Gertsamtkunstwerk

What is a Comptroller?

Lyle, don't feel ignorant. Gordon, how cruel you are to mock...!

The C&AG is the head of the National Audit Office, an officer of Parliament, and sackble only by a majority vote of both Houses and with the Queen's assent. The Auditor General bit covers most of the NAO's work.

The Comptroller bit is tiny but, arguably, more important. Every Government department etc that wants to get its hands on its money 'draw down' has to ask permission from the C&AG to do so. So, the Comptroller has to authorise the release of money to Departments. The French equivalent of the NAO is the Cours des Comptes.

More info is available here.

Day at the seaside

The day started too early. The alarm was too loud and the bed far too comfortable. The sky was cloudy and dull, but the forecast was not for rain. We arrived in Whitstable a bit before midday. Soon afterwards the sun came out. We walked for a bit and them came back. We sat on the beach either side of lunch. At five o'clock we caught the train home. You don't want a flat unevocative narrative. You know where to find the Whitstable photos.

More news

It's a bit much that even citizens of nations supposedly in alliance with the US cannot have a fair trial in accordance with international jurisprudence. Nations are judged by the degree of humanity with which their governments treat the least deserving and most wretching. The abuses of Guantanamo show the US Government to be wanting in humanity. That is how the US will be judges by many of the world's nations and people.

Bosses charged over Hatfield crash. I don't suppose this story will get the prominence it deserves because of the road building plans, but it looks a very positive move. 

I don't suppose they'll end up getting convicted, let alone serving life sentences. And if they do, will John Major and his bunch of privatisers get away scot free?

Toddler shot dead is tremendously sad. What kind of idiots have rows with guns?

Billions for roads

There are days when not a single news story grabs my attention. I currently have 24 BBC News tabs open.

£7bn scheme to tackle congestion. I am pleased that new and re-opened rail schemes are 'being considered' and that there is some investment in buses...in the West Midlands. I also think it is positive that schemes that are specifically environmentally damaging - as opposed to just generally - are not going ahead. I am singularly under-impressed by the Tory Tim Collins describing the road-building as 'belated'.

Overall, I am not impressed. There is strong evidence that traffic expands to fill the available road space. I also watched a TV programme a few years back that suggested that the M25 was like Guinness - if everybody travelled at 50mph and kept a sensible distance people would actually travel more quickly than trying to drive at 70-80 mph and constantly stopping and starting.

It would also impress me more if I could see more evidence of investment to ensure that it doesn't take the hour and three quarters to travel the 60 miles from London Victoria to Whitstable that we experienced on Sunday.

With Alastair Darling planning to pave much of the country with motorways and John Prescott planning to build ten millions home on the Green Belt, I suspect that most of lowland England, at least will become one shapeless urban sprawl. I am already of the belief, evidenced by own eyes, that there is just one field that separates Greater Greater Manchester and Greater Merseyside. It is extremely difficult to go anywhere in lowland England without seeing urbanisation.

The Environment Groups also comment. The Green Party, as usual, get it entirely wrong, by saying the pedestrianisation of towns is a great success, whereas there is a school of thought which believes that pedestrianised towns encourage attacks on the person.

I think the congestion charge in London is a splendid thing, and would advocate its extension to other congested cities. I would not wish to see tolls on motorways and by-passes, because this would just encourage people to drive through towns. I was deeply influenced by a series of TV series called Six English Towns, which showed the dreadful churn of vehicles grinding bumper-to-bumper through historically and aesthetically interesting towns.

Yellow

On Saturday evening we ate a simple supper al fresco. I tried to find the wick of a large outdoor candle. It was buried beneath a layer of dead leaves and twigs. I used the dead vegetation as kindling. It was a pathetic, girly fire. Jimmy gathered more dead wood from around the garden, saying 'Man! Fire!' as he laboured. Soon a mighty, but controlled and scented, fire burnt in this wooden tub. It entertained us until bedtime. We had no need of  telly.

Go-ahead for East London Line

It's good to hear that the Tube scheme back on track, despite the best efforts of a man (Charles Windsor) who never has to travel on an overcrowded underground train network.

I know that it will extend it to Clapham Junction, and I am fairly certain that it will run quite close to my little patch of South West London. Such a shame that Transport for London's links all return a 404 error!

Fortunately, Hackney Council has provided a copy of the map. It seems that round this way it will run on existing lines but join up in quite an intelligent way. So, if I ever need to go to Canada Water I could probably knock half an hour off the journey. That would have been useful three years ago when I had to audit schools in that area!

Car crash

The Evening Standard headline screams London Train Crash. Let's set aside that the crash happened in Evesham, and the London connection was merely its destination. It was, technically, a road traffic accident, caused by the careless driver of a road traffic vehicle. It is, in my opinion, no more newsworthy than the accident at my local junction on Saturday, caused, no doubt, by one car driver jumping an amber, or red, light and another anticipating the green. The air ambulance attended the scene.

The Standard also reports flood on the M25. Drivers 'accidentally' drove into it. Would that have been because they were travelling too fast to anticipate and avoid hazards?

You tell the story...

I opened my dictionary. The header read 'Blind man's bluff/bloodbath'.

I wondered how an innocent party game could have such tragic consequences.

