Another Year and Daft Commemorations etc.

A belated Happy New Year to you all – I meant to write something just after the bells on Friday night, but phone calls, emails, and visitors kept me occupied. I wrote ‘visitors’ there – actually I only had one of the human variety – the other two were members of the rana ridibunda family, or marsh frogs. My human visitor had obviously left the back door open when he arrived, and those two had hopped into the porch. I had to show them the door, as I’ve never had them on a plate before, and I didn’t intend to start the habit in 2011.

As it’s the beginning of another year, I thought I’d steer clear of the political pages today, and have a look at a couple of more lighthearted topics.

I think I’ve commented before now on the fact that something or someone is commemorated on every day in the year, thus making the various card companies a tidy sum of money. I’ve also noticed lately that we seem to have surveys cropping up all the time, and all over the place – newspapers, magazines, on the street, internet etc. Undoubtedly, some surveys are beneficial for various reasons, but the majority of them seem to serve no useful purpose, apart from, in some cases, physical exercise in the form of a lot of folk having to scratch their heads in bewilderment. I had a look at some surveys that I consider to have been a total waste of time and money, and came up with some conclusions and questions of my own – obviously I had plenty of time to spare as well!

For instance, 42% of people regularly eat in bed – do they have a bed in the dining room, do they partake of grub after retiring for the night, or do they hop into bed every time they feel peckish? 45% of teachers say behaviour in their most recent or current school is inadequate – do they mean good or bad behaviour? I ask because what was once considered right and wrong seems to have become rather muddled nowadays. Then there’s the fact that 50% of women watch wildlife programmes on television. Any connection between that and the fact that there are more female inmates in our jails, I wonder. 53% of men aged 35 were adamant that redheaded women are the most passionate. I would imagine that not many of the 53% will be fit to take the survey next year – if they stick to the redheads, that is.

Most of us have heard of the old joke about the Grand Canyon being started by a Scot who was looking for a penny that he’d dropped. It seems that some of them across the Pond really believe that most inventions attributed to Scots were inspired by our fondness for money. For example, some are of the opinion that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to save him fares when having to visit folk, and that John Logie Baird thought of the television as a means of saving on cinema tickets. In that case, my New Year Resolution is very simple this time around – invent something that will help to keep my siller in my pocket!

I mentioned the fact that so many days are used throughout the year to commemorate something or other, but having looked at the subject again, I see that we in Britain are, thankfully, lagging behind America. Over there, January alone has 34 monthly observances, 33 weekly, and 118 daily ones. Incredible! It is Bath Safety Month, National Soup Month, Oatmeal Month; weeks to be commemorated include Bald Eagle Appreciation Days, Cuckoo Dancing Week, National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week; the days to be immortalised have the following amongst others -- Happy Mew Year for Cats Day, Tom Thumb Day, Balloon Ascension Day (not sure if there’s a Descent Day), and Bean Day, presumably followed by Windy Day, although I haven’t checked!

Back nearer home, and that advert of Asda’s supermarkets, where a satisfied customer pats his bottom pocket to infer that he’s saved money by shopping with them, actually turned into reality for a few folk last Wednesday afternoon in Linwood, Renfrewshire. Tills at the Asda store in the town crashed for around an hour at lunchtime – it seems that when any of their tills are temporarily out of action that staff and customers can haggle over, and eventually agree on, prices. Needless to say, the customer WAS, IS, and WILL be always right, so there would have been a few smug grins in the area that night.

I thought I could lay off politicians etc for a few days, but feel that I must mention the Chancellor George Osborne, who enjoyed himself with a New Year break at Klosters, the ski resort. I seem to remember that he used the phrase, “we’re all in this together” when calling for massive cuts to get the country out of the red at the 2009 Tory Party Conference. Tycoon MP Zac Goldsmith was sunning himself at an £8,000 villa in the Caribbean – this a couple of days before the UK is due to be hit with hikes in VAT and fuel duty. Not to be outdone, the Speaker, John Bercrow, hosted a star-studded champagne New Year’s Eve party on the Commons riverside terrace, giving MPs a prime view of the capital’s fireworks display. Among the guests was the Prisons Minister, Crispin Blunt, while another fireworks display was causing millions of pounds worth of damage to one of his establishments. Ah well, maybe the political world still has the weirdest stories to give us after all.

