Sometimes you can really be led to wonder how people come to have the names they do. And it's not just the chavs either. The toffs are as bad. How does Santa Sebag Montefiore come by that name? Well, the surname obviously comes from marrying the historian and posh tv history programme maker Simon of that name. But who calls their female child Santa? Weird!
I came across her name while reading about her sister Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, who has just died at the age of 45. Friend of Prince Charles and other, younger members of the royal family, recovered drug addict and former "It" girl, she served to show that being born with it all doesn't mean you get to live happily ever after.
What is an It girl anyway? According to Wikipedia: ""It Girl" is slang for a beautiful, stylish young woman who possesses sex appeal without flaunting her sexuality. The phrase is believed to have originated as in British upper class society around the turn of the 20th century. An early literary usage of the term "it" in this context may be traced to a 1904 short story by Rudyard Kipling: "It isn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just 'It'."
There you go!
I read today about people whose lives and relationships have been turned upside down by the way people voted in the US elections. One couple, now in their sixties, have separated after 22 years because she could not bear the fact that he had voted for Donald Trump. She always knew that they had very different views about a whole lot of things but this was a step too far. Others no longer speak to certain members if their family unless absolutely necessary. I can understand that. I "unfriended" a number of people on Facebook after the referendum. And I have a cousin who I did not unfriend (he is a cousin, after all, and a link to other family members) but took measures to stop his stuff popping up on my page after he posted that he thought the birch and other forms of corporal punishment should be reintroduced! We are in the 21st century, when all is said and done.
This being the 21st century does not, of course, guarantee that we behave in a civilised way. As someone called Chris Edelson pointed put in the Baltimore Sun newspaper the other day (I somehow come across articles from odd newspapers around the world) it was ordinary Americans who carried out inhumane acts for their president at airports which were not allowing certain people into the USA. They handcuffed a five-year-old boy and a 65-year-old woman, no doubt both seriously likely to carry out acts of violence on the spot. The little boy was kept away from his mother for several hours; maybe she would coach him so that he gave acceptable answers! A woman and her small children were held for almost a day without food. No doubt there are further examples.
The journalist went on to say that these employees, people like you and me, probably went home and kissed their wives and read bedtime stories to their children. All this with a clear conscience; they were just doing their job after all. I think we might have heard that excuse before!
One of my nodding acquaintances around the village blames Trump for everything. If the weather is bad: the Trump effect! If there is no lettuce on the shelf: the Trump effect! Even if he forgets what he went to the co-op for in the first place: the Trump effect!
And, finally, here is a link to a series of photos quietly making fun of the so-called president.
Thursday, 9 February 2017
Tuesday, 7 February 2017
Serious stuff and a bit of silly!
There's a lot I don't understand about the world of finance but I think that selling debts is just about the strangest thing I have ever come across. If someone had told me when I was a kid that you could sell debts, I would never have believed them. Of course, I understand that the people who buy the de to hope to make a lot more money by calling in those debts but the very idea of buying and selling debts still seems very odd.
And now the government is selling the student loan book, which is presumably a list of all the (ex)students and the amount of money they owe. They are trying to assure those who have outstanding student debts, almost all ex-students these days, that this will not make any difference to the way their debts are eventually collected. But surely if someone thinks it is in their interest to buy these debts, they must have a plan to recoup the money. The kind of people who speculate on this kind of thing don't do it out of some kind of altruistic desire to put money in government coffers.
Mind you, the government seems dead set on raising money in all sorts of ways at present. Hospitals are having to set up systems so that they can charge foreigners who don't qualify for free medical treatment if they fall ill in this country. Granted, we should do something about so-called NHS tourism but I remain unconvinced that equipping each hospital with credit and card readers is necessarily the answer.
And after watching news reports about waiting times in A&E departments, I have decided that we must do all we can to remain as healthy as possible for as long as possible in the vain hope that if we can only hang on long enough things might get better. Fat chance!
