Twenty Years On

In November 2014 I was somewhat bothered, if not bemused, to find that I had been writing bits and pieces for this blog for ten years. I am bewildered and befuddled [Enough of words indicating confusion beginning with B: Ed] as I note that a further decade has elapsed and yet this blog still refuses to die. I pen these words from the rural heart of beautiful Warwickshire, and neither Ruislip nor commuting feature heavily (or at all) in my thoughts, except for a sigh of pure schadenfreude at this sort of news report.

We do have the odd travelling problem. Last year our village was cut off by floods on the roads both in and leading to it; fortunately there was no lasting damage and the waters receded within a day. Sometimes the A46, the main road between Stratford (to our east) and Alcester (to the west) is clogged with traffic or has been closed due to accidents. As I rarely use it, and can always find an alternative given a bit of warning, this doesn't matter. The biggest frustration is being stuck behind a slow-moving tractor or held at road works.

Anyway, I think I am legally covered by calling myself an ex-Ruislip commuter.

The main event within this column was the ground-breaking series, 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, published between September 2019 and May 2020. I had more time to complete it than I had expected because the Covid epidemic began in the UK in early March and we were in lockdown by the end of the month. We also covered, albeit with cunning camouflage, the strange Presidential career of The Most Popular Man in the World, thanks to our unnamed correspondent in Karakorum, who was there when the mighty Mongol Empire gave under the sway of one G. Khan. And a large number of businesses came under heavy fire for stupid or misleading advertising and risible PR Claims, including Aberdeen Standard Life who changed their name to Abrdn (to get down with the kids and be more cool), Coca-Cola who tried to get us to believe that Kate Moss personally chose some trashy prizes they were trying to foist on an uncaring public and, quite recently, the bare-faced cheek of Vodaphone and Three who claimed that competition in the mobile phone/broadband market would be increased if they merged.  We shall continue to scrutinise all such enterprises and to hold them to account.

Where will we be in another ten years? The signs are not encouraging. Wars in Europe and in the Middle East, the growing polarisation of liberal democracies versus dictatorships and the short-termism of politicians everywhere mean that climate choice, species extinction and the destruction of the natural biosphere on land and, especially, in the oceans, will not be addressed adequately. There is another factor that rarely gets discussed - world population. I worried about this as a student, a long time ago. Since then the population has more than doubled and is still growing. The idea that the finite resources of the planet can continue to provide improving lifestyles for so many more consumers was never discussed at all when I studied economics back then, and is rarely mentioned today in political debate. But the outcome is going to be migration from hot, poor countries to anywhere else on a scale unparallelled in human history; the small boats bringing migrants over the English Channel are just a foretaste.

Anyway, you don't come here for serious stuff. We shall go on trying to find humour wherever it may be lurking, be it behind the news headlines, in advertisements, in popular culture or, if sufficiently chortle-worthy, in unpopular culture.  We shall probe politicians, antagonise admen, petrify pundits and, er, you know, the other lot [I'll get the thesauraus: Ed]. Terms and Conditions will continue to apply wherever we can shoehorn them in. Exclamation marks will be deployed and, somewhat regrettably but there is nothing I can do about it, stupid bloody interventions in italics from the Editor will continue to be injected. 

We are Ramblings!

Sen. Cassius Takes Over

News has reached us of important changes in the Republic of Rome. After a short, but bitter, election campaign involving many cloaks, some fairly sharp daggers and a considerable amount of speech-making,  Senator M. Bucinum Cassius has been acclaimed as Imperator and will now head up the Republic. The Senator was Consul some years back and his administration ended amid much confusion and contumely. However, with vigorous support from many plebs disillusioned with the current administration, he was able to present himself as the only man who could save Rome from the chaos that he had so carefully nutured in the interim.

Speaking to a rally of supporters in the Forum, Cassius is reported to have said

"This is where we start making Rome great again. We're gonna bring back total freedom and liberty. Top of the agenda - more slavery. Slaves mean more production and more production means more money, right? Next, anyone who bad-mouthed us during the assass, er, election, can expect a visit from my lictors, you know, the big guys with the axes. Now I'm totally for the constitution and the guarantee of impartial justice from our magistrates, so I'll be replacing most of them with guys who understand just what impartial really means..." 

It is believed that at this point one of the Senator's aides whispered a few words and Sen. Cassius continued "Well, anyway, I'll be replacing them. Period."
 

Turning to foreign policy the Senator is understood to have focussed on the threat from Carthage. "We're gonna put big tariffs on imports and boost home-grown farming and manufactures. And if they don't like it, then ..."

Another aide is said to have mentioned something and the Senator resumed "As I was saying, if the Carthagians try to start doing imports into Rome, then we'll hit them with tariffs from here all the way to Carthage City."

The Senator then introduced his key backer, the richest man in the Empire, M. Croesus Muscus. "This is a truly great man. He's going to build a fleet of huge ships, sail them way out beyond the Pillars of Hercules and find new lands. And when we find them, we're gonna introduce them to the way of Roman civilisation, and if that means slaughtering most of them and enslaving the survivors while our men loot everything they can carry and burn the rest, hell, you gotta expect a bit of adjustment when you join the worlds greatest nation. Am I right?"

Those watching applauded, but Cassius seemed unimpressed. At his signal the Praetorian Guard touched their hands to the scabbards of their swords, and the Senator put the question again. This time there was no doubt about the fervour and sincerity of the crowd. 

We shall continue to follow the career of Senator Cassius and may consider sending a special correspondent to cover the story on the spot. By good fortune, there happens to be one available.

TV Shock Sensation - Show Goes Entirely To Plan

 I have commented recently about crap clickbait headlines in local online "newspapers", such as this one about a non-existent Big Cat Peril. We have come to expect this sort of lazy, regurgitated journalism on such sites. But surely the national press have higher standards? Perhaps not the tabloids but the heavyweights that pride themselves on their ethics and principles? 

Wrong again. Here is a story in The Independent about a certain well-known TV show. For those who have recently immigrated from Tharg,  the Great British Bake-Off is a sequence of knockout competitions in which 12 amateur bakers are eliminated, one a week, until three remain to contest the final. Let me repeat this simple format. They are regularly eliminated. Now look at the press snippet

I glanced over the body of the story. I thought, yes, well, maybe out of the five million or so who watched, perhaps a goodly portion - say one million, had swamped the Channel 4 switchboard to register their contumely and demand the reinstatement of the wronged cake maestro. Of course, that the show was filmed several months ago, and the outcome long since determined, does not need to be brought into account.  Alas, the hoped-for images of crowds thronging the streets around the studios, holding flaming torches, waving pitchforks and demanding the exile of the Head of Creativity (yes, her again) were strangely absent. So too were any details of the numbers of these stunned viewers. In fact, it seems reasonable to infer that absolutely nobody at all was "stunned" that a TV show based on weekly eliminations eliminated a contestant. Upset at the premature departure of a favourite, certainly. Perhaps irritated at the show's format which bases the ejections on the performance of the week and does not take into account past successes. But this has been how it has worked since the first series. Nobody, except our Thargian friends, could possibly be left aghast, struggling for breath, weeping with frustration and shock, rushing to social media to set up a support group and begin crowd-funding a legal campaign.

Had the Independent gone with "GBBO - some viewers unhappy with this week's elimination but most shrugged it off", I would have had no quibble at the accuracy of their reporting. As it is, I feel cheated because I took the time ( a few moments out of my busy lifestyle, as one might say who knew nothing about me) to glance down the article before realising the vapidity of the content and then reaching for my trusty keyboard to hammer out this piece. And that is as far as I wish to take it.

The winner of October's Do It Like Prescott award ...

