The Final 'Just A Thought'

It is with great sadness that I am writing to tell you that my father Brian died on the 17th February 2011.
He enjoyed writing this blog to the last, and we hope that you enjoyed it. Alasdair (his son)

And What Then?

It is reported that American bioarchaeologists are going to ask for royal approval to exhume the body of King Henry VIII in an attempt to prove that a rare disease caused his ferocious temper.

It seems that ‘Kell-positive’ blood coupled with McLeod’s Syndrome in later life causes muscle weakness and even schizophrenic behaviour and may explain why a much-loved prince became a murderous tyrant king.

King Henry VIII is buried in St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle after he died in January 1547 at the age of 55. After a jousting accident in 1536 he became susceptible to an ulcerated leg injury, boils, violent mood swings and possibly untreated Type II diabetes.

Whether or not the researchers obtain royal approval for an exhumation of King Henry’s hair and bone DNA samples remains to be seen, though one feels it is unlikely the Queen will grant the request.

But what will it prove? That there is just another cause to the king’s behaviour? And if DNA samples prove that Kell-positive blood and McLeod’s Syndrome are involved in the case of Henry VIII? What then?

Will researchers be wanting to dig up every bad-tempered individual from the past to test them as well?

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Thar She Blows!

The classic American novel, Moby Dick, was written by Herman Melville after he read about the dramatic events of the Essex whaling ship which had been rammed by a sperm whale and sunk in 1821.

After the Essex sank, Captain George Pollard and his crew drifted at sea without food and water for three months and even resorted to cannibalism before they were rescued. Captain Pollard went on to command the Two Brothers which two years later struck a coral reef in shallow waters off Hawaii, but eventually gave up whaling and became a night watchman in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Now the remains of the Two Brothers are thought to have been discovered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about 600 miles north-west of Honolulu. Though the wooden frame of the ship has disintegrated in the warm waters, harpoons, hooks and cauldrons to turn blubber into oil have helped to identify the ship.

I love these maritime stories. We can send rockets and men to the moon, but finding things at the bottom of the oceans often seems much more daunting. But here, after much research and effort, a tangible link to an American maritime classic has been uncovered.

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Proud

Now and again Parliament does the right thing.

For they have now shown two fingers to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg who were insisting that British prisoners should have the vote.

It does not matter in this instance what MPs voted on and I can’t say that I have any sympathy for British prisoners who, in punishment for their crimes, have temporarily lost their freedom. The point is that our elected representatives have upheld Britain’s sovereign right to make its own decisions by defying demands from an unelected body consisting in some parts of people with no conception of our own ancient laws.

This may well be the ‘one small step’ to our Parliament paying more attention to what Strasbourg wants in comparison to what we as a sovereign nation wants. If so, what happened the other night is a very good thing.

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Blimey!

Let’s suppose you are a fisherman and that you are sailing close to a busy cross-Channel lane off Beachy Head, near Eastbourne in East Sussex and you spot something floating on the water’s surface. Blimey - it’s a torpedo!

This is what happened to fisherman Peter Storey earlier in the week who, not knowing whether the torpedo was live or not, bravely tied a rope round it and brought it ashore into shallow water. Later, the Royal Navy Bomb Disposal team comes along and finds that the erxplosive charge had corroded and that the torpedo posed no threat to shipping.

Mr Storey was a brave man for he had no knowledge of explosives and one hopes that there is some sort of reward for removing something that may have been dangerous in a busy shipping lane.

On the other hand, it would be interesting to know how this torpedo ended up where it did seeing that it was confirmed as a British Mk 9 device which had a stamp stating it was last checked and tested in 1955.

Wow! Last tested? What happened to it in the meantime?

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What A Good Idea!

An Indiana-based company called Little iApps has created the first application for the Apple iPhone giving guidance for Catholics who wish to return to the confessional.

The application, which has received its imprimatur from Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese, is not designed to be used in the confessional itself but gives a step-by-step guide to the sacrament to those who have been missing for a while. The app, costing just $1.99 in the Apple iTune Store gives password protected advice on performing the sacrament as well as a list of acts of contrition.

Unlike some of the things that come onto the market, this simple application seems to me to be an eminently good idea since anything that helps people along the path of spirituality is bound to be one.

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‘Ain’t Science Wonderful?

Last July divers exploring a Baltic Sea shipwreck believed to have sunk some time between 1800 and 1830 found 145 bottles of what is believed to be the world’s oldest champagne.

On arrival at the surface only one bottle burst open and this proved to be a bottle of beer which experts are trying to recreate if there is enough living yeast or other microbial cells present in the remains.

It’s many years since I drank alcohol, but it would be wonderful to try a beer made to an authentic 200-year-old recipe.

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Spooky, But Good For Business?

We may be living in the 21 century but the possible doings of the 7th century may still be affecting us.

That may be the case if we are likely to visit Thorpe Park, one of the UK's largest theme parks, who have had to move their ‘Storm Surge’ water ride away from what experts believe may have been an ancient burial ground or settlement. After a paranormal detection agency was called in following reports of various ghostly sightings, including that of a headless monk, managers of the park decided to relocate the ride to another area of the park.

