Potentially Dangerous

It has long been established that some discretion is always needed when folk send emails to one another, and stories about the cock-ups when people accidentally get emails they oughtn’t to see are legion.

Most often these sort of cock-ups are caused when the writer of an email presses the wrong button and sends it to the very person who shouldn’t see it. Sometimes an email which criticises someone is maliciously circulated and recirculated, eventually ending up in the wrong hands.

So, bearing this in mind, discretion has to be the watchword when people send their emails which, when you consider it, are just another form of the written word and therefore capable of being reproduced. Exactly the same principles apply when sending cables.

WikiLeaks is a website run by an international non-profit organisation that aims to publish and comment on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct. It has been busy in recent months, but has latterly caused international controversy and embarrassment by publishing the first tranche of over 250,000 diplomatic emails and cables that an unknown source has passed on to them.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the leaking of some documents helps in some way to uncover corporate and governmental misdoings. On the other hand, to recklessly publish documents which have been unlawfully obtained and which create untold diplomatic difficulties is, in my view at any rate, irresponsible and potentially dangerous.
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Sensational

Today is the day on which in 1922 Howard Carter opened the tomb of the Egyptian boy-king Tutankhamun to the public.

The discovery of the tomb was an international sensation at the time and the various artefacts found, including the gold sarcophagi and face mask, are still quite sensational when viewed in person.

Tutankhamun was born around 1341 BC, the son of the ‘heretic’ king Akhenaten. He ascended to the throne at the age of nine but died ten years later. Scholars are still debating the cause of his death and theories range from murder by a blow to the head, the product of incest, malaria and infection following a fall which broke one of his legs.

The Pharaoh is one of the few Egyptian kings that still lie in their original tombs. Tutankhamun rests in a climate-controlled environment to prevent his body decomposing because of the humidity and warmth from the many tourists that enter the tomb.

Tutankhamun was revered in his lifetime, and he and the artefacts that were buried with him and which are now on view in the Cairo Museum, some of which are occasionally loaned to other museums, continue to amaze us thousands of years later.
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Why?

Everyone hopes that the strained relations between the two Koreas do not worsen into all-out war. However, a report in yesterday’s Independent suggests that North Korea are preparing for something, though what that something is has yet to be discovered.

The newspaper reports that North Korea sends thousands of workers to the Far East of Russia to earn money, most of which ends up in government hands. North Korean workers apparently left the town of Nakhodka en masse shortly after the escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula earlier this week. ‘Traders have left the kiosks and markets, workers have abandoned building sites, and North Korean secret service employees working in the region have joined them and left,’ the Vladnews agency reported.

That doesn’t seem to bode well.
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Harsh!

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A 23-year-old Royal Bank of Scotland debt officer but off sick was telephoned at home by her boss who announced the Telford office where she worked was to be closed and telling her she would have to take redundancy or, alternatively, relocate to Birmingham.

She then posted three messages on her Facebook page boasting how lucky she was to be able to take redundancy and the £6,000 payoff that went with it.

But one of her so-called friends reported her messages to the bank who promptly suspended her and later fired her for breaching what they called the company’s ‘declaration of secrecy’.

The young woman was, of course, extremely foolish to make such boasts on her Facebook page. On the other hand the bank would appear to have acted extremely harshly in dealing with a junior employee.

Especially when RBS are soon likely to be paying senior executives bonuses of such a size that six grand would seem to be mere loose change!
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Are We Married?

There are reports that a million Church of England marriages over the last thirty years are technically invalid because the wrong form of words was used when clergy, using the latest Prayer Book, read the banns three times in the weeks prior the ceremonies.

At face value this is quite an alarming story and one that has quickly spread through the internet.

But, as is so often the case, you have to hear what the lawyers say and, in this case, common sense would seem to prevail.

Addressing the Church of England General Synod, one Church lawyer said: ‘... the 1949 Marriage Act contained ‘robust’ clauses to protect ‘a marriage that has been entered into in good faith by the parties’.’

And, if that were not clear enough, another lawyer put it more succinctly: ‘... the marriage legislation effectively says that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it is a duck. If both parties believe they are married, then they are protected.’

Thus dashing the hopes of many who might rather have wished that their marriages were now invalid!
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Different

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, the day on which most Americans are indoors with their families celebrating the start of the festive season and enjoying the traditional turkey lunch.

