newgate news

Where's Lembit Opik when we need him?

2012-01-27T15:35:00.006Z

A busy afternoon but I couldn't let this one pass unremarked. Opik may have strayed from his erstwhile preoccupation but some of us are still watching the skies:

An asteroid will pass by the Earth on Friday in something of a cosmic near-miss, making its closest approach at about 1600 GMT.

At its closest, the space rock - named 2012 BX34 - will pass within about 60,000km of Earth - less than a fifth of the distance to the Moon.

A near thing, in cosmic terms, but a long way from sending us the way of the dinosaurs; in any case, the asteroid in question, first detected on Wednesday, is a mere 11m in diameter.

There seems to have been some uncertainty about its exact path:

Earlier estimates put the asteroid's closest distance at as little as 20,000km, near the distance at which geostationary satellites reside, but observations overnight showed it will pass at a more comfortable distance.

That's quite a difference; the predictability of Newtonian mechanics is all very well but you can only calculate with the observational data you have available - in this case, that has evidently been subject to a certain amount of revision.

"It's one of the top 20 closest approaches recorded," said Gareth Williams, associate director of the US-based Minor Planet Center.

So quite a rare occurrence, then? Er, no; according to a NASA statement last year, an object of this size can be expected to come this close to Earth about every 6 years or so, on average. They may want to rethink that calculation, though...

The asteroid's path makes it the closest space-rock to pass by the Earth since object 2011 MD in June 2011.

That one, you may recall, passed us by at 12,000km, while in September 2010, one whizzed by a more generous 80,000km away. Certainly these are vast distances when you're talking about a rock a few metres in diameter, but it does suggest there are quite a few of the things up there.

So for all the apocaholics out there, don't worry; there'll be another one along soon! Meanwhile, we in the Tavern always regard a passing asteroid as the perfect excuse for a party; feel free to join us in spirit (or spirits).

Show me the way to go home...

2012-01-26T09:31:00.007Z

You can always count on the Clacton and Frinton Gazette for a good read, and this week is no exception.

A man has been jailed for stealing an ambulance fast response car.

*gets popcorn*

Daniel Glover led police on a high-speed chase along the A12 after stealing the vehicle in Clacton in the early hours of New Year's Day. The car was only brought to a halt when officers used a ‘stinger’ to burst its tyres.

It seems he adopted this unusual choice of transport to get back to his London home after attending a party in Clacton. Police found him to be more than twice the drink-drive limit - probably much more, if the excuse he offered is anything to go by:

He claimed he did not know the vehicle was an ambulance car as it was dark at the time.

Just for the record, this is an ambulance fast response car.

Now I may be going out on a limb here, but I'd say those blue lights on top are a bit of a giveaway, and, in any case, I'm guessing those bright yellow bits are designed to be visible even after dark, particularly under the street lights of Valley Road. Perhaps he was confused by the fact that the word AMBULANCE on the bonnet is written backwards.

Meanwhile, according to the Telegraph, a family member adds an interesting element of confusion to proceedings:

Outside court Glover's father said: "He doesn't drink normally and he didn't know what he was doing. He thought it was a taxi."

To be honest, it's not really the best plea in mitigation, particularly for a man who actually makes a living delivering taxis on a daily basis. At least he admitted the offence:

Glover, 26, of Old Ford Road, Mile End, east London, admitted charges of aggravated vehicle taking, drink driving, no insurance and obstructing police.

The last of which translates as threatening to break a police officer's nose, which at least adds a certain credibility to his claim that he wanted to go home after falling out with someone at the party. They must have been glad to see the back of him.

Meanwhile 'aggravated' doesn't even begin to cover the offence of stealing a paramedic's car (and equipment) on A&E's busiest night of the year - an hour after the theft, a man was attacked and fatally injured in Clacton and, at the same time, a security guard was stabbed in nearby Walton.

The subsequent silence on that story leads me to hope the victim is making a full recovery but he's certainly had his fill of bad luck; it's bad enough to be attacked in the early hours by knife-wielding thugs without finding out that some drunken oaf has stolen the local paramedic's car.

Interlude

2012-01-24T14:38:00.001Z

The refurbishments continue apace, so posting will have to wait - though I have given in to the temptation to comment elsewhere.

Thus I have no time or leisure to do justice to the delightfully symbolic news story that the Houses of Parliament are sliding inexorably into the mud of Father Thames.

Fortunately, wiser bloggers than I have done the story justice, so without further ado I refer you to Demetrius and Anna Raccoon.

And to accompany the mental image of the Palace of Westminster gently subsiding into its historic swamp, here's my current earworm - self-indulgent, lush and far too much fun to keep to myself....

Toast of the week - the Buggrit

2012-01-22T10:44:00.009Z

In keeping with yesterday's post on nostalgia, today I should like to celebrate a household electrical appliance that is older than I am and still fully functional - the Buggrit.

The Buggrit consists of two steel dishes that clamp together housing a standard fitting for a 40W light bulb. The design was developed in the 1930s as a way to heat up a cold bed before you got in - an updated version, if you will, of the ember-filled copper warming-pans of the Tavern's eighteenth-century namesake.

Our version is the fetching Germolene pink pictured above - though in its 1950's heyday it came in a variety of pastel colours - and was once a much-appreciated asset in a household with no central heating; you simply plug it in and place it between the sheets well before bed-time, where it generates an impressive amount of heat.

There is, however, a significant drawback to this ingenious invention*. It was many years before I realised that Buggrit was not, in fact, its official designation, the name having passed into family usage thanks to the unfortunate soul who leapt into bed on a particularly chilly night while calling downstairs,
"Did you remember to take out the ...Aaaargh, BUGGER IT!"

Doubtless Health and Safety would have much to say about the Belling bed warmer, to give it its proper name, and electric blankets and central heating - not to mention low-energy bulbs - have made it all but obsolete, but the simplicity of its design and fitness for purpose, as well as the fact it still works perfectly after 50 years, is something I consider worth celebrating.

Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses to - the Buggrit!

*Particularly if your family, who don't believe in doing things by halves, substitute a 60W bulb for the 40W one intended.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

2012-01-21T09:40:00.005Z

Following yesterday's musings on the fact that my treasured glass beer-mug is now, apparently, 'retro-cool', I've been thinking about nostalgia.

I'm not the only one; A K Haart today waxes lyrical on the effects of the passage of time. He's right, there is something quite disconcerting about the realisation that part of your life has now technically become history.

Teaching brings that into sharp relief; you are constantly confronted with fresh-faced adolescents to whom the pre-internet past is not so much another country as a different planet. In years to come, the spread of the internet will doubtless seem as socially significant as the Industrial Revolution.

The Tavern provides an interesting measure of social attitudes to the past; the current refurbishments have involved removing the ceiling tiles, textured wallpaper and sliding doors installed by a disciple of the 1950s TV home decorating guru Barry Bucknell, the man who turned a thousand charming Victorian homes into feature-free modernist boxes.

With an impressive irony, replacing the lost features has proved easier than Bucknell could ever have imagined; today every DIY store has an abundance of Victorian-style accessories and designs. Those of us born at the height of his fame are actively embracing technology beyond his wildest dreams while surrounding ourselves with the trappings of the past.

Meanwhile, the post-internet generation seems to cherish much the same fondness for a more recent era; led by the marketing machinery of the modern media, the fashion, music and culture of recent decades are reappearing at a startling rate, fed by the breakneck speed of communication and need for constant innovation.

All of which leads me to one of my all-time favourite articles from The Onion which says it all better than I could ever do myself.

Mine's a pint!

2012-01-20T15:31:00.006Z

In case anyone was wondering, the recent silence here has been due to the extensive refurbishments the tavern is undergoing; as a bar to creativity, the pram in the hall is as nothing compared to the decorator's ladder on the landing.

As the sidebar implies, I am very attached to my pint mug, albeit a heavy-bottomed one made of glass rather than the handsome antique specimen depicted.

These days it serves mostly as a water-glass, though back in my distant penurious past it doubled as a cereal-bowl on the mornings I couldn't be bothered to wash up, not to mention occasional money-box, flower-vase or wasp-catcher.

When the Urchin came of age, he too wanted a pint mug of his own; however, it proved surprisingly difficult to find one. Pubs had, almost universally, replaced their handled glass tankards with straight glasses and shops had followed suit.

I'm hoping Bucko - having relevant experience - can enlighten me as to the reason for this*; I always thought that it was because the weight and the handle made a pint mug a potentially lethal weapon, but, according to the Telegraph, the reason is far more prosaic:

In the late 1970s and early 1980s drinkers rebelled against tankards. ‘In a straight glass, not a jug’ was a common request. The move saw most pubs ditch them and stock 'straight' glasses only.

Real ale - the sort for which you are supposed to need a woolly sweater and, preferably, a beard - still came in handled mugs, but for everything else you got a straight glass (unless you were female and in the North, when you would automatically be issued with a half in a 'ladies' glass' complete with stem).

It is thus highly amusing that, as reported in the Telegraph, style-conscious city-dwellers are now insisting on traditional-style glass pint mugs for their beer. In the words of a Wimbledon pub manager:

“More and more people are specifically requesting their beer in a pint jug with a handle, particularly when they see other drinkers with one. There is definitely an element of nostalgia about a proper pint jug.

They are seen as retro-cool yet comforting and traditional, reflecting the return to more traditional pub values.”

'Retro-cool', eh? Just goes to show; hang around long enough and, like it or not, you'll be at the cutting edge of fashion.

*Update: According to Bucko (via comments):
"the glass was phased out because of its adaptability as a nasty weapon. If you hold the handle with your fingers all the way through the hole, so your knuckle is touching the glass, turn it 45 degrees onto it's side, then bang it hard on the edge of a table, the glass shatters leaving you with what is called a 'glass fist'. A bit like a knuckleduster with jagged glass edges. You can imagine the damage such a weapon would do."

It's rather sad when your low opinion of your fellow-man turns out to be entirely justified - though my respect for those who successfully ply the publican's trade has increased in proportion.

A walk on the tacky side

2012-01-14T09:39:00.013Z

Readers of this blog, being people of taste and discernment, may well have missed a news story that provides both an aptly fitting fable for modern morality and an example of dramatic symmetry worthy of the most contrived Restoration comedy.

It concerns a television programme called 'Take Me Out', which the Times' Caitlin Moran today describes, with her customary pithy brilliance, as 'essentially Blind Date for the Rohypnol generation'.

The show features male contestants displaying their wares - metaphorically speaking - before a panel of women, who express their reactions by the use of lights, giving rise to what is described as the show's catchphrase, "No likey, no lighty" (frankly, I'm amazed that one got past the race relations people).

The victors in this sleazy enterprise are sent off for a weekend together for the subsequent delectation of the viewing public, and that's where the dramatic irony comes in. Last week, the Mail gleefully outed one winner, supposedly a construction worker, as a '£50-an-hour male escort' with a previous conviction for violence.

Spotting a clear opportunity, the woman who had been despatched to a foreign resort to enjoy his company with the blessing of the producers immediately claimed that she had been 'manipulated' into sleeping with him - this evidently being the expected outcome of the trip.

All was not as it seemed, however; two days later, the paper revealed that she, too had a secret - though working as a hairdresser, she had previously engaged in an altogether more horizontal profession at a princely £200 an hour (as with houses, the Mail seems to feel obliged to define escort services by price).

Thus these two photogenic young people, whose courtship was due to be observed with much the same intensity as that of Edinburgh's pandas, turned out to be on something of a busman's holiday at the TV company's expense.

Not surprisingly, 'Embarrassed show producers have now decided to axe follow-up footage of the couple on holiday when the show airs again on Saturday night.'

Meanwhile, as the icing on the cake, other members of the cast - if that's not too cynical a description - are in trouble for holding a 'two-day mass orgy' in a rented mansion in Chepstow; a misdemeanour that has Zeitgeist written all over it.

To paraphrase the German writer Heinrich Boll, the fact that a competition to meet today's criteria of desirability was won by two members of the world's oldest profession is 'neither accident nor design, but simply unavoidable'.

Ill-gotten gains

2012-01-13T16:29:00.001Z

Under normal circumstances, I'm not the sort of person who tells a complete stranger to b***er off.

Yesterday, however, was different. The refurbishments had just hit a snag when a lath-and-plaster ceiling suddenly decided to start a new life as a floor, necessitating expensive and time-consuming repairs, while an abundance of ladders and wet paint has turned every journey upstairs into a gymnastic exercise.

Naturally, I was upstairs when the phone rang; expecting the builders, I dashed down with as much speed as the obstacle course permitted to answer it. What followed was, alas, a script with which I have become all too familiar.

Last year, someone backed - very gently - into the side of my stationary car in a car park lane, causing a small dent which was fixed on his insurance; as I was in my car at the time, I was bombarded for months afterwards with calls urging me to claim for non-existent injuries.

Their evident bafflement that I was not prepared to lie - "The money has already been allocated; all you have to do is claim it!" - suggested that the usual response is rather different. No wonder MPs are calling for tighter control of payouts:

The committee pointed out that there has been a 70% rise in motor insurance injury claims in the past six years, despite a 23% drop in the number of casualties actually caused by road accidents.

The calls eventually stopped - until yesterday, that is, when the caller not only suggested that I should make a claim but said he had evidence that I had been admitted to hospital following the accident; when I said he was mistaken, he became aggressively insistent - hence my unaccustomed rudeness.

There was a certain irony to this blatant incitement to commit fraud on the very day that the issue once again makes the news. Perhaps my details, initially sold on by the insurers or repairers, have now trickled down past the merely shady into a stratum where fake hospital records and thuggish tactics abound.

The figure bandied about at present is that fraudulent claims are now adding £90 to the cost of car insurance, up from the £74 suggested last year, when a member of the Association of British Insurers described whiplash as a 'fraudster's dream'.

I wrote this last April, but it's as true now as it was then:

They have turned car insurance into a lottery – sure, you pay a bit extra up-front, but if your number comes up, there’s at least £1,500 waiting to be claimed every time. Having someone run into me and freely admit liability was the equivalent of a winning Premium Bond.

Why on Earth not?

2012-01-11T21:57:00.009Z

It's that time of year again. Britain's emergency services are issuing press releases about the time-wasting calls they have to deal with on a regular basis, South Central Ambulance Service among them:

In the past three months, call centre staff have dealt with a call from a young woman who had a headache after a night out, a man who wanted paramedics to treat his dog's injured leg and a man reporting that a hedgehog had been run over.

On New Year's Eve, a drunk man called for help to get up the stairs to his house.

A combination of excess alcohol, ubiquitous mobile phones and, in many cases, the cognitive skills of a crustacean has meant a perfect storm of this kind of thing; a large percentage of calls on Friday and Saturday nights, according to paramedics, are from people too drunk to get home.

It's an unfortunate combination, and one we've seen at work with the RNLI; an emergency response organisation with no alternative but to take each call seriously is forever at the beck and call of the thoughtless (not to mention intoxicated), who can summon assistance at the touch of a button on phones that may well, in some cases, be smarter than their owners (as described by the indefatigable JuliaM).

The quotes above are from a local paper's version of the story; there are similar pieces appearing around the country. What caught my eye with this one, however, is that the reporter includes not only the cost to the taxpayer of each call-out (£257, if you were wondering) but a memorable quote from an ambulance service spokesman:

"SCAS does not bill timewasters. That is not the NHS ethos."

It goes further than that, however; the ethos appears to be that no restitution of any kind is called for. Since it would be impossible - and expensive - to assess each case on merit, only persistent offenders are punished, while ambulance crews and paramedics are repeatedly diverted from their real purpose.

Now, I'm sure some of these calls are from people who genuinely do not understand the priorities involved - 'care in the community' has left many unfortunate souls struggling with the complexities of modern life - but it seems over-generous for us to foot the bill when a wobbly inebriate fancies a lift home.

There is an encouraging and heartwarming trend for those who have been plucked to safety by the RNLI to engage in subsequent fund-raising activities for the charity. There's no bill, no costly legal involvement, no compulsion; it's what you might well call an ethos.

The NHS ambulance service may not have the same need to raise cash, but wouldn't it be a fine thing if those time-wasters could be induced to do something in return?

Parish news

2012-01-09T21:42:00.001Z

Things will be a little quiet on the blogging front for a few days as we are redecorating the Tavern; time, I think, for another of Pa Peachum's favourites...

Here we go again!

2012-01-07T22:31:00.001Z

Thanks to some over-enthusiastic hammer-wielding as part of the Tavern refurbishment, I'm laid up with a bad back this evening while the Spouse is off to a party.

A resulting trawl through the evening news shows that Jeremy Clarkson has provoked yet another media storm, or rather that the Telegraph is doing its best to whip up a frenzy following his latest gaffe.

In a column for a tabloid newspaper, Clarkson mocked the sport of synchronised swimming as "Chinese women in hats, upside down, in a bit of water", adding: "You can see that sort of thing on Morecambe Beach. For free."

Crass? Definitely. Tasteless? Certainly. But is it really news? Was it necessary for the Telegraph journalists to scamper off in search of quotes from 'a Morecambe town councillor' and 'a member of the Chinese Lib Dems'?

Two predictable but gratifyingly quotable reactions later, a story is born, though, given Clarkson's form, it's debatable whether this one will run and run or fizzle out in a flutter of raised eyebrows and a yawn - not Clarkson again!

As Diane Abbott found out this week, the price of the Faustian pact of fame is eternal vigilance; every word you utter, type or text can be scrutinised and pulled apart in search of offence. Every lapse of taste, every error of judgement is writ large for the world to see.

It is, in a way, the intellectual equivalent of the magazines that gleefully highlight the cellulite and bulges of swimwear-clad celebrities for the delectation of the masses; Clarkson's fame makes him fair game for a high-profile article because his name guarantees column inches and ample cause for righteous indignation.

Clarkson's status as national enfant terrible means that a story like this falls firmly into the category of 'Dog Bites Man'. Surely the Telegraph can find something more interesting to offer its readers on a Saturday night.

Diane Abbott's true colours?

2012-01-06T18:44:00.021Z

From the Telegraph:

Diane Abbott is facing fresh calls to resign after enraging London’s taxi drivers with a claim that they routinely refuse to pick up passengers who are black:

“Dubious of black people claiming they’ve never experienced racism. Ever tried hailing a taxi* I always wonder?”

And to think that this woman - in her own eyes, at least - was a contender for the labour leadership! It's a good indication of how short a step it is from multiculturalism to mentally dividing the population into homogeneous groups of 'us' and 'them'.

Wiser bloggers than I - Al Jahom, Dizzy Thinks, Leg-iron, Longrider and the Heresiarch, among others - have spilled much virtual ink over the matter of Abbott's tweets, but I think I may have the perfect soundtrack...

(With apologies to Fleetwood Mac)

Oh no, here she goes again,
Upset the public again;
If you take an anti-racist stand
You've got to have an even hand:
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa Diane!
Whoa there, Diane!

No room for doubt, it's plain:
She'll get no taxis again.
So is she getting out of hand?
Will another call from Miliband
Go, "Oh, whoa, whoa Diane!
Whoa there, Diane!"

(Repeat ad ~~lib~~ nauseam)

*Not that Abbott seems to have had much trouble: with delicious irony, also from the Telegraph: She was also criticised during the MPs expenses scandal, after claiming £142,000 in 2009, including £1,100 on taxis.

All present and correct?

2012-01-05T09:07:00.004Z

While on the theme of exotic animals (see previous post), we've mentioned this before, but why should London Zoo be holding its annual animal-count slap-bang in the middle of winter?

The papers are awash with shots of the customary photo-call - this year, it's the penguins - as a keeper poses with a clipboard and journalists try to think up an amusingly punning headline.

I suppose the staff are less busy now than at any other time, but it does seem a little harsh on the pooor animals to be turfed out of their nice warm beds for roll-call - I heartily sympathise!

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government is being castigated for spending nearly £43,000 on a 'welcome party' for their new pandas, though it's not quite the extravaganza the term suggests:

The money spent by the Scottish Government includes a grant of £12,900 offered to the Royal Zoological Society Scotland towards the arrival event, £23,000 on marketing links between Scotland and China in both countries and staff costs of £6,822.

So that's what it was about: I thought there was something distinctly odd about the ranks of children obediently cheering and waving their little flags in unison as the lorries went by - though I bet it played well back home among the big bosses in China.

Subrosa certainly wasn't impressed:

'I have no problem with businesses introducing new ideas to boost their profits, but using live animals under the canopy of improving relationships with China, is a few steps too far.'

Looking after your neighbours' pet rabbit while they're away is worry enough; I hope, for Scotland's sake, these two furry hostages to fortune thrive in the chilly winds of Edinburgh.

Oh, I do hope so!

2012-01-04T14:07:00.010Z

From the Mail:

'What could be Britain's most daring thieves were last night on the run from police after around 100 exotic animals - including a 5ft crocodile* - were swiped in a pet shop raid.

Officers are now hunting the missing menagerie and have warned the thieves they could be risking life and limb trying to handle the stolen predator.'

The BBC has more: 'Shop worker Paul Williamson said the caiman was "aggressive".

"I've been here for four years and I've never picked it up. I wouldn't want to physically go in there and pull it out - they're not the biggest animal in the world, but they can do a lot of damage.

