Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Life according to the DT
Yesterday we learn that after some amount of legalising, a school in Dorset (or perhaps Devon) has decided that parents may, after all, take pictures of their kiddy-winks when performing the sack race at the annual sports day. It seems that such taking of pictures had been banned as a breach of the data protection act. Something to do with the possibility of the pictures falling into the wrong hands. It seems that the first lord of data protection has ruled that the act does not apply in this case; a pleasing example of a large nanny showing a bit of common sense. But contrariwise, the BH tells me that in her day, eager happy-snapping parents were a well known menace at school sports days, which was sometimes banned. Fair enough, but let's do the banning for a sensible reason not a silly one.
But the legalisers scored a hit over the speeding doctor. It seems that he was driving along a narrow 30mph road when some sort of diabetic attack came on, potentially disabling and for which the remedy was a glucose injection. So the doctor took the conscious and deliberate decision to speed up to 37mph if you please, in order to attain a wider bit of road where he could stop and inject. Doctor prosecuted, presumably by a speed camera. He took the matter to the High Court, lost and was denied permission to appeal to the House of Lords. Now while this is rather a lot of legal expense to incur on a rather small matter, I do think that whoever processed his first appeal against a speeding notice might have allowed it. Maybe according to the letter of the law he has done wrong, but it would have been easy enough at that first stage just to lose the thing. Perhaps the first processor had the hump that day because of partner trouble over toast over breakfast. Burnt perhaps. Out of such little things news items are made. But contrariwise, perhaps someone along the line thought that doctors prone to potentially disabling diabetic attacks should not be driving at all. They should be setting a better example.
And there was the case of the DNA analysis running amuck. It seems that someone thinks that it would be a good idea to dig up unmarked or mass graves from a first world war military cemetary to do with some part of the battle of the Somme. Once dug up, the chaps with white coats move in and start taking samples. Then they start matching samples from graves with other materials, the idea being to work out who exactly had been buried. To my mind, it would be better to let the dead lie. It is all happened a very long time ago and I am sorry that there are people around, presumably including relatives with long missing loved ones, think that a grisly procedure of this sort is going to help. I don't know of any long missed loved ones in my family, but I do not think I would be moved to back this sort of activity. I might be of retiring age but I was born thirty years after the events in question and any knowledge of or regard for the missing would have to be very second hand. Do I really want to get into the trauma by missing person game on that basis?
And lastly, there was the case of the cows running amuck. Now I am not all that keen on sharing my walks with cows on Epsom Common or anywhere else. And I recall not so long ago, on the Isle of Wight, having to have the BH see off a herd of nosey cows. But yesterday it seems that a lady vetenarian, whom one might think ought to know better, went for a walk with her dog in a field full of cows with calves. It seems that these cows were sufficiently bothered or nosey that she was squashed up against a wall and trampled to death underfoot. My case, as regards Epsom Common, rests.
Lamb's liver for tea yesterday. No tea but accompanied by fried onions (lite, that is to say fried in omega rich rape seed oil (third pressing)), boiled carrots, cabbage and potato. Not bad, but rather more livery than the calf's liver we usually have. Liver should not be livery and fish should not be fishy. Livery and fishy describe charectaristic flavours of bad examples of the genre, not good examples.