Category Archives: Asides

Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson

Posted on by

While the world’s attention is focussed on my homeland, let us not forget North of the Border, where the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) now shares power with Sinn Fein. The new First Minister — who succeeded ‘Dr’ Ian Paisley — is Peter Robinson, a freshfaced apparatchik who might, in other circumstances, be confused with a New Labour Minister. As is often the case in Northern Ireland politics, official appointments are a family business with the Robinsons, and his wife Iris is an Assembly member and Chair of its Health Committee.

According to the Irish Times, a few days after Mr Robinson’s elevation to supreme power, Iris caused quite a stir by airing her belief that homosexuals could be “turned around” by psychiatry, and “redeemed by the blood of Christ”. Her views on the “abomination” of homosexuality were published on a week in which homophobic thugs attacked and badly injured a young man in Newtownabbey.

Mrs Robinson also confided her belief that Princess Diana was murdered (presumably by papists acting under the direction of the Duke of Edinburgh) to an interviewer from the Dublin newspaper, the Sunday Tribune.

How does that Simon & Garfunkel song go? Ah, yes:

And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
God bless you, please Mrs. Robinson.
Heaven holds a place for those who pray,
Hey, hey, hey

Lisbon Treaty: dead duck

Posted on by

From RTÉ News.

It seems certain that Irish voters have rejected the Lisbon Treaty.

With results in from 10 of the 43 constituencies, the Lisbon Treaty is being beaten by a margin of 53.6% to 46.4%.

That margin is expected to tighten as more results are announced, but the result is not in doubt.

Posted at 14:10 on Friday.

Bet it’s fun at EU HQ just now. How long before they start spinning the result as a triumph for democracy?

Making no waves

Posted on by

I’ve been hearing things on the radio about Speedo’s new swimsuit, but until this Economist piece really had no idea of what the fuss was about.

The suit has what Speedo calls an “internal core stabiliser”—like a corset that holds the swimmer’s form. As a swimmer tires, his hips hang lower in the water, creating drag. By compressing his torso, the LZR not only lets him go faster, because it maintains a tubular shape, but also allows him to swim longer with less effort. In tests, swimmers wearing the LZR consumed 5% less oxygen for a given level of performance than those wearing normal swimsuits did.

The third innovation, a further drag-reduction measure, is that polyurethane panels have been placed in spots on the suit. This reduces drag by another 24% compared with the previous Speedo model. Fourth, the LZR was designed using a three-dimensional pattern rather than a two-dimensional one. It thus hugs a swimmer’s body like a second skin; indeed, when it is not being worn, it does not lie flat but has a shape to it.

The results are a suit that costs $600 and takes 20 minutes to squeeze into, and a widespread belief among swimmers competing in the Beijing Olympics this summer that they will have to wear one or fail…

Apparently the Japanese are particularly worked up about this ‘unfair’ technological advantage. If so, why don’t they just buy some of the suits for their swimmers?

Later: Neil MacNeil emails a link which suggests that pragmatism has taken hold in Japan:

Japanese swim officials have granted their swimmers an option to choose swimsuits for Beijing.

Even though Japan’s swimmers are contracted by other companies in a domestic sponsorship agreement, they can choose to wear the tight-fitting polyurethane suit that suit that has been involved in 30 world record-setting swims since February.

Quote of the day

Posted on by

“Greatness is measured by the size of your manhood.”

Subject line of a junk email caught by my spam-filter. Sounds vaguely Churchillian, don’t you think?

Licence fee or not?

Posted on by

Here’s a question I hadn’t thought about before. If you live in the UK and have a TV set, then you must — by law — pay for an annual TV licence. But last night we had supper with a couple who don’t have a TV set of any kind in their house but enjoy watching programmes via the iPlayer. Are they exempt from the licence fee requirement? And, if not, how on earth would the authorities catch up with iPlayer-only viewers?

Later: My esteemed colleague, Kevin McConway, pointed me to Ashley Highfield’s blog, and thence to the FAQs on the iPlayer site, which says:

You do not need a television licence to watch television programmes on the current version of the BBC iPlayer.

You will need to be covered by a TV licence if and when the BBC provides a feature that enables you to watch ‘live’ TV programmes on any later version of BBC iPlayer, which has this option. Your TV licence for your home address will cover your use of the BBC iPlayer in your home (and outside the home if you use BBC iPlayer on a laptop or any other device which is powered solely by its own internal batteries).

A ‘live’ TV programme is a programme, which is watched or recorded at the same time (or virtually the same time) as it is being broadcast or otherwise distributed to members of the public. As a general rule, if a person is watching a programme on a computer or other device at the same time as it is being shown on TV then the programme is ‘live’. This is sometimes known as simulcasting.

You cannot currently watch ‘live’ TV programmes as part of BBC iPlayer, however, we hope to offer this function in the future.

Blues and Royals officer forced to moonlight as male model?

Posted on by

From this morning’s Financial Times. I know that General Sir Richard Dannett is concerned about the impact of low pay on army morale, but have things really come to this?

Is this ad a spoof? Is there a Second Lieutenant Hulme? If so, why hasn’t his CO torn a strip off him? I remember a time when officers in the Household Division were forbidden to be seen in London wearing a civilian clothes and carrying a parcel — because that was deemed to be the role of servants.

Life, death, tragedy

Posted on by

This is the saddest story I’ve read in a long time.

An eight-year-old boy has been found hanged in his bedroom in Lancashire.

Joshua Aldred was found unconscious by his grandmother in Lytham on Thursday night. He was taken to hospital in Blackpool but died a short time later.

Joshua’s mother and grandfather had recently died from cancer …