Bank Holiday Round-Up

Because I'm enjoying this, the last Bank Holiday before Christmas, too much to spoil it with a look through the news, here's a selection of excellent posts from others:

DumbJon has the guaranteed shoo-in recipe for Oscar success.

David Duff ponders the universal fear of the dark.

Counting Cats is looking for reasons to watch one of the greatest shows of the modern age.

Longrider notes the (sadly totally predictable) consequences of allowing Town Hall staff access to wider sources of information.

Fuel Injected Moose has a 'Gordon' moment.

Ross finds consternation at the possibility of offensive words in Scrabble.

Tom Harris shows once again why he's probably the only Labour blogger worth reading.

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

I Spy, With My Little Eye...

...a marketing opportunity!

British parents and teachers are unwittingly putting children's eyes at risk by not making them wear sunglasses and not having their sight tested during the critical first eight years.

Says who?

Says the people who make a living out of eye tests, of course!

"There seems to be a wide lack of understanding about eye health," optometrist Karen Sparrow told the Observer. "I would urge parents to remember taking their children to see the optician is just as important as the trip to the dentist or having their feet measured."

And BMWs don't buy themselves, she may have added...

Marching Season...

Michael P Jeffries has a column in CiF regarding the popular conservative talk-show host Genn Beck.

What's that? Who's Michael P Jeffries? Well, according to his bio, he's 'an assistant professor of American studies at Wellesley College. His book, Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop, is available for pre-order at major booksellers...'

Wow. Must put that on my Amazon want list!

So, he's an inveterate race hustler. He's also either got a curious grasp of grammar, or his sub-editor didn't do his job very well:

Glenn Beck has constitutional rights, including the right to free speech – which he exercises regularly. These exercises include calling the Barack Obama a racist.

'The Barak Obama'..? Freudian slip?

That aside, little Mikey is upset at the thought of Beck holding a march to Washington to speak, on the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech:

King and his colleagues were social justice advocates who fiercely defended workers' rights, and worked to eliminate institutional racism and other forms of inequality and exploitation for the benefit of all Americans. Beck's stance on issues from military engagement to social justice bears no resemblance to King's.

Does it have to? Is that how it works, then? Beck can never tread the same ground on a significant date unless he's mirroring the same reasons?

Impassioned responses to Beck's event, Dr Laura Schlessinger's recent N-word gaffe and offensive remarks about female supreme court justices are justified and necessary. But they must occur in the context of an unrelenting commitment both to change the institutions that provide platforms for such regrettable incidents, and to move away from soundbites towards a sustained discussion of racism and sexism in all its complexity.

Somehow, I don't think those words mean what little Mikey fondly imagines they mean. A 'sustained discussion of racism and sexism in all its complexity' is the last thing he and his ilk want.

After all, if they were so certain of their righteousness, why would they be getting so worked up over the symbolism?

Sunday Funnies

Fancy some light reading..?

When The Licence Fee Isn't Enough Any More...

The BBC director-general's whinge about Sky is as predictable as another evening of BBC repeats or cheap reality shows, and about as appetising, but one extract made me take notice:

Thompson also attacked Sky's content, conceding that it had spent heavily on news and sport but saying it had failed to invest enough of its £4.8bn subscription revenues in British programming.

'failed to invest enough'..? To suit whom, Thompson? You?

He said Sky should be forced to pay ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 a fee for carrying their channels on its satellite platform through a "retransmission" charge.

So, as well as sticking your hands in our pockets, you want to stick them in other competing businesses' pockets too? You've got some cheek, I'll say that.

Needless to say, the comments are priceless, with much fretting about the eeeeevil empire of Murdoch. Best comes from someone calling itself ClassConscious, who (after decrying them as capitalist organisations that exist to make profits) believes that "Anyone with a doubt over the negative impacts of the mega news corporations should refer to Noam Chomsky."

Errr, OK, then...

"...moral and ethical and corporate responsibility..."

...is apparently something that Internet servicer providers have that no other company has, according to this woman:

Alexis Bowater, of Network for Surviving Stalking, said: "We need the internet service providers to get on board they need to take moral and ethical and corporate responsibility for what is happening to the millions of customers that they make billions out of."

Mmm. Get back to me when Ford are held 'morally, ethically and corporately responsible' for ram-raids carried out with Ford pick-ups. Or when the Royal Mail has to dance to the tune of the charities and authorities over threatening letters and blackmail attempts...

However, the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) says it is doing all it can about the abuse but it is not possible to police the internet in the way demanded by victims' groups.

James Blessing, of ISPA, says many people "assume that internet service providers can do more that they actually can", comparing expectations of them to "asking the police to put a speed camera on every stretch of road in the country".

He said: "Internet service providers are there to help charities and government to find solutions to this and we have been talking to them for many years. Unfortunately expectations from other parties seem to be a lot higher than what is actually achievable in a technical and operational sense."

Whatever new technology we invent soon gets used to commit crimes. It's just life.

