Boris Johnson's 'virements'

Courtesy of the Mayor of London Boris Johnson's new initiative to launch a public archive of data and information about London, I learned a new word today:

Virements

Apparently, it's what was required to fund the Story of London in June 2009: 'To approve a budget of £165,000 for the Story of London from the core GLA (greater London Authrity) budget, to make the appropriate budget virements and any other necessary budget adjustments.'

The new, online London Datastore (data.london.gov.uk) is promised to be a 'treasure trove of civic information' about London, launching officially on Jan 29. If you want to see the history of the Mayor's decisions since coming to office or even the population changes in Ealing and the City of London since 1881, it's a useful and sometimes interesting resource. Meanwhile, I'll keep making those virements to try to balance my own books.

Free Rice.com

Be as smart as Stephen Fry, by knowing the definitions of obscure words and donating free rice through the UN World Food Program at www.freerice.com

Fraktur, Flabelliform, Katzenjammer, Cockalorum, Melilot, Propaedutic, Nullo, Grampus, Pung, Kop, Klieg, Asseverate, Scute, Entelechy, Kampong, Rial, Suttee, Lavolta, Piassava, Discerption, Partita, Pitchblende, Saury, Stromuhr...

How to write right

The Times Style Guide is an invaluable guide to 'correct' writing - or, at least, to the way that The Times does it. For example: 


* apostrophes with proper names/nouns ending in s that are singular, follow the rule of writing what is voiced, eg, Keats's poetry, Sobers's batting, The Times's style (or Times style); and with names where the final “s” is soft, use the “s” apostrophe, eg, Rabelais' writings, Delors' presidency; plurals follow normal form, as Lehman Brothers' loss etc

Note that with Greek names of more than one syllable that end in "s", generally do not use the apostrophe "s", eg, Aristophanes' plays, Achilles' heel, Socrates' life, Archimedes' principle; but note Jesus's (not Jesus') parables. Beware of organisations that have variations as their house style, eg, St Thomas' Hospital, where we must respect their preference. Also, take care with apostrophes with plural nouns, eg, women's, not womens'; children's, not childrens'; people's, not peoples'.

Use the apostrophe in expressions such as two years' time, several hours' delay etc.

An apostrophe should be used to indicate the plural of single letters - p's and q's

* management-speak do not succumb, for example, to describing an organisation as meaninglessly as what was suggested in a press release: "interested in non-face-to-face, high-volume, low-unit-cost solutions that would require the front-loaded investment the voluntary sector cannot acquire". See 'jargon'.

* News International Rupert Murdoch is chairman and chief executive of News Corporation (second mention, News Corp), a name changed in November 2004 from The News Corporation Limited after incorporation in the United States; it can be described as "parent company of The Times".

A subsidiary of News Corp is News International (its full title is News International Ltd; was News International plc until June 2003), a British company that owns Times Newspapers Holdings. The operating subsidiary of Times Newspapers Holdings is Times Newspapers Ltd, publisher of The Times and The Sunday Times. Times Newspapers Holdings is chaired by Mr Murdoch and the board includes the independent national directors of The Times and The Sunday Times. It is thus the controlling company.

News Group Newspapers, another operating subsidiary of News International, is the publisher of The Sun and News of the World (and Sunday Magazine).

TSL Education Ltd (formerly Times Supplements Ltd) was another operating subsidiary of News International which published The Times Educational Supplement, The Times Higher Education Supplement, The Times Literary Supplement, Nursery World, TES College Manager and TES Primary magazine. Worldwide Learning Ltd, a subsidiary of TSL Education, is a provider of global distance learning solutions. The Times Literary Supplement is still owned by News International.

The Times Educational Supplement is now better known simply as the (l/c, roman) TES; what was The Times Higher Education Supplement is now Times Higher Education and branded as the (l/c, roman) THE. Both publications, with Nursery World and other publications, are still owned by TSL Education, but that company and its titles were bought from News International by Exponent Private Equity in 2005.

News Ltd is the Australian arm of News Corp.

Twentieth Century Fox (or 20th Century Fox in logo form), Fox News, Fox Sports etc are part of the Fox Entertainment Group, which is 82.1 per cent owned by News Corp.

