iL Dottore

The problem with “mates rates” and “an old Fly-Boy who, for a modest consideration*…” is that without orders from a legitimate source, then they are nothing but “guns for hire” a.k.a. Mercenaries. And the problem with mercenaries - as many commanders (and even Kings) have found out to their cost - is that they make themselves available to the highest bidder. It was not unknown for mercenaries fighting for one side (say “the Blues”) in the morning would be fighting for the other side (say “the Reds”) in the afternoon, because the Reds offered them much more money than the Blues. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of the “old money” fortunes around - now very respectable - came from an ancestor or two who managed to successfully switch sides a number of times during a long campaign. The Swiss, who provided countless mercenaries to the European powers over the centuries have banned the Swiss from being mercenaries - with the exception of the Swiss Papal Guard (technically a mercenary unit) who must be Catholic, single males with Swiss citizenship who have completed basic training with the Swiss Armed Forces and can obtain certificates of good conduct (they generally come from the Catholic Alpine Kantons). According to my father, who researched the family history, I have a Condottiere** or two amongst my ancestors… 😁 (as well as some minor city-state princes, a wayward cleric or two, several farmers and at least one [suspected] assassin). * I wonder if the “Fly Boy” in question would prefer to have a few tins of baked beans, some curly fries, some arduino electronics, a few hundred quid “under the table” and the full undivided attention of HMRC OR a few hundred thousand Swiss francs in a discreet numbered account located somewhere in Zūrich, Basel or Genève. No Questions Asked, No Questions Answered! ** Medieval Italian mercenaries.

I take great pleasure in being at the top of The Bear’s list as it means: That I am doing something right; i.e. annoying The Bear, which in my book Is Always A Good Thing. That it shows that I am a man of immaculate taste and refinement. That it allows me to indulge in a little “Cruelty To Polybears” - which is lotsa fun (and NOT to be confused with animal cruelty which is totally morally and ethically abhorrent - the perpetrators of which deserve the short, sharp, drop) Hours of innocent (and free) amusement - and all zero-calorie! Mucho Kudos amongst my fellow Gastronauts! If he can find me - given my numerous residences and, thanks to the technological wonders of modern 3D printing, a plethora of absolutely-identical body-doubles. So even if The Bear were to reach deep into his pockets (bunker busters are NOT cheap) chances are he’d end up blowing a 3D printed resin copy to smithereens!

Did diddums get wet? Awww! Absolutely NO sympathy from this part of the Alps! You should have known better, Bear. Your mistake was (a) going out in the rain and (b) going out in the rain near Bear Towers, as - according to your various postings - you are surrounded by ne’er-do-wells, scrotes and other low-lifes. You might as well have worn a sign reading DRENCH ME! I never use any of the browsers put out by Microsoft, Google or Apple. I keep to Firefox which is readily and easily customisable, does what you want it to do and updates itself only rarely (i.e. only when really needed). The updates on Chrome, Edge, etc. are really for their convenience, NOT yours. I absolutely loathe how HP and many other printer manufacturers make it difficult (if not impossible) for you to use cheaper cartridges (i.e. not theirs) in their printers. There is one nasty little trick of theirs - used to get you to buy more cartridges than necessary - which is pretty easy to circumvent. That’s the “you are very low on supplies” <warning>. I found out, purely by accident (as I didn’t have time to get replacements), that you can safely ignore these warning and only replace the ink cartridge/toner cartridge when the print starts to fade - which is (depending upon what you print) a good 100 pages or so on from when you should have (according to them) “replaced the cartridge for optimal print quality” Perhaps the owners of such vehicles are all Boy Scouts (or former Boy Scouts), y’know “be prepared and all that” It would be, of course, be uncharitable of me to opine that many of those making such purchases are gullible fools with more money than sense, ripe for the picking by some unscrupulous car salesman OR that they are pretentious prats who believe that spending LOTS of money will either elevate them to the ranks of Gentlemen of Quality or compensate for micro-genitalia…

Currently, in an undisclosed secure underground location somewhere in the Swiss Alps, preparations are underway for the production of one of iD’s chocolate chip cakes. Upon completion, the cake will be taken by Mrs iD, accompanied by Schotty and Lucy, to the deserving recipient. A Word Of Warning: Lucy and Schotty take their guard dog duties seriously, anyone unauthorised trying to get cake will end up in a world of hurt!

