Today, when looking at Gordon Brown's first speech as PM, I had that Blake's Seven Series 3 feeling.
You know, the one where one of the two main characters has left the stage and suddenly it's a one man show.
Blair, like Blake, started off with the best of intentions, but many people died as a result of his actions. He believed it was worthwhile, in the pursuit of freedom and the war against terror (represented in the series by 'The Federation').
Meanwhile, Brown as Avon... brilliant, yet strangely aloof, ambitious but not a natural leader. However, Avon got better scripted lines than most of what I've heard from Brown... so far, at any rate.
David Miliband would make a good Orac.
Was Iain Duncan Smith Space Commander Travis?
And who is Servalan? Maybe Patricia Hewitt?
A more serious post on Brown when I don't have to work 16 hours a day to finish this bloody report I'm writing for work. That'll be in about two weeks, then...
(p.s. this post won't have made any sense to those of you not acquainted with Blake's Seven. In which case I can only recommend that you do get acquainted with it. In the meantime, "indulge me"...)
22 June 2007
"Classic Britannia"... another classic
I end up watching TV more Friday evenings than I'd like to admit, simply because the pubs in London are so damn busy on Friday nights that it's the last time you'd want to go out for a beer, and people we know locally in Essex never seem to be around on Fridays. Usually it's absolute cack, but BBC4 will often throw something exciting into the mix, and so it was with Classic Britannia. This was the first in a series of three hour-long programmes that look at classical music in Britain between 1945 and the present day. This one covered the period up to the early 60s and featured a lot of Benjamin Britten (whose work I know to some extent), William Walton (who I was clueless about), the tail end of Ralph Vaughn Williams's career (a Benny Voller favourite), and early works by Harrison Birtwhistle and Peter Maxwell Davies (reassuringly avant garde.) The surviving composers were all interviewed specially for the programme and this was combined with a lot of good archive footage including Britten's War Requiem (which I was lucky enough to pick up as a vinyl box set from a charity shop in Clacton last year), at its premiere in Coventry Cathedral in 1964. Anyway the programme was brilliant and follows hot on the heels of Jazz Britannia, Soul Britannia and Folk Britannia. All we need now is Barber Shop Britannia and we're done.
Seriously though, BBC4 is an oasis of quality programming in a sea of cack. Many people don't like the licence fee but I think just this channel on its own makes it worthwhile. Perhaps I'm an awful elitist? Who gives a f***. Benny V, you need to watch this program as soon as you can (I'm sure it'll be repeated. Nice Pink Floyd post by the way son. So what did happen to the Post War Dream?
See y'all down The Proms next month.
Seriously though, BBC4 is an oasis of quality programming in a sea of cack. Many people don't like the licence fee but I think just this channel on its own makes it worthwhile. Perhaps I'm an awful elitist? Who gives a f***. Benny V, you need to watch this program as soon as you can (I'm sure it'll be repeated. Nice Pink Floyd post by the way son. So what did happen to the Post War Dream?
See y'all down The Proms next month.
18 June 2007
Bemard Manning dead?
...it's a fucking disgrace.
I don't believe it for a second... it's been made up in a newsroom... by sick bastards.
Shove the paper back in their face and tell them to f*** off.
Posted by guest reporter Ted Maul, who is doing his best Hal impersonation.
I don't believe it for a second... it's been made up in a newsroom... by sick bastards.
Shove the paper back in their face and tell them to f*** off.
Posted by guest reporter Ted Maul, who is doing his best Hal impersonation.
14 June 2007
Hal goes AWOL, but the garden's doing great....
Barney with news on why the posts are so damn infrequent at the moment...
Greetings all, and if you're reading this as regularly as I think you are, I hope you're enjoying 2008. We've been a bit slack at giroscope of late... formula posts every week or so, a touch of the boxtickers about it all.
Partly it's because Hal has disappeared off the scene completely and we're worried about him. Since a rather random post on the topic of widescreen TV on 3rd June, Hal has not been seen on the web apart from a comment on a dilate.choonz post today. If the truth be told, Hal's never been happy with the role of a sports reporter, and yearns for the grit of the political coal-face once again. Anyway if you're reading this, Hal, do get in touch. We miss you...
So in the meantime what's Barney been up to? Gardening, mostly. We've got a good collection of stuff growing in the garden now: turnips, kohl-rabi, courgettes, squashes, onions, broad beans, beetroot, sweetcorn... all very exciting. I would have taken some pictures tonight but the heavens opened and the plants weren't in their best light so that's a project for the weekend. In the meantime, I've found a lot of good allotment blogs out there; I like the ones with the really bland titles like Dave's Allotment and Mike's Allotment best, as they seem to have the most exciting content. Suddenly, pictures of (for example) squashes being planted out start to look quite exciting when you're trying to do it yourself. Or maybe it's just me...
I must reserve a special mention for the compost heap which is going great. Got a very good mix of 'greens', 'browns' and 'activators' (nettle leaves), and the bin itself, which we made out of 4 pallets we got from some very kind neighbours who were doing their house up, is just brilliant. I'll post some pics of that as well. There are some good composting blogs out there - this one looks good, for example. But what we really need is a mechanism which takes old, abandoned blogs full of verbal rubbish and converts them into useful words and phrases you can insert into your blog to pep it up a bit. I've not seen such a device yet but I live in hope. Anyone got any ideas?
Greetings all, and if you're reading this as regularly as I think you are, I hope you're enjoying 2008. We've been a bit slack at giroscope of late... formula posts every week or so, a touch of the boxtickers about it all.
Partly it's because Hal has disappeared off the scene completely and we're worried about him. Since a rather random post on the topic of widescreen TV on 3rd June, Hal has not been seen on the web apart from a comment on a dilate.choonz post today. If the truth be told, Hal's never been happy with the role of a sports reporter, and yearns for the grit of the political coal-face once again. Anyway if you're reading this, Hal, do get in touch. We miss you...
So in the meantime what's Barney been up to? Gardening, mostly. We've got a good collection of stuff growing in the garden now: turnips, kohl-rabi, courgettes, squashes, onions, broad beans, beetroot, sweetcorn... all very exciting. I would have taken some pictures tonight but the heavens opened and the plants weren't in their best light so that's a project for the weekend. In the meantime, I've found a lot of good allotment blogs out there; I like the ones with the really bland titles like Dave's Allotment and Mike's Allotment best, as they seem to have the most exciting content. Suddenly, pictures of (for example) squashes being planted out start to look quite exciting when you're trying to do it yourself. Or maybe it's just me...
I must reserve a special mention for the compost heap which is going great. Got a very good mix of 'greens', 'browns' and 'activators' (nettle leaves), and the bin itself, which we made out of 4 pallets we got from some very kind neighbours who were doing their house up, is just brilliant. I'll post some pics of that as well. There are some good composting blogs out there - this one looks good, for example. But what we really need is a mechanism which takes old, abandoned blogs full of verbal rubbish and converts them into useful words and phrases you can insert into your blog to pep it up a bit. I've not seen such a device yet but I live in hope. Anyone got any ideas?
08 June 2007
"one"... everybody do the Chivers Chase
Join the fight to track down an elusive rail boss...
The Essex Chronicle is probably not the most exciting local paper in the country (in fact it's amazing how, in many people's eyes, putting the adjective 'local' in front of anything is enough to elicit sniggers and damnation in equal amounts. Think about it... local paper, local radio, local government, local shop for local people, local loop unbundling... you know you don't like any of 'em. A sad and sorry state of affairs...)
But the Chronicle is fairly good at pointing out the deficiencies with the ludicrously named 'one' railway... every months or so the crapness of the rail service provokes a headline. This time it was 'one hell of a train service' which is very similar to the giroscope post title from the last time I talked about this topic. I don't come back to it that often because it's too easy a target and nothing every really changes - the trains are always crowded, there aren't enough at peak times, they get slower and slower as more 'long term speed restrictions' are added in, and the fare increase is always more than CPI. The bastards just get more and more smug and unreachable. However my interest has been piqued by the sheer unreachability of new 'one' managing director Andrew Chivers.
