Among the invitations I received this morning was one to attend the International Coalition against Prohibition conference in The Hague on 15 March.
I have to say that I was sorely tempted, particularly when I learned that one of the speakers is to be Dr. Kamal Chaouachi, who is “the world’s leading expert on waterpipe smoking”.
How many lesser experts are there, I wonder?
Sadly, I will be engaged on Parliamentary business that day.
Great news for the people of Britain’s second city. Erdington MP, Siôn Simon, has announced that he is to stand down at the general election, to concentrate on becoming Birmingham’s first elected mayor.
By way of assistance to Mr Simon, and to give people a taste of what they might expect from their wannabe next first citizen, here’s a clip of him displaying to fullest advantage his unique range of talents:
Wales on Sunday’s Matt Withers notes that the new Welsh First Minister, Carwyn Jones, is taking a keen interest in the wintry conditions gripping the Principality and wonders whether Mr Jones has “mistaken himself” for chirpy BBC Wales weatherman, Derek Brockway.
It has to be said, in fairness, that it would not be an unreasonable mistake to make:
Brockway
Jones
Advertising billboard in railway station.
I was nostalgically pleased to read in today’s Sunday Telegraph that the name of Williams & Glyn’s Bank may be resurrected as a consequence of the Government’s decision to break up the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Although I never banked there, I always had a soft spot for Williams & Glyn’s, principally because the name (a) had a ring of old-fashioned, long-established solidity and (b) sounded Welsh. In fact, it was neither; the bank was established as a result of a merger in 1970 of Williams Deacon’s Bank and Glyn, Mills and Co, both of which had long been subsidiaries of RBS. Williams & Glyn’s was primarily a north of England bank, though it did have branches in both Llandudno and Colwyn Bay, perhaps reflecting the long tradition of Lancastrian emigration to the North Wales coast.
Many solicitors, however, may be somewhat less pleased to see the return of W&G; the bank gave its name to the leading case of Williams & Glyn’s Bank –v- Boland, relied on heavily by mortgagees in negligence actions against conveyancing practitioners.
Michael Meacher has posted on his blog, under the headline Labour is not finished, even if New Labour is, a piece that commences:
There’s so much defeatism around.
Unfortunately, that’s where it also ends.
Mr Carwyn Jones, who is Counsel General in the Welsh Assembly Government, is fancied by some – not least himself – as the most likely successor to Rhodri Morgan as leader of the Assembly’s Labour group when the old maestro finally hangs up his boots and heads for what we all hope will be a happy and lengthy retirement contemplating the sun setting over Cardigan Bay.
However, Mr Jones has a few rivals for the job: Huw Lewis, the radical intellectual from Merthyr Tydfil; the courteous and honest-to-goodness Jane Hutt; and Edwina Hart (see this blog passim), who is probably Mr Jones’s biggest threat, given that, importantly, she appears to have the support of the unions and he doesn’t.
Mr Jones also has an unfortunate reputation, as Betsan Powys has noted, for laziness, although I am sure that it is wholly undeserved.
Mr Jones consequently needs to up his profile a bit – no, a lot – and it is noticeable that of late his activity has increased considerably. In May, he gave a lecture entitled Getting the Devolution Dividend; Legal Wales in the Next Ten Years to Cardiff University Law School. Earlier this month, he delivered a speech at the national Eisteddfod warning – correctly – that Labour can no longer rely on its core vote in Wales. He has even started blogging.
Oh, and today, he decided to have a pop at me.
This afternoon, I had a telephone call from the Western Mail’s Martin Shipton. He told me that Carwyn Jones had telephoned him to say that he had been surfing the web and had discovered that I was a member of the Cornerstone group of Conservative MPs, one of whose number had published an article some time ago that was critical of the National Health Service. What, asked Martin, had I to say to that?
The following, I replied:
Martin thanked me in his usual courteous way and told me he would write the story up as the sort of inter-party row that is manna to political journalists in the month of August.
So there we are: Carwyn Jones has shown that he isn’t lazy, after all. He is fully capable of surfing the internet single-handed and of telephoning a journalist without assistance.
But I have a gentle word of advice for Mr Jones: remember that I’m not the enemy. I’m just the opposition.
The real enemy is Edwina Hart and I’m afraid that, at the moment, she’s several streets ahead of you in the leadership stakes.
Given the general, pervasive gloom, anything that makes the nation feel chirpier must surely be good news.
We should therefore welcome the report in today’s Telegraph that Professor Richard Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, has concluded that thinking of something pleasant from the previous day can makes us happier, as can expressing gratitude, smiling and carrying out an act of kindness.
