Dreams and Daemons

Relaunch of The Common Room

2008-03-29T11:02:47+01:00

In response to a request from OldMovieGuy, MyT has started a new spot called "The Water Cooler". It's a concept I mooted here a while back (see "Notablog" )in an attempt to get away from the straitjacket blogging format - and the confrontation that it engenders. I discarded "Water Cooler" - apt, but perhaps somewhat mundane - and see, in fact, that despite a promising start, there's been little enthusiaism for OMG's idea - though I wish him well.

I chose "The Common Room" - a similar concept but perhaps a bit more ivory tower, to receive - guess what?- even less response, save for some welcome expressions of support from a couple of wellwishers. But then the waters have been muddied, due to my current (unresolved) spat with Dr.Yong-Cheng (Shi), that real-life academic at Kansas State University. He, you may recall, appears to have a blind spot to a particular practice, frowned upon in academe- known as plagiarism (see previous posts). So while I await a response from said gentleman, I shall try a re-launch of the Common Room, and see if it fares any better this time around.

On what topic shall we kick off? How about Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons? Is the media being too puritanical in focusing on his lifestyle and expenditure - or that of his wife with her thousands of pounds worth of taxi claims?

The Telegraph has just put up a critical editorial, entitled: The Speaker Must Go.

Feeling somewhat mischievous, I've just submitted this comment:

Order! Order!

Waiter, where's my order? That caviar should have been here five minutes ago!

Update: Saturday March 29, 23:45

As indicated recently, "blogging", as generally understood,is something that holds no further interest for this individual. It's a recipe for sniping, put-downs, character assassination and worse. I see it as a flawed concept - the product of technology running ahead of human psychosocial development. (Now there's some hoity-toity jargon that's sure to get a few backs up).

The concept of folk standing up on an electronic equivalent of a Speakers' Corner soapbox, and spouting forth on deeply held-beliefs to a bunch of complete strangers, would seem a foolhardy enterprise, and I for one can personally vouch for the truth of that.

The sensible thing would probably be to close down this site, and retreat to my pre-electronic age pursuits and interests - but the medium still has promise for something - a constructive and fruitful way of interacting with one's fellow human beings- even if remote and faceless- but how? The last throw of the dice is the "Common Room" idea I have proposed - basically a passing of the time of day, a relaxed exchange of views- with recognition that conversation with strangers is not the same as with family or friends: one has to tread a little more carefully, one might think. Or does one? Maybe that is the fundamental source of misunderstanding - whether or not the cloak of anonymity afforded by the internet allows one to speak more freely than one might, say, in a pub in which one knows little or nothing of the background of those whose ears prick up when one touches on certain subjects - especially those that arouse strong feelings. Is the internet, especially the blog, bound by the same rules of everyday discourse with all and sundry. Or is it a whole new ballgame, played by its own rules?

Personally I believe that blogs are a minefield, and I for one prefer safer territory. "The Common Room" seems a better alternative - a free-flowing exchange of ideas in which everyone- including the site "owner" - can participate or stay silent - as one sees fit. If there's a topic that anyone wishes to raise here- then please feel free to put it forward, using the comments facility. For my part, I, as an ex-blogger, will now step back, and see what response, if any, I get to this invite to make The Common Room, previously Dreams and Daemons, the readers' site - not mine- as far as proactive initiatives are concerned. I shall hover in the wings, as a moderating influence if necessary.

If this site dies the death, so to speak, through lack of interest, then so be it. Irrespective, I for one shall be fascinated to see how the internet evolves. Will blogs survive, and if not, what will take their place?

Update: Monday March 31

Does Norfolk need saving from flooding?

Update: Monday March 31, 19:12.

Oops, methinks I might have got a bit carried away today - 4 comments on that one thread (Norfolk Broads). But seeing as how there are no takers for the "Common Room" idea, maybe that reader-friendly facility for providing feedback on the Telly's editorials might just be this singed ex-blogger's natural niche. Nope - it definitely won't be a return to MyT - been there, done it, got the charred, smouldering tee-shirt. OK, so the Telly's editorials are ephemeral - but isn't that true of everything on the internet re current affairs ? No, it's not actually, given the existence of those search engines, crawling their way through our submitted thought-processes - dispatched into cyber-space. It's a frightening thing when you think about it - that what we said two years ago, maybe in haste- is still searchable, still traceable. OMG! My real name is John Smith!

Update: Monday March 31, 22:00.

Hmmm: interesting new developments on that Telly thread! I just knew it was too quiet: a nightmarish figure from the past has reappeared! Yes, the blogging Balrog has returned with a vengeance. Time to put on that asbestos overcoat...

Tuesday April 1st

When a 60 year old - a superannuated hack* no less - invents a string of pseudonyms so he can snipe anonymously at someone even older than himself, then you know it's time to give up on the internet.

Today's announcement that he is "taking early retirement" **, with even more spare time for mischief, makes this an opportune moment to draw a line under my internet presence, including the last-throw "Common Room".

What I find particularly reprehensible is this moron repeatedly divulging my full name and geographical location - while hiding behind his various pseudonyms, like yesterday's "Reluctant Canute". As ever, the bully proves generally to be a coward too.

Shame too on the Telegraph's moderators, at any rate those who allow stalkers and trolls to operate with impunity. In so doing, they give these obsessional types a green light to persist with their hounding and personal attacks.

* http://www.personalchewtoy.com/?p=165

** http://www.francesalut.com/2008/04/forum.html
_________________________________________________________________

Comments

Reply to Dr.Yong-Cheng (Shi) of Kansas State University re his resistant starch patent based on my methodology

2008-03-25T19:28:00+01:00

This is my considered reply to the email I received from Dr.Yong-Cheng (Shi). The two previous posts would need to be read to appreciate the background to the dispute that exists between said gentleman and myself. Suffice it to say that it's about intellectual property, namely the patent that he and his three colleagues took out on a method for making resistant starch based on work (unattributed) that I published in 1986.

Link to his patent: US patent issued July 25,2006 "Resistant Starch Prepared by isoamylase debranching of low amylase starch"

Ref. to my published work:

Berry, CS (1986) Journal of Cereal Science, 4, 301-314

"Resistant Starch: Formation and Measurement of Starch that Survives Exhaustive Digestion with Amylolytic Enzymes During the Determination of Dietary Fibre."

Abstract (key passage in italics):

Heat processed foods can contain appreciable amounts of resistant starch(RS) that have the ability to survive prolonged incubation with alpha-amylase and other amylolytic enzymes. The occurrence of RS has important implications for dietary fibre(DF) determination and, possibly, for human bowel physiology also. Studies using cereal and potato starches have identified three key factors that influence yields of RS after heat-processing, ie amylose content, processing temperature and water content. The highest yields of RS(20-34% of total dry weight) were obtained from amylomaize starches, either raw or processed, and from amylopectin starches (32-46% RS) after incubation with alpha -(1->6)de-branching enzyme (pullulanase)followed by heat-processing. In contrast, the lowest yields of RS (0.2-4.2%) were obtained from intact (ie non-debranched amylopectins), with or without heat-processing. Yields of RS from wheat starch were affected primarily by processing temperature, reaching levels of about 9% in a single cycle of autoclaving at 134°C with excess water and subsequent cooling (cf levels of less than 1% in uncooked wheat starch)and higher levels still (about 15%) after 5 repeated cycles of autoclaving and cooling. A similar increase in yields of RS was seen in dilute (1%) starch suspensions that were subjected to repeated cycles of heating to 100°C, followed by cooling and storage. The time of storage after gelatinisation was only important in these dilute systems: levels of RS in freshly-prepared concentrated starch gels(typically 57-67% H20) or in white bread did not alter significantly on storage.

Reply:

1. Relax, Dr. Yong-Cheng (Shi) et al* : I'm not going to challenge your patent, at least not now. Indeed, I hope it earns you and your sponsors lots of dollars through royalties and licences. I may then come back later and claim a share of the proceeds - on the grounds that your patent is a straight crib of what I published in the open literature, back in 1986.

2. Relax, Dr. Yong-Cheng(Shi): I'm not going to contact your new employers - Kansas State University- accusing you of plagiarism.

It would be easy for me to do so. After all, how many people move from industry - as you have recently done- straight into a high-level academic appointment on the strength of a few published papers as you have succeeded in doing?

One has to assume that it was your patents, to which you give prominence in your current resumé, that so impressed your new employers, knowing that they too are patent-hungry, in common with so many new-age US universities. I expect they also like the research funding that you brought with you from your previous employers: the National Starch and Chemical Company (well over a quarter of a million US dollars).

In short, there's nothing for which I can report you. Kansas State University knew exactly who/what they were getting when they offered you that appointment - a commercially-aware "business scientist" who has no qualms about patenting someone else's discoveries.

3. Relax, Dr.Yong-Cheng (Shi): I am not going to denounce you here for failing to acknowledge my discovery in your patent application. Florid example it may be of plagiarism, but you have made it ridiculously easy for me to show the way in which a man's work can be turned to commercial advantage without so much as an acknowledgement.

No, my real ire is directed at some others who have taken out patents on my work, who have simply paid lip service to my original (and some might say, including yourself, unexpected discovery) by merely including my name in a list of references, without saying why it's there. Another has cited the title of my paper, but omitted my name, making it impossible for patent assessors and others to locate and read my work. Now that's what I call sneaky!

4. So what's my next step? Options are limited, given that the system of granting patents and licences seems indifferent as to who did the original work (at least in the US, and possibly elsewhere). All the rewards go the individual and/or company that files the first patent application. This means that a discovery made in Europe say, supported in my case by public funds (UK Ministry of Agriculture,Fisheries and Food) can be commercially exploited in the USA, earning perhaps millions of dollars for the patent holder, while the discoverer and his research sponsors get nothing- not even an acknowledgement for venturing into print with news of the breakthrough. Yet who was it who took the flak at the Kelloggs' Symposium, and at an Edinburgh conference, and even from his own colleagues, for describing a way of making resistant starch that seemed to fly in the face of received wisdom at the time? "Don't you realize that retrogradation of starch requires long chain amylose?" they asked. "How can you possibly claim that short-chain linear alpha-glucan (debranched amylopectin) can retrograde to resistant starch?"

To which my response was effectively "Sod your theory- these are the results I obtained by putting aside all preconceptions about the nature of RS."

So my next step is to wait a week or two for a reply from Dr.Yong-Cheng and his commercial sponsors who filed a resistant starch patent based almost entirely on my technology. I want to know how they propose to recognize my input - in a tangible way.

If I hear nothing, then I shall contact the media, suggesting it's high time that certain patent applications, especially ones filed in the US, were exposed for what they are - legalized robbery.

*Full list of patent applicants:

Inventor(s)

Yong-Cheng Shi
Xiaoyuan Cui
Anne M. Birkett
Michael G. Thatcher

Update: Wed March 26th

Changing the subject, have you ever wondered about the National Debt? Has it been rising or falling under the present Government? You might be forgiven for thinking it was falling, given that "prudent" gesture of Gordon Brown's a few years back of using the proceeds of the auction of 3G licences (some £20 billion pounds as I recall) to reduce out National Debt.

For the full grisly picture of what has since happened, read the comment by Cheeky Monkey on the comments of a Telegraph thread (ostensibly about skilled immigrants). It will make your hair curl. It certainly made mine (see later comment in response to Cheeky Monkey.

Update Thursday March 27

Here's an interesting site I discovered yesterday through idle googling.

http://bastard-bloggers.blog.co.uk/2008/01/20/my_telegraph~3603550

Health warning: don't visit it if you are averse to expletives, or if you consider "My Telegraph" to be a shining and inviolate example of civilized behaviour.

See also: http://bastard-bloggers.blog.co.uk/ (home page)

BTW: this disillusioned ex-blogger/MyT escapee gets a walk-on part in the above link

Second update:Thursday

Sometimes you read something, and wonder if it could really have happened, so one reads it again, looking for extenuating circumstances, and finding few, if any, that could account for the horror of what occurred. Today was an example - the story about the young girl with a "phobia" for dentists.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/27/ndentist127.xml

She woke from a general anaesthetic to find that all - yes ALL- her milk teeth had been removed, and died some four weeks later after refusing to speak, or eat anything except watermelon. Is that surprising: she must have felt an immense sense of betrayal, of being "punished" for not being brave where dentists are concerned.

How could such grotesque medical decision-making have taken place in a NHS hospital? The parents want those concerned to be run out of the profession. Unless there are some clinical factors that we don't know about - then so do I.

From the archives (Daily Mail, almost two years ago):

It's very noble of Paul to be saying that Heather's no gold digger. But who needs to dig for the stuff, when there's a pantechnicon full of it, sitting on the drive way, with the keys in the ignition?

- Colin, Antibes

Yet another update (Thursday)

Sad to say, the standard of reporting in The Telegraph goes from bad to worse. Regarding yesterday's State visit by Nicolas Sarkozy and his chic new wife, the Telly shows a picture of Sarky next to Her Maj' at the State banquet. The caption reads: "The Queen sat beside the French Premier". Ouch, you just can't get the staff these days.

To add to the confusion, the article continues:

Seating arrangements were carefully planned, with the Duke of Edinburgh placed opposite the Queen and Mr.Sarkozy, between Miss Bruni and French justice minister Rachida Dati.

Anyone remember the time when Fleet St. employed people called "subeditors" ? Their job was to scrutinise copy, and deliver caustic stinging remarks to those guilty of sloppy journalism, replete with threats of imminent P45s. These days, it would seem, anything goes. What is especially irritating is the Telegraph's failure to provide contact details that would allow incorrigible dyed-in-the-wool nitpickers such as myself to report misreporting (if you see what I mean).

And so to bed, but not before posting the following:

Telegraph: Schools must take in badly behaved pupils

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/27/nschools127.xml&posted=true&_requestid=459587

Studio schools ? Good heavens! Do you mean to say that this Government has finally woken up to its obligation to train the academically less-gifted for well-paying vocational careers, like plumbing - ones that enhance status and self-respect? Gosh, before you know what, this Government, stuck for the last 10 years at the bottom of its learning curve, might just see fit to revive those old-fashioned apprenticeships. Not before time, some might say. It's maybe just as well those industrious Poles are heading back home, if those slow-learner serial botchers, Balls and Brown, have indeed finally hit on a way of replacing their sorely needed skills.

Posted by ColinB on March 27, 2008 8:24 PM

Update Friday March 28 08:42

"Colombia seizes 60lbs of depleted uranium" is an item in today's Telegraph. It goes on to say that the uranium was intended to make a dirty (radiological) bomb as a terrorist weapon for spreading radiation. Someone's got their science wrong there, methinks. Depleted uranium is uranium metal from which the fissile U-235 isotope* has been removed (for nuclear reactors or bombs) leaving the major(99%)non-fissile isotope, U-238, which is only weakly radioactive. Indeed, it's probably a greater chemical than radiological hazard.

The major use of depleted uranium has been for making the hardened tips of armour-piercing shells, due partly to its great density.

Uranium has a density of about 19 grams per cc (cf lead of 11.35 g/cc)

Readers may recall that large amounts of depleted uranium were scattered around the Iraqi and Kuwait deserts during the first Gulf War, and were considered a prime culprit (rightly or wrongly) for causing "Gulf War syndrome".

* more correctly "nuclide".

Comments

Holding response to Dr.Yong-Cheng (Dr.Shi ?) of Kansas State University

2008-03-21T11:31:51+01:00

For the past few days I've been deliberating on what should be my response to the email from Dr. Yong-Cheng (see previous post).

Apologies, incidentally, for mispelling his name originally as Dr.Yong-Chen (which may have confused Google and other search engines; indeed,it is possible that he should be addressed as Dr.Shi (Yong-Cheng).)