Chivers took up his post in January and apparently agreed to meet a reporter from the Chronicle to discuss the inadequacies of the service. However, after this initial agreement in principle, requests for an interview date were never answered. At the start of April, the Chronicle's assistant editor wrote to Chivers personally requesting an interview. Several weeks later Chivers's PA called to say she was unaware of any previous interview requests but said it would be fine if a Chronicle reporter called to arrange an interview. He left 'numerous messages on her answerphone' over the next few weeks, none of which were returned. As the Chronicle reports,
Whilst the story is highly amusing, and an indictment of 'one', the aforementioned journalist and assistant editorChronicle seem to be unimaginative lame-asses - or maybe they're just on a tight budget. 'one''s address is at:
[These guys might not be able to run a train service but they can sure grab a fancy postcode, eh?]
All the reporters have to do is get on a train up to London (admittedly it's quite expensive and I don't know if regional journalism pays at all well) and take a newscrew from the local BBC or Anglia News with them (there is very rarely anything interesting on the local news here - for example, the headline one day was a piece about 'rats on the roundabout' at Ditchingam in Norfolk - I kid you not). Then do the most basic imitation of Michael Moore: go to reception, ask to speak to Andrew Chivers, and if he isn't there, blockade the entrance/exit for the day until the guy has to go home. (Best to turn up in the afternoon probably). For extra man/womanpower they could take some of the long suffering commuters with them. I'd certainly turn up. And voila! Instant headline story. I'm going to write to Watchdog with the story about Mr Chivers's reticence in any case - it will be highly amusing if it gets on TV.
I will also try writing to Chivers, although it's unlikely to do any good. I wrote to a previous managing director, Tim Clarke, a couple of years back. All I got was an identikit response from some poor bastard working in the 'customer services' (ahem) department which managed to be both patronising and incoherent at the same time. The only employee there who has ever responded to queries personally is Theo Steel, who was the 'Projects Director' (what on earth does he do I wonder?) but he is now retiring. I wish him all the best and it's probably a good time to leave. I wish I could... (i.e. stop commuting), and maybe I will. Just walk away from the f***er... I've got a dream about buying some land (like Gerry Rafferty said on Baker Street. But prices weren't as high relative to incomes in 1978, y'know.)
Anyway let's bombard this wanker Chivers with audio-visual assaults. Maybe it's time to do a Michael Moore on the bastard. I might take matters into my own capable hands. As Morrissey (and King Crimson) once said, "We'll let you know"...
p.s. I would have linked to the Essex Chronicle website for this story, but their write up of it was so pithy that I couldn't be bothered. Their site is bloody crap. Obviously they have no money for a decent web designer as well as train tickets!
p.s.2 - In the course of my research for this post I found an informative and entertaining blog about being annoyed about trains here.
p.s.3 I can't afford one of them yet and I would be crap at the games even if I could.
The Essex Chronicle is probably not the most exciting local paper in the country (in fact it's amazing how, in many people's eyes, putting the adjective 'local' in front of anything is enough to elicit sniggers and damnation in equal amounts. Think about it... local paper, local radio, local government, local shop for local people, local loop unbundling... you know you don't like any of 'em. A sad and sorry state of affairs...)
But the Chronicle is fairly good at pointing out the deficiencies with the ludicrously named 'one' railway... every months or so the crapness of the rail service provokes a headline. This time it was 'one hell of a train service' which is very similar to the giroscope post title from the last time I talked about this topic. I don't come back to it that often because it's too easy a target and nothing every really changes - the trains are always crowded, there aren't enough at peak times, they get slower and slower as more 'long term speed restrictions' are added in, and the fare increase is always more than CPI. The bastards just get more and more smug and unreachable. However my interest has been piqued by the sheer unreachability of new 'one' managing director Andrew Chivers.
Chivers took up his post in January and apparently agreed to meet a reporter from the Chronicle to discuss the inadequacies of the service. However, after this initial agreement in principle, requests for an interview date were never answered. At the start of April, the Chronicle's assistant editor wrote to Chivers personally requesting an interview. Several weeks later Chivers's PA called to say she was unaware of any previous interview requests but said it would be fine if a Chronicle reporter called to arrange an interview. He left 'numerous messages on her answerphone' over the next few weeks, none of which were returned. As the Chronicle reports,
more than six months after Mr Chivers took over, we are still chasing that elusive appointment.
Whilst the story is highly amusing, and an indictment of 'one', the aforementioned journalist and assistant editorChronicle seem to be unimaginative lame-asses - or maybe they're just on a tight budget. 'one''s address is at:
Olivers Yard
55 City Road
London EC1Y 1HQ
[These guys might not be able to run a train service but they can sure grab a fancy postcode, eh?]
All the reporters have to do is get on a train up to London (admittedly it's quite expensive and I don't know if regional journalism pays at all well) and take a newscrew from the local BBC or Anglia News with them (there is very rarely anything interesting on the local news here - for example, the headline one day was a piece about 'rats on the roundabout' at Ditchingam in Norfolk - I kid you not). Then do the most basic imitation of Michael Moore: go to reception, ask to speak to Andrew Chivers, and if he isn't there, blockade the entrance/exit for the day until the guy has to go home. (Best to turn up in the afternoon probably). For extra man/womanpower they could take some of the long suffering commuters with them. I'd certainly turn up. And voila! Instant headline story. I'm going to write to Watchdog with the story about Mr Chivers's reticence in any case - it will be highly amusing if it gets on TV.
I will also try writing to Chivers, although it's unlikely to do any good. I wrote to a previous managing director, Tim Clarke, a couple of years back. All I got was an identikit response from some poor bastard working in the 'customer services' (ahem) department which managed to be both patronising and incoherent at the same time. The only employee there who has ever responded to queries personally is Theo Steel, who was the 'Projects Director' (what on earth does he do I wonder?) but he is now retiring. I wish him all the best and it's probably a good time to leave. I wish I could... (i.e. stop commuting), and maybe I will. Just walk away from the f***er... I've got a dream about buying some land (like Gerry Rafferty said on Baker Street. But prices weren't as high relative to incomes in 1978, y'know.)
Anyway let's bombard this wanker Chivers with audio-visual assaults. Maybe it's time to do a Michael Moore on the bastard. I might take matters into my own capable hands. As Morrissey (and King Crimson) once said, "We'll let you know"...
p.s. I would have linked to the Essex Chronicle website for this story, but their write up of it was so pithy that I couldn't be bothered. Their site is bloody crap. Obviously they have no money for a decent web designer as well as train tickets!
p.s.2 - In the course of my research for this post I found an informative and entertaining blog about being annoyed about trains here.
p.s.3 I can't afford one of them yet and I would be crap at the games even if I could.
03 June 2007
Respect going out to people who can't use their widescreen TV properly
because Hal likes a laugh at the expense of people who are techno-illiterate...
Not being able to face a post on the Labour deputy leadership campaign due to its extreme dullness (oh, for the excitement of the 1981 campaign! Why can't Hilary Benn be more like Tony?) I had a choice between writing about recent gardening work I've been undertaking or a post that caught my eye on IDWID. This is the blog that the guy who does the Jammer's Reviews TV sci-fi reviews site does in his spare time (or maybe he does Jammer's Reviews in his spare time. But anyway they are complementary.) The post was about people who get the aspect ratio wrong on their widescreen TVs and display 'full screen' (4:3 aspect ratio) programmes using the full 16:9 ratio screen, which means everybody looks very fat. Anyway the post is a hilarious and cutting exposé of the widening gap between the capabilities of modern TV equipment and the audience's capacity to use them.
