The Return of Lent

Due to Covid, and the various stresses of life, I have skipped Lent for the previous two years. Now that things seem to be settling a bit, I've decided that this year it is time to give it a go again.

Of course, the notion of Lent is that one should give something up, and that that something should necessarily hurt, at least a little - it is, after all, supposed to be a sacrifice. So a few years ago I concluded that the thing to give up was coffee. As of Wednesday, therefore, that will be cut for a few weeks.

Unless it turns out to be impossible to stick to that. But then, I managed to give up on Irn Bru for a good long time, so it should be okay. I think.

#9: "Sea Lord", by Bernard Cornwell

Funding Political Parties

The situation in Ukraine has caused questions to be raised once again about the funding of the Tory party - they have been in receipt of some millions of pounds that ultimately came from Russia. This donations are, of course, entirely legal, but they have caused at least some raised eyebrows. And, at a time when the UK really needs to take strong action against Russia, we really need to be confident that the party of government is empowered to do so.

So yet another aspect of our politics that needs to be cleaned up is the funding of our political parties.

My suggestion is pretty straightforward, and it is that political parties should have exactly two sources of funding, and it should be illegal for them to raise funds by any other means:

• They are permitted to charge a fee for membership of the party. They can set the price of this membership as they wish, but it must be a single, fixed annual fee for all - no concessionary memberships, no gold passes, etc, etc. Anyone on the relevant electoral register can choose to join a party... and only registered voters can join a party. (Oh, and only individuals could take out memberships on their own behalf - no "associate memberships" for being part of a given union, or whatever.)
• Additionally, after each general election parties should receive money from the public purse, with the amount received depending on the number of votes that they receive. (That is, for every vote cast they would be given £1, or whatever a suitable amount is.)

There would be a couple of effects of this. Firstly, it would cut out any suggestion of dodgy money getting into the coffers of political parties. Similarly, it would sharply reduce the influence of unions on parties, most notably the Labour party. It would prevent parties being heavily funded by bequests, which currently mean that dead members are more important to the Tory party than living ones. And it would prevent the raffling off of 'access' - pay some thousands and you too can play tennis with Boris, have lunch with Ruth, or whatever!

But, crucially, the funding by votes clause would have the effect of making every vote in an election matter - even if you live in a rock-solid safe seat, voting for some other party would be worthwhile as it means more funding for your party of choice.

(Additionally, it of course means that parties must then either work to maximise membership or to maximise the number of votes they receive, in order to be funded. Which is really no bad thing.)

Just my suggestion.

#8: "The Power of One", by Bryce Courtenay (a book from The List. Six to go.)

The Rings of Power

I watched the trailer for the new Amazon "Lord of the Rings" series about a week ago, and I'm afraid I was unimpressed. Basically, it looked like Fantasy Lands of Generica yet again... it was okay, but there wasn't really anything in it that grabbed me and said "you must watch this".

I guess that's inevitable - since they're not adapting any of Tolkien's actual stories, what is essentially left is a set of names and locations of varying levels of familiarity. But Middle Earth is so foundational to the whole of fantasy that without the big stories it is, more or less, Fantasy Lands of Generica.

Oh well. I'll inevitably watch it anyway, so I guess we'll see.

There are two things I would like to mention at this point, though.

Firstly, I have absolutely no issue whatsoever with the greater representation seen in the trailer. Bluntly, I don't much care - there are many people of colour who are fantastic actors, and so giving them a chance can only be a good thing. Middle Earth was soft-of kind-of a mythic history of Britain, but it's so far removed from any sort of real history as to make it nonsensical. Plus, elves and dwarves don't actually exist, so who is to say that the theoretical dwarves of ancient Britain weren't people of colour?

Then there is the issue of the dwarven princess who, shock horror!, doesn't have a beard. Much has been made of the 'fact' that this is at odds with Tolkien's writings on the subject. Just one small problem: last year the Tolkien estate published "The Nature of Middle Earth", a collection of writings by the man himself. That work had a chapter on 'Beards' (yes, really), which specified who did and did not have them, and in which Tolkien specifies that all male dwarves have beards. He doesn't say anything about female dwarves here, but if he specifies all male dwarves rather than all dwarves that must imply that at least some female dwarves don't have beards.

So our beardless female dwarf is, actually, not at all inconsistent with what J.R.R. Tolkien states on the subject. Oops.

(And, incidentally, what are inconsistent is Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn and David Wenham's Faramir - in "The Nature of Middle Earth" Tolkien specifies that those characters don't have beards.)

