Creditworthy

There's a play on the radio.  Or television (although this rarely gets turned on here).  The actors get a big mention, and usually the producer, too.  But what about the creator who actually wrote the thing?  It's a brief after-thought in the credits, if at all.

I tuned into a Radio 4 play this afternoon,  Every Child Matters.  It impressed me and I took the trouble to look up the listing on the BBC web page.  There was a neat synopsis and full credits for the actors, including a biographical paragraph each.  But not a word about the writer - Christopher Reason, to give him full credit here - without whom, to state the obvious, there would be no lines for the actors to recite.

Are writers so shy as to not demand greater recognition?

Emperor's clothes

Gazing idly around in a Bristol traffic jam, I was struck by the boast emblazoned across the  Rohan store window: "Technology disguised as clothing".

Is this meant to attract me to making a purchase?   

What will be next?  Additives disguised as food?

Voting for lethargy

Voter turnout for the election today seemed, at least locally, even poorer than normal.  And that's saying something.

I trod a lonely path to the poll station and had a sense that I was intruding on the officials, who stopped reading their newspapers just long enough to draw a line through my name on the register and hand me my voting slips.  

A particular culture seems to have developed over the last few elections that it's perfectly fine for the polling clerks shamelessly to tune into the radio, browse the newspapers, read a book.  Dealing with any stray voters who chance by seems a mild irritation.  

Voter apathy now seems to have spread to the officials.