over-the-counter cash withdrawals and some organisations have even banned the use of cheques in favour of credit card transactions. In another development, Barclaycard may next year trial a wristband containing a microchip that can be preloaded with credit to be used by those attending music and other festivals, thus eliminating the risk of fraud and theft.

So it is interesting - for the older generation at any rate - to reflect on the importance that cash used to have and the tedious queues that used to be involved in getting it.

All that changed on this day in 1967 when the first ATM machine to be installed in this country was put into use by Barclays Bank and first used in a blaze of publicity by Reg Varney. After that day, bank queues and officious clerks faded out - at least for getting small amounts of cash.

These days our only problem is whether the ATM machine we are using has been ‘doctored’ by crooks or whether we will get mugged when using it!
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How Sad

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Roman history, and particularly aspects of their technology, interests me very much and my attention has been drawn to a recent report about the archaeological finds in the Yewden Villa complex in Hambledon, Buckinghamshire.

The Yewden site was extensively excavated in 1912 by archaeologist Alfred Heneage Cocks. He and his team discovered the remains of a villa and workshop complex containing tessellated pavements, bathroom suites, a well, 26 pits, 14 kilns and a wealth of high status finds including a hoard of 294 coins.

In use between the 1st and 4th centuries, the site also contained the remains of 97 infants which were hidden under walls or buried under courtyards close to each other and these and the other artefacts uncovered are housed in over 300 boxes in Buckinghamshire County Museum.

The bones of the infants have recently been examined in detail and all were found to have died at 40 weeks gestation, very soon after birth. What could have caused their deaths; was it disease or some other cause?

The archaeologists believe that the only explanation is that the inhabitants of the villa were systematically killing their unwanted babies. And that led them to theorise that the villa was, in fact, a brothel.

Roman contraception was ineffective and unwanted pregnancies and infanticide were common in those days. Indeed, a spokesman for Chiltern Archaeology has said that archaeological records suggest Roman infants were not considered to be ‘full’ human beings until about the age of two and that children younger than that were not buried in cemeteries but in domestic sites.

Much as I admire the Romans for their accomplishments, infanticide is not one of them and the discovery of the likely cause of the death of these little babies is extremely sad.
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Wouldn’t You Have Thought?

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The Chinese government is about to complete work on what will be the world’s longest natural gas pipeline which will run for 8,704 kilometres. The Russian government has the world’s longest oil pipeline which runs for 4,000 kilometres. Around one fifth of the natural gas used in the UK is bought to us by the Langeled subsea pipeline which runs for 1,166 kilometres from the North Sea.

‘Ain’t it astonishing then that a Cumbrian water company may have to ask permission to impose a hose-pipe ban to combat a dry spell in that area?

Wouldn’t you have thought that by now that someone would have come up with the idea of a water-grid, bringing supplies from the water-rich north to the rest of the country?
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Not A Bad Idea?

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When we are stuck in traffic jams we may take a look at the number plate of the car ahead.

Some of them are quite interesting. When I lived in the US, I would look out for the plates from the various states and some of them were quite colourful or gave a message about the particular state: California - the Garden State, Idaho - Famous Potatoes, Alaska - the Last Frontier, New York - the Empire State, ... and so on.

As we drive around our own country, we look out for foreign plates some of which even tell you the city where the vehicle was registered. As in the US, there are number plates which give the name of or tell you something about the drivers who, in my view at any rate, have more to say about their egos than anything else.

The cash-strapped state of California has come up with what may be a good idea, if potentially a dangerous one.

That is to allow drivers to have electronic number plates that would scroll adverts while the vehicle is stopped at traffic lights or in congestion for more than four seconds, though they would show the registration number when the vehicle was in motion. The drivers could earn advertising commission and the state could get a licence fee.

It’s not a bad idea though I can foresee drivers approaching a traffic jam paying more attention to the scrolling number plate of the car stopped ahead!
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Part Of Titanic Recreated

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The latest museum attraction in America is a 50% scale replica of Titanic’s front section.

Costing over £16 millions, the Titanic of Pigeon Forge in rural Tennessee is already bringing in the crowds and is set to attract over one million visitors this year. Not only does the museum recreate Titanic’s grand staircase, the ship’s bridge (under a starry sky) and recreations of first and third class cabins, it also comes complete with its own iceberg.

