Shock Jocks? Time To Grow Up?

So the BBC has been forced to apologise for lewd messages left on Andrew Sachs' mobile messaging service. I think lewd is a fairly mild term for saying that you had 'fucked' Mr Sachs granddaughter. I've long since stopped listening to or watching Jonathan Ross because of his mysogynistic innuendo which I personally find tediously juvenile and frankly pretty insulting to his guests. It came to a head, if you'll pardon the pun, when he suggested to Katie Price that he was going to go home and 'crack one off' having interviewed her. Jordan, to her credit laughed it off but I found it fairly gratuitously insulting and ceased watching to Ross from that moment onward. Now I don't think that my embargo is going to cause Mr Ross to loose much sleep but I feel better and less 'unclean' for my decision. 

Unfortunately not enough people seem to hold my view so we've now been exposed to the awful synergy of Ross and Brand seemingly stoking each other up to an unacceptable level - unacceptable to at lest 500 listeners and the BBCs subsequent apology. Quite apart from the utter rudeness and lack of consideration of this so-called 'prank', it's the kind of thing most boys grew out of before the age of twenty, the abuse of their respective positions just sticks in the gullet. As far as I'm aware the propagation of obscene messages over the public communications network is an offence so why aren't the boys in blue charging these morons pour encouragé les autres? 

More annoying still is the fact that both of these presenters are really bright people who could be using their talents in amazingly creative ways instead of taking the easy option. I'm not holding my breath.

Prezza Punches His Weight

Huzzah for Prezza. This morning on Radio 4, usually known for it's ambushing of politicians, inviting them onto the programme to discuss one issue then asking them for off the cuff comments on another, John Prescott remained calm and gave Radio 4s new economic skinhead, Evan Davis, a verbal thumping for his cheeky bushwack. Asked onto the Today programme to discuss his TV show on Class in British Society, Davis began to ask Prezza about the Mandelson/Deripaska business. It's obvious that Prescott has taken some ducking and diving lesson in the local gym since his straight left to the electorate of yore because he handled Davis in consummate style deflecting the question adroitly and with not a little humour. JP really is a joy for commentators and not for the same reasons that Mandelson is. He is straightforward and often unintelligible but always worth listening to. I, for one, am going to miss him

Passing It Forward

An article this morning give just praise to Alan Bennett for donating all his works to the Bodlean Library that Oxford institution that houses copies of most of the world's literary heritage. Mr Bennett is reported to have told of his relief as the notes, manuscripts and jottings of a lifetime disappeared off down the road. His rationale seems to have been, partly at least, that his education was State funded so he felt that this selfless donation was almost a duty to give back. Bravo Bennett and more power to your literary elbow, may we be reading many many more of you gems in the future.

Fresh from that uplifting moment I come across this item via Digg, in which some anonymous stranger has bought, at auction, a repossessed house in the States only to give it back to the owner from whom it was repossessed. How cool is that?

It just goes to show that perhaps that sixties idealism didn't die out after all; that a seed of it still survives and is just now ready for germination in this financially turbulent time. Now that the ethos of unfettered greed is being reappraised perhaps the idea of community and collective responsibility is an idea whose time had come.

Presidential or What?

Who looks the most Presidential - Barak Obama or John McCain? Or perhaps Sarah Palin should be up there in the choice because, frankly, McCain ain't looking so hot health-wise. Three times cancer survivor is three times cancer getter n'est-ce pas? So his record on cancer is not to be envied. Does the USA want Sarah Palin as President? Perhaps they do. I heard a lady on Radio 4 this morning saying that we, the British more specifically the British Press, were being superciliously nasty to Ms Palin and that we had misjudged her appeal to the American people. Well dang my britches if that ain't the darndest accusation I ever heeard! Is it too much to ask that a Vice-President, possibly a President, can speak in joined up sentences and knows a little, just a little, whereof she speaks. I know we've all been conditioned to low expectations by eight years of W but maybe we might not be in the shit heap we're currently in if we'd had a President who could read without moving his lips. To replace him with another one who's definitely short on international experience is, to say the least, dangerous. Ms Palin is undoubtedly smart, a cute as a pet fox some might say, but is Alaskan native cunning enough on the international stage. I suspect not.

