All sorts of stuff seems to be going on again. There’s the question of when to wear a seatbelt in your car! And we’ve got Zahawi, or Nadhim “He Pays What He Wants” Zahawi as John Crace calls him in his column in the Guardian, being careless and getting in a mess with his taxes. This gives a new definition of the word “careless”. I heard someone on a news programme trying to tell us that “careless” is actually a technical, legal term for Zahawi and his tax muddle. “Careless” is when you drop a glass or forget your shopping list! Definitely not muddling up your tax payments! Anyway, imagine having so much money that you can be “careless” to the tune of £5m! Maybe if the government and the tax department were more “careful” we all might be better off.
I keep hearing strange statements and definitions on news broadcasts. Last night it was someone assuring us that the BBC is totally impartial in every aspect. This was in connection with the appointment of Richard Sharp as Chairman of the BBC and the recent revelation that before he was appointed by Boris Johnson he had helped the aforementioned Boris Johnson obtain a guarantor for a loan of £800,000. What a coincidence. As regards the impartiality, it’s very hard to think of any media famed for it’s impartiality these days. They don’t really seek to inform as much as to mould opinion.
Getting back to the loan, it’s funny how rules work differently for certain people. If you are poor you need to turn to loan sharks and the like because the banks won’t lend you the small amount you need (small is, of course, a relative term!) and you end up paying silly amounts of interest. If you want to borrow a piffling £800,000 you can turn to a wealthy, influential person to help you find a guarantor. I’ve never had anything to do with loan sharks, fortunately, but I don’t imagine they run to amounts like that. Just imagine what the interest would be! Of course, now the aforementioned Boris Johnson probably wouldn’t need a loan; he’d just go and do a speech somewhere and receive silly amounts of money for doing so.
There’s a basic unfairness there!
Having got that rant out of the way, here’s another little oddity of the modern world. Another example of how things that we have been used to hearing or seeing around us are increasingly being deemed offensive to one group or another. A young (well, younger than me) friend and former student drew my attention to this headline:
Now Aretha Franklin’s song Natural Woman is deemed offensive to trans women: Outrage as ‘activists’ demand song is removed from Spotify and Apple Music.
There we go again! The song was written, of course, by Carole King and Gerry Goffin. If the original Aretha Franklin version is banned, will all other versions by other artists also be banned? Which other Carole King songs might need examining for dodgy content? Why do people choose to be offended by stuff like this when there are more important matters to get hot under collar about?
Okay, here’s a bit of silliness I can approve of, another thing posted on social media, originally by a writer called Natali Simmonds:
Me, to my 11 y o: What do you want to do for your 12th birthday in Feb?
Her: I want a Potato Book party.
Me: What’s that?
Her: Just something I came up with. We serve 6 different types of potatoes, everyone brings their books, and we read.
Genius.
Genius, indeed! It could be ideal for our soon to 20 year old Granddaughter Number Two, who is never without a book on the go. Of course, in her case you couldn’t have 6 types of potatoes; it would have to be chips and potato wedges (which are really chips but cooked in the oven!).
That’s all.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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