The museum, whose 75 staff are dressed as members of Titanic’s crew, additionally houses four hundred artefacts from the original ship, though none have been recovered from the wreck itself. These include White Star cutlery and crockery and even Lady Astor’s lifejacket.

The museum is bound to be a success, though some might find it sad that visitors are presented with a ‘boarding pass’ bearing the name of one of those who died on that ill-fated maiden voyage in 1912.
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You've Lost What?

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Last week a circus moved some animals from Nova Scotia to Ontario. A trailer that was parked overnight near Montreal was stolen along with its occupants of a Bengal tiger named Jonas and two camels called Todd and Shawn. The trailer was discovered in Quebec on Saturday but the three animals were missing.

The police feel that this was an ‘opportunity’ crime and that the the thieves were unaware what was inside the trailer. I’m no detective but it seems to me that the thieves as sure as heck found out what the cargo was when they opened the trailers doors.

I have two questions. What did they do with the animals? And how can you hide a Bengal tiger and two camels? [The animals were safely recovered.]
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The Days Are Drawing In!

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Yesterday’s solstice made an estimated 20,000 people happy when they prayed, danced and generally whooped it up around Stonehenge. The rest of the population merely noted that yesterday was the longest day and that the nights are now inexorably drawing in.

Along with shorter days, what else is there to look forward to this year? George Osborne’s Emergency Budget this afternoon is most likely to be a starter. Judging from what has been leaked so far, a further tightening of personal and national pursestrings and, quite possibly, a summer and autumn of discontent to look forward to.

No dancing and whooping it up for us then but, possibly, quite a bit of praying!
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Let’s Suppose ...

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Let’s suppose that you’re a multibillionaire with lots of money to splash around, and decide that you would like to support your country and promote it by assembling one of the world’s national football teams and turn it into the very best.

You take advice and hire the best football players available in the country of your choice and make sure that their earnings are at a rate of at least £140,000 a week. You then find yourself the very best football manager in the world and take him on an annual salary of at least £6 millions. You hire also the best available assistants, trainers, sports-therapists and other experts in the game.

After an adequate period of training in first-class facilities, during which your players get used to each other, you sit back and consider what you have achieved so far. You have assembled one of the best football teams in the entire world, and you are so confident of their abilities that you decide to enter them in the World Cup. The game’s experts are highly impressed with what you have achieved and reward you by rating your team among the first ten in the world. You eagerly look forward to their first game.

But, after two disastrous games in the first round, in which your team is roundly and humiliatingly beaten by teams reckoned to be easily beatable, you sit back once again and consider where you are now.

You discover that, thanks to their fat wage packets and extravagant life-styles, you have assembled a group of grumpy, half-interested men who are just not hungry to the point where they will do anything to win a match. You discover also that it takes more than just money to instil a proper team spirit in your players.

All is not yet lost though. There is one more match to play in which your team might qualify for the next round. You keep your fingers crossed that the manager and the players can get their act together in time for this. You might give them a couple of pep-talks and remind them what the purpose of the game and the competition is.

You night ponder upon the impact this exercise has had on your wallet so far and wonder whether it has been worth it when you might have done better by going out and recruiting a bunch of athletic school-leavers who might have done a better job at a lot less cost.

You mention all of this to one of your chums and ask for his view. His reply astonishes you.

‘Thank God, the taxpayer hasn’t had to fork out for this shambles!’
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Out Of Control?

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I always thought that ‘proms’, the non-musical sort I mean, were the end-of-term dances held by American high school students.

I was used to seeing the students in California clothed in their best or hired attire and often riding to their celebration dances in the stretched limos that our American cousins are so fond of. So I was not surprised when the idea of end-of-school proms as well as stretched limos spread to this country. The proms mark in celebratory fashion the transition from school to university or to work and, possibly, the move to adulthood. And why not celebrate in this way? I am enthusiastically all for it.

But it was a bit of a surprise to learn the other day that the idea of proms has spread to children to mark their move from primary to secondary schools. I feel this is more than a little over the top.

My surprise was heightened when I read that parents are trying to outdo each other by providing the fanciest or outlandish way of getting their little darlings to their celebrations. Indeed, East Renfrewshire Council has recently said ‘No!’ to one parent’s request to transport their 11-year-old child to the school prom in a helicopter. Dismissing the request on grounds of health and safety and the effort involved in providing a safe landing space, a council official added that it had ‘no educational benefits’. They got that right!