Thr answer is never to put restrictions on the technology.

The Appliance Of (Politically Correct) Science...

Quoth uber-lefty Hugh Muir:

...I'm all for a bit less Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, Galileo and Copernicus, if it means a bit more McCoy, Banneker and Carver. It's a question of balance. It's important.

Who are they, you ask? What have they done to be bumped up ahead of those greats?

Well, I had to Google them. Carver was a botanist who got poor farmers to grow alternative crops, McCoy was a big cheese in the world of industrial lubrication (Woo!), and Banneker appears to be most famous for making a wooden clock...

Yes, really.

So, why should we elbow aside the greats of history? Only one reason:

It's a question of balance. It's important.

I talk it over with Joe, a black school governor. Get the black scientists on the curriculum, he says. Black engineers, black investors, black surgeons. "If I see another school trying to boost black achievement by talking about black pop and sports stars, I am going to do someone a serious injury," he says. At a young age, the only limit most kids have is their ambition, says Joe, and yet we limit those ambitions. "What's the best they see to aim for? A West Indian takeaway. A barber shop, if they are lucky. Who plants the seed in their minds that they might be a metallurgist or a physicist; that people who looked a bit like them have already done it?"

There you go.The only thing that can possibly give kids ambition is to see other kids that look a bit like them.

Never mind are they any good, are they the right size, shape and colour...

There is black history month, I tell him. We are lucky to still have that. No sign of a Polish history month, a Chinese history fortnight or even a Pakistani history week. But it's stuck, he says. On Mary Seacole, and Martin Luther King.

Oooh, that reminds me! Wasn't it MLK who said that he wanted to see a world where the only criteria that mattered was the colour of a man's skin?

No, wait, that's not right, is it?

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Oh, Martin. You'd turn in your grave if you saw what passes for today's 'leaders'...

Update: As NickM over at 'Counting Cats...' shows, that's something the ladies want in on too.

"If something is too hard to do, then it's not worth doing."

It seems Croydon Police are taking the words of Homer Simpson to heart:

Fomer policeman Graham Peacock, 65, caught a violent thief, on camera, stealing £90 from his till at the Security Centre in Purley on May 17.

Police issued the picture of a man called Leroy Lawless (Ed: no wonder he turned to a life of crime!) who they wanted to question in connection with the crime, however they have been unable to trace him through their appeals.

Oh, well. No doubt he'll turn up sometime, and they can then charge him with...

Oh. Wait:

Mr Peacock recently received a letter from the Victim Focus Unit which read: “We have reviewed the crime but so far there is not enough evidence to continue with further inquiries and the case will now be closed.“

But it's amazing what a little bit of shaming puiblicirty can do, isn't it?

A police spokeswoman said: “A thorough investigation has been carried out by Croydon Borough's Burglary squad and this has led to the suspect in this offence being identified. Although a number of enquires have been made to locate him, he is yet to be arrested. The suspect has been circulated as wanted and Police will continue to pro-actively seek him.

“Unfortunately, the victim was sent an incorrect letter advising him that the matter was being closed. I regret that this has happened, particularly in light of what was an excellent investigation by the Burglary squad and can confirm that Mr Peacock has received a personal apology on behalf of Croydon Police"

A mistake. Sure it was.

"...she ‘equally suffered the loss of a relative’..."

The widow of a July 7 suicide bomber yesterday launched a High Court bid to be represented at the victims’ inquest - saying she had also suffered the loss of a loved one in the atrocity.

Well, I'm lost for words...

Not so those who are paid for their use of them, of course:

Lawyers for Miss Patel claim there should be ‘no material distinction’ between her and the families of those killed, because she ‘equally suffered the loss of a relative’.

It must be nice to have no conscience at all, to stand up in court and argue the most unconscionable things, never letting it trouble your sleep...

Miss Patel’s request for equal funding was refused in May this year.

Afterwards, her solicitor Imran Khan said: ‘There appears to be no material distinction between the victims’ families and the position of my clients as family members who, through no fault of their own, have equally suffered the loss of a relative.’

In the same way as the now-infamous victory flag 9/11 mosque can't be prevented, under US law, from being built slap-bang next to the site of a Muslim atrocity, they use our own rights and freedoms against us...

Yesterday Ashley Underwood QC, representing the Lord Chancellor, said Miss Patel wanted legal aid only to defend her reputation.

Defend her what..?

Miss Patel, who was born in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, married Khan in 2002 after they met at Dewsbury College, where both were studying to work in the education sector.

She has described her husband as a ‘good person’ who was brainwashed by Islamic militants.

Don't bother, love. I think your reputation's beyond any defence...

Massive Understatement Of The Week

From Chris Shepherd, South-East Asia deputy regional director for Traffic:

"If people are trying to smuggle live tigers in their check-in luggage, they obviously think wildlife smuggling is something easy to get away with and do not fear reprimand," he said.

There really isn't anything to add to that, is there?