Thursday, November 10, 2011
In the soup
Oxtail soup has now been finished, not bad but with too much fat, the cooking method not having provided an opportunity to skim. Probably vastly more unhealthy than a full English. All in all, perhaps the worst oxtail in recent years. Perhaps since records began.
But succour was to hand, in the form of the Guardian from Tuesday. It gives a fifth of a page to an article about the sad death of a cyclist under a lorry and another fifth to a portrait of the cyclist. It seems that the cyclist's family are in a paddy because the coroner did not see fit to indulge in wide ranging inquiries into cycle safety and make recommendations. I think the coroner was quite right: it is not the business of medically flavoured lawyers or legally flavoured doctors to sit in judgement on bicycles because we have a well staffed Ministry of Transport for precisely that sort of thing. I dare say the Ministry includes whole divisions devoted to bicycles: these are the people to whom the dead cyclist's family should be addressing themselves. The only odd feature of the case was that the driver of the lorry involved got off with a fine of £200, and that only on account of not wearing proper spectacles at the time. Presumably the coroner did not think that much of the blame, if any, rested with him.
Writing as a semi-retired cyclist, I would say that I make plenty of mistakes while cycling. Recently I have not done worse than attract a bit of honking but it could easily have been more worse.
And then we have the library correspondent telling us about the exploits of Stella Rimington as chief judge for the Booker prize, a lady who comes across to me as what a luvvy might call a media tart. Which I find a little distasteful: a lady with a distinguished career in what used to be a discrete part of government and in receipt of a fat pension, who chooses to splash herself around and write what I imagine to be not very good novels. I prefer my retired public servants to be more retiring. It also occurs to me that the number of good politicians who wrote good books added to the number of good writers who made good politicians is less than 7. So one should not attempt the challenge of a double lightly.
Sadly she is not alone. I have noticed in the past eminent scientists who, more or less in retirement, try to make a splash in someone else's pond. Most recently, we have S. Pinker, an eminent experimental psychologist with a talent for popular science, trying his hand at quantitative sociology.
The front page has what passes for the party of left in this country, berating the party of the right for being soft on immigration. Which is ironic since the leader of said party of the left is the child of gifted immigrants of the previous generation. And the successor of leaders who thought it a good plan to renew the stocks of genes and young people by letting in lots of people from eastern and central europe.
But perhaps the challenge of the day is to find out whether paddypower (http://www.paddypower.com/bet) is taking bets on whether the good people of Mississippi are going to vote to give fertilized eggs all the same rights and perquisites of human beans. Is the European High Court of Human Rights on the case yet? Ambulance chasers? Enforcement certainly opens up a rather unsavoury vista: endoscopy units ahoy!
But succour was to hand, in the form of the Guardian from Tuesday. It gives a fifth of a page to an article about the sad death of a cyclist under a lorry and another fifth to a portrait of the cyclist. It seems that the cyclist's family are in a paddy because the coroner did not see fit to indulge in wide ranging inquiries into cycle safety and make recommendations. I think the coroner was quite right: it is not the business of medically flavoured lawyers or legally flavoured doctors to sit in judgement on bicycles because we have a well staffed Ministry of Transport for precisely that sort of thing. I dare say the Ministry includes whole divisions devoted to bicycles: these are the people to whom the dead cyclist's family should be addressing themselves. The only odd feature of the case was that the driver of the lorry involved got off with a fine of £200, and that only on account of not wearing proper spectacles at the time. Presumably the coroner did not think that much of the blame, if any, rested with him.
Writing as a semi-retired cyclist, I would say that I make plenty of mistakes while cycling. Recently I have not done worse than attract a bit of honking but it could easily have been more worse.
And then we have the library correspondent telling us about the exploits of Stella Rimington as chief judge for the Booker prize, a lady who comes across to me as what a luvvy might call a media tart. Which I find a little distasteful: a lady with a distinguished career in what used to be a discrete part of government and in receipt of a fat pension, who chooses to splash herself around and write what I imagine to be not very good novels. I prefer my retired public servants to be more retiring. It also occurs to me that the number of good politicians who wrote good books added to the number of good writers who made good politicians is less than 7. So one should not attempt the challenge of a double lightly.
Sadly she is not alone. I have noticed in the past eminent scientists who, more or less in retirement, try to make a splash in someone else's pond. Most recently, we have S. Pinker, an eminent experimental psychologist with a talent for popular science, trying his hand at quantitative sociology.
The front page has what passes for the party of left in this country, berating the party of the right for being soft on immigration. Which is ironic since the leader of said party of the left is the child of gifted immigrants of the previous generation. And the successor of leaders who thought it a good plan to renew the stocks of genes and young people by letting in lots of people from eastern and central europe.
But perhaps the challenge of the day is to find out whether paddypower (http://www.paddypower.com/bet) is taking bets on whether the good people of Mississippi are going to vote to give fertilized eggs all the same rights and perquisites of human beans. Is the European High Court of Human Rights on the case yet? Ambulance chasers? Enforcement certainly opens up a rather unsavoury vista: endoscopy units ahoy!
# posted by Jim @ 2:22 AM 
