sparrow chat

Apparently, my good blogging pal, WiseWebWoman, has recently splashed out on a wonderfully outrageous makeover. A neighbor of hers, who wisely wishes to remain anonymous, sent me a photograph:

You can read all about it HERE

Filed under: Fine feathered friends

Posted under Sparrow Chat

BBC Radio Four’s, ‘More or Less’, discusses numbers. I pricked up my ears at this week’s program as one of the subjects was close to my heart.

While I was an Inspector for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in the English Midlands, among the people I found most irksome was my Regional Superintendent. The RSPCA employed about five or six of these uniformed officials, one for each region of the country, and their job was to ensure the Inspectors in their area carried out the work correctly, and to assist in dealing with any work-related problems an Inspector might have.

In those days, the Society owned the Inspectors’ houses, vehicles, telephones, and almost everything else. Regional Superintendent ‘Mick’ Hartley believed it owned the Inspector, as well.

He was a pompous, bellicose, individual, in good shape for his fifty or so years, and resplendent in immaculate uniform with military-style boots you could see your face in. Thick black hair was heavily greased above equally bushy eyebrows; a slightly bulbous nose topped the inevitable well-groomed moustache, slightly yellowed from a lifetime of nicotine addiction.

He’d turn up at the ‘Society house’ about four or five times a year to check the Inspector’s books were in order, vehicle properly maintained, and stuff like that. Once a year, he’d perform the annual ‘house check’, which meant him scrutinizing the property inside and out to ensure it was all in good repair and the Inspector wasn’t sub-letting one of the bedrooms to a family from Pakistan, or growing marijuana in the attic.

It was a dreadful invasion of privacy for the Inspector and his family. Hartley gave very little notice, telephoning the night before, or sometimes leaving it until the morning of his visit, which resulted in the poor wife rushing around vainly attempting to make everything look perfect before he arrived.

My wife worked full time, so usually I was alone in the house when he arrived. We didn’t get on. I’ve always had a down on authority. It’s not that I’m against rules, it’s more to do with the type of individuals who invariably end up enforcing them.

It’s been my experience that rules are made for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men. Sadly, those who enforce them tend to be of the former category. Regional Superintendent ‘Mick’ Hartley was no exception.

He worked, he proudly declared, “……by the book”. There was no word for human error in Hartley’s dictionary. If a job wasn’t done strictly according to the rules, then it wasn’t done right and he expected, “……my Inspectors to give one hundred and twenty-five percent.”

It was at this point I made the mistake of pointing out he was wrong.

It’s always been something of an irritant to me, you see. Not that I’m a mathematical genius, or anything. In fact, my old maths master probably went to his grave early trying to teach me calculus. Nevertheless, he did manage to instill in me the basic principle that one hundred percent is a total amount, and consequently there can never be anymore.

So, when I pointed out to Hartley that there was no way he could expect one hundred and twenty-five percent from me, and not even one hundred percent given that I had to spend a third of my time sleeping, another hour or two eating, and some occasional off-duty recreation may be nice, he began to turn a delicate shade of puce.

By the time I’d informed him the best I could manage was probably around sixty percent, if he were lucky, apoplexy was becoming a distinct possibility.

Following that visit, the report he sent to RSPCA Headquarters probably didn’t portray me in a terribly good light. I wasn’t too concerned, though, as fate was already steering me towards pastures new, and I was aware my career in animal welfare had run its course.

It wasn’t long after that fateful encounter with Regional Superintendent Hartley that personal matters caused me to leave the RSPCA.

As years went by the irritating misuse of percentage terms escalated throughout British and American society, egged on in part by brain-numbingly stupid reality TV shows displaying barely educated youths, of both sexes, desperately attempting to sell their limited attributes as potential company directors. Most would be incapable of even managing a piss-up in a brewery, but virtually all were eager to give, “One hundred and twenty percent”, “Two hundred percent”, or even in one instance, I believe, “A thousand percent,” to impress the rich idiot with the electrified hairstyle who pretended he might eventually employ them.

Was I the only human on the planet screaming with frustration at the cathode ray tube in the living room corner? Did no-one else care that mathematical precision was being so grossly and carelessly eroded?

So it seemed, until recently, while listening to Tim Hartford’s ‘More or Less’ on BBC Radio Four’s website, I discovered I wasn’t alone. Susie Dent, described as a ‘writer and language expert’ was so incensed with the misuse of the term, she made quite a study of the phenomenon. She sees it as part of a more general ‘bigging up’ of the language – like use of the terms ‘super’-hero, or ‘mega’-cool.^[1]

There’s one point, however, on which Ms Dent and I wholeheartedly disagree.

From her research, she suggests the ‘bigging-up’ of the hundred percent began with ice-skating stars Torville and Dean in the 1980′s, when they attributed their success to giving their all, “one hundred and one percent”.

