Supermarket queuing

How to choose the till that will get you out the door fastest?  The Sunday Times ponders:

... scientists have worked out an answer to perhaps the most crucial question of all: how do you choose the queue that will move fastest? Simple: choose the one with the most men in it.

This is because women are more patient than men, who are more likely to just give up if the queue is moving too slowly.

According to researchers at Surrey University: “Men were more likely to dislike waits than women and be less accepting of their inevitability.”

But then again, it does not pay to overcomplicate it. When Dan Meyer of Desmos, a US-based online maths business, analysed the till receipts at his local supermarket he discovered that each person in line adds at least 41 seconds to your waiting time, regardless of how many items they have, because of the time taken to unload, pack and pay. His advice: just choose the line with the fewest people in it.

My advice (which is both sexist and ageist)?  Avoid the queue populated by old women - it takes them so damn long to open their handbags, then find their purse, then count out the pennies ...

 

Music of the week

Who is for a little grunge?



   

It's that time of year again

This year, next year, sometime, never ...

Will he?  Won't he?  Does what he says mean anything?

CityAM reports:

Mark Carney’s Bank of England pushed sterling off a cliff yesterday by suggesting that interest rates could stay anchored to their historic low until 2017.

Having said earlier in the year that a rate hike could come towards the end of 2015 or start of 2016, the Bank’s governor appears to be diverging from the position of US Federal Reserve boss Janet Yellen.

The dollar jumped this week when Yellen and two of her Fed colleagues pointed to a “live possibility” of a US rate hike next month.

Many analysts have expected the Bank to follow the Fed’s lead and tighten monetary policy sooner rather than later, but yesterday’s trio of publications – dubbed Super Thursday – was surprisingly dovish.

“The path for Bank rate implied by market rates has fallen by around 40 basis points [since August], such that it only reaches 0.75 per cent in 2017 quarter two,” said the Bank’s inflation report.

It will no doubt be an entirely different story in January.

 

Stuck?

Don't know how you get 20,000 British holidaymakers back from Sharm el-Sheikh.  Even if flights were possible, you would need a large number of aeroplanes.  I suppose the alternative is buses to Cairo; but you would need an awful lot of buses ...

 

Photos of the day

Canadian dogs come off poorly after attacking porcupine:

More here.  But it doesn't tell us what happened to the porcupine ...

Do they know what they are doing?

The Guardian reports:

Theresa May is to propose a major extension of the surveillance state when she publishes legislation requiring internet companies to store details of every website visited by customers over the previous year.

I reckon that I must visit over 100 websites each day (including separate visits to the same website).  But, for the sake of argument, let us posit that the average UK user visits only 25 sites.  If there are 20 million users in the UK (and bear in mind that it is not just the visits of you and me that will be recorded but also those of all of the large and small businesses), that means about 500 million visits per day for the UK users as a whole.  Multiply that by 365, and you get the annual grand total of UK website visits of over 180 billion (or 180,000,000,000).

That amounts to an awful lot of data for the internet providers to store and organise in some kind of accessible format.  Even if the police or the security authorities were able to extract the date for one particular individual, they would still have to look through many thousands of website visits.

Is this at all practical?

 

How much food do you throw away?

Far too much in my case.



Splendidly entertaining programme from the BBC.  Despite being a bit of a posho, Shuggie manages to engage with real people without patronising them.

You can catch the programme on the BBC i-player or on you-tube.

"Old love, new love, every love but true love ..."

So, tell us, Jerry, what attracted you to Rupert?

 

Man of the people

Nothing wrong with enjoying the nice things in life.  After all. it's open to anyone (provided they have a spare £2000 annually and are prepared to wait for a couple of years - unless you are the PM).  The Times reports:

David Cameron has accepted free entry to one of London’s most exclusive private members’ clubs. which boasts that it is a “haven of exclusivity” and recently underwent a cull of its membership.

The prime minister’s latest entry in the register of members’ interests reveals that he has accepted honorary membership of Mark’s Club in Charles Street, Mayfair.The club, which is open to women as well as men, describes itself as an elegant and traditional private members’ club, situated in a “beautiful townhouse”, and has recently undergone an extensive refit.

...

Membership of Mark’s Club is believed to cost in the region of £2,000 a year, with a joining fee in the region of £1,000. There is a waiting list of two years. Zagat, the restaurant review guide, wrote: “Members sniff, ‘If you ask how much it costs, you can’t afford to eat here’.”