... is Labour MP Mike Amesbury. I found out about this pugilist politician from a feature on my Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet. On the home screen of this handy device, it displays the icons of the main apps I have chosen to put there. Swiping to the right brings up additional screens that I have created. Swiping to the left, however, brings up a page curated by Google in which they display various snippets culled from newspapers, websites, YouTube etc of topics which they think might interest me. They have never actually bothered to ask me what I would like to see but it is mostly relevant so I tolerate it.

 

This is a bit from tonight's offering and my attention was immediately drawn, not to the story of the fisticuffs but those dangling dots, the ellipsis, at the end of the unfinished strapline. Google does this because it wants to jam in as much content as it can onto the screen.  As a result, the most fascinating part of the story has been cropped. 

I could, I suppose, click on the picture and read the details. Sky News would undoubtedly fill in the gaps in a moment.  I could search online for additional information. But that is not the Ramblings way. We work with what we are given. Mr Amesbury punched a man in... in what? This, gentle reader, is what we shall ponder.

This is like one of those smug Radio 4 panel games where the jovial host invites his guests to finish the sentence in the most risible fashion they can concoct, with ensuing hilarity all round. But I need no guests. Here are a few of my suggestions

Mike Amesbury punched a man in ....

• A fit of jealousy
• The saloon bar of the Dog and Duck, Runcorn (his constituency, if you didn't know)
• his dressing gown [Mr Amesbury's or that of his antagonist? Ed]
• the early hours of Saturday morning,
• spite of them having just enjoyed a man-hug and a bag of crisps on the pier at Blackpool
• lieu of accepting the rent on the allotment of which Mr Amesbury is the owner
• order to prove to some doubters that he "still had it in him"
• time to the fast movement of Elgar's Cello Concerto
• a senseless act of violence to draw attention to the lack of police on the streets

=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Readers! Can you do better in our "What did Mike Amesbury punch a man in?" competition. Send in your entries to the usual address enclosing a stamped but not addressed envelope²  The winners of the funniest comments will be given the chance to meet Stephen Fry!³   The Editor's decision, should he ever get around to making one, which, quite frankly, is a bit of a long shot given one thing and another, is about as final as it is likely to get unless anyone else wants to step in.

Terms and Conditions apply, although the only one that matters is our disclaimer for being responsible for anything.

Footnotes:

1. John Prescott won undying fame for his duel with an egg-throwing voter in the 2001 General Election.
2. Don't bother writing your address on it, we won't be sending it back , but any stamps that can be steamed off will go to the "Pay the Ramblings Editor a living wage "appeal.
3. We will notify you of the country, and if possible, the city, that Mr Fry is believed to be staying in and supply a weblink to a travel agency from which you may obtain tickets for travel. We are, sadly, not able to assist in the financing of any arrangements you may make, nor can we guarantee that Mr Fry will be there, or that he will consent to meeting you if you should happen to be in his immediate vicinity, nor that his bodyguard will not "do an Amesbury" on you if you do rush up saying "I won the Ramblings contest".

Aurora Sensation or not, as the case may be

 I had thought that the idiocy of local news stories featuring enticing headlines, followed by little more than what we serious journalists call "utter bilge", had reached its nadir with the big cat that wasn't story that featured a few weeks ago. How wrong I was! [Good strapline that, I shall save it for future use: Ed].

Today's snippet must rank amongst the most utterly pointless uses of a news medium since, I don't know, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle straplined "Monk finds Holy Grail" and followed it up with "According to a man who claims his neighbour heard about it from a passing minstrel who said his brother-in-law definitely heard a rumour about it at the Winchester Fair from a man called Ethelbert the Liar". We are used to finding garbage from the garbage websites mostly operated by Reach but this is worse. It was on the BBC website. And not the entertainment section either but the BBC News!! [Yes, two whole exclamation marks there and I utterly concur with their use on this occasion, and damn the expense: Ed]

Here it is. I've cut all bar the first sentence of the copy and that is more than enough, believe me.

source: BBC

This is the entire story, bar some stuff about how she went onto social media that is of no consequence. The BBC news department regarded "slightly disappointed" as good enough to record the incident for posterity and to take up valuable disk space on their servers.

There might have been a decent story here. Suppose the content was something like this:

The woman, aged 53, with three childen and a gerbil, became so distraught with worry after telling all her friends on social media about the wonderful aurora that she has left her family home, taken up residence in a beach hut near Sheringham and has changed her name to Boudicca the Unforgiven. She has vowed never to speak again until either seven years have elapsed or she receives an apology and a year's supply of tomatoes from the factory, and has launched a website called FakeAuroras.co.uk which has already attracted no fewer than 14 visitors, including two from Canada who have written supportive messages that they frequently mistake the lights from the local disco as being messages from space aliens.

As it happens, she was just "slightly disappointed". Come on, George King (and when you fill official forms that have the surname first, does it seem odd naming yourself after a monarch?). Not "massively" or "overwhelmingly" or the ever-popular "incredibly" but just a little bit, hardly at all really, in fact she's already forgotten the whole thing, or would have had not a journalist with absolutely nothing to do and a deadline to fill stumbled over her Facebook page and thought "This is it, Georgie-boy, this is the big one, next stop Panorama and look out Amol Rajan, I'm coming for you". Now the whole sorry episode has come back to haunt her and her name is being plastered over the media (but not in this column because we respect the identy of innocent citizens plagued and pilloried by the paparazzi) [I had one of those last night, the cheese was a bit off if you ask me: Ed].

How easy it would be for me to create a few bitingly-satiric spoof pieces such as "Red traffic light changes to green and utterly baffles pensioner" or "Local footballer misses a pass and fans regret it" or "Two teenagers went into a shop to buy something but it wasn't in stock, although it had been last week". I don't think I will. I don't think I can outdo the inanity of the original.

Implausability Corner #2 - The Merger

 This month's award for the most blatently self-serving load of PR flummery to be heard for a long time goes, by huge popular acclaim, to the spokesman for Vodafone. The mobile comms giant wishes to merge with another massive company, Three, to form a conglomerate that will have something like half of the UK mobile phone market.

Naturally there are concerns that this is an attempt to stifle the market and use economies of scale to drive others out of business, significantly reducing competition and enabling the directors to give themselves huge salary boosts plus bonuses because they will now be directing a much bigger enterprise than before. Oh, and presumably profits will have to go up to justify whatever the cost of the merger is, and in an essentially static market place there is only way for that to happen (and I'm not talking about cutting portion size in the middle-managers' canteen).

The Competition and Markets Authority has provisionally concluded the proposal would weaken competition. Good spot guys, but lose several house points for the weasel-like chickening out of "provisional" [erm, weaselly and chickening in the same phrase. I don't like it, I don't like it one little bit: Ed]

 Naturally the big boys of telecomms took their fight to the airwaves and I caught the interview on the morning broadcast on the BBC

Vodafone's CEO for European Markets, Ahmed Essam, told the Today programme, on BBC Radio 4, that he still believed the merger would make a better network for customers, and add to the competition in the market.
source: BBC

 Well he would, wouldn't he? There has never been a merger in history that has increased competition. The entire purpose of mergers is to reduce it without the economically efficient way of being better than the others. Because a merger does it quickly whereas actually being better and gradually atracting business through lower prices, better network coverage and better customer service ¹ takes time and requires taking risks. Although this is supposed to be what competitive markets are all about, the Vodafone/Three tie-up is all about cutting risks so that their future investment has a guaranteed customer base.

But the Vodafone CEO says it will add to competition, and sure he is an honourable man. 

There is one potential technical justification for the claim. If a very dominant player already controlled the market, and this merger would create a business sufficiently strong to challenge it, then there might be good reason for approval. But the mergees² already have the market in their grip. Does this in Vodafone seem like competition? But Mr Essam says it will increase competition and he is an honourable man, so all they are all, all honourable men. 

