The Extra Hour

The old adage ‘Spring forward, Fall back’ reminds us that we all got an extra hour in bed last night and that the clocks should all be returned to Greenwich Mean Time.

My first job this morning will be to tour the house resetting all the clocks and watches to their new time, save for one that reset itself at two o’clock this morning thanks to a time signal. Adjusting the clocks in my house will take just a few minutes. Contrast this with the effort required by the curator of Cuckooland, a museum housing the world’s largest collection of Black Forest cuckoo clocks, who has over 600 of the noisy beasts to alter twice a year.

Though GMT was long used by mariners to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, it was not legally introduced throughout the UK until 1880 even though it had been used by the railways since 1848. Until then time had been measured locally, giving rise to much confusion after folk were able to move around the country at greater speeds than before.

The annual return to GMT has led again to discussion about the usefulness or otherwise of British Summer Time. Recently, there has been a call that Britain should extend BST into the winter months to reduce carbon emissions, and another which recommends that we adopt European Central Time which is an hour ahead of GMT in winter and a further hour ahead with daylight saving time during the summer months.

Personally, I don’t see the merit in tinkering with the time system we already have. While it is perfectly true that GMT gives us lighter mornings, the evenings are darker. Contrariwise, if we extend BST it will have the opposite effect. So, in my view, there is no point in making a change.

Doubtless, the arguments will go backwards and forwards for years to come. Meantime, the return to GMT reminds us that winter is definitely upon us.
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Aaah!

Yesterday a chum emailed me some wonderful photographs of a little girl who befriended a baby male orangutan at a wildlife centre in Miami. Those amazing pictures, which feature widely on the internet, also appear in one of this morning’s newspapers.

Two-year-old Emily Brand was taken to the wildlife centre by her father where she was introduced to the one-year-old orangutan, Rishi. The two took to each other immediately and are clearly bosom pals judging from the photos of Rishi giving Emily a kiss, sharing the child’s tea party and being taken for a walk in a doll’s pram, etc.

It is a lovely, heart-warming story about the bond that can exist between a child and one of the gentlest and friendliest of creatures, now an endangered species.

The same newspaper also features the equally heart-warming story of Mely, a 15-year-old female orangutan who has been rescued from harsh captivity in Borneo by International Animal Rescue and taken to an animal sanctuary where she will be cared for.

Maybe stories about two orangutans does nothing for you amidst all the other stories ot economic woes, bomb threats, riots and so on.

But, while there are people out there who devote their lives to looking out for some of God’s creatures, perhaps it’s not such a bad world after all.
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Happy Halloween!

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This evening in 1938 occurred something which it is difficult to believe could happen these days. It was the evening that CBS aired Orson Welles’ adaptation of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and which brought short-lived panic to some American homes.

Published in 1898, Wells’ The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel describing the invasion of London and the southern counties by alien creatures who set out to destroy life on earth. At the time of its publication it was considered to be a scientific romance, though that changed on the evening of 30 October 1938 when nervousness about German ambitions in Europe gave it another slant and some folk believed the US had actually been invaded by aliens.

Orson Welles adapted Wells’ novel, set it in America and treated it as if it were a news broadcast, though an announcement was made at the outset and during a mid-programme station identification break making it clear that it was just an episode of Mercury Theatre On The Air. Those announcements, however, were thought to have been missed by those who juggled their listening between the CBS Welles’ programme and NBC’s Chase and Sanborn Hour hosted by Don Ameche or just plain misunderstood.

In the Welles adaptation, the Martians landed in Grover’s Mill, a village in New Jersey. After the introduction, the programme proceeded with a weather report, then a dance band which was interrupted by a news flash about strange explosions on Mars. The news reports then grow more frequent and ominous, reporting meteorite strikes in Grover’s Mill which are then seen to be spacecraft housing tentacled Martians with death rays. The news becomes more and more desperate until Welles, in the guise of an astronomer and university professor describes the aftermath of the attacks with the Martians finally falling victims to earthly germs.

Newspapers gleefully reported that mass panic ensued, that people were fleeing the area and that some could smell poison gas or see flashes of lightning in the sky, etc. Large crowds had even congregated at Grover’s Mill Within a month, it was estimated that there had been 12,500 newspaper articles about the broadcast or its impact, though later studies suggested that there had been far less panic than had first been suggested.

The play propelled Orson Welles into stardom, though he was censured for the way in which apparent news broadcasts were used as its story line. Welles and Wells met only once, in San Antonio, Texas, where a local radio station interviewed them in joking fashion about the Halloween adaptation of the novel.

Of course, it is clever to say that people listening to the Welles’ play had overactive imaginations though, of course, there are always those who implicitly believe that what they see or hear is real. As witness the national heartbreak caused in 1955 when Grace Archer was killed in the barn fire or those who thought the Panorama piece two years later about the spaghetti harvest was true.

Happy Halloween!
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Facial Recognition

There is an interesting report that scientists have developed software for mobile phones that will record a number of features on and around the face such as the eyes, nose, mouth and jaw line. The idea is that facial recognition will replace passwords and PIN numbers when a mobile user logs onto internet sites for access to email, social networking and online banking, etc.

On the face of it (no pun intended), it is a good idea which could lead to developments in other computer-related areas.

On the other hand, the story brought to mind a tale about a Japanese shipowner who many years ago developed a system of voice recognition which was used on a ship’s bridge to give helm and engine commands. Only one day it failed at a critical moment and disaster was only just averted.

Inquiries later showed that the ship’s master had had something to drink before coming up to the bridge and, though he was not intoxicated, the alcohol had temporarily modified the sound of his voice which the computer didn’t then recognise.

Let’s hope that the developers of the facial recognition software incorporate a variety of facial expressions; sadness, joy, pain, laughing, grimacing, etc.
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Lavatorial

According to Wikipedia, the porcelain toilet was invented today in 1885 though, disappointingly, it gives no further details.

