Weymouth JournalWeymouth Journal

A man who was stopped for not wearing a seat belt discussed the matter with Sgt. Lee Savage, left, and Police Constable Graham Pinney on Thursday in Britain’s Dorset County.

The officers cautioned another Dorset driver against tailgating.

One after the other, the motorists were caught blatantly violating the law. One after the other, they tried to talk their way out of it with elaborate diversionary narratives.

Though he had been spotted exiting his driveway with no seat belt, the man in the Isuzu Trooper stated that he had unbuckled the belt just that instant, in preparation for entering a gas station. Though his cellphone registered an outgoing call, the man in the Mitsubishi L200 Animal claimed that he had merely answered the phone, almost as an afterthought, as he rounded a traffic circle. And the woman in the silver Vauxhall boldly asserted that she had left her BlackBerry at home and that anyone who observed her typing while driving was sorely mistaken.

Oops. “I’m sure your mum told you never to lie to a policeman,” said Sgt. Lee Savage, a traffic officer with the Dorset Police Department, casting doubt on her credibility by locating the BlackBerry — open to Facebook — on the passenger seat and fining her £60, about $90.

Special pleadings are not acceptable in the “No Excuse” initiative being run here in Dorset, a largely rural county on Britain’s south coast. The yearlong, $1.25 million project — a combination of advertising, education and increased police patrols — is an effort to reduce the number of accidents caused by driver inattention, a common problem across the car-driving world.

The New York Times - In Dorset County, inattentive drivers are being watched. 

violations include things like changing CDs, fiddling with the radio, folding maps, programming GPS navigation devices, dialing hands-free phones, looking for stray French fries in fast-food bags and steering with one’s elbows while pouring a cup of coffee.

I'd like to see that one: pouring coffee whilst steering with one's elbows.

The drivers caught that day tended to employ the “I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy” defense, admitting only to part of the misdeed. Stopped for making a call while driving to his job as a window repairman, a man in a dusty Vauxhall tried to claim in mitigation that he had just bought his phone and had not yet had time to activate his plan to install a hands-free system. His assertion was undercut by the obvious elderliness and grubbiness of the phone.

It gets better.


Mr. Smith, the road safety manager, said that the campaign’s name was a homage to motorists’ endless litany of fruitless rationalizations. “I was out about a year ago and we stopped a lady who had three children in the back of the car,” he related. “The officer said, ‘Why aren’t these children belted in?’ and she said, ‘They’re not my children.’ ”

Or worse.

Beckham Chiquito

Comprueba lo que pensaba
Manosean a Beckham en "partes nobles"
La conductora italiana Elena Di Cioccio se mostró muy decepcionada con la experiencia que vivió tras tocar los atributos del mediocampista inglés, al asegurar que el jugador del Milán lo tenía chiquito


La conductora italiana Elena Di Cioccio se burló de los atributos de David Beckham después de que tocó en un evento público (Foto: Imagen tomada del video)

Redacción
El Universal
Ciudad de México
Jueves 21 de enero de 2010 | 10:48



El mediocampista inglés David Beckham, quien en la actualidad milita en el Milan de Italia, se topó con una de las escenas más bochornosas de su vida, cuando de la nada la presentadora italiana Elena Di Cioccio decidió tocarle sus partes nobles durante un evento público.

Tras la curiosa escena, el cuerpo de seguridad que resguardaba al futbolista buscó someter a la controversial presentadora, sin embargo no se dejó reprimir e incluso se dio el lujo de seguir al esposo de Victoria Adams hasta su automóvil.

Al ser cuestionada del por qué de su accionar, la mujer argumentó que lo hizo porque quería comprobar que las imágenes que realizaba el ex Galaxy para Armani tenían retoque y que sus atributos no eran de la magnitud que todo el mundo creía, por lo que la única forma de desmentir al astro era tocando sus "partes nobles" y una vez que lo hizo, la conductora tuvo la facultad de confirmar lo que pensaba: David Beckham lo tiene chiquito.

Who is a Jew?

David Lightman with his daughter, who was denied admission to the Jews' Free School because her mother's conversion was not recognized. But a court ruling has voided the admissions policy.





LONDON — The questions before the judges in Courtroom No. 1 of Britain’s Supreme Court were as ancient and as complex as Judaism itself. Who is a Jew? And who gets to decide?

