Tuesday Tragedy

While I am away, here is some reading to entertain you from The Guardian newspaper about London's Grenfell Tower fire. What stupid poor people, disabled and immigrants who chose to live in public housing in London's richest local council area. What did they expect?

When built Grenfell met fire standards of the time, which unfortunately did not include sprinklers. El cheopo renovations since and generally lax maintenance led it to become the fire hazard it became. The cladding mentioned was just the icing on the cake.  

It is all really so shocking; lax fire safety for public and private housing in one of the richest countries in the world. The UK should the world leader with fire safety, as it is in so many other areas.  

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/02/grenfell-is-still-giving-up-its-secrets-and-they-retain-the-power-to-shock

London's Mayor Khan is still concerned.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/12/sadiq-khan-london-mayor-i-fear-we-could-face-another-grenfell

Back Soon Enough

As this is published I am snuggled down in bed but I need to be up soon as we are travelling in a big silver sky bird. We are away for a week or so. The blackish card will be left at home and the brighter card will come into play. Just the colour of the cards tells you something about the respective cities. 

No changes at the Sydney Broadcasting Corporation

It is supposed to be the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and I couldn't help feeling very cross when the radio news switched from local state to national news on Saturday and the national ABC radio news at 8pm waxed lyrically about New South Wales rugby sports results at the conclusion of the bulletin but failed to mention Victoria's Australian Rules football results. I think more people in Australia follow Australian rules football than Sydney thugby. The states of Victoria and New South Wales have similarly numbered populations. 

Most of the stories in the news were national or international and at least there wasn't a Sydney car crash report with the news that Harbour Bridge traffic is delayed. Don't laugh. I've heard it.

This is not new. Somewhere in the ABC archives will be a couple of letters I wrote about the same matter in the 1980s. The will be emails I have written. There will online complaint forms I've filled in. The ABC bias towards Sydney in national radio news has been happening for decades and it needs to stop. 

God help you if you live in the states of WA, SA, QLD and TAS. You'll never get a look in.

Saved post for a rainy day

Don't we want to hide when we hear the term 'politically correct'. It has become an abusive term towards some who think they have the right to spout off from their mouths about others in an offensive manner.

I had some success suggesting to transport bloggers that it was low hanging fruit to pluck by replacing the phrase 'manned ticket office' with 'staffed ticket office'.

For some jobs it might be helpful to identify the sex of the person performing the job, but mostly it isn't. Waiter will do for me and no need for waitress. 

It's a moot point really as we generally don't have them any more. But even so, no need for conductor and conductress. Once tram conductors were removed from our trams in the 1990s, I haven't really heard the word conductress. Train conductors are just that, male or female...or perhaps train managers.   

Ground manhole? Inspection pit. 

Ceiling manhole? Roof access.

Fisherman? Fisher. 

Chairman? Chair.

Man/girl, no, man/woman. Man with his bitch, appalling. Woman with her bitch (man), amusing. 

There are not too many workplaces in the Western World where woman don't participate and our language needs to and is changing to mark that.