I don’t know whether this interests you or not but, having scanned the newspapers for something interesting to say this morning, this is the best that I could manage!
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No Surprise There!

It is reported this morning that 75% of around 840,000 claimants for incapacity benefit were either found fit for work or withdrew their application before they were required to undergo new work capability assessments.

Is anyone surprised by this?
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An Inspiration

Some folk may sneer at the work of the Scout Association, but I am not one of them for their activities occupy and possibly inspire those youngsters minded to join the organisation and others like it.

Take the case of 10-year-old twins Jack and David Taylor from Lichfield. These boys have achieved the distinction of being the first in the country to gain all 33 of the Cub Scout badges and have won the Chief Scout's Silver Award for doing so.

Jack and David had to qualify in activities as diverse as astronomy, animal caring, cooking, global conservation, map reading and navigation, martial arts, skating and world faiths.

These youngsters are an inspiration not only to other boys and girls but to the rest of us as well. If they are examples of the sort of men who will develop in the future then the country will be much better off for them.
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Ancient Technologies

A chum of mine recently emailed me a video explaining how the Ancient Egyptians were able to sculpt identical statues of Rameses the Great using geometry based on the Pythagorean triangle. It brought to mind the many wonderful technologies that the ancients used, some of which cannot be replicated in these technological times.

The building of the pyramids is one such example. They are a marvel of technology and craftsmanship, especially in the way that the outer casings were fitted so closely together that a knife cannot be inserted between the joints. The same can be said of some of the ancient buildings in other places such as in Macchu Picchu where stone blocks seem to have been almost ‘moulded’ to precisely fit with their neighbours.

The Egyptians were notable for the invention of paper and the decimal system and the development of a phonetic writing system, astronomy, mathematics, glassmaking, mapmaking and many others including advances in medicine. They had, for example, a form of penicillin which they used to treat infections, and their doctors may even have used stethoscopes to listen to the chests of patients (see a photo I took in in the Great Temple of Kom Ombo -www.flickr.com/photos/cruisemac/983687661/). There are those who believe that the Egyptians also had a knowledge of electricity which they used for an early form of electroplating.

Some of the Egyptians’ knowledge of medicine may have been passed down from the prehistoric past. I once visited the small museum of a Turkish archaeological site and was amazed to see the skull of a prehistoric man who had undergone a trepanning operation. Such operations are very delicate and this particular skull clearly showed that the man had survived the operation. Later I learned that such operations have been found in remains from Neolithic times onward. How, I wonder, did very ancient peoples learn to master such things?

When you look around at the wealth and sheer variety of ancient technology, you cannot but wonder at it all.

To quote but a few examples: In China, papermaking, printing, iron-casting, gunpowder and the compass were invented and great strides made in medicine and astronomy. They also invented the suspension bridge and seismometers. Mathematics were arguably developed in India where perfume was perfected along with textile-dying. The Greeks invented differential gears (enabling the construction of analogue computers like the Antikythera Mechanism), the water clock and water organ and Roman technology is famous for its civil engineering, the invention of concrete, the arch and an efficient system of water-management and public bathing (something which, itself is said to have originated in the Indus Valley). The wheel originated from Mesopotamia whose people also perfected metalworking, flood control and water storage. To the Assyrians we owe the invention of the pump and the ‘Baghdad Battery’ which reconstructions demonstrate was a working electrical battery (giving some credence to the theory that the Egyptians had access to electricity in some form).

There are many more examples of ancient technology and skills that could be quoted here, but my main thought - prompted by the emailed video sent to me the other day - was amazement at the number of things that were invented thousands of years ago.

When you consider the inventions made in just the last fifty years, you have to wonder where the world and its technology will be in fifty years time.

I, alas, will not be around to comment upon it.
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Offensive

The BBC has been forced to apologise for an offensive remark by Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson in which he described a Ferrari car as ‘a bit wrong – that smiling front end – it looked like a simpleton – should have been called the 430 Speciale Needs’.

The BBC removed the comment from the programme’s repeat and apologised for any offence caused. But, of course, the damage was done and Ofcom were spot on to say ‘discriminatory language of this nature has the potential to be very offensive to some viewers as it could be seen to single out certain sections of society in a derogatory way because of their disability.’

I am not a fan of Clarkson or his sneering Top Gear programme which, in my view, promotes fast and dangerous driving. But the main fault here would not seem to have been Clarkson’s even though he ought not to have made the remark.

Doesn’t anyone at the BBC check that programme content is good enough to be aired before it is broadcast without offending anyone?

And, if not, why not?
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A Memorable Day

Back in 1967 we were living in the West End of London with views of Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. As a newly-married couple, it was an exiting place to live as there always seemed to be something interesting going on. For example, even then we were once able to see a procession pass our building which we later learned was a rehearsal for the Queen Mother’s funeral!

Behind our flat was a run-down mews which at some point in the past was a barracks building and we were fascinated when a film crew took over the place and started sprucing it up a bit. That was where part of the barracks scene in the movie ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ was filmed. Behind the mews was Carlton House Terrace and that was where they built a huge wooden mock-up of a statue on wheels of the Duke of Wellington that also featured in the movie.

Anyhoo, all this was brought to mind just a couple of evenings ago when we watched the DVD of the movie which depicted the background to the infamous cavalry charge during the Battle of Balaclava in Crimean War in 1854. As it happens, the charge took place this day that year.

The movie starred Trevor Howard as Lord Cardigan, Harry Andrews as Lord Lucan (Cardigan’s hated brother-in-law), John Gielgud as Lord Raglan and David Hemmings as Captain Nolan.