They're very powerful, very strong and they've obviously got huge teeth, so if they bite, the next place for you go to is hospital."'

Perhaps someone's been reading Angry Exile and got some ideas about cross-breeding (very cross indeed, I should think, if that caiman has anything to do with it.)

Update from a Manchester news website: 'Stolen' 5ft crocodile and other reptiles miraculously reappear outside Stockport pet shop

The thieves seem to have bitten off more than they could chew; I wonder whether the caiman did too...

*Loosely speaking; but then the Mail has form in the area of vague taxonomy.

Toast of the Week - Ronald Searle

2012-01-03T11:24:00.001Z

This week, we are raising a glass to mark the passing of Ronald Searle, the gifted and witty cartoonist who brought Nigel Molesworth to life and gave us the original St Trinians.

The skills honed in the appalling conditions of an Asian prisoner-of-war camp developed in peacetime into a distinctive style that captured the popular imagination and inspired and clearly influenced later generations of cartoonists.

I could choose from any of dozens of iconic works to illustrate this piece, but I have chosen a new discovery; published last year, 'Les Tres Riches Heures de Mrs Mole' is an affectionate reworking of a medieval Book of Hours.

Made for his wife when she was undergoing chemotherapy many years ago and only just released to the public, the drawings show Mrs Mole going about her daily chores in the beautiful Provencal house the Searles had just bought.

Searle had his dark side - the St Trinian's girls exuded menace on all sides and what reader of Molesworth could forget the sinister Gabbitas and Thring kidnapping a young man and taking him off to be a schoolmaster? - but these pictures have a warmth and charm that any artist would be proud to leave behind as a parting gift.

Image courtesy of The Bloghorn

There is much, much more at this blog celebrating Searle's work.

Brighton Walton Rock

2012-01-02T18:13:00.002Z

If the thought of going back to work this week is getting you down, spare a thought for this chap:

A security guard has been stabbed in a confrontation with two attackers in an Essex seaside town.

The 27-year-old was stabbed in the stomach on Walton Pier, Walton-on-the-Naze, shortly after 04:30 GMT and taken to Colchester Hospital for treatment.

Police have appealed for help to identify "two attackers" who are described as teenagers.

This was in the early hours of January 1st, when he could have been forgiven for thinking that all the fuss had died down and he could finish his shift in peace.

It's a given that New Year's Eve has become a sort of Walpurgisnacht for the hard of thinking, as the Daily Mail annually delights in informing us in articles helpfully accompanied by abundant photos of scantily-clad revellers of a female persuasion sprawled in the gutter (you don't really need a link to that, do you?).

As a result of the tendency of the inebriated to damage property - or themselves - in various imaginative ways, structures such as piers are carefully monitored at this time of year; what those safeguarding property do not usually expect is a knife in the guts.

The hour and the violent response suggest an attempt at vandalism, arson or theft; there's nothing new about that (though rising scrap metal prices play a part these days), but it is disturbing that, confronted by an unarmed man employed to prevent them achieving their nefarious ends, these teenagers resorted to such an extreme form of retaliation.

However grim tomorrow looks for you - my employers have laid on a staff training day complete with instruction in the use of fire extinguishers - take comfort in the thought that at least it's unlikely to lead to emergency abdominal surgery.

The mean streets of rural Oxfordshire

2012-01-01T19:06:00.001Z

Here's a little something that seems to have slipped under the news radar: it seems that parking chaos (see previous post) was not the only thing going on in Bicester on Boxing Day.

A man was stabbed while shopping at Bicester Village.

Not as serious as the Oxford Street attack, admittedly...

The 22-year-old was stabbed in the buttock with what police believe was a knife.

... but enough to land him in the nearest hospital - probably quite a lengthy and uncomfortable ambulance journey, given the miles of stationary traffic in all directions and the site of the wound.

The attack took place at 3.50pm, in a short alleyway at the centre of the shopping village; the alleyway leads to the toilets and, with 30,000 shoppers visiting the retail park that day, there was almost certainly a substantial queue of potential witnesses.

Sure enough, the police have a clear description of those responsible:

Police believe the attackers were four or five black men in their late teens to early 20s wearing black clothing.

So we have a public stabbing - albeit a relatively minor one - involving a group of men on the busiest day Bicester Village has ever seen. Even allowing for the fatal attack in London the same day, one might have thought this merited more than a few paragraphs in a local paper.

It was presumably the Oxford Street events that led police to add this statement:

"We have no reason to believe at this stage that the incident is connected to the retail industry or involved any kind of dispute over shopping or goods".

I have to admit I'm slightly baffled here - after all, there aren't many other reasons for being at an out-of-town shopping village on Boxing Day afternoon, unless, of course, you are retailing a little something on your own account.

I suspect the low-key response to this incident is a fair indication that the stabbing was a little internal difficulty within the group and highly unlikely to affect outsiders and passers-by; one comment suggests it is a standard method of settling an issue of 'respect' - or, presumably, a lack of it.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that events like this are not uncommon on the street - or even in school playgrounds - in Britain's cities, and the phenomenon is rapidly spreading to smaller towns. One might, however, have thought that a sanitised pseudo-American shopping street, awash with bright lights and security cameras, would be free from this kind of thing.

That it is not is something we should find very worrying indeed.

Traffic jam of the vanities

2011-12-31T12:34:00.006Z

The paper's description of 'a ticking timebomb' might be putting it a bit strongly, but it's true that things got badly out of hand at Bicester Village on Boxing Day.

More than 30,000 people visited the shopping centre on December 26, causing some drivers to abandon their cars on the A41.

Tailbacks stretched back to Junction 9 of the M40 while the inconsiderate parking forced police to shut one side of the road between the Oxford Road and London Road roundabouts.

Pause a moment to consider that figure; over thirty thousand people dragged themselves from the bosom of their family on a December day to join the queue for parking spaces and cram themselves into a grossly overcrowded feeble pastiche of a New England shopping street.

And then consider that Bicester Village is a shopping outlet for last season's collections and the lines that didn't sell - it seems to have escaped the notice of the teeming hordes that the stuff in the stores is permanently marked down; this was an entirely irrational feeding frenzy.

It's a measure of how the name on the label has eclipsed the product that, in these supposedly cash-strapped times, so many ordinary people considered this a worthwhile enterprise - and ordinary people they must have been; the affluent foreigners who form Bicester Village's target clientele arrive by train from London, no traffic jams for them.

Incidentally, I'm intrigued by the Oxford Mail's choice of language; these shoppers were 'caused' to leave their cars at the roadside, as if, on finding the 1800-odd spaces full, they were in some way obliged - or entitled - to abandon their vehicles and continue on foot into the temple of Mammon.

It reminds me of the woman who set up a facebook page to draw attention to the fact that residents of her town were ‘fed up having to travel to Northampton or Milton Keynes to view films in a modern big cinema’ - this despite the fact that her town already has a two-screen cinema in the centre.

Of all the bizarre January (ha!) sales stories, this mass migration and the stranding of vehicles along the A41 is surely one of the most peculiar and inexplicable, given current economic circumstances - though there could be a certain hip-pocket or (dare we say it?) demographic factor at work.

With the possible exception of Clarks shoe shop (a leftover from the Village's 1990s infancy) Bicester Village sells virtually nothing that could be considered essential to normal life - unless, that is, your continued survival depends on designer labels and overpriced luxury goods.

Perhaps there are now people who genuinely believe it does.

Satirical knitting

2011-12-30T17:39:00.005Z

Here at the Tavern, we preserve a childhood nostalgia for knitted social commentary thanks to The Clangers, Oliver Postgate's little woollen aliens learning from experience the dangers of unwise agricultural practices ('Sky-Moos') or industrial over-production ('Goods').

You could knit your own Clanger if you have the time and the skill - instructions here - but, as the BBC reports today, a French blogger has gone one better and produced a whole range of instantly recognisable public figures who appear on her charmingly witty satirical website, Delit Maille (loosely, 'Outlaw Knitting') - which by happy chance sounds a lot like Daily Mail.

If you have not already encountered this bizarre but utterly inspired phenomenon, the BBC has a memorable slide show of the best bits here.

Whup! Whup! merrily on high.

2011-12-22T08:56:00.001Z

It was twenty years ago today that the first commercial wind-farm went live in Delabole, Cornwall.

It caused something of a stir in those parts - much of the talk at parties over the festive season centred on whether you had yet been out to see 'them thurr turboines'.

The local garages had their hands full too, as drivers, transfixed by the sight of the spinning blades, shunted into each other or the local scenery.

Meanwhile, seabirds met a nasty end and the residents complained of the irritating thump and hum - shades of what was to come on a grand scale.

Twenty years so far - how long, I wonder, before the shine wears off for the PTB?

Posting will be light for a while, partly because of seasonal commitments but mostly because I'll be busy stripping.

The Tavern's getting a long overdue makeover, so years of accumulated woodchip and paint have to be scraped from the walls. With that ahead, there's little time to do much save wish you all all a merry Solstice, Saturnalia, Yule, Christmas or celebration of your choice. Cheers, one and all!

"Is it 'cos I is a lay-dee?"

2011-12-18T12:23:00.003Z

Bless her, just when you thought all was done and dusted and the fat lady was taking a deep breath, Baroness Uddin surfaces again - it's like Fatal Attraction but with ermine.

Despite the best efforts of the Lords to shake her off, at least until she paid back the £125,000 she pocketed in dodgy expense claims, legal advice had it that a permanent exclusion would 'infringe her right as a peer to be called to the house by the Queen at the start of a new parliament'.

Worming her way back in thanks to this technicality would enable her to claim the full attendance allowance and - oh, the irony! - use it to pay back the money she owes. As an illustration of the difference between the law and justice, that would take some beating.

Thwarted on that front, their Lordships are now, according to the Sunday Times, proposing to suspend peers who fail to repay until the end of the current parliament and repeat the vote at the start of each subsequent parliament until the sum is repaid in full.

This raises the prospect of a vote specifically to exclude the Baroness, thereby opening a whole new can of worms. It is hardly to be expected that a professional Asian woman - in the sense of one who has made gainful employment out of the description - will sit back and allow that one to go ahead.

I suspect that left-leaning discrimination lawyers are even now beating a path to the door of her subsidised London flat, pleading to be allowed to take up a case in which a charge of institutional racism and/or sexism could be argued to trump the mere bagatelle of a missing £125,000.

We have, of course, celebrated the Baroness in song elsewhere, but this seems as good a time as any for a nostalgic and appropriate reprise of another expenses ditty:

The People's flag was deepest red,
But now its guiding lights are dead;
Their principles and lofty aims
Demolished by expenses claims.
New Labour came to rule the roost
And give their private funds a boost
And with a supercilious sneer,
To plant their skull and crossbones here.

While we worked hard to pay our tax,
These parasites upon our backs
Indulged themselves in luxury
At the expense of you and me.
They've tried to water down the rules,
And play us for a bunch of fools;
It's time to shout it loud and clear,
No more expenses scroungers here!

Toast of the week - Mr Pickwick edition

2011-12-17T10:25:00.013Z

This week, we are raising a glass to Ken Atack of Cherwell District Council, whose bonhomie and benevolence belies his name and provides a minor but refreshing example of seasonal goodwill.

The Occupy protests, in the UK at least, have predictably suffered as a result of the weather - some rather more spectacularly than others: the spirit lives on, however, in the shape of a contender for the Christmas number one single.

A North Oxfordshire folk rock band is hoping to land a Christmas number one with a protest song about Government cuts.

The song 'draws inspiration' from the TUC march last spring, describing anarchists occupying Fortnum and Mason and invading the Ritz, and 'is believed to be the first pop song to make reference to quantitative easing', along with some scurrilous attacks on Cameron and the present government.

Billed as an 'anti-austerity song', it is accompanied by a video filmed at locations which include the Occupy protest outside St Pauls - keep an eye out for the dancing elves at 1.17 - and featuring demonstrators there carrying placards bearing the song's title: 'We're all in this together'.

Given the politically provocative nature of the song, the local news reporter who approached Cllr Atack was clearly hoping for some newsworthy hang-'em-and-flog-'em soundbites and a lively bit of controversy. What he got instead was this:

'Conservative Ken Atack, lead member for financial management on Tory-run Cherwell District Council, said he was more of a Roxy Music and Cream fan.

He said: "I'm sure the song will resonate with many young people and older ones, and if they get on 'Top of the Pops', if that's what it's called, then good for them."

Cllr Atack, we salute your magnanimity; your excellent health!

I can't say the question of what's number one at Christmas matters to me, though it would be good if Subrosa is right.

However, on the basis that real music matters more than manufactured pop bands and we are always ready to respect lyricists with something to say, whatever their point of view (though not, of course, to contribute financially to a cause condoning trespass and criminal damage), here is Leatherat's offering:

Deep and crisp and even?

2011-12-16T15:39:00.005Z

Despite the excitable prognostications of the Met Office's finest last night, quite a lot of us didn't wake this morning to a Winter wonderland.

True, there was a bit of soggy-looking snow lying about apologetically in a morning-afterish kind of way, but it's a far cry from that incredible satellite image of the British Isles unbroken white from edge to edge.

However, BBC news had decided the weather would be a major story, so when I tuned in this morning (courtesy of the treadmill at the gym), a shivering reporter was standing on top of the Brecon Beacons to interview a spokesman for Mountain Rescue.

It is a given that any extreme weather event means an interminable series of live reports from regional newsreaders dragged from their warm comfortable desks to the edge of a motorway, a sea-wall or a flood - if it's the latter, they are, of course, contractually obliged to stand ankle-deep in the water.

In this case, editors have had to exercise a certain amount of imagination to make a major news story out of an inch or so of slush and ice; this seemed largely to consist of finding a suitable hilltop - I imagine the rescue services will be less than delighted should they be called out to the aid of the camera crew intent on finding a snowdrift into which they can deposit their hapless reporter.

Two years ago, when a few inches of snow brought the UK to a virtual standstill, I was in Alberta (with downtown Calgary under 5 feet of snow and daytime temperatures of -30C in the Rockies). The valiant attempts by Canadian news teams to politely suppress their mirth as the news of UK airport closures rolled in is a spectacle I shall always cherish.

I'd love to know what they would make of today's reports.

For a reminder of just how spectacular snow can be, there's an astounding collection of Snow Sculptures over at Nourishing Obscurity.

Reasons to be cheerful

2011-12-15T21:28:00.005Z

It has been pointed out by some - the Spouse among them - that I have been somewhat gloomy of late. My previous post, I admit, was particularly misanthropic, so, in advance of the festive season, I'd like to cheer things up a little.

First of all, Christmas music; while I stand by my loathing of sentimental Americana (see previous post), I am happy to admit that our highly-accomplished local brass band playing carols in town is a sound to gladden even the must curmudgeonly heart.

Meanwhile, there's a seasonal helping of Schadenfreude in the fate of the Occupy Brighton camp; first some of their tents blew away in a gale, then some genius decided to light a bonfire in a high wind and accidentally set light to the rest of them. You couldn't make it up!

And then, in the process of researching another post, I came across this gem which I can do no better than give in its entirity:

Burlesque beauties set to thrill village audience

BURLESQUE comes to Fenny Compton on December 17 when Creme De La Creme Cabaret brings the latest craze in evening entertainment to the The Wharf Inn.

The compere for the evening will be Kate McGann of TV dating show Take Me Out fame, and entertainers will include the truly hysterical Nanny Dora, the Dita von Tease of the hula hoop world, Franky Fire, cheeky Hollywood siren Miss Scarlet Cuffs, vintage beauty Miss Bettie Wishes and the mesmerizing Belles Burlesque troupe.

There will be a prize for the best dressed competitor and plenty of opportunities for audience participation.

Why does this make me laugh? Well, for those unfamiliar with the area, this is Fenny Compton. All of it.

Reasons to be cheerful, indeed!

Christmas shopping - no thanks!

2011-12-10T18:39:00.001Z

One of my favourite Giles cartoons features the family at breakfast. As Grandma descends the stairs, Mother reaches out to turn off the radios on the table:"Off transistors!" she says, "Nothing puts Grandma in her 'let's-hang-everybody' mood quicker than Wonderful Radio 1."

Regular readers will know that, for me, Christmas music has roughly the same effect. I don't mean the classical stuff; I'm very happy with the odd oratorio or a traditional carol, but the nauseating drivel that fills your ears in virtually any enclosed public space at this time of year makes my blood boil.

Prime offenders are, of course, the Americans; lacking a sensible tradition of wassailing*, yule logs or holly and ivy (all, incidentally, good Norse pagan customs), they have invented the cult of Christmas, an amalgam of drippy pseudo-nostalgia and ersatz emotion where sentimentality is viewed as a positive attribute.

Those of us who decline the invitation to rock around the Christmas tree or have ourselves a merry little Christmas are probably no great loss to the retailers pumping out this stuff; I'd like to think we have more sense than to spend unreasonable sums on overpriced tat.

As a timely antidote to the crass jollity and commercialism of the season, I'd like to offer one of my favourite alternatives, Tom Lehrer's Christmas Carol, dedicated to Longrider and his aversion to organised fun:

* Memorably described thus by Bill Bryson:
In Anglo-Saxon times, it was customary for someone offering a drink to say 'Wassail!' and for the recipient to respond 'Drinkhail!' and for the participants to repeat the exercise until comfortably horizontal.

Exam cheating - everyone's a loser

2011-12-09T10:17:00.002Z

The news this week that exam boards have been running courses at which teachers were told which subject areas would come up in exams is, alas, less of a surprise than it should be.

The existence of rival exam boards competing for custom means the system is inherently flawed. There is far more at stake than the simple exam fees; when a school adopts a particular syllabus, it will then buy appropriate textbooks and teaching materials (to say nothing of pupils buying past papers and revision guides) and send staff on courses run by the board.

This willingness on the part of both exam boards and teachers to cut corners is an illustration of the way education in this country has been undermined; the undignified scramble to an end result inevitably means compromising the vital process of education and instruction.

It's reminiscent of the rival undertakers in Dave Allen's sketch:

This matter has been written on with more inside knowledge and eloquence than I could ever muster at Going Fast, Getting Nowhere - if you haven't already done so, I urge you to read the post.

Losing the swings - and the roundabouts too

2011-12-08T10:08:00.005Z

The Mail is exercised this morning about a children's playground dismantled because the equipment failed to meet European safety requirements.

Perhaps the most striking thing about it*, for those of us on the downhill side of 40, at least, is that the offending equipment illustrated looks distictly tame by the standards of our childhood.

When I was young, our local park featured a slide of such vertiginous altitude and gradient that users regularly overshot the long horizontal run-out; a cage at the top of the ladder was the only protection against plummeting to the tarmac ten feet below.

Meanwhile, the swings described vast and graceful arcs from a massive frame and the see-saws were long planks of wood balanced on a central pivot; no springs or rubber matting - if you didn't get your feet down in time to break the fall, the end would hit the ground with a spine-jarring crash and your opposite number would be flung wildly into the air.

Best of all was the roundabout, a flat octagonal arrangement of planks on a central pedestal strangely reminiscent of our dining table at home. The resemblance ended there, however; in the hands of determined ten-year-olds, this contraption could generate sufficient centrifugal force to catapult its gleeful occupants a distance of several yards.

It is, perhaps, a good illustration of how expectations of children's behaviour have shifted over the past four decades. Certainly we sported an interesting variety of grazes and bruises, but the incidence of serious injury was, if anything, lower than today.

Regardless of European directives, we have seen an increased insistence on monitoring and restricting children's ability to decide for themselves or to take responsibility for their actions - small wonder, then, that a generation has grown up expecting to be provided for and entertained by others.

And just as the relaxing of discipline in schools has led to appalling behaviour as pupils try to find the limits of what's allowed, so the reduction of risk has taken all the fun out of the playground and surely contributed to risk-taking behaviour elsewhere.

*apart from the blatantly misplaced apostrophe of the caption - 'Before: The playground with it's full complement of equipment'.
I mean, we're all vulnerable to the occasional typo but they get paid to produce this stuff.

Incidentally, a trawl through the Mail also turned up this festive headline:
'Father has finger bitten off in parents' brawl at school NATIVITY PLAY'
I can't wait to see what JuliaM makes of that one!

Cancer statistics and the blame game

2011-12-07T08:51:00.010Z

There's been a distinctly statistical flavour to this week, what with the question of lessons in gambling and The Moose's musings on child poverty.

I'll be the first to admit that, while I can more or less follow the reasoning of such Titans in the field as Mark Wadsworth (at least as long as he keeps explaining things so clearly), my grasp of the finer points is a little shakier than I'd like - I don't gamble, but if I did, I'd be the one standing in the bookies muttering "Each way? Er, is that r factorial divided by n minus r?"

Even I, however, have no difficulty working out from today's headlines that if just over 40% of cancers could be prevented by lifestyle change, then nearly 60% are determined by factors beyond the patient's control.

Unfortunately, this reasoning still seems to be beyond the grasp of some of those who work in the field. I make no apology, therefore, for recycling part of this post on the subject from last May, when similar statistics were published for breast cancer.

*******

The other 58% of cases may be linked to environmental or genetic factors or other causes not yet established. Information like this, however, proves a logical step too far for many NHS staff, for whom the mantra runs thus:

Cancer is caused by unhealthy lifestyles.
You have cancer.
ergo You have an unhealthy lifestyle.