Mr Murdoch does not "own" any of these companies, though his family is the largest single (though not majority) shareholder in News Corp. See BSkyB, Murdoch, Rupert, The Times

* BSkyB News Corporation, parent company of The Times, owns 39.1 per cent of BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting Ltd). So use the formula: BSkyB, in which News Corporation, parent company of The Times, has a 39.1 per cent stake ... Sky can also be called an associate company of News International, or of News Corp. See News International, The Times

* Brummie (not Brummy), Geordie, Scouse etc, people and dialect, all capped. See Cockney

* breastfeed(ing) no longer use hyphen

* e-mail but note E-Stamp, a registered trademark; note e-commerce

* jellybean one word

* poppadum

* possessives do not use inelegant "geographic possessives" such as London's East End, Colorado's Breckenridge ski resort: write the East End of London, Breckenridge, the Colorado ski resort. Similarly, do not use the possessive in phrases such as BBC One's Panorama programme: write the BBC One Panorama programme, or simply Panorama on BBC One


and much, much more pedantry...

Great Fire of London - 2 Sep 1666

September 2, 1666: The Great Fire of London begins shortly after midnight. The fire burned for three days and decimated Old London inside the Roman Walls. By 1660, London was the largest city in Britain with ≈ 500,000 residents – more than the next 50 largest towns combined. Most of the houses were haphazardly placed and built of wood. The urban sprawl led to slums forming outside the old walled portion, The City. The City was bordered on the River Thames and covered 700 acres and 80,000 people lived there – about one-sixth of Londoners.


The City was the commercial heart of Greater London. It held the busiest port and was occupied by the working classes. The aristocrats lived in the countryside or further west, in the Westminster district, modern day West End. King Charles II's court was at Whitehall. The City itself was dirty, crowded, and rife with disease. The Plague Year of 1665 saw the bubonic plague spread through the mean streets. There was further tension between holdovers from the Civil War (1642-51) and the King.


The winding streets were narrow and although wood and thatch were prohibited, the materials were cheap and still in use. Several fires had already spread through London, the latest in 1632. The industry in the area also increased risk. Foundries, smithies, and glazeries flourished even though they, too, were banned because of potential fire hazard. The only connection between The City and the south side of the Thames was the London Bridge – and that was also built up with combustible materials.


The fire broke out on Sunday morning in Pudding Lane at the bakery owned by Thomas Farmer. Neighbours tried to put out the flames as the family climbed across roofs to safety. It was originally seen as no threat. By 7 AM, an easterly gale had turned the small local fire into a conflagration. By Wednesday, the winds fell and firebreaks contained the remaining small local fires. Deaths due directly to the fire were minimal, listed as eight. Many others died as secondary victims as they huddled in makeshift camps. Over 13,500 houses were burned along with 73 churches and St. Paul's Cathedral. Many businesses were also lost to the blaze. The price of the fire eventually came to around £10 million, or more than £1 billion today.


Source: www.examiner.com

Rubicon Project offices - set of 24

Check out Jack Bauer's office (from the TV show 24) at 40 secs
into the video.

YouTwitFace

Coming Soon: www.youtwitface.com

Waldo in the woods

"The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine" Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), the transcendentalist preacher, philosopher and poet. Quote courtesy of my lunchtime smoked salmon bagel from Daily Bread ('By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen, Maker of Quality Sandwiches'), supplier of sandwiches to The Times (and other fine papers, I'm sure).

Moral of the story: never look too closely at your sandwich wrapper (or you'll end up looking at Linda McCartney's vegetarian food website, interrogating Dictionary.com and generally wasting your lunch hour), nor take a rain-sodden walk through woods (like Waldo did) or you'll end up dying of pneumonia (like Waldo did...).

Dictionary.com: Torpid - inactive, sluggish, slow, dull, apathetic or lethargic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: biography

Daily Bread: http://www.hain-celestial.co.uk/

Up The Workers!

'Manchester United have defied the credit crunch to secure the biggest shirt sponsorship deal in football history', writes James Ducker in The Times. 