If You've Done Nothing Wrong...

Did I miss something? Did Bjork and Sigur Ros plant bombs in the London Underground while I was asleep and kill and maim dozens of voters. Because that's the only reason I can think of that Gordon's barmy army of legal eagles could have sanctioned the use of anti-terrorist legislation to freeze Iceland's assets in the UK. It's kinda like your local council nuking your vehicle for illegal parking instead of just giving it a ticket like any normal joe. Admittedly Iceland didn't seem to be handling their own personal financial meltdown very well but holy crap why not just go the whole nine yards and invade. Surely those smoking geysers are hiding places for all kinds of WMDs?
Remember folks, this is the administration that says their uberdatabase, all your information, is safe in their hands. If they're prepared to cripple the economy of an ally using the terrorist legislation what are they going to do to you, you're only a voter. Remind me again. Is this a Labour Government?

Help stop this lunacy now. Check this out and sign the petition. This folks, is not what the anti-terrorist legislation was meant for. But this is the way it starts.

Headline Spotting - Part 1

Newsfeed readers are quite useful but they do throw up some really strange headlines. My first encounter with one of these was the headline 'Gunshot victim critical' and I thought 'well you would be wouldn't you', you're not likely to be complementary. 

Today I come across 'Cemetery owner denies murder plot' and I'm wondering whether he has a special space for murder victims. 

Perhaps it's just me...

Australia - Land of the Bizarre

Via Boing Boing. Anytime you think you'd like to emigrate perhaps you should check out these extraordinary tales from the outback. Not only could you be assaulted in an olfactory manner by fish-lady but you could be chased by hearse-man. God's own country no doubt, who else would want to live there?

Joining the Mobile Revolution

Well, here I am blogging from an iPhone on the move. So now waiting world, you can be kept up to speed with my every trivial hiccup. You lucky people. Moving trash.


-- Post From My iPhone

Winston Smith, Mind Your Back

It comes to something when Big Brother's big brother warns about Big Brother. Wacky Jacqui Smith's proposals to monitor every communication in the UK and store this information on, what the press are calling, an uberdatabase have come under fire from one of the people you'd expect to be right behind such a move. Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has issued a warning to the Government not to create irreversible powers that could be misused to spy on individual citizens. It just goes to show how far Ms Smith has travelled down the road to 1984. Do you think, perhaps, Jacqui Smith may be related to Winston Smith who must've been a terrorist given his inexplicable fear of rats who as we all know are nice cuddly animals not the voracious, disease ridden, faithless, sewer-dwelling quadrupeds of fable . Link.

KYC Extends UK Paranoia

Jesus H Christ it's getting worse by the day in the cradle of democracy. Has the whole world gone stark raving mad? Timesonline is reporting news that you will need to present a passport to obtain a mobile phone in future. So that's great. Now as well as having to present two (or is it three now) forms of identification to a person who's been taking my bank deposits for nearly ten years in case I'm money laundering, parroting some laughable excuse for a security check every, repeat every, time I want to discuss my meagre pension with some call-center exotic, being told that my call may be recorded for 'training and security purposes', I now have to produce a passport if I want get a mobile phone which is not much more than a glorified radio tag anyway. Well I've had about enough of this bollocks. Jaqui 'if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear' Smith has gone too far this time and this worm is ready for turning. I'm about as likely to vote Conservative as I am to stick a loofa up my arse and fart the Marseillaise but David Cameron is looking ever more appealing as the New Labour machine moves into Wermacht territory with Ms Smith as Goebbels goose stepping to the tune of the far right. What the hell happened to the Labour Party? Did someone scoop out their principles and replace them with those of the tin pot ruler of some banana republic. How did we let this happen and how can we reverse it? If Osmam Bin Laden had designed the best possible outcome for his personal jihad he couldn't, in his wildest dreams, have thought that all his desires would have been enacted voluntarily by the free society he so vehemently opposes. Game, set and match Osama Bin L. say I.