And less anyone think that this may just be a case of getting some free publicity, Thorpe Park also called in a forensic geophysicist from Cranfield University who, using deep ground radar, picked up signatures similar to that of an ancient burial ground.

Spooky, eh?

Let’s Do It!

A report by the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange has shown that European judges had overruled British law on on 26 occasions since Labour passed the Human Rights Act a decade ago.

Policy Exchange say there is ‘strong evidence’ that withdrawing from the Strasbourg court’s jurisdiction would not affect Britain’s membership of the EU and that Britain should press for major reform of the Strasbourg court to rein it in. If negotiations are unsuccessful then the UK should withdraw from Strasbourg.

The report’s findings are backed by one of Britain’s retired judges, Lord Hoffman, who believes that in recent years ‘human rights have become, like health and safety, a byword for foolish decisions by courts and administrators’.

It seems like a good idea to me to pull out and restore our own justice system. But will the government be brave enough to do it?
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A French Upset?

The government is considering moving the May Bank Holiday to October, from the half-term break in 2013, which they think would help promote the tourism industry in the latter part of the year. The idea comes as tourism chiefs have called for a better spread of pubic holidays throughout the year and this one might be called UK Day or Trafalgar Day.

The whinging has already started and unions have accused the government of attacking International Workers Day on 1 May. This despite the May Day Bank Holiday often falling close to the Easter holidays. The General Secretary of the TUC has called for an extra bank holiday to be given instead.

Compared with other EU countries, Britain falls behind in the number of public holidays each year, so moving the holiday to October - or putting another one in place - would seem to me to be a great idea especially if it were to be called Trafalgar Day.

But I doubt the French would be pleased about that!
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Disgraced?

The wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons appeared in the Evening Standard supposedly wearing just a sheet in front of a hotel window with the Palace of Westminster in the background.

Subsequently she told a BBC Radio 5 Live interviewer that she was ‘probably stupid to do it’. She also confessed that because she is married to the Speaker, ‘... whatever I do is put in the media and used to get at him’.

The office of the Speaker is an ancient one and ranks in the order of precedence above all non-royal individuals except the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord President of the Council along with some religious leaders.

Is it just possible that the Speaker’s wife disgraced this ancient office? I’d say there is no contest.
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Put A Sock In It!

Every now and again I chuck out all my socks and start again by purchasing a new stock. It’s an efficient arrangement except that I very often end up with one unused sock in my drawer.

How is it possible to end up with one unused sock after I gradually use up the dozen or so new pairs I bought? It’s a mystery and the only possible answer must be that I have been short-sold one sock.

Socks, of course, go missing for any number of reasons: they get lost in washing machines, get chewed by dogs, get thrown away accidentally or go walkabouts for a variety of other reasons. In my case, I’m sure that I’ve just been short-sold since there is no other plausible solution to the problem.

Coincidentally a study of 1,500 Britons has shown that 82% of young men will end up wearing mismatched socks at least once a week. It seems that northern men are most likely affected by the lost sock syndrome with 67% of those questioned reporting that they lost up to 15 socks a year. Black socks are also those most likely to go missing.

Socks are not expensive and so I can’t say I can get worked up too much when I find an odd one before I’ve had a chance to wear it. I just buy more when I need them.

There may be a mystery about where the other lost socks disappear to. But the bigger mystery to me is why all those young men don’t just go out and buy new ones!
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Eternal Egypt

I have little knowledge of tangled Middle Eastern politics but like most thinking people am highly alarmed at the reports coming out of that lovely country that is Egypt.

The Egyptian President has dismissed his government, called out the army and police to quell unrest which has already resulted in the deaths of over 100 people and imposed curfews in various areas. Flights into the country are being curtailed while, at the same time, thousands of people, including Egyptian nationals, are trying to flee from it. The chaos is such that, while steps are being taken to safeguard the country’s national treasures, the ordinary folk on the street are beginning to struggle to survive against looters, vigilantes and shortages.

Egypt, as I’ve said, is a lovely country and its gentle people long-suffering. Let us hope that peaceful and lasting solutions can be found which will stabilise affairs in a part of the Middle East which ought not to be underestimated for its importance in the region.
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Those Human Rights Again!

It’s not all peaches and cream being a prisoner in a Dutch jail. Take the case of the 36-stone inmate of Krimpen aan de Ussel Prison in Holland serving two years for fraud.

He is suffering because his cell is too cramped to accommodate his body mass which is said to be a metre wide and a metre deep which means that his bed is too narrow, he cannot use the toilet in comfort and he becomes wedged in the shower cubicle. Since he is also 6ft 9ins tall he is unable to move around his cell without bowing his head and there is not enough space in it for family visits.

The man concerned claims that the cramped conditions in the prison breach his human rights and has launched a legal bid to be given house arrest.

One would assume that the Dutch authorities would be glad to release this man to house arrest. Think of the savings on food alone!
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Jobsmiths

The security jobsmiths working at Gatwick Airport spotted a model soldier holding a three-inch resin gun with no moving parts which they decided was a ‘firearm’.

Purchased by Julie Lloyd from the Royal Signals Museum in Blandford, Dorset, as a present for her husband in Canada, security staff allowed her to take the soldier home in her hand luggage but wouldn’t permit her to take the toy gun which she posted home from the airport in a padded envelope.