In the past few years, several of my friends and family have been diagnosed with so-called ‘lifestyle cancers’, and, to a man (and woman) subjected to lengthy instruction by medical staff about their supposedly unhealthy habits despite a clear family history of the disease in each case.

Thus a friend who walks her dog several miles every day was advised to take more exercise; a lifelong non-drinker was repeatedly told to cut down on his alcohol consumption and, most bizarrely of all, a woman who has the healthiest diet I know of was constantly lectured on cutting down on fat and sugar and avoiding junk food – she weighs less than eight stone.

And each of these reported, with varying degrees of fury, a clear and consistent implication by hospital staff that they must have brought the cancer on themselves by their own failure to lead a healthy lifestyle. Their remonstrations were brushed aside - the cancer was proof enough.

It is no secret that doctors receive a ridiculously small amount of training in the interpretation of statistics, given the relevance of probabilities and incidence – I have mentioned before the GP who excused his diagnostic failure with the words, ‘97% of people with this cancer are obese; you aren’t even overweight, so there was only a 3% chance of you having it.’

That being so, how likely is it that the lower echelons of the medical hierarchy can correctly interpret statistical information, given the standard of maths in today's schools? It is a matter of record that numeracy skills are at a frighteningly low level across the population, and I doubt that hospital staff are any exception.

Tell them that cancer is linked to poor diet and lack of exercise and, unless it is clearly explained, some, at least, are going to go on with complete self-assurance to tell cancer patients that it is all their own fault.

Update: via Longrider, this BBC article includes an interesting ~~show-trial~~ interview with a woman brought out to make a public confession that her cancer was lifestyle-related.
Watch out for the interviewer posing the loaded question:
"Why was it you? What was it in your lifestyle that was wrong?"

Secret Santa - a product of derangement*

2011-12-06T19:37:00.006Z

It being the feast of St Nicholas for those who do that sort of thing, I thought it would be the appropriate time to fulminate against one of the more pointless activities carried out in his name.

Several bloggers have already posted on the abomination that is the employees' Christmas party - enforced crass jollity with a bunch of people whose only common factor is that they work in the same building. I'm off the hook this year - the plan for a beer-tasting at a local brewery has once again been shelved, happily confirming my metaphorical opinion of my employers.

There is, however, no escape from the horror of Secret Santa. The workplace variety is probably the most monstrous of all; soooner or later, a member of staff will get the bit between his (or more usually her) teeth and you are dragooned into the whole sorry business.

For anyone fortunate enough to have missed this creeping phenomenon so far - just wait; they'll come for you in the end - each person in a group draws the name of another and buys them a present to a pre-arranged budget. The presents are given anonymously; thus everyone receives a gift and participants have the sense of universal generosity while only making one purchase.

Now that's all well and good - and even pleasantly economical - in families, say, or groups of close friends where presents would be customary. But how many people, particularly in the current climate, want to spend money on presents for their work colleagues? How do you even know what they would like?

And don't even think about refusing; if everyone else has caved in - or, worse, is enthusiastic - you'll never hear the end of it. Politeness dictates that you agree, so you find yourself obliged to buy a meaningful gift for someone you hardly know.

Unless you a) are highly creative and b) have plenty of spare time, this will probably mean heading for one of the major retailers, who have not been slow to cash in on the practice; there are Secret Santa sections springing up on all sides on retail websites and in the high street.

So the day arrives; the spirit of St Nicholas is celebrated with a vast heap of plastic ephemera, unwanted items and cross-purposes - the law of averages dictating that every group contains someone whose idea of a joke is a mankini or furry handcuffs and a grown-up who will have taken it seriously and given a bottle of good wine.

Should you find yourself entangled in one of these schemes and unable to make a graceful exit, it's no good trying to get away with an empty box - unless you want to upset the instigator. I recommend an alternative present so bizarre and out of keeping with the consumerist spirit that you'll never be asked again.

My current favourite is Oxfam Unwrapped's £5 load of manure, but I'm open to suggestions...

*For statisticians, this means a permutation of names on a list such that everyone is paired with someone different. For everyone else, it just means what it says.

Be careful what you wish for...

2011-12-05T14:38:00.009Z

In the high-and-far-off-times, O best beloved, when the Coalition was so-new-and-all, I exhorted them thus on the subject of gambling, in a post on punters taken for a ride by dodgy fairground stalls:

Here's an idea for Michael Gove & Co.; if you want lessons in school to be relevant and useful in later life, you could forget about Citizenship GCSE's and teach some basic probability and a realistic calculation of the chances of winning.

And behold, not eighteen months later, a plan is afoot to introduce lessons on gambling. But it isn't what I meant at all!

Instead of incorporating into maths lessons the ability to work out odds and calculate risk, the proposed course will be part of PSHE and include a class discussion in which pupils are asked 'to identify some of the more positive aspects of gambling'.

This, together with the stated objective - "to enable students to increase their knowledge and understanding of gambling" - is, I suppose, hardly surprising, given that the project is the brainchild of an industry-funded organisation specifically to tackle problem gambling and its given aim is to teach "responsible gambling" instead.

Since my main area of concern is the 'tax on stupidity' aspect of the situation, I don't hold out much hope that this will improve matters; according to The Times, 'In its submission, Gamcare admits that an initiative in Canada left pupils more aware of how gambling works but 'not more likely to know about the signs of problem gambling''.

Now I ought to declare my position on this - I have a long-standing aversion to gambling. This is due in part to generations of Calvinist ancestors glaring down from the hereafter (even atheists sometimes find themselves looking over their shoulders) but mainly to my experiences at school.

The annual bazaar was the province of Sister Patrick, who ran a bottle stall from which nearly all the winning tickets had been extracted in advance. Pupils also had to run the gauntlet of Sr Mary's dartboard (blunted darts), Sr Seamas' coconut-shy (glued down) and Sr Clare's tombola (you've guessed it). Most of us had worked it out by the time we left, but by then there was always a new crop of bright-eyed youngsters, eager to win and well-supplied with pennies.

The nuns had it nicely calculated - just enough pupils won prizes to keep everyone's hopes up while extracting the maximum amount of profit. I may not have derived much spiritual benefit from that education, but being thus parted on an annual basis from my hard-earned pocket-money gave me a lifelong aversion to risking cash ever again.

One of the problems with lessons on gambling is that teenagers' brains are hot-wired for risk-taking and primed to respond to the prospect of reward. Some never grow out of it; the same phenomenon sells millions of scratchcards and Lottery tickets every week, even when the purchasers are struggling to make ends meet.

Instead of appealing to a judgement and reasoning ability pupils are unlikely to have, surely it would be better for government initiatives to use maths to illustrate exactly how remote are the chances of winning.

But then, of course, no-one would play the National Lottery*.

(*Nick M at Counting Cats sums up the situation admirably in a comment)

The price of compassion

2011-12-03T10:07:00.004Z

It would probably be fair to say that teachers do not rank highly in the public sympathy this week, which is unfortunate for this man.

Teacher Martin Davis was suspended for giving a lift home to a 17-year-old pupil who had forgotten his bus fare.

Mr. Davis, a maths and science supply teacher for 23 years and a father of two, was employed by an agency to give one-to-one support to boys with dyslexia in a Newcastle college.

One afternoon in November, a pupil approached him and said he had no money for the bus fare home; as he would be passing the boy’s house on his way home, Mr Davis offered him a lift.

“A week later one of the office staff at the college pulled me to one side, having heard about me giving the boy a lift, and said it was a stupid thing to do because I was opening myself to all sorts of allegations.

I said I was sorry and she just told me not to do it again, and that seemed to be the end of the matter.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Davis, it was not; the agency, presumably alerted by college staff, promptly removed him from his job there and suspended him without pay pending further investigation. Official statements have been produced and the words ‘safeguarding’ and ‘procedures’ bandied about in justification.

Career-wrecking events like this happen with depressing regularity, although in this case, at least, there is no question of malicious allegations by a pupil; in fact, according to Mr Davis, the boy concerned was ‘upset and angry’ about the dismissal.

Quite apart from the incongruity of applying child protection-inspired policies in this case – the boy was old enough to be in the army, or in full-time employment – I’m shocked by the lack of respect and trust for someone who has dedicated his working life to educating the next generation.

Mr Davis is an experienced teacher, whose background has been scrutinised by the usual CRB checks, yet the protocol treats him as a potential risk to the young man he offered to help. What’s more, one of the office staff at the college considered it acceptable to describe his action as ‘stupid’ and admonish him for it.

What would have happened, I wonder, had Mr Davis followed the approved course of action and the boy, walking home alone after dark, been attacked or met with an accident? It’s a matter of record that young men are far more likely than any other group to be victims of urban violence.

Sadly, I have no doubt that officialdom would shake its collective head in sorrow while affirming that Mr Davis had done the right thing, just as school policy these days requires teachers to stand by when one pupil attacks another rather than intervening and risking allegations of assault.

But had the boy failed to make it home that night, I have little doubt that Mr Davis would not have seen it that way. Teachers who want to stay in their jobs, like Caesar’s wife, have to be above suspicion these days.

Unfortunately that sometimes means being above compassion too.

Divide and Conquer

2011-12-02T13:57:00.005Z

Unison. Unite. I'm part of the Union. One out, all out. United we stand.

Once upon a time, there was a point to all this. Combination - acting as a united group to withdraw labour - allowed poorly-educated and exploited 19th century factory workers to negotiate fair pay and conditions by hitting the mill owners where it hurt.

But what did this week's strikers achieve, beyond illustrating exactly how little difference the withdrawal of their labour would make to the country? Well, I suppose they can congratulate themselves on a mass demonstration of support - at least by those who weren't spending the day Christmas shopping.

Certainly the BBC was happy to carry repeated interviews with staff who had never considered strike action before, and who were now being provoked into it by the actions of the coalition; the subliminal message was clear; these are decent, honest workers forced into an uncharacteristic joint rebellion.

But the united facade covers a world of differences. Take for example the staff I have been dealing with recently at a major hospital. One is an administrative officer; last time I saw her, she arrived half an hour late (wiping chocolate crumbs off her face), filled in the wrong form and insisted on telling me all about the birthday party she was planning for her child.

In the same building, in a secure dementia ward, I met a male nurse who works tirelessly with his confused and sometimes violent patients; breaks are few and far-between, but he maintains a calm and reassuring presence throughout, however difficult or unpleasant the job becomes.

The work these two people do has very little in common; the desk-bound administrator will probably be able to keep doing her job (or more likely occupying her desk while surfing the net and eating biscuits) to a far greater age than the nurse could meet the demands of his, and thus retire on a larger pension.

Meanwhile, those head teachers who closed their schools have salaries that are, in some cases, double those of the classroom teachers they led out - with accordingly higher pensions. An average salary-based scheme will hit them hardest, since senior management entails a massive salary hike in most areas.

Those striking Victorian mill-workers, by and large, were doing the same kind of work and stood to lose or gain together. By contrast, some of those marchers last Wednesday (not to mention the thousands of public sector staff who went to work as usual) have far more to lose than others, and some are already putting in their all while others idle along.

So here's a thought; why not allow certain public sector workers to keep their current pension rights because they do jobs too difficult, unpleasant or stressful for the majority of workers to tackle and because they are likely to burn out earlier? These people are generally among the lower-paid in any case.

That takes care of the front-line staff who, according to Unison general secretary Dave Prentis, 'care for the sick, the vulnerable, the elderly. They wipe bottoms, noses, they help children to learn, and empty bins.' Meanwhile, office staff, managers and administrators adopt the new proposals and save the state a fortune.

Of course, it would never happen; the unions wouldn't hear of it.

Quotes of the day - Clarkson hyperbole edition

2011-12-01T18:40:00.007Z

No, it's not the out-of-context comment that launched a thousand angry outbursts* (and 5,000 complaints to the BBC), but the Unison response. After the general secretary demanded that Clarkson be reported to the police - and wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall in that interview? - a spokeswoman weighed in with this objective analysis:

'It's disgusting. It's like something Colonel Gaddafi would say about a demonstration.'
(Courtesy of Radio 4 news at 6.30pm)

And the ever-acerbic Longrider has just posted this memorably phrased opinion on the same topic:

'No one – except a compete fool with their head shoved so far up their arse they can do their own dental checks – seriously believes that he was actually suggesting anyone be killed.'

*If you haven't seen the footage, it's on view at Angry Exile, who finds a side order of extra amusement on camera.

Crowd control turned inside-out

2011-12-01T10:16:00.006Z

'Where have the barricades gone, Nobby?'
'That'll cost - '
'I am your sergeant, Nobby. We are not in a financial relationship. Tell me where the bloody barricades are!'
'Um...prob'ly near to Short Street, sarge. It's all got a bit metaphysical, sarge.'

It was a beguiling theory that might have arisen in the minds of Wiglet and Waddy and, yes, even in the not overly exercised mind of Fred Colon, and as far as Vimes could understand it, it went like this:
1. Supposing the area behind the barricades was bigger than the area in front of the barricades, right?
2. Like, sort of, it had more people in it and more of the city, if you follow me.
3. Then, correct me if I'm wrong, Sarge, but that'd mean in a manner of speaking we are now in front of the barricades, am I right?
(Terry Pratchett: Night Watch)

Ah, the glorious 30th November! Behold an army of brothers (and sisters), who have devoted their working lives to public service, marching shoulder to shoulder, banners held high, in the face of injustice and oppression! See the nation brought to a standstill in a manifestation of solidarity!

Or maybe not. As Anna Raccoon comments with amusement, the country seems to have managed pretty well without them. In fact, closing the schools made things much easier for the parents who usually have to fake a dentist's appointment to take their child Christmas shopping on a schoolday.

The London march also enabled the Police to unveil their newest toy, as Pavlov's Cat points out (with pictures) - a set of futuristic trailers with fold-out sides that transform into an interlocking steel wall. You almost expect the interior to be filled with Universal Soldiers.

Pavlov's Cat expresses justifiable concern at the existence of this equipment and its use to keep the people away from the seat of government. There is another worrying aspect; although the British authorities have, on occasion, demonstrated a heavy-handed approach to policing unruly crowds, there has usually been a suggestion that force will be held back until called for.

This, however, is policing at its most uncompromising - a solid steel barrier with armoured windows, blocking off an entire street. Its only apparent weakness, as Mark Wadsworth points out in a comment chez Cat, is that it can be outflanked when protecting a large target such as the Palace of Westminster.

But which side of a barricade is which? It may seem feeble as an attempt to keep the mob out of somewhere, but what if the position were reversed? How about a crowd penned into an ever-decreasing area - these things are on wheels - by an impenetrable wall of metal seven feet high?

It is clear from the structure of this contraption that there is most definitely a right side and a wrong side to be on. Like all weapons of defence, this shield has the potential to become very offensive indeed.

The tide is high (but the IQ's aren't)

2011-11-28T15:52:00.005Z

...Here we go again!.

This time, we're off to JuliaM's stamping-ground of Southend for a startling tale of man vs nature.

We've mentioned here before that, despite our island nation status, there are still Britons who appear totally baffled by the fact that the sea goes up and down (see 'Roll on, thou grate and restless ocean').

One might, though, expect rather more awareness from those actually involved in seashore construction work...

Workers building flood defences on a beach were left red-faced after returning from a break to find their construction vehicles underwater.

They had parked their digger and nine-tonne dumper on the shore at Chalkwell in Southend, Essex but were caught out by a high spring tide.

As it happens, one of our favourite haunts is a beach on the same coast, where maintenance work on the wooden groynes and sea-wall is done on a regular basis to prevent beach erosion and flooding.

The contractors we have observed there have it down to a fine art; during the spring tides, they arrive in force as the sea is receding, drive down the beach to work at full stretch throughout low tide and then retreat before the oncoming waves.

And here's the clever bit; those contractors are local chaps and, knowing that the lowest tides - which uncover a maximum area for them to work on - correspond with the highest ones, they remove their equipment completely from the beach until the next low tide.

So why should this lot have lost the plot so completely? Well, there's a clue at the end of the article (complete with authentic Daily Mail typo):

Council contractors North Cotts Civils were unavailable for comment.

Once you decipher it (with the help of the photos), it turns out that this coastal engineering was being carried out by North Notts Civils, based in - you've guessed it - the distinctly landlocked town of Nottingham.

Carried out under the aegis of Southend Council's Deputy Leader with responsibility for Regeneration and Enterprise (now there's a title to conjure with!), this has all the hallmarks of another triumph of competitive tendering over common sense.

DIY post

2011-11-24T16:21:00.001Z

I'm going away for a few days - which is annoying because there's a matter I really want to post on but don't have time.

It was inspired by reading this post at Ambush Predator, on a woman who seems to think the only reason not to behave appallingly would be the prospect of being found out, closely followed by Angry Exile's look at the letter written by a teenage burglar blaming his victims for their stupidity in leaving a window open.

It's the sense of inevitability about their attitude that struck me, as if they perceive their default setting to be aggression and criminality. While most of us - or so I'd like to think - try to treat others as we would like to be treated in our turn, they seem to regard their fellow-man as prey. Maybe there's something after all in the idea of Original Sin.

There's much I want to say on the matter but the taxi's due; regualar visitors to the Tavern must know my style by now, so I invite you, if you haven't already done so, to visit the links and imagine for yourselves the wordy and incoherent ramblings I would have attached if I could.

A bientôt!

Empty Vessels

2011-11-22T20:32:00.002Z

Flushed with pride at the forthcoming strike, Patrick Roach, deputy general secretary of the NASUWT, has seized the moment for some inflammatory rhetoric.

Channelling his inner orator, he proclaimed to the Socialist Education Association, a group formed in the 1920s for far left-leaning Labour-supporting teachers,

‘The Education Act is a crime against humanity, a smash and grab raid that will tear apart our schools and our communities.’

Even allowing for the fact that he was preaching to the converted (this particular audience would probably be happy to join him in a resounding chorus of 'The Red Flag' while urging on the tumbrils) it does seem to be something of an overstatement.

In certainly appears so to MP and human rights lawyer Dominic Raab, who claims it is 'offensive' - that word again! - to anyone who has experienced genuine abuse of their human rights, though I'm inclined to think that anyone unfortunate enough to have suffered under one of the planet's nastier regimes is hardly likely to attach much importance to the rantings of a former sociology lecturer.

Roach is, of course, only following the standard demagogue script; Humanity (crimes against) is right up there in the rabble-rousers' handbook, sandwiched between Hegemony (bourgeois) and Hyperbole (use of). It's a very good indication of how far the union management is removed from the day-to-day reality of the classroom.

Teaching unions are, after all, a contradiction in terms. It is essentially a solitary profession, requiring a degree of autonomy and self-reliance. And good teachers - the ones we should be encouraging - are dedicated professionals with a vocation to instruct, inform and educate. There are plenty of them out there - it's just that they tend not to make much noise.

It is, by and large, a disaster for the structure of the profession that many of the brightest and best want to stay where they can do the most good - in the classroom - while the power-hungry and self-important set about climbing the greasy pole, knowing that, if you get high enough, you may never have to teach another lesson.

And over and above this, there are the unions; while there are many union reps at school level who are also dedicated and hard-working teachers, I think it's fair to say that, in the higher echelons at least, you will find few people who were ever likely to have made the best interests of their pupils their first priority.

'O wad some Power the giftie gie us...

2011-11-22T08:34:00.007Z

To see oursels as ithers see us!'

At least next week, when, according to media predictions, hundreds of schools will close due to striking teachers.

While the union activists see themselves protesting their just cause in a glorious, banner-waving amalgam of the Jarrow March and Les Miserables, it's doubtful, to say the least, whether the rest of the population will be viewing them in the same light.

Teaching unions are, as I've said here before, an anomaly; a significant proportion of teachers care nothing for union politics but need the legal protection insurance against possible allegations against them by pupils.

Many teaching union members treat it like joining the RAC or AA; pay up and then forget about it. The few active members muttering over mugs of bad coffee in the corner of the staffroom at breaktime are a far cry from the mass shop-floor meetings of Britain's industrial past.

In this case, however, the rank and file have been roused by the fact that, having paid heavily into the superannuation scheme, in some cases for many years, they may see their final pensions drastically reduced. It's a reasonable point - particularly for part-timers and women who've had a career break, for whom the pension contributions are a significant expense - but closing the schools is not the way to win friends and influence people.

There is already much resentment among the general population about teachers' long holidays and job security; when it comes to a strike, it seems that being on a comfortable salary may have prevented the union types appreciating the plight of parents who will lose their hourly wage if they take the day off for childcare.

If the union officials are hoping for parents to give a mass display of solidarity and wholehearted support for their cause on Thursday, they may be sorely disappointed.

Quote of the week

2011-11-20T11:39:00.000Z

'You don’t believe in fairy tales do you?’

The Duke of Edinburgh, on being told by the managing director of a leading wind farm company that 'onshore wind farms were one of the most cost-effective forms of renewable energy'.

Toast of the week - Ilkley edition

2011-11-18T08:45:00.010Z

Three cheers this week for Gordon Eddison, leader of Otley Brass Band.

Mr Eddison is dismayed at the decline of the iconic Yorkshire song 'On Ilkley Moor baht 'at'. Shocked at the realisation that only a tiny minority of his school music pupils know the song, he has decided to do something about it.

