Here Come The Cavalry!
I was surprised to see this phalanx of Police motor-cyclists today at the Angel.
Here Come The Cavalry!
I assume they were trainees or on some sort of exercise, as there didn’t seem to be much crime about.
Collumpton Thinks About Banning The Apostrophe
Mid-Devon Council has provoked outrage, by discussing the removal of the apostrophe from street signs. Appropriately, this is the subject of a piece in the Guardian.
A picture in the piece is from my neck of the woods; Hackney and shows a sign labelled “Childrens’ Garden”
I think that they should all be correctly shown.
Note that even Transport for London, has an apostrophe anomaly in Barons Court not being Baron’s Court. It’s all explained here.
An Unusual Advantage Of Professional Cleaners
For the last few months, I’ve had a professional company clean my house, as opposed to a lady who comes round.
One advantage I hadn’t thought of, was that as the company, bring all their own equipment and materials, I no longer have to buy them and carry them back from the shops.
I’d never thought of that! But it’s a great advantage and offsets the extra cost of the professional company.
The Circular Argument Over The Falklands
Whatever the Pope thinks about the Falklands is all fairly irrelevant, despite what was said in the my post about the Daily Mirror, as he has other more pressing problems.
In the end though, economic arguments will win through, so consider these facts.
Argentina’s economy is pretty much a basket case and with policies like nationalising oil companies as reported here, they are annoying possible supporters like Spain.
Spain too, would like to get rid of that irritant Gibraltar, but with their economic problems, they are not going to do anything rash in the area. Although, they do block various EU measures because of it. I think the Spanish are sensible enough to realise that British visitors are an important part of their economy.
The UK, is also a big destination for Spanish unemployed, where they are one of the bigger groups of immigrants.
And then there’s the Spanish enclaves on the coast of North Africa, which to Morocco are probably the same sort of irritant as Gibraltar is to Spain and the Falklands are to Argentina.
So the economy and the politics go round and round.
Throw in possible Scottish independence, which would be an encouragement to some parts of Spain, that yearn for independence and you have a big, interconnected mix.
You probably have two sensible players and one that has a reputation as a bit of an opportunist.
In some ways it’s rather sad what has happened to Argentina. Before the Second World War, it was much higher up the league of prosperity, than it is now. It just shows how bad government can ruin a country.
The Daily Mirror Isn’t Impressed With Pope Francis
I found this article on the Daily Mirror written by a journalist, who comes from the Falkland Islands.
I think most people in the UK, would agree with what he says, as we tend to have fairly strong feelings about those faraway islands in the South Atlantic. I don’t think I’ve ever met a UK citizen, who thinks we should give the island to Argentina.
The writer of this article finishes off like this.
So Pope Francis, I urge you to join the rest of us in the 21st century and recognise the Falkland Islanders’ democratic rights.
Oh, and while you’re at it, how about changing your mind on contraception, abortion and gay rights into the bargain?
Sadly, I think there’s more chance of me becoming the next Pope than any of that happening.
I think my advice to the Pope would be to stay out of the row and try to be a calmiong influence on all parties.
The Banking Sector Is A Turd
Not my words, but those of Simon Walker, the head of the Institute of Directors, as reported in The Times and also here in the Guardian.
He should know given his position.
Why Can’t I Sort My On-Line Bank Statement?
Often at the end of the month, when my current account has too much money in it, I transfer the excess I won’t need to Zopa.
This morning, I wanted to check, that I had put all of these payments into my Excel spreadsheet, that tracks my Zopa lending and calculates the rate I get.
So I logged into my bank account and looked at the on-line statement. I could of course look at it on a page-by-page basis, but where was the feature to sort all of my bank statement entries to bring direct debits to Zopa together?
No-where that I could see! There isn’t a select either to just bring up the debits to Zopa.
It is just not good enough, in this day and age, where a good proportion of the general population is familiar with handling sets of dat in programs like Excel.
I remember in probably about 1990, I was talking to a senior programmer, at one of the big banks. They had made a proposal to senior management to enable customers to get their bank statements on floppy discs. It was technically feasible and they felt it would have been taken up by customers and professionals, who needed to get the data into their personal computers.
