geraldhartup

2007-05-20T17:00:00.000+01:00

East Enders defies the laws of nature

Following the accident in which the car goes into the water with the two kids, despite the fact that a window is wide open, the water magically does not fill the car but leaves a breathing space in which they can lament their fate.

It takes their rescuer several diving attempts before he realises one of the windows is open.

As far as I know I am the only person who has noticed.

2007-02-16T11:36:00.000Z

Cameron gets down to the ‘nitty gritty’

It stuck out like a sore thumb. Interviewed by the BBC's Today presenter John Humphrys [16 February] on his policies to bring about a renewal of British family life David Cameron employed the term “nitty gritty” that got Labour home office minister John Denham into hot water for using in May 2002.

It will be interesting to see whether the BBC receives complaints about his use of the term, employed by him to mean ‘the heart of the matter’ and whether he used it in full knowledge of the controversy it caused to challenge politically correct censorship. It is possible that he has already been reported to the police for using the term.

Speaking to the Police Federation Denham had been told by some of those attending that its use was banned by the Metropolitan Police and that officers would be disciplined for using the term. Denham told delegates: ‘It does show there are phrases in our language that we are not aware of’.”

It caused quite a stir and highlighted the dispute over politically correct language.

There was some debate about the origin and use of the term. Its detractors argued that its use could have originated from the slave trade where ‘nitty gritty’ could have described what was left in the holds of slave ships after victims were removed.

Lexicographers, however, have stated that its first appearance was as late as 1956 and that no written record of its use is found before then.

“Nitty gritty” is one of many terms whose use is described as offensive by race campaigners Ligali. Their list of offensive terms in their media guidelines includes: people of colour, coloured, black, black on black, third world, and urban. It calls disrespectful: Afro-Caribbean, urban music, yardies. It also now finds the term ‘white’ offensive.

It provides examples of how to avoid using the term ‘black’: I only date brothas, sistas. Language’ found unobjectionable by the group includes: bounty, coconut, sell-out and PMS [pale,male and stale] popularised by former CRE chair Trevor Phillips.

2006-04-22T15:17:00.000+01:00

Ross fish steaks in butter sauce

It's easy to lose weight. All you have to do is consume less calories than you use up each day. One of the ways of doing this is to use convenience foods. Ross fish steaks would seem to fill the bill.Each one is worth just 126 calories. True if you are anything like me you will need two of them.

They come in what is described as a butter sauce and it's actually quite tasty. It certainly provides everything that is needed to go with a few boiled potatoes and some green beans.

For what it is worth my own suggestion for an accompaniment is a portion of mushrooms fried in groundnut oil. This probably doubles the calorific value but it will still come in at about 500 calories.

What about the fish? Well, it is only 49% of the whole deal but without the sauce it would be pretty boring. The fish fillet is not even given a name. It is a white fish and is undistinguished but what do you expect?

Still I'm going to ask Ross what it is. they have nothing to be ashamed about.

It all goes quite well with a glass or so of Muscadet that always comes in at less than £3 not on special offer.

2005-08-24T22:03:00.000+01:00

Andrex talk frankly to men about a personal problem

Thanks to Kimberly-Clark there is now no need for men who have been run over to worry about the state of their underpants. The makers of Andrex have thought of everything and have launched a campaign to advise men of the solution showing a full page shot of a man's pants clad bottom with an appalled dragon looking at the question "Could you be cleaner? Their solution:Use Andrex "moistened after regular toilet paper to leave you cleaner and fresher than ever"

2005-08-24T21:58:00.000+01:00

Walls brilliant bacon

Within a couple of months of me complaining about the horrible white stuff in cheap bacon Walls come up with the goods.In a beautiful full page ad in the Telegraph magazine they promote their brand with theslogan "less white stuff".

Isn't the power of blogging amazing/

2005-08-21T15:06:00.000+01:00

Film masterpiece emerges after 27 years

Langrishe go down was shown on BBC 2 television on 16 August late night with virtually no publicity. Newspaper television reviews did not draw attention to it. I watched it accidentally having awoken with the television on a few minutes after it had begun. I was mesmerised by every part of the production.
I have never seen a sexual relationship captured so well in a film with the fascinating combination of strength, vulnerability and eroticism portrayed by Judy Dench.The cinematography was haunting and the dialogue witty and moving. Only afterwards did I realise the involvement of Harold Pinter.
It is truly amazing that this television film was shown just once in 1978 and not repeated until 2005.