Though there were a couple of historical inaccuracies in the film, it portrayed fairly accurately the harsh treatment but superb discipline of British soldiers and the incompetence of the army’s leaders who were mainly aristocrats who had purchased their commissions and who were more often concerned with appearances than with the work of leading their men.

At this point in the Battle of Balaclava, Russian troops were removing British naval guns they had captured from redoubts on the reverse side of the Causeway Heights, the hill forming the right side of a valley. At the end of the valley was a mass of Russian guns. Both could be clearly seen by Lord Raglan, the army commander, who had a high vantage point, but neither could be seen by the cavalry waiting below.

Lord Raglan sent an order via Captain Nolan to Lord Lucan who was in overall commend of the Light and Heavy Brigades that ‘Lord Raglan wishes the Cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop Horse Artillery may accompany. French Cavalry is on your left. Immediate.’ There was a discussion between Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan, who was in command of the Light Brigade, as to what the target of their attack was and Nolan is said to have indicated by a sweep of his arm, not the Causeway redoubts, but the mass of Russian guns at the end of the valley about a mile away.

The rest is history. Captain Nolan rode in front of Lord Cardigan at one point in what is thought to have been an attempt to correct the mistake, but was killed doing so. The charge resulted in 118 men being killed, 127 wounded and around 60 being taken prisoner. Tennyson, the Poet Laureate, was moved to write a sentimental poem about the Brigade’s sacrifice. Lords Lucan and Cardigan spent years blaming each other for the disaster (Lord Raglan having died the war after the charge) and they and other military leaders were excoriated in the press for their general incompetence and for the poor treatment of soldiers during the Crimean campaign.

The work and subsequent reports of Florence Nightingale also highlighted the muddle between military departments and the lack of proper medical care for solders. Press reports also helped to force the government to do away with the purchase of army commissions and to introduce promotion by merit of properly trained officers.

The movie, which came out in 1968, didn’t win any awards but it remains for me a spectacular and fairly accurate depiction of a point in time in Victorian history. It shows the difference between the leaders and the led and their distinctly different lifestyles.
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More Excuses?

A study by the University of Southampton and Network Rail, forecasts that wet winters and hot summers will become more common over the next fifty years as a result of global warming and that the UK rail network is at risk from this.

One hopes that railway managers and the government will take note of the report and act accordingly. On the other hand, will these sort of events just give some railway operators more excuses to explain why our trains are late?

We’ve had the leaves (and cows) on the track excuse, overhead power lines down due to high winds as well as the wrong type of snow complaint, but global warming?

Groan!
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Obscene!

The newspapers this morning seem uniformly critical that, while the rest of us will feel the pinch of economic stress over the next five years, Wayne Rooney will make £50 millions under the deal his agent has struck for him with Manchester United.

I’m not into football and so am unable to comment on whether the man is worth this amount of cash. But it does seem to me that the high fees paid to some footballers turns the game into a money-machine which other clubs are unable to afford.

Perhaps Rooney was right to get the best fee possible and to become the highest-paid English footballer of all time.

On the other hand, over £200,000 a week for just kicking a ball around is not only absurd, it’s obscene!
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An Early Victorian Church Service

It is a a matter of some regret that for health reasons I am not as mobile as I used be to. Had I been more mobile, I would have been tempted to have popped down last night to the Ewenny Priory Church near Bridgend to hear one of the oldest working and regularly played church organs in Wales.

Built by the celebrated organ maker William Sweetland in 1850, the organ was originally built for the Theological College at Wells and was relocated to the Lady Chapel of Wells Cathedral in 1895 and moved in 1999 to the newly restored Norman nave of Ewenny Priory Church. One reason the organ is rare is because of the lowness of its notes, allowing a more accurate interpretation of 18th-century church music.

Last night a special choral evensong was held to commemorate the centenary of Sweetland's death in 1910. The service used the 1662 Book of Common Player and included music written before 1850, sung by the St Hilary Choir with students of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Organ voluntaries were played before, during and after the service by Father Martin Colton, formerly the organist at Sheffield Cathedral.

I’m hoping that the church have recorded last night’s service for it would be a delight to hear it. I’ve emailed the church and am keeping my fingers crossed.
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An Echo?

The Standards and Privileges Committee has published a document from a Tory MP who told them: ‘My blog is 70% fiction and 30% fact. It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to [her constituency].’ She also said that, ‘I rely heavily on poetic licence and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another.’

This disclosure came as part of a sleaze investigation that cleared the MP of abusing the Commons expenses system but found that she had ‘misled’ voters.

The Commissioner said that the MPs blog, ‘gave information to its readers, including [her] constituents and party supporters, which provided a misleading impression of her arrangements as a Member of Parliament for the constituency’.

MPs, 70% fiction, 30% fact, poetic licence?

Is this an echo I hear?
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Good Luck!

The winner of last week’s £113 millions Euro Lottery has now come forward, has had the claim verified and been paid out.

The person, who so far has remained anonymous, has instantly become one of the richest folk in Britain and good luck to him or her is what I say!

It is curious though that over 1,000 other people came forward to claim the prize. Have these not attempted a fraud on Camelot?
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Trafalgar Day

Ignoring the dire news of government spending cuts and the potential consequences of these, it is worth reminding ourselves that today is Trafalgar Day, the day on which Admiral Horatio Nelson took on the combined French and Spanish fleets and gave them a first-rate whopping.

The Battle of Trafalgar was the most decisive British naval victory during the Napoleonic Wars and was partly achieved by Nelson splitting his fleet into two columns instead of engaging the enemy in a single line of battle as was the practice at the time. Nelson, of course, died from a musket wound during the battle in which the Franco-Spanish fleet lost twenty-two ships without a single British ship being lost. The British were never again seriously challenged by the French after the battle.

I was going to say that this day should engender in us a sense of national pride.

