The Hats are Still There
I went into Cambridge this afternoon and the hats I mentioned earlier are still there.
So I took some pictures of Kings College Chapel and Senate House.
Note that the hats are quite small, so enlarge the pictures to see them on the four spires.
Students will be Students
When I was at Liverpool University, I had a friend on my course called Alvin John Slasser, who was known as Shaun. He was an experienced climber and climbed everything in site, including the giant crane that was being used to build the Catholic Cathedral.
So when I heard on the news this morning that students had put Santa hats on Kings College chapel I was amused. It was just students following the tradition of Shaun and others. It would appear though that the college authorities are not amused.
The article in the Telegraph also notes this student prank.
In 1958 a group of Cambridge engineering students hoisted an Austin Seven onto the roof of the Senate House at night and left it balancing there.
A few years after this happened, I remember them showing how they did this on the legendary Tonight program with Cliff Michelmore. On the previous night they’d hoisted beams to make a crane and then the car with its back axle removed was lifted, followed by the axle.
I sometimes wonder what happened to the students who did that stunt.
I got a lot of that wrong, when I originally wrote it. The full tale is here.
Sadly, Shaun, my friend at Liverpool University died when abseiling down a rock face in Snowdonia.
Life can be cruel.
Fathers at Their Children’s Births
I was present when all three of my children were born. And that was in the early 1970s. In fact most of the fathers I knew in those days had been present.
I think it helped everybody, even if it was just to hold hands at a stressful time. In fact, by the third my wife was getting to enjoy childbirth a lot more and it was a much better occasion.
I can’t father children any more, so it won’t happen, but would I do it again? Yes!
But then we have this article in The Times. It contains this.
Michel Odent, a leading French obstetrician and author, will argue that men should not be present in the delivery room when women give birth, as their anxiety can be catching and make labour longer, more painful or likely to result in a Caesarean section. Men now attend more than 90 per cent of births in the UK, a proportion that has grown significantly since the 1950s.
Dr Odent believes that the birth process had become too “masculinised” in recent years, and delivery of babies would be easier if women were left with only an experienced midwife to help them, as used to be the case.
“It is absolutely normal that men are not relaxed when their partners are giving birth, but their release of adrenaline can be contagious,” he said yesterday. “When a woman releases adrenaline she cannot release oxycytin, the main hormone involved in childbirth, which can make labour longer and more difficult.”
In my view he’s talking rubbish.
How to Break the Law
One of the ridiculous laws brought in by Blair and Brown is the rules about entertainment licences.
Perhaps it was well-meaning, but it meant that loads of places could fall foul of the law for just a single impromptu performance.
Take the case of Faryl Smith, who got up and sang to promote her record at HMV in Kettering. It’s reported here on the BBC. HMV are now being prosecuted for not having a licence.
The trouble is if you create stupid laws like this, that are not properly thought through, you get even more stupid cases like this.
Surely, the test of laws like this, should be that if no-one is annoyed or disturbed, then you are not breaking the law. I suspect, in Faryl’s case, everybody was enchanted.
Laws like this cost businesses a lot of money and don’t serve any worthwhile purposes. I suggest that most are created by civil servants to make sure that there are lots of jobs that need to be done in the public sector.
Years ago in the UK, we used to have a dog licence. It went because it cost a lot more to collect, than was brought in. No-one mourns such a silly law and has there been any adverse affects. Some will say yes, but when you look at the dog laws in detail, other laws have been brought in to deal with the more extreme cases.
All laws need a cost benefit analysis. If they cost more to implement and keep than any benefits, then they should be broken on the anvil of progress.
That’s the way to really break the law!
Brown Uses the D-Word
As I drove back home today, I was listening to Prudence’s speech to businessmen.
He then used the D-word – dynamism. I can remember Peter Ryrie using that many times as he tried to dominate student politics in the 1960s at Liverpool University.
I laughed, as we all used to mock Peter for the word.
Sadly though, I’ve found that Peter died in 2007.
Paying for the Care of the Elderly
I’m getting there fast and hopefully, I’ll have enough money to keep me in my old age, but others will not.
There is an article in today’s Times, which lays out whether the state or families should pay. It is a difficult question and judging by some of the comments, a large number of people find it unfair that they should pay extra, after they have contributed all their life.
In my view we have to radically change several things.
