A Gentleman's Domain

Youth Up In Smoke

And here is today’s big surprise.  Prepare to be absolutely shocked, because I am sure that this is something that none of you has ever suspected, not even very slightly.  Have a look at this.  British American Tobacco (BAT), one of the world’s leading suppliers of cigarettes, has been breaking the rules in the Third World by targeting children. Who’d a thought it!  With hundreds of people dying from smoking every day, they have to find new smokers to replace them or  their customer base will shrink, and who better than children?  Get them while they are young.  So, it is alleged, they have been advertising tobacco by giving it a positive, cool image – not mentioning that there is nothing cool about lung disease, body odour and breath like a sewer – and by selling cigarettes singly.  Only kids buy cigarettes one at a time.  When I was at school I remember there was one brand, Woodbines I think or maybe Weights but I’m open to correction, which was available in packs of five, and we schoolboys used to pool our money and buy one of those between two or three of us.  I should imagine that children were the most frequent customers for those.  They have long been banned in Britain, as far as I know, and there is now talk of banning packs of ten as well and increasing the penalties imposed on people who sell to under 18s.  And in most countries in the developed world they have equal, or more severe, restrictions.  Take a look at those graphic health warnings on cigarette packs in Australia and Canada sometime.  So, if these reports are true, they are off to hook in new smokers, especially kids, in third world countries, where there are fewer or no restrictions, and where such regulations as may exist can be ignored or sidestepped.

The bastards!  The sons of bitches!  I’m not interested in any “great debate” or “the jury is still out” crap.  I am convinced that smoking kills, and people who sell this dangerous drug are pushers plain and simple.  Merchants of death may be an overused phrase, but it is still very accurate.  I really hate smoking, as only an ex-smoker can hate it.  It’s true that people who give it up are the most anti.  But how can we stop these people?  So many billions who live in the third world will fall easy prey to them unless something is done. And if this report is true, then I can say on the basis of no proof at all but in the certainty that I am right, that all the other tobacco companies are doing exactly the same thing.

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Thursday Thirteen #59

 Thursday Thirteen

Management-speak.   Don’t you hate it?  Those words and phrases used in offices, usually by people who don’t have much of a command of the language, are not secure in their jobs and try to dress up their activities in clichés and long winded phrases that mean very little, if anything.  It would be a different matter if these word and phrases meant something special, which could not be communicated by using ordinary English, but they don't -- they simply show that whoever uses them is pretentious and stupid.   The BBC recently published a survey of 50 examples that people hate, and some of them coincide with 13 examples of office speak that I have heard and long despised

   

       13 Examples of "Management-Speak" that I can't stand

Incentivize  Do you mean “encourage” dear?

Touch base   Far easier to say you'll be in touch.  No need to go on about bases. Sporting metaphors are always irritating.

Hit the ground running  I used to hear this all the time in sales management.

Lead from the front  That was often stated as a job requirement in sales management. Usually it was a disguised way of saying that you had to sell and manage at the same time. In other words, do two jobs for the price of one.

Forward planning  What other kind of planning is there?

Under the radar   Which means that someone or something has gone largely unnoticed.  This was probably a rather clever metaphor when it was first used by whoever thought it up, but now it is everywhere, like a fungus.

Good to go  Just plain annoying.

Step up to the plate  So is this.

At the end of the day  This has spread so widely in Britain it has reached epidemic proportions.  I hope the USA resists it.

You can talk the talk but can you walk the walk?  This bit of long winded drivel seems to crop up a lot.  I notice that they said it frequently on The Apprentice (Trump’s version, not Sugar’s). Only once has anyone said it to me and I replied “Yes, and I can banana the banana too.”  which is utterly meaningless but did have the pleasant effect of killing the conversation stone dead.

Think outside the box   I don’t think in a box, do you?  Are you trying ot tell em to be imaginative?

Blue sky thinking   I’m still not exactly sure what this is, but I bet there is a better way of expressing it.

Basically   Arrgghhh!!!!

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Mind Your Keyboard, Not Your Language

Well now, here are a couple of things I have read about recently that may interest you.  Both to do with dirt, in one way or another.  Now, I have always thought of you lot as pretty clean – though one or two of you do have dirty minds, I’m glad to say.  But I’m wrong.  You are all positively wallowing in dirt and grime and, shock horror, germs.  So am I, probably.  We can’t help it – it’s just the way things are.  For an explanation, take a gander at this article and you’ll see what I mean.   Your keyboard is positively awash with germs and muck. 

When you think about it, it’s not really all that surprising.  People eat over their keyboards, they cough and sneeze – and who wipes their keyboard after a good sneeze?  In fact, who even puts their hand to their mouth to cover a cough when they are sitting alone at their computer (I do – but maybe I’m just odd.)?   Remarkably, many keyboards are far more germ infested than the average toilet seat.  You wouldn’t want to spend hours at a time rubbing your fingertips over a toilet seat, I’ll bet, but one thinks nothing of tapping away for ages at a qwerty disease incubator.  Next time you use a public computer, stop and think for a moment – you are about to plunge your fingertips into unknown quantities of germs and muck and dried spit and phlegm from legions of previous users!  You know those revolting commercials that show the cartoon fungus that can afflict people's toenails?  I tend to avert my gaze when that come on. Well, little monsters like that probably lurk under your caps lock key! And strangely enough, women are far dirtier then men in this respect.

