Miscellaneous Adventures

I had originally decided that I wouldn't blog during the holidays. After all, I thought, the whole idea of this crazy endeavour was to be a work-avoidance technique, and I currently have no work to avoid! I realise that my failure to tell anyone that this was my plan has almost certainly caused great inconvenience to my many readers. I can imagine people across the land hunched over their computers and desperately hammering the Refresh button in their browsers, waiting for the next installment.

I apologise for so irresponsibly leaving a wailing chasm / howling void (couldn't decide which phrase I liked more) in everyone's lives. But never mind, you'll get over it. C'est la vie, as they say in Spain.

The reason that I changed my mind about the whole "blogging during the holidays" thing was that I heard word of new blogs begun by two friends of mine, Jack and Cecily. (Rotate your eyes a few degrees to the right for links.) Inspired by their noble example (or should that be consumed with jealous rage?) I have decided to regale you with exciting tales of my recent visit to the Lake District, during which I learnt to sail several small boats and enjoyed several Cumbrian sausages.

Yet I realise now that this post is becoming rather inordinately long. Thus, delighted with the irony of explaining that I had decided not to post whereas now have changed my mind and am intending to post, and then not actually posting about anything at all, I shall end. Updates on sailing exploits tomorrow(ish).

Thank you to Jack for kindly linking to here, thus probably trebling my readership at a stroke.

Politicians Being Silly

Exams are finished!!

Yes, after months of torment, finally I need no longer feel guilty that I am spending time doing something that is entirely unrelated to law. What, I wondered, would be the best way of celebrating this event? And then it hit me. I shall write an article that is, ironically enough, obliquely related to law!! What an excellent idea.

This was largely prompted by John Reid following in the hallowed footsteps of the Blunkett and Clarke eras by, quite frankly, being a moron. Specifically, jumping on the bandwagon to criticise a judge for giving what he believes is too lenient a sentence.

The point is not the correctness or otherwise of the sentence. The point is that it's nothing to do with the Home Secretary. It is not the place of politicians to stick their noses into judicial decisions. They have no idea about the judicial process and they don't have a clue how the legal system works in reality. The whole point of having an independent judiciary is that they judge each case on its merits rather than taking any notice of public opinion. Politicians do nothing but take notice of public opinion, which is why they should stick to their proper constitutional role and stay out of the judicial process.

To my absolute lack of surprise, everyone's favourite idiot-sheet, The Sun, has come out in favour of Mr Reid. They are campaigning for judges who make "loony" sentencing decisions to be sacked. Possibly someone should explain to them that judges are unsackable precisely because they must be able to carry out their functions without worrying about pleasing the politicians.

If The Sun had its way, our legal system would disintegrate into trial by tabloid. Judges would be at the mercy of journalists who don't know a sentencing tariff from their backside. What fun.

"Exam replaced after papers leaked"

...was the headline that struck me when I last looked at the BBC News website.

How, I thought, was it possible for exam papers to leak? And even more significantly, what exactly were they leaking? Was it simply water, or something more sinister? Was there an oily trail of knowledge oozing out of them, soon to be lost beyond all recall? Or was it blood, or some ghostly form of ectoplasm? Scenes from Poltergeist and Ghostbusters flashed through my mind.

Woe to ye who fail to use the passive tense correctly when writing headlines. And woe to pedants - I hate people who pick holes in everything.

Hitting Balls with Hammers

Croquet is, apparently, less painful than its conceptual description seems to suggest. It's a sport that I've always considered to be simply a gentle pastime for the elderly, when they become too decrepid to withstand crunching sliding tackles. Bless them.

But apparently I was mistaken. According to the BBC News website, and seemingly every newspaper in the country, it's actually an amazingly vicious game. Curious as to the basis of this claim, I read further. Was there, I wondered, a dimension to this game that I had entirely missed? In between each round, did the competitors lay down their hammers and undertake a fist-fight? Or, more promisingly, did they keep hold of their hammers and have a highly entertaining hammerfight? Was the aim of the game, in fact, to bludgeon one's opponent to death, and all the hitting of balls merely an elaborate form of foreplay?

