For those of you that have any doubt I have man hands. That is to say that my hands are scarred gnarled and lumpy, in short they bear witness to my life. There is a new addition to my hands, having vociferously chewed my finger nails for as much of my life as I can remember I have now stopped. It suddenly occurred to me that if I can give up smoking I really should be capable of growing some finger nails. But it is not the finger nails that concern me.
Having performed my normal press-ups this morning I flexed my hands and realised again how tight my right knuckles are becoming. The right hand is supported, during press-ups, on 2 knuckles and my thumb, in deference to the lack of movement. This is result in rough patches on my knuckles and I’m not happy. The rough patches cause no real problems to me; they don’t disturb my life, inhibit movement or cause pain. The trouble is that the rough patches remind me of the expression ‘dragging knuckles’ and for that alone it disturbs me. For the first time in my life I am considering that I may need to use some form of hand cream, only considering of course.
An item in the news today caught my eye and reminded me that in the world of finance there is no humour. A man is facing jail having been convicted of selling novelty golf ball finders as pretty much anything (bombs, drugs, immigrants, money) detectors. Now much has been made of the poor front line guys using this kit to detect bombs in cars, reliant on equipment that could never work. For me this misses the point, it’s not the man selling the lucky heather that is wrong it is the idiot that purchases it. Some of these devices were sold to NATO but they rejected them as not being fit for purpose, I am surprised that they got that far but have no doubt that there was some underhand financial incentive involved.
The places that used these devices were third world countries; they were purchased by mad dictator states. The failure was not the selling of the device but the stupidity of the purchaser in relying on it. Brilliantly the have found evidence of countries asking for special sample cards related to their particular detection problem. The ‘detector’ was calibrated by inserting a coloured card into the handle, really? Have these people ever travelled? Inserting a red playing card was sufficient to cause the device to detect a human from 10 Km, a yellow card detected Botswana dollars. The scientific advisor to the case said that a 15-year-old would have considered the claims to be fantastical.
The real crime that this man committed seemed to be the £50M that he made and the life with 3 houses and a yacht that it supported. I have not researched it in-depth but I would wager that a failure to fully comply with some western tax legislation was the start of his end. If anybody wants to purchase a device that predicts the winning Lotto numbers then please contact me, don’t forget to let me know which country you are playing in so that I can include appropriate coding cards.
