How many percent?

Now that we know that we're not, in fact, all going to die from swine flu, we can turn our attention to what our favourite MPs have been spending our money on. Dewsbury MP, Shahid Malik, is the latest parliamentarian to be suspended, after reports that he claimed over £60k over three years on expenses for what may or may not have been his main home. Among the more dubious claims were a £730 massage chair and a £2100 TV, despite his repeated protestations that he'd behaved "one million percent by the book". Quite why anyone would expect someone so inept at math to make adequate expense claims, though, is beyond me.

Where has all the money gone?

So let me ask you this. If, in this time of financial crisis, everyone has lost so much money, who's getting it all? I mean, these banks and financial institutions have lost trillions of dollars, judging by how much money we're pouring into them. Well where did it go? Someone must have it somewhere. How exactly do you lose a trillion dollars?

I'm sure it's mine. If you find it, please let me know. I want it back.

One use of strong violence

I love the British Board of Film Classification. Nowadays, in the age of consumer choice, they don't just give you their opinion on which films are suitable for which age groups, they also provide you with helpful 'Consumer advice'. According to their website, consumer advice "enables the public to make informed choices. It covers in particular violence, sex, language, drugs and any other matters likely to be of concern to the public."

Below is a list of the type of consumer advice available for movies currently showing at my local cineplex. Bonus points if you can guess which movie corresponds to which piece of advice:

1. Contains very mild threat
2. Contains mild threat and scary moments
3. Contains mild language and sex references
4. Contains strong language and infrequent bloody war violence
5. Contains strong language
6. Contains infrequent strong language
7. Contains strong violence, sex references & one use of very strong language
8. Contains strong language and sex references
9. Contains strong gory violence, horror and sex
10. Contains moderate sex references and one use of strong language
11. Contains strong language
12. Contains strong language and crude sexual references
13. Contains emotionally intense scenes
14. Contains strong language and violence
15. Contains strong sex
16. Contains strong bloody wrestling violence, strong language, sex and drug use
17. Contains moderate fantasy violence and horror
18. Contains strong bloody violence
19. Contains moderate violence and one use of strong language
20. Contains one use of strong language and moderate sex references

The great thing about consumer advice is that it adds a whole new dimension to the cinematic experience. Suppose it's a Friday night, I'm bored, I feel like watching a movie, I check the local listings, but hey! I haven't heard of any of these movies. What to do? I could spend half an hour trying to find out about each of them on Rotten Tomatoes, but by the time I'm through, maybe I've missed all the showings. With consumer advice, I can just choose what I feel like watching. Say I feel like watching a violent film. My options are almost limitless! But if I know what kind of violence I'm into, then I can easily narrow my choices. I'm into bloody wrestling violence myself, so #16 would be the obvious choice (the smart ones among you will have guessed that #16 is The Wrestler). I can even choose what I want to go with my bloody wrestling violence. It's like a buffet, but better! Say I like strong language, drugs and sex. Why, #16 has it all! How could it not win an Oscar?!?

I still find some of the advice slightly confusing, though. Take "one use of strong language" as advertised for #19 and #20. What does that entail exactly? One instance of profanity? Or a single profanity repeated over and over? This would clearly influence my choice. It would be helpful if they could also clarify what kind of strong language, e.g. "one use of strong language beginning with "f", repeatedly" or something such like. My favourite description is "contains emotionally intense scenes". I've never wanted to see one of those.... and now, I never have to!

The correct answers, in numerical order: Beverly Hills Chihuahua; Bolt 3D; Bride Wars; Che: Part One; Frost/Nixon; Ghost Town; Jar City; Milk; My Bloody Valentine 3D; Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist; Revolutionary Road; Role Models; Seven Pounds; Slumdog Millionaire; The Reader; The Wrestler; Twilight; Underworld: Rise of the Lycans; Valkyrie; Yes Man

The flesh-eating bug

I was out for a walk the other day when I started thinking about all those phenomena that we used to hear about on an almost daily basis, but that have since been forgotten in the archives of history or been superceded by newer, trendier concepts. I think of acid rain, CFCs, lead poisoning, Michael Bolton. One rarely hears about these any more (in the latter case, that is undoubtedly a much welcome relief), although we now hear a lot more about climate change, melamine, mobile phone radiation and Ditta von Teese.

