Pesach Special 5775

It’s been a bumper year for Passover-related current affairs, so as per tradition, find below the 5775 edition of Gabrielquotes Pesach News, brought to you – as always – by the good old BBC (Biblical Broadcasting Corporation).

Grow vegetables extensively in greenhouses!

Those are rousing words, aren’t they. Grow vegetables extensively in greenhouses! Those of you whose lives have now been given meaning, having read that proverb twice, might be slightly emarrased to learn that it was taken from a list of 310 new patriotic proverbs recently published by the North Korean government.

National leaders hope that the public will pepper their conversation with epigrams such as…

Other gastronomic highlights of the list include:

and

Some of the slogans are cryptic:

Some are short:

Some artfully combine both of these qualities:

One or two wouldn’t have looked out of place in George Osborne’s budget speech:

And for those contemplating any sort of project management in the near future, I can do no better than point you towards this invaluable advice:

Inpsired? I certainly hope so.

Litvinenko: nothing to see here

May contain traces of polonium-210

The inquiry into the death of Russian secret agant Alexander Litvinenko is now well underway. A succession of spies, criminals and oligarchs (many of whom hold more than one of the aforementioned roles) are turning up to the Royal Courts of Justice to give evidence of facts of which they, strangely, seem to have little recollection.

But the unhappiest people in this unhappy affair are the media, who were disappointed by the judge’s ruling that some witnesses would testify anonymously.

A 9-page legal submission from the media argues: “There is an enormous public interest in these proceedings being conducted as openly as possible. The subject matter of the Inquiry does not easily lend itself to any sensationalism.”

The subject matter of the Inquiry does not easily lend itself to any sensationalism?! A Russian secret agent on the run from his former spymasters, killed in Piccadilly by being fed sushi laced with radioactive poison?

Yeah, it could happen to anyone.

In other inquiry news

Wot the planning inquiry could look like

Sussex University bosses were upset when their “Campus Masterplan” was rejected by the local council on the grounds that it would be a monstrosity and turn the peaceful, green campus into “a dense urban environment”.

Because it was all so unfair and because Michael Farthing thinks that the law only applies to him insofar as he wants it to, an appeal is underway. The University submitted a 51-page document to the Planning Inspectorate, which it has finally deigned to release to me under information rights legislation

(They only released it after intervention by the Information Commissioner, because my request conflicted with Sussex’s policy of refusing to tell anyone anything unless they bother to pursue it to great lengths.)

Horrifyingly, the University has opted to have the dispute resolved by an inquiry, at which both sides will be legally represented at public expense, calling and cross-examining witnesses… for eight whole days. What value for money, my friends!

Nirtzah

Congratulations for making it this far through the blog post, whether or not you had the assistance of four glasses of wine.

Gabrielquotes would like to wish all its readers a chag sameach and a joyful and restful Pesach!

Acknowledgement

In tonight’s episode, Pesach news was presented by the Biblical Broadcasting Corporation. The Litvinenko Inquiry was conducted by Sir Robert Owen and the media submission was drafted by The Guardian. North Korea was ruined by Kim Jong-un, Sussex was ruined by Kim Jong-farthing and the People’s Democratic Republic of North West Friends of Israel is co-chaired by Anthony Dennison and Stuart Ailion. This was an Gabrielquotes production!