Bravo Signore! The effort is appreciated by your fellow Gastronaut. For a tasty, quick-to-prepare but filling snack/nibble/light meal, may I recommend piadina (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piadina_romagnola) filled with salumeria from Emilia Romagna - such as mortadella or salame felino, or from Tuscany (such as finocchiona). The best piadina are cooked in front of you and served warm. You can get fairly decent factory produced piadina (some are better than others) but the important bit is they need to be served warm (due to the lard in the piadina dough). They can also be filled with Nutella or marmellata for a sweet fix. ION After 3 sleepless nights in a row - thanks to a number of middle-of-the-night-emergency-poo runs with Lucy (once I had to take her out twice in one night!) - I finally got some decent sleep - albeit plagued by some seriously weird dreams. I don’t recall much, except for two fleeting images: one was finding the first class lounge at London City Airport closed because of a “terror threat” at Migros (a Swiss supermarket chain), the other was a dalliance that took place in a café with a “baby wall”: young mums would put their sprogs into sturdy romper suits made of strong velcro and fix the sprog onto the “baby wall” (also made of strong velcro) allowing the young mums to do… well whatever young mums do when freed of sprog maintenance for a while. As I said, weird. Finally, through my verein I know both a Sunni and a Shia muslim (who, surprisingly given the traditional antagonism and animosity between those branches of Islam, get on very well with each other) and both will not touch pork, but both can (and do) drink the bar dry. Originally, I had concluded that the prohibition against pork (and alcohol) came about for health reasons (e.g. pork can cause trichinosis), but more recently I read a more convinced ng argument that posits such prohibitions are all about creating in-groups (us: the good guys) and out-groups (them: the bad guys). So it goes!

The problem is when they insert modern sensibilities into historical events. Apart from being anachronistic and jarring, it is also highly selective. Take, for example, slavery. In Roman times a grateful slave owner could have selected slaves manumitted - many of whom after becoming free men would go on to acquire their own slaves. Those with a bee in their bonnet about historical slavery rarely acknowledge that. And as for referring to the huge role many African kingdoms and the Arabic world played in the slave trade of the 1700s - nary a mention in the popular depictions being pushed as "the" narrative about slavery. I would argue that acknowledging the entire historical picture, instead of ideologically chosen parts, gives us a better understanding of what really happened and what are the modern parallels we should recognize and take action on. As someone who has appeared in a number of "reinvented" Shakespearean plays, I have been lucky inasmuch as the directors I worked with had the same attitude to innovation as I. Namely, always asking two fundamental questions: does it bring anything to the play? is it something that the audience can relate to (aka "does it work"?). I saw a production of Julius Caesar with an all black cast and it worked extreme;y well - nothing was incongruous, nothing stood out like a sore thumb shouting "look at us, aren't we clever" and it was great reminder of the universality of Shakespeare's plays.

Some further ideas: HH: We're Bear and Hippo and we HAVEN'T had our cake... PB: Put the cake on the ground and back away slowly, hands where we can see 'em. HH: Give me the keys. I'll go to the supermarket. What do you want? PB: Truth and justice. HH: Anything else? PB: Cake. HH: Why not? We're cops. PB: You're Out Of Cake. And You Know What That Means - You're S*** Outta' Luck! HH: You've Gotta' Ask Yourself A Question. 'Do I have cake?' Well, Do Ya...PUNK?