Be that as it may, I have decided to respond, not in the manner he suggests, by contacting his legal team, but in the form of a second open letter, which will appear here next Tuesday (March 25th). The reasons for doing so, as well as for my singling out just one of the four patent applicants (which some might think unfair) will be defended then, as well as my reasons for believing his patent application for making resistant starch by enzymic de-branching should never have been granted. It was, after all, my discovery, reported in the open literature, something he and his co-applicants failed to acknowledge.

Dr.Yong-Cheng(Dr.Shi ?) now has a full-time academic appointment, as Associate Professor at Kansas State University. So he should not be surprised if researchers - including retired ones like myself- expect him to observe academic courtesies - and ignore his attempts to hide behind company lawyers. It has not escaped my attention that his generous research funding still comes from his previous employer (National Starch and Chemical Company of New Jersey, USA ) for whom he worked at the time the patent application was filed.

See Wikipedia entry on plagiarism.

Update: Saturday March 22:

Some Google searches to this site have been receiving a "Page not available" messsage, including un-controversial stuff like holiday experiences!

I'm not sure what's causing the problem: it might be the change of site name from (New)Dreams and Daemons to "The Common Room". For an experimental period I've reverted partially to the old nomenclature at the top, at least in the main title. Let's see if that does the trick. If not, I've a reserve site called, guess what, "The Common Room", pure and simple, if all else fails.

Update Sunday March 23

Today sees yet more dumbed-down, blatantly misleading "science" from the Telegraph. I refer to the item on the Home Page entitled "Even in space your boomerang comes back".

A Japanese astronaut aboard the Space Shuttle has shown that a boomerang launched into space comes back, same as on earth. Ipso facto, gravity cannot be the reason why boomerangs come back because, we are told, there's no gravity in space.

Gawd help us! I've sent Roger Highfield, the Telly's Science Editor, a barbed message to his personal website (the Telly itself making it difficult if not impossible to comment on individual articles, or even to contact the Editor, except for letters, or responses to editorials).

And would I be correct in thinking that one does not add to the "font" (sic)of human knowledge?

Second update Sunday

Sky and other news outlets are reporting that Robert Murat, whom the Portugese police had named as a suspect in the disappearance of Maddie McCann, is to have his computer and other property returned. There is speculation that he may soon have his arguido status rescinded . I drew attention to the plight of this man under Portugese law, who has been neither charged nor convicted of any crime, whose life has been on hold for the best part of a year, who has been the subject of the most lurid speculation in the Portugese and UK press. But here's a curious thing: I tried to locate my post on Robert Murat by looking in the tags on the right, and it was missing. So too was the tag for Maddie McCann. Not surprisingly, when I googled to find my own post it led to a dead link. Well, the post is still there: I tracked it down by finding that "arguido" and "Portugese law" are still in the list of tags, and I was not surprised to find that "Robert Murat" was still in my tags beneath the post.

It would appear that the hosts of this site have unilaterally deleted my tags on the Murat post, and done so without notifying me of that fact. I can understand that the issue is legally sensitive, especially in view of the half million pounds in damages that the Express was forced to pay out to the McCanns. But why the cloak and dagger MO?

Anyway, here's the link to the Robert Murat post which I will update shortly.

Update Tuesday 25 March

Have put comments up today under two of the Telegraph's leader items.

One concerns the Government's "mysterious inflation figures".

The other concerns "Michael Gove's ideas to free our failing schools".

Comments

Open letter to Dr.Yong-Cheng of Kansas State University

2008-03-13T15:32:50+01:00

Here is a letter that I sent to Dr.Yong-Cheng of Kansas State University on March 6th(a week ago)- to which I have so far had no reply:

Dear Dr.Yong-Cheng

I am addressing this communication to you, whose name appears first on the following online document:

US patent issued July 25,2006 "Resistant Starch Prepared by isoamylase debranching of low amylose starch

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7081261-claims.html

Could you explain to me how you were able to take out a patent on a procedure given that is intrinsically the same, except for differences in detail, to one that I published over 20 years ago in the open literature?

Berry,CS (1986) Journal of Cereal Science 4 301-314

"Resistant Starch: Formation and Measurement of Starch that Survives Exhaustive Digestion with Amylolytic Enymes during the determination of Dietary Fibre."

In that paper I described experiments in which low-amylose starches were gelatinized, incubated with a source of de-branching enzyme (pullulanase), then heat-processed, cooled and dried to produce products with high levels of enzyme-resistant starch. The technology you describe was essentially of my creation, yet I receive no mention whatsoever in your patent application. It's as if you are claiming my findings as your own, in which case some might consider you and your colleagues to be guilty of intellectual property theft.

Regards

Colin Berry (Dr)

Antibes

France

(previously Head of Nutrition and Food Safety at the Flour Milling and Baking Research Association, Chorleywood, UK (now part of the Campden and Chorleywood Food Research Association)

Reply,finally, March 13, from Dr.Yong-Cheng:

Dear Dr. Berry:
I am out of the office and have limited internet access and no access to some information I would like to read and confirm before I reply you.
I'll try to give a considered response your e-mails when I return next week. However, if you consider this a legal matter, maybe my colleagues and I are not the right people to response because the company owns the patent, not me or my colleagues. Please let me know about this. I could share with you my thoughts but I am not the legal person to answer the question in your previous e-mail. Thanks.

Best regards.

Yong-Cheng

My reply to the above (same day):

Dear Dr. Yong-Cheng

I am pleased to hear from you at last.

Yes, I recognize that the patent is owned by your commercial sponsors, and they will no doubt be prepared to defend it legally against the charge that the patent was (in my opinion) awarded on the basis of faulty and incomplete documentation. I believe that the latter was seriously misleading in at least one place as to the provenance of the key technology.

However, it's too soon to be passing the buck: the patent application was clearly drafted by you and your fellow academic colleagues whose names appear on the patent. That is why my complaint was addressed initially to you, the first author . You and your co-authors have succeeded in convincing the US patent authorities that it was you who devised a novel procedure for manufacturing enzyme-resistant starch in quantity. That was despite the essential technology being in my 1986 Journal of Cereal Science paper. All you have done, as far as I can see, is to scale up from laboratory to production plant scale. I do not see any new principles being employed - either scientific or technological- except on minor matters of detail. In short, you have presented my technology as if it were you own - a serious breach of academic and scientific etiquette to say the least- especially as you made no reference to my original findings, which have been widely cited in the literature.

Since it is you who has introduced the matter of "legal" issues into your reply, indicating that I may have to deal with a company and its legal advisors, then I shall now spend a few days considering carefully my course of action. I shall be taking advice from interested and other parties. When I have reached a decision I shall contact you again, as well as the co-authors of the patent application- if I can find their addresses- as well as your commercial sponsor.

You might not agree, but I consider that you and your fellow patent applicants should have approached me or my ex-employers in the first instance, inviting us to be co-applicants on the initial application for a "master" patent.

Yours sincerely

Colin Berry (Dr)

PS All my correspondence on this matter will be placed in the public domain (ie on my personal blog), since it raises important international issues re the commercial exploitation of intellectual property.

Update: Friday 14th March

If Dr.Yong-Cheng googles "yong-cheng kansas", he will find this post at the top of the list of returns.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=fr&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=yong+cheng+kansas&btnG=Rechercher

It occurs to me that there is one word that sums up the essence of my dispute with that individual and his colleagues: plagiarism. I shall be adding some more thoughts in due course on the subject of plagiarism - which I consider one of the deadliest of sins in the world of academic research.

Update Saturday March 15th

Received the following email from Dr.Yong-Cheng (to which my considered reply will appear here in due course).

Dear Dr. Berry:

As I indicated in my previous reply to you, National Starch and Chemical Company owns the patent.I was an employee at National Starch when the patent was filed.Other inventors also were employees at National Starch.

Because of my previous employment agreement with National Starch and potential legal issues, I have been advised that this patent matter must be handled by the company. Please communicate any issues you have with Ms. Karen Kaiser (copied), patent attorney at National Starch. I hope you understand that I care about my reputation as much as you do.

Best regards.

Yong-Cheng

Saturday: 2nd update:
As a holding reply, I invite Dr.Yong-Cheng to enter * Berry debranching * into a Google search.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=fr&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=berry+debranching&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta=

The first 4 returns ( and later ones too) all refer to my 1986 paper, the one that he and his co-authors omitted to acknowledge in their patent application.

Now look at the way in which Dr.Yong-Cheng et al referred to my work in their patent application:

"Surprisingly, it has now been discovered that completely linear, short chain alpha-1,4-glucans which are highly crystallized result in a starch which is resistant to amylase digestion."

"It has now been discovered..." !!! "Surprisingly"!!!!

Update Sunday March 16th

This ex-blogger spent a fair amount of time yesterday, trying to think up a catchy title for the issue that he has stumbled upon - one he will be reporting on here for some time to come.

I finally decided on "predatory patenting". Note the obligatory alliteration. Googling the "new" tag confirmed, as always, that others have got there first:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=fr&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=predatory+patenting&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta=

That suggests that the tawdry practice it represents has been around for quite a while. But how many people know that universities are now providing tenured academic posts to "predatory patenters" as a means of boosting their income? Let that serve as a warning to any blue sky academics who attend conferences to trade ideas with those whom they assume to be fellow seekers after truth. They may find on casual googling a year or two down the line that their ideas, including those published in the open literature, have been used without their knowledge to win lucrative patents for the applicant, with scant recognition, if any, of the originator's ideas or intellectual property. Incidentally, I was never a "blue sky researcher", working as I did for an industry research association, at the interface of commerce and academe. At the risk of introducing a commercial taint into my 1986 paper on resistant starch (RS), I alluded to the potential for supplementing bread and other baked products with RS as a means of boosting the dietary fibre(DF) content:

"One effect of adopting a legally binding definition of DF in terms of NSP (non-starch polysaccharides) would be to downgrade, arbitrarily, the contribution that baked cereal products, notably white bread, make to estimates of DF intake. Another consequence would be to destroy any incentive for food manufacturers to explore possible ways for raising levels of RS in processed foods as a means of generating extra dietary fibre."

So you see, I was no innocent abroad when I wrote those words, back in 86, but there are opportunist predatory patent applicants, 20 years on and more, who seem to think that they can treat me as one now, presumably because I'm retired. When challenged, they take refuge behind the legal departments of the rich corporations who employ or sponsor them. Well, they seem to have forgotten one thing: the power of the internet, especially Google , to throw the spotlight on their grubby underhand practices, ones that rob scientists of the recognition, and possibly financial reward, to which they are entitled for their discoveries.

Expect to find more here later on those predatory patenters, who, driven by the prospect of making a fast buck, both for themselves and their sponsors, file patents based on discoveries that are not their own.

Update Tuesday 18th March

"Creativity at mercy of intellectual pirates" is the headline of a feature on the BBC website today.

Here's a passage from the article:

Copying a person's ideas or products without their knowledge is known as intellectual piracy.

Intellectual property covers a number of things like patents, designs, trademarks and copyright.

Keeping ideas safe

Stephen Selby, who is the Director of Intellectual Property for the Hong Kong Government feels it is important to keep ideas safe.

"It protects the fruits of people's invention or creativeness, so that they can earn money from the things that they have done," he said....

Intellectual property accounted for around 40% of the growth of the US economy last year and in Britain it was around 10%.

Why 40% in America and only 10% in the UK? Are we really less creative than our US cousins? Our share of Nobel prizes, calculated per head of population, would suggest otherwise.

Maybe there's a simpler explanation: the predatory get-rich-quick ethos that now exists on American campuses allows anyone to file and win patents on other people's inventions. Those other folk remain blissfully unaware, especially when they don't even get an acknowledgement in the patent application, carefully written to make it seem as though it was the applicants' own work.

There are now rich rewards for hijacking other people's published work: fancy academic titles, fat research grants from industry (which may include the previous employer under whose auspices one filed the plagiarising patent).

There is now an overpowering stench of financial self-interest from at least one mid-western campus I could mention. See recipients' research awards, dated just over a year ago.

See also the IPbiz blog for "patent competition in Kansas"

Comments

Current topic: COFFEE (or maybe there's something else you want to talk about)

2008-02-24T11:28:44+01:00

It began with this comment from J (aka Louidog)
louidog [Member]
2008-02-22 @ 14:01

I am just imagining the blue skies and sun....oh and a very nice coffee too!

Oh now coffee, there's another thing that gets me thinking. Costa and Starbucks are very popular over here but why oh why are the drinks so expensive in there!!!! Overheads I know but even so.....

Next comment, from moi, ColinB, site moderator, wearing poacher's hat

Costa? Starbucks ? Well, I guess it's partly the franchise thing, with 50p a cup going to the fat cats who dish out the licences. But that's probably peanuts when you look at what they pay the Council in business tax - the original stealth tax that inflates the cost of virtually everything you buy in the UK, and in reality helps pay for all those wars and military operations for which we feel ourselves uniquely responsible. Ever wondered why the Swiss and Swedes look on us with a strange mix of admiration and pity while deciding which car to buy this year?

Next comment from Bearsy (here's an extract re coffee)Bearsy [Visitor]

2008-02-24 @ 06:55

We have followed the designer coffee idea however, and I'm not impressed. Stiff prices for an almost undrinkable product - what's wrong with the old 'flat white', I ask? Never mind, I don't have to buy it!

From ColinB

Coffee is a sore point with us right now - not café coffee but instant. We've just thrown out a virtually brand new jar of one we hadn't tried before - Nescafé "Red Cup"- that tasted of nothing, except maybe lightly roasted cardboard.

It's probably naff to be even mentioning instant, but if anyone has a favourite brand they wish to recommend, with flavour that lasts beyond the first day or two after opening, please let us know.

I'm old enough to remember "Camp Coffee". Actually, it wasn't coffee, but an ersatz wartime substitute. Folk continued to buy it during the post-war rationing period. But it was a darn site better than some of today's "genuine" coffee!

And this one arrived just a few minutes ago from J:

louidog [Member]
2008-02-24 @ 09:47

Camp Coffee!! Goodness, now that takes me back a few years. I can almost smell it now.

Bearsy, you're right, we don't have to buy the designer coffees. Can you imagine if everyone did the same and went to the little cafe on the corner and had a cup of coffee? I dare say that little cafe is struggling anyway now that Costa and the likes have set up camp in the High Street (proably next door to them too!) so would welcome everyone back with open coffee cups.

Please use the Comments if you would like to add to the thread. Newcomers are very welcome to contribute. There's just one proviso: the aim on this site is to recreate the ethos of an old-fashioned school or university Common Room - see previous post entitled "Notablog". Apologies if that sounds pompous or overbearing.

Comments

Notablog

2008-02-22T02:50:12+01:00

"Notablog". Ah, now there's a word to conjure with, and a possible new departure for this site. But it will need a little help from my friends. You see, this is no longer a blog, as announced in the previous post. This scribbler has wearied of the conventional blogging ethos (but does not intend to dwell at length on the reasons).

Let's look briefly at the format of the blog, as presently understood by most folk. Somebody puts up a post, invites comments, and then it's anyone guess what happens. The comments may be friendly, and addressed to the topic of the post. Or they may be unfriendly, and have little or nothing to do with the post. Or, as frequently happens, the comments thread is an informal chatroom in which a band of regulars chews the fat on this or that, and engages in occasional cat fights in which the fur starts to fly.

What I'm now proposing is the internet equivalent of what I experienced and enjoyed while doing my PhD research at a London medical school - a drop-in Common Room. Mine was situated in the basement of a building in Hunter St. It was really no different from what I believe is now referred to, post Maggie, as the water-cooler, except it was a lot more comfortable, and conducive to conversation since we were seated around all four sides of a small carpeted room that made for intimacy.