Another person who spoke sensibly was the spokesman for One Parent Families Scotland who pointed out that end-of-term parties put pressure on parents who may not have the resources for their children to emulate those whose parents are better off.

High or secondary school parties seem a great idea to me. But end-of-term parties for pampered eleven-year-olds? Definitely, not!
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Worth A Pound!

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Today is the 19th which, for reasons which will become clearer, made me think of the Colosseum, that monstrous first-century amphitheatre which was the scene of so much tragedy, torture and death in ancient Rome and which apparently kept the public’s mind happily off the troubles and politics of the day.

A few years ago I used to visit Rome from time to time and got much pleasure in my off-duty hours from quietly wandering around some of its ancient sites. There were occasions when I had time on my hands and would to take a closer look at the Colosseum, originally the Flavian Amphitheatre, in the days when, for a small tip to one of the guardians, you could pretty much go where you wanted in the place. I explored much of the building and was astonished by its construction.

I learned, for example, that the amphitheatre could seat over 50,000 spectators which could be seated or evacuated quickly in much the same way as modern stadiums. There were eighty entrances, four of which were reserved for the nobility and other members of the elite, that were numbered, and spectators gained entrance by means of pottery ‘tickets’ that directed them to their appropriate section, tier and seat. Those entrances, and the passages and stairways that led from them, were of such a design that those moving up from or down to one entrance would not meet others entering from or leaving the next. Each staircase led to a passage to the appropriate tier quite separate from the other passages.

Chatting to the guides and the guardians, I heard among other things that the Colosseum was constructed with a series of elevators that lifted animals and those unfortunate enough to be killed either in brutal gladiatorial contest or executed in a variety of cruel and dreadful ways into the area itself. Beneath was a two-tier series of tunnels off which were holding cages, cells and other spaces. The arena was used to stage mock land battles and dramas, and could even be quickly flooded to enable mock naval battles to be staged as well.

One has to be in the Colosseum to appreciate the immensity and complexity of the place, and it is good that some of the underground passages that were once barred to the public have now been opened for inspection so as to give visitors a better idea as to how intricately and very efficiently the place was organised. The movie ‘Gladiator’ gives a very good idea of this level of organisation and how the games and contests were choreographed.

On one of my visits to Rome I took a colleague to see the Colosseum and, as we walked round the outer wall, I asked him what the Roman numeral for nine was. ‘XIV’, he responded. I bet him a pound note that he was wrong and he took the bet. As we continued our walk, I showed him one of the numbered entrances, I forget now which, which showed very clearly that in the first century, the Romans designated nine as VIIII.

So today could be numbered XVIIII. Thus, you also have now accumulated a useless piece of knowledge which that particular day earned me a pound note!
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24 Years?

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Barring a last-minute reprieve, this morning Ronnie Lee Gardner, a convicted murderer, will be strapped into a chair in the Utah State Prison in Draper. He will be hooded, have a target placed over his heart and, after he has said his last words, shot to death by five unidentified law enforcement officers. One of the .30-calibre rifles used will have a blank inserted instead of a bullet, thus allowing each of the executioners to feel that their shot may not have been a real one.

Gardner was convicted in 1985 of the murder of a barman. He was on trial for this in Salt Lake City when he tried to escape from the courthouse and, in so attempting, shot and killed his defence lawyer and a bailiff who died later from his injuries.

If the execution goes ahead, it will be the first in Utah for over a decade and only the third time since the death penalty was restored in 1976. Utah is now the only US state to use the firing squad for executions which Gardner selected after he was given the opportunity of death by lethal injection.

It is not Gardner’s story or the fact that he has chosen death by firing squad. What is interesting is that it has taken 24 years for him to arrive at this point having been sentenced to death in 1985 and gone through a lengthy series of appeals.

Surely, a man who has been on Death Row for so long has already endured his own punishment of sorts? And doesn’t that qualify for him to be kept in prison for the rest of his life and not shot?
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‘Uncanny’? Not!

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You do read some tosh in the newspapers sometimes.

Take, for example, the one-inch copper badge of England, thought to have been part of a 13th-century horse harness, that was recently found in a medieval stone wall in Coventry. The badge features the three lions of England which also forms the England football team’s logo.

