Stray Blogs

Misused Words

2011-12-21T11:07:00.000Z

The fashion for misusing particular words comes and goes, but there are always at least a few with us. EFFICIENCY is a long-standing favourite, but the current one is SPRING, as in ARAB SPRING. The Prague Spring of 1968 really meant something, even though in the event it proved to be no more than a temporary thaw in a long winter. But can journalists compare rifles being fired into the air (at best) and the exchange of one dictatorship for another at a cost of hundreds or thousands of lives with this?

By the way, Blair believes...

2011-09-10T15:00:00.000+01:00

With the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Centre murders coming up, the BBC had Blair on the radio this morning to be interviewed. I had the misfortune to hear it.

I found the way Blair repeated 'by the way' literally dozens of times very irritating. No, Mr Blair, it's not 'by the way' that the world has taken such an ugly turn of events over the last ten years. You bear a major part of the responsibility for this, just as you bear a major part of the responsibilty for the deaths of half-a-million people.

But what really infuriated me was the way Blair met every sensible point put to him by the interviewer by saying things like 'I fundamentally disagree...' or 'I believe...' As if this made everything all right! Why was this man given air-time? I blame:

the BBC for taking the lazy way out and wheeling Blair out for 'interview' at this time
all the Labour and Tory MPs (especially the members of the Labour Cabinet) who allowed themselves to be taken in by Blair's words.
all the people (this includes me) who put Blair in power in 1997.

Words are the new........... (fill in as desired )

2011-09-06T08:39:00.002+01:00

It's so easy to have fun with quotes from people who are not thinking properly about what they are saying. I like these. Jack Straw on recently released documents from Libya concerning the possible implication of our Government in the torture of prisoners....."they say what they say..". Helpful?

A recently reported death by strangling of a blind imam outside a mosque. "This was not a hate crime." It's that juxtaposition of 'strangling' and 'hate' that worries me.

Finally some frivolity from the National section of The Guardian on Saturday. Following articles on the EDL - "not an extremist organisation", more on Wikileaks and Darling's hatchet memoirs, comes the "Manicure Boom". "Nails are an art form." "Nails are the new art." "They are the new handbag." Men need not feel excluded. "It's an intimate expression of art and culture" Ryan L.

Perhaps we should revert to that time of grunts and hand gestures.

I did like this though, from a former Gang Leader debating the causes of recent riots. "The Welfare state started off as a safety net, it's now a hammock and will become a noose."

TWO MEETINGS WITH JORGE LUIS BORGES

2011-09-03T15:59:00.023+01:00

The fact of living in the same city as a writer we admire does not mean a huge advantage in relation to the possibility of meeting him beyond what his pages offer.

In the event, Icould only see him a couple of times, both very briefly. The first occasion,was in 1975, when he unexpectedly showed up at an art gallery I attended. He was extremely polite and even shy in his social behaviour. I do not remember who introduced us but he told me something about his latest book La rosa profunda (The Deep Rose), just published. He was very reticent in talking about himself or his work unless directly asked. By that time. I had not read him thoroughly nor was I particularly interested in his poetical or narrative work. Six years later I had devoured his complete works and had the chance of meeting him again at the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores (Argentinian Society of Writers).

As I had published my first book — in which Dylan Thomas had left a deep trace — I wanted to give Borges a copy with an inscription. I remember he took my book very politely. Listening to the reading of my inscription —Borges had been blind since 1955 — he told me he did not deserve those words of sincere admiration; nobody did. When I told him I also admired Dylan Thomas and that the Welsh poet had had a powerful influence on my first book, he said that if I liked Dylan Thomas so much, I would also like Walt Whitman, "an author of other epiphanies", as he then defined it. I answered that I had read Whitman — with that certainty only allowed by the age of 20 and a first book published — and was not too enthusiastic about him.

Borges retorted that something similar had happened to Ezra Pound, who only came to appreciate Whitman's great work at an older age and that, if Pound had had that perception, it was probable the same would be happening to me: that I might be needing some more time to enter Whitman's poetics.