   

A modern hero

Mr Williams is a decent sort of a guy:

It was an unexpected and almost absurdly touching end to six weeks of crunching top-level sport: the hulking, tattooed figure of New Zealand rugby star Sonny Bill Williams almost tenderly placing his brand-new World Cup winners’ medal around the neck of a dumbstruck teenage fan who had rashly run on the pitch to congratulate him.

...

Williams said later he had been upset to see the slight teenager “smoked” by the security guard. “It was pretty sad,” he said. “He’s just a young fella obviously caught up in the moment.

Asked about the medal gesture, he said: “Why not try and make a young fella’s night? Hopefully, he’ll remember it for a while. I know he will appreciate it, and when he gets older he will be telling kids. That is more special than it just hanging on a wall.”

...

Williams said that had he seen one of his own younger relatives similarly bowled over, he “would have given the security guard a hiding”, an alarming thought for the unnamed steward, given the 6ft 3in Williams is a sufficiently skilled boxer to still be listed as one of the top 100 heavyweights in the world.

   

A tap on the shoulder

Sometimes the Aussies get it right:

Australia will no longer appoint knights and dames under the honours system, PM Malcolm Turnbull has said.

Mr Turnbull said the titles were "not appropriate" in modern Australia, and that Queen Elizabeth had accepted the cabinet's recommendation to drop them.

Could the UK not do the same?  After all, hack politicians, ageing actors, political donors and superannuated civil service permanent secretaries are already sufficiently well-rewarded.

 

Music of the week

Quote of the day

Methinks he protesteth too much:

"It’s sad,” said Mourinho. “Look at Brendan Rodgers’ situation. He was the manager of the season [with Liverpool in 2013-14] and, suddenly, people were really happy and working hard until he was sacked. It’s strange. I don’t belong to that world. I’m too emotional and hate people losing their jobs but I’m not worried about that at all. Not at all. I don’t spend one second of my day thinking about it. I’m worried about the results, about winning against Liverpool, about qualifying for the next round of the Champions League, about recovering our position in the table, about getting Chelsea back to where we normally have to be. I’m not worried about my job, my future, about anything other than that. I’m not worried. I’m not worried. It looks like people want to put a lot of pressure on me in relation to that but they can’t. They can’t do it. They can’t do it.” By the end, the constant references to a lack of concern actually suggested something very different.

   

Miles better?

As I am from the other side of the country, I'm biased, of course, but this strikes me as a step too far.  According to The Times:

It has a reputation as Britain’s most macho city, with a mean streak as wide as the Clyde (Marc Horne writes). But Glasgow has been given a makeover and will be marketed around the globe with a new pink colour scheme.

The livery is being used on taxis, billboards, banners, badges, visitor websites and on the high-visibility lanyards worn by security staff at Glasgow airport. It is also featuring heavily at the World Gymnastic Championships at the SSE Hydro Arena.

The man behind the pink push has revealed that it has been done to give Glasgow a softer, more friendly image.

Scott Taylor, the chief executive of Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, said: “Making a post-industrial city in the west of Scotland go pink demonstrates just how comfortable Glasgow is in its own skin. It’s an inclusive colour, it’s a caring colour, it demonstrates a softness that Glasgow has.”

...

The city is also preparing to market itself as a gay-friendly metropolis. “It is about making a statement,” Mr Taylor said. “Glasgow is a place where everybody and everyone can come and have fun and feel welcome.”

Aye, well.  Just don't go to Glasgow in the day of an Auld Firm match and expect to have fun and feel welcome.

Hubris

Even The Times is putting the boot in:

Osborne could have chosen to introduce the cuts only for new claimants, thus avoiding the horror of families opening letters just before Christmas that tell them they will lose around £1,300. He could have twigged that a sum this large would mean that the adulation he received for his clever summer budget wouldn’t last forever. He could have listened to worried backbenchers, rather than sending his henchmen to bellow down the phone at them when, exasperated, they voiced concern in the press.

He could have put the cuts into primary legislation, where they belong, rather than in a statutory instrument, a lesser form of legislation that the Hansard Society believes is being increasingly abused by governments keen to avoid proper scrutiny. And he could, at a number of stages in this long row, have shown some humility by saying he wants policies to work for the hardworking people that the Conservatives claim to represent, and that he would tweak his original design. Though he said on Monday that he was listening to those who were worried, he appeared to snarl into the camera as he said it, suggesting a man whose pride had been stung, not someone humbled.

It is difficult even for those who support the chancellor’s ideal of a “lower welfare, higher wage” economy to feel much sympathy for where he has ended up. He thought he was being wise, which is always the sign he is being a fool. This latest row confirms that the “omnishambles” budget of 2012 was not just one dropped stitch, but part of a pattern: a complacent chancellor assumes that everything is fine with a controversial policy until its flaws are so obvious that even Geoffrey Boycott’s mother could have pinpointed them with a stick of rhubarb.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer fellow ...

