Will Expelling Two Syrian Diplomats Make Any Difference?
Of Course it won’t! Assad’s vile regime will expel or worse two of our diplomats. And two from all the other countries that have sent a couple of Syrian diplomats home.
I can’t see a solution to this, whilst the Russians and China back the Syrians. After all, kicking Assad out of power, would set a terrible precedent for their own human rights abuses.
Paying by Phone
They are discussing this on BBC Breakfast this morning.
It won’t work for me, as I use a 12 year old Nokia 6310i. In fact, I’m now going the other way, taking just one credit card, my camera and my Freedom Pass with me, when I go travelling or shopping in London. I sometimes leave the phone at home anyway, as when I’m in the Underground, there is no signal.
Pasty Tax
As a coeliac, I can’t eat pasties and most takeaway food, so the pasty-tax was for me creating a level playing field in taxation.
It just shows how the country wants to eat themselves to hell and then travel there in a dump truck.
FiReControl Was Abysmal Failure
FiReControl was one of the Blair government’s flagship projects, which had the aim of sorting out the 999 services for the fire brigades across England. According to this report from the the National Audit Office, it wasn’t a success. Here’s the first paragaph.
The project to replace the 46 Fire and Rescue Services’ local control rooms across England with nine purpose-built regional control centres linked by a new IT system has been a comprehensive failure. The DCLG acted to cut its losses by terminating the contract in December 2010 but at least £469 million will have been wasted.
Lord Prescott defended the system in the media last week and felt that others were to blame.
Now a letter from Matt Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union is published in The Times with the title of this post as a title, which drops Prescott in the doo-dah. If the FBU won’t support you, something must be wrong.
I hope he’s got his wet suit on!
Prescott is one of those politicians, who in my view, are not fit to run a whelk stall.
He should do everybody a favour and retire from public life. Preferably to a cottage by Spurn Head.
What Is The Collective Noun for Dames?
The Royal Academy has recently had a party for the Queen to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, where they invited a large collection of Dames of the British Empire and other important women from the arts and the media. Here‘s Dame Joan Bakewell‘s account of the evening.
So what is the collective noun for dames?
For dames of a certain sort, it could be a pantomine, but that would have been unfair to those, who turned out in their finery for the Queen.
So perhaps it could be a finery or an elegance of dames?
Burke’s Peerage suggest dameage and then say it is ugly. Which it is!
You could mangle the lyrics from the song and make it a not-like-a of dames. Ugly again!
So I think I’ll go for an elegance of dames, in deference to the ladies, who went to the Royal Academy.
They Say the Welsh Aren’t Mad
Read this from the BBC’s text commentary of the Olympic Torch Relay.
Next stop is Pontypridd and we have arrived – and start off with a torchbearer with an interesting tale. A man with a history of taking his clothes off while running, Courtney Maggs-Jones removed an item on each of 16 London bridges he ran across to raise money for local children to fund a new wheelchair. He appears to be fully-clothed today….so far at least as he sets off at a brisk pace.
I rest my case.
If Bankia Were a Used Car, It Would be a “Cut and Shut”
The heading of this post has just been said by BBC financial correspondent on the BBC Radio 5. I like it. He also said that Bankia needs €19billion immediately and the Spanish banks together need €100billion.
I would move everything out of Santander now, as when this Spanish idiocy goes bang, it will be very difficult, as those left in this game of Spanish musical chairs will be exiting at the same time.
But of course banking with a company headquartered outside the UK, breaks one of my golden rules of banking. Or in fact my late friend’s rules.
The Dominions Stick Together
In some ways it’s one of the best pieces of news for Africa in a long time, but the decision of the SKA organisation to site their new radio telescope in remote parts of Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, is to be welcomed. The details are here on the BBC’s web site.
Milton Nkosi from the BBC says this about the project.
This decision will help to change the perception that Africa is a dark continent full of death and destruction and where little scientific research is carried out.
The telescope will deliver thousands of jobs and will showcase South Africa’s rich history in astronomy.
The SKA will have 3,000 antennas across a vast semi-desert part of South Africa known as the Karoo. The site is already home to seven massive Gregorian dish antennas that form part of the Karoo Array Telescope, or Kat7.
The only thing history tells us about it, is that the project will get bigger. And it will be joined by other large instruments.
When Social Media Goes Awry
The Telegraph reports an unseemly spat between Joe Simpson, the author of Touching the Void, and schoolchildren doing the book for GCSE.
It is the sort of thing that can happen on social media and I suspect both parties could have been a little bit more discrete or less outrageous with their replies.
I had a letter published once and it attracted some fairly abusive letters in reply. In the end, history has shown that I was right.
Wales Does the Torch Proud
They’re now only an hour or so from Cardiff and the end of the day’s run.
Wales has done the torch proud and it has been sunshine all the way.
The BBC Wales weatherman was warning of too much sun in Cardiff and said to bring sun cream. No comment!
The Anonymous Widower 