One would arrive, find one's mug, charge it with caffeine, plonk down, and then tune in to whatever was being discussed. It might be a burning issue of the moment, but as likely as not it was Yvonne and her daring new hairdo, or whether a particular film was worth seeing or not. One decided if one had anything worthwhile to contribute. If not, one stayed quiet, and was content merely to listen. Sometimes one would sense that conversation was flagging, and if there was one of those dreaded pregnant pauses, might introduce a new topic for discussion.

So what say this site be used as a testing bed for a nonblog that is simply an online Common Room, with no set pieces, merely a drop-in centre with a rolling commentary?

It will need rules, especially if it's to be an open forum. But let's not dwell on rules at the moment, more on opportunities.

The aim is not to compete head-on with any of the better known sites - merely to offer an alternative when those places flag - or one seeks something different.

I do have some ideas about making the site attractive and workable, with a small competitive element - about which more later.

But let's leave it there for now. If anyone would like to offer comments - or, better still, begin a conversation - then be my guest!

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Bowing out

2008-01-16T12:52:45+01:00

With tongue planted firmly in cheek, I wish to announce that there are two highly significant dates in my life, apart from the usual - wedding anniversary, birthdays and the like.

The first is Sept 20th, 1974, when I finally, finally, kicked the smoking habit (quote: Mark Twain: "Giving up smoking is easy - I've done it hundreds of times"). The second is January 16th 2008 (today, as I write) when I finally kicked the blogging habit. Apologies, btw, for the repetitious prose. I'm not feeling at my most creative right now.

I don't intend to dwell on the reasons for giving up blogging. Suffice it to say they have much in common with giving up smoking. In both cases there is that short-term buzz, one that is highly addictive. Inevitably, and sadly, there's that sting in the tail: a gradual and insidious undermining of one's sense of equilibrium and contentment, indeed of one's psychological health if the truth be told.

I hope that visitors to this site - regular or occasional- will allow this blogger to enjoy his present state of demob-happiness, and not tax him too much on the whys and wherefores. To do so would simply draw him back into that world of constant self-justification from which he now wishes to escape.

If I were religious, I would say God bless you all, friend or foe alike.

"May you be at peace with the world" will have to substitute.

Here's a blogger, correction, ex-blogger, who right now feels immensely at peace with the world, and who bids you all farewell. Feel free, but not obliged, to add comments. However, please don't be offended if I am slow at responding.

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Change of tack for Dreams and Daemons in 2008

2008-01-04T12:08:09+01:00

Hello again. Apologies for the prolonged radio silence. That was due to a number of factors. Firstly I was in England over Christmas and New Year, staying at my daughter's. Although she's online, I tried to stay off the internet as much as possible. It seemed a bit unsociable, or maybe just unfestive, to spend time communing with a cyber world when in someone else's house, and in any case she (my daughter) has made no secret in the past of her disapproval of my blogging activities!

I have also been pondering the future of D&D. It had been a major focus of my life last year, with the result that the weeks flashed by like days, while other things got neglected - family, reading - especially of books and keeping abreast of new ideas.

I had decided in principle that with the novelty of personal blogging on the wane, especially with the improving credibility and self-regulation of My Telegraph, 2008 would be the year when I retracted from the blogosphere. That applies especially to this particular site with its high demands on time and nervous energy. I want to try to restore some balance in my life.

But an entirely new and sinister factor has crept in since September or thereabouts that has caused my thoughts to crystallise on priorities and re-directions for D&D.

It's difficult, nay well nigh impossible, to blog with confidence when fearful of losing one's internet connection at random points throughout the day. Yet that has been my predicament for several months now.

Way back in early October I described difficulties I was having with my modem connection, and my failure to get my ISP (AOL Neuf Cegetel- now wholly French owned) to take my complaint seriously and provide a replacement modem. Link

At the time it seemed I was dealing simply with a mixture of inertia and incompetence. However, things got progressively worse towards Christmas, with acute connection problems in December while all the time being continually pressurised by AOL Neuf to sign up to a new contract. Matters came to a head yesterday with complete loss of connection for some 12 hours, with an hour spent on the phone being browbeaten and subjected to the third-degree. Almost everything we said about the modem and its faulty lead was contemptuously dismissed. Instead we were bombarded with checklists of other things that were considered more probable causes of our difficulties - the phone line, the filters, our computer, our software etc etc. Yet we have only to jiggle the modem lead slightly, and we lose our connection, which may takes an hour or more of patient re-jiggling to restore !

In view of this systematic obfuscation, I now believe the problem with AOL to be far more serious than I had originally assumed. There is now a disturbing and sinister element - for me the customer to be browbeaten and humiliated in this fashion. To be told, for example, that there is no record on AOL's system of our phone calls in September and the promised action is to my way of thinking a huge black mark against our Internet Service Provider. Fortunately I blogged on the subject on October 3rd, and have itemised phone bills to back up my version of events. I now feel feel like David girding up his loins to confront Goliath - although I take some heart from knowing how that story ended.

For the forseeable future, D&D will restrict itself to documenting the strange and worrying course of events of my current dealings with AOL. When faced with what appears to be systematic moving of contractual goalposts, coercion, time-wasting and possibly more serious charges, I think it is important to get the facts down fair and square in the public domain. I shall be using this site for the English-language version of events, whilst accepting that the failings of a French-based ISP will be of limited interest to a UK readership. However, I shall also be putting French translations up on my old D&D (blogspot) site, since anything on that site is indexed by worldwide Google, and will ultimately I hope bring AOL Neuf the kind of publicity on its homeground- in France- that it so richly deserves.

Hearing my daughter's recent experiences with her mobile phone/internet provider (Virgin) with a similar convenient "loss" of records of phone calls convinces me there are growing abuses of power within the electronic service industry: far from being service providers, we are seeing the rampant growth of contractual lock-in merchants (for want of a better name). These operators, most of them household names, are increasingly unfussy about the methods they use to massage their balance sheets. Every customer, present or prospective, is considered fair game - an innocent abroad- to be conned, coerced, and manipulated. To describe their business model as a principle-free zone would probably be to err on the side of politeness.

AOL has blighted my daily existence for the best part of 4 months, now: yesterday both my wife and I felt we had been put through a wringer.

It will take a number of posts to do justice to the way in which something that should be simple and unobtrusive has come to haunt our daily lives. But that is the task I have now set myself - to document a nasty and vicious form of exploitation that has infected 21st century commerce - one that has crept up on all of us by degrees, and which has grown largely unchecked through a failure of interest or vigilance on the part of the mainstream media.

Public duty calls, even if it means D&D adopting a single-issue mode for the forseeable future. Everything else in my life pales into insignificance when I feel that someone to whom I pay 26.89 euros a month for internet access is being deliberately obstructive and unhelpful, and trying to foist a new contract on me whether I want it or not. I am still waiting for a reply to the letter I sent to AOL's Head Office two weeks ago, reminding them that there are two parties to a contract.

Update: Friday 18th Jan See the post by the estimable "Goth Queen" on MyT, entitled "Internet Provider Nightmare", describing a similar runaround to ours. The post itself did not identify the ISP, but its name is revealed later in the comments. No prizes for guessing who is making Goth Queen's life a misery!

Update Tue 22nd Jan 14:40 approx.

Again, lost internet connection. No lights on modem, on-screen message saying I needed to reconnect first with dial-up (bas debit, metered).I ignored that message, and instead jiggled the modem lead and after a while got back on-line. One wonders how much longer this nonsense will continue, before AOL-Neuf realises that by failing to replace my modem, with its faulty lead and/or USB plug, as promised, way back in September last year, it is failing to deliver on its contractual obligations. A financial settlement, when it comes, as it surely will sooner or later (probably the latter) will have to compensate not just for wasted time, but for the unending disruption caused to our lives by failure to rectify a small mechanical fault in a modem lead. What is it that prevents AOL Neuf doing something so simple and straightforward as replacing a 4 year old modem?
Update: Tue (still) 20:35 approx. Session interrupted by one of the AOL Error boxes that freeze the system and won't delete, necessitating a time-consuming reboot.
Now finding that I am unable to access my regular sites from the default browser. Thanks to Firefox I am still online. this is a repetition of what happened for a week or two before Christmas. What a shambolic ISP I find myself landed with. AOL Neuf - you are the pits.

Update: Thur 24th Jan: I had trouble booting up this morning. The process got stuck at Stages 5 or 6, and kept flashing up a message saying the computer would have to be re-started (another wasted 5 minutes).

So I rebooted, all the while thinking: what if it fails to connect? What then? Go back to the so-called Help Line, going through all that tedious round of questions, all the while racking up a big addition to the phone bill (typically 10 euros or more if they keep you on the line for 30 minutes). There's no point in emailing- they just bounce them back. There's no point in writing: you wait 2 or 3 weeks for a reply, which totally ignores one's specific complaint.

Since this has been going on since September of last year, I am beginning to smell a rat, and on googling discover that AOL-France, prior to its takeover by Cegetel, had indeeed fallen foul of French law on matters relating to failure to honour its contractual obligations (which is putting it politely). I'll add a small piece in a day or two.

Link to French language version on (Old) Dreams and Daemons

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Merry Christmas! See you in the New Year

2007-12-13T08:17:49+01:00

D&D is now closing up shop for 2007, but will be back early in the New Year. Here, then, is wishing you all a splendid festive season with your families.

It did not take long to find an appropriate D&Dish take on Christmas, searching the online image files ...

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D&D newsblog: Time to end the charade of the Queen's Speech ?: Tue 11 Dec

2007-12-11T10:56:20+01:00

I was half watching/half listening, as is my wont, to the latest fly-on-the-wall TV series, devoted to her Magnificent Maj. Yes, I believe she does a splendid job, and even in a purely monetary sense gives superb value for money. Don't the whingers and monarchy-knockers realise that replacing the Queen with a ceremonial Head of State is still going to cost much the same when one factors in the cost of the State visits, overseas trips etc.

Be that as it may, I heard the dulcet tones of our erstwhile PM briefly singing her praises, but straightaway picked up on that man's tone that so grateth on this blogger - that simpering sound bite mode of his that is insincerity personified. It began with a truism - that her Majesty acts as a unifying figure in the country- but he then added how much he and his fellow Parliamentarians look forward to the pomp and ceremony of the annual Opening of Parliament ceremony (now televised needless to say).

"Of course we all know the Queen's Speech is not really the Queen's words - she's just reading out the Government's programme." And there you have it in a nutshell - the gloating of a control freak who along with his predecessors turns the Monarch once a year into a silken, sequinned glove puppet, so they can recall all the past conquests in the battle between Sovereign and Parliament, including the beheading of one of her ancestors.

The same series accompanied the Queen on her State visit to the US last year. One thing to emerge was that the Queen is an important and comforting source of continuity to Americans as she is to us, even though they would have no truck themseelves with the idea of Monarchy, consitutional or otherwise. The Queen has met,and no doubt discusssed affairs of state, with no less than 11 (?) American Presidents. The first would have been Dwight Eisenhower (Ike) I would guess. (Personal aside: I once went to Heathrow airport as a young teenager to see him arrive (Aug 31st 1959 - thanks Google). He left an indelible impression by leaping onto the seat of his limo as he passed, and holding both arms up high in a victory salute - pure showmanship and much appreciated. Darker side, no PC inhibitions: I also remember the molester behind me in the crowd, and thinking how odd it was that he was black - I'd never thought of black men as being homosexual child molesters.)

The Queen has an unparalleled knowledge of world affairs, stretching back over 50 years. Yet that knowledge, and no doubt wisdom, is only available at present to the PM, and Heads of Commonwealth and other countries.

I believe it is time to end the demeaning charade of the Queen's Speech. It, and her appearance before the two Houses of Parliament, should be ended. If MPs insist on basking in the reflected glory of the Sovereign, then let her instead give an annual "State of the Union" message. Without needing to be overtly political, let her summarise what she consider the key issues that confront the nation, based on the hundreds of conversations she has with people in all walks of life, from the most exalted, to the most humble in the land. Let's start treating her as one of the planet's greatest assets, who has discharged superbly her role to "warn and advise". Let her now warn and advise the nation directly. She has earned her right to do so; few doubt she would abuse the right to speak to her people directly about the things that are on her mind.

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D&D newsblog: Colin Randall in India and more besides: Mon 10 Dec

2007-12-10T11:04:54+01:00

For starters Colin Randall (Salut blog: see Links in margin) is on the road again, and presently reporting from India. On his current post there is a facsimile of a page from the Times of India. English is clearly not the first language of the type compositors (or their modern day equivalent).

Some of the small print looked tasty, so I saved and re-displayed to get a better look (a handy trick in case you are not aware).
Here's what it says in the last few sentences:

The Times of India
Are the local poilce (sic) competent enough ?

The problems started with a clash between lawyers and cops..... In other incident, police were blamed for showing inactiveness when an irate mob of lawyers ransacked the SDM Pindra court in August. This incident led to strike of lawyers which ended after intervention of Bar Council. Killing of a Government doctor DP Singh took place. The pol... (unable to read further)

Hmmm, it's refreshing to see that the Indian judiciary and police did not inherit the stuffy formality of their erstwhile colonial masters...

Or have they succeeded in creating an endless closed loop, as in the D&D graphic above, in which the judiciary supplies a never ending round of business for the police, and the police reciprocate in kind... ?

Judge to Defendant: I understand you are defending yourself today. Is that correct?

Defendant to Judge: No m'lud. Mr Parvider Singh is defending me today, and I shall be defending him tomorrow. I just thought I'd mention that to make you aware that a custodial sentence is out of the question...

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D&D newsblog: Where are you positioned on the blogosphere? Sat 8 Dec

2007-12-08T13:18:44+01:00

There's been some chat recently about different blogging styles. I thought it was time to put the thing on a more mathematical basis.

Despite the Earth being a sphere, two position coordinates - latitude and longitude - are all that are needed to locate any point on the Earth's surface.

It occurred to me that it should be possible to do the same with the blogosphere. But what would be the reference coordinates ?

There seem to be two main dimensions to consider, one for the horizontal(x)axis, and one for vertical(y) axis .

First, what is one's reason for blogging? Is it to keep a private diary, Samuel Pepys style, preferably for one's eyes only? That's an extreme position, admittedly, which would score -5 on the x axis.

Or are you a self-publicist/wannabe journalist who wants the whole world to be hanging on your every word? That's maybe the opposite extreme, which would score +5 on the x axis.

The second factor is to do with how you interact with other bloggers.
Are you someone who is quite happy to blog independently, and wouldn't be too concerned if you never got a single comment? If so then you are a "Lone Wolf" and score -5 on the vertical(y) axis.

Or are you part of a buzzing network, exchanging comments with all and sundry? If so, you are "The life and soul of the party" and score +5 on the y axis.

So far I have described the extremes. It goes without saying that most of us fall somewhere intermediate between each of the two extremes, eg (-2, -4) would represent someone who blogged mainly, but not exclusively, to create a daily journal of their daily life, to be read mainly by family and friends ( x=-2), and who perhaps tends to regard comments as a bonus rather than a dire necessity( y=- 4).

I've just knocked up a crude graphic (above) using Bill Gates Paint (being rusty with spreadsheets and proper scaled graphs) but it will have to do for now.

You can see where D&D has positioned itself - with a leaning towards wannabe journalist, while being, I have to admit, a bit of a lone wolf.

