The good news from the House of Lords

What really matters about the potential scandal brewing in the House of Lords is not that there might be some dodgy members who've been caught out sounding as though they were negotiating possible bribes, but that the story might actually get us thinking again about why such people are awarded peerages in the first place – given that not all former MPs, MEPs or Leaders of Blackburn (and other city) councils get a seat there on retirement.

The hereditary basis for sitting in the House of Lords was embarrassing enough for anyone wanting to defend or take pride in British democracy, but the ramshackle replacement is no less embarrassing. In one sense, it’s even worse, as it’s come from a premeditated and supposedly carefully thought out reform of the system, rather than from a legacy of feudalism that previous governments had never bothered to get rid of.

Worthy though most of the miscellany of retired MPs and mysteriously selected ‘great and good’ Lords may be, they are not elected by anyone, not accountable to anyone and not obliged to depart until they die. As such, there is no democratic principle I've ever heard of that would justify their playing any legislative role at all in a modern democracy.

Memorable lines in President Obama's inaugural speech?

A lot of commentators have been complaining that President Obama’s inaugural address was a bit short on memorable phrases, and there’s a very interesting post on the subject at Podium Pundits by Clark Judge, a former Reagan speechwriter.

This got me thinking about two related questions: (1) were the most memorable lines from other presidential inaugural addresses noticed by the media there and then, and/or (2) does it take longer than that for a line to become memorable?

The preliminary findings from my initial surf of the internet suggest the answers may be (1) no, and (2) quite a while.

This is based on the surprising discovery that none of the famous quotations from President Kennedy’s inaugural address on 20 January 1961 made it into the headlines or front page reports of two leading American newspapers, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

If nothing else, this looks to be worth a bit more research and should serve as a warning to all the ‘expert’ commentators who don't think there were enough memorable lines in President Obama’s speech that they should perhaps think again and wait a while before drawing any such conclusion.

The great camcorder con-trick

After using video cameras in my work (and leisure) for as long as they’ve been around, I’ve become increasingly frustrated that so many manufacturers have done away with view-finders and replaced them with silly little screens that stick out at the side of the camera.

I’m told that this is to keep them as compact and as cheap as possible, which would be all very well if it didn't completely ignore a fairly obvious problem that will afflict any customer who wants to use a camcorder in bright sunshine (i.e. most of them) when on holiday – where they’ll soon discover that glare and reflection make it almost impossible to see anything at all on the screen.

This happened to me twice last year, first on a Nile cruise and then on a skiing holiday. Whether you’re pointing the lens towards an ancient ruin or someone whizzing down a ski slope, your main resource is guesswork, and it’s become a matter of luck whether you end up with anything worth watching again.

To make matters worse, some of the top manufacturers (e.g. Sony) don’t seem to realise or care that the by far the best and easiest video-editing facilities are to be found on Apple computers, and are so complacent that they only supply software that’s compatible with Windows.

As far as these 'we know best' merchants are concerned, ‘the customer is always right’ is presumably no more than a high-sounding principle for paying lip-service to whilst completely ignoring it in practice, and we can only hope that disappointing sales and complaints from frustrated users will eventually bring them to their senses.