A judge?

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews’ Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London’s Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts.

Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority.

Publicly financed schools; imagine that happening in the US?

By many standards, the JFS applicant, identified in court papers as “M,” is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — nor was her son. It turned down his application. That would have been the end of it. But M’s family sued, saying that the school had discriminated against him. They lost, but the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal this summer.

In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.”

The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.

Interesting distinction.

The case’s importance was driven home by the sheer number of lawyers in the courtroom last week, representing not just M’s family and the school, but also the British government, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, the United Synagogue, the British Humanist Association and the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Lot of lawyers.

The case has stirred up long-simmering resentments among the leaders of different Jewish denominations, who, for starters, disagree vehemently on the definition of Jewishness. They also disagree on the issue of whether an Orthodox leader is entitled to speak for the entire community.

No one does. Jews have no Pope.

“Whatever happens in this case, there must be some resolution sorted out between different denominations,” Mr. Benjamin said in an interview. “That the community has failed to grasp this has had the very unfortunate result of having a judgment foisted on it by a civil court.”

Exactly.

Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school, saying that observance is no test of Jewishness, and that all that matters is whether one’s mother is Jewish. So little does observance matter, in fact, that “having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn’t make you less Jewish,” Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

Really? So what is the sense of, or use for, rules of orthodoxy? Why bother, if your mother is Jewish?

“How dare they question our beliefs and our Jewishness?” David Lightman, an observant Jewish father whose daughter was also denied a place at the school because it did not recognize her mother’s conversion, told reporters recently. “I find it offensive and very upsetting.”

Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism here, said the lower court’s ruling, if upheld, would help make Judaism more inclusive.

“JFS is a state-funded school where my grandfather taught, and it’s selecting applicants on the basis of religious politics,” he said in an interview. “The Orthodox definition of Jewish excludes 40 percent of the Jewish community in this country.”

Agent 00-something

Benito Mussolini was paid £100 a week by MI5 to keep Italy in the first world war. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

This is a good one.



Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini

Documents reveal Italian dictator got start in politics in 1917 with help of £100 weekly wage from MI5



History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce's CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.

Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.

For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.

Mussolini's payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5's man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.

Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."

Hoare, later to become Lord Templewood, mentioned the recruitment in memoirs in 1954, but Martland stumbled on details of the payments for the first time while scouring Hoare's papers.

As well as keeping the presses rolling at Il Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper he edited, Mussolini also told Hoare he would send Italian army veterans to beat up peace protesters in Milan, a dry run for his fascist blackshirt units.

"The last thing Britain wanted were pro-peace strikes bringing the factories in Milan to a halt. It was a lot of money to pay a man who was a journalist at the time, but compared to the £4m Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash," said Martland.

"I have no evidence to prove it, but I suspect that Mussolini, who was a noted womaniser, also spent a good deal of the money on his mistresses."

After the armistice, Mussolini began his rise to power, assisted by electoral fraud and blackshirt violence, establishing a fascist dictorship by the mid-1920s.

His colonial ambitions in Africa brought him into contact with his old paymaster again in 1935. Now the British foreign secretary, Hoare signed the Hoare-Laval pact, which gave Italy control over Abyssinia.

"There is no reason to believe the two men were friends, although Hoare did have an enduring love affair with Italy," said Martland, whose research is included in Christopher Andrew's history of MI5, Defence of the Realm, which was published last week.

The unpopularity of the Hoare-Laval pact in Britain forced Hoare to resign. Mussolini, meanwhile, built on his new colonial clout to ally with Hitler, entering the second world war in 1940, this time to fight against the allies.

Deposed following the allied invasion of Italy in 1943, Mussolini was killed with his mistress, Clara Petacci, by Italian partisans while fleeing Italy in an attempt to reach Switzerland two years later.

Martland said: "Mussolini ended his life hung upside down in Milan, but history has not been kind to Hoare either, condemned as an appeaser of fascism alongside Neville Chamberlain."

Factory Town Roots for Kraft in Candy Battle

a taste of Paine

Who was Paine? Depending on whom you ask, he was ­either an uncompromising free-thinker who made possible the popular embrace of the ­Declaration of Independence, or "a filthy little atheist," as Teddy Roosevelt once ­described him. A seditious subject of the English crown or an honorary French citizen chucked in the Bastille. Or just a fiercely American idealist with too much interest in brandy and democracy and not enough in fashion or personal hygiene.