And then I remembered that the government’s spending cuts will do away with HMS Ark Royal before her time and that one of the two new aircraft carriers will be mothballed as soon as it is delivered.

Nelson must be turning in his grave!

Oops - No 3!

Possibly the most embarrassing ‘Oops’ reported this morning is that of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury who was yesterday photographed reading a copy of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

A sharp-eyed photographer with a good zoom lens took a snap and voila! one of the secrets of the Review was exposed to public gaze - there are expected to be 500,000 public sector job cuts.

Oops!

Oops - No 2!

Let’s assume you were invited to someone’s 30th birthday party in a Dublin hotel on Saturday evening and you were enjoying yourself with your girlfriend or wife on the dance floor.

Then the DJ played the theme tune to the television programme ‘Skippy the Bush Kangaroo’ when, all of a sudden, some silly devil releases a wallaby among the dancers. Chaos results, of course.

The General Manager of the hotel said, ‘This bizarre and depraved series of events demonstrates that there are people in our society who need to be policed.’

She got that right!

Oops!

I was looking for a document the other day that I knew I’d filed somewhere for safety. The problem was that so safe was this place I can’t find the wretched thing.

A lot of other people have recently lost important documents. Like the more than 1,000 people who have so far claimed that they won last week’s £113 million Euro Lottery jackpot, including one Coventry pensioner who says that her husband dumped the ticket. Oh dear!

It’s not only individuals that can mislay an important document.

It seems that the good folk in Fiji who are in charge of its national archives have lost the Independence Order handed over to its ministers by Prince Charles in 1970. After five years of searching the records in various government departments, it was forced to ask for a photocopy.

With luck, once they get the photocopy someone will pop up and say, ‘Hey! I’ve found it!’

Meantime, I’m still scratching around looking for mine!

A bit like all those folk who reckon they won the Euro Lottery last week but lost their tickets!

Clear As Day

One shining star in the Church of England hierarchy is the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who in an interview yesterday laid it on the line for young black men.

Warning that prisons, mental health units and young offender institutions held too many black people, he said that young black people should stop blaming racism for their problems. ‘Your future success does not lie in guns, gangs and knives or in the worship of celebrities, but in the pursuit of study and hard work and in valuing who you are under God,’ he said.

The Ugandan-born Archbishop also criticised African nations for too readily trying to blame their Europe or their former ‘colonial masters’ for their difficulties, and pointed to African corruption and lack of democracy and warned that nations were squandering their opportunities.

There’s not much else to say after that.

Fond Memories

This morning’s newspaper carries the obituary of Mary Malcolm who died on 13 October aged 92.

For folk of my generation, Mary was one of three television presenters, along with Sylvia Peters and McDonald Hobley, who fronted programmes throughout the 50s. Presenters were properly dressed in those days and wore evening dress after six o’clock which seems very odd these days but was quite normal then when some folk dressed for dinner in their own homes.

The public were fascinated with the presenters, and I remember the ‘discussion’ that followed when Sylvia Peters, having introduced some programme or other, rose from her desk to reveal that her ‘evening dress’ was just a top; she was wearing slacks from the waist down.

Similarly with Mary Malcolm who would often lapse into Spoonerisms. ‘My biggest fear [when reading the weather forecast] was ‘drain and rizzle’, which I said more than once’, she said. She also came up with ‘shattered scowers’.

These were the days of live television and mistakes could not be covered over. Now and again there would be a fault of some sort and everything would grind to a standstill and the presenter would be called upon to say something while engineers tried to fix the problem. Sometimes we would be treated to a short film of a potter at his wheel (my favourite), horses ploughing a field, fish gliding about or a kitten playing with wool.

Even when programmes were taped, cock-ups could occur. In a voice test Mary once said, ‘Good afternoon, here is a programme mainly for morons,’ which to some amusement was accidentally broadcast.

Happy days!

Different Worlds!

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The scandal of Parliamentary expenses rumbles on and one wonders when it will ever cease.

Now three peers are in trouble for overclaiming their expenses, will have to apologise for their errors, repay the monies owed and be suspended for lengthy terms. One has agreed to pay back £125,000, another £40,000 and the other £27,000.

We are told that the three were investigated by police who have decided not to prosecute.

One wonders why?
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Absurd Red Tape

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In an article about the red tape that hampers the police, the Sunday Telegraph revealed that one superintendent stated that he could sign one piece of paper to authorise someone to be shot, but that he had to fill in a 16-page form for someone to look through a window to keep watch on a suspect.

This is only one of a series of examples of the pointless and unnecessary paperwork required to be completed by harassed police officers which is contained in a report to be published by the government this week. Not surprisingly, the Police Minister has said, ‘The police must be crime fighters, not form writers’.

I know from my own work in the past the amount of paperwork involved in police stations and, though a new computer system was introduced some years ago, it did not lessen the sheer volume of paperwork resulting from the most trivial of offences. Detailed records of crimes and those who have committed them have to be sighted and signed off by senior officers at various stages and, although this can sometimes be done electronically, paper copies of records still have to be run off.

All sections of society are going to be affected by the forthcoming budget cuts but, insofar as the police are concerned, a major effort should be made to cut their paperwork and release police officers to fight crime.
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In A Muddle

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I’ve said before that the Anglican Church needs to get itself organised. Compared to the Catholic Church, whose tenets are virtually set in stone, the Church of England seems to have been in a muddle for many years with various groups agonising over homosexuality, women priests, women bishops, etc., etc.

Recent elections to the Anglican General Synod seem to have strengthened the grip of the traditionalists who oppose women bishops. Whether they will be able to block plans to consecrate women bishops and slow down the move in some quarters to convert to Catholicism remains to be seen.