It is also the one day in the year when American shops are closed and the roads are free of traffic. Indeed, there was one year when, together with two of my colleagues, I drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas by way of the Mojave Desert. It was a wonderful drive for, until we got into Vegas, we encountered no traffic to speak of.

The day after Thanksgiving is quite another thing and is known as Black Friday. This is the day that the stores commence their Christmas sales. Some folk queue up to be the first into the malls and stores when they open, and stampedes resulting in injuries are frequently reported. In sharp contrast to the day before, the roads are jammed with traffic heading towards the shopping malls.

Except for those who have visited America, the term Black Friday is mainly unknown in this country. Yet this year a number of online sales companies have declared this week to be Black Friday Deals Week.

Of course, the difference is that traffic is unaffected and no-one is going to be injured doing their shopping online!
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What Makes Us Happy?

A chum of mine with a great sense of humour and who I unsuccessfully keep prompting to write his own blog, has sent me an email which I quote (nearly) in full. What he says is spot-on!

‘I hear that this government is going to spend £2,000,000 to find out ‘What makes people happy?’

Give the money to me ... that will make me very happy!

Does it make you feel a little uneasy when you read of this stupid waste of money, when most people are finding it difficult to make ends meet? Especially when he (Cameron that is) ‘ain't been governing for very long.

I could tell him for nothing that if you've got: food on the table, good health, good family around you, friends that don’t borrow money off you, beer in the cupboard, dosh to pay the rent and enough left over to pay off the last instalment on your inflatable doll ... you have got to be a happy man!’

Nuff said?
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First Past The Post

The first Christmas card of this year’s festive season slid through our letter box yesterday morning, and very welcome it was too as it came from a chum with a great sense of humour.

We plan to post our own Christmas cards at the end of this week, just after Thanksgiving, and I thought that ours would be the first out this year. But my chum has beaten us to it.

I did wonder whether it would be a good idea to put a note in this year’s cards announcing that this would be the last year they would be sent and that a donation to charity would be made in future. But my wife, who is the arbiter of such matters, strongly disagrees as she likes the tradition. On the other hand, she smiles wryly when I point out that it is Yours Truly that has the job of writing them all out!

The first commercial Christmas card is considered to be that commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in 1843 at a cost of a shilling each. It is interesting to note that the cost of postage at that time was just one penny.

How things have changed. These days, the cost of postage is very often more than the cost of the cards themselves!
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Whoopee!

So now we know, the royal wedding will be on 29 April in Westminster Abbey and that it will be a bank holiday. Excellent!

Though I understand the reasons why the royal family and the Middletons are paying for the cost of the wedding, I happen to think it a bit mean of the government. The wedding will encourage all sorts of industries to produce souvenirs and look-alike articles, and it will also pull in thousands and thousands of tourists all to the benefit of the country.

The day will be a bumper one for the country. It will be a day of pomp and circumstance, and it will be a day of rejoicing that a young couple are joining in marriage.

Whoopee, I say! I for one will be glued to the television!
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Retire?

It is interesting that two revered people talked about retirement yesterday.

The first was the 75-year-old Dalai Lama who gave hints that he might retire within six months, an announcement that has caused confusion among Tibetan Buddhists who believe him to be the latest reincarnation in a long line of religious leaders.

And 83-year-old Pope Benedict said that he might become the first pope in over 700 years to voluntarily retire if he become physically or mentally incapacitated. The last pontiff to do that was Celestine V in 1294.

Reports on both stories make reference to the changing world we now live in.

You can say that again!
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Today’s Whinge

According to a study by the makers of Sensodyne toothpaste, the average Briton moans 1,300 times a year.

This equates to nearly eight and a half minutes a day or 53 hours a year. The most common moans are about how expensive things are, the lack of anything decent to watch on television, the weather, household chores, our finances and the government.

I’d add to these the annoying increase in sound levels when television adverts come on, traffic in general and the lack of bad manners on the road, people that spit in the street, disruptive youths, so-called Civil Enforcement Officers, people that breathe garlic over you, the EU, television shows which set out to humiliate people, folk who constantly complain about things, research that doesn’t enlighten our lives ... oops, but my eight and half minutes are up!

My wife says that I became a grumpy old man some years ago and certainly I, and probably the readers of my daily blogs, wouldn’t argue with that. On the other hand, there is a certain pleasure in having a good old whinge about things!
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Good on Yer, Widders!

