Sour Fish

The lengths to which the Poison Pixie’s Praetorian Guard have been prepared to go to silence Alex Salmon very much suggest that she is guilty as charged by him.

Who knows precisely how complicit she was in the attempt to have her political rival imprisoned on trumped-up attempted rape charges? But her hands did not look clean. Further, it seems clear that she has since been complicit, if not the lead player, in the attempted cover-up.

She should resign. But she will not, of course any more than would the leader of any other Banana Republic who has been caught misbehaving.

By and large, it seems that the people of Scotland don’t much care. Indeed, they seem to

Monster Chomp

Britain has been considerably amused this past week by the video of the meeting of the planning and environment subcommittee of Handforth Parish Council. Fun as it is, it hardly reflects very well on the British psyche.

In case you missed it, the background was that there was a feud between members of the committee. They have probably forgotten what the feud was originally about but the side that was losing played the Monster Card. They called a Zoom meeting, and got Jackie Weaver to be the meeting administrator. Now, Jackie Weaver is not a councillor, nor a member of the committee, nor any sort of officer of the committee, and had no right to be at the meeting. But she is a fearsome busybody.

So this is like something from old Norse mythology. An aggrieved faction invites a horrendous cannibalistic she-monster out of the swamp, and into the feasting hall. And by giving her the Zoom button they gave her, so to speak, the key to the chainsaw cupboard. We all know what happens in the stories. The monster slaughters and devours not only those who she was summoned to destroy, but also those rash enough to have summoned her. That is part of what makes the story so compelling.

Sure enough, the meeting in question had barely started (indeed, some would say that it had not in fact started) when the Weaver Witch got the munchies. She started dictating terms from the outset.

Unsurprisingly, the chairman told her to be quiet, and asked what authority she thought she had? Poor deluded fool! He should have known that monsters do not need authority to break into a hall and start killing and eating the people!

Chomp!

Not a good week for the NHS

 

It has not been a good few days for the NHS in England.

The much-admired Captain Sir Tom Moore has died at 101. Having repeatedly been tested negative for Covid, he was recently admitted to hospital for a few days with pneumonia. He then tested positive for Covid as he was discharged from hospital and shortly thereafter died.[1]

We cannot be sure he caught the Covid in hospital, but it is not a good look for the NHS.

Meanwhile, the NHS, working hand-in-hand with the police, have obtained a Community Protection Notice against Hannah Dean, for filming interiors of hospitals which looked – well – not that busy.  There are those who are not amused; according to

Memorable Lines

My brother asked what I thought was an interesting question this week. How come we can remember the sound of music which consists of chords when we can only whistle or hum one note at a time? The example he chose was the climax of the second movement of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto.

Is it like art? A work of art like the Mona Lisa is obviously complex:

But it is not hard to recognise the picture from just a few lines:

Can we do the same with the extract from Rachmaninov suggested by my brother?