These days, it should be second nature for a bank to offer a simple download of your bank statement in an Excel format.
Why doesn’t my bank offer this facility to everybody?
Why Do The Italians Live Longer Than Us?
This question is asked by Fergal Keane on the BBC web site in this article. This is the first two paragraphs.
What is it about the Italians? They smoke more than us, they earn less, their economy is in even worse shape than ours, they spend less on healthcare, and yet – they live longer. Not just a bit, but a whopping 18 months more on average.
They also have more years of good health before disease and disability set in.
Only speculation is offered as to the reeason of Italian longlivity. Although I do find this statement interesting.
There have been improvements in living standards here of course. But Alan Maryon-Davis, honorary Professor of Public Health at King’s College London suggests that Italy is a more cohesive and less divided society than ours. He said “There is a flatter social gradient – less difference between the haves and have-nots in Italy, and that is likely to play a role in health outcomes.”
He also speculated whether the British psyche was fatalistic when it came to illness: “I wonder if many people feel that they can ignore their health for decades in the expectation that the NHS will be there to bail them out when they get into trouble.”
Especially, as I had similar thoughts a week or so ago in this article.
It would be enlightening to see how long Italians, who have lived in the UK for some time, live! After all, if you are from an Italian family in the UK, you probably eat like an Italian, even if your family arrived here decades ago.
The article gives a lot of food for thought.
A Comment On The Election Of The Pope
I cut this out of the BBC web site. It is a comment, that I suspect is typical of the way many Catholics are thinking.
I am praying that the conclave has voted for a progressive Pope. The aggressive rebuking of homosexuals and continued opposition towards contraception have left me doubting whether my social values are compatible with my Catholic faith, to the point where I have considered abandoning my faith. I hope the new Pope will treat these subjects with compassion rather than contempt.
It will be a tragedy, if they elect another backward thinking Pope.
We need leaders, who look forward with clear and radical scientifically-based answers to solve the problems of the World.
The Language Rules In Quebec
There is a big row going on in Quebec about the use of the proper language in an Italian restaurant. It’s here in the Guardian. This paragraph shows the pedantic nature of the language police.
After a five-month investigation into an anonymous complaint, Massimo Lecas received a letter from the board telling him that his establishment, Buonanotte, had broken the law by including the words “pasta” on the menu and “bottiglia”, the Italian word for bottle, instead of the French word bouteille.
It sounds like several Italian restaurants, I have been to in the UK, the Netherlands or France.
I have only been to Quebec once and wouldn’t go again.
I don’t speak French well, but I can read it pretty well, as I’ve spent a couple of summers in the South of France and have also read some of the James Bond books in French.
But I found the French in Montreal very difficult and I never worked out how to use the public transport, as there is no English translation. It was almost like going to Wales and finding everything in Welsh. Even Paris, which last time I looked at the map was in France, is a city, where instructions for public transport are in multiple languages and in that respect it is much better than London.
But the main reason, I won’t go, is that I found on that trip it was difficult to stay gluten-free. In fact, I got glutened for the only time in recent years. It was mainly because the good restaurant I ate in, had probably used oven-chips, which are coated in wheat to make them crisp.
Some years ago, I used to own a hand tool company. We sold in numerous countries including the United States and France, and then had an enquiry from a distributor in Canada. They would take the product, but the product leaflet would have to be in perfect Canadian French. French just wouldn’t do! So at some expense we got a French Canadian translation and the product was duly launched in Canada.
Some time later, we had an urgent order from France and sadly we were out of French leaflets, so we told them, we did have the French Canadian version in stock. So we faxed one to France and the French said that the leaflet was rather quaint and a good laugh, but that it would do to fulfil the urgent order.
There’s no doubt that French Canadians are much more bothered about their language than the French.
Perhaps though some Canadians are also a bit touchy about English spelling. I once flew to the States sitting next to a secretary at the New Zealand High Commission in Toronto. She had to be very careful she didn’t use American spelling, when writing to some English-speaking Canadians, as otherwise they’d return it with corrections.