It's an issue dear to our hearts at the Tavern because it enshrines one of our founding principles - there's nothing like a good song set to a well-known tune. A picturesque tale is told that the first line originated at a Wesleyan picnic, when a knowing question to a courting couple caught the imagination of one of the choir.

This choir member, who should also be included in today's toast (though as a Methodist he - or she - would certainly not have approved), then went home and - here's the clever bit - set to a well-known hymn tune the now-familiar tale of the young man who goes courting sans headgear and meets a nasty end.

The tune chosen was one widely used for the Christmas carol 'While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night'. A stroke of genius inspired the lyricist to replace the repeated triumphal line 'And glory shone around' with the refrain 'On Ilkley Moor baht 'at', a marriage of memorable imagery and euphonious articulation that was a joy to sing.

The result was a resounding success - not least because local choirs could immediately perform it with the harmonies familiar from their Sunday services. I'm inclined to think that, addictive as the practice is, those choristers probably made a habit of such compositions and this particularly ingenious example is the only survivor of a larger repertoire.

I have no personal claim on this song - though my sister, as an honorary Yorkshirewoman, has sung it many times - but I heartily support Mr Eddison's campaign to save from oblivion one of the classic examples of its type. Though his preoccupation is with the borrowed tune rather than the words, the whole deserves to be preserved as a model of the art.

Wheear 'ast tha bin sin' ah saw thee?
On Ilkla Mooar baht 'at
Wheear 'ast tha bin sin' ah saw thee?
Wheear 'ast tha bin sin' ah saw thee?
On Ilkla Mooar baht 'at
On Ilkla Mooar baht 'at
On Ilkla Mooar baht 'at

Tha's been a cooartin' Mary Jane
Tha's bahn' to catch thy deeath o` cowd

Then us'll ha' to bury thee
Then t'worms'll come an` eyt thee up

Then t'ducks'll come an` eyt up t'worms
Then us'll go an` eyt up t'ducks

Then us'll all ha' etten thee
That's wheear we get us ooan back

A horrible coincidence

2011-11-15T21:09:00.000Z

First there was this, from JuliaM in answer to a comment on her blog suggesting, "if you can't actually be a victim, try being "vulnerable"..."

'Quite! It's got to the point now that when I see that word, I think 'OMG! What have they done?' rather than 'OMG! What have they had done to them?'...'

...and then, a few hours later, there was this, from the BBC report on the 10-year-old boy abducted in Oldbury and imprisoned in a nearby flat:

'The address where the boy was found is owned by Adullam Homes Housing Association Limited which houses vulnerable people who are difficult to find accommodation for.'

A Song for Baroness Uddin - Reprise

2011-11-14T09:03:00.007Z

I love the expenses scandal - it's the story that just keeps on giving!

The latest twist in the tale is the ruling that Baroness Uddin cannot be prevented from taking her seat in the Lords when her suspension expires in April, even though she has not yet paid back any of the £125,000 to which she helped herself in dodgy expense claims, saying she cannot afford to do so.

Her intention, it seems, is to trot back to Westminster next Spring, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and claim £300 a day in tax-free allowances, out of which she could repay the lot in three years without touching her own substantial assets.

Since one assumes the allowances are meant solely to reimburse the Lords for out-of-pocket expenses incurred in attendance at the House, this would surely imply recidivism on a monumental scale.

It's been a while since we first immortalised her in song; I think another verse is called for...

She keeps a home down in Wapping,
Where subsidies help pay the rent,
A mansion in Bangladesh,
And don’t forget the flat in Kent,
Pressed for a remedy, she says she’s in penury,
But once she’s back in Westminster then all will be fine;
Three hundred quid a day she’ll get,
She’ll use your cash to pay her debt
Extraordinarily nice!
She's Manzila Uddin,
Baroness of Bethnal Green,
House of Lords expenses queen;
Her arrant greed will blow your mind.

Blistering Barnacles, your Holiness!

2011-11-12T09:59:00.011Z

In the midst of this week's financial Sturm und Drang, a surreal note was added by the official Vatican newspaper's ringing endorsement of Tintin as a 'Catholic hero'.

'Tintin is a Western knight of modern times, an unstained heart in an invulnerable body... Tintin is now all alone in initiating children into the values of chivalry.'

It's quite a publicity coup for the film that has had at least one die-hard fan frothing at the mouth; the Guardian's critic left the cinema 'too stunned and sickened to speak' at the violence perpetrated on his childhood favourite.

He is, however, something of a lone voice crying in a wilderness of merchandise, promotional tie-ins and media hype designed to bring to a wider British audience a character whose adventures have hitherto been largely confined to the bookcases of the francophile middle class.

This has opened a festering can of worms in the form of the reporter's earlier adventures - and in particular 'Tintin in the Congo'. For many years this book was unavailable in the UK - now, with massive sales expected on the back of the film, the publishers have issued the entire canon, leaving retailers with something of a problem.

Like an elderly uncle with embarrassing racist views, this book needs close supervision in the company of the impressionable young; it has thus been banished to the top shelf and forced to wear a sash proclaiming that it reflects the 'colonial attitudes of the time' and the 'stereotypes of the period which some people may find offensive'.

This is a red rag to the bull of L'Osservatore; 'can the book really perturb the young Britons of today, who live off the internet, video games and fish and chips ?'

The answer is, almost certainly, a resounding 'no', because it's doubtful that many will actually read it; have you tried to get the average child to read a book recently - even a comic-strip one? They're far more likely to immerse themselves in the Tintin console games - when they're not glued to the X-factor or facebook.

I suspect that the vast majority of people reading 'Tintin in the Congo' this week are journalists, activists and the professionally offended - and I wish them joy of it. Actually, as I remember from reading it long ago in France, the story's pretty weak - Herge didn't really get into his narrative stride until 'King Ottakar's Sceptre', eight years later.

As Herge matured - 'Tintin in the Congo' was, after all the unaided work of a 22-year-old - his hero metamorphosed into the character the Vatican praises, assisting left-wing rebels in South America, defending natives against colonial oppression and risking his life to rescue a Chinese friend.

And I'd love to see what the Daily Mail makes of 'The Castafiore Emerald', in which Tintin meets a group of gypsies forced by the authorities to camp at a rubbish tip and offers them free use of the meadow at the Captain's stately home, later defending them when they are unjustly suspected of theft.

But amid all the fuss over racist portrayal of the Congolese, something arguably more sinister has escaped notice. None of the recent articles deploring Herge's racist depiction of Africans has mentioned that there are some decidedly unflattering portrayals of Jewish bankers and financiers in the books - take a look, for example, at the sinister Bohlwinkel in 'The Shooting Star' (1942).

In the original version the character was a New York financier named Blumenstein; a subsequent revision relocated him to a fictitious country but could not eliminate the stereotypical caricature of the illustration - potentially as offensive, one might think, as the large-lipped African natives.

Although Herge later explicitly expressed regret about some of the opinions he held in his youth, the illustrations remain. It's an interesting lesson in victim hierarchy and the changing fashions of political correctness - and it raises some difficult questions in the Vatican's readiness to claim Tintin as a Catholic hero and a role model.

By bizarre coincidence for fans of the genre, Asterix has surfaced today in a fine post by Pavlov's Cat.

Leering O'Leary knows There's Always the Sun

2011-11-08T20:54:00.004Z

Oh dear! Michael O'Leary's done it again. In a perfect storm of tackiness, O'Leary chose an interview with the Sun - on the City pages - to put forward the idea of pay-per-view in-flight entertainment of a distinctly adult nature.

What Ryanair passengers need, according to O'Leary, is a pay-TV service allowing them to watch TV, play games, gamble or watch 'erotic movies' on smart-phones or tablets:
"I’m not talking about having it on screens on the back of seats for everyone to see; it would be on handheld devices. Hotels around the world have it, so why wouldn't we?"

It's not the first time O'Leary has put forward a controversial idea - remember his suggestion for all-standing flights? Or getting rid of the co-pilot? - but this one sets a new standard for grubbiness, particularly given this year's Ryanair calendar.

In a departure from the usual swimwear, the calendar features a bunch of Ryanair cabin crew who have apparently forgotten to put on their outer clothing, playing tennis or taking a walk in the park in an assortment of lingerie. This is familiar territory for Sun readers, of course, so, to be sure of the front page, O'Leary has had to go one better.

Because it's clear that O'Leary is not so much getting in touch with his inner Hugh Hefner as making sure of his continued place in the media spotlight. It's just that his method of choice - and his chosen vehicle - this time happens to be particularly sleazy.

In fact, I think this calls for another song (with apologies to The Stranglers):

Did you hear about O’Leary,
And his innovative idea
For the in-flight entertainment;
On discreet hand-held devices
The passengers get TV,
While films of an adult sort are
Played to order -
Nice’n’sleazy,
Mike O’Leary does it!

O’Leary he decided,
There’s no catering for the traveller,
With a charge for any luggage;
He spoke of savings many,
No co-pilot, porn aplenty,
Getting media attention
For his story,
Nice 'n' sleazy,
Mike O’Leary does it,
Mike O’Leary does it,
Mike O’Leary does it,
Does it every time!

So near and yet so far!

2011-11-08T09:09:00.002Z

Apocaholics around the world might just be forgiven for heaving a secret wistful sigh as the catchily-named asteroid 2005 YU55 passes by a mere 325,000km away tonight.

We've known about this one for a while, unlike the two that took everyone by surprise when they came much closer last year; I suggested then that a fly-by was an excellent excuse for a party but, frankly, in the middle of the working week in November, I'm not sure I can summon up the enthusiasm.

In today's climate of austerity, it's almost surreal to think that Lembit Opik once drew up realistic plans for a National Asteroid Agency to scan the skies for approaching doom - although, as I remember, he wasn't particularly clear on what, exactly, we could have done about it.

Global news coverage has shown up some interesting variations in tone; while the Boston Globe is decidedly upbeat - Big asteroid to make close, harmless zip by Earth - the Wall Street Journal is far less sanguine - Asteroid to Just Squeeze Past Earth.

Meanwhile the Irish Times is milking the situation for all it's worth - Astronomers focus on asteroid hurtling towards Earth - and the New Zealanders are in full prophet-of-doom mode with Close-call asteroid would have devastating impact if it hit - either there's a closet apocaholic on their editorial staff or someone's having a really bad day.

Emotional vampires and corporate bonding

2011-11-06T12:11:00.004Z

Somewhere in Hell, I hope there is a place reserved for the people who dream up corporate bonding strategies.

I'm not talking about Kriss Murrin and her freshness cupboard or the 'stir-fry' role-play (see "Today, Home Secretary, you're going to be a beansprout") - grisly as that sort of thing can be - but the really nasty ones, who persuade their victims to share their most traumatic childhood experiences with the group.

There's an example quoted in Sally Brampton's advice page in today's Sunday Times concerning a work course at which participants were required to 'talk through the highs and lows of our lives from as far back as we could remember'; in this case, reliving an old tragedy had a serious and lasting effect on the reader.

I know of a similar case in which a bank employee, as a result of one of these courses, underwent a drastic change of character that eventually cost him his marriage; the events he was led to recall included a serious childhood trauma, the resurgence of which had devastating consequences for him and his family.

The emotional incontinence that characterises popular culture has spilled over into the corporate sphere where, I suspect, it is doing untold damage. Managers fall for the new-age psychobabble of catharsis and re-birthing, secure in the knowledge that they won't be the ones hot-seated for simulated playground bullying or parental abuse.

This whole idea of repeatedly raking over unpleasant experiences rather than letting the passage of time bury them away has become the norm - barely is the ink dry on reports of a catastrophe before counsellors are being bussed in from all sides to 'help' the survivors; in our secular society they have rushed to fill the void left by the consolation of religion, as Subrosa has eloquently described elsewhere.

And it's a short step from there to the assumption that all trauma must be relived; that there is something wrong with those who try to ignore it and carry on. In the same way, amateur genealogists are mercilessly stripping away years of oblivion to bring to light events best left forgotten.

And finally there's the Jeremy Kyle effect - emotional voyeurism. I'm sure his audience feel a sense of bonding as they vicariously wallow in the pain paraded on stage for their delectation, but it takes a special sort of mind to conceive of using the same phenomenon in a corporate setting.

Bottoms up!

2011-11-05T13:00:00.000Z

Here at the Tavern, we have been celebrating the harvest season with a succession of cider-brews. Now the last few apples are dropping from the trees and we have a dozen or so gallons already bottled ready to see us through the winter.

And, following an entertaining and informative exchange of comments on home-distilling courtesy of the redoubtable Leg-Iron, we have been considering turning some of it into something more interesting.

This is, of course a civil offence - though not a criminal one; unless we blow ourselves up in the process, the knock at the door won't be the boys in blue but HMRC's finest demanding their pound of flesh (or rather £20 duty a litre plus a £250 fine).

Leg-Iron suggests freeze-distilling, the method used in New England to make their notorious applejack; this seems to be a method popular with scientists, presumably because they have access to large freezers and, being of an experimental turn of mind, are less likely to worry about the potential methanol content.

Should winter temperatures be suitably severe, we might give it a try. However, the spouse has found, in a book on self-sufficiency, an alternative method involving beer heated in a large copper, a bowl on top to condense the vapour and a floating basin to catch the drips of what it optimistically calls whisky.

It then goes on to warn that distillation may not be legal in your part of the world. Fear not, however; the book has some helpful advice on the subject:

"If some inquisitive fellow comes down the drive, it doesn't take a second to be boiling clothes in the copper, making porridge in the floating basin and bathing the baby in the big flat dish."

It might, admittedly, take us a bit of time to borrow a baby from somewhere, but I feel the writer's attitude to authority strikes exactly the right note - after all, where is the justification for fining householders for preparing their own garden produce for their own consumption?

Whether in sparkling cider or home-made apple brandy, I'll continue to raise a glass to the freedom of the individual and confusion to the revenue men.

Cheers, one and all!

One small step for man...

2011-11-04T09:27:00.000Z

Don't get me wrong; I think the Mars 500 mission has an important role to play in the development of long-range space-travel - after all, this blog was in on the start of the mission 520 days ago. It's just that...well... I mean for goodness' sake!

Watch LIVE as the hatch is opened! See six men step out from a converted submarine in a Moscow car park!

After all, it's hardly Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, is it? As far as I can see, the only people interested in seeing them emerge, blinking, into the daylight would be their families and friends.

Of more significance, perhaps, is the fact that we can watch the event. In just over 40 years - half a single lifetime - we have gone from relatively few privileged souls huddled round black-and-white televisions to a world population able to watch live action in full colour on TVs, computers and even phones almost anywhere on earth.

There's a certain irony in the fact that, while the moon has returned to its unattainable status, at least for the time being, and we are, in any case, almost enclosed in a cosmic cage of our own making, technology has significantly shrunk the Earth, at least in terms of communication.

However, there's having the power to say something and there's having something worth saying. Had the intrepid six actually been to Mars, there might well be a media frenzy beyond all imagining at their return; as it is, despite the best efforts of the European Space Agency, the story remains resolutely low-key.

Of course, that's before anyone has told the European contingent exactly what's been going on in their absence - perhaps it might be worth tuning in after all to hear the Frenchman and the Italian reacting to that.

The sledgehammer, the rapier or the firebomb?

2011-11-02T14:13:00.014Z

Spinoza at Rational Islam? today raises the issue of free speech with reference to the fire-bombing of the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Some of the cartoons can be found here - courtesy of the Pub Philosopher; I have to admit that I don't find them particularly funny and the style is one I consider horribly vulgar but that is, of course, not the issue. Meanwhile Longrider has also entered the fray at Orphans of Liberty with a well-considered post on the subject.

Here in the less intellectual environment of the Tavern, our musings have taken a more melodic turn...

To make fun of the Prophet takes men who are bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear;
The latest example is Charlie Hebdo
And its issue concerning sharia.

Of political satire and scurrilous news
The magazine's made a career
But cartoons of Mohammed and critical views
Of Islamists have now cost it dear.

On Twitter and Facebook the faithful complain
Saying editor Charb went too far;
And of course France's free speech allows them a way
To explain just why 'Je ne veux pas...'

Though Monsieur Charbonnier's not one to hide
When it comes to a verbal fracas,
It was not with debate his opponents replied
But with petrol alight in a jar.

There is always a risk when you want to make fun
Of religions that people hold dear,
But who's to decide if a cartoon or pun
Is high satire or merely a sneer?

Whoever it is who is taking a stand
There is one thing that has to be clear;
The unwritten sign of a civilized land
Is the freedom to speak without fear.

For those who were not raised on the strains of Abdul Abulbul Amir (I must get round to a post of Pa Peachum's favourites one day), the tune can be found here:

Fish Spas and the Giant Squid

2011-10-28T17:25:00.004+01:00

It would be fair to say that our nearest town is not a feast for the eyes. A few misguided tourists do find their way here but, after a fruitless search for historical attractions or picturesque scenes, they generally end up drifting round the shopping centre like everyone else.

It is not a prosperous area; figures show a depressingly low per capita income and a significant number of people on benefits - not surprising when part of the town has achieved national notoriety as 'Chav Central'. That aspect is mirrored in the abundance of pound shops and a prominently-placed pawnbrokers.

And yet a stroll round the town provides an interesting counterpoint. Within the space of ten minutes, you can count six hairdressers - of the unisex trendy and expensive kind - as well as a tanning salon, two tattoo parlours, four nail bars and, as of this week, a fish pedicure shop.

Few of these establishments cater for the shy and retiring; the emphasis in on treatments in the shop window for all to see - perhaps part of the attraction is being seen to have your roots/nails/feet done, making it the utimate in conspicuous consumption.

After all, none of these things comes cheap - and there's the puzzle. In a town where, we are told, belts have been tightened to wasp-like proportions, where do these customers come from? For customers there are in abundance, smirking out from their shop window vantage points with their hair in foil or their feet in a fishtank.

There is only one conclusion; that the official figures don't even begin to tell the story. That, far removed from the headlines, a black economy is thriving and expanding so fast that businesses like these can open up in prime locations in the current economic climate and be sure of a steady income via the hip pockets of the locals.

The scale of it is a classic 'known unknown' - we are aware it's out there, but the scale of it is a complete mystery and there's no way to deal with it; like the giant squid of legend, the monster lurks in the depths of society, extending its tentacles in every direction - unknowable, unquantifiable and potentially dangerous.

"Les QI, ont-ils brusquement baissés alors que j’étais absent?"

2011-10-26T11:21:00.000+01:00

Remember these chaps?

Six intrepid astro/cosmonauts have spent the past 513 days on a simulated mission to Mars in the interests of space research. For over a year and a half, their only contact with Earth has been through the official communications link.

While they have produced plenty of media-friendly diary entries and accounts of their situation, all their information on events outside has come via Mission Control, where psychologists have been employed to ensure their emotional well-being and equilibrium.

How likely is it, then, that the two Europeans involved - a Frenchman and an Italian - have been allowed to follow the development of the growing financial crisis in the eurozone? What possible good could come of describing the situation to men in their position?

So in a week or so, Romain and Diego will emerge, blinking, into the spotlight of European media attention and find out that it's all been going to the dogs - and just to complicate matters, thanks to an ill-timed grimace captured by the world's cameras, relations between Berlusconi and Sarkozy are less than cordial.

I imagine that, sometime next week, on the outskirts of Moscow, there will be a scene not entirely unlike the one in Aliens when a newly-defrosted Ripley discovers just how disastrously things have gone wrong in her absence.

And like Ripley, one imagines, our intrepid heroes will find themselves asking the question,"Did IQ's just drop sharply while I was away?"

Rhyl-life drama

2011-10-25T19:39:00.002+01:00

Is there, I wonder, a category in the Darwin awards for those who, having reproduced, attempt to rectify the situation by removing theselves and their adult offspring from the gene pool in a startlingly novel and unintelligent way?

If so, honourable mention is surely due to the woman who, accompanied by her 15-year-old son, was picked up drifting off the coast of Rhyl this morning. It takes a truly spectacular lack of common sense to take to the sea in an inflatable ring in late October with an offshore breeze and an outgoing tide.

The RNLI are no strangers to the idiocy of their fellow-man (and woman) over bank holidays and Summer weekends, but they might have thought that by now, with the sea at 11 degrees and the air about the same, they could forget about the terminally incompetent and concentrate on rescuing the victims of genuine emergencies.

Anyway, all this started me wondering whether the RNLI have some sort of award system of their own for this kind of thing - after all, they probably see more of it than anyone else (with the possible exception of staff in A&E). You'll find some of the sort of thing I mean here under the label RNLI or sea rescue.

If they do, I'm sure it is kept under wraps - bad publicity and all that - but I'd like to think that, despite the serious nature of the risks involved, they do see a certain black humour in it all.

Interference

2011-10-25T13:59:00.005+01:00

Hey - where'd the internet go? Followers of the Tavern gossip may have noticed things being rather sporadic round here, at least during the mornings; this is partly due to the internet cutting out every morning for a couple of hours.

We tried re-booting everything in sight repeatedly to no avail; the ISP couldn't help either. Finally, this morning, we worked out the answer and identified the culprit...

It's Peter the Postman! Good morning, Peter, are you having a busy day? Lots of letters for the people of Camberwick Green?

