I've never understood this

Today I was reading about the racism goings on inside the Big Brother house. I didn't follow it too closely at the time, but it seems to involve the word "paki" being used to describe an Indian actress.

Call me weird ("Ok, you're weird"), but I've never understood really why it's a racist word. Obviously "paki" is short for "pakistani". Since when did referring to someone by their country become a racist thing? The Australians don't complain when we call them "Aussies". A couple of Indian-descent (sub-continent, not country) people I know refer to people from Pakistan as "pakis". They don't mean this in an insulting way, it's just where they are from.

It's only an insulting word if you decide to be insulted by it. It could therefore be equally insulting to be called an Indian, or an Khazak, but it isn't. If I was abroad and somebody tried to insult me by saying something like "you stupid Englishman", I wouldn't feel racially insulted, just miffed I was called stupid. Same should go for "you stupid Paki".

Attempting to insult someone based on where they are from is xenophobic, not racist.

Not so fast

So, the HIP things have been delayed, which means we don't have to rush our house on the market, but can wait until August.

This is good, because it means we can do a few jobs that need doing, like sorting out the garden and repainting the door frame outside.

But, it's also annoying because it only comes into effect for 4-bed houses, which ours is.

So this leads to an interesting question: What constitutes a bedroom? I'd rather market our house as a 3-bed house with an upstairs reception room/music studio/playroom/dressing room/walk-in closet/study etc, because then we can avoid the stupid £600 HIP cost.

But I'm sure we wouldn't get away with it. Thing is, though, there's nothing to stop us from putting a bed in, say, our dining room, and then having a 5-bed house.

So who is going to decide exactly what the classification of a bedroom is? Glad to see the government haven't managed to add even more confusion to an already confusing issue.

Upping Sticks

We have decided to up sticks and move. We've been thinking about this for a while, because from where we live the closest five primary schools are, frankly, crap. There's just no way I'm sending Joe to a school on a council estate.

About a mile away, however, there is a really good school. So, basically, we have to move only about half a mile to get into the catchment area. We might even just swing it from where we are, but it's doubtful and a huge risk. How stupid and irritating. We might try and move close to where Jess's primary school is, but houses around there tend to have more zeros on the end than I can afford.

It seems daft though, to spend so much money moving so short a distance, but then can I put a price on Joe's education? Not really, unfortunately. And it's still cheaper than private school.

Thing is, we've been forced to make this decision quickly. The stupid Home Information Packs will be madatory from the 1st of June, and if we want to avoid a pointless £600 cost, we have to have the house on the market by the end of May. Which, if you are paying attention to the movement of time, is not that far away. So there's Estate Agents coming around tommorow and Wednesday to value our house and hopefully tell us it's worth loads of money. Then we have to find a house to buy, and convince a bank to lend us loads more money.

This is all made worse by the fact that we have no money at all for moving costs, and are relying on the equity in the house to pay for these things. I might have to try and get a bridging loan or a massive temporary overdraft to cover some costs.

Stressful times ahead, I predict...

A fine job

Apparantly a lady was slapped with an £80 fine by two coucil wardens, because her 2 year-old granddaughter dared to drop two crisps in the street.

Sometimes the word "Jobsworth" simply isn't enough.

Fortunately, the council did overturn the fine.

Grammar schools

I'm a big fan of grammar schools. I went to one, and received a good education (even if it was only after I left that I truly appreciated it), largely undistracted by the yob element that seems to be in control of classrooms these days. Grammar schools give you, no matter what your social status or background, a chance to shine.

But, of course, these days nobody is allowed to be better than anybody else. This was to be expected under Labour, but not, traditionally, the Conservatives. Until now. They have made it very clear that they do not think grammar schools are a good idea. They won't close any existing ones, but won't open any new ones either. Rather, they are going to back the Academy schools conceived by Blair and his ilk.

The problem appears to be that they think that grammar schools don't take children from poor backgrounds, and that only middle-class children get into them. This thinking fails on a few counts:

1 - Grammar schools are ability only, especially now the 11-plus exam has gone. My old school, for example, has an entry test. The top 120 or so results get in, with a bit of weighting for those living locally or those with brothers already at the school. It doesn't matter if you are rich, you will not get in. Interestingly, it used to be known as "Wilson's School for poor boys" when it was oringinally founded (admittedly this was in the seventeenth century and they are now simply "Wilson's School").

2 - If children from poorer areas don't do well at school, this is basically down to the parents. At a young age, it is attitude and willingness to learn that is important. If parents treat school like an optional extra and don't encourage the child, it is useless. Similarly, if the "poor" child really enjoys it and works hard to learn independantly, he would make an excellent grammar school candidate, and shouldn't be forced into the local comprehensive if his abilities are clearly above it.

