What a month January was.
I have, of course, chosen a depiction of Janus with a rather good beard. (Infra)
Today is 1st February – well… it was when I started writing this post:
London, despite the best endeavours of the media weather forecasters, bathed in sunshine – even if the the air this evening was brisk for smokers sitting outside pubs – while the North suffered blizzards, gales, and storms. We have television pictures of stranded motorists…lorries… and intrepid TV news crews preferring to film extreme weather conditions in Britain than the various wars we are currently involved in.
Why do people deliberately go out in their cars without blankets, thermos flasks full of cuppa soup and a mobile phone, when the local Police tell them not to travel? I suspect that many of these people are not working and may be bored with daytime television and, rather than watch it, prefer to be on it. Just a theory. Report from The Sun
We have had the Federal Reserve in the United States cutting interest rates… stock markets (particularly in Asia) rising and falling, credit card bills arriving in the post after the Christmas escape…and the great British January hangover. Mervyn King has been given another opportunity to be Governor of The Bank of England – and, will, no doubt, in the fullness of time, act in the interests of the British people in terms of dealing with our interest rate.
Fortunately… our elected representatives in Parliament have laid on entertainment and diversion for us to help us get us through our globally warmed January. We have had Labour and Tory MPs being investigated by the Police or being suspended from Parliament for ten days, but not resigning as MPs, and others wondering, possibly… allegedly….. and .. this is pure conjecture… because they have absolutely no idea how their lives are administered…. or because they cannot remember the detail of the laws they participated in designing and then promulgating… worrying how many relatives they have on the payroll. It has all gone a bit quiet, in the light of the Derek Conway incident, in terms of MPs writing to the Metropolitan Police calling for immediate investigation into the misdemeanours of MPs from other parties., I think it may have been Lib-Dem Chris Huhne who wrote to Plod about Labour Funding? Certainly, the Police wrote back to him. I could be wrong…
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Guido Fawkes, however, writes in his blog: “On this day (31st January) in 1606, Guido Fawkes, following months of torture was convicted of treason for his part in the ”Gunpowder Plot” against an oppressive political class and the tyrant King James I, and executed. Now, some four centuries later, it is Guido’s turn to torture politicians…
[Pic: Prime Minister’s Questions: Guardian]
We have also had an Italian football coach, manager of the England Football team, who now speaks good English in private after a month, not selecting Beckham to play against a Swiss football team – and thus denying obsessive tattoo fancier and world icon, St Beckham, of an opportunity to join other footballing greats in the 100 caps for England Hall of Fame. I know little of ‘the beautiful game’ – but I am very familiar with those black and white clips of the 1966 World Cup. I do not need to put them on my iPod. I have wasted part of what is left of my memory because I cannot delete them from my brain after so many repetitions on British sports TV programmes over the last 40 years. The Sun has a debate on the Beckham non-selection if you would like to participate
It was, however, pleasing to note that Maradonna has finally admitted, to a Sun reporter, to using his godly hands to put the football into the goal and deprive England of World Cup glory shortly after we won The Falklands war in the early 1980s. The / An England goalkeeper of the time was not impressed… according to the tabloids… ‘too little… too late’. I rather like the idea of sportsmen using all their limbs and faculties to move a ball around a pitch (although I prefer the game that allows players to use a cricket bat) – I shall watch the start of the Six Nations Tournament tomorrow…..
I have lost my train of thought. This is no bad thing… but I have been diverted by Advocatus Diaboli, of Reductio ad Absurdum, almost certainly correctly, calling into question my reference to “The Laws of Tort” in the comments section of my earlier ‘Beards Growing Post’ – … rather than the more usual “Law of Torts”.
I suspect that I may not have been sufficiently persuasive in my response to Advocatus Diaboli (ibid) … BUT… as Harry Callaghan said in the famous “Dirty Harry” movie… “it takes a good man to admit his limitations”.
One thing I am fairly sure about this evening… now Saturday morning: (and this follows on from the Beard Growing comments section (Supra) …. I do not recall ever saying to a student I have taught in the last 25 years “Are you feeling lucky, Punk?” as they were about to go into the examination hall…. (however tempting it may have been in the case of a few rather amusing students who knew absolutely no law, despite the best endeavours of lecturers, librarians and authors of textbooks, after a year of perfecting their social lives.)
On that note… buona notte. It is time for me to go to my futon and watch the Parliament Channel on BBC. Nothing like a bit of coverage from The Houses of Commons and Lords at this time of night. Forget ‘Pop idol’, ‘Strictly Come Drinking” or any of the soaps… The Parliament Channel on BBC.. has it all: pathos… drama… corruption… intrigue… violence and, sometimes, a bit of new law being debated.
Finally… one of our great writers and humourists died yesterday. Miles Kington. He went to the school I attended. I did not know him – I am younger – a different generation – but we were told by our English teacher that Miles Kington was one to watch. My teacher was right. Kington was a brilliant writer. We are all ( I hope) influenced by the work of others. The Independent Obituary is excellent.
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I’m looking forward to the weekend.
I still haven’t quite worked out how that giant leap from beard cultivation to the taxonomy of the law(s) on civil wrong(s) was made… oh well… it was an entertaining aside for late on a Friday night… AD 🙂
Think Dada ?
It is, I agree, an improbable connection 🙂
But… there again the assertion that there are only six degrees of separation between me / you and everyone in the world is a strange idea…given immigration restrictions in certain countries.
Can someone please tell me where the lawful authority to intercept within prison exists, other than monitoring telephones, within the Prison Act 1952 and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000?
I just really liked the way this was written Charon. Nice.