Ms Dent, you’re wrong. I can’t definitively pinpoint when it all began, but Regional Superintendent ‘Mick’ Hartley was way ahead of Torville and Dean.

He was up to one hundred and twenty-five percent as early as the 1970′s.

^{[1] “The death of 100%” BBC, April 27th 2009}

Filed under: Everything and more

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Surely no-one could deny the acclaim meted out to British singer Susan Boyle was rightly earned. Her rendition of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from the hit musical, Les Miserables, on the British talent show, ‘Got Talent’, was memorable, to say the least.^[1]

Why then do we have to suffer the deplorable guff pouring forth from various media outlets like sewage from a faulty water treatment outfall?

The BBC recently described her as:

………with double chin, unkempt hair, frumpy appearance and eccentric demeanour……”^[2]

Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, a US rag:

In our pop-minded culture so slavishly obsessed with packaging – the right face, the right clothes, the right attitudes, the right Facebook posts – the unpackaged artistic power of the unstyled, un-hip, un-kissed Ms Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace.

She pierced my defenses. She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective.”

Melanie Reid inThe Times:

…..Susan Boyle is the ugly duckling who didn’t need to turn into a swan; she has fulfilled the dreams of millions who, downtrodden by the cruelty of a culture that judges them on their appearance, have settled for life without looking in the mirror.”

And so it goes on, and on, and on……this erudite ejaculation of obnoxious emphases, serving only to self-excuse these same journalistic icons of the entertainment industry from their total obsession with physical attraction, a fixation all too frequently blinding them to the utter lack of talent present in many of the latest protegees to emerge into today’s show business limelight.

Miranda Sawyer of the Daily Mirror:

No woman gets to perform publicly unless she looks like Mariah Carey. If you’re a female singer, you are required by showbiz law to appear sexy at all times.”

What utter balderdash, Ms Sawyer.

There was a time when singers were lauded for their voices, not their looks. Birgit Nillson was hardly a classic beauty, but she wooed audiences with her divine rendering of Wagnerian masterpieces. Over the years, plenty of double-chinned, overweight, and frankly unappealing sopranos and contraltos have graced the operatic boards -unappealing, that is, until the moment they opened their mouths.

Today’s entertainment industry is all about money, and youth, and sex, and more money. The industry’s spent billions persuading us we want the Madonna’s of this world, and then appears surprised when an ‘ordinary’ woman becomes an overnight sensation.

Susan Boyle ‘reordered the measure of beauty’, according to Lisa Schwarzbaum.

No, she did not, Ms Schwarzbaum. She just opened her mouth, and sang like a nightingale.

<sup>[1] “Got Talent” April 11th 2009

[2] “How Susan Boyle won over the world” BBC, April 18th 2009</sup>

Filed under: Corrective lenses

Posted under Sparrow Chat

There comes a time in everyone’s life when old prejudices need putting aside, life-long loyalties rigorously examined, and the beliefs of years cast to the wind.

Most Americans have no interest in British politics. Indeed, it’s safe to say that Americans in general have little concern for any politics outside the USA, unless of course those politics interfere in some way with the well-being of the Homeland.

As both British Labour and Tory governments have passionately wooed America since the latter days of King Charles George III, and bent over backwards (and, on occasions, forwards) not to upset the former colonies, it’s hardly surprising the intricacies of British government are not considered vitally important when the education of young US citizens is being pursued.

Consequently, the following will prove of little interest to those born outside the United Kingdom. So, if you’re an American, nip off and grab a Starbucks, or order a Big Mac at….wherever it is that sells them, while we focus on Sparrow Chat’s British contingent.

For years, the Conservative (or Tory) Party was beloved of the British aristocracy, who still viewed the working man (and woman) as servile creatures useful only for fetching firewood, or gracing the master’s bed chamber when the mistress of the house was elsewhere.

The Labour Party changed that attitude (at least, so far as the working man and woman were concerned) by providing a socialist government which created the National Health Service, safety nets for those unfortunates without jobs or other forms of remuneration, and a plethora of benefits for the working classes that caused long-dead Tories to spin in their graves.

It was all very clear-cut in the heady days pre-Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Quite simply, the Tories looked after the rich and Labour fought for the workers and downtrodden.

In the 1990′s, all that began to change. Under the leadership of Tony Blair the Labour Party swung away from representing the workers of Britain and became hand-in-glove with corporate interests. Blair and Brown were fascinated by the ‘American model’ and went all out to change the face of, not only British politics, but the very fabric of UK society. Privatization, though begun by the very Tory, Maggie Thatcher, was the order of the day.

The effect of privatization on Britain is well documented, but there was another spin-off, less obvious but growing insidiously, as a cancer, pervading the whole of British society and creating problems it will take generations to correct.