With jobsmiths like this working on our behalf at airports, should we be sleeping safely?
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Crack On Please!

The Chancellor is widely reported as considering cancelling the one penny a litre tax increase on petrol scheduled to come into force in April. He is also said to be thinking of reforming the fuel tax system through a stabiliser of some sort.

Very good. Anything helps the cash-strapped motorist as well as those using oil to heat their homes.

But enough of the dithering. Let him crack on and announce something soon!
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Warming?

Against a background that north-eastern USA and Canada have again been hit by a severe snow storm and South Korea is suffering from an unaccustomed wave of bitterly cold weather, we here are also being warned of yet another cold snap.

Is it surprising? I mean, it’s winter after all. So. faced with fair warning that snow flurries may descend upon us today, we in Casa MacDonald will muffle up when we go out later on.

The question is: Where is this global warming that is going to cut our fuel bills then?
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Lifted Today

Today is the one on which in 1944 Russian forces were at last able to lift the murderous two-and-a-half year Siege of Leningrad which marked a turn in what Russia knows as the Great Patriotic War.

Once again known as St. Petersburg, the city is unquestionably quite wonderful as anyone privileged to have visited it will know. Built by Peter the Great to rival any western city, it is full of fabulous buildings, academies, museums, cathedrals and churches, palaces and grand houses around a river and canal system. Commencing in 1703 and aided by the best architects and artisans in the world, Peter the Great imported conscripted peasant labour from around Russia to build his new city which became Russia’s capital in 1712. The capital was moved to Moscow in 1728 but went back to St. Petersburg in 1732 where it stayed for the next 186 years.

It has rightly been said that the Siege of Leningrad caused the greatest destruction and the largest loss of life ever known in a modern city. On Hitler’s express orders, many of the palaces and other landmarks were systematically looted and then destroyed. Around 1.5 million were killed, and another 1.4 million civilians were evacuated many of which died of starvation or bombardment. Few, if any, residents of today’s city are left untouched by the events of the Siege.

Signs of the Siege can be seen most anywhere in the city and the pride the people show in its reconstruction is justifiable and clear to see. Visit, for example, Catherine’s Palace in Tsarskoye Selo on the outskirts of the city and you will see photographs of the complete destruction that was meted out to it by German forces, including the theft of the fabled and incomparable Amber Chamber, a room decorated with amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors. Like many other landmarks, the palace was extensively rebuilt to its original condition after the war and between 1979 and 2003 the Amber Room was reconstructed using fresh materials since the location of the original amber was lost.

I would love to visit St. Petersburg once again and see not only the friends I met there on past visits but also to visit once more some of its incomparable sights again. In the meantime, like many others, we have seen the city, the palaces and other buildings, the Amber Chamber and dined in the Astoria Hotel where Adolf Hitler planned to hold his victory party.
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A Very Sensible Idea

It is reported that Redditch Borough Council is thinking of diverting waste heat generated by a crematorium in Worcestershire to heating a local swimming pool.

This would, apparently, save £14,000 a year in pool heating costs and seems to me an eminently sensible proposal to me particularly as the heat generated by the crematorium is lost to the atmosphere.

On the one hand, the council have recognised that the issue could be a sensitive one and, after public consultation, it will be debating it on 7 February. On the other hand, crematorium workers’ union, Unison, have branded the proposal as, ‘sick and an insult to local residents’.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition of views. Which is more sick: the energy provided by, what is - let’s face it! - a waste facility, which is vented to the atmosphere, or the expenditure on heating a pool where energy is otherwise freely available?

No pun intended - but more power to Redditch Borough Council!
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Scots Wha Hae!

Those of us who claim affiliation to a Scottish clan may be tucking into a steaming plate of black, rich haggis this evening and raising a dram to the memory of the Immortal Bard, Rabbie Burns, whose birthday we celebrate today.

Though the traditional Burns Night’s Suppers will be held right across the world where the Scots influence is strong, it may not be the case in America where our national dish has been banned for the last twenty years or so following the US Department of Agriculture’s ban on food stuffs containing sheep lungs. Since then, our American cousins have partaken of modified haggis which conforms to US FDA regulations.

Last year, Richard Lochhead, Scotland’s Rural Affairs Secretary, invited a delegation of officials from the States to sample the authentic flavours of the real stuff and he has done again this year.

It is not yet known if Mr Lochhead has been successful in overturning the ban this year but, surely, his persistence will ultimately pay off?

If so, then Americans can tuck into one of my favourite foods, raise a glass and cry out, ‘Scots Wha Hae!’ like the rest of us!
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Scandals

In common with most other peoples, we British love a good scandal. In many cases, it’s the ordinariness of then that brings a smile - but, sometimes, astonishment - to our eyes.

The 50-year-old Leader of the House of Lords, married for twenty years with three children, is alleged to have been having a fling with a 48-year-old London socialite for the last seven years. ‘I just feel angry and used,’ she warbled to a reporter. Yeah, over seven years?

Then we have the tale of the 45-year-old police protection officer who is alleged to have seduced the 47-year-old wife of the much-respected Shadow Chancellor who felt obliged in honour to resign his post on Thursday. The officer has been suspended pending a police investigation.