Oh dear ...

The Guardian reports:

Bacon, ham and sausages rank alongside cigarettes as a major cause of cancer, theWorld Health Organisation has said, placing cured and processed meats in the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco.

The report from the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said there was enough evidence to rank processed meats as group 1 carcinogens because of a causal link with bowel cancer.

It places red meat in group 2A, as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. Eating red meat is also linked to pancreatic and prostate cancer, the IARC says.

Looking on the bright side, there are apparently no suspicions about fried bread and tattie scones.

 

Quote of the day

Lady Stowell, Tory leader in the Lords, defending the indefensible during the debate on tax credits:

“Let me be clear,” Stowell said. The only clarity thereafter was that she would rather be anywhere but where she was. Even though David Cameron had specifically ruled out cutting tax credits before the election, Stowell assured the Lords everyone had assumed they would, so it was perfectly reasonable to sneak them through on a statutory instrument – and even if they hadn’t it would be a constitutional crisis if the Lords were to vote for a fatal amendment, even it wasn’t actually fatal. As long as everyone was reasonably nice to the Conservatives and didn’t do anything worse than express regret about her party’s incompetence, she could give her word that the chancellor had promised he would have a rethink and come up with something a bit better in the next few days.

   

Decision day for the Lords

Will the House of Lords sabotage Osborne's proposed cuts in tax credits?  The Guardian reports:

In an attempt to persuade peers not to block the measures, the government warned the non-party crossbench group of peers, who hold the balance of power in the upper house, that rejecting such a large financial measure would provoke a constitutional crisis.

There were suggestions that Downing Street could flood the lords with new Tory peers or limit its powers if the cuts are blocked. If peers vote for a non-binding “regret motion” then the chancellor is expected to indicate that he would act to soften the impact of the cuts in his autumn statement on 25 November.

Bluffing?  Maybe.  After all, what would the voting public think about the prospect of creating hundreds of new Tory peers?  (Just think of  all those Tory donors wearing ermine.)  At what cost?   Would an expanded House of Lords have a future?  And all this in order to shaft the poorer sections of the working classes.

The Tories might want to think about holes and stopping digging ...

 
   

What? No spring roll?

The menu for the state banquet:

We wiz robbed

It's official.  The BBC reports:

Referee Craig Joubert was wrong to award a crucial 78th-minute penalty against Scotland in Sunday's World Cup quarter-final defeat by Australia, says World Rugby.

Scotland led 34-32 at Twickenham when Jon Welsh was ruled deliberately offside for playing the ball after a knock-on by a team-mate.

The governing body said that, because Australia's Nick Phipps touched the ball, "the appropriate decision should have been a scrum to Australia for the original knock-on".

 

Dunking

All rather messy.  The Guardian reports:

It was a mouthful of miniature sponge-cake dipped in tea that became one of French literature’s most powerful metaphors.

But the madeleine cakes that Marcel Proust made famous as the trigger for nostalgia in his book might have actually started out as toasted bread, according to draft manuscripts to be published in France this week.

A first draft of Proust’s monumental novel dating from 1907 had the author reminiscing not about madeleines as the sensory trigger for a childhood memory about his aunt, but instead about toasted bread mixed with honey. 

A second draft, the manuscripts showed, had the evocative mouthful as a biscotto, a hard biscuit.

It was only in the third draft that Proust wrote that he had bitten into a soft little madeleine.

Any dunker will tell you that plain digestives are the most appropriate, with hobnobs possibly in second place.


 

Music of the week

Getting sentimental in my old age:

Walking on water

From The Guardian (here):

While half the Conservative party doesn’t really care one way or the other if David Cameron stays or goes, half the Labour party actively want to remove Jeremy Corbyn and half the Lib Dems don’t even know what Tim Farron looks like, Sturgeon is received with an adoration bordering on a holy rapture.

She only has to smile and her audience is already entranced.

   

Going nowhere?

The state of the negotiations prior to the UK's in/out referendum?  What does Cameron want?  Not clear.  When does he want it?  Also not clear.  When will it become clear?  Later, perhaps.

The Guardian reports:

David Cameron bowed to pressure from other EU governments on Thursday and pledged to put his shopping list of demands for his in/out EU referendum on paper within weeks after previously declining to do so.

The prime minister is to write a letter to Donald Tusk, the president of the European council who chairs EU summits, detailing the changes he hopes to obtain in the EU, before putting the outcome to a referendum by the end of 2017 on whether the UK should remain in the EU.