It's not all the audience's fault, however. Manufacturers and broadcasters have to shoulder some of the blame for the fact that there are a load of people watching 4:3 programmes in widescreen. One of the pins on a SCART cable (the standard audio-visual connector in Europe until high-definition came along) is designed to carry a signal which 'switches' the TV between 4:3 mode and 16:9 mode. This works OK provided that:
I hate SCART anyway. The idea of a single, two way A/V connector seems good in principle but the manufacturers often don't implement it properly, a good quality SCART cable costs about fifty quid, and they fall out all the time. Part of the reason we had to get a new TV was that the SCART connectors stopped working on our previous one which was only 6 years old. OK, so it was an el cheapo 4:3 CRT set but so what? You shouldn't have to change your TV because the bloody input socket has stopped working! It's like Neil Young said - a "piece of crap." Anyway, that's all for now on the subject of people who can't use their TV, which I have pretty much exhausted - for now. Next stop'll probably be a gardening post from Barney Ruddle, 2007's answer to The Lawnmower Man.
Not being able to face a post on the Labour deputy leadership campaign due to its extreme dullness (oh, for the excitement of the 1981 campaign! Why can't Hilary Benn be more like Tony?) I had a choice between writing about recent gardening work I've been undertaking or a post that caught my eye on IDWID. This is the blog that the guy who does the Jammer's Reviews TV sci-fi reviews site does in his spare time (or maybe he does Jammer's Reviews in his spare time. But anyway they are complementary.) The post was about people who get the aspect ratio wrong on their widescreen TVs and display 'full screen' (4:3 aspect ratio) programmes using the full 16:9 ratio screen, which means everybody looks very fat. Anyway the post is a hilarious and cutting exposé of the widening gap between the capabilities of modern TV equipment and the audience's capacity to use them.
It's not all the audience's fault, however. Manufacturers and broadcasters have to shoulder some of the blame for the fact that there are a load of people watching 4:3 programmes in widescreen. One of the pins on a SCART cable (the standard audio-visual connector in Europe until high-definition came along) is designed to carry a signal which 'switches' the TV between 4:3 mode and 16:9 mode. This works OK provided that:
- the TV manufacturer has wired the SCART input to recognise the signal;
- the DVD/set-top box manufacturer has wired the SCART output to produce the signal;
- [for TV broadcasts] provided the broadcaster includes the signal to switch the aspect ratio as part of the programme broadcast data.
I hate SCART anyway. The idea of a single, two way A/V connector seems good in principle but the manufacturers often don't implement it properly, a good quality SCART cable costs about fifty quid, and they fall out all the time. Part of the reason we had to get a new TV was that the SCART connectors stopped working on our previous one which was only 6 years old. OK, so it was an el cheapo 4:3 CRT set but so what? You shouldn't have to change your TV because the bloody input socket has stopped working! It's like Neil Young said - a "piece of crap." Anyway, that's all for now on the subject of people who can't use their TV, which I have pretty much exhausted - for now. Next stop'll probably be a gardening post from Barney Ruddle, 2007's answer to The Lawnmower Man.
29 May 2007
Cornwall report... Ruddle hits the farm cider... maybe it's time to buy a B&B?
Back after a 12 day break in Cornwall... 'twas strangely nice to be gone, with no internet access and not writing one of these posts every few days. I'll get back into it though... nothing worse than a blog with no entries for several weeks, or indeed months. Actually there are worse things than that... one of them is the episode of Newsnight I've just seen which featured all the candidates for the deputy leadership contest. Well, Jon Cruddas was pretty good. As was, perhaps surprisingly, Harriet Harman.
But I can't be bothered to talk about that now... maybe tomorrow. You can watch the deputy leadership debate on Newsnight here if you really want to.
2 things struck me in particular about Cornwall. One was how good farm cider is. Just the basic stuff you can get in a plastic bottle in some of the more adventurous off licences... or even from the farm itself if they're selling. I found "Hayes Farm Cider" particularly impressive, at around 7.4% abv.
The other was how nice it would be run a B&B down there. I've checked out the financial logistics of this and at current housing prices down there it's impossible unless we were to win the premium bonds jackpot or something. But to be able to say f*** off to travelling into work on a crowded tin box for 2 hours a day and the insanity of the nutters in London trying to shove a free paper in your face every five metres... that would be a real killer.
We're also getting quite into growing our own vegetables at the giroscope house in deepest Essex. Broad beans are doing particularly well at the moment and we are getting some kohl-rabi action as well. I'll probably post some pictures up later in the week. It would be good to be able to do this on a slightly bigger scale but the garden ain't that big and so we are rather limited here. But a little self-sufficiency is certainly better than none at all...
Anyway, enough escapist whimsy for one post-holiday comedown... time to get back in that f***ing tin box again and take my punishment like a clone. According to the guy in Star Wars Episode II the clones are very impressive, so I guess that's something. Now get on with your work.
But I can't be bothered to talk about that now... maybe tomorrow. You can watch the deputy leadership debate on Newsnight here if you really want to.
2 things struck me in particular about Cornwall. One was how good farm cider is. Just the basic stuff you can get in a plastic bottle in some of the more adventurous off licences... or even from the farm itself if they're selling. I found "Hayes Farm Cider" particularly impressive, at around 7.4% abv.
The other was how nice it would be run a B&B down there. I've checked out the financial logistics of this and at current housing prices down there it's impossible unless we were to win the premium bonds jackpot or something. But to be able to say f*** off to travelling into work on a crowded tin box for 2 hours a day and the insanity of the nutters in London trying to shove a free paper in your face every five metres... that would be a real killer.
We're also getting quite into growing our own vegetables at the giroscope house in deepest Essex. Broad beans are doing particularly well at the moment and we are getting some kohl-rabi action as well. I'll probably post some pictures up later in the week. It would be good to be able to do this on a slightly bigger scale but the garden ain't that big and so we are rather limited here. But a little self-sufficiency is certainly better than none at all...
Anyway, enough escapist whimsy for one post-holiday comedown... time to get back in that f***ing tin box again and take my punishment like a clone. According to the guy in Star Wars Episode II the clones are very impressive, so I guess that's something. Now get on with your work.
18 May 2007
Taking a break from all your worries (incorporating blog review #20 or thereabouts...)
The plugged-in amongst you will spot that the title of this post is stolen from an episode from the last series of Battlestar which I haven't managed to see yet because it's on Murdochvision and no bloody way am I giving that bastard any of my wonga. EVER. I only ever read the Times if it's given to me free on a GNER train. And even then, it sucks. I read the Sun sometimes at my wife's nan's house, but then they have all the quality papers - the Sun, the Mirror, the Mail, the Princess Diana memorial circular.
But Murdoch-bashing is too easy and satisfying to make good copy... Anyway, the long and short of it is that the editors are off on holiday to Cornwall for a week and a bit, so there may well be no giroscope until May 29. Having said that, we'll have a laptop with us and I am assured that the wi-fi scene has percolated into the extreme south-west, so who knows? There could still be text-based adventure for you next week, fellow shipmates. In the meantime, can I thoroughly endorse this week's randomly chosen blog, Rainbow Pills.
"Rainbow Pils" with just one 'l' would be more promising (imagine: the wacky adventures of a barman at Yates's Wine Lodge with access to the beer lines and several litres of industrial dye... "that pint looks green!" Nah mate, it's just the weird lighting we got in here.) Instead we get a lot of detail about IKEA and a lot of stuff about not being able to sleep. All I can say is that if blogging apparatus had been around when I was 15 or whatever I'd have been far more shit than this. Such is life. See ya soon!
But Murdoch-bashing is too easy and satisfying to make good copy... Anyway, the long and short of it is that the editors are off on holiday to Cornwall for a week and a bit, so there may well be no giroscope until May 29. Having said that, we'll have a laptop with us and I am assured that the wi-fi scene has percolated into the extreme south-west, so who knows? There could still be text-based adventure for you next week, fellow shipmates. In the meantime, can I thoroughly endorse this week's randomly chosen blog, Rainbow Pills.