These reports are hardly fit for a Mills and Boon novel, but they obviously represent emotional relationships that have failed and which have started up again in different forms. The human condition is full of heartbreaks and upsets and these are two of such. The public ought not to be that interested in them I feel.

On the other hand, the divorced 74-year-old Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has refused to resign his high office of state following widespread allegations that he frequently attended wild sex parties with prostitutes, including one that was said to have been just 17-years-of-age at the time he had sex with her and who it is alleged received a ‘gift’ of €7,000 from him. ‘I am not running away and I am not resigning,’ said Sr Berlusconi, after newspapers ran telephone transcripts from more than twenty women who said they attended sex parties at Sr Berlusconi’s residences.

It is the Italian story that raises an eyebrow. An old man making out with a 17-year girl and other women? He must have stamina as well as other attributes one supposes if the stories are true and, perhaps, it is no surprise that the Pope reminded the world on Friday that public officials ought to offer a strong moral example.

On the other hand, as one commentator said on television yesterday, we Brits expect our politicians to behave themselves while Italians may well prefer a leader who does not always keep his trousers firmly buckled up!
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Rare Generosity

An ATM cash machine in Dundee started spitting out extra bank notes to customers withdrawing money from it last week and, once word got round that it was doing so, crowds gathered to take advantage of its generosity before the company closed it down.

The company showed a rare philosophical side when reporters asked its spokesman to comment: ‘Because it happens so rarely and is dealt with very quickly when it arises, there is no point in being grim-faced about it. If the people using the ATM see it as a bit of fun, so be it.’ He added: ‘We are not going to pursue people. It is up to their conscience whether they return the money or not.’

Customers certainly seem to have regarded it as a bit of fun, and it is clear that none of them seems to have had a conscience since not a single one has yet telephoned to enquire how to return the extra cash they received.

A bank with a sense of humour as well as untypical generosity?
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Make Hay?

According to the Ancient Maya who were adept in mathematics and astronomy, the world will come to an end on the winter solstice of 21 December 2012.

The Mayan glyphs were in use until after the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors in the 16th-century and their meaning was not completely fully understood until fairly recent times. The Long Count Calendar began in 3,114 BC, the day on which the Maya believed the world was created, and its Doomsday prophecy has long been debated by scholars, some of who, merely believe that it signals the start of a new cyclical era in Mayan time.

Nonetheless, some advocates of the Long Count Calendar point to increased solar activity and polar realignments that the Earth is heading for some form of catastrophe next year. Others feel that we are heading for a spiritual rebirth for mankind.

The doomsday scenario has, however, been given some publicity this morning by the news that George Lucas, of Star Wars fame, recently told actor Seth Rogen and director Steven Spielberg that be believed the world would actually end on 21 December next year.

Now whether George Lucas has knowledge that the rest of us do not, ought we to be making hay while the sun shines?
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Kept Out!

Back in December it was reported that the pastor of a Florida church with less than forty members and who had caused widespread contoversy by threatening to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks had been invited to speak at an English Defence League rally in February.

I commented then that we had enough home-grown extremists of our own and that we didn’t need to invite any more into the country to stir things up. As it happened, the original invitation was withdrawn though another group, England Is Ours, popped up to issue an invitation for the man to speak at a rally next month.

Commonsense has been applied by the Home Office and the pastor has now been banned from entering Britain on the grounds that ‘Coming to the UK is a privilege not a right and we are not willing to allow entry to those whose presence is not conducive to the public good.’ That is absolutely right.

It is reported that the pastor is now promoting an ‘International Judge the Koran Day’ on March 20, which he said would put the Koran ‘on trial’.

Let’s hope he keeps this nonsense and the untold trouble it is likely to cause well at home in his own backyard of Gainesville, Florida.
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Dangerous As Well?

I wrote yesterday about the wonders of technology particularly in the hands of our computer-savvy children. Since then I’ve read a report that tends to confirm what many of us have long suspected, and that is that some technology can be positively dangerous particularly when used on aircraft.

It seems that passengers are forgetting to switch off their mobile phones, laptops, e-readers and other electronic gadgets in such numbers that they may present dangers to the aircraft’s cockpit equipment, and that this is thought to have been factors in several aircraft crashes. Most of these portable devices transit a signal and all emit electromagnetic waves which, so say some experts, could interfere with a plane’s electronics, particularly those on older aircraft which may not be protected against the latest devices.

In one 2003 case in New Zealand, the pilot phoned home, left his mobile switched on and this possibly led to the plane’s navigation equipment giving a false reading which led to the plane flying into the ground short of the runway, killing eight people. In 2007, one Boeing 737 pilot found his navigation equipment failed after takeoff but the problem disappeared when a flight attendant told a passenger to switch off a hand-held GPS device.

Various airlines have carried out tests of the effect mobile gadgets have on aircraft navigation and other cockpit equipment and, because the results have been inconclusive, the jury is still out on the subject. However, the US Federal Aviation Administration forbid the use of gadgets below 10,000 because pilots have less time at lower altitudes to deal with any problem that may arise; and this is a practice followed by other countries.

I have certainly used a laptop in the days when I used to fly and most airlines allow this, though I recall that all forbid the use of mobile phones. Since those days, there have been a raft of new gadgets introduced in the market and, indeed, my new Kindle which I bought only last week is certainly one gadget I’d want to use on board if I were ever to fly again.

