Great – in theory

Amazon is to sell drones, which will fly around a mansion and look for burglars. Should be okay in a place which is fully open plan. But if there are any doors that are kept shut to limit the spread of a fire, not so wonderful.

Technology failure

The addition of video referees doing instant replay analysis to help referees at football matches get it right seems to be a step backwards, if the furore in the papers is to be taken seriously. The problem seems to be that two blokes with the same training looking at an incident are both going to make the wrong call. And it was bad enough when just one bloke was doing it in the heat of the moment.

Just a thought

If I didn’t read the newspapers, I wouldn’t think to wonder if I could have inflamation and/or hidden diabetes! You can probably add masochism to the list. But I have no intention of abandoning newspapers.

Cheap old daze

15/6 for a large whisky in a club in an episode of Randall & Hopkirk & Deceased? Life was almost affordable back then.

Great! Love it!

The story of the month has to be the one about the Israeli prime minister lugging bags and bags of dirty laundry with him to get it washed at the White House when he visits the US president. Priceless!

Lost cause

“Prince William: A Planet for All of Us” is a rather weird concept for a TV show. There is only this planet for all of us because we can’t go anywhere else. Not to mention the fact that ‘all of us’ will never agree on anything.

Misplaced race blame

I see from an old back page that the Daily Mail is confecting outrage about county cricket not having racial quotas. Is it really the job of a national newspaper to be cricket’s Race Police? I’m sure they’d love it if cricketers invaded their offices and started telling them where they’re going wrong.

Mobile – or not?

What do they do with the plastic fans in the Bronco stadium in Denver? Do they just dust them occasionally or do they move them around a bit to reinforce the illusion of a presence?
    Indianapolis has gone one better with some robot fans in the Colts’ stadium.

Creating interest? Actually, no

How do you keep Louie Samilton off the top step of the podium after a Grand Prix? Confect a couple of time penalties to fix his wagon.
    Grandstands full for the race? Hey, it’s Russia where they don’t have the plague.

An easy life

I think if I ever get a job other than the one I’m doing at the moment, I’d be a political commentator. The PM not at the Chancellor’s big speech on the furlough replacement? Confect a rift in the Cabinet and ignore the fact that Boris knew what Kish was going to say and he went off to do a bit of flag-waving to give him a clear field.
    Dead easy, money for old rope.

Empty brag

How flimsy claims of greatness are today. Something called Schitt’s Creek (as in up) is ‘the biggest comedy show in the world’? Except to the millions and millions of people who have never heard of it.

A deal of attrition

Some bikes croaks in Moto2 @ Catalunya, some solo crashes. Wot about a win by the British bloke? Could he stay on the track and off the green bits? He used up his tyres to much and could manage only 2nd.
    Series leader Dovizioso was crashed out in the first few seconds of the MotoGP race! Good to see Cal Crutchlow back, still missing Marc Marquez. All sorts of tyre problems. The Doctor in the dirt on lap 16/28 from 2nd, so no 200th podium finish. 10th place for Cal.

Believe the label? Nope!

I happened to study the stuff printed on a Pritt stick after using it. Only 90% natural ingredients? Put the virtue flag back in its box.
    “Solvent Free” four times. But the stuff contains water, which is what? A solvent. So a black lie repeated 4 times. Not impressed and shame on you, Mr. Pritt.

The wrong kind of drama

Drama in the Catalunya Moto3 race – all very civilized until the British bloke crashed out the series leader. Triumph in the form for his first ever win @ the end for Basher Binder.

Could happen

Watching a copper in an episode of Inspector Frost putting a prisoner in the back of a police car, I found myself wondering how often they put a hand on a prisoner’s head so he/she doesn’t bump it and find themself clutching a handful of wig.

Communication for beginners

When the Mansion cat is in a dithery mood, she can respond to a direct question like: “Do you want to go out?” with a sound that is remarkably like “don’tknow”. Not once or twice but on numerous occasions. Maybe cats get more from what we say to them than they let on.
    She can also do a pretty good “no” when her mind is made up.