All that said, there's a larger point here: if you are truly opposed to the beardless female dwarf, or the people of colour playing elves and dwarves, based on some sort of purist's appreciation of the written works, then surely you must reject any and all of the adaptations of Middle Earth completely - all the movies, the play, the musical, the video games, the TTRPGs, Leonard Nimoy's musical genius... all of it. The truth is that none of it is entirely consistent with Tolkien's writings or his vision, so how can it be accepted.

Bottom line: it's an adaptation; things are going to be changed. What matters is whether those changes are trivial or fundamental, and whether the result is good or not.

#7: "The Looking Glass War", by John Le Carré

Day 50: Update on Goals

Today is the 50th day of the year, so it's time for the regular update:

• Books: By day 50 I should have read 8.22 books. At time of writing I've finished six, am halfway through another and two-thirds through yet another. So I'm about a book behind target, which isn't ideal but isn't terrible. I've also read one of the remaining books from The List, and most of another, so that's going well.
• Weight: I've made no progress on this goal.
• Blogging: By day 50 I should have written 16.44 posts here, so I'm right on target here. I've also actually written 8 posts on The Imaginarium, so I'm very happy here.
• Redecorating the Hallway: I haven't started on this, but that's not a problem - we're probably aiming to do this around Easter (or perhaps even later in the year), so I didn't expect to have anything to add.
• Super Secret Goal: I've made no progress on this goal. Indeed, I've discovered that it's nature, coupled with the general stresses of life, make it extremely difficult to progress. I'll need to think on that, as it's something I really need to resolve. (There's a little bit of hope that this might become unnecessary, but we'll see - I'll know by the next update.)

And that's that. I'm reasonably happy with progress to date, but will need to have done more by next time.

The Price of "King Charles"

In the least-shocking development in ages, Prince Andrew has settled his case in order to avoid court. Which means, legally, he has no stain on his honour, and can just carry on as before.

Yeah, right.

Here's the thing: the Royal Family have very significant wealth and holdings nominally in their own name, and they're also in receipt of very significant sums of money from the public, and have access to many homes and palaces that are nominally owned by the public. The claim is that the settlement, which is significant, is being paid from the former... though whether that money originally came from us via the Civil List is never going to be clear.

Well, fair enough. He's the queen's son, indeed her favourite son, so if she wants to bail him out with 'her' money, that's her prerogative as a mother.

But it's also not enough.

Nor is it enough that Andrew has been stripped of some of his ranks, titles, and honours.

Very simply, the public can no longer be expected to support Andrew in any way, shape, or form. He must now be stripped of all of his remaining ranks, titles, and honours (with the exception of those few minor awards he legitimately earned for his military service in the Falklands War). Additionally, he must lose access to all those properties that the Royal Family are permitted to use but which remain publicly-owned. Let him live the remainder of his life in obscurity, and as a private citizen.

If not, if the Royal Family cannot bear to excise the poison, then the Royal Family itself must also no longer be in receipt of public money, and they themselves must lose access to those public holdings.

If Charles wants to be King, Andrew must cease to be a Prince.

A Transfer Window for Managers

Aberdeen have been having a shockingly poor season, with the result that they have sacked their manager, Stephen Glass. As a consequence of this, there is the usual round of speculation about who will take over, with most of the names in the frame being managers of smaller teams. So it's likely that Aberdeen's sacking their manager will lead to them taking the manager from some other team, who will then poach a manager from a yet smaller team... and so it goes down the table.

The effect is that because Aberdeen's players can't get their act together, half a dozen teams have their seasons disrupted.

Similarly, a few years ago the then Celtic manager, Brendan Rodgers, accepted the offer of a job from Leicester City while the season was still in the balance. As it happened, it was Celtic's good fortune that Neil Lennon was currently out of work, or that could potentially have had a title-altering effect on that season.

And, of course, this season Steven Gerrard has moved from Rangers to Aston Villa. And, again, it is Rangers' very good fortune that Giovanni van Bronckhorst was out of work... though it remains to be seen what the effect on the title may be, if any.

What I'm coming to is this: a club's manager is massively important. Indeed, in all but the most extreme cases, the manager is a more important figure at the club than any single player (with perhaps half a dozen exceptions - Ronaldo, Messi, etc). Yet while we have a transfer window for players, limiting the ability of the big boys to disrupt an opponent's season by poaching talent, we have no such equivalent for managers.