"Rainbow Pils" with just one 'l' would be more promising (imagine: the wacky adventures of a barman at Yates's Wine Lodge with access to the beer lines and several litres of industrial dye... "that pint looks green!" Nah mate, it's just the weird lighting we got in here.) Instead we get a lot of detail about IKEA and a lot of stuff about not being able to sleep. All I can say is that if blogging apparatus had been around when I was 15 or whatever I'd have been far more shit than this. Such is life. See ya soon!
17 May 2007
John McDonnell = R5D4
"Well come on red, let's go!!"
[splat...]
Before they were hunted into hiding and near-extinction in the dark days of the New Labour empire, the fearless Jedi warriors of the Campaign Group controlled Labour politics. John McDonnell wanted to be their Obi-Wan Kenobi, returning from obscurity to mount a brave challenge to Gordon Brown's Darth Vader.
But instead, he secured only 29 nominations from his fellow Labour MPs - 16 short of the number required to get on the ballot - and he became the R5D4 of the Labour leadership campaign, shorting out with a bad motivator at the first hurdle.
I was going to carry this Star Wars - British politics analogy a lot further, but after noting the curious resemblance between Hazel Blears and Salacious Crumb, I was too distressed to continue...
Incidentally, in the course of research for this post, I discovered that R5D4 has his own fan site. There are some wonderful, kind souls on the internet, doing sterling work like this every day, catering for the hard luck cases of the golden age of film sci-fi. Respect goin' out to ya.
15 May 2007
This Is a Formica Table... Brown Is Its Colour
(with apologies to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me fans. But we're going to have a lot of Gordon Brown post titles over the next six weeks and I thought I'd get the rubbish ones out of the way first.)
It's true... Gordon Brown did look a bit like a formica table when he delivered his opening shot in the Labour leadership 'campaign' on Friday. He was hiding behind the autocue and it was the classic slightly stilted Brown performance.
And thank hell it was stilted... something real for a change. We've had 10 years of a 'charismatic' and 'inspirational' Prime Minister, and look where it got us. Cynical, manipulated, betrayed and maybe damaged beyond repair. Brown was stressing substance over style, which is the same thing poor old Ming Campbell tries to do every week, but Brown somehow seems to do it with a lot more gravitas. And he is the low side of 85, which helps.
Ironically, of course, there was next to no concrete policy in that Friday speech. There have been a few ideas since then: 'eco-towns' (anybody got a definition of one of those?) and giving Parliament the right to decide whether to go to war or not (although of course they did vote in favour of Iraq, so it wouldn't have made any difference in that case.) It's still very thin pickings at the moment. But then we are only 5 days into the 'campaign' so best to wait and see.
I use the inverted commas round 'campaign' deliberately as it looks likely that John McDonnell, the Hugo Chavez of Hayes & Harlington (and coming from me that's a compliment), is not gonna get the 45 nominations from Labour MPs he needs to stand. Which is a shame, but it was always going to be a tough call to convert the present Parliamentary Labour Party to the socialist cause. You almost feel McDonnell would have a better chance mounting a leadership bid against Dave Cameron; certainly Ming Campbell's post is there for the taking. I think he should resign the Labour whip and convert to the Green Party (along with the 40 or so backers he will probably be able to get), which would deprive Labour of a majority. Then it would be time for a 'rainbow coalition' of Tories, Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Greens (plus whatever Northern Irish support they could muster), which would make life very interesting. And probably annoy Brown intensely!
Fortunately, it looks like Jon Cruddas is over the hump for the deputy leadership contest. Cruddas isn't quite as "out there" as McDonnell; talking 70s prog bands for a moment, if McDonnell is Magma - so prog he has his own language - then Cruddas is more like Supertramp; he can take it "outside" once in a while but he knows when to reel it back in, and crucially, he knows how to write a political hookline. Basically, JC's shtick is: the Labour party is dying on its feet and we need to haul some serious ass to get it back into a healthy state again. Which is a very powerful message, with resonance for a considerably broader spectrum than just the left. I don't know if Jon Cruddas can win, but he can certainly galvanise the contest and ask all the right questions.
Anyway enough vapid speculation for tonight - except to suggest that Jon Cruddas uses Supertramp's "Give a Little Bit" as his campaign song. and "McDonnell Cruddas", besides being a great name for a folk-rock band, sounds a bit like McDonnell-Douglas, the old American aerospace company. You know it makes sense...
It's true... Gordon Brown did look a bit like a formica table when he delivered his opening shot in the Labour leadership 'campaign' on Friday. He was hiding behind the autocue and it was the classic slightly stilted Brown performance.
And thank hell it was stilted... something real for a change. We've had 10 years of a 'charismatic' and 'inspirational' Prime Minister, and look where it got us. Cynical, manipulated, betrayed and maybe damaged beyond repair. Brown was stressing substance over style, which is the same thing poor old Ming Campbell tries to do every week, but Brown somehow seems to do it with a lot more gravitas. And he is the low side of 85, which helps.
Ironically, of course, there was next to no concrete policy in that Friday speech. There have been a few ideas since then: 'eco-towns' (anybody got a definition of one of those?) and giving Parliament the right to decide whether to go to war or not (although of course they did vote in favour of Iraq, so it wouldn't have made any difference in that case.) It's still very thin pickings at the moment. But then we are only 5 days into the 'campaign' so best to wait and see.
I use the inverted commas round 'campaign' deliberately as it looks likely that John McDonnell, the Hugo Chavez of Hayes & Harlington (and coming from me that's a compliment), is not gonna get the 45 nominations from Labour MPs he needs to stand. Which is a shame, but it was always going to be a tough call to convert the present Parliamentary Labour Party to the socialist cause. You almost feel McDonnell would have a better chance mounting a leadership bid against Dave Cameron; certainly Ming Campbell's post is there for the taking. I think he should resign the Labour whip and convert to the Green Party (along with the 40 or so backers he will probably be able to get), which would deprive Labour of a majority. Then it would be time for a 'rainbow coalition' of Tories, Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Greens (plus whatever Northern Irish support they could muster), which would make life very interesting. And probably annoy Brown intensely!
Fortunately, it looks like Jon Cruddas is over the hump for the deputy leadership contest. Cruddas isn't quite as "out there" as McDonnell; talking 70s prog bands for a moment, if McDonnell is Magma - so prog he has his own language - then Cruddas is more like Supertramp; he can take it "outside" once in a while but he knows when to reel it back in, and crucially, he knows how to write a political hookline. Basically, JC's shtick is: the Labour party is dying on its feet and we need to haul some serious ass to get it back into a healthy state again. Which is a very powerful message, with resonance for a considerably broader spectrum than just the left. I don't know if Jon Cruddas can win, but he can certainly galvanise the contest and ask all the right questions.
Anyway enough vapid speculation for tonight - except to suggest that Jon Cruddas uses Supertramp's "Give a Little Bit" as his campaign song. and "McDonnell Cruddas", besides being a great name for a folk-rock band, sounds a bit like McDonnell-Douglas, the old American aerospace company. You know it makes sense...
09 May 2007
Watch out for Tony's last stand
Reports suggest that Tony Blair will announce a timetable for his resignation tomorrow at his constituency.
Personally I don't believe what "reports suggest" that often anymore, so I'm not hopeful. Possible options for what might happen tomorrow:
That suggests Tony will be the source of the violence. Maybe we should add:
10. Tony shoots Gordon (but how if he's not up in Sedgefield as well?) turns and grins smugly at the camera, says "OK, whatcha gonna do now, ya baz?"
Love it.