Politics of the brain dead

Politics really does come with its own class of stupidity, a lot of it wilful. Like the former Cabinet minister who wanted to know how the PM can convince everyone he’s doing the right thing.
    She must know by now that 100% of the people will never be sold on any given issue, which makes her a silly cow doing a ‘look at me’. Either that or she really has learned nothing from her time in the Westminster bubble.

No contest

If you want to know who’s making an effort, compare & contrast the handful of BBC customers on the screens behind the BBC 1 Question Time inquisitor with the magnificence of the WW Thunderdome. They think so much bigger across the pond.

Eat till you pop

If I tried to follow the average expert’s tips to get “the nutrients I need” (allegedly), I’d end up spending most of the day trying to scoff 5 of this and some of that, and demolishing about three times my normal food intake. And I’d probably have to end up getting my worn-out teeth replaced.

Nearly another world

NASA is so hard up that it is going in for produce placement, just like film and TV companies. So if you see an astronaut waving a bottle of shampoo or other grooming product around on the International Space Station, it’s to pay his/her wages!

Another world

I’m feeling quite disconnected from things at the moment. I don’t watch daytime TV and the disconnection results from reading about what the government’s experts were saying at the beginning of the week as reported in the following day’s newspaper. Today, I’m catching up with Wednesday.
    Do I feel any need to do anything about the disconnection? Actually, no.

No problem or faux problem?

When reading The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke the other day, I started to wonder just how many people are totally bent out of shape by not knowing if there is other developed life elsewhere in the universe.
    Because it’s not something most people will think about from one decade to the next unprompted.

Weirder world

The police say they’re taking the matter of the abandoned gun ‘extremely seriously’. Which implies that they have the option of taking it extremely frivolously. Unless the comment is just routine PR BS, of course.

Weird world

How is a story about a police bodyguard abandoning a hand gun on a plane embellished by speculation about the make of the weapon? Or is there a manufacturer’s league table for guns left on planes and a plaque awarded annually for the winner?

Another country; imaginary?

A friend of mine, who also acquired his bank account in the early 1960s, responded to John Humphreys’ account of getting a glass of sherry and a short lecture from the manager with a scornful “Yeah, right!” No bugger offered me sherry when I became a bank customer either. Maybe we didn’t look posh enough.

They didn’t think of this one!

An unexpected hazard of working from home, one of my mates has found, is having to work around a cat, who insists on having a kip on his lap when he’s tapping away at his computer. Which is somewhat preferable to the Mansion cat’s habit of parking on the keyboard when you look away for a moment.

Not terribly advisable

“With great age comes great wisdom” is an adage with enough gaping holes in it to sink it to the bottom of the sea if tossed overboard. And that’s the ultimate argument against making Supreme Court jobs anywhere a job-for-life.
    Remember Doris the Spider!

Old clichés never die

“From the creators of Castle” was the puff for a new US cop show. Does that mean a lead character will be obsessing about the fate of a parent or whatever, who vanished or was croaked in mysterious circumstances? Boring if it does.

Could be true

Could the reason why Americans are so keen on cutting police budgets be a response to films in which the likes of Steven Seagal wreck a whole bar or restaurant during a brawl with a bad guy?
    It could be argued that, as the taxpayer has to foot the bill for all the repairs, cutting police budgets is aimed at eliminating expensive wrecker cops.

Not at all convincing

Labour’s replacement leader for Oh, Jeremy Corbyn needs to reminded that he’s just different rather than new and, by implication, better. He seems to be trying to position himself as a champion of law, order & justice. Not anything that was too evident when he was directing public prostitutions.

Pointless whinge

Some political wonk was trying to get excited about the Home Office not bothering to guess how many illegal immigrants are here since 2005. But if we can’t evict the buggers, why waste time and taxpayers’ cash on guessing how many there are?

Taking a break

I’d normally have a sub to Sky Sports for the NFL season now but I have decided not to back their campaign of paying homage to American criminals.

All bases covered

I see the experts are now telling us that taking precautions against the plague is resulting in a surge in deaths from cancer; maybe even more than the lives being saved from the plague. It’s not a case of you can’t win, it’s more you’re not supposed to.

