News in Brief

It's a crazy world. We know that. Maybe even crazier for an old guy like me who finds some aspects of modern life baffling. I spotted a few weird/mildly interesting things in today's news. Some of them barely need a comment from me but comments from readers are always welcome, occasionally amusing and generally stimulating and thoughtful.

The owner of an American bulldog (that's a breed, not a nationality) accused the government of "dog racism" after Lola, her dog, was seized by police because she "looked like a dangerous dog".

A professor from Yale University claims that construction of Machu Picchu started in 1420 rather than in 1440 as the Spanish had claimed. A spokesperson for the Spanish Government suggested that maybe Professor Burger might have better spent the last 20 years of his life sailing the world and looking for the Loch Ness Monster and the lost continent of Atlantis.

[Comments in italics are editorial]

Dr Zoe Muller of the University of Bristol studied the herd behaviour of giraffes and concluded that their social groups include older animals acting as "grandmothers", helping to bring up the young. Presumably as the parents go out to work. Dr Muller found that female giraffes live for about 10 years after they are no longer capable of giving birth, leading her to suggest "there must be some evolutionary advantage". Otherwise they'd die straight after their last child, Zoe? An old, female giraffe at Bristol Zoo claimed compensation on the basis that it had been "a dig at my age".

A 12 year old Japanese girl won a silver medal for the women's park skateboarding event. Mr Wiki tells us (I'm still giving him my £5 a month) "park skateboarding encompasses a variety of sub-styles adopted by those who ride skateboards in purpose-built skate parks. Most skate parks combine halfpipes and quarterpipes with various other "vert" skateboarding features as well as "street" obstacles such as stairs, ledges, and rails." Whatever all those words mean. Plans for a Junior Olympics have now been put in the same place as for a Senior Olympics: in the bin. Quite right, don't want any ageism.

I, Grandfather

A woman recently sued her employer for age discrimination. One of her colleagues at the publishing company, road testing a car, commented in the review that the car had "comfy wheels for a grandmother".

She is 62 and ... a grandmother.

She complained to a tribunal that it had been "a dig at my age".

The tribunal threw the case out, So far so good.

The Tribunal Judge, however, ruled that the words in the review amounted to "detrimental treatment" and was therefore "direct discrimination" under the law. Idiot.

I have instructed lawyers to write to my sons regarding their frequent use of the phrase "old man". Boys, please desist. Further, in emails to my grandsons my lawyers say that the use of "grandad" and "grandpa" is no longer appropriate and that I must henceforth be referred to as "bro" or "dude".

What a strange world we live in.

Self-identifying

According to the Office of National Statistics in a report published on Monday, white people born in the UK in the period covered: 2011-2014 had a lower life expectancy than all other ethnic groups. Black African women, for instance, had a life expectancy of 88.9 years; for Asian (other: excluding Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) men the figure was 84.5 years. For white women life expectancy was 83.1 years, for men 79.7 years. You can download the data here.

Which leads me to wonder whether, in this post-binary world, I could identify as a black African woman and live for an extra nine years. And what would I do with those years?

Three questions:

1. Are there cultural reasons which I have ignored? Probably.

2. Am I trivialising a number of issues in an offensive way? I hope not, but maybe.

3. Why am I blogging only 164 words when there is so much else to write about? You're right, I could just have tweeted.

Spotto

When I was last in Australia visiting Son #1 and his family (an almost extinct activity which many of you will remember in the olden days), his children introduced me to the game of Spotto. It's customarily played on a car journey and involves the participants saying (it's usually yelling, actually) saying "Spotto" when they see a yellow car. The first to say it for a particular car gets a point and the player with the most points at the end of the journey wins.

You have to say the word in an Aussie accent, with the "tt" very soft and the final "o" more like "ao".