2005-08-21T10:42:00.000+01:00

Minette Marrin has a great website

One of my favourite columnists is Minette Marrin who writes for the Sunday Times. I have only just discovered her website in which I can read all that she has written for newspapers since 1991.

Such websites could well provide an alternative portal into the history of what concerns intelligent and perceptive people over the period in which they write.

She's jolly brave, however, to leave in everything she has written. I just rereasd her piece on Labour's election victory in 1997 that, as a Conservative supporter, gave her a considerable amount of pleasure. I don't know whether she ever recanted that pleasure.

Her archive index is very easy to use. I look forward to dipping into it to revisit articles that I enjoyed and to find ones that I missed.

You can find her on http://www.minettemarrin.com/minettemarrin/the_sunday_times/

2005-06-26T11:39:00.000+01:00

Cooking a Morrison's chicken

I wonder who is responsible for the cooking instructions to be found at the back of the food labels attached to plastic film covered chickens. At Morrison's the first thing is a careful choice of colour of the typeface. What about grey? That should do the trick. Now fill up the space available by repeating information like the Morrison logo and a reminder that it is a GRADE A FRESH GARLIC BASTED CHICKEN which we of course already knew because that is what it said on the outside of the packet. Next make the typeface as small as possible. Perfect. Given the distortion caused by any attempt to read this through the plastic film, customers without 20/20 vision can be given the maximum aggravation.
Now there's one in the eye for the Disability Commission. There should be a law against it! Come to think of it there already is.
Technical note: 55 minutes a kilo at 190 centigrade + 25 minutes should do the trick.
But please take expert advice and legal advice before attempting to cook a chicken.

2005-03-06T14:16:00.000Z

Frying cheap bacon

I don't know why they do it but supermarkets insist on watering down their economy bacon. There is so much water that they all seem to recommend grilling the stuff.

I like my bacon fried because I like the fat. But when you 'fry' it it is more like stewing it. What is the answer? Just put a little oil in the non stick pan and fry until the water is extruded from the bacon. There is quite a lot. Pour the mixture of water and fat away [and the horrid white gunge that comes with it] and start again with a little oil.

Now the bacon is more or less the real thing and it cooks the way it ought to before the food scientists got to it.

2005-03-06T14:00:00.000Z

Pommes de terre sautées à la Lyonnaise [not quite]

Tamasin Day-Lewis explains how to do the real thing in the Sunday Telegraph but my version seemed to work quite well.

Take enough potatoes, peel them, boil them until they are cooked but don't fall apart when you cut them up into as near as you can make cubes.

Fry them in fat until they are golden brown turning them carefully. You can use bacon fat, goose fat , dripping or butter. I did two portions using bacon fat in the first and olive oil in the second.

At the same time slice an onion very thinly and fry separately. This is where a sharp knife is absolutely vital. When the onion is cooked finish off in the pan with the potatoes.

Salt and pepper to taste.

You should use heavy bottomed frying pans but if you don't have them don't worry.

2005-03-06T13:11:00.000Z

Côtes du Rhône now relegated to also rans

£2.77 at ASDA*. How the mighty have the fallen. And it doesn’t taste bad. It has been boosted up to 13%. It’s a blend of Grenache, Syrah and Cinsault and other grape varieties.

On the shelves medium price Australian wines seem to have collared the market. Certainly that was what I was buying. I only went for the Côtes du Rhône because it was cheap.

*ASDA is a British supermarket chain.

2005-01-18T17:32:00.000Z

Saatchi’s big fish nets £7million.

Sunday Times Arts Editor Richard brooks reveals [16 January] the sale of Damien Hirst’s 1991 pickled shark to an American buyer for £7million.

The piece of conceptual art had been bought by Charles Saatchi for just £50,000 and he gets a return of 14,000% on his investment in Young British Artists.

Richard Brooks states that the work “will be lost to Britain”, that its departure is “a big loss to Britain” and that Nicholas Serota of Tate Modern was “disappointed not just for his gallery’s sake but for Britain”. He also appears to lament the fact that since the fishy statement is less than fifty years old government powers cannot stop its export.

