It's the solar rays wot dunnit! Once again this blog was wrong - so no surprise there, then! In fact, this blog is pissed off with having to keep owning up to errors but then again, no-one in their right mind pays any attention to what is written here, so what's the problem?! Anyway, my frequent dire warnings and my shaking, accusatory finger-pointing at those nasty little sun spots as being the cause of all our good/bad weather was wrong. At least, that is according to Dr. Leif Svalgaard, the well-known Scandinavian spelling mistake and the expert of all experts when it comes to solar matters. He has written an article over at WUWT which I urge you all to read, not least because I don't see why I should be the only one with a headache this Sunday. It is also worth reading the entire comments thread - just take a handful of paracetamol first - because sundry swots add in their expertise and slowly - very slowly as far as I am concerned - you begin to grasp, not the absolute truth of the matter, but the complexity of it all and the way in which first-class scientists, like Svalgaard, inch their way slowly and carefully towards some tentative conclusions. One of which appears to be some sort of correlation between cosmic rays emitted from the sun and the formation, or not, of cloud cover on earth which, of course, even a scientific twit like me can see would alter our climate to some extent.
The '50s: Heaven or Hell? I grew up during the 1950s in the pleasant county of Surrey. As a 'family' unit my Mum and I were exceedingly hard-up although I never sensed it at the time because whilst there were never any luxuries equally there were never any shortage of absolute essentials. So for me, the '50s were heaven, or as near to it as you can get on earth. Of course, it was a time when public propriety went hand-in-hand with private promiscuity as, according to the reviews of An English Affair by Richard Davenport-Hines, was the case with the Profumo affair. So no change there, then! From the reviews I gather that Davenport-Hines was shocked - shocked, I tell you - by the rank hypocrisy of the ruling class to which I can only respond with a yawn. One only requires a slight knowledge of 'dear Bertie's' efforts to shag for Empire, or, going further back, to the dear old 'Duke of Boot' and his 'heroic' efforts to defeat 'feelthy' French hints that we Brits were not really up to the job whilst on the job! Anyway, one result of the scandal was that henceforth hypocrisy, that is, the wilful practice of hiding one's sins because of shame, has disappeared and today anyone and everyone is advised to 'let it all hang out' so shame has been banished. Well, bring back the era of hypocrisy, I say. (By the way, Profumo once shook my hand and if I had known then where it had been I would never have washed it again!)
Chicago should follow LA: Let not Mayor Rahm Emanuel put it about that this blog has it in for his 'Windy City'. Absolutely not, even if the body count last year was at record heights and that in the first three days of this year, five more people were murdered. Despite all that, this blog is eager to assist the mayor in his valiant efforts to cut the killing - er, he is making efforts, isn't he? Anyway, eager to be of assistance might I suggest that he begins by introducing strict hammer and club control laws because according to the FBI, no less, more people are killed with those implements than with rifles! Next, he should begin a vigorous campaign to attract Latinos to his city because according to a city cop with the Los Angeles Police Department commenting on the drop in crime stats in his city, a goodly part of it is due to the influx of Latinos pushing out Blacks. Ooops, perhaps that was a tad blunt, so allow me to re-phrase it in 'PC-lingo for the cringo', let's just call it a "demographic shift", there, that's much nicer, isn't it?
The Plods get it right and wrong: I noticed somewhere, I forget exactly where, someone moaning that Scotland Yard were wasting public time and money in putting 30+ officers onto the task of investigating the so-called 'Plodgate case' involving the ex-Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell. I care nothing either way for Mr. Mitchell whose efforts at the Ministry of Overseas Aid should have led to him being put naked in the stocks in Parliament Square so that we could all pelt him with rotten veg. However, if - and it still remains an 'if' - there was a concerted effort by a gang (I use the word deliberately) of police officers to 'fit up' a government minister then absolutely every effort should be made to uncover it. It strikes with deadly accuracy at the very heart of our democracy. What they should do, is cut down on the ridiculous investigation, now verging on a witch hunt, into various elderly gentlemen (er, well, men, anyway) accused by sundry old biddies of having touched them up as young girls but none of whom, as far as I know, were exactly kidnapped and raped! I am also slightly miffed that I have not been questioned as yet! I consider it a slur on my manhood because I certainly spent a considerable amount of time and energy attempting to touch up inappropriately as many young girls as I could get to stand or lie still long enough for me to do it. Alas, truth will out, and the fact is that the number was distressingly tiny. 'E' for Effort - again!