Just A Thought!

The Final 'Just A Thought'

2011-02-27T17:07:00.004+01:00

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?

2011-02-14T11:27:00.001+01:00

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?

Thar She Blows!

2011-02-13T10:23:00.000+01:00

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.

Proud

2011-02-12T12:40:00.000+01:00

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.

Blimey!

2011-02-11T13:25:00.002+01:00

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?

What A Good Idea!

2011-02-10T07:04:00.000+01:00

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.

‘Ain’t Science Wonderful?

2011-02-09T10:38:00.000+01:00

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.

Spooky, But Good For Business?

2011-02-08T12:09:00.001+01:00

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!

2011-02-07T10:45:00.000+01:00

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?

2011-02-06T11:42:00.001+01:00

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?

2011-02-05T11:16:00.001+01:00

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!

2011-02-04T09:11:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-30T07:32:00.000+01:00

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!

2011-01-29T16:35:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-29T16:34:00.000+01:00

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!

2011-01-28T07:32:00.000+01:00

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?

2011-01-28T07:19:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-27T09:44:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-26T09:27:00.001+01:00

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!

2011-01-25T07:49:00.001+01:00

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

2011-01-24T10:27:00.003+01:00

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

2011-01-23T08:08:00.000+01:00

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?

2011-01-22T12:38:00.000+01:00

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!

2011-01-21T13:24:00.001+01:00

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?

2011-01-20T09:57:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-19T08:15:00.001+01:00

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!

2011-01-18T10:07:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-17T07:19:00.001+01:00

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!

2011-01-16T09:24:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-15T09:35:00.001+01:00

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!

2011-01-10T14:51:00.001+01:00

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

2011-01-10T07:12:00.000+01:00

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!

2011-01-09T12:17:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-08T08:01:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-08T07:58:00.000+01:00

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!

2011-01-07T07:08:00.001+01:00

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

2011-01-06T09:43:00.000+01:00

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?

2011-01-05T17:34:00.001+01:00

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

2011-01-04T10:12:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-03T15:29:00.001+01:00

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

2011-01-02T09:14:00.000+01:00

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

2011-01-01T13:28:00.001+01:00

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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A New Year Beckons

2010-12-31T11:13:00.001+01:00

This is New Year’s Eve and many of us will be celebrating tonight with friends and family and waiting for the stroke of midnight which will signal the arrival of 2011, the New Year. There may be much jollity, food and drink and, perhaps, some fireworks.

New Year’s Eve is celebrated worldwide. Midnight sees out the old year with all of its associated problems and welcomes in the new year with the hope that it will be a better one than the one that went before it.

Today is also the feast of St. Sylvester, a 4th-century Pope who reigned during the time of Constantine the Great. He was born in Rome, supposedly the son of a Roman soldier, and was pontiff for nearly 25 years. He died in 335 and is buried in the church he built over the Priscilla Catacombs.

Let us hope that the New Year will be a decent one and that, for those who choose to honour him today, St. Sylvester will look beneficently upon them. In both cases, I hope so.
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What Does It Mean?

2010-12-30T08:05:00.000+01:00

The Crown Prosecution Service has dropped all charges against a man who was due to stand trial next year over allegations that he failed to stop at the scene of an accident, failed to report an accident and driving without due care and attention.

In words I seem to have seen before, the reviewing lawyer for the CPS said: ‘I have reviewed the file of evidence passed to me ... and have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction.’

What does this mean? Does it mean that the man concerned might have committed the offences but there is not enough evidence to prosecute? Or does it mean that the charges were dropped because, as he had stated, the man was innocent?

The CPS statement leaves things in the air somewhat, but let’s assume the man was innocent.
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Not Immortal

2010-12-29T07:03:00.000+01:00

We hear more and more of teenagers who die or who are mained while speeding or driving dangerously. Such stories are tragic for those involved and for their families, especially when they occur over the Christmas period.

So it was sad to read of the three teenagers killed and another who received serious injuries in a head-on crash as the car they were in tried to overtake another car on a road in South Yorkshire on Monday evening. Miraculously, the driver of the oncoming car they struck received only minor injuries.

Some teenagers seem to feel that they are immortal and, encouraged by television programmes such as Top Gear, drive as if they are competing on a race track.