Flash Gordon Saves The World

I am gobsmacked by Gordon Brown's chutzpah. Not only is he claiming credit for saving the planet from the results of a financial disaster which has happened partly as a result of the so-called 'light touch regulation' for which his government was responsible but he now has the unmittigated gall to stand in front of a British electorate and claim that unfettered capitalism is responsible for the disaster and that greater regulation is the answer. This is like an arsonist throwing water on a fire he himself stared and then claiming credit for putting it out. 

Un-f**king-believable. Link.

On Size and Why It Matters

When I first saw this I thought someone had unearthed some more gen on the Rolling Stones/Marianne Faithful tale, a modern urban myth with much to recommend it. Or that maybe there had been a 21st century parallel that had passed me by in my webside trawlings. But then I realised that the modern Mars confection was way to small for even the most modest popshot and on further investigation (i.e. reading the blog) that the actual story was far more mundane. Shame.

Flann O'Brien - Years Ahead of His Time

This item via Make about photographs of a jeans distressing factory in Kentucky made me realise what a true visionary the Irish writer and satirist Flann O'Brien really was. O'Brien, whose Myles na gCopaleen column in the Irish Times raised titters at Dublin breakfast tables from the 1940s for some decades, observed in one of his myriad flights of fancy, that many owners of newly commissioned mansion houses ordered, as part of the decor, books by the yard and that the observant visitor might deduce, by the obvious lack of use of said books, the owner's Philistine nature. He proposed to fill an evident gap in the market with a Book Distressing Service in which, for varying reward, he and a team of carefully trained distressers would punish the books in as an artistic fashion the owner could afford so that they might be spared the embarrassment of a virgin tome adorning their carefully tasteful libraries. The stages of distressing ran from the basic (worrying by small but determined terriers specially trained for the job) to erudite dedications by the author in the flyleaves to the current owner of the book complete with wine stains and railway tickets from exotic locations placed as 'forgotten' bookmarks. I've no doubt that he has a wry smile on whatever passes for a face now and is at this moment perparing a law suit claiming copyright on his brilliant idea.

Annals of NSS Vol.1

In the No Shit Sherlock awards October 2008 special mention must surely go to the piece of research published in Clin. J. Sports Medicine, September 2008 in which it was noted that sliding head first down a water slide could, mind you could, result in devastating spinal chord injuries. Who'd have guessed?

You Can Take A Pitbull out of Alaska...

There's been great fun had at the selection of Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican Party and her seeming inability to string together a sentence without a folksy wink or a 'you betcha!' Quite what the McCain team thought would be the up-side of their selection is anyone's guess but as the McCain campaign staggers and lurches from one indecisive statement to the next you can't help but remember that pitbulls are generally rather loyal mutts with an ineffable good humour. These don't seem to be qualities that Ms Palin has in a superabundance so the term may well be misplaced. However, they do have a very high pain threshold, a very thick skin and an unfortunate propensity for turning on their owners with somewhat painful results. So perhaps not so misplaced then and McCain would do well to keep his particular attack dog on a very short chain.

Horses For Courses

So Katie Price, our very own silicone valley doll, is fighting for the masses to subue the rampant class prejudice in the horsey world. I don't think so. Katie is doing what she does so very well, keeping herself in the headlines of the twittering tabloids who seem to have a never ending appetite for the minutiae of her glittering lifestyle. I happen to think that Jordan, for it is she, is a genius at manipulating the media and, frankly, deserves every reward that ensues from satiating the great British public's need for gossip/sleaze/drivel. What I wont stand for, however, is that she's engaged in some sort of class war in which she represents Joe Public in an uphill struggle against the aristocratic equestrian set who would like to ostracise her on the grounds that she's 'not one of us'. Having worked in the horse world for the thick end of thirty-five years, I know that it's peopled by everyone from our own dear Queen to those who are just one generation from the travelling community, indeed the travelling community have a reverance for good horse flesh that would make the Queen envious. So Jordan's class war is just what it is a PR exercise. Let's not paint her as anything other than what she is - a damn fine business woman with considerable assets not least of which is her sharp brain and PR genius.

Child Pornographers Really?