Spelling mistakes

I used to be avery good speller. In fact, I am. If someone asks me how to spell a word, with the exception of just a few, I get it tright.

Typing is something entirely different. I've wruitten about htis before, but in the past couple if weeks I seem to have developed a whole new tic - leaving out while portions of words. For example, the post below this originally referred to 'wbsie' rather than wevsite.

You will, of course, have noticed a plethora of errors in this post. these are not deliberate - they just occur as a I try to type the right thing, but, annoting thought it is to read it, I'm leaving this entry llike this to illustrate just how bad my tryping is. Even though my actual spelling is good.

Thankfully, I have a little applet permanently on my task bar - spell-vbs which I ususually use before I post. I originally stole the idea from Owen

If your typing is like mine, and you don't currently have a spell checker, I would heartily recommend it.

It doesn't however, pick up on those ghastly mistaes, such as confusing you're/your and its/it's that I never used to make until I saw all those other peopel doing it and it seaped into my subsconscious.

Nor does it pick up that really embarrassing tic of using the entirely wrong word - saying /napoloeon when you want to say 'loaf of bread, please.'

My first, my last. my everything

Sad news - Singer Barry White dies

I was never really into him in the Seventies (my sister was, a bit) but in the 90s, when Ally McBeal was damn good telly, realised I liked him. I have the song on a free tape I got when I bought a mop. Whenever I hear the song I always think of John Cage psyching himself up in front of the mirror in the unisex.

We had unisex loos at Southwark Education. But as we also had single sex ones, I never used the unisex.

How not to be a phlogger

I had a meeting at our main HQ type building today. I took my rucksack over, to hold my notebook, and 'stuff', and in case I had documents to collect. After pondering for a while I decided to leave my camera in my rucksack. "If I don't bring it, I'll miss a wonderful photo op."

Surprisingly, the Fish and Parcels line train came immediately, so I decided to hang around outside the building smoking. The building is entered by a turning door, although there is a standard one that can be opened if necessary. I saw some chap holding open the standard door, clearly waiting for someone. I saw a Guide Dog appear and walk out the door, followed closely by the Secretary of State (obviously, I can't tell you who, because I would then reveal which Department I work for and that would be very naughty).

I was in a perfect position to get a photo. But my camera was in my rucksack.

Sigh.

The limits of the comments box

There is always a danger in leaving a comment on someone's site that they, or someone else, may see it as an attack on the siteowner, or on another commenter. Sometimes that fear censors me. Sometimes I want to express something, but am fearful it will come out as an attack. when it's not meant to be. Sometimes I disagree with what's been said. Or what I think is being thought. Today I decided to say it.

The trouble with someone else's comments box, perhaps a structural problem, is that at the same time as allowing some level of free speech, it also constrains it.

However, from time to time I will leave a comment about the way I think. The expression of it is not fully thought out, although I am entirely clear about the sentiments within, having been thinking - and honing - them for quarter of a century.

And then, sometimes, I think, I'll post the coment here, so that I don't forget it. Maybe one day I'll want to expand on it.

Here it is:

I never read debates on whether or not men should have children. (Obviously, there is no real parallel between women having children and men having children.) Have them, or not.

In my view someone who wishes to imbue their personal choice not to have children with a moral weight is no better and no worse than those who tries to make out to be morally superior bevause they chose to have children (or had them, anyway). Either you believe that the welfare state is there for "those according to need from those according to ability" or you believe "each for themself and tough if you can't afford it".

Because I chose to pursue a University degree, those people who chose not to were forced to subsidise it. When I need my hip replacing in thirty years time, I will expect people with healthy hips to subsidise it.

It's what happens in a Welfare State.

I also have a lot of pity for women who actually believe that their sole purpose in life is to produce and fail to bring up their kids. On the other hand, if women (or men) decide to take a career break, or do so for financial reasons, it doesn't make them lesser people, or better people.

I thought that one of the great objectives and partial achievements of feminism was destroying the notion that people should or shouldn't do certain things. Even if you don't agree with people's choices, as long as they're rational choices (and are legal, and don't harm others etc etc etc), just accept the choice. If you don't like it, get over it.

On Green Fairy

Dumbing down

I have an anathema to the media's desire to remove the science from medicine. During all the ridiculous hysteria about the MMR vaccine - a hysteria whipped up by people so stupid as not to understand that by keeping quiet they were more likely to protect their children by herd immunity - Crohns Disease became 'bowel disease'.

Now we have the Daily Bigot headline screaming something about taking eggs from aborted babbies. No, not eggs. Not babies. Follicles. Foetuses. I don't suppose the Daily Bigot has ever studied biology...

...actually, I never studied biology, but even I know that right now my ovaries are full of follicles. (That I know, I've seen them on a screen when I had penetrative scan). Maybe, in a couple of weeks, one, or possibly two or three will have ripened and matured into eggs. Girls are born with millions of follicles. Most of them wither and die. Less than a thousand become eggs.

I'm sure a few years ago it was regarded as unnatural and outrageous for women to be egg donors. Heck, I can remember when there were serious discussions on the TV about the ethics of heart transplants.

We'll get over the shock and revert back to wondering the latest OK-list celebrity is wearing.

Update In fairness to the BBC, they actually do mention words such as follicles in their Q&A