Last October, Pope Benedict offered a place in the Roman Catholic Church for Anglicans opposed to women bishops that would let them retain some of their practices and traditions. So far, four Anglican bishops have taken up the offer, and recently an entire Anglican congregation in Kent became the first to convert en bloc.

It will be interesting to see how things develop.
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Good News

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Fear of being sued for compensation by the many firms that promise to take up cases on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis even for the most trivial accidents has introduced a climate of fear in many quarters.

Now the government has promised to curb such advertising, and especially on those firms that offer people £500 up front in return for lodging a claim. Many of these firms are not, in fact, lawyers but professional claims handlers.

Commonsense prevails once again and, hopefully, many of these legal parasites will be put out of business.
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But Is It Art?

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I haven’t visited the Tate Modern since I find much of so-called modern art unappealing and often meaningless.

Such in my view is the latest ‘art work’ by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who, along with a number of other artisans, produced more than 100 million porcelain sunflower ‘seeds’. These were placed in a gallery so that folk could walk across a carpet of them and, presumably, admire the craftsmanship involved.

Whether or not 100 million ceramic sunflower seeds can be considered art is for the individual to decide. However, if the experience was to be enhanced by walking over them, visitors are to be disappointed for the health and safety police have stepped in (no pun intended) and decided that they must be viewed from a gallery above and not trodden on in case their dust is hazardous.

There is a link here somewhere between so-called modern art, commonsense and money. But, like much of modern art, it eludes me.
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Marginalised?

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Next week is the annual Get Online Week where more people will be persuaded to sign up to the internet. The organisers hope to encourage 80,000 to sign up.

The ONS has reported that, whole 99% of those aged 16-24 use the net, only 40% of those aged 65 or more have. Age UK is so concerned about this that it has warned that unless more can be done to help older people get online ‘there is serious concern that they'd become more and more marginalised members of society’.

I’m now over 65 and use the internet every day, but I can’t believe that those oldies who do not are becoming ‘marginalised members of society’. Oldies who do not have computers may not be able to order their shopping online or keep in touch with friends and relatives via email, but they are hardly marginalised.

Let’s keep a sense of proportion here!
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Useless Bodies

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In what has been called the ‘Bonfire of the Quangos’ the axe has fallen on 192 of these often useless bodies. Another 118 will be merged and 171 ‘substantially’ reformed.

There is much discussion in the papers this morning as to whether or not the cuts, which could result in as many as 10,000 people being put out of work, will actually save the billion pounds annually that the government have forecast.

Maybe there are few savings in the short-term when redundancy and severance costs are taken into account. But isn’t the whole point of getting rid of these quangos is to remove the interference that some unaccountable officials have in our lives?

And, while it is a shame that people will be made redundant because of the cuts, the Cabinet Office Minister is right to say that this move will end the ‘spectacle of unelected quangocrats making decisions that affect millions of lives without scrutiny’.
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Cancer

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Tucked away in the morning papers is an interesting story about the lack of cancers in ancient Egyptian mummies.

A review by Manchester University has found that there is an almost total absence of cancers in fossil records, Neanderthal bones and Egyptian mummies, leading to the conclusion that cancers are man-made. Indeed, they found that the disease rate has risen dramatically since the Industrial Revolution, probably because of pollution and changes in our diet and lifestyle.

Understanding the causes of cancers may ultimately lead to its cure but, in the meantime, it is estimated that around one in three people in the UK will get some form of the disease each year and that 150,000 will die from it.

Scientists say that a healthy diet and regular exercise can prevent around a third of the most common cancers, so perhaps our ancestors’ lifestyle reduced their risk from cancer.

Let’s hope that scientists somewhere can find a cure. Soon.
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Oh Dear, Poor Thing!

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There is not much news around other than the amazing and completely absorbing rescue of the trapped Chilean miners, but one very unimportant story caught my attention and encouraged a bit of the Bolshie streak I’ve developed in recent years.

It seems that Princess Beatrice broke down and wept after crashing her car in London on Wednesday. Oh dear! Poor thing!

It’s not the crash that interested me as much as the press reporting that this young lady is fifth in line to the throne. So what, I ask? God forbid that anything should happen to Prince Charles or his sons or the Princess Royal, but why would we want Beatrice as our monarch? And if not, why bother mentioning her in the utterly meaningless monarchy league-table?

The papers also reported that a royal protection officer dealt with the nasty business of exchanging details with the drivers of the other vehicles and organising a replacement car. Would that we all had someone like this to sort things out for us in these situations but, of course, I’m being facetious. More importantly, I ask why we should have to pay for this privileged young lady and her sister to be escorted everywhere by presumably-armed police officers at an annual estimated cost of £250,000?

I am an ardent monarchist but, really, there are limits! Let this young lady sort out her own problems and get on with her life without costing the British taxpayer a single penny.

There now, I’ve said it!
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Inspiring

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Who could fail to have been inspired and excited by the sight of the welcome given to and by the first three miners to have been rescued from the San Hose mine beneath the Chilean desert this morning. As I write these words, the fourth of the 33 miners is being slowly winched to safety.

The effort that the Chilean government has put into rescuing these men is simply staggering, and they and all those involved in the rescue mission are to be congratulated for their efforts.

The bravery of those miners, their families, their rescuers and the paramedics that have descended into the mine to give first-aid to some of the remaining men is a shining example to the world.

Fingers are now crossed worldwide that all the remaining men will be recovered safely.
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Lost At Sea

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Having spent a lifetime in the shipping industry, stories of folk going missing at sea always attract my attention.

This was the case with the report that a British pensioner has gone missing from Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines’ Balmoral. It seems that the man’s 80-year-old wife woke early on Monday morning and discovered him missing. After the ship was thoroughly searched, French and English emergency services began searching the area in the English Channel but unfortunately without result.