As it is, the Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts that the UK government is on course to impose steep cuts in public spending from April and increase taxes by the end of the decade to their highest level as a share of national income since 1986-87 to combat the UK’s persistent budget deficit. So it looks as though austerity is going to be around for a bit longer!
Okay! That's enough serious stuff. Here's a link to a number of European countries taking the you-know-what of President Trump and America First. I particularly like the Netherlands' offering!
And now the government is selling the student loan book, which is presumably a list of all the (ex)students and the amount of money they owe. They are trying to assure those who have outstanding student debts, almost all ex-students these days, that this will not make any difference to the way their debts are eventually collected. But surely if someone thinks it is in their interest to buy these debts, they must have a plan to recoup the money. The kind of people who speculate on this kind of thing don't do it out of some kind of altruistic desire to put money in government coffers.
Mind you, the government seems dead set on raising money in all sorts of ways at present. Hospitals are having to set up systems so that they can charge foreigners who don't qualify for free medical treatment if they fall ill in this country. Granted, we should do something about so-called NHS tourism but I remain unconvinced that equipping each hospital with credit and card readers is necessarily the answer.
And after watching news reports about waiting times in A&E departments, I have decided that we must do all we can to remain as healthy as possible for as long as possible in the vain hope that if we can only hang on long enough things might get better. Fat chance!
As it is, the Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts that the UK government is on course to impose steep cuts in public spending from April and increase taxes by the end of the decade to their highest level as a share of national income since 1986-87 to combat the UK’s persistent budget deficit. So it looks as though austerity is going to be around for a bit longer!
Okay! That's enough serious stuff. Here's a link to a number of European countries taking the you-know-what of President Trump and America First. I particularly like the Netherlands' offering!
Monday, 6 February 2017
Restoring things!
Yesterday i wrote about Kapka Kassabova, a writer I had only just heard of, and assumed this was a male writer. Wrong! A female writer! Fancy my jumping to stereotyped conclusions like that. That will teach me to check facts before I put pen to paper - or fingers to keyboard for that matter. She seems to write very nicely, judging by the excerpts from her books included in the later article I read about her:-
"One evening, when mist had risen from the river, chill and clammy on the skin like a ghost, a Belgian guy arrived in the village in the valley."
Describing a flat: "the carpets full of cigarette ash and old sorrows".
Of course, I have no idea how these words sound in the original Bulgarian. Translated, they become the kind of words you would like to have written yourself.
Meanwhile, here I am, still spluttering about the daftness of the USA. On Thursday Republicans voted to overturn a rule that restricted the sale of firearms to people with severe mental illnesses. Maybe it's because it was an Obama administration law that the Republicans wanted to get rid of it but really, how can anyone think it's a good idea for people who are bi-polar or schizophrenic to be able to buy guns easily? But then a whole lot of people have a funny-peculiar attitude to guns in the USA. Here's a sort of vaguely connected link to an article where Rich Hall rants a good deal more amusingly than I ever could about the banning of immigrants to the USA.
Back on our side of the Pond, there has been a good deal in the press about boys being beaten decades ago in summer camps organised by posh schools, possibly in conjunction with the church. Giles Fraser has been writing about his experience in the Guardian. Here's what he had to say.
I was particularly struck by the fact that even though judicial corporal punishment for adults was banned in 1947, it only became illegal for all schoolchildren in England and Wales in 1999!!! As late, as recently as that? I remember being a young teacher in the 1970s and turning down the opportunity to have permission to "strap" pupils. It meant I could not send miscreants along to more senior members of staff if they challenged me because I knew that those senior members of the profession might well get out their leather strap and wallop the aforementioned miscreants. I had seen them practising on tables in the staff room and did not want to have anything to do with it. More and more of us found other ways to persuade our more recalcitrant little dears to do what we said!
