Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

If some of the claims getting published these days is anything to go by, they seem never to have had to submit an expense claim as a subordinate working in some company or indeed, perhaps more appropriately, the civil service.

Although the vast majority claim to have kept their expenses claims “within the rules” that’s not really the issue and claims that they have “done nothing wrong” isn’t relevant. The issue is that the rules themselves are, in many cases, quite ridiculous.

For example, it would be quite convenient had I been able to claim expenses for a home that was closer to work. Clearly this would have meant that I’d have been more available to work late and so on. Yet, of course, I can’t do that because there’s no way the company would pay for that. I see that Peter Mandelson has claimed for work done to repair his roof as it was leaking. Ironically, Peter is one of the more honest of the politicians yet the thing is: it’s his roof, so why should he be able to claim it as an expense?

What is clear is that there is a need for politicians to have a home near to Westminster and it’s reasonable that expenses for this should be paid for. After all, it is (in principle) a temporary job and moreover they also need to live in their own constituencies where, in effect, their true home is. What’s not reasonable is that all MPs should be claiming for this second home because obviously many already live in London and it’s also unreasonable for them to be able to constantly switch which is their main and their second home which seems, in most cases, to be done solely to work the system.

More generally they also need to recognise that it’s unreasonable for them to be the only arbitrators for their own salaries. Whilst recognising that it was far from perfect the simplest way of doing this seems to have been to tie their salaries down to specific civil service ranks and perhaps while they’re at it, follow the rules on expenses that the civil servants do.

Now that we’ve really started to ramp up the exercise aspect of our weight-loss programme we’re at the point where we’re hitting the buffers on the actual weight loss since the muscle that we’re building is heavier than the fat that we’re losing.

Now you might think that there can’t be a whole lot of difference in the density of muscle and the density of fat but in fact the difference is around 18% which is pretty substantial obviously. In reality though it’s probably going to hit us most in the early stages of our more intensive exercise programme, the thinking being that presumably there’ll be a much higher percentage gain in muscle in those early stages than later on. Thus whilst my weight seems to have stopped dropping over the last week or so, there is definitely less of me hanging out than there was a week earlier.

Later on it should be different in that maintaining the diet plan whilst simultaneously upping the ante with the exercise programme should eventually (within a week or two given the programme we’re following) reach the point where the gain in muscle levels off whilst the fat continues to disappear. I suspect that the weight would go down relatively quickly at that point but we’ll see in a few weeks time.

One wonders how many people who’d like to “lose weight” pack in their exercise programmes in the early stages due to their gaining weight from all that extra muscle that they’re building?

Incidently, one other trend that we’ve noticed in the gym this time around compared to our experience five years back is that there seems to be a massive growth in the use of personal trainers. Previously you’d have seen one every couple of days but now there are three or four going round with people every day. We’re starting to feel left out as we don’t have one but Wendy says I can’t have the blonde one that promises “great one on one fun” 🙂

This seems to have been one of the most widely discussed trials around the world to date and it seems certain that the discussion has a ways to go with an appeal seeming quite likely if not yet certain.

The grounds for the appeal seem to be coming from two basic angles namely that the child’s evidence was unreliable because she was so young and that the defendant didn’t get a fair trial because of all the discussion that’s been going on by way of the Internet around the world and particularly because said discussion could hardly be missed in the UK by the jurors. I’m calling him “the defendant” to avoid legal issues but if you want to know his name, it takes a few seconds to find it courtesy of google as he’s named on loads of non-UK sites.

The “fair trial” argument will likely hinge on article 6 of the Human Rights Convention of which entitles everyone to a “fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law”. The problem being that had the jurors seen some of the discussion knocking around the Internet over the last few months then it would be quite possible that they would not meet the requirement that they be impartial. That’s a particular problem in the British court system as it starts from the premise that the jurors know nothing about the case that they are concerned with other than the information which they acquire in the course of the trial itself. Were the appeal for this case to be upheld for this reason it seems certain that the presumption of ignorance would need to be changed; doing so wouldn’t mean jail time for this defendant but would at least sort out what is becoming a serious problem for high profile cases that will come up in the years to come.

