Oddities

  • More thoughts on monarchy and the royal family by Keir Hardie

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics

    Jame Keir Hardie photographed in 1905Today, 19th May 2018, uncelebrated blues artiste Mumblin’ Harry Wales (posts passim) weds US actor Meghan Markle in Windsor.

    Whilst I have no particular axe to grind against anyone wishing to get married and wish Mr Wales and Ms Markle every happiness, I do have objections to the undemocratic nature monarchy and the idea that the heads of state of this country should come down the birth canals of one particular family and one family only.

    Then there’s the whole concept of the so-called royal family being somehow special or better than the rest of humanity.

    In these objections I’m in fine company.

    One of those who shares my republican ideals was James Keir Hardie (15 August 1856 – 26 September 1915), socialist, politician and trade unionist, who rose to become the first leader of the Labour Party.

    In “Keir Hardie: His Writings and Speeches” edited by Emrys Hughes and published by Forward Printing and Publishing Company Ltd, Glasgow in 1928, Hardie is credited with writing the following on the occasion of Victoria von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha’s diamond jubilee in 1897. However, his remarks are still relevant today and reveal how far ahead Hardie was of the conventional establishment thinking of his time.

    Even under a representative system of government it is possible to paralyse a nation by maintaining the fiction that a reigning family is a necessity of good government. Now, one of two things must be – either the British people are fit to govern themselves or they are not. If they are, an hereditary ruler who in legislation has more power than the whole nation is an insult. Despotism and monarchy are compatible; democracy and monarchy are an unthinkable connection.

    If we are for the Queen we are not for her subjects. The throne represents the power of caste – class rule. Round the throne gather the unwholesome parasites who cling to the system which lends itself to their disordered condition. The toady who crawls through the mire of self-abasement to enable him to bask in the smile of royalty is the victim of a diseased organism. No healthy, well-developed people could for one moment tolerate an institution which belongs to the childhood of the race, and which in these latter days is the centre, if not the source, of the corrupting influences which constitute Society.

    The great mind, the strong heart, the detestation of wrong, the love of truth whether in cot or palace will always command my respect. But to worship an empty form, to make pretence to believe a gilded mediocrity indispensable to the well-being of the nation – where is the man who will so far forget what is due to his manhood?

    In this country loyalty to the Queen is used by the profit-mongers to blind the eyes of the people. We can have but one feeling in the matter – contempt for thrones and for all who bolster them up.

  • German beer no longer wholesome

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities

    German brewers will no longer be able to advertise their beers as “bekömmlich” (wholesome) following a ruling by the Federal High Court (BGH), The Local reports.

    tray of beer
    A wholesome tray of (un)wholesome beer

    According to the BGH, the word “bekömmlich” has connotations of health benefits and thus cannot be used as it falls foul of European Union regulations on advertising alcohol, which must avoid any suggestion that alcohol is good for a body.

    In 2015 a case was brought against Brauerei Clemens Härle KG of Leutkirch im Allgäu in Baden-Württemberg against the brewery’s use of “bekömmlich” in advertising.

    After a series of appeals through lower courts, the BGH finally ruled on Thursday ruled that breweries were not allowed to describe their beers in terms that portray them as having health benefits.

    That ruling and the EU legislation puts paid to any return of Arthur Guinness’ “Guinness is good for you” advertising slogan for the Dublin’s most famous liquid export.

    The situation of Sanatogen Tonic Wine (marketed in the UK as a fortified wine with an alcohol content 15%), remains unclear.

  • Lookalikes – a politics & sci-fi double bill

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics

    Prime Minister Theresa May has the inhuman touch, an inability to relate to people that has led some unkind people to refer to her as the “Maybot“. Indeed, the Financial Times (the sporting pink for the casino economy. Ed.) even came up with a definition for his noun last December, i.e.:

    A prime minister so lacking in human qualities that she soon requires a system reboot.

    Ouch!

    However, I wonder if our mainstream media have ever noticed the striking similarity between Theresa May and Twiki, the robot assistant of the eponymous hero of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century?

    Theresa May and Twiki

    Twiki was mainly voiced by the late, great Mel Blanc, who provided the voices for the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, the Tasmanian Devil and many of the other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons stables. If, in addition to these vocal talents, he could be brought back from the grave to speak well and lie badly, the Maybot might sound less like an automaton.

    We of a certain vintage remember our reading included following Dan Dare’s adventures in space against his arch-enemy, The Mekon, who with his shaven pate, does a remarkable impression of Sajid Javid, the current Home Secretary, who has recently been ushered into 2 Marsham Street, London SW1 with his dustpan and new broom to clear up the mess the Home Office has created in recent years in relation to the so-called “Windrush generation“.

    The British Home Secretary and The Mekon

    Incidentally, Javid is not the first Conservative Cabinet Minister to be compared to The Mekon. One of his partisan predecessors, the late Angus Maude, who was Paymaster General in the government of Margaret Thatcher from 1979 to 1981, was nicknamed The Mekon.

