Comments on: A name to watch for …

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:54:49 +0000

The abuse scandal; NSPCC figures continue to quote 1 in four children are abused in the UK annually. The bulk I’d guess are associated with care homes and in cases where the parents have significant social problems such as alcohol and other drugs, but in general there is probably no reason to assume it is much better elsewhere in the world. Peer abuse by siblings and bullies within care homes and schools accounts for another chunk before the sexual issues of mulitply-offending individuals appear in the mix, but getting a breakdown of such data tends to be harder. Getting data on the ‘why’ is harder still – it is almost as if the budget-setters already have a fair idea and don’t want to reveal the answers a large scale study would be likely to throw up.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:48:17 +0000

The half-million passengers, mostly to Moscow begs the question as to how many were multiple trips by the same passengers and for what purpose.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:43:35 +0000

…and how prescient another part of this Nov 2001 broadcast seems today:

At the moment it seems inconceivable that the president can maintain or legally sustain his executive order to deny non-citizens a jury trial and commit them to secret military tribunals.

The president, I suspect, may well come to envy and to echo the unforgotten Fiorello La Guardia – the bounciest, most ruthless, of New York’s reform mayors.

“I seldom,” said Mayor La Guardia, “I seldom make a mistake but when I do it’s a beaut.”

Truly a master!

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:41:46 +0000

That’s magnificent! Thanks so much!

(I had remembered several details incorrectly, but the gist was OK. What a marvellous man – I shall spin a deliberate digression about him next time I’m giving a talk at a conference.)

By: ian

ian — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 07:06:30 +0000

I love a challenge … Try this :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00sx6g8/features/transcript

The guy’s name was Kenneth Hale …

By: Guest

Guest — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 06:55:31 +0000

My father used to listen to Alistair Cooke on the radio in the car. I remember that when I was small I found his slow delivery boring, but as I got older I began to regard him as a master of the medium. Do you remember one episode when he talked about a man with a gift for learning languages, who had just passed away? It was roughly along the lines of: he had little formal education and had a nondescript job but could speak 50+ languages. Dutch he found the hardest, which took him all of 2 weeks to learn. It took him 20 minutes to make himself understood in one of the Pacific island languages that very few people speak, and could hold a proper conversation after a couple of hours. Well, perhaps I have some of the numbers wrong, but that was the gist.

I have searched for a transcript of this on the internet several times, but to no avail. At this point, I’d be happy if a fellow fan at least remembered hearing this!