I thought it had disappeared from our schools long before the end of the 20th century. It was something from a dim and increasingly distant past. My husband and his friends still recount tales of corporal punishment at their boys' grammar in the 1960s: whacks around the head, slippers (ie gym shoes) on the backside, canes of various thicknesses! But that was the 1960s!
And none of this went on at my girls' grammar school. Were bright girls simply more civilised that bright boys?
Is this one of the things that some people would like to see brought back into our odd world?
"One evening, when mist had risen from the river, chill and clammy on the skin like a ghost, a Belgian guy arrived in the village in the valley."
Describing a flat: "the carpets full of cigarette ash and old sorrows".
Of course, I have no idea how these words sound in the original Bulgarian. Translated, they become the kind of words you would like to have written yourself.
Meanwhile, here I am, still spluttering about the daftness of the USA. On Thursday Republicans voted to overturn a rule that restricted the sale of firearms to people with severe mental illnesses. Maybe it's because it was an Obama administration law that the Republicans wanted to get rid of it but really, how can anyone think it's a good idea for people who are bi-polar or schizophrenic to be able to buy guns easily? But then a whole lot of people have a funny-peculiar attitude to guns in the USA. Here's a sort of vaguely connected link to an article where Rich Hall rants a good deal more amusingly than I ever could about the banning of immigrants to the USA.
Back on our side of the Pond, there has been a good deal in the press about boys being beaten decades ago in summer camps organised by posh schools, possibly in conjunction with the church. Giles Fraser has been writing about his experience in the Guardian. Here's what he had to say.
I was particularly struck by the fact that even though judicial corporal punishment for adults was banned in 1947, it only became illegal for all schoolchildren in England and Wales in 1999!!! As late, as recently as that? I remember being a young teacher in the 1970s and turning down the opportunity to have permission to "strap" pupils. It meant I could not send miscreants along to more senior members of staff if they challenged me because I knew that those senior members of the profession might well get out their leather strap and wallop the aforementioned miscreants. I had seen them practising on tables in the staff room and did not want to have anything to do with it. More and more of us found other ways to persuade our more recalcitrant little dears to do what we said!
I thought it had disappeared from our schools long before the end of the 20th century. It was something from a dim and increasingly distant past. My husband and his friends still recount tales of corporal punishment at their boys' grammar in the 1960s: whacks around the head, slippers (ie gym shoes) on the backside, canes of various thicknesses! But that was the 1960s!
And none of this went on at my girls' grammar school. Were bright girls simply more civilised that bright boys?
Is this one of the things that some people would like to see brought back into our odd world?
Sunday, 5 February 2017
Aiming for a more equitable world?
Our southern grandchild, the one whose third birthday celebration was yesterday, is a quarter Indonesian. Her Indonesian grandfather has been talking to her in Indonesian, teaching her to count and so on. Being a child of independent mind, when he counts one, two, three in Indonesian, she makes up her own version of the words, quite deliberately and consciously transforming them so that they are the same words but beginning with the letter b. This morning she applied the same principle to English, replying to a query about breakfast with, "Yes, bease", explaining that she had said this instead of "Yes, please". A little later she thanked her daddy, "Ba bou". When he responded, "you're belbolm", she told him, "No, Daddy. This is MY language".
Her daddy was most surprised. He did not think she even knew the word language, let alone the concept that she could have one of her very own.
We were talking about this just yesterday, my son's best friend and I. His children are also a mix of races in odd proportions. So are various friends' children and grandchildren. We all hope that this mixing and matching might lead eventually to a more tolerant world. Something needs to swing the world that way as so much that is going on at present seems to be pushing in the opposite direction.
In an article in yesterday's paper, which I only got around to reading this morning, the American visce president Henry Wallace said in 1944: "a fascist is one whose lust for money or combined with such an intensity of intolerance to those of other races, parties,classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends."
He predicted that American fascism would only become "reallly dangerous" if a "purposeful coalition"arose between crony capitalists, "poisoners of public information" and "the KKK type of demagoguery".