Why not reveal your own blogging persona to the big wide world? Send me your coordinates in a Comment and I will display them. To avoid misunderstanding or libel suits, please give give me the horizontal coordinate first, vertical second. D&D's was (2,-2).

Update: 14:25 Thanks La Spice for being the first to volunteer her ~~vital statistics~~ coordinates (1,1)

Update: Sunday 12:20 Thanks for the coordinates, Bearsy, even if I did have to drag them out of you (see Comments). Nice to see you have another blog up-and-running. I've added it to my Links.

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D&D newsblog: Roman Londinium and those 19 pots: Fri 7 Dec

2007-12-07T17:34:11+01:00

If you had a time machine, which era of English (or British) history would you wish to visit first ? Would it be Elizabethan times, to see those galleons, the palaces, the finery, the squalor, the bar room brawls ... you get my drift, I'm sure. Whichever period one visits, there is the upside - especially if you were well born - and the downside, which statistically you were more likely to witness at first hand, if born a prole.

The curious thing about English history is that one goes back through the centuries, thinking of progressively meaner living conditions, reaching the so-called Dark Ages, and one thinks of a lawless era, with no proper central authority, in which bands of foreign invaders roamed freely, where life was brutal and short.

Go back a bit further to the Roman Occupation, and I don't know about you, but I find it hard to rid myself of images that I now realise, in the light of modern discovery and scholarship, are totally misleading. One thinks of imperial Rome with its magnificent but intimidating architecture - again a false impression created by the skeletal remains of what is left, without the colour, the drapes etc. One thinks about Emperors and centurions and legionnaires - of a vast military machine that subdued Gaul and Britain by sheer brute force, and one is left with a vision of an essentially military occupation that was a passing phase.

That view of the Roman era as one of alien domination has gradually been eroded over the years. It began, I suspect, with a visit to the Colchester Museum. There in the glass cases were the little household items that were not just functional, but had been cast, carved, enamelled etc with loving care, because these were things used every day by people with taste and discrimination, and an eye for decoration and detail. How very different from the image of Roman Britain created in schooldays on the visit to Verulamium, with its amphitheatre hypocaust and occasional fragments of mosaic- leaving an impression of masonry, and more masonry. Colchester showed the softer side of Roman life.

A few years ago the Sunday Times produced a diarama of how Silchester might have looked.It was an artist's impression of an oblique aerial view, as if from a helicopter. I haven't been able to track down their exact picture - one that had me gazing in amazement and wonder for minutes on end - but here's one that similar.

I'm not sure what it is - maybe the orange roof tiles, the sheer civilized look with all the busy streets and squares, the mix of private and public buildings, but it all looked so welcoming and MODERN. Yes modern - it's as if the Romans - or should that be Romano-Celts - were not far short of our present lifestyle in terms of comfort and expectations, but then a long dark night intervened, lasting the best part of 1500 years, before we were able to pick up where we left off.

All these feelings about the essential cosiness and civilized "modernity" were hugely reinforced by our visit some 4 years ago to Pompeii and Herculaneum. So much has been uncovered, and is still being revealed about life in a very upmarket part of the "ancient "world. It's not just the amazingly well preserved murals, depicting ordinary-looking folk doing ordinary unheroic things. They are now uncovering the timbers, admittedly charred, that convey a better impression of the abodes of the people who lived on the Bay of Naples. There is a much stronger sense now of the "towniness" of those places, as distinct from being on a stark archaelogical site.

So what prompted all these musings? It was yesterday's announcement of the discovery of that hoard of pots under Drapers' Gardens in the City - which are reckoned to date back to the last days of Londinium in the 4th century AD.
Roman artifacts discovered in London well

It's that bucket especially that amazed me, with its swing handle, with those two corrugations near the top (I'm sure there's a better word than corrugations - it'll come to me). Is that not the kind of bucket one would see on the restaurant table, for cooling the wine or champagne ?

How little has changed, then, in the space of 1500 years. Yes, if I had to choose an era, I think it would be the Roman occupation. Sure, they were intruders, and they were Latins, not true Brits, who brought their foreign ways with them. But from a modern perspective, they no longer seem foreign. They were laying the foundations for what we now consider a gracious and civilized lifestyle, with their villas topped with those attractive orange tiles, their patios and gardens, their liking for creature comforts, be it underfloor heating, piped water, half-decent loos, and something both attractive and fit for purpose on the table at mealtimes.

What did the Romans ever do for us ? They gave us a vision of a better life, that's what, which took a millennium and a half to rediscover!

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D&D newsblog: The Nebraska massacre stirs memories of Dunblane. Thur 6 Dec

2007-12-06T12:10:21+01:00

Where were you when news of the Dunblane massacre came through?

I remember exactly where I was, and wondering how anyone could be so evil as to shoot down tiny infant school children. I also wondered how he could do it so easily - hadn't the gun control laws been tightened up after the earlier Hungerford massacre ?

Then it became more bizarre by the hour, with the news that Thomas Hamilton had been a boys' club leader, and, on paper at any rate, was a pillar of the community. He had also been a member of a gun club, having had, it first seemed, little difficulty obtaining a licence (only later did we learn that attempts had been made to block his application by those who had spotted the dark side of Hamilton).

After each massacre, we hear the same old arguments trotted out by the gun lobby. "It's not the gun that kills", they say, "it's the person".

Sure, we know that, and if people like Hamilton - supposedly pillars of the community - were able to get guns, what hope do we have of preventing further obscenities by screening for psychiatric traits ?

The John Major government took in my view a wise and courageous decision, recognizing that the Hamiltons would always be able to slip through, and one did not need a sophisticated semi-automatic weapon of the type used at Hungerford to commit mass-slaughter of innocents. Even a single shot weapon in the hands of someone intent on suicide, but wishing to go out in a blaze of perverted glory, could take dozens before running out of ammunition, or satisfying their blood lust, whichever came first.

The gun lobby in the US was furious. There was the old country, Britain no less, outlawing gun ownership, setting off maybe a chain reaction. The pressure would grow enormously on Washington, whoever was in charge, but more probably a Democrat administration, to follow suit. In fact, it's worse than I have depicted, much worse. The organized, well funded gun lobby, which equates with the National Rifle Association (NRA) is not just defending the right to own a gun, the type some US citizens, fearful for their security, might wish to keep at home for self-defence. It appears to defend the system that allowed that Korean student at Virginia Tech to walk into a gun store, and with few formalities was able to purchase several hundred dollars worth of highly lethal weaponry - a Glock semiautomatic pistol we are told, with which he was able to slaughter 32 of his fellow students before turning the gun on himself. But still the NRA bleated on about its freedoms, enshrined in the Constitution it said ( overlooking the qualifications and caveats about private militias).

I once made the mistake of getting into conversation with an American fellow on a transatlantic flight, and having to spend the next 6 hours listening to every argument he could dream up to defend his position. One thing I learned was the total disrespect for any kind of logic or structured argument. To defend each objection raised, he would quite happily trot out a debating point that contradicted an earlier "argument" and so one found oneself trapped within endless circular arguments. I also became aware of the NRA as a powerful force in the self-image of the all-American male, with the gun being almost synonymous with the Stars and Stripes. Not for nothing do many liberal-minded Americans, who would never dream of owning a gun, clam up whenever gun control is raised an option. They don't want to go there, because they have all experienced the same browbeating tactics in argument, and in any case they live in a "neighborhood" in which there are many gun owners. Think about it - better still, don't.

So what is the gun lobby doing at present ? From perusing some message boards, I think they are doing what they have been doing for last 10 years or more, which is attempt to discredit the kind of gun control laws introduced in Europe and elsewhere. They claim the legislation has not worked, pointing out, quite correctly as it happens, that "gun crime" is on the increase in Britain and elsewhere. However, they fail to make a distinction, needless to say, between guns held by gangs or criminals, used mainly to protect or intimidate, and rarely fired, certainly not in Dunblane style rampages. They even try to suggest that gun control has somehow promoted gun crime. If people cannot get guns legally as a hobby or recreation, they will they get them illegally, and then be tempted to misuse them for criminal purposes. When I hear arguments like that, I switch off, I'm afraid, and cease to have any interest in trying to engage in rational debate. Thank goodness Britain has gun control laws. If the US wants to allow virtually free unhindered access to lethal weaponry, and is prepared to tolerate a further Columbine High , Virginia Tech or Nebraska shopping mall every six months or so, then that is their decision. All I would ask is that we are spared the breast-beating and navel gazing from our cousins, about what motivates people to do such terrible things, and where society has failed these poor,tortured, misunderstood individuals etc etc.

The disturbed, the deranged, the suicidal are, like the poor, are always with us, sad to say. The difference is that in America, they are provided with the wherewithal to wreak their revenge on society in a highly efficient manner before topping themselves. Sorry to put it so crudely.

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D&D newsblog:Gillian Gibbons' ordeal- afterthoughts and reflections: Wed 5 Dec

2007-12-05T10:38:23+01:00

Update: 19:15 I have completed the first of three short surveys of comments sent to the BBC's Have Your Say.

Here is a summary of every 10th comment, taking just the first 20. GG= Gillian Gibbons.

1. Unsympathetic to GG. She failed to abide by the laws of a foreign country.

2. Anti white, anti-Western rant. We are all hypocrites

3. Relieved she's back safely. Don't take pressure off Sudan over Darfur.

4. It is Muslims who operate a double standard re "When in Rome".

5. Criticism of BBC's reporting. They should have said she "allegedly" insulted Islam

6.Funny ha ha - being sent back to Liverpool worse than being flogged

7.All religion are the problem, with possible exception of Buddhism

8. Disparaging ref to Muhammed the Prophet's lifestyle

9. Numbers game re Muslims v. non-Muslims in the world

10. Self-declared atheist - would only kill in self-defence

11. Flippant remark, but sympathetic to GG

12. Muslims have a blood-thirsty tendency

13. Attack on those who would try to shift blame from Sudanese religion onto their economic condition.

14. Sudanese have set back inter-faith relations in UK by 5 years

15. Praise for the manner in which GG comported herself on return to UK - a good role model

16. GG should have served her sentence, with suggestion that there would be a corresponding offence in UK (???).

17. Don't let Sudanese off the hook - they elected the Sudanese government

18. Forget about Sudan as a tourist destination

19. Some mixed messages about GG. Glad she's back, didn't like the self-remorse, disliked "deluge of hatred" directed inappropriately at the UK (vague on details)

20. Bush's actions in Iraq not comparable to Sudan's in Darfur.

Conclusion: the majority of comments are broadly sympathetic to GG, and condemn the Islamic intolerance seen in Sudan. Just 2 considered that GG had only herself to blame, or deserved her sentence.

Update: 20:50

After pulling out 20 as described, I then extracted the next 10, restricting the selection to UK based locations, and (risking offence to PC sensibilities) excluding any names that looked in the least bit exotic. The aim was to filter out the views of that endangered species, the indigenous Brit.

1. GG should have served her full 15 days sentence. She was disrespectful. Am in total agreement with the "gouvernement" of Sudan.

(This comment, allegedly from one "Vanessa" in Cardiff was the subject of much mirth and criticism, not just for the French spelling of government, but for its subsequent descent into hilarious pidgin English.

2."Vanessa" cited as one of the "wacky" foreigners who ought to be deported.

3. Hopes that GG does not "get hounded" ( does not specify who would do the hounding).

4. Defends GG, saying she simply went along with the children's wishes. Highly critical of those who condemn GG for "not having done her homework", whom are dismissed as "classic British self- loathers".

5."I would never want a teacher as naïve as GG for my boy". Goes on to claim that "it's equivalent to a UK teacher applying an inappropriate name, like "Paedo the Bear" !"

6. Defends GG, saying that "this inanimate object(ie teddy bear) was named through love not hate", and pointing out that Jesus is a popular name for children in Latin countries.

7. Send a gunboat !

8.Invidious comparisons on the "when in Rome " theme, citing today's news about nurses in UK hospitals being required to turn the beds of some Muslim patients to face Mecca.

9.Same point as above: we are "watering down" our customs to accomodate Muslims.

10. She was a bit naïve - but glad she's back.

Update: 21:41 Here, finally, is a cut-and-paste from the BBC website, listing the top 10 recommended comments.
I particularly like the comments posted by "Paul C from Glasgow" and "The Historian" from Stirling"!

DEBATE STATUS
Total comments:6071 Published comments: 4886 Rejected comments:618 Moderation queue:566 ABOUT HAVE YOUR SAY

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 09:50 GMT 09:50 UK

Cartoons and teddy bears.Seems like this is what we Muslims are occupied with these days.Is our religion so weak and fragile that a teddy bear, book or cartoon will hurt it? The Prophet we claim to revere withstood taunts and stones thrown at him and still showed compassion and justice.Look at what we resort to.He would be ashamed what is being done in his name. Also, I find it hauntingly ironic that a gov't sponsoring a genocide against fellow Muslims has the audacity take such measures over a bear named Muhammad. How about the real Muhammads being slaughtered and displaced in Darfur? Surely genocide is unIslamic.Time to wake up from this deep sleep we Muslims are in.

Samira
Recommended by 678 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 09:52 GMT 09:52 UK

"....and as British Muslim Parliamentarians we, Baroness Warsi and myself, we feel proud that we've been able to secure Gillian Gibbon's release." So says Lord Ahmed. What you've done is obtained the release of a teacher who was imprisoned because her young pupils wanted to name a teddy bear!!! What you should feel is great shame that you are part of a religion that can, on occasions, stoop to such a despicable act.

Ian, Colwyn Bay
Recommended by 571 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 08:49 GMT 08:49 UK

Tell you what - TOO LATE!! the damage has been done. Next time there is humanitarian crisis in Sudan they will get penny ZERO from me.

Paul, Glasgow, UK
Recommended by 502 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 09:52 GMT 09:52 UK

Finally now dump your sharia Law.

This is the not the 7th century, join the modern world

Richard Leeds, United States

Recommended by 499 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 12:12 GMT 12:12 UK

'The Muslim religion should be respected, in the same way that Muslim's would respect Christianity'

Since when do Muslims respect other faiths especially Christianity - aren't we all infidels in their eyes???

[welshcurls], Powys, United Kingdom

Recommended by 422 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 09:13 GMT 09:13 UK

"Tell you what - TOO LATE!! the damage has been done. Next time there is humanitarian crisis in Sudan they will get penny ZERO from me."

I second that...

Chris Ryan, London

I third that..........

scooby, Swindon

Recommended by 422 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 10:28 GMT 10:28 UK

'I am horrified that Ms. Gibbons has been let off so lightly . . . '
Carla, Norwich

I am horrified that you exist.

PaulC, Glasgow

Recommended by 372 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 11:28 GMT 11:28 UK

Islam is a very very dangerous religion which has not place in a modern civilized society.

andrew, northampton
Recommended by 365 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 08:56 GMT 08:56 UK

I think that most Western people will be unhelpful to areas needing charity where this type of stupidity is allowed to happen. Why should we support any country that allows a lady trying to help it's people to be subjected to barbaric laws and actions. Lets support ourselves from now on.

Derek, Glasgow

Recommended by 354 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 08:55 GMT 08:55 UK

This whole incident was a farce. Im seeing top officials, headline news, protests on streets calling for execution all over a Teddy bear!? I think we should seriously re-consider any diplomatic links with this country.

Simon Cook, Essex, United Kingdom

Recommended by 330 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 09:13 GMT 09:13 UK

About time too. I can't believe that some western liberals are STILL blaming her for this, though we should be familiar with their hatred for their own country by now.

the_historian, Stirling

Recommended by 291 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 08:56 GMT 08:56 UK

"Tell you what - TOO LATE!! the damage has been done. Next time there is humanitarian crisis in Sudan they will get penny ZERO from me."