Cameron has previously refused to be pinned down on his demands, triggering a chorus of complaints over the past fortnight from EU capitals that the negotiations were going nowhere and that there would be no meaningful talks until Downing Street put something on paper.

Do you get the impression that Cameron has a cunning plan for the negotiations?  

No, neither do I.    

   

Jezza puts the boot in

The Guardian wittily summarises Prime Minister's Questions:

When Corbyn opened with a question on tax credits from Kelly, Cameron’s eyes glazed over in chillaxed bliss. “National living wage, everyone better off, yadda yadda, yadda,” said Dave, before a little voice in his head reminded him to mention Kelly by name. “Kelly, Kelly, Kelly will be better, better, better off.” Yay, job done. Bring on the next moaner from Radio Somewhere Up North. Only this time Corbyn had a follow-up question. “Actually Kelly will be £1,800 worse off.” Would the prime minister like to have another go at answering the question?

Not in the slightest, it seemed, as Dave scrabbled for a folder that might give him a more detailed answer than was generally required for Radio Somewhere Up North. “All these people benefit,” Dave said. Kelly had by now been long forgotten, to be lumped in the catch-all “these people”. These people being people not like him.

Corbyn now adopted the air of a long-serving academic, reluctantly forced into explaining something very simple to an irritatingly dim student. “The prime minister is doing his best and I admire that,” he said, failing to disguise his ennui. But could he try just a little harder to explain why Kelly would be broke? A puce Cameron snapped. “I don’t really give a toss about Kelly,” he said. Or words to that effect. “If she can somehow struggle by for another four years she will be just fine.”

 

Cameron cynical?

Well, I suppose that this is one way of describing something of a debacle.  The Guardian reports:

Not so much a U-turn as a 360-degree spin. From hug-a-hoodie to hug-a-flogger and back again. Changing policy doesn’t seem to present nearly so many problems for the prime minister as it does for Jeremy Corbyn – probably because no one really believes David Cameron has any principles he wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice for short-term personal gain.

Up till Monday night, David Cameron was standing full square alongside foreign secretary Philip Hammond in support of the rights of the Saudi government to do whatever it likes to its own citizens in exchange for sharing security titbits and any number of lucrative contracts.

Come Tuesday morning, when the details of both a Ministry of Justice contract to train the Saudi police – “you don’t want to bother with a sword, mate, just turn this Taser up to max” – and a threatened flogging for an elderly, ill UK citizen prompted an urgent question in the Commons, Dave suddenly remembered he had a conscience. The only public execution now on offer was the hanging of Hammond. Out to dry.

 
   

Geordie haka

h/t Dan

Music of the week

Stream of consciousness

Mrs Cameron's diary:

Dave has these super progressive thoughts when we are chillaxing in front of Bake Off, like, what if prisoners did the Bake Off washing up as a punishment #winwin, Govey’s like, awesome, noted :) Nancy’s like but Dad, doesn’t BonkersWhittingdale hate Bake Off? Dave’s like not that I heard darling, she’s like plus Dad, do they watch it in China you know what Hunty said, he’s like, I have literally no idea, she’s like, & what about tax credits?

I’m like Nancy did you not HEAR where Daddy said in Greater Britain nothing is written? As in literally? So nothing that Oik & Bonkers & Theresa & Hunty say stops Daddy being totes progressive? Nancy’s like, u wot m8, aren’t we Conservative? I’m like, well Oik & Theresa are very sweetly & kindly doing that so Daddy doesn’t have to, I just wish someone would tell Mrs Merkel :( Because we told her it was Dave’s birthday as in *hint* banging on about Syria is NOT his idea of a treat #downer? She was like, Und? Dave’s like, Angela, my dream is a Greater Britain where nobody will EVER have to do boring stuff on his actual birthday, she’s like, she’s like, Ja, right, in your dreams :(((

   

Looking like a prat

No, not Beyoncé; the other one 

   

Idiot

The Times reports:

Alex Salmond was barred from boarding a British Airways plane because he booked his seat under the name of James T Kirk, the captain of Star Trek’s starship Enterprise.

An extraordinary stand-off took place this summer, when check-in staff at Heathrow refused to let the former first minister on to a flight to Scotland because his passport did not match the name on his ticket.

Mr Salmond, 60, revealed that he often travelled under a false name for security reasons and he liked to use Captain Kirk’s name because he is an avid fan of the television series.