I suppose I must declare an interest. I am indirectly a customer of Three, via a reseller called Smarty who, for a very small amount of monthly cash, give me all the minutes, texts and internet data I could wish for, and throw in European roaming as well.  I am a little nervous that this happy state of affairs may not last once the merger goes a little sour, as they usually do, and costs far more than expected to make a single system of the two existing ones, as invariably happens, and the shareholders begin shifting uneasily in their seats at AGMs and things begin to be said about whether the merger was delivering all that had been promised. But by then, no doubt, Mr Essam and his chums will have taken their massive bonuses for making it happen and it really won't be their problem at all. It will be ours, the consumers.

Footnotes:

1. This was never going to happen, comments of forums such as on Reddit make it very clear how awful it is

 2. Do you like it? I may launch a Kickstealer campaign for a book called "My 100 best neologisms" if there is enough support.

Carry On Larking

 In a wonderful instance of life imitating art, this recent story in the papers seems to show that when it comes to having a rollicking good wheeze at the expense of the taxpayer, nobody competes with the Senior Service. Of course, when I say "art", I really mean the glorious British tradition of comic film, tv and radio where no institution is sacred.

source: The Independent

We've seen them dealing with a nasty leak. We've followed them into the war-torn waters of the Gulf. It looks like we need to go round again.

Scene: The choppy waters of the English Channel somewhere near, but conveniently out of sight of, Portsmouth. The bridge of a certain warship seems remarkably quiet as the officers go professionally about their duties, hunched over their instruments.

CPO Pertwee:  (to himself). Come on, come on, just a little bit more ...ease it off there ...that's got it just where I want it, lovely.
Sub-lieutenant Phillips: (to himself) I say, jolly well done, straight back over the bowler's head.
Distorted voice over loudspeaker Lookout here. Boat approaching, looks like the commander with some other geezer.
Pertwee: Oo-er, he's back early.
Phillips: I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, chief. Probably giving a friend a joy ride.
Distorted voice. Just to let you know, the Commander's friend is wearing rather a lot of pips. And carrying a clipboard
Pertwee: I'm not sure about this, Mr Philips, not sure at all, sir. Perhaps we should make ourselves scarce.
Phillips: Yes, chief, good idea and all that but, correct me if I'm wrong, aren't we supposed to be on watch?
Pertwee: Watching out for ourselves is what we should be doing right now, sir
Bosun's whistle heralds return of Commander Murray and guest
Pertwee: Whoops, too late
Murray: Through here, sir. You'll find my officers hard at work and totally in control. Gentlemen, this is Commodore Chumbleton, very high up in Naval Intelligence. Nothing gets past you, eh, Commodore?
Phillips: (sotto voce). Oh, lummee
Chumbleton: Just carry on as usual gentlemen. I'm just reviewing our state of readiness for, well, anything really, we haven't the faintest idea what might take place, anything can happen at sea, what, what, what.
Pertwee: What?
Chumbleton: That's the spirit. Now then, CPO, that screen looks jolly interesting. Seems to be some of wiring diagram - what's this say here "Plan of security lock, Atkinson's Jewellers". Well, I'm sure you have a perfectly sound reason for examining it, but isn't this supposed to be the short-wave radar screen thingy?
Murray: Yes, chief, I seem to recall we did used to have a short wave radar screen but, um, there's a  really important reason why we don't. Perhaps you could remind us.
Pertwee: Being tested, sir. In the special bay. Where the radioactivity levels are up dangerously high, so you really don't want to go anywhere near that, sir. This screen here is a medium wave radar replacement, nuffink like as risky as the other, just happens to be tuned to a frequency that matches the jeweller's computers and so of course their lock details get displayed.
Chumbleton: I see. Yes, that makes perfect sense. And the sub-lieutenant ...
Murray: Phillips, sir
Chumbleton: Phillips. I'm no expert, I leave that sort of thing to my technical people, but that looks very much like a cricket match.
Phillips: I know. It's amazing. And we managed to rig it up without having to pay a subsc...I mean, it's some of interference on the VHF band...er, isn't it, chief?
Pertwee: Yes, sir, these systems are so sophisticated they can pick up television channels, like Netflix or Sky, and display them even while doing all the rest of the normal navy stuff sort of in the background.
Chumbleton: Are you saying that is the tactical weapons status screen? Why don't you fix it?
Phillips: Well sir, to be frank, all those numbers going up and down the screen give me a bit of a headache.
Chumbleton: Must admit, I get them as well. So everything is perfectly alright here, then?
Phillips: Tickety-boo, sir.
Pertwee: Everything is just as it normally is, sir.
Murray: Shall we have a pink gin in the officers' mess now, sir? You certainly don't want Mr Phillips to change the channel and start all those little squiggly things dancing up and down, not in these rough seas.
Chumbleton: Lead on, Commander Murray.

Ketchup on your locket, madam?

 There are some key cultural moments, tectonic shifts in the zeitgeist, quantum leaps in the social consciousness (insert other portentous phrases here) that must be documented. This, future historians (that is, historians in the future looking back, not historians who study the future in some weird time-reversal universe),will say is the point at which things changed. The divide that reshaped the lives of all who, in some ways, were touched by it. 

This column has from time to time brought some of these to light - the "artist" whose work comprised burying himself under ground over the weekend and the creation of the British Toast Association to name but two. Today we can add, without hesitation, the announcement by the much-loved baker Greggs that they are to commemorate some of the nation's favourite snacks in the form of jewellery.

Source: Greggs

The "Baked in Gold" range features earrings. lockets, bracelets and rings that resemble miniature sausage rolls and pasties, in genuine fake imitation faux 22 carrot caret gold. Whether the interiors of these pieces can be heated to the 1100c of the products handed out over the counter to hungry punters, who spend the next ten minutes going "Oww" as they juggle them from hand to hand, is not yet known.  Nor is it clear if they will shed little gold-like flakes of pseudo pastry to stick to your jumper.

Greggs have announced, in what appears to be a genuine blurb rather than some belated April Fool japery, that the range is to be launched this coming Friday in time for London Fashion Week. Here at Ramblings we always investigate the claims of advertisers and our crack team of news-sleuths have already unearthed the following astonishing facts.

Fact: London Fashion Week begins on 12 September. Greggs are launching "Baked in Gold" on Friday 13th. Why the delay? Could the launch date be a clue? Is this going to be another Ratners - Prawn Sandwich event?

Fact: London Fashion Week has a number of sponsors. As is now customary with such things, some of them are the usual big companies whose products have absolutely nothing to do with the event (think World Cup / Olympics). Thus we find Coke and 1664 as sponsors, products that are neither fashionable, avant garde or new. But, and I want the jury to pay particular attention to this point, Greggs are not listed as a sponsor. We are not to see a line of haughty models swishing up and down the catwalks with little golden sausage rolls dangling from strategic places. Surely the PR department has bungled. Or are they, quite rightly, keeping a low profile instead?

It would appear that there is no connection with London Fashion Week and they might just as well have linked it to the race meeting at Sandown Park, the Worcester music festival or the welcome home party for Britain's paralympians.

However, inevitably, we must consider if this is the start of a trend. Who will follow the path so boisterously blazed by the beaconing bakers? 

Perhaps the Egg Industry Council could create an exqusite pair of pearl-style earrings in the shape of eggs, each adorned with a hand-painted lion mark in brilliant blue.

Every smartly-dressed male commuter would certainly wish to be able to flash a pair of Return Ticket cufflinks, with the words "not eligible before 9:30" visible under a microscope.

And surely any fashionista would proudly sport a sequin-studded tie pin in the shape of a prawn sandwich, by Ratners. If only they still existed.

Crowdstruck

 Woke this fine, sunny morning to hear of a worldwide IT outage. Many hospitals and health services, airlines, hotels and other time-critical organisations were unable to work normally. I checked my GP's online presence and the NHS app was unable to retrieve any information from them.