But what about the flesh-eating bug? There was a time when this was the scourge of hospitals, the flesh eating streptococcus causing that wonderfully exotically and scarily named condition, necrotizing fasciitis. It has, of course, more recently given way to equally nasty things, like MRSA and Clostridium difficile. But those of us who appreciate vintage do, on occasion, miss hearing about the flesh-eating bug, so it was with a certain amount of quiet glee that I glanced over at a fellow commuter this morning to peek casually at a headline from The Daily Mail (really, why.....?), which was all the more enjoyable for its quirky ambiguity:

"I Caught Flesh-Eating Bug Doing Gardening"

I rushed to the paper's website (this was a one-off, obviously, not something I do on a regular basis), although I was slightly disappointed to find that this was actually a story about an unfortunate gardener who brushed her hand across her eye and ended up on life support following a nasty eye infection. But even the staunchest of evolutionary biologists would have to admit that that would have been quite a sighting indeed.....

China China, where art thou , oh China?

aka 烧肉贩

I was devastated to learn that China China, my vote for the best Chinese restaurant in London's Chinatown, closed down recently for reasons that will probably never be known. Situated in a prime location on the corner of Gerrard Place, roast duck, chicken and pork alluringly hanging on the restaurant front, China China served classic Cantonese food for years, and had the best crispy pork and rice in town. Gone are the days when I could pass by after work for a take out portion of crispy pork, or drop in for duck and preserved vegetables with crispy noodles, pi-pa tofu, or prawn dumplings.

I am now forced to undertake an exhaustive research of all the restaurants in Chinatown, to find a suitable replacement for my crispy pork cravings....... I will report back. In the meantime, I have no choice but to make my own...

Doing the J-walk again....

Phew! Having spent a few days in Vienna, let me tell you that it's a real relief to be back in a country that allows jaywalking. I mean, I'm all for respecting local laws and customs and all, and I certainly don't want to be fined 50 Euros for failing to cross the road at the designated pedestrian crossings. Nor do I want to undermine the imperative to cross the road safely. I have to admit, however, that I don't think I can trust a country that penalizes pedestrians for jaywalking. Firstly, making jaywalking illegal is a recognition of the preferential treatment that motorized transport receives over pedestrians. The average intersection might allow cars in any one direction to pass through for one or two minutes at a time, while giving pedestrians only some 20 seconds to cross the road, despite the fact that cars generally travel at 10 times the speed of pedestrians. This, in addition to the extra distance that pedestrians must walk to get to a crossing, means that pedestrians spend proportionately more time crossing intersections than do motorized vehicles. Secondly, such preferential treatment of motorized transport perpetuates gross inequities in urban living. Although many pedestrians choose not to own a car, a great many don't own one because of financial rather than personal reasons. Car ownership is, however, rarely forced upon people (except perhaps in ridiculous cities that are built around the car). Urban public spaces are thus preferentially occupied by private, mobile spaces that pollute the air for everyone else at no additional penalty (exceptions being, perhaps, cities that have congestion charges). The very least cities could do to offset this imposition is to make jaywalking legal (under jaywalking, I exclude skimpily-clad, extremely drunk women who jump in front of a bus on a Friday night for no particularly good reason - that's just dumb).

Val de Loire

How can you possibly not like the Loire Valley? A place that has more castles that have been written about in Disney stories, where a salad involves rillons (pork belly cooked in lard and browned with caramel), lardons and ham accompanied by a few lettuce leaves (but at least it comes with a decent dressing, which is more than can be said for most salads you get in London....), where anything that isn't a salad is served with frites, where trying to get an outdoor table for lunch invites dramatic remonstrations from a waitress complaining "Mais c'est impossible! Voyez! C'est complet!", where turning up for dinner at a restaurant without a reservation is met with looks of disapproval from a dour-faced waitress and replies of "Vous n'avez pas reservé? Je ne sais pas, hein?", where you can have dinner in a troglodyte cave, where a quick lunch ends up taking hours, where it takes at least three hours to have dinner in a half-empty restaurant that will serve no more than five tables on a Saturday night?

Château at Saumur, where a castle has existed since the 12th Century