boreders

I love my pets as much as the next pet-lover (our family includes three cats, four gerbils, three hamsters, a fish, and a sea anenome), but… I can’t help feeling two Fire Engines coming out to rescue a lost hamster represents a massive waste of manpower and tax-payers money.

Relevant reading:

Apparently, the Steatoda Nobilis, Britain’s only biting spider, has claimed another victim in Devon, where some poor soul disturbed a nest and got a nasty bite on the neck. No… don’t ask me how. Maybe he was in the attic or something and the spider launched a sneak attack. The article, in the Metro, features a picture of the ‘false’ Black Widow (the Steatoda Nobilis is related, distantly one would hope) which defies easy scaling; but, a little research brings relief from confusion. Another article on BBC News online (from September 2001) shows the same sort of spider with a far better judgement of scale. Knowing it’s about the size of my thumbnail makes it all the more comforting to know it lives down south at the moment!

Given this article (on BBC News) is almost seven years old, you’d think people would have had time to prepare for this sort of encounter. It must be the sort of thing that comes up down the pub all the time. As the Steatoda Nobilis first set up home at the beginning of the last century, it isn’t as if this has been some undercover assault on the shores of the UK. No doubt some fanatical collector carried it home from the Canary Islands or it hitched a ride in a shipment of something or other. The fact that it has spread across the whole of south coastal England in a hundred year residence seems like slow progress to me. Fascinating that this arachnid from warmer climes has managed to make the transition to the chilly damp of England in a relatively short space of time. Isn’t the natural world fascinating!

The Japanese intend to chuck 100 paper planes into orbit. Constructed from silicon treated, heatproof paper and measuring around 20 cm in length, the places will depart from the International Space Station and head earthward. The planes will cover around 300 miles in their journey and most probably land in the sea. However, I’m midly concerned what might happen if they don’t! How much damage can a paper place cause if it has travelled down from orbit and covered about 300 miles to really top up base velocity? Can we expect people to suffer severe injuries from smouldering paper planes travelling at terminal velocity? What about birds? Or planes? Has someone actually taken a moment to really think this through?

Suicide bombs. Unrest in Chad. Public sector pay cuts. And Holly Willoughby’s cleavage. I had to raise them again, because another tabloid did yesterday, with another front page picture and a claimed plethora of complaints. To be honest, Holly wore a nice dress with dropped frontage, but nothing eye-watering… nothing like Jodie Marsh’s number from ‘The Mirror’ last week.

Quite why this poor woman has drawn such ire from the press beggars belief – I mean, these articles question her judgement and highlight the distress she’s causing (to about four people)… while selling more papers with some nice colour photos. The paper noted that Phillip Schofield complimented Holly on her dress as a veiled reference to all the media coverage and that Holly appeared to look down towards her cleavage as if acknowledging what he co-presenter really meant. To me, the picture looked like Holly had decided to refer to her script in a moment of amnesia bought on by embarrassment.

Of course, you know if she comes on next week dressed in a burka, she’ll still get a couple of pages coverage in all the gutter press…

I was less than shocked to discover today that The Mirror has managed to stretch out Holly’s cleavage to a further day of discussion with a 2-page article discussing the right and wrong amount to show in public. Obviously just a chance to show a dozen or more pictures of celebrities in flesh revealing dresses, from the tasteful and currently highly popular Angelina Jolie to the utterly deranged and hardly dressed Jodie Marsh. With death in Kenya, incompetence and nepotism in Parliament, and street violence on the rise in the UK – you can see why women and their breasts demand so many front page inches.

Dancing on Ice was flooded with complaints after host Holly Willoughby showed off her cleavage in a skimpy dress.

Flooded. Cleavage. Skimpy clothes. The shock of it all. What has saturday evening entertainment come to when a young and attractive woman wears a dress. Damnation and brimstone rain down on her satanic soul!

I read about this with incredulity, because I know what papers will do to sell copy. It would appear the ‘flood’ amounted to five complaints that Holly showed a little too much skin this last Saturday. What do these five people do as a day job? In truth, they’re probably professional complainers. Reminds me of a sketch from ‘Saturday Night Fry‘ where a woman (played by Phyllida Law) blurts all sorts of obscenity in a discussion about dirty minds (with Hugh Laurie) and then promptly sends a letter of complaint about the poor standards and language just in time for the end of the show (she complains they used the word ‘penis’ twice in the course of the show, three times if they read out her letter…).