Against all this must, of course, weigh the need for safety but whether folk are prepared to give up using their gadgets on planes is quite another thing.
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Amazing Technology

It is often said that today’s children are more computer and technology literate than their parents and this has been borne out by the case of a 12-year-old schoolboy, Kristen Richardson, who managed to track down his mother’s stolen mobile phone.

The mobile phone was not a cheap one, it cost £230 and it disappeared when she placed it on a Felixstowe nightclub bar when she bought a drink and a light-fingered thief took the opportunity to pocket it.

What the lady didn’t know was that her savvy son had installed something called a Lookout Mobile Security application on her phone, enabling him to track its location if lost. Using his mother’s laptop, Kristen logged on to the free Lookout account he had installed and was able to show a map showing exactly where the phone was, a detached house ten miles way. Looking up the address on Google Street View, Kristen was able to display a picture of the house near Woodbridge. The whole process took but just a few minutes.

Mrs Richardson passed the information on to the police who later called at the house and interviewed a 21-year-old man who admitted he had taken the phone when he was in the nightclub. The case was settled amicably by ‘community resolution’ when Mrs Richardson agreed to accept a letter of apology from the man who had never been in trouble with the police before.

Kristen is to be congratulated for his commonsense and for his technological knowledge. It’s a case also when you are almost breathless at learning what technology can do for you.

At the same time, it was staggering to learn that the thief had deleted 173 of Mrs Richardson’s contacts from her phone. But even then, Kristen came up trumps. He just pressed a button and all the contacts were restored.

Mrs Richardson must be a very popular lady. I don’t have 173 contacts around the whole world and only a dozen on my own mobile!
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Miaow!

In a case worthy of being taken argued in court by the clever Albert Haddock in front of the ever-puzzled Mr. Justice Swallow, in one of AP Herbert’s ‘Uncommon Law’ stories, a pet cat has been summoned to appear for jury duty in Boston, USA.

The owner of the cat, told the court that there must have been a mistake for ‘Sal’ was a cat and not a person and so was ‘unable to speak and understand English’. The court was unimpressed with her explanation and a vet’s certificate which accompanied it, and the owner has been told she must present the cat to Suffolk Superior Crown Court for duty on 23 March or suffer the consequences.

It appears that census forms in that part of the world want to know what pets are in the house at census times and so Sal was duly entered on the form. However, when it was processed, the cat mistakenly became a human and so is not entitled to exemption from jury service.

It will be interesting to see what happens on 23 March when Sal’s owner presents her pet to the court.

Doubtless in front of the world’s media keen to present something on the lighter side to the public other than all the other dire things that are happening around this time!
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Not Close Enough

This is an interesting day in history for it features three of my historical heroes, three dogged explorers who did much to open up parts of the world unknown at the time. They are Captain James Cook, Sir Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen, and on this day, they were all exploring the Antarctic.

In 1773 Captain Cook was undertaking his Second Voyage of Discovery in command of HMS Resolution accompanied by Captain Tobias Furneaux in command of HMS Adventure. Though he had charted much of the eastern coastline of Australia during his First Voyage, the mythical Terra Australis he sought was supposed to lie further to the south.

During the Second Voyage, Cook and his team were the first to cross the Antarctic Circle on this day in 1773. Later, in Antarctic fog, the two ships became separated and Furneaux made his way to New Zealand before eventually returning to Britain. Cook continued to explore the Antarctic seas, almost encountering the mainland before having to return to Tahiti to resupply his ship. He made a second, fruitless, attempt to find Terra Australis before returning home.

In the case of Robert Scott, he was in command of the Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole. The Terra Nova sailed out to New Zealand from Cardiff in June 1910. In Melbourne Scott left the ship temporarily to raise funds, and here discovered to his surprise that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was also heading for the South Pole, the first indication he’d had that he was effectively in a race to reach it.

Scott rejoined his ship in New Zealand and, having taken on board additional supplies as well as 34 sledge-dogs, 19 Siberian ponies and three motorised sledges, the ship sailed for the south, losing some supplies in a storm and then becoming stuck in pack ice for twenty days before finally landing the explorers for the Antarctic winter of 1911. Scott’s expedition plans were complex and, in some cases, ill-thought out. One of the motor sledges was lost in the ice as it was being landed, the other two were useless and the ponies, six of which died on the voyage, were soon found to be ill-suited to the extreme weather conditions. The expedition members were poorly equipped and were hampered by heavy woollen clothes. Scott’s team were also sometimes unclear as to what his intentions were.

In November 1911, Scott’s team started their march south, with groups travelling at different speeds, some of which dumped stores and returned to base. On 4 January 1912, the last two of the four-man groups had reached 87°34'S and Scott announced that five men would go onwards to the Pole - Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Evans. The other three men would return to base camp.

On 17 January the five men finally reached the South Pole only to find to their very great disappointment that Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it by five weeks. The rest is history: Scott and his four companions died of starvation and extreme cold on the way back to base.