I am, however, rather mystified by the precision of the conclusions Professor Wiseman draws from his experiments:
An act of kindness led to a nine per cent boost in happiness, while being grateful for an aspect of life led to an eight per cent rise and making an effort to smile and hold it made people six per cent happier…
The “happiness experiment” was set up in an attempt to send cheerfulness across Britain.
Together with a nationwide publicity campaign which saw Prof Wiseman give 30 radio interviews, it was hoped the experiment might make Britain a happier place.
To find out, a ”before and after” survey was conducted among a representative 2,000 people from across Britain.
It showed a 7 per cent increase in overall cheerfulness after the experiment.
Happiness is, of course, an intensely subjective and intangible thing. At the moment, for example, I feel pretty content. My happiness is certainly greater than it would be if I faced the prospect of a trip to the dentist, but it falls some way short of a state of ecstasy. If you were to ask me to assess it in percentage terms, however, I’d be hard put do so. Fifty per cent? Sixty per cent? I really couldn’t say.
How, therefore, is Professor Wiseman able to express the rises in happiness he has observed in such extraordinarily precise terms?
I’m sure that, as a scientist, he is absolutely right, and that I’m being typically and unscientifically dense. But I can’t help thinking of the story of the statistician who advised a client that if he were to stand with one foot in a bucket if ice and the other in a pan of boiling water, he would, overall, be comfortable.
Further to my post about the impact of swine flu on worship in Colwyn Bay, a correspondent has suggested to me that Richard Stilgoe’s Mrs Beamish wouldn’t be entirely displeased at the loss of physical contact when giving the sign of peace:
Don’t you dare shake hands with me, or offer signs of peace; You lay a finger on me and I’ll call for the police. Don’t whisper ‘Peace be with you’; this is the C of E, So bend the knee, say thou and thee, And keep your hands off me.I am relieved to hear that President Sarkozy has been pronounced none the worse after collapsing yesterday whilst jogging through the park of the Palace of Versailles.
The incident, however, does tend to highlight how careful men of a certain age – particularly politicians – should be about engaging publicly in vigorous sport. A carefully cultivated reputation for physical prowess can be destroyed in an instant.
In 1979, US President Jimmy Carter collapsed whilst running in a road race in Catoctin Mountain Park, Maryland. He had to be supported by secret service officers and the TV pictures looked dreadful.
Carter lost the presidential election to Ronald Reagan the following year, although the Iran hostage crisis may have had a little to do with it.
For my own part, I used to jog regularly until I learned that Jim Fixx, the man reputed to have “invented” jogging and its most enthusiastic proponent, had died suddenly at the early age of 52 – shortly after jogging.
I received a survey today from a well-known manufacturer of (among other things) breakfast cereals.
Among the questions it contained were:
“To what extent do you consider that X Company succeeds as a provider of convenient, nutritious dietary solutions?”
and
”Do you consider X Company to be a thought leader in dietary and lifestyle choices?”
I think that a “dietary solution” is what my grandmother used to call food.
I’m still trying to work out what a “thought leader” is.
Civic Sunday in Ruthin was marked by a service at St Peter’s church, followed by a garden party at Nantclwyd y Dre. The weather was showery, but it bucked up and by the time I left for the drive to London, it was a perfect high summer’s day.
I stopped at the traffic lights on the crossroads in Llandegla. Depressingly, the Crown Inn was draped with a banner which read: “Have you booked for Christmas?”
The festive season arrives earlier every year, but, unless anyone can tell me otherwise, 12 July must be the all-time record.
My thanks to the Standard’s Paul Waugh for pointing me at this priceless video of the Prime Minister looking utterly relaxed with a pre-school playgroup:
Look out for the moment at 1:07 where he’s obviously considering making a break for it.
Drivers on the London Underground have been issued with a booklet of philosophical, political and historical quotations which they have been urged to read to passengers as they hurtle through the subterranean network.
The booklet, What is the City but the People? has been compiled by the Turner prizewinning artist, Jeremy Deller, and is part of a series of arts projects planned for the Tube.
According to Sarah McLean, spokesperson for Art on the Underground, drivers are being encouraged to make judicious use of the quotations, at appropriate times in the journey, to help build a rapport with passengers.
I think it’s an excellent idea, with a great future. For instance, as I travelled this evening in a hot, stuffy, crammed Tube from Westminster to Euston, I would have been hugely inspired to hear the driver intone Jean-Paul Sartre’s immortal line: Hell is other people.
On the ferry to Helsinki, I study the comprehensive FCO brief on Finland.
This provides the following useful information:
All this is tremendously interesting stuff, with which I hope suitably to impress any Finnish politician with whom I may fall into conversation this afternoon.