Alas, many of them discover only too soon the truths that a driving licence doesn’t come with experience, that the roads are not race tracks and that death and serious injury may be the consequences of their bad driving.
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Bad Move

2010-12-28T09:48:00.000+01:00

A number of newspapers report this morning that one in four local councils is planning to scale back or even abolish school crossing patrols - the iconic and distinctive ‘lollipop’ men and woman who morning and afternoon guard the road crossings outside British schools.

One council, Northamptonshire, is said to be planning to scrap the service altogether and save over £200,000 per year by sacking 65 people and encouraging local communities to replace them with voluntary patrols.

I have no idea what sort of things are hidden away in the annual budget for councils such as Northamptonshire, but I would have thought such a small sum could have been saved by making cuts elsewhere in them.

At least a dozen children are killed or seriously injured on our roads each year. If the government supports road safety campaigns, then it should set up a system under which no council should be allowed to abandon school crossing patrols if the appropriate savings could be made elsewhere in their budgets.
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Thank Heavens!

2010-12-27T06:24:00.000+01:00

It is reported that a study into a disease, the white-nose syndrome, that has killed a million little brown bats in the US since 2006 warns that the species may be wiped out in less than twenty years if a solution is not found.

Apparently, one option being considered is a cull of bats in areas where the disease is known to be present, though this has been ruled out.

Thank heavens for that. If culling the creatures turned out to be a viable option, it would be only a matter of time before someone though of applying the ‘cure’ to Swine Flu!
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They’re Watching!

2010-12-26T11:17:00.001+01:00

Tonight my wife will be treating our grandchildren to the pantomime, that curious British mix of humorous, slapstick, musical drama that has entertained Christmas audiences for the last couple of hundred years. A type of theatrical performance which absolutely baffles foreigners because of its tradition of men playing women and women playing men and of all the ludicrous things that happen during it.

I shall be resting indoors with the two dogs enjoying the peace and quiet of an empty house. In my mind’s eye, however, I will hear our grandchildren shouting out at the top of their voices, ‘He’s behind you!’ or ‘Oh, no he isn’t!’ And I can visualise them ducking when the water, or pretend water, is thrown at the audience or their surprise when the genie suddenly pops up in a cascade of pyrotechnics. I image also their reaching out desperate to catch the sweets that are always thrown out by one or more of the leading characters.

These are happy memories from the past. Memories that will not apply to children going to see a production of Aladdin in Barrow, Cumbria, because the killjoys and jobsmiths in the local council have forbidden the throwing of water and sweets or the customary pyrotechnics on health and safety grounds.

A council official, who obviously is not an aficionado of pantomime, said that the rules were necessary to ensure no members of the audience were injured during the performance. Christopher Biggins, Britain's most famous pantomime dame, correctly summed the situation up as ‘idiotic and ludicrous!’

What’s the betting that Barrow Borough Council send one of their jobsmiths to watch Aladdin every day to check that the rules are being followed?

Watch out! He’s behind you!
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Not Even A Mouse

2010-12-24T06:03:00.002+01:00

It is Christmas Eve and across the English-speaking nations perhaps the most popular poem to be read on this day will be that most commonly known as ’’Twas the Night Before Christmas’ from its first line.

The poem was first published under the title A Visit From St. Nicholas on 23 December 1823 in the Troy, New York, Sentinel newspaper. It was published anonymously having been sent to the newspaper by a friend of Clement Clark Moore who is generally thought to be its author. The poem is considered to be largely responsible for the invention of Santa Claus as he is thought of today: his appearance, his mode of transport and the names and number of the deer, the night of his visit and the idea that he brings toys to children.

So, in keeping with the season, Happy Christmas!

A Visit from St. Nicholas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there ...’
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Right For Once

2010-12-22T05:43:00.000+01:00

Those busybodies in the European Commission that cause so much aggravation and frustration around the world have just decided that some so-called art work by the late Dan Flavin are no more than ‘light-fittings’ and should, therefore, be subject to full VAT when imported into into the country from outside the EU.

By jingo, some commonsense at last!
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Time To Stop It

2010-12-22T05:42:00.001+01:00

I happen to be one of those who admire Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, who is one of our more sensible politicians. I am also a supporter of the coalition government which is trying to get the country out of the mess it found itself in last May.

It is possible that Mr Cable was indiscreet when he recently spoke to two women claiming they were constituents concerned over changes to the benefits system; that is for others to judge. What concerns me more is that it seems to be lawful for a newspaper to send two undercover reporters to interview someone with the sole purpose of encouraging and eliciting from that person statements which might be embarrassing if later published.