A simple game, you might think. But, as you can imagine, it leads to much controversy. Most obviously there are questions about the "shade" of yellow. "No, that's gold!" is a frequent cry. Marginal calls can be made on cars that have some yellow in their livery and adjudication is then called for. Did I mention that you lose a point if your claim is disallowed? Then there is the question whether buses count or does it have to be a car? Experienced players will sneak in the odd yellow road sign when attention is elsewhere, and caravans definitely engender debate. Ties (half a point each, which is awkward for three way ties) can be allowed, although loud shouts often win over equally well-timed but timid ones, unless you have a strong and well-respected adjudicator - normally the driver to make sure (s)he concentrates on all other road users not just yellow ones.. Familial respect can go out of the window.

When I returned to the UK I introduced Spotto to Son #2 and his family. So the game is no longer unique to the Aussies. As with the latter, daughters-in-law prove particularly pugnacious in playing the game. We have explored alternative versions such as Grotto for grey cars and Blotto for blue ones, and also (since they live close to the sea) inclusions of boats and garbage trucks. It whiles away the time on long trips.

If/when I buy a new car, I am considering getting a yellow one. I'd climb in it every morning and claim my Spotto point, almost always winning the day's competition. But would that be cheating? It's a moral dilemma that I may need help with. Let me know.

Heritage

Do you know how many World Heritage Sites there are? Have a guess before you read on. No Googling. My guess was ... around 40.

Nope. There are 1,120 sites listed by Unesco, under whose auspices the sites are chosen. And sometimes unchosen. 868 on the list are cultural sites, such as Angkor Wat and Auschwitz Birkenau, 213 are natural, e.g. the Giant's Causeway and the Kilimanjaro National Park, and 39 are both - the Tasmanian Wilderness and Meteora, for example.

The United Kingdom is a State Party of the World Heritage Convention, which enables a state to identify and nominate properties in their national territory to be considered for inscription on the World Heritage List. In order to be a State Party, you have to agree to adhere to the World Heritage Convention which defines the kinds of sites eligible for inclusion and the responsibilities of the State Party in terms of conservation and other criteria.

Being a State Party provides access to the World Heritage Fund but also the Party contributes to that fund. A report commissioned for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2007 on the costs and benefits of World Heritage Site Status in the UK is so opaque and unhelpful to the casual reader that I gave up after 20 pages of what I can only describe as pure management consultancy speak. It describes benefits such as tourism, civic pride and social capital in terms that a sixth former could have done and is clearly a copy and paste job, for which the PWC partners were undoubtedly rubbing their hands with greedy glee. If you want your garden to be recommended for World Heritage status, don't read this report, ask me.

Of the 1,120 sites on the list, three are shown as Delisted. In other words, booted out:

• The Arabian Oryx Sanctuary
• Dresden Elbe Valley
• The City of Liverpool

The Arabian oryx, a kind of antelope,

was declared extinct in the wild and reintroduced, after a captive breeding programme, in 1982, in an area of Oman known for its unique desert ecosystem and protection of other endangered species. The site was delisted in 2007 after the government of Oman reduced the size of the conservation area by 90% amid "plans to proceed with hydrocarbon prospection". I take this to mean that digging for oil was more important than protecting the remaining 65 oryx (down from a peak of 450).

The Dresden Elbe Valley was originally listed for "outstanding cultural landscape with ... exceptional testimonies of court architecture and festivities". It was delisted in 2009 "due to the building of a four-lane bridge in the heart of the cultural landscape which meant that the property failed to keep its 'outstanding universal value as inscribed.'".

Liverpool - Maritime Mercantile City was originally listed as a World Heritage Site in 2004 for demonstrating "Outstanding Universal Value in terms of innovative technologies and dock construction from the 18th to the early 20th century and the quality and innovation of its architecture and cultural activities are contained within the boundaries of the six areas forming the property." Subsequently the city was placed on the "List of World Heritage in Danger" in 2012 following concerns about the proposed development of Liverpool Waters. When the residential development went ahead, the city was delisted this year and is no longer a World Heritage Site.

It seems that this bureaucratic organisation is flexing its muscles - "don't take us for a ride". Now there is concern that the proposed tunnel replacing the A303 near Stonehenge

will jeopardise that site's World Heritage status. Unesco has advised the Department of Transport that it would have an "adverse impact" on the site's status. The site will be placed on the "in danger of delisting" list if the project goes ahead.