I never saw Borges again but I kept on reading and re-reading his poems and narrations. Later these became a major influence in my writing. By then I already believed that a new author should try to premeditatively seek the influence of other writers, to counterbalance the influence received from one author with the reading of another. LUIS BENITEZ

Vorderman doesn't add up

2011-08-08T15:13:00.000+01:00

That deeply unpleasant woman, Carol Vorderman, has seen fit to publicise her views on mathematics teaching. Apparently she believes, or says she believes, that everybody in school should study maths until the age of eighteen. On behalf of my sixteen-year-old self (I was one once, though admittedly this was a long time ago) I shuddered at this suggestion. Strangely enough, I have retained the greater part of the mathematics I struggled with so long ago.

But why should we take the opinions of a TV presenter seriously? And why, in particular, should we pay heed to Vorderman? Her doubtful claim to fame is based on her time as front woman of Countdown, a daytime TV show, but I remember her better as the front woman for a loan company's advertisements. Her job was to give this usurer some kind of credence, and to pretend that the extortionate repayment rates added up.

In the magazine-based predecessor to Stray Blogs, Stray Thoughts, I identified Vorderman as one of the three most ill-matched people to jobs. The others were Tony Blair as 'peace ambassador' in the Middle East and Jeffrey Archer as a 'TV jurist'. Would we take anything they said seriously? I hope not.

Why did Charlene cry?

2011-07-03T08:56:00.003+01:00

If you watched Prince Albert's wedding you certainly saw the bride crying in the church. Was it the solemnity of the moment? The lyrics of the song? Indeed, the singer seemed to be doing her job most convincingly. Or was it the idea of freedom being lost forever? Charlene used to be an athlete and athletes, we well know, have strong personalities, their will cannot be bent as easily as Albert might think, although he's spent quite a while in their company. In the past few months Charlene must have got acquainted with the strict rules of monarchy and with how demanding Albert himself probably is. Think of how he reacted to her crying. A long face that spoke volumes. To say nothing of the age gap. History will probably repeat itself for the House of Grimaldi: another unhappy Grace Kelly. Princess Diana, another victim of the same circumstances, must look as sad now as Charlene did yesterday.

See you later, Talibangater!

2011-07-02T05:42:00.002+01:00

NATO's decision to leave Afghanistan is most welcome. They should have done it much earlier if they had given more thought to the lesson the Russians learnt there years ago. One thing is for certain: Afghanistan or any other country, one can't impose their own system on them. It simply doesn't work. They should be left to their own devices. I know it's the ordinary people that carry the burden but, basically, it's their job to get rid of their own evil. The Taliban are probably wining and dining now - once the NATO forces are out, they'll do whatever they want in the country. The same thing will most probably happen in Iraq.

Weddings

2011-06-14T06:37:00.004+01:00

Who said Romanians can't afford a wedding as big as the royal one? The other day a twenty-eight-year-old MP married the twenty-five-year-old daughter of a local baron, their wedding being attended by exactly one thousand guests. The gifts were worth one million Euros. That should definitely change the British perception of Romania - there are rich people there too, not only beggars that cross the Channel to fill the streets of London and other important cities. The trouble is the former's wealth and snobbery are based on the latter's poverty and despair.

Communism, Here I Come

2011-06-13T08:45:00.002+01:00

The communists have just won the local elections in the Republic of Moldova. So what, some of the Westerners might say. Moldova is such a small country, with next to none chances to join the EU, just two million disoriented people. The trouble is the older generation has managed to pass on its communist nostalgia - nourished by the sort of wild capitalism that has replaced the former regime - to the younger generation. And that hasn't happened only in Moldova. It's also happened in Romania and all the other ex-communist countries. With a deeply dissatisfied younger generation I think the resurrection of communism is just around the corner. With the global crisis which doesn't seem to end, even the EU and the Western World in general are facing the danger. Greece, as part of the EU, is likely to be the first to say hello to communism - not that it would be a first in its history. The bottom line is the filthy rich of the world should move fast if they want to avoid waking up some day and seeing red flags outside their mansions.