He also warned that if and when facism came to America it would be called "Americanism".
All of this somehow sounds very up to the minute!
I also came across something by a Bulgarian writer Kapka Kassabova who describes himself as one of "the last generation to have come of age behind a hard border". He writes in the weekend newspaper:
"All my life, I have been haunted by borders - how unjust they feel when you are on the hard side, how alluring when you're on the soft side and how surprisingly small when they crumble."
"Is it unavoidable that we would enter an era of building hard borders, again? No - it is only desperately unwise. The reason why new borders haunt us is because we haven't listened well enough to the stories of the old ones. It is because the barbarians are here, not among us but inside our heads, tirelessly tweeting hatred."
"New borders will fail just as old borders failed. In the wretched meantime, they will not make our world freer or fairer. Only harder, costlier and more haunted."
Let's try to have a bit more multi-culturalism and rather fewer hard borders, please.
Her daddy was most surprised. He did not think she even knew the word language, let alone the concept that she could have one of her very own.
We were talking about this just yesterday, my son's best friend and I. His children are also a mix of races in odd proportions. So are various friends' children and grandchildren. We all hope that this mixing and matching might lead eventually to a more tolerant world. Something needs to swing the world that way as so much that is going on at present seems to be pushing in the opposite direction.
In an article in yesterday's paper, which I only got around to reading this morning, the American visce president Henry Wallace said in 1944: "a fascist is one whose lust for money or combined with such an intensity of intolerance to those of other races, parties,classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends."
He predicted that American fascism would only become "reallly dangerous" if a "purposeful coalition"arose between crony capitalists, "poisoners of public information" and "the KKK type of demagoguery".
He also warned that if and when facism came to America it would be called "Americanism".
All of this somehow sounds very up to the minute!
I also came across something by a Bulgarian writer Kapka Kassabova who describes himself as one of "the last generation to have come of age behind a hard border". He writes in the weekend newspaper:
"All my life, I have been haunted by borders - how unjust they feel when you are on the hard side, how alluring when you're on the soft side and how surprisingly small when they crumble."
"Is it unavoidable that we would enter an era of building hard borders, again? No - it is only desperately unwise. The reason why new borders haunt us is because we haven't listened well enough to the stories of the old ones. It is because the barbarians are here, not among us but inside our heads, tirelessly tweeting hatred."
"New borders will fail just as old borders failed. In the wretched meantime, they will not make our world freer or fairer. Only harder, costlier and more haunted."
Let's try to have a bit more multi-culturalism and rather fewer hard borders, please.
Friday, 3 February 2017
Travellers' tales.
Our local bus service reached a new low this morning. Phil had to dash into the town centre for a checkup at the eye clinic and the hurry back in time for us to set off to catch a train to London. Had there been a major delay, plan B was for me to grab the bags and meet him at the tram stop to go into Manchester. However, as he is a perfect gentleman, he preferred to come hime and do some of the bag toting himself. For all the more rabid feminists out there, I have no objection to somebody volunteering to carry bags, especially if some of the stuff in the bags is his stuff. I feel no urge to prove that I am super strong when I know that it is not so.
Anyway, his dash in was no problem. His checkup at the eye clinic went fine, on time, no waiting around. There was a handy bus only a few minutes after he left the clinic. So far so good! Then the bus reached the Mumps interchange. The driver got our. It was the end of his shift. Another driver was due to take over. Fifteen minutes or more later the passengers were informed that the driver had been held up in traffic somewhere. in fact other buses had been he,d up by the accident causing the delay. This explained the presence of drivers who were hanging around without buses. And so they were cancelling the bus Phil was on and sending it somewhere else. All the passengers were simply advised to catch the next bus. Presumably the bus route coordinators must have known there was a mismatch of drivers and buses. Driverless buses and bus-less drivers should be a solvable problem. Apparently not. Even though one of the bus-less drivers, when asked, agreed that he did know the route for Phil's bus and so could have driven it. but it was not in his schedule. It was more than his job was worth to depart from his schedule. Well, yes, that is understandable. You can't have anarchy in the bus service. However, surely it is not beyond the wit of bus management to sort it out! You would think so!