You kinda miss the point, Bear. Before all this D&I reared its ugly head, the casting of HH and PB would have been viewed as simply getting the best bear (or hippo) for the job. Nowadays, the cynical amongst us would wonder if PB and HH were the best actors for the job or were they hired for being a bear (or hippo) first and a decent actor second (in some cases a very distant second). Recent casting decisions in many BBC and ITV programmes support the latter conclusion.

One of the problems bedevilling modern programmes is the curse of “diversity and inclusivity” which has programme makers saying “we need one of these, two of those and three of the other and we’ll be properly inclusive”. In other words hiring to meet quotas, rather than according to the needs of the story and the characters in that story. Unfortunately, the push for D&I has resulted in an awful number of poor casting decisions - causing the cynical to wonder if casting was nothing but a tick box exercise. To make up a silly example: the Beeb announces a new comedy drama “Black and White” about a pair of oddball coppers: DCI Black (played by @Happy Hippo) and DS White (played by @polybear). In the 70s and 80s you would have simply concluded that PB and HH were the best ones to hire for those roles. Nowadays? You end up asking did they cast HH and PB because they were right for the roles or because someone, somewhere, said “hold on, there aren’t enough hippos and bears in our cop dramas”? Just as bad, in my view, is when the film/programme is supposedly - say - a cop buddy-buddy “bromance” and instead of hiring a Polybear to play DS White, hire a Polina Bear (which sort of destroys the whole premise of a cop buddy-buddy “bromance”). And such hiring does the actors no favours either, causing the cynical to wonder whether or not PB was hired to play DS White because he was the best actor for the job or because they didn’t have enough bears in the production. NB: “Bromance” a type of drama in which there is a very close and non-sexual relationship between two men. It is an exceptionally tight, affectional, male bonding relationship exceeding that of usual friendship, in a bromance, a charachter would rather die than betray his buddy…

Well that applies to most of the stuff that’s ever been transmitted over the airwaves. Last of The Summer Wine was indeed variable, but at its best quietly enjoyable and a positive depiction of older men. For me the best episodes were those featuring the programme’s second ensemble trio of Bill Owen as Compo, Peter Sallis as Cleggy and Brian Wilde as "Foggy" Dewhurst. Part of this appeal being that, at that time in the early 80s (I was back in the UK by then), I was one of a trio of tight-knit chums and one of us was definitely a Compo, one was definitely a Cleggy and one was definitely a Foggy (me, if I’m being candid). And to add richness to the mix, “our” Compo even had his very own “Nora Batty”. But it is damn near impossible to continuously write great scripts for each and every episode of a long running series*: people run out of ideas, scriptwriters change, it gets harder and harder to come up with fresh takes on things and so on. John Cleese did exactly the right thing with Fawlty Towers limiting it to just 12 utterly perfect episodes. * as someone who has dabbled in (semi-) professional acting a popular long running series is a great gig to get - a steady income from continuous filming (plus residuals) and the reassurance of forthcoming work - not to be sneezed at in the highly precarious world of TV, stage and screen.

In what way "regressed"? Become incredibly more judgmental and censorious (as in "can't say the T word or the G word or even talk about "X") or become incredibly more licentious ("Naked Attraction" anyone)? An interesting aside: I read somewhere that those words considered to be the foulest epithets in any given country are words that reflect a country's obsessions and phobias: in the UK and the US foul language revolve around the act of reproduction, in Germany, around excretory functions and in Italy around religion. Of course, the above may be just a bit of academic misdirection, perhaps to have a little fun at the expense of the credulous. But it's an intriguing notion nonetheless.