E-coli

2011-06-10T06:40:00.002+01:00

Tons of vegetables wasted, millions of Euros lost, thousands of people losing their jobs, panic and hysteria all over the world - do you really think all that comes from the innocently called e-coli? Didn't everything start after good old bin Laden was killed? What if his supporters finally triggered the bacteriological warfare? No more explosions, no more planes hitting sky-scrapers, no more kamikaze, just pissing off the latent e-coli which we all carry inside. What could be simpler and more efficient than that?

Ordinary Citizen Firing

2011-04-18T12:43:00.003+01:00

I'm surprised no-one else has mentioned the situation in Libya. John Simpson of the BBC said it all when, a few weeks ago, in trying to explain away an incident of 'friendly fire' against the 'rebel' forces, he said something like, "The NATO pilots can't distinguish between anti-aircraft guns and ordinary citizen firing into the air". Ordinary citizen firing into the air? What are we doing there?

The Silent Majority

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

One of the most dishonest things any journalist or 'commentator' can do is to call upon 'the silent majority' for support. You know the sort of thing:

'the silent majority recognises the need to address our budget defecit'

or

'the silent majority resents the savage cuts to public spending'.

No it doesn't, in either case. We don't know what the silent majority is thinking. The thing about 'the silent majority' is that it's silent. As some of those who seek to enlist it to their cause should be.

Advertising Oscars

2011-03-28T15:31:00.020+01:00

There should definitely be the equivalent of an Oscar ceremony for TV advertisers. Some of the awards I'd like to make for 2011 are: MOST POINTLESS ADVERTISEMENT The AVIVA ad that starts with someone trapped in a call centre singing 'ISA, ISA, ISA', would be the clear winner here. You can see that the creative genius behind this is the same one responsible for changing the name of NORWICH UNION to the present one, probably shared with a thousand joke or tourist souvenir shops somewhere. MOST AUDACIOUS ADVERTISEMENT You've got to admire the sheer effrontery of WONGA.COM. They call themselves something like 'Alternative Loans Provider of the Year' and then breathtakingly put interest rates exceeding 4,000% APR up front. MOST UNAPPEALING AVERTISEMENT This would be a close-run contest. In the frame would be the diseased mind responsible for the DOMESTOS rubber-sucker germs. But the eventual winner would be the creator of the woman-icon for CONFUSED.COM. This must have lost them a lot of sales. Should they change their name to BEMUSED.COM? Fancy letting themselves be beaten by a fat opera-singer annoyingly singing 'GO COMPARE'. There IS intelligent life in the universe. It's just that there's not much of it in the advertising industry.

Smoking

2011-03-09T14:23:00.004Z

I can say this with no axe to grind, because I've never smoked a cigarette, a pipe, or anything else. The anti-smoking fascists are in action again, this time making moves for cigarettes to be sold only in plain cartons from under the counter. They won't be satisfied until smoking is banned anywhere in the open air and until all smokers are made to wear a yellow armband. Everyone knows smoking is not exactly a heath aid, but what business is it of everyone else?