  

Music of the week

The Hair

Vanity, vanity, vanity.  The Times reports:

Enter Donald Trump. The tycoon’s marmalade-coloured, candyfloss-textured, gravity-defying, super-luxury comb-over has entranced much of America — including Ms Stephens, who re-creates hairstyles from antiquity. “I tried to figure out how long that top hair has to be. It’s probably pushing a foot long,” she told me.

“He combs it diagonally forward to the right, pulls half of it back, and drags it to the left — kind of a big overlapping U shape that’s sprayed down with aerosol cement.”

Political hair, of course, is an irresistible springboard for pop psychology. A flamboyant do such as Mr Trump’s can connote self-esteem, Ms Stephens suggests. 

No, it connotes the fact that he is going bald.

 

Extract from the Corbyn diary

From The Times (here):

Thursday

Today I’m heading up north to meet what remains of the Labour party in Scotland. Kezia Dugdale, who is in charge up there, meets me at the station and says they’re in the car.

“Who is?” I say.

“The remains of the Labour party in Scotland,” she says.

I tell Kezia I thought our membership up here had doubled since I took over, and she says it has, and that’s why they’re not on the moped.

“I’m here to listen,” I tell her.

Kezia says that’s great, because normally Westminster politicians who come up on flying visits never really get beyond the crass Scottish stereotypes.

“Although not to bagpipes,” I add.

   

The best they could do?

According to The Times, a geriatric has-been will lead the Brexit mob:

The former Conservative chancellor Lord Lawson has put himself at the head of a Tory campaign to leave the EU and warned that David Cameron’s reforms would be “wafer-thin”.

Lord Lawson of Blaby has said that it was time for the prime minister to spell out red lines in his Brussels renegotiation, including limits on migration, or risk allowing “xenophobic voices” to lead calls for a British exit.

Writing in The Times before the Tory party conference next week, the peer announces that he is to become president of Conservatives for Britain as it gears up to join a cross-party campaign for a “Brexit” in the EU referendum expected to be held next year.

He's older than I am ...

  

Quote of the day

He coulda been a contender.  The Guardian contemplates the survival of Andy:

Having gone from clear favourite for the Labour leadership to distant runner-up, Burnham has had to rethink his political ambitions even more radically than he had to rethink his political positions during his campaign. Right a bit, left a bit, right again, bit more right, no left, left, left. Fire. Missed. Bugger it.

But Burnham is a natural survivor; not to mention amnesiac. Having been one of the few former shadow cabinet ministers not to throw a strop and refuse a position in Corbyn’s team, the new shadow home secretary then promised a fresh style of doing politics where “principle would always come before presentation”. Coming from him, this took some nerve.

   

So Jezza won't push the button ...

Music of the week

Quote of the day

From a letter to The Guardian (here):

Imagine the headlines in the Tory press if it was Jeremy Corbyn, rather than George Osborne, visiting China to foster closer economic and cultural links.

   

Rugby - the squeaker

I thought that my sister put it very well when she asked why Scott Hastings always sounds as if his underpants are strangling him.  But what can you expect from a Watsonian?

 

Quote of the day

So it goes.  Add VW to the roll-call of shame.  CityAM reports:

FOR MUCH of the past few years the debate around trust in business has focussed on financial services. The case for the prosecution is well known and the roll-call of shame (Libor rigging, forex scandals, PPI mis-selling) should never fail to serve as a reminder of the damage caused when individuals and institutions consider themselves to be above the rules or beyond the law. For a while, the horse meat scandal reminded the public that a business doesn’t have to be dealing in currency to behave like a crook, but generally speaking it’s financial services that still takes the heat when the public wants to vent. Now a new bad guy has strolled into town in the shape of Volkswagen. How did it think it would get away with it? Consider the discussions that must have gone into such an audacious deceit. Up to 11m VW diesel cars may have been fitted with a device whose sole purpose appears to have been to cheat the consumer and lie to regulators over emission levels. The consequences for the 78-year-old German company could be immense. In two days, £17bn has been wiped off the value of the carmaker, governments around the world are launching investigations and it faces multi-billion dollar fines and the threat of criminal charges.

   

Photo of the day

That SABMiller-InBev merger

Nowadays, even The Times  is being sarcastic about the bankers:

Officially, fees to bankers for cobbling together two companies that are already bigger than sense will be about $200 million. Assume that is an underestimate.

It’s all about shareholder value, of course. To suggest that this deal is going to be shoved through to enrich banks and executives no matter what anyone else thinks would make you a fool who just Doesn’t Get It.

Mergers are good, say bankers, who are impartial to a fault. Evidence to the contrary is yesterday’s news.

Meanwhile, the chancellor and the new city regulator want to ease off on bank regulation. It’s time they stopped saying sorry and got on with getting rich again, the politicians and the watchdogs agree.