3 - Those that can afford private schools will pay for it, thus bypassing the problem, but even these are often ability-tested.

4 - Sending otherwise grammar-abililty pupils to other schools may simply slow them down and distract them. Not totally true, this, because even the most useless of schools chuck out the occasional straight-A student, but they are the exception not the norm.

Realistically, a higher-ability child will do better in a higher-pressure, tightly-focused school. A lower-ability child (and don't try and pretend they don't exist, because they do), would just not cope and would be a distraction to others. Streaming students into different abilities is the best way to ensure they each achieve an appropriate education.

Choosing a party to vote for in the next election is now looking even trickier. They are all exactly the bloody same.

I'm stupid

Not often you'll hear me say that. Or, more accurately, see that I've typed it. But 'tis true. I am stupid. In my defence, so is Ele. I shall explain.

A couple of years ago, the sparky-clicky thing on our oven stopped working. By this I mean the button you press to produce a spark that lights the gas. We've gotten around this ever since by the simple method of a gas hob lighter, which is basically a cigarette lighter with a long handle. It's not too inconvenient, apart from the main oven bit, which requires squatting down to the floor and shoving your hand into the oven to igninte the flame at the back.

Anyway, we've lived with it, although at one point we did consider buying a new oven, before deciding it wasn't worth the expense.

Then, on Saturday, I managed to drop something down the back of the oven. Ele pulled the oven out a bit, but I couldn't reach it, and then she pulled it a bit too far, meaning the thing I had dropped now lay flat on the floor, rather than leaning against the back of the oven. This necessitated pulling the oven out entirely, which we did.

"What's the battery for?" asked Ele, noticing an AA battery on the back of the oven.
"I dunno, just put it back we've got to get on with the dinner... hang on a minute!" said I, running to the lounge to get a new AA battery, which we had conveniently purchased a new pack of the previous weekend.

I replaced the battery, and hey-presto, the sparky thing works again.

Not once in those two years (it may actually be longer than that) did it ever occur to either of us that there must be some form of power source that might need renewing to make the sparky thing work.

So, chalk that one up to stupidity. I'm just relieved we didn't buy a new oven, as we'd have looked rather foolish when it was installed and we noticed the battery in the old one as it was removed...

Shutterspeed

Now, normally I'm not one to defend speed cameras. In fact, I will usually point out to you that their introduction stopped a steady decrease in road deaths. But, I also cannot abide stupid reporting and conclusions.

Today the anti-speed camera brigade were cheering because last year the number of road fatalities went up, despite the number of speed cameras increasing.

Wanna know the figures? Ok. 2005 - 2913. 2006 - 2920.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a whopping increase of 7. Or, to put it another way, an increase of 0.24%.

This is hardly proof (or even statistically significant), and they are damaging their campaign by crowing about it, because they are showing themselves to have no grasp of mathematics at all.

The newspaper didn't actually specify whether this figure was the number of crashes in which a fatality occured, or whether it was the number of people killed in fatal smashes. If it was the latter, there could actually have been less crashes, but simply with more fatalities in each. If the former, there where obviously more crashes, but we don't know how many people actually died - it could have been less than 2005.

Either way, it doesn't actually prove anything.

But still, the fact remains that road deaths were decreasing until the introduction of speed cameras. I've never understood how driving whilst paying more attention to the needle on your dashboard is safer than paying attention to the road. The worst are the SPECS cameras that record your average speed over a distance. Cleverly, they often use these in roadworks. So, not only are you having to constantly look at your speed to check you don't accidentally slip over the temporary limit, but you are doing this is a part of the road where the lanes are half the width and you are about a foot away from the other cars, all of whom are also looking mainly at their speedometers.

On that basis, it's a miracle it only went up by such a small amount.

Service

Both of the Customer and Car kind. This is what happened:

Last Week:
"I'd like to book my car in for it's first service, please. How much is that?"
"About £195."
"Ok, how about a courtesy car?"
"No problem. Next Thursday?"
"Done."

Yesterday:
"Hello?"
"It's the Mitsubishi dealer here, there's been a bit of a cock-up and we haven't got a courtesy car for you, but we can pick it up from your office and deliver it back again."
"Sounds fine to me."

Today:
09:45 - Man picks up car. I watch it's progress via the tracker. He didn't speed, but did take a slightly odd route to the dealer. The ignition goes on and off a few times as it goes in and out of the workshop.
13:00 - "Hello?"
"It's the Mitsubishi dealer here, your car's done. That'll be £285 please."
"Er, come again?"
"£285, please."
"I don't think so, you quoted me about £195."
"Well, the service is £205, and the there was the other bits."
"£205 is fine, close enough to £195, but what other bits?"
"We changed the windscreen wipers! They needed doing."
"No they didn't. More to the point, I didn't ask you to do it. I asked for a service, nothing more."
"I'll call you back."