No Shame

2011-03-07T18:03:00.003Z

I have recently been reading a very interesting book about the background to the economic catastrophe we are in the midst of, the full consequences of which are yet to be felt. The book is Whoops! by John Lanchester, it’s easy to read and gives easy to understand explanations of the mysterious bank products (or shenanigans) such as Credit Default Swaps and Options which would have led to their downfall had we not bailed them out. Thanks to the generosity of the taxpayer the bankers can keep on doing what they do best and that’s making themselves rich. I recommend the book.
One passage in the book caught my attention and that was the reaction of an Icelandic student who was stranded in the UK because her Icelandic bank had literally run out of money and the ATM refused her request for cash even though she was in credit. The outcome was that she was unable to complete her education in the UK and is now unemployed in Iceland her career hopes in ruins. Her comment was: “What angers me most about our former government here (Iceland) is that they didn’t have the decency to be ashamed”
I’ll think of that every time I see Messrs.’ Miliband and Balls pontificating on what’s best for the economy. After ten years in government and the biggest credit boom and bust in history these guys who were so fast asleep at the wheel that unlike every sensible man in the street they couldn’t foresee the financial tsunami that had to happen, instead they were out there not saving for a rainy day but spending in a fashion not seen since Viv Nicholsonson won the pools. Now they have the audacity to tell us how to put the economy to rights. These people are useless.
The irony of this tale of woe is that the people that voted for them in the first place are going to be the very ones that get hurt the most: the ordinary working family, the lower paid, the public employee and the sick and unemployed. But the greatest irony yet to come is that these are the very people who could easily vote them back into government when they feel the unavoidable financial pain dished out by the Tory’s and the men in yellow ties. , ‘there's nowt so queer as folk.’

Recycling - The New Religion is Green

2011-03-07T16:30:00.002Z

Is Green Religion founded on fact or faith like the old religions? Well I’m inclined to think fact given the authoritative scientific evidence we are regularly bombarded with and unlike the old religion we can actually go and see the melting polar ice caps whereas we can’t hail a time machine and go and check out events of 2000+ years ago, not yet at least.
So I have become a committed recycler and have all the boxes, bins and bags to prove it, namely: a landfill bin, a garden/organic materials bin, a blue box for paper and newsprint, a white bag for plastic bottles, a bag for tins and cans and finally a green box for booze bottles and paper cartons which I have to segregate into brown, green, clear and cartons when I arrive at the supermarket bottle bank. That by any measure is a lot of containers to clutter up the house
For me this is not really much of a space problem being fortunate to have ample space to hide away the multitude of containers, the people I feel sorry for when confronted by the demands of green priests on the councils are the ones who live in normal sized house or flats and who have to live with the indignity of wheelie bins sitting outside their front door all year-round. You take a nice street of terraced houses then you litter it with wheelie bins and black plastic bags ugh, there has to be a better way.

Recycling

2011-03-06T19:02:00.001Z

It’s become all the rage round our way. Cardboard, plastic, tins, paper, glass, food leftovers… even those containers that fruit juice and chopped tomatoes come in – what do we now call tinned tomatoes? After the initial resistance and confusion (the council had to employ a batallion of agency staff and hire extra switchboards to cope with all the calls from disgruntled or bewildered members of the public), most people seem to have accepted the changes and dutifully separate their recyclable waste into the correct depository for weekly collection, while remembering to only put out their black bags for collection fortnightly. I suppose it’s all to the good, although part of me can’t help wondering if we’re locking the stable door long after the horse has been recycled into a tube of glue.

While we consumers are being converted to the recycling revolution late in the day, others have been recycling for years. Take record producers. How many times have you heard a song on the radio and started to sing along before realising it’s not the same version as the one you know and love? When the song finishes and the DJ mentions the artist, your reaction is, “Who?” Turns out to be the winner of some reality show you’ve vaguely heard of and might even have watched once, or a version of it, when such shows were just starting out and had the novelty factor (if not the X factor).

And what about films? Just think for a moment of how many films they’ve remade in recent years, for no reason that I can see other than in the hope of making a fast buck. Ones that spring to my mind: The Omen, King Kong (twice), The Parent Trap, The Poseidon Adventure, Planet of the Apes, The 39 Steps (at least twice, more counting TV versions). It wouldn’t be so bad if the remakes somehow improved on the original, but they rarely do in my experience.

There are, of course, exceptions, particularly in music. I love Kelly Osborne’s grungy version of Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach and Wheatus’s version of Erasure’s A Little Respect. But I’m struggling to name a film whose remake I prefer.

So, I can see the point of recycling when it comes to household waste, but music and films? Hmm… I’m not convinced, unless it’s to give the older generations an undeserved reputation for being hip.