  • English translation required?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

    Although it’s not one of his regular local media reads, your ‘umble scribe might just start visiting the Oswestry and Border Counties Advertizer website more to keep up to date with dynamic, one could even say groundbreaking, developments in use of the English language, if the headline of the report shown below is in any way typical of modern journalism.

    headline reads NFU president Minette Batters calls on police to not countryside be soft target

    The same piece, by the same author, also appears in yesterday’s Whitchurch Herald, where similar sub-editing skills are in evidence.

  • France – plus ça change…

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities

    …Plus ce n’est plus la même chose ! 🙂

    As I sit in my sister’s apartment on the coast of Brittany this Easter, the thought comes to mind that it’s nearly five decades since my first visit to France as a callow schoolboy in 1971.

    This realisation has prompted me to consider just how much France has changed – albeit gradually but nevertheless steadily – over the intervening years. Below are four (for the sake of brevity. Ed.) obvious changes your ‘umble scribe has noticed have changed, haven’t changed and are completely new.

    Things that have changed or are now apparently rare

    • The distinctive smell of French built-up areas, the odour being composed mostly of bad plumbing and the pungent aroma of Gauloises and Gitanes.
    • Mopeds, particularly the 50cc Mobylette or front wheel drive Solex, plus the classic Citroën 2CV.
    • In one and a half weeks here, I have yet to see someone working for the French state wearing a kepi. This headgear is now only worn by Customs officers and gendarmes on ceremonial occasions and by the military on “appropriate occasions”.
    • The lack of public conveniences; the average small French local authority now has more public loos than even large city authorities in the UK (who’ve been shutting theirs under austerity and costs-savings measures. Ed.).
    Solex and kepi
    The Solex and the kepi – destined for obsolescence?

    Things that haven’t changed

    • Grumpy-looking gendarmes and police officers.
    • The excellent quality of food on markets and in supermarkets and shops, plus affordable prices for alcoholic beverages.
    • French motorists’ psychopathic attitude to other motorists and contrasting extreme courtesy to cyclists.
    • Drinkable coffee and lovely hot chocolate in bars and cafés.

    Novelties

    • Ubiquitous cycle helmets, along with cycle routes and cycle lanes.
    • Roundabouts working on the same principal as in the UK (traffic on the roundabout has priority over that entering) have proliferated in the last 2 decades.
    • Pre-packed British style sandwiches on sale in supermarkets, along with ready meals: definitely a retrograde step. 🙁
    • Major stores opening on Sundays.

    If any readers wish to add to either list, comments are welcome below.

  • French seaweed farmers to sue Hanna-Barbera for breach of copyright?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

    In Brittany collecting seaweed off the beaches and out at sea for use as fertiliser on fields has a long tradition.

    In the early 1960s, the job of collecting seaweed was given a major mechanical boost with the invention of the “scoubidou“, a corkscrew-like tool that is used for the commercial harvesting of seaweed, consisting of an iron hook attached to a hydraulic arm. Its invention is credited to Yves Colin and it is largely used for gathering oarweed.

    A scoubidou can be seen in action below.

    A scoubidou in action off the coast of Brittany
    A scoubidou in action off the coast of Brittany

    Scooby-Doo the cartoon dogLet’s fast forward to the USA in 1969. At animation company Hanna-Barbera, a character in the shape of a male Great Dane called Scooby-Doo has just been invented and becomes the eponymous hero of an animation series featuring amateur detectives.

    The franchise proved very successful with the cartoon series being shown all around the world, culminating in a feature length film in 2002.

    News has now emerged that Breton seaweed harvesters, also known as “géomoniers“, might now be considering suing the animation company for copyright infringement.

    Breton seaweed harvesters’ spokesperson Avril Fouelle has commented: “It’s only right that we seek recompense. If it hadn’t been for those darn kids in Hollywood stealing our terminology for financial gain, Brittany’s géomoniers would today be living more comfortably than they do.”

  • Mad dogs – an Englishman speaks

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Oddities, Open Source, Tech

    During my first visits to France in my teens one frequently saw blue-enamelled signs mounted on gates and walls and bearing the words “Chien méchant“, the French equivalent of “Beware of the dog“. However, we used to translate it literally and, as the only other creature we’d come across which could also be described as “méchant” (= naughty*) was children, we settled on “naughty dog” as the accepted definition or translation and had a good chuckle. However, as time progressed and language studies reached higher levels, one gradually came to realise that literal translation is often unreliable, as exemplified by our French four-legged friends.

    The classic French "Chien méchant" sign from yesteryear
    The classic French “Chien méchant” sign from yesteryear

    Yesterday afternoon in Sainte Marine when out walking with my sister we came across the sign below.

    sign with French wording mad dog

    The alleged four-legged friend to which the sign refers is clearly a canine which has strayed well beyond being merely “méchant“, is clearly mentally unstable and would – if human and resident in England and Wales – be admitted to hospital against its will under the Mental Health Act.

