Christmas news and nonsense!

I know it’s Christmas but there are still serious news stories going around. Trains are being derailed. Our country is being derailed. It’s not the time of year when you expect to hear, as I just did on the BBC radio news, people getting very excited about finding ancient turkey bones!

I think it’s somewhere in Devon that an animal archaeologist has dug up some thigh bones, complete with knife marks as if they have had the meat carved from them. She thinks they are about 500 years old and may be from the original turkeys brought here from the New World!!! A local farmer was also getting quite emotional to think that these bones might be from the forebears of he turkeys she rears!!! Wow!!! I must be missing something but I find it hard to get excited about turkey bones! 

Here’s a bit of Christmas irony: Toys R Us, the massive toy supermarket chain is in difficulty. It’s Christmas! Isn’t this the time of year when the aisles os the stores are filled with parents desperately trying to find the latest fad in toy consumerism? Seemingly not! Perhaps all the children are asking for iPads and X-boxes and Wiis instead. How very strange.

Bristol is full of Christmas cheer, decorating its trees in one part of the city with the kind of spikes you see on the tops of walls and roof ridges to prevent birds from settling there. Most of us have at some time or other come put to find our car embellished with a bird’s distinctive, and corrosive, calling card. Most of us curse a little and clean it off. In Bristol they have upset bird lovers by taking more drastic action. An interesting addition to Christmas decorations. 

More in keeping with the Christmas spirit is this item about vending machines which homeless people can use to get essentials - sanitary products for women who are sleeping rough among other things. It’s interesting that those who have the special access cards for the machines can withdraw a maximum of three items a day. This is to prevent then from becoming too dependent on the machines. All in life is controlled, apparently. And can a vending machine be called a vending machine if it gives stuff away instead of selling?

And finally, I have come across another of those things about which names are banned in certain countries. I have often expressed my disgusted amazement at anyone calling their child “Summer”, for example. I have yet to come across a Spaniard naming a child “Verano”! And yet it is a direct translation.

Anyway, in New Zealand you can’t name a child “Justice” because it is an official title. Neither can you name a child "Lucifer," as the name has an (obvious) religious meaning, but “Number 16 Bus Shelter” has been allowed. So it’s okay to leave a child open to ridicule from the very start but no matter how wicked the child he can’t be names after a fallen angel!

France has eased up considerably in what they allow so long as it is not too embarrassing. In 2015, a French court rejected a couple's decision to name their child Nutella, noting that the name, while creamy and delicious, wasn't in the child's best interest. Instead, the court ruled that the child be named "Ella." And even dog owners there come under naming jurisdiction. One dog owner named his dogs “Itler” and “Iva” and was made to change them. "It's not a question of how dangerous the dogs are," said the town mayor, who made the decision. "It's a question of principle."

"Most people are reasonable and have the welfare of their children in mind," said a Munich judge.

Maybe so, but you still come across people who call their daughters “Sydney”.