The Jewel in the Crown of Labour Party achievement is undoubtedly the National Health Service. Blair and Brown’s tenure as Prime Minister and Chancellor resulted in those jewels ripped from the crown and sold to the highest bidder, but the Blair/Brown government achieved a more sinister purpose. In its efforts to still appear as ‘the party of the workers’, it introduced a whole conglomeration of legislation that neutralized authority and gave the underclass a carte blanche to demand rights that previously they would never have entertained.

Those who have perused the excellent British Channel Four documentary series, “Hospital”, (available to expats on the internet, if you know where to look) will note that where once the medical profession were masters of their NHS domain, the patient – or, more correctly ‘client’, or, ‘customer’ is now able to decide the course their treatment should take, even if it conflicts with the advice of those who gave seven years of their lives to learning care of the sick.

One has only to read such excellent websites as the Police Inspector’s Blog^[1] or, “The Policeman’s Blog”^[2] by David Copperfield, to realize how much the authority of law enforcement has been eroded in Britain over the years, under the pretext of protecting ‘individual rights’.

While Blair/Brown’s ‘New Labour’ was hobnobbing behind the scenes with corporate cronies, selling the nation down the river to the highest bidder, it covered up its crimes by pandering to the underclass of criminals and hooligans given the right to wage mayhem every Saturday night on city streets and in town centers, while removing the ability of police officers to deal adequately with their menace.

Much has been made of the recent death of a protester at the G20 summit in London. The police have been condemned for undue violence. Yet nothing was said of the stressful conditions under which those officers were forced to work, the fact they were outnumbered ten to one. It’s always unfortunate when someone dies, but this man died of a heart attack, not from police brutality. Yet the media, the government, and the police hierarchy themselves were quick to condemn the officers concerned, perhaps more to absolve themselves from blame than from any evidence of serious wrongdoing by the officer involved.

The sad state of teenage drunkenness and pregnancies in Britain today is highlighted by the Channel Four series. Kids of sixteen and seventeen are dictating to doctors how their out-of-wedlock pregnancies should be handled. The cost to the NHS of underage alcohol abuse – a problem paralyzing A&E departments throughout the country – is astronomical, yet does the government move to curb it?

No. To do so would be seen as a move away from championing individual rights.

This fraudulent smokescreen only serves to mask the true purpose behind the Blair/Brown doctrine. While pretending an interest in Old Labour’s worker manifesto, it sells itself to corporate capitalism like a whore to her bejeweled pimp.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when old prejudices need be put aside, life-long loyalties rigorously examined, and the beliefs of years cast to the wind.

There comes a time when the British working man must seriously consider voting a Tory government into office.

^{[1] “Police Inspector Blog”}

^{[2] “The Policeman’s Blog”}

Filed under: Beneath the icing

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Much of the American world will have forgotten Tony Blair. The puppy-dog prime minister of Britain, most often seen tagging along at the heels of ex-President George W Bush, long ago faded into obscurity once the Iraq war was pronounced well and truly “over” – all bar the shouting, that is.

Following his demise as head of the British government, Blair was welcomed into the arms of the American political and corporate elite, who paid handsomely for his after-dinner speeches and politico-religious lectures, all delivered with the cheeky, boyish, grin and soft upper-crust British accent so beloved of hard-boiled American businessmen and women.

After pottering unsuccessfully at fixing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, as Middle East envoy for the ‘Quartet’, and landing a bit of a job on a prestigious US university campus, Blair finally appeared to find his niche by joining the Roman Catholic church and devoting his attentions to his very own foundation, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Yale University has agreed to launch a brand new course for Blair – Faith and Globalization. It seems a strange subject for such an elite university to take on, but then it was George W Bush’s old place and he owed Blair a favor for supporting him so loyally over Iraq.

The BBC reported yesterday that Blair appeared more at home with religion, than he ever was with politics……

I’m really, and always have been in a way, more interested in religion than politics”^[1]

……he told their reporter at a seminar to announce the new course.

According to Blair, the secular world needs to understand religion, and religions need to understand each other.

This statement, perhaps, does more than any other recent utterance to help us comprehend the mindset of Tony Blair. Like so many before him, he’s taken refuge in religion and believes he is cognizant with it. While he was engaged in political life, religious leanings took a back seat, but were constantly in conflict with his political ideals.

He began as a young man imbued with enthusiasm to change the world, but the rigors of high political office, coupled with a greed for wealth and power that only subservience to a corrupt American political regime could procure, took their toll of Blair’s moral values. Now, having achieved his personal ambitions, though at a terrible cost to his nation of birth, and with the blood of countless innocents on his hands, Blair can conveniently seek his own salvation, while continuing to satiate the demands of his ego.

