Choo-Choo - Silly Season continues.

I was reading the obituary of Sir Antony Jay, masterly creator of Yes, Minister this morning


It made me think this morning that the really challenge of any comedy is to make it funnier than real life, or at least appear so.


Following  Yes Minister we had 20 years later the brilliant The Thick of It - reflecting the coarsening tone of public discourse and also the hectic madness of a 24 hour news cycle.


But yesterday we have a brilliant show, one of the world's best PR experts in Richard Branson against one of the world's worst, in Jeremy Corbyn. For anyone else, pictures of him walking past empty seats to made a little film about packed trains would be a resigning issue - after all it suggests complete lack of judgement and nous.


Oddly though, his opponent is in fact we find a comedic character, Owen Smith, who is actually worse as a public performer than Corbyn. Not as bad, or so, but actually worse. For example today, he passionately said he is opposed to Brexit and will make Labour do everything possible to stop it. Then, having besmirched democracy he calls Jeremy Corbyn a lunatic whilst on stage.


I mean, FFS, how can you do this? How can you be so bad. Literally, a man off the street could put in a better performance than either of these two.


Jim Hacker is a titan by comparison.

Simple solutions to complex problems: Part II - Melting polar ice caps

There was some resistance when I attempted to persuade readers to embrace non-EU immigration and solve the current African migrant crisis. I realise that solving long term population shifts was probably a tad ambitious. 
So this week, in the Quango Lectures, I shall attempt to try and solve something far simpler.

Global Warming.

On this global warming site - www.underground {not affiliated to the tube drivers union} there is deep concern over the melting of the polar ice caps.

Impacts of Disappearing Sea Ice

Arctic sea ice is an important component of the global climate system. The polar ice caps help to regulate global temperature by reflecting sunlight back into space. White snow and ice at the poles reflects sunlight, but dark ocean absorbs it. Replacing bright sea ice with dark ocean is a recipe for more and faster global warming.

The Problem 
- Melting ice in the arctic reduces the white reflective area that returns sunlight to space.
 About 4.5 million kilometers is the area that is reported to have been lost between max and min ice shelf extent.

The Requirements
- There are some 100 million homes in Northern Europe and the Northern USA. The average house size in the US is 200 sqm. Canada 180sqm and UK 75 sqm. The UK has the smallest house sizes in EU so that gives us a good median EU/North American Home size of around 150sqm/home.
That gives us around 15000 sq km of roof area. Much more than we really need.

The Solution
- Introduce legislation to have all roof area in Northern Europe/North America painted white.
This permanent white will reflect the sunlight lost in the arctic and Greenland regions from melting ice and so prevent accelerated global warming caused by ice loss. It may even prevent the ice loss in the first place.

* The cost of initially painting or white covering all the roofs can be met by a temporary reduction in local domestic and business taxation. Council tax payment in the UK, for example, could be offset by by having the work completed. Or governments could use some of the money earmarked for Green energy subsidy instead. Either way the 100 million roofing works will generate significant VAT and sales tax receipts and a completion date of 2030 would ensure
Industry and employment will benefit from the initial works that need to be carried out. And the the design, manufacture and continuing research of reflective white, self-cleaning, slate and tiling for use in construction.

Quite tempting to pay £3 to elect Corbyn...

The height of the silly season approaches. Perhaps this year we thought it would all be about Germans getting lynched on Greek holidays or vice versa.

Instead we are treated to Grade A* charade of a leadership election by the Labour party. The candidates appear to be the wife of someone who would have been OK, a token northerner who can wear a suit, a muesli eating character straight out of Viz and an earnest handwringer whispering against the gale.

It's brilliant fun, I was a bit sad when UKIP had their 'Farage Farrago' but by comparison they handled it like a grown up bunch of adults.

But would it be right to waste £3 on the Labour election? Whilst I was not that interested a week ago the writings of the likes of Lord Finklestein and Matthew Parris are normally a good sign of what to do - i.e. the opposite. They are very keen on trying not to stir up the far left.

However, the far left are well stirred up, there is this thing called the Scottish Nationalist Party and they show no signs of giving up and going home for a hot toddy.

So they are wrong, as always.

But can Jeremy Corbyn win, are the early 1980's back in fashion to that extent - its quite likely, more so than the 1990's being back in fashion as it is too soon for that.

What would a Corbyn win mean, well for me it would mean a lot of very easy blog posts for a few years. For UKIP it would mean a lot of very easy votes to sweep up and for the Country, not much as the Tories are the Government anyway for the foreseeable.

Should I waste £3. Given I am not a member of any party currently, joining Labour is not even morally dishonest - people have lots of varied reasons to join political parties after all......

Working with famous people

 

Weekend Fun.

Well, not really the actual famous people. Here at BQ Towers we have a Mega Famous pop Star , a 70s sitcom icon and a Ronnie Corbett character from the 80s. 
Long service account manager Michael Jackson. Processor, Penelope Keith. And driver Timothy Lumsden.
{Mike, Penny and Tim as they prefer to be known.}
Leslie Phillips left a while back. {he was called Desmond, for reasons I can no longer remember, but might have been that barber sitcom.}

But, new recruit Michael Caine starts Monday. BQ Industries only employ world class talent.

Thinking back I have worked with a Terri Christian, Diana Spencer and a Paul Young.
Mrs Q knows a Philip Green and a Daisy Cheyne.

Anyone else have any colleague, school or family 'famous' names they have lived/worked with?