Dennis the Menace a Menace no more!

Nicola Sturgeon, first in line to the throne of that other fishy sounding character, Alex Salmond, seems to have completely lost her marbles this week, having written to a court asking for leniency to be shown in the case of a convicted benefits fraudster. This guy cheated taxpayers out of £80,000 whilst living in a £400,000 home in Glasgow and earning rent for another property in Edinburgh. She must also have been aware of the fact that he’d been jailed for 4 years in 1996 for a pensions and benefits scam, yet she had the gall to tell the court that he’s in poor health and had made a “mistake”. Some mistake! Anyway, it’s made me take a note of my own MSP’s phone number, in case I get nicked in the future for flicking my cigarette ash on to the pavement.

It seems that Dennis the Menace, b.1951, and one of my boyhood heroes, has been disarmed in the comic, supposedly to match Dennis in the TV cartoon version. The politically correct brigade have managed to remove his peashooter, catapult, and water pistol; his menacing scowl has gone, replaced by a wide angelic grin, and his trusty sidekick, Gnasher the hound, has lost the right to bite the postie or the traffic warden, or indeed, anybody else who looks remotely edible. The PC lobbyists insist that children who are exposed to the old-style Dennis, Roger the Dodger, and Minnie the Minx are more liable to turn into serial thieves, murderers, or terrorists. What utter rubbish! Do the majority of us who were brought up reading those comics now go around brandishing guns, knifes, or throwing bombs into crowded places. I think not!

I think I’ve written before now regarding stupid surveys and research carried out at great expense by supposedly respectable bodies and individuals. I’ve just come across another one that has been unleashed this week, involving some research done by Dr Jane Murray of Bristol University. She has come to the conclusion that folk who own cats are quite a bit more intelligent than those who own dogs. No chance of me, then, applying for membership of Mensa, and meeting up with the Queen of figures, Carol Vorderman, at an egghheads’ convention. I’ve never had a cat, and I don’t think I will either, even if it was going to enhance the cells up top. Dr Murray has also come up with the breathtaking revelation that people with gardens are more likely to have pets than those who don’t. I’d actually suspected that was the case for a number of years now, as my pet elephant’s toilet requirements couldn’t easily be met inside the confines of the house. The research wasn’t all rubbish, of course – it also informs us that, on the whole, members of the canine and feline worlds do not get on well together. It must have taken them a long time, and the consumption of countless doggie biscuits, before they came up with that one. Not having had time to read the whole report, I’m not sure if loyalty is mentioned. I think everyone, pet owner or not, can see that cats have a “couldn’t care less” attitude, as long as they are fed, whereas dogs never tire of showing affection for their owners. Of course, it’s a known fact (no research needed) that if you were to die, your dog would lie there indefinitely beside you, whereas your cat …. well, he wouldn’t starve….

Useless and Costly Surveys

A recent survey found that as much as 6% of the world’s population may experience sleep paralysis, the inability to move and speak for several minutes after awakening. I think maybe that quite a few of that 6% are probably MPs, senators etc. worldwide, the only difference being that some of them seem to experience the phenomenon 24/7. 

It seems that forty percent of American adults cannot fill out a bank deposit slip correctly. Now we know the real cause of this credit crunch. It couldn’t have been the dodgy fatcat bankers after all.

 

66% of men wear briefs, 22% wear boxers, and 6% prefer to toddle about without wearing any. From those results, I can only assume that the person who carried out the survey was not an accountant, or the missing 6% were admiring themselves in front of a mirror, sporting their wives’ smalls.

 

This one takes some beating. After careful research, it’s been discovered that most humans can guess someone’s sex with 95% accuracy just by smelling their breath. After all those years, now I know why doctors can confidently shout, “It’s a boy!” so soon after a birth takes place.