In the past, so-called missing passengers were often to have been found wandering around the previous ports of call, but in these days of high security they and crew are clocked on and off ships at all times so that those in charge always know who is on board and who is ashore.

If the gentleman concerned was lost overboard, then one’s mind turns to how this could have been possible. All decks are surrounded by chest-high safety railings and passengers have no access to openings in the hull temporarily used by crew which, in any event, are these days strictly supervised. So the reason for this man’s disappearance is a mystery as well as a tragedy.

There will be an Inquiry and some answers may follow from that. But the personal tragedy of the situation will remain.
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Fit For (Some Form Of) Work

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Thirty-odd years ago a pension fund I knew about almost went out of business because so many of its members were being declared unfit to work and so entitled to full medical pensions.

The fund managers took a closer look at what was going on and quickly discovered that many of the folk being declared unfit for work were, in fact, perfectly fit and well for some or other forms of employment. At that point, they tightened their rules which limited full pensions to those who were wholly unfit for any form of further work.

The process must have been similar to that now being undertaken by the government who have said that medical assessment tests will be done on people receiving incapacity benefit. Those who are found ‘fit to work’ will be encouraged back into employment or, alternatively, placed on to Job Seekers Allowance.

The Work And Pensions Secretary says that the government hopes to save four billions by cutting long-term sickness benefit.

Assuming that some form of work is available in these economically-challenged times, he might find that more than four billions can be saved.
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That Horrid Collar!

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I can’t remember when my voice broke since the event occurred so long ago. But I do recall that one week I was singing in the front row of the church choir and the next I was singing from the back. I had no cause to complain for I was instantly released from the hated and uncomfortable starched collar that I wore and which one very hot summer Sunday made me faint.

In those days, choirboys whose voices broke at the onset of puberty just carried on singing in a different range. Nowadays, they are advised to take a break from singing so as to let their voices settle. I had no such holiday nor sought one as I much enjoyed singing.

The memory of that hated collar returned to me as I read the paper yesterday morning and learned that a growing number of boys’ voices are breaking earlier than in the past, a trend that a Danish study suggests is linked to changes in modern diets. Curiously, this doesn’t imply an increased diet of hamburgers and chips but rather a better diet, with more protein, with the result that puberty arrives a little earlier than in the past.

It is interesting that so widespread is this phenomenon, that many cathedral, church and other choirs are having to limit their repertoires because of the lack of boys that can sing the higher notes. What a shame.

There is something quite special about the rich sound of a boy treble, but I expect that some will still be found to perform in works such as Allegri’s Miserere like that recorded by the choir of King’s College in 1963, featuring the then treble, Roy Goodwin, and to which I am listening with much pleasure as I type these words.

I wonder if he had to wear one of those horrid starched collars?
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Joy World-Wide

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The best news of the day must be the breakthrough of the 26-inch-wide shaft drilled half a mile deep into the San Hose mine beneath the Chilean desert which will be used to rescue the 33 miners who have been incarcerated for 65 days.

Now comes the difficult parts. Firstly, the lining of the rescue shaft with steel piping to prevent the shaft from collapse or from the specially-designed capsule from snagging on rocks as it is used to bring the miners back to the surface one by one.

The ordeal of the 33 copper and gold miners, who have survived underground for longer than any others in history, is unimaginable. Now their torture must be even worse as they wait for the last two or three days for the rescues to commence.

On the other hand, who can imagine their joy and excitement at being reunited with their families, events that will be watched world-wide?

The rescue is a tribute to the various organisations that have doggedly drilled three separate shafts to ensure the safety of these men.
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Bonkers!

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At this time of the year when we walk our two dogs in the local woods, we occasionally get struck on the head by falling acorns. Over the years it’s quite possible we have been hit by a falling conker but, to be truthful, I can’t remember this happening.

It’s no big deal and the only problem we encounter is Ollie’s nervousness when he hears acorns and conkers hitting the undergrowth because he cannot understand the source of the noise these make.

However, we know what an oak tree looks like and we know also what a horse chestnut tree is and, of course, look out for the missiles coming from them in the autumn.

But it seems that some folk in Bury St. Edmunds do not, for the local council has posted a notice on one horse chestnut tree warning them ‘BEWARE Falling Conkers’.

Bonkers is what I say!
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Why The Frenzy?

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There are many things I don’t understand, as for example my comments yesterday about the concept of ‘nothingness’.

But the latest frenzy caused by the remarks of the Culture Secretary have me completely baffled, for what he said makes perfect sense to me.

Calling on the jobless to take responsibility for their families, he said that it was not the duty of the state to fund an increasing number of offspring with benefits.

What’s wrong with that I ask?
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Nothing To Speak Of

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I was curious about the meaning of ‘nothing’ and so looked it up in a couple of online resources.

The best definition I found was in Wikipedia which says that ‘nothing’ is ‘a concept that describes the absence of anything’. Other dictionaries define it as ‘something that has no existence.’

I’m certainly no philosopher, but don’t the words ‘anything’ or ‘something’ used in these definitions raise yet more questions? For example, if the absence of ‘anything’ is right, then what is the effect of its absence? And if ‘something’ that has no existence is right, then what is the ‘something’ referred to?

Wikipedia confirms my train of thought by the following: ‘Grammatically, the word ‘nothing’ is an indefinite pronoun, which means that it refers to something. One might argue that ‘nothing’ is a concept, and since concepts are things, the concept of ‘nothing’ itself is a thing.’

As I looked closer into the subject of ‘nothingness’, I found that the philosophers have tortured themselves with it since ancient times. The list of them is impressive, starting with Parmenides in the 5th-century BC right up to modern folk such as Newton and Einstein. I have to say though that reading through some of their thoughts on the issue is akin to swimming in thick mud. But then my brain isn’t as good as theirs.

Why am I banging on about the concept of nothingness? It’s simply because I can find nothing of any interest, at least to me, to talk about today.