A spokesman for the Football Association said the resemblance of the badge to the England logo was ‘uncanny’.

Doesn’t he know that the three lions passant have been used in the royal coat of arms since the time of Henry II in the 12th century?
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A Wonderful Day Nonetheless!

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Yesterday marked the start of Royal Ascot, that annual racing event that puts aside the woes of the day and brings out the toffs attired in top hats and tails with their ladies modelling stunning dresses and impossible hats (sometimes in impossible dresses and stunning hats!). Of course, we plebs do not have to dress formally, though it is nice to do so now and again if only to give our partners a chance to shine in their own new clothes.

I and some of my colleagues were invited to Ascot by a wealthy contact a couple of times a few years ago. He had a box and so we all had to troop round to Moss Bros. and get ourselves correctly kitted out. Our wives were invited on the first occasion and went off to buy themselves lovely dresses and hats. We all had a wonderful time sipping champagne and enjoying the appetisers and lunch and, when we remembered to look, the races themselves. Afterwards, we went to a posh hotel somewhere and had a splendid slap-up dinner complete with yet more champagne.

The second year, I forget which it was though doubtless someone with racing knowledge will let me know, six of us were invited without our wives. Again we poodled round to Moss Bros. for our suits and hats and, once again, we enjoyed all the good things in life in the box that our contact had hired as well as dinner in a hotel afterwards.

That particular year, we impoverished shipping executives decided that we would have a ‘kitty’ from which we would make our bets so that we would equally share the winnings we would undoubtedly receive. If anything, that £20 sub from each of us focussed our minds on the actual races.

The first race was the Queen Anne Stakes and we placed three bets on the three horses we figured between us might come in first. To back up our guesses, we also made three place bets, so ensuring that, even if one of our horses came within the first three, we would make a little money. If one of our horses came in first, then that would be wonderful.

As it happened, all three horses we picked were the first three to cross the line and we were cock-a-hoop with excitement as we tried to work out how much we had won. Around us, disappointed punters threw their useless tickets on the ground.

But then there was an announcement that there was a stewards’ inquiry into the race and, instantly and suddenly, well-tutored young boys hoovered up all of those discarded race tickets and, in half a minute before anyone could react, they disappeared. After an anxious wait, all of our three horses were disqualified, for the jockeys’ use of the whip I seem to recall, and we were added to those who were bitterly disappointed by the result. Among us were frustrated punters who had lost the opportunity to recover their tickets and so make a profit on the day.

It was the year when all three winners of the Queen Anne Stakes were disqualified. It was a day when we didn’t make a fortune, but then we hadn’t spent one either.

But we had a wonderful day nonetheless!
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Sealed Today

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Today is a momentous one in our history for it was on this day in 1215 that King John put his seal on the Magna Carta, the Great Charter, in a meadow at Runnymede.

It was not signed as many believe, nor did it bear the seals of the barons who forced the king to accept that he and his subjects would always in future be bound by the rule of law.

The Charter was the most important influence on the development of law in England and later many other countries around the world. Since 1215 there have been a number of versions of the Charter, and it is the 1297 version which contains three of its 37 clauses which are still on our statute book. Since then various governments have tinkered with it.

The first tinkering was a repeal of clause 26 in 1829. At that point, the perceived protected status of the Charter was broken for ever and over the next 150 years virtually the whole of it was repealed leaving only clauses 1, 9 and 29 still in force:

I FIRST, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. We have granted also, and given to all the Freemen of our Realm, for Us and our Heirs for ever, these Liberties under-written, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of Us and our Heirs for ever.

IX THE City of London shall have all the old Liberties and Customs which it hath been used to have. Moreover We will and grant, that all other Cities, Boroughs, Towns, and the Barons of the Five Ports, as with all other Ports, shall have all their Liberties and free Customs.

XXIX NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.

Magna Carta was unquestionably the foundation for our law - despite subsequent tinkering - but, sadly, according to a poll carried out by YouGov in 2008, 45% of the British public do not know what it is.

Nonetheless, today is one on which a very important anniversary should be remembered.
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Stunning!

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Yesterday afternoon I was treated to the theatre by one of my sons. Not just any old theatre but a stunning three-act performance of an epic Japanese Kabuki play at Sadlers Wells.