I confess that I can’t stand the dance contest, Strictly Come Dancing, and never watch it. However, via the newspaper reports, I have kept up with the antics of Ann Widdecombe who has had the four judges consistently growling at her poor performance.

I quite like Ann Widdecombe who I thought was a voice of sense when she was an MP, and was disappointed when she was not elected to the Speaker’s Chair. I think her strident quips would have brought the place to good order.

Ann stood down at the last election and was then brave enough to expose herself to ridicule on this dance contest that seems to have quite an audience. Such is the size of her enthusiastic followers that she has been repeatedly voted ‘in’ despite the judges wanting her ‘off’.

You have to admire her tenacity and also humour. As our Aussie cousins would say, ‘Good on yer, Widders!’
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Not By Vote!

Following Prince Charles’ recent hesitation when asked if the Duchess of Cornwall could be the next queen, it is reported this morning a couple of newspaper opinion polls suggest that, of the people questioned, the majority would prefer Prince William to be our next monarch.

It’s an interesting idea: we now get to choose our own monarch. I don’t think so!

The heir to the throne is, of course, Prince Charles and, constitutionally, his wife would become the Queen Consort on his accession. There is a significant difference here that should be noted: a queen consort is the wife of the king and not a queen in her own right, as is the case with Queen Elizabeth.

For Prince William to become the next king would require Prince Charles to abdicate. Whether he does that is for him to decide, though I sincerely hope he does not for their is no good reason in my opinion for him to do so. And, if the Duchess of Cornwall becomes queen consort following Charles’ accession to the throne, then I am all for that as well.

At the point when Prince William becomes King, then it follows that the present Kate Middleton will become the Queen Consort, something I think may be missed when opinion polls ask if they would prefer her to be the next queen.

The point here, I think, is that we do not choose our monarch by lottery, postal vote or opinion polls. And, hopefully, that will always remains so.
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Xmas Party Decline

Researchers have discovered that almost four in ten businesses were scrapping the traditional Christmas parties.

In a way I’m not surprised. When you’ve made staff redundant, increased workloads, cut bonuses, etc., there is maybe an insensitivity in holding the annual Christmas bash for the survivors.

Once I became a manager, I found my enthusiasm for the Christmas party quickly waned. By then I had stopped drinking in the office environment and I always felt that the occasions were ripe for a sort of ritual suicide by staff who didn’t have the sense to reign in their drinking. I never curtailed any of the parties but made sure that, after putting in a brief appearance, I hightailed it out.

I kept to that rule for many years and was glad that I did so. I always felt it was so much better to hear about the various fights, indiscretions and sillynesses, than to actually be a part of them!
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There’s No ‘Off’ Button?

The mobile phone belonging to a woman from Bolton was bombarded for seven weeks with over seventy calls a day after her phone company mistakenly redirected customer complaint calls to it.

The women concerned reported that the experience was exhausting and that it also affected her partner’s health.

Cripes! I’d have just switched the wretched thing off!
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Confusion & Distress?

Five Anglican bishops have so far defected to Rome and an estimated 500-600 Anglicans, including about 50 priests, are believed to be following them in the first wave of converts to join the Catholic Ordinariate when it is established in the first half of next year.

In an interview with Vatican Radio, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, says that traditionalists who cannot accept Anglican plans to ordain women bishops were in ‘considerable confusion and distress’.

Surely, it is the Anglican Church that is in considerable confusion and distress?
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Leaves Again?

It is reported that on 8 November, a train from Charing Cross sped through one station and over a level-crossing in East Sussex and carried on for more than two miles before stopping. Because of leaves on the line.

I thought we had sorted out the ‘leaves on the line’ problem years ago?

Fortunately, the line was clear at the time and the level-crossing was closed to traffic. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch are now to carry out a full investigation to see went wrong.

I hope they report quickly, for it doesn’t bear thinking about what might happen if a similar incident occurs when the line ahead is not clear.
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Where’s The Crime?

There is report in a couple of the newspapers about a so-called Jesuit priest who for the past twenty years or so has been donating valuable works of art to museums across the United States. The only problem is that they are all clever forgeries.

The man makes the ‘donations’ of works by Curren, Picasso, Signac and Daumier in memory of his late mother and does not ask for any payment, though he occasionally attends special ‘donor events’ that the museums organise.

