Blog posts

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

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

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!

You might think I’ve plumbed the very depths of Channukah-based humour but we’ll see. If you want to be updated when I’m next back, put your email address into the box on the right.
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It’s that time of year again; let there be light, oil, latkes and presents. And if you’re having trouble finding decent, why not browse this year’s hot-off-the-press-edition catalogue from GABRIEL FESTIVE INNOVATIONS!

Other Channukoid news

And on which point…

Parliamentary news

Portsmouth MP Penny Mourdaunt had a bet on to try and slip the word ‘cock’ as many times as possible into a speech to the House of Commons, while David Cameron had a similar bet on to try and slip as many stupid policies into a five-year term as Prime Minister.

Gosh, how childish.

But she’s not the only one: Nigel Mills MP (Amber Valley, Con.) was filmed playing ‘Candy Crush’ on his iPad for two and a half hours while he was at a meeting of the Work & Pensions Select Committee. Mills admitted that he “shouldn’t do it […] I shall try not to do it in future.”

He’ll try not to sit in a meeting, get out his iPad, switch it on, select ‘Candy Crush’ and sit playing it for extended periods of time. He’ll make an effort not to do that.

I think it’s heartwarming how committed Nigel Mills is to conquering his demons.

The Sussex trade

The case of University of Sussex v Information Commissioner and Webber (EA/2014/0148) continues apace. Last week Sussex student newspaper The dear old Badger turned me into an infographic [left]; and yesterday they published an article about my Guardian Runner-up Student Reporter of the Year award for uncovering Lapelgate. (Slightly sad to be so old that I get invited to share my war stories with a young cub reporter.)

Interestingly Sussex University itself hasn’t yet found time to report that one of their alumni won a prestigious journalism award like they did when someone won last year. They managed to report someone else winning one though so I guess it must just be an oversight.

Anyway, reading through the legal bundles with which they’ve filled my front room, one gets a pretty rosy picture of how lovely they are. They began every one of their letters over the legal case with the sentence:

The University would again stress its ongoing commitment to the Freedom of Information regime and the openness and transparency that it promotes.

Well, that seems jolly good of them! They sounded almost hurt that I’d made a formal FOI request rather than simply asking them for the information I wanted man-to-man.

However, this “ongoing commitment” to FOI apparently developed fairly recently (or is just completely contrived; I guess that’s a theoretical possiblity) because in 2012 the University of Sussex made the following submission to a Parliamentary select committee:

On the whole it [the Freedom of Information Act] is not used for the purposes of encouraging transparency […] It can be deliberately used for time-wasting or mischievous questions […] We suggest that the FOIA enquirer should be required to present a specific public-interest rationale for each request, which the receiving body should be able to challenge.

It’s lovely when public authorities are so committed to transparency that they want to retaint for themselves the power to decide whether or not a request for information is worthwhile. “You want to know about our Board’s three-month fully-funded trip to Tahiti? No, I don’t think you need bother your pretty little head with that.”

Lusm transparency.

And a happy new year

Gabrielquotes Plc. wishes all of its readers a joyful winter season, Limmud, new year etc., and we’ll be back presently with more tempting tidbits.

See ya then!