The problem with the Assange case is that although he is an unpleasant individual (as a person), his crime was to expose how - to put it bluntly - how the US mislead the world and covered up how it really behaved in Iraq and Afghanistan (amongst other things). I don't think WikiLeaks put out anything that wasn't already known or suspected by various foreign governments, intelligence services and diplomatic corps. Undoubtedly some crimes had been committed in getting some of the material WikiLeaks published, but such as to land Assange in a SuperMax prison or on death row? Hardly. No, the big crime was to embarrass the US Government. In the world of real-politik you can get away with murder (in some cases, literally) and still be welcomed back into the fold. Today's friends are tomorrow's enemies and vice versa, all that counts is furthering the country's self interest. However, the one thing the US never forgives (and neither do a number of other countries) is being embarrassed on the world stage. It took nearly 30 years for the US to forge diplomatic relations with Communist Vietnam and even then I suspect it was to obtain a useful tool against the PRC. And they still haven't forgiven Cuba. All the above is but the rough and tumble of diplomacy, but I do wish they wouldn't be so bloody sanctimonious about it.

Portuguese Custard Tarts (or more properly Pastel de Nata). Although the original (and some say only true) recipe is a closely guarded secret (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastel_de_nata), all recipes I’ve seen call for flour, butter, egg yolks, cinnamon, vanilla extract, cornflour, lemon zest and water. The highlighted ingredients tend be avoided by commercial manufacturers due to reasons of cost (butter, cinnamon, vanilla extract) or shelf life (butter) or ease of preparation (lemon zest). Butter, especially, is frequently replaced by margarine (or a pseudo-butter) as items made with butter can quickly go rancid. For a home baker, the cost difference between using real ingredients as opposed to synthetics is marginal, but for a company mass producing thousands of Pastel de Nata each day a one or two pence difference (or more) between real and synthetic ingredients soon mounts up to a big wodge of cash*. Furthermore, even with the financial advantages of bulk purchasing and mass production, using “real” ingredients could well increase the price per unit to a point where those who care more about price than quality will no longer buy your product. Let’s be honest here: how many on ER would spend £5 for a hand made, all natural ingredient Pastel de Nata from a small baker? * one US site quotes $6.19 an ounce (about 30mL or 6 tsp) for a pure vanilla extract and $0.12 an ounce for synthetic vanilla. So if a batch of tarts (12) requires 1 tsp of vanilla, then a mass production of 12000 tarts would require about 2000 fl oz of vanilla for a total of about $12000 for the real stuff or $240 for the synthetic version.

You’ve highlighted a considerable problem facing many democratic Western countries: a total disconnect between the decision makers and (to use a modern term) “influencers” (media pundits, the “mediarati” etc) and the general populace. This disconnect extends far beyond the serious matters of state - it’s everywhere, even in something as lightweight as entertainment. This is exemplified on Rotten Tomatoes, where films - praised to high heaven by the critics - absolutely tank in the court of public opinion. And to add insult to injury (so to speak) the critics (and others) then refuse to even contemplate that they may have made a misjudgment but instead blame the public for being……. well, whatever. A good example of this was the reaction of critics and the filmmakers to the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters absolutely tanking at the box office and in viewer reviews. They claim that the reboot tanked not because it was badly written, badly acted and badly directed (which it was), but because of the bigotry and misogyny of the cinema-going public. I would go as far as to claim that one of the biggest problems facing most Western democracies is the shirking of personal responsibility. It is never “my fault”, it’s always “someone else’s fault”. And even when someone is caught “bang to rights” (or holding a smoking gun - choose your metaphor), then they have the get-out-of-jail-free-card of being afflicted by a “condition” or a “syndrome”. One day, something will snap and the politicos better hope that it isn’t the beleaguered middle class. My father, a keen student of history, observed that it was when the middle classes got intolerably squeezed (politically, economically, socially, financially) that you had successful revolutions: the Robespierres, the Lenins, the Mao Zedongs all coming from an equivalent of the middle class. I wonder if this is an observation that the Lords This or Sirs That of the UK’s political class have made.