Peter the postman is a very busy man
He parks up his Mazda anywhere he can,
Sets off on his round taking his big red sack
And the Tavern's lost the internet until he marches back.

No more casual surfing, blogging has to stop,
No way to research or browse, to comment or to shop;
With wireless interference or something of the sort
The Mazda blocks our internet and leaves our tempers fraught.

Seriously, though, has anyone else experienced this? Is it something to do with the car electronics or do the Royal Mail have some kind of sinister radio or security device? Or are they simply trying to make us abandon e-mail and buy a stamp?

For those who don't remember Camberwick Green (and as a nostalgic treat for those who do with affection), here's the original:

Update: It's definitely the car alarm. We've had a chat with him and tried it out; what's more, he's been having internet problems at home for the same reason.

'Make room! Make room!'

2011-10-20T21:06:00.006+01:00

Much of the room in question is being rapidly created between Tessa Jowell and the Intergenerational Foundation, who must surely hold some sort of record in the cats and pigeons department.

In a matter of hours, the Foundation's report suggesting that the over-60's should vacate their 'under-occupied' homes for the public good has caused a furore of national proportions, not to mention a certain amount of debate in the blogosphere - see the Moose, Longrider, Angry Exile amd the Cynical Tendency (links in sidebar), to name but a few.

Meanwhile, totalcatholic.com has got something straight from the horse's mouth - or possibly another equine orifice altogether; reading in the Mail that Tessa Jowell had sponsored the launch of the report in a House of Commons hospitality room, Joseph Kelly tweeted on the subject and was answered by Jowell in person.

"The Intergenerational Foundation is a new charity dedicated to promoting fairness between generations which is located in my constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood. I supported the launch of their first major report in the House of Commons yesterday as their local MP."

Nothing to do with New Labour then - at least not now it's turned out to be a total can of worms and potentially politically damaging. Drawing, perhaps, on the fuss over grammar schools, they must have thought that the huddled masses would rise as one to evict the complacent bourgeoisie, completely overlooking the fact that the elderly dogs in mangers include a fair proportion of the nation's much-loved grandparents.

They also failed to grasp that a substantial proportion of us have an inexplicable aversion to being told what to do - inexplicable, at least, to the Guardian's Comment is Free, where terms like 'hoarding', 'squatting' and 'rattling around' are bandied about with predicatable venom.

Meanwhile, over at the Telegraph, Esther Rantzen has shoved her oar in with a piece describing how she downsized from her family home - nauseatingly described as a 'museum of love' - because she felt she no longer had 'a god-given right to the place'. (I have to admit to being baffled by that one - I don't recall the Almighty being involved in any property transactions I've made.)

If she's trying to ingratiate herself with the IF, she might have done better to leave out the bit about the house being empty now that, her three children having left home, the au pair has moved out too. After all, what is this whole business but thinly disguised class war, as the Guardian comment amply demonstrates?

The Foundation, apparently, will generously allow you to have a spare bedroom. This surely means that a couple ought to be permitted to occupy a three-bedroom house - assuming, of course, that the IF would not go so far as to insist on dictating sleeping arrangements - and pressure to move on would apply only to couples with four bedrooms or more, or, in other words, the better-off.

Meanwhile, the Foundation soundly castigates those who have merely endured the passage of time but says nothing of the increase in the number of divorced parents. I know several children who have two bedrooms each - one with each parent; the arrangement is actually recommended where possible to help children cope with the divorce and avoid friction with step-siblings.

Then there's the matter of second and third homes - some villages round here are virtual ghost towns during the working week; half or more of the local cottages are owned by Londoners, many of whom can be heard in the village pub on Sundays braying about their jobs in the broadcast media. Funnily enough, the news reports haven't mentioned that one.

And Labour's policy of getting 50% of the population into university has meant that vast swathes of family homes have been transformed into student lodgings, sometimes whole streets at a time - no mention of that either, oddly enough. In fact, the whole thing is so biased and highly selective that I initially suspected it might be a practical joke.

Sadly it appears not to be, and I find the implications intensely worrying. The title of this post is from a Harry Harrison novel, in which over-population has led to repeated sub-division of living space as people are forced to move into anywhere they can find.

Hoarding space becomes a crime against the state, and the elderly are put under increasing pressure to downsize, eventually taking it to its logical conclusion. In 1973, they made a film based on the story.

It's called 'Soylent Green'.

Drama at the End-of-the-Pier Show

2011-10-15T19:57:00.009+01:00

Sometimes you read a story and the word 'compensation' hovers, unspoken, in the air. This one is crying out for comment all the way through: I'm no JuliaM, but I'll give it my best shot...

A CHILD was inches away from falling off Clacton Pier, a family claims.

*gets popcorn*

Oscar Weston, aged 20 months, was playing at the seaward end of the pier when he came close to a gap in the fence preventing people falling into the waves.

20 months - that would be rather less than two of your Earth years. Ye gods! The child is barely out of nappies - or possibly not even that - and he's let loose to run around at the far end of Clacton pier, an environment that has full-grown adults gripping tightly onto the rails (or is that just me?).

Meanwhile, let us pause a moment to savour the poetic flourish of 'the waves'; the Gazette, it seems, is harbouring a reporter who dreams of something altogether more creative. He evidently also has a keen sense of the dramatic:

His granddad Mark was watching and called out to Oscar, before rushing over to block off the gap with his leg and taking him away.

Well, thank goodness for that! A responsible adult intervened to protect a child from danger; where I come that's known as childcare, but perhaps they do things differently in Clacton. Meanwhile, the grandfather is in no doubt of hs own heroic role in this near-tragedy:

“Oscar is well-behaved and luckily he stopped when I shouted across to him. If I hadn’t been able to put my leg across he would have drowned."

More poetic licence here, perhaps - the gap in question being easily bridged by one man and his leg: I know toddlers aren't very big, but they don't tend to dive head-first through apertures like this...

Handy, isn't it, how the drama of a narrowly-missed drowning prevents anyone - apart from cynics like me, of course - asking the obvious question; why was the child so far from his supervising adults that the nearest one had to 'shout across' and 'rush over'.

Nearly two decades ago, the abduction of Jamie Bulger sparked off a national demand for reins for toddlers; for months afterwards, nearly every small child out walking in public was firmly tethered. The fuss caused us much bafflement - the Artful Dodger* at three was regularly secured with both reins and wrist-link on shopping trips, having extricated himself from each separately on occasion.

The use of such devices seems to have fallen into abeyance once again - in Britain at least; I'm told they are still common in Germany and Holland, though in the freedom-loving US-of-A, a passer-by once threatened to report my sister to the authorities for 'keeping that poor child on a leash like an animal'.

Take a trip through any busy town centre today and you'll be treated to the heart-stopping sight of free-range toddlers hopping on and off the kerb while their mothers bulldoze heedlessly ahead with their pushchairs - with supreme irony, you can be sure those same mothers would scream blue murder if they saw a strange adult approach one of their children.

At least in this case, all seems to have ended well; the family have, one hopes, learned a valuable lesson and the readers of the Gazette have enjoyed a little bit of vicarious jeopardy; under the circumstances and in today's sensation-hungry culture, it seems almost churlish of the Pier's management to adopt quite such a low-key response:

"...an incident was reported to a ride operator regarding a hole in the fence of the pier perimeter. Once notified maintenance staff attended the area and carried out repairs immediately."

Still, if, by any chance, you were thinking of putting in an offer for neighbouring Walton Pier - currently on the market: a snip at £2.5 million - it might be best to remember the Weston family and make sure you put up a sign; 'Under-5s should be kept on a lead at all times'.

* Whose Houdini-esque feats included escaping on his first day at playgroup and setting off for home - though, unlike several parents recently, I never felt the need to take the story to the national press. Warhol certainly hit the nail on the head as far as fame is concerned...

Lost, stolen or strayed - the work ethic

2011-10-14T10:16:00.002+01:00

It's something that seems to be sorely lacking in Britain today; any foray into the area of health, social services or local government is likely to furnish an abundance of examples of the sort of worker whose output approximates that of the office rubber plant.

It's nothing new; thirty years ago, as an office temp at the local council, I was taken aside and warned not to complete more than a (derisory) set amount of work in a day or the unions wouldn't like it. However, many among the increasing numbers of working mothers (by courtesy of Harriet Harman) have taken the ethos to their hearts, allowing them to concentrate on important matters like arranging their children's birthday parties in office time.

Having had reason to deal with several of these agencies recently, I have overheard far too many discussions about 'Barbie theme or Disney?' or whether Hayley should have Ugg boots at eight; one woman filled in a vital form in front of me (wrongly) while booking her daughter's haircut on the phone. When I called to complain about the resulting problems (which took me several months and £5,000 to remedy), I was told she had been promoted.

That is not to deny that there are many hard-working and conscientious public sector workers out there. I wonder, though, whether the idle have more time to spare for office politics; those who make the others look sloppy might well find themselves first in the firing line. And as proponents of the procrastinatory art travel further up the food chain, it becomes the office norm, until our public sector makes the notorious 1970s print workers look like a colony of ants.

All this musing was prompted by a recent exchange at Subrosa's on a delightful parody by Tedious Tantrums , which reminded me of this favourite of Pa Peachum's:

The stouter I cobble, the less I earn
For the soles ne'er crack nor the uppers turn;
The better my work the less my pay
But work can only be done one way...

Stolen - fifteen minutes of fame

2011-10-12T08:54:00.003+01:00

A worthy role-model for our times has emerged in the story of Rob Sloan, who came in third in the Kielder Marathon last weekend.

Mr Sloan, who clocked up an impressive 2 hours 51 minutes, told TV reporters he had given it 'everything he could' as he posed with his medal for the cameras.

All was not as it seemed, however. At the 20-mile mark, Sloan had flagged down a passing spectator bus and hitched a lift for the remaining six miles, hiding behind a tree near the finish line until the other runners came into view.

Waiting until two had passed him - presumably coming first would have led to too much scrutiny - he simply joined the race in their wake, coming in ahead of the runner who had been in third place since the start.

There is something familiar about this for us in the Tavern; the Urchin's school has an annual cross-country competition in which his ability to get soaked, mud-encrusted or completely lost while attempting illicit short-cuts has become legendary.

Had a bus been available, I am certain the Urchin would have flagged it down at once, though I doubt Sloan was also equipped with the Urchin's running accessory of choice - a large packet of Kettle Chips hidden in his tracksuit hood (also useful for bribing staff at checkpoints).

But it is not Rob Sloan, lazy and deceitful as his behaviour was, who embodies the spirit of 21st-century Britain. Consider the order of priorities in this quote from the man who actually came third:

‘At the end of the day, as funny as it seems, he’s stolen my spot on the podium, my TV interview and my third place medal.’

When Warhol predicted that in the future everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes, he didn't foresee that people would come to regard those minutes on TV as their personal property - indeed as a right.

It's not, these days, the winning that counts; it's the TV interview afterwards.

Lashings of SASS

2011-10-10T15:11:00.001+01:00

We at the Tavern have no cause to love Professor Sir Nicholas Wald, purveyor of pills and potions to all regardless of casualties from side-effects; the needs of the many may outweigh the needs of the few but that's small consolation if you happen - through no fault of your own - to be one of the few.

And now he's back; according to the Sunday Times, he is proposing a 'SASS' tax - on Salt, Alcohol, Sugar and Saturated fat; anything the Danes can do, it seems, we can do better.

He believes that if manufacturers are compelled by taxes to take all the 'unhealthy' ingredients out of processed food, they will produce 'healthier' alternatives, thus working to prevent obesity.

It's not entirely clear what is to replace the SASS; perhaps he intends manufacturers to increase the use of artifical sweeteners such as aspartame. A minority of people would suffer unpleasant side-effects from the chemical but, as the Professor has amply demonstrated, that's fine as long as they aren't statistically significant.

What baffles me is why he thinks this would work. After all, taxes on cigarettes have been rising for years, yet the fag-and-pushchair combo is everywhere on the local streets. People eat SASS because they like the taste; put up the price and they'll grumble, but they'll still search out food they like - that's why there is an obesity epidemic after all.

It's the over-availability of fast food, fizzy drinks and confectionery that has to be tackled - that and the lack of cooking skills among today's young adults. Insisting that manufacturers make diet versions of everything (the sort of food known in the Tavern as FOFF [F*** Off Fat Free]) will increase production costs so avoiding the tax will have no financial benefits.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why the Professor has stuck his oar in on this one; after all, he's planning to mass-medicate the lot of us with polypills anyway, whether we like it or not. As a Professor of medicine, tax is surely outside his remit - let alone deciding which of our small pleasures should be taxed beyond our reach; St Emilion? Vintage Cheddar? Sachertorte?

In any case, I'm not going to trust a man who's happy to write off a proportion of patients for what he considers the greater good.

On weighty matters

2011-10-08T09:33:00.006+01:00

I am a Cheddar cheese.

No, honestly! Just bear with me for a moment.

With all this talk of 'fat taxes', I had a highly topical experience this week. I've been advised to join a gym to sort out a dodgy shoulder, so I duly unearthed a dusty pair of trainers from the back of the wardrobe and trotted along in my best lamb-to-the-slaughter fashion.

I have to admit that the gym is not my natural habitat; I find myself pondering awkward questions like "If I'm making all this effort, why is the machine plugged into the mains?" or "Wouldn't it be nicer to go for a walk outside?" or, mostly, just "Why?"

However, on my best behaviour, I walked into what Jeremy Clarkson once described as 'a room crammed with Steves busy lifting things up and putting them down again' to meet my 'Fitness Consultant' (who was, inevitably, a superbly-honed specimen of humanity expressly designed to lower the self-esteem of mere mortals).

I wasn't allowed to play with the iron bars and hamster-wheels straight away, though; the first thing they wanted was a fitness assessment, for which I was wired up to an assortment of nameless and expensive-looking gadgets. Then it was back to the office for what I believe in lifestyle TV is called 'the reveal'.

Actually I'm not in such bad shape; all the figures in the glossy report were printed in green - all but one, that is. It turns out I have the same percentage fat content as a good Cheddar cheese. As a result, there were angry announcements in red all over the printout saying, basically, "Watch out, the Grim Reaper's on his way!"

Amid all the dire warnings about diabetes and heart disease was the actual percentage figure, so when I got home, naturally I googled it. And here's the thing; I exceed the 'healthy percentage' of body fat for my profile by a mere half a per cent, rounded up.

0.3% less and I would be in the 'acceptable' range; no red lines, no dire warnings, green lights all the way. And what's the margin for error for a calculating machine that gets all its data from sticking electrodes to the wrist and ankle of the recumbent victim and measuring the resistance?

Small wonder, then, that my 'Consultant' hardly batted an eyelid at these woeful prognostications; after all, I'd managed to squeeze in through the door without a struggle and - using the other fashionable statistic - my BMI is unequivocally normal.

Now, I'd like to believe that all these parameters are determined by dedicated, white-coated lab rats hunched over their microscopes for the good of humanity but I suspect that, somewhere, there is a roomful of statisticians who have arbitrarily decided that a fraction of a percentage more or less will divide the sheep from the goats.

If you have the body fat percentage of cottage cheese, you're among the ranks of the saved; if it's Roquefort, then you're on the road to perdition. Forget St Peter and the pearly gates; we're right back to Ancient Egypt and the Weighing of the Heart.

In view of which, it's probably a good thing that, according to the bizarrely omniscient Frankestein electrode machine, my skeleton and internal organs apparently weigh exactly what they should.

Flushed with entitlement

2011-10-06T13:06:00.003+01:00

More details have been emerging of events in Bretch Hill, where residents hijacked a lorry-load of water bottles sent in after the mains supply failed (see previous post), including the somewhat pointless headline:

'Banbury’s water supply nearly back on'

Thames Water have been criticised for failing to organise distribution properly - though it sounds as if the best research for the operation might have been to watch a few of Hollywood's offerings on transporting valuable cargo through bandit country.

It certainly sounds as if it was every man for himself once the driver had been stopped; according to an eye-witness, "There were people filling cars and vans with bottled water, and then coming back for more".

The total amount delivered in 24 hours equates to 47 litres for every household - surely enough for a family to survive, it would be riches beyond belief for the thousands globally who have to walk for miles to find clean drinking water (and who, moreover, don't have the option of abundant soft drinks available in the local shops).

So why the piratical assault on the emergency supplies? It turns out that, despite their novel notions of fair play, the inhabitants of Bretch Hill are mighty fastidious:

"You don't realise how much water you need to do everyday things. It takes three two-litre bottles just to flush the toilet."

Now I understand that flushing is not always optional, but the suspiciously exact match to the capacity of modern cisterns suggest that the speaker carefully topped up the plumbing to its full capacity with bottled water every time - meanwhile, I wonder what happened to his used washing and washing up water.

Would he, one wonders, be so profligate with clean drinking water had he had to buy it himself from the local shop like the intended recipients thwarted of their delivery? And isn't this just the perfect example of the attitude engendered by something for nothing?

Nine meals away from anarchy...

2011-10-05T09:07:00.003+01:00

..but only one drink, it appears.

When pumps at a local reservoir failed, depriving a large housing estate of its supply, the authorities in Banbury responded by supplying 68,000 bottles of water to the area - the equivalent of twelve litres for every man, woman and child living in the estate.

Remember the '76 drought? All those people standing patiently in line, waiting to fill their bottles from the bowsers at street corners? Think again; welcome to Great Britain, 2011 AD*.

A water delivery driver in Oxfordshire was forced to abandon his supply of emergency bottles after he was threatened by a group of residents.

The contractor concerned was outnumbered by a group who verbally abused him and refused to allow him to take his delivery to another part of the estate - physically removing the bottles from his truck.

Desperate people taking desperate measures, perhaps? Well, not exactly; other areas of the town were unaffected and there was plenty of bottled water in local supermarkets. In any case, according to an eye-witness:

“Kids have been coming down the street nicking water and throwing it over themselves.”

Bretch Hill does, it's fair to say, enjoy a certain notoriety; local bus shelters have an average life of around two weeks, and elderly ladies returning from their weekly bingo night need security guards to protect them from being robbed of their meagre winnings by local teenagers.

This, however, is something new and more sinister; the original estate population, once a proud and self-sufficient community (and I mean that in the real sense), is aging fast and what were once a minority group of teenage thugs have grown up with little sense of social responsibility.

There's something deeply depressing about the sight of police supervising the distribution of bottled water because the locals are incapable of behaving like civilised human beings; sadly, if the riots are anything to go by, unless something radical happens soon, this may well be the future of Britain.

*For anyone upset by this dating system, I'd like to point out that a)I'm an atheist but that's the system I grew up with and I'm used to it and b) today is Wednesday, or rather Woden's Day; I don't believe in Woden and I bet you don't either, so what do you want me to do about that?

Invading the past

2011-10-04T19:29:00.006+01:00

Sally Magnusson, what have you done?

Radio 4 has been proclaiming the return of the series 'Tracing Your Roots', a programme which encourages amateur genealogists to investigate their family histories. Their website invites listeners to contact them with 'family history questions'; those selected will have the assistance of programme researchers to unearth hidden details from their families' pasts.

They start out innocuously enough, asking whether you've hit a brick wall trying to find out more about where family money disappeared to, or came from, but there's something slightly sinister about the tone of the next part of the invitation:

We're also interested in stories of captivity - not for crimes, but perhaps a relative was held against their will in an asylum, convent...or elsewhere.

Today's broadcast included one such case; a child placed in a mental institution for life. The listener discovered that the baby's mother - her own grandmother - had had an affair and, to avoid being disinherited for her misconduct, arranged for the resulting illegitimate child (later found to be brain-damaged) to be hidden away and adopted.

One hopes for the sake of family harmony the listener has no living relatives on her grandmother's side: "I felt a little bit of anger towards my grandmother," she said. "She came out as a calculating, selfish woman."

This wasn't, however, going to stop her sharing the story with the rest of the family - and the listeners of Radio 4. After all, it has all the ingredients the programme is looking for - extra-marital sex, financial machinations, an elaborate deception and plenty of human suffering.

There is a dark side to this prurient desire to unearth bygone sensational events; the resurgence of a story that is intriguing - or even morbidly titillating - for today's curious researcher may mean reliving unspeakable trauma for those who were directly affected by its consequences.

With the blessing of presenter Sally Magnusson and her team, amateur genealogists are bombarding distant relatives with demands to know the details of devastating events from the past. As regular readers may remember, my family has experience of this (The Cruelty of the Curious) and, a year on, I can report that the persistence of these people - newly retired, computer-literate and with plenty of time on their hands - knows no bounds.

One they have wind of a story, they will pursue it regardless of the feelings of those involved and without respect for family privacy; in fact they manage to project an air of outrage and resentment that you may be unfairly witholding from them all the gory details of the tragic circumstances you witnessed as a child.

If you have never been hounded by such people, count yourself fortunate and hope that you never will be. The internet has brought it to epidemic proportions and there's more to come as long as people continue to respond to invitations like this:

Finally, is there an intriguing name change in your family history? We'd be keen to find out why.

Ducking and driving

2011-10-01T10:42:00.002+01:00

The Quiet Man, prompted by a Telegraph article suggesting that young people are deterred from driving by the behaviour of other motorists, offers an alternative view:

'There may be a few young people put off driving by other angry drivers, but the real reason a lot of young people don't learn to drive is cost.'