In the event, the delay did not cause any problems. We got into Manchester in plenty of time, got on our train and has the usual silly conversation about booked seats. Somebody was occupying our seats so, rather than kick up a fuss, we sat in a couple of empty ones nearby. Inevitably someone else came along and pointed out that he had reserved one of those seats. Another little discussion ensued and he sat in yet another empty seat nearby, all of us prepared to move if the situation grew more complicated. Or if there was an officious guard insisting onus all sitting in our rightful places. It began to feel as if we had strayed into an odd version of the Red Riding Hood story.
A very British problem! I say that but I have witnessed funny scenes on the bus that does the journey between Vigo and Porto. When you book your ticket, it does say that the seat number is not indicative of where to actually sit. It merely serves to tell the computer how many places have been booked. And yet I have often seen people, usually British or American, walking up and down the bus looking for "their" seat and being given short shrift by bemused Spaniards who always disregard that mind of thing!
Such are the joys of travel!
Once we safely reach our son's house ( we are travelling to a birthday celebration) I shall try to post this.
Please note the restraint: no rants about any politicians today.
Tomorrow, however, is another day!
Anyway, his dash in was no problem. His checkup at the eye clinic went fine, on time, no waiting around. There was a handy bus only a few minutes after he left the clinic. So far so good! Then the bus reached the Mumps interchange. The driver got our. It was the end of his shift. Another driver was due to take over. Fifteen minutes or more later the passengers were informed that the driver had been held up in traffic somewhere. in fact other buses had been he,d up by the accident causing the delay. This explained the presence of drivers who were hanging around without buses. And so they were cancelling the bus Phil was on and sending it somewhere else. All the passengers were simply advised to catch the next bus. Presumably the bus route coordinators must have known there was a mismatch of drivers and buses. Driverless buses and bus-less drivers should be a solvable problem. Apparently not. Even though one of the bus-less drivers, when asked, agreed that he did know the route for Phil's bus and so could have driven it. but it was not in his schedule. It was more than his job was worth to depart from his schedule. Well, yes, that is understandable. You can't have anarchy in the bus service. However, surely it is not beyond the wit of bus management to sort it out! You would think so!
In the event, the delay did not cause any problems. We got into Manchester in plenty of time, got on our train and has the usual silly conversation about booked seats. Somebody was occupying our seats so, rather than kick up a fuss, we sat in a couple of empty ones nearby. Inevitably someone else came along and pointed out that he had reserved one of those seats. Another little discussion ensued and he sat in yet another empty seat nearby, all of us prepared to move if the situation grew more complicated. Or if there was an officious guard insisting onus all sitting in our rightful places. It began to feel as if we had strayed into an odd version of the Red Riding Hood story.
A very British problem! I say that but I have witnessed funny scenes on the bus that does the journey between Vigo and Porto. When you book your ticket, it does say that the seat number is not indicative of where to actually sit. It merely serves to tell the computer how many places have been booked. And yet I have often seen people, usually British or American, walking up and down the bus looking for "their" seat and being given short shrift by bemused Spaniards who always disregard that mind of thing!
Such are the joys of travel!
Once we safely reach our son's house ( we are travelling to a birthday celebration) I shall try to post this.
Please note the restraint: no rants about any politicians today.
Tomorrow, however, is another day!
Thursday, 2 February 2017
(Mostly) heartwarming stuff.
In the midst of all the gloomy stuff that is around in the news at the moment I found an odd story with the headline: "Mais wee, monsieur: Paris finds eco solution to public peeing". It seems that in some parts of Paris, tired of the smell of urine that seeps into stone pavements no matter how much you wash the area, they are trying out a system of boxes on sticks for men to per in. The boxes are full of straw and when enough pee has been added this can make compost to be used on gardens. If it proves successful, the experiment will be extended.