In contrast to some of the muddles and misfortunes that beset Scott’s expedition, Amundsen had carefully prepared for his, having learned much about survival in the Arctic from the Eskimo inhabitants and particularly their clothing and handling of sled-dogs. Setting out on skis with four dogsleds and 52 dogs, some of which would later be used for their meat, Amundsen and his five other colleagues almost effortlessly reached the Pole 35 days before Scott. They left a small tent and a letter proclaiming their accomplishment.

17 January. An accomplishment for Cook in crossing the Antarctic Circle. Devastation for Scott for being late but glory for Amundsen for being early.
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I’ve Been Kindled!

My reading has tailed off dramatically thanks to what has recently turned out to be the effective loss of one of my eyes. Some books I bought recently have print that is so small, it strains my good eye trying to read them.

I thought all was lost until someone suggested I bought a Kindle. A Kindle? What is a Kindle?

It turns out that a Kindle is an e-reader, an electronic device around the size of a paperback book but which only weighs a quarter of one. Operated by the Amazon online shop, you can download books, magazines and newspapers at significant savings over the cost of the hard copies. There are also thousands of free, public domain, or very low priced books available.

So, on Monday I ordered one up via my computer thanks to an early birthday present from my wife. It arrived next day but, because I was taken ill, I only got round to getting my hands on it yesterday afternoon. And what a revelation! It was simplicity itself and, within an hour, I had worked through the brief operating instructions, registered my Kindle with Amazon and downloaded six books, one of these was free, one was £1 and another £4. The three others averaged just £7 each.

Now what possible use can a Kindle be to a one-eyed man who can’t read small print you might ask? The answer is very simple. Unlike a real book, you can not only adjust the print size to suit your own eyesight but change the orientation of the e-reader so that you can hold it either as a conventional book or turn it sideways to see more print on each line.

You’d have thought that reading something on an electronic device would seem alien to someone accustomed to reading books. But, after a few minutes, it seems so natural you wonder why hard copy books haven’t gone out of fashion, so simple is the gadget to use.

I’ve made a start by dipping into each of the books I’ve downloaded until I’ve finally settled on the one I want to read from start to finish. And for the first time in many months, I stayed up late last night reading in bed.

I think it’s fair to say that I’ve been Kindled!
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To The Door

Though I often feel in my mind that I am still in my twenties, age is undoubtedly catching up with me and, as I was reminded only recently by my other half, it will not be many years before I celebrate my seventieth birthday. So I can be forgiven for being of a generation that is perhaps more traditionalist in outlook than others.

Take milk for example, an essential commodity we all take for granted. In our house we still have it delivered in glass bottles to our front door by a milkman in his electric milk-float. I mention this because a few days ago, the 11th to be precise, happened to be the day in 1884 that one Dr. Hervey Thatcher, a New York inventor, came up with the first glass milk bottle which was sealed with a waxed-paper top.

Thatcher may have come up with the idea of glass milk bottle in the United States, but it was four years before that, in 1880, that the Express Dairy Company first started using glass milk bottles in this country.

By then most milk was pasteurised under a process invented in 1863 by Louis Pasteur which killed off harmful bacteria. And, in 1894, Anthony Hailwood, a North Country dairyman, pioneered the method of sterilising milk by heating it to high temperatures. Though most milk these days is pasteurised, some folk still prefer to use sterilised milk.

The shape of our milk bottles has hardly changed in my memory and as long as I can recall, they have always been capped by aluminium tops of different colours to represent their fat content.

While it is true that I cannot always recall what I had for lunch yesterday, I can recall the days when milk (and other things like coal and beer) were delivered by horse-drawn carts. When the milkman had his break, the horse had one as well and could usually be seen with a bag of feed hung from its collar as a midmorning snack. If you were lucky, the milkman might let you ride on the cart for a short while, often when the horse was slowly clip-clopping behind him as he rushed backwards and forwards and from house to house.

When horse-drawn milk-floats were replaced by electric ones, they were not quite so interesting. That is, unless you were being paid by the milkman to help on Saturday mornings when he not only had to deliver the milk but collect the week’s money as well, and you were allowed to occasionally drive the float. This, of course, was quite illegal but in those days no-one seemed to bother about a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old schoolboy driving a milk-float around the back streets of north London.

As I say, milk used to be delivered by a milkman and that is the way we still prefer it to arrive. It saves us the bother of carrying it, and milk bottles can be repeatedly cleaned, sterilised and reused and ultimately recycled into glass.

All you can say about the plastic-coated milk cartons that you have to heft from the supermarkets yourself is that they merely add to the ever-growing landfill sites and unnecessary waste I bang on about occasionally.
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Start Saving!

There’s an interesting disaster/survival movie called 2012 which posits the idea that, in order to counter a 21st-century flood of Biblical proportions, the governments of the world constructed a number of ‘arks’ atop the tallest mountains in China in which important government leaders and those with enough cash to buy a ticket could save themselves from annihilation.

It’s just an adventure movie you might say and, in any event, there are so many moral issues arising from the idea that only the rich and important could save themselves that such crafts would not be built. But hold that thought.

For a Russian firm has come up with the concept of the Ark Hotel biosphere, a huge, safe and self-sustaining haven from a flood disaster caused by climate change. The shell-shaped craft would withstand tidal waves, earthquakes and other natural disasters. Its eco-environment would contain vegetation to assist air quality and provide food sources, and solar panels would provide energy and a system of collecting rainwater would produce fresh water. The biosphere would also be covered with see-through panels so that daylight could be filtered to internal rooms and plants to reduce the need for lighting.

