Diana Watch

I'm sorry it's late. We went to London yesterday on a special deal, £10 per person to anywhere on the network. The train on the way up was completely full, standing room only, and way did all these people want to go to London on a sunny Sunday? Because it was cheap.
There you go rail companies and Government. If you want people to get out of their cars and travel on public transport, make it cheaper and not more expensive as you have decided to do this week. The normal price for the cheapest ticket is usually about £70 to London. £140 for Significant Other and myself to go there so we don't do it very often and if we do we drive because it is much, much cheaper. £10 full train, £70 not very many people on it.
We did have a lovely day though. We visited a couple of wool shops and the Fashion and Textile museum. The sun shone and we wondered through Islington (which is sort of a parody of it's self), nice lunch, nice dinner and then home.
So sorry to neglect you dear reader but had other (slightly more fun) things to do.
One of things that I have discovered since starting new job and working every Saturday is that working every Saturday is rubbish. I don't like it but, hey, I've got to earn some money so I'm back to looking for more things to do again. I am applying for on job on the Press Complaints Commission for a bit of fun. They need a lay person and I am a lay person and I am interesting about what goes on in the press so I am the perfect candidate. I'll let you know how the application goes.

Ok, enough about my weekend, what happened in the news? Well nothing really. It is “silly season”, a lazy journalistic term meaning Parliament isn't sitting so we have to go out and find news for ourselves but we are really lazy (hence our use of “silly season”) and can't be bothered to go outside so we will just trawl the interweb for stories. This means that we end up with papers for of tittle-tattle and lots of opinion pieces about the tittle-tattle and stories about kittens up trees. And people wonder why newspapers are having problems making money.
Anyway you can tell that not much is happening because you get stories about who is in charge this week. It's Gordon Brown by the way, despite what the press would have you believe, others are just the most senior minister in London for that week.
First it was Harriet Harman, who discovered that Britain really is full of rather nasty misogynists who hide behind pseudonyms on newspaper comment sites and some columnists who don't. Why do woman work for the Daily Mail? It hates woman. It really does. Go and look at its website (that is not a thing that I would usually encourage but this are special circumstances) and you will find down the right hand side of the page a long series of pictures. Most of them will be of woman and attached will be some comment about the woman's body, i.e. Looks great in this bikini, why is she out without make-up etc. Then have a look at the FeMail (see what they did there?) section and wonder at the endless diet advice and scare stories about health and sex. I ask again, why do woman work for them? Do these women hate other woman?
And then, joy of joys for the papers, Peter Mandelson nearly strode into the picture. He had to finish his holiday first though.
This may be an odd view to take but I love Peter Mandelson. He is such good value for money. Don't get me wrong, I find a lot of his politics a little dubious but he is very funny and, let's be honest here, he is much cleverer than most people you might meet. Yes he does have the problem of reminding most people of Professor Snape as played by Alan Rickman (although Rickman may look better with a moustache)
but that is a small price to pay for the joy that he brings to my life when he is interviewed on the Today programme.
It does seem that he has managed to keep his head down for most of the week, which came as a surprise. He did a couple of interviews for radio and for the papers, my favourite being the one for the Observer in which he described himself as a “pussy cat”, even his aide was heard to stifle a laugh.

The problem with “silly season” is that stories that would not normally make the news, Russian cargo ship goes missing springs to mind (according to insurers it's not that rare. Something like one every month), and too much time is spent discussing them. This then lends the story an air of significance that it doesn't deserve.
Let us take an example. A man that you have never heard of called Jim Fitzpatrick (it turns out that he is Minister for Food, Farming and the Environment) went to a wedding. It was a Muslim wedding. He had been to many such events because, and for reasons that escape me, as an MP he gets invited to lots of weddings. My MP is Oliver Letwin (Conservative), so strangely enough he didn't get an invite to mine last year.
Anyway, back to the story. When he arrived at the wedding he and his wife found out that it was to be a segregated affair, Men in one room, Ladies in another. This had only happened to Mr Fitzpatrick once before and, whilst he sat through it, he was uncomfortable with it.
This time he and Mrs Fitzpatrick had a quick and quiet discussion (because he treats her as an equal) and they decided that they both felt uncomfortable with the situation and quietly left. I assume that they left their present.
Now, I don't see a problem here. Weddings are bad enough to attend when the only person that you know is your wife but to then find that she has to sit in another room! That is too much to ask.
As I said, they quietly left. No fuss, no bother. If only the same could be said for the press coverage.
Some people chose to have a segregated wedding, which they are entitled to do (although it is wrong in my opinion and how do the logistics work? Does one room get a live video feed?), and a man and his wife didn't like that so they left, which they are also entitled to do, but is that the way it was treated? Of course it wasn't. According to most radio and newspaper reports he “stormed out”, which he didn't. And then he was accused of trying to score political points for someone else's wedding. If they had slaughtered a goat and he had found that offensive, would he have been wrong to leave? No, of course not.
This is not a story about multiculturalism or integration or a clash of civilizations, it is a story about trying to fill time on Radio phone-ins and on 24hr news.
Of course there are people on both sides who will try and use this for their own ends but these people are stupid enough to be ignored. Some people got married and someone didn't like the service, a role normally reserved for an embittered aunt who has never married, “I don't like these sugared almonds”, “these serviettes don't match the tablecloths”, “I've never found love”.