You set ’em up . . .

“Nothing beats Gatorade”, it said on the screen last night. Okay, I thought, I’ll have a pint of nothing, pliz.

Sunday evening gone

I was somewhat sceptical about the recommendations of the fans who enjoy the insanity of Red Zone on a Sunday, but it seems that I am sad enough to think it’s great.
    The Mansion cat, however, can sleep through all the action, no matter how frenetic.

Enjoyable finale

Rossi and the other Binder came off on lap 2/27 of the MotoGP race in Italy. Binder remounted but lasted just a couple more laps. Bagnaia had a dramatic fall off from the lead with 7 laps to go. Viñales won in fine style and everyone was left scratching their heads over how nowhere man Dovizioso could still be leading the series.

Confected confusion or Too clever by a lot

A Daily Mail Correspondent claims that people confuse absorb; slurping up and incorporating; with adsorb – sticking to the surface. Ruggish, my technical expert sez.
    The average punter knows the ab-word but not the ad-word. Thus no confusion is possible. And anyone who knows the ad-word isn’t likely to get confused.

Ditheroo

A crash on lap 5 of the Moto2 race in Italy and rain flags being waved! Red flag on lap 7, restart on slicks? Nope, rain tyres it must be. Nope, the sun came out and it was slicks for the last 10 laps. Crash on lap 6 of these, not the victim’s fault.

Go, Donald!

The last thing we need is Democrat IRA groupies like Rancid Pelosi sticking their beaks into the UK’s internal workings.

Big question of the day

Very mannerly start to the 2nd Moto3 event in Italy. Would they manage 23 laps without losing a bunch of crashers? Nope. Crash on lap 10. And 11. And Basher Binder gone with 5 laps to go; not his fault, as if that’s any consolation.

Mee, too!

In addition to being broke because of the Chinese plague, the nation faces having to shell out over £200 BILLION to women who didn’t get to retire at 60, if they get their way.
    Just how many extra BILLIONs will be needed to compensate all the men who had to retire 5 years later than women, and their heirs! Probably none if blokes don’t count when it comes to gender fairness.

Much worse

Memo to Sarah Vine of the Daily Mail: Gordon Brown wasn’t just some relatively harmless phone-throwing maniac. He also managed to trash the British economy between hurls.

Wot about me?

Just a thought, but am I supposed to feel slighted because some scammer hasn’t phoned me out of the blue to offer to turn my pension fund into a fortune?

Idle mind

A so-called show biz correspondent reckons that people giving Booker & other prizes won’t be able to judge a book by its cover if they get a PDF edition. News flash: all the PDFs I get have the book cover as the front page.

Blown fuse?

The Daily Mail TV Guide for last nite: Fox, 20:00, NCIS, A man claims to be a Pearl Harbour survivor. SYFY, 20:00, Merlin, A man claims to be a Pearl Harbour survivor. Oh, yeah?
    It’s amazing how stuff like that jumps out and catches your eyes.

Change your bluddy tune

Dom-diddy mute! Another LV Insurance TV advert’s message not heard, another piece of the advertising budget wasted.

Issue explored

Time passes slowly in locko; or the passage of time in the outside world has become rather irrelevant with the focus on matters close to home. There is less urgency to wondering about things. Like the Hamilton whinge shirt @ the last F1 Grand Prix.
    Who was the lady concerned? A paramedic. Clap, clap, clap. Who had the poor taste to pick as her boyfriend, a drug dealer who started shooting when the police closed in on him.
    Agent of her own misfortune? Check. Innocent victim? Sort of. Non-caucasian like Louie? Check.

Blast from the past

“Oh, look! There’s Acker Bilk!” Amazing who you can spot making up the numbers in the branch of digital heaven called Dempsey & Makepiece.     “Oh, look! Suzi Quatro as a psycho killer!”

Accurate prediction?

In the book created by ACC from the Clarke/Kubrick screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is speculation about Chinese blackmail using synthetic diseases for which they alone have an antidote. Is that what’s going on!!
    [page 54 of the 1997 BCA edition]

No worries

According to the Daily Mail’s “are you drinking too much?” test, I’m not. Clearly, I must try harder in future.

