The hotel I'm staying at in Mainz has quite an impressive array of tea, including Assam, Darjeeling, Earl Grey and English Breakfast.
But can you get a decent cup of tea? No you can't, because, as in most of the hotels in Europe, no one outside the UK (and presumably the Indian sub-continent) seems to understand one of the most basic factors in the chemistry of tea-making - which is why I think it's high time that we had an EU directive that would require hotels, cafes and other outlets to boil, yes boil, the water before pouring it on the tea leaves or tea bags.
And, while they were at it, they might as well go the whole hog and add in requirements to warm the tea pot first and then let it brew for a few minutes before pouring into a cup.
Apart from reducing the grumbling dissatisfaction of British tourists and business visitors with what's currently passed off as a cup of tea, a beneficial side effect might be that growers in developing countries would be able to increase their sales to Europe. After all, if only more people here knew what tea can really taste like, they'd surely want to drink a lot more of it.
From the point of view of improving communication between businesses within the EU, there's also a case for another European directive on lunch times. In Holland, it's 12.00 noon, in Germany it's 12.30 p.m. (but moving ever nearer towards 12 noon), in Britain and France it's closer to 1.00 p.m. while, in Spain, you're lucky if you get anything to eat until about 3.00 p.m. in the afternoon.
The net result of all this is that there are 4-5 hours in every working day when there's no point in trying to phone people in various different countries because they'll be out on their lunch break. An EU directive that standaredised lunch time within the EU would be an obvious way to solve the problem and might perhaps even help to oil our faltering economies along their way towards recovery from the recession.
Expenses?
I have to go to Frankfurt this evening to run a two-day course on Monday and Tuesday.
The recent revelations about MPs' expenses have got me wondering whether I include enough of my outgoings when invoicing clients, as well as whether I should be setting more of my expenses against tax.
Short journeys like this one, for example, mean buying cups of tea, coffee and snacks that I can never be bothered to include in my invoices, even though I wouldn't have had to spend any of this money had I not been on my way to do a job for a client.
And, having just bought a new case that's big enough to take all my equipment, shirts, etc,. but small enough to count as hand baggage and save me time waiting at luggage carousels, does this count as a 'business expense' that can be legitimately set against tax?
Thanks to our elected representatives, I feel a visit to my accountant coming on...
Imagery worthy of Obama in speech by the Governor of the Bank of England
I’ve thought for some time that Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, has some pretty good speechwriters, and this isn’t the first time I’ve thought it worth posting an example from one of his speeches.
The night before last at the Mansion House, he used and developed a neat simile, that was singled out and used as a headline in the print and broadcast media:
KING:
"To achieve financial stability the powers of the Bank are limited to those of voice and the new resolution powers.
"The Bank finds itself in a position rather like that of a church whose congregation attends weddings and burials but ignores the sermons in between.
"Like the church, we cannot promise that bad things won’t happen to our flock – the prevention of all financial crises is in neither our nor anyone else’s power, as a study of history or human nature would reveal.
"And experience suggests that attempts to encourage a better life through the power of voice alone is not enough.
"Warnings are unlikely to be effective when people are being asked to change behaviour which seems to them highly profitable.
"So it is not entirely clear how the Bank will be able to discharge its new statutory responsibility if we can do no more than issue sermons or organise burials."
You can watch this part of the speech HERE - and was there a slight smirk on his face as he finished the punch line about 'sermons' and 'burials'?
News on BBC radio is sometimes very good indeed
I didn’t get to see any television news last night but did listen to The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 while having a bath.
I hadn't heard it for a while, and had forgotten what a very good a news programme it is and was impressed by how much more I learnt about what's going on in Iran than I have from all the television pictures of John Simpson wandering about the streets of Tehran, interspersed with poor quality mobile phone footage.
There were no needlessly adversarial interviews as featured daily on the Today programme - and, better still, I somehow managed to understand every word without having to watch a single slideshow from the likes of Nick Robinson, Robert Peston and all the other death from PowerPoint merchants who now dominate BBC Television News programmes.
Dudley Moore's 'Little Miss Muffet' by Benjamin Britten
I’ve often noticed that I don’t often laugh out loud when listening to comedy on my own, and that the exceptions, when they do occur, really are exceptional.
It happened last night on Radio 4 during a fascinating programme, in which John Bassett was being interviewed about his long friendship with the late Dudley Moore.
The cause of my laughter was the latter's brilliant rendition of ‘Little Miss Muffet’ à la Benjamin Britten from Beyond the Fringe - which also reminded me that I’ve always found this piece far more entertaining than anything Britten himself ever managed to write.
BBC Television News slideshow Quiz
Regular readers will know that I’m getting increasingly worried about the way BBC Television News shows us more and more PowerPoint style presentations.
Whether or not anyone at the BBC has ever bothered to ask viewers what they really think about it, I do not know, but I can’t think of any reason why television audiences would differ much from other audiences – which raises the question of why would they be any more favourably inclined towards slidomania than the hundreds of audience members who’ve told me how much they detest it when listening to PowerPoint dependent presentations.
However, after a lifetime in research, one thing I know for sure is that I might be wrong. Maybe information overload isn’t as big a problem for people as I think it is. Maybe viewers really do like to see pictures and printed words popping up on the screen behind reporters in the studio. Maybe it really does make it easier for people to understand and take in things in.
Here's another exhibit from the BBC’s 10 o’clock news (a couple of nights ago) and an invitation to see how it works for you. Watch it once – which is, of course, all that viewers get to do – and don’t read any further until you’ve seen the whole thing.
Then have a go at answering the questions below the video – and let us know how many you got right.
If the result is 'all' or 'most of them', the BBC's nightly slideshows must be doing a good job.
If it's 'none' or 'hardly any of them', I rest my case.
1. What are the 4 essentials of modern life?
2. What did the Prime Minister say today?
3. What would be hugely expensive?
4. How many of us are already in reach of superfast broadband?
5. What will be hugely expensive?
6. How much a year would the annual levy be?
7. What prices have been falling in recent years?
8. What is the government's clever wheeze?
9. How much a year is raised from television license fee payers?
10. How much is it going to cost to help old people to cope with the digital switch over?
11. How much of that might be left over by 2012?
12. How much do local news programmes cost ITV?
No flies on Obama!
After recent posts about how British politicians behave in interviews, I couldn't help being impressed by President Obama's cool and skillful dispatch of a fly whilst being interviewed.
Whether or not the ASPCA worries about insects, I do not know, but I can imagine the RSPCA, not to mention the anti-hunting lobby, getting very steamed up such heartless behaviour!
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