Story of the week does have to be the “We love the NHS” thing on Twitter.
For those of you who don't know, some Americans, let’s call them Republicans because I'm trying to be nice, have been massively distorting what President Obama wants to do with American health care. They have been saying that he is trying to “socialise” health care and then saying that this is a bad idea because it will lead to an awful system like Canada, higher life expectancy than the US, or the NHS here in Britain. If there is one thing we don't like, it is a formal colony (but only if you recognise US independence) being rude about our stuff. It is perfectly fine for our right-wing press to dedicate page after hate filled page to telling it's readers how bad the NHS is, how nurses don't care, how doctors are lazy and incompetent, how GP's are only in it for the money, how there are too many managers. It's fine for them to do it but when someone else does it, oh and there is a massive movement on Twitter that has caught the attention of all 3 major party leaders and all of the press and celebrities, then, and only then, will they defend it. For about 3 days.
The idea came from Graham Linehan (@Glinner), co-writer of Father Ted and writer of the IT crowd, who had had enough of the NHS getting bashed so decided to try and redress the balance a little. He used the hash tag “welovetheNHS” and many others joined in, expressing support for this countries finest creation and sharing stories about excellent service that they had received. Within hours it was the most talked about thing on Twitter. Links were being put up to surveys or newspaper articles that rebuked the bashing and downright lies that the NHS had suffered from in the preceding days. The NHS put out a statement addressing the specific allegations made against it. Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and the other one, David something I think, all got involved. It was nice to see some patriotic fervour for once.
We all understand that there are still problems with the NHS but it is so much better than it was and still improving. And it is free at the point of delivery. Everyone contributes the same percentage of their earnings towards it and everyone, regardless of what you have paid in, gets treated the same.
The ironic thing is that whilst we were all finding love for the NHS after the poorly informed attacks on it, President Obama's plans were for a system that was nothing at all like the NHS.
Way to cloud the debate there Republicans. Ooh, just for the record, who is paying for those TV adverts? You know, the ones where you lied to and misrepresent the English people who appeared in them. Would it be Health Care Insurance Companies? Just asking.
Oh and while we are at it, the USA spends 17% of it's GDP on health care, we spend half that and we live longer than them.
Oh again, and people that don't turn up for appointments at their hospital or GP's cost the NHS £574 million per year, so if you can't go, phone and tell them so someone else can have your appointment.

I've wittered on a little, sorry about that, but now there will be some awards,

The Award for Making My Point For Me Saving Me The Bother,

Economics is really rather vague as you know and peoples opinions on what needs to be done is usually based on an ideological position dressed up as “science”.
When to the Bank of England released growth figures for the UK this week, not so good by the way, there was a discussion on the World at One on Radio 4. They had 2 “experts”, both economists and they argued completely different points of views. They agreed on nothing. It made me laugh.

The Award for I'm Not Sure If They Got The Irony,

The Mail had a story about a lady and her son getting stung by some wasps. The headline was “Wasps sting mother and two-year-old son 55 times as swarms invade Britain.” As you can imagine they where not British wasps, oh no. They were foreign wasps. The worst sort. So when I commented on this story I simply put “damn foreign wasps, coming over here, stinging our woman”. Irony, see. Well I of the second most popular commentator.

Quick sports news.
Jessica Innes has won gold from the UK in the Heptathlon at the World Championships which is incredible as she was unable to compete at the Olympics last year because of a stress fracture in her foot/ankle.
Andy Murray has won the Montreal Masters and, in doing so, has become world number 2.
Usain Bolt has set yet another World record at the World Championships in Berlin. He won the 100m in a time of 9.58 seconds and thinks that he can run even quicker.

I think that that will do for this week. Have a fun week, I'll try and fill my time.

(Not Really) Diana Watch

No proper blog this week as there is a family sadness but we will have some awards,

Award for Spoilt Brat of the Week,

This goes to Miley Cyrus (or is it Hannah Montana, I’m never sure which one is a fiction). She has spent much of the last 2 weeks telling interviewers that Radiohead didn’t want to meet her backstage at the Grammys. She said in one interview, "If someone, like, said that, like, 'I would cry if I met them. I really want to meet them,' I would freaking, like, run and, like, give them the biggest hug in the world because that's cool, you know? But they were like, 'We don't really do that.' " No, I don’t understand what she said either but I think she asked Radiohead, who are mid to late 30’s, to come and meet her, who is 17 or something, why would they want to meet you? And she now says that she can’t listen to their music any more because of the way they treated her. I’m sure that they are not that heartbroken. However her treat to “Ruin them” probably will make them sit up and take notice because I believe that pre-schoolers are Radiohead’s core demographic. They had already snubbed Kanye West that evening so Miley really didn’t stand a chance no matter how great Disney tell her she is, as long as she keeps shifting product.