I second that...

Chris Ryan, London

Recommended by 278 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 08:54 GMT 08:54 UK

The damage has been done. She shouldn't have been jailed in the first place!
It's a real shame - Sudan will now be in more of a crisis as so many brits wont be donating to them anymore. And that is all of their own doing.

Stacey, Aberdeen

Recommended by 273 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 08:52 GMT 08:52 UK

So now that this poor woman has been released by these primitive fanatics, can the thinking people among us issue an ultimatum to those who believe in any religion....

Either allow people to believe or not as they wish, and have freedom of speech, or prepare for your cults to be made illegal.

[chiptheduck]

Recommended by 268 people

Added: Monday, 3 December, 2007, 08:53 GMT 08:53 UK

She should never have been charged let alone found guilty in the first place.

The president is alleged to be embarrassed. I would have thought that was putting it mildly.

Coudl I ask why it was necessary for two Muslim peers to go and argue her case? What was the diplomatic service and British government doing? They too should be ashamed that they could not seemingly get her immediate release, even if it meant saying "Release her or else".

edwardingle, chesham

Recommended by 264 people

Update:12:15 For a flavour of what I refer to below, see the comments beneath the post by "Damocles" that has just appeared on MyT, entitled: To all the people still posting about bears...Frankly, I'm appalled and depressed. Whatever happened to that civilized nation we used to call Britain? Maybe it was just a invention of the media. Maybe it's always been a place full of mean-minded detestable folk, with chips on their shoulders about one thing or another. The difference is that they now have instant forums on which to vent their spleen. Their views would never have seen the light of day, pre-Internet, when there was competition for appearing under "Letters to the Editor".

For starters: Today's posting - or at any rate, the main offering - will be a little later than usual. There's research to be done. You see, there's something that's been bothering me these last few days as we waited anxiously for Gillian Gibbons to be released from custody and get home safely.

We all know about the demons in Sudan's society - the kind that possessed those grown men to pour out of the mosques onto the streets, wielding swords, calling for Gillian to be shot or beheaded. Those demons are not going to go away in a hurry, and the UK's foreign policy will have to take on board the reality of dealing with societies which have painted themselves into corners from which they can only watch the rest of the world go by, trapped in their 7th century mindset. No, I am more concerned about the demons it has exposed in UK society, looking at some of the comments that have appeared on message boards. There are over 5000 alone on the BBC's "Have Your Say". I shan't try to read them all, obviously, but might take every 10th comment or so, and try to gauge the spread of opinion, and see whether my hunch is correct that there is something amiss in certain people's responses, indicative of some kind of social and moral faultline in UK society - or, as J says, in human nature itself. More later.I need to chose a tag: hardhearted Britannia will have to do for now.

Comments

D&D newsblog: Gillian Gibbons safely back home: Tue 4 Dec

2007-12-04T07:58:52+01:00

Phew. That was a close call. Gillian Gibbons is now safely out of that hellhole, and will hopefully think twice before taking another job in a country with a theocratic regime, one that is able to justify genocide.

The Telegraph has wrtitten a robust editorial, entitled Sudan's grotesque stunt over Teddy teacher saying it's time to take off the gloves when dealing with the likes of Sudan.

As ever, my own take on issues is often different from that of the MSM, as will be clear on the following missive, submitted a few minutes ago:

Personally, I am far more concerned about the state of the human spirit and conscience closer to home. Some of the statements we have seen on this site condemning Ms.Gibbons, laying the blame entirely on her, even suggesting that she set out deliberately to enrich herself by intending to "sell her story" have been nothing short of nauseating. One has to question why so many have subscribed to that position. Some of it appears to be antipathy towards schoolteachers, some to expatriates who take jobs abroad, some to those who take jobs in conservative Muslim societies, or a toxic combination of all three.

What worries me is the suspicion that it is driven in some cases by a fear of confronting a repressive regime. If so, the individuals concerned, ever ready to appease or turn a blind eye to evil, will not welcome this robust editorial.

It is my understanding that the parents had known about the children's choice of name for the teddy as far back as September, shortly after Ms.Gibbons took up her position at the school. It only became an issue when a secretary at the school got into a dispute with its Director. The rest as they say is history - of the most sordid kind imaginable.

Maybe it's time for the UK government to press for an escape clause in expatriate contracts, permitting rapid exrepatriation on occasions such as this, in which Western innocence, even naïvete, collides with religion and ideology.

Comments

D&D newsblog: Changing the lyrics of the National Anthem: Mon 3 Dec

2007-12-03T13:11:42+01:00

The Telegruff has opened a "Have Your Say", inviting us for suggestions as to how we would change the lyrics of the National Anthem to suit 21st century sensibilities.

This in response to an article claiming that the second and later verses are not sufficiently "inclusive", and might give offence to Scots and other unnamed groups

Leaving aside the question as to why anyone would want to change something that is so rarely heard (I can only recall one occasion - it was a sporting event, hosted in Japan, as I recall, at which no one told the band that we only do the first verse) I feel Dreams and Daemons ought to rise to the challenge.

But there are 6 verses, dammit. So this site will today be used as my worksheet, while I tackle each verse one at a time, putting up each reworked version as and when inspiration strikes.

The first verse I consider inviolate.

Second verse: Present:

O Lord our God arise
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix
God save us all

Proposed:

O Lord our God arise
Go shame her enemies
Make them play ball
Clean up their politics
Get rid of all the hicks
Maybe try a Westminster fix
God save us all

Third verse: Present:

Thy choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour
Long may she reign
May she defend our laws
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen

Proposed:

Thy choicest gifts in store
Give her tax free, for sure
Long may she reign
May she advise those bores
To avoid stupid laws
Let's sing with heart and voice
God Save the Queen

Fourth verse: Present

Not in this land alone
For God's sake love be shown
From shore to shore
Lord make the nations see
That men should brothers be
And form one family
The world wide over

Proposed:

We'd like some fair play shown
Not just in this land alone
But globally.
Here's a good tip from me
Try to stay neighbourly
But never excessively
S'not the done thing

Fifth verse: Present

From every latent foe
From the assassins blow
God save the Queen
O'er her thine arm extend
For Britain's sake defend
Our mother, prince, and friend
God save the Queen

Proposed:

From Toe Rag, Scumbag & Co
In Bradford or Walthamstow
God save the Queen
Waste no time, apprehend
Her Maj' one must defend
Our mother, prince (whoops,gender bend!)
God Save the Queen

Sixth and final verse: Present:

Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring
May the sedition hush
And like a torrent rush
Rebellious Scots to crush
God save the Queen

Proposed:

Lord grant that Jocks feel made
Welcome, lest UK fade
Let's all be friends.
May the back-biting hush
While the black gold doth gush
Independence ain't a thing to rush !
God save the Queen.

Update: 17:54 submitted and published in its entirety on the Telegraph's Have Your Say thread (see link above):

First verse - inviolate!

O Lord our God arise
Go shame her enemies
Make them play ball
Clean up their politics
Get rid of all the hicks
Maybe try a Westminster fix
God save us all

We'd like some fair play shown
Not just in this land alone
but globally.
Here's a good tip from me
Try to stay neighbourly
But never excessively
S'not the done thing

From Toe Rag, Scumbag & Co
In Bradford or Walthamstow
God save the Queen
Waste no time, apprehend
Her Maj' one must defend
Our mother, prince (whoops, gender bend!)
God Save the Queen

Lord grant that Jocks feel made
Welcome, lest UK fade
Let's all be friends.
May the back-biting hush
While the black gold doth gush
Independence ain't a thing to rush !
God save the Queen.

Posted by ColinB on December 3, 2007 4:25 PM

Comments

D&D newsblog: Gordon Brown to get tough with spendthrift Britain: Sun 2 Dec

2007-12-02T11:25:14+01:00

I was expecting some CDs from Amazon yesterday. Instead I got a package from SW1 inside of which was a data CD. Somebody had scrawled "To Ed Balls for checking: Prime Ministerial Broadcast, first draft, D-Day 3/12/2007). Natural curiosity got the better of me, and hey, D&D has its very first scoop!

Here's a cut-and-paste:

Prime Ministerial Broadcast Monday Dec 3rd

Three months ago, when I ~~finally~~ took over from Tony Blair as Prime Minister of this great nation, I made a solemn undertaking: I promised you I would change the way that Government had been run: I would always be candid, forthright and honest about the difficulties that we as a nation face. I would never attempt to put a ~~spin~~ gloss on things.

I am taking this opportunity to demonstrate that ~~unlike my~~ I am true to my word. I consider it my duty to tell you of serious choices that I and my Ministers have been forced to make these last few days.

We in the past have been been remarkably lucky as a nation. With our North Sea oil and gas resources, with our being a world centre for finance, we have been able to weather many of the world's economic storms. Sadly that is no longer the case. North Sea output reached its peak several years ago - revenues have since been steadily declining. Whilst Britain, especially the City of London, is still preeminent as a financial centre, there is presently a growing crisis of confidence in the loans and mortgages industry, with serious knock-on effects in the markets and exchanges.

The fact is that we as a nation have been living beyond our means. Most of us are only too aware of this, having built up record levels of private debt, currently running at over 1 trillion pounds. That is some £50,000 for every household in the country. Our commitments abroad, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, have placed a further burden on our reserves, even though we've cut back to the bone. The so-called credit crunch that I mentioned earlier has played havoc with our leading financial institutions, requiring underpinning support from the Treasury to mitigate the worst effects - on depositors, indeed on the entire viability of our mortgage providers.

The strain on the Exchequer has become acute. Now is the time for belt-tightening, and some rigid self-discipline, both from my Ministers, whom I have asked today to cut back immediately on spending plans, and upon you, as responsible citizens. I understand that past debts cannot be instantly repaid, but we have to stop taking on new commitments immediately.

To assist that,I am, with immdiate effect, re-instituting credit controls. The details need not concern us now, but one noticeable difference you will find on your next credit card statement is a requirement to repay 7.5% of the outstanding loan, or £50, whichever is the smaller.

That alone will not prevent disruption to our economy in the months ahead. Immediate measures are needed to control spending in the short term. This brings me reluctantly to the final part of this message. In consultation with my Ministers we have decided, after much agonizing and soul-searching to ~~abolish~~ ~~cancel~~ curtail this year's Christmas. Yes, it's only 19 shopping days away, but that, I regret to say, is the problem. In those 19 days, billions of pounds of debt could be incurred that would leave this nation of ours crippled and incapable of meeting its obligations in the New Year.

We have decided that Christmas, this year, will be a simple celebration of the birth of our Good Lord. There will be no expensive presents, not wanton spending on food and drink, no wild parties. Instead we will all of us rediscover the joy of simple observance of the Season of Good Cheer, the kind that our previous generations enjoyed.Call me ~~a dour Scot~~ old-fashioned if you like, but there's merit in the solid virtues of our forefathers. Goods that are presently in the shops will be diverted to needy countries as part of my new GB1 aid programme to Africa and other needy parts of the world which I shall be announcing in due course. I hope that my plan will do for Africa what the Marshall plan did for Europe.

We have today created a new temporary Ministry for the ~~Abolition~~ Curtailment of Christmas 2007. It will be headed by my capable colleague Harriet Harman, who has agreed to give up her role of Deputy PM. Indeed that position has been abolished, since she is keen to show that she shares the pain that she will be inflicting on you in the coming days.

The first act of her Ministry will be to send every household in the country a set of Christmas ration books, printed I hasten to add on recycled paper. These will contain perforated coupons that permit a purchase of Christmas gifts. They will have a total face value of £75 for adults, and £10 for each child beneath the age of 16. There will be a ceiling of £200 maximum for a single household. There will be no attempt to restrict these books to any particular religious or ethnic group. Nor will there be any attempt to control religious festivals other than Christmas, on advice from the Attorney General and the Chief Constable Sir Ian Blair.

Most of the vouchers will be valid for use at supermarkets and other food outlets, gifts shops, off-licences, restaurants, hotels etc. You will recognize approved outlets by the ~~John Prescott~~ Lenny Henry Santa Claus logo. (Thanks for the suggestion, Ed. Please confirm whether he's agreed or not)

Now I know that these measures will come as a shock to some of you. We have grown accustomed to Christmas as a time for wild splurges, financial recklessness, gluttony and inebriation.I myself went through a brief period of levity. But let's be honest with ourselves. Have we not immediately regretted this wanton self-indulgence in the New Year? I believe that the great majority will see the sense in what I am announcing today, and recognizing the challenges we face, as a nation, will accept these measures with true British forbearance, cheerfulness and grit. I know I can rely on the older ones among you who recall the sacrifices made in wartime, which eventually allowed us to survive(? there's a better word, what is it Ed ?) as a nation. I call on the younger generation to prove it is not a lazy, feckless, self indulgent group of ne'er do wells such it has grown accustomed to being called.

Now I know some of you have already done your shopping, and there is nothing I can do about this. ~~However, you'd be unwise to think~~ For those who are having to cut back in the light of these changes, there are some consolations.

My Chancellor, Alistair Darling is presently engaged in a programme to rescue Northern Rock. Indeed, that is one of the reasons for our present dire straits as I mentioned earlier. In the new year, each household will receive a ~~modest~~ generous portfolio of Northern Rock shares. Whilst the value of these cannot as yet be determined precisely, it will not be less than £25. Any shortfall below that value will be made up with new Government-issue savings stamps. Yes, older ones among you will recognize what I refer to. We are re-instituting National Savings Stamps, which you will be able to buy at your post office, ~~those of you that still have one~~, with face values of £1 and £5. These you may recall used to be perforated like postage stamps with an adhesive backing, and you stuck them in a special blue book. They had charming pictures of Prince Charles, Princess Anne when they were were very little. When you had saved enough, you took them back to the post office and redeemed them for National Savings Certificates. I want Britain to return to being a thrifty nation!

I have been able to give only a brief outline of the special measures in store. There will be a more detailed statement from the Chancellor tomorrow in the House of Commons. He will be mentioning my other special measures needed to make good the loss of tax revenue from curtailed Christmas sales.To dispel rumours,let me say immediately that the Christmas Tree tax will be a one-off measure. I think most families will be able to find the extra ~~£7.50~~ tenner. The new Internet Connection Tax in the new year will be permanent, but if you are honest with yourselves, you must have known it was coming, sooner or later. Those of you who have mastered how to use it, have had a free ride so far.

I shall now go to back my family, and together we shall look out jigsaw puzzles, ~~playing cards~~ and board games. We will mix up flour-and-water paste with which to make our own Christmas decorations. It's quite easy you know, you just cut narrow strips of paper, and join them up in loops. The Government will be sending a leaflet to every home, giving simple illustrations on how it's done.
We shall also be making arrangments for a distribution of free Utility Christmas stockings in ~~poorer~~ economically-deprived neighbourhoods, together with instructions from Fire Brigade on safety considerations, especially in homes that still have coal fires and chimneys. (Can I still say "coal", Ed ? Smokeless fuel seems a bit of a mouthful)

I have asked Her Majesty to keep her Christmas broadcast short this year, and to focus on themes like thrift, economy, making-do, a stitch-in-time etc. She has also agreed to have half the back garden of Buckingham Palace ploughed up, and turned into a Model Allotment, as part of a joint project with the BBC, to be broadcast in the New Year with Sir Alan Titchmarsh.

(Ed, what do you think about it so far ? Remind me, has that Titchmarsh got his gong yet, or is that on our next list for the Palace ?)

Comments

D'n'D newsblog:Turkish budget airline plane crash:Fri Nov30

2007-11-30T18:26:27+01:00

Sky News report: "A Turkish airliner has crashed near the town of Isparta in central Turkey on Friday, killing all 56 people on board."
See also BBC report.

