Fifteen Minutes of Mantra Filled Oompah

Comedy Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 13:19:00 +0000

It's been a fairly busy week.

On Tuesday, off I went to York to watch The King's Speech. Now, given the way this film has been hyped in recent weeks, one would be forgiven for not realising that, actually, it is a very, very funny film indeed. The dialogue fizzes with lots of wondrous one-liners and mordant wit. And of course it also has Helena Bonham-Carter, who, as far as I'm concerned can do very little wrong. Both Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are fabulous but, for me, the jaw-dropper was Guy Pearce's turn as Edward VIII: his appearances are fleeting but spell-binding. Of course, it's not a comedy. It's so much more: at turns witty, sad, angry and frustrating. It really is quite, quite spellbinding. And I'll buy the DVD when it turns up because I think it will bear up to a lot of repeat watching and deserves the awards it's getting right now.

Interval time at Punt & Dennis

On Thursday, I went up to Middlesbrough Theatre to see Punt & Dennis' new show, "They Should Get Out More". Brian Logan's Guardian review wasn't particularly kind to them, though I suspect this has rather more to do with Logan than Punt and Dennis. And besides, he rather misses the point. Steve and Hugh are quite cosy. They've been together a long time now and have a format that largely works and plays to an audience that contains the likes of me. That said, the age spread of the audience was pretty wide, with lots of late-teen, early 20's types kicking around. Of the two, Punt is clearly the less comfortable on stage, so he leaves most of the more obvious performance elements to Dennis. Ok, it's hardly at the bleeding edge, but it is funny, which is the most important thing. The finale is a great sketch with Dennis playing a drunk wine taster on a TV wine show (think Oz Clarke after three or four bottles), a character I've seen before, but enjoyed finally seeing on stage.

And then, finally, last night, down to Scarborough to check out Count Arthur Strong. I've been listening to the radio shows for a few years now, a convert after hearing clips on various shows beforehand. I was hoping that he wouldn't prove to be a let-down. I needn't have worried, though the Spa Theatre wasn't quite as full as I'd hoped, which flattened the atmosphere just a touch. Steve Delaney's monstrous creation, on the other hand, was sensational. The two riffs on 'Michaels' (there were recurring references to Michael McIntyre through the show too) and his version of Deck of Cards alone were worth the admission fee for me. The cookery segment was something that had appeared in the radio show, but was all the nicer for having seen it done live. Though his supporting cast are more than able, Delaney himself is a masterful character actor, and Arthur's tics and ever more spiralling rants are the real centre of proceedings.A great show, and a real coup for Coastival to have got him there: congratulations to all.

Nokia : Death by a thousand cuts

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 17:42:00 +0000

CEO Stephen Elop's deliberately inflammatory email within Nokia last week seems designed to pave the way for justifying Nokia's decision to ditch Symbian and move the Nokia brand across to Windows Phone 7. There are so many reasons why this is a bad day for the mobile industry, so let's articulate a few:

Nokia have expertly managed to piss off quite a lot of its devoted developer base. Qt could have been tied into WP7 to at least allow the dev base that did exist to move stuff they were doing into the new world. As it is, those who wrote Symbian code are probably not going to run headlong at a chance to start writing for Windows. And, if we're being honest, though WP7 has now got an app base about as large as the massively superior HP WebOS, it's not exactly overrun with developer activity. This lack of traction is hurting, especially when you compare it to the Apple Store and Android Marketplace
It's a pity Nokia hadn't considered going in for Palm when HP picked them up. WebOS running on Nokia hardware could have been a compelling mix. Now we'll never know.
And, in a comical move today, Nokia have tried to claim the smartphone market is essentially a three horse race between WP7, Apple and Google. RIM, of course, took immediate umbrage, while most of the rest of us just had to sit down and hold our sides just to recover from Microsoft's belief that they're anywhere near Blackberry yet, let alone Android and iOS. Nokia might have a large slice of installed base, but their share is sliding and a lack of strong products to bolster that slide will only make things even worse.
Nokia's best strategy may have been to go down the Android route. While there are lots of Android phones in the market, Nokia's hardware is still a heavy plus point in their favour. Android is als oan environment that is hihly tunable and can be used across a varierty of phone specs. WP7 is, weirdly, rather more prescriptive about its needs. Nokia's phones running Android could have managed in the top end of the market and in rhe mid range. Instead, they have WP7 which has an underwhelming feature set and has aired on fairly unremarkable phones so far. It hasn't really set the world alight.
And then there are tablets. Or rather, in Nokia's case, there aren't. Miscorsoft are not looking at WP7 as a tablet OS at all. Meanwhile iOS and Android Honeycomb look pretty much bedded in for the long haul. MeeGo is dead in the water, so Nokia don't have a tablet entry into that rapidly growing market. This is a worry. Meanwhile, HP's entry, the TouchPad looks like it could actually give Apple a few sleepless nights: it looks a very polished product indeed. In Redmond, Steve Ballmer is still trying to push Windows 7 as the tablet OS of choice, but this is starting to look just a touch desperate. Trying to port 7 to ARM is only going to make Microsoft's portfolio more confused and cluttered. While this happens, both Apple and Google have very strong offerings that look coherent and unifeid across their entire ecosystems. Throwing money at the problem isn't going to solve it, especially when both Google and Apple have just as much cash they can pour inot their projects.
But this is a good move for Microsoft on their terms, at least on paper. They push their OS into the market on the back of a big hardware company (more of that in a sec) and can try to gain a foothold. Unfortunately, Nokia's WP7 phones will take a while to finsh and get to market. In the meantime Android pdates are coming and we're probably only a couple of months from iPhone 5. This will make the need for Micrsoft to up their update cycle game for WP7 all the more urgent as the OS feature set and experience still lags behind the competition. Don't get me wrong, I would actually like to see WP7 gain a hold in the market, just so that there is some push for innovation and competition, but this doesn't seem like the right way to do it.
What does this mean for Nokia? Well, their attmepts to control the vertical integration of their products, like Apple have done so successfully, is pretty much dead in the water now. They will lose developer momentum. And all because Nokia just didn't get software. While Symbian was a great product in its time, the word has moved and, unfortunately, neither Symbian nor Nokia moved quicke enough with it. Their management fo the whole Symbian project left much to be desired, while the company culture seemed fixated on hardware. While the M8 has a lovely 12MP camera, the environment you use it in isn't so great. Not a great selling point.

In all, Nokia seem to be the ones losing out here. They've been forced into an alliance that many inside the company probably don't really want, which will only serve to give Microsoft a toehold if it succeeds, and will burn them both badly if it fails. Time will tell which way things will go, but if I were Nokia I would be casting anxious glances over my shoulder at the past, and how previous incarnations of Windows Mobile were handled. Have Microsoft learned from their past mistakes or are they doomed to repeat them, and drag Nokia down in the process?

Posh and Posher

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:09:00 +0000

I find that, in spite of myself sometimes, I like people that perhaps I might not be expected to, usually for odd reasons. One such person is Andrew Neil. IT was one of the things I ruminated on as I watched his recent BBC2 programme Posh and Posher: Why Public Schoolboys Run Britain. I missed it on broadcast but managed to catch a fair bit of it on the iPlayer.

As I was watching a couple of things struck me. First was that, despite the running jokes in Private Eye about the Brilo Pad on his head, Neil is a generally decent and thoughtful bloke, and one who clearly has given a great deal of consideration to his background and how lucky he feels to have had some of the opportunities that were offered to him. Actually, this is pretty much the cornerstone of the whole programme, wondering how those opportunities he took with both hands are less likely to come now to those with the same background. It resonated with me to, coming from where I do. Perhaps that's another reason why I like Neil: some tenuous sense of kinship.

But there was something missing from Neil's analysis, I think. As he went through the list of public schoolboys who either went to Eton or Westminster, and talked to those at Nick Clegg's old school about the advantages they enjoyed, two things struck me: the first was that there was a tacit assumption that a political career was still something aspired to by many of what used to be called the "grammar school" students, the second was the fact that many of the skills taught in the independent system are still very classical in tone. The latter of these things was thrown into relief when Neil enjoyed a short conversation with Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was desperately trying to deflect observations about his class, ended up claiming himself, "a man of the people: vox populi, vox dei", which only served to point out the exact opposite.