So be cheerful. Life is better. For bankers.

I have shares in neither; nor do I drink their sorry apology for beer.

     

The mighty big if

The warmongers are at it again.  The Guardian reports:

Jeremy Corbyn faced pressure over Labour’s policy on airstrikes in Syria after senior shadow cabinet ministers signalled they could support military action under the right conditions.

Lord Falconer, the shadow justice secretary, said he would be prepared to back a bombing campaign in Syria with the proper military and legal justification, despite the Labour leader’s stated opposition.

His intervention came after Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign minister, refused to rule out supporting military intervention, saying he would look at the objectives.

There you have it: "under the right conditions" and "with the proper military and legal justification".  It might be rather difficult to tease out a rational justification and a clear objective for further military intervention in Syria.  What would it achieve?  What would it contribute to our national security?

Incidentally, the miltary boys playing with their toys would not provide a decent excuse.

Up all night

The Guardian  reports:

Every night at 8pm, Eastern Standard Time, Rhod Sharp, an expatriate Scot, climbs to the loft of his house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, puts on his headphones and prepares to pretend that it is actually one in the morning GMT. For the next four hours he sets out to, in his own words, “keep some listeners awake and send others to sleep” with the mix of rolling news and free-range conversation which is Up All Night (Monday to Friday, 1am, 5 Live). If you’re one of the significant minority of people who find it difficult to go to sleep without the reassuring sound of a bedside radio or the confiding comfort of an earpiece, the image of Sharp talking to you from his own home thousands of miles away is somehow more appealing than thinking of the same job being done by the sole bleary-eyed occupant of a media mausoleum.

Sharp’s chat provides a valuable supplement to the station’s daytime output. In a media environment where too much time is given to big-name guests with nothing to say or stories with little to add to your knowledge of a situation beyond the fact that they are apparently “breaking”, Sharp’s gently unfolding conversations with experts, well-placed observers and stars whose names wouldn’t be quite big enough to get on the main bulletins are even more welcome.

Aye, Rhod is alright.  But he is only on for three mornings a week - Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  And on Thursday morning he gives up an hour of the programme to an execrable Australian who claims to be a scientific expert.  The rest of the week is given to Dotun Adebayo who is un-listenable to - the radio equivalent of tabloid newspapers.

So, for much of the week, we nightowls have to rely on the World Service.  But that is deeply marred by a daily disgraceful programme of an hour from 2am called Outlook, devoted to "true life stories", especially those - refugees and other victims - who have endured some kind of trauma.  The presenter, a Matthew Bannister, loves to dwell on the gory bits, along the lines of "How did you feel when they tortured you?".

I tell you this - it's not easy being an insomniac ...

 

Music of the week

Fair unbiased coverage?

Perhaps the English rugby fans watching their TVs were happy.  The Guardian comments:

While ITV has employed former players of various nationalities to peddle opinion on their World Cup coverage, any pretence it was going to be anything other than totally chariot-centric was quickly put to bed when John Inverdale, a presenter who could scarcely bawl “Home Counties” more loudly if he was shouting through a megaphone fashioned from a rolled-up copy of the Daily Telegraph, introduced an all-English panel of studio experts comprised of Jonny Wilkinson, Sir Clive Woodward and Lawrence Dallaglio.

Meanwhile down on the touchline, Martin Bayfield towered over Jason Robinson, while Francois Pienaar made some early contributions until, one supposes, a minion checked his passport and realised there had been some terrible mistake. Weirdly, despite an early cameo, we neither saw nor heard from the former South African captain again.

Apart from the usual inability to understand the tactics or the strategies, I thought that the commentators might have made a little more effort to identify the Fijian players.  But a Bill McLaren does not come along every day.

Nice to see Jonny Wilkinson wearing a tie, while the others on parade in the studio went fashionably open-necked.  Inverdale is exempted from this criticism as he has no neck - his head just sits on his shoulders without any apparent attachment.

 

Tinkling the ivories

Her Majesty snubs The Red Flag

PMQs

Usually, I find that watching Prime Minister's Questions verges on the tedious.  But, as it was Jezza's first outing, I metaphorically girded up my loins to watch the gladiators in their contest.

Mr Corbyn was calm and courteous.  He looked somewhat dishevelled but that only served as a welcome contrast with the sleekit smoothness of the Prime Minister.

The Leader of the Opposition asked a series of questions based on e-mails he had received from real people, covering housing, tax credits and mental health facilities. IMHO, he put Cameron on the spot more than once; even on the telly, you could see the colour rising in Cameron's cheeks, as he strove to move his answers on to what he thought was safer ground.