How interesting is this report which will exercise the minds of a number of legal experts in the months to come? What crime has been committed in circumstances where no money or reward has changed hands? Is he a priest or not? If not he may be accused of fraudulently posing as a priest, and if he is a priest, then he will have to answer to the church authorities for what he has been up to. But is a crime committed when someone donates a forgery to a museum in circumstances where that body has the ability to check the veracity of the artwork involved?

Somehow, I think not.
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The Anti-Phone

A Dutch company has designed what they say is the world’s simplest mobile phone, ‘John’s Phone’. It just makes calls and you can’t do anything else with it. You can’t receive calls, send text messages or emails, access the internet, play music ir games on it or take a photograph with it.

The makers say that the £67 mobile phone will appeal to technophobes and children buying their first phone. Personally, I can’t see the point of producing a mobile phone which can’t receive calls.

The best mobile in Chateau MacDonald belongs to my wife and which I bought some years ago. All it does is make and receive calls. Now that’s what I call a simple mobile phone.

At least, that is true when she remembers to switch it on!
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Stone Dead?

The European Union President, the fellow who MEP Nigel Farage said had the ‘charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of low grade bank clerk’, has said that Ireland’s debt crisis could kill the EU stone dead.

‘We must all work together in order to survive with the eurozone, because if we do not survive with the eurozone, we will not survive with the European Union,’ he said.

The question is: Would anyone in Britain mind?
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Congratulations!

The country needed something to lift its spirits, and that came with yesterday’s announcement that Prince William is to marry Kate Middleton in the spring or summer of next year. Heartiest congratulations to them.

A royal wedding will certainly lift our spirits, not to say also the welcome impact on tourism. Already there is much speculation.

Where they will marry; will it be St. Paul’s, Westminster Cathedral or the Chapel Royal? Where will the bride get her wedding dress and what sort of style will it be; will it be an unknown British designer and something more simple than that worn by Princess Diana thirty years ago? What will be Kate’s rank after marriage; will she be a duchess or a princess, or both? Will it be a formal or informal affair, though is there any doubt that it will be a formal one? Where will the honeymoon be? And will the wedding day be a public holiday (possibly a better chance for this under the present government!)? And so on and so forth.

One thing that has yet to surface among all the speculation is what name will the bride adopt when she eventually becomes queen. At this moment she is Catherine Elizabeth. Will she remain a Catherine (possibly not because previous Catherines have come to a sticky end) or will she choose to be Elizabeth (which many might say would be a nice compliment to the present queen and her late mother) as her reign name?

I don’t know the answers to these questions any more than anyone else, but it’s all good stuff which will occupy the minds of royalists for months to come. And I’m all for it!

Warmest congratulations!
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Holly Berries

Will we have another severe winter this year? If the dense, red berries on our holly tree in the garden are anything to go by, we will.

Last year was the same. The amount of holly berries on our tree gave warning that it might be and, indeed, it was; it was the hardest winter in 31 years. So, perhaps, there is something about the old wive’s tale after all. Indeed, the Telegraph newspaper this morning confirms that the bountiful supply of berries on the trees this autumn might give warning of another hard winter.

As usual, we will be bringing sprigs of holly into the house as Christmas decorations, a tradition which apparently goes back to pre-Christian times.

We will also be pulling out the snow shovels in readiness!
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About Dogs

The Kennel Club has announced that Alaskan malamutes are now among Britain’s most popular dog breeds and that their number has risen almost tenfold in the last decade.

Now and again we see a malemute while we walk our own dogs, and I got used to seeing these lovely animals when I once worked in Alaska where they were originally used by the Inuit as sled dogs. Indeed, in this country they are often harnessed to wheeled sleds and raced. One has only to see the impatience of these energetic animals to get going to appreciate how much they enjoy working.

Dogs are very personal things. What is loveable to one man is something to be detested by another. Some folk prefer their rescued mutts to pedigree animals, while others look to particular sizes and shapes of dog for their pets.

In Chateau MacDonald, we have two dogs with oodles of character; an elderly Yorkshire Terrier, Mickey, and a youngish Jack Russell, Ollie.

Mickey is most definitely my wife’s dog and, if she has to go out, will sit atop the armchair by the living room window waiting for her to return home. He cannot be deflected from this.

Mickey’s main ability is to understand the time, and we often wonder if he can read the clock in the living room. He is a terrible whiner and knows within a tolerance of ten to fifteen minutes when he is due for a treat or a saucer of chicken. How he does this is a complete mystery to us, but does it he does and, if we are late in delivering what he wants, he can be extremely vocal for such a titchy little animal.