With a learner driver in the family and citing people he knows on jobseekers' allowance, he is certainly in a position to appreciate just how much financial outlay is required to get a new driver on the road - a law-abiding one, at least.

For the less scrupulous, however, the burden of tuition, tests, insurance and tax is less of an imposition. A few miles from the Tavern is an estate notorious for collisions involving unqualified and uninsured drivers; this almost certainly explains the extortionate insurance premiums generated by our postcode.

In a scenario that is becoming increasingly familiar in our society, the lawbreakers have free rein while the more conscientious lose out on opportunities because they cannot afford the expense - in part because the costs are higher thanks to those who avoid them.

According to the Telegraph article, Twenty years ago, 48 per cent of those aged 17-20 could drive. Now, it’s 35 per cent. Frankly, I'm surprised it's that high, given the GCSE pass rates and the difficulty of the new theory test; there must be significant correlation between academic performance and the ability to pass a driving test.

Unfortunately for those of us who obey the rules, however, that 35% is presumably the proportion of 17-20 year-olds out there who have full licences (and by extension, probably insurance); the number actually on the roads is quite another matter.

While we're on the subject, spare a thought for a friend whose formidable mother had unwisely laid on a lavish family gathering - plus new girlfriend - to greet his triumphant return from his driving test just before his 18th birthday. Entering to the sound of champagne corks and cheers, he panicked and found himself unable to tell them that he had actually failed.

He went along with the deception for several weeks, having secretly booked a re-test. However, his mother finally insisted on him collecting her from the station and, following an incident in which a signpost definitely came off worst, he was picked up and charged. Fortunately for my friend, his mother (a well-known and vociferous pillar of the local community) appears to have been accepted as mitigating circumstances.

Eight minutes of heaven

2011-09-29T08:32:00.002+01:00

No time to post today; instead, should you have eight minutes to spare, sit down, relax and enjoy the view...

( For film enthusiasts, this has the added bonus of being forever associated with John Boorman's ground-breaking Zardoz.)

For full-screen, you may need to view it at source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ8tmkDLkLs&feature=related

Toast of the week

2011-09-27T21:55:00.003+01:00

This week, we in the Tavern are raising a tankard to not one but two latter-day worthies.

First there is former pathologist Professor Green, whose cynical view of his fellow-man takes some beating;

"I think if the heavens were striking in cases of spontaneous combustion then there would be a lot more cases."

There would, presumably, also be rather more people in church of a Sunday - for all but the most altruistic, there is a certain satisfaction in the prospect of divine retribution waiting to strike down those who trespass against us.

Increased church attendance would definitely please our second hero, Alderman Alan Graham from Bangor, Co. Down;

A farmer who allowed one of the world's best-selling pop stars to film in his grain field told her to cover up after she stripped down for a video.

In our celebrity-obsessed age, there is something wonderfully refreshing about a man who not merely professes ignorance of a major pop star but has no qualms about ignoring her attendant media circus and asking her to behave properly when on his land.

"I thought it was inappropriate. I requested them to stop and they did," he explained. "I wish no ill will against Rihanna and her friends. Perhaps they could acquaint themselves with a greater God."

While I don't share Alderman Graham's religious beliefs, I salute his refusal to compromise his principles in the face of a celebrity, her entourage and an audience of onlookers.

Alderman Graham and Professor Green, your health!

Protest or provocation?

2011-09-26T16:05:00.005+01:00

The deed is done; the youngest scion of Clan Macheath has been cast forth to seek his fortune in the world - or at least in a northern university town.

The last affectionate goodbyes said ("Will you two just stop fussing and go!"), we set off yesterday with heavy hearts and lightened suspension in the newly-emptied family pantechnicon, hoping to be home in time for a late lunch.

No such luck, however; we had scarcely got up to cruising speed on the motorway when a car in the next lane suddenly lurched sideways. It was only after taking rapid evasive action that we had leisure to see what had distracted the driver - a column of motorcyclists several hundred-strong pouring out of the services onto on the opposite carriageway.

For the next hour or so, we had to contend not only with delays caused by similar processions of bikers on our own carriageway but also the erratic driving of motorists ahead of us watching the oncoming convoys or swerving to avoid slow-moving bikes.

The radio traffic news mentioned in passing a 'biker protest' but gave no details; it was only after getting home that we were able to piece together the fact that this was part of a nationwide go-slow, with thousands of motorcylists travelling at 45mph on sections of Britain's motorways in protest at EU legislation.

If this was meant to hit the national press, it has drastically failed; although there are some news reports out there, almost all - deliberately or otherwise - focus on one particular region, mentioning in passing that there were other groups out too. For those travelling through several of these regions in succession, however, the disruption was significant.

While I respect anyone's right to stage a protest against legislation they feel to be unjust - I've even done a bit of it myself in the past* - I have to admit to being a bit baffled by this one, which seems to have achieved nothing but considerable inconvenience - and possibly risk - to a large number of increasingly tired, stressed and hungry motorists, most of whom had no idea what the protest was about.

Even when I do not agree with what you say, I will stand by your right to say it - but really, there are limits!

*See 'Confessions of a former Labour acolyte'

Fire from Heaven in the Emerald Isle

2011-09-23T17:52:00.002+01:00

(No, it's not UARS this time; if that's what you're after, you want the post before this one.)

Here at the Tavern, we are always interested in manifestations of the mysterious and unexplained; today's news has furnished a prime example in the verdict handed down by a coroner in Ireland.

A man who burned to death in his home died as a result of spontaneous combustion, an Irish coroner has ruled.

"This fire was thoroughly investigated and I'm left with the conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation," he said.

Anyone who read 'Fire From Heaven' - the definitive popular book on the subject - as a teenager will instantly recognize the classic signs; an elderly victim, a nearby heat source and the surroundings relatively untouched despite the high temperatures that consumed the body.

Spontaneous human combustion has long been acknowledged as a phenomenon - no need to mention here Dickens' use of it as a plot device (or, for that matter, its appearance in 'This is Spinal Tap') - though this is thought to be the first case of its sort in Ireland.

I refer anyone seeking further information to what may be the most awesome TV documentary ever - 'Bruce Dickinson Investigates Spontaneous Human Combustion'.

Meanwhile, a dissenting voice has appeared in the form of retired professor of pathology Mike Green, who claims that there must have been an ignition source of which the fire subsequently eliminated all trace; something he claims accounts for all cases of SHC.

The pragmatic professor does not agree that combustion could have started spontaneously; not surprisingly, he also dismisses the historical explanation of divine intervention, demonstrating an opinion of his fellow man that I suspect is shared by many of you, my dear readers:

"I think if the heavens were striking in cases of spontaneous combustion then there would be a lot more cases."

The sky is falling!

2011-09-22T08:41:00.003+01:00

According to the latest update on the UARS - the satellite dropping out of its rapidly decaying orbit - it is expected to land sometime 'during the afternoon of September 23rd, Eastern Daylight Time'.

A bit of arithmetic places that as sometime on Friday evening for those of us in the UK. Although the exact target area cannot yet be determined, the update is certain that the satellite 'will not be passing over North America during that time period'.

One imagines the good folks of the U-S-of-A breathing a sigh of relief - as any Limey who has spent time there can tell you, there's A-murr-ica and then there's the rest of the world, which doesn't really count (except for a few Canadians, who play hockey and almost talk like real people).

We're not in the clear yet, though. It's a sobering thought that, should 1,200-odd pounds of metal start raining down on some of Britain's city centres during the usual Friday night Bacchanalia, quite apart from potential casualties, we'll never hear the end of it from the religious fundamentalists.

NASA have calculated the chance of a person being struck by any of it - something that has never happened to date - as 1 in 3,200; worrying, perhaps, for anyone who has ever bought a National Lottery ticket expecting to win. However, according to the Daily Mail (who else!), 'the odds of any one particular person being hit are much lower, around one in 21 trillion'.

So I suppose that means I'm all right, Jack; all the same, it will be interesting to see whether there is any ongoing news coverage tomorrow night, particularly in the likely impact zone.

Health & Safety update: according to latest reports, 'NASA has warned people not to touch the debris if they come across it because it is likely to have sharp edges'.

Seismometers and crystal balls

2011-09-20T17:17:00.003+01:00

Up until now, I've always thought that seismologists had an enviable job; plenty of fascinating rock formations and strata, lots of foreign travel and the offchance that some day you might make a discovery of real benefit to mankind.

The study has none of the pyrotechnics of vulcanology, of course, but there's less chance of ending up fried or kippered or even lightly singed in the course of your work. You may, however, face an unexpected hazard;

This week, six seismologists go on trial for the manslaughter of 309 people, who died as a result of the 2009 earthquake in l'Aquila, Italy.

One upon a time, earthquakes were regarded as the work of gods or demons - or the slumbering dragons of Norse and far eastern mythology. As we came to understand the processes involved in tectonic plate movement, the reasons for earthquake hotspots became clear.

Recent advances in technology and data gathering have led to the theory of 'eathquake swarms' along fault lines and the prospect of predicting where the next one is likely to strike, although exact prediction is still the stuff of science fiction.

Not, however, according to the Italian lawyers: The prosecution holds that the scientists should have advised the population of l'Aquila of the impending earthquake risk.

The seismologists are being held responsible for the fact that, following their reassurances that minor tremors did not necessarily mean a major one was imminent, the local population did not immediately realise the danger they were in when the 6.3 earthquake struck.

Current research incorporates the wildly diverse areas of animal behaviour, radon gas release, groundwater levels and electrical field activity, to name but a few, and still no means of accurate prediction has been found; issuing alerts would mean many false alarms for every valid warning.

Given the number of earthquakes that happen every day around the globe, with consequences that vary wildly depending on a number of currently unpredictable factors, it seems rather harsh not merely to reproach scientists with failing to understand fully the many complex processes involved but to sue them for their inability to predict the future.

Of course, there is always the possibility that this is all a legal convention* - maybe someone must be charged with the blame if the processes of insurance payouts are to be observed, but it seems to me that, if anyone should be standing in the dock over this, it is surely God, Poseidon or a restless dragon.

*Or maybe not. According to the recently updated BBC report, this is both a criminal and a civil case:
The defendants face up to 15 years in jail. Lawyers for civil plaintiffs - who include the local council - are seeking damages of 50m euros (£45m).

Full English Breakfast: Prevention or cure?

2011-09-19T08:36:00.003+01:00

Some definitions today, courtesy of Wikipedia: first of all, 'bacon':

Bacon is a cured meat prepared from a pig.

Right, that's got that one cleared up; now, in case you were wondering,

Curing refers to various food preservation and flavoring processes, especially of meat or fish, by the addition of a combination of salt, nitrates, nitrite or sugar.

That being so, precisely how are manufacturers supposed to reduce by a quarter the amount of salt contained in bacon?

The salt isn't there for decoration, or as part of an evil plan to assassinate the pork-eating sector of the population (although I can think of some extremists who might appreciate such a purpose) but as a preservative.

Take out the salt, and bacon surely becomes something closer to short-coded, vacuum-packed pork. As Wikipedia explains,

Table salt (sodium chloride) is the primary ingredient used in meat curing. Removal of water and addition of salt to meat creates a solute-rich environment where osmotic pressure draws water out of microorganisms, retarding their growth. Doing this requires a concentration of salt of nearly 20%.

In addition, salt causes the soluble meat proteins to come to the surface of the meat particles within sausages. These proteins coagulate when the sausage is heated, helping to hold the sausage together. Finally, salt slows the oxidation process, effectively preventing the meat from going rancid.

Sounds pretty conclusive to me, but that hasn't stopped 62 retailers, including major chains, signing up to the Government's targets of 1.13g of salt per 100g for sausages and 2.88g for bacon.

Once upon a time, the Full English Breakfast (can we still call it that?) was under fire for the artery-clogging cholesterol it inflicted on the unsuspecting consumer; these days the focus has shifted to the salt content. Whatever the reason, it's been a sustained attack reminiscent of the Puritans' 17th-century assault on maypoles, festivals and dancing.

As it happens, I don't eat meat - my idea of a good breakfast is a bowl of muesli or a croissant - but that doesn't stop me being angry at the way the Government is interfering with the contents of its citizens' breakfast plates .

I may not partake of your breakfast, but I will defend to the hilt your right to eat it.

Down and down and down it goes....

2011-09-17T17:47:00.001+01:00

... and where it lands, nobody knows!

Remember UARS? The Nasa Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is now on its way back to Earth at a speedy 5 miles per second.

According to NASA's latest update, 'Re-entry is expected Sept. 23, plus or minus a day. The re-entry of UARS is advancing because of a sharp increase in solar activity since the beginning of this week'.

The BBC have reported this with the splendidly vague headline 'Nasa satellite UARS nearing Earth 'could land anywhere''.

Scientists have identified 26 separate pieces that could survive the fall through the earth's atmosphere, and debris could rain across an area 400-500km (250-310 miles) wide.

Where this area might be won't become clear until about two hours before it enters the atmosphere, around the 23rd. So far, all they can predict is that the impact will be somewhere between 57 degrees North and 57 degrees South - which doesn't exactly narrow it down.

Normally this kind of thing would have me glued to the computer* but it so happens that I shall be spending most of the 23rd and 24th ferrying offspring plus an assortment of wordly goods to other parts of the country; how frustrating is that?

NASA have calculated that the chances of a chunk of it actually hitting someone are 1 in 3,200, although, as they optimistically point out, no one has to date been injured by an object dropping from space. What I'd like is something a bit more practical; for example, if you see it coming, should you:
a) run like hell?
b) crouch down and cover your head with your arms?
c) call Max Clifford? After all, you're going to have a story to sell whatever happens.

Doubtless this kind of advice won't appear for fear of setting off mass panic; it's probably best not to worry and to think that, should you be unlucky enough to be on the receiving end, at least your place in history will be assured.

*Not that I'm hoping it hurts anyone, you understand - although in an idle moment or two, I have been compiling a little list of those who, should they happen to be underneath, 'they'd none of them be missed' .

Kaspar Hauser - Mysteries ancient and modern

2011-09-17T08:45:00.005+01:00

Readers with a fondness for the mysterious and unexplained will doubtless be familiar with the case of the 19th Century enigma, Kaspar Hauser.

On 26 May 1828, an unkempt teenage boy appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, Germany. He seemed unable to express himself clearly but constantly repeated the sentence, "I want to be a soldier like my father was" and the word, "Horse".

Given pen and paper, he wrote the name 'Kaspar Hauser', but otherwise he appeared unwilling or unable to communicate. It was assumed at first that he had been living wild in the surrounding forests but, as he adapted to his surroundings, he told a story of being reared from infancy in a cramped cellar by an unseen jailer who suddenly released him into the Bavarian countryside, first giving him the letter and teaching him his one sentence.

The boy's story captured the imagination of 19th Century Europe, prompting increasingly far-fetched speculation about aristocratic or even royal connections. In the sci-fi mad 1950s, the story was resurrected with the theory that the boy might have travelled from another time or a parallel reality, or even another planet.

There is, of course, no such fanciful speculation about the 17-year-old found in Berlin last week, although his case does present several interesting puzzles.

The 17-year-old, who turned up at Berlin’s city hall, said he had been walking for two weeks but had no idea who he was or where he was from.

He told officers that he and his father moved to the forest about five years ago following the death of his mother and had lived off the land since, sleeping in a tent and remote huts.

He said his father had also died recently and that he had buried him in a shallow grave before setting off to find help.

Detectives said the teenager, who gave his name as Ray, spoke a little German, but his first language appeared to be English.

Hence, of course, the story's appearance in the British press. Unfortunately for those trying to help, the boy does not appear to know his parents' surnames and has no recollection of his life before entering the forest. The only possible clue to his identitiy is his fluent English; his German is described as 'basic'.

Since the boy's appearance on September 5th, nothing has been found to suggest an identity; the search is now being widened in the hope that someone outside Germany can provide a clue. With modern technology on his side, the authorities can be optimistic that this case, at least, may well be solved.

Kaspar Hauser was not so lucky. Amid speculation that he himself may have been responsible for concocting some of the many unexplained events that surrounded him, he died of a stab wound inflicted by 'a stranger' - or possibly himself - in 1833.

Hauser was buried in a country graveyard; his headstone reads, in Latin,
"Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious."

Don't spare the rod....

2011-09-16T08:39:00.005+01:00

A surprise, perhaps, this morning for our liberal times :

Nearly half of parents of secondary school children say corporal punishment such as the cane or slipper should be reintroduced, a survey suggests. Nearly all surveyed thought teachers should be able to be tougher on pupils.

Support for tougher discipline will, of course, be music to the ears of many teachers, not - in case you were wondering - because they have a repressed sadistic desire to beat their charges but because the matter does need to be addressed; it is clear that the existing deterrents simply do not work.

As a recent court case shows, a pupil with a long history of disruptive, abusive and aggressive behaviour is given repeated 'second chances' and is still able to destroy the career of a well-respected teacher with false allegations and walk away scot-free.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said: "The right every child deserves to be taught properly is currently undermined by the twisting of rights by a minority who need to be taught an unambiguous lesson in who is boss."

Well said! False allegations of assault are a powerful weapon in the armoury of pupils caught out in seriously bad behaviour; the Head is obliged by regulations to take them at face value - however ridiculous - and act on them. If investigation proves the teacher innocent, no action is taken against the pupil and - significantly - the original misdemeanour also goes unpunished, obscured by subsequent events.

Support remained high for most traditional punishments, including sending children out of class (89%), after-school detentions (88%), lunch time detentions (87%), expelling or suspending children (84%), and making them write lines (77%).

Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted something odd here. If these figures provide anything like an accurate representation, then some 10-15% of parents do not support the use of sending a pupil out of the rooom, detention or suspension as punishments.

So what do these parents advocate? How do they suggest a teacher deals with an unruly, disruptive or downright aggressive pupil? And what sort of parents are they? There's an easy answer to that one - the parents who object to discipline are precisely those whose children are most likely to need it, the ones who march in and confront the teacher at the slightest excuse.

Whether it's the Yummy Mummy who rolls up in her SUV to complain about a telling-off - 'Jacintha never joins a queue; the other children should have let her go first!' - or the thug who punches his son's female teacher in the face for giving the boy a detention (true story - I took over the class afterwards), a minority of parents condone their child's misbehaviour and undermine every attempt to curb it.

What is needed - Michael Gove, please note - is not just full support for teachers in enforcing high standards of work and behaviour but protection against the 10% of parents who are no more capable than their immature offspring of understanding the need for everyone to cooperate if the best possible results are to be achieved.

A worthwhile honour

2011-09-15T14:13:00.002+01:00

Dyslexia is not short of high-profile poster boys (or girls - though the latter are thinner on the ground, the condition being far more common in men) but it was good to see one of them, actor Henry Winkler, honoured for his work.

Henry Winkler, who played the Fonz in the classic US sitcom Happy Days, has been appointed an honorary OBE for his educational work on dyslexia in the UK.

Dyslexia has long been a controversial issue; you don't have to go far, even now, to meet highly-educated people who deny its existence, claiming that it is a convenient label for the well-off to excuse their offspring's lack of intelligence. While most people now do accept it exists, it manifests itself in a variety of ways and degrees of severity.

What is true is that many high-achieving dyslexics come from relatively comfortable backgrounds, having attended the sort of school - independent or high-end state - where their difficulties were more likely to have been identified and tackled. Even simple measures by sympathetic classroom teachers - colour-coding notes, extra hand-outs - can help a great deal.

Where dyslexia is causing serious damage is in schools where there is little support from parents and discipline is a major problem. Rather than admit he is struggling, a dyslexic pupil may well turn to disruption or refuse to work at all. A hard-pressed teacher, already dealing with a large class, has little leisure to diagnose his difficulties, let alone deal with them.

There is much talent going to waste as a result; studies suggest that dyslexics often have excellent creativity and spatial awareness - they frequently excel at Art at school - but many will never find employment because their lack of success with written work effectively bars them from many qualifications unless properly taught.

Campaigners like Winkler and the actress Kara Tointon, both of whom struggled with being labelled as stupid before their dyslexia was diagnosed, were lucky enough to succeed; it is a sad fact that far too many dyslexics fail in life and, by passing their negative attitude to school on to their children, contribute to their failure too.

Somebody's watching me....

2011-09-13T23:04:00.003+01:00

...I know I'm nervous and I shouldn't be:
Somebody's got their eye on me,
Perhaps we should invite them up for tea.
(Thompson Twins: We Are Detective)

In this case, it's the engine that targets adverts to match recent keywords on the computer. Following today's post on the shortcomings of Virgin Trains, I am being bombarded with offers of railcards or - optimistically, given my finances - the Orient Express, while a post on Forest Lawn cemetery produced an invitation to 'memorialize a Loved One's ashes' in a glass paperweight.

And it doesn't stop there; post on holidays and up pop cruises and villas, post on cars and you'll be invited to test drive half a dozen possibilities. Not as nerve-wracking as the assorted government agencies who drop in when you've mentioned, say, Dubai - Hi guys! Yes, it's me again! - or arms deals, but there's something depressing about tailored marketing.

And I'm starting to wonder whether the same thing applies to television advertising. After all, we're already familiar with the concept of ads targeted for viewer profiles - hair products during 'Skins', Lynx during football matches or Steradent during 'Countdown'.