Sadly, I could find no such feature to the game. I say sadly, because there is seldom any game that could not be improved by the addition of violence. But nay, the sole justification I found for the claims of brutality was:

"At the same time you would try and position your balls in a certain place, you can hit your opponent's ball off the lawn."

So in other words, at the same time as trying to win, you try to make your opponent lose. I must confess to being slightly dubious as to the uniqueness of this aspect of the game.

The reason why the newspapers have been so excited about croquet is, of course, that John Prescott was pictured playing it. This, bizarrely enough, actually took up the entirity of the front page of that well known oasis of intelligent comment, The Sun. The accompanying article seemed to suggest that his previous misdemeanours of groping every female within reach, presiding over the most demoralised and unhappy department in government (an impressive achievement, considering the continued existence of the Home Office), punching people, and having an affair with a civil servant, were trivial in comparison, and that he should be sacked immediately.

The most worrying thing about the whole incident is it meant that, for the first time in history, I actually found myself defending John Prescott. When that happens, you know that something is very, very wrong with the world.

Galloway Watch - Episode 1

To avoid the horrendous prospect of yet more depressing musings on revision and exams, I have decided to begin an occasional column chronicling the life and times of the Rt. Hon. Mr George Galloway, MP. In other words, every time that Our George says or does something stupid (and I have a funny feeling that this might not be the rarest of occurrences), I shall report it in gleeful detail.

His recent gem occurred when he was asked whether a suicide bomber would be justified in blowing up Tony Blair. I don't know whether such a bizarre question was a genius attempt to catch Galloway out, or just plain idiocy. (But given that it was asked by Piers Morgan, I'm going to assume the latter.) George responded:

"Yes, it would be morally justified."

Oh dear. Even George realised he'd gone too far this time, hastily backpedalling in the press, claiming that what he meant was that he could see, in a calm, objective, disapproving way, how a suicide bomber could construct a moral argument. Now that clearly isn't even close to what he said, but it's what he says he said, so that must be okay.

What's really disappointing is that in starting this new hobby now, I've missed the opportunity to comment on Galloway's disgraceful election behaviour, his antics on Big Brother, and the hilarity of his arrest in Egypt. But I'm sure that more will follow soon...

Revision

...is the Destroyer of Souls.

Happily, though, the largest part of it is over. My exams begin soon - on the 31st May - and end on the 13th June. Two weeks of sheer terror, followed by blissful nothingness. Nothingness in the relaxation sense, not in the death sense. Hopefully.

In our desperation, we have had to find various ways of allieviating the tedium. Yesterday was the turn of the Paper Aeroplanes Flying Championship of the World. It was a beautiful sight, five planes of different designs all gracefully flying through the air in formation(ish) before nose-diving into the ground. Brought a sentimental tear to my eye.

And now I must return to the pit whence I came. The library awaits, eager to draw me into its cavernous maw, there to devour me, slowly, for the rest of time. Or until June 13th, whichever is sooner.

Ducks and Cold Water

But, bizarrely, not together.

I always thought that ducks tended to stay by such bodies of water as rivers and lakes. After all, (and I'm moving into entirely guesswork territory here) they mostly survive on little water-based swimming things, and bread thrown by small children and tourists.

All of this would no doubt be news to the ducks in Cambridge. Not for them the quiet, placid life of swimming along a river. These ducks want some action. They want to paint the town red and hang around on street corners. Which is why, every time it rains, they all start wandering through the town centre. My college is about ten minutes (at human speed) away from the river, yet a couple of days ago there were a couple of ducks apparently trying to get into the library where I was working. They can't have meant any harm, for they were not wearing hoodies (the Gospel According to Bluewater, Chap 3, Verse 17), but were a strange sight nonetheless.

In Other News:

In what perhaps can best be described as a fit of genius, the nice college maintenance people have been round to turn off our hot water. They're supposed to be turning off the heating for the summer, but clearly don't have a clue what they're doing. Showering this morning was a disconcertingly bracing experience.

Pointless Creatures

Is there any point in the existence of wasps?

They seem to exist purely so that they can fly in through open windows, sting everything in sight, and then knock themselves senseless trying to get out again. Hardly the most glorious of ecological niches.