It might be an eco-solution but the very problem provokes the question, why do men need to pee in the street? It happens all over France. And, for that matter, it is very common in Spain too. Behind rubbish containers is a favourite spot. Shop doorways are also popular, which is one reason why so many shopkeepers have to swill out their doorways with bleach in the morning. I suppose it must happen in the UK as well but I am pretty sure it is too a much lesser extent. Does our British reserve lead to a restraint that our less inhibited continental cousins do not have?
Perhaps the "uritrottoir", as this box of straw is being called, will be something of a solution. The inventors themselves admit that it is not a solution for women who are desperate for a pee. Fortunately women seem less inclined to pee al fresco; it's generally more difficult, far more inconvenient and potentially embarrassing.
Here's another story I have found: an artist called Kia La Beija was interviewed by the Guardian. Kia LaBeija was born HIV positive in 1990 and was raised in NewYork's theatre district. So although she is clearly a young lady with a big problem in her life she had some advantages in being surrounded by all sorts of artistic possibilities. She is described as a multidisciplinary artist whose work "explores the intersections of community, politics, fine art and activism. As a visual artist she stages digital portraits as theatrical and uses her photos, self portraits, her self-portraits to show the reality of living with AIDS today. “I had felt incredibly silenced for many years on my battle, and as I got older that began to manifest in other unhealthy ways,” says Labeija. “I have slowly begun to share these parts of me through my work as an artist. I feel incredibly vulnerable, and sad at times. But this is how I know I'm doing something right. I believe all the great artists are great because they are honest. This is as honest and real as it gets for me.”
Here is what she regards as her best photograph: an HIV check-up in a prom dress. I should have found this last week when my homework for my Italian class was to research and present to the class a contemporary artist. She would have been a good subject.
There have been lots of photos of protest in the news lately. Pictures of people protesting accompanied by their children are always appealing. This is one that I find particularly good, since it shows a Jewish child and a Muslim child getting friendly during a demonstration at a US airport. Even better is the fact that the fathers of he two children, realising that their offspring were getting friendly, started to chat, exchanged mobile numbers and have arranged for their families to get together. Perhaps they could send pictures of their cooperation to Israel! Just an idea!
And, while we are on the subject of all getting along together, here is a link to a video from Danish television all about how we should put our differences aside and concentrate instead on what makes us similar to each other. For some reason there are subtitles in Italian!
Heartwarming stuff!
It might be an eco-solution but the very problem provokes the question, why do men need to pee in the street? It happens all over France. And, for that matter, it is very common in Spain too. Behind rubbish containers is a favourite spot. Shop doorways are also popular, which is one reason why so many shopkeepers have to swill out their doorways with bleach in the morning. I suppose it must happen in the UK as well but I am pretty sure it is too a much lesser extent. Does our British reserve lead to a restraint that our less inhibited continental cousins do not have?
Perhaps the "uritrottoir", as this box of straw is being called, will be something of a solution. The inventors themselves admit that it is not a solution for women who are desperate for a pee. Fortunately women seem less inclined to pee al fresco; it's generally more difficult, far more inconvenient and potentially embarrassing.
Here's another story I have found: an artist called Kia La Beija was interviewed by the Guardian. Kia LaBeija was born HIV positive in 1990 and was raised in NewYork's theatre district. So although she is clearly a young lady with a big problem in her life she had some advantages in being surrounded by all sorts of artistic possibilities. She is described as a multidisciplinary artist whose work "explores the intersections of community, politics, fine art and activism. As a visual artist she stages digital portraits as theatrical and uses her photos, self portraits, her self-portraits to show the reality of living with AIDS today. “I had felt incredibly silenced for many years on my battle, and as I got older that began to manifest in other unhealthy ways,” says Labeija. “I have slowly begun to share these parts of me through my work as an artist. I feel incredibly vulnerable, and sad at times. But this is how I know I'm doing something right. I believe all the great artists are great because they are honest. This is as honest and real as it gets for me.”
