Outraged of Hebden Bridge

Darwin
Sexy, not sexist.

Last night, I dreamt that I caught the end of a piece on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, in which some feminist was spouting bollocks about Charles Darwin. As opposed to spouting bollocks about men in general, I mean. I decided to write a letter to put them straight. But then I woke up.

Letters to Radio 4… Even in my dreams, I am hopelessly middle-class.

Keeping things in perspective

BBC: Complaints over Clarkson strike comments reach 23,000
The BBC has received more than 23,000 complaints over Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson's remarks that striking public sector workers should be shot

To put this figure into some sort of perspective, Mr Clarkson's original complaint was about what their unions claim were two-million public sector workers on strike this Wednesday.

That's 23,000 complaints versus Clarkson's two-million.

Big end tart

BBC Sport: Stoke 1-1 Dynamo Kiev
Kenwyne Jones' towering late header ensured Stoke progressed to the knockout phase of the Europa League.

I'm not sure that I like the idea of Dynamo Kiev. I tried Chicken Kiev once, and it was OK, but dynamo… Really?

I wonder if all Russian soccer clubs name their teams after exotic engine-component recipes. I have to say, Sump Pavlova sounds rather nice, but I'm not at all sure about Carburettor Rarebit.

Those Russians are crazy. I mean, which other country on earth would name an entire town Ardon? I kid you not.

 Postscript: Oh, apparently Switzerland would. And France (twice). And Spain. Who says the Europeans can never agree on anything?

Pond'ring

A nice Asian lady named Jennifer phoned me on Wednesday and asked me some questions about our house. She said something I didn't really understand about government grants and home insulation. We had a rare old chat: I must have kept her gabbing for a good quarter of an hour at least.

Jennifer seemed quite surprised to hear that our house is almost 800 years old, and that it doesn't have a roof. Apparently, that disqualified us from government assistance for loft insulation. I would have thought, if anyone had need of loft insulation, it would be someone whose house does not have a roof.

Jennifer then said that she assumed we did not have cavity walls either. I said that our walls are full of secret passages and priest holes, and that they would probably count as cavities. Jennifer seemed to doubt that they would. I more than half suspected that she didn't know what a priest hole was, but was too polite to ask.

"What about the fish pond?" I asked.

Jennifer seemed confused. I explained that our fish pond has a modern, brick wall around it, and that there are cavities in that. Jennifer began to sound a lot more encouraged. She asked me several questions about the fish pond, such as whether it had a roof. I began to wonder whether Jennifer was not quite right in the head.

After a while, it dawned on me that Jennifer seemed to be under the misapprehension that The Fish Pond  was the name of a second property that I happened to own. I soon put her straight on that.

"How big is the wall around the fish pond?" Jennifer asked, once this silly misunderstanding had been cleared up. I explained that it was about a foot high and twenty feet in circumference. "It's quite a small pond, but the wall definitely does have a cavity," I assured her.

Jennifer then gave me the excellent news that I was entitled to a government grant for 50% of the cost of having the cavity wall around my fish pond insulated.

"So, who pays for the other half?" I asked.

Jennifer sounded rather embarrassed, and explained that I would be expected to pay for the other half.

"Can't the fish pay for the other, half?" I asked.

At which point, Jennifer said that she would have to consult her supervisor. Sadly, we were then cut off.

Is it me, or has the world gone crazy? We are in the middle of the biggest financial crisis in a generation, and this coalition government has got money to fritter away on insulation for fish ponds, when there are people living in 800-year old houses without roofs over their heads!

I should probably write to my M.P.

Fresh Gruts!

Did you feel those slight tremors between 07:02 and 09:11 this morning? I reckon they peaked at about 2.3 on the Rixter Scale. No, nothing to do with fracking tests near Blackpool; it was Gruts going through a major upgrade.

After many years loyal service, I have decided to put my home-grown content management system out to stud, and to migrate to WordPress. When I started Gruts over a decade ago, this simply wasn't an option. By the time that decent content management systems became available, however, there was so much crap content invested in Gruts, that changing to a new system was far too much of a headache. Such is often the case with ground-breaking technological innovations—remember all the grief the BBC had rescuing  the data from their Domesday Project?

Anyway, I have finally grasped the nettle by the horns, muscled down, and written lots of clever, one-off computer programs to convert all of the old Gruts content into WordPress format. This includes the post comments, the conversion of which alone required two bumper packets of Anadin Extra™. You wouldn't catch Murdoch showing such respect to his readers' contributions, mark my words (as I marked yours).