But I’ll bet you guessed that already!
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'Nuff Said!

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In his ‘Your Country Needs You’ keynote speech at yesterday’s Tory Party Conference, the Prime Minister had this to say about Labour’s thirteen years of misrule:

‘They left us with massive debts, the highest deficit, overstretched armed forces, demoralised public services, endless ridiculous rules and regulations and quangos and bureaucracy and nonsense.’

‘They left us a legacy of spinning, smearing, briefing, back-biting, half-truths and cover-ups, patronising, old-fashioned, top-down, wasteful, centralising, inefficient, ineffective, unaccountable politics, 10p tax and 90 days detention, an election bottled and a referendum denied, gold sold at half price and council tax doubled, bad news buried and Mandelson resurrected, pension funds destroyed and foreign prisoners not deported, Gurkhas kept out and extremist preachers allowed in.’

That seems about right!
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A Moan About Toyota - Part Two

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On 25 September I grumbled about the crumbling keys for my RAV4, a problem I understand other people have had with other makes of car keys.

A couple of days later as requested, I took my logbook and driving licence to the local dealership who checked that I was the owner of the car (which was fair enough) and coughed up £70 for a new key (which I assumed was likely to be gold-plated). It will be here in two or three days the man said.

A week and a day later I called to see what was happening, and was told that the key had arrived just the day before (yeah, right!) and that I needed to book the car in so that they could programme the key. The cost of this would be another £45 and the ‘work’ would take about an hour and a half.

Why would programming a car key take an hour and a half I naively enquired and why so expensive? Well, the chap said, it’s expensive because we have to link your car to Toyota’s computer system (yeah, right!) but - wait for it - we do give your car a courtesy examination to see if everything is OK. That explained to me the £45 right enough!

So the car (or rather, it’s key) got booked in for one week later. In the meantime, I had the car serviced and given its MOT by a much less expensive service station. I happened to mention to the mechanic the business about my car key and the extortionate cost of its replacement and programming.

And then he saved me £45 with a piece of advice that was so simple, I almost kicked myself for not thinking of it.

Go get the key he said and take it apart. Put the innards from your old key into the new one and, hey presto, you’re fit to go! So I did exactly that.

I cancelled the appointment, got the key from the dealership (discovering that it was not, as I had thought, gold-plated), swapped the innards over and saved myself £45. When the battery from the ‘old’ innards gives up, then I can replace it with the one out of the unused ‘new’ innards.

So you too can share in this simple piece of advice, and save yourself some money when you car key starts crumbling!

Of course, it would make life simpler if Toyota and other car manufacturers would make modern car keys in such a way that they don’t crumble with wear!
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Seems Fair To Me

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In the YouGov poll published this morning, 83% of those polled supported the government’s plans to abolish child benefits for higher-rate taxpayers. 86% of those polled also agreed with the proposal to introduce a £500-a-week cap on the benefits unemployed families can claim.

Given these figures, which I would guess are fairly representative of those around the country, it is hard to understand the media frenzy this morning against the proposals.

Do these journalists think that the public believe that only taxing the City fat-cats, overpaid bankers and those on very high incomes can pluck this country out of its current problems? Or that the cuts ought not to be fairly shared to a greater or lesser extent by everyone in the country?

Or is it just that there is nothing much else going on at the moment to capture the minds of the headline writers?
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Could They Reopen The Dartmoor Quarry?

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The Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, said yesterday that prisoners should no longer live a life of ‘enforced, bored idleness’ and that his aim is to make prisons ‘tougher places of hard work and reform for the criminals who should be locked up’ and ‘make community sentences that really are tougher and more effective for those who don't need to be locked up’.

Doubtless, all the bleeding hearts will now emerge to say how Dickensian these proposals are and how they offend against prisoners’ human rights.

But so far as I am concerned, Mr Clarke is spot on. Bring back oakum picking is what I say!
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Beware The Laptop Scam!

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Let’s see. You are shopping in the High Street and are approached by a fellow who offers to sell you a laptop for £650. You withdraw the cash from a bank, pay the man and later find you’ve actually been handed a bag full of potatoes.

Are you surprised?
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A Start

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London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson, has asked the Prime Minister to consider bringing in a law requiring a minimum 50% participation in a strike ballot by union members which, he feels, will bring an end to the sort of expensive and disruptive strikes which have once again brought London to a standstill.

Whether or not you feel, as he does, that the latest strike by tube workers is a ‘nakedly political gesture’, it can’t be right that just a simple majority of members actually voting as presently provided by law can cause so much disruption. Something needs to give somewhere.

The CBI, who pointed out that only 33% of tube staff actually bothered to vote, would like new legislation to be introduced requiring 40% of balloted union members to be in favour of a strike.

At least that would be a start.
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Come On Dogs!

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It’s a few years since I tasted a real truffle, sliced and folded into a plate of pasta. I suppose they are an acquired taste, but I have to admit that its delicate flavour immediately appealed to me.

The subject arises this morning from the news that Prince Philip has been trying to cultivate a truffle plantation, a truffiere, at Sandringham. Having planted some appropriate saplings impregnated with the spores of the fungi, nothing happened. So he is bringing in some experts from Acqualagna in Italy to help hi. They will look at the soil, check its alkalinity and generally advise.

Perhaps the Prince should contact a primary school in Perth, where the pupils have dug up what was thought to be a Scottish summer truffle in their vegetable patch. However, an expert has said that the 250 gm fungi is not a variety he had ever seen before in Scotland. Notwithstanding, if edible, this truffle could be worth many hundreds of pounds.

Depending upon their quality, white truffles can fetch around €10,000 a kilo, while the black truffle can fetch around €3,490 a kilo.