Here is what she regards as her best photograph: an HIV check-up in a prom dress. I should have found this last week when my homework for my Italian class was to research and present to the class a contemporary artist. She would have been a good subject.
There have been lots of photos of protest in the news lately. Pictures of people protesting accompanied by their children are always appealing. This is one that I find particularly good, since it shows a Jewish child and a Muslim child getting friendly during a demonstration at a US airport. Even better is the fact that the fathers of he two children, realising that their offspring were getting friendly, started to chat, exchanged mobile numbers and have arranged for their families to get together. Perhaps they could send pictures of their cooperation to Israel! Just an idea! And, while we are on the subject of all getting along together, here is a link to a video from Danish television all about how we should put our differences aside and concentrate instead on what makes us similar to each other. For some reason there are subtitles in Italian!
Heartwarming stuff!
Wednesday, 1 February 2017
Out of the usual routine!
It's been a funny sort of Wednesday. Usually I get up and run to the market on Wednesday morning early but today I had had a request to go to my daughter's house. So I walked to the market, bought some stuff, left my gloves on the fish stall and had to go back for them, and eventually found my way to the bus stop to travel to my daughter's house.
There, at the bus stop, I had one of those odd conversations about the reliability of buses, which routes they follow, including the fact that the lady I was speaking to, despite having lived in Uppermill for donkey's years, had only recently discovered that one of the local buses, if you catch it on the other side of the road, takes you to Oldham, via Delph. "I went the other day", she said, "It's a pretty place, Delph, isn't it? But there's not much there!" She needs to get out more!
The main reason I was going to my daughter's was so that I could accompany her to the dentist's surgery and hold the baby while she, my daughter, that is, not the baby, went and had some treatment. Now, that little possible confusion over which "she" was having dental treatment would be avoided in Spanish by use of the demonstrative pronouns "esta" (this one) and "esa" (that one). You can do it in English with "the former" (that one) and "the latter" (this one) but when did anyone hear those terms used in everyday speech recently? Okay, language lesson over!
After the dental visit, which went well apart from residual numbness, we went back to my house, where my brother-in-law was paying a hastily-arranged-at-the-last-minute visit. That involved another change of routine. As a rule, when he comes we go for a long stomp to Diggle chippy (a converted wooden garage I may have mentioned several times before) and eat fish and chips al fresco before stomping back home again. This time the visitor went off by car to Diggle chippy and brought fish and chips back for everyone, except for the person suffering from residual numbness! Very good but somehow never as nice indoors as al fresco!
We did manage a stroll around the block when the sun came out mid-afternoon but that was the whole extent of our stomping today.
Later, checking Facebook, I "liked" a post by my young friend who spoke at the anti-Trump's-Muslim-ban rally. His small daughter had congratulated him on his speech, which she said she had seen on video, and told him she was proud of him. To my surprise, I noticed that another friend of mine, from a completely different section of my life, had also "liked" that post. This just proves what a small world we live in: two bits of my life coinciding via social media. Or, as my young friend commented, "it's almost as if the left is a small incestuous cabal isn't it?! 😉"
Well, I appear to have managed to write all this without a rant about POTUS. So here is a little something I pinched from some newspaper or other:
"California Democrats are considering creating a state-wide sanctuary rule that will prohibit police officers from working with federal immigration authorities in opposition to President Donald Trump's migration policy. A number of cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, already operate such a policy – but it does not cover the entire state.
It means they do not cooperate with US Immigration and Customs enforcement—for example, by not notifying immigration officials if an illegal immigrant is about to be released from custody. Around 300 US jurisdictions are believed to currently have sanctuary status.