In contrast to Mickey, Ollie is an extremely patient dog and seems to understand that treats and chicken come along at some time during the day and that there is no need to expend energy on chasing us up for them.

Ollie is my dog. Or, at least for some of the time.

If one of our granddaughters is in the house, for example, then Ollie cannot be separated from her. She will carry him around the house like a rag-doll with him having a silly look on his chops (yes, dogs do have expressions!). If either of our two sons happens to be at home, then he will gravitate to one of them. If we are watching the television in the evening, Ollie will either sit by the side of my mother or, alternatively, stretch out beside my wife on the sofa.

How then do I know that little Ollie is ‘my’ dog? It is because he will sometimes ignore everyone else and come to me for a cuddle. And, on the few occasions that I am unwell and have to return to bed, then Ollie is always there by my side ignoring whatever else is going on in the house.

Ollie is our third Jack Russell. They are dogs with immense character and can be very funny in some of their antics. They can also, like any other breed of dog, be very territorial.

As witness the Jack Russell, appropriately named Jack, who lives with his family in a farm in South Dakota. He recently discovered a 150lb cougar wandering around the property and was so aggressive in defending his territory, that he managed to chase it up a tree where it was later chased and shot by the farm’s owner.

Mickey and Ollie are cowards, but we used to have a cat that could have done that!
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Remembering

Today is Remembrance Day when services and ceremonies will be held around the country at war memorials in cities, towns and villages to commemorate those who have fallen in war. Similar services will be held around the Commonwealth and in other places.

At eleven o’clock, the nation will once again observe a two-minute silence to honour the dead. After this, wreaths of poppies will be laid to memorialise and symbolise the blood spilt in war; that flower being a reminder of the poppies that bloomed across some of the battlefields in WWI.

The Queen will lead the nation by laying the first wreath at the Cenotaph in London. She will be followed by many representatives of various organisations, including those of the armed services. Afterwards there will be the familiar parades, including those of veterans.

People of my generation who were born towards the end of or after WWII have much to be thankful for. We were not directly affected by war except when parents or relatives were killed or injured in them.

As I said the other day, those who gave up their lives did so to keep this country free. Regardless of whatever anyone else feels about war, I for one will be watching the ceremony at the Cenotaph and will observe the two-minute silence.

It will be the least I can do to remember those who gave up their lives for their country.
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Grilled With Salad

Like many other people I enjoy oriental cuisine, though I have always drawn the line at things such as boiled snakes, roast chicken feet and other such delicacies.

I enjoyed my travels in the East and was fortunate to have never been in a situation of having to taste anything that I had not already seen on a restaurant menu back home. So I have no idea what some of the more exotic delicacies taste like, let alone look like.

But one man in the Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology, Dr Van Tri, has achieved international distinction by recognising an unknown species of lizard when it was served to him, grilled with a salad, in a restaurant in the Mekon Delta.

Not only was the lizard a new species, but it was thought to consist entirely of females which reproduce by a process called parthenogenesis. Dr Van Tri emailed photographs of the lizard to scientists in California and Pennsylvania and they got so exited that they flew immediately to Vietnam to see it for themselves.

They confirmed Dr Van Tri’s discovery and the new lizard species was named Leiolepis ngovantrii after him.

Thankfully, at least to me, there is no word as to how it tasted grilled with salad!
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A Dishonour

Millions of Britons stopped what they were doing yesterday to mark the anniversary of Armistice Day. They stopped at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in remembrance of the day in 1918 which signalled the end of the First World War.

That solemn two minute silence honours the dead of all wars and it will be repeated when the Queen leads the nation at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.

Yesterday, a small group of protesters burned a model of a poppy in Exhibition Road, South Kensington. Some held placards saying BRITISH SOLDIERS BURN IN HELL.

These same people forget that our soldiers gave their lives to preserve what is still thankfully a free country.

What, I wonder, would happen if these same people returned to their own countries of origin to protest about the happenings there?
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Bad News!

It is possible that students have reason to peacefully protest about the increase in tuition fees.

But there is no excuse for the outburst of violent thuggery that occurred yesterday at the Millbank Tower.

Nor does there seem to me to be a valid reason why the police were not more robust in preventing or containing what turned out to be a riot.
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Good News!

The Supreme Court has rejected the bid by three former MPs to avoid criminal trials for allegedly fiddling their expenses on the grounds of Parliamentary Privilege.