    However, for we open source enthusiasts, “mad dog” – or in this case “maddog” – has other connotations. “Maddog” is the nickname of programmer Jon Hall, the Executive Director of Linux International, a non-profit organisation established by computer professionals with the aim of supporting and promoting Linux-based operating systems.

    Finally, any mention of mad dogs by an Englishman would be incomplete without a passing nod to Noel Coward, so here it is. 😀

    * = With enhanced vocabulary knowledge one subsequently became aware of other meanings of “méchant“, such as nasty or spiteful, which although laden with anthropomorphism are particularly pertinent to dogs and their bite. 😀

  • Fishy business

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities

    When it comes to advertising, your correspondent shares George Orwell’s opinion as expressed in 1936 in “Keep the Aspidistra Flying“, i.e.:

    The public are swine; advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket

    However, I’ll make an exception for a local fishmonger’s van seen on Good Friday in Fouesnant market in Brittany and depicted below.

    Fish van seen in Fouesnant market. Brittany
    Click on the image for the full version

    Billing themselves as a hard-working/responsible/serious company (Maison sérieuse), Poissonnerie Cabioch & Fils’ signwriter clearly has a humorous streak when it comes to advertising her/his client’s common items of trade.

    For those not well versed in French, the bounties of the sea shown on the side of the van are listed below with their equivalents in English. Some also have slang meanings in French. Each link in the list leads to the relevant Wikipedia page in the respective language for the species concerned.

    Talking of fishy things, it’s very nearly April Fools’ Day, or for the French “Poisson d’avril“. For children, “Poisson d’avril” consists of sticking a paper fish on the backs of people they wish to make fun of.

    The earliest known occurrence of “Poisson d’avril” in French is found in the “ Doctrinal du temps présent” by the 15th century French poet and priest Pierre Michault, dating from 1466. However, its use to describe a traditional trick played on 1st April is only confirmed in the 17th century, when its earliest known occurrence is found in “La Vie de Charles V, duc de Lorraine” by historian Jean de Labrune published in 1691. It is first recorded in the dictionary of the Académie française, the guardians of the French language, in 1718.

    Fish fingers going over a weir
    A fish-fingery April Fools’ prank. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    Finally fish – in this case rotten fish – also come into play in French if one wants to call someone every name under the sun; the equivalent French expression is “engueuler comme du poisson pourri“.

  • Trinity Mirror local “news” – readers respond

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    Ever since the takeover of the Local World newspaper titles by Trinity Mirror in October 2015, several Local World titles seem to or actually have given up on reporting serious local news preferring to give preference to what are essentially advertorials (e.g. restaurant reviews) and trivia instead of the hard work of investigating corruption and wrongdoing in the local corridors of power and/or amongst the
    city’s so-called great and good.

    This certainly seems to ring true if one examines the Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of warped record.

    Today’s most spectacular piece of trivia from the Temple Way Ministry of Truth concerns an encounter with an unpleasant object in the men’s toilets of McDonalds, not a caterer likely to feature in the aforementioned restaurant reviews (McDonald’s restaurants is a well-known modern oxymoron. Ed.).

    When allowed to comment, Post readers are not shy in expressing their views, as shown by the exchange below on the offending article.

    comments read 1 This is not news and 2 The Post isn't a newspaper

    As alluded to above, most of the Post’s alleged online news content can accurately be described as “clickbait“, which is defined by Wikipedia as “web content whose main goal is to entice users to click on a link to go to a certain webpage or video. Clickbait headlines typically aim to exploit the “curiosity gap,” providing just enough information to make readers curious, but not enough to satisfy their curiosity without clicking through to the linked content“.

  • It’s Pi Day

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

    Listening to Radio 3 this morning, presenter Petroc Trelawny announced that today is Pi Day, an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi). Following the US date format style (MMDDYY), Pi Day is celebrated 14th March, since 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant digits of π. Pi has to date been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point.

    A Pi pie. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
    A Pi pie. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    The earliest known official or large-scale celebration of Pi Day was organised by by physicist Larry Shaw in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium, where he worked, at which fruit pies were consumed.

    Besides maths and the sciences, Pi also turns up in the arts. In literature for example, in Terry Pratchett’s fictional Discworld city of Ankh-Morpork, Unseen University is a school of wizardry staffed by a faculty mostly composed of indolent and inept old wizards whose main function is not teaching, but eating big dinners. The University’s unofficial motto is “η β π”, or “Eta Beta Pi” (Eat A Better Pie).

    Still in world of literature, Life of Pi is a fantasy novel by Yann Martel, which was adapted into a 2012 film of the same name directed directed by Ang Lee.

    Finally, Kate Bush’s 2005 album Aerial features the track Pi.

    Happy Pi Day! I shall be celebrating by eating a pastry product. 😀

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