* The Barclays Premier League champions announced a four-year contract - from the end of next season - worth £80 million with Aon Corporation, the world's leading risk advisor/insurance broker. Guess who's going to pay the best part of that fee? The workers, of course. Aon announced in April that they would be cutting company contributions to the staff pension fund of most of its 5,400 UK workforce; it halved the maximum amount contributed by the employer to 6% of an employee's salary. The move was described by them as 'necessary to cut costs and remain profitable', and now widely seen by the market as 'heralding a clampdown on retirement schemes'. Nice timing, Aon, your employees will be seeing red in more ways than one.

* So, in order not to fuel the flame of Aon's hoped-for publicity, above is a pic of Wayne Rooney doin' a little dance in the current sponsor AIG's shirt. AIG, of course, is another discredited American insurance company (but they only paid £56.5m). 

Social Engineering

From The Sunday Times leader 24 May 2009:

The answer is to make bad schools better

If you think social engineering is a myth, look no further than the admissions procedures used by a number of Britain’s top universities. Using information from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the sinisterly named “DCSF standardisation measurement score”, universities such as Oxford and Durham are employing a points system to penalise entrants from the best state and private schools.

Social engineering well describes a system that uses a mathematical formula and GCSE results to provide applicants from poorer schools with a leg-up, handicapping those from good schools. Universities insist this is a fair way of spotting talented candidates who have been held back by poor teaching. Superficially it sounds reasonable – who can object to helping bright children from poor backgrounds? But there are deep flaws in this system. With the exception of Cambridge, universities have been slow to admit to using these methods. It has had to be dragged out of them. Yet students and parents have a right to know how their applications are being judged. The use of GCSE results also means many are being judged retrospectively. Having believed what mattered was A-levels, they now find the die was cast much earlier. Parents strive, rightly, to get their children into the best state schools. Others make huge sacrifices out of taxed income to pay for a first-class education. Now they find their sacrifices may have been in vain.

Not only is this wrong; it is tantamount to an admission that education policy has failed. As Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of schools, puts it: “The solution lies in the schools disadvantaged children attend. Labour has failed to raise standards in such schools and now wants us to believe that the problem is the elitism of our best universities.” It is not. Britain’s best universities are not so good that they can afford to be weakened. Social engineering is as bad for them as it is unfair for bright students who are being penalised for going to good schools. The government should instead concentrate on making bad schools better. That is the best way to serve the underprivileged.

* Click here for further reading from The Sunday Times 24 May 09, with additional formulae added for the online edition:

Top schools boycott ‘biased’ Durham. The leading university's entry system handicaps high performers

* The Cambridge GCSE formula is here

Victorious Gurkhas - VG Day

Pic: Joanna Lumley at The King's School, Canterbury in 2005 (photo by NEJ)

Glorious victory - well deserved - for both Joanna lumley and the veteran Gurkhas. 36,000 Gurkhas, who served with the British Army before 1997, will now be allowed to apply to live in the UK and bring with them their spouses and children under the age of 18. The Government backed down under intense media pressure, headed up by Absolutely Fabulous star Joanna Lumley, and made a u-turn.

* Who are the Gurkhas? The Gurkhas have been part of the British Army for nearly 200 years. Originally enemies of the British East India Company army, their impressive fighting in the Gurkha War led the British to not only make Nepal a protectorate, but to allow them to fight as mercenaries (now soldiers) for their own Army.

Recruited from Nepal, these soldiers are known for their bravery and strength; an astounding 13 Gurkhas have been awarded the Victoria Cross, an honour given 'for most conspicuous bravery, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy.' Every Ghurka carries a kukri, a curved Nepalese knife.

More than 45,000 Gurkhas have died defending British interests, with a further 150,000 injured in the line of duty.

Since the handover to Hong Kong in 1997, all Gurkhas with four years service were automatically entitled to live in Britain.

Partial source: The Sun

Plasticine Paradise

Plasticine Paradise is the name of a surreal garden created by BBC Top Gear's James May at this year's RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Featuring a statue of the inventor of plasticine, William Harbutt, the plasticine flowers, fruits and vegetable plot little beasties have broken the rules of no artifical flowers and survived the weather to date. All in the name of art... The show was first held in the grounds of Royal Hospital in 1913 and now draws in 157,000 visitors each year, consuming 54,000 cups of tea and coffee, 28,000 sandwiches and 5,000 bottles of champagne. Stephen Fry's twitpic is here. 

