How Sez Sees It

There was a blog on the Independent's web page today about words and phrases that should be banned.  In fact here is the link because it is rather excellent: http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/06/14/the-banned-list-top-100/ I would like to put a bid in for a few of my own pet hates.  Here they are: The over use of the word 'like' as in "So and so said...and I was all like..." or the use of it to fill in blanks in a conversation where the speaker lacks the confidence to finish what they are saying. The wrong use of the apostrophe.  It must always be used when describing a possesion e.g. 'Sarah's bag.'  It must also be used for 'it's' when shortening 'it is', but never for the possesional 'its'.  Also the apostrophe must be used in words where a letter is deliberately missing, e.g 'Hallowe'en'.  The phrase here is 'All Hallows Eve' so you can see the bits cut out. The over use of the word 'right&

In the last week there have been lots of stories about the sexualisation of children.  Several high street chains have pledged to stop selling clothes that would be inappropriate for young children such as padded bras and t-shirts that say slogans like 'Porn Star in training'.  The trouble is we still see examples in the media every day...but not of the sexualisation of children but of hypocrites. I remember reading a story a few months back about two young mothers who let their eight year old daughters dress up as Lady Gaga every weekend to perform at children's parties.  These costumes are hardly the sort of thing you would want your child to wear normally and yet these parents seem to think it is the norm.  Underneath the story there were many comments saying how bad this was, but there were others saying that the children were enjoying it so why stop it?  These are the same commentators who go the comments pages of stories about underage sexual assults and accuse peop

The BBC has announced it will show both the finals of Wimbledon on 3D TV for the first time.  As much as I would love to see Nadal in 3D (because believe me I would), I myself do not have a 3D TV so will be watching it on bog standard HD :-P I think the best comment I saw though was a Sun reader who announced that the advent of 3D TV was over as there was hardly any of it about.  I thought this was fairly amusing as more than anything it made me think about how quickly technology can move on. I remember back in 2004 we still had only analogue TV in our house.  Where we live signals  for TVs and phones tend to be dreadful.  In fact it was so bad that we couldn't have Channel Five tuned in (not really a bad thing).  Then that year we got Freeview.  I remember that day so well.  We could only get about 10 of the 30 or so channels to work and we had to get a booster arial, but it was still better than the analogue.  Then this year we got FreeSat and an HD TV.  This means we have ac

Recently and totally out of the blue I have started eating honey.  I don't know why, but I love the stuff now where I used to hate it entirely.  There you go, taste buds change.  It turns out that honey could be good for watching your weight and keeping you healthy. Manuka honey (which is expensive) is said to have many health benefits and can keep you from getting colds and all sorts, but any honey will do the trick apparently.  Honey, on average, has more calories per tablespoon than refined cane sugar (the calorific content can change due to the type of honey used).  However, because honey is very, natuarally sweet, you need to use much less of it than sugar so that you should end up having less calories anyway.  The other thing is the GI count.  GI or Glycemic Index is basically a measure of how quickly the body can use carbohydrates from foods.  The lower the score the slower the release of energy.  Ordinary supermarket sugar has a GI of 60 - 100 whereas honey tends to ran