So, rather unexpectedly, a win for Corbyn.  At least, I thought so ...

You can watch it on BBC2 on the i-player.

 

Cutting your nose off to spite your face

I don't understand.  The Guardian reports:

The prospects of Labour opposing British membership of the European Union, or adopting a position of neutrality, has grown markedly after the Trades Union Congress (TUC) voted to recommend Britain leave the EU if David Cameron negotiated a new European settlement that watered down workers’ rights.

To lose the protection of the EU Social Chapter would indeed have a deleterious effect on workers' rights; but I do not see that leaving the EU would do anything to restore the position to status quo ante.  If anything, it would give a Conservative government greater freedom to worsen the position of workers.

     

Hyperbole

Oh yes. the politics of fear - once again, the Tories are at it.  The Guardian retorts:

They may in time find a new way to argue, but currently, a prime minister warning you via Twitter that a man in a beard and a cardigan is going to threaten your family’s security sounds plain silly.

 

On y est!

Quote of the day

Pretentious, moi?  The Observer gets carried away in setting the scene for its analysis (or philosophical deconstruction) of the Manchester Utd - Liverpool match:

The collective narrative before this match had always suggested what we were about to see was a kind of angst-summit, a meeting of two decaying empires gripped with Weltschmerz, angst, ennui and – let’s face it – unhappiness at not getting to win everything all the time any more.

Hey guys, it's a football game ...

 

Music of the week

Quote of the day

Matthew Parris in The Times (here):

Perhaps modern leaders make war beyond their borders because they can: elected presidents and prime ministers have so little freedom of manoeuvre at home. A buzz-phrase of our era is “make a difference”. Oh boy, have we made a difference in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. Heaven send us a breed of politicians who vow not to make a difference.

But the joy of efficacy, mere efficacy, is very strong in human beings. You or I might re-site the garden shed, where Tony Blair or David Cameron might authorise a bombing raid. It would be futile to discuss these decisions in terms of cost-benefit analysis because the balance has been secretly tipped by the weighty satisfaction of simply doing something — anything. The Middle East has become the western leader’s DIY. Never mind if the result is ghastly: I redecorate therefore I am.

A Commons vote on the extension into Syria of British military action is on its way and (with Labour’s disarray) will almost certainly be nodded through by parliament this time. So, Lord, give me grace. Here we go again.

   

Corbyn is a brave man

I can only hope that his political acumen is better than his dress sense.

Why the housing crisis will remain with us ...

... and why Osborne's schemes to stimulate the market are doomed to failure.  The Times explains:

If anyone is going to ease the acute housing shortage in the next few years, it is the biggest half dozen housebuilding companies. They alone realistically have the financial firepower, the appetite and the skills. Councils have no money. Housing associations lack oomph. Smaller local housebuilders, the kind who would knock up two or three homes on a small plot and were a key component of the industry a decade ago, have disappeared in their droves.

That leaves the likes of Barratt Developments, which yesterday reported a thumping 45 per cent leap in profits, while boasting it had completed 16,447 new homes in the year to June. That was an increase of 12 per cent, significantly above the growth rates of 5-10 per cent achieved in the previous few years.

Strong demand, more plentiful mortgage availability and easier planning rules have helped. So have alternative technologies like timber-framing and off-site roofing assembly, which have speeded up building times. But Barratt is still a long way off from returning to the pre-crisis years, when it sold more than 18,000 homes a year, let alone churning out the 25,000 or more required from it if Britain is seriously to achieve the new homes target of 200,000-250,000 a year that most people think are needed.

It expects its completions growth to slow to just 2 per cent in the current year. Skills shortages are a serious constraint. Bricklayers are earning 20 per cent more than two years ago and are still in short supply, as are carpenters and dryliners. An estimated 300,000 people left the building trade in the 2008-2010 downturn. Training and apprenticeships take time.

Not very promising ...

 

Music of the week

Quote of the day

Matthew Parris in The Times (here):

What kind of primitives have we become that we need to see a drowned person before we acknowledge to ourselves that people are drowning? Did we not know, had we not read, that migrant children drowned? What happened to the written word? Are newspapers and broadcasters to dispense altogether with report and analysis and offer us only a slide show? “Tragic,” “shaming”, “shocking” — this is politics by adjective. We need some nouns.

We have no idea what to do about the refugee crisis. We didn’t before we saw the picture and we still don’t. It is possible there is no answer. Should there be a workable answer, it is unlikely the nations of Europe will be able to agree upon it.