The age of the child is an interesting argument from a psychological perspective. Can a 4 year old be relied on to accurately recount events that occurred when they were 2? Early childhood memories are quite a big issue in psychology and it’s very, very difficult to avoid implanting memories in young children of events that just didn’t happen. At the trivial level this can be as simple as asking leading questions rather than open questions but even open questions need to be carefully phrased with young children. It is fortunate that her recollection came from a time when she could speak as few people can recall anything before that and little in any detail. Quite why that should be so is something of a mystery but suggests that memory is either dependent on speech or requires developments in the brain that happen to coincide with occur at the same time as speech development. Actually implanting false memories was one of the assignments set by a Yale psychology course so it’s surprisingly easy to do even for those of university age never mind young children.

Although this is one guy who needs the key thrown away, if his appeal does succeed on the article 6 grounds, let’s hope that the British legal system learns from the experience and abandons the presumption of ignorance on the part of the jury. Should it succeed on the grounds of the competence of a child to testify then that’s potentially a very serious problem for any children in similar circumstances in the future.

Once the original Star Trek series started to do really well in syndication after it had been canceled it was obvious that “something” would be produced to follow it up although it was probably not so obvious that so many “somethings” would be done over the decades which followed it.

Clearly the easy thing to do is to produce a follow-on of some sort but for a successful series that becomes more and more difficult to do both in terms of the writing and indeed of the fees demanded by the actors to reappear. In the case of Star Trek this meant that the follow-on series were spin-offs with very little real connection with the original series. Certainly the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine made little attempt to truly place themselves within the confines of the original series. Funnily enough, although Voyager was effectively in an entirely different universe, it was the one that seemed to me to be closest to the concept of the original series in exploring new worlds, new civilisations and boldly going.

Once the sequels had largely been exhausted it was time to consider prequels. In a science-fiction series these can get away with being set so many years before the original that there’s no problem with actors needing to appear younger and so Enterprise got away with an entirely different cast. The problem with that series seemed to be that it’s quite difficult to develop a plausible set of technologies that whilst more advanced than what we have now, are less advanced than what’s to come. Unfortunately in the case of Enterprise this was particularly difficult as a lot of the technologies from the original series are already available in the shops in some form eg the communicator, electronic notepad, etc. which meant that those remaining seemed to be confined to limiting the capability of what was shown on the original series eg the less perfect transporter, the slower warp drive, and, of course, the much grimmer decor of the ship (I suspect that this last one is what felled the series ultimately: it didn’t look science fiction enough).

Which brings us to the prequel film. Clearly the studio had decided that it was time for another Star Trek film but apparently didn’t want to pay enough to drag the various actors out of retirement. Thus we have an entirely different set of actors with pretty much the only common link to what had gone before being the name of the film. But, then, what else could they do?

It’s all so much easier to do in books….

It wasn’t that we’ve been putting off joining a gym for the last couple of months but rather that we’ve been both working up our exercise programme and checking out the prices/facilities on offer locally.

Our first thought was to head for Esporta which we’d been going to before. It’s an excellent choice for the long term committed gym goer in that it’s quite a large place with lots of free space around the equipment and it provides a very complete health club setting with everything including a pool, a wide range of exercise classes and quite a nice little restaurant. However, it’s 12 month contract at around £50/month (they have various offers so the price on offer varies) and we knew for sure that we’d be taking a two month break this summer.Besides, the £50/month is really only worth paying if you’re making full use of the facilities and we won’t be for a while. In a similar vein is David Lloyd although they currently offer a three month trial membership which we might take up in September.

At the other extreme are the small gyms run by private organisations and the local councils. These are generally run on a pay per visit basis which is a great way to start out an exercise programme as you can begin with a once a week visit and work up from there. The larger council places usually run classes too. However, the pay per visit approach can get very expensive. For example, a typical £3/visit with three visits a week amounts to around £40/month. Add on classes and you can easily be talking over £60/month at which point clearly somewhere like Esporta is a more sensible option.

Finally, there’s Fitness First which falls in the middle ground between the two extremes. Pricing for a membership cancellable at one months notice runs to around £30/month which includes gym access and classes ie it’s all-in; for a 12 month membership it’s around £20/month. This is essentially an Esporta cum David Lloyd place minus the pool, tennis court and restaurant and with the exercise machines packed quite close together. We’ve signed up for the one month notice version and will be cancelling next month seeing as we’re off in July.

And we’ve even started going, unlike the surprisingly large number of people who sign up for the gym but never actually go. Even more surprising is how well we’re doing already after just a few days. We reckon that we’re not quite fit enough for the classes but should be in a couple of weeks or so.