The 46-strong, Tokyo-based Shochiku Company presented a two-and-a-half hour taster of the 18th-century drama, ‘Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees’, in which the mistress of the fugitive General Yoshitsune, fleeing from his brother who has established himself as Shogun, is barred from following him. She, Shizuka, is protected by a shape-shifting companion, Tadanobu, a mythical fox in disguise, who journeys with her through the cherry-blossom strewn landscape of Mount Yoshino.

The star of the show was Ebizo Ichikawa XI, who is a direct descendant of the 17th century Ichikawa acting dynasty. He took on the dual role of Yoshitsune’s loyal retainer and the enigmatic fox spirit, performing to a most wonderful scenic, vocal and musical background.

Kabuki theatre is highly stylised and ritualistic, and yesterday’s play was one of the theatre’s three most favourites which normally runs to five acts. The actors, beautifully dressed in traditional costumes were just staggering in their variety of moods, expressions, grace and, at times, their agility.

Maybe Kabuki theatre is not everyone’s cup of tea, but what I saw yesterday was just breathtaking and a tremendous Sunday treat.
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Requiescat In Pace?

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Rest in peace. That is what we are supposed to do when we finally shed this mortal coil. But not necessarily if you are a saint.

Saints are constantly being prayed to for assistance for all sorts of problems and situations. Some of them are sometimes exposed to the public gaze, and some of them even get to be paraded around towns now and again. Yet others, if their bodies remain incorrupt as saints bodies are supposed to, even get to have a medical exam.

Take Saint Rose of Viterbo, the 13th century virgin who at the age of just three raised her aunt from the dead before going on for a short reclusive life of holiness and penance. The saint, who lies in the monastery of Viterbo near Rome and is paraded around the town each year, has recently been X-rayed to discover whether or not she died of tuberculosis as originally thought.

Researchers found, however, that the saint, whose feast day is 4 September, was most likely killed by a blood clot in the heart; Cantrell’s syndrome, causing defects in the heart and surrounding tissues. You’d have thought that this would have been the end of the matter, but researchers say that at some point in the future they might be able to analyse her heart with ‘more modern technologies’.

Requiescat in pace is what I say.
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Clear Enough?

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A Southwark Crown Court judge has ruled that the three former MPs and one peer charged with expenses fraud are not covered by parliamentary privilege as they had claimed.

The judge said the argument that submitting an expenses form was part of the proceedings of parliament, and therefore protected by privilege, was akin to saying that the coin used in a slot machine was part of its machinery. There was no ‘logical, practical or moral justification’ for the four men using parliamentary privilege to prevent prosecution, he said, adding that there was no legal justification for it either.

That judgement seems to me to be not only very sensible but as clear as a bell.
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Should Have Asked Mickey!

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Most owners will attest to the intelligence of their dogs, large or small. In our case, we have two small dogs - Ollie, a Jack Russell terrier, and Mickey, a Yorkshire terrier. Each has their own endearing personality and each of them know just how to manipulate us when they wish.

It is Mickey who is, perhaps, the most manipulative of our two pets. At the same time it seems to me that he operates rather as some sort of impatient automaton.

For example, when we return from our twice-daily walks, he will loudly demand his doggie treat. Midmorning when we have coffee, and midafternoon when we settle for a cuppa, he demands another one. At around five o’clock he gets very impatient and voluble for his evening supper of a saucer of chicken. And so on.

To attempt to deviate from the strict routine he has imposed on us turns him into a noisy impatient bundle of fur. For such a little dog, the noise that he can create in the house if his demands are not met has to be heard to be believed. The curious thing is that if he is offered a titbit at other times he will usually turn his nose up at them, so fixed is the routine in his mind.

Ollie, on the other hand, is possibly one of the most patient dogs we have had. He knows Mickey’s routine very well and merely waits quietly for the treats to be handed out. He is much less manipulative than Mickey, but even he knows that if he feels like a treat he has only to come to where I am sitting and stare quietly at me for something to be eventually offered.

Our sons say that our two dogs rule our house, and we have never sought to dispute this for clearly that is the situation. I guess that, despite television programmes such as The Dog Whisperer’ which exhort us to treat dogs as animals and not humans, most dog-owners are as soft as butter when it comes to their pets.