Brooks, however, ends his article by saying that: “Some believe that Saatchi may have seen that conceptual art is on the wane.”

This Arts Editor agrees andsays that Charles Saatchi, Richard Brooks, Nicholas Serota and even Damien Hirst should be given a Queen’s Award to Exporters.

Apparently the big fish is destined for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The photograph to illustrate the work of art seems to show the shark smiling enigmatically.

2004-10-24T15:50:00.000+01:00

Finding Neverland

At Brixton Ritzy’s showing of Finding Neverland on Sunday 24 October I don’t think anyone shifted from their seats until the credits were over. They were clearly moved by this most romantic of films.

J M Barrie a successful Scottish playwright at the turn of the last century played by Johnny Depp is going through a bit of a dry creative spell. Taking his morning walk in the park he strikes up a friendship with the four children of a beautiful and spirited widow, Kate Winslet. His friendship develops and he becomes deeply involved with the family to the despair of the widow’s mother, Julie Christie, and the envy of his beautiful but conventional wife, Radha Mitchell.

His close involvement with his delightful surrogate family is the inspiration for his triumphantly successful play put on by his indulgent American theatre producer Dustin Hoffman. Eventually his wife leaves him and Kate Winslet dies but not before domineering and protective grandmother Julie Christie warms to him.

The actors playing the children with a mixture of verbal sophistication and naivety are particularly good. Johnny Depp who is supposed to have difficulty with accents maintains a gentle unexaggerated Scottish accent for his superb portrayal of Barrie.
Kate Winslet only has to play Kate Winslet and does so with total conviction. She is perfect. Hoffman, Christie and Mitchell are excellent as are the supporting cast.

The film raises the sensitive issue of Barrie’s close friendship with the four boys in a scene at a cricket match where a friend warns him of the way people think. Barrie dismisses these fears as I'm sure did the audience at the Ritzy and as I hope they will do all over the world.

2004-09-25T06:18:00.000+01:00

John Kerry is an alien

It came to me as a revelation. How come Kerry was so familiar to me. And then I understood.

Kerry is actually Dick in Third Rock from the Sun. In order to blend in, he assumed the human form of actor John Lithgow utilising a bald wig. Since the show finished its run he thought with his enormous intelligence that he should run for President. The Big Giant Head, however, is considering calling him back now his cover is blown.

Can Tom, Dick, Harry and Sally persuade BGH otherwise ?

2004-05-27T10:46:00.000+01:00

Robocops come to Lisbon for Euro 2004

The Sun on 24 May published two pictures that made my 59 year old blood run cold. What looked like a Hollywood publicity still showed Portuguese police in full body armour with grenade launchers and flash-ball guns that fire rubber bullets preparing for a football competition. An adjacent picture showed cavalry officers for all the world like medieval samurai warriors. The message delivered by an officer was: “Do not try to fight us, just run.”

Is this the brave new Europe utilizing the fictional Detroit model of social control?

EU ends UK summer railway timetables

I’m one of those people who have never really been able to understand railway timetables. By the time I have worked out where the route is in the booklet and laboriously worked out when to travel I realise that I’m looking at the weekend timetable or vice versa, whatever gives me the wrong times.

Now, thanks to a European Union directive my task becomes even more difficult. Britain’s rail network must drop its twice a year summer and winter timetables that come out in May and November in favour of a single timetable coming out in December to ensure closer alignment of rail services across Europe.

This may be quite useful for Europe but we of course are not in Europe. This is another example of subsidiarity. We do what we are told.

2004-05-14T14:50:00.000+01:00

Look at this blogspot

More items of interest can be seen on http:www.libertyandlawjournal.blogspot.com
The latest report is on the Equal Opportunities Commission.

2004-05-11T15:02:00.000+01:00

Atlas still shrugging

"We're after power and we mean it. there's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. one declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Now that's the system Mr Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it you'll be much easier to deal with." So said Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein to Hank Rearden the inventor and developer of the fabulous Reardon metal in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas shrugged.

Panned by the critics [and by many of those who love the book] it has remained in continuous print since its publication in 1957 and continues to have an enormous impact upon the political convictions of anti socialists.

When I first read its thousand pages or so I believed that Ms Rand had gone over the top in the description of her imagined America but with every year that passes her passionate message of individual freedom under threat becomes more relevant.