"Atlasjet is a privately owned, low-fare Turkish airline run by two Turkish tour operators, Etstur and Oger Tours.
Atlasjet has 15 planes for domestic and international flights."

Yet when you look at the pictures, there's a large section of fuselage that appears intact, and no obvious signs of fire.

So how come there were no survivors ?

The g forces of sudden deceleration can kill, certainly, but I can't help wondering if this is not an example of a weak point in certain aircraft, perhaps all. It's to do with the anchorage of passenger seats to the floor of the aircraft. If weak, then the seats can rip from the attachment points, slide forward, and then telescope together at the front, crushing passengers. One wonders if passenger aircraft are under-engineered - to save on weight - on the grounds that crashes are rare events. Maybe - but who wants to travel in a death-trap - one that gives virtually zero chance of survival in the event of a forced landing?

Comments

D&D newsblog: Unity High School Khartoum: Fri Nov 30

2007-11-30T17:59:50+01:00

I've just been reading the BBC's report about rioting in Khartoum. Mobs are out on the street, protesting that Gillian Gibbon's sentence was too lenient. Some are waving knives and what look like scimitars, demanding that the poor lady be shot. The expression "screaming dervishes" springs to mind.

The report mentions the name of Mrs.Gibbons' school in passing: Unity High School, Khartoum. It has a website - here's a "snapshot" of the home page.

Here's what the site says about the School:

Where is Unity High School?

Unity High School is located in Central Khartoum, Sudan, less than two kilometres from the River Nile. Its gardens form an oasis of escape from the hot, dusty atmosphere of a desert city.

What is Unity High School?

Unity High School is an independent, co-educational, multi-racial school that serves the needs of pupils from various backgrounds whose parents have chosen a British -style education for them. Founded in 1902, it has always, as its name implies, been open to pupils of all ethnic groups and all faiths.

The School broadly teaches the English National Curriculum (with the I.P.C. also in Lower School), with local modifications to cover Arabic language and Islamic and Christian Religious Studies, leading to IGCSE Examinations at Key Stage 4 (Average IGCSE results over the past three years: A*- C grade passes = 89%). Special Educational Needs are supported and there is an EFL department and Language Support in the Upper School.

The school roll of around 750 pupils is roughly evenly split between boys and girls and Lower and Upper School classes. Class sizes vary but are always less than 30, and much work is done in smaller groups. The School enjoys the highest reputation and admission is by competitive examination.

The School is administered by a Council whose members represent the different Christian denominations found in the city. The School is a non-profit making, charitable institution financed by school fees and donations.

Postscript: Note carefully the last-but-one sentence. It's not difficult to see why this particular school was targeted by the zealots: "The School is administered by a Council whose members represent the different Christian denominations found in the city."
We're told it was a secretary employed by the School who reported Gillian Gibbons to the religious authorities. The School's response ? She was immediately sacked. To think they call themselves Christians ... Is that how the School has managed to survive these last 105 years - by abject capitulation at the first sign of trouble? Nope, I take that back. It's easy for us to talk.

Update Mon 3 Dec "British teacher pardoned by Sudan President" (Times headline) is the welcome news this morning.
The articles provides some more insights on how this unfortunate woman found herself the target for so much abuse. Here's part of the above Times article:

Ms Gibbons was arrested last Sunday after a secretary at Unity High School complained that she had named a teddy bear Mohamed after Islam’s holiest prophet. Teachers said that parents had known about the name since September without anyone taking offence. They insist that it was an innocent mistake being exploited as part of a dispute between the secretary and the school’s director.

Seems to me that Unity School sacked the wrong person! Bringing one's employer (which would include staff) into disrepute is surely a sackable offence!

Comments

D'n'D newsblog: Potboiler: Fri 30 Nov

2007-11-30T12:48:25+01:00

Today's post is just a potboiler.

Please feel free to talk quietly among yourselves.

Comments

D'n'D newsblog: sitemeters, Mars exploration, Mr.Bean:Thur 29 Nov

2007-11-29T11:21:34+01:00

Update 23:30 Mr.Bean

Once in a while, something is said in the Commons that strikes a chord, one that stays in the mind for all time. Denis Healey said that being attacked by Sir Geoffrey Howe was "like being savaged by a dead sheep". Priceless!

Vince Cable, the Lib Dem's acting leader, is the latest candidate for the bon mot Oscars, with his put-down of the accident-prone, scandal-surrounded Gordon Brown. He had "slipped from Stalin to Mr.Bean in a matter of months" he said. Nice one, Vince.

Which reminds me of something really odd. Mr.Bean works brilliantly for me on the small screen, whether at home, cross-channel ferries, airlines wherever, even on repeat showings. But if you were to ask me what's the worst film I have ever seen in my entire life, I would nominate Mel Smith's "Bean: The Ultimate Disaster movie" (1997) without a moment's hesitation.

Strange, isn't it? Bean's substitution of affected upper-class twittish chuckling and gurgling etc for speech on TV is fine. But to create a character who appears first as a verbally-challenged museum attendant, and then send him to America in the guise of an academic, who simply seems super-cretinous to his hosts from the very first encounter, and who continues to issue strange strangulated sounds for the next 90 minutes, is really just more than I could bear. Rarely have I ever felt a non-stop cringe of acute embarrassment, and just wanted the floor of the cinema to open and swallow me up.

What's your worst film of all time?

********
Update 21:45

What do folk think about a manned expedition to Mars ?

I've been on websites that have discussed the pros and cons, and generally got shouted down by the "to boldly go" tendency for suggesting that the billions might be better spent here on Earth, eg making the deserts bloom. "We've been to the Moon", they say, "so the next logical destination is Mars. It's man's destiny", they say, "to range further and further afield, because that is what Man does, and has been doing for thousands of years.

In vain have I argued, firstly, that space is a highly hostile environment for man, and that the best space crafts, or the best space suits, offer at best partial protection from damaging cosmic rays. Secondly, suppose we get to Mars, inhospitable though it is, with what is described as a thin atmosphere ( but which with an atmospheric pressure less than 1% of Earth's is a near vacuum). What then ? Where's the next step ? Unless there is some quantum leap in propulsion technology, and putting astronauts into hibernation, there is no forseeable prospect of travelling outside of the Solar System. A journey to the nearest star is probably a 10 year round-trip, even if one could get up to a cruising speed of half the speed of light. And who's to say that Alpha Centauri has any habitable planets anyway ?

Realistically, then, there is no next step. Mars is the end of the line. Why? The two planets between ourselves and the Sun are far too hot to sustain life as we know it. The planets beyond Mars are for the most part gas giants and/or intensely cold, being so distant from the sun. So cold, in fact, that the term "gas" is something of a misnomer, since much of the gas is in the liquid or solid state.

There are the moons of the outer planets, and some may be worth exploring to see whether they have lifeforms. Indeed, the search for life, any form of life in the Solar System, is crucial to science. While failure to find life says nothing about whether life exists outside our Solar System, the discovery of even the most primitive life, living or extinct, on Mars or elsewhere would increase hugely the odds of there being life elsewhere, with the possibility perhaps of there being Earth-like planets on which Zogians are presently zogging away on their laptop computers.

So for the forseeable future, Mars is the only planet that is remotely Earth-like, and is thus seen as must-see destination.
I say "Earth-like": one tiny tear in one's pressurised space suit, and one would expand like a balloon and go pop. Hardly my idea of a hospitable planet, fearing one might get hit by a micrometeorite that punctures the outfit !

So is it worth spending tens, probably hundreds of billions of dollars/euros whatever getting to the last frontier? Colonisation is probably not just decades away, but centuries.

Is there anything that astronauts can realistically achieve that instruments and robots can't ?

********

Update: 11:50 Mars Exploration
Here's a lighthearted introduction to a topic which is, in fact, one of concern to this blogger, as you will see later.

The BBC's website is taking a long, well longish, hard look at the practicalities and cost of a manned mission to Mars. It illustrates the feature with an artist's impression of future colonists at work.
Here's the picture. The question I would ask is this: what is the spaceman doing ? And is that R2D2* I see scuttling around among the boulders in the background? What is he/it doing or looking for ?

* apologies, I had him mixed up earlier with the taller, wellspoken one who's a bit, you know ...

********
For starters: Sitemeters

Hooray! Following a late-night delve into the Help files, I finally have the sitemeter where it should be, in the margin, where it now monitors all the comings and goings. Up till now, it's been stuck on current posts only, because there seemed nowhere else to put it. Now it's in the margin, it tracks all those Google searches that bring folk to one's archives.

It's a bit sobering to write a post critical of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, and find Dreams and Daemons is fourth in the list of returns. Today, I even had a visitor from Procter and Gamble, their Russian arm no less who had searched under Duracell+ Skywalker and been directed to a recent post on Star Wars (end of thread). I have just done my own Google search, and find that Duracell are now owned by P&G. So don't forget, you new owners of that splendid, fit-for-purpose product, I will hold you to that bottle of vintage champers if you use my idea of failing non-Duracell batteries in Darth Vader's light sabre for advertising purposes.

BTW: I rarely say anything complimentary on this site about products,but Duracell are in a class of their own. On occasions when we've been forced to buy other brands, we've usually found ourselves replacing them after a few months, sometimes weeks.In contrast, we have two clocks in the house that have had the same Duracell batteries for well over 18 months. I seem to recall Duracell was at the top of a list of Britain's favourite companies not so long ago. Nope, all you cynics out there - I was not paid to say that.

Now here's a possible breach of internet etiquette (aka "netiquette", not a term I like), but it's well intentioned. There's someone who visits this site almost every day with a location in western France (famed for its wine, hint hint), with a computer set up for English. Would you consider leaving a comment, mystery man or woman, even just a one-off, if only to sate one's natural sense of curiosity? Actually, it's so I know exactly where to stick the pin on my map entitled "World's Vanishing Masochists".

Comments

D'n'D newsblog: Golden Compass premiere, Philip Pullman, Wed 28 Nov

2007-11-28T13:25:38+01:00

For starters

Yesterday saw the premiere of "The Golden Compass", which is the first part of the Philip Pullman trilogy "His Dark Materials" . The first book in the series, which the author called "Northern Lights" is the subject of today's senile musings.

I've lost count of the number of books recently that I've started to read, and have put down unfinished. It's a rare author who can keep my attention to the very end. By that reckoning, anything written as a trilogy should be a complete turn-off. But by a happy accident of nature I am surprisingly well disposed to the trilogy. It was the result of finding myself in Ridge Hospital on the outskirts of Accra as a young man, struck down with a mysterious, and undiagnosed disease, that left me semi-paralysed for the best part of a week. One of my visitors was Mike G, the Head of English at the school where I taught, He said he was reading a trilogy called Lord of the Rings, had finished the first part, and thought I might prefer it in preference to the customary bunch of grapes.

On his next visit a few days later, not only had I finished it, I was pleading to be given Book 2, which Mike himself was still reading

Apologies for this long introduction, but I am doing in a sense exactly what J.R.R. Tolkien, Philip Pullman did: carefully preparing the ground, even at the risk of losing a reader or two, or, in their case, millions of potential readers, because long after reading LOTR, and re-reading at biennial intervals, I ran into people who's attitude to the book puts one in mind of the old Guinness ad: I've never tried it, because I don't like it. Indeed, I seem to recall a book by that bearded William Rushton fellow called "Bored of the Rings" that was pitched at determined non-readers of LOTR.

So what's all this got to do with "His Dark Materials" ? I first encountered the title about 3 years ago: it was at or near the top of a list of someone's greatest literary feats of the 20th century, and seeing it described as a trilogy did not put me off, for the reasons stated . Nor did the brief reference to it being perceived in some quarters as anti-Church, far from it. After all - who was it who, in 1964 or thereabouts, as Chairman of Birmingham University Humanist Group, accepted the invitation of a local vicar to give his side of the story from the pulpit of his Anglican church one lunchtime, and may have left that very Christian gentleman pondering the wisdom of that decision, given the response he got from his parishioners immediately afterwards, in my presence to boot over the tea and sausage rolls.

I was given the trilogy two Christmases ago, and launched into the first book. I managed to finish it, with some effort, and the other two remain where they are, still pristine in the box.

Watching the news last night, with the author defending his work against charges that it is an underhand way of promoting atheism to teenagers and young adults I, began to analyse my feeling about this landmark work of semi science- fiction fantasy.

However, I had already decided, earlier in the day, to re-read "Northern Lights",aka "The Golden Compass" but this time, slowly, aloud, as if reading to a bed-ridden aunt. Why ? All will be explained later in the day.

Update: 18:10
Here is an extract from Chapter 2. It gives an example of the author's somewhat uncompromising approach to stamping an authenticity on his parallel universe. Anything in bold is my addition, to make it easier for those not familiar the the book.

The Master (baddie) was silent for a while before saying ,"Yes perhaps I should have done. The alethiometer (magic device) warns of appalling consequences if Lord Asriel pursues this research. Apart from anything else the child (Lyra, heroine) will be drawn in, and I want to keep her safe as long as possible."

"Is Lord Asriel's (Asriel = goodie) business anything to do with this new initiative of the Consistorial Court of Discipline? The what-do-they-call-it: the Oblation Board?"

"Lord Asriel - no, no. Quite the reverse. The Oblation Board isn't entirely answerable to the Consistorial Court, either. It's a semi-private initiative; it's being run by someone who has no love of Lord Asriel. Between them both, Charles, I tremble. "

The Librarian was silent in his turn. Ever since Pope John Calvin had moved the seat of the Papacy to Geneva and set up the Consistorial Court of Discipline, the Church's power over every aspect of life had been absolute. The Papacy itself had been abolished after Calvin's death, and a tangle of courts, colleges and councils, collectively known as the Magisterium, had grown up in its place. These agencies were not always united; sometimes a bitter rivalry grew up between them . For a large part of the previous century, the most powerful had been the College of Bishops, but in recent years the Consistorial Court of Discipline had taken its place as the most active and the most feared of all the Church's bodies.

But it was always possible for independent agencies to grow up under the protection of another part of the Magisterium, and the Oblation Board, which the Librarian had referred to, was one of these. The Librarian didn't not know much about it, but he disliked and feared what he'd heard , and he completely understood the Master's anxiety.

Updated 20:00 Thanks for your comments so far. This final section would have come sooner, but for the complete loss of the first draft when I tried submitting some 90 minutes ago.

Well, that passage rather put me in mind of those dessertspoonsful of cod liver oil I had as a child: "take this -it will do you good". Did the author really have to provide so much bureaucratic detail, quite so soon? Where were his publishers? Everybody knows that the best novels have been through a critical mill, painful maybe to the authors, but emerging better at the end for it.

Listening to the news last night, the main complaint from the US Catholics and other critics from organized religion would appear to be that Book 1 is a thin end of the wedge - that the anti-Church, indeed anti-God message that is hammered home in the final book is not quite so in-your-face in the first book. The Golden Compass, itself watered-down from the book we are told, is thus seen as literary and anti-religion Trojan horse for penetrating the homes of good Christian folk, whose children will then be assaulted later with a more hard-core atheist message. The author himself vigorously denied that on camera . I forget his precise words, but the gist was that his book was an adventure in fantasy, intended to make the world a more interesting place for children (it's coming back to me now). More to the point, the film's scriptwriters have toned down a lot of the anti-Church passages of the book, they say. But that's what I don't understand: Book 1 did not come across to me as anti-Church at all - it was more science fiction, starting with the first reference to that "Dust". The religion simply seemed a counterpoint to the more imaginative science fiction. That is why I am patiently re-reading it, before making a belated start on the second and third parts of the trilogy.