But at least we are no longer in the position of firefighters who refuse to rescue those in the burning building because it would not put the fire out.

Quote of the day

David Cameron  - what he says:

 “We have already accepted around 5,000 Syrians and we have introduced a specific resettlement scheme ... to help those Syrian refugees particularly at risk. As I said earlier this week, we will accept thousands more under these existing schemes and we keep them under review. And given the scale of the crisis ... today I can announce that we will do more, providing resettlement for thousands more Syrian refugees. We will continue with our approach of taking them from the refugee camps. This provides them with a more direct and safe route to the UK, rather than risking the hazardous journey which has tragically cost so many of their lives. We will set our more details next week.

“We will continue to work with partners to tackle the conflict in Syria, to provide support to the region, to go after the smuggling gangs exploiting these people, and we will continue to save lives at sea.”

What he means:

I don't want to look like a heartless bastard so we will do the minimum necessary in an attempt to satisfy public opinion on this matter.  We certainly will not get involved in dealing with those refugees already in Europe.  And, as far as I'm concerned, those in Calais can stay in Calais.

Do you think that Cameron gives a toss for refugees?  No, neither do I.

   

I'll drink to that

The Guardian reports:

Nicola Sturgeon’s plan to fix a minimum price for alcohol has suffered a huge blow after the European court’s top lawyer ruled it would risk infringing EU law on free trade.

In a formal opinion on Sturgeon’s flagship policy, the advocate general to the European court of justice, Yves Bot, has said fixing a legal price for all alcoholic drinks could only be justified to protect public health if no other mechanism, such as tax increases, could be found.

Bot’s opinion is expected to mean a final defeat for the Scottish government’s efforts to be the first in Europe to introduce minimum pricing – supported by leading figures in the medical profession and the police, after several years of legal battles.

It is highly likely the ECJ in Luxembourg will now uphold complaints from the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) and nine other member states, including France, Spain and Bulgaria, because its judgments rarely contradict an opinion from the advocate general.

And there is more good news for those of us who partake of the demon liquor:

Teetotallers should raise a glass of sparkling water to Britain’s drinkers, who are subsidising the Treasury to the tune of £6.5bn a year according to a think tank.

 Revenues from alcohol taxes amount to over £10bn, according to official figures crunched by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). The contribution of drinkers to the state compares with costs of just under £4bn which are borne by the NHS and criminal justice and welfare systems. The figure is over seven per cent of the government’s budget deficit for the 12 months ending March 2015.

Daft economics

CityAM reports:

English football giants spent £483m on players from euro area clubs during the latest transfer window, a figure that would have been far higher if the pound had not climbed up to 17 per cent against the euro since 2014. 

With transactions typically taking place in the currency of the selling club, buying the same batch of players in last year’s summer transfer window would have cost £568m. It marks a saving to top English clubs of £85m, according to analysis from forex broker Foenix Partners.

But if you look at it through the other end of the telescope, if sterling had not been so undervalued in 2014, the English clubs would not have had to overpay by so much in that year ...

 

New logo - same as the old

Old:

New:

   

Apocalypse now

The Times predicts disaster:

If Labour chooses Jeremy Corbyn — a man who will never be elected prime minister — as leader next week, its end could be as brutal and sudden as those other once great tribes. Peter Mandelson is right to say that his party is in “mortal danger” and may be writing the final chapter of its history. This is bad for democracy as well as for the Labour party, since it is healthy for there to be a credible centre-left alternative to a Conservative government.

...

In a series of phone calls and emails over the past two weeks, between holiday villas, constituency homes and country retreats, senior figures from the centre of the party have been urgently drawing up a fightback strategy. 

It is the concept of Labour grandees in their holiday villas and country retreats that gives the game away.  What hope do such bourgeois pragmatists have of connecting with the ordinary Labour voter on minimum wage or suffering massive cuts in benefit payments?  It is arguable that Mandelson and co, with their failure to believe in anything other than winning power, are the ones who are destroying the Labour Party.

 

What's in a word?

Have you noticed how the media have begun to use the word "migrant" in their reports of those assembling at Calais and making their way across the Mediterranean?  This displaces the previous "immigrant" which used to be used for incomers from abroad.  Emigrants, on the other hand, were those who left for abroad.

It remains unclear if  "migration" will replace immigration or emigration.  Migration is of course more commonly used to describe the temporary seasonal movement of animals, birds and whales.  So I suppose it would be less than accurate to use it to describe the more or less permanent movements of human beings.

Much the same applies to the verb "migrate".  (Although, curiously, while "to emigrate" was common enough, "to immigrate" was seldom used.)

Strange ...