Personally I don't believe what "reports suggest" that often anymore, so I'm not hopeful. Possible options for what might happen tomorrow:
- Tony declares martial law, on the grounds that Gordon isn't up to the job. John Birt is brought in as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Or maybe Peter Mandelson will be brought back from Brussels.
- Tony stays on as the puppet head of a national government with Dave Cameron as the right hand man (I floated this idea back in September)
- Tony walks into the spaceship and ascends to the heavens, a la Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
- Tony walks on water and ascends to heaven, a la "The Second Coming".
- It is revealed that for the past 24 years Tony has been an automaton controlled by Ming Campbell, who is actually "Ming the Merciless" from Flash Gordon.
- Someone blows up a secret transmitter and Tony and most of the New Labour cabinet are revealed to be hideous aliens (a la They Live).
- Someone blows up Tony.
- Tony announces he's decided to accept the vacant manager's job at Newcastle United.
- It is revealed that in a secret deal just before leaving office, Tony has sold the entire country to a private equity group headquartered in Dubai. The top 100 millionaires in the country are all given $2 billion of stock options each and told to work very hard. The rest of us are put on minimum wage and told to work even harder, or shipped out to Belarus if we complain. The CBI issues a statement saying "it's good for employment."
'Mr Blair will fire starting gun in leadership contest'
That suggests Tony will be the source of the violence. Maybe we should add:
10. Tony shoots Gordon (but how if he's not up in Sedgefield as well?) turns and grins smugly at the camera, says "OK, whatcha gonna do now, ya baz?"
Love it.
Where's Guido? Day One
Readers of the Guido Fawkes blog may have been following his series Where's Gordon? which followed the whereabouts (or otherwise) of Mr Brown through the recent General Election campaign and beyond.
Sadly, however, a surf to www.order-order.com as of 8pm, 9 May, reveals:
Update @ 9pm: Guido's back. But he was down for about an hour, possibly more. I wonder what happened?
Sadly, however, a surf to www.order-order.com as of 8pm, 9 May, reveals:
Not Found
Error 404
Have the New Labour web police got the bugger at last? Let's hope it's just a temporary outage. In the meantime you'll have to content yourself with Guido Fawkes 2.0.Update @ 9pm: Guido's back. But he was down for about an hour, possibly more. I wonder what happened?
06 May 2007
Reflections on various polls
Not my best post title, but it's (reasonably) late and I'm severely lacking energy.
News has just come in that Sarkozy has just won the French presidential election. It may well turn out to be a moment similar to the election of Thatcher in 1979 in the UK, or Reagan in 1980 in the States, with similarly calamitous consequences. Then again the guy might just be a complete hick who fails to accomplish anything and is voted out at the first possible opportunity. His general demeanour reminds me of Jose Mourinho, which can't be a good thing at any time. It's too early to say yet - more on this one as it pans out. A shame about Segolene Royal, who seemed OK. But then we seem to be in a nasty, vicious phase in international politics where 'seeming OK' is the easiest way to lose an election. How else to explain how a small-minded bastard like John Howard in Australia, for example, can win about 4 times in a row?
Meanwhile, the post-mortem from the local elections for Labour continues. It's hilarious to hear Tony Blair going on the radio and saying it wasn't that bad a result. In huge swathes of England it was atrocious. For example, in my neck of the woods in Braintree the Tories went from 27 councillors to 42 out of a total of 60. I've no particular liking for the Conservatives - they are, as Hunter S Thompson said about the Republicans, "cheap greedy killers" - but Gordon Brown had better hope this is a 'kick Tony Blair out the door' result, a big mid-term protest, and once the electoral cycle swings round to 2009, things will improve. It's not clear that'll happen, though. I can't see that the economy's going to be doing much better 2 years from now and it might well be doing worse. All the polls asking how people will vote when Brown takes over from Blair show a shift away from Labour, not towards. And there seem to be very few 'big ideas' in the pipeline short of stopping the crazy dismantling of key public services in the name of 'reform'. Actually, just doing that - stopping Tony Blair's crazy sabotage programme - might be enough to win next time. That, plus the fact the electoral system is ridiculously biased against the Tories.
Of course the interesting thing is that who you vote for in local elections seems to make very little difference in terms of how the locality is run. A key case in point: fortnightly bin collections to encourage recycling. The Daily Mail is up in arms about this - as with everything else. Fair enough - in a well-functioning democracy, one might think that at election time, one party (or parties) would be saying "let's have fortnightly bin collections and charge you less council tax" and another party (or parties) would be saying "let's have weekly bin collections and charge you more". What you find instead is that there is no coherent pattern at all in terms of which councils have introduced fortnightly bin collections, which parties are backing them and which are pledging to reintroduce weekly ones. The Mail likes to blame fortnightly collections on Labour but Braintree council was already run by the Tories (with independent support) when they were introduced! All the election literature which came round (and only 2 parties bothered to, or could afford to, produce any) concentrated completely on national policies with no mention of local policy. I couldn't name a single local issue where I knew that the Tories in Braintree had an identifiably different policy from Labour - and I actually take the trouble to read this kind of stuff (most of the time). Is it any wonder people can't be bothered to vote except as far as it shows two fingers to Tony Blair?
News has just come in that Sarkozy has just won the French presidential election. It may well turn out to be a moment similar to the election of Thatcher in 1979 in the UK, or Reagan in 1980 in the States, with similarly calamitous consequences. Then again the guy might just be a complete hick who fails to accomplish anything and is voted out at the first possible opportunity. His general demeanour reminds me of Jose Mourinho, which can't be a good thing at any time. It's too early to say yet - more on this one as it pans out. A shame about Segolene Royal, who seemed OK. But then we seem to be in a nasty, vicious phase in international politics where 'seeming OK' is the easiest way to lose an election. How else to explain how a small-minded bastard like John Howard in Australia, for example, can win about 4 times in a row?
Meanwhile, the post-mortem from the local elections for Labour continues. It's hilarious to hear Tony Blair going on the radio and saying it wasn't that bad a result. In huge swathes of England it was atrocious. For example, in my neck of the woods in Braintree the Tories went from 27 councillors to 42 out of a total of 60. I've no particular liking for the Conservatives - they are, as Hunter S Thompson said about the Republicans, "cheap greedy killers" - but Gordon Brown had better hope this is a 'kick Tony Blair out the door' result, a big mid-term protest, and once the electoral cycle swings round to 2009, things will improve. It's not clear that'll happen, though. I can't see that the economy's going to be doing much better 2 years from now and it might well be doing worse. All the polls asking how people will vote when Brown takes over from Blair show a shift away from Labour, not towards. And there seem to be very few 'big ideas' in the pipeline short of stopping the crazy dismantling of key public services in the name of 'reform'. Actually, just doing that - stopping Tony Blair's crazy sabotage programme - might be enough to win next time. That, plus the fact the electoral system is ridiculously biased against the Tories.
Of course the interesting thing is that who you vote for in local elections seems to make very little difference in terms of how the locality is run. A key case in point: fortnightly bin collections to encourage recycling. The Daily Mail is up in arms about this - as with everything else. Fair enough - in a well-functioning democracy, one might think that at election time, one party (or parties) would be saying "let's have fortnightly bin collections and charge you less council tax" and another party (or parties) would be saying "let's have weekly bin collections and charge you more". What you find instead is that there is no coherent pattern at all in terms of which councils have introduced fortnightly bin collections, which parties are backing them and which are pledging to reintroduce weekly ones. The Mail likes to blame fortnightly collections on Labour but Braintree council was already run by the Tories (with independent support) when they were introduced! All the election literature which came round (and only 2 parties bothered to, or could afford to, produce any) concentrated completely on national policies with no mention of local policy. I couldn't name a single local issue where I knew that the Tories in Braintree had an identifiably different policy from Labour - and I actually take the trouble to read this kind of stuff (most of the time). Is it any wonder people can't be bothered to vote except as far as it shows two fingers to Tony Blair?
