You won’t live longer..
..it’ll just seem like it.
A study released today (BBC), offers all sorts of advice for avoiding cancer, including not gaining weight after you reach 21, having a BMI of between 18 and 25, not eating bacon or ham, no sugary foods and keeping off the alcohol. They even go so far as suggesting you exercise every day.
And the saga continues…
I’ve written before about Formula One and the near-farce that was the 2007 season. I’ve also written about Lewis Hamilton, rookie challenger who so very nearly won the Championship this year – missing out in the final race, to trail eventual champion Kimi Raikkonen by just one point. Well, things are moving again today.
Max Moseley, president of the FIA and pretty much boss of Formula One, has been talking to the BBC about the season just gone and the 2008 season to come (check this link for the BBC’s story). I’m not a big fan of Mr Moseley for two reasons; first, I don’t think he really has the best interests of the sport at heart and second, he and the organisation he controls, seem to be inconsistent and biased with their rulings. Let’s take a few examples from the BBC report:
He thinks that Lewis Hamilton being successful will have a negative effect on the sport: “It will start to be negative because we’ll get the Schumacher effect where people start writing to me saying can’t you do something to slow him down”. I don’t remember hearing him making such a statement when Schumacher was racing, or when Alonso won two Championships on the trot, or when Ferrari were winning the Constructors Championship every year. There is well-known ill-feeling between Moseley and McLaren boss Ron Dennis – is this perhaps why he feels a successful McLaren driver would have a negative effect?
Surely if one driver or team is consistently successful, it’s up to the other drivers and teams to raise their game to compete. Formula One is supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsport; it is a competition for supremacy. That supremacy can only come from being the best, consistently. Is Mr Moseley suggesting that (as with schoolchildren now) there should be no winners or losers – everyone is equal?
He goes on to suggest that if it wasn’t Hamilton who was drawing people to F1, it would be one of the other new young drivers like Nico Rosberg, Robert Kubica or Sebastian Vettel. Perhaps if they’d been driving the McLaren they might have been more successful this season, but these three have not lit up the scene in the way that Hamilton has. Strangely, as he appears to be a big Ferrari fan, Moseley makes no mention of Felipe Massa, who surely has made more of an impact on F1 than any of the other three drivers he did mention.
Making reference to the McLaren-Ferrari “spy-gate” affair, Max Moseley says “although the behind-the-scenes stuff was annoying for us and the people concerned, for the public it really adds to the general interest.” Not sure I agree on that one; what the spying affair did was really throw into sharp relief the inconsistent way that the FIA applies its decisions. It was shown that there was two-way flow of information but it was not proved that McLaren had used Ferrari technology on their car. Ferrari do not appear to have been subjec to the same scrutiny. McLaren were robbed of their points and the Championship was basically handed to Ferrari who, up to that point, were completely out of the running. Yet Ferrari ran an illegal car in the first race of the season and escaped any punishment.
For 2008, McLaren will be “closely scrutinised by the FIA to ensure the team had not included any Ferrari ideas on it.”. Quite how they’re going to be able to determine this is not stated, but Moseley says “Finding something will not be easy. On the other hand, there are sources we are going to deploy who will give us as good a chance as its possible to have to find it.” Which seems to be saying that they’ll find something even if there isn’t anything to find.
When asked about Hamilton’s involvement in the spying row (Alonso and test driver Pedro de la Rosa were shown to have been involved, from email evidence they submitted), Moseley says “He’s not a known quantity to me. It would be surprising if he didn’t know something of what was going on, but I’ve got absolutely no evidence that he had. On that basis it would be wrong of me to suggest that he had.” Even though that’s exactly what you’ve just done, Max.
Formula One is supposed to be a development sport; it’s for prototypes (like MotoGP is with bikes). That development will inevitably lead to one team having new kit, or new ways of working, that give them an advantage. The other teams will then try and find out what those are. The recent row is perhaps a little more direct than its ever been before – with two top designers swapping information over the phone – but its part and parcel of the sport. Of course, the fact that they’re talking about a 10 year ban on engine development from 2008 rather makes spying a waste of time.
