en – Page 57 – Denseman on the Rattis

Bognor Regis

2008/04/02 22:35

Phyllis and I were reading through a list of sub-prime exposure by constituency when I saw the name of Bognor Regis. That reminded me of the Cucumbers and Pandas.

Googling for it returned this Youtube video that Phyllis thought was hilarious in a locking-up kind of way:

ECONOMICS · EN

Economist letters Originally uploaded by viralbus I’m a content subscriber to The Economist. However, every three years I have to renew my subscription, which can be very entertaining. Three years ago, I renewed fairly early, only to receive an offer of an increased rebate the day after I sent back my renewal letter. I wrote back to complain, and they refunded me the difference. This time, I’ve been postponing renewing just in case they’d improve their offer again. After receiving two letters, I thought at first it […]

EN · TRANSPORT

Terminal 5

2008/03/28 23:35

Heathrow Terminal 5 – Baggage Reclaim Originally uploaded by terminal5insider It’s been quite amusing reading about the disastrous opening of Heathrow’s Terminal 5, in a Schadenfreude kind of way. Fundamentally, I don’t understand why they started out with so many flights on the first day if they hadn’t performed extensive testing. I mean, you either test and test and test till you’re certain everything will work out perfectly, or you start out with very few flights and then gradually add more. Just jumping into the deep end […]

EN · FOODDRINK

A disappointing griddle

2008/03/25 00:10

Phyllis gave me a griddle for my birthday, and it was beautiful. Unfortunately, it needed to be seasoned in an oven before the first use, and given that we don’t have an oven here, it got delayed for a while. Yesterday we were invited for lunch at Derek and Amanda’s place, and we brought it. Unfortunately, the seasoning covered their kitchen in smoke – I hope it’s not the last time they invite us round! 🙁 Today I then finally got round to trying it out. I […]

EN · POLITICS · SCOTLAND

Teaching children to drink

2008/03/22 23:26

BENCH Originally uploaded by photographic_index There was an article in The Herald yesterday about a proposal made by an SNP MSP to increase the age at which people can legally buy alcohol to 21. I can see quite a few reasons why this is a silly idea. First of all, it would mean that lots of people would have left home by the time they started started drinking, thus making it impossible for their parents to supervise their drinking habits and teaching them responsible drinking. Second, it […]

EN · POLITICS

Black Year?

2008/03/18 23:01

The Open Europe blog has an interesting posting: They’ve calculated how far the pound fell on Black Wednesday and compared that to the fate of the pound after Brown become prime minister. The result is not pretty: The pound already has fallen more under Brown that it did in the month after Black Wednesday. Add to this that Brown has already wasted more money than was lost on Black Wednesday on his botched gold sale, and that Northern Rock could still end up extremely costly, and it […]

EN · GARDENING

Latvian peas

2008/03/10 20:08

National latvian meal – boiled grey peas… Originally uploaded by stepan-elias Today I received my Heritage Seed Library membership card. Unfortunately, it turns out I became a member a fortnight too late – orders for the six seed packets have to be sent during February, so I can’t order mine till next year. 🙁 However, they sent me a complimentary packet of Latvian peas that I can try to grow this year. It seems to be totally standard Latvian peas, but that’s of course something of a […]

EN · POLITICS

Open Skies

2008/03/30 22:18

Continental Airlines Boeing 737-824 N12218 Originally uploaded by Cubbie_n_Vegas The Open Skies agreement that the EU negotiated with the US to replace the old agreements that individual EU states had with the US came into force today. The effects at the moment is basically that lots of US airlines will start flying into London Heathrow (which they weren’t allowed to before), while Air France will fly across the Atlantic from Heathrow and British Airlines will do the same from Paris and Brussels. However, many more changes are […]

EN · PHOTOGRAPHY

Beautiful Phyllis

2008/03/28 23:42

Phyllis Originally uploaded by viralbus I’m quite proud of this photo I took of Phyllis recently. 🙂

EN · WEB

Internet Archive

2008/03/25 23:00

I haven’t used the Internet Archive for a while, but today I tried it again. For instance, here is a link to what this blog address pointed to in October of 2003. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to contain my earliest home pages any more – all the links on this page seem to point to the same (fairly recent) page. It’s a shame I didn’t keep all the old versions myself – after all, I had a home page years before most people had even heard about […]

EN · MEDIA

Wee sooky girrel

2008/03/24 23:35

Anna loves to suck, and given that her mum won’t let her have a dummy, she has to use her thumb instead, just like her paternal grandmother (who was also not allowed dummies). It is very cute, no?

ECONOMICS · EN · FEATURED · POLITICS · SCOTLAND

The British Parliament

2008/03/24 23:13

Although I’d prefer Scottish independence, if I can’t have that, I’d prefer a fully federal system in the UK. That would mean that the federal parliament should only deal with foreign affairs, macroeconomics, defense and a few other things. Such a parliament should give ample representation to the smaller nations. The only reason that the English are allowed to dominate Westminster so heavily is that it is also their national parliament. As soon as the English had their own parliament to deal with schools, hospitals, traffic and […]

CULTURE · EN · LINGUISTICS

Language and culture

2008/03/20 21:45

To the clouds Originally uploaded by clydeye I read an article in the Metro a couple of days ago about a guy who’s decided to abandon money, and as part of that decided to walk to India without any money at all, even refusing to accept monetary gifts. I must say his whole project annoys me from the start. He’s refusing to buy a ticket for the ferry because that involves money, but he then expects somebody else to buy one and give it to him. If […]

EN · FOODDRINK

Pork and squid

2008/03/14 00:03

Korean meal Originally uploaded by viralbus My friend Lars is working in Edinburgh this week. Today he came to Glasgow after work, and Phyllis, Anna and I joined him for a meal at Kokuryo, the Korean restaurant in Argyle Street. I’ve never been to a Korean restaurant before, so my knowledge of Korean food isn’t great (apart from kimchi), so I didn’t know what to expect. In the event, it was very nice. As an hors d’oeuvre, they served us four bowls with squid, aubergine, meatballs and […]

DENMARK · EN · POLITICS

Swedish schools

2008/03/11 22:21

Swedish Middle School Originally uploaded by gordasm The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson has written a good piece about the Swedish “free school” system – basically a system where private schools get money from the councils depending on their number of pupils. AFAIK, Fraser is married to a Swede, so he’s normally fairly clued up on Sweden. I’m not quite sure how the Swedish free school system differs from the Danish one. I do believe it’s existed in Denmark for much longer than in Sweden, though. Although I might […]

EN · KIDS · MEDIA

Laughing girl

2008/03/09 00:12

Yesterday Phyllis was singing along to Amy Winehouse, dancing a bit and shaking her hair, and Anna thought it was hilarious:

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