You approach things as "a job to be done". When I first started (many, many decades ago) I was told that one of the worst things is to feel sorry for whomever you are treating. By feeling sorry for someone you loose that dispassionate objectivity which is so necessary for assessing and treating patients. You go in, do the job you are trained to do and then move on. Dwelling on things is not only bad for one's psyche, but also prevents dispassionate assessment that turns events into valuable experience. Not only that, but one has a lot of fun telling "war stories" (also a coping mechanism) - but again something NOT for outsiders. Sometimes, when I, my GP friend and my radiologist friend get together we start telling stories - but are promptly told to "cut it out" by the civvies around the table (basically our SWMBOs) Definitely. The longest I have done CPR for was about 35 minutes in a back of an ambulance that got stuck in a traffic jam (eventually the police had to order some drivers to pull over or be arrested). Needless to say, the patient didn't make it, poor sod. Finally, @br2975's comments once again reinforces and emphasizes how badly the UK treats those who puts themselves into harm's way for the good of the country. The US has many faults, but you can't help but admire the esteem and respect they hold their military veterans and others who put themselves in harm's (even though, at times, how this is executed leaves much to be desired). As others have mentioned, things would certainly be very different if - suddenly - little junior career politician was called up...

No. 1: of what, exactly? No. 2: doesn't count. One Bear's opinion does not a crypto-currency make. No. 3: NMP! (Not My Problem)

One would have thought so. But quite a few doctors were most reluctant to sign DNR orders, even for the sickest of patients (I have one story to tell you, Bill, about a DNR order on an end-stage oncology patient - we can keep it for our next meet-up). Mind you, this was the 70s. I've always thought it bizarre that we would end a dog's suffering when nothing more can be done, but not a human's...

Of the hundred or so patients I gave CPR to, only one was resuscitated and was (eventually) discharged from the hospital. And this was because the patient went into asystole (cardiac arrest) whilst on telemetry in the specialised CCU (Cardiac Care Unit). In most instances by the time CPR is started it’s already too late. To complicate matters further are the considerations of what underlies the cardiac arrest (many of the patients I attempted to resuscitate were oncology patients with end-stage metastatic disease). Most of the time in such patients any successes are merely temporary. And one final observation: a great number of patients who end up needing CPR are elderly and what they don’t tell you about in CPR training is the audible crunch you hear (and feel) as the sternum separates from the ribs upon first compression on an elderly person’s chest…..

I’m afraid that all that high-octane, high-speed “bimbling” must have affected @PupCam‘s faculties. I think Puppers might be talking out of his exhaust regarding the definition of “A Deltic” as a currency unit. Firstly, WHO decided upon the Accurascale OO model as the financial benchmark for a “Deltic”, why not the Heljan Sound and DCC equipped model (about £600)? Was this decided upon by ALL stakeholders and enshrined in law? Is the “Deltic” on the Gold Standard (i.e. 1 Deltic equals X amount of gold held in a reserve bank)? Furthermore, to be a recognisable currency it has to be exchangeable against other currencies. Is The Deltic pegged against the US Lionel Trains “Big Boy”? How does it compare with the KATO Hayabusa Shinkansen now that the Yen is weaker than last year? Or perhaps The Deltic is like the North Korean won (aka the Democratic People's Republic of Korea won), essentially worthless outside of ERs Somehow I don’t think Warren Buffet has invested in Deltics…..

I’ve always been of the opinion that anyone that proposes a certain course of action (or in the context of this discussion a regulation or law) should not be immune to/protected from the consequences of that action/regulation/law. So, to make up a two silly examples, if I - as a politician - (1) I pass a law requiring the national registration of all cake stocks, then the law should (not) be framed in such a way that my artisanal cake stocks don’t have to be registered, whilst mass produced cakes MUST be registered or else; (2) I pass a law that adds a 1250% surcharge to every tin of baked beans, (without) ensuring that my usual nightly bottle of rare vintage Dom Pérignon is zero rated (or even gets a subsidy!). Unfortunately, in far too many countries, the politicians, the influential and the “movers and shakers” never experience the - how can I put it? - the “disadvantages” of their policies and decisions foisted on everybody else.

