Thursday, December 11, 2008
TLS reviews
A particularly bad example of the genre this week. That is to say the reviewer writes a short essay on the subject in hand, giving the books or their authors a cursory mention along the way. Maybe the editor ought to insist that the review spend at least half its space reviewing the subject of the review, leaving surveys of the world at large to the other half.
In this case the subject of the review was the history of books and libraries, one a snip from Yale University Press at £20, the other a rather more expensive effort from the British Library at £45. In the course of a review between three and four columns long, the author of the first book is mentioned maybe four times, that of the second once. The review closed with two very picky errors. Perhaps the reviewer saw that as his main task: scim the books until you have found a couple of errors. Whack out a short essay on the subject in hand, maybe lifted from Wikipedia, job done and down to the boozer. I wonder if they get paid? How many people - even including libraries - are going to shell out £45 for the second book? Perhaps Lord and Lady Healey, whom we learn to be the proud owners of 17,000 books, will. They can neither be short of a bob or two or too fussy!
And today, the DT tells us that the open air swimming pool at Hampton, near Hampton Court Palace as the name suggests, is heated and is open all the year round. To the comfortably warm 82F. I'm not sure that I would want to swim there with the air temperature around freezing, but it seems that people do. In fact there has been a rash of people in the DT doing odds things around very cold water. Now around cold water is fair enough. That is your problem. But pumping hard pressed taxpayers money into the sky through Hampton swimming pool is quite another. I think we ought to send the eco-police in to close the operation down. Must be a more serious offence than putting potato peelings in your land fill only wheelie bin.
Came across the passport of my mother in law, who died some time ago, the other day. Having nothing better to do, I read the instructions. These were to the effect that, in the event of the death of the holder, the passport was to be returned to the nearest passport office for cancellation. Still having nothing better to do, and passing through Victoria Station, I thought I would do as I was asked. Trundle around to the back of Victoria Station to the passport office which I discover has been renamed the Department of Identity or some such. And in large part staffed by people who were no doubt born in this country, but whose family connections looked to be rather more exotic than mine. No problem but amused that things should pan out in this way. Gent. at the door looked a bit amused when I explained what I wanted but thought that I should go through the metal detector and present myself to the general enquiries counter. Luckily I was not carrying my trusty bread knife on this occasion and make it to the general enquiries desk and explain myself again. Given a queueing ticket, number G8006 or some such and told to proceed to the second floor. Arrive on the second floor to find a sort of departures display listing lots of numbers starting with Ps. The chap next to me was an F. We wondered whether we were on the wrong floor, or otherwise in some sin-bin. While we wondered, an F-number and a G-number came up, although not the right ones. Wondered a bit more and my number came up. Off to desk number 8 and explain myself again. The customer advisor (I imagine that is the sort of job title they get these days) thinks for a moment and then produces a very scruffy form for me to fill in. None of your tasteful printing in shades of green. Just a rather scruffy copy of a rather scruffy form. Fill it out and the customer advisor trots off to check something. Presumably to look up some combination of me, the mother in law and the passport on some crime register. Not quite sure why this could not be done on the shiny new computer she had at the enquiry point. Most places make a point of letting you see what is on their screens these days. Anyway, we passed the test and I was free to go, the whole operation having taken maybe 15 minutes. Will I just drop the next one in the compost heap?
What does the department gain by having the passport handed in? In these days of electronic passports, presumably the pages and covers and what not are not quite as useful as they were in the day of the jackal. And in these days of linking records, presumably it would not be that hard to run the deaths file from the Office of National Statistics against the passport file. There must be a lot of stuff besides the name to do a match on. And I don't see any privacy angle as death records are on the public record - although I am not sure that you can go and buy the tape. Maybe it is just that in the rush to get everything onto the computer, the department didn't bother to revise the rules printed inside?
In this case the subject of the review was the history of books and libraries, one a snip from Yale University Press at £20, the other a rather more expensive effort from the British Library at £45. In the course of a review between three and four columns long, the author of the first book is mentioned maybe four times, that of the second once. The review closed with two very picky errors. Perhaps the reviewer saw that as his main task: scim the books until you have found a couple of errors. Whack out a short essay on the subject in hand, maybe lifted from Wikipedia, job done and down to the boozer. I wonder if they get paid? How many people - even including libraries - are going to shell out £45 for the second book? Perhaps Lord and Lady Healey, whom we learn to be the proud owners of 17,000 books, will. They can neither be short of a bob or two or too fussy!
And today, the DT tells us that the open air swimming pool at Hampton, near Hampton Court Palace as the name suggests, is heated and is open all the year round. To the comfortably warm 82F. I'm not sure that I would want to swim there with the air temperature around freezing, but it seems that people do. In fact there has been a rash of people in the DT doing odds things around very cold water. Now around cold water is fair enough. That is your problem. But pumping hard pressed taxpayers money into the sky through Hampton swimming pool is quite another. I think we ought to send the eco-police in to close the operation down. Must be a more serious offence than putting potato peelings in your land fill only wheelie bin.
Came across the passport of my mother in law, who died some time ago, the other day. Having nothing better to do, I read the instructions. These were to the effect that, in the event of the death of the holder, the passport was to be returned to the nearest passport office for cancellation. Still having nothing better to do, and passing through Victoria Station, I thought I would do as I was asked. Trundle around to the back of Victoria Station to the passport office which I discover has been renamed the Department of Identity or some such. And in large part staffed by people who were no doubt born in this country, but whose family connections looked to be rather more exotic than mine. No problem but amused that things should pan out in this way. Gent. at the door looked a bit amused when I explained what I wanted but thought that I should go through the metal detector and present myself to the general enquiries counter. Luckily I was not carrying my trusty bread knife on this occasion and make it to the general enquiries desk and explain myself again. Given a queueing ticket, number G8006 or some such and told to proceed to the second floor. Arrive on the second floor to find a sort of departures display listing lots of numbers starting with Ps. The chap next to me was an F. We wondered whether we were on the wrong floor, or otherwise in some sin-bin. While we wondered, an F-number and a G-number came up, although not the right ones. Wondered a bit more and my number came up. Off to desk number 8 and explain myself again. The customer advisor (I imagine that is the sort of job title they get these days) thinks for a moment and then produces a very scruffy form for me to fill in. None of your tasteful printing in shades of green. Just a rather scruffy copy of a rather scruffy form. Fill it out and the customer advisor trots off to check something. Presumably to look up some combination of me, the mother in law and the passport on some crime register. Not quite sure why this could not be done on the shiny new computer she had at the enquiry point. Most places make a point of letting you see what is on their screens these days. Anyway, we passed the test and I was free to go, the whole operation having taken maybe 15 minutes. Will I just drop the next one in the compost heap?
What does the department gain by having the passport handed in? In these days of electronic passports, presumably the pages and covers and what not are not quite as useful as they were in the day of the jackal. And in these days of linking records, presumably it would not be that hard to run the deaths file from the Office of National Statistics against the passport file. There must be a lot of stuff besides the name to do a match on. And I don't see any privacy angle as death records are on the public record - although I am not sure that you can go and buy the tape. Maybe it is just that in the rush to get everything onto the computer, the department didn't bother to revise the rules printed inside?
# posted by Jim @ 7:35 AM 