The painting, a bust circa 1792 by Laurent Dabos of Toulouse, seems to have been lost until only a few years ago, when it surfaced in England. It's a flattering portrait, but—not surprisingly, perhaps—on the back of the canvas an anonymous hand appears to have scribbled something of an insult to Paine.

Paine had enormous power with words, Ms. Vickers says, "a power that he himself probably didn't understand. During the Revolutionary War, George Washington made sure Paine kept writing to rouse public sentiment and support. If Washington thought him ­important, we should, too."

Humble? Silvio?

The best political leader in Europe and the world

Silvio Berlusconi, on himself

First he complimented Barack Obama's "tan", then he played hide and seek with the German leader. He has even annoyed the Queen by being too loud.

Now Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has held up the start of a key Nato summit - by talking for too long on his mobile phone.

In his defence, Mr Berlusconi was talking to Turkey's prime minister in a bid to resolve a row at the summit.

But Germany's leader was kept waiting on the red carpet for several minutes.

Angela Merkel had just led Nato leaders from Germany across a bridge straddling the River Rhine to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy coming from Strasbourg on the French side.

Mr Berlusconi joined the group shortly afterwards.

Mrs Merkel looked bemused as the Italian's call dragged on and finally opted to start the event's opening ceremony without the Italian.

It emerged later that Mr Berlusconi had been speaking to his Turkish counterpart in Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an attempt to persuade Turkey to drop its opposition to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Nato's new chief.

In the event, Turkey did concede, with Mr Erdogan saying it had been swayed by US President Barack Obama's assurances.


What can possibly be added? SIlvio takes care of it all.

Mr Berlusconi's previous practical jokes at formal gatherings include making the Italian horned cuckold gesture behind a Spanish minister during a group photo of EU leaders in 2002.

The billionaire media mogul then sparked a minor diplomatic incident in 2005 by suggesting he had used "playboy tactics" to woo Finnish President Tarja Halonen in order to ensure her backing for Italy to host the European Food Safety Authority.

Protocol is abandoned as Michelle Obama cosies up to Queen

From the London Times, this story:

Protocol seems to be dispensed with when the Obamas come to town.

When the President and his wife, Michelle, attended a reception at Buckingham Palace, the First Lady and the Queen slipped their arms around each other towards the end of the evening.

It is usually a breach of protocol to touch the Queen. But as the two women stood side by side, chatting about their height difference, she put her hand on the back of Mrs Obama, who did the same for a few moments. Before she departed, Mrs Obama told the Queen: “I really enjoyed our meeting.”

Breaching Royal protocol has left visiting digintaries and statesmen in hot water in the past. When the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating put his arm around the Queen in 1992, he was branded the “Lizard of Oz”. When his successor, John Howard, was accused of doing the same, a spokesman insisted: “We firmly deny that there was any contact whatsoever.”

The warm conclusion to the Obamas' Royal meeting was matched by the rest of the US President's engagement, which was both informal and affectionate.

Mr Obama had earlier disclosed that the Queen was top of the list of things he likes about Britain, praising her “decency and civility” as important matters to people in the United States.

When they met last night, Mr Obama was heard to say to her: “Thank you so much for having us.”

Addressing the Duke of Edinburgh, he added: “It’s a wonderful honour,” and then described his day. “I had breakfast with the Prime Minister, I had meetings with the Chinese, the Russians and David Cameron,” he said.

Appearing to refer to his jetlag, he won laughter from his hosts as he added: “I’m proud to say I did not nod off in any of the meetings.”

The Duke laughed and asked: “Can you tell the difference between them?” The President waved a hand and joked: “It’s all a blur.”

The 20-minute meeting was held before the reception for world leaders in the Palace’s picture gallery.

The long room, with its arched roof, buzzed with conversation as the politicians, their aides and other members of their entourage chatted.

The Queen held court in the middle of the event, which despite the formality of the setting was designed to be informal. A large number of the Royal Family had joined them, including the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, Duke of York and Princess Beatrice.

At one point, the Queen chatted for a few moments with Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian leader, as a few inches away the French President Nicolas Sarkozy held an animated discussion, through an interpreter, with Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State.

The world leaders sipped white and red wine and champagne in front of Old Master paintings worth millions.