I should declare that I have an interest in this. The A303 is my primary route from Cornwall to London and Kent, a journey I drive on a regular, albeit not frequent, basis. The part of the journey past Stonehenge is always extremely slow as two lanes merge into one from both directions. At times it can delay the trip by an hour or more. I believe that the argument against the tunnel by Save Britain's Heritage and others is that the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites' "Outstanding Universal Value" could be affected by the "adverse impact it may have on the landscape, archaeological remains, hydrogeology and ecology of the site".

Now I am supremely unqualified to make judgements on hydrogeology, whatever that is, but I am instinctively suspicious of the "numerous messages from citizens from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" that Unesco's World Heritage Centre claims to have received on this issue. OK, it's a lobbying campaign and that's how pressure groups go about things but surely there is a balance here to be had. One the one side the undoubted benefits of removing a severe blockage of the flow of traffic from London to the South West; on the other, the potential damage to the site. I say "potential" because as far as I can see the archaeological damage is unspecified - there might be artifacts below the surface of the land to be removed in order to build the tunnel.

Of course there is often a balance to be had between development and conservation. But the World Heritage Convention has all the hallmarks of a huge bureaucratic leviathan, gobbling up money from contributor countries and, after deducting substantial management costs, giving it back to those countries. And taking upon itself to decide what is of "universal" cultural value and what is not. Is any of that really necessary or desirable?

I don't argue against the notion of heritage, nor that cultural sites can have historic, social and civic value. No nation claiming to be civilised would destroy sites such as Stonehenge. I do question whether there are sites of such great "universal" value that need protecting from rapacious, uncivilised governments. Who are we to judge whether the Pyramids should be protected? In any case, there is no serious danger of the Pyramids or the Parthenon being destroyed. And if they were, the World Heritage Convention would have only one sanction available: "you're no longer on our list, so there!"

My problem is that the World Heritage monster has grown out of control - 12 sites in its first year of existence, now over 1,100 - and needs to add more sites every year in order to justify its existence. In doing so, it seems to have broadened the definition of sites included and diluted the significance of "world heritage".

The UK has 32 World Heritage sites. In what way is "Dorset and East Devon coast" of "universal value"? Sure, we'll protect our coast but that's a choice we make as a nation. And have the means to decide whether to do so: elections. There is nothing an international quango can contribute.

The origins of the concept of shared international cooperation to protect historic sites - such as the campaign to dismantle and move the Abu Simbel temples in Egypt, so that they weren't destroyed by the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1959 (50 countries contributed money) - are worthy of acknowledgement. But not as a precursor to an unnecessarily grandiose bureaucracy. 

Breaking news! Since I started writing this, five more sites have been added to the World Heritage list, including "the great spa towns of Europe". Including Bath.

Which was there before being listed and will still be there if it is no longer listed.

I instinctively felt that "world heritage" sounds like a good thing. Not so sure now. It didn't help the poor oryx.

Words of the week

Luthier. A craftsperson (horrible, ugly word) who builds and repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. In case there are other species in the universe which use "person", I prefer craftshuman.

Evazoum. A Late Triassic archosaurian ichnospecies. A four year old girl in Wales discovered a large Evazoum footprint on a beach. Her name (the girl, not the dinosaur) is Alice and she was walking with a White Rabbit Lily.

Pingdemic. The NHS Covid-19 app telling you to stay at home (but you don't have to).

Limbic. The limbic system is the part of the brain involved in our behavioural and emotional responses, especially when it comes to behaviours we need for survival: feeding, reproduction and caring for our young, and fight or flight responses. Word courtesy of Follower Dan.

Nudiustertian. Relating to the day before yesterday. I came across this in a cryptic crossword. From the Latin nunc dies tertius est (“now is the third day”). In some ways the opposite, or mirror image, of ...

Overmorrow. The day after tomorrow.