It’s about time that the government outlawed this type of provocative journalism that has become virtually endemic in this country. If a journalist wants politicians or other persons to answer questions, then let them be put plainly and without deception.

Of course, whether such questions are answered truthfully is quite another issue!
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Utter Tosh!

2010-12-21T08:34:00.001+01:00

A survey of 77 Christians and 57 non-believers by researchers at Canada’s Simon Fraser University claims that the non-believers felt less self-assured and had fewer positive feelings when a twelve-inch Christmas tree was present in a room used for the survey.

The survey also found that Christians were mostly cheered by the presence of the tree but did report feeling more guilt which the researchers felt indicated that the holidays could be stressful.

I’m certainly no scientist but I would question the value of this survey and the way in which it was organised. For a start, the survey seemed directed against Christmas, the number of people involved is ludicrously low and, more importantly, who in their right minds is going to be influenced by an insignificant twelve-inch Christmas tree?

The social psychologist behind the research said pompously: ‘... in contexts where we really do value respecting and including diversity in terms of religion, the safest option is not to have these kinds of displays.’

Blimey! That’s a huge conclusion to reach from a stupid little twelve-inch Christmas tree seen by a total of only 134 people!

Perhaps he ought to have asked the participants whether they were actually offended by the presence and meaning behind the Christmas tree. Perhaps he ought also to have asked them whether they were offended by the lights and decorations to be seen throughout the year of other religions. Possibly, the participants were put off by the way in which the tree was decorated or whether it was nicely lit. Maybe those seeing the tree thought that such a titchy one looked ridiculous. Maybe the tree looked absurd in a room which was otherwise not decorated for Christmas.

There are any number of such questions that could have been asked of the 134 folk who put themselves up for a survey that ended up suggesting that Christmas trees be banned in public places lest they offend non-believers.

Some folk do take themselves very seriously and, in this case, the survey results have been published in the otherwise respected Journal of Experimental Social Psychology under the heading: ‘Identity moderates the effects of Christmas displays on mood, self-esteem, and inclusion’.

It should have read: ‘Utter Tosh!’
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The Challenger Expedition

2010-12-21T08:32:00.000+01:00

We live in an amazing world in which new species seem to be discovered every month. Recent reported discoveries include new species of frogs, lemurs, monkeys, spiders, crickets, snakes and many others.

The great age of discovery was that of the Victorians who sent out expeditions to most of the known world and to some of the unknown. And it was on this day in 1872 that one of the most famous expeditions, the Challenger Expedition, set sail from Portsmouth on the first global marine research expedition which, at its conclusion, was said to have contributed ‘the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’.

Promoted and ultimately led by Charles Wyville Thomson of Edinburgh University, the Admiralty loaned the expedition HMS Challenger, a 2,137 ton, 21 gun, steam-assisted corvette. The ship was specially modified for the expedition and had all but two of its guns and some spars removed. Extra cabins, laboratories and a special dredging platform were installed. She was loaded with a variety of equipment including trawls and dredges, sounding leads and devices to collect sediment from the sea bed and a total of 181 miles of hemp rope. Some of her scientific equipment was invented or specially modified for the purpose.

Challenger carried a total of 243 officers, crew and scientists for her 1,606-day voyage on which 713 days were spent at sea and which covered nearly 69,000 nautical miles. In this time, the scientists carried out hundreds of deep sea soundings, bottom dredges, open water trawls and water temperature observations. By the time she returned to the UK, around 4,800 new species of marine life had been discovered.

We may never know how many species there are in the world, but there are close to two million that have been named and recorded. It is to expeditions like the Challenger one that we owe much of our information though, as we know, many more are discovered every month.
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2,400-Year-Old Soup

2010-12-20T08:50:00.001+01:00

My family enjoy Chinese food and I am partial to the hot and sour soup from our local Chinese restaurant.

So it is interesting to read that Chinese archaeologists have uncovered what is thought to be the oldest pot of soup ever discovered. The 2,400-year-old sealed bronze vessel was discovered in a tomb near the ancient capital of Xian and contained a soup made of liquid and bones that had turned green due to the oxidation of the bronze.

This 2,400-year-old soup certainly knocks 100-year-old eggs into a cocked hat!
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Those Woodpeckers

2010-12-20T08:09:00.000+01:00

Researchers from Idaho University have been using a satellite-borne laser to predict areas where North American pileated woodpeckers may be living.

