Lena’s Satellite

Well, there’s a surprise – the UK completely bombed in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.  I’m not in the slightest bit surprised.  We don’t take this contest at all seriously and our nation, that continues to produce some of the greatest pop music in the world, is represented instead by complete unknowns and some very dull songwriting (sorry Pete Waterman, but this definitely wasn’t your finest hour). 

I’m actually pleased to say that having caught my first listen to our song entry yesterday, I made the conscious decision not to watch and therefore not to be embarrassed. 

Several people predicted that Germany would win… currently being the rich man of Europe and everything.  (We could all be heading to them, cap in hand, pretty soon so we needed to keep ‘em sweet).  That may be a little unfair, having listened this morning to singer Lena with ’Satellite’.  Her ‘mockney’ English accent is slightly dodgy (‘though to be fair she sings English better than I can sing in German), but she’s cute and the song is catchy, young and a bit of fun.  It’s the complete package really …and a far cry from our very poor offering.  

So, well done Lena and well done Germany.  At least you can actually afford to host this next year!

(Last year’s winner – Alexander Rybak, Norway)

First Defense

These two ads carry a common theme – first defense.-      

The first is for Vicks ‘First Defense’ cold medicine and this ad makes me giggle every time I see it.   The second was voted funniest ad in Europe in 2005.  Initially you’ll almost certainly find this one pretty heinous but do stick with it – I can almost guarantee that it will make you laugh out loud.

‘I want those sweeties!’ ….

Two things…

Firstly, any genealogists out there:  I was on Ancestry.com this week and came across what could be the birth records of two recently found and personally significant relatives.  The only way to prove their connection to my tree is by ordering their birth certificates, which I notice you can now do directly from the Ancestry site.  I clicked on the link but lo and behold, Ancestry were anticipating charging me £20 each for the pleasure of receiving these certificates and then quoting a wait of 16 working days.  Being a pedantic soul when it comes to family history research, I’ve collected the BMD certs of all direct family members where possible and I knew that I wouldn’t have done so at anything near £20 a pop.  So I went on over to my usual source for these, the UK Government’s ‘General Records Office’.  Sure enough, certificates are still available there for £7 each and the quoted wait is 4 working days.  Moral of story?  Don’t even think of ordering documents from the Ancestry site.  It’s shiny, it’s happy and helpful but it’s also horrendously expensive.

For anyone new to family research, to order a UK certificate it’s best to have the GRO index reference and this is something that you can look up without membership to Ancestry and better still, it’s for free.  Just head on over to the aptly named FreeBMD and key in your relative’s details.  You can then order the certificate from the General Records Office here at a much more reasonable rate.

Secondly, has anyone else noticed that the French have an entirely different approach to the construction of many of their websites?  Where English speaking sites are all about speed in leading you from page to page, the French sites I’m referring to like you to stay a while and read through oodles of verbiage.  I’ve noticed this on several sites but the biggest offender I’ve found so far is Geneanet whom I rely on for finding my French relatives (of which there are many).  I recently made the mistake of forking out money on up-graded membership, so that I can view documents.  The trouble is, I’m having such huge difficulty wading through their clunking site that I haven’t made any headway yet.  If it all worked in a similar way to the English sites I might well have traced my family back to the year dot by now.  As it is, I’m thinking that a trip across the water and some serious leg work would probably yield swifter results.

By the way, if anyone knows of a smokin’ hot site for European research, please share!  I’m currently going nowhere fast with this.

Daniel ‘Tell it how it is’ Hannan

This is Daniel Hannan, Conservative Member of European Parliament for the South East of England.  I hadn’t heard of him until last night but I think we will all be hearing a lot more.  I fear many people in the UK have no idea just how desperately bad our particular economy is after 11 years of this government, never mind the recession that has rocked the world.  This straight talking is a breath of fresh air.

Daniel 'Tell it how it is' Hannan

This is Daniel Hannan, Conservative Member of European Parliament for the South East of England.  I hadn’t heard of him until last night but I think we will all be hearing a lot more.  I fear many people in the UK have no idea just how desperately bad our particular economy is after 11 years of this government, never mind the recession that has rocked the world.  This straight talking is a breath of fresh air.