Sunday, October 23, 2005
PC Blindness
10/23/2005
The weather remains changeable with rain when one least expects it and dry autumn days in between. There is a nip in the air and the old fingers are seizing up when I am outdoors perhaps a sign of the hard winter ahead that the pundits are foretelling. A couple of chums, both captains of industry, have told me over a dram in the Lindsay Lodge that they are planning for a four day production week in February as power supplies will be restricted. Apparently, President Blair is steaming full speed ahead into a winter of hard weather and, of course, The Pestilence with eight of his sixteen nuclear power stations out of commission through lack of investment in maintenance. Time to service the generators, stock up on Calor Gas, kerosene and fuel, we had better test fire the AK47’s as they may be required to warn off the townies as they fan out from the cities in search of food and shelter next year. The last few croaks from the stags can be heard at night, the heating has been switched on and I have spent an evening or two in front of the Great Fire watching TV. Despite my fifty channels, I find it very difficult it find anything to watch amongst Wife Swap, Gender Swap, Race swap, House swap, Holiday swap etc., is this reality? I hope not. However, I very much enjoyed “A Very Social Secretary”, a docu-drama about the fall of the blind Blunket, it had me chuckling away, this unusual sound attracted both dearest Dottie and Mhairi to watch with me, and we all watched it through with a modest glass and thoroughly enjoyed our evening. What really interested me was the non-PC way the piece handled the blind B’s disability, I really did not think you could get away with that sort of thing nowadays. This brings me to the question of black sheep, for, as with the blind B’s philandering we Trollaighs have not been without our share of males who ran off with Chorus Girls and Maidservants. One such was the 9th Baron who set sail with his wife and retinue for the West Indies to invest in tobacco and sugar. The Baron refreshed by many a rum punch made free with a dusky maid and there is supposed to be a whole clan of “Trollee” in Kingston, Jamaica. However, worse was to befall the Baroness, reputedly a great beauty, who left her husband, made off with the dark and mysterious Captain D’Abanville to lead a life on the wrong side of decency on the high seas. Tales of her unconventional lifestyle were often retold by my father at our New Year family bashes, a personal favourite of mine being that of her death in a huge four-poster in Port au Prince, a cigarillo at her lips, in one hand a beaker of Brandy and in the other an erect phallus (attached!). Of course, Cat Stevens’ popular song was written in her honour and it often comes into my head when I am near Smithfield in London, I wonder if her ghost is still abroad, I do hope so. Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.
PS. I did watch some of Gender Swap and Vicki Butler-Henderson was magnificent, of course she can do no wrong in my book. Cheers.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Identity
10/19/2005
For those of you in search of nature notes we swing to a wet day with an unusual gusty north wind, and as I gaze from the drawing room windows, I first of all see the welcome sight of Field Fayres in the Holly trees. The visitors seem to have a strange effect on our resident Blackbirds who have been elusive for months, but now appear in profusion, I hurry to hang plenty of apples about the place as the Blackbirds adore them, and hope that Glen Trollaigh can support this unusually large population over the winter months. I toil at my desk listening to Radio Scotland and amongst a lot of tabloid drivel; they do spend a little time on the question of identity cards. I must say that I am ambivalent towards such proposals that seem to be uncosted and so far from introduction that I will probably never have the need for one. I am concerned that an executive who admits that 30% of motor vehicles on our roads, so closely policed and controlled by legislation, operate without paying road tax or insurance, cannot really be competent enough to handle an inclusive personal identity system. Let us face it the criminals, twisters and terrorists from whom we will allegedly be protected by the proposals will be more than one step ahead with forged identity documentation. Why must government always threaten rather than reward? Rather than penalise folk without identity cards, why not reward those with the cards? If you can produce the right card with your tax return, you get a 10% tax discount; if your motor has all the right bits of bumf, you get a discount on your road tax etc. A similar suggestion today was that those with wind farms in their back gardens should get free electricity, how very sensible and a reasonable proposal that would substantially reduce much of the protest against the expansion of this dubious alternative energy source, and a good counterbalance to any potential reduction in property value. In the countryside, we do see an example of the “carrot” approach to identity legislation with livestock and plant passports, where if all the amazingly complex paperwork is in order the land manager receives a cash payment. And of course the question of the accuracy of bio-metric measurement of bald headed, brown eyed males will be resolved at a stroke by painfully sticking large numbered yellow tags in each of their ears when only a few weeks old. Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.