The routine of our two dogs was brought to mind this morning by a report from the University of South Australia in Adelaide which has shown that pet dogs are less intelligent than their forebears, the wolf, or of Australia’s wild dogs, the dingo.

The researchers set up a problem-solving test in which, to reach a bowl of food behind a fence, the animals had to move away from the food, pass through a swing door and then come back on themselves. The wolves and dingoes passed the test in twenty seconds. but the domestic dogs failed altogether. They just pawed uselessly at the the fence and barked out of frustration, thus proving that they were utterly reliant on humans.

They should have asked Mickey. When it comes to food, he’d have beaten the other animals hands down with Ollie closely following in his wake!
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Back To Work

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Yesterday saw the last of the series of five-day strikes by some members of British Airways’ cabin crew which has disrupted the airline’s business and inconvenienced thousands of passengers. Now Unite, the union involved, is considering balloting its members for further strike action.

The dispute arises from proposed changes in the airline’s staffing levels and working conditions and the sticking point seems to centre around the withdrawal of travel concessions for those who went on strike.

Though discounted travel is certainly a perk enjoyed by those employed in the travel industry, there must be few companies that give free travel, and it is a surprise to learn that some BA staff members actually rely on free travel to get themselves to work.

Against a background of rising operating costs and falling passenger loads, British Airways surely have no choice but to try to reduce their own expenses. Haven't the strikers realised this?
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Who Is Competent To Judge?

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The Health Secretary has announced that hospitals will suffer financial penalties if patients are readmitted as emergencies within thirty days of being discharged. They are also now required to look after patients’ health and well-being for up to a month after their discharge.

It seems that hospitals are currently paid for each admission, including readmissions. The new plan is supposed to ensure that patients are not prematurely discharged in order to free up beds.

This seems all well and good on paper but it seems to me that much depends upon a doctor’s opinion as to whether or not a patient is ready to be discharged. In that respect, nothing has changed.

The question is: Who is competent to decide whether or not a patient that has been readmitted within thirty days was not fit to be discharged in the first place?
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A Small Price

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The TaxPayers’ Alliance has disclosed that the 218 MPs who were either defeated or who stepped down at the General Election last month are entitled to ‘golden goodbye’ payments of around £10.5 millions.

That, it seems to me, is a very small price to pay to get rid of that last lot!
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In Case I Choke!

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One of the pleasures of the weekend is to settle with the newspaper travel supplements and think about planning a holiday break.

One of the nicest holidays I’ve had is a Nile cruise, and a number of them were on offer yesterday. The prices were at their lowest, doubtless because of the heat in Egypt at this time of year and, because of this, any thought of doing another one except in winter was quickly discarded.

The advertisements made me think of trips to Egypt, of the Nile, the pyramids and the many ancient temples. There were thoughts also of souks throbbing with merchants and people and also of hubble-bubble pipes and strong coffee taken in cool cafés where one had the chance to chatter with the locals. And there were wondrous occasions when I stood on the side of a ship watching the wide expanse of the desert pass by as we processed slowly through the Suez Canal.

I once had to join a ship in the Canal and was driven by car to where I would board the ship. Before I left, my boss called me in and wished me good luck. I asked why did I need good luck.

‘The last time I went that way,’ he said, ‘it was the middle of the night and I couldn’t see a bally thing. Even the road in those days seemed but a blur in the car’s headlights. At one point the driver stopped the car and took his false teeth out and put them in the glove compartment. ‘Why did you do that?’ I asked. ‘It’s just in case I fell asleep and we crashed,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to choke!’’

So, taking his advice, I watched the road very carefully but, since we did the drive in daylight, there were thankfully no problems.
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The Quicker, The Better

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For years now the appearance of Parliament Square has been ruined by the various protesters camped out on its lawns and creating a messy blot on would would otherwise be an impressive landscape.

I can’t think of any country I’ve visited that does not have superbly manicured and tidy grounds close to its principal buildings. And yet the Greater London Authority, who own the land, appears powerless to do anything about it. Nor, it seems, can Westminster City Council or the Metropolitan Police intervene.

It’s an extraordinary situation that these untidy and inconsiderate demonstrators are allowed to ruin this lovely spot, and it is good news that the GLA are now considering the options open to them.

Free speech and the right to demonstrate is one thing, but I can’t think of any reason why people should be allowed to make a complete shambles of an important tourist area adjacent to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.