It upheld a decision by the Court of Appeal which made it plain that allegations of ‘ordinary’ crime by MPs and Lords ‘does not, has never, and, we believe, never would’ come under the protection of the 321-year-old defence.

Now that is clear for the second time, perhaps we can get on with the business of testing these three men, and the member of the Lords also accused of false accounting, in an open criminal court.
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For Life?

Five suspected Somali pirates are being prosecuted in a court in Virginia after allegedly firing on what they believed was a merchant ship but was, in fact, the guided-missile frigate USS Nicholas off the Seychelles.

The men were captured and brought back to the US to stand trial for piracy, the first such trial to be held in the US for over 100 years. If convicted, they will face a mandatory life sentence.

With piracy on the increase, there have been calls for international courts to be set up to deal with the problem. So I find it interesting that this trial is being held in the States which will have to house and feed these men in relative comfort for the rest of their lives if convicted.

Might it not have been better to have held the trial in a friendly African country and let them serve their sentences out there in less comfort?
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Rupert Bear

Ninety years ago artist Mary Tourtel created the cartoon strip of Rupert Bear for the Daily Express who first published it on 8 November 1920. As a child I read his daily adventures with much interest and looked forward to receiving his Annual as one of my Christmas presents.

Instantly recognisable in his red jumper, yellow scarf and checked trousers, Rupert had all sorts of adventures with his chums Bill the badger, Edward the elephant and Willie the mouse. There was also the Professor who lived in a castle and invented things, a Chinese girl named Tiger Lily and many other characters in the stories.

Even at this distance in time, the Rupert stories are quite endearing and I’m sure children of this generation are still enjoying them as much as I and others of my generation did.

News of Rupert’s birthday comes with the announcement that a charity auction featuring a one-off collectable Steiff Rupert Bear is to be auctioned on 14 November in aid of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign.

It’s bound to be a winner.
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How Much Is Enough?

The House of the Gladiators in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii has collapsed, possibly because it became unstable after recent rains. Known as the Schola Armaturarum, the building was used by gladiators for training before fights in the nearby amphitheatre.

Anyone who has visited Pompeii will have marvelled at the state of preservation of parts of the city which was covered in ash when the nearby Vesuvius volcano erupted in 79 AD. Still under excavation, the city has become a major tourist attraction.

Some critics accuse the Italian authorities of not putting enough funds into conserving the city’s buildings and its art works, some of which are beginning to fade. Pompeii is an important archaeological site and clearly needs adequate funding.

However, in times of economic crisis, preserving what has already been uncovered as well as funding what still has to be discovered must be a nightmare.
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What? Go To Work?

The Work and Pensions Secretary will this week unveil government plans to help the long-term unemployed get back into the work ethic by obliging them to do four-week programmes of compulsory community work.

In heavily-leaked interviews and newspaper articles, the government also plans to apply sanctions against benefit claimants who do not use the available support to find employment.

The majority of the people in this country would, I think, support any scheme to reduce unemployment along with the high cost of benefit payments to folk who do not want to work when it is available.

But, of course, those who are work-shy may not be among them!
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A Sight To Behold

One of the joys I had of travelling - at least in the days when the actual process of getting from here to there was more pleasurable and relaxed - was visiting some of the great cathedrals of the world. The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain was one such, and yesterday the Pope celebrated Mass outside it.

The faithful believe that the cathedral holds the relics of the martyred St. James the Great. According to tradition, the tomb of St. James was discovered in 814 by a Galician bishop who was said to have been guided to the spot by a star and who brought the relics back to Compostela. They eventually became the major focus of pilgrimage, the Way of St. James, and pilgrims wore a scallop shell to identify themselves. Even today, in excess of 100,000 pilgrims are drawn from around the world to the saint’s shrine in the cathedral’s crypt.

Construction of the cathedral, which replaced a chapel and two churches, was commenced in 1075 when it became an episcopal see, being raised to the status of an archiepiscopal see in 1100. Between the 16th and 18th centuries the cathedral was much embellished and expanded. The cathedral is, as one might expect of a place of pilgrimage, splendid in its ornamentation, and one of the greatest joys of visiting it is to witness the swinging of the ‘Botafumeiro’, a giant thurible, being swung from one end of the nave to the other. Constructed in 1851 and weighing 80 kg and measuring 1.6 metres in height, this is the largest censer in the world.