The day that Madonna released her version of American Pie, my daughters regarded me with new-found respect as I absent-mindedly sang along – how could their fusty dad be so up to date with the music scene as to know the words to Madonna’s latest song? Little did they know that I was singing the Don McLean version.

Computer Says No

2011-03-04T20:54:00.004Z

A very popular, but in my view highly overrated, TV programme of recent years was LITTLE BRITAIN. The sketches were too repetive, being repeated week after week with no real variation. Nevertheless, I have to acknowledge that the basic ideas behind many of the sketches were sharp and insightful. One of these was the 'computer says no' series, in which an unthinking employee of a travel agent pressed a few computer keys before coming up with the unhelpful response to a straightforward question of 'computer says no'.

This is a real phenomenon of our times. It is encountered in all sorts of situations. Certainly it isn't confined to travel agents, nor even just to computer systems. So determined have been the designers of systems and procedures been to make them 'idiot proof' that they discourage the use of any iniative on the part of the user. In other words, they encourage them to be idiots.

City Slickers in Primary Schools!!

2011-02-23T18:55:00.001Z

I don’t know anything about PGCE so could you enlighten me as to what it cost to qualify and what costs the previously obtainable bursary was intended to cover? If you are a qualified librarian why are you expecting the state to finance a change in career so you can be a primary school teacher as worthy a profession as that may be? Don’t suppose there are many city slickers looking for places on these courses!
I don’t know how the Big Society vision will work out in practice but it’s got to be better than the mess the last lot left behind. Oh and what’s wrong with privatisation the public services have not and do not always served us particularly well. According to various articles I have read public sector employment increased by c800000 during Labours term in office, what do they all do and what services are we getting today that we didn’t get before they all arrived?

BIG society

2011-02-23T17:28:00.003Z

Whether you agree with Cameron that it's empowering local people and communities and transfering power from the politicans to the people (hmm) or you think that the coalition is "cynically attempting to dignify its cuts agenda, by dressing up the withdrawal of support with the language of reinvigorating civic society" (copyright E Miliband), this has been making all the headlines in the UK of late.

From a personal viewpoint, I've worked (mostly) in the public sector for the past few years as a librarian and now as a teaching assistant. Volunteerism looks like an excuse to get rid of skilled, qualified librarians from the already ailing public library sector. Can our libraries be realistically sustained by volunteers? And as far as schools go...well, I was hoping to do a PGCE next year to train to be a primary school teacher, but the government have decided to withdraw bursaries from all but the 'priority' PGCE programs. Yeah, cheers for that. Now only city slickers who are concerned about losing their jobs and have £10K stashed away in savings can train to be teachers now then. Education was all about inclusion under Tony Blair, or at least that was the official line. It looks more like it's going down the route of exclusion now.

So in short: not a fan. I agree with the guy who said it was smoke and mirrors for an avalanche of privatisation.

Because Chickens are Highly Offensive Monsters of Epic Destruction, I Suppose.

2011-02-23T02:33:00.007Z

When we left the city of Vancouver and moved here, to a tiny rural community on an island, one of the first things I asked at the village office was if I could keep a chicken or two in our yard. I received a prompt, enthusiastic "NO". Residences within village boundaries are not zoned for the husbandry of farm animals, so all hopes of raising sheep, horses, dairy cattle and fowl on my lot were RIGHT OUT. Even if it was only a pair of cute bantams and a rooster. The Powers That Be have spoken, and they proclaimed, "No chickens for you!"

It now seems that the residents of Vancouver are one step closer to urban farming, and soon, it will be perfectly legal for Vancouver homeowners to keep chickens in their backyards.

The world is a bizarre place.

RECAP: if I move back to the city, I could raise chickens and have fresh eggs, but if I continue to live here, surrounded by forests, I will be slapped with a fine if I purchase a single hen. In fact, as the bylaw stands right now, people in the City of Vancouver can keep 12 exotic birds -- they are perfectly within their legal rights to own a dozen ostriches.

How very, very odd.

