This blog has previously documented the carnage on the highways caused by driverless vehicles (posts passim).
The Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of warped record, has now discovered that driverless vehicles are not only responsible for so-called “accidents“, but have now turned to theft – or attempted theft – as well.
If there’s one crumb of comfort to be gained from the above report, it is that our brave boys and girls in blue would have had no trouble spotting the offending vehicle with those American “license plates“. 😉
During the United Kingdom’s involvement in Afghanistan, British forces were supported by some 3,000 civilian interpreters. These Afghan interpreters were often exposed to extremely dangerous situations.
An Afghan interpreter in action for a British officer
In its reportLost in Translation? Afghan Interpreters and Other Locally Employed Civilians, the House of Commons Defence Select Committee has now found that Government’s scheme to safeguard Afghan interpreters threatened with reprisals for working with the British Army “has dismally failed to give any meaningful assurance of protection” from the Taliban.
The committee’s report also calls for a more sympathetic approach to Afghan personnel seeking relocation to the UK after serving in front-line roles.
Earlier this month, Sajid Javid, a man who does Home Secretary impressions, bowed to pressure over 150 interpreters seeking indefinite leave to remain in the UK under the Relocation Scheme, including waiving a £2,389 application fee.
No such concessions have been made for many others who have made it to the UK or who are still in Afghanistan where they are targeted by the Taliban or Isis.
Besides the Relocation Scheme, the government also initiated the so-called Intimidation Scheme; this had the aim of relocating interpreters within Afghanistan if they faced threats from the Taliban or Islamic State, only offering them a place in the UK as a last resort.
However, not a single Afghan has been relocated as part of the intimidation scheme, which the Select Committee describes as an “utter failure”. It goes on to say that the scheme is perceived as unfair and miserly and that will continue until it “offers a genuine prospect that, when individuals face serious and verifiable threats to their lives, as a result of having helped UK armed forces, they will be allowed to come to the UK”.
Amongst its recommendations, the committee has called for a more sympathetic approach and looser application of the Intimidation Scheme.
Select Committee chairman Dr Julian Lewis said: “This is not only a matter of honour. How we treat our former interpreters and local employees, many of whom served with great bravery, will send a message to the people we would want to employ in future campaigns.”
Many members of the armed forces who served in Afghanistan go further than the Select Committee and believe that the UK has a debt of honour to resettle all former civilian interpreters in the UK and that their former colleagues are been caught up in the racist Home Office’s crackdown on immigration.
It’s official: the Bristol Post (or is it BristolLive? Ed.) is changing its name to the Manchester Evening News.
And the revelation comes in a piece from no less a personage than Mike Norton, the title’s editor in chief himself, and is hidden away in the details about the implications of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The relevant section is outlined in red in the image below. Click on the image for the full-sized version.
Whether production of the Post will be moved up north from the Temple Way Ministry of Truth is not mentioned.
Is Mike Norton guilty of copying and pasting without checking the actual wording?
In Private Eye’s immortal words: we should be told! 🙂
Q: Pictured below are 2 men: Winston Churchill, who some would argue was the greatest UK Prime Minister ever; and Piers Morgan, a man of no discernible talent apart from sycophancy to those on the extreme right wing of politics. What links them?
A: A cigar butt.
One of Churchill’s discarded cigar butts, to be precise.
Piers (affectionately renamed Piers Moron by Private Eye. Ed.) was so pleased with his purchase, he also tweeted about it.
Auctioneers Travanion & Dean of Whitchurch in Shropshire had been expecting the half-smoked historical artefact to sell for about £1,000.
Piers paid £2,600 for it.
Needless to say, the final bill would have been rather more than that once the auctioneers’ commission had been added.
He may have considered his action patriotic, but Piers’ action reminded your ‘umble scribe of an old adage, i.e. a fool and his money are soon parted.
That bit of folksy wisdom in turn set me researching its origins.
The King James version of the Bible published in 1604 has something similar to this saying in Proverbs 21:20, which states:
There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.
However, for a rendition slightly closer to the wording in question, one has to look at 1573’s Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie by Thomas Tusser, reproduced below:
A foole & his money,
be soone at debate:
which after with sorow,
repents him to late.
The form of words commonly used in the present proverb were first just over a decade after Tusser. In 1587 Dr. John Bridges writes the sentence below in Defence of the Government of the Church of England:
If they pay a penie or two pence more for the reddinesse of them..let them looke to that, a foole and his money is soone parted.