On important religious holidays - and sometimes when commissioned by tourists and others - the botafumeiro is filled with 40 kilos of charcoal and incense and swung backwards and forwards by eight red-robed ‘tiraboleiros’ dispensing clouds of incense around the church.

Higher and higher the thurible is swung, occasionally bursting into flames because of its downward speed. The tiraboleiros are extremely adept in handling the heavy thurible and will sometimes terrify the onlookers below by swinging it just above their heads.

As with the cathedral itself, the swinging of the botafumeiro is certainly a sight to behold, though I don’t know if His Holiness was given the opportunity to see the latter yesterday.
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Worlds Apart

In 1838 Frenchman Louis Daguerre took a photograph of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris which researchers have now found also captured the image of a shoeshine boy cleaning someone’s shoes.

This is now thought to have made history by being the first ever photograph taken of a human being, replacing one taken in Cincinnati in 1848 which was previously thought to have been the first.

Contrast this photograph with that taken a few days ago by NASAs EPOXI Mission Deep Impact spacecraft of the peanut-shaped comet Hartley 2 belching out jets of gases some 13 million miles from Earth. The spacecraft came within 435 miles of the comet before sending back amazing monochrome photos of it.

Deep Impact was originally supposed to photograph the comet Boethin in 2008 but it disappeared, after supposedly breaking up. So the spacecraft was redirected towards Hartley 2, capturing along the way scenes of a cluster of nearby stars with known planets circling them.

Two black and white photographs separated by 162 years and, for once, literally worlds apart!
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Remember, Remember ...

Tonight across the country bonfires will be lit, guys burned and fireworks let off in celebration of the discovery of the failed Bonfire Plot of 5 November 1605.

The plot, in which explosives were placed in the undercroft of the Palace of Westminster, ended in the trial and execution of Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators who attempted to assassinate the Protestant King James I of England and replace him with a Catholic monarch.

In 1606, this day was declared a public holiday, Thanksgiving Day, and was commemorated for many years by the ringing of church bells along with special services and appropriate sermons. Bonfires and the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes (the ‘guy’) started soon after the discovery of the plot and this gradually evolved into today’s festivities.

I guess that the majority of youngsters these days have heard of Guy Fawkes but have only a vague idea, if any, of the circumstances in which he is memorialised this evening, and it’s unlikely that many have a clue as to why the conspirators wanted to kill the king. The emphasis these days is to set off as many fireworks as possible in the longest period of time.

The last government imposed stricter controls on fireworks, reducing their strength and decibel-ratings but Bonfire Night is, alas, an annual event in which many people, young and old, get burned setting them off. I suppose that not much can be done about this unless, as in some US states and other places, fireworks are banned except in professionally organised displays.

In any event, Happy and Safe Bonfire Night!

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
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University Tuition Fees

I can’t say that I fully understand the complexities of the row over tuition fees or why they should be so high and also variable between universities. I do know that a nephew of mine has run up a huge debt which he will struggle to pay.

I was, however, reminded that it was not so long ago that there was a proposal to drastically cut university holidays and to truncate three-year courses into two years.

Would that not save the students’ money and also improve the throughput of them through universities?
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A Nightmare

That arch-busybody in British affairs, the European Court of Human Rights, has ruled that sentenced prisoners should be allowed to vote, a privilege originally denied them by the Forfeiture Act of 1870.

Though it is said that the Prime Minister is ‘exasperated’ by the ruling, I can’t say that I can personally get too worked up by it, particularly as prisoners on remand awaiting trial, fine defaulters and people jailed for contempt of court are able to vote.

It does strike me, however, that organising a vote for prisoners - presumably those able to prove British citizenship - is going to be an administrative nightmare for the Prison Service, an organisation not often renowned for its speed of bureaucratic action. With a population sometimes moving between prisons and with some prisoners gaining early release, getting a vote organised efficiently throughout the prison system is going to take a great deal of detailed organisation.

But in theory, they would seem to have plenty of time to get it together.
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That One There!

Yesterday afternoon we walked our dogs in a local park instead of heading for Two Tree Island.

Treading over the fallen leaves that carpeted the ground, scenting the wispy smoke from a nearby bonfire and wishing that we had worn gloves against the bitterly cold wind, we were reminded that autumn is well on its way to becoming winter.

The thing that struck us also in the sunshine was the splendid view of the trees covering the hills in the far distance and blazing with an abundance of glorious russet colours. They reminded us that we need not have to travel to New England to see the Fall colours for they are here in abundance this year.

