Jim Stewart's Blog

I was watching “Would I lie to you” and I noticed something odd. There are two options:

“It is True” or “It is a Lie”

“It is a True” does not work, neither does “It is lie” – but we could say “It is untrue”.

Perhaps we could say “It is a lie” and “It is the truth”.

You can “lie” but you can’t “true” and something can “be true” but can’t “be lie”.

Lie is a verb and true is an adjective.

No wonder English is a difficult language to get right.

There was another saying I heard “Nobody should live to see their children die”. Once you have researched your ancestry you realise how much of a modern statement this is. Really this has just been a norm for less than 100 years. And in many countries in the world it is common for some children to die before parents.

We sometimes forget just how amazing a life we live.

• Around 100 years ago there were about 80 infant deaths for every 1000 live births in the UK
• When the NHS was created in the late 1940s this had dropped to about 40
• Today it is about 4.

Even in this pandemic I think it is worth remembering how good our lives have become. Our horrible year is a lot better than the normal year 100 years ago.

There are a lot of people that are saying they would be better than Boris. They would have made sure fewer people had died, they would have kept us in Europe/negotiated a better deal.

But it is just words. The fact is they have not done anything better than Boris.

Why? Well, mainly because they have not been Prime Minister. Unless you can become Prime Minister you cannot do better than the current Prime Minister.

This is our democracy. Is it a strength or a weakness, depends on your view. Looking at the Labour party and the leadership battles is a good example of this in practice. Who is the person with the best ideas? Who is the person most likely to get elected? I always think Gordon Brown is a good example – his failure was in becoming the leader of the party.

There are some people in politics that understand this and will do anything to win votes – including being less than honest in some cases. It can create a driver for dishonesty of a kind.

The recent events have been interesting. I detest the confrontational nature of our parliament. I think it results in leadership that has the wrong flavour. I wonder how many votes Chris Whitty could generate? I’ve seen a change in the attitude of people toward leaders recently. There seems to be more acceptance of the non-confrontational people.

I’ve seen it on Facebook. I see people getting tired of the confrontational nature of discussions. And that isn’t just about other friends, it can be about fact-checking. Fact-checking is essentially confrontational (okay a lot is passive aggressive). But confrontation is the driver for Facebook.

I even see Boris, the great confronter, becoming less confrontational. He has been waxing lyrical about the EU recently (you could almost believe he wanted to re-join at times).

I hope this is the start of the transformation of politics, and maybe even society. I doubt it, but I hope it.

Horrible times. But one thing I can say – there are people I have got to know since staying in the house that I would never have got to know so well.

When this is ended I will be a richer person for it (just not in money terms)/

It was interesting listening to the different views on the BREXIT deal. Some say hot, some say not. Some say both.

SNP will apparently oppose the deal. I wonder what happens if they get their way and Scotland loses all of the free trade deals. It seems odd to me that you have two options, and you choose the one that is worst for your country. But it could be a bigger mistake – voting to have no relationship with Europe sort of takes away the argument for a new indy vote because you want a relationship with Europe.

Anyway, that is a distraction. The question is what is the core part of the deal. The answer to me, as I have said from the start, and as Boris mentioned on his announcement, is the escape from the European Court of Justice.

From Jan 1 we are outside the customs union, and outside the single market.

British laws will be made solely by the British Parliament.

Interpreted by UK judges sitting in UK courts.

And the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice will come to an end.

Boris Johnson 24 Dec 2020

There is a battle going on in this country, I think caused by confusion between the different branches of government. Parliament make the rules, the government (cabinet and ministers) are supposed to run the country within the rules, and the judicial are there to make sure they do. The executive are getting frustrated because they want to have absolute freedom to do whatever they want – they don’t like the judicial checking up on them – making sure they stay within the rules set by parliament.

The first level of judicial overview, the ECJ has now gone.

Make sure you stay aware of any attacks on the UK courts – and if you see it write to your MP quickly to make sure they know you are watching.

There have been a lot of war films on TV recently. I try to avoid most of them, but I watched one tonight “The Sound of Music”. Yes, I know it comes across as a sugary sweet love story, but there is more to it.

I think I preferred the stage show that I saw in London (when I went we ended up sitting next to a row of nuns which added some humour). I was listening to some of the lyrics and I picked up “schnitzel with noodles”, made me laugh. I’m sure they meant Schpatzl, but it reminded me of some encounters with knodles (talk about heavy food!).

The love story is the up front and obvious, but the back story is the anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Germany). I watched the film a few times before I learned about the back story.

The background is that Georg Von Trapp is a wealthy man that has a deep love for his country. He sees evil spreading and taking control. He is encouraged to go long, work with, the evil, but refuses. He makes the decision to leave the country he loves, his friends, his wealth and cross to another country.