It seem that a fifteen year old from Newark, Ohio might be labelled as a sex-offender for sending naked cellphone pictures of herself to other minors (presumably her friends). If convicted all sorts of doom and destruction will be visitied on her for at least ten years and she'll be branded as a child pornographer. For goodness sake, we all had our naked moments in childhood and early adolescence didn't we? No? That's just me then.
I'll get me coat. Link

Gordon's Sticky Fingers

Yeah, yeah I know it's not spelled the same but how the hell would I get the headline if accuracy was my main concern? Michael Douglas' role in Wall Street seems likely to have little in common with the green lizards you see walking up walls in your cheap Spanish condo apart from the reptilian stare, but gekkos are some cool little dudes with amazingly sticky fingers (not so unlike Wall Streets finest after all then) and now, it seems, scientists have used the secret of the tacky lizards to formulate a substance that is three times stickier than any other glue. That is some sticky shit!
I might just have to blag some of this stuff so that I can hang onto what little money I'll have left after paying for our bankers bonuses. Link

More Power to the Whipmeister

So Max Mosley is taking the fight to the gutter press by way of the European Court of Human Rights. Well good on him. It's about time the disingenuous dickwads at the News of the World and similar sleazoid trash got themselves hosed by someone and if that someone needs to wield the big stick why should it not be Max who enjoys a bit of stick-wielding. Mosley's family have been put through the wringer simply so the reptiles could embarrass him and as he pointed out this is a weekly event in which some poor sod's life is microscopically disected in public with little or no thought given to the effect it has. It's a sad comment on Britain that these comics sift through the septic tank of our sad little world and see how many of the big lumps they can get on the front page. However, parasitic as they may be hooked on in the large intestines of society, it's the buyers of these papers who are the real coprophagics.

Singer and Songwriters Myopic? Discuss

Every week some smug troubador dribbles on about how hard life is for a struggling artist and how they're going to sell straight to their fanbase and cut out the Big Bad Wolf of the music industry. Burbles on about how the record company don't understand them and don't increase their revenues despite the fact that digital distribution must have reduced costs significantly. So they're going to fire up a website and sell their 'art' to the fans direct. Well how the fuck do they think they got the fans in the first place. They got 'em because some music industry type bunged a five of six figure advertising and PR budget at a fledgling popster or popstrelle and propelled them, by the power of money, into the public's consciousness. Last week it was Kate Nash and some other johnny/jackie-come-latelys who frankly wouldn't have been given the time of day without some PR person pumping their story to the heavens. There is no doubt that the music industry as a colony (bit like slime molds but with less integrity) is oozing about trying to plot a path through the new paradigm or even trying to define the paradigm which is still shifting on a weekly, if not daily, basis but there's still things they do quite well and blowing up the skirts of the press in general and the music press in particular is one of them. Selling the back story to infiltrate the artist into a jaded buyers short little span of attention is one thing they do very well indeed. They've kept the interest in Coldplay going while they whined their way through three cloned albums before making a reasonably interesting fourth. They've miraculously maintained radio interest in Dido, whose lastest single is getting amazing amounts of airplay despite sounding identical to virtually all of her first album. (Jesus H Christ talk about music to knit entrails to). So before these mediocre talents throw themselves at the mercy of the internet downloader they should consider just how it was their moderate accomplishments clawed their respective ways to the top of the playlists cos it sure as hell wasn't entirely on merit

From the Annals of 'Ya Couldn't Make It Up'

It seems that the Welsh and their sheep antics just wont go away. Now comes a report of the North Wales Police Force tasering a runaway ram on the A55 near Bodelwyddan last week. Since most of the traffic seems to have stopped and some of the onlookers, showing a deal more sense than the local plod, had tried to herd said ovine off the road and back to the safety of his paddock there wasn't much, if any, danger to the public. Tasering the poor beast seems significantly OTT. But you know boys and their toys. Once they've got 'em they just can't resist playing with 'em.

High Profile Victim of The Parasites of Fleet Street

There's nothing the public seems to love more than watching a high profile talent implode in public. Recent reports suggest that Amy Winehouse is in a suicidal state and threateneing to end it all. Anyone who believes that this girl is not a major talent need only listen to her recorded output. Anyone who believes that she is not seriously disturbed need only watch one of her recent live performances. The contrast tells its own story.