With a couple of friends, we did take a trip to New England a few years ago. It was a hugely enjoyable trip but the thing that amused us most, and has stuck with us ever since, was the brilliantly vibrant gold colour of a single tree that stood out among the many, many thousands of others we saw. Though we did a week’s tour of New England it was that one tree that was the most noteworthy and beautiful.

It was the tree standing opposite the entrance to our hotel!
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Contrasts

A 22-year-old man walked out of a £93-a-week job over a year ago, preferring instead to live on benefits and happily admits this to a reporter.

An 18-year-old who applied for more than eighty jobs since leaving college is so desperate to find work that she took up her mother’s suggestion and walks the streets of her home town for three hours a day holding a placard saying ‘Please give me a job’.

The one demonstrates clearly why benefit reform is so badly needed, while the other deserves as much support as the State or anyone else can give her.
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Corrosive

We live in times where attention to health and safety regulations have removed commonsense from many areas of our lives.

Think of schools that have banned conkers unless the contestants wear goggles or the council that banned cheese-rolling because the hill was too steep. There are hundreds of such examples, including the one I mentioned earlier this morning about Network Rail making it virtually impossible for a Women’s Institute to carry on with a railway garden they have tended for 26 years.

We also live in times where terrorists attack us or attempt to attack us in various deadly ways. In times when deranged men kill innocent people in senseless random attacks. These are times when incidents such as these need to be reacted to with great speed. And, generally speaking, our emergency forces do a wonderful job in responding to major incidents.

The coalition government have promised to do away with unnecessary health and safety regulations and I for one wish they’d hurry up and get on with it.

For a start, they could do away with the RA1 form that needs to be filled in by the Metropolitan police before they can commence conducting any sort of operation. The Risk Assessment Form contains 238 potential hazards that officers must consider before embarking on, say, attendance at a football match or, at the other extreme, reacting to a terrorist attack.

Once filled in, the form has to be accompanied by Form RA2 (an inventory of risk activities), Form RA3 (a calculation of levels of risk) and Form RA4 (the resulting recommendations). Then a Commander or Chief Constable has to sign off the recommendations.

A former Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner has said that a ‘self-serving risk assessment culture’ blights police operations. ‘A generation of senior police, fire and ambulance officers have grown up in an environment where avoidance of risk and the fear of being sued by an ‘ambulance-chasing’ solicitor is more important than public duty.’ He added, ‘This corrosive culture of caution and risk-avoidance is why the Aldgate firefighters were ordered to stay at the gates rather than help the grievously wounded.’

Corrosive indeed. Given that the risk of terrorist activity is now rated as severe, now is the time for the government to crack down on this sort of nonsense that serves only the ambulance-chasers and not the public.
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A Farce

I suppose we often say that things were simpler long ago and sometimes that is right as two reports this morning remind me.

In the ‘old days’ when trains broke down within sight of a station, you waited patiently for a little while and then opened the doors, climbed out if you could and hoofed it along the track to the station. I’ve done that myself at least a couple of times. But you can’t do that easily these days as there are few ‘slam-door’ trains left. Most of them now have electrically-operated doors controlled by the driver.

So when a rush-hour train from Kings Cross to Cambridge conked out on Friday evening, around fifteen passengers got fed-up with waiting more than thirty minutes, forced open a door, climbed out and walked 500 metres along the track to Foxton station. You’d have thought ‘Good luck to them!’ but the driver thought otherwise, locked the other 360 passengers in with a warning that they could be arrested if they tried to leave the train, and then called the police.

The first set of trapped passengers were released from the blacked-out train ninety minutes after it broke down and ferried, not to Foxton nearby, but back to Royston. Nearly three hours after the train broke down, the others were ferried back to Royston again where a fleet of 28 buses took them all to Cambridge.

I suppose that in the case of this train, there might have been a risk that some dimwit escaping from the trapped train might have fallen over and injured himself so, possibly, First Capital Connect were right to lock the other passengers in.

On the other hand, contrast the 32 ladies of the Bucknell Women’s Institute who for the last quarter of a century have tended a garden alongside their local railway station, even winning a Wales in Bloom award in 1992.

But no longer. For Network Rail has told them that they need to complete a detailed risk assessment, arrange insurance, sign a five-page licence that would restrict their activities, undergo safety training and fence off their garden. And all this for a station that has eight trains a day travelling at two miles an hour because of a level crossing nearby.

What a farce!
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