It seems that the woodpeckers, the sort with tall red crests, are very selective about where they decide to live and are usually found in high-density forests. The scientists’ work has enabled maps to be drawn up of the areas favoured by the noisy birds. One of the scientists explained that the woodpeckers make cavities which are then used by other species for nesting and roosting.

It is interesting work but if these woodpeckers like high density forests, I wonder if our own species have similar tastes.

And if that is the case, why are the managers of our local reserve, cutting down so many trees in what they say is an exercise in coppicing?\.

Furious?

2010-12-19T07:21:00.000+01:00

An Immigration and Asylum Tribunal have overturned a decision by the UK Border Agency to deport a failed asylum seeker who killed a 12-year-old girl in a hit and run incident before going on to commit other offences. The Tribunal said that because he fathered children in Britain, the decision of the UKBA was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

It’s a great shame that the Home Secretary cannot order the UKBA to find this man and pop him on the first plane back home. At the very least, they should find a decent barrister and file an appeal.

David Cameron is said to be furious at the Tribunal’s decision. We are all furious!

Perhaps Parliament should reconsider which bits of the European Convention need to be rewritten or scratched out!
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Who Cares?

2010-12-19T07:20:00.000+01:00

A senior Tory MP is reported as being about to reveal that he is gay.

Good for him, some might say. On the other hand, do people really care about the sexuality of anyone these days?

Not in this household!
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The ‘Mini-Mini’

2010-12-18T07:44:00.000+01:00

Our first car was an Austin mini which lasted for years until we could see the road beneath our feet and even I realised that it was an unsafe rusting wreck that needed to be replaced. I suppose we were a bit thinner in those days but my wife and I managed to motor all over the UK with our two sons, our dog, Max, which was the size of an Alsatian, and our luggage.

My days of driving that Mini were brought to mind by the report of a New Zealander, Lester Atherfold, who owns a large AEC Reliance Coach motorhome which he and his wife use to tour New Zealand. Recognising that he couldn’t take the motorhome everywhere, Mr Atherfold, who is a retired mechanic, looked to see if he could find a car small enough to go into the boot of his motorhome.

Finding none, he converted a cherry-red 1964 Mini 850 that he bought for £203 in 1988 and, over three months and at a total cost of £95, shortened the ten foot long car by two feet and shrinking its width by a few inches. Now he can drive his ‘Mini-Mini’ up a ramp into the Reliance Coach’s boot and park it beneath his bed where it sits safely until he wants to explore places the motorhome would not easily access.

When I lived in the States, I was quite used to seeing these humungous motorhomes on the freeways. Usually the racks at the back carried motorbikes or cycles but quite often there was a small car being towed behind that could be used on occasions such as shopping expeditions or go to places where it would be difficult to take the motorhome.

But Mr Atherfold takes the prize for originality, especially as I thought we did quite well all those years ago cramming everyone and everything into our first car!
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What About The Parents?

2010-12-17T05:53:00.000+01:00

An American woman, supported by an outfit called the Center for Science in the Public Interest, has launched a class-action lawsuit against McDonald’s claiming that the toys given out with Happy Meals was an illegal marketing ploy to exploit children. ‘I am concerned about the health of my children and feel that McDonald’s should be a very limited part of their diet and their childhood experience,’ she trilled.

Her action will be heard by the California Superior Court in San Francisco and it will be interesting to see what happens.

Will it, I wonder, consider whether parental control might have something to do with the problem?
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Earhart Found?

2010-12-17T05:52:00.000+01:00

The Discovery Channel have revealed that bone fragments found on Nikumaroro Island, a tiny uninhabited coral atoll in the Pacific, may solve the mystery of the what happened to Amelia Earhart who disappeared in July 1937 while attempting to fly around the world.

The tiny bone fragments were found alongside pieces of a pocket knife, pre-war American bottles and makeup from a woman’s compact. The remains of small fires as well as bird and fish bones and empty oyster shells laid in rows as if to catch water were also recovered.

Amelia was last heard from while heading towards tiny Howland island in the south Pacific when her twin-engine Lockheed Electra crashed in the ocean after running out of fuel. Despite an extensive search being carried out, her body and that of her navigator, Fred Noonan, were never found.

The bone fragments are now being examined by scientists at Oklahoma University who hope that they will yield enough DNA to be compared with members of Earhart’s family.

