the corner office

Ignoring the sad content of the story, I often find myself wondering why the BBC (amongst others) has to quote everything:

The family of a British man executed in China for drug smuggling has expressed "outrage and shock" at the legal proceedings that resulted in his death.

Why put "outrage and shock" in quotes? Presumably the family said something along the lines of "we wish to express our outrage and shock," or "we're outraged and shocked," both cases in which the BBC could fairly say that the family expressed their outrage and shock, no quotes needed.

One more:

In a statement, his family said China's officials had "made a mockery of appeals for clemency" and ignored pleas for a mental health assessment.

If the family made the statement, then one can safely assert that the family said that China's officials made a mockery of appeals for clemency. Again, why the quotes?

It's as if the BBC is resorting to quotes to suggest that someone really-really did say something that they (the BBC) are too scared to come right out and say was said, either for fear of disbelief or fear of being perceived as being supportive of the comments. Either way, the only term I can think of to describe the quoting is... chickenshittish.

Nearly 5 years ago I wrote a blog post about Kula Shaker, a psychedelic Britpop band who'd disappeared into the ether, leaving a trail of forgotten and neglected 90s-era fan websites.

As it turns out, they'd secretly gotten back together around the time I wrote that post, surfaced in 2006 and released a new album in 2007 called Strangefolk. And I got it for Krismis, and give or take a dodgy track or two, it's pretty damned good, if retro-esque psychedelic rock does it for you (as it does for me).

Back in South Africa, a public holiday on a Saturday means sorry-for-youuu, you don't get the Monday off. I'd never thought much about it UK-wise and since Boxing Day was on Saturday, I had it in my mind that I'd be off to work today. Thankfully we had family around yesterday and someone mentioned 'the bank holiday tomorrow', else I'd have felt like a right nana pitching up at the office this morning.

Food to excess, beer to a lesser extent so, and lots of TV, much lousy but some not (rounded off with the excellent Hogfather). In short, a good Christmas day. Hope yours was the same.

Recession my arse. The supermarkets are packed with people filling their trolleys. Having done a grand tour of them this evening, I learned that some of the things which for some reason are real big sellers in the run-up to Christmas include:

• dishwasher salt
• thai sweet chilli crackers
• lindor chocolate balls

I know this because these things were on my shopping list as well, and they were sold out 3 of the largest supermarkets around us. Wtf?

This came up in a discussion with a colleague today and I thought I'd store the link for posterity. This little bit of info, quoted from 2007 parliamentary proceedings, (and links to source data via, for example, here) is an interesting statistic:

In this financial year, the top 1 per cent of earners — those with a pre-tax income of £117,000 — will pay 22 per cent of all income tax. The top 5 per cent will pay 41 per cent, and the top 10 per cent will pay 52 per cent of all income tax gathered.

The moral of the story being that if too many of those top earners decided they'd had enough of the UK and buggered off, it would leave a disproportionely large hole for the rest of us to fill.

A Times columnist parrots the usual line:

Iceland was brought down by its bankers. Britain came dangerously close

And a while ago, another view of what sent Iceland over the brink, also from the Times:

Brown's response? To seize the UK assets, not of the bank that ran Icesave, but of a wholly unrelated bank, Kaupthing, thereby collapsing it. Icelanders, who had been expecting to negotiate a guarantee to British depositors - eventually agreed on Monday - were stunned. They couldn't bring themselves to believe that the leader of a country they admired would destroy their last solvent bank simply to give himself what Labour MPs have since called "his Falklands moment".

You can say it's raining hard, but it feels wrong to say it's snowing hard, because even though it's bucketing down outside, it's completely silent apart from the wind howling a bit.

Back in Feb this year when we had the really heavy snow, it was said to be the worst in 20-odd years, and thus statistically unlikely to be repeated any time soon. Less than a year later, and before Christmas nogal, and we're in for more of the same.

Which is to say, I think there's a non-zero chance that the trains will be out of action tomorrow.

Update: well, woke up this morning and it wasn't much snow as in February, but a decent layer in our neck of the woods nonetheless. Getting into work wasn't too bad, but by this evening the rail services had descended into chaos.

My missus sent me this gem:

Don't be me, don't be stupid, don't get drunk and stand in the middle of the road and flash anyone because it hurts when you get hit.

Flasher hit by distracted driver

I wouldn't spend money on either of 'em, but it is a laugh to see a band like Rage Against the Machine putting in a noble effort against X-Factor wotsisname's single in the online charts. But nobody is laughing more than Sony BMG, which is the record label behind both artists.