Ask a silly question

A Daily Mail correspondent reckons that October 3rd is the 30,000th day since he was born and wants to know how he should celebrate it.
    My suggestion would be very quietly so that he can hear all the people laughing at him.

Another whinge

An international company remaking an advert for the Chinese market by giving Chinese faces prominence is now a crime against humanity, the displaced Western faces are moaning.

Hand in our pocket again

The news that a first offence of straying into a deliberately badly signposted bus lane will no longer lead to a fine for the motorist concerned has left every else braced for a rise in Council Tax to plug the gap in council finances.

Posture till you drop

Whatever happened to retiring gracefully? It seems to be no longer an option for meeja faces, who feel obliged to kick up a stink and start biting the carpet if their employer decides it’s time they were put out to grass.

Saga shares? No chance!

A friend of mine has been sent an opportunity to get involved in a new Saga share offer. After watching the price of the last issue sink to nothing much – long before the Chinese plague came along – he’s put the mailing through the shredder.

No need to panic

The amount of synthetic fury in the papers over the Rule of Six & Xmas is reassuring. Nothing terrible is happening in the world if this is all that is making dippy journalists shake with dizzy disbelief.

Big time appropriation

Since when did Cinderella become a Disney character? This has to be cultural appropriation of a traditional folk tale on a truly disgraceful scale by an ITV quiz show.

You wuz robbed

I watched a 2018 action film with Sylvester Stallone in it on the SyFy Channel the other night. Sly definitely should get his money back from whoever did the plastic surgery job and set his trademark sneer in stone.
    p.s. Isn’t it great when you have a handgun that holds 500 bullets?

Being helpful

It was quite weird watching NFL refs taking their mask off when they made announcements—to do lip-readers a favour, I assume
    And that bogus crowd noise is really, really naff.

Wow, gosh!

We live & learn. If I’d not read yesterday’s Sunday Post, I’d never have known that dragging up has ‘exploded’ into the mainstream. Really?

Real dedication

I’ve been advised that some sports freaks had a real binge yesterday. They watched the kaleidoscope of Red Zone for an hour, then did an hour with the barmy bikers on a mountain in France. Zipping through the action of a recording-in-progress of the Grand Prix highlights took 40 minutes, then it was back to the NFL on Red Zone until getting on for 1 a.m.
    Oh, for that amount of stamina!

Just not trying

Only the Jags were able to organize a spaced-out audience for their NFL match? The rest need to get on the ball because all those taped cheers behind the commentary don’t help. Neither does knowing they’re totally phoney.
    p.s. LV means luncheon vouchers to a British audience, not Las Vegas, new home of the Oakland Raiders. But I doubt anyone across the pond will care.

No one impressed

Is there enough hippocrisy [that’s the jumbo version] to go around for all the highly paid sports stars in the US who are identifying with deceased criminal elements in the dark-skinned community?

Equity is a moveable feast

“Brennt Paris?” Adolf Hitler is supposed to have asked in 1944 as the Allied invasion surged across France. As it happened, Paris didn’t burn. And the same seems to have happened in Birmingham despite the casual murder of a white bloke last weekend. White Lives Don’t Matter?

Just another excuse for a booze-up

Do the Oscars have any credibility left? They won’t have any after 2024, when the allegedly best of anything will have to survive a diversity count and excellence is binned.

Phew, Gov!

I was truly astonished to discover that the Xtinctionists are pretending that SIX BILLION people will die from the effects of global warming over the next 10-20 years. That’s gullibility on an industrial scale!!

Well prepared

If I’m ever busted by the fuzz, I now know what to tell them after watching last night’s episode of Major Crimes. I’ll just say SODDI – which means “some other dude did it”.

Another of life’s complications

Using the new and clunky interface to post these comments, you get a column of first letters of the titles at the left side of your screen. I guess we’re all going to have to be extra careful to ensure that they don’t spell out a rude word which will get us cancelled!!!

