Here yesterday, gone today

The cat took one look at the snow yesterday and zoomed back indoors. But she did venture out after thinking it over and left a few trails of pawprints between clear stretches in the shadows of buildings.
    No such problem during today’s sunny morning as most of the residual snow is off the ground. Not that anyone is moaning about the lack of a chance to use their snow boots again.

Interesting idea

There’s a suggestion flying around that if the Republic of Ireland is expelled from the EU, there will be no need for the backstop which is causing all the Brexit problems. Sounds like an idea with legs!

Just not trying

I was interested to learn that there is something called the Corruption Perception Index, which ranks countries according to how corrupt people think they are – rather than how corrupt they are in actual practice.
    Denmark and New Zealand seem to be taking turns in the top spot, which makes me wonder what the Russians and Chinese are up to. They must be slacking if they haven’t persuaded their many stooges to vote for them.

Bucking the trend

Someone pointed out that the detective series Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn, lacks credibility if it has a 72-year-old detective inspector as the lead. Really? In this age of enforced diversity when all isms are banned? Including ageism?

What’s in a name?

Is there a competition for the weirdest first name in the NFL? If I ever see a caption on the screen declaring that someone’s first name is something as synthetic as Omegran or Chesquelle, I’ll take that as confirmation that there is.

Thank you, we’re heard enough, next!

Getting a kid in a Steelers outfit to do the anthem for the Pro Bowl was a gimmick which should never be repeated. The cat was far from impressed. Keeping the game clock running after an incomplete pass is an idea which should be transplanted to the regular season.

Chalk & cheese?

We’re being told that the last time the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was 400 parts per million, the sea level was 30 metres higher than it is today. Which suggests that the link between the two is not as dramatic and desperate as some would have us believe.

Predictable consequence

There’s a lot of indignation flying about over what is going on in Zimbabwe, and its opponents are predictably trying to blame our government. But if the people of Zimbabwe replaced the evil thug Mugabe by a guy who’s known as The Crocodile, the wheels were bound to come off. As in Venezuela.

Casual wisdom

I heard an interesting analogy at a do last night. Referring to the gangs of climate change gurus who are scoffing from the taxpayer’s trough, my sceptical informant said what they’re up to has parallels with the situation that would arise if Scotty were hauled out of Engineering on the Starship Enterprise and a know-it-all six-year-old were installed in his place – one with an infinite capacity for uninformed meddling and unchallengeable authority.

More speed-viewing

Tranny troubles on WW SmackDown! with The Man clobbering Oscar! Then some brawling in the ring. The scriptrotter has run out of inspiration? Half an hour went by before the blokes showed themselves in the ring and The Swizz was done over. And Shane.
    Then back to the usual BS and that was an hour gone. Thank goodness for fast forward.
    Rey Mysterio’s big problem is that it’s hard to take such an excellent wrestler seriously when he’s had a bra tattooed on his chest!

Eyes on you

There’s a lot of seriously weird stuff on the interweb. I’ve just been reading a short story called Human Form In Formalin. That’s a prime example of the genre!

All change

The reason why the legal aid system is in such disrepute is obvious. It’s run by lawyers, which is the equivalent of putting mice in charge of a cheese factory.
    The only way forward from here is to have the revolution, hang all the lawyers and trade union leaders, and start again with people who will treat the public purse with a little respect.

Warning: content lacking

Crumbs! No wonder no one watches unrecorded versions of WW RAW – just fillers in the first 30 minutes of a 2-hour show. Fast, fast forward. I was through the first hour in 10 minutes and knocked off the rest in half an hour.

How are the mighty trashed

Once upon a time, he was Scotland’s First Meenister and bigging it up. Now, he’s just “a 64-year-old man has been arrested and charged and a report will be sent to the procurator fiscal”. Still, he gets his picture in the papers and on TV.

Unspeakable and indestructible

The appalling Gary Lineker guarantees that Walker’s crisp packets will be 100% recyclable or biodegradable by 2025. Maybe we should all stop buying them until then as an incentive to speed up the transition. I know I have.

Definitions for today

Defector – someone who gets the feck out.
Defected – with the feck removed.

Move along, there’s nothing new to see

Is Jeremy Corbyn’s version of the Labour party anti-Semitic? Yes, it is, and it will remain so because this is now an accepted Fact of Life. Like ‘grass is green’. Except in Kentucky, of course.

Nothing like a healthy sense of entitlement

The hit film Ghostbusters was remade with an all female cast a couple of years ago. The studio has decided to go back to the original format for the next film and that has really upset one of the cast of the all-female remake, who seems to thinks she’d become entitled to a job for life.
    Oh, dear, how sad, never mind.

Quarterback sayings

“Blue eighty sucks!” according to Drew Brees. And he was right. The Saints needed two more plays to get their first touchdown against the Rams.
    No chance of hearing what Mr. Goff had to say over the din in the Superdome. But whatever it was, it worked and the Rams are in the next Super Bowl.