Another mystery solved?
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Charity Fatigue II

2010-12-16T07:26:00.000+01:00

I wrote a few days ago about the number of advertisements on satellite television channels for various charities. They caused me to wonder if the television companies were using them as ‘fillers’ when there were no paying advertisements to broadcast.

Since then I have noted half a dozen more charity commercials which have joined the others at a time of year when many of us are thinking of making donations to worthy causes. Some of these would seem to be fairly small charities and some appear at first sight to duplicate the work of larger and better known charities.

I’ve so far counted a dozen charities appealing for funds in the last couple of weeks and it has struck me that some of them appear to duplicate the work of others, some better known. I wonder what benefit arises when a small charity makes a similar appeal to a larger one?

As I said before, we have made our annual Christmas donation and the spate of charity commercials do not affect us. Except to make me wonder what overheads some of these charities incur before they actually do their advertised work.
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A Disgrace

2010-12-16T07:24:00.000+01:00

A Romanian woman who provided compatriots with fake documents to obtain National Insurance numbers and make illegal claims for state benefits totalling nearly £3 millions has been jailed for 27 months. A number of other Romanians were also given jail terms for their part in the scam.

Fraud of this size makes you wonder about the competence of those people responsible for checking benefit claims. Can’t their computers spot fraudulent National Insurance numbers?

The Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance is quoted as saying: ‘We need a reformed benefit system less vulnerable to this kind of abuse and the authorities need to explain how it could happen and how they will stop it happening. ... Finally, there need to be stiff punishments when criminals rip off taxpayers.’

He got that right!
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A Hostile Environment

2010-12-15T06:03:00.002+01:00

I spent forty-odd years in the shipping industry and got to travel on a variety of ships in a variety of oceans. In all that time, I think there were only a dozen occasions when the ship I was sailing in encountered such severe weather that there was danger to life and limb.

They were all very unpleasant occasions and a reminder that the sea can be a hostile environment no matter how large a ship might be. Despite this, when you speak to a seasoned cruise passenger about, for instance, the hurricane you were once in, the chances are that you will be countered by their experience which they are sure was worse than yours. As I’ve said before, some passengers very often wear their bad-weather experiences like medals and are more than happy to talk at length about them.

So I was interested in two recent bad-weather stories affecting cruise ships. The first concerned the small Clelia II which, returning from a trip to Antarctica, suffered an engine failure in severe weather and, for a while, was escorted by an Argentinean Naval ship until things were sorted out. In this instance, there were no injuries except to one crew member.

In the second incident, dozens of passengers and crew were injured when the much larger Brilliance of the Seas encountered such bad weather in the Mediterranean that giant waves sent people and furniture flying around the ship. One report said that the wavs were of such intensity that it caused the ship to ‘rock dangerously from side to side’.

I spent a little time looking up the blogs and twitters of some of those involved in these two and other incidents and was not disappointed for there were some who thought their own experiences were more dramatic.

But none of them were as bad as when I was on the old Victoria in June 2000. We had left Akureyri and had spent a day sailing round the coast of Iceland trying to avoid the worst of some very bad weather when the ship was hit by a hurricane. The ship’s motion was quite unbelievable and ...
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Mysterious Indeed

2010-12-14T07:19:00.000+01:00

We all love a mystery, and art historians seem to have uncovered one after discovering minute letters and numbers painted into the pupils of the eyes of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the woman known as the Mona Lisa.

On display in the Louvre, the woman with the enigmatic smile, also known as La Gioconda, was painted in the early 1500s when Da Vinci was living in France and is a half-portrait painted in oils on a poplar panel. There are a variety of theories as to who the painting represents; one says that it is Lisa Gheradini, the wife of a Florence merchant, another says that it is Da Vinci’s mother. Yet another says that it shows the face of Da Vinci himself.

The painting has been closely examined by members of the Italian National Committee for Cultural Heritage who say that, seen under a magnifying glass, the letters LV appear in the painting’s right pupil, while in the left pupil appear the letters CE or CB. In the arch of the bridge in the background appears the number 72 or, possibly, L2.

It seems that art historians were alerted to the secrets of the 500-year-old painting by the discovery of a 50-year-old book that described how the Mona Lisa's eyes are full of various signs and symbols.

Odd isn’t it that truth so often mirrors fiction? The painting, possibly the most famous in the world, featured in the book and movie of The Da Vinci Code whose main character interprets secret messages found hidden in it and some of Da Vinci’s other works.