The reports don’t say how much such a craft would cost, how many ‘guests’ it could accommodate, how they would be chosen and what they would be charged. These are very interesting questions!

I don’t know by how much sea levels would have to rise to make building the Ark Hotel feasible, but it is interesting that another report out today says that they will rise by at least 13 feet in the next 1,000 years as a result of carbon dioxide emissions.

At least there’s no point in me saving up!

Disturbing

Damien Hirst has coated a baby’s skull with platinum and covered it with over 8,000 pink and white diamonds as his latest ‘work of art’ entitled ‘For Heaven’s Sake’.

Reports say that he acquired the skull as part of a 19th-century pathology collection. I can’t think of anything less insensitive or distasteful than to use the skull of a child in this way.

It is true that Mr Hirst has said he was inspired by the use of skulls in ancient Aztec art. But, thank heavens, we are not living in Aztec times.
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If Only It Were That Simple!

I can’t find any good news in this morning’s newspapers which are pretty depressing in their detailed accounts of the calamities that have befallen people in the last few days. So I’ve looked further afield in search of something to raise a smile for a change.

I found it in the tale of the Romanian witches who, for the first time, have been forced to pay taxes (at 16%) because their own superstitious country is as cash-strapped as so many others in these economically-challenged days. One witch said: ‘This law is foolish. What is there to tax, when we hardly earn anything. The lawmakers don’t look at themselves, at how much they make, their tricks; they steal and they come to us asking us to put spells on their enemies.'

Converting action into words, a dozen witches descended on the banks of the Danube River and hurled a poisonous mandrake plant into it along with curse on government officials so that ‘evil will befall them’.

If only it were that simple!
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Act I

The former MP David Chaytor has been jailed for eighteen months for falsifying his parliamentary expense claims.

He’s paid a very high price for submitting what turned out to be bogus invoices: disgrace, prison, exclusion from the party he served for many years, heavy court and legal costs and an uncertain future.

Sentencing, the judge commented that MPs ‘behaviour should be entirely honest if public confidence in the parliamentary system and the rule of law is to be maintained.’ There’s not much else to say after that.

Except, it must be remembered, this was just the first of the court cases pending concerning misuse of parliamentary expenses.
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Sufficient Justification

The House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee has said that coalition government plans to scrap up to 192 quangos and merge another 118 will not save money or improve accountability.

They may well be right.

On the other hand, if a quango serves no useful purpose or does something that can be done by a government department, that is sufficient reason in itself to get rid of it.
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Uplifting!

Anyone who has been fortunate enough to visit the great pyramids dominating the Giza plateau may also have travelled a little further south to Saqqara to admire the 4,650-year-old Step Pyramid of King Djoser.

Djoser’s imposing 60-metre-high pyramid rises above an enormous mortuary and festival complex surrounded by a wall 10.8 metres high containing fourteen doors; thirteen of these are false and meant for the use of the dead, while the one in the south-east corner is real and meant for the living. Built of Tura limestone, the wall is designed to represent the mud brick construction of earlier times, and the whole is surrounded by a rectangular trench 750 metres long and 40 metres wide.

Djoser’s tomb, which was the first to have been entirely built of stone, started off with a square ‘mastaba’ tomb being dug underground and rising above ground to a height of 60 metres with a vertical shaft leading to it; this tomb was conventional for the time except that it was square instead of rectangular. Later, it was enlarged all round by ten feet and then again when an extension was added at the eastern side to make it the conventional rectangle. Yet again it was enlarged and a two-tiered structure was made. To this two-step structure was later added another four tiers, making it the six-tiered pyramid we see today, though much of the polished Tura limestone with which it was faced has since disappeared.

Most of Egypt’s pyramids are relatively earthquake-proof, but that of 1992 led to the partial collapse of the ceiling of Djoser’s burial chamber, and repairs must be made to prevent the interior structure from being completely destroyed.

Enter then an engineering company from south Wales, Cintec, who have been commissioned to stabilise the chamber’s ceiling. They will, apparently, hoist scaffolding into the structure's chamber before pumping up specially designed inflatables to support the ceiling. They will then insert special fabric ‘socks’ into any wall fissures which will be filled with grout which will stabilise and strengthen the structure.

Who’d have thought that a Welsh company would have found themselves repairing an ancient Egyptian pyramid? This company would seem to have the right experience for, apart from helping to restore Windsor Castle after its 1992 fire, it also strengthened a major bridge in Delhi last year ahead of the Commonwealth Games.

Djoser’s step pyramid and its surrounding enclosure are uplifting by any standard. Now it is to be uplifted in a completely different sense.
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Rubbish

It is good the the government have ordered councils who abandoned weekly rubbish collections to reinstate them.

Encouraged by the last government, some councils cut their rubbish collections to one a fortnight despite widespread public condemnation of a system that demonstrably encouraged vermin. Fortunately, our local council was not one that tinkered with rubbish collections though it did organise fortnightly collections for recyclables, a system that has worked very well.