How to bring a police farce into even greater disrepute

A car bomb in Londonderry condemned by police as ‘utterly reckless’!! What sort of limp response to an act of terrorism it that? Pathetic isn’t in the same universe.

Now, she’s in real trouble!

Nigel Farage, the man who gave us Brexit, is to start a new political party to ensure that it happens. Which is dreadful news for Theresa May and all the other Bremoaner saboteurs. The last thing they need is someone like Nigel looking over their shoulders and challenging every dither and haver.

A WWE code?

“This is cockroach!” the crowd at either Raw or Smackdown seemed to be chanting. Maybe it makes sense to Americans, who are noted for having lots more roaches than anyone else, especially in the big cities.

Pie back in the sky

There has been talk of flying cars pretty much since heavier than air flying machines were created. Now, there’s another rash of it – flying taxis on demand four years from now.
    Door-to-door service? Really?

No surprise there

J. Corbyn is essentially a ‘can’t do’ person. He’s very good at negatives but he hasn’t a clue when it comes to things that would do anyone any good. And that’s the real reason why he’s afraid to meet the prime minister.
    He can pal up with any number extreme minority interests but when it comes to people who can do anything to benefit the country, he doesn’t want to know because his trade is talking Britain down. He’s a sad, old Wolfie Smith, who should have been put out to grass; no, not in the House of Frauds; years ago. He’s an old (69) joke which has grown stale.

Good news!

It’s official! We can relax and have a day off. There isn’t going to be a political crisis today.

Spot on, Ted Tubb

I have just finished reading the final novel from the SF author E.C. Tubb – Fires of Satan was completed just before his death in 2010 and it’s about a world-ending threat. The author's view of politicians is jaundiced – he’s writing at the end of the corrupt New Labour era – and, in the light of the current Brexit antics in Parliament, accurate. He believed that the more they do to promote their own selfish interests, the bigger the mess they create. How right he was!

Nothing worthwhile in a rehash

What is the point of ‘remaking’ a successful TV show but messing about with the main characters? It happened to Battlestar Galactica and Hawaii 50. Now, Magnum P.I. is getting the treatment.
    What next? A ‘remake’ of Cagney & Lacey featuring two blokes who think they’re women and get terribly upset when criminals fail to take them seriously?

Losers all

That’s one-all in Commons vote losses for the main party leaders. What next? A penalty shoot-out using Berko’s head instead of a ball?

Political stitch-up

May’s Brexit Betrayal strategy is now clear. She and the EU cobbled together a ‘deal’ which no Tory MP who respects the referendum outcome would support. She dithered and dithered, then staged a vote on the deal which she knew she was bound to lose.
    Next thing you know, Brexit will be ‘postponed’ and 50 years from now, we’ll still be financing the E bloody U.

His choice

The F.O. might be upset about Singapore sentencing a 29-year-old British citizen to 20 lashes on top of 20 years in gaol for drug trafficking, but someone of his age must have known that Singapore takes a primitive and direct approach to drug-dealing. And yet he still went ahead with it. And now he has to pay the price for his stupidity.

A distant admirer?

An amusing game to play while watching American football is to spot the more outlandish things that quarterbacks yell at the line of scrimmage.
    Drew Brees of the Saints, for instance, bawled “Lady Thatcher!” during his team’s match with the Eagles last night. Well, that’s what it sounded like.

Where do they get people like this?

You have to wonder what sort of jobsworths are being paid out of the taxpayer’s pocket to assess disability when some of them report that blind people display good eye-contact with them during an interview.

Devalued Apostrophes

I’m reading one of the Gateway science fiction Omnibus Editions published by Gollancz – which seems to have sacked Victor. My eyes keep being clobbered by apostrophes within words.
    The contraction “we’d” is printed as “wed” with an apostrophe stuck in the space above the “e” and the “d”. Other contractions, such as “it’s” are treated the same. It’s as if Jouve (UK) of Milton Keynes, who did the typesetting, think apostrophes are somehow unworthy of their own space.

Things got better

It looked like we were going to get the first NFL snow match on TV in Kansas City and conditions like those for the Grey Cup in Ottawa two years ago. But come match time, the pitch had been cleared; more or less. The part on the right of the centre line looked like a thorough job by a crew which took pride in their work.
    The half of the field to the left of centre looked like a “minimum amount of effort” do by a bunch of jobsworths, with the lines cleared but quite a lot of snow left between them. Very odd.

Impact blunted

“James Middleton, my secret mental health battle” shouted the headline.
    Poor bloke. Who is he?
    No idea.
    Me, neither.

Trash TV

A new series of The Orville started on Fox on Thursday, and one of the Big Moments was one of the aliens having his once-a-year pee into his version of the Grand Canyon with the rest of the crew cheering him on.
    Proof that aliens are weird? Nope, proof that the programme’s creator, Seth MacFarlane is out of his tiny mind and so are the bosses at the studio where the series is made.