For those who wanted something to eat, minuscule canapes were served by catering staff. The selection included chicken with courgette on skewers, mini Cornish pasties, smoked quails’ eggs, foie gras and tiny rolls of duck filled with melon.

As the drinks reception drew to a close, the politicians were ushered into the Palace’s ornate Throne Room for a group photograph with the Queen to mark the occasion.

A Palace official told the dignitaries to pose for four frames. The Queen then made a quip that made the whole group laugh: “It has to be a happy photo,” she said.

Presents were exchanged between the Queen and Mr and Mrs Obama. The US President gave the Queen an iPod containing a video of her visit to Virginia, Washington, in 2007. In return, he received a silver-framed, signed photograph of the royal couple.

French City Cheers London Olympics

The Pas-de-Calais area hopes to draw Olympians training for the 2012 London Games. Above, a stadium in the city of Liévin.











When Frenchman Dominique Dupilet heard four years ago that Paris had lost its bid for the 2012 Olympics to London, he hoisted a British flag on the roof of his office in this northern French city.

Calais is the entry point for the Eurostar train that crosses La Manche (the English Channel) via the Chunnel.

"London 2012 is our economic-stimulus plan," says Mr. Dupilet. "This is the beginning of our development as a sporting home."

When we crossed to France on the Eurostar, I remember seeing many trucks (lorries) and a wind farm.

Calais, the area's biggest city, is selling itself as the European gateway to London; indeed, it was ruled by the English from the 14th through the 16th centuries. Had Paris won the Olympics, Calais would have faced competition from a host of French regions closer to the capital. But it's just an hour by undersea train from London, so Mr. Dupilet hopes to attract tourists and athletes before and during the Games.

Why would people go to Calais?

"London would rather lose money to other parts of the U.K. than see it go overseas," says Ken Kelling, spokesman for Visit London, a tourist organization in the capital. "I doubt they [Calais] can compete."

That's the English point of view. The French? Well, the view from Calais?

"Who wants to go to Birmingham?" retorts Mr. Dupilet. "In Pas-de-Calais the French lifestyle is better. And as for the food over there, well, forget it."

Pas-de-Calais's Dominique Dupilet hopes to draw Olympians training for the London Games. His department has earmarked a budget to refurbish sports venues.











A spokesman for Locog, the committee organizing the London Olympics, said last month that he hadn't heard of Pas-de-Calais' Games-related plans. Mr. Dupilet says that thus far he's been careful not to advertise too much, lest Calais attract unnecessary attention -- and perhaps more competition. The Frenchman says his goal isn't to steal London's thunder. "I am an Anglophile," smiles Mr. Dupilet. "We just want to help out."

The Tale of the Temeraire

Picture from a story in today's Wall Street Journal. HWPL owns a book Joseph Mallord William Turner, text by John Walker, which has the painting in a color plate.











In the late summer of 1838, H.M.S. Temeraire, a once-glorious remnant of the Battle of Trafalgar of 1805, was towed up the Thames to the wharf at Rotherhithe, to be broken up and sold for her fittings and oaken timbers. J.M.W. Turner's painting of the doomed ship's final passage, in which he summoned her illustrious past by rechristening her the "Fighting Temeraire," never left his possession and became part of his bequest to the nation after his death in 1851 at age 76. Enshrined in the National Gallery in London since 1856 and embodying a nostalgic nation's memory of an age when it ruled the waves, Turner's canvas remains among his best-known and best-loved works. Even today, as scholars debate the meaning of its ambiguous but deeply stirring imagery, "Fighting Temeraire" elicits a charged emotional response.

Picture gleaned from the Web.











Contrary to legend, we know that Turner did not witness the Temeraire's last journey up the Thames, and countless critics in his day and ours have enumerated the ways in which the painter plays fast and loose with the facts here. News accounts tell us, for example, that the ship had been dismasted before setting out for Rotherhithe. From a contemporary print we learn that Turner moved the smoking funnel far to the fore of his tug; and a chart of the Thames makes plain that the westward course of the voyage has the sun setting, incongruously here, in the east.

How bad is it?

This is one measure of the depth of the current recession: The Bank of England cuts its key rate by a half percentage point to 1.5%, the lowest level in the bank's 315-year history, marking the latest in global policy makers' efforts to fend off the threat of deep recession.

