Stories that caught my eye

Although Alzheimers is a very serious subject, this initiative by a German care home which apparently succeeds in preventing too many incidents of people in their care wandering off and having to get police and other authorities out to look for them is so supremely simple, and when you think about it and obvious ruse, I just fell off my chair laughing when I read it!

Richard does a very funny piece on differing attitudes to coiffeur.  Well worth a read.  But Richard - it ain't just the girls.  Last Tuesday when I was on duty I was called by a young male student resident who was out in town.  He was calling to ask me to go check his room because he thought he had gone out leaving his hair straighteners turned on and burning a hole in his bedroom.   He had, but such was the mess in his room I honestly couldn't tell if a fire had already happened or not!

Over at the Social Affairs unit you can read the whole of a no doubt fictitious letter from Gordon Brown to Tony Blair pleading with him not to take the Euro-prez job...here's just a snippet from the end: 

I know that you feel that you have outgrown national politics and in the post-modern post-democratic world we live in the old conventions don’t apply. But I also know that you have always been concerned about your place in history. If eurosceptic opinion in this country hardens in the coming years many will view your role as that of a Quisling. It is the destiny of prophets to be reviled in their own country even while acclaimed in others, but a false prophet runs the risk of universal opprobrium.

...is good publicity?  Maybe not:

"Jock bottom "

Saturday January 26, 2008
The Guardian

I never thought it would come to this, but I'm starting to feel sorry for that suddenly most benighted of species, the high school jock...He was a God.

Not any more.

Jock-stock has been terribly devalued in the last few years. ...Pity the poor jock. His day is done.

Still, good job this one is a Jock and a wonk, and a Mac user I suppose! 

So Lord "Paddy" Ashdown has apparently accepted the job as UN high representative in Kabul:

The former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown, has agreed to become the United Nations' envoy to Afghanistan, a source close to negotiations on the post said today.
"Yes, he has accepted the job," the source told the Reuters news agency, speaking of an agreement between Ashdown, 66, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.

Ashdown, a former soldier, had been seeking a strengthened mandate for the post, to become more deeply involved in coordinating efforts to combat a Taliban insurgency and guide reconstruction.

Hardly what I would choose as a retirement job.  I guess it's true what they say about old soldiers!  Good luck to him.  I disagree with our presence there, but I can't think of anyone better to try to put it right. 

It is not often that I find myself agreeing with Neil Clark, but I do, and wholeheartedly, on this point he highlights:

(From the Tehran Times )...

Islamic law prohibits production of nuclear arms: Leader
Tehran Times Political Desk

TEHRAN - Iran’s religious leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has stated that the Islamic Republic has repeatedly said that Iran opposes the production and use of nuclear weapons in principle from an Islamic point of view. 

Of course, there'll be some of you respond "well he would say that wouldn't he" but it's something I've long bellieved - it is logically inconsistent with Islam to want to have the means to destroy God's creation so comprehensively as a nuclear weapon would.  So? you say, Pakistan has them...but Pakistan has never been ruled specifically by Islamic clerics.

I for one believe them. 

Via the Environmental Economics blog comes a story about, well, bansturbators banning, yup, balls, bollocks, genitalia from the back of vehicles:

Today, a Chesapeake lawmaker plans to introduce a bill that will ban "truck nuts" from your truck or SUV.

The nutty idea is the brainchild of Delegate Lionell Spruill.  We're talking about the fake testicles people hang on the backs of their vehicles.  Spruill's bill would ban anything on a car or truck that looked like human genitalia.

Those nutty Americans, eh! 

I admit it...I'm addicted to computer porn!

Via Tom Paine's "Last Ditch " blog here's a humourous take on the serious issue of organ harvesting by default:

EVERYONE is to be fitted with a zip as part of Gordon Brown’s plan to nationalise Britain’s kidneys.

The zip will run across the middle of the abdomen to allow for the quick and easy removal of major organs and body parts – all of which will become the property of the Cabinet Office from next April.

Harvested organs will be given to Labour Party donors or used to make pies for the TUC conference.

Read the rest of it if you like...  (and no - it was not me in the photgraph - although I tend to agree that the default position should be donation, I can't imagine anyone wanting mine so I'm on pretty safe ground!)

Apropos of nothing in particular, this little snippet of news...

The government of Singapore has built up a 3 per cent stake in British
Land, the FTSE 100 property group that has seen its market value dive
with the rest of the UK property sector.

...prompted me to mention something that many might not know and that I discovered while researching the history of things that could loosely be linked to community land trusts or mutual housing schemes that I am working on elsewhere.

British Land plc is the successor of something called the National Freehold Land Society, which was founded by nineteenth century liberals, foremost amongst them Richard Cobden and John Bright, as a way of subverting the restriction that only those with freehold property had the vote. They would club together, buy up swathes of land around inner cities and parcel it off to households at a minimum nominal value of the £50 you had to be worth in land to vote.

Much of the familiar nineteenth century townscape of Britain was developed by this and other temporary building societies and similar vehicles, including a less successful one established by the Tories that I think also has a successor plc today (Slough Estates maybe?).

Quite often, if you see streets where every other house is of a slightly different nineteenth century design you will find that many of these were built by these mutuals. Members would get allocated their land and then the whole mutual would save money until they could afford to build a house, then the whole process would start again until all the members were housed.