* STOP PRESS (19 May 2009): The plasticine Paradise wins its very own Plasticine Gold Medal.

The future of newspapers?

Plastic Logic is a company with offices in Mountain View (California, US), Cambridge (England) and Dresden (Germany), who are developing a full-size e-book reader scheduled for pilot release during the second half of 2009. Rupert Murdoch is CEO of New Corp., who publish millions of printed newspapers every day, almost all of which have declining print circulations and may (the jury's still out) be being 'cannibalised' by their own websites. Advertising is in the doldrums due to the worldwide credit crunch. 

So, where to next? Portable newspapers that are multimedia and can bolster cross-media ad sales? 

* Read Mr Murdoch's recent take on the subject (and News Corp. investment) here

Printed books already have alternative solutions like eReaders (Sony Reader, Ectaco Jetbook, iRex Iliad, Franklin eBookMan and Amazon Kindle), so why not newspapers? Plastic Logic, Hearst and Fujitsu (expensive) are all developing products, some with bigger screens and full-colour that would be appropriate for a new concept for portable, up-to-the-minute news consumption, maybe even with multimedia...

* View partial source: Gizmodo

St George's Day

Wikipedia - that ever-reliable source of accurate information - says:

In the fully-developed Western version (of the legend of George and the Dragon), a dragon makes its nest at the spring that provides water for the city of 'Silene' (perhaps modern Cyrene) in Libya or the city of Lydda. Consequently, the citizens have to dislodge the dragon from its nest for a time, in order to collect water. To do so, each day they offer the dragon at first a sheep, and if no sheep can be found, then a maiden must go instead of the sheep. The victim is chosen by drawing lots. One day, this happens to be the princess. The monarch begs for her life to be spared, but to no avail. She is offered to the dragon, but there appears Saint George on his travels. He faces the dragon, protects himself with the sign of the cross, slays it and rescues the princess. The grateful citizens abandon their ancestral paganism and convert to Christianity.

...and so they named dozens of pubs after Georgie and his fire-breathing protagonist. Especially, the George and the Dragon at Fordwich, Kent. Used to be nice, but not so nice now as it used to be (better to nip round the corner to the Fordwich Arms instead).

* King Edward III made George the Patron Saint of England when he formed the Order of the Garter in St. George's name in 1350, and the cult of the Saint was further advanced by King Henry V, at the battle of Agincourt in northern France. George also has patronage over herpes, leprosy, plague, skin diseases and rashes and syphilis - or so it says here.

Financial (April) Fools' Day

Obamamania hits London, along with G-20. 

* 'Don't shortchange the future for fear of the present', says the President. 

* 'We cannot afford a further discretionary stimulus', say the Governor of the Bank of England and David Cameron. 

* 'Print your own money...', says www.G-20meltdown.org.

You pays your money and takes your choice. I couldn't possibly comment...

Refreshment Day for Mothers

A joyful yet sad day, as Jade Goody passes from our lives and we also remember Natasha Richardson. Refreshment Sunday is the liturgical name for today, so refreshed we shall be with a small libation in memory of two proud mothers, Jade and Natasha; both paid a small part in brightening up our lives in Big Brother and Parent Trap.

* Jade cartoon by illustrator Mike Hall: www.thisismikehall.com

http://thisismikehall.blogspot.com/

Google Street View

Google Street View finally proves that our car can be in two places at one time. Spooky.

* However, they could have had the decency to wait until we had had the house repainted (and the new front door) before taking their creepy pictures.

Foxtrot Oscar, TA

Frustrated by the inability of Turkish airlines to understand how to spell my surname during a telephone call (and their eventual provision of a misspelled e-ticket) I decided to learn the unclassified NATO phonetic alphabet, more formally knwon as the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet. This I thought might help in multiple calls made to try to correct the ticketing problem. But what's the code for a hyphen? The Turkish Airlines online credit card booking system won't accept a hyphen in my surname. 

* Nowadays it might be easier just to send a letter, use morse code or send smoke signals... (even an e-mail to TA seems to go into a black hole).

Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.

The temptation to use a picture of a TA plane broken into two parts at Schipol airport was high. However, I'll give TA the benefit of the doubt and respect those who lost their lives in the tragedy. Meanwhile, I hope they manage to get us to Istanbul safely for our summer holidays...