Why didn’t I think of that?

Victor Orban, PM of Hungary, wants secondary schools to be equipped with shooting  ranges – to nurture Olympic champions but also to instill patience and concentration – according that is to the Times.

What a wonderful idea! Forget boxing and the martial arts, let’s get military – and why not throw in a few knife-fighting skills too? Then the public school system will be able to make sure all the potential thugs and terrorists have a proper grounding in murder and can succeed in their chosen professions.

I’m surprised the grand old US of A didn’t think of it first (or did they?). It would make a perfect social fit. I can’t wait for Trump’s tweet.

 

Of frying pans and fires

Here and throughout the blogging world, spleens have been vented, feet stamped, cool lost and superlatives exhausted – at the gross incompetence and ineffable profligacy of a sitting government; and all to the accompaniment of the opposition’s sneering triumphalism laced with preposterous claims of competence and reliability.

Soon the fabled one week in politics will live up to its reputation and prove to be a long time since 8th June. The Queen’s Speech will be agreed by the warring Tories, the opposition will have their jolly bunfight in the House, the negotiations with Brussels will duly begin – and everybody will go away on their hols. Continue reading “Of frying pans and fires”

Conspiracy theories??

I am not normally one to subscribe to conspiracy theories, but, given the idiocy of half the UK population in the General Election I just wonder……..

  • If the polls at the time that Maggie Maybe called the election were rigged to show a much more commanding lead for the Tories than actually existed to persuade her to call the election, given that a lot of poll companies seem to be  Labour inspired and I never really believed them anyway?
  • How much electoral fraud was involved in some of the Labour victories. They have rather a record for such things?
  • Whether Maggie Maybe wanted to lose to screw up Brexit negotiations?
  • Whether her chief advisers were either Labour plants, received large backhanders or were just total wazzocks? I suspect the latter, but you never know.

Probably we shall never know, but we can only hope that she is dumped very soon for a proper Conservative leader and that they can do a deal with the DUP to ensure Brexit continues on course. We also have to hope that when the next inevitable early election comes, the Constituency Boundary Changes have been made, so that Labour do not get a 10% head-start in the polls.

The only good things to come out of this election were Nick Clegg, Alex Salmond and SNP Westminster leader Angus Roberson all getting the chop and the reining in of the SNP. Everything else was a disaster, although not as bad as if Jeremy Corbyn had won. That would have been apocalyptic.

What, me worry?  (Alfred E Neuman c1964)

Time for others

By coincidence, after I’d seen many reports of people going the extra mile during the latest terrorist outrages, I saw an article in the Beeb’s travel pages about a Greek word nobody, even Greeks, can translate satisfactorily. It’s ‘philotimo’ (from the ancient Greek φιλοτιμία which appears in Homer and Pindar). Down the centuries the meaning segued from ‘ambition to impress’ to ‘altruism’ and ‘doing the right thing’ and these days seems to hover somewhere in between those apparently contradictory concepts.

Did the ancients see a connection there, I wonder. Did they reckon acts of kindness might be motivated, perhaps subconsciously, by a desire to appear virtuous, a wish to deserve praise?

Anyway, see what you think! Just askin’.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170605-the-greek-word-that-cant-be-translated