And, according to the Urchin, those hyperactive music channels with presenters who go 'Yeah!' a lot regularly treat their viewers to ego-crushing advert breaks crammed with commercials for deodorant, spot cream and online dating.

The Artful Dodger is currently watching 'The Day of the Jackal' and, every twenty minutes or so, has been invited by a variety of rival concerns to open a new bank account, buy a fast car or travel abroad - enough to wonder whether the same inquisitive software is following the plot.

As the Dodger points out, should he decide to adopt the profession of hit-man after graduation (after all, there will be precious few job opportunities out there) he is now amply supplied with ideas about getaway vehicles and where to stash his ill-gotten gains.

'Space? Thanks, but no thanks, Richard!'

2011-09-13T09:33:00.002+01:00

With the 'news' that 'Phase One of the world's first commercial spaceport is 90% complete' - a pointless Public Relations announcement if ever there was one - those interested in joining Branson's happy band should probably start booking soon.

The first Virgin Galactic flights are predicted to take place early in 2013, according to a spokeswoman who appears to be rather indecently excited about the whole affair:

'Christine Anderson, the newly appointed executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, told SPACE.com she was 'jazzed' about the progress made so far.'

That is, I suspect, a new and obscure piece of American business jargon, of which Ms Anderson appears to be a fluent speaker:

'So hats off to all the contractors and architects and everybody else that spent a lot of time and sweat equity in its development.'

I can't help feeling, however, that all this futuristic development has been going on longer that you'd think. After all, Richard Branson was the man behind Virgin's Cross-Country trains.

Clan Macheath being widely scattered about the United Kingdom, long-distance train journeys have been a constant fixture for as long as I can remember. It used to be a not unappealing way to spend a day - a good book, occasional snacks and ever-changing views of our beautiful countryside.

Then Branson came along and changed all that. The first thing to go were the tables for all but a lucky few; everyone else got a view of someone else's seat-back and a flimsy drop-down tray.

This, of course, meant that the conveniently suitcase-sized gaps between each pair of back-to-back seats were replaced by two shelves at the extreme end of the carriage, out of sight of their worried owners and conveniently close to the exit for any opportunistic thief*.

The long-distance traveller, then, had the choice of an unattended shelf holding, at most, six cases or a Damoclean overhead ledge too narrow for a briefcase and too shallow for anything else; inspired design for a train making the 12-hour journey from Penzance to Aberdeen.

And then there were the toilets. Oh God, the toilets! Conforming to disability access rules, these vast hangars took up a huge proportion of the carriage and, the trains having drastically shrunk from their once majestic length, there were three of them. For the whole train. From Penzance to Aberdeen. Enough said.

Now I think I see where it was all going. A vast distance to travel, no luggage to speak of and no need for a working toilet; those inexplicably comfortless Virgin trains were obviously the prototypes for Branson's Spaceships One and Two.

And that (plus, of course, the $200,000 fare) is why I, for one, will be declining Branson's invitation.

*Not idle speculation; a few weeks after this new arrangement came in, a couple in my carriage discovered that their suitcases had vanished from the train somewhere between Birmingham and Newcastle. The reaction of the authorities suggested this was by no means an isolated incident.

A worrying coincidence?

2011-09-12T13:03:00.002+01:00

It's not a good time to be a patient at Stockport's Stepping Hill Hospital. While detectives swarm over the place looking for clues to the deaths of three patients from saline drips contaminated with insulin, another crisis looms.

In the latest incident, officers were called to the hospital at 20:30 BST on Saturday after staff found that a bottle of milk had been contaminated.

However detectives said there was no evidence of a link to the sabotage of saline drips earlier this year.

For readers of crime fiction, there is a distinct frisson from the fact that a milk-bottle spiked with bleach had been left on a ward - precisely the method by which someone is murdered in a hospital in an early book by one of our foremost authors of detective stories*.

And a quick trawl through Amazon turns up another bit of light reading: 'Insulin Murders' by Caroline Richmond and Vincent Marks.

Insulin Murders is the first book on the market to describe real life cases of murder using insulin (and other hypoglycaemic agents) as a murder weapon. Written by a leading authority on insulin and its use as a murder weapon, this is a gripping account of true life crime, intended for doctors and laypeople alike.

It will appeal to both the medical and non-medical communities, and especially to all those with an interest in forensic medicine or true life crime.

And - just possibly - potential murderers as well.

*Spoiler Alert; this one.

A question of childcare

2011-09-12T09:38:00.004+01:00

Say what you like about Aric Sigman, the man has guts.

The author of books on the effects of a drinking culture and television* on children is no stranger to controversy, but this week he boldly goes where few men have gone before; he has taken on that most redoubtable of foes, the working mother.

Putting children into day care may change their brain structure and function, according to research.

The study by Dr Aric Sigman found that 70-80% of children in day care centres showed increasing levels of the stress hormone cortisol throughout each day they were there.

Now that's what I call putting your head above the parapet! Up and down the country, I imagine mothers preparing for work were screaming at the radio as Sigman explained his findings on the Today programme, suggesting that sustained raised cortisol levels could have as-yet undetermined effects on the child's long-term health.

Now, I have to admit that there are times when I feel like echoing Ripley's outburst in 'Aliens' - "Did IQ's just drop sharply while I was away?" - and when the issue of daycare comes up is one of them.

It's well-known that taking a puppy away from its mother too early means that you're more likely to end up with an insecure or even aggressive pet; why do so many people persist in believing that the same would not apply to a six-week-old baby suddenly deprived of its mother for most of the day?

And what benefit does the mother see from this? Well, there are plenty of high-flying career women going straight from the labour ward to their desks but its a fair bet they can afford high-quality one-to-one childcare (or follow the example of superwoman Nicola Horlick, who tellingly conducted an interview on how she single-handedly managed a career and a young family with her mother bent wordlessly over a sink-full of washing-up in the background).

The reverse of the coin are those mothers for whom childcare swallows up most of their earnings - my sister once worked for a high-street shop where some of the staff, once they paid for childcare, lunch and travel, had less than £10 a week left.

So why do they do it? For some, whether by inclination or because they have bought into the 'having it all' culture, it's definitely because they want to - begging the question 'why have a baby at all if you don't want to spend time with it?' - but plenty of women out there are trapped by a phenomenon familiar to anyone who drives on busy motorways.

Ever hogged the middle lane because you know that, if you pull in behind the lorry 500m ahead, you'll never get back out to overtake it? The same thing is happening in employment, with mothers reluctantly heading back to work because they fear that, if they drop out until the child goes to school, they may never find another job.

And of course they are right - because so many of the available jobs are already taken up by other mothers of under-5s. I'm no Mark Wadsworth but even I can see this doesn't make sense at all; if Ms A goes out to work and pays most of her income after work expenses to her childminder Ms B, then why not cut out the middle-man (sorry, woman!) and give Ms B the job in the first place?

The answer, of course, is economic activity, two women in the workplace is better than one, even if the workplace of one is the other's home and the childcare is subsidised by the state - it's a bit like the bank wanting us to transfer money back and forth between accounts because it shows up on the books as income and productive banking activity.

If Sigman is right, and babies do suffer long-term ill effects from being put into childcare at an early age, then it could spell the end of a culture that regards infants as so many parcels to be left until called for; the ultimate expression of baby as accessory to a lifestyle.

It would be interesting to see if that correlates with a subsequent improvement in Britain's educational standards and achievement.

*'Remotely Controlled: How Television is Damaging Our Lives', memorable for basing some of its conclusions on an experiment in which seven ferrets were sat in a row and repeatedly shown 'The Matrix' - proof, if it were needed, that some scientists have too much time on their hands.

'We have nothing to fear but the sky falling on our heads!'

2011-09-09T08:40:00.002+01:00

Hot on the heels of the announcement of orbital debris reaching a 'tipping point' comes the news that a 6.5-tonne satellite is on its way down and will be liberally spreading debris over a wide area sometime in the next few weeks.

Despite official announcements that the chances of being underneath a piece of it are very small indeed, the Times is getting entertainingly worked up about the potential hazard:

'Britain in path of falling satellite', screams the headline, implying that a direct hit is inevitable; better start looking for tin hats, digging shelters or, better still, think about leaving the country.

Actually that might not be much help; a better decription of the impending situation would be 'Antarctica and anywhere further than 57 degrees North NOT in path of falling satellite' - less catchy, I admit, but it does sum up the predictions in a rather more balanced way.

In fact, unless you happen to be in Alaska, Canada (north of Churchill), Greenland, Iceland, Scandanavia or Siberia - or, closer to home, anwhere north of Braemar - you could be on the receiving end of a sprinkling of NASA shrapnel. Given the price of gold these days and the amount of the stuff that goes into making a satellite, this could be cause for rejoicing rather than otherwise*.

The current eccentricity of its orbit makes it impossible to predict where the 500-mile-long target area will be at this stage but NASA will be posting regular updates for the obsessively worried (would-be Chicken Lickens can get status reports here).

The satellite in question - the snappily-named UARS (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite) - was actually expected to function for only three years but pluckily carried on for another eleven, gathering data on the depletion of the ozone layer and clearly implicating the release of man-made CFCs.

Perhaps a better name for it would be The Golden Snitch.

*We should point out that the satellite remains federal property and, should you put a bit of it on e-bay, Uncle Sam's enforcers will be popping round pretty sharp-ish.

The diss service sector

2011-09-07T10:02:00.001+01:00

Faced with a recalcitrant mobile phone last week, I set off for the company's local shop - one of five phone shops in a single shopping centre. All the assistants were already occupied with customers so I waited. And waited. And waited.

The assistants - all three of them - eyes fixed on their computer screens, resisted all attempts to make eye contact; the customers fiddled silently with the mobiles they were buying or had brought in for repair. Nobody said a word.

With a bustling concourse a few feet away, six people stood facing each other across the counter in stony silence: I started wondering whether I had inadvertantly intruded into a piece of experimental theatre.

Finally, after more than ten minute of trying unsuccessfully to catch someone's eye, I gave up and went home. Fortunately the Artful Dodger, being a child of the 1990s, understands these new-fangled things and has since managed to restore the phone to working order.

A ten-minute wait gives you plenty of time to study your surroundings. The piece of shop furnishing that struck me most was a large red sign prominently displayed on the counter, warning of dire consequences for anyone who physically or verbally assaults one of the shop's employees.

If what I experienced is a taste of standard high street practice these days, then no wonder Britain's service economy is in trouble - and no wonder they need that sign.

Per garbage ad astra

2011-09-06T09:21:00.002+01:00

There's something rather unsettling about a former NASA scientist admitting 'We've lost control of the environment' - it's the sort of line that's usually followed by the arrival of a bunch of voracious extra-terrestrials and a lot of special-effects gore.

This time we're perfectly safe, as long as we stay put here on earth. For those, venturing into orbit, however, the amount of debris out there has reached a critical point, according to a report submitted to NASA last week.

It seems we've left so much rubbish lying - or floating - around up there that we may have effectively prevented ourselves leaving the planet. (Much the same thing, interestingly enough, seems to happen regularly with the Urchin's bedroom floor - perhaps it's simply human nature.)

Part of the problem is our increasing dependence on satellite technology; with an average of 76 satellites a year launched over the past decade and more planned for the future to feed our insatiable need for communication technology, it's gettng awfully crowded up there even without the rubbish.

Add in the myriad pieces of debris, from chunks of rocket down to minuscule flecks of paint, and you effectively have a cage in which we have managed to imprison ourselves; astronauts who honed their skills on games of Asteroids in the pub now apply the techniques for real to evade rogue particles.

And - guess what! - it turns out we've been naughty in more ways than one: 'The extra CO2 pumped into the atmosphere down the years has cooled some of its highest reaches - the thermosphere.

This, combined with low levels of solar activity, have shrunk the atmosphere, limiting the amount of drag on orbital objects that ordinarily helps to pull debris from the sky. In other words, the junk is also staying up longer.'

Well, it never rains but it pours! And it could get worse - though this particular aspect of the situation has not so far made the news. Regular readers may recall that we have mentioned this subject here before, and touched on another aspect of the potential Nemesis floating above us:

'in ‘The Day of the Triffids’ it was the release of biological weapons from accidentally damaged satellites which ultimately paved the way for the destruction of human civilization as we know it.'

Computer models suggests the amount of debris "has reached a tipping point, with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures." Even if we escape the disastrous effect John Wyndham envisaged, we could be effectively marooned on earth until we do a bit of cosmic housework.

Update: The Mail reports this morning that Phase One of Richard Branson's Spaceport America is now 90%complete, with commercial space flights being planned for early 2013. Should you feel like taking your chance up there in the craposphere, you can secure your seat reservation with Virgin Galactic (yes, honestly!) for a deposit of only $20,000.

This Little Piggy

2011-09-05T09:40:00.002+01:00

In what must surely be an appropriate fable for our time, Jane Croft, purveyor of handbag pigs to the stars, has gone bankrupt.

Former investment banker and amateur pig-fancier Croft spotted a gap in the market and set about crossing traditional British breeds with miniature Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs to produce 'micro-pigs' with an adult height of around 14".

A combination of excessively photogenic cute piglets and ruthless PR ensured a surge in demand as Croft appeared in countless media interviews singing the praises of her 'perfect pets'; even her website was liberally sprinked with stardust, carrying endorsements from the likes of Andrew Flintoff, Robbie Williams and Vanessa Feltz.

A best-selling book full of predictably cute images (and, it has to be said, reasonably sensible advice) followed and soon Croft's farm's 50 resident pigs had become a gold-mine; piglets were selling for up to £1200 each and, thanks to massive publicity and celebrity hype, demand was rapidly outstripping supply.

Aristotelian tragedy dictates that the hero (or heroine) has a fatal flaw that brings about ultimate downfall and this was it - the former investment banker, a product of the 'growth is always good' school of thought, expanded her business to seize the market.

“I couldn’t keep up with the demand so I bought extra pigs believing they were micro-pigs. They grew to be massive so I had to offer refunds."

Surely, then, she should have been seeking redress herself from her suppliers; someone was definitely telling porkies here. Instead she took back the expanding swine and refunded the purchase price and soon she was unable to pay her staff, an omission which has now landed her in the bankruptcy court.

It may be that, in years to come, Jane Croft's experience makes an appearance in social commentaries on the early 21st century; a media-frenzy fad for preposterous pets leading to hubristic misjudgement and eventual financial ingnominy gives as neat a summary as you could wish of the risks of a fashion-led business venture in today's celebrity-obsessed age.

Bobbing about in the beautiful briny sea

2011-09-04T21:16:00.002+01:00

It hasn't been a good week for sponsored swims.

Last week, Pavlov's Cat highlighted the irony of rescuers being called out to assist 80 swimmers swept out to sea while racing to raise money for the RNLI; this week we have what may be one of the worst-organised mass fund-raising events ever.

Three lifeboats, a helicopter and a coastguard team spent several hours today searching for nine swimmers reported missing after the Pier to Pier swim from Bournemouth to Boscombe, an event which attracts some 1,000 participants.

It gradually emerged that eight of the swimmers had definitely gone home, blissfully unaware of the efforts being made on their behalf, and that the partner of the ninth was accounted for and had left - presumably with her; it's hard to imagine he would be callous enough to set off happily while she was bobbing around in the English Channel.

The organisers had insisted all along that the lost swimmers had simply departed for home since all the baggage had gone but the emergency services can't work that way - which is reassuring for anyone who may find themselves genuinely at risk in Britain's coastal waters. One imagines that the relationship between the two is now somewhat strained.

After all, the RNLI and Coastguard have enough to do especially at weekends, what with rescuing Darwin Award hopefuls from unsuitable dinghies or complete ignorance of the existence of currents or tides.

Despite the straitened times, there seems to be no shortage of fund-raising events that focus on the experience - go skydiving for cancer! climb Kilimanjaro to save the whale! - rather than on the recipient cause; at its worst, the cost of the experience dwarfs the actual sum raised. Whatever the case, it is not unreasonable to assume that the organisers have devised a fail-safe method of ensuring everyone is accounted for.

I don't envy the representative of the British Heart Foundation who had to explain to the RNLI that their volunteer crews wasted an afternoon looking for a bunch of people who were tucking into tea and cakes at home.

We don't need no thought control

2011-09-03T23:15:00.001+01:00

I consider myself to be an individual and I'm sure you do too. In fact, if you are reading this, there is a high probability that you are a blogger too, and thus something of an independent spirit.

If so, then, like me, you will doubtless be worried by the findings emerging from Nijmegen, where scientists have been trying to identify the part of the brain that determines the conformity of its owner's behaviour and, having tracked down this elusive region - it's in your posterior medial frontal cortex, in case you were wondering - looking for ways to influence it.

It turns out that a burst of Transcranial Electromagnetic Stimulation (TMS) inhibiting the activity of neurons in this area made their subjects less likely to alter their decisions in response to group pressure.

'Dr Klucharev believes this part of the brain is responsible for generating an "error" signal when individuals deviate from the group opinion, triggering a cascade that leads them to conform with the group view; "Individuals differ in the strength of the error signal – which is why some people are more conformist than others".'

Klucharev envisages techniques that can increase immunity to the negative aspects of peer presssure - criminal behaviour, for example or aggressive marketing - but it's a worryingly short step from there to the idea of manipulating neuron activity in the opposite direction to increase conformity.

Far-fetched? The stuff of science fiction? I sincerely hope so, because the thought of such techniques in the wrong hands is a frightening prospect indeed.

While on the subject, I have been wondering whether bloggers - or at least those who offer comment on social and political phenomena - are, in fact, a self-selected group whose 'error signals' are so weak as to be imperceptible. After all, the ability to place yourself outside events and offer an independent view suggests a strong maverick streak.

Or are we all actually closet conformists seeking the approval of an online community of similar thinkers?

What do you think?

A paradoxical pinch of salt

2011-09-02T22:20:00.009+01:00

Salt has been something of a hot topic here recently but The Moose , Longrider and others have done far more justice to today's 'outrageous levels of salt in bread' story than I ever could.

There's little to add save a coda in the form of a fine piece of television comedy from the past week. 'The Great British Bake-Off' featured a clutch of eager contestants hopefully profferring freshly-baked loaves.

The expert judge solemnly took a mouthful of bread, chewed it thoughtfully and pronounced his verdict; "Not enough salt". Loaf after loaf was dismisssed with the same problem; the lack of salt, he said, affected both texture and taste and the bakers should have used more of it.

Astounding! The baffled contestants gaped at him, obviously waiting for a thunderbolt to strike him dead. You could almost see the cogs whirring as their brains tried to assimilate this violation of public health orthodoxy.

The ultimate loser appeared to have actually halved the amount of salt in her recipe - presumably with a self-satisfied glow at her own virtue; after all, no less an organisation than the NHS advocates "Say No To Salt!"

Meanwhile, for fans of Xeno's Paradox*, there's an interesting quote from the Department of Health welcoming the reductions in salt content many manufacturers have already achieved:

"We look forward to seeing further reductions as more companies meet the targets"

Since we are, as fans of Star Trek know, "ugly bags of mostly water"** and, as The Moose points out, salt water at that, how soon before these reductions reach a point where salt deprivation becomes a mass epidemic rather than an obscure ailment afflicting only the over-conscientious?

*The paradox of Achilles and the tortoise states that if Achilles races against a tortoise and gives it a head start, he will never catch up with it; in the time he takes to move to a point on the track occupied by the tortoise, the tortoise will have moved from that point to another further on, and so on.

**Episode 18 'Home Soil'; I should, perhaps, point out that I remember this phrase not because I am an obsessive Trekkie but because it is teaching the imaginative use of the English language that keeps the wolf from the door.

A musical interlude

2011-09-01T11:07:00.001+01:00

A busy week at the Tavern so I apologise for recycling an old post - this blast from the past, however, sprang immediately to mind on hearing that Alastair Darling's memoirs are about to hit the fan...

In a fine example of serendipity, the italicised wording is that of Darling himself.

Alistair's Hell

Oh, Whelan was screaming and McBride was howling
And in Downing street the knives were all out;
There was Brown in the shadows with a glint in his eye -
It was a weekend I could do without.
I don’t know why the briefers did what they did,
One day maybe they will explain,
What I do know, and it’s not a great source of pleasure,
What I said, unfortunately, turned out to be true;
We were bound for a recession again.;

Well, maybe there’s no better thing in this whole world
Than knowing you've been right,
And wherever you are and wherever you go
There's always gonna be a fight.
And I know there have been some robust exchanges
Between me and Gordon Brown,
But there’s more that unites us than will ever divide us;
Without me, you know,
He’d really be alone.

And the forces of Hell
Were unleashed from Number Ten,
When Brown’s two enforcers
Were let loose and set on me again, again, again.
Yes, the forces of Hell
Were unleashed from Number Ten;
But now the day is done
Then Messrs Whelan
And McBride you’ll see it’s true
That I’m still Chancellor of the Exchequer
And there’s only one left of you.

L'Etat, c'est moi!

2011-08-25T08:10:00.002+01:00

JuliaM has a fine piece on Jacqui Smith's use of day-release prisoners to paint her house - or, as the Mail inevitably has it, her £450,000 house - in exchange for a donation and some plants.

It's an interesting little coda to the expenses scandal - from which, come to think about it, Smith didn't exactly emerge smelling of roses - and the reasons for which senior politicians helped themelves to public funds.