I'm moved to record this because of an article by Paul Craig Roberts entitled Bill Gates meets Hank Rearden

2004-03-30T12:06:00.000+01:00

Education for Democrats

"It is now almost universally accepted that British education is facing a crisis." This is the fortieth anniversary of the first sentence in chapter 1 of the Institute of Economics Hobart Paper by Alan Peacock and Jack Wiseman arguing for a system of vouchers, bursaries and loans that would give parents the freedom to choose between private and state schools and colleges.
The crisis remains but the authors ideas in Education for Democrats have had a gradually accelerating political impact.

2004-03-16T11:15:00.000Z

6 March 2004

Labour Party chairman reported to police

Following Labour Party chairman Ian McCartney’s speech to the Scottish Labour Party Conference at Inverness on 28 February referring to shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin as a 21st century Fagin and his failure so far to apologise for it, his action was reported on 1 March to Scotland’s Northern Constabulary by Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup to determine whether it was in breach of the Public Order Act.
Mr Hartup commented: “The use the term Fagin, Charles Dickens's archetypal evil Jew, in McCartney’s laboured but offensive description dragged political debate into the gutter. Mr Blair should take McCartney’s speech off the Party website immediately, demand a public apology from him and should it not be forthcoming sack him. Mr McCartney claims to be anti-racist and as chairman of the Labour Party he should be well aware that in a widely reported January ICM poll 11% of respondents disagreed strongly with the view that a Jewish Prime Minister would make an equally acceptable Prime Minister as a member of any other faith. McCartney’s scripted keynote speech, however, plays even if he doesn’t understand or intend this, to these very prejudices. He has made himself part of the problem. ”
Mr Hartup also reported Broxtowe MP Nick Palmer to Nottinghamshire Police on March 1 following a report in the Mail on Sunday on 29 February that a month after the World Trade Centre atrocity as part of a Taliban satire he posted on his website and e-mailed a substantial series of racially and religiously offensive ‘jokes’ to up to 1400 of his constituents.

Mr Hartup commented: “Were Mr Palmer, for example, a prospective police or prison officer he would surely be deemed unacceptable and if a serving officer no doubt sacked. Should even a schoolboy distribute such material it would have to be recorded as a racial incident. Does Parliament have lower standards? Should his unfortunate constituents be made morally complicit in his anti-Arab and anti-Islamic ‘jokes’? The Prime Minister must demand from him a public apology and remove the whip should he not give one.”

Ends

Notes:
1. Mr McCartney’s speech can still be seen on the Labour Party’s website at http://www.labour.org.uk/speeches/
2. ICM poll can be seen on http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/2004/jc-jewish-poll-jan-2004.htm
3. Mr Palmer’s justification can be seen on http://www.broxtowelabour.org/ Here he explains in Jokes row explodes where he believes the line should be drawn: that Ann Winterton’s shark joke was unacceptable but that his own contribution was not.
4. Gerald Hartup reported Ann Winterton MP to Cheshire police for her train ‘joke’ in May 2002. In 1992 he instigated the prosecution of Cheltenham racist Bill Galbraith for his behaviour during and after the selection of Conservative Party candidate John [now Lord] Taylor for the then Tory marginal seat of Cheltenham won and now held by the Liberal Democrats.

Further information: Gerald Hartup contact as above

2004-03-14T13:52:00.000Z

Make cooking instructions transparent

I don't know about you but I'm cooking a small shoulder pork joint for lunch today from Tesco. The instructions on the outside of the packet tells me that it takes about 90 minutes to cook and that the full cooking instructions are on the reverse. They are but I can't read them. How so? Well the instructions are written in about 2 point and can only be read by someone with perfect vision in natural light. Is Tesco short of space? Not at all. The instructions only take up about 40% of the available space. The rest is elegantly blank white space. Normally I don't need reading glasses but I've had to find them to perform this simple domestic chore. I'm now going to drop Tesco a line but I thought I would share my anguish.

2004-03-13T20:56:00.000Z

13 March 2004

This is the blog of Gerald Hartup. I am the director of a London [England] action orientated think tank Liberty and Law. I have an almost thirty year background in pressure group politics. I was the director of the Freedom Association until 1999 and a Conservative councillor on the London Borough of Southwark from 1986 to 1990.