Category: Chips on Shoulders

Pull the other one

If you want an exercise in suspending belief, try this:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22152700

Allegedly the ultra-orthodox Jews, despite thousands of years of practice, are still unable to find out how to procreate and need a book to help them. “We wanted to give people a sense of not only where to put their sexual organs, but where to put their arms and legs,” the author says. “If you have never seen a movie, never read a book, how are you supposed to know what you do?” Well, sir, as a former schoolboy in the late ’40s and ’50s, I can’t remember my contemporaries ever being uncertain about the positions employed, despite a total lack of access to films or books on the subject. You put the right one in, the right one out, the right one in and you shake it all about. You do the okey kokey and you turn around. That’s what it’s all about. Remember, son?

Go forth and multiply, I say.

Where’s Gordon?

Former Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Sir John Major and Prime Minister David Cameron attend the funeral service

The media, even here in socialist Vikingland, are banging on about the cost of Maggie’s funeral – twenty new pence a head allegedly. So I thought I’d set the record straight, just to comfort the serried ranks of soon-to-be-late prime ministers who might feel obliged to decline the same honour in the interests of national thrift.  Continue reading “Where’s Gordon?”

Mea culpa?

Time was when cricketers walked, snooker champs owned up and, yes, golfers retired when they broke a rule. The gentlemen’s code, as far as I know, never extended to tennis or any of the foootball or hockey variants – in which hoodwinking the ref has become de rigueur, nay a practised skill. Remember Bloodgate and the iconic Dean Richards? But luckily hawkeyed gadgetry is slowly replacing the human eye and on Friday a telly viewer caught Tiger woods cheating – not on his latest blonde this time but on the fringes of the 15th green during the US Masters. He later stated he’d chosen to ‘drop’ a couple of yards back to get a better lie. No behavioural change there then.

Do I care? Should you? Not really, except to bewail the loss of honesty among our heroes. But, hey! All’s fair in love, sport and war and you can’t trust a superpower to play nicely with his drones anymore .

Do one, yer silly mare!

It’s an annual phenomenon: the scrubberfest at Aintree, exhibiting some of the social and sartorial fashions of modern Merseyside; ironically known as Ladies’ Day. And who should gainsay them, one asks? A brave man indeed. It’s only to be feared that the PC brigade will insist on a Gentlemen’s Day – when no doubt the even less becoming Merseyside Male would take centre stage.

Racegoers react during the John Smith's Mildmay Novices steeple chase on the second day of the Grand National meeting at Aintree

NIMBY politics

HMS AstuteIt’s rather a facile option for small countries to declare themselves ‘nuclear free’. Denmark has done it and the SNP will do it on behalf of a ‘free’ Scotland. But such posturing ignores the realities of life in the 21st C. (Every day for example Denmark may choose to buy electricity from neighbouring countries which run nuclear power stations – only confirming the hypocrisy of its policies.) Militarily, the western alliance (or NATO) ‘protects’ both territories by dint of their membership (unless the Scots go 100% neutral) and uses nuclear weapons to secure such protection. So when Iran and North Korea threaten Europe, as well they might, will the Lilliputians expect special dispensation from nuclear attack or eventual occupation? Maybe,  but only total political neutrality will guarantee that. That’s the dilemma. They surely wish to be seen as supporters of European values and defenders of their own – but not, it seems, at any price or ‘in my back yard’. And would any rogue state misguided enough to launch a nuclear attack respect the nuclear neutrality of such defenceless people? I doubt it.

The dangers of banking

A lot of financial experts and other commentators are up in arms about the Cyprus Solution, which slaps a 40% ‘fee’ on savers with more than 100,000 euros in a couple of local banks. ‘Poor, unsuspecting savers’, allegedly. Many of them are British pensioners lured to Aphrodite’s Isle by a mouth-watering 5% tax rate; and even more are Russsian emigres from whom (à la Russia’s President Medvedev’s enigmatic quoation from Lenin) “the stealing of what has already been stolen continues”. Unknown

Now I’m not anti-capitalist, nor pro-communist but I do wonder how this arrangement is remotely less acceptable than forcing innocent tax-payers to pick up the tab for the profligacy of bankers; because the thing about banks is that we usually rely on them to stay in business and not to mess with our money, but when they fail, we the savers bear some responsiblity for having chosen to let them use it. It’s a business arangement gone wrong – between consenting partners, not between banks and their ‘victims’.

Of course I sympathise with the British pensioners whose retirement bubble has burst so spectacularly – surely the Bank of Cyprus, if not the Laiki bank, was ‘reliable’? It probably was, for many years. But if I were a eurozone taxpayer I would strongly resent having to bail it out when tens of thousands of depositors, attracted by the offer of tax holidays in the sun, held on to their funds.

Getting the low-down

I took a wee foray north again today, only to find that flying out of Edinburgh can be a challenging experience. Some passengers are ‘selected’ to undergo a full-body-scanner check – which except for exhibitionists (especially the extremely well-appointed) is surely a sufficient invasion of one’s privacy – followed by a ‘voluntary’ questionnaire seeking personal information including one’s religion. Unfortunately there seems some doubt whether the staff always get round to mentioning it’s voluntary.

Continue reading “Getting the low-down”