The microbiologist quoted in the article recommends using alcohol wipes once in a while. I feel vindicated!  For a long time now I have been giving my keyboard the occasional once over with a Wet One – not because I was afraid of germs really, but because I like things to be clean – but I couldn’t help feeling a frisson of embarrassment as I did it, even though I was on my own.  Now, no such frisson will occur!  I will wipe boldly and proudly, imagining that I can hear the death screams of thousands of gems as I do so, confident that even if I haven’t exactly sterilized my keyboard it will at least be a bit cleaner than your average toilet seat.

And the other thing?  Well,  it concerns filthy language.  In many circumstances, I am all for it.  I hate mealy mouthed euphemisms almost as much as I hate bleeps on TV shows during adult viewing time.  In the heated environment of a high pressure workplace, bad language is often the lingua franca.  It was ever thus.  A person who makes copious use of it is one of my fave TV personalities at the moment, the chef Gordon Ramsay.  He swears a lot during “Hells’ Kitchen”   “Ramsay’s F-Word”  and both the British and American versions of “Kitchen Nightmares”  and you know what? The shows do not suffer one iota for it.  These are not children’s shows, and responsible parents should make sure there are no little ones watching.  The swearing is harmless, because it is suitable to the circumstances.

And then, as we read,  the Australians, of all people, have complained. Well, not every single Australian, of course. Just some dickhead politicians.  Ramsay’s shows are very popular there, and some people became concerned at the amount of swearing the man does.  Now, we all know that Australians have a worldwide reputation for being shy, delicate, unworldly and fragile and Senator Bernardi obviously wanted to protect the poor dears from verbal assault. Silly old git!   As if they needed it!  I’m glad to say, it transpires that Ramsay will be able to carry on as before.  As he says, if you don’t like it you can switch off. Watch something else – there’s a novel idea!  Content yourself with reruns of "Happy Days" or do some quilting.  Senator Bernardi is an example of that disgusting attitude of “I don’t like it so you can’t do it.”  and that’s what needs to be stamped out, not a bit of bad language.  Carry on with the fucking swearing, Chef!

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Thursday Thirteen #58

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We have just spent a very enjoyable holiday in England, visiting friends and family and generally relaxing in the countryside.  While we were there we did of course visit a great many pubs of various styles – old and modern, simple and multi-purpose.  Some were a lot better than others but there were none that we actually regretted going to. Here are thirteen of them.

The Red Lion, Long Compton
Apparently this place is quite well known but I had never heard of it.  We had a quiet drink there on the way home from an afternoon of driving and sightseeing.

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The Mason’s Arms, Swerford
Like so many country pubs, this place has become part pub, part restaurant.  We dropped in for a drink one afternoon, only to find it closed, but we went back a few evenings later for a wonderful, if expensive meal.  The waitress was interested to chat to us because she had just finished 6 months as an exchange student at Berkeley.

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The Unicorn Inn, Deddington
This was one of the closest pubs to where we were, within walking distance.  We went here just once, at a time when there were hardly any customers, and we sat in what in effect was a private room for an undisturbed quiet drink.

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The Drabbet Smock, Haverhill
I have no idea what the name signifies. This is a modern gastro-pub, where we had dinner with my daughter and her fiancé.  It was even bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside (a sort of Tardis effect) and was doing a great business.

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The Dun Cow, Dunchurch
This pub in south Warwickshire has something of a reputation as a restaurant.  We went there in 2002 and decided to make a second visit.  The place was buzzing and the food was excellent.

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The Coach & Horses, Adderbury
This place has no culinary pretensions.   Just a nice little pub in a small country town.  We spent a nice hour there.

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The Joiner’s Arms, Bloxham
Another quiet little country pub.  A pleasure to visit.

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The Wharf Inn, Fenny Compton
The Oxford Canal runs right behind this pub and the wharf in question refers to a mooring point there.  In the old days of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the canals were used to transport goods the way the highways and railroads are used now, there were pubs situated at frequent intervals along them where bargees could eat, drink and even sleep.  In our hard bitten twenty-first century the only boatmen we saw on the canal were there for the fun of it and there were no bargees in the pub when we dropped by – just a few people enjoying an afternoon drink.

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The Three Wishes, Edgware
This pub is in what used to me my old stamping ground about ten years ago, but it was not one I visited regularly.  We found that my old local, the Railway Arms, had closed down, so we dropped in here for refreshment.  I don’t know what the George Michael poster was all about.  He wasn’t there when we were!

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The Silver Cross, Whitehall
This was the only pub we went into in central London.  It’s at the north end of Whitehall, just a few yards from Trafalgar Square.  At 6pm on a summer evening it was full of tourists visiting London and civil servants from the surrounding government offices, popping in for a quick pint before going home.

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The Falcon,  Shipston-On-Stour
We stopped here on the road to Stratford-On-Avon.  It was a nice enough pub but they had an overhead TV playing some sports crap far too loud.

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The Bure Farm, Bicester
We decided to go to a pub we had never been to before, so we drove south along the A4141 until we came to the outskirts of Bicester and went to this place. It is very new, and very large.  Luckily it wasn’t too crowded.  It was a nice day so I suppose we should really have sat in the garden instead of indoors.

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The Blue Boar, Chipping Norton
One of the nicest pubs we visited during our trip.  It’s a very old pub, as the picture shows, but the back has been built onto, and we sat in a rather Mediterranean looking patio and had a rather nice meal at a very good price.

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