02 May 2007
'Inland Empire': er...
Went to see David Lynch's latest effort, Inland Empire, last night, at just about the only London cinema that was still showing it. (It's been out for a long time but it takes me a while to get my act together to go to the cinema these days.)
It was great, but I'm not really sure why. Lynch's stuff has been getting progressively weirder and harder to follow for some time now. Lost Highway (1997) centred around a bizarre incident where the main protagonist became someone completely different about half way through and then switched back again at the end, plus a really scary guy who was able to break into your house and talk to you at a party at the same time.
Mulholland Drive (2001) had a reasonably coherent storyline for about the first two-thirds of the movie, then got extremely confusing in the last part, as the main character's names switched round. It was kind of like the first part of the movie was nested within the second part. Or something. There was also a scary guy in a back yard behind a diner with a blue box (not Doctor Who, though) and various other strangeness featuring Michael J Anderson who played the 'little man from another place' in Twin Peaks.
Inland Empire has some similarities to Mulholland Drive in that it's once again set in Hollywood and features an actress (this time Laura Dern). Justin Theroux, who was in Mulholland Drive, is in this one as well, although sadly he's minus the glasses which made him look a bit like my mate Foley last time. And Jeremy Irons is in there as well, playing a British film director. However this time round the ratio of 'normal' to 'weird' material, which was running at about 70:30 in Mulholland Drive, is now switched round - or maybe even further. I couldn't make head nor tail of more than about 20% of the film in plot terms. There's no point putting a warning about plot spoilers in a review like this (can this be considered a review?) as I couldn't fathom the plot, so it would be hard to spoil it. All I will say is: watch out for the human rabbits in their sitcom. There must be some significance there.
And the match between the pattern on Laura Dern's dress and the carpet when she first enters the house with the orange front room.
Anyway I thought it was great, and the acting, soundtrack and camerawork were absolutely superb. I particularly like the 'shove the camera in people's face' style of dialogue shots that Lynch is going for on this one. It's quite possible he may have been influenced by Peep Show in his camera style. But it would be hard to get a lot more weird than this without viewers simply giving up, apart from the hard core who think the guy's a genius no matter what he does - or even if he does nothing. Maybe I'm one of those people, indeed. The film comes out on DVD in July and it may be an easier watch on that format as 3 hours on a cinema seat is a hard sell for anyone these days.
I wanted to sign off with a snappy bit of dialogue from the film but I can't remember any of it. Only the woman who played Sarah Palmer in Twin Peaks talking about a "f***ing brutal murder" at the start. That was good. The best bit of swearing in a film since the guy trying to buy a car off William H Macy called him "a f***ing liar" in Fargo. He had a bit part in Inland Empire as well (I mean William H Macy, not the guy who called him a liar.)
Best bit from the Wikipedia entry on the movie:
It was great, but I'm not really sure why. Lynch's stuff has been getting progressively weirder and harder to follow for some time now. Lost Highway (1997) centred around a bizarre incident where the main protagonist became someone completely different about half way through and then switched back again at the end, plus a really scary guy who was able to break into your house and talk to you at a party at the same time.
Mulholland Drive (2001) had a reasonably coherent storyline for about the first two-thirds of the movie, then got extremely confusing in the last part, as the main character's names switched round. It was kind of like the first part of the movie was nested within the second part. Or something. There was also a scary guy in a back yard behind a diner with a blue box (not Doctor Who, though) and various other strangeness featuring Michael J Anderson who played the 'little man from another place' in Twin Peaks.
Inland Empire has some similarities to Mulholland Drive in that it's once again set in Hollywood and features an actress (this time Laura Dern). Justin Theroux, who was in Mulholland Drive, is in this one as well, although sadly he's minus the glasses which made him look a bit like my mate Foley last time. And Jeremy Irons is in there as well, playing a British film director. However this time round the ratio of 'normal' to 'weird' material, which was running at about 70:30 in Mulholland Drive, is now switched round - or maybe even further. I couldn't make head nor tail of more than about 20% of the film in plot terms. There's no point putting a warning about plot spoilers in a review like this (can this be considered a review?) as I couldn't fathom the plot, so it would be hard to spoil it. All I will say is: watch out for the human rabbits in their sitcom. There must be some significance there.
And the match between the pattern on Laura Dern's dress and the carpet when she first enters the house with the orange front room.Anyway I thought it was great, and the acting, soundtrack and camerawork were absolutely superb. I particularly like the 'shove the camera in people's face' style of dialogue shots that Lynch is going for on this one. It's quite possible he may have been influenced by Peep Show in his camera style. But it would be hard to get a lot more weird than this without viewers simply giving up, apart from the hard core who think the guy's a genius no matter what he does - or even if he does nothing. Maybe I'm one of those people, indeed. The film comes out on DVD in July and it may be an easier watch on that format as 3 hours on a cinema seat is a hard sell for anyone these days.
I wanted to sign off with a snappy bit of dialogue from the film but I can't remember any of it. Only the woman who played Sarah Palmer in Twin Peaks talking about a "f***ing brutal murder" at the start. That was good. The best bit of swearing in a film since the guy trying to buy a car off William H Macy called him "a f***ing liar" in Fargo. He had a bit part in Inland Empire as well (I mean William H Macy, not the guy who called him a liar.)
Best bit from the Wikipedia entry on the movie:
Lynch attempted to promote Dern's chances of an Academy Award for Best Actress nomination at the 2007 Academy Awards by campaigning with a live cow. Ultimately, she was not nominated for the award.
29 April 2007
Beats International - Dubya Be Good To Me
With apologies to Norman Cook...
Footage from last week, at a White House event for Malaria Awareness Day. Not the rebirth of the "robotics" dancing style, as Dubya seems to be trying for.
I would have posted this last week but the 'post to blog' function in Youtube seems to have gone haywire since Google took over Blogger, so I had to paste the html in manually.
Footage from last week, at a White House event for Malaria Awareness Day. Not the rebirth of the "robotics" dancing style, as Dubya seems to be trying for.
I would have posted this last week but the 'post to blog' function in Youtube seems to have gone haywire since Google took over Blogger, so I had to paste the html in manually.
27 April 2007
Great anti-binge drinking idea - let's prosecute parents for giving their kids a glass of wine!
Current top story (at the time of writing) on the BBC is that the charity Alcohol Concern has said that parents who give their kids alcohol in the home should be prosecuted.
I sometimes think that I'm living in a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers where almost everyone else in the country has been replaced by a low-grade moron who just wants to sleepwalk into the police state (or indeed the police station). "Yes, I'll come quietly officer... it's a fair cop guv... I plead guilty to not treating my kids like toddlers and trying to explain to them what responsible drinking is."
A Mr Don Shenker from Alcohol Concern was made to look stupid on the BBC Breakfast News when he appeared alongside a rep from the British Beer and Pubs Association to argue the case. Even the anodyne BBC interviewer managed to destroy Shenker's arguments. There is no evidence showing a link between the incidence of children drinking with parents in the home and going on to binge drinking later in life. There is a statistical link between alcohol abuse as a kid and alcohol abuse later. But how many parents are binge drinking with their kids? Not many, I suspect.
And (as the beer and pub guy pointed out) without CCTV in every home and an army of snoops to police it (which I'm sure John Reid would love) there would be no way of enforcing Alcohol Concern's proposal anyway. Really, if they're that worried about the dangers of alcohol, why don't they go the whole hog and argue that it should be banned - that we should introduce Prohibition? I'm sure John Reid would like that too. He could argue for massively increased police and homeland security expenditure on the grounds that illegal bootleggers were funding terrorism. It's a 'win-win', as the policymakers like to say. So watch out for that one in the next Labour (or Tory) manifesto.