But whether we will ever discover the secret behind these minute symbols hidden in the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile, is quite another thing.
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Keep Him Out!

2010-12-13T07:41:00.000+01:00

A Florida pastor has been invited to the UK to speak at an English Defence League rally in February.

One wonders why the pastor of a church with less than forty members should be invited to speak but, of course, this is the man who achieved international notoriety for threatening to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

It has rightly been said that extremism breeds extremism, and we have enough extremists of our own without inviting any more into the country to stir things up. So I for one would welcome a decision by the Home Secretary to keep this fellow out of it!
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Depressing

2010-12-12T06:59:00.000+01:00

I spent some time yesterday scanning the comments in some of the online newspapers about the recent student protests.

I wonder sometimes what sort of world we have created when folk can blame everyone in sight for Thursday’s riot but the students themselves. The range of excuses started fairly predictably with the Labour government that introduced student loans but went on to blame the bankers, the current government, the police, fiddling MPs and, among others, even the media.

It is bad news that the students are to carry out more protest marches and, doubtless, there will be a minority of those involved who will set out to cause trouble. Neither will endear students to the rest of us.

Students need to join the real world. Enough of their protests and the disorder that results.
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Cheers!

2010-12-11T06:58:00.001+01:00

The UK Border Agency has confiscated over 80,000 litres of Italian wine, 14,000 litres of vodka and over 300,000 litres of beer with a total value of more than a million pounds all of which was illegally imported into Britain recently.

The alcohol will now apparently be turned into fertiliser and the packaging recycled.

I suppose the UKBA is right to put illegally imported items to some other use but, at the same time, one wonders why all this booze couldn’t just be recycled at a profit through the supermarkets.

What I’d like to know is: What is to be grown in the fields fertilised by wine and vodka, and where can we buy whatever is produced in them?
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Roll On Summer!

2010-12-10T07:06:00.000+01:00

Like most other people in this country I’ve had enough of the cold weather, and a circular received from one of the cruise lines reminds me that there is something called summer.

A cruise has always been my favourite holiday. One can do as much or, as in my case, as little as one wants. Everything is included in the fare except drinks and shore tours and all you have to do is to relax. Cruising has grown in popularity in this country for the last fifteen years and this is no surprise when you compare the fares with what one might expect to pay in a hotel for a fortnight for instance.

There is, of course, another incentive to a holiday by cruise ship, and that is the increasing dangers involved in a traditional British seaside holiday. Dangers you might ask?

Well, for a start, there’s the tremendous increase in the number of stinging jellyfish that have recently appeared in our coastal waters. There’s the Weaver fish that hide in the sand with three spines protruding which give excruciating pain when they are trodden on. Spiny sea urchins and Stingrays also give intense pain when they are trodden on. And, since 2006, Great White sharks are said to have regularly been spotted in our waters.

Isn’t that enough to put you off a seaside holiday? If not, there’s another new menace to consider and that is the emergence in our waters of the Mantis Shrimp, also known as the Toe-splitter Shrimp.

These little fellows, which can grow to as much as twelve inches, lie in wait on the seabed and either smash or spear their prey with their heavily calcified claws. They are said to be incredibly fast when they strike and, unbelievably, can smash their way through aquarium glass. In fact, three specimens caught off the Kent coast recently are being housed in a reinforced tank in an aquarium in Hastings.

Though these creatures are said to be rare, the experts acknowledge that these and other creatures being seen more frequently in our waters are evidence of global warming. Given the current cold weather, this is hard to believe.

Nonetheless, it all goes to show that a cruise is quite a good holiday idea!
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Deal With It!

2010-12-10T07:05:00.000+01:00

Yesterday’s riots in central London had nothing to do with peaceful protest, and if the students think that what happened endeared the minds of the British public to their cause they are deluded.

One may argue about the causes of the current economic crisis but one thing is clear and that is that the coalition government are trying their best to get us out of the mess that was bequeathed to it. They repeatedly make the point that everyone in the country has in some way to make a contribution.

So must then the students. Enough of their protests. The public are fed up with scenes of riot, anarchy and violence.

If the students want the public’s sympathy, they should go back to their colleges and leave the rest of us in peace!
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Journey Into Space

2010-12-09T07:24:00.001+01:00

Yesterday saw the demonstration flight of a privately-funded rocket which took off from Cape Canaveral bearing a space capsule which, after orbiting earth for a while, will return to earth by splashing down in the Pacific.

