The joys of democracy. Saw an article in the New York Times
that had a very familiar ring to it. New legislation, tax credits, people not getting their due share. The tax authorities here have been mucking about with a 'New tax credit' system and wow look what happened. Lots of people at the lower end of the income scale are not getting money. Amazing coincidence? No just a common failing of politicians. If people at the top of the feeding chain find that their snouts are pulled away from the trough they get a politician to fix it and it happens. The hoi-polloi are only of importance to politicos when the elections are under way.

I wonder whether Charton Heston sees the funny side of this? The Allied security forces in Iraq are going to confiscate certain types of firearms from civilians.

Sexist social patterning. Mea culpa.
Self and wife just leaving the house for the open air Chelsea Flower Show.
Small Boy aged about 6, walking along the street, hidden behind the hedge.
Wife, glancing at sky, in commanding tone to no-one in particular but probably the Almighty, 'Please don't let it rain.'
Small Boy, still walking past, appears in gateway. Looks at wife puzzled that anyone should have the power to command the weather. Glances at self.
Self, resigned look, rolls eyes skyward.
Small boy, look of complete understanding, knowing half nod at self, walks on into a future now populated with a slightly more confirmed male chauvinist pig.

Feeling smug. It is so nice to read an article in The New York Times fashion pages, as one does, and feel that one could have done better oneself simply because one started doing it all six months ago. Furthermore one doesn't read anyone who has blogged for less time. Perhaps one should stop whilst one is still ahead of the fashionista hoi-polloi. On the other hand what's the point of feeling smug if you can't blog it?

I don't think it was my fault. Farrago's moved. She has taken her camera and a large pot of black paint to Eye Contact. Don't worry if you can't read the notice under the main sign. In case she didn't take the fridge I left some Amstels. See you over there.

I really must cut down my drinking. I was once graciously given the freedom of Farrago's fridge but I didn't think I had abused the privilege to the point where it was neccessary for South Africa to buy a couple of extra breweries.

At last. I have been muttering in my beard for years that airlines should charge by weight for air transport. It costs three times more to fly a bloater weighing 300lb than 101 pounds of fun. Why should they pay the same price? It makes sense to the engineers and accounts department. The marketing department gets a fit of the vapours, as usual, at anything which might slow down a sale. The defenders of civil liberties will unfortunately feel they have to get involved. Environmentally it makes sense on the principal that the polluter should pay.
So the news that local airlines are being forced to look at the weight of what they are carrying is a very small step but it is in the right direction.

Apologies probably required. Scripting errors caused by commenting HTML should now have stopped even if commenting hasn't started.

Flag of convenience. I am not at all sure what this is going to look like but here goes anyway. If it all goes pear shaped it's down to Farrago.

A missed opportunity. The British are a relatively undemonstrative race when compared to the rest of Europe. We only had two gestures of any note. They were identical twins; the fist with index and middle fingers extended. Palm away from the speaker - Churchill's V for Victory. A rallying call to the nation in time of war. Palm towards the speaker - any insult you care to imagine. Born out of war with the French who neither wanted to keep prisoners of war nor kill them. So they cut off the index and middle fingers to prevent them using their English longbows, the current weapon of mass destruction of Fench soldiers. In recent times I have deplored the importation of the American gesture of insult that only involves the middle finger. Not only is it obscene but it only exercises half the number of fingers. I feel that in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, when Bush and Blair were opposed by the French and Russians, then the adoption by the war campaign of the Olde English salute to the French would have been a much better tactic than renaming fried potatoes. Not only would it have removed obscenity from the street language of a sizable portion of the world's population but as a reward for Britain's support of a wrongly motivated war the return of the two finger salute to Tony Blair seems entirely appropriate. I know this idea is months late but at least I have avoided linking being slow on the uptake with running a country.

The Mayor of London joins the Dixie Chicks. No need to reach for the volume control. Anyone who has heard Ken Livingstone speak will know what I mean. Not a pretty sound. More importantly, unlike many politicians Ken has strong opinions and does not go out of his way to avoid upsetting people by not expressing them. He has now told a group of 200 schoolchildren that 'George Bush is about everything that is repellent in politics.' Nepotism, insider trading, cowardice and non-election featured strongly in the speech. He did not comment on the office of President of the United States he criticised the incumbent. There has been almost universal criticism from the people interviewed by the media. Nobody mentioned the accuracy of his comments only the fact that he made them.
'The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity. - Rollo May' was posted on Bumble recently. At the time I felt that too much non-conformity was a danger to society but courage was a neccessary component for society's survival. I believe that Ken Livingstone deserves a knighthood at the very least. If nobody tells it like it is especially to children then we are failing to try and improve the world we live in.
Since the sycophantic US media got their knickers in a twist over Natalie Main's comments about Bush and banned the broadcasting of the Dixie Chicks' records I would warn His Worship the Mayor that this is one more reason for him not to enter the music business. Stick to what you're good at - keeping THEM honest.
Go Ken. Go Chicks. Bush, just go.

