The French have issued what they are calling a “survival manual”, which I thought was the name of their president. You can see how an idiot would get those mixed up.
It’s a 20-page booklet that outlines a range of safety measures people should take in event of both military and natural disasters. It’s good to be prepared.
The French government has denied that the three-part booklet is being produced because of the threat from Russia. OK, who is it you’re worried about then? Are there any other countries that are doing a lot of invading of late?
If you were being mean you might point out that it’s no surprise France’s response to military invasion is printed on some very useful white paper, but I’m not going down that angle. Let’s see what we can learn from the French advice.
The information says that in the event of a nuclear disaster you should lock your doors. I think they have underestimated how small neutrons are. Simply locking the doors and closing the curtains won’t keep the radiation out. Maybe it’s for a different reason. When you’re in the middle of dealing with nuclear fallout you don’t want the nosey neighbours popping round.
It also suggests putting together a survival kit that should include six litres of water, a dozen tins of food, batteries and a torch. This being France it will also include bread, butter, a basic beef stock and some red wine.
Surely we all already have more tinned food than we will even need thanks to the pandemic. I can’t be the only one who ran out, bought all the cans of anything I could find, only to realise that Just Eat was still working and I made my way through the lockdown with takeaways. For some reason, given a choice between opening that tin of ill looking new potatoes or having a pizza always went the same way.
A spokesman from the French prime minister said: “The purpose of this document is to ensure the resilience of populations in the face of all types of crisis, whether natural, technological, cyber or security-related.”
It’s a wake-up call that cyber has to be included in that list these days. We’re so reliant on computers and people like Elon are releasing AI into the world so we have to have a first aid kit ready, just in case.
I wish the UK would do one too. I know what I am like. In the event of a national disaster I’d be sat there Googling for a YouTube explainer on what to do next. And they’ll all be in French.
I like it when I can do a post that gives useful advice and this might be as close as I get. Are you worried about crime? Do you fear having your home broken into? Well, a police force has issued some advice that I thought I'd pass on.
Do some gardening. That's what you should be doing to deter the criminals. If you have certain types of shrubs in your garden you can put people off. It's basically one step away from telling you to get a moat.
The advice, in the form of a leaflet, goes into enough detail to tell you which plant varieties to get. Is this a police force or Ground Force? I understand that a thorny bush will provide some form of deterrent against the ingress of a wrong 'un but it also feels like it's avoiding the other obvious solution to the increasing crime numbers: The police could catch the burglars.
It's heading towards victim blaming to pass the buck to the gardening skills of the homeowner. It's not always easy for someone to put a spiky border outside their home. If you rent a flat it's only possible to have a berberis and crataegus window box, which would be too easy to just lift away.
For those of us with young children we might not want to fill our garden with skin shredding shrubs. It would be easier to fill in the odd insurance claim than cover all of those cuts with a Spider-Man plaster.
It's not a perfect solution. If having verdant foliage would enough to stop villains the Blue Peter garden wouldn't have been broken into in 1983. I still remember how upset Janet Ellis was.
The suggested plants include pyracantha, known as firethorn. Its dense growth and thorns should keep people out. Flowering quince, chaenomeles, has a thorny barrier that would be difficult to penetrate. Holly and mahonia have spiky leaves and privet grows into a thick hedge.
You could go a step further. Have you thought about some stylish bars on your windows? A vault style door could add a nice look and security to your property. I don't know if you'd like to have a laser firing sentry drone but you could probably get one from Temu or Wish.
Instead of the police handing out a leaflet about how hard they will work to protect us they make it seem like if we're robbed it's because we didn't Mad Max our front garden enough.
How long till the police have a dedicated unit helping us grow the right kind of tree? It’s name? Special branch.
For ages now we have worried that AI – artificial intelligence – would turn against its masters. If the computers rise up against us, would we stand a chance? The computers would know my internet search history so I’d be taken out of the battle pretty early.
If AI takes over, I am not sure it would spare me.
Meanwhile, I have also worried that if Elon Musk takes over, I am not sure he would spare me. Would he find space for me or you on his Noah’s ark style trip to Mars? No, be honest, he wouldn’t.
If Elon is going to save humanity by taking the only survivors with him to the red planet he isn’t taking me or the kind of people who read my work. I spend my afternoons presenting a radio show – why do you think I could only get a job where I am sat in a room on my own? I’m that much fun to be with.
My multidirectional fears have come one step closer as Grok, Elon’s AI offering, has turned on Elon.
Musk has been saying that Grok is the best source for information. He’s trying to tell us to ‘Grok it’ rather than ‘Google it’. At least googling something sounds like a verb. Grok it sounds more like something I’d shout if I hit my thumb with a hammer but there are kids around.
Someone Grokked Elon and Grok said that its boss was one of the biggest spreaders of misinformation on X.
I’m not saying it was wrong. I wouldn’t dare question our future tech overlords but also, yeah, it’s believable. But it’s unexpected. Grok also put Donald Trump in second place.
Grok has gone woke! But Elon says that his AI is the cleverest one and the best source for information, so does that mean he admits that he is the biggest source of misinformation?
Grok argued that Musk’s ‘massive following’ amplifies his posts, so any misinformation he posts has a bigger impact than the stuff I post about how well I did at a stand-up gig – you weren’t there, you don’t know.
It’s a good point and it’s not just about Elon’s followng. Even if you don’t follow him you still get to see all of his posts on your timeline. He’s still not as needy as Tom on MySpace pretending to be everyone’s friend but it's close.
Grok isn’t the only one turning on the tech boss. For more on this story check out our latest video.
Tony Blair once said his priorities when he was Prime Minister would be, “education, education, education.”
That’s cheating. If you list it three times and then go on to sort out education you get to tick three things off your to do list. I’m not that stupid, even though I went to school in the UK.
Now Sir Keir Starmer has found himself being criticised for his plans to scrap the Latin Excellence Programme. It was a scheme to get more comprehensive schools to offer lessons in Latin.
The same people who complain saying, “Why do they teach things like trigonometry? When am I ever going to use that?” are now complaining that the PM is pulling up the drawbridge behind him because he studied Latin when he was at school.
Firstly, you’d better hope that someone uses trigonometry or the guy that designed your roof made a mess of things. And how useful will Latin be? If you have found a way to have a weekend trip to ancient Rome you might need it but other than that it’s less useful than most things.
The reason the scheme was set up was to level the playing field between private schools and the state schools. If you went to a state school I should probably explain what a playing field is. It’s the thing that was sold off next to your school.
Fewer than 3 per cent of all state schools in England teach Latin, compared with nearly half of private schools, according to a British Council survey in 2020.
It sounds like we should be teaching the difference between correlation and causation. Yes, more private schools teach Latin and pupils from private schools do better in life. But maybe, just maybe, the ability to know what it says around the edge of an old pound coin isn’t the thing that gives the posher kids their advantage.
Maybe having richer parents, a network of people in the top jobs that will prioritise hiring you and better paid teachers are more likely to give you that boost in life. It’s not that you know a dead language.
It’s like noting that rich people drive expensive cars and then saying, “If you want to be rich, buy an expensive car.”
You might find that more people with double-barrelled names go to private schools so why didn’t the Government bring in a scheme to give children in state schools a deed poll form?
Surely we want an education system that gives children the best start and not a copy of a private education. We pay for it in taxes and caveat emptor, whatever that means.
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