Autumn is here, and winter is on the way, so better stock up the wood pile.
Logs
Bawburgh; June 2011
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All posts by Keith
Something for the Weekend
This week I thought we’d have a wartime offering from the cartoonist Jon, famous for his “Two Types” — eccentric British Army Officers so often encountered in wartime.
So It's Two Fingers to You …
They just do not get it, do they!
According to today’s news feeds (for example here from the BBC) Rebekah Brooks is to return as chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper operations.
This is the woman who was acquitted (yes, OK, she was found not guilty) of phone hacking last year, having not known, or forgotten, large chucks of what was happening in her empire over a period of something like 10 years. Others were allowed to take the fall.
OK, I accept it is Murdoch’s right to appoint anyone he likes to his organisation (providing they fulfil the legal niceties). As Evan Harris of Hacked Off has observed (quoted in the Guardian a few days ago)
Mrs Brooks’s successful defence at trial was that she was such an incompetent executive that she was unaware of industrial-scale criminal wrongdoing in intercepting voicemails and bribing public officials, and unaware of the vast conspiracy to cover it up, despite her admitting to destroying millions of emails and putting the company’s reputation before cooperation with the police.
This doesn’t seem to be a very encouraging sign in one expected to lead an organisation — any organisation.
Moreover to me this also says much about the Murdoch empire’s total disregard for ethics and morality. As the shadow Culture Secretary and others have said (also in the Guardian) it sends a massive two fingers to the British public and, I suggest, a high-five to the wealthy and influential who seem to be able to can get away with almost anything they like.
However legal it is, they basically just do not seem to get how cynical this is.
The (Plastic) Pound in Your Pocket
The Bank of England is introducing plastic money. Specifically polymer banknotes. They start in the autumn of next year with a new £5 note, followed by a new £10 note in 2017. And, it has been announced today, a new £20 in 2020. Which will leave only the £50 note made from paper.
But why, oh why, does this take so long? The Bank essentially know the designs, the technology and the security features. So why is it not possible to have the new £10 and £20 notes next year along with the £5 note? Why does it take 5 years to create the new £20 note. This isn’t building a space shuttle; it’s essentially printing pieces of paper, albeit with some devilishly clever technology embedded.
I have never understood why it takes any public enterprise — central government, local government, Bank of England, the NHS; the list is endless — so long to accomplish anything. They’d never survive in a competitive marketplace.
Gawdelpus!
Oddity of the Week: Playboy
According to the Weird Universe website, quoting the Houston Chronicle of 12 August 2010 …
Playboy magazine has long published an audio edition, and the Library of Congress produces a text edition in Braille. However, as a Houston Chronicle reporter learned in August [2010], a Texas organization (Taping for the Blind) goes one step further, with volunteer reader Suzi Hanks actually describing the photographs — even the Playmates and other nudes. “I’d say if she has large breasts or small breasts, piercings or tattoos,” said Hanks. “I’ll describe her genitalia. I take my time describing the girls.” “Hey, blind guys like pretty, naked girls, too!”
Book Review: Burlington
Nick Catford
Burlington; The Central Government War Headquarters at Corsham
Folly Books; 2012
This is a large, coffee table-sized book full of photographs and maps of the now decommissioned and abandoned government bunker under north Wiltshire.
Nick Catford is one of the country’s most expert and specialist historians and investigators of underground Britain, and especially wartime/military and railway infrastructure, with several books to his credit. He is also an excellent photographer and a leading light in Subterranea Britannica (SubBrit). Which means he gets access to places most people wouldn’t and he’s absolutely the right man to write this book.
The first almost 50 pages provide a blow-by-blow history of the Corsham bunker from the mid-1930s through to it’s demise some 10 or so years ago, but majoring on its Cold War incarnations since the mid-1950s. The reminder of the 215 pages are filled with glossy photographs and charts of the layout of the various areas of the bunker, showing how each area would have been allocated and the now abandoned state of the site — complete with stored hardware, furniture, etc.
The photographs give a good idea of the decay that sets in very quickly when a site like this is abandoned. As yet apparently no roof-falls (at least not in the bunker area), but lots of water seepage and thus decaying wood and metal. Hundreds of new, but abandoned, chairs, blankets, packs of copy paper, telex machines, generators, telecoms infrastructure, catering equipment — it’s all there! It just beggars belief that all this can just be abandoned; one would think that at least the metal (and there must be hundreds of tons of it) could be recovered and sold off for scrap and recycling.
It’s the sheer scale of the enterprise, the government’s inability to organise its way out of a paper bag (certainly with any speed) and the scale of waste which for me makes this book so interesting. Plus the horrendous logistics of setting up the whole outfit, keeping it secret (the code name seems to have been changed every 2-3 years!) and maintaining it in a state of readiness. It all just boggles the mind.