Only petty politicians could come to the conclusion that a bronze statue of Nelson Mandela should not be erected in Trafalgar Square on aesthetic grounds. They must have believed that as the square was laid out to commemorate war Horatio Nelson and the other virtually unknown military personages would look out of place alongside one of the very, very few great men of principle and peace of the last hundred years. If that is so then, although I am rather fond of Horatio who was definitely a bit of a lad, I would seriously consider replacing him with Mandela. The other people would obviously go but Landseer's lions would certainly have to stay.

What does a girl do first when she finishes sailing 29,000 miles around the world on her own? Isn't it obvious?
Watching the BBC news this morning Emma Richards was being interviewed in the studio with shots of her crossing the finish line. She'd had no more than one hour's sleep at a stretch since last September, no regular baths and lousy weather. First thing, before spraying the champagne, she opens a can of Amstel of course.

Mayday May Day. It used to be a perfectly respectable pagan festival celebrating the start of summer. Alright it was open to a fair amount of libertine interpretation but in principal it was a 'good' occasion. A time of joy as spring budding developed into summer growth - lads and lasses frolicking in ancient rituals. There used to be pictures in the family archive of me, complete with wench, dancing around a Maypole. I have attempted to destroy the evidence. The girl was pretty but the world is not ready for the sight of me in full frolic.
First the Communists hijacked May Day as Labour Day which didn't have much effect in the UK until the labour party finally got into power after a couple of decades in opposition and wanted to throw their weight about. It wouldn't have been so bad but instead of taking the first day of May they stole the name, stuck it onto the first Monday and made it a public holiday. The end result could only have been designed by a political committee.
A holiday with a false name at the wrong time and no reason for its' existence other than political expedience. Now May 1st is a day for political protest, exhibitionism and hooliganism. The last straw will be when the card industry starts persuading people that they must send Happy May Day Greetings. It's much the same as the christians did by adopting the mid winter festival, calling it Christmas, a pope adjusting the calendar to account for leap years, the hardliners panicking about celebrating the wrong day and also celebrating according to the old calendar on twelfth night.

There is still hope for faintly pagan rituals. Morris dancing is alive and well in England. On Saturday we went to the Sweeps Festival in Rochester, Kent. Rochester and Chatham are ancient port towns where the old Roman road between Canterbury and London crosses the River Medway. Their High Streets lie along the line the Romans laid out early in the first millennium although the oldest buildings seem to date from the 17th century.
The Sweeps Festival (this site is populated with HUGE pdf files and is slow) had attracted more than a score or more different Morris groups from around England. They were dancing continuous sets at half a dozen spots along the length of the High Street. I had seen quite a few Morris sides before but it was great to see so many at once and be able to note the diversity of costume and style. Some traditions die hard and there were many dancers with a half pint pewter tankard looped onto their belt, as one chap explained 'As the council is running a Beer Festival at the same time it would be rude not to.' The form of the dance probably hasn't changed much in the last few hundred years but the detail certainly has. Women now dance and there are a number of wholely female sides. The tunes aren't entirely traditional, the guiding principal apparently is, if it sounds right, who cares if it was written last week. 21st century technology in the form of a battery amplified bass together with that descendant of the Elizabethan sackbut, the saxophone, didn't seem out of place. The one thing that I did notice on glancing round the faces of the crowds watching the dance was that amongst the adults the expression was an almost universal faint smile. Now that alone makes Morris a bit of Olde Englande worth preserving.

A bit more of that tortuous train of thought. Thinking things through is not my style. Forward planning? No way. I am reactive not proactive. Things happen and I react, I don't do thinking. Shallow and superficial? Yes. So? It worked for me. Come to think of it when I started blogging, under mild protest, I even had a masthead 'Narrow thoughts from a shallow mind'. I must reinstate it. It's reasonably accurate. Right after I fix the commenting. There is another phrase which I am fond of, 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.' I have even attempted to translate it into dog Latin, 'Tunc ille sententia bona viderat.'(I have a feeling that 'viderat' should have been a subjunctive, corrections welcomed to malcolm at baker dot it) I might stick that on the masthead too.

Big Brother is not only still watching you he is becoming more able to collate the information he is acquiring.