Ollie and Mickey are always snuffling around in the undergrowth in our local woods. I wonder if they could snuffle me out a few truffles?
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The New ‘Bombing’ Of Guam

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It is twenty-five years since I visited Guam, though I can’t say that I saw much more of it than the quay to which the ship I happened to be on was tethered.

I did wander ashore in the morning and walked along the quayside to visit a Japanese cruise ship for a couple of hours. Afterwards, I recall taking a shady seat on the quay and having a cigarette while watching the Japanese ship sail. Had I known that Guam was infested with brown tree snakes, I might not have done that.

It seems that brown tree snakes were introduced to the otherwise snake-free island as stowaways from a cargo ship that called there in the 1940s. The invasive snakes quickly multiplied and are responsible for killing off many of the island’s native birds, lizards and fruit bats as well as causing major power outages when they coil themselves around power lines.

This piece of information comes to light with the bizarre news that the US Navy are planning to ‘bomb’ the island with frozen dead mice stuffed with paracetamol, a chemical that is poisonous to the snakes. Even more bizarrely, the plan is to attach cardboard wings and green streamers to the dead mice, dropping them from helicopters and letting them float down to catch on the tree branches where the snakes will find them while, at the same time, avoiding poisoning other jungle-floor creatures.

I’m not keen on snakes and wish the US Navy well with their plan.

But I shudder to think I might have had one of these critters fall on my head that hot day I sat in the shade of Guam and watched a ship sail!
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Too Comfortable?

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The subject of prisons is one that interests me for I have not long since retired from doing voluntary work in my local one.

I often ask myself whether or not prison is an answer to many crimes and I usually, but not always, come to the conclusion that it is. Sadly, I often think that prison is too comfortable for many prisoners who, though having lost their freedom temporarily, may enjoy better conditions in prison than they might at home.

This is partly borne out by the news that an unmarried 75-year-old career criminal who has spent fifty of the last 56 years in jail has been sent back to prison for two years for theft and handling stolen goods. Described as a ‘bit of a rascal’, this man committed his first crime in 1945 when he was nine, since when he has clocked up a total of 35 convictions. Rightly, the court heard that the man has been institutionalised by prison and ought to be ‘in his slippers in front of the fire’ rather than carrying out more burglaries. This is confirmed by his reaction to being sentenced; ‘OK, thanks’, he said, and gave the thumbs-up sign.

Perhaps this man represents one extreme, but it is interesting to note that the Justice Secretary has disclosed that the number of prisoners in England and Wales has reached an all-time high at 85,495, around 2,000 short of the prisons’ operational capacity. It is reported that he wants a greater emphasis placed on rehabilitation and community sentences.

I really don’t know what the answer is except to build more prisons. I have doubts that rehabilitation and community service achieves a great deal but, at the same time, I have reservations that prisons may be too comfortable for some people. Prisons come with a great variety of amenities not all of which are available to folk outside: decent food, education and training, gymnasiums and sports facilities, recreation areas, televisions in cells, laundry, chapel, etc., etc.

There is a popular comparison between prisons and work circulating on the internet:

PRISON VERSUS WORK

Prison: You spend the majority of your time in a 10x10 cell. Work: You spend the majority of your time in an 6x6 cubicle/office.

Prison: You get three meals a day fully paid for. Work: You get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.

Prison: You get time off for good behaviour. Work: You get more work for good behaviour.

Prison: The warden locks and unlocks all the doors for you. Work: You must often carry a security card and open all the doors for yourself.

Prison: You can watch TV and play games. Work: You could get fired for watching TV and playing games.

Prison: You get your own toilet. Work: You have to share the toilet with some people who pee on the seat.

Prison: They allow your family and friends to visit. Work: You aren’t even supposed to speak to your family.

Prison: All expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required. Work: You get to pay all your expenses to go to work, and they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.

Prison: You spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out. Work: You spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.

Prison: You must deal with sadistic wardens. Work: They are called managers.

Alas, there may be truth in some of this!
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More Commonsense

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In a newspaper interview, Lord Young has promised to rein in the health and safety madness which has beset this country for years along with the compensation culture that says someone must be held to account for everyday mishaps and accidents.

He promises a crackdown on the many no-win, no-fee television advertisements that encourage so many personal injury claims in which the legal fees are often many more times the amount of the claims themselves.

At the same time, Eric Pickles, the Local Government Secretary, promises to crackdown on the number of local government employees who earn more than the Prime Minister by cutting their salaries or by getting them to do more work. He says he also wants to restore weekly rubbish collections, look again at unreasonable parking restrictions and the revenues made by local councils from parking fines.

It’s about time we had some commonsense like this!
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Keep The ‘Real’ Bobbies

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The Taxpayers' Alliance asked Hampshire Constabulary for details of what had been achieved last year by its 330 PCSOs, who were each paid an average of £23,636 and who cost that county a total of £7.8 million in wages.

They discovered that the PCSOs, who have no powers of arrest and serve no real purpose except what one senior officer said was to ‘provide a visible presence on the streets’, detected just 50 crimes and handed out only 122 fines. So the productivity of PCSOs in that force was £156,000 per crime detected.

It makes you wonder what the position is around the country. If it is anything like as similar, then one hopes the coalition government will get rid of PCSOs and protect the employment of ‘real’ policemen as soon as possible.

This is more particularly relevant to Hampshire as their Chief Constable is considering reducing his force by a fifth, or 1,400 jobs.

Get rid of the PCSOs and keep the ‘real’ bobbies!
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Surely She Jests?

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Harriet Harman, Labour’s Deputy Leader, gave the closing speech to the party’s annual conference in Manchester yesterday, a speech which is traditionally a light-hearted affair.

Among other things she said that she was, ‘disappointed to be in opposition, but proud of what we achieved in government’.

That was the biggest joke of the lot. What achievements?
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