Rumania vs. Romania

2011-02-20T20:44:00.002Z

At the peak of his political career, Ceausescu (does the name ring a bell?) decided that the name of his country - Rumania - should be spelt differently - Romania, to make sure everybody realised the Romanian people was the result of the blending of two civilizations: the Roman and the Dacian (the Roman Empire invaded Dacia at the beginning of the second century A.D. and the following centuries witnessed the emergence of the Romanian people and the Romanian language, a process similar to what happened in England after the Norman Conquest). Only nobody knew at the time that the gypsies in the country and elsewhere would get a politically correct name - the Roma/Romani - and thus cause an embarrassing (at least for the true-born Romanians) confusion: nowadays many people believe that Romania is the country of the gypsies! Given the troubles many Roma people tend to get into wherever they go, Britain included, and hence their bad reputation, a Romanian MP recently proposed a bill that was supposed to draw the line between the Romanians proper and the Roma ethic group by giving back the latter its former name. The bill was voted against, in spite of the growing pressure from a great number of Romanians who were scandalised both by the evil doings of some of the Roma people who travelled to the West and by the anathema cast on the whole Romanian nation just because of a linguistic confusion. Although officially the issue seems to have been solved, controversy among the ordinary people is still going on.

Petru Iamandi (Rumania/Romania)

On a train

2011-02-18T14:39:00.002Z

About a week ago, on a busy commuter train to Newport, I took the opportunity to study some of my fellow-passengers. Of the nine people in my line of sight, two were reading books, one was ostentatiously reading his Kindle, and no fewer than six were grey-facedly prodding their Smartphones or iPods.

Ten years ago the majority might have been reading 'Heat' or some such. Twenty years before that, they might have been reading books. If we believe the old b&w films, go back another twenty years and they might have been deep into their broadsheet newspapers. Fashions change. It's as well for the mental health of the i-prodders that they do.

Universal Language

2011-02-17T18:38:00.003Z

About a century ago, ESPERANTO made a bid to be the universally-understood language. More recently, it's looked as if ENGLISH would be the de facto universal language.

Now a clear winner has emerged with the ascendancy of BULLSHIT. Only this morning I heard a fine example on the radio. Some twonk was describing Bahrain as a 'quasi-democracy'.

BULLSHIT has a clear advantage over the pretenders. ESPERANTO is an artificial language that has to be learned. ENGLISH can only be understood by non-English-speakers when you shout. BULLSHIT makes it sound as if you're saying something clever and wise when you're only talking - well, bullshit.

I read you Superman

2011-02-14T12:49:00.003Z

Superman, putting the words "rude and insulting" with "bringing balance and reason to the proceedings" does not instill confidence in your super powers........do they not cancel out each other????

Stray Frog

An Invitation

2011-02-13T15:26:00.001Z

Stay Blogs? Why stray? Did these blogs wander off at one time and then unexpectedly turn up on your web site, or were they abandoned by their owners and then by chance turn up on your web site looking for a new home? Strictly speaking, they should be described as ‘Miscellaneous Subject Matter Blogs’, for they are clearly not stray by virtue of the fact that they were deliberately placed onto your web site by their originators, albeit those originators may be disguising their identity by use of a nom-de-plume. All that said, I suppose it would be fun to contribute to your Blog, for it is an opportunity to be rude and insulting to a wide cross section of the community from the safety of my pen name. My contribution will help bring some balance and reason (that will be the day)and, who knows, some spark to the proceedings.

Superman

2011-02-13T15:13:00.002Z

I have arrived. Is there anyone there? Somebody say something

Graphic Novels - 'the literary comic book'

2009-04-14T12:26:00.000+01:00

When I suggest that graphic novels are capable of having as much literary merit as a Dickens or a MAN Booker Prize nominee, I sometimes meet with snorts of derision from not only English teachers but my fellow librarians too. Their ill-informed perspective is that a graphic novel is essentially a trussed up comic book; that is, superheroes in tights fighting moustache-twirling villains over 100+ pages.