The back story shows up best in the scene where Christopher Plummer sings Edelweiss at the Saltzburg Music Festival and breaks down part way through.

Georg Von Trapp became a refugee. I didn’t realise, but as I grew up I met several people that were refugees from that time.

Next time you watch it and see that song give a thought for refugees. Von Trapp was a successful man in a modern western country – and he had to give it up to become a refugee.

There have been several versions of A Christmas Carol on this year. I like the version with Alastair Sim. It was on yesterday.

As I was watching it I thought about how the term “Scrooge” has become linked with being miserly. Somebody that doesn’t give away money, that is mean. Look it up in a dictionary.

But in the story Scrooge has an epiphany. He throws money at Christmas. He buys the biggest bird in the butchers and gives it away. He lived the rest of his life celebrating every day as though it was Christmas.

It’s interesting that we have come to identify Scrooge with the “before” and not the “after”. We seem to do that so much. We penalise people for what they did 25 years ago.

I want to be like Scrooge – I want to be a real Scrooge, somebody that changes their life for the better as the get older.

that somebody is working on Christmas to provide you with information. We are not talking about providing statistics to government. We are talking about providing information to you, the public. Somebody in the civil service is working at that on Christmas day.

Over my time in the civil service I worked one Christmas on an emergency, but I also worked on other special days (like Easter, or on Bank Holidays). I think I mentioned before spending time in the emergency room during the millennium – somebody spent the whole night there.

The queen today talked about the amazing emergency services we have. But those grey civil servants will not get a mention. And none of them will think twice about that. It comes with the job, service without recognition. If they wanted to make money or get recognised then they would work somewhere else.

Yes there will be one or two will get an award at New Year, they are the representatives of the group. Personally I feel proud when somebody I worked with appears there – I see it as a thank you to everybody.

And this is why I disliked the views of people like Dominic Cummings – who seemed to have so little regard for the civil service.

I’m ready for it….

How many people will be looking out some of these tomorrow? After all – we all know Christmas is about a big meal – eating all those forbidden treats.

It is the season of over-indulgence – and self-indulgence.

I have been surprised this year about how clearer it has become that people do things for others more to make themselves feel good than to help others. Christmas has become the festival of self-pleasure, we all do the things that make us feel good, we plan our whole day around it.

That is the reason for Christmas – isn’t it?

The story from 2000 years ago is something different. It is about giving up everything for others.

Mild he lays his Glory by,
Born—that Man no more may die,
Born—to raise the Sons of Earth,
Born—to give them Second Birth.

Appropriation can be defined as “taking something such as an idea or custom from a group that they are not a member of and using it yourself”. There are a lot of examples around us.

I always remember the most Scottish people at the St Andrews night dance had never been to Scotland. They saw it as celebrating a culture they liked. I have no problem with that – but when they start to preach the culture it can get a bit annoying.

In a lot of English churches they celebrate Celtic spirituality. Is that appropriation?

I was watching some of the day-time stuff the other day. One of them is about upcycling, the other about buying old stuff and reselling at a profit.

I saw a chair that I recognised as being similar to one we used to have in the kitchen. I can remember when an old fashioned “tramp” came round the doors my grandmother put the chair at the door while she gave him a sandwich and a cup of tea. The chair was “highly sought after”. It sold for a lot of money.

It struck me that a lot of the fashionable kitchens are trying to mimic what was the best some people could achieve. A lot of stuff being sold for a fortune started in the homes of people that could never hope to afford them these days. Is that cultural appropriation?

Doesn’t exist! Why? Because lex implies it relates to words. The proper term is dyscalculia.

I had a friend that thought he had it – maybe. What he described was a condition where two numbers often got exchanged in his head.

Remember the Mayan calendar idea? 2012 was going to be the end of the world. The apocalypse that ended the world for all of us. But what if that Mayan had dyscalculia and he mixed up the last two numbers? Did he really mean 2021 was the end of the world?

I’ve been following the reports on the new variant of coronavirus. There is a lot not known at the moment – there is a wide range of possibilities.

The good news is the vaccine should work – the new virus is 99 percent the same as the old virus. In any case a new vaccine can be produced reasonably quickly if it oes not.

Better news – it sounds like the new variation does not make people sicker.

But the ability to spread is still not clearly understood. The worst case estimates make bad reading. If they are right then even a total lockdown will not bring the R value below 1. And that will mean it will be hard to roll out the vaccine in time to protect people. It will mean a higher death rate than we have seen so far. We already see thinking along these lines with the new shielding rules in the Tier 4 areas.

But with a mixture of lockdown, shielding and vaccine roll out we can probably expect the end of the worst part of this by Easter. It might not be pleasant for the next few months, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

No – the Mayan probably didn’t have dyscalculia.