Formula One used to be a must-watch sport but no more. The ridiculous amount of new rules (especially the utterly stupid “two types of tyre must me used in the race” rule), the inconsistency of application of those rules and the boredom brought to the track by the stifling of technical development just make it an expensive irrelevance. I’m not so sure I will be paying any attention in 2008.
Working for the Apple dollar – Updated
I wrote a post about the UK pricing of Leopard the other day, complaining that the price of £85 was way above the $129 being charged in the US. Since writing that, I’ve read in a number of places the argument along the lines of “the £85 includes VAT (sales tax) but the $129 doesn’t, so when you factor that in, it’s the same price”.
On the face of it, this seems like a fair argument but the numbers don’t really work out. At today’s exchange rate, $129 is £62.87. VAT (sales tax) runs at 17.5% in the UK, which is £11, making a total of £73.87. So, £11.13 cheaper than the £85 RRP, which is an extra 15%. OK, so it’s only £11 but why does it have to be even £1 more expensive?
Of course, this is all probably just sour grapes because I’ve had to spend the money I was hoping to spend on Leopard on getting my bike fixed instead and I feel like I’m missing out!
Warming to my theme
I decided a few days ago that the Wolf’s Howl would have a theme but it would not be technology, or motorsport, or relationships, or books or any of the other things I’ve written about over the last few months. Instead, the theme would be ranting and I started off with a couple of minor ones about the BBC’s attitude to non-Windows users and Apple’s pricing policy.
Since then, I’ve been in a good mood and my posts have been quite upbeat and positive (not like me at all) but over the last few days there have been a couple of items in the news that have started the Rant-O-Meter (patent pending) rising towards the red. This first one is the more emotive one, I think.
Yesterday the UK Government announced that they have decided not to introduce a total ban on smacking children, saying that the current law (which pretty much outlaws it anyway) is sufficient and is working. Today, England’s children’s commissioner – whatever that might be – has said that this is “missed opportunity”, even though the current law is supported by a majority of parents.
I want to say at this point that, while I am not in favour of a total ban on smacking as a form of discipline, I am also not advocating smacking as an excuse for abuse of children. Smacking should only ever be a last resort punishment, and even then should be used only sparingly; I grew up in this sort of environment, where if it got to the point that I was smacked it was because I had repeatedly disobeyed a request – wilful, sustained, disobedience that I’d already been warned about. I was never beaten, I was never hit with anything other than an open hand (no belts, slippers, or fists) and it was always on the back of the legs or my backside. It is a lesson easily learned – you behave so that it doesn’t happen again.
Having said that, just because physical punishment is available as a discipline tool is no excuse for sloppy parenting. Take a look round any town centre on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll see the results of too many years of sloppy parenting. All those yobbo kids that you complain about – they’ve never had any discipline. And this brings me to the crux of my argument and why I am pleased this ban has not come in completely.
We took away the rights of schools years ago to properly discipline children, to the point where we’ve had teachers murdered in the playgrounds, because the Government decided that the cane, or the slipper, or even just raising your voice to a child constituted abuse. Parents don’t discipline their children at home because they say it’s the job of the schools; the schools say – rightly – that they no longer have the power to do so. So we breed generations of undisciplined thugs.
There are parents out there, of course, who do educate their children in the proper way to behave but even these children will need to be disciplined at some point. Sending little Johnny to his room doesn’t work anymore; he’s got games consoles, PC’s, music systems, the Internet to keep him busy. You can’t send him to bed without any tea, because that’s also classed as abuse. Parents need a last resort punishment that will work and at some point the Government needs to step back from it’s continual interfering in people’s everyday lives.