At times like this one longs for the honest, no-nonsense professional drinker; Oliver Reed, Peter Cook, George Best. Those guys' lifestyles had a drawback, which is that they're now dead. But there's no way they'd have gone for bullshit like the Alcohol Concern proposals. And I also think it's quite unlikely that their liking for alcohol was caused by their parents giving them a glass of wine with their dinner.
I sometimes think that I'm living in a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers where almost everyone else in the country has been replaced by a low-grade moron who just wants to sleepwalk into the police state (or indeed the police station). "Yes, I'll come quietly officer... it's a fair cop guv... I plead guilty to not treating my kids like toddlers and trying to explain to them what responsible drinking is."
A Mr Don Shenker from Alcohol Concern was made to look stupid on the BBC Breakfast News when he appeared alongside a rep from the British Beer and Pubs Association to argue the case. Even the anodyne BBC interviewer managed to destroy Shenker's arguments. There is no evidence showing a link between the incidence of children drinking with parents in the home and going on to binge drinking later in life. There is a statistical link between alcohol abuse as a kid and alcohol abuse later. But how many parents are binge drinking with their kids? Not many, I suspect.
And (as the beer and pub guy pointed out) without CCTV in every home and an army of snoops to police it (which I'm sure John Reid would love) there would be no way of enforcing Alcohol Concern's proposal anyway. Really, if they're that worried about the dangers of alcohol, why don't they go the whole hog and argue that it should be banned - that we should introduce Prohibition? I'm sure John Reid would like that too. He could argue for massively increased police and homeland security expenditure on the grounds that illegal bootleggers were funding terrorism. It's a 'win-win', as the policymakers like to say. So watch out for that one in the next Labour (or Tory) manifesto.
At times like this one longs for the honest, no-nonsense professional drinker; Oliver Reed, Peter Cook, George Best. Those guys' lifestyles had a drawback, which is that they're now dead. But there's no way they'd have gone for bullshit like the Alcohol Concern proposals. And I also think it's quite unlikely that their liking for alcohol was caused by their parents giving them a glass of wine with their dinner.
24 April 2007
Imspeccable
Technology correspondent Hal Berstram rediscovers an old friend...
It's 25 years since Sinclair launched the ZX Spectrum.
It was, for sure, the home computer of the early 80s. It cost £175 for the 48k version, which was a lot more money then than it is now (I could put you together a (very low spec) new PC for not much more than that nowadays), but that was an absolute price breakthrough for 48k, 'high resolution' graphics and a colour screen back in the day. Somehow, in the summer of '83, my parents managed to scrape the necessary readies for a Speccy and I was in business. I think after buying a couple of lame Space Invaders and Frogger clones (Hungry Horace anyone?) I bought Jetpac and never looked back. Thank f*** my dad didn't do his normal money-savin' trick and go for the 16k model - only about 2 games ever ran on it as I recall.
The Spectrum was severely compromised in many ways:
To sign off, here are my 5 top games picks on the Spectrum (in no real order):
It's 25 years since Sinclair launched the ZX Spectrum.
It was, for sure, the home computer of the early 80s. It cost £175 for the 48k version, which was a lot more money then than it is now (I could put you together a (very low spec) new PC for not much more than that nowadays), but that was an absolute price breakthrough for 48k, 'high resolution' graphics and a colour screen back in the day. Somehow, in the summer of '83, my parents managed to scrape the necessary readies for a Speccy and I was in business. I think after buying a couple of lame Space Invaders and Frogger clones (Hungry Horace anyone?) I bought Jetpac and never looked back. Thank f*** my dad didn't do his normal money-savin' trick and go for the 16k model - only about 2 games ever ran on it as I recall.
The Spectrum was severely compromised in many ways:
- the keyboard. I mean, it was better than the ZX81 membrane keyboard, but not by much. I wonder if anyone ever learnt to touch type on it. Actually it would be great to sell a laptop with a retro 'Spectrum-style' keyboard and see if anyone bought it. I'd probably get rid of the diagonal rainbow stripe across the bottom left though.
- It did have 8-colour capability, but to cut costs the screen mapping allowed each 8x8 character square to be one of two colours - a foreground and a background. This meant that in a game like Manic Miner for example, Willy (who I think was white) would turn the green hedge he was walking past white - and then it would go green again once he'd gone past it. This 'colour bleed' was annoying but was helped by the fact that most of the TVs we had were so crap that you couldn't actually see what colour the aliens, or whatever, were anyway. A plus side to this was that not much of the RAM was needed to hold the screen memory - unlike the BBC micro where screen mapping could take up to 14k (depending on which screen mode was used).
- the sound. It was about as good as the PC's internal loudspeaker. Amazingly, a few of the games I had for it featured (8-bit) speech synthesis.
- no disk drive capability (at least not until Amstrad took over Sinclair in the mid 80s, but by then I'd moved on to the Amiga anyway). There was a thing called a microdrive which I think was a high-speed tape interface, but it was complete bollox. But that was Clive Sinclair for you. He was - we are told, and I've no reason not to believe it - a genius, but his basic schtick was to design consumer products that were weedy and flimsy looking enough to get you laughed off the street unless they were so cheap that everybody bought them anyway and there was safety in numbers. I once saw someone commuting into Chelmsford on a C5. But only once.
- the thermal printer. One guy at school once handed in his homework on one of these. I think the teacher said something like, "I don't normally accept a till roll as homework".
To sign off, here are my 5 top games picks on the Spectrum (in no real order):
- Halls of the Things (an early classic from Design Design software, the guy behind which has a page here.)
- Jetpac (once played non-stop for about 36 hours)
- Elite (still great, even though the Spectrum version had a lot of the ships taken out of it)
- Splat (this sure was a weird one. Hard to describe)
- Psyclapse/Bandersnatch (these never actually came out, but acquired iconic status, and hence have been included for sheer comedy value. They caused the collapse of Imagine Software, which had been running an advertising campaign for them for about 6 months in the computer press before they went under. The games were going to feature specially designed hardware and would, we were reliably informed, be the Best Games Ever. It was a sad end for a great company!)
18 April 2007
It's arrived! (But there's a sting in the Mail...)
Well, Twin Peaks season 2 has arrived, all the way from the good ol' US of A. The packaging has attracted some criticism on the reviews at amazon.com, but it looks OK to me - well, no worse than the first season, anyway:
I haven't actually watched any of it yet as I'll have to refresh my memory by watching the first season again, but it's nice to know that I can at last consign my set of ageing, decomposing VHS videos to the charity shop.
There was a sting in the tail though... customs duty (as the set came in at $43.97 including postage and packing, which, even given the collapsing dollar, is a little above the duty-free import limit of £18. VAT was only £3.92, but the Royal Mail slapped an 'International Clearance Fee' of £8 on the package. I've done some digging around and this is a flat rate fee levied on all packages that are imported from outside the EU above the £18 limit. But get this... it doubled from £4 to £8 on 2nd April!
It's bloody daylight robbery and I have emailed Royal Mail to ask them what the f*** they think they're playing at, and how a 100% increase in a charge like this can ever be justified by the underlying economic costs of doing... whatever it is they say they're doing to justify the charge (processing the mail? I thought we were about 150 years past the point when the receiver had to pay the postage.) As the banks are currently finding out, the Office of Fair Trading likes to hear about businesses that are levying charges out of proportion to any economic rationale.
I'll let you know if I get any explanation out of the Royal Mail and if not, whether the OFT takes this up. In the meantime my advice to people importing Region 1 DVDs to the UK is:
I haven't actually watched any of it yet as I'll have to refresh my memory by watching the first season again, but it's nice to know that I can at last consign my set of ageing, decomposing VHS videos to the charity shop.
There was a sting in the tail though... customs duty (as the set came in at $43.97 including postage and packing, which, even given the collapsing dollar, is a little above the duty-free import limit of £18. VAT was only £3.92, but the Royal Mail slapped an 'International Clearance Fee' of £8 on the package. I've done some digging around and this is a flat rate fee levied on all packages that are imported from outside the EU above the £18 limit. But get this... it doubled from £4 to £8 on 2nd April!
