Last updated 10:36, Thursday, 07 August 2008

THERE you are sitting in your living room watching Coronation Street when in bursts the government inspectors.

A survey reveals there are now 1,043 state powers of entry in force in Cumbria which allows officials into your homes without your permission.

Your soap-watching could be disturbed, for example, by officials raiding your home to check your fridge has a correct energy rating, whether you are holding a dancing bear or investigating to see if your hedge is too high.

Chris Whiteside, the Conservative MP for Copeland, has expressed concern at these powers. “Instead of passing ridiculous new laws giving officials the right to enter your home to check your pot plants, we should be scrapping outdated old laws giving officials the right to enter your home to check for rabbits,’’ he said.

“We’ve already seen that legal powers which were passed on the basis that they would be used to protect us from terrorists have been abused to check up on people suspected of trying to get their kids into a good school. It’s time to apply some old-fashioned British common sense and balance.”

Our advice to anyone with immigrant dancing bears, unruly hedges or over-heating fridges is: be afraid, be very afraid!

Marra across the pond attracts mixed crowd

IN mid-town Philadelphia in the USA is a restaurant proudly calling itself Marras.

We discovered the Marras restaurant in Passyunk Ave on the internet and while it gets favourable comment as: “Marras’ atmosphere is tough to beat: Above red-vinyl booths hang paintings, photos and wooden cutout letters that spell the establishment’s name. With a carafe of house wine on the table, many customers have been known to stay a while as they eat meals of cuisine that is decidedly not nouveau Italian: enormous servings of homemade pasta, mussels, calamari and thin-crust pizza.”

It adds: “Private rooms are available for parties upstairs, but the metal-legged chairs are not as cozy as the booths downstairs.” And on a more ominous note one reviewer comments: “Just awful. The place smelled funny. And it wasn’t a food smell, which is always a little alarming in a restaurant. After waiting for a waiter to appear for 15 minutes, we left before we could even place an order. I can’t really comment on the food, but if the kitchen is run anything like the front of the house, I’d bet it’s pretty lousy.”

Having some fun with our Cumbrian dialect

WE noted with a wry smile that the website for the Lakeland Dialect Society doesn’t have a home page.

Instead it has, quite rightly, a ‘yam’ page – yam being dialect for home.

But as good as their site is, it’s not as much fun as a website called Do Keswick which comes complete with a Crack-a-phone. Drag dialect words into a box, press the ‘Gibberin Gowk’ button and a gurner with his head through a braffin reads out the words in true dialect.

How winter evenings will fly by!

Waiting for digital age is something of a soap opera

DIGITAL UK were quoted in our letters page last week explaining why some people are receiving a particularly weak signal at the moment.

The Caldbeck transmitter, which serves some of our area, is only broadcasting a weak analogue signal while the switchover to fully digital is being made.

More than one reader has noticed this and this week John Bruckshaw from the Parkside Inn at Frizington rang to say: “I could not watch my favourite Coronation Street last night because the digital signal was so poor. Lots of people are complaining and I understand output at Caldbeck is down to a tenth of usual because they are busy working on Digital UK for the rest of Cumbria.”

Once analogue is turned off, digital will be put on to full power so we should all be happy. That should occur by June next year (2009). The alternative of course is to switch to satellite. There’s Sky or BBC and ITV have now launched Freesat which offers 80 plus channels for £150, plus a one-off £80 installation fee. There should be no problem with a weak transmitter – unless it’s raining. As satellite users know, rain leads to some dodgy reception even with this space-age technology.

Sister says it’s time to find out about apostrophes

WE are as likely as the next person to put an apostrophe in the wrong p’lace. But even our proof-readers were choking on their tea Tuesday evening while watching Border.

An item on the news talked about a clean-up campaign at Carlisle hospital. It was called Sister Say’s and came complete with 6ft tall posters announcing the campaign.

So, given the huge size of the lettering, how come no one noticed that errant apostrophe. Sister Says go back to school!