I suspect there is a particular form of hubris here - become a political animal and eventually you can no longer distinguish your public and private personae. Thus our MPs trotted merrily off to buy top-of-the-range furnishings at our expense, believing it was part of their inalienable right to life, Liberty prints and the pursuit of valances.

Perhaps it's seeing the grace-and-favour accommodation given to those in high office - look at the Bercows, after all - but the expenses affair served to illustrate the way many MPs felt entitled to have their homes improved at public expense without performing the public functions that explain our funding of Chequers and its ilk.

Leaving aside the interesting image of the Obamas or the Portugese Ambassador popping round for an evening chez Smith and Timney - probably best not to ask if you can watch TV - this story somehow sums up the arrogance that confuses the office with the person doing it.

Judging by Jacqui Smith's choice of painters and decorators, it's a hard habit to break.

A degree of ignorance?

2011-08-21T13:00:00.000+01:00

What can you get for £25,000 these days? Well, if you're off to university this September, that amount should more or less cover your term-time fees and expenses for the three years if you're careful.

If the end result is a degree in a recognized subject from a well-known university then it's probably worth the money, but a glance through what's on offer for candidates in clearing shows plenty of the sort of thing that might raise the eyebrows of a prospective employer.

Tony Blair's intention of getting vast numbers into university may have been an attempt to match the increasingly well-qualified workforces of the tiger economies but the sad reality is something rather different.

Without the school system to back it up, the result has been a vast increase in degrees of doubtful academic merit attracting candidates struggling with the demands of A-level. According to a report published in February of this year,

Some four-in-10 newly-admitted students had grades no better than two Es at A-level... [and] ...an increasing number of applicants were being given places despite lacking “the intellectual attributes needed for higher education”.

These will be the students most likely to drop out before the end of the course - England's record in that department already being a decidedly unenviable one - and be left with massive debts and nothing to show for it. Even if payment is deferred until they are earning a reasonable amount, the debt remains as a financial and psychological burden.

'50% to university' belongs in the same category as 'all must have prizes' - it produces a system that ultimately breaks down under the strain, harming the very people it was meant to benefit.

Hanging on the telephone

2011-08-19T09:21:00.003+01:00

It's front page news today - the chaos caused by a crashing computer at UCAS and 135,000-odd applicants chasing 45,000 places in clearing*.

With £18,000 at stake in increased tuition fees, it was a no-holds-barred race for those who didn't get the expected grades, the Urchin among them. In the Tavern, as in thousands of other households, every computer was pressed into service, leaving no time for such trivial pursuits as blogging.

The same applied to telephones; if I had 10p for every time a redial button was hit across the nation yesterday, I'd be paying the Urchin's fees up front and heading off to the Seychelles for a month to get over the strain.

It's the perfect modern example of the Tragedy of the Commons. That's what UCAS didn't consider; there may be 135,000 applicants for clearing, but a substantial proportion of these will have press-ganged the laptops and mobiles of all their nearest and dearest into the effort, on the basis that every additional computer and phone increases your chances of logging on or getting through successfully.

With most households in possession of several telephones and computers, the result was jammed switchboards at every university with places still on offer. Whether you secured a place was largely down to luck - getting through at the precise moment that a line became free. The end result is that many of those who narrowly missed the top grades will have lost out to those with inferior results.

There's a sort of January sales atmosphere about the whole business; desperate candidates grabbing any course they can to beat the rush and universities accepting on a first-come first-served basis rather than selecting students on their potential suitability for the course.

It will be interesting to see what the drop-out rate is over the next year.

Update: The Urchin, I am infinitely relieved to say, has secured a place at a reputable northern university.

*UCAS allows applicants to hold only two offers; those who fail to meet the requirements of either must log in to receive their Clearing number before scanning the lists of available places online. Having found a suitable course, they must then phone the admissions tutor on the number supplied by UCAS to apply for a place.

The importance of correct spelling...

2011-08-18T08:05:00.000+01:00

From a cookery forum:

A coffee mouse with cream cheese. GREAT RECIPE. Impresses your guests. And even yourself. I got it from Kraft Canada's Whats Cooking magazine.

We're not going on a summer holiday...

2011-08-17T16:16:00.004+01:00

Thanks to the recession, the Tavern staff are staying put in the UK this Summer. For anyone else in the same situation and longing for Mediterranean sun and to remind myself of what I am missing, here's how the last foreign holiday went...

a

Well I didn’t get much sleep here last night,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I'm so hot I feel I need some more air,
My head aches and I am close to despair;
Bugs to the left of me,
Mosquitoes to the right, here I am,
Stuck in a villa with flu.

Yes I'm stuck in a villa with flu,
And I'm wondering what it is I should do,
I’ve got all the right drugs but who needs
A Lemsip when it's ninety degrees?
Bugs to the left of me,
Mosquitoes to the right, here I am,
Stuck in a villa with flu.

Well you started out with a snuffle,
And the shivers though you’re more burnt than tanned,
And your skin, it’s all a-crawlin’,
And you’ve started to cough and to wheeze….wheeze….

Trying to make some sense of it all,
But I can see that it makes no sense at all,
Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor,
'Cause I don't think that I can take anymore
Bugs to the left of me,
Mosquitoes to the right, here I am,
Stuck in a villa with flu.

Boredom for Dummies

2011-08-16T10:30:00.003+01:00

Boredom has been in the news a lot this week as a result of some young people's attempts to alleviate it. The mother of a 12-year-old who smashed up a shop with a golf club was clear whom she blamed for the looting:

''The government,'' she replied, her son by her side, adding: ''There is f*** all for them to do.''

It is interesting that the woman - who, as a lone parent with 10 other children, presumably has little time to spare for her wayward son - seems to believe it is entirely the government's responsibility to keep him entertained; perhaps she expects David Cameron to pop round on Thursdays and kick a ball about with the lad.

Meanwhile, liberal commentators are lining up to deplore the fact that disaffected youngsters find school 'boring, innit'*, criticising teachers for failing to make their subjects entertaining enough to grab the attention of their pupils.

That is easier said than done, given today's media culture. With the best will in the world, if the 14-year-old sitting (I use the term loosely; lounging, sprawling...take your pick) in front of you has been playing Grand Theft Auto since he was seven, I doubt he's going to find 'To Kill a Mockingbird' riveting, however gifted his teacher.

And if the girl at the next desk has been up all night watching hard-core porn with her 20-year-old boyfriend, she is unlikely to be touched by the lyricism of Wendy Cope's poetry.

Many teachers do try, but Health and Safety have taken the bangs and fizzes out of the science lab and all the breathtaking risks out of outdoor activities, while the ever-present inhibiting spectre of political correctness hovers over every Humanities classroom.

And, of course, anyone who tries the 'Down wit' da kidz' approach - "Dat Fortinbras, 'e's well 'ard!" or "Ophelia's a nutter wot topped 'erself, innit."* - deserves all the contempt and scorn they will undoubtedly receive from the class - and the justified anger of those parents who want their child properly taught.

These children are adrenalin junkies, reared on a constant bombardment of visual and auditory input to such an extent that they are desensitised to all but the strongest images and emotions; no teacher can hope to match the flood of sensation they need to register something as entertaining. And on the back of this brainwashing ride the messages of consumerism that allegedly fuelled the looting last week.

What is needed goes against all that their viewing habits - including the notorious 'MTV Cribs' - have been telling them since early childhood; they need to learn that life isn't fair, that wanting something isn't going to make it happen and that you can't expect to be entertained and amused day in day out for the rest of your life.

And above all, if they are ever to become employable, they need to learn that boredom isn't something someone else does to you; it's all your own work.

* Does 'innit' require a question mark? I'm never quite sure.

Blurring the boundaries

2011-08-15T20:57:00.000+01:00

From today's Times TV listings:

8:00 Eastenders
After an argument with Tanya, Vanessa flies into a destructive rage.

8:30 Panorama
John Sweeney reports on the recent civil unrest that has led to death, injured policemen and millions of pounds worth of damage and looting.

On Her Majesty's Cheapest Service

2011-08-14T22:20:00.011+01:00

Something a little more light-hearted this evening, with apologies to Ian Fleming...

Cash-strapped MoD sells off its spies’ luxury watches – and thousands of other items – to plug £36bn ‘black hole’ Daily Mail

James Bond sipped his drink and looked at his wristwatch again. The digital dispay read 10:25. He got to his feet, pushing aside the polystyrene box that held the last few crumbs of his Big Mac. Carrying his large 7-Up, he went to the door of the restaurant and looked out.

It was still raining. His imitation Converse would be soaked through long before he reached the Premier Inn where he had left his Timpson suitcase. If only M would let him take a minicab on expenses.

Turning up the collar of his Burton jacket, Bond stepped out into the street and walked the ten yards to the Silver Dollar Amusement Arcade. Two girls in the doorway made way for him to pass; a hint of Burberry Touch lingered in the air where they had been standing.

Bond selected a slot machine and started to feed in 50p coins. He was gambling with his own money now; M had been very firm about allowances. One of the girls from the door had followed him and now stood beside the machine, watching him. He looked up and caught her eye.

"Gum?" she said, offering a packet of Wrigleys Extra.
"Don't mind if I do." Bond took a piece. "What's your name?"
She leaned closer to him and giggled, her Elizabeth Duke earrings chiming in sympathy. Her breath was warm on his neck and smelt of Bacardi Breezers.
"It's Lauren, but my friends call me Chardonnay," she said.
"Chardonnay? I like it. Smooth, and with a touch of oak. Tell me, Chardonnay, where would you like to wake up tomorrow morning?"

The girl looked up at him from under eyelashes heavy with Rimmel Volume mascara.
"Dunno, really," she said, "As long as I'm in time for school. I've got double geography first thing and it's the only GCSE I'm goin' to get, innit."

"B***er!" said Bond. Turning on his heel, he walked outside onto the pavement and lit a Lambert & Butler.

Since the Ministry cuts, the job just wasn't the same, somehow.

Update: After I had written this, the Urchin drew my attention to this take on a similar theme...

Marshmallows, Money and Middle-class Morals

2011-08-14T14:54:00.008+01:00

A K Haart today has a post about the Marshmallow Test, designed to assess a child's ability to resist immediate gratification for a deferred reward. Although he is actually making a thought-provoking point about the role of the observer, the experiment's test of the power of self-restraint is not far removed from this week's news.

I have already argued that many of the looters were not suffering from material deprivation - the fact that they communicated on Blackberries being one example - and in fact had an abundance of consumer goods already. Even so, confronted with a broken shop window and the cornucopia inside, the prospect of immediate gratification proved an overwhelming one.

Some of those convicted - the ones who 'couldn't sleep' for remorse - claimed this was a complete aberration; it was only the sight of the goods lying there for the taking that prompted them to steal, even though they knew it was wrong and would never normally behave that way. I'm not utterly convinced, I must admit.

Pavlov's Cat - my usual point of reference for matters Japanese - recounts the tale of a friend who dropped a large denomination banknote in a busy part of Tokyo and, to his astonishment, recovered it at the local police station where someone had handed it in - standard practice, apparently, in Japan.

This story - appropriately enough - rang a bell. Some years ago, I was talking with a class of 14-year-olds about what constituted stealing. The hypothetical case - based on a class reading book - was a £20 note dropped in a shopping centre, and the response of the class varied surprisingly.

From the answers I got, only a few would take it to the police station. Some of the others would hand it in to the nearest shop or the centre staff but the vast majority felt that, if they found it, it was theirs to spend. The original owner had lost it through carelessness and thus forfeited his rights.

Even if they were told they woulld ultimately receive the note back if it were not claimed, or a reward for finding it, most of them said they would rather keep the note and spend it there and then.

One boy went further; his mother, he said, had actually found £20 on the floor in a local shop a few years before. She took it to the till, changed it for two £10 notes and gave one each to him and his brother to buy toys and sweets.

This effectively ended the lesson, which was probably a good thing. It was not long after that that I read an article in which a self-righteous Guardianista declared that teachers should avoid at all costs 'imposing their own middle-class values' on pupils - values such as the idea that helping yourself to other people's property is always wrong.

Quite apart from the insulting suggestion that non-middle-class families are incapable of instilling a sense of what constitutes acceptable behaviour in society, there is something frightening about the way honesty and respect for other people's property can be seen as irrelevant to the process of educating future citizens.

You do the maths....

2011-08-13T16:16:00.001+01:00

In the early 1940s, with much of the male population away on military service, an army of women went out to work in Britain's cities while their children were left with carers or evacuated to the country. These children often lacked a single constant parental figure or role model in their lives at a formative stage and bonded instead with other children in mutual ignorance.

Twenty years later, this happened:

In the early 1990s, in the wake of Harriet Harman's IPPR pamphlet 'The Family Way', in which she trumpeted the apotheosis of feminism as she saw it - a matriarchal household free from male influence, a radio interviewee could declare proudly:
"I am pleased to say that Britain now has the highest proportion of working mothers with children under five in the whole of Europe."

A massive drive to get mothers of young children into the workplace promoted daycare from as early as six weeks, particularly if the mother was a lone parent. Another generation of children grew up with absent fathers and limited contact with their mothers, learning their behaviour from other children instead.

Twenty years later, this happened:

Update: Turns out I'm not the only one to have thought of this - Guido Fawkes has been thinking along remarkably similar lines.

The opposite of deprived

2011-08-12T12:21:00.004+01:00

There was a highly significant moment on last night's BBC news - though you might have missed it if you blinked; a father, his back to the camera, explained that he could not control his son or prevent the boy joining the thieves and looters in the street outside.

'I can't stop him going out,' he said, 'I can't even lock him in his room'. His frustration is echoed by parents and teachers across the country whose efforts to educate and civilise their charges are hampered at every turn by the orthodoxy of the child's 'rights'.

I've heard the same phrases used by affluent middle-class parents when their children have annoyed the neighbours with rowdy behhaviour or loud music at all hours: "We can't stop her seeing her friends" or "After all, it's not as if we can take his stereo away from him." Why not? You paid for the thing and it's in your house!

The warning signs were out there when TV presenter Esther Rantzen, in a departure from obscenely-shaped vegetables and talking dogs, strayed into the territory of her reality-documenting spouse Desmond Wilcox and made Childwatch - a programme 'alerting the public to the prevalence of child abuse' (Wikipedia).

This was followed by Childline - founded with the best of intentions to give abused children somewhere to turn in desperate circumstances. Unfortunately one of the founding principles, duly expressed on several occasions by Ms Rantzen in media interviews, was that 'children do not lie about abuse'.

This was a gross over-simplification of the widely accepted finding that 'young children simply do not have the necessary experience or understanding to invent detailed stories of abuse' (quoted by Mary MacLeod and Esther Saraga), an over-simplification which had far-reaching and disastrous consequences in childcare and education as those in authority went on to apply it to all children and all forms of perceived abuse.

And the early jokes about calling Childline because there was broccoli for tea instead of chips have now metamorphosed into a climate where parents really do feel that they cannot risk upsetting their children, whether by imposing discipline of any kind or denying them something they want.

What we saw on the streets this week is not the result of material deprivation - despite the best efforts of liberals to make us believe otherwise - but of indulgence, both material and disciplinary. Look at their trainers and the ubiquitous blackberries, to say nothing of the decidedly comfortable backgrounds of some of those appearing in court; many of these young people have grown up expecting to get everything they want.

Looting simply takes that to its natural conclusion.

A sense of entitlement

2011-08-11T22:04:00.003+01:00

You've got to feel sorry for Michael Gove; there he is trying to sort out a mess that makes cleaning the Augean stables look like a bit of light hoovering while being systematically undermined by the left-leaning (un)civil servants of the Department for Education or whatever it calls itself these days.

What everyone wants to know is why our young people are emerging from schools with fewer certificates than the Tavern dog and what can be done about it. The rioters interviewed complaining they had no jobs may well be right, but I wonder what skills or qualifications they had to offer a potential employer.

The deplorable level of academic achievement in this country has been blamed on a number of things, among them the lack of role models, celebrity culture and that old chestnut deprivation - though Britain has plenty of examples of academic success from backgrounds of real poverty before the welfare state was born.

However, the behaviour of the rioters and looters in recent days is, I would argue, the result of one of the most significant causes of academic failure - a lack of accountability. These children are completely indifferent to rules or exhortations to behave well becauser they believe they can do exactly as they like.

Pupils in many schools see their teachers powerless in the face of disruption - lacking even the most basic sanctions of detention or extra work as punishment for bad behaviour - and are tempted to exploit the situation. A handful of determinedly disruptive pupils can effectively prevent any learning taking place in the classroom, however well-informed, entertaining or interesting the teacher may be.

The consquences of misbehaving or failing to complete work are so trivial that the benefits of messing around in lessons and amusing their peers far outweigh them. Much of the blame for this must lie with progressive Head teachers like the one whom I once heard caution a female teacher for seizing the jacket collar of a boy about to punch another in the face.

What she should have done, he explained to the assembled staff, was to allow the blow to land, then, ignoring the attacker, escort his victim to the office for medical attention and report the incident to the Head - who would follow his usual procedure of inviting the perpetrator to sit down and talk about why he felt the need to punch someone. (It's a fair bet that this character, for example, has a few of these interviews in his past.)

By this stage, the aggressor, accompanied by several friends, had already visited the Head with a pre-emptive allegation of assault against the teacher which was taken very seriously indeed by the school authorities. Standard practice in this situation is suspension pending an enquiry, giving the accuser and his allies a gratifying sense of power and a public demonstration of their success.

Small wonder then that false accusations abound - and are usually levelled against the members of staff most likely to enforce what discipline they are allowed to. These potentially career-wrecking allegations are removing effective and experienced teachers from the profession every year; beyond the classroom a similar phenomenon inhibits any adult trying to prevent young people doing something illegal or antisocial - looting or rioting, for instance.

And small wonder that childen, having refused to take advantage of the education on offer in our schools through a lack of respect for their teachers and fellow-pupils, leave school with rudimentary qualifications and an overwhelming sense of their own importance, invulnerability and entitlement.

Update - someone else is thinking along similar lines this week; Patently Rubbish suggests some decisive steps to re-assert the rule of law, including this one:
Pass a law establishing that teachers are indeed in loco parentis and that a punishment inflicted by a teacher is acceptable regardless of the opinion of the parent or guardian, provided that it is not grossly disproportionate.

A lesson in dignity

2011-08-11T18:57:00.000+01:00

A few days absence but it feels like an eternity - though mostly without my computer, I've been watching events unfold on television to leave us with what may be a profoundly altered society.

There are certain images and stories that have represented recent events - the woman jumping from her burning flat, the dazed and injured student being robbed of his possessions, police charging in lines down city streets - but among the most powerful must be Tariq Jahan's challenge to the surrounding crowd:

"I have lost my son - if you want to lose yours step forward, otherwise calm down and go home."

It may be that, with hindsight, the deaths of Haroon Jahan, Shahzad Ali and Abdul Musavir will be seen as a turning point, the stage at which a game suddenly turned ugly; certainly the previous behaviour of many of the looters had suggested a euphoria at odds with the sententious explanations of 'anger' and 'social exclusion' being bandied around the media.

In the face of a potential flashpoint, Tariq Jahan's restraint in the expression of his grief before the cameras and his refusal to blame the government or police for the actions of criminals stand out as an example of dignity and reason.

We're gonna rock down 2 Electric Avenue...

2011-08-08T18:30:00.004+01:00

...and then round the corner into Atlantic Street.

"It's not rioting, it's shopping."

That was the opinion of one Brixton shopowner whose business, looted during the 1995 disturbances, survived last night intact. Others were not so fortunate, according to the BBC:

On Atlantic Street, one jewellery shop stood with its broken glass front next to shops, takeaways and cafes that had been untouched.

Residents said the choice of targets - clothes, sports goods, jewellery shops - suggested that the intention of the people who hit the streets after violence spilled over from Tottenham and Enfield was not motivated by any political cause.

Around 200 people descended on Brixton last night with the clear intention of causing trouble and helping themselves to whatever they could grab. A group that large, and at a time when tensions are running high, can only have been assembled with the help of modern communication technology.

That is, of course, nothing new. One September night in 1985, an elderly member of Clan Macheath was among a coachload of venerable ladies who found themselves being driven through the middle of a riot in Brixton. Over a restorative cup of tea, our aged aunt later described seeing shadowy figures directing the mob with 'those new mobile telephones'.

Those phones were the latest thing in technology and beyond the means of all but the wealthiest city types - the first UK network went live in January of that year - but were already being harnessed by the forces of disorder. A quarter of a century later, their modern counterparts are providing a secure means of communication to coordinate riots and looting:

'Away from Twitter's very visible feeds, there are perhaps more credible reports that rioters were using private communication systems to encourage others to join the disorder.

Following Saturday's trouble in Tottenham, a number of BlackBerry users reported receiving instant messages that suggested future riot locations.'

And, presumably, future locations for looting. There seems to be no shortage of the latest technology among those criminally inclined, perhaps because it's likely to have been acquired via a smashed window or a dodgy deal in a pub.

Just as the development of speech made early man into an unbeatable predator, so this communication network allows his descendants to pillage en masse and even to pose for pictures along with their ill-gotten gains. To be honest, I'm not sure that really counts as evolutionary progress.