It's bloody daylight robbery and I have emailed Royal Mail to ask them what the f*** they think they're playing at, and how a 100% increase in a charge like this can ever be justified by the underlying economic costs of doing... whatever it is they say they're doing to justify the charge (processing the mail? I thought we were about 150 years past the point when the receiver had to pay the postage.) As the banks are currently finding out, the Office of Fair Trading likes to hear about businesses that are levying charges out of proportion to any economic rationale.
I'll let you know if I get any explanation out of the Royal Mail and if not, whether the OFT takes this up. In the meantime my advice to people importing Region 1 DVDs to the UK is:
- try to keep the total cost below £18 (why is this limit never raised? Probably because HMRC likes ripping us off at an increasing rate - a more subtle version of what the guys in the Post Office are doing.) As the pound's now into '$2 and upwards' territory (thanks Dubya), this should become easier and easier.
- if you can't keep the cost below £18, the 'International Clearance Fee' is a flat £8 (unlike VAT), so you're best to go for the biggest single shipment possible if you can.
- If you know someone in the States and can get them to send the package to you marked 'gift' then your tax free allowance goes up to £36 [why??]
17 April 2007
How long can Mike Read continue to torment radio listeners?
I don't normally post a review of a TV programme before I've actually watched it, but at 9pm tonight Channel 4 is showing a documentary called Get Your Act Together With Harvey Goldsmith. Goldsmith is the music promoter responsible for Live8 a couple of years back.
The subject of tonight's programme is Mike Read, whose bid to become London mayor attracted a bit of attention from giroscope a few months back. I have no idea how his campaign is going, but in the meantime he's set up a radio station called Big L which is broadcasting from above a building society in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. It could almost be a remake of Twin Peaks, where the one-armed man famously said that:
So who's Bob gonna be? Bob Harris? Can't be, he's still got a proper job on Radio 2. No, let's make it "Diddy" David Hamilton. Pour some quick-drying cement in my ears quickly...
Big L is losing £50,000 a month according to the listings in Radio Times (having said that I don't believe that necessarily, as they didn't even manage to spell "Mike Read" right). It's gonna be an absolute classic. You only have to read the Big L website to know that these are people who make Smashey and Nicey sound like the late lamented John Peel:
I'm sure Jerry Lee Lewis would love to feel good next to Amy... but she'd probably kick him in the balls. Which is what listeners should do (metaphorically) to these Big L DJs.
To be fair to these guys, modern commercial radio certainly is utter cack, but there's no way a bunch of old Radio 1 and 2 DJs can fix it. You can't fool me. I've read The Nation's Favourite. Snooker on the radio? That was people like you (DLT, to be precise).
Hey Benny Voller: could you do a review of Big L on your new blog? It might even rival Classic FM for sheer mediocrity.
The subject of tonight's programme is Mike Read, whose bid to become London mayor attracted a bit of attention from giroscope a few months back. I have no idea how his campaign is going, but in the meantime he's set up a radio station called Big L which is broadcasting from above a building society in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. It could almost be a remake of Twin Peaks, where the one-armed man famously said that:
We lived among the people... I think you say 'convenience store?' We lived above it... My name is Mike, his name is Bob.
So who's Bob gonna be? Bob Harris? Can't be, he's still got a proper job on Radio 2. No, let's make it "Diddy" David Hamilton. Pour some quick-drying cement in my ears quickly...
Big L is losing £50,000 a month according to the listings in Radio Times (having said that I don't believe that necessarily, as they didn't even manage to spell "Mike Read" right). It's gonna be an absolute classic. You only have to read the Big L website to know that these are people who make Smashey and Nicey sound like the late lamented John Peel:
This is Big L 1395, the Heart & Soul of Rock & Roll... no corporate playlists, no pre-programmed PCs picking the music, no frequent repetition... If Jerry Lee Lewis feels good next to Amy Winehouse, then we'll play it.
I'm sure Jerry Lee Lewis would love to feel good next to Amy... but she'd probably kick him in the balls. Which is what listeners should do (metaphorically) to these Big L DJs.
To be fair to these guys, modern commercial radio certainly is utter cack, but there's no way a bunch of old Radio 1 and 2 DJs can fix it. You can't fool me. I've read The Nation's Favourite. Snooker on the radio? That was people like you (DLT, to be precise).
Hey Benny Voller: could you do a review of Big L on your new blog? It might even rival Classic FM for sheer mediocrity.
16 April 2007
Problems with MicroCrap: the personal and the global
Science correspondent Hal Berstram smashes an easy target...
It had to happen. Approximately 18 months after building my PC, the goddamn thing stopped booting into MicroCrap XP Professional. No real idea why. It was an intermittent fault but became increasingly regular until it happened every time; the boot sequence showed the XP splash logo, then a black screen with a (movable) mouse pointer, but nothing else. Possibly a hardware fault? I checked all the connections, but MEPIS Linux loads fine, so it's a weird hardware fault if so. After eventually finding my XP Pro CD I fiddled around with the recovery console, thinking I might be able to repair the installation; before I knew it my C: drive had become E: and I was downloading 73 security updates from MicroCrap central. Seems to take most of the day, even with broadband. On the plus side, at least it boots up now OK.
Could have been a lot worse though... I could have been running Vista. If you read nothing else this year, do read 'A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection' by Peter Gutmann of Auckland University. If you haven't got time to read it all, here's the "executive executive summary":
Vista has the rare distinction of being the first operating system in history to do less things, less well, than its immediate predecessor. One could call it the Gerald Ford of operating systems; except Vista can't walk or chew gum at the same time. It's an absolute dog's breakfast, and the fact that thousands of copies of it are being sold every week gives the lie to the notion that capitalism is in any sense an optimally efficient economic system. It is doubtful that anyone would voluntarily shell out on Vista were they not forced to by Microcrap's machiavellian licensing policies. It'll certainly help both Linux and Macintosh gain market share although either of them have a mountain to climb if they are to displace Microsoft as the market leader. Still, one can but hope.
For my part, when the current PC finally dies, it'll almost certainly be a Linux machine I replace it with. I'm through with the MS bullshit.
It had to happen. Approximately 18 months after building my PC, the goddamn thing stopped booting into MicroCrap XP Professional. No real idea why. It was an intermittent fault but became increasingly regular until it happened every time; the boot sequence showed the XP splash logo, then a black screen with a (movable) mouse pointer, but nothing else. Possibly a hardware fault? I checked all the connections, but MEPIS Linux loads fine, so it's a weird hardware fault if so. After eventually finding my XP Pro CD I fiddled around with the recovery console, thinking I might be able to repair the installation; before I knew it my C: drive had become E: and I was downloading 73 security updates from MicroCrap central. Seems to take most of the day, even with broadband. On the plus side, at least it boots up now OK.
Could have been a lot worse though... I could have been running Vista. If you read nothing else this year, do read 'A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection' by Peter Gutmann of Auckland University. If you haven't got time to read it all, here's the "executive executive summary":
The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.
Vista has the rare distinction of being the first operating system in history to do less things, less well, than its immediate predecessor. One could call it the Gerald Ford of operating systems; except Vista can't walk or chew gum at the same time. It's an absolute dog's breakfast, and the fact that thousands of copies of it are being sold every week gives the lie to the notion that capitalism is in any sense an optimally efficient economic system. It is doubtful that anyone would voluntarily shell out on Vista were they not forced to by Microcrap's machiavellian licensing policies. It'll certainly help both Linux and Macintosh gain market share although either of them have a mountain to climb if they are to displace Microsoft as the market leader. Still, one can but hope.
For my part, when the current PC finally dies, it'll almost certainly be a Linux machine I replace it with. I'm through with the MS bullshit.
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