pumpkinstrokemarrow

When I first saw this item (in yesterday's DT) I was a bit concerned at what appeared to be a punitive fine. What if this was some small, generally decent operation which was going to be driven out of business by a fine of this sort? Would we have come out ahead?

I then ask Mr. Google about the operator who turns out to have a fairly fancy web site (http://www.caretech-uk.com/) from which we learn that 'CareTech is a principled service provider ... live and breath quality'. The turnover appears to be of the order of £50m with profits of the order of 10% of turnover. So maybe the fine is both proportionate to the offence and to the offender. But I do hope that sentencing guidelines do include both elements.

The same issue contained an allegation that the Syrian government operates two of the world's largest warehouses of chemical weapons, in this case sarin, mustard gas and cyanide. If true, sad that a poor and troubled country should spend its money on such things. One then wonders who sells them - thinking that it is probably somebody living in Eastern Europe. Hopefully not us.

BH has worries of a different order, being concerned that the Olympics are being held during Ramadan. Does the IOC take such things into consideration when coming up with dates? What does it take into consideration? A little work with Mr. Google and I have my very own copy of the Olympic Charter, a smartly produced document smelling of expensive international civil servants. All it says about dates - a search of the PDF document finding very few of them - is that 'The dates of the Olympic Games are determined by the IOC Executive Board' while there are reams and reams of stuff about governance. Entirely appropriate for an outfit which I believe to be in the rather venal grip of a bunch of people mostly originating from immature parts of the world. The lands of the fat brown envelope.

Odd that amongst all this stuff on governance there was not more about dates, at least to the point of saying how and when they were fixed. Maybe two weeks at the discretion of the host city falling between the fourth new moon after Easter and the second old moon following. Something which excused the date clashing from Ramadan from time to time. The simple option of replacing the phrase  'after Easter' in the foregoing by 'after Ramadan' does not work as we really do want the weather to be good. These are the summer Olympics after all.

Odd also that we have not noticed any notice of this matter. Do Muslims not do sport of this sort? Maybe their attitude to the Olympic Circus is one of their plus points.