The first is that we will all have to work later. I have no intention of giving up on work at 65, as my father did and it killed him. But seriously many of us do jobs that we can continue to do on a full or part-time basis for a few more years. If I was Chancellor of the Exchequer, I would give a tax advantage to older workers, as the longer they work the greater the savings will be to the government’s coffers.
I would also abolish Inheritance Tax. I’ve had letters published about this in the Financial Times and know that it can be funded by perhaps two pence on Income Tax. This would give those who wanted to pass on their wealth much greater flexibility and many would move into much smaller well-equipped homes, that would allow them to stay self-sufficient for longer. I’ve been told that some stay in run-down large houses to minimise tax Inheritance Tax liabilities. That is wrong on many fronts.
Inheritance Tax will never be abolished though, because of the politics of envy. Unless of course someone does it in the EU, like Spain or Italy, and everybody rushes to the sun to avoid paying the tax.
We must also find some way to reward those who have looked after their finances. Many others have been profligate and have no assets when they can no longer cope. How this will be done is the difficult part, but perhaps we should give extra tax relief for pensions and savings. This could actually be paid for by making the systems a lot simpler, so that you didn’t have to use one of the armies of pointless intermediaries.
But it is not all gloom!
All of these elderly will be a big market for new products and services. Just take the StairSteady, which is an invention to help the elderly and infirm climb stairs. There are loads of things that need inventing.
In a few years time, a large proportion of the retired will be Internet-savvy. This in itself will enable local self-help groups to be created. New hand-help devices will also make things better.
We often tend to say that it will all get bad and even worse. But often we realise that the doom-mongers are wrong. As an example what happened to the Millennium Bug?
I Back the Judges
Senior judges are at odds with David Milliband over documents concerning interrogations in the US.
Here’s the first two paragraphs of the BBC report.
Senior judges say the foreign secretary is stopping them releasing details of CIA interrogation techniques – even though the US has published them.
The High Court says it wants to refer to previously classified documents as part of its judgement on the alleged mistreatment of Binyam Mohamed.
Interestingly, it would appear that the BBC’s web page links to the documents on the American Civil Liberties Union.
So if we can all read them on the web, why can’t the judges use them?
But then we are never given the truth by government when it suits them. Chevaline was the codename of the project by the Callaghan Government to update the Polaris missiles in the 1970s. It was kept secret for years and only a few years ago, the only full reference to it on the Internet was on the Federation of American Scientists.
We need a lot more information to be published. And not about MPs expenses, which is just peanuts compared to the dark and terrible secrets of things that governments do in our name.
Gordon Brown
I won’t comment on the policies of the main parties, as they were debated in Parliament after the Queen’s Speech today. To me they are irrelevant, as we must get on with the task of sorting the mess out, rather than scoring points.
But I’ve never heard Prudence sound so tired and almost shot to pieces. He’s not a good or jaunty speaker, but he was as uninspiring as you can get. There didn’t seem to be any conviction in his words, no passion, just the repeating of tired phrases.
He should go! And in the manner suggested by The Moody Blues.
Reporting Internet Abuse
There has been a lot of reporting lately about cyberbullying and abuse on social networking sites. In fact the BBC breakfast phone-in was about this subject.
I have no experience of reporting problems on social networking sites, but for years I have been fighting a campaign against on-line fraudsters using the Internet and mobile phones. I have reported endless people for abuse to e-mail organisations and so have many others I know who work in this field.
No service provider have ever informed me that they have taken serious action. As these scams are still occurring, it would appear that nothing has been done. I have found that the same e-mail addresses keep coming up in different scams.
Why?
These companies want the traffic to continue and as they run tight ships, they can’t afford the methods that everyone knows would stop all of these practices.
It is exactly the same with social networking sites. Put a button to report abuse on a site and the abusers will go elsewhere, so a site that does it, will lose traffic and advertising revenue, which is of course geared to traffic.
I also have a granddaughter and she was showing me an innocent site aimed at her age, with educational games, quizzes and puzzles. There was nothing wrong with the site, but some of the advertising on it, was promoting all the foods and snack products that you shouldn’t give to children of her age.
All of these problems are driven by commercial interests, most of which are headquartered outside of the jurisdiction of the UK and the EU. So in truth we are just whistling in the dark and the sites will never change.
All these indignant phone-ins are just free publicity for these social networking sites. They would have had to pay millions to get the same effect. I’d love to see how many new members have joined them in the last few days.
The Anonymous Widower 