Holly used to be a model. She’s an attractive woman. Women have been known to wear dresses and use their appearance to their advantage. That rubs off on the success of the show. People who feel that seeing cleavage constitutes some level of uncalled for nakedity really should just pack up and go hold a 24/7 vigil with placards outside their local lap dancing club… Maybe they could go down the newsagents and tear the topless ladies out of the tabloids, to save people from themselves. Revealing dresswear and pornography occupy quite different points in the spectrum of decency – and judging by the pictures of Holly and the dress, there’s nothing wrong here.

France seems to thrive on l’exception culturelle, running against the grain of what the rest of the world might consider commonsense. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has, of late, shown a very different approach to personal relationships while in office, the sort of thing that would see uproar, crazed media assaults and impeachment around the rest of the world. In the UK when a business declares job losses you might expect unrest and a spot of light industrial action from the unions, but in France you can expect riots and acts of arson.

Now, Amazon has raised hackles in France because they offer discounted books and, woe is me, free shipping. The Lang Law of 1981 protects small publishers and booksellers by enforcing tiered discounting – basically making competition nigh on impossible without breaking the law. Amazon’s offer, of combined discounts and free shipping on new titles, exceeded the lawful 5% – and following court action, where they lost, they have now chosen to ignore the law and the decision of the court, while paying off a fine in neat little chunks of $1,000 a day. You have to accept that you can’t rescue everyone by force of law – the smaller retailer either has to find a niche or move on… you can’t coddle them and wrap them in cotton wool.

Expect burning books quite soon, probably lit by enraged book stall owners.

I don’t have much to do with blogs. Hardly write online at all. Never engage in pointless chit-chat and banter simply to fill space.

Oh… OK. Who am I kidding? I have one or two blogs around here somewhere. And now, I have an ‘experimental’ blog – on the alpha test – over at profy.com. The blog comes from Russian coders and shows promise. Apparently we’re only seeing about 20% of the potential functionality so far – but the site seeks to combine blogging and social networking into a natural whole.

I shall blog here and there about my experience and findings. Over there I inhabit the Borederland – so, if you get the chance, do read and maybe even try it yourself.

I was saddened to read that George MacDonald Fraser had died, aged 82. Charting the adventures of the dastardly Flashman, Fraser created a character both loved and hated, who has invariably influenced a plethora of fictional (and likely real) cads and bounders ever since. Fraser charted Flashman’s career over twelve books, between 1969 to 2005, and attracted considerable acclaim for his writing talent, though he remained ever humble.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the books I have read so far – as Flashman sits on my ‘Stuff to Read before I go Gaga’ list. While I knew Fraser had a long career in writing – as author and journalist – I didn’t know he also wrote the screenplay for ‘Octopussy’. I freely admit to being both a Bond enthusiast and a fan of the Great Eyebrow, Roger Moore, so the pedigree of the screenplay simply adds to the experience now. Guilty pleasures and all that!

I look forward to many more years of reading pleasure in the hands of Flashman and will do all I can to spread the word.

I was a little concerned yesterday when Eddie Mair asked Steve Clegg, new leader of the Liberal Democrats, to tell him something we didn’t know about him that didn’t involve his politics or his family upbringing. I have to admit I may have misheard the constraints of the question – or perhaps Steve did – but, Clegg promptly rolled out an answer that involved his post-War family upbringing shaping of his world view and current political bent.

Anyway, that aside, I seriously think I’m going to need someone to win me over to the Liberal Democrat cause for the future, especially the leadership (now that it’s changed yet again…). I have found myself swayed by the views of David Cameron far too often of late – and it’s possible I may have no choice but to reevaluate my options come the next General Election. Ten years ago, I’m certain I wouldn’t have had these sorts of doubt… but, now I’m constantly concerned about the way the current government seem to have gone off the rails and the ‘other option’ no longer holds the same allure.

Me… a Conservative (with a capital ‘C’) – whatever is the world coming to?