France Annoys Another Friend
France is thinking about making it an offence to deny the Armenian genocide and a bill is passing through their parliament.
If you don’t know about the genocide, this is the first few paragraphs from the Wikipedia article.
The Armenian Genocide also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees. The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally held to have been between 1 million and 1.5 million. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination.
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as scholars point to the systematic, organised manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians, and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust. The word genocide was coined in order to describe these events.
If you read the article, you’ll see that it was probably one of the most barbaric acts of history at the start of the twentieth century. And let’s face it there were quite a few atrocities.
The French action in their parliament, is very much resisted by Turkey, who still deny that the genocide happened There was a protest in Ankara yesterday, which is reported in the Guardian.
Interesting Comments On North Korea
Some wag has posted this as a comment to this article on The Times website.
What next? Simple. Send an X Box, PS3 and Iphone 4 to the young Kim with all the games available. Like any other Korean kid he will get addicted and leave the North Koreans alone. £2000 well spent.
He’d obviously need to be supplied with a decent broadband connection, but the South has some of the best in the world and I’m sure they could find a solution.
And here’s another one.
” I told you I was Kim Jong Il.”
(Apologies to the late, great Spike Milligan.)
There are lots more.
How Real Printers Catch Rats
My father was a real letterpress printer and his works was a rather decrepit building with a rodent problem.
Over the years he told me various stories about how they dealt with them
In the 1930s, he’d lived with his widowed mother above the shop, so to speak, and they’d employed a traditional solution; a cat.
According to my father, who was not unknown to embellish a good tale, the cat was an enormous ginger specimen. And as was typical of those days, he was a proper Tom.
Whether he was any good in the ratting department never entered the story But above the shop next door lived a posh lady with a pedigree Siamese female.
One morning my father was confronted by the lady, saying that his mother’s cat had fathered a litter of kittens, that her Siamese had just produced. On inspecting them, there did seem to be a large number with a ginger hue.
The lady said that her cat never went out and he knew that his family cat was always shut in to deal with the rodent infestation.
So how did the two cats do it?
One hot night, my father was returning from the Jolly Anglers opposite. All the top windows were open and he saw the ginger cat balance along the parapet on the wall and hop in next door to see his lady friend.
His other method of catching rats, relied on those things that were always around in a print works. He would take a quad box and prop it up at an angle over the rat hole with a pica reglet. They’d then all wait in the dark for action. When the rodent disturbed the reglet, the box fell and trapped the poor animal underneath It was then a matter of switching the lights on and moving the box gently to the middle of the room, keeping the rodent trapped Everybody, then grabbed something suitable, like a small coal shovel before the box was removed
It was a quick end. And as my father told it, a fun tale
A Good Sign In Morpeth
I have various Google Alerts setup and one found this story from Morpeth in Northumberland.
Let’s hope it works and improves footfall to the shops.
As I found on my trip around all 92 League clubs, in many places signs are non-existent or downright useless. Many seem to have been designed by those, who have no idea what a visitor wants to do.
Islington’s Hidden Temple
Walk through the back-streets of Islington and tucked away in Gibson Square, you’ll find this curious building in the garden in the middle.
A Curious Building in Gibson Square
So what is it?
The clue is in the roof, as it doesn’t look like the wire mesh would keep the rain and weather out.
But then that isn’t necessary as it is the ventilation shaft for the Victoria line.
The shaft was built in 1970 and has recently been updated to improve the cooling of the line for passengers.
Good Riddance Kim Jong-il
Is there anything else to say after his death?
Except possibly the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
Farewell Vaclav Havel
The death of Vaclav Havel was not unexpected given his health problems. It is very sad and he will be missed by many. He would be on any sensible person’s list of the greatest of the twentieth century.
If I look at countries that have thrown off dictatorships successfully in the last few decades, they seem to have needed a figure to whom they could rally. The charismatic Havel was a supreme example as he took Czechoslovakia from under the heel of the Russians to a free and proud country.
He was no mean playwright either!
When we lived in that flat in St. John’s Wood, we had no television, but we did have a radio and often listened to it, after the children had gone to bed. Some nights we listened to the play on Radio 4.
One night, I can remembering listening to a play called The Memorandum by a Czech author. It may have starred Donald Pleasance, but I can’t find any reference to the production.
It is a superb play and one of the best I’ve heard on radio.
The author, who was unknown to both C and myself, was Vaclav Havel.
How many politicians, even the good ones, will be missed for what they did outside politics? Not many!
France in a Fitch
The French have been blaming everybody except themselves for the pickle the Euro is in.
They have used their biggest guns against the UK. But they have also had a go at the rating agencies, saying that they are part of the Anglo-Saxon plot against the euro. This report on the BBC concerns the view of the rating agency Fitch on the euro.
But Fitch is a French-owned company. Even so, they give France a less than perfect rating.
I shall be watching what they say in the future.
Practical Risk Taking
David Spiegelhalter is Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University. His personal home page doesn’t look like most you find for academics of his august reputation.
We will all have the chance to see him on television tonight.
Not in some economics program about what the various rating agencies think of the euro or a discussion on the risk of smoking, but in the first edition of the BBC’s new series called Winter Wipeout. In an article in The Times today, he said that he considered it an obligation under my terms of employment to apply.
What did the University’s Health and Safety Department say? He does not disclose this in The Times.
Let’s hope though, that after his performance, where I hope he does well, that the politicians, bankers, businessmen and the general public take statistics more seriously. And act on what they say they should do!
This Should Never Happen Again
The case of Dr. Eva Michalak should never happen again. Reading the story in The Times and on the BBC, it seems that the doctor did nothing wrong in her work, except decide to have a baby. That seemed to arouse the ire and vindictiveness of her colleagues and quite rightly, she has got a settlement to compensate for the career they destroyed.
My main problem with this case, is that it would appear that none of her colleagues, have been disciplined in any way. That may not be the case, but as in so many cases like this secrecy may have been used to protect the guilty.
Every person, who runs a large company or organisation, has a duty to all their employees to make sure things like this don’t happen. It could also be argued that they must manage the organisation, so that no employee is pushed into a position, that will cost their company a lot of money. Is the Chief Executive still employed by the Trust? I hope not!
The Anonymous Widower 