Caged

Fergus had to have his vaccinations today. I've never had a cat insured before and having annual boosters is one of the terms. I wouldn't have got him insured but he ate a needle at about 6 mths and cost us £450. His mother managed to tear her own leg off somehow, so I felt genetics might be against me. Of course, nothing has happened to him since I insured him.

'Caged' is tabloid shorthand for jailing criminals, which I hadn't come across before I moved to Scotland. Not being a tabloid reader, I don't know if it just came into fashion then, or if it's specifically Scottish. I have noticed it creep into use on BBC News: Reporting Scotland, which is disappointing, along with some other disreputable techniques like showing photos of the state of a flat where a dead child was found. I don't want to look at that while I'm eating my tea and I've got a pretty good idea of what it would look like anyway.

While I'm on the subject... I think the BBC ties with the NHS as institutions which we British should be most proud of, but I got right on my high horse about their inaccurate reporting last night about the Olympic Flame palaver. It's the BBC itself that's made such a big deal about this ceremony, but still they reported the flame was transported on the plane in 'hurricane lamps', when they were clearly miners' lamps. If the flame tour is such a cultural celebration as they claim, how could they miss such an iconic and important British invention? I'm afraid I hunted down the reporter and sent him a tweet. I bet he's quaking in his boots.