Mandamus And Orlop

Sounds Like A Novel, Don't They?

I can imagine the taglines even now:  "The searing satirical sequel to "Oryx And Crake" by Margaret 'Buster Of Blocks' Atwood!!"

     That would have been back in the day when 'Oryx' was just a random word and not an open-source Dutch website that tracks material losses in Ukraine.  'Twould also be difficult to have a sequel when the protagonist was at death's door in the original, and modern medicine had gone away, as had most of civilisation.  Art!

Blackpool never looked more beautiful

     Of course - obviously! - that's not what these words are about.  If one tackles them separately, then 'Mandamus' sounds like a character from "Lord Of The Rings", one of the princelings of Dol Amroth, perhaps.  'Orlop', on the other hand, sounds like a Bond villain.  An albino hunchback with metal claws for hands - life's not been good to him.  Plus he has terrible BO.

     ANYWAY neither of those fetching fantasies are true.  Conrad is unsure why either of them bubbled up as mental flotsam, but they did, and one cannot look at blog content with idle curiosity.

     So, taking up my copy of the Collins Concise, it defines 'Mandamus' as "A writ from a superior court commanding an inferior tribunal, public official, etc., to carry out a public duty."  From, inevitably, the Latin for "We command".  Art!

     It is, essentially, an instrument of correction, where the inferior body is compelled to act in the public interest, whether or not they want to.  This only applies in nations where the law is upheld, mind you; in Ruffia rather than 'Mandamus' they have 'Bribery'.

     As for 'Orlop', that's nothing to do with James Bond and everything to do with matters maritime.  Art!

     The Orlop deck is the lowest deck in any ship having three or more decks.  by tradition it is where cables and ropes are stored.  Unlike 'Mandamus' it hails from the Dutch 'Overloopen' meaning 'To spill'.  Which is quite prosaic and lacks metal claws for hands.  Why on earth it popped into my consciousness is anybody's guess.

     Enough random nonsense - let's get with the comprehensively-planned nonsense!

I Say!

Over on Quora there was a challenge to post a short item that only British people would be able to make sense of.  One person rose to the occasion by creating a description of a rugby match, which, to be fair, only British people could make sense of.  It would have been even better had it been done as a radio broadcast in broad Geordie, because then only people from Tyne & Wear would have been able to make sense of it.  Conrad used to work with a lady from Newcastle, and when she'd had a few pints of shandy her accent was so pronounced nobody could understand her.

     ANYWAY I think this sidebar from the BBC would also serve -

     Cricket, doncha know.  It's not just a game, it's a culture.

Your Daily Dose Of Dismal

Forsooth, the woes of Ruffia are but grist to the mill of BOOJUM! because what's bad for them is always interesting, since schadenfreude is a very real thing.

     As your tooth-sucking savant Conrad has opined, the war in Ukraine is not going to last for 'years and years', because the Ruffians are going to run out of either manpower or gold and it's currently a race to see which is exhausted first.

     The Pest In The Bulletproof Vest has loudly declaimed that there's not going to be any more mobilisation, which is a lie - you can tell because his lips are moving.  For example, students in Dagestan who turn up to get their university diplomas are also being given mobilisation papers, to sign on the spot.  Dagestan is one of the poorest Asian republics in Ruffia; Putin will move mountains to ensure the non-white Ruffians all die before the lily-white citizens of Moscow or Saint Petersburg get drafted. Art!

Dagestani factory produce much thread

     Thanks to the every-cheerful Joe Blogs for the core of what follows; if Joe had to announce that an asteroid was going to destroy planet Earth in the next ten minutes, you better believe he'd have a great big grin on his face.

     One real reason Bloaty Gas Tout might not be able to enforce a mobilisation even if he wanted to is down to demographics.  As soon as the Special Idiotic Operation began, hundreds of thousands of young, educated and highly-skilled Ruffians abruptly left Soviet Union 2.0.  In fact this had been a trend before the SIO, meaning that in January 2022 over a fifth of businesses were short of employees (22%).  By October this had risen to 33% and now stands at 35%.  Art!

Ruffian factory am stronk

     In 2022 1.3 million young people left Ruffia with no intent to ever return.  This is 1.3 million salaries not being generated and thus 1.3 million fewer tax revenues being made.  In fact there is a wage-race on at present to obtain and retain staff, which helps drive up inflation.

     Then you have the actual demography of Ruffia.  When portrayed as a chart, for any developed country the overall shape with trend towards a rectangle, as health, wealth, living standards and civil society maximise length of life.

     Not so in Ruffia.  Art!

Just to rub it in

     Note that the gender demographic is significantly skewed in Ruffia; men die a lot earlier than women, thanks to unhealthy living, depression and - most especially - alcoholism.  And, since February 2022, bits of sharp metal coming their way at high speed.  The overall death rate has jumped by half since the Nineties, now standing at 16 per 1000 population.  The UK's rate is 9 per 1000, just to rub it in further.  
     However, if you have shares in a Ruffian vodka plant, business is booming!

"City In The Sky"

We have shifted into the near future as the Doctor and Ace prepare to go for a jaunt in time.

With Ace fruitfully occupied, he went back to do more background research in his library, passing a studious hour before making a pot of tea, drinking it and then being interrupted -

     ‘So where do we begin?’ pestered Ace, barging into the library’s cloistered solitude, wearing a pair of space-suit armoured gauntlets. 

     ‘Not here, in the physical sense.  We need to jump forward about a century and arrive somewhere that has access to information, at the centre of a good information sink.  London, I think.  There’ll be any number of webstraunts we can use.’

     The unfamiliar word puzzled Ace.  She took it apart the way her mentor prodded her to do: web – did that have to do with information and being at the centre of it? – straunt sounded like the last syllable of “restaurant”.  A place you could sit and eat and look at library books?

     ‘Tottenham Court Road,’ decided the Doctor, pressing buttons and pulling levers.  ‘Nice and busy.  We’ll blend right in.’

     ‘The Tardis won’t!’ joked Ace, to a reproving glance. 

     ‘Obviously a film prop or created for a publicity event,’ was the huffy reply.  Ace suppressed a smirk: he always got sniffy if you dared to criticise his beloved time-ship!

       Yeah, don't diss the TARDIS.  She doesn't like being dissed. 

Finally -

Time, I think, for the traditional Sunday constitutional stroll into Lesser Sodom to see what's going cheap at the Co-Op.  What do you bet they're overflowing with cabbages now that I already have a sweetheart iteration?  Wish me duck!