And the upshot of all this? Well, in short:

  • nearly all of the previous content is still available;
  • I did delete a few old posts, which I happened to notice depended entirely on links to other websites which aren't there any more;
  • all of your comments have been preserved for posterity. All of them. No matter how stupid;
  • the URLs (web addresses) of all of the posts and a lot of the other content have changed, but the old URLs still work. This is because I happen to believe that honouring existing external links to your website is a courtesy that every content provider should adopt, pain in the arse though it undoubtedly is;
  • one thing I haven't been able to incorporate into the upgrade is my bespoke comment avatars (those little pictures next to each person's comments). WordPress makes use (as did my old home-grown commenting system) of the external Gravatar.com service. Under my old system, anyone who didn't use this service was assigned their own Gruts-specific avatar. This no longer happens. To set up your own avatar, therefore, check out my FAQ: How do I set/change my comments avatar? (Regular Gruts commenters who don't do this can expect to be badgered by yours truly: avatars make websites more friendly!)
  • if you are a new commenter (i.e. if you have not had two previously approved comments associated with the email address that you give), then any comments that you post will be held in a moderation queue prior to being approved/rejected by me. This is primarily to prevent comment spam. I haven't been able to test it, but I am pretty sure that any previous comments you made under the old system will be honoured in the calculation;
  • the borders around some of the images on the old posts don't look quite right, but it would have been too much hassle to fix them all. I'll probably fix certain individual ones manually, if they begin to irritate me unduly;
  • each post on Gruts can now be associated with one or more topics (or categories). I have been recording categories against posts for years, but you have never been able to see them before because it was too hard for me to program without a proper database running things behind the scenes. Some of the categorisations of old posts are, I freely admit, a bit rubbish, and the very old posts have no categories at all. I shall be trying to improve these categorisations retrospectively over the coming months;
  • I shall also be giving the About pages a long-overdue update pretty soon;
  • all Gruts content remains completely free. (I certainly won't be repeating my rival Murdoch's ridiculous mistake.)
  • a lot of the stuff in the sidebar has disappeared for the time being, but it will return in due course;
  • the site should now look pretty nifty on your smartphones;
  • I am now able to post updates from my own phone, so expect more roving reports in future.

Or, to summarise in five words:

  • same shit; slightly different format.

Spooky coincidence: WordPress informs me that this is the 1,965th post on Gruts. 1965 also happens to be the year in which I was born. This probably means something deeply significant, but I haven't been able to work out what it is yet.

1,965 posts. That's a serious load of nonsense.

Gravitas and dignity

Did you watch BBC Children in Need on Friday night? No, me neither. I avoid it on medical grounds: I have a very low hilarity threshold. Seeing some bunch of no-mark celebrities I have never heard of put on drag to perform some famous pop song that I have also never heard of might just be the side-split which tips me over the edge. It's the same with those people who dress up in bear costumes and accost you in shopping precincts: I might just have to attack the next one I see, purely in self-defence.

It seems to me that what BBC Children in Need lacks is gravitas. Gravitas and dignity. Gravitas and dignity, as exemplified by Archduke Stephen, Palatine of Hungary (1817–1867):

Archduke Stephen
Palatine Stephen of Hungary (L) and Archduchess Hermine of Austria (R).

You wouldn't catch Archduke Stephen dressing up like Freddie Mercury—uncanny resemblance notwithstanding—to make a dreadful spoof video of the Queen classic Lady O'Gaga. You wouldn't catch the Palatine of Hungary wearing a pirate costume and demanding money with menace and a bucket outside Aldi—no matter how worthy the cause. No. Archduke Stephen would have had none of that nonsense: he was far too busy governing Bohemia.

If you want my opinion, I think it's way beyond time that the BBC put that yellow bear out to stud and went up-market. Up the Auntie, so to speak. It seems to me that they could do far worse than adopt Archduke Stephen as a role model. It's time the British public rediscovered dignitas. Dignitas and gravity.

Inconsistency

BBC: Myth that antibiotics cure coughs and colds still rife

The above BBC headline is completely correct: it is a myth that antibiotics can cure most coughs and colds, and that myth is rife.

But can you imagine the BBC publishing the following headline?

Myth of homeopathic efficacy still rife

No, me neither. The second headline is equally correct, but the BBC seems scared to say so. Instead, they remain neutral, saying stuff like:

  • Supporters believe homeopathy helps relieve a range of minor ailments from bruising to insomnia
  • But critics say it is no better than sugar pills and people only get better because they believe the treatment will work - the so-called placebo effect

There are scientifically valid ways of testing medical efficacy. Antibiotics fail these tests for most coughs and colds. Homeopathy fails these tests for all medical conditions. But the BBC, bizarrely and irresponsibly, seems only prepared to report quite categorically the former.

Oh, and in case you were wondering which other 'minor ailments' homeopathy's supporters claim that it can treat (not just 'relieve'), well, for a start, there is malaria and aids.