Like so many who’ve done so before him, Blair has embraced the path of orthodox religion. Exchanging personal moral values for those of a hierarchical institution demands subservience to the ways of that institution. No longer can the world outside be viewed in a rational way. Every thought has to be filtered through the membrane of the holy viewpoint, a perspective entirely dependent on the institution’s hierarchy, and their decrees.

No wonder the secular world is seen as “needing to understand”.

In fact, the secular world understands religion only too well. It views it not from a singular, predefined, vantage point as the ‘faithful’ do, but from many billions of different perspectives – one for each secular individual on the planet – all merging to form a broad statement. This statement basically defines religion as a product of the imagination, made real only in the minds of ‘believers’ who seek out others of their ilk for the purpose of reinforcing the doctrine they’re pledged to uphold. By so doing, they become ‘as one’, in their belief.

Can the belief of one be considered so relevant as the viewpoint of billions?

It’s long been argued by the religious that their beliefs must be true, otherwise why would so many embrace them?

The reason is plainly one of feeding off each other, bonding against a secular world seen as uncomprehending of those great religious ‘truths’ revealed by an imaginary god, and its bevy of sales staff, the prophets – both ancient and modern.

Tony Blair has sought sanctuary in religion to avoid facing his conscience. Like so many popes, bishops, cardinals, and mullahs before him, he has chosen a career that places him above reproach, at least from his own ego.

For him, the future is all about bringing different faiths together:

I believe this whole issue to do with inter-faith is absolutely where the 21st Century needs to be in social and cultural terms.”

He won’t succeed. Man has been trying to live in peace with his various religious off-shoots since the dawn of time. It can’t be done. Each threatens the other’s belief system.

Tony Blair has decreed it will be his life’s work.

It had better be, for if he ever turns away from it he’ll come face to face with what he is desperately seeking to avoid, and if that happens, he’ll be forced to accept the blood on his hands as belonging to other than his savior, Jesus Christ.

^{[1] “Tony Blair’s faith in new mission” BBC, April 13th 2009}

Filed under: Holier than thou

Posted under Sparrow Chat

America has changed over the last few months. George W Bush had a sobering effect on the American people, subduing the arrogance of many who once strutted their stuff like prize cockerels around the world’s farmyard. Eight years of neocon rule, as well as running the country into the ground economically and politically, caused many of them to retire into their feathers and lie low.

Now, it seems, they’re out again.

It’s most obvious in the mood of the media. Fake broadcasters like Limbaugh kept up their vile rhetoric throughout, of course, but others on the more ‘moderate’ channels acquired permanently furrowed brows and somewhat slumped shoulders from the strain of America’s dive into the social cesspool of world opinion.

The effort of buoying the nation throughout these long, dark, times was not easy for the likes of Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News, or his counterparts at ABC and CBS. The NBC “Making a Difference” segment usually involved only one citizen (out of three hundred million) doing someone else a good deed, so it could be stretched out to cover eight years without much trouble, but the truly nasty deeds being reported for the remaining twenty-five minutes of news coverage were hardly masked by it.

With Bush’s departure and the inauguration of Barack Obama, however, the mood in our newsrooms perceptibly altered. It took a while, but of late an air of arrogant optimism is once more noticeable to the discerning viewer.

One might have hoped a few lessons were learned. Could it, perhaps, have been realized from all the bad world opinion that there really was a planet out there to be taken note of, one sick to death of the arrogance and bully-boy tactics of Bush and his band of outlaws?

No, sorry, nothing’s changed. Already the theme of US dominance is once more humming around the airwaves, only this time the patronising benevolence is back. “American Power” is again symbolized as a Godhead, with all other nations bowing the knee in wondrous supplication at the glory that is the great, resurrected, United States.

Obama’s European tour has been seen in his home country as a vindication. Europeans have such short memories they’ve already forgotten the last eight years, or the ravishing of the world economy by Wall Street neocons. Obamamania has wiped it from their minds as surely as Beatlemania erased the horrors of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the polluted brains of the hippie generation in the sixties.

At least, that’s the sermon being preached by the US media. But, as usual, it’s wrong.

The era of George W Bush taught Europeans once and for all that America is no longer to be revered as the great leader of the world. No-one outside the US desires a return to the old style of United Nations dominance and third world exploitation that led directly to the terror attacks of 9/11/2001. No-one, that is, apart from a few outdated and corporate controlled European politicians.

Only this week, one US news commentator, reporting on the piracy incident in the Indian Ocean, concluded by remarking that “America would now be taking the lead in the fight against piracy”, despite a European flotilla of naval anti-piracy vessels having been in the area for some months, with no assistance from the US navy until finally a American ship was hijacked.

Suddenly, American ‘heroes’ abound, “American Power” is again in the ascendant, and once more all is right with the world.

Except, it undoubtedly isn’t.

Filed under: Cock-a-doodle-doo

Posted under Sparrow Chat