A Time of Magic

In principle, it sounded like a good idea. Other countries have organised debates between their potential leaders in the run-up to an election, so why not do it in the UK too?

For one thing, by the time they’d gotten around to running with the idea, the UK had saddled itself with three separate regional governments in addition to the Westminster parliament and therefore there needed to be four separate debates running in the pre-election period. Not a big deal to be sure but it meant that the heavy-hitters in terms of presenters were snapped up by the main debate so the other debates seemed very much a down market affair in comparison.

The biggest problem though is that we don’t actually elect those leaders directly. They’re selected from amongst all the people we’ve already elected around the country in the regional assemblies and in Westminster. Those regional assemblies are a problem too because their election periods aren’t in sync with those at Westminster so there wasn’t a lot of point in having the regional debates on air now.

But then it descended into silliness with the little worm thing going across the screen as the second debate progressed. What was the point of that? It was driven by people the TV companies had selected from amongst the “I want to be on TV” crowd (we noticed several on the programme who’d clearly joined that bandwagon some time ago). That in itself wouldn’t be so bad but it ended up with a reliability that must be close to zero given that the TV people had “balanced” the audience controlling the thing thus making it highly skewed towards minorities (the “token white” syndrome) but did they really think that everyone would remain alert to what was being said throughout the long and tedious debate?

Perhaps if it had been a debate, they might have but it seemed more like isolated presentations for the most part, particularly in the regional debates.

All it really showed was that the leaders are quite good at making presentations and that leaders of parties with no real hope of forming the next government can really let their total lack of responsibility run wild.

Once you’ve gotten the birth out of the way, the first significant milestone for your child is their first birthday and so first birthday invitations mark what’s probably going to be an occasion that’s more memorable for you than it is for them.

That said, this is one of the first times that your child will be making their mark on the social calendar of life and so it’s worth putting that little bit more effort into the event. From the perspective of others that’s probably going to start with the invitation that they’ll receive which very much sets the scene for the event for them.

Naturally, you’ll want to continue the theme throughout the event as much as you can to make it a truly memorable time for all who participate in it but remember that it’s the first contact with the invitees that really sets the tone for the party.

Las Vegas, as always, is the land of excess in every way and the Stratosphere hotel takes that excess upwards with its hotel building towering above the Vegas skyline.

Although the hotel might be high the prices certainly aren’t. Typically for Las Vegas you get relatively low prices for extremely high quality hotel experiences. Yeah, I know, “hotel experiences” sounds very marketing-speak but in Vegas they take into account the whole deal rather than just having a decent mattress and a couple of freebies in the room so it’s very much the whole experience that ends up high quality rather than just some individual items as you’d find in other destinations.

Combined with the height of the building, the rides available are themed with altitude in mind so this probably isn’t the hotel to go to if you’re not too keen on heights.