Both the rocket and the capsule were designed and constructed by California's SpaceX company which has won a contract with NASA to provide twelve spacecraft with payloads of twenty tons each to resupply the International Space Station through to 2016.

Private enterprise is a great thing and SpaceX deserves to succeed in this $1.6bn venture.

Let’s hope though that none of our cheap airlines get involved!
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A Flippant Thought

2010-12-08T06:04:00.000+01:00

Post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes follows a traumatic event and may overwhelm a person’s ability to cope.

But now, scientists have discovered a way to stop the problem before it starts. Which is good news for those who might suffer from it.

If the new drug, which is injected into the brain, stops the disorder from starting, how do scientists know that it might start in the first place?
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Dark Thoughts

2010-12-08T06:02:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was one of my ‘bad’ days when various pains resulting from a problem that developed three years ago effectively incapacitated me for the day.

At times like this my mind invariably wanders to the future when, possibly, a hospital bed looms. It’s not a comforting thought because one reads so many reports of overcrowded wards for the elderly or critically ill along with a lack of care and compassion by the staff supposed to be caring for them. Doubtless, the reports reflect a minority situation but when one has dark thoughts at such times, they become darker in one’s mind.

So it is interesting that a review of palliative care by Marie Curie Cancer Care concludes that the NHS in England has failed to take responsibility for ensuring good end-of-life care. In response, the Health Secretary for England said: ‘We need to ensure that the care people receive at the end of life is compassionate, appropriate and gives people choices in where they die and how they are cared for.’

I hope he and the others responsible get it all organised in time for me!
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Two Questions

2010-12-07T07:32:00.000+01:00

Reports say that that the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, is about to hand himself into police hands to answer a European Arrest Warrant issued by the Swedes who want to talk to him about an alleged rape.

Wikileaks has done immense damage by leaking US consular messages and I would have a couple of questions I’d like to ask.

Firstly, who funds Mr Assange?

Secondly, if the recent activities of Wikileaks is unlawful, why are not the newspapers and other media that publish the leaks equally responsible in law?
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Some Good News

2010-12-07T07:00:00.000+01:00

The cold weather continues and we learn that the Christmas Brussels Sprout harvest in Britain is at risk because the frost makes their harvesting by machine impossible.

While I feel sorry for the farmers affected, at least for me there’s some good news coming out of this cold spell of weather!
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How Would He Know?

2010-12-06T07:01:00.000+01:00

A 25-year-old Russian woman who came to this country three years ago to study and has been working as a researcher for an MP who sits on the Defence Select Committee has been detained on suspicion of being a spy and faces deportation proceedings.

The MP in question backs his researcher 100% and said, ‘I have no reason to believe she did any thing but act honourably during the time she was working for me.’ Perhaps he is right.

Two questions, however, arise in my mind.

The first is why would any MP want to employ a non-British national as a researcher, particularly if that MP could have access to sensitive papers? The second is how would the MP have known whether or not she was a spy?
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A Question

2010-12-05T07:42:00.001+01:00

I suppose I cannot avoid mentioning it. The cold and snow, that is.

In our part of Essex, we were hit hard by the snow which fell to a depth I can’t recall before. For the first time ever, I had to clear paths through the snow in the back garden to allow our two small dogs to get out of the house rather than have to tunnel through the white stuff. Four times I had to do this.

Like others around the country, our local council only salt and grit the major roads and so it is always a struggle to get out of our road and those leading to the main roads. The result is that we feel somewhat marooned as you see no-one about for days on end. As more folk get adventurous and start driving, the snow on the road becomes compacted and turns to ice. As, indeed, happened this week. If we had the equipment, we could actually skate along our road at this moment. I don’t complain about this, we just accept it as something which happens ever year.

Like most other people, we have put up with the bad weather with stoicism. What else can we do? The central heating has been on twenty-four hours a day all week, but that is the price, literally, we have had to pay to keep warm. The weather experts tell us that we have to face at least another week of cold weather and we are prepared for this.

What I want to know is: If we are in the grips of global warming, why is it so bloody cold?
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Charity Fatigue

2010-12-04T08:21:00.000+01:00

I don’t think I’m a mean man and, when I can, I try to help out local and other charities.

The number of television advertisements for various charities seen in the last few days make me wonder whether the satellite television companies are using them as ‘fillers’ when they have no paying advertisements to broadcast. If so, I think they do the charities a disservice.

