Live in hope

+I often wonder who exactly comes up with daft ideas. Daft ideas can plague our lives from the parochial to the national and even international levels. It’s not just the people who have daft ideas that should worry us of course, but also the people around them who let stupidities pass without any checks or balances. They are equally to blame. Every so often a daft idea will be launched, will be promoted and eventually quietly dropped as its sheer daftness is revealed more often than not after a significant dip into the public purse has taken place. I think you probably know where this is going. The airport island in the Thames. The ’garden bridge’ over the same river. A bridge or tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland. A double decker bus in London that made people ill and never operated as promised. A false promise here (£350 million a week for the NHS) and a let-down there (levelling up).
 
Now we have an inquiry into whether Imperial measurements should be re-introduced. If that were to happen a lot of time will be wasted in the classrooms. Perhaps it won’t be long before we are asked to consider the return of pounds, shillings and pence. That wouldn’t perhaps go down too well with the Conservatives’ core demographic, who have long gotten used to a simpler metric system, and who may be shocked that you can’t today buy a Ladybird book for 2/6. Or 12½p (they’re about £6 now, I think). Who still thinks in ounces? What’s the point? Younger people will have little or no knowledge of such things. This ‘Imperial measurements review’ the government has set up is of course just a symbolic dead cat, a pathetic attempt to reclaim Britannia’s glory coupled with this weekend’s Ruritanian extravagances. I suppose in the end the best way to respond to this, short of revolution, is to marvel at the incompetence that has taken us to where we are today. That’s not such a daft idea.
 
+By the way, I wish all the best to Zenouska Mowatt. Who she? Well, in our strictly hierarchical society, she is 64th in line to the throne (the last name I could find online in the line of succession). I hope she gets to launch a few ships, although that’s a remote possibility in British shipyards these days. And of course there’s rather too many kind hearts and coronets to bump off beforehand.

+ I'm just catching up with the news. Congratulations to Euan Blair, son of Sir Tony and Lady Cherie on being awarded an MBE. You are the living proof of your father's oft repeated mantra that we should live in a society that offers equality of opportunity. Hurrah!