5 minutes later
"Hello?"
"That'll be £205, please."
"Better."

I've no idea what the other charges were for, because windscreen wipers don't usually cost £80. It's a Mitsubishi, not a Maserati. I guess the invoice will tell, when they get back here with it. They did say they were leaving straight away, but 20 minutes after the phone call it's still parked there.

Cheeky bloody so and so's.

Some balance

As I was at the Gumball send-off in London last week, I should write about the widely-reported deaths of two locals driving a VW Golf in Macedonia when they were hit by a Porsche driven by two British guys.

The man driving the car (and his co-driver) has been vilified for driving recklessly and for fleeing the scene.

But let's look at a few facts before jumping to conclusions (oh, too late).

1 - We don't know they were speeding. Some newspapers and websites said they were doing over 200kph. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. The cars didn't look like a 120mph smash though. It looked like a slower impact that caused the Golf to roll. More to the point, doing 120mph on Macedonian roads (not highways) is probably impossible.

2 - Many have said the Golf pulled out in front of the Porsche. This is quite possibly true. They could have been hit by anything and had the same fate, except it then wouldn't be reported by anyone, anywhere.

3 - This fleeing the scene business. By many accounts, they called for an ambulance and spoke to the police, and then hopped into a passing competitor's car to carry on. It was whilst they were on route to the border that the man died, and then they were detained at the border to be questioned. This is not fleeing the scene. I understand that the co-driver was allowed to go anyway, and the main driver was then held and bailed. He was apparantly then re-arrested trying to get onto a private plane. He must have had his passport to do this, so they can't have taken it from him. A bit strange if he wasn't supposed to leave.

4 - Almost every year, people (both competitors and spectators) die on the Dakar rally, but this doesn't get a mention.

Now, I'm fully prepared to be wrong about all this. What I'm trying to do is give balance, and point out that there are two sides to every story. Hopefully the truth will come out.

Tough on crime

Thus spake The Right Honour(less)able Tony Blair when he breezed into No.10 all those years ago.

And tough on the causes of crime, too. I was never entirely sure what he meant by that, he didn't explain it fully, but in hindsight that would become the norm.

Last night I caught the end of a TV show, that seemed to be about people getting nicked for doing various nefarious thing. One bloke had stolen a car from a 95 year old man. Ignoring the fact that the 95 year old man was probably not going to be the best driver in the world and that removing the car from him was probably a public service, this was a crime, and a fairly serious one at that.

They caught the guy, luckily, and not so luckily for the rest of us, gave the 95-year old his car back to carry on his death and destruction on the roads.

Do you know what the punishment was for stealing a car? A £40 fine. Let me repeat that to let it sink in. His. Punishment. For. Stealing. A. Car. Was. A. £40 Fine.

A £40 fine!!!!!! Sorry, I had to repeat it again. If this car thief had driven his own car at 35mph in a 30mph zone past a speed camera at 2am he would've got a £60 fine!

What a stupid, stupid, stupid place we live in when you can be fined more for exceeding the speed limit by 5mph at 2am, than for stealing a car.

No wonder there is crime everywhere. It's hardly a deterrent, is it? So much for tough on crime... the cause is the fact that there's no bloody punishment, so much for tough on that, either.

Still, Blair he won't care, he's leaving soon giving us the unwanted, unelected and unEnglish Gordon Brown in charge.

Wonderful.

Holmes would not be proud

Today there was a picture in the paper of a truly horrendous car accident, where a car was mangled basically beyond recognition after a collision with a bus. Sadly, the driver died.

The thing that struck me was that the police said the car was too badly destroyed to recognise, yet they believed it was a Ford.

The first thing that I noticed upon looking at the picture, was that the alloy wheels of the car had Ford logos on them... hardly the greatest detective work the world has ever seen there, boys.

Taken our advice, ladies? Now DIE!

For years we've been told that drinking a glass or two of red wine per day is good for you, cutting the risk of strokes, and helping to prevent heart disease.

But, unfortunately, they neglected to tell you about the part where you get breast cancer instead.

Chalk up another great victory for the scientists.

I really wonder why we should listen to these guys. They do tons of research on something, then a few years later turn around and say "oh, sorry, we forgot about this bit and now you're all going to die."

So I'm really looking forward to the firing up of the Large Hadron Collider later on this year, where scientists will either learn about the origins of the universe, or create a black hole that the Earth will be sucked into.