David saw this on Kid’s TV yesterday. It is very silly.

You’ve got your foot stuck in my ring!

(Karen to Gizmo during his Physiotherapy)

I felt a bit briefly maudlin today. I’ve been following the story about the typhoon in Burma since it happened and the first thing I had to do was work out where Burma was. (Between Bangladesh and Thailand is the simple answer, I’ve never been further East than Muscat). Burma is a socialist military dictatorship apparently and the lengths they have gone to in order to mismanage the aftermath is very depressing. (Mind you, so was New Orleans). The thing that actually got to me was seeing the news about the China earthquake, nearly 15,000 dead so far, and children being rescued from the collapsed remnants of a school. It occurred to me that the children were of course the lucky ones, as they were still alive. (There is no fate worse than death really, except perhaps when death brings release from terminal suffering). Lucky is a relative word, of course, as some children may have terrible injuries or have lost family members.

How would Britain cope if we were ravaged by similar natural catastrophes on a massive scale? Pretty badly I suspect. Our earthquakes and storms cause damage but they don’t generally flatten cities, for that we should be grateful for a quirk of geography.

After all, mankind is just a tiny speck of dust in the timeline of mother earth and we cling precariously to the thin crust of a raging inferno underneath. Earthquakes may be tumultuous to us but to the planet they are minor inconsequential shudders.

David explained to me the other day how the Sun was eventually going to expand, engulfing all the planets and burning us to a cinder, something even the Cockroaches can’t survive. He wasn’t overly bothered by it though, as it is five Billion years away. By that time, Man will hopefully have reached for the stars, or possibly perished along the way.

I usually have a mini-surf whilst munching my lunch. (Still the healthy option).

Yesterday, however, I was distracted by a comment on a website that mentioned a short story from 1909 called “The Machine Stops”

I started reading the text to get a feel for it, then spent the rest of my break reading it (and dropping celery on the keyboard!)

It manages to be both dated and ahead of its time at the same time. If you have fifteen minutes or so to spare, have a read.

There have been interesting developments on the matter of Cllr Finnigan and his dodgy election.

It has made the Yorkshire Evening Post today and it transpires that former Councillor Stewart McArdle is involved in a petition to the High Court.

However, Cllr Finnigan has revealed that his defence is based on a ruling that being a Councillor is classed as work in the area based on a legal precedent. A quick sniff on’t interweb supports his case. (From NALC legal topic note 28:-)

A person is qualified under paragraph 5 (c) above for re-election if he is already a councillor. The Court of Appeal held in Parker v Yeo (1992) that being a councillor was “work” and that the work was carried on in the area where the councillor was an elected member.

However, a closer look at Parker vs Yeo reveals that it is not as simple as it first appears. The Mr Yeo in question had actually retired during the term of his office due to his employer ceasing trading two years before the election. It was decided in the Court of appeal that work could include councillor duties in the wider sense as he wasn’t actually working. (See section 2.03 of this document for more).

Cllr Finnigan is on much shakier ground than this as he has declared it as

c. my principal or only place of work during those 12 months has been in that
*county/district/London borough/county borough at (give address of place of work and, where
appropriate, name of employer):

Well, it obviously can’t be his only place of work as he was working at Cleckheaton Town Hall until earlier in the year. So, which one was his principal place of work? Was it full time employment? Did he get more money as a Councillor (indeed a member of the executive board as he has been since a subtle change in the rainbow alliance last year)?

Ask yourself a question. Why would someone want to be on a Council for somewhere you don’t actually live in, work in or own property in?

(Well, there is one obvious answer…)

Speaking of sticky wickets, this made me chuckle…