It is essential to read the first chapters slowly - pausing to take in the wealth of detail (see above). That is what I failed to do, on first reading. Result: if you had asked me a week ago what impression Northern Lights had left on me, the answer would be thus: a favourable one as regards the invention of those daemons. They create an entirely new connection in one's mind between the world of humans and those of animals - one that basically kicks Darwinism into the long grass, and replaces it with a kind of mystical and vital duality - survival of the most successful synergies.

However, the main narrative of the book, much of it set in the Northern wastes, left me cold -literally - with all those harsh Nordic names of people and places, with bears that talk.

But the overall impression was inescapably bleak - with the idea of grownups inflicting frightful cruelty on kidnapped children - the wilful separation from their personal daemon as part of a dastardly plot to rule the world, resulting in their certain death.

At least the book does what it says on the label - dark materials indeed - so no one can complain of being deceived. I shall attempt to finish the trilogy - this side of Christmas I hope - but it's perhaps through a sense of duty:the entire trilogy is not to be judged - or avoided- based purely on one's experience with Northern Lights.

How will the film be received I wonder ? After Lord of the Rings I suspect it may seem a damp squib, despite the special effects. I suspect that the power of daemons to excite the imagination when encountered in print will not translate so easily to the big screen, where furry or feathered animals tend to look a bit jerky and comical. We shall see.

Comments

Dreams and daemons newsblog: The Telegraph, 007 and MI6 HQ, Tue 27 Nov

2007-11-27T09:43:42+01:00

There's an item on the Telegraph's homepage this morning about our real-life 007s. In an interview, they want to reassure us (or more probably foreign governments) that they don't really have licences to kill.

The article tells us what we already know, namely that the modern-day James Bond has his office in that Lego-brick building at Vauxhall Cross on the banks of the Thames. Just case you have forgotten what it looks like, the Telegraph sub-eds proceed to illustrate it with a picture of .... oops, MI5 HQ at Millbank!

MI5 HQ at Millbank - briefly mentioned, but not the main focus of the story

This one would have matched the headline better: MI6 HQ at Vauxhall Cross

I don't know. One just can't get the staff these days. Or there again, MI6 might have drafted in the Telegrah as part of disinformation campaign, and D&D has gone and ruined it. Oh well, that's my chances blown of a place in the New Year's Honours list.

Comments

Dreams and daemons newsblog:1. A A Gill; 2. Inflammatory journalism. Mon 26 Nov

2007-11-26T11:13:28+01:00

Update: 21:30 That disgraceful scene at the Leatherhead public swimming pool (but were the facts accurately reported ?)

We constantly hear the cry these days for someone to be "named and shamed". What is implied by "shaming" ? If it's a dodgy motor repair shop, or a crooked estate agent, the bad publicity hopefully hits them where it hurts - in the pocket, or the bank balance, through loss of custom.

But suppose it's an individual member of the public who is to be "named and shamed" ? What is the likely or intended outcome there ? Is it intended that the individual will be sent to Coventry, ignored in the street, or shunned at pubs, clubs ? Suppose there are children in the family? Will they too suffer from the opprobrium being heaped on the head of the household or his wife ? What about their personal security ? Do they need to board up their windows, or seal up their letter box against unwelcome intrusions ?

All these thoughts were running through my head when I read that Telegraph article the other day about the bad scene at the Leatherhead swimming pool.

First, let me say straightaway that if injured servicemen were indeed "jeered" at the swimming pool that I consider those responsible to be complete scumbags, who should have been ejected from the pool and suspended or banned till they mended their ways. But "named and shamed" in the press ? With what consequences, one wonders, given that "worst case scenarios" have a habit of getting worse, with each passing year.

Usually I'm content to provide a link to a topic under discussion, but in this instance the devil is in the detail, so the entire article is reproduced.

I would invite readers to look at the title, then the first sentence, and then read the article to see whether it supports the emotive words you see at the beginning. Note also the quoting of someone calling for the alleged abusers to be "named and shamed".

Disabled veterans jeered at swimming pool

By Thomas Harding, Lucy Cockcroft and Brendan Carlin

Last Updated: 1:47am GMT 25/11/2007

Injured soldiers who lost their limbs fighting for their country have been driven from a swimming pool training session by jeering members of the public.
The men, injured during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, were taking part in a rehabilitation session at a leisure centre, when two women demanded they be removed from the pool. They claimed that the soldiers "hadn't paid" and might scare the children.

The incident has sparked widespread condemnation. Adml Lord Boyce, a former head of the Armed Forces, said last night the women should be "named and shamed".

"These people are beneath contempt and everything should be done to get their names and publish them in the press," he said. "It is contemptible that people who have given up their limbs for their country should be so abused when they are trying to get fit again."

It comes after calls for the public to do more to welcome home troops back from tours of duty and to recognise the bravery of those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The unpleasant scenes broke out at Leatherhead Leisure Centre in Surrey when the wounded veterans, who are at Headley Court Military Hospital, had to use the 25-metre public pool because the hydro-pool at the defence rehabilitation centre is not big enough for swimming.

The servicemen were about to begin their weekly swimming therapy in closed-off lanes when they were verbally abused by the swimmers.

One woman in her 30s was said to be infuriated by the lane closures saying the soldiers did not deserve to be there when she had paid.

It was also reported that others complained that limbless servicemen were scaring children at the centre.
The atmosphere was said to be so tense that the soldiers' instructors removed them.

Charles Murrin, 79, a Navy veteran who saw the incident, said: "The woman said the men do not deserve to be in there and that she pays to come in the pool and they don't. I spoke to the instructor in the changing room afterwards and he was livid."

It is not the first time that Headley Court neighbours have been accused of poor behaviour.

There was uproar earlier this year after residents objected to planning permission to convert a home into a six-suite hostel for injured soldiers' families to stay in. The local council later approved the building work.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "We are disappointed that a small number of people objected to the closure of swimming lanes so that patients of Headley Court could use them."

This topic subsequently became the subject of lively debate on MyT: see Dogblog's post.

This blogger joined the fray when it seemed like a lynch mob fever was developing. The question I would ask is whether the Telegaph reporters were acting responsibly in the way they reported the story. We are told almost everyone's version of what occurred, except for the two women themselves. They were given no opportunity to give their side of the story, yet we then read of calls for them to be named and shamed.

A fine line exists in society between law and order on the one hand, and mob rule on the other. Is it just me, or did that Telegraph write-up carry some echoes of the worst kind of rabble-rousing tabloid journalism ?

For starters: A A Gill

Diligent readers of this blog may recall that I had a pop at A A Gill here a couple of weeks ago. It was for a highly floral, overly embroidered introduction he wrote to a travelogue piece in the Sunday Times.

I don't suppose that a writer of his calibre would be unduly bothered by what the gadflies of the blogosphere say about his weekly offerings. In any case, it must be an enormous burden having millions eagerly await each weekly offering, slavering in anticipation of finding yet more memorable and witty phrases in abundance.

On the occasions when he succeeds, and succeeds brilliantly, I think it's only fair to celebrate those examples of his dazzling literary skills. I refer especially to ones that are not mere technical wordsmith knowhow, but show a confidence in exposing human pretension and foibles.

Judi Dench (left) and Eileen Atkins (right) in Sunday Times graphic

Here was his introduction yesterday to his take on the new costume drama series, Elizabeth Gaskell's "Cranford" on BBC:

"I have never read Cranford, and, just between the two of us, neither have you. It's on our list, though, and has been here since we were 18 and first discovered we had a list. Everywhere else in the world, literate people have a list of books they have read: only the English have a list of books they haven't read. Like an embarrassing line of intimates hanging out the back of your literary presumption, Mrs Gaskell is a large bra, right at the top of our unread laundry."

Priceless!

Unfortunately I missed the first episode of "Cranford". Actually, that's not strictly true. Sitting up here in my mezzanine, I can always hear the soundtrack - J tunes into every period drama, she being a literary type who will later pronounce on whether the playwright has been faithful to the book.

I can even get a glimpse or two of the screen if I edge over a bit into a neck-cricking position. But I enjoy reading A A Gill's write ups on programmes that I have never seen, and never had any intention of watching, even if I suspect they are the high profile ones that A A Gill feels duty-bound to survey.

Part of my antipathy to tv, video, cinema is having a low attention span. I also tend to look at costume drama through highly sceptical eyes. Did they really use that particular expression in those days, are they guessing at what the garden looked like, is that a garden centre tag I see on that clematis etc ?

There's another more recent factor to consider. Everyone who buys a wide-screen tv says it transforms one's experience, though whether it would be enough to drag me away from the adrenaline-high of real-time, interactive blogging is something else.

Actually, we were on the point of splashing out on a widescreen tv recently at out local Darty. But first we wanted a fault corrected on a laptop on which some of the keys periodically go dead. It was just out of guarantee. They kept it for something like a month, only to tell us that spare parts were no longer available, despite it being a common make of Compaq. That kind of experience puts me of buying electrical consumer goods, I'm afraid.

Postscript to this stream-of-semi-consciousness post: A A Gill was effusive in his praise of a particular actress in Cranford, namely Eileen Atkins. The man's existentialism simply poured out:

So, I sat down to Cranford(Sunday, BBC1) girded and gimlet-eyed, my modernist cudgel ready to bludgeon it to a silly pulp. Then, in the very first minute, Eileen Atkins gave me a look – just for a moment, a sideways look, more a glance, really, but it had such depth of character, such promise of interest and intimations of stories to come of hardship and parsimony, of steadfastness, piety, worldliness and a little kindness, all packed together in that one tiny gesture, like an apothecary’s spice box – and I realised it was all up. I was hooked, gaffed, netted and filleted.

Atkins could have me for her tea with tartare sauce. She is the cur’s cods, the terrier’s testicles, the business.

I will go further and declare that Atkins is the finest actor appearing anywhere in the world right now. There is, in her performance, a miraculous ability to project a complex subtext or emotion and motivation in her face and posture, while delivering words that seem real and immediate but, simultaneously, tell us something quite different. With the merest tightening of a lip or flickering of an eye, she raises doubts, opens lines of plot and is able to hold and impart contradictory emotions clearly and profoundly. To be able to do this isn’t just talent or craft or practice, it is an intense sensitivity, an insight into the dilemmas of the human spirit. She is an era-defining actress. A A Gill Sunday Times 25 Nov 2007

I resolved there and then to force myself to watch episode 2, but just as it started I became hooked on some particular blogspat, despite J saying "she's on, come now if you want to see her".

You'll never guess. I finally went downstairs, briefly laid eyes on Eileen Atkins, whose character then proceeded to climb a flight of stairs, and collapse in the bedroom, dead as the proverbial doornail. Doh! That was it - she had gone, written out, if one assumes there are no flashbacks! I don't think 19th century novelists went in much for flashbacks.

Now I shall have to wait for the inevitable repeat to judge whether A A Gill's superlatives were justified or not - but it's still a pleasure to see a top notch critic being prepared to heap wholesome praise on someone who gives a stunning performance. That's one more reason why I need that widescreen tv : it's the actors and actresses who can take one's mind off the details off the set, and assist with that willing suspension of disbelief.

Comments

Dreams and Daemons on Ruth Lawrence, braid theory,Sun Nov 25

2007-11-25T12:13:05+01:00

Apologies for the delay in finishing yesterday's story. I was saying goodbye to all my regular playmates on MyT. "Lostsoul" has now joined other pixellated stardust in the Great Beyond, along with my previous cyber-manifestations (or infestations as some might say) - Westlondoner, The Truth Will Out, Richard of Orlean, Richard on Orleans, ColinB (I think that's all of them). I now need to think of another expendable throw-away identity that can be thrust into the MyT bearpit ...

Back to the subject of Ruth Lawrence, and what she's currently doing (see yesterday's post). Well, she's something big in braid theory it would seem.

No, it's not a crochet pattern - this is "braid theory"

I shall strenuously resist the temptation to suggest that Associate Professor Ruth Lawrence of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is compensating for having missed all those home economics lessons at school, especially needlework. So what's braid theory ? More to the point, is it her stretching her formidable intellect ?

I'm personally not acquainted with this esoteric branch of mathematics. Perhaps I ought to consult with my old classmate, Robert Vaughan, even if I have only recently forgiven him for sneaking up behind me in Mr.Tanner's class and giving me a karate chop across the nose ...

Bob Vaughan FRS is, or was, a big cheese in the world of number theory. He's the kind of guy who gets headlines for calculating pi to a record number of decimal places.

My own research achievements (biochemistry and nutrition) are at a lowlier level, but there's one thing I learned early on - it doesn't matter how bright you are - it's vital to choose an area of research that is "open-ended", ie one in which a chance discovery can open up an entirely new area of investigation. Looking at the (admittedly) few words written about braid theory in wikipedia, I get the impression - I may be wrong- that the area is too circumscribed, too much of a specialised backwater, one that does not have sufficient connections with the mainstream of maths. I've known a small number of academics who have done the unthinkable - abandoned "their" area of expertise mid-career, and embarked on something entirely new, and cutting edge. Sometimes they have succeeded in the new area, sometimes not, but they all say the same thing - "I'm so glad I got out of such-and-such - it was so limiting."

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Dreams and daemons newsblog: Sat 24 Nov

2007-11-24T14:37:07+01:00

For starters

Child prodigies
Some months ago, on the Old Dreams and Daemons site, I posted on the subject of a clever young lass who posts to My Telegraph. I had expressed surprise that after putting up some articulate posts, she calmly announced she was just 13, and thought this was no big deal.

Well, I forgotten the precise chronology, but recall contacting Shane Richmond, asking what was MyT's policy on minors joining in the general fray, with other bloggers perhaps unaware that they were in debate with someone barely into their teens, and whether MyT ought to have a flag or something to signal a minor.

As far as one can tell, nothing has been done, and the issue of the young lady in question reappeared yesterday on MyT. First, she put up a post, entitled "I honestly am" bemoaning the fact that some were treating her differently on account of her age. In fact there's been little condescension that I have seen, except on occasions when she posts something that is highly provocative, or perhaps,insensitive towards particular bloggers who could be anywhere in this big wide world. Yesterday was a case in point: she posted on the subject of "arrogant America", and immediately her age became cited as an issue.

I'm not relating all this to re-address the age issue - that's been raised, nothing has been done, and yesterday's pointed exchanges were in a sense inevitable, and distracting from the main issue of whether America does get backs up with its actions around the globe.

No, it's a side issue I want to pick up on now, and may come back to later today or tomorrow, when I've had time to do some research. In passing the young lady (now 14) volunteered the information that she was receiving all her education at home, from her father, and listed the exams for which she was being coached.

Uh uh, I thought. Another Ruth Lawrence, or that other child prodigy who went up to university early, with her limpet-like father in tow. Sorry if my detachment on this issue is beginning to slip, but I do have quite strong opinions on this matter of "Dad knows best"(it's invariably Dad) that over-ride issues of parental freedom.

Our of interest, I went to Google to catch up on Ruth Lawrence. She, you may recall, obtained her bachelor's degree in maths at Oxford at the tender age of 13, achieving, would you believe it, the highest score for her peer group.

One wondered how this precocious talent would translate in the world of research and scholarship.

Well, she's now 36, with two young children, with a post at an Israeli university. But she's not a full professor. In the Israeli scheme of things, which appears to be a mix of UK and US, she's an Associate Professor, ahead of a Senior Lecturer, but not yet a full one.

OK, she's taken off time for motherhood, but I would have expected an exceptional genius to have won a Chair at, say 25, or 30 at the latest. Personal chairs, with no Head of Department responsibilities, are not that difficult to come by these days. So why hasn't she gained one?