I understand the argument against smacking. Groups like the NSPCC want to stamp out child abuse and they see smacking as a tool for that abuse. I agree that it can be, but this is where the current law is designed to step in. And I do think that the sort of abuse that we should be most worried about is not remotely connected to the parental-discipline use of smacking.
The other news item that got the Rant-O-Meter going was this one, about Iggy Pop. He, and the BBC, were reprimanded this week for an interview he gave during the Glastonbury Festival when he used a derogatory word for Pakistani’s. Two people complained to the BBC, who issued an on-air apology the day after the interview was shown. Isn’t too much being made of this sort of thing? Iggy, bless him, doesn’t really live in the here and now and probably didn’t realise what he said was in anyway derogatory. Probably not many people saw the original broadcast; lots more people have probably seen the story on the BBC website, where they repeat the word for all to see. Can’t we just accept that some people talk in certain ways? Let them get on with it and if you don’t like it, don’t listen. (I’m fairly sure that this story, on a similar subject, is a piss-take – The Onion is not renowned for real news. But, it’s not so implausible and nicely encapsulates the double-standards that seem to be the norm these days. Be warned – NSFW)
If you followed the link to the BBC story about Iggy, you’ll have seen a bit at the bottom where another program was reprimanded for showing a machete scene too close to the watershed. I’m sorry, but it’s a watershed; once you’re past that point the rules change. Are we now suggesting that we need a watershed for the watershed? “Well, you can have the swearing after 9pm, the sex at 9.30pm but keep the violence until 10pm, won’t you?”. Bollocks; it’s either a watershed or it’s not – if it’s too early, make it later I have no problem with that, but once that time comes expect programs to have mature content that may not be suitable for minors.
A child of our time
I got sent this by email today; I have no idea where it originated – whether it is one person’s work or a collaborative effort – but it struck a chord with me. Rather than just email it round to everyone I knew, I thought I’d give it a post all of its own.
If any of this resonates with you, then look out – you’re getting old.
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For those born before 1986…
According to today’s regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 60’s 70’s and early 80’s should not have survived because our cots were covered with brightly coloured lead based paint which was promptly chewed and licked.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pans.
When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip flops and fluorescent “spokey dokeys” on our wheels.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags, and riding in the passenger seat was a treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same.
We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.
We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and no one actually died from this.
We would spend hours building go carts out of scrap and then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.
We did not have Playstations or Xboxes, no video games at all. No 99 channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no DVDs, no internet chat rooms. WE had friends – we went outside and found them.
We played elastics and rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt! We fell out of trees, got cut, and broke bones but there were no lawsuits.
We had full-on fist-fights but no prosecution followed from other parents. We played Knock-down Ginger and were actually afraid of the house owners catching us.
We walked to friend’s homes.
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls. We rode bikes in packs of seven and wore our coats by only the hood.
The idea of our parents bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of; they actually sided with the law.
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem-solvers and inventors ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
Pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as real kids, before the lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good. For those of you who aren’t old enough, thought you might like to read about us.
This my friends, is surprisingly frightening but it might put a smile on your face;
The youth of today have never heard of “We Are The World” and they think “Uptown Girl” is by Westlife!
They have never heard of Rick Astley, Bananarama, or Belinda Carlisle.
To them, there has only ever been one Germany and one Vietnam.
They don’t remember a time before AIDS. They don’t remember a time before CDs.
To them John Travolta has always been round in shape and they can’t imagine how this fat guy was once God of the dancefloor.
They believe that “Charlies Angels” and “Mission Impossible” are films from the last few years. They can never imagine life before computers.
They’ll never have pretended to be the A Team, the Red Hand Gang or the Famous Five. They’ll never have applied for Jim’ll Fix It or Why Don’t You.
They can’t believe a black and white TV ever existed and they will never understand how we could have ever left the house without a mobile phone.
That my friends is how it was…
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So, what else is there? What makes YOU a child of the 60’s, 70’s or early 80’s?
Wolfs Helpers