Initial reports identified this as a Windows issue but it rapidly became clear it was caused by a botched update from a software supplier called Crowdstrike. They provide anti-hacking solutions. Must admit I've never heard of them but today, for all the wrong reasons, they are a household name.

Exasperated IT professionals vented their anger on the Reddit r/sysadmin forum, making two key points. Updates should not be rolled out on a Friday, and, crucially, asking whether Crowdstrike bothered to test the update, seeing how readily it has prevented Windows based systems from working. Any test would, it seems, have shown that the update was defective.

Surely the cause was not our old friend getting out of his depth....

Scene. Update Control room at Crowdstrike. Although the company is based in Austin, Texas, this is in England (just go with it, ok). A group of seasoned coders, analysts and hacking experts are crowded round a screen. Enter a fresh-faced, eager young intern.

Taz (for it is he): Gosh, guys, what's up?
Rodney: That's the code for our latest update. We're just scrolling through it and admiring the beautiful structure. See that little recursive call there? That's one of George's finest
George: Too kind, Rodders, too kind.
Rodney: And here, these curly brackets enclosing square brackets enclosing another set of curly brackets with two extra quote marks round the text string? Take a bow, Amanda
Amanda: Only up all night polishing that little lot, that's all
Taz: It's amazing stuff, really. Only Customer Services have asked me to find out when the update is going to be released. Early next week, right?
Amanda: As far as I am concerned, it's finished.
Rodney: Yup, just put a full stop after the last rem and I'm done. George?
George: I think I'll just put in a Do until x=2, x=x+1 Loop. Give the punters good measure. All done, old boy.
Amanda: Lovely work, George.
Rodney: Right, I'll just copy it to this flash drive and we can call it a day. There's a bar stool down at the Red Lion with my name on it. Might catch a bit of the Test Match. Tell you what, young feller, you can help us out. Take this and do the usual, alright?
Taz: Er, the usual...
George: That's the spirit. We'll make a programmer of you yet. Let's go, people.

They exit.

Taz: Umm...I suppose they want me to take this straight back and get it out there, get all those computers round the world updated as quick as possible. Yes, that must be it. I can tell them in Customer Services that everything has finished here so it must be ready to go. Brilliant, everyone will be happy that it is going out so fast and on a Friday too, they can rest easy over the weekend...

Shock! Horror! Local!!

 Now that my friends at Google know I live in Warwickshire, they are keen to flag up stories of local interest to me and today a snippet from Worcester News was featured.

 

 This is not the time to ponder the difference between a major and a minor milestone, or to write a begging letter to the lucky owner of the unusual coin. Our attention has to be focussed on the big cat story. This is one of the great recurring themes of local news across the country  - there is always a breathless eye-witness, a few seconds of seeing something that always runs away, never to be seen again, and no other direct evidence apart from a blurry photo now and then. I was drawn to it, however, because of the "face to face" element and had a look at the story. And this was what confronted me:

Worcester News

Terrifying, is it not? Er, no, not really. For what we have here is a stock image of a black panther, an animal indigenous to South-East Asia, and not Worcestershire at all. This is not a photograph taken by the woman in the story. It is not even claimed to be what she saw. It is just a photograph, supplied by Getty Images, that the paper chose to publish immediately under the headline.

 It turns out that this "terrifying" moment was in 2013. The woman in question was driving in the country and glimpsed, no less than 20 yards away, something big and black that moved like a cat. The animal ran off at once and vanished. No trace of it was found. 

I do not doubt that the lady saw something that disturbed her. My fascination with this classic example of crap local journalism is the the way that the newspaper has attempted to sensationalise it. She did not have a "face-to-face" encounter - she was in her car and it was in the field some way away. It did not leap on her bonnet and snarl at her through the window, flashing enormous blood-stained teeth, whilst its razor sharp claws slashed deep grooves in the paintwork. It took one look at her and was off. Perhaps it was the animal that was terrified - the motorist may have been startled. A bit.

Anyway, if you want gripping stories with a local interest that have a searing, must-read, headline that bears little resemblance to the content, read on, gentle reader, read on.

-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-

My Inferno Nightmare - Local Pensioner's Lucky Escape

A fire somewhere else

 Grandfather of two Norman Maltravers has told us of how he narrowly missed first degree burns and loss of 95% of his skin when he visited the chip shop in Lower Bishop's Nodules. "I'll never forget it" he told our reporter "There I was, queuing up for a small cod and chips same as every Thursday when it happened! I saw one of the assistants put some fish in the deep fat fryer and I thought - Blimey, if that lot goes up, we'll all take one hell of a pasting and no mistake. The whole shop will go, I shouldn't wonder, if not half the ruddy street.". 

Fortunately there was no explosion of boiling, rancid fat to splatter flesh-tearing gobbets of liquid terror over the plucky pensioner and the two other customers. "By some miracle nothing at all happened" said a still shaken Mr Maltravers "We got out alive and with our fish suppers still intact. I went home and gave thanks for my deliverance. To this day I believe that it was the blessed Saint Peter himself who looked after me - he's the one who covers fish bars, isn't he?"

Later Mr Maltravers explained that this near fatal incident occurred "sometime in 1995, I think, or anyway round about the Queen's Jubilee celebrations". He founded a support group for others with similar experiences and is hoping to have someone join it one day.

Road Horror Heroine 

A tanker similar to the one in the crash

Keen bowls player and owner of two cats, Deirdre Flint of  Great Silage is counting her blessings today. A terrifying accident between a truck full of high explosives and a petrol tanker brought traffic to a standstill on the B347 just moments after she backed her Morris Minor into Abattoir Lane. "That could have been me" said a quivering Mrs Flint "and it was pure chance that this red-hot vortex of destruction happened on the B347 in Santa Maria province, Argentina, and not here in peaceful Warwickshire"

"If it had happened here and I was caught up in it " the battling housewife went on "I would have had no hesitation in driving away as fast as possible before phoning someone to tell them to do something about it"

Local Man Nominated for US Presidency!

 

Bumford born and bred Hartley Harrow, 47, has been nominated for the top job in America and may pose a serious challenge to Donald Trump at the Republican convention. He remains in Bumford doing his day job as assistant vice-secretary to the Bumford Allotments Society but is bursting with enthusiasm to fly to Los Angeles and start "mixing it with the Hollywood jet set and the rest of those guys".

Mr Harrow was nominated by his wife, Hilda, who wrote his name on the back of a breakfast cereal box and sent it in four months ago. "He's the right man to lead the Republicans" she enthused "He has a baseball cap and a badge that says 'President', which I made out of tinfoil and some sticky-backed plastic".

We asked if there had been any contact from the Republican party. Mr Harrow seemed doubtful but his wife pointed out that it didn't matter in the least. "You just turn up and say you want to run, and next thing you are on the platform and everyone is cheering and bursting balloons. I've seen it on the telly"

Mrs Harrow is organising a jumble sale and kids face painting to raise the funds for the air ticket and says there has been a surprising amount of support from the neighbours. 

"I'm really surprised there has been zero interest so far" she told our reporter "But that's bound to change now that the national press have picked up the story".

When it was pointed out that the convention was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, over 2,000 miles from Los Angeles, Mr Harrow remained undaunted "One of those film stars will give me a lift, they all want to be friends with America's next president". 

Asked about his policies, should he win, Mr Harrow was emphatic. "No US air base in the Bumford allotments, that is right out, I'm putting my foot down on this one. A cultural exchange between Bumford and San Francisco. The CIA to 'take out' those bastards from Great Silage who park outside our village shop on Wednesday mornings. Er, that's it for the moment.

The good wishes of all our readers go with this gallant contender.

