Tennis football and football tennis
Watching a bit of Wimbledon, with some matches lasting forever and others finishing almost immediately, made me think about the difference between tennis and football.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to design a variant of tennis that was more like football, and vice versa? To be specific:
Football tennis: Basically tennis, but a match lasts 90 minutes. During those 90 minutes, as many games (the 15-30-40 things) as can be fitted in are played. If a game ends with no points to the opponent, the player gets a point. In this way, a match should end up with a score more like football (such as 5–2), and it would be possible to get one or two points just before the finish to change the expected result.
Tennis football: Basically football, but a match is divided into sets. To make it easier to score a goal, the goalkeepers are eliminated. To win a set, a team has to get at least six goals, and two more than the other team. The first team to win two sets wins the match. In this way, a match is never decided until the very last moment, but it might theoretically last forever if the teams are evenly matched.
Would these new games be more popular that the original ones, I wonder?
Lancashire Lad peas
This year I had time to order seeds from the Heritage Seed Library.
I got various tomatoes and other stuff for the greenhouse, and then some peas called Lancashire Lad.
I didn’t know much about them, but they’re growing really well, much better than the peas we bought in B&Q.
And today they got their first flowers, and they’re beautiful (click on the photo for a better view).
I’m already looking forward to tasting the peas!
Gordon Brown’s ten gravest financial errors
The Times have compiled an excellent list of Gordon Brown’s ten worst financial gaffes.
Inevitably, some of the items on the list are much worse than others, but most of them have been pretty disastrous.
Do read the whole list!
It’s amazing that some people still regard Brown as having been an excellent chancellor, even if they agree he’s a very bad prime minister.
Krumme agurker
Uffe Ellemann har skrevet et glimrende forsvar for EU-forbuddet mod krumme agurker.
Han pointerer, at de alle lande allerede havde deres egne regler om agurkekrumninger, og at alt, EU gjorde, var at harmonisere reglerne, så kasser med agurker kunne sælges overalt i det indre marked.
Det er desværre alt for sjældent, at nutidens politikere forsvarer EU – der er alt for mange stemmer i ulødig og populistisk kritik.
Balls accused of lying
Do read this blog posting on The Spector’s Coffee House blog.
In an earlier blog posting, they had accused Ed Balls of lying, and for once the government didn’t send out its spin doctors:
Ed Balls has just called me up about my post from this morning, hopping mad. He instructed me to “take that post down now”. I thought he was joking: has there been some change to the constitution where ministers now have power over the media? But he was deadly serious. [...]
Is the Scandinavian model restricted to Scandinavia?
Charlemagne is quoting Johan Norberg for wondering whether the Swedish model is restricted to Sweden: “If countries don’t already have a tradition of an efficient, non-corrupt bureaucracy with an impressive work ethic a larger government only means more abuse of power and more waste of money. I often try to convince Americans, no, more government in the US would not get you a big version of Sweden, it would get you a big version of the US Postal Service.“
It’s an interesting point, and I think it’s at least partly true.
I do think Sweden in this context can be replaced by a much larger area, at the very least Scandinavia and parts of Germany, but living in Scotland, I can see that many things are just not working because of different attitudes.
For instance, buses are regularly late, but people just shrug their shoulders and use their car the next time. In Denmark, people would be very upset and it would eventually become a priority for the government to sort out.
Black hole ahead?
I like dedicated bicycle lanes, but in this case I’m not so sure.
Also, why are they sending the cars right into the black hole on the bicycle lane?
Perhaps it would have been easier simply to write Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate instead – the effect would have been similar, wouldn’t it?
/ˈlalɔ/ vs. /ˈlalœ/
Anna kopierede ret tidligt Léons navn for Charlotte, /ˈlalɔ/.
Så begyndte hun at bruge samme navn for begge, hvad der var noget forvirrende.
Men nu har vi opdaget, at hun rent faktisk skelner, idet Charlotte er /ˈlalɔ/, mens Léon er /ˈlalœ/.
Den forskel er ikke helt nem at opfange i forbifarten!
Hun gør i øvrigt noget tilsvarende med mig og Marcel: Jeg hedder /ˈdade/ (den normale skotske udtale af Daddy), mens Marcel er blevet til /ˈdadɛ/ (vokalerne fra Marcel, men konsonanterne fra Daddy).
How to fix the pensions
More and more people are complaining about the fact that the public sector are still enjoying generous final-salary pensions while the private sector has mostly moved to much more modest defined-contribution schemes.
The solution recommended by most commentators is to reduce public-sector pensions.
This, however, is not likely to be enough for a comfortable retirement for most people. Pensioners in the UK are already much worse off than those in other developed countries.
The way I see it, defined-contribution schemes (which basically means you give people some money to invest in shares, without any guarantee how the investment will turn out) are far too risky for normal people.
Final-salary pensions, while great for the workers, are far too risky for companies, and they put established companies at a disadvantage compared with newer companies and companies in other countries without similar pension systems.
So a third way is needed. I would suggest something along the following lines:
- Set up some big pension organisations/companies (let’s call them POCs) to take contributions from workers and companies, invest this money and pay out generous pensions to retired workers.
- Make it obligatory for all companies, for self-employed people and the public sector to pay in a specific percentage of salaries to one of the POCs.
- Make sure sure the POCs insure each other and give them some sort of state backing to ensure people can be confident their pension will not suddenly disappear.
In this way, public and private sector workers would have equivalent pensions, and old companies wouldn’t struggle to compete with newer ones.
Also, when people change jobs, their pensions could still remain with the same POC, instead of having small pensions in many different places.
The reason I’m suggesting setting up multiple POCs rather than a single one is to avoid having an organisation that is too big to fail and too big for the state to save.
Can anybody spot any flaws in my suggestion?
Fondue with charcuterie
When Phyllis, Anna and I went on a short holiday to Paris last summer, I had cheese fondue served with boiled potatoes, charcuterie and lettuce for lunch at a restaurant.
Recently Asda started selling an Austrian cheese fondue that can be microwaved in its container, so it’s really convenient.
I decided to recreate the Parisian experience, so tonight I served the Austrian fondue with a packet of Italian prosciutto crudo and salami, boiled new potatoes, iceberg lettuce leaves and crusty bread.
It might sound a bit strange, but it actually tasted lovely – even Anna loved it.