In the last few days I have been invited to subscribe £2 per month to St. Dunstans, £3 pm to adopt a tiger, £3 pm to adopt a polar bear, £30 per annum to adopt a lion, £2 pm for the WeCare charity, an unspecified amount to the RSPCA and £19 to the Salvation Army. There were also a couple of others.

All these are worthy charities and I have selected the one that I shall donate to this Christmas. But I do wonder whether the number of these sort of advertisements is one reason why most of the charities themselves admit that Britain suffers from ‘charity fatigue’.

If that is right, then might fewer advertisements than at present help?
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Nuts!

2010-12-03T07:01:00.001+01:00

An Australian chap recently ‘married’ his beloved yellow Labrador bitch in an outdoor ceremony attended by thirty of his chums and family members and some of their pet dogs. After the happy couple took their vows, the union was sealed with a kiss.

It has not been explained how the Labrador bitch was able to express her wedding vows, and one assumes that the kiss was a rather wet one. But, unlike human marriages, the groom was at pains to explain that the reason for the wedding was not sexual.

It’s good to know that nutters still exist on this planet!
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Life Goes On

2010-12-03T07:00:00.000+01:00

So Russia will host the 2018 World Cup and, within minutes of the announcement, the recriminations have started.

I might be wrong, but surely football is a game? You win some and you lose some.

This time we lost!
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Extraordinary!

2010-12-02T07:08:00.001+01:00

Bored with stories about the snow and Wikileaks, I looked around this morning to see if anything else of interest was being reported. I wasn’t disappointed.

To start with, there’s the tale of the drunken passenger on Holland America Line’s Ryndam, sailing in the Gulf of Mexico, who is said to have taken himself into the restricted area at the stern of the ship and released the anchor. He is now in FBI custody and faces a $250,000 fine and a possible prison sentence if convicted. I’ve never heard of anything like that in all my years in the shipping industry.

Closer to home, a South Wales council has threatened to prosecute a ‘Secret Santa’ who leaves Christmas presents for less well-off children hanging from trees in a local park. The offence? Fly-tipping! Are they serious down there in South Wales?

Then you have the woman who was fined £60 for parking 22 minutes longer than the three hour limit in Swansea. The contractor who levied the fine and then refused her appeal was told that the women was a little late getting back to her car because she went to the aid of a suicidal woman who was threatening to jump into the River Tawe. Unsurprisingly, when the story hit the press the contractors changed their mind. Couldn’t they have done that in the first place?

And then, the pilot of the plane carrying Nigel Farage of UKIP which crashed on general election day has been charged with threatening to kill Farage. And, presumably, himself at the same time?

‘Ain’t it a strange world sometimes?
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Wanna Bet?

2010-12-01T06:48:00.000+01:00

On Monday evening BBCs Panorama programme alleged that three FIFA executive committee members of accepting ‘corrupt’ payments and that its vice-president attempted to supply ticket touts.

Since all four men are part of the committee that will vote on the 2018 and 2022 hosts, one would think that England’s chances of hosting the 2018 World Cup were slim indeed.

But an official from England 2018 said yesterday: ‘The BBC’s Panorama did nothing more than rake over a series of historical allegations none of which are relevant to the current bidding process.’

I wouldn’t like to bet on it!
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Potentially Dangerous

2010-11-30T07:23:00.000+01:00

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

2010-11-29T08:05:00.000+01:00

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?

2010-11-28T06:59:00.000+01:00

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!

2010-11-28T06:58:00.000+01:00

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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?

2010-11-27T06:22:00.000+01:00

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

2010-11-26T06:36:00.000+01:00

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?

2010-11-25T16:49:00.000+01:00

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

2010-11-25T07:00:00.001+01:00

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!

2010-11-24T07:00:00.001+01:00

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?

2010-11-24T06:59:00.000+01:00

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

2010-11-23T06:59:00.001+01:00

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!

2010-11-22T07:01:00.001+01:00

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!

2010-11-21T05:14:00.001+01:00

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

2010-11-21T04:40:00.000+01:00

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?

2010-11-20T13:49:00.000+01:00

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?

2010-11-19T07:31:00.000+01:00

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?

2010-11-19T07:09:00.000+01:00

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?

2010-11-18T07:05:00.002+01:00

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

2010-11-18T07:03:00.001+01:00

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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