My Dad

If you want to know your future, it is often a good guide to see what your parents are up to. I have added my dad to the list of blogfriends. He likes to run up and down hills, and tries to organise others into doing the same on his car share webpage.

Sometimes I'm not quite sure what he's up to, but it sounds like fun, and over rough ground he's too fast for the police anyway:

This week's News.

Labrador Tea Plants. We all know about Mike's original mystery Tea Plant, placed at Outer Edge.

He permanently rues the fact that England's hills are too small, and is off to Austria to run up a mountain this weekend. It looks quite a testing route, but I think that he can at least take the cable car back down.

Democracy in action

On the 23rd of June last year there was a most hotly contested election for a seat in the british parliament. The election was contested by a select bunch of 26 Lords, Viscounts, Earls and Dukes, and the leading candidates were Viscount Montgomery of Alemain (son of the bloke who saw off Rommel in Egypt) and the Earl of Effingham (a descendant of the bloke who crushed a rebellion by Thomas Wyatt the younger against Mary I in 1544). The electorate consisted of 28 assorted noblemen and women, who chose Viscount Montgomery.

Viscount Montgomery now sits in the House of Lords, the second chamber of the British Parliament. Any law passed by the House of Commons must be approved by the Lords before it comes into effect. The House of Lords consisted for many years of a combination of leading religious figures (archbishops and the like), life peers, and hereditary peers. The special thing about a hereditary peerage is that it is passed on when the holder dies. Thus there had been Effinghams in the house for five centuries, and when one Earl died his son took his title and seat.

This all changed in 1999, when the labour party realised that there was a slight imbalance. Because hereditary peers are pretty much immortal there were lots of them (759 to be precise). And as they tended to be rich and live in big houses, they alomost always voted for the conservatives. Trying to correct this imbalance, the labour government pushed through an act to reduce the number to 92, to represent the interests of the 759. This drastic cull still leaves them with a fair proportion of the 713 current peers, and they still tend to vote conservative, but it is a slight improvement.

If one of the 92 dies, then they are replaced not necessarily by their son, but by any hereditary nobleman. This means that elections must take place, with the electorate being those hereditary peers who are already in the House of Lords who support the party of the deceased.

WM

You may well have noticed that a certain football tournament is underway. Due to a combination of this and the erlangen beer festival I have been rather slow in updating this blog. Since the last update I went for a bicycle ride, drank lots of beer and watched lots of football, so everything is alright.

Even the usually xenophobic drunken English fans have turned into weltbuergerlicher drunken English fans. I quote from that bastion of reasonable thought and openness, the british tabloid: "The Sun".

Basking — like England — in the middle of a heatwave, Germany is heaven for footie followers now.

Huddersfield fan Paul Braithwaite, 39, who is sharing a VW camper van with two mates, said: “Everyone is drinking loads but behaving. The Germans have been laid back and the policing is low-profile. Right now, there is no better place on Earth.”

A small contribution to anglo-german friendship

What better way to improve the relations between england and germany than a charity football match with ex stars (Paul Gascoigne, Lothar Mattheus, Thomas Haessler, John Barnes), pop stars (Herbert Groenemeyer), other sporting figures (Boris Becker) and the right honourable member of parliament for Henley, Boris Johnson?

You may think that such a game would be a timid affair, with lots of pussy-footing around and no hard tackling. You would be wrong. Take a look at this video with the floppy-haired Boris Johnson in the starring role!

There is also a description of the match in the Daily Telegraph.

The blood donor

I overheard a very interesting conversation in the changing room of the local swimming pool. A father was explaining to his young son the process of donating blood. As a good father (the kind who takes his kid swimming etc.) he was keen to impress how useful it could be, and how it could help seriously ill people. Then came the following line from the eight-year old:

"wouldn't it be funny if you were in hospital and got your own blood back!"

Of course he said this in German, but those were the sentiments. But why the hell am I writing about this, you ask? And why was I hanging around changing rooms listening to what pre-pubescent boys say? Well the point is that this little boy had just re-invented the climax of what many people in England consider to be the greatest half-hour of TV comedy ever made, without even trying. People, professional comedians, sit around for hours trying to come up with funny ideas and in Germany they usually fail miserably.

So the next time someone tells you that Germans don't have a sense of humour, the correct reply is that they have it removed at the age of 12 or so.