Apparently, if experts are to be believed, coley tastes like cod (or so the Daily Telegraph reports today, ‘Cod diners to get a taste for Coley’). Quite how these experts arrived at this conclusion, and why we should take their word for it, I am not sure. Coley was a regular feature of school dinners when I was a child. That may have been quite a long time ago, but I can assure you that coley did not taste like cod then, and nothing will persuade me that it does now.
Why is Surrey so loathsome?
Perhaps not so much Surrey, as the people who choose to live there. First there was the furore in July over the purchase by an Armed Forces charity of a house close to the Headley Court Military Rehabilitation Centre, near Ashstead in Surrey. Now, if Boris Johnson is to be believed (The Spectator,15 – 29 December), a woman swimming at a public pool in Leatherhead berated 15 wounded soldiers and their trainers, because part of the pool had been roped off for them. This apparently prevented her from doing her daily laps. “I pay to come here, ” she is reported as shouting at them, “and you lot don’t”. Although one hopes that her problem was that she hadn’t engaged her brain before opening her mouth, I wouldn’t have money on it. There seems to be a deep current of hostility to the military, possibly because many people seem unable to separate their opposition to the war that the Blessed Tony took us into, and the men and women whose job it is to fight it for us. Thankfully the Surrey woman’s reaction contrasts vividly with the recent TV reports of the public lining the streets of Cardiff and other UK cities and towns, to welcome home returning troops.
Not now darling
From the FT today: “The latest debacle in the CGT saga lays bare the weakness and dysfunction at the heart of Gordon Brown’s government,” said George Osborne, shadow chancellor. Vince Cable, acting Liberal Democrat leader, added: “It’s a textbook example of how not to run the Treasury and make tax law.” And what was Gordon doing? Well, he was in Lisbon, late, signing the Treaty.
The clunking fist
Less the clunking fist, more the dead hand. Once again, as “Pensions ministers fight Treasury for extra cash” [FT Monday December 10], it seems that the Treasury team can make no decision without Gordon’s approval. ‘Careful consideration because of public spending implications’ is no more than an excuse for unappealing timidity. First the Forces, now 120,000 pensioners. It beggars belief.
Dealing with Dictators
Meeting people your mother would not like you to meet, and dealing with dictators are, whatever Jose Manuel Barroso may think, not one and the same thing. However you see the job specification for an international leader, it should not include giving respectability to tyranny. Had Gordon Brown given way to pressure to attend the EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon, he would have been doing just that. Better Kate Hoey’s comments in her letter to the Daily Telegraph this morning: that Gordon Brown should be congratulated for his principled stand.
Enough said: George Wilkinson's blog 