Award for Unfortunate Greetings Card of the Week,

This goes to a Mexican man who arrived at Manchester Airport on a flight from Los Angeles, claiming he was on a brief visit to a friend. When searching his luggage immigration officials found a good luck card for a "new life in the UK". D’oh.

Award for Picture Most Likely to Cheer You Up This Week,



Look, its Peter Mandelson covered in green custard.

Award for At Least They Are Trying,

Cadbury's Dairy Milk is to go Fairtrade. This will mean that the total amount of Cocoa from Ghana, where Cadburys source theirs, will rise to 15,000 tonnes, which is a lot, however the total annual cocoa production of Ghana is more than 600,000 tonnes. But at least it’s a start. Now all they have to do is work on making some chocolate that actually tastes nice!

That’s all for this week. Have fun. Oh almost forgot, Elbow were fantastic on Monday evening. Also I said I would review the “controversial” novel Wetlands when I’d read it and now I have. If you like “The Catcher in the Rye” and sliding avocado stones inside your various orifice then you will love it. I like neither of these things.

Diana Watch

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I know it’s late but we spent the weekend in Kent again, I’ll explain why we are going there so often at a later date.
I want to start with a heart warming story from my hospital. One of our patients is a young man who is planning to marry in May but his consultant advised him that he would probably not live that long and he should consider moving the wedding forward.
As you can imagine a wedding is a hard thing to organise and suddenly being told to bring it forward too really quite soon presented the couple with a few problems. We have a fantastic social worker for those with cancer in our hospital and she started to make some phone calls. She phoned round all of the local cancer charities and within 4 days they had organised, between them, a venue and food and most of the other things for a wedding. There was still a problem however. The dress that the bride wanted was still on order and will take a while to come, so his consultant said, “Don’t worry about it. Go to the bridal shop, get any dress you want and I will pay for it.”
Now I am a slightly cynical man who has recently seen a not so good side to my beloved NHS but this, this beautiful gesture by everyone involved has restored my faith completely in my fellow man. It brings to my eye a small tear every time I either hear, or tell, the story. So hurray for people. Some of them are pretty good really.

It seems a shame to go on with the news now but that is why we are all here, if you not then do tell me why you are here and I will attempt to accommodate you.
We can talk about whatever you like, except celebrities obviously. If you haven’t actually done something important than I don’t care that you’ve have a new t-shirt. I like your song but I don’t care that you had a sweat patch on that new t-shirt on a hot day. Come up with a new theory on quantum mechanics and then we can talk, well you can talk and I will nod like a confused chimp not understanding any of the concepts that you are trying to explain.
As a normal brained human I have no frame of reference for these incredible ideas, oh and can some one ask Schrödinger to let that cat out of that box. Particle physics joke there. Not a good one I grant you but I bet you can’t think of a better one. How shame faced will I be if someone does e-mail me a better one? It’s a risk you take. Can I give you a couple of quantum physics’ facts? Actually I’m not going to wait for all 10 of you to answer individually because you probably won’t. I’ve asked you things before and none of you have got back to me so I’m just going to type them anyway and you can read them if you want. A cup of coffee weighs more when hot than it does when cold. You age faster at the top of a building than you do at the bottom. Time travel is not forbidden by the laws of physics. And my favourite is; the entire human race would fit in the volume of a sugar cube. It’s true. There is some much empty space in an atom, if you removed all that space, the entire human race would fit in the volume of a sugar cube.
The lack of reference points comes with the stuff about atoms existing in two places at once and atomic switching.