This coalition government has made some good progress in many areas, but so far seems not to have zeroed in on the one factor that impacts on rubbish collections. And that is the unconscionable amount of packaging that covers almost everything we buy. Why does some fruit, for example, have not only to be supplied in plastic ‘egg’ boxes but then covered in cling film?

The number of rubbish sacks my household put out for collection are far outnumbered by the sacks of recyclable materials we put out on the roadside. And a brief look along our road shows that pretty much the same applies to most households.

It’s time to deal with unnecessary packaging. That would do much to help councils and their waste collections.
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Say That Again?

A study by Newcastle University suggests that removing kerbs might actually make driving safer because they believe that hazards can actually increase drivers’ attention to the road.

So far so good.

But the idea is then spoiled by one of the researchers who said: ‘In towns we may need to start considering some radical schemes such as removing kerbs so there are more hazards - like pedestrians - around your car. Our research suggests that this might actually improve people’s driving.’

You read that right. Put a few more pedestrians around to improve road safety!

And we pay people to come up with crackpot ideas like that?
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New, But Expensive

You learn something every day. I didn’t know, for example, that the new-style energy-saving light bulbs were subsidised by the manufacturers. The subsidies will disappear in a couple of months at which time the cost of the so-called energy-saving bulbs will rocket.

I had to buy a couple of these new bulbs just before Christmas at a cost of around £4 each. £4 for a blooming light bulb! And this cost is set to at least triple according to reports.

Like many other people I don’t like the clumsy, expensive new bulbs. I don’t like the light they give out and don’t believe that they are truly energy-saving. They may last longer than the old ones but they only cost a few pence.

Of course, the arguments for and against the eco bulb have been lost and the EU bureaucrats have won. By the end of next year, the sale of all the old incandescent bulbs will be banned.

So now is the time to stock up. But only if you can find them!
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A Number Of Questions

As someone once interested in prisons, I feel that news of the riot in Ford Open Prison raises a variety of questions that need to be addressed quickly.

I wonder, for example, whether there are enough prison officers to maintain control of an establishment of nearly 500 prisoners in this place? In view of the reported low numbers when the riot started (two officers and four support staff), was this enough to maintain any discipline within the prison? Were all prisoners suitable for open conditions? What is the discipline regime in the prison? And if, as reported, prisoners have had free access to drugs and alcohol over a period of time, I wonder why nothing seems to have been done about it? There are many other such questions that spring to mind.

The internal discipline of a prison is largely down to the way in which senior staff and prison officers manage it. On the other hand, if staff numbers are kept low by the Prison Service, no amount of goodwill on the part of the prison officers and staff can prevent a situation such as the one that has occurred in Ford from getting out of control.

The Independent Monitoring Board for Ford reported in 2009 (there is no report yet for 2010) that: ‘The import of drugs, alcohol and mobile phones continues to be a problem and with possible reduced staffing levels it is difficult to see how this can be addressed.’

In light of this, I wonder what, if anything, was done about the situation?
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Shockingly Bad Taste

I am squeamish in the extreme and hate any television programme involving medical matters. If I had my way, I’d insist on a warning announcement being made before any news segments showing things like folk being given flu injections or having babies, etc.

The Discovery Channel was to have aired a documentary ‘re-enactment’ of the official autopsy on Michael Jackson who died in June 2009 at the age of fifty from a prescription drug overdose. This is obviously not a programme I would have watched. But I was interested to see, however, that the programme has been ‘postponed indefinitely’ because legal proceedings against Jackson's physician commence shortly and also at the request of the late star’s executors.

I have to agree with those who said that such a programme was ‘in shockingly bad taste’, and I wonder why money was spent on making it in the first place.

Perhaps to make a lot of money?
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Still A Good Read, 400 Years On

Though I am woefully lax in reading it, I am very fond of the King James version of the Bible published four hundred years ago. Even in these modern times, if one rises above archaic words such as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, its language is rich, resonant and beautifully crafted.

Also known as the Authorised Version, the King James Bible was first published in 1611 by the King’s Printer, Robert Barker, and replaced two previous versions. It came about when King James I convened the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 when a new version was ordered to deal with the problems perceived by the Puritans in the earlier translations.

The new translation was undertaken by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England. The Old Testament was translated from the Hebrew texts and the New Testament from the Greek Texts. Though the new translation was not initially universally accepted, it slowly supplanted the previous versions and remained the standard text until fairly recent times when new translations were made.

The new translations, in my view at any rate, do not have the resonance and richness of language of the King James version. Compare, for example, the following text from the Gospel according to St. John at Chapter 1 between the 1611 King James Version and that in the New English Bible of 1970:

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ (KJV)

‘When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was.’ (NEB)

Why do I raise this on new Year’s Day?

It is because the Archbishop of Canterbury in his New Year’s Address has said that the King James Bible could help people see the ‘big picture’ at a time of financial or job pressures. ‘This year's anniversary is a chance to stop and think about the big picture - and to celebrate the astonishing contribution made by that book 400 years ago’, he said.

It is interesting that the Archbishop has pointed towards the King James version and not one of the modern translations. And, for once, I agree with him.

Four hundred years after it was crafted and published, the King James version of the Bible remains richer and more resonant in its language than any of its successors.
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