What her handlers think they are doing shoving her on stage in the state she's been in on her last few outings is anybody's guess but they're certainly not looking after her welfare. This is a huge shame and I can only hope she has finally reached a tipping point from whence the only way is up. We can't afford to loose talent like this through carelessness.

World Ends Tomorrow - Part 2

Part 1 was the firing up of the Large Hadron Collider and was an anticlimax of giant proportions but Part 2 tomorrow, tomorrow may well be different as a 5m asteroid is due to augur in somewhere in Northern Sudan at 2:47UT. A 5m asteroid might not seem like a whole hell of a lot but I'd rather not be too near the thing when it hits though Southern Europe and Northern Africa will see a spectecular re-entry. It may be that all our financial worries will be over by 2:50. It's been fun. 

Warning - Eat Food With One Ingredient Only

More evidence, if more were needed, that much of the food industry's priority is profit and that customer's health and long-term welfare is lower on it's list than its balance sheet. The scandals of pet food adulteration and the crap that some processing companies added to pet food formulae to bring it up to 'spec' seems to have passed inevitably to the human food industry. So we have the spectacle of children being diagnosed with kidney stones because some bright spark thought melamine was a protein additive with which they could safely bulk up their product undetected. They'd have probably got away with it except they got the proportions wrong and overdosed hundreds of children and it all blew up in their faces. But it goes to show the old adage that 'the more they f**k about with it, the less you want to eat it' is a survival technique for the 21st century. They will scarf up your food and sh*t all over it if it makes an extra few pence. Link.

Just Another Manic Monday

Credit crunch blah blah, Sub-Prime blah blah, Robert Peston blah blah, Iceland bust blah blah, house prices down blah blah, Bradford & Bingley blah blah, Angele Merkel blah blah, FTSE down blah blah, banks worried blah blah etc etc etc ad infinitum. Apart from that nothing much is happening.

Snodland Big Cat - No, Not a Joke

Here in Dorset, big cat sightings are reported regularly but there is no known photographic evidence to back up the reports. Now from Snodland in Kent comes this. Now that's a pretty big cat. I'm not sure how big but I wouldn't like to have to worm it. 
So is it possible that this guy/girl comes the Dorset on holiday or is just part of a government big cat job relocation programme. I think we should be told.

Boris The Spider

The blonde bombshell whose bufoonery, I am reliably informed, hides a sharp intellect has called time on the beleagured Sir Ian Blair. Weaving his web around London Boris has effectively removed his support for the Metropolitan police commisioner who is already under attack from shadowy forces within the force. 

The Force is obvously not strong in Sir Ian Obi Wan. 

I can no longer feel his presence. 

Gone he is.

Poacher Turned Gamekeeper - Almost Literally

The Johnny Rotten butter commercial is now in the wild and Mr Rotten's clarion call for Country Life butter has him looking like a naughty child who's found the squire's jumble sale box. Still it could be worse. At least the antichrist wont have any trouble getting his bread toasted or they could have altered the spelling of Country. Link.

Joan As Spokeswoman

I was reminded last night of things as they used to be before we all got smug and self-satisfied and started to trust 'the man'. Watching Joan Baez at the Royal Albert Hall was like being transported back to those heady days in the sixties when we all thought that the world was going to change because the brokers and the sharks knew we were onto them and they had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. It was all so heady and idealistic and then somewhere along the line their representatives put on their best squaline smile and invited Joe Public to join them at the trough and we fell for it. Not all of us took the bait and, I suspect, Joan Baez was one of the few that remained clear about the threat from naked economic greed. Last night at the RAH she cycled back through a 50 year career in the protest business and proved that she still has what it takes. But Joan does it in such an extraordinary way that it almost defies description. She is like the still point at the centre of events that seeth around her, a gentle but immovable fulcrum providing the focus of the leverage needed to effect change. As we watched her performance it was impossible to think of her as anything but one of the worlds permanent features. An elemental treasure that we are not likely to see repeated given the self-centred self-satisfaction of most of our music industry figures. You could count on the fingers of one hand the voices that stand up for the kind of values that Joan has espoused over a lifetime. They sing and they shout those few, but nobody's listening.