The quicker the GLA acts, the better in my view.
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Chits And Red Tape

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A Hong Kong based consultancy has discovered that, of twelve Asian countries, India has the worst levels of bureaucratic red tape. Any Indian businessman or person doing business in that lovely country could have told them that!

I like India and its people, and I much enjoyed my occasional visits there but even I had to gasp at the amount of bureaucracy involved sometimes. It was during my first visit there in the 70s that I saw for my own eyes, files in a Dickensian-type office bound up with the proverbial red tape.

I learned also that one sometimes needed a ‘chit’ for various activities. Indeed, there was one occasion when I found myself in a long queue of hot and tired folk just arrived in the country lining up to get a chit to enable us to get another chit to have our laptops examined. It was only after I left the airport that I found we had been scammed by a couple of crafty airport officials. But, at least, it was a gentle scam.

Indians are used to the bureaucracy and have ways, which we need not go into here, of getting round it. They do not usually complain, they just deal with it.

The sad truth is that it is the British that originally introduced bureaucracy and its associated chit system into India. An unfortunate legacy of the Raj.
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Unimaginable

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This morning’s media is dominated by the news of the taxi driver, Derrick Bird, who went on the rampage across Cumbria, killing twelve people and injuring twenty-five others in the process before committing suicide.

One cannot imagine what went through the mind of this man or others like him in the past who have gone berserk with guns. There is no rational explanation for such actions.

Unimaginable also is the misery now inflicted on a small area of north-west England by this man’s deadly actions. One cannot help but feel sympathy for all those caught up in this terrible tragedy.
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'Dog's Balls'

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Under EU compensation rules, airlines have to pay the food and accommodation costs for passengers whose flights have been cancelled such as occurred during the recent airspace closure due to the Icelandic volcano ash cloud.

The head of Ryanair, Michael O'Leary, has been most outspoken about EU rules which he calls a ‘cheaters charter’ since there is no cap on what can be claimed. He says the airline will challenge up to twenty of the most contentious claims in local courts and then, if necessary, take them to the European court of first instance where it hopes that a favourable ruling will force the European parliament to put a cap on compensation.

There is no doubt that the EU rules are, as Mr O'Leary puts it, ‘ludicrous’ and they have cost Ryanair €40 millions. He cites claims coming from passengers who paid €30 for a ticket and are seeking compensation of €3,000.

Though I don’t always agree with Mr O'Leary’s ideas about maximising profit from passengers, I think he is right to seek a change in the EU rules on events out of the control of airlines and which ought more logically to be something to be covered by passenger travel insurance. Other airlines who have similarly had to face expensive compensation claims will be watching the situation very closely and I expect that others may follow suit.

Mr O'Leary is also spot on when he says that European regulators made a ‘complete dog’s balls’ by unnecessarily shutting European airspace in April

He got that right!
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Pitiful!

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The government has carried out its promise to publish a list of civil servants who earn more than the Prime Minister’s £142,500 annual salary.

There are 172 of them, with the top earner, the Chief Executive of the Office of Fair Trading, receiving a salary of £279,999.

It is for debate whether some of these top earners are worth the rewards they receive, though there is an argument that in order to attract the right sort of talent the government must pay the going rate in industry.

What is clear from publication of this list is that our Prime Minister is pitifully underpaid!
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Unacceptable

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The international community is right to condemn Israel for its military action against a flotilla of ships carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip in which a number of people were killed.

The Israeli Ambassador to Ireland repeatedly referred to the deadly shells which daily land in his country as some sort of justification for the act. Dreadful though this obviously is, it is no justification to board vessels sailing in international waters and by this act triggering the deaths of a number of people.

One has to look beyond the political and military differences between Israel and Palestine. Sure, there are the problems caused by the firing of missiles into Israel which, in any event, are aggressively countered by the Israelis.

It is the people of Palestine that are suffering from the Israeli blockade and to interfere with a ship that was carrying aid to them - assuming that this was aid and not munitions - is unacceptable.

The Israeli Defence Minister called the relief effort - largely organised by Turkey - a ‘political provocation’ by anti-Israeli forces. Relief aid has been called many things but not so far as I know as political provocation!

The ships have been escorted to the Israeli port of Ashdod and the world waits to see what will happen to the aid that was carried by it.
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