Belated assault on Xmas fare

I got to sample some turkey and stuffing hand-cooked crisps yesterday. The Mansion’s procurement officer had liberated them from the local Aldi.
    What did they taste of? Sage, mainly, given that turkey is bland, bound to be overwhelmed by the stuffing flavourings and pretty much a non-playing member of the team.

Save us from the foggy dew

Bit of a weird day yesterday. It looked like the windows were steamed up but it was wet fog outside, not failed double glazing. It might be the season of mists but mellow fruitfulness is in very short supply. Probably as a result of Brexit panic buying.

Pointless pixels

What is the point of putting pixels on the face of a kid who is just 11 weeks old? It’s not as if anyone is going to recognize the kid from the photo in the future. Stupid application can bring any rule into contempt.

History can look after itself

“History will take a dim view of a Cabinet which presses ahead with no deal” has as much validity as “History will take a dim view of senior Tories who sabotage Brexit because they think the electorate, which pays their wages, got it wrong.”

More, More!

Jeremy Clarkson’s idea of a vulgarity tax for bling community members. e.g. footballers with a diamond-studded Roller, has legs. If it could be extended to include annoying gitism, the likes of Gary bloody Lineker might have less to say for themselves and Tony B. Liars would have to sell off property empires built with cash from tainted sources.

Pragmatism winning in NHS?

The government is thinking of modifying its 4-hour residence time in an A&E department as it is impractical. Things have evidently got no better in the decade since I last sat at someone’s bedside, listening to the count-down at the nurse’s station, and then watching the customer be pushed out of the A&E at the last second, only to be parked in a corridor for a while until the ward had prepared a slot for her.
    Bullet-biting can be uncomfortable, especially when there are out-of-office politicians looking for any sign of change to use as an excuse for a claim of how wonderful things would be if only the public were stupid enough to vote for them.

Dangerous move

President Trump’s invitation to his enemies in Congress to name his wall/fence/whatever at the US border with Mexico ‘anything they like’ sounds like a recipe for disaster – if any of the Democraps has a sense of humour.

Wildcard Weekend rocked

Good to see the Cowboys stick it to the Seasquawks, the Armstrong Athletic of the NFC. Nice to see the Chiefs and Old Man Rivers getting the job done against the Ravens with time running out for him. As for the Eagles in Chicago, there was some extraordinary reffing and a demonstration of a time out working against a kicker to put the current world champions of America into the next round.

Luck beats lack of mercy

Don’t you just love an NFL team with a linebacker called Merciless? Didn’t do the Houston Texans enough good against an Indianapolis Colts team with Luck on their side, though.

Rights and wrongs

There’s nothing wrong with trying someone in absentia if he/she refuses to appear in court but there is everything wrong with letting a convicted absconded felon appeal without surrendering his/her miserable carcase and doing so at the taxpayer’s expense.
    But try telling that to some of our judges.

Now we have Fat Cat Friday

5th January 2019

The average FTSE100 boss might have been paid as much as the average Brit will make in a year by January 4th, but earned? That’s highly debatable.

Just not trying

If the police have no idea where the Speedboat Killer is lurking, how come the government can’t cramp his style by cancelling his passport? Being allowed to evade justice is not a human bloody right when it’s British justice that’s being dodged and British taxpayers' cash that's being wasted.

Great, but not as we know it, Jim

The Greatest Ever Movie Blunders 2 on the 5Star TV channel last night?  Pulling the legs off nits with very minor continuity bog-ups was all it turned out to be. Not fit to shine the shoes of Alright On The Night.

Hyperbole unlimited

“The first image from the far side of the Moon ever recorded”? What bollocks the BBC News spouts! What they mean is that the Chinese have landed a probe on the far side, which has been mapped comprehensively from orbit over the last 60-odd years. What was on offer was the first image from an object sitting on the far side of the Moon; which is something quite different from the initial puff.

The most confusing bit of cat behaviour?

I would nominate suddenly deciding that she HAS to wash the bit of her body that I’ve been stroking – but only sometimes and not always.

Time to get pragmatic

In the good old days, there used to be people classed as criminally insane, but that has probably been abolished by the diversifiers. But the news that the knife-armed nutter who went on the rampage at Manchester’s Victoria station was arrested under the Mental Health Act suggests that it’s exactly right for terrorists; as long as it involves detention in basis surroundings with no kid gloves in use.

That’s it done with

You can tell the holiday season is done and dusted if BBC 1 has a repeat of Bargain Hunt on just before the lunchtime news.

Not only feckless parents

The government’s food waste guru, B. Elliot, reckons that 70,000 kids in London go to school in the morning breakfastless.
    Any danger of a few prosecutions for felony child endangerment?
    Thought not.

Someone been at the medicinal cannabis?

Whichever planet S. Khan, London’s comic opera mayor, comes from, it certainly isn’t this one. Letting off fireworks when a new year arrives is just an excuse for waking up the neighbours. It is most certainly not a sign that we British are outward-looking and pluralistic, as Khan would have us believe.