Shame but true

Channelling that bloke on The Fast Show, I am mostly feeling completely disconnected from the NFL right now, even though the new season has started. Probably from not being primed by a Canadian season, which would have been getting extremely serious now if not for the Chinese plague.

Getting away with it

Dempsey & Makepiece riding a stolen motorbike without helmets last night! What a reckless lot we were back in the Dark Ages.

Off to digital heaven

Crumbs! A world without Diana Rigg. Doesn’t seem possible. Cue a season of repeats of The Avengers with Mrs. Peel and Steed tolchoking bad guys vigorously until Emma’s mysteriously lost husband suddenly turns up again.

Clarification needed

I was amused to read that someone living in Leighton Buzzard described this week’s small earthquake as the first excitement in the area since the Great Train Robbery. But she didn’t mention whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
    Probably the latter, if ‘may you live in interesting times’ is a Chinese curse.

Fair’s fair

After the stabbings in Birmingham, are we in for a weekend of rioting, arson and looting by white folks using the same justification as the mobs in the United States? Perhaps not if there’s no presidential election going on here.

Sad but true

We’re entitled to be dismayed, but not surprised, to learn that the government figured into its furloughing scheme, a loss of £2-4 BILLION due to fraud and blunders by civil servants. It would be really nice to have a system that worked. But we’d have to kill everyone in the country and start again from scratch if we wanted to try to get there.

Laugh of the week

It has to be the revelation that Jobcentre staff won’t let employers ask for happy people in their advertisements as it discriminates against miserable sods.

Lost freedom

Cor blimey, mate! Cops Dempsey & Makepiece driving around not wearing seatbelts and not having to arrest themselves. In fact, Dempsey only put his seatbelt on when his ladyfriend started doing some reckless driving. It really was another world back in the 20th century.

Yecccch!

In what universe is a raw egg yoke planted on a dish of pasta tubes with pork (all cooked) an embellishment? On the other hand, it could be a Salmonella Special for someone feeling a bit suicidal.

Okay boldly goers

The Star Trekkers can get it right if they try. I’ve just rewatched Star Trek Beyond (2016) and it’s a pretty good film and faithful to the original. Even if you need the subtitles on to tell what they’re saying a lot of the time.

That’s telling them!

The experts reckon people are more likely to die in their bathtub than from a case of the Chinese plague and they can get out more. Still, it’s really good news for everyone who only does showers.

Include me out

Star Trek: Discovery seemed like something worth watching at first. But it rapidly disappeared into a fog of wibble. After missing a couple of episodes, I became disconnected.
    The next series is threatening to shove in all sorts of weird & wonky characters in ridiculous numbers to the exclusion of normal people. Yawn.

The next step

We get all sorts of warnings about the content of TV shows recycled from the 20th century – bad language, bad attitudes, etc. I’m waiting for the day when the hysteria gets to the stage where we’re warned there are people smoking in the programme and watching could give the viewer cancer.

Bamboozling Mr. Bond

I finished my evening’s viewing with the tail end of a 007 epic. It came to a buffer-crunching failure of credibility. The villain announced to J.B. that he was starting a war between the UK and China to gain control of the Chinese meeja for 100 years.
    But as he was a grey-haired zillionaire with a life expectancy (without being Bonded) of 30 years tops, what good would that century of control do him?

Opportunity lost

Watched more Bones before the GP replay. It wasn’t Xmas – but as good as for the viewers. The self-righteous Agent Booth got himself shot. Sadly, he won’t be allowed to croak as he does all the production work for the series.

Mooching along @ Monza

Formula One is great if you have a dodgy heart. Zero excitement; apart from one heavy collision with a tyre wall; zero stress, 100% chance of being still alive when it’s all over if you’re not a Ferrari fan.
    And they were even successful in keeping the British bloke off the podium to let someone else have a win.

Not news

“Experts howl with anguish”, yelled the headline. But tell me something they don’t do. At all times, 50% of the nation’s experts are howling because the ‘wisdom’ of the other 50% is the current fashion. Because experts are the world’s most disagreeable people.

Level, but not as we know it, Jim

The EU is prepared to let us have the water and the plastic debris in our territorial waters, but they expect to have control of all the fish. And they think that’s fair & reasonable. In which universe?