on ERs, "THING" is probably the most charitable description you can give to a £3.50 industrial quality Lemon Drizzle Cake (LDC). Anything that contains "SugarFortifiedWheatFlourWheatFlourCalciumCarbonateIronNiacinThiaminPasteurisedEggLemonIcingSugarLemonJuiceHumectantVegetableGlycerineAcidityRegulatorCitricAcidLemonButtercreamButterCowsMilkSugarLemonCurdSugarGlucoseSyrupButterCowsMilkWheatStarchMaizeStarchDried EggConcentratedLemonJuiceGellingAgentPectinAcidityRegulatorsCitricAcidSodiumCitrateFlavouringSaltGlucoseSyrupModifiedMaizeStarchHumectantVegetableGlycerinePreservativeCitricAcidLemonCurdSugarGlucoseSyrupButterCowsMilkWheatStarchMaizeStarchDriedEggConcentratedLemonJuiceGellinAgentPectinAcidityRegulatorsCitricAcidSodiumCitrateFlavouringSaltRapeseedOilPalmOilPasteurisedLemonJuiceHumectantVegetableGlycerineRaisingAgentsDisodiumDiphosphateSodiumBicarbonatePalmKernelOilLemonZestEmulsifierMonoandDiglyceridesofFattyAcidsAcidityRegulatorCitricAcidColourCarotenes" is NOT a cake by any reasonable definition. Edible chemical fancies is probably a better description. As for the ER Cryptocurrency - The Deltic - well, Bitcoin it ain't! A "Deltic" can vary between £124 and £600 (depending upon scale etc. etc.). So when someone moans that X cost 2 Deltics, you have to ask: did it cost £248 or £1200 (or somewhere in between)....

It seems to me that there are only two ways to fully maintain civil order: the first (and by far the best) is where citizens understand that they have obligations, duties and responsibilities - as well as rights - and thus behave in public (and to each other) with respect and consideration (as we see in Japan) OR the state meets out such terrifying, unavoidable and draconian punishment for any sort of infraction that no-one dares put a foot out of place (such as in North Korea). The UK has to be careful that, with the widespread ascent of (as HH put it) of "the biggest bunch of liberal wet wipes the world has ever known. They are well known for making the perpetrator the victim and the victim(s) the perpetrator". the populace doesn't elect (or allow the takeover by) a Kim Jong Un act-alike strongman. Probably, the most galling thing about the current situation in the UK is that seems to be driven by naked self-interest (for top jobs, promotions, eye-watering salaries etc.) rather than by any real commitment to the ideologies they espouse and promote. If there was money to be made, promotions to be had and stellar careers to forge by cleaving to draconian "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" policies, most of the current bunch of "soppy liberals" (other terms are available) would would commit such an about-volte-face and start meeting out such punishments as to make "Hanging Judge" Jeffreys say "whoah, slow down a bit"....

Nul Problemo Amigo*, Mrs iD and I have separate income streams and NO sprogs**. Usually any expenditure is at one's own discretion. Basically, at Schloss iD we have three levels of discretionary spending: Level 1. No notification or permission needed (e.g. buying a new loco) Level 2. Notification needed, but not permission (e.g. going to London for a weekend) Level 3. Notification needed, joint agreement needed (e.g. buying a new car, > 5 day holiday/foreign travel). We both are Jäger und Sammler, so undoubtedly we both have far too many things (and don't talk to me about clothes or shoes....) *my rolling stock, materials and book collections were accumulated over 25 years or so of collecting. ** sprogs are the single fastest road to bankruptcy, heartbreak and premature death - though some DO get lucky with their offspring.

And whilst on the subject of the Police. Did I mention that Schotty had a (very) brief career as a Police Dog? He was dismissed from the service for "exerting excessive force on a suspect's genitalia" (in other words he was kicked out for tearing off a scrote's b****!). He's a gentle soul, but a fearsome devil if he gets p****d off...

As I had mentioned, Aristocratic Disdain! (and, yes, that is Lucy. The only changes I made to the photo was the addition of the tiara and the removal of the background in order to make a portrait of The Dowager Duchess)