This is true to an extent, of course. Trouble is, people seem to think that it's truer to a greater extent than it actually is. It doesn't help when Waterstones seem to only stock superhero graphic novels (that's certainly the case in the branch at Leeds), and graphic novels are tucked away in the teenage zone of the public library, a place the rest of us tend not to 'invade'.

Anyone who's read Watchmen will testify that superhero graphic novels can be literature. The weighty ethical and political issues dealt with in this chilling alternative reality, in which Nixon is still president in 1985 and a consequence of superhero-assisted victory in Vietnam is a countdown to nuclear Armageddon, are as excitingly thought provoking and stimulating as just about any novel I can think of. Ditto Frank Miller's Batman books, a clear inspiration for the recent excellent Batman Begins and Dark Knight films.

But there are reams of brilliant graphic novels out there in which there isn't a cape or 'BIFF' sign in sight. Anyone who thinks the comic book medium can't grapple with truly powerful and horrifying episodes from human history, such as the Holocaust, should really read Art Spieglman's Maus books, which deal with precisely that. Marjane Satrapi's bittersweet memoir of her life before, during and after Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 in Persepolis not only reads as a great history lesson, but it's a truly moving and involving rites of passage autobiographical tale in its own right.

And if intellectual mysticism is your bag, check out the brilliantly demented Neil Gaiman's Sandman books, in which the reader is invited on a dizzying, non-linear trip through space and time in the company of Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, and his family Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium and, grandest of all, Destiny, complete with a supporting cast that borrows deities from just about every culture in the world. Believe me, these books have as much philosophical, metaphysical and theological meat to get your teeth into as a Dostoyevsky.

I could go on and on, but that's enough from me. Open your mind to graphic novels, and you won't regret it. In case you're wondering I'm a school librarian, and had I not been one I'm not sure if the literary merit of graphic novels would have been something I'd have been alerted to. I definitely wouldn't have been aware of the merits of teenage fiction had I not got this job: and a post on why you shouldn't rule those out is what I'll be nagging you about in the near future...

U.S. Elections and Conspiracy Theorists

2009-01-22T15:26:00.005Z

Barack Obama has had to re-take his inauguration oath because there was a slight mix-up with the words first time around. They were worried about conspiracy theorists getting excited. BUT I hear that the second oath was taken without a bible. Apparently there wasn't one to hand.

Surely that will have the conspiracy theorists jumping up and down even more? Anyway, I hope this daft-as-brushes minority doesn't cause too many problems. Obama has enough on his plate. He'll need a very big mop and bucket to clear up after Dubya.

The very best of luck to him. Expectations vary from 'Barack walks on water' hysteria in some quarters to 'anything must be better than Dubya' from the cynics. Personally, I think he will beat the latter minimum by some distance. Let's hope so.

Cultural Imperialism

2008-06-17T14:47:00.004+01:00

Michael Balcon, the heart and soul of the post-war Ealing Studios, said 'the only Imperialism worth anything is Cultural Imperialism'. It's hard to disagree with this statement. Think how much cheaper it would be to subsidise the making of a few film comedies or to properly fund organisations like the British Council than it is to spend £££££££££'s on military adventures like the Suez Canal and the Falklands, or latterly in trotting obediently after the Americans.

news gathering

2008-04-22T09:14:00.002+01:00

I often think it's the small items of news that say more about the state of the world than than the leader articles...take this for example

"A man has been prosecuted for attempting to smuggle an iguana into the US inside a secret compartment in his prosthetic leg."

Now whatever happened to ferrets and moleskins?

US Elections

2008-03-03T11:02:00.003Z

Why is the UK media so obsessed with every little detail in the run-up to the Presidential elections in the USA? The elections don't even take place until the end of the year.