Then there are the general issues: is it right that talented children are forced like hothouse plants ?

If it's a parent who is doing the forcing, what are their reasons for abandoning jobs to become home tutors? Why is it usually a father, pushing a daughter, and rarely, if ever, a mother forcing a son ?

More later ....

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Dreams and daemons newsblog: Fri 23 Nov

2007-11-23T10:36:43+01:00

Squandered taxpayers' money

Update: 14:10

Have you noticed how it often takes a crisis in Government to find out what really goes on?

For several years now we have learned about billions of pounds being spent in Whitehall on IT projects, often on highly questionable projects, like putting all our medical records on computers. As often as not, we then learn the project has been ditched at the last minute, which means thousands of IT people laughing all the way to the bank. Where does all the money go, one may ask ?

There's an item that has just appeared in the Telegraph that provides a clue.

£5,000 would have made HMRC discs safe

By Christopher Hope, Home Affairs Correspondent

The child benefits records scandal could have been avoided if Customs officials had spent £5,000 on removing bank account details from the computer discs that later went missing, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Emails showed that HMRC officials were concerned about paying to remove unnecessary information such as account details from the discs before they were sent to London.

Cutting the files would have cost as little £5,000, experts said yesterday, compared to the £200m cost that could result from the scandal, even if no fraud is committed.

Hold on a minute. Admittedly my knowledge of databases is restricted to Lotus or Microsoft Office software but the principles still hold. When you set up a new database you are asked to give titles for "Fields", like "Names", "Addresses" etc. You then enter your data. Anytime you want to search your database for, say, all people who live in Rotherham, you simply enter the relevant fields in your search enquiry, hit the key, and out comes the list.

Presumably the Child Benefit data base works the same way. Any half-competent clerk should be able to do the same. How long would that take to exclude fields of sensitive data, like bank account details? An hour at most, if that ? Cost? Maybe £30 or so ? So why would the Treasury be charged the ludicrous figure of £5,000, simply to tweak an existing database ? Let me guess. It's those IT consultants who work in-house, who are always there, but not on the permanent payroll, who probably charge top consultancy fee rates for the simplest job, and who enter a day on the time sheet because that is the minimum charging period for a "new" task.

I know it's "only" £5,000 in this instance, but we are just seeing the merest tip of the iceberg. Imagine the same charging going on, every minute perhaps in one or other Civil Service department, racking up the running costs to thousands, millions and finally billions.

When the historians come to look at the record of this Government, with its creeping stealth taxes to pay for one botched or ill-considered project after another (which would include wars) I suspect that wanton squandering of taxpayers' money on an unprecedented scale will feature prominently in the final indictment.

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Northern Rock debacle (update)
"Revealed: massive hole in Northern Rock's assets" is the headline in today's Guardian.

As each day goes by, nay, each hour,each minute, it just gets worse. The taxpayers' exposure to mind-blowing levels of liability is now beyond doubt. That's thanks to a knight in shining armour, Chancellor Alistair Darling, charging in beneath that fluttering makeshift banner called the Treasury cheque book. Gnu Labour's motto: when in doubt, charge (the taxpayer).

Here is the hair-raising introduction to the article:

Revealed: massive hole in Northern Rock's assets

Ian Griffiths The Guardian Friday November 23 2007
Fresh doubts emerged last night about Northern Rock's ability to repay the £23bn of taxpayers' money it has been lent by the Bank of England.

A Guardian examination of Northern Rock's books has found that £53bn of mortgages - over 70% of its mortgage portfolio - is not owned by the beleaguered bank, but by a separate offshore company.

The same investigation reveals just how vulnerable the bank is to a cooling property market and demonstrates the scale of Northern Rock's exposure to mortgages where customers have borrowed heavily against their homes.

The mortgages are now owned by a Jersey-based trust company and have been used to underpin a series of bond issues to raise cash for Northern Rock. It means the pool of assets available to provide collateral for Northern Rock's creditors, including the Bank of England, is dramatically reduced, calling into question government claims that taxpayers' money is safe.

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Dreams and daemons newsblog:Thur 22 Nov

2007-11-22T11:27:46+01:00

5280 words, no less, to relate a long-shot theory
Update: 15:15

"Hunt for the Mystery Man" is the title of 4 page feature in my Sunday Times Culture supplement (International Edition).
The article looks inviting, with its dramatic shot of someone in free fall over Washington state, USA.

The photo is actually of a skyjacker, parachuting from an aircraft with two hundred thousand dollars in cash extorted from a US airline. No, it's not a genuine picture. It's a still from a Hollywood film that reconstucted the celebrated 1971 crime, which some considered a US equivalent of our own "Great Train Robbery", the perpetrator being admired for his cojones.

I finally managed to track the article down in the ST's new user-unfriendly listings, where it appears under a slightly different title: "The hunt for the invisible man".

Here is the taster for tempting us to read further:

The hunt for the invisible man

In 1971 a man hijacked an airliner, demanded $200,000, and jumped out somewhere over Washington state — and straight into American folklore. The FBI investigated nearly 1,000 suspects and drew a blank. But now they may have finally cracked the case

However, be warned. A slight negative note will intrude from this blogger at this point. This article, written by Geoffrey Gray, runs to 5280 words, with 78 paragraphs.

The question I would leave you with, dear reader, is whether the ST was right, indeed professional, to accept this syndicated article from another periodical (New York Magazine). To assist you with your decision,

Gray's account:
" On his deathbed, Lyle remembers, his older brother (ie Kenneth Christiansen, the alleged skyjacker) pulled him close. He then said something that didn’t make sense to him then. It does now.

Kenny (Kenneth) said: “There is something you should know, but I cannot tell you!” Lyle didn’t want to know. “I don’t care what it is you cannot tell me about. We all love you.”

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I failed to detect words such as "skyjack" or "loads of dosh buried in the back garden" in that so-called death bed confession.

I will return later, quoting further extracts from Gray's verbose account of his suspicions as to the identity of a skyjacker. Most folk, including the police, assumed the skyjacker had been killed, coming down in wild forested terrain. Sadly, or fortunately as the case may be, the individual whom Gray suspects to have been the villain of the piece - "Kenny" Christiansen- is no longer alive to speak in his own defence. Being fingered by one's brother - who developed his hunch after seeing artist's impressions of the hijacker- does not help, of course. More on those charcoal sketches later.

The question I ask is not just whether the ST should have spiked those 5280 words of what I consider to be tendentious waffle, but whether this article is not a prime example of all that is wrong with US journalism ? One sometimes wonders whether Stateside journalists get paid on a per-word basis.

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Search(tongue-in-cheek) for a national motto
For starters: remember that competition in the Times I mentioned a week or so ago about the search for a national motto? It invited readers to encapsulate the essence of Britishness in a mere 5 or 6 words.

Finally the winners have been selected from over a thousand entries.
The headline says it all: Maverick streak makes mockery of hunt for a British motto

The "Top Ten" (but see caveat in postscript below)

1. No motto please, we’re British (20.9% of votes cast,David, London)

2. Dipso, Fatso, Bingo, Asbo, Tesco (18.6%, JCL)

3. Try Writing History Without Us! (13.5%, Simon Ludkin)

4. We apologise for the inconvenience (11.3%, Matthew Bailey)

5. Mathematically, we could still qualify (9.6%,Wobbly)

6. Smile, you’re on CCTV (9.5%, Les)

7. Once mighty empire, slightly used (6.9%,J Harris)

8. Britain The Birthplace of Freedom (4.3%,Kat)

9. Free, Tolerant, Fair-minded & True (3.4%,BENJ)

10. Mind your own business! (2%,Brian Clacey)

Total votes cast: 4,156

Source: Comment Central/Times Online

One small whinge: I too would have liked to cast a vote (not that an extra one in 4,157 would have made a lot of difference), and no, I would not have voted for myself, honest guv.

In fact I would probably have added just one more vote to the winning entry. But here's my beef: nowhere in the list of submissions which were growing by the day was there any mention of how to register a vote. Indeed, the introduction made some facetious comments about voting in general, as to make on think the entire thing was a send-up of the genre. Maybe it's a case of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing. Or there again, we may be seeing yet another symptom of a newspaper that does tend to get up itself at Times, methinks.

Postscript/Correction: added at 11:45 Oops there was a link for casting one's vote, but I missed it, and possibly others, because it was tacked on the end of links to other motto-related stories like "What was America's first national motto?",
"Top ten Aussie mottos" zzzzz.

But the way the vote was done and reported was most unsatisfactory. I had been puzzling those percentages above - the winner was good, but surely did not get a 1 in 5 approval rating from over 1000 suggestions ? Well, it didn't: Daniel Finkelstein at the Times drew up his shortlist of 10, and asked for folk to vote among just those. Had I spotted that, I would, firstly, not have voted and, secondly, sent a verbal raspberry to the Comments section. I re-iterate my point about the Times and its tendency to adopt configurations that some might consider anatomically impossible !

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Dreams and daemons newsblog: Wed 21 Nov

2007-11-21T11:12:03+01:00

Update: 17:55 Those missing data CDs

To read the blogsites - at any rate the ones that I frequent - you would think that the case of the missing disks- with data on 25m people - was the fault of a junior civil servant. Why, he posted a pair of CDs carrying the entire child-benefit database to another department without bothering to use registered or recorded delivery. Ipso facto, the fault lies with him or with TNT, the couriers, but ultimately, we are told, the buck stops with Alistair Darling.

Is it just me, or are we seeing an attempt by the real culprits to deflect blame in any direction- upwards or downwards- to keep the buck landing where it truly belongs ? And where is that ? It stops with the civil servant bosses and their IT consultants who placed this massive bank of sensitive data onto supposedly secure computers which allowed a junior civil servant - or someone else with whom he cooperated- to copy the entire shebang onto CDs. How could that be allowed to happen ? When he pressed ConC, why did he not get an on-screen message, telling him that he had just tried to perform an illicit, indeed illegal, operation ?

Quite simply, why was the entire system not copy-protected with the highest level of security, such that only a highly senior individual would have been able to supply the necessary passwords.

Indeed, why does such sensitive material have to be transmitted by something as vulnerable as disk, unencrypted ones to boot. Does the government not have secure optical fibre cable networks for transmitting encrypted data from one department to another, even if they are hundreds of miles apart? What's happened to the countless billions sunk into IT schemes if we don't have 21st century supporting hardware ?

I don't think we'll be hearing much about those proposed identity cards from now on.

Correction: 18:55 Ooops, silly me. I've forgotten that the Head of Inland Revenue/Customs had resigned, so at least one Civil Service head has fallen.

Here's what I found on the BBC's website which jogged this senile memory:

How were the discs lost?

They were sent in normal internal mail from HMRC in Newcastle to the National Audit Office in London on 18 October, by someone at a low level, and never arrived, Chancellor Alistair Darling said. That broke data protection laws and is the reason Revenue and Customs chairman Paul Gray has resigned.

But is that single resignation too little, too late ? Has a culture of laxness with computer data been allowed to take root in Government departments ? If so, it might take a pretty draconian new broom to change it. Never mind Sir Humphreys and other mandarins. Maybe Whitehall needs the equivalent of "matron".

Update 22:33 The Telegraph updated its "missing CDs" story just over an hour ago:

Ministers ignored data security warnings

Diligent readers of this blog will appreciate why none of the new revelations come as a surprise ...

"As the scandal over the loss of 25 million personal records escalated, the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, was accused of misleading parliament by saying a “junior official” at HM Revenue and Customs was to blame for the loss of the data, whereas email evidence shows he was told two senior managers had authorised the procedure.

He was also said to have misled MPs over the reason he delayed announcing the loss of the child benefit records for 10 days.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said the Prime Minister had presided over “systemic failure” in the Government’s handling of sensitive data and accused him of not being able to “run anything”. "

Update Thur 22 Nov 23:20

The Telegraph's latest headline is "£5,000 would have made HMRC discs safe"

Here are the first few sentences, whicn confirm my hunch that the buck should have stopped higher up the Civil Service food chain.

By Robert Winnett and Christopher Hope
Alistair Darling is embroiled in a cover-up row after Whitehall e-mails revealed that a senior civil servant was involved in the blunders that led to the lost data crisis.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) director Nigel Jordan was copied in on the decision not to remove crucial personal details from the 7 million missing child benefit files before they were posted to another department - in a bid to cut costs, the messages show.

Police are continuing to search for the missing discs
The newly-released internal emails revealed that the catastrophic decision not to filter out the sensitive information, made against the advice of the National Audit Office (NAO), was therefore not a low-level administrative error as the Chancellor claimed.

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Update: 11:35

"Cave of Romulus and Remus located in Rome" reads the title of another prominent story in today's Telegraph.

Is it just me, or are journalistic standards slipping on my (currently) favourite broadsheet.
Should that headline not have read "Italians claim to have located Romulus and Remus cave" ? Or as we now as equally gullible as those who make beelines to sites of mythical events ?

Maybe we and the Italians have been seduced by that portentous voice-over at the start of Lord of the Rings ( ... "when history turns to legend, when legend turns to myth...")

OK, that's fine as a literary device, a way of undermining incredulity, assisting the audience to make that willing suspension of disbelief. But I know of no hard historical evidence that Rome was founded by two orphaned brothers who were suckled by a she-wolf (apologies for the redundant "she" - it just sounds better), even if there are precedents for feral children being thus nourished.

I guess it's all part of widening the attraction of sites as tourist destinations.
After reading about that fabled Roman cave, I reminded J about a tourist guide of Greece that I had tried reading a while back, but finally threw down in disgust (that's the price one pays for a scientific background). I've just dug the book out again, opened at random, and, lo and behold, here's what I found on p 326 of "The Rough Guide to Greece": 9th edition:

"Dhelfi to the Corycian cave"

To the left rises a steep ridge, on whose flank lies the ancient Corycian cave... you meet another dirt road, turn left and follow it 5 minutes more to the end, about 10m below the conspicuous cave mouth at an altitude of 1370m. The cave was sacred to Pan and the nymphs in ancient times, the presiding deities of Delphi during the winter months when Apollo was said to desert the oracle...The cavern itself is chilly and forbidding, but if you look carefully with a torch you can find ancient inscriptions near the entrance... By the entrance you'll notice a rock with a man made circular indentation, possibly an ancient altar to hold libations.

Or there again, that's where Linus Pocketus used to put the admission fees from visiting 1st century tourists. They had come all the way from Rome, in the summer tourist season, and trudged up to the mythical cave of the ancients. Ten minutes later they left, shivering and glum-faced, with a cheap garment with the slogan "My mater and pater went to Corycia and all I got was this lousy T-oga".

For starters

"Meet the cat with 9 lives and two faces" is in today's Telegraph. If,as is suspected, each head has its own brain, then the title is in a sense incorrect: it should be two cats with one body.

Splitting hairs? Far from it. Did anyone see that fascinating programme about the two sisters, Abigail and Brittany Hensel in Minnesota who are the human equivalent of those cats. The proper term is dicephalic conjoined twins. To begin with, I felt as if I'd strayed into one of the 19th century fairground freak shows, like that in which the "Elephant Man" found himself before becoming a celebrity in high society. Then the wonderful personality of each of the sisters began to assert itself, with further confirmation, if any were needed, of the amazing ability of human beings to adapt to their circumstances.

Here's a link which shows some close-up pictures of two happy, well-adjusted individuals. Shame about the site's title !

Each twin has control over her own side of the body. Amazingly, on reaching 17,they learned to drive, with a division of labour as to who controls what, needless to say. The authorities tested each sister separately to check their skills as co-driver, and issued two separate licences. That was a thoughtful and sensitive answer to a unique situation, methinks!

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