I think it's needed - both to prevent the sort of cascading disruption we're about to see, but also to give managers a bit more job security.

The Notion of a Good Funeral

Funerals are unlikely to be happy affairs. (Or, at least, any funerals I'm likely ever to attend.) At best, they are a matter of saying farewell to a loved one at the end of a long life well lived - and if the person involved had been suffering prior to death, even that can be a blessing.

But a good funeral will generally give a sense of catharsis - it puts the seal on that life well lived, lets those present say their last goodbyes, and then you move forward.

My grandmother's funeral was not such an event. Indeed, it stood in massive contrast to my grandfather's funeral - both were fairly simple affairs, both had detailed plans that were followed to the letter... indeed, both had much the same detailed plan. But that served to make the differences so stark.

Unfortunately, it was an event marred by bitterness. The rifts in the extended family have now become irretrievable, and whereas before there was a need not to let grandma or grandad see the issues at work, that is no longer the case.

Such a shame that the very last gathering of the extended family should be of that character.

The GOAT

There are controversies and then there are CONTROVERSIES!, and today I'm going to be addressing one of the biggest. Forget Messi vs Ronaldo (Ronaldo), forget Federer vs Nadal (Fed), forget even Kirk vs Picard (Sisko). Today, we'll be addressing the burning topic of all topics: Hey Duggee or Bluey?

In all seriousness, CBeebies is twenty years old, and the Guardian have commissioned an article looking at some of the best programmes from the history of that channel. For anyone who is familiar with them, the top two are no surprise at all - the only real question was which would come on top of the heap.

For the uninitiated, Bluey is an Australian animation about a family of dogs - Bandit, Chilli, Bingo, and the titular Bluey. On the face of it, it's the usual anarchic "here's a situation, hijinks ensue" show we've seen a million times before... but what sets Bluey apart is the writing, which is just stellar. It's a children's show that I could happily watch myself.

On the other hand, Hey Duggee is an British animation about a dog (Duggee) who runs a day care facility for five children. Each episode the squirrels go on some adventure to collect a badge. And, again, it's set apart by the writing of the piece, and again it's something I could watch by myself. Indeed, until Bluey came along, my go-to opinion for just about any piece of entertainment was, "well, it's no Duggee... but then, what is?"

One thing to note is that part of the greatness of both of these shows is that they don't talk down to kids, as a great deal of children's entertainment does. Children obviously don't have the skills and experience of adults, and they haven't yet been inflicted with the decades of relentless cynicism that we've developed. But there's a big difference between that and being stupid, and a great deal of children's TV forgets this. Bluey and Duggee do not, and that is a real strength.

Honestly, my view with these things is that the need to pick an absolute winner is somewhat silly - in all the cases, there's no reason you can't acknowledge the excellence of both sides, and indeed be grateful that we live in a world with both - indeed, in most of the cases, each side has made the other better. So it doesn't really matter which is better - they're both good.

But... if I simply had to choose, Duggee wins it for me.

Multipacks

A couple of yeas ago, Tesco decided to do away with as much plastic packaging in their stores as they could. Amongst other things, this meant getting rid of packs of four tins of beans and/or soup, and instead running a permanent "four for..." offer. Which was a good step.

I've noticed that they've now brought back the packs of four, but now wrapped in cardboard, and at a cheaper price point than the "four for..." offer.

Which is a shame on two counts.

Firstly, while cardboard wrapping is better than plastic, it's still an extra bit of wrapping that gets used, and then recycled. That's considerably worse than nothing - it would just be better to leave these things unwrapped.

The other problem concerns the nature of the "four for..." deal in the first place, which ties into issues with poverty, and the Vimes "Boots" Theory of Economic Unfairness - people on the very poorest end of the scale can't afford to pay £2.50 for four tins of soup, and must instead pay 80p for a single tin each week. Over the course of four weeks, then, they pay £3.20 on the same soup - the (slightly) richer person ends up paying less. (And, yes, it's 'only' a matter of 17.5p per week. But multiply that by 52 weeks in the year, and however many different offers the richer person can use but the poorer cannot, not to mention the potential to "stock up" as and when very good deals happen to crop up, and it turns into a not insubstantial chunk of money.)

The upshot: Tesco, could you please get rid of these cardboard packages again? And could you also review whether these "four for..." deals are really appropriate - can you not instead reduce the unit price across the board?

#5: "The Wandering Fire", by Guy Gavriel Kay

#6: "Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master", by Michael E. Shea