Election 2024 - Winning By Default

It's the day after and, despite a very late night, I have dragged myself back to the pressure-cooker vortex at the hub of Ramblings Central to sum it all up. The polls were pretty much there, although the prospect of a complete annihilation of the Conservatives, that seemed possible a couple of weeks ago, receded when the exit polls were published at 10pm.  Labour have won 211 seats, the LibDems 63. The Tories have lost 250 and the SNP 38. And yet the share of the vote for each party does not reflect this huge shift. Labour's share has barely changed from the debacle of 2019. The collapse in the Tory vote is mainly down to Reform who received more votes than the LibDems but only took 5 seats. Tactical voting has been the winner of this election, with Labour performing insipidly in safe seats and much better where there was something to gain.

All those flyers and leaflets may have helped the local LibDem candidate win spectacularly here in Stratford-on-Avon. [And it is 'on' rather than 'upon'. 'On' denotes the council district and constituency, while 'upon' means the town: Ed]. Other Conservative seats with similar profiles did not fall.

A tactical election is about getting the incumbents out and accepting that whatever pattern is thrown up by the outcome is better. It is a negative way to choose a government and the result of this election is that Labour has total dominance in the House of Commons but cannot point to a popular mandate. It is going to have to tread carefully.  But not as carefully as the Conservatives. Somehow they must reestablish credibility but with which set of voters? - the incoherent "stop immigration and let's get our country back" of the Brexiteers, now given full voice by Reform, or the more traditional centrist strand, the sort represented by John Major and David Cameron in the past.

There were one or two "Portillo" moments [Older readers will recall the shock. and visceral delight of his political opponents, when the cheerleader for Thatcherite politics, but now rather decent train-loving TV presenter, was ejected from his seat at Enfield Southgate in 1997;Ed]. Liz Truss lost her safe seat in Norfolk, the coda to the strange and sudden collapse of her prime ministerial period. My favourite was Jacob Rees-Mogg ousted from North East Somerset. This was the man who, as a minister, liked to dictate to his civil servants how to use English grammar and whose latest policy wheeze was to fix the problem of unwanted immigration. This was how it was reported on the Politico website

When I came across this quote, I spent some time imagining how one might put a wall up and, crucially, which firm one might appoint to do the job. Some experience at working in damp conditions, and a really plentiful supply of bricks, would be essentials. Probably need access to at least a couple of vans and have several brickies on call. Whether Moggy would have been on hand to supply the tea and biscuits ("Six sugars, thanks, guv") or would have delegated this task to his butler is not clear. There was also the delicate question of the bill ...

"Yerse, well, squire, I know we estimated five hundred nicker, plus VAT of course, but, well, the lad made a little error in the sums, told me it would be thirty metres long. Not thirty kilometres. And nobody said nothing about a thousand fathoms of water, neither".
"I think you could been more exacting in your surveying. We did specify it was The Channel"
"Oh, yes, guv, certainly, could have been, could have been indeed. We fort you meant a channel, you know, sort of small ditch at the back of your estate, that sort of thing. But, well, there it is, what with the water getting in, and the storms, and the shifting sands, and the fish boring holes in the foundations, and that problem with the van breaking down....tell you what, call it twenty four billion and I'll let you off the extra four bags of quick-drying cement"

Rishi Sunak gracefully paid tribute to his successor and was reciprocated. After the insults of the past six weeks, this made a pleasant change. Then the "no-surprises" Cabinet appointments were made and a new government started work.

Election 2024 - The Results Are In: - It's a LibDem Landslide!

Excuse the hyperbole in the title to this piece. The "results" are the count of how many separate pieces of communication have been received from each party contesting the local seat. The outcome has never been in doubt, and, far from a last minute campaign by the outsiders to disrupt the trend, the front runner has doubled down on their formidable lead, supplying leaflets both yesterday and today (all other parties, nothing).

Here then, is the count. <clears throat, coughs, taps microphone cautiously>. I, being the returning officer for the Ramblings household in the Stratford-on-Avon constitutency do declare that the sum of the bits of paper collected from the door mat for each party is as follows.

Reform                2
Conservative       2
Labour                 1
LibDem              12
Non-political      1
Green                  0
Independent        0

and that the LibDem effort is hereby elected as the one wasting the greatest amount of paper, taking up the largest amount of space in the paper recycling bag and becoming, in the end, a bit of a bloody irritant.

Back in the real world, I was waking up drowsily to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 and was surprised, to put it mildly, to hear the Conservative spokesman in the flagship interview spot concede the election. He said they were going to lose. 

 “I have accepted that where the polls are at the moment – and it seems highly unlikely that they are very, very wrong, because they’ve been consistently in the same place for some time – that we are therefore tomorrow highly likely to be in a situation where we have the largest majority that any party has ever achieved,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. (source: London Evening Standard)

This was not some off-the-rails intern fronting for Conservative Central Office - it was the work and pensions secretary Mel Stride.

This is very odd behaviour. Politicians are normally required to smile, shake their heads gently and say "Of course the only votes that count are those cast in the ballot box" right up to the point that the polls are shown to be roughly correct, and then they can say either they are proud to have the overwhelming mandate of the entire country (based on a 35% share of the vote) or that their policies were absolutely the right ones but they just failed to get their message across and they will do better next time, especially once the other lot have mucked everything up.

It would be hilarious if millions of voters are playing the old lie-to-the-pollsters game to the hilt and a disbelieving Rishi Sunak is back in Downing Street on Friday morning. I would love to hear him explain to Mr Stride his position in the new government (grovelling on the floor and lashing himself with a cat'o'nine tails, I should imagine). But I suspect that the polls are reasonably sound and that a huge change in the political landscape is about to occur.

Election 2024 - Canvassed

 Our first canvasser of the current election campaign knocked on the door this afternoon. Not surprisingly, given the torrent of leaflets already received from this quarter, it was on behalf of the LibDems and she handed over yet another, now increasingly redundant, piece of paper. It was nice to be asked what single policy measure I would like and it seemed to strike a chord when I said it would be to reverse Brexit; sadly I do not see this is remotely achievable in the near future even if the EU were to welcome us back, which I rather doubt.

The national talking-point seems to be about the blatant racism and homophobia of a Reform candidate but this is hardly news, the whole point of the party is to try make such views respectable.

In international news, France is having its first round of elections that could give a very right-wing party a majority in the Assembly and Joe Biden's weak performance in a televised live debate might have just done the same for his florid-faced felon of an opponent. It is not quite time to wake up my correspondent and despatch him back to Karakorum but the rattle of scimitars is getting closer.

Sarcasm Corner

 

Source: The Guardian

I wonder when those letters will be delivered ...

Election 2024 - It Grinds on

A week and a half to go in this strange general election. Opinion polls continue to suggest a huge Labour victory, coupled with a Conservative wipeout. I remain sceptical that it will be so big a change. The weather has turned warm - the first prolonged hot spell of this wet and chilly year - and it has clearly been good for the local party promoters because we had a positive flurry of leaflets in the past couple of days. 

I pass over "Reform" whose underlying fascist tendencies grow more marked each day that their glorious leader shows his admiration for Russian brutalism. Maybe he sees himself in ten years driving round in a fancy limousine with World President For Life Putin, much as Putin and the horrible thing that runs North Korea did in their much-publicised meeting. I would have to ignore it anyway, because their candidate has nothing to say except to highlight, with skilfully chosen tick marks, a list of seven policies. 

The LibDems continued a strong marketing campaign with a newspaper-style leaflet claiming once more that they are the only opposition likely to topple the Tories in Stratford. This was the prediction from ElectoralCalculus, and it was pretty accurate. The seat did fall. [I have edited this piece retrospectively, because originally I used a prediction that was actually based on some numbers I put in, not those based on the polls].

But my focus is on the two main parties. Labour produced a very slender prospectus featuring its candidates career as a financial crime analyst - now that is a skill that may well be in demand as the investigations in Conservative dodgy betting activities and the covid PPP sourcing programme continue. But as to some meaty policies - a promise to end the scramble for 8am GP appointments and support for a small hospital the other end of the constituency is about it.

