Red Cross Code

I see that a Christmas panto in Glasgow has violated the Geneva Convention by using a red cross on a nurse’s costume. I put a red cross on my household first aid box (red, because at the time I didn’t have any green tape – and anyway, red was okay for first aid box crosses when I was a boy so when did the world change, and why?). Does this mean I’m about to have a visit from the colour-of-cross police?

Lichfield Heritage Centre had better watch out, because if the Red Cross perseveres with this nonsense then the Lichfield mouse (see left) will soon be for the big mousetrap in the sky.

Why stop at pantos and mice? Why not have ago at all those ambulances* (not just in the UK, but worldwide) that dare to use the symbol? Or would that problem be harder to crack than the local kids pantomime?

Film producers be warned – if you are planning a documentary about the Crusades then you had better forget it, because the symbol is sacrosanct. The fact that it has been used elsewhere for hundreds of years apparently means nothing. Isn’t it simply the cross of St.George?

Oh – and if the Red Cross is looking for more red cross users to assail, why not have a go at this one – it’s BIG, because the red cross symbol is used on thousands of vehicles and letterheads. It is the City of London crest. Does it breach the Geneva Convention? Possibly…

I can understand why the Red Cross wants to protect the use of the symbol, but a panto? Has it lost its sense of proportion, doesn’t it have better things to do? Why does the word ‘jobsworth’ spring to mind? La-la land is alive and well. We are living there.

The Red Cross appears to have forgotten where its funding comes from, oh yes it has. Oh no it hasn’t… Oh yes it has…

The BBC report is here.

*military ambulances can use it

Out damned Scot! Out I say!

Okay, so I butchered the Macbeth quote. But if what the media says about big firms not having the guts to deliver to Scotland then it’s true, isn’t it? We recently had a huge snowfall, resulting in 24 hours of hell on some roads*. In the Home Counties they get 2″ of snow and come to a complete standstill, I know that because I used to live there. But will the big firms ban all deliveries there? You bet they won’t. These big suppliers no doubt based their decision not to deliver to Scotland on a 60% chance of heavy snow here (which is what I read in the ‘media’ so it has to be true). You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that this is 60:40, just a little better than a 50:50 chance – which you get from tossing a coin and we can all do that. I don’t blame the Met Office for being cautious. I was living in Berkshire that fateful day in 1987 when Michael Fish predicted mild weather and next morning it looked as though we’d been hit by a hurricane.

I have said a few times before in these posts that I am not a Scot. But I have lived here for 10 years and I am beginning to understand what niggles the people here about ‘down south’. We might as well be Norway or Sweden. I’m sure Scots are thought of by many as bagpipe-playing caber-tossing peasants swigging whisky and eating haggis, shortbread and turnips. Others subscribe to the more modern belief, that we are all stabbing one another on Glasgow streets (they don’t do that in London of course, they just have drive-by shootings). I have watched 1950’s documentaries on TV with a voiceover sounding like Laurence Olivier on steroids that describe Scotland and the Scottish in the same patronising way that other documentaries of the time described ‘negroes’ in mud huts (you know what I mean – the commentators used the word ‘piccaninnies’ when talking about black kids).

So where am I going with this? Nowhere, I’m just telling the truth. But I am beginning to understand why so many people here voted SNP.

*The M8 in particular. For those that don’t know it, it is the arterial road between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Unlike most other motorways it is ONLY TWO LANES. And it doesn’t actually connect the two major cities because a long stretch of it is ‘A’-road dual carriageway.

Lost in Space no longer…

I have bought a satnav. I have avoided the things for years, relying on my faultless map reading skills and equally faultless memory (joke). When driving from A to Z I have always been fairly good at getting from A to W. It’s the W to Z bit that usually zaps me. You know what I mean, the road maps and signs get you most of the way and then let you down because your map scale is wrong or the traffic too heavy to keep stopping to check your directions. After reading a lot of reviews I bought a TomTom XL (it was cheaper last week!).

On Friday I drove north into the Highlands and used the satnav for the first time. Because I thought I knew the way I took a turning I shouldn’t have taken. The satnav stopped speaking to me and I thought it was sulking. I expected a message telling me I had gone the wrong way, but instead I got further instructions – it had accepted what I had done and had recalculated a new route, brilliant! Some satnavs that can’t do that. There are others that tell you that you have gone wrong. What’s the point of that?

My daughter in law had to drive into Glasgow recently so she borrowed her friend’s satnav. As you may know, as is the case with phones and ringtones, you can download different satnav voices. Her friend had downloaded an Irish voice. Despite satnav guidance, D-in-L went horribly wrong and found herself facing a brick wall in a dead-end street. The very Irish satnav seemed just as perplexed as she was and asked her ‘Where the f**k are you going?‘