Mr Trump issued an executive order threatening to strip federal funding from sanctuary cities if they "harbour illegal immigrants" and San Francisco is already suing him on the basis the order contradicts states' rights provisions under US law. The new plan, drafted by California Senate president Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, was due for its first airing on Tuesday. The city of San Francisco said the executive order could result in the loss of more than $1bn (£794m) in funding.
Mr Trump's crackdown was foreshadowed not long after his victory in November's election.
Chief of staff Reince Priebus said cities that "ignore federal law" should not expect "federal government to help them in any way". Ending cities' sanctuary rules was a Trump campaign promise.
Mr Trump has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to publish a weekly list of crimes committed by immigrants to "better inform the public regarding the public safety threats associated with sanctuary jurisdictions".
There we go!
There, at the bus stop, I had one of those odd conversations about the reliability of buses, which routes they follow, including the fact that the lady I was speaking to, despite having lived in Uppermill for donkey's years, had only recently discovered that one of the local buses, if you catch it on the other side of the road, takes you to Oldham, via Delph. "I went the other day", she said, "It's a pretty place, Delph, isn't it? But there's not much there!" She needs to get out more!
The main reason I was going to my daughter's was so that I could accompany her to the dentist's surgery and hold the baby while she, my daughter, that is, not the baby, went and had some treatment. Now, that little possible confusion over which "she" was having dental treatment would be avoided in Spanish by use of the demonstrative pronouns "esta" (this one) and "esa" (that one). You can do it in English with "the former" (that one) and "the latter" (this one) but when did anyone hear those terms used in everyday speech recently? Okay, language lesson over!
After the dental visit, which went well apart from residual numbness, we went back to my house, where my brother-in-law was paying a hastily-arranged-at-the-last-minute visit. That involved another change of routine. As a rule, when he comes we go for a long stomp to Diggle chippy (a converted wooden garage I may have mentioned several times before) and eat fish and chips al fresco before stomping back home again. This time the visitor went off by car to Diggle chippy and brought fish and chips back for everyone, except for the person suffering from residual numbness! Very good but somehow never as nice indoors as al fresco!
We did manage a stroll around the block when the sun came out mid-afternoon but that was the whole extent of our stomping today.
Later, checking Facebook, I "liked" a post by my young friend who spoke at the anti-Trump's-Muslim-ban rally. His small daughter had congratulated him on his speech, which she said she had seen on video, and told him she was proud of him. To my surprise, I noticed that another friend of mine, from a completely different section of my life, had also "liked" that post. This just proves what a small world we live in: two bits of my life coinciding via social media. Or, as my young friend commented, "it's almost as if the left is a small incestuous cabal isn't it?! 😉"
Well, I appear to have managed to write all this without a rant about POTUS. So here is a little something I pinched from some newspaper or other:
"California Democrats are considering creating a state-wide sanctuary rule that will prohibit police officers from working with federal immigration authorities in opposition to President Donald Trump's migration policy. A number of cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, already operate such a policy – but it does not cover the entire state.
It means they do not cooperate with US Immigration and Customs enforcement—for example, by not notifying immigration officials if an illegal immigrant is about to be released from custody. Around 300 US jurisdictions are believed to currently have sanctuary status.
Mr Trump issued an executive order threatening to strip federal funding from sanctuary cities if they "harbour illegal immigrants" and San Francisco is already suing him on the basis the order contradicts states' rights provisions under US law. The new plan, drafted by California Senate president Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, was due for its first airing on Tuesday. The city of San Francisco said the executive order could result in the loss of more than $1bn (£794m) in funding.
Mr Trump's crackdown was foreshadowed not long after his victory in November's election.
Chief of staff Reince Priebus said cities that "ignore federal law" should not expect "federal government to help them in any way". Ending cities' sanctuary rules was a Trump campaign promise.
Mr Trump has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to publish a weekly list of crimes committed by immigrants to "better inform the public regarding the public safety threats associated with sanctuary jurisdictions".
There we go!
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