Very concerning

I'm a bit late picking up on this Age Concern advert. It points out that old people can miss their meals while in hospital because their food trays are placed out of reach by staff, leading to malnourishment, and suggests using red trays to alert them to those patients that need help. Am I alone in thinking that another solution would be to ensure at the outset that you employ people who have a passing interest in doing their job? Quite frankly I think Age Concern are being a bit too charitable.

Something for the home-workers

From Anorak.

The end of the world is nigh

Oliver Kamm has some fun with the conspiracy nuts and doom-mongers over at his blog. I particularly like this quote he takes from a professor Brian Cox regarding the “Big Bang experiment” later this week, as well as his comments afterwards:

Professor Cox clearly has a way with pungent summary, for in an article for The Telegraph he adds: “The LHC [Large Hadron Collider] has captured the public imagination, which is wonderful because scientific exploration on this scale is a prerequisite for our survival as a species in this dangerous and challenging universe, and yet a significant fraction of the population would usually rather watch The X Factor. A slight irritant is that a small but vocal faction of nutters with a Frankenstein complex and membership of the "Relativity is a Zionist conspiracy" forum on the internet think that banging two hydrogen nuclei together will fulfil Nostradamus's prophecy (Century 4, Quatrain 67) that everyone should leave Geneva in the year that the air becomes very dry. He obviously never visited Manchester."

Nostradamus, of course. (But it's interesting that Professor Cox makes no mention of the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission and the Freemasons. What's he trying to hide? Who's paying him?)
The Daily Mail, meanwhile, covers the same story with a headline that might feature in a series of "Great Historical Questions to Which the Answer is No". The report is entitled "Are We All Going to Die Next Wednesday?"

More lookalikes

India's Richard Branson, says the Telegraph, but more discerning readers will immediately recognise Switzerland's most famous export.

Calm down dear

Swedish MEP Eva-Britt Svensson is pushing for an EU-wide ban on advertising that portrays women as sex objects or reinforces gender stereotypes, reports the Telegraph. Well, maybe she has a point, but she's not much to look at is she? The lass should make a bit more of an effort if she wants us to take her ideas seriously.

Back again

My favourite comment on Palin so far comes from this report of a conversation by Fraser Nelson at the Spectator:
"She was put on this earth to chew gum and kick ass," said one conservative journalist I spoke to. "And she's all out of gum".