Labour's man appears to be local. Actually he has been a local councillor for Coventry, not Stratford, but it is not too far away. The Conservative candidate has, in two distinctly different leaflets (that suggest the job was given to two interns working on the same material but in different rooms and not communicating with each other), emphasised his past political career. He is not very forthcoming about the fact he was MP for a constituency in Lancashire and a councillor in Salford before that, so not actually a local man at all and the pledge to support small business rings somewhat hollow from a man who supported the Brexit government of B. Johnson. Anyway he seems to believe that the Rwanda plan will "stop the boats", despite all evidence to the contrary and we can magically get to Net Zero without it costing any more. Perhaps the immigration fairy and the climate fairy can be persuaded to show up at last.

All attention now shifts to the last group match for England in the European football championships. Scotland were booted out yesterday after a miserable performance. England have not inspired so far though they will qualify for the next round whatever happens tomorrow night when they face the might of Slovenia, 57th in the FIFA world rankings compared to England's flattering 5th. What could possibly go wrong?

Election 2024 - Place Your Bets

Vote Spendthrift

Our Policies for a Massively Richer Britain 

A recent meeting of the Spendthrift Shadow Cabinet

We, in the Spendthrift Party, have been accused by poorly informed detractors of having "a galaxy sized black hole" at the heart of our policy to cut income tax to 1% whilst recruiting four million doctors, nurses, teachers, police officers and reasonably competent left-sided attacking wing backs, starting the day after we sweep to power. And they might have a point, were it not for our revolutionary financial plan. We will have little need of conventional sources of revenues, my friends, because we are riding the express train of the future and all the signals are green. We have found a sure fire way to raise enormous amounts of the ready and it's all thanks to the Conservative Party.

There's no need to work hard to create wealth. No need to to work at all, actually. Simply obtain some inside information and place a bet. Results guaranteed. This is a proven technique. Already associates of our great party have made the following wagers:

• The newly installed foreign secretary to describe Mexicans as "lazy, tequila-swilling loudmouths in stupidly large hats who spend all day lying around outside cantinas". The odds - a very tasty 20,000 to 1, thank you William Hill. We've pledged our tax revenues from North Sea Oil on this one and it is a dead cert to bring in £190bn within the very first week of a Spendthrift government taking office.
• Appointment of Liz Truss as Director of the Office for Fiscal Responsibility. Corals offered 38,000 to 1 against this ever happening and we've snapped it up, staking the take from customs duties in Dover and Southampton for the next five years. There's a guaranteed £290bn right there.
• Date of the next general election. We know when it will be, nobody else does and if Ladbrokes are happy to offer 90,000 to 1 against it being on Christmas Day 2024, who are we not to bet the Crown Jewels on it?

Vote Spendthrift. The only party who can genuinely say "We're betting it all on Britain".

Election 2024 - Out of the Woodwork

 The election is entering the second half and finally I have received a leaflet from somebody other than the energetic LibDem candidate for Stratford (4 separate items from her so far). Unfortunately the newcomer claims to be a contradiction-in-terms, a non political party (cunningly called Nonpol) that is campaigning to be elected on a raft of policies that somehow, mysteriously, are not political at all, even though they represent choices in exactly the same way that all political parties offer choices.

There is a list of policy objectives. Item one is something incomprehensible about transgenderism. Why on earth this should be the first thing they want me to read is baffling. Later on we learn that Boris Johnson is responsible for the war in Ukraine (and there was me thinking it was Putin, the historical legacy of Tsarist expansion south and west since Peter the Great and Russia's long term strategic goal of dominating the Black Sea), and that if only Britain left NATO then everyone else would disarm, link hands and sing folk songs in joyful comradeship. I noticed that they intend to simplify the tax system by abolishing VAT, charging a flat rate of income tax and raising the threshold before tax is paid to £35,000. How would all this be paid for? Ah, it's much too complicated for the leaflet so we are directed to the party website.

I went to the party website. Now they want me to watch a YouTube that will explain their tax strategy and how they will make the rich pay by forcing everyone to have one bank account, or something. Erm, if I might just interject - I am not going to watch your video. Either explain your plans in writing using words that convey a straight meaning or kindly leave the stage.

Towards the end of the manifesto is a comment about Covid and this gem

As Covid 19 originated in China and was not bought to a halt like SARS1, it has cost the UK thousands of lives and billions in costs. The cost to the UK from Covid will recouped from the Chinese economy. This will be done via imports of Chinese goods and taxation on Chinese assets based in the UK, until the debt is cleared.

I fail to see how importing even more Chinese goods will somehow "recoup" the cost of Covid. Surely all it will do is bolster the Chinese economy and undermine our own? But it's all right, we shall tax Chinese assets based in the UK. There's bound to be loads of those just lying around and of course there is no  question of any retaliation. No, we're definitely on safe and legal grounds. We could also tax them for bird flu, the black death and that nasty throat complaint, Chinese whispers, while we are at it.

As I have written in another context: when asked about these policies, the Chinese ambassador smiled inscrutably

Election 2024 - Beware the Reds

I glimpsed a curious headline in the Daily Mail today whilst shopping (I only browse through it for its excellent coverage of the North Lincolnshire Basket Weaving League (Division Three) and gleaned the following from its website:

A Tory wipeout risks one-party socialist state: Conservative MPs warn public not to hand Keir Starmer a 'super-majority'  

The story acknowledges that Labour continues to lead in the opinion polls and that Reform is steadily eroding the Conservative vote. It is unusual for Lord Rothermere's personal journal to be so defeatist with three weeks of electioneering to go, but it amuses me to see two massive chunks of true-blue hypocrisy in the one short paragraph.

Hypocrisy 1 - It is totally fine and in keeping with God's eternal plan for Britain, this sceptred isle etc etc for the Conservatives to have a huge majority. Absolutely no risks to anything there, if a load of no-hope extremist candidates should happen to get elected on the back of a massive swing to the Tories, and then put through some stupid policy that fundamentally damages the country (I don't know, say the European "Research" Group forcing a referendum on EU membership or something), then that is good and proper, and we should all applaud. A Conservative majority of say, 100, does not in any way turn Britain into a one-party state.

Let Labour get a decent working majority and instantly the Devil and all his works will be let loose in Whitehall; democracy demands that they must be forced to do deals with other parties so as to dilute their policies or perhaps have them regularly voted down. A Labour majority of say, 100, automatically means a one-party state, the Security Police breaking down the doors of private schools, anyone earning more than £20,000 pa paying 110% income tax, the abolition of the Monarchy and public executions in Trafalgar Square (renamed The Glorious People's Struggle Arena of Hope) of anyone denounced by their neighbours for thought-crimes against freedom, such as being able to choose what time you go to the shops,

Hypocrisy 2 - What exactly is a socialist state anyway? The introduction of the National Health Service was opposed at the time because it was socialist. Now every party defends it and says it is safe in their hands. The idea that income tax should be progressive (meaning lower earners pay little or nothing, high earners pay more) is also widely accepted - indeed Tory chancellors in recent times have often boasted about how many low-earners they have taken out of tax. Yet this too is a broadly socialist idea. Social care, free education up to and including sixth-forms, pensions and income support measures that give older people something reasonable to live on - these are all socialist ideas that grew from the extremes of deprivation witnessed in Victorian times and all are embraced by the Conservative party. 

Of course when the Daily Mail uses the word "socialism", they really mean "communism" but these days it is hard to see many of their readers making that connection, let alone the mass of voters. 

Anyway, enough of that. I was delighted to learn that Immingham Ferrets had roundly trounced Caistor Stoats by six baskets to three, Mrs Arkwright with two superb late plaits and an assist, and continue their bid to win promotion.

They're Out There. Aren't They? I Mean, They Must Be.