If you are interested in what we get up to underground, things governmental and military or the general disorganisation of the way government goes about planning and implementing projects, you’ll likely find this book fascinating. Or you might just want to have your mind blown! If none of those floats your boat then basically, don’t bother.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆
A Right Bag of Cornflakes
Oh dear, dear.
From 5 October retailers in England are required by law to charge 5p each for single use plastic carrier bag. Except when they don’t.
It’s all well and good, and very laudable, in theory. But as with all legislation the devil is in the detail.
And oh dear me! As the Independent on Sunday pointed out yesterday, the system is a mess and is bound to lead to a whole raft of arguments with supermarket cashiers who are going to be at the sharp end of implementing the scheme. I can already picture the low-life having fisticuffs round the checkouts in Asda and Tesco.
Just take two minutes to read the article. Think about some of the implications and it’ll soon become apparent that this isn’t as clear-cut and easy as it needs to be.
If you want more you can always read the Government’s guidance.
What a mess!
Weekly Photograph
For lots of reasons this week and next we’ll be taking our weekly photographs from the archive. First off here’s one from almost exactly five years ago. Eeek! Is it really that long? It seems like only a few weeks ago.
Holy Stone
Rye Harbour; August 2010
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Quote: Generosity
of receiving the generosity we give them.
[Ethan Nichtern]
Strange Conversations
About 30 years ago, the guy I shared an office with commented about “the strange conversations you people have over the dinner table”. This was, as I recall, occasioned by my mentioning that the previous evening Noreen and I had been ruminating upon the origins, and reasons for, the names animals were given in medieval times. You know: Reynard the Fox, Tib the Cat, Broc the Badger, and so forth.
[Although it has to be said that Jim and I also had some curious conversations in the office; as you do when you are working in IT, you have a doctorate in Chemistry and your office-mate has a doctorate in medieval French, from a French university.]
And indeed Noreen and I do discuss some odd things over dinner. Last evening we wondered about the origin of the word kiosk.
Noreen suspected initially that it might be Arabic. I suggested possibly Hindi; and later wondered about Inuit.
And of course Noreen turns out to be right. Kiosk is indeed derived ultimately from the Persian. According to the OED:
From the French kiosque and Italian chiosco; after the Turkish kiūshk a pavilion; which is from the Persian kūskh, a palace or portico.
Secondarily to this the OED quotes as one of its sources (not the earliest, that’s 1625):
1 April 1717, Lady MW Montagu letter to Mrs Thistlethwayte: “In the public gardens there are public chiosks, where people go and drink their coffee, sherbet, etc.”
I remark on this because the only other time I have come across Thistlethwaite as a name was Prof. Frank Thistlethwaite, Vice-Chancellor of UEA when I was a graduate student there in the early 70s.
But it isn’t just us. A few weeks ago when we met up with our friend Katy (plus under-age hangers on) for lunch the conversation fell to wondering about the origin of hunkey-dorey, meaning OK, good or even excellent. None of us knew, or even wanted to hazard a guess.
But trawling the intertubes it turns out that there is no agreed origin of the expression. The earliest reference seems to be in the US Civil War period collection of songs George Christy’s Essence of Old Kentucky of 1862. Not that this tells us the origin or reason; just when it is first recorded.
Looking further Word Detective turns up another, but suspiciously spurious, possible origin:
Probably the most oft-heard story about “hunky-dory” holds that there was, in the 19th century, a street in Yokohama, Japan, called “Honcho-dori.” It is said that Honcho-dori was the Times Square of Yokohama, and thus a favourite hangout of US sailors on shore leave. So popular did this street become among sailors, it is said, that “Honcho-dori” entered naval slang as “hunky-dory,” a synonym for “Easy Street” or a state of well-being and comfort.
Now, there actually is a “Honcho-dori” in Yokohama. (In fact, there’s one in many Japanese cities, because “Honcho-dori” translates roughly as “Main Street”.) But there are two problems with this story. One is that there is no direct evidence of any connection between the first appearance of “hunky-dory” around 1866 and US sailors in Japan or naval slang in general.
Problem number two is that a connection with “Honcho-dori” is somewhat unnecessary. English already had the archaic American slang word “hunk,” meaning “safe”, from the Dutch word “honk”, meaning goal or home in a game. To achieve “hunk” or “hunky” in a child’s game was to make it “home” and win the game. So “hunky” already meant OK.
But where the dory or dorey came from is, it seems, anyone’s guess. But then maybe it’s just a rhyming duplication like okey-dokey.
Yeah, the strange conversations you people have over dinner!