Economist's explained

I think the Daily Mash tends to do a rather good job with the news, but if you're not a fan, here's an excerpt from the latest spat between people who think cuts are bad and those who think they're good, which I particularly enjoyed.

The people who signed the letter stressed it was a very important letter because they were not just people who did not like the cuts, they were economists.

Blanchflower added: "We feel it would help raise the level of debate if you could pretend that this time we have got it absolutely right."

But their plea was rejected by people who read articles instead of headlines.

Helen Archer, who usually gets all the way to the end and then has a thought, said: "People seem to have this idea that economists are motivated by facts and evidence instead of raw political prejudice. It's very queer."

She added: "They're not scientists. They're not even astrologers.

"They are like a drunk priest trying to explain the immaculate conception with a broken Etch-a-Sketch."

See!

The Vatican gets it right!!!

As a lapsed Catholic who had found in his antipathy towards the church in recent years growing towards disdain I'm shocked to find this morning that only the Vatican have been able to find an appropriate response to the news that the USA undertook a military operation within the boundaries of an independent country, resulting in the death of their great adversary - I wasn't aware that Osama Bin Laden had been through a trial and had verdict passed upon him, but apprently we're told in great cheer that Justice has been served... We'll see!

Still, amongst all the bluster we get this from the Vatican.

But the Vatican warned that no Christian should celebrate the death of the al Qaeda leader.

“A Christian should never rejoice” over the death of a human being, said Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, although bin Laden would have to answer to God for spreading hatred and ordering the killing of so many people.

“Osama bin Laden, as everyone knows, had the grave responsibility of having spread division and hate among people, causing the deaths of an innumerable number of people and exploiting religion for these purposes,” Father Lombardi said.

He said the Vatican hoped that the death of bin Laden “would not be an occasion for more hate, but for peace".

Quite so! but I hae ma doobts!

Infinite Monkeys...

...clattering away on an infinite number of keyboards will at some point produce the correct sequence of keystrokes to reproduce a Shakespearean play.

I often feel like my blog efforts are a wee bit like an effort from some of the other less 'lucky' monkeys.

What am I saying and why am I saying it?

When I try to say one thing I say too much and someone jumps in to argue about the thing I was really just using as a prop for my main argument and we get dragged into some semantics.

It's not just me though. If I indulge in some discussion with the Labour webbie chaps, I often find after I've addressed the bit that annoyed me about what they've said it turns out that's not what they were wanting to talk about anyway... ho hum!

It's a frustrating business, but this blogging lark is definitely good exercise for the mind and a worthy way of honing your own arguments (well, the nasty extremists aside!). Sometimes though you find yourself in the company of true wordsmiths, such as the esteemable Mark MacLachlan who writes of the Labour party...

"I believe that a profoundly honest social movement that mobilised to help the working man and woman has been subsumed from within by careerists desperate for power and willing to do almost anything to hold on to it."

With this one paragraph the monkeys can stop their key-bashing antics and go back to swinging on the trees - for I've found the paragraph I needed.

Lowlights of an otherwise lovely weekend...

It wouldn't have been much after 4pm on Saturday afternoon with my 3 year old, that we sadly watched the shell-suited, burberry becapped, teenagers excitedly locate the best spot between some bushes and high on the hill of Queens park overlooking Pollokshaws road, for them to imbibe the far too many 2 litre plastic bottles of strong cider that they'd somehow managed to procure, despite most of them looking under 16, never mind 18.

I did wonder which of them would end the night over the hill in the Victoria's casualty department...

I did also think back to the New Year's eve I was inadvisedly carrying a bottle of beer on the streets of Byron Bay, where the Police officer, blessed with common sense, simply took the bottle from me, poured it down the drain, put the bottle in the bin and invited me to wisen up and enjoy my evening...

It's such a shame that these gangs of teenagers are so devious in their efforts to get drunk in public that they manage to do so so far from the watchful gaze of our constabulary, who seem to prefer spending Monday mornings in teams of 3 setting nefarious speed traps in places where motorists are likely to be accelerating away from town towards that National speed limit sign... (don't worry, I was travelling in the other direction!)

Children's exercise - FFS!

I've been annoyed with this children's PE debate since the last election. I just don't understand what the problem is in delivering 4 hours of PE a week for Primary school children.

Now, admittedly I went to a school with rather low numbers but I suspect the problem here is not the supervision, but what actually constitutes PE / exercise and how it could be undertaken.

In Primary school my teacher regularly took the entire class to the gym hall where we played wee games for 45 minutes. You didn't need to get into shorts and t-shirt for it.

We played rounders, tig, crab football (where you could easily tell who was in the cubs and who wasn't) and learned to skip.

Sometimes we had an old guy who could play the piano a wee bit. He came along and we had a mini-choir session, then we did some dancing - which as far as I'm concerned is about the best exercise their is... don't believe me? Check out the professionals on Strictly and ask any of the celebrities who make it through the first few weeks.
You could have a dance in your classroom if you just shoved some of the desks and chairs to the side for a wee bit...

So who is it that's not able to deliver some exercise to the children as part of a fun filled daily education?

Is the problem defining what constitues exercise? or is it teacher's inability to think outside the box or is it that the inner city kids are crammed into some shoebox where swinging low, never mind a cat is impossible.

What's the bloody problem?

My Scottish Political Compass

Hat tip to James Kelly for the link to the Scottish Vote Compass. It poses some interesting questions which helps to focus the mind, after all - as James pints out - Labour and the Lib Dems have pretty much copied the SNP manifesto and Stuart Winton quite rightly parodies Salmond's latest wheeze of increasing the now popular council tax freeze to 5 years - I hate it when politicians indulge in this playground game of who can piss the highest. Labour annoyed me last week with their 2 week cancer scam (pick a number and half it!). Salmond had no need to play top trumps in this petty way!

Anyway, onto my political alignment and it doesn't really surprise me to find that the party I am most aligned with is the Greens. They generally talk sense as far as I can see, even if they can get a wee bit dogmatic at times... Not as half as dogmatic as the old school Labour boys who despise themselves for actually having a National identity I suppose...




That doesn't change much though, as this particular election is much more about the battle between Labour and SNP than any other election in my lifetime. I'll be voting SNP & SNP. If they win, I'll be haranguing them from the rooftops about Green issues - then again... they've actually not got that bad a record on that front either... Hope Patrick Harvey gets back in though!

PS I realise that image is probably a bit small, but if you do the compass youself you'll get the gist of where I stand - slightly left wing social liberal... seems a reasonable place to be...

Tribute to Giggsy - a true legend of the game!

Modest, unassuming, Legend, role model, boys-own fantasy hero, superstar of the global game... There's only one Ryan Giggs!



There are few footballers that I'll point out for my son if he takes an interest in the game. Sometimes they release their career highlights. There's space on our shelf for a Henrik Larsson DVD. There's space for a Brian Laudrup DVD. Dad will still have his old Jimmy Johnston and Lubo Moravcik videos - assuming we still have a video player, but there will need to be a new shelf built for the Welsh Wing Wizard who has been enthralling me for over 20 years now.

Pleasing to note that as a youth he also played a bit of rugby - what's the chances that it was having the opportunity to play both codes that helped him to develop into the all round, ball playing, team minded, maestro that he became? I like to think so.