 A recently-published scientific paper has caused some interest amidst those who believe there are alien civilisations watching us and indeed, amidst those who believe that, if you write any old garbage but dress it up in academic language, someone somewhere will take it seriously.  

Source: Futurism

 

 Provocative it certainly is. And if you want the reaction of someone who has been well and truly provoked, then just read on, my son. All in a spirit of epistemic humility, of course [You have no idea what that means and, to be frank, neither do I: Ed]

So, did these scientists study mysterious artifacts found on the Earth and show they are made of exotic materials that could never have existed naturally here? Did they identify from animal or near-human remains traces of DNA that have amino acids not found in nature, or an utterly alien cell structure, perhaps with three intertwined helixes? Have they a list of sightings of unidentified vessels leaving the surface of the Moon or streaking through our atmosphere? [All excellent questions: Ed]

Nope. It's all just made up and pretend. There may be an unknown civilisation hiding here (perhaps taking part in some inter-galactic contest of hide-and-seek and, if they last another 28.000 years, they beat Tharg and go through to the semi-final). But saying may is a cop-out. I could say it with exactly as much scientific credence (ie none whatsoever). Science needs something on which to anchor speculation before a hypothesis is worth investigating. What we have from Harvard's finest is exactly the same as the "What-if" scenarios that power a thousand pointless YouTube videos. What if singularities do not exist?¹ What if the planets switched position? ² What if the moon crashed into the earth?³ What if gravity suddenly switched off?⁴ What if aliens are hiding in your dustbin?⁵ What if you were the only girl in the world and I were the only boy?⁶ What if England had a really good football team?⁷  Anyone can make these and they add nothing to our knowledge because they are not based on knowledge, only on speculation.

There is nothing wrong in my book with speculation. Philosophers have been doing it for centuries and sometimes their ideas point the way for the physical sciences to follow The idea that aliens are here, unknown to us, is the stuff of many a worthy science-fiction novel.  But the Harvard mob are supposed to be "researchers", not egg-heads musing over a pint and a pipe. I wonder how they made their application for the funding of this "research"?

Scene: An office just off Peabody Street, Cambridge, Mass. Enter Professor D. Crockett, Professor H. Burger and Professor P. Mason, examiners and Dr. A Einstein (no relation) and Dr J.C. Maxwell (no relation), heads of research team.

Crockett: Sit down, gentlemen. Let's have some coffee. Now then, Dr Einstein, we've glanced through your application but why don't you explain it in your own words?
Einstein:  It's ALIENS. They're here. They're hiding on Earth. They have a secret base on the moon. And they may be in touch with mysterious ancient civilisations also hiding on Earth, but not in the same place, probably. They walk among us, possibly, wearing trousers that cunningly disguise their tails, and when they go into bars and say "568 milliliters of your finest fermented barley and water mash flavoured with hops, earthling" NOBODY NOTICES. That is what we need several massive grants to research, gentlemen, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
Burger: If you could stop shouting, you're making my dentures rattle
Einstein: Sorry.
Mason: This does sound very important work. Have you a digest of observations and evidence to back up these claims?
Einstein: Ah. My colleague can cover this.
Maxwell: What?
Einstein: You know, what we talked about in the bar.
Maxwell: You mean the...oh yes, of course the evidence. Yes, indeed, the evidence. That's definitely what we've got and I am going to show it to you right this minute, gentlemen. Erm, is there any more coffee?
Burger: You do have some evidence, Mr Maxwell?
Maxwell: Yes. Yep. Yes indoody. And here it is (whispers to Einstein) You told me to do it.
Crockett: Well now, I may be just an old-fashioned particle physicist and a bit tired after several ground-breaking experiments, nine best-selling books and a Nobel prize but that does look to me like a napkin.
Maxwell: A paper that we researchers use in our research, sir.
Mason: Looks like a napkin to me. It's got "Eat at Joes" printed on the side, a smear of tomato ketchup and has been crumpled by someone who probably wiped his hands with it, then tried to flatten it out in order to write, in biro if I am not mistaken, "Aliens are here" on the corner.
Einstein: miserably Yes, that's it
Maxwell whispers I told you it wouldn't work
Crockett: This...this is simply incredible.
Burger: My God! I had no idea. This is a real bolt from the blue These young men have done what we never thought possible.
Mason: I never dreamed ... they really do exist? I'm finding it hard to believe what my own eyes are telling me but surely...
Crockett: You are right. I wish you weren't but there it is. We are scientists. We must act on irrefutable facts. And this will confirm Harvard as the world's greatest institution for academic excellence and rigor. It gives me great pleasure to support this research application, to allocate you as many graduate students as you need and to award you thirty million dollars, to begin with. And believe me, gentlemen, there's more where that came from.

Footnotes

1. This is a real YouTube video
2. As is this
3. And indeed this one
4. Probably real
5. I made this one up but I think I will get away with it as nobody ever reads these footnotes anyway
6. Music Nat D Ayer, lyrics Clifford Grey
7. The subject of every newspaper's back page

Election 2024 - Sunak: The Riches to Riches Story

 The news story overshadowing the launch of various party manifestos is the astonishing revelation of prime minister Rishi Sunak, who has laid bare the deprivation and misery of being born to a family who could only afford to send him to Winchester College for his private education. Here is The Guardian's take on it

The Guardian (picture removed)

Now it all falls into place. The young Sunak naturally took up politics, keenly aware of the injustice of wealth ownership, filled with a burning anger to fight for social justice and determined to better the lot of his fellow citizens, Never would he forget the privations of his younger days when he pressed his nose against the windows of the houses of neighbours, eyes wide as he realised that yes, there were indeed more than five channels of television and yes, the one that he was unable to see featured non-stop ¹utterly non-rigged American wrestling .

My eyes teared up on reading that his parents "wanted their kids to have a better life". It seems incredible that any parents could think in such a way. Surely all normal parents want their kids to suffer, to work even harder than they did, to grow steadily poorer and until, in despair, they trade in their fancy 68" HD 4k televisions and go back to a black and white set that you have to thump on the back to get it to switch from BBC to ITV. Or was that just my family?

I too was deprived of Sky. Although, to be fair, this was through my own choice. I decided that I had no need to subscribe to Sky One (bringing you fifteen hours a day of non-stop American wrestling) nor Sky Two (another twenty hours of the bits of non-stop American wrestling you may have missed on Sky One) nor Sky Sports (All the big stories behind American wrestling), Sky Movies (coming soon, American Wrestling III, the grunting continues) nor Sky Arts (Those American Wrestlers costumes - we reveal how they get the sequins to stick on) nor indeed Sky News (All those all-important results from the American wrestling). But I can see how little Rishi must have yearned for the glamour and excitement of watching wrestlers pretend to be hurt as they bounce off the ropes, or surprised by a lethargic drop-kick, or angry at a forearm smash that didn't actually connect with them. Here were a bunch of actors making good money by prancing around for the cameras without actually doing anything. What an inspiration for an aspiring politician.

I look forward to more revelations - the days he was picked up from school in just a Range Rover because the family Bentley was being serviced while all his classmates looked on and sniggered, the awful holidays in Mauritius, New Zealand or Monte, having to keep his old iphone going for a month after the latest model was available - the voters need to know these things. We need to understand better the fire burning in his belly to ensure that no child will ever undergo these dreadful things again. 

Incidentally, the ITV interview, that is the source of this story, is the one Sunak dashed back to London to film instead of standing with other world leaders at the D-Day 80th anniversary commemorations last week. Draw your own conclusions.

-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-

 Readers! Join our Buy Rishi a Sky Subscription Appeal

Let's all dig deep and give our leader the best present he could ever have - a year's subscription to Sky, including all the wrestling channels. Send whatever you can afford to the usual address and we will ensure that not a moment of all-American canvas-pounding action will be missed by a man who, if the opinion polls are to be trusted, may have a lot more time on his hands to watch it all come July 5th. Let's end the years of suffering right now and do the right thing for Rishi!