Irresistible

What is it with cats and keyboards? The Mansion cat can’t see one without wanting to park on it. Laptop or PC, makes no difference. Especially if I’m trying to use it.

In digital heaven . . .

I switched on an episode of the US cop show Bones last evening and found that it was Xmas and the Chinese plague hadn’t been invented. Which was truly magical.

Welcome change

Something extraordinary has happened to Radio 4. Yesterday’s edition of The News Quiz actually gave us something to laugh along with, rather than sigh at, for the first time for years. Amazing!! Bit too soon to be anything to do with the new boss, though.

Modest classic

I’m revisiting a fragile, 1972 Penguin edition of A Clockwork Orange, the rather short (144 pp) novel by Anthony Burgess. I was presented with it by a friend who didn’t need the glossary at the end of the book as he was learning Russian when he bought it and he was able to cope with the Nadsat chat unaided. Oh, to be so educated!

One way to tackle lockdown boredom

The mad, self-torturing illusionist David Blaine, I have just read, did it by strapping on 52 big balloons and swanning about five miles above some Arizona desert. Takes all sorts, I suppose.

Cash Crisis

Will the teenage Chancellor be able to cut government spending instead of shoving taxes up? Which invites people to get creative about avoiding it and reduces tax revenue, history has shown us.
    If he has a bad case of the spending bug – if he’s under the evil influence of the ghost of Gordon F. Brown – then we’re all in trouble.

A world gone mad

An Arab bloke leaves his mobile phone in the bog of a passenger jet and puts a couple of RAF fighters next to it and able only to shoot it out of the sky as a course of action.
    Welcome to Wonderland.

Get out of this!

There’s a full-page whinge in Monday’s Daily Mail about the young lady who plays the assistant in the TV adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s Stride story not getting top enough billing.
    But did she have to have a leg chopped off to get the gig, like the bloke who does Stride? ’Nuff said.

History binned

There has been all sorts of hoo-haa this year about D-Day, VE-Day and VJ-Day. But not a word about yesterday being The Day War Broke Out 75 years ago.

So much for safe spacing!

You hear about queues of hundreds of idiots waiting in line to stand on top of Mount Everest. The same is going on in Wales, where people who are waiting to stand atop Mount Snowdon keep getting into punch-ups with suspected queue-jumpers.

Something you couldn’t make up

Since 2019, MPs and peers have been forced to go on sexual harassment and bullying courses. To teach them how to do properly?

Like as if

MPs, including the prime minister, and peers are being given training courses in sexual harassment and bullying. Like any of them need it, if the whinges about misconduct and bullying coming out of Westminster can be believed!

Contaminated

The TV chugger MSF Pandemic may be losing potential clients among my pals and their pals, who have been initiated into the novel Prey by Jon A. Gored. One of his characters invented the label MSF which, in its politer form, stands for Mobile Sewage Factory.
    Just what the world needs – lots of those!

Violence barely contained

Don’t you just want to scream when your bank’s website takes ages to load then the box for your user number turns red with an order to enter a number whilst you’re reading a pop-up message about cookies at the bottom of the screen!

Simple truth

Someone needs to mention to our young, thrusting Chancellor of the Exchequer that if we really are all in it together over the Chinese plague, then there will be a monstrous backlash if he tries to make onlythe middle classes pay for his largesse @ the taxpayer’s expense.

Expensive habit

You have to be really keen; and rich; to be a smoker in Australia, where cigarettes now cost at least £1 each after the second rise in tobacco duty this year!

No limits

Everyone medical, no matter how vaguely, I’ve just read, is to be recruited to the task of vaccinating the population. Which means that if you feel a stab in the arm whilst pumping iron @ the gym, it’s just your personal trainer topping you up with a flu jab – or a shot for the Chinese plague when it becomes available.

Ho, hum, yawn

The band Queen has been declared to have perpetrated the best ever festival gig of all time. But what’s the poll worth if it was don with just a tiny number of people? I know that no one asked me for my opinion. Or anyone else I know.