Original Thinkers of Our Times

[liadnan]

The Today programme this morning had several slots on various aspects of the obesity report put out yesterday, the very last item being Norman Tebbit and Boris Johnston, not that I could quite understand why (I was in the whosershower when they started).

According to Uncle Norm, the rise in obesity is due to this government "doing everything it can to encourage buggery".

Que? Something about destruction of the family it seems.

Cue Humphries effectively telling him to shut up and Boris coming out with some polite variant on "what a load of rubbish". Oh, and then he started banging on about how it used to be possible to bring up families on one income so the woman (obvs) could stay at home, but mercifully the beeps came. Honestly, why do we give these loonies airtime? And why does anyone care? Same goes for Princess Michael of Kent. Why does anyone care? One can usually get even fairly devout royalists to admit that she's particularly stupid, ignorant, arrogant and unpleasant so why the surprise? The only question is why Her Lizzyness allows a relatively third-rate royal who by all accounts she personally dislikes; with a cloud over her re use of grace and favour apartments and a habit worst than Philip's of opening her mouth before engaging what it pleases her to call a brain; to do these junkets at all.

Heigh ho. Been fairly busy, went to see Almodovar's Bad Education with Anna-who-lives-upstairs Tuesday (worth seeing, full of Almodovar's usual things, perhaps not his best though) and dinner with the lovely Frankie last night.

Was coming out of the Winding-Up court yesterday morning in full get-up and a very cute member of a party of American tourists/exchange lawyers/whatever who were wandering through the costume exhibition evidently thought I looked great. Remind me to see if I can change my vote in the internal survey on court dress to keeping wig and gown... (though it would be better if we came out of mourning for Queen Anne (? I think) and went back to red robes).

Comments

[booklectica]

The odd thing about Princess Michael is that she apparently told that group of black Americans they should 'go back to the colonies'. What can she mean? We have, like, one tiny colony left! There isn't room!

[joffstar.livejournal.com]

Nobody does care, which is why people like Tebbit become specious rent-a-quotes. Chances are he doesn't believe what he's saying any more, let alone anyone else...

And as for Princess Michael of Kent, I'd imagine she falls neatly into the very small yet funky ven diagram space for both 'people who are royal' and 'people who will come on Today'. Remember, in broadcasting people being stupid is a Very Good Thing. Because with any luck it provokes a reaction.

Anyway, you have to come to my party on June 19th! You don't have to sing though. But you can if you want.

[liadnan]

Nah, she wasn't on Today, was this thing in NYC.

Am coming to your party of course.

[joffstar.livejournal.com]

Well, there is a space for a bungalow just south of Adamstown on Pitcairn Island in the pacific. No, wait, it's gone.

PS If I were them, I'd change the name to the PitCairn Island. Embedded capitals are the way forward.

PPS Or just 'The Colonies', if only because it sounds like a holiday home that way.

PPPS Can you imagine if the government really did do everything it could to encourage buggery? Blimey.

[joffstar.livejournal.com]

Good o!

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Oh, and then he started banging on about how it used to be possible to bring up families on one income so the woman (obvs) could stay at home.

Well, so it did (and not just for middle-class people, either - my grandfather, a bricklayer, promised my grandmother when they got married that she would never have to work again, and she never did). It's not clear to me whether that was because people accepted a lower standard of living, though, or whether average/median earnings really haven't kept pace with inflation. Certainly my grandparents managed to have a second home, hobbies and, latterly, an annual holiday abroad, so their standard of living wasn't at all bad. I think it should be possible for more people to have a one-earner household and still have a decent standard of living, and I do worry that an increasing prevalence of double-income nuclear families may be having a deflationary effect on wages and therefore making the choice to be a single-income family more difficult. I don't have the economic data or training to know if my worry is borne out by the facts, though.

[etherealfionna.livejournal.com]

I've been pondering about how an increase in buggery (assuming he meant between men, if he meant anal heterosexual sex I'm stumped) could lead to obesity, and I think I have it figured out.

Help! Get me out of this mad headspace! I don't *want* to understand what he meant!

[liadnan]

Standard of living, I think.

[liadnan]

Do tell?

(I think he really meant homosexuality---> collapse of traditional society--->collapse of family life---> people eat crap.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Can you imagine if the government really did do everything it could to encourage buggery?

Utopia!

[etherealfionna.livejournal.com]

Basically, but like this:

homosexuality --> men without women to cook them dinner --> men eat crap --> men get fat

There's also:
homosexuality --> women without men to marry (cos they're all shacked up with other men) --> women going out to work --> women not having time to cook their own dinners --> women get fat

[etherealfionna.livejournal.com]

I agree. "Good standard of living" these days includes a whole heap of hardware that just wasn't necessary before: TVs, video players, cars, DVDs, CDs. Plus, these days we pay others to do a lot of things that we could do ourselves much cheaper.

I'm not complaining or harking back to simpler times, just saving money at the moment and realising how much of what I spend is actually unnecessary.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

homosexuality --> men without women to cook them dinner --> men eat crap --> men get fat

Is this you or you channelling Tebbit?

Besides everyone knows:

marriage --> men and women get fat

[etherealfionna.livejournal.com]

Is this you or you channelling Tebbit?

Oh, come on.

[eccles.livejournal.com]

Is "channelling Tebbit" a euphemism for buggery?

[liadnan]

and, deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Administrative Affairs, a plan began to hatch...

[beingfrank.livejournal.com]

If it isn't, it should be.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it's too confusing! I meant, do you know something about Mrs. Tebbit's cooking that we don't? Either way I wouldn't want to have dinner chez Tebbit.

[liadnan]

To be fair I think Mrs Tebbit is off-limits really. The only good thing one can really say for Tebbit is that he put his career a poor second to caring for her after the Brighton bomb.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

No one tells me what's off limits, especially not someone who gets in a whoser. However I am utterly perplexed and can no longer see how I got here from my destination and I will now shut up. But not without first blaming Fionna.

[etherealfionna.livejournal.com]

I thankfully know as little about Mrs Tebbit's cooking as the rest of you. But I can't really picture them scoffing fish and chips whilst watching Eastenders, can you? I see them at either end of the dining table eating meat and two veg and potatoes every night, before going out for a constitutional stroll about the garden.

And only then the buggery.

[liadnan]

I thought that typo was too funny to delete outright. Partcularly since it was more or less more accurate than the other.

Arguments with you often seem to leave me looking in perplexity at the metaphorical roadmap, but it's more traditional to blame you for everything than it is Fionna, whether or not you were actually involved. You know this.

[liadnan]

This comments thread has become a train wreck.

[etherealfionna.livejournal.com]

It's Martin's fault.

[etherealfionna.livejournal.com]

deep in the bowels
Nice pun, by the way.

[liadnan]

Thank you. Glad someone noticed.

[deililly.livejournal.com]

I love your lj.

[eccles.livejournal.com]

Oh I thought it was just a "Yes, Minister" reference.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Only thing I could find on Google was a report by the Government actuary which said that average earnings had "historically" (no indication of what period that means) grown by 1% - 2% p.a. above the RPI. A disproportionate amount of the overall increase was post-1990, though. I think that the median would actually be more indicative in this case, too, and then there's the problem that the "basket" for the RPI changes regularly, and changes in taxation and such.

[liadnan]

That too.

[liadnan]

I suspect it's an almost impossible question to answer properly.

And see http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/002730.html for an example of a similar problem.

[liadnan]

Thankyou. Personally I think it should be declared an Official Disaster Area by the UN.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Thanks!