Footnote

1. Commercials and trailers for yet more American wrestling on various Sky channels included, of course.

The Blight of the Lawyer

 I reproduce a news story in the Daily Telegraph that is sparking so many ideas in my head I can barely sit still - see if you concur

This story is all too familiar in these days of unrestrained global capitalism. A big firm threatens to sue a tiny one for a breach of copyright, knowing that the costs of even a small court action will be disproportionately large for the defendant and therefore seeking to intimidate heedless of the justice of their claim. In this case the big firm, Campari, has a brand called Skyy Vodka. The little firm, owned by Steve White, is a microbrewery selling Dark Sky beer. Campari market their drinks around the world. Dark Sky beer is only available in a handful of pubs in the north of England. 

Campari's lawyers argued that, and please put down any hot drinks before reading on, you don't want to splatter it all over your clothes, "consumers might get confused between its vodka and Mr White's beers". Yes, indeed, easy to mix the two up. Here they are, side by side.

Skyy vodka            Dark Sky beer

I suppose these lawyers are reasonably intelligent and are only acting on instructions. Nonetheless, they could have told their aggressive client that they were just being bloody stupid. No, they took their fees and went to court and to his great credit Mr White refused to be bullied, fought his case and won.

I am inevitably reminded of another lying lawyer, convicted felon ex-President Trump's friend Rudy Giuliani and somehow, given that Skyy Vodka's base is the US, it does seem that we are destined to have another eavesdrop on the American legal system.

Scene: a courtroom in California. US flags, policemen wearing sunglasses, palm trees waving gently outside in the breeze from the Pacific.

Clerk: Yo there, dudes, show some respect and give it up for his honor, Judge D. Crockett
Crockett: Sure is hanging looser here than in my previous courtrooms. Okay, okay, let's all get mellow and see if we can't finish up here before the surf gets up. This is some sort of brand copyright issue, am I right?
Hamilton Burger: Your honor, as usual I represent the plaintiff, in this case the Skyy Vodka corporation of this very state, and my colleague Mr Mason is appearing for the defendants from England, some two-bit moonshiners who aren't even American.
Crockett: Looks pretty bad for you Mr Mason, even before the get-go, whatever that is.
Mason: Your honor, I shall be vigorously contesting this case and I reserve the right to call at least four surprise witnesses at the last minute, as usual.
Burger: Damn.
Crockett: Proceed, Mr Burger.
Burger: I show the court this bottle of my client's vodka, and this bottle of beer from England. It is our contention that the beer has stolen my client's brand name and appearance and it is impossible to tell the difference. Anyone going into a bar anywhere in the world wishing to drink my client's excellent white spirit short drink and having forgotten what it is called, will inevitably see this beer and order it instead. Or if they are aware of the name of Skyy Vodka and wish to order it, will find their tongue twisting to say "Dark Sky beer" instead, everyone knows this happens all the time and my clients are losing literally billions. Every day. At least, I think they are. I mean, aren't they? They told me they were, or might be, or something. Billions. If not more.
Crockett: Mr Mason?
Mason: Your honour, the plaintiff makes a very strong case. I can see that, using the same argument as my distinguished and honorable friend, that anyone wishing to watch Sky TV might well find themselves downing a few shots of vodka instead, having confused the two. Indeed, I have referred this matter to the legal advisors for Sky and they tell me they are going to sue Skyy Vodka for, consults paper at least forty-eight squillion dollars, plus costs, for stealing their name but they are not concerned about Dark Sky beer because, in their words, only a drooling moron could confuse TV and beer or indeed beer and vodka.
Burger: Oh, shi...Your honor, may I have a recess to consult with my clients?
Crockett: Take as long as you like, young feller. Mr Mason, Let's have a beer at the bar, I hear they got a new one called Skyy.

Euros '24 - It's All Here, Right Now, We've Got It Covered

 Once more the England men's football team is poised to compete in a major tournament and once more this column is proud to bring you the only comprehensive, targeted and fully-costed preview you need. Last night in a spectacular and deeply impressive friendly against Iceland last night, where our lads took on the might of the team ranked no less than 72nd in the world, they acquitted themselves superbly by only losing 1-0, and had at least one shot on target. We can now accurately chart their progress in the group stages of the European Championships which begin in one week, hosted by Germany. Iceland did not actually qualify this time but we remember what happened just a few years ago and England have made huge strides since then. Back in 2016 we lost 2-1. This time we limited them to scoring only 1 goal. That is a 100% improvement in terms of letting in goals.  Confidence will be sky high. 

What then of the three matches ahead? It seems likely that things will go something this...

Sunday 16th June vs Serbia. Gelsenkirchen

Result Serbia 2 England 1

Our special correspondent writes...The sun beat down relentlessly on the unforgiving arena that was Gelsenkirchen's Schadenfreude Stadium as England, playing an unfamiliar 3-5-2 formation struggled against the plucky Serbs. Temporary manager G. Southgate's problems were due to the last minute withdrawal of several key defenders who cited niggling groin strains, urgent appointments with their ghost-writers and not wishing to miss a barmitzvah as reasons to stay at home. 

Serbia's midfield dynamo Mágĩc scored the first by hitting the ball directly at the goal  - something Ramsdale had not expected. The second came from a corner where Plȃstȉc's high ball dropped accurately toward the far post and Trȁgĩc had only to tap in as all the defenders were looking the other way. England did pull one back at the end when Trippier booted the ball into the area and it bounced off Kane, the referee and a ball-boy before eluding Fȃntastȉc in goal.

"A good result against a superb and in-form side, even better than Iceland" said Southgate afterwards. "We know what we have to do now. Yes. Yes, we certainly know. There can be no denying that essential fact. The evidence is plain. We simply have to turn up next time and, er, do it"

Thursday 20 June vs Denmark. Frankfurt

Result Denmark 3 England 1

Our special correspondent writes...In the windswept, rain-drenched vortex of 100% proof football that was Frankfurt's SchwanzstuckermitWurst Park , England faced the mighty Danes with grit, determination and, er, grit. With a brand-new 3-6-1 formation, forced upon temporary manager G. Southgate as several key players reported "feeling a bit funny" after an all-night currywurst and Blue Nun special, it was unfortunate that the Danes scored from the first kick, shooting directly at goal. "I didn't expect that" said hapless shot-stopper Ramsdale "I thought nobody would try that one again". Strikers Hans and Christian found easy paths to goal through England's ponderous midfield whilst Andersen had little to do as shots fizzed wide, or over the top, or were scuffed directly at him. England's consolation goal came when Saka dribbled into the penalty area and stepped over the ball, Foden fell over Palmer's untied boot-lace and Watkins stuck his leg out to keep his balance, deflecting the ball past the defence who were mainly holding their sides laughing.

"We can take a lot of positives from that game" Southgate wrote later on Twitter "We know now that kicking the ball up the field rather than backwards makes it more likely we can score. We just have to put that into practice"

Tuesday 25 June vs Slovenia. Cologne

Result England 0 Slovenia 5

Our special correspondent writes...The gale force blizzard that somewhat unexpectedly turned Cologne's UberAlles Avenue Arena into a skating rink did England's gallant players no favours. Temporary manager G. Southgate chose a controversial 2-8-0 formation, comprising whatever was left of the squad after an impromptu schweinshaxe and schnappes contest. But Roglič and [insert other well-known Slovenian here] simply booted the ball over the top of the midfield and scored at will.

"It was hard going" admitted Southgate, writing in The Beano "but our lads showed they can match the best in the world. They were all there at the kick-off and, by God, most of them were still standing at half-time. Nobody can do more for their country.  We leave with heads held high and suitcases stuffed full of duty-frees, and I know we will receive the welcome we deserve"