Oh yes news, I remember. I would like to start be congratulating the Government and the right-wing press on their excellent controlling of the news agenda, with a little help from the opposition parties. For a couple of weeks we have been thrown a single story about Britain’s financial problems to foam at the mouth about and, like good little Pavlovian dogs, we did. Firstly it was bank bonuses. You mention a banker’s bonuses in a crowd and you could guarantee that at least one person in the crowd would get so worked up that they would have a heart attack or a stroke; it’s like a fire in your head you know. It was quite entertaining really (the stroke causing bit) but it was an irrelevant argument (the bonuses bit). Most of the money being given in bonuses was given to counter staff and branch staff who had no part in the near collapse of the companies that they work for. They hit their targets and their contract states that they are entitled to a bonus. If I’d worked my arse off for £17,000 a year and met my, quite hard to reach, targets and then the Daily Express works it’s self into a frenzy over whether or not I should get my little bonus I would be a little disgruntled. “Well, its tax payers’ money” goes the argument, “and it shouldn’t go to rewarding failure”. Quite right too but John Major still got paid. Oh and how much tax does your papers owner, the pornographer Richard Desmond, pay? Well, your company is registered in St Hellier in the Channel Islands, above a small parade of shops I believe, in order to take advantage of the tax haven status of the Islands. Just a quick side note, 50% of the worlds tax havens are Crown dependences, i.e., we run them so they are our fault and problem.
In his personal finance Richard Desmond saves in quite a lot of tax. £13m in 2006 for instance by, legally, paying himself straight into his pension before the rules changed. So before you start lecturing us, have a look at yourselves. And this is the story that isn’t being covered by the Government, right wing media and, strangely, the BBC. Tax is one of the biggest problems with our nation’s finances, with massive amounts of money not being paid, but is the tide turning against them? Well, President Obama says he wants to close these tax havens. I do hope that he brings this up with Gordon Brown when he visits the White House this week. That won’t be too uncomfortable for Mr Brown will it?
This week’s attention drawing story is the pension pot of Sir Fred Goodwin, former chairman of The Royal Bank of Scotland. It seems that despite resigning from a bank that is now pretty much owned by you and me, he still managed to leave with a pension that will pay him about £650,000 per year. For life. Do you think he stole his stapler on his way out as well?
My, that is a lot of money and most of the press are frothing at the mouth and want blood, well some of the money back anyway. Now, it does seem that he has a pretty strong legal position for not giving any of it back, his contract says he can have it and some one in the Government signed of on it but yesterday Harriet Harman said one of the most stupid and scary things ever uttered by a Government minister, “it may be acceptable in a court of law but not in the court of public opinion and that is where the Government steps in.” Woah there Nelly! What’s that? It may be lawful but because the mob doesn’t like it then we’ll, as a Government, ignore the law? Is that what you are saying? In front of us we have a very steep, very slippery slope. Is it something that we want to try and stand on? Laws are ok as long as the Sun agrees with them? Is that is? I know you ignore certain international laws, you know, those petty little ones about war, more on that later, but this is quite a remarkable statement. I hope it was made in haste and it will be retracted. Whilst I don’t agree with the size of his pension plan, Sir Fred is entitled to it. His contract says so and, therefore, so does the law, you know, those things that you are supposed to up hold, what with being an MP and all. Oh, and a lawyer I think. Is my paranoid fantasy coming true? Massive surveillance, huge database keeping (and data mining doesn’t work) and now Government threatening to ignore laws that it decides that it doesn’t like right now. How do you think that would go down if say, umm…. Vladimir Putin said something like that; do you think that there might be a word or 2 from the Foreign Office?

Jack Straw has decided that he will not publish the minutes from Cabinet meetings that happened just before the start of the war in Iraq, despite a freedom of information request and the information commissioner tell him that he should. His argument is that it will undermine cabinet Government if people feel that their private views will be aired in public at some later date.
I can understand his point of view on this one but there are two important facts that he seems to be forgetting, 1, Tony Blair massively undermined cabinet Government by himself without any help from us, and 2, The papers refer to something, the invasion of a sovereign country, that may well be illegal under international law. That is really rather important Mr Straw. Is the Government withholding information about its illegal activates?
I’m in full on paranoid delusion mode this week but with good reason. Your Government admitted this week that when it said that it had not been involved in any “extraordinary rendition” activities in collusion with the U.S., it really meant that it had and was lying, a bit.

Despite the rantings above I am quite a good mood today, the sun is shining, I’m on holiday for a week and we are off to see the fantastic Elbow in Bournemouth tonight and Franz Ferdinand next week, which is nice. We went to see some more modern dance on Friday evening and I sort of enjoyed it. As you know I’m not super keen on modern dance but, using a scoring system based on the number of times I yawned during the performance, it was once by the way, I think that it went quite well.

Let’s do some awards,

The Award for Being a Brave Man or Clearing Looking For a Fight,

This goes to Peter Mandelson who wants to try and sell off some of the Post Office to a private company. No one is really sure why. The company started making a profit last year and selling it won’t help with the pension’s black hole that they have. Even Margaret Thatcher backed away from that fight.

The Award for What May Have Been Coincidence But it Doesn’t Look Like it to Me,

This again goes to Peter Mandelson. He was supposed to bring in the bill about the part selling of the Post Office in the second half of the week but it was suddenly bought forward and was introduced on the day that every news outlet was reporting constantly on the death of David Cameron’s son Ivan. Now as I say, it may have been coincidence…..

I think that will do for this week, hope you all have a nice week doing whatever it is you do. I’ve learnt to do hyperlinks now but I think you might have noticed that.