Bees are different - bees have a purpose. They pollinate things, and, as I am given to understand, procreate with birds. Plus they don't maliciously sting people just for amusement, because they end up leaving half of their internal organs embedded in your skin, which apparently hurts them more than it hurts you.

When the sun goes down and all the wasps fly back, contented in their evil deeds of the day, to whatever diabolic pit they came from, a new pointless creature emerges. Those tiny, tiny little flying things that are attracted to electric lights.

Evolution has clearly gone completely tits-up here - what kind of nocturnal creature is attracted to light? I have no idea what these things eat, but I'm willing to bet that its prey doesn't look like a flourescent light. You would have thought that natural selection would have operated to make extinct a creature that spends all its time flying into electric lights, but it doesn't seem to have happened yet. Darwin, shmarwin.

Scolari - A Right Balls-Up (An Angry Rant)

Unless you have spent the past week cowering under a damp stone (in which case, I salute you - it's got to be more fun than revision) then you will have heard of the fiasco surrounding the FA's attempts at hiring a new England manager.

When things go drastically wrong, people often say things like, "There's no point throwing blame around" or, "Nobody was at fault - it just wasn't meant to be." I disagree. I think it's a great idea to throw blame around, and that is exactly what I propose to do. Better yet, I'm going to structure it, with subheadings and everything, so that I can convince myself that it's valuable exam practice. Prepare yourself.

The FA

The main mistake that the FA made was to appoint a committee to do what should have been done by a single person. In the past, the Chief Executive has been sent toddling off to go and hunt down a manager and bring him back to Soho Square, by force if necessary. If this had happened, we would almost certainly have Martin O'Neill (who is manifestly the best candidate) in the job by now, because he was Mr Barwick's preferred choice. All would have been rosy.

God alone knows why the Premier League chairman, the FA chairman, and another faceless corporate mannequin were involved. And then to make matters worse, David "Impartial" Dein, the Arsenal vice-chairman, muscled in and insisted that Scolari was the best choice. Over-crowded broth-spoilage occurred.

The Press

As undoubtedly bungled as the FA's efforts were, I think the Press (that vague, amorphous entity that in this context essentially means tabloid newspapers) is the real villain of the piece.

Firstly, they reported in gleeful detail the fact that the FA was talking to Scolari. At no point did the FA make any kind of announcement - they were trying to keep things under wraps, like any sensible recruiter would in the situation. But the newspapers couldn't resist sticking their noses in, not caring that reporting that he had been offered the job meant that, if he refused it, any decent manager subsequently offered it would know that he was second choice, and may well refuse it on that basis.

After thus storing up massive problems if Scolari should reject the job, the Press then added the coup de grace by actually causing him to reject it. He said in a press conference that there were 20 reporters outside his house, and the newspapers had already started sticking their noses into his private life and comparing his wife to Sven's. He said he wanted no part of that culture, and I don't blame him.

Conclusion

So as much as the FA did make a mistake in their selection procedure, I would still like to take this opportunity to stick several fingers up at the Press, and to cast grave doubts on the legitimacy of their parentage. Not only have they stopped us getting Scolari, they've now made it very difficult for us to get anyone else. Good job.

The Duck Returns!

I decided not to write (m)any posts over the Easter holiday, because nothing really happens at home that is worthy of your attention. That's right, gentle readers - I was thinking of you, my loyal and dedicated flock. Praise my selfless attention to your needs. In addition, there's the distinct possibility that I would have ended up scrabbling desperately for things to write about, and that wouldn't be fun for any of us.

So now I'm back at university, spending more or less every waking hour in the library revising for the exams that are now less than two months away. Revision has become a vast monster that is threatening to consume my soul.

Writing that metaphor reminded me of Shang Tsung, that rather unpleasant fellow from Mortal Kombat, the most hilariously bad film ever made. He killed people and then enslaved their souls, which always seemed a bit harsh. His one redeeming feature, however, is that he never made those tortured souls revise for Law exams. Compared to the Faculty of Law, and whichever bastard writes the exam timetables, he was positively an angel.