Does Dave still love Huawei?

Last month, we heard from PCPro

UK's loyalty set for £1.2bn Huawei reward

The UK economy is set to get a much needed boost on Tuesday when Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei announces an expected £1.2bn investment including hundreds of jobs.

The announcement, which is expected to be endorsed by prime minister David Cameron, will consist of a pledge to create at least 700 jobs in the country along with a direct investment of £600m in Huawei’s growing UK base.


Today, also according to PCPro

China's top telecoms equipment makers should be shut out of the US market because potential Chinese state influence on them poses a security threat, a US intelligence committee has recommended
.
US companies thinking about buying from Huawei should "find another vendor if you care about your intellectual property; if you care about your consumers' privacy and you care about the national security of the United States of America," panel chairman Mike Rogers said in comments broadcast late on Sunday on the CBS News program 60 Minutes.

Oops! I wonder if the UK and US don't see eye to eye on Huawei, or whether the US simply doesn't share the detail behind this kind of info.

Lucid rants

One of my favourite types of blog post is the lucid rant. It’s where a blogger seems to build up a head of steam and all of a sudden out comes a real, rasping snorter of a rant. Purple prose in full-on vituperation mode. I love it. Lucid, straight to the point, uninhibited and profoundly satisfying.

A good rant makes my day.

It’s not something I do myself, because I think to do it well you need the invective arts of Auberon Waugh and, let’s be honest here, a light sprinkling of well-placed f-words sometimes does no harm too.

Rants seem to be triggered when a particularly ludicrous bit of news floats to the surface. It's usually something to do with the scumbags we elected instead of a proper government. Something which makes you think:-

I wonder what (insert blog of choice) will make of that? Time to do the rounds.

When a particularly good bit of outrageous absurdity pops up, I sniff the internet air and off I go on the delicious scent of a really good rant, because there is always one to be found. 

In the old, pre-web days this was nigh on impossible, because where would you look? Okay there were always mildly cynical and sarcastic magazines such as Private Eye and possibly a few waspish journalists in mainstream print journalism, but it was all a little tame compared to the present.

Because I really do see a need for vituperation – a good solid dose of it is healthy and cathartic. If stupidity and cupidity had been vanquished then maybe things would be different. Maybe we could settle down and have a go at being civilized.

Maybe.

The Compleet Molesworth

As any fule kno, the gratest brane in the univers is n molesworth of st custards skool. When I saw his book priced at a meer thirty shillings I thort at least I'll hav a laff and a bit of philoserfy, hem hem.

A trap for dere santa

Conoisuers of prose and luvers of literature hem-hem may not see the geenius behind simple skool tales of peason gillibrand fotherington-tomas and meny other villans, but I repli so wot - its the deep thorts that count.

Wot thorts I hear you ask with a dredful leer. The thort that when I hav read n molesworths golden words and absorbd the wisdum of that deliteful chap I can giv the book away next time Im stuck for a burthday prez.

Child dies - lack of meat say experts

Cave Paintings in Zimbabwebetween 350,000 and 400,000 years old 

Okay, it was quite some time ago.
e! Science News reports on new evidence that our early human ancestors began eating meat much earlier than previously thought - at least 1.5 million years ago.

A fragment of a child's skull discovered at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania shows the oldest known evidence of anemia caused by a nutritional deficiency, reports a new paper published Oct. 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE. The discovery, made by a global team of researchers led by Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo from Complutense University, Madrid, suggests that early human ancestors began eating meat much earlier in history than previously believed. The skull fragment identified is thought to belong to a child somewhat younger than two and shows bone lesions that commonly result from a lack of B-vitamins in the diet.

Previous reports show that early hominids ate meat, but whether it was a regular part of their diet or only consumed sporadically was not certain. The authors suggest that the bone lesions present in this skull fragment provide support for the idea that meat-eating was common enough that not consuming it could lead to anemia.

Nutritional deficiencies such as anemia are most common at weaning, when children's diets change drastically. The authors suggest that the child may have died at a period when he or she was starting to eat solid foods lacking meat. Alternatively, if the child still depended on the mother's milk, the mother may have been nutritionally deficient for lack of meat.

Both cases imply that "early humans were hunters, and had a physiology adapted to regular meat consumption at least 1.5 million years ago," say the authors.

So this is essentially a story about a hominid child who died because either the child or mother didn't get enough meat. Whatever the health advice and the incessant nudging, we must surely be well adapted to meat by now - if it was so nutritionally valuable 1.5 million years ago.

Maybe there's a lesson here.

Recent reads

I don't do this often enough to recall even a fraction of the posts I've enjoyed recently, but here are a few that stuck in my leaky mind.

nourishingobscurity - the heart is not a pump. New to me and very interesting.

barnacle bill - cauliflowergate part 1 Health and safety madness on the high seas.
barnacle bill - cauliflowergate part 2

theylaughedatnoah - tyranny in name of freedom case history Horrifying wartime incident.

fountain.blogspot - mps thick-labour mps especially Yes, our MPs are as dim as they seem.

mark wadsworth nick clegg utter utter shit. It's in the title.

angusdei allandsundry cold cuts car crash bulls bollocks beer After the bull's bollocks beer, check out the bit about how many of us think parsnips grow on trees. Are we as thick as our MPs?

Dear Mr Cameron

With the Tory party conference almost upon us, I'm sure you have been casting around for the best way to present yourself and your style of what is sometimes termed leadership.

Unfortunately, we now know that you are a liar. I won't go into details, but I doubt if a single person in the entire UK believes your hints on an EU referendum. So if you are inclined to protest that liar is too strong a word, please allow me to disagree. It is not too strong a word. You know it, I know it, we all know it.

Perhaps if you were not speaking from the position of Prime Minister, then your evasions, dissimulation and shading of the truth would be merely regrettable. A reason perhaps for shunning you socially, as I’m sure some principled people do, although we never get to hear about that do we? We have your temporarily loyal staff and your powers of patronage to thank I suppose.

However, you are speaking to us as Prime Minister aren't you Mr Cameron? So your evasion, dissimulation and shading of the truth are more than merely regrettable, they are lies. They are lies because your intent is to deceive – to deceive us the electorate who unfortunately had some hand in electing you to high office. 

Not that we elected you directly, because even that was a somewhat shady game you played with the unelectable Liberal Democrats led by Mr Clegg, a man you probably neither like nor trust. However you did it though, you clawed your way into No 10 with his conditional and somewhat flexible support and there you are – lying to us.

All we ask is that you stop lying and stick to the truth, or at least as close to the truth as anyone may reasonably expect in these complex and difficult times. For that you would earn our respect you see. With respect you could achieve something. Not much I grant you, for you are clearly not a talented man or you would already have deduced this for yourself.

Yours

A K Haart

Jam rules

From the BBC we learn:-

Jumble sale jam makers could face new scrutiny - after it emerged they might have been flouting food hygiene rules.

Homemade preserves sold in fetes are often stored in sterilised used jars.

But a parishioner in the Diocese of Peterborough, which covers Northamptonshire and Rutland, was made aware of hygiene rules which state only new jars should be used.

Peterborough City Council, which has the power to enforce the rule, said it would be discussing the issue.

Jams can only be sold in used jars at special events and with local authority permission.

My parents were keen jam-makers, especially at this time of year when the fruit harvest comes in. They would never think of buying new jars though - we recycled in those days you see. However, in later years when they were getting on a bit, we were given a jar of jam with a label like this still stuck to the jar:-

For some reason we decided not to eat it.