After reading the actual story, I found no mention of pictures being thrown into the River Severn in Ironbridge by vandals.
Did it actually happen? Or did the dread ambiguity that plagues so much modern journalism strike again?
When I was learning/being taught to write so many decades ago, we were always advised to steer clear of anything that could be misconstrued.
That concept is now obviously regarded as old-fashioned and no longer worthwhile by those who write today’s media (sometimes with the digital equivalent of a crayon. Ed. 😉 )
Today’s Graunaid reports on the establishment of a new Tory think tank, erroneously called “Onward“.
However, it is firmly denied that this anodyne moniker is meant in any way to be an echo of “En Marche!“, the movement that propelled the right-of-centre Emmanuel Macron to power in France (and Andorra; he’s also the ex-officio co-prince of the Pyrenean principality. Ed.).
Those at the centre of the launch in the Gruaniad’s eyes are Scottish Tory leader Ruth “tractor quotas” Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, and Michael Gove, the man with the most punchable face in British politics and alleged to be the UK’s current Secretary of State For Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.
Leaving aside the sordid details of the think tank’s launch, which were given far too much attention for my mind by the Gruaniad, what struck your ‘umble scribe was the following phrase relating to the boy Michael:
Gove, the environment secretary, who has long been one of the party’s most influential thinkers,…
The plain truth is that thinking doesn’t come naturally to Michael. In a previous incarnation as Secretary of State for Education, he’s on record as not understanding what an average is or how it works in this oral reply to the House of Commons Education Committee in 2012:
…we expect schools not only to be judged on the level of raw attainment but also in terms of making sure that children are on track and are not falling back-and, indeed, do better than the average.
Meanwhile in his present post, he has in the past had difficulty in remembering which country he’s in, singing the praises of Welsh lamb in a press release for a visit to Northern Ireland (posts passim).
Thinking is a skill that can be taught and acquired, but your correspondent has yet to see that Gove has gained sufficient quantities thereof in his education at public school and thereafter at Oxford University.
Then again, lack of talent has never been an obstacle to achieving high office for the Blue Team…
On Saturday, a certain Melania Trump was discharged from hospital following surgery for a kidney problem.
Needless to say her husband. one Donald John Trump, who occasionally resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. in between golfing trips, was delighted.
So delighted he sent the tweet below to his followers.
The reason why The Donald should misspell his wife’s name is unknown. Perhaps he had that pesky predictive text active on his tweeting device.
However, the 45th President of the United States is not the first Republican Party occupant of that office of state to experience problems with the use of the English language.
George H.W.’s son, George W., who was affectionately known as “Dubya” and inaugurated as the USA’s 43rd president, was so inept with his alleged mother tongue that a term – Bushisms – was coined to denote his ability to engage both tongue and brain when speaking in public. Bushisms are defined as Dubya’s unconventional statements, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms and semantic or linguistic errors in public speaking. Besides malapropisms, Bushism’s other common characteristics included the creation of neologisms, spoonerisms, stunt words and grammatically incorrect subject–verb agreement.
To conclude this brief excursion into members of the Grand Old Party’s difficulties with English, who can forget former Vice-President James Danforth Quayle’s erroneous correction of a school student’s correct rendition of “potato“? 😀
Today, 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 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.
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.
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.
In the last 2 weeks there have been several attempts to block implementation of part 2 of the Leveson inquiry, judicial public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandal.
Part 2 of the Leveson inquiry (aka Leveson 2. Ed.) would investigate “the extent of unlawful or improper conduct within News International, other media organisations or other organisations. It will also consider the extent to which any relevant police force investigated allegations relating to News International, and whether the police received corrupt payments or were otherwise complicit in misconduct.”
However, the proponents of Leveson 2 have not given up. Yesterday the House of Lords voted in favour voted by 252 to 213 on Monday evening to back an amendment to the Data Protection Bill that called for Leveson 2 to be put back on the agenda, i.e. a full investigation into unlawful conduct by newspapers, misuse of data by social media companies and relations between the press and the police.
This overturns a decision made by MPs last week and has set up another showdown with the government.
At this point you may be wondering why the government is so keen to halt an inquiry into corporate criminality.
This is best answered in pictorial form, with no further comment being necessary.
Those at the centre of the launch in the Gruaniad’s eyes are Scottish Tory leader Ruth “
Today, 19th May 2018, uncelebrated blues artiste Mumblin’ Harry Wales (