315 years is a very long time. 1929 was eighty years ago. 315 years ago it was 1694. England and Scotland unified 13 years later - and BOE's interest rate was higher than it is now.

Bank of England records show that from April 1719 until May 1822 -- a period that included the U.S. Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic wars -- rates held steady at 5%. As Britain joined World War War I in early August 1914, on the other hand, U.K. rates fell sharply, from 10% to 5% in a week.

Locomotive as Artistic Inspiration

No application of the harnessing of steam power rattled the status quo so much as the steam-powered locomotive. With each improvement, its speed and reach shattered limits of space and time. Millions of acres of wilderness were cleared for hundreds of railway lines. Timetables enslaved travelers to the clock as never before. (By 1883 American railroads had divided the country into four time zones, decades before the government made the concept official.) Stations and railroad cars forced people together even as they reinforced their division into classes.

Slide show.

G. Caillebotte - Le pont de l'Europe









Caillebotte - Landscape With Railroad Cutting
Edouard Manet - The Railway (The Gare Saint Lazare)," in which a seated governess looks up from her book to study us while a young girl in her care gazes through iron bars at a Parisian rail yard."

Thomas Talbot Bury: Coloured Views on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway









John Cooke Bourne - View of a steam locomotive crossing the Knaresborough viaduct, in Yorkshire.


O. Winston Link - "Hot Shot Eastbound at the Iaeger Drive In, Iaeger, West Virginia, 1956"

Peter Brookes satire

Took me a couple of moments to make out that the strings are nooses.












Ah, to make fun of the French. So easy.

English Border Town Yearns to Return to Scotland

For centuries before the U.K existed, the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed changed hands 13 times in wars between the English and the Scots. The town ended up in English hands in 1482 and has stayed since.

We in the US don't know anything of the sort.

But today, the walled town on England's windy northeast coast wants to be Scottish once more. Local calls to move the border between England and Scotland 2.5 miles to push Berwick into Scotland are being helped by the resurgent Scottish National Party, which is winning voters from Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party. It is yet another problem for Mr. Brown, whose popularity is at record lows.

Seems Gordie caught the downside of the Labour Party's stay in office.

Local boundaries are redrawn frequently in the U.K. In 1999, the U.K. Parliament tilted a maritime boundary line northward from Berwick to give England about 6,000 square miles of once-Scottish North Sea waters. The move was seen in Scotland as an attempt by London to secure potential oil and gas revenues if Scotland moved for full independence.

We have gerrymandering in the US. But our memories are not as long as this: "Twempies have never quite forgiven the Scots for insisting that Tweedmouth Castle be pulled down in the early 13th century," says Chris Green, the curator of the local museum.

13th century? 800 years.

Commons

I just find it fascinating. The guy with the wig, the books, the scepter, and that box, all symbols of Parliament.

Stonehenge Used as Cemetery From the Beginning

Ken Geiger/AFP-Getty Images

New discoveries shed light on the original purpose of the Stonehenge monument.

White Cliffs of Dover

A ferry near the cliffs of Dover

Musn't grumble

Reading the book, Mustn't Grumble - an accidental return to England, by Joe Bennett. Enjoying it much.

On page 50 he mentions Sohrab and Rustum. I've no idea what that is; so, google it. 1st hit is from University of Newcastle (New South Wales, Australia), something called Whitewolf. Person whose name appears in site information is Russell Tayler, whom I found in the University's staff directory.

The work (poem?) Sohrab and Rustum was written by Matthew Arnold, 1822 - 1888.

Bagehot's Lessons for the Fed

An interesting economic analysis and history lesson. This chap Bagehot, whom I have never heard of, analyzed foreign and domestic "drains" on the English economy in 1873. His proposed solution for the economic malady of capital flight and the seizing of internal markets was to raise interest rates and to make liquidity available.

It is amazing how remarkably similar the conditions Bagehot described are to today's economic conditions in the US. Now, I have no idea whatever how Bagehot is looked upon by people other than the piece which appeared in today's WSJ. Perhaps other consider him a quack, a minor-league thinker, a nobody. I don't know. I do know I have never encountered the name before. And what I read is fascinating.

Free Love

Red Ken has been around:Ken Livingstone has five children by three women

Mayor of London says he has two daughters by one woman and a son by another, as well as two children with his partner

• April Fool? Livingstone video risks Labour rift

• Red Box blog: watch the video here