Granted that the US President is an important figure in international politics, and the World will be very glad to see the back of Dubya and his cronies in November, but we in the UK have absolutely no influence on the outcome of these elections. Let's face it: the American people don't have much. We're talking about the politics of a Plutocracy, not a real Democracy.

courtesy

2008-02-21T08:22:00.006Z

Whenever news programmes want to run a predictable item on obesity they then settle for the predictable background footage in some shopping mall, showing various citizens with corpulent spreads and large behinds. But do they ask these people's permission to photograph them at such a disadvantage? And if not isn't the whole process incredibly rude? It maybe that if the PC Republic is ever declared we'll find that simple old-fashioned courtesy is a thing of the past.

Headlines

2008-02-11T12:12:00.000Z

Remind me of what a headline is supposed to do..........this grabbed my attention alright but as for giving me any clue as to the contents of the article........

"Pop goes chance of Beckham hit with Haircut 100" Daily Telegraph, last week.

Any guesses? Answers on a postcard please....

Healthy? You're a burden on the state

2008-02-06T14:40:00.000Z

I've always instinctively known this, but am glad that there's finally research to prove it. Dutch researchers have proven that healthy people are a greater burden on the state than smokers and the fat. A person of normal weight costs an average £210,000 over their lifetime whereas a smoker costs up to £165,000 and the obese about £187,000 each. So if you're a fat smoker, the government should be paying you to stay that way. It'll be cheaper in the long run!

Valentine

Administrative Shortcomings

2008-02-01T20:53:00.000Z

Administrative shortcomings? Apologies? Ten days suspension? If you're going to be a benefit fraudster, you should know which benefit to defraud. Derek Conway certainly does.

Creative Writing

2008-01-31T15:40:00.000Z

Overheard on the radio - politician unknown.

"Ticking boxes is so yesterday's story..."

I wonder what kind of story that would be? I thought politicians told the truth? And I didn't know they ticked boxes, either? Saying they think outside the box, yes, in a transparent kind of way but all the time sending out strong signals in a robust fashion as they float off their raft of measures on their level playing fields....sorry, getting carried away with my own story....

ID Cards

2008-01-19T19:04:00.000Z

How could an MOD car containing a laptop computer with the personal details of 600,000 people be left in a car park overnight for anyone to steal? Thank goodness our ID Card data will be in safer hands. What was that? You're a cynic, you are.

Words

2008-01-19T14:50:00.000Z

I may not do this, for I feel it would surely characterize me as something of an Anorak, but I should love to sit through next year's final of the BBC's 'Strictly Come Dancing' and actually count the number of times judges and commentators use the word "fantastic". I suspect that this year's count would have run into several dozen.

Words

2008-01-18T19:32:00.000Z

A few months ago, the England football captain, Steven Gerrard, looking for reasons why his side lost 3-2 to Croatia, "pinpointed" the fact that they had conceded two goals early on. Sounds like shrewd analysis.

Mobile Madness

2008-01-17T20:44:00.000Z

Mobile phones have made people careless about making private phone calls in public places. Even so, I thought the lady I heard on a crowded bus shouting her credit card details down her handset must have been very trusting.

Words

2008-01-17T16:34:00.000Z

Is any term in the arts (and in literature in particular) now used as relentlessly as the ubiquitous "innovative"?

Preaching Politicians

2008-01-12T16:04:00.001Z

A few mornings ago I heard David Cameron bleating on the radio about 'performance related pay' for NHS staff. What about chronic patients, the elderly etc?

Words

2008-01-12T15:56:00.000Z

Acknowledging that he was on dangerous ground, Bill Oddie said on the radio that ‘only civilised people care for wildlife’. This raises complex questions, but in a very narrow sense what he says is worth considering: ‘civilised’ originally meant ‘city-dwelling’ (from ‘civitas’, Latin for ‘city’). It’s often interesting to know the roots of words: ‘entrepreneur’ literally means ‘between-taker; ‘egregious’ comes from ‘grex gregious’ - ‘standing out from the flock’; and so on.

Preaching Politicians

2007-12-30T18:14:00.000Z

Headline news in The Observer was ‘All Children Must Read by Six, says Cameron’. The Government and politicians should concentrate on providing good facilties, not preaching to us, weighing children and the like.