In the past, the education of a gentlemen mostly focused on three areas: logic, literature and rhetoric. In essence this gave the ability to analyse argument, speak and debate, and then throw in a few well chosen bon mots from others to garnish. Oddly, these skills are exactly he skills for parliamentary debate. Another thing skirted over came when the presence of Tony Blair as Prime Minister was seen as weakening some of those arguments becasue he was a "great communicator", even though he too was a public schoolboy (at Fettes). The school is not the issue. What is the issue is that, since World War II, of the 11 men and women who have assumed the role of Prime Minister, nine of them were educated at Oxford. Only John Major, with no degree and Gordon Brown (Edinburgh) spoil the Oxonian hegemony. Oxford provides the Oxford Union, which reinforces the values learned in school, attracts influential speakers and provides a network and lauchpad for those with a political interest. An example of this is the path of the Milliband brothers, educated at their father's insistence in the state sector, but also going up Oxford

The elephant in the room for me is, however, related to the first of the issue I had with Neil's analysis: perhaps it's only really those going through the public school system who have any interest in a career in the now rather quaint and arcane Westminster system that appears, to many, to be increasingly distanced form any kind of reality. Perhaps it's not that the talented from outside the public schools can't get into those positions, but that they don't want to. It's not beyond the realms of possibility. In recent years the political system, and the politicians within it have become stained with a continuous stream of dirt and scandal. Mistrust of 'careerist' politicians has not been higher in living memory, and probably has not been as profound since the 19th Century. But the Westminster environment is an incestuous one and it seems, from outside, that there is a distinct lack of understanding at the growing levels of anger in wider society about what is seen as the pulling up of the ladder of opportunity by those for whom that opportunity is firmly entrenched.

Perhaps the question shouldn't be "Why Are Public Schoolboys Running Britain", but "Why does no one else seem to want to?"

Welcome to Year Zero

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 12:54:00 +0000

As the late Frank Zappa once said, "there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over." And right now, we are being bent right over. Welcome to 2011. Before Christmas, when Vince Cable talked about the colation being essentialy Maoist there was a fair amount of media scoffing and incredulity on offer. I'm not sure ther'es much to laugh at now: Cable's thesis is turning out to be pretty much on the money. We are in the midst of a time of continuous revolution. Here's a government who know, in their hearts, theat they've got one Parliament to do what they want, so they are haring around at pretty much breakneck speed, trying to force every single last bit of change through before anyone tries to stop them. The only thing Cable got wrong in the analysis was that the Coalition project hasn't modelled itself on Mao, but Pol Pot. This year is rapidly turning into Year Zero on the political calendar. Every institution or system is being ransacked:

The NHS : today's Bill publication sees a huge change to the way helath care is provided. At first it looks little more than an accounting practice of ditiching PCTs, then giving the cash to doctors instead. This is all very well, but theres'a rather more sinister logic behind this: GP's are not going to run their own finances; they'll see the amount of work and subcontract to a specialist medical management organisation. The big European and US players must be rubbing their hands right now as a new market opens up to them. Goody, just what we need: more private organisations bleeding money out to hand to shareholders, and more managers to do it.
Education : the Universities, Free Schools, the trashing of FE. How do you begin to even comprehend the coming car crash that this will be? There's not enough room here.
Electoral Reform : changes to the voting system? Ok. Consulation? No, why bother, let's just bulldoze it throuh the Commons and Lords and have the referendum anyway. Still, for some in the Conservative party this is great. After using the LibDems as a human shield for a year, anything with Clegg's name on it will be toast. Then came the proposals to force 50% participation in union strike ballots. But this is also hpocrisy. Why should different rules apply to unions when elections to parliament, in parliament, or to any other public office, for example, don't have these conditions. Boris Johnson was elected Mayor of London on a turnout well under 50%, for example. But he doesn't like to talk about that.
The Economy : what we have is essentially neo-Thatcherite. We have a government who are intenet on sucking money out of the economy as quickly as possible. But, of course, with rising unemployment and rising inflation, the prospect of all that private secotr growth Cameron and Osborne were optimistically predicting looks fairly dim. And that's beofre the tax rises really bite: VAT and fuel rises are going to cause a fair bit of discomfort for many. And then when interest rates start rising again. Meanwhile, the 50% tax rae is going to be removed because it is "ineffective". Lovely, so slap up indirect taxation and use the most regressive means possible to screw the public.
Transport : so another thing that will be rising is train fares, and once again well above inflation. And then there's the (at least) 35bn to be spent on the London-Birmingham High Speed Rail Link, for which the benefits are, at best, questionable. I'd have thought the money would be better spent elsewhere, and not on bulldozing on of the few green areas left in the south of England. But no, it's OK, we'll plant a few tress and everything will be just peachy. Never mind that neither the rail link to the North East of the country, nor the A1 could be described as more than barely adequate, we Northern Johnnies will just have to make do. And, in rural areas, cuts to local authority funding wil have disastrous consequences for public transport, like this and this. It's amost as if someone doesn't want the popluation to be mobile.
The Banks : the government claims that they cannot affect bank bonus culture, even though we, the public, own 82% of RBS, for exmaple. The mantra is that, "if we curb them, they will move elsewhere". Well, given the wonderful job they've been doing, elsewhere can have them.
Local Authorities : one of the results of all this cutting is that local services will suffer. The quality of life for many people, some of whom are the most vunerable, is going to get markedly worse. And the wave of reduncancies mean that those people who were in work will now be on benefits, unproductive and angry.
The Big Society : Cameron's BIG idea. And what a wet, resounding fart of an idea it is. Perhaps he envisioned all those people being made redundant being energised to go out and do what they were doing, but without earning a living doing it (and in some cases barely even that). Perhaps he really is that much of a blithering moon-faced imbecile. No, the Big Society is a cynical exercise in the neo-Thaterite embracing of 'charidee' and a public high-minded morality concealing the systematic rpe and pillage of much of our infrastructure, both physical and social. As an idea it is both iniquitous and hypocritical. And he can shove it.

So far, after the New Year, the weather is just about holding but the political and social temparture is starting to rise. Already unions are expressing concern about inflation outsripping peoples ability to live, and pressure is strting to build. It's already a rocky start to Year Zero. how much worse will it get?

It's going to be a long, long winter

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:35:00 +0000

Back when the Comprehensive Spending Review happened earlier in the year I remarked to some friends that the one thing the coalition government should pray for was a mild winter.

Well, if they did, it didn't work. As the snow piles up, so do the problems for Moon-faced Dave. The tuition fees row is just the tip of a very, very big iceberg if some of the disquiet of the last few days is to be believed. It's also why, as far as I can see, Ed Milliband's attempts to stick the knife in and twist might be very well-timed indeed. His nailing of Vince Cable (once a welcome voice of sanity and now little better than a clown) as craven, and the government held together by only the thinnest of threads, can't be described as anything other than accurate.

Just look at the landscape right now: concerns that the preparations for bad weather have not been managed well; unemployment rising; inflation rising; housing market basically flatlined; a stuttering economy. And that's before the 'cuts' that have been pushed through have even taken effect. Or before the VAT rise arrives in January.

Already, the public sector unions are jumpy, and the only reason this hasn't permeated the private sector is the rollback of unions from corporate Britain. Fuel prices are now, in some cases, nearly 50% higher than this time last year. Energy bills are once again rising, with concerns about the power companies using wholesale prices as a neat excuse to wring even more cash out of their customers to bolster dividends.

The optimism from Cameron and Osborne that the private sector would 'take up the slack' of public sector job losses seems ever more foolhardy and misdirected. Meanwhile, their coalition partner in the LibDems are in despair: they seem to be there to prop up the Maoist 'continual and continuous revolution' zeal of a Conservative right wing who know that one term is all the chance they'll get, all the while aware that they are being used as a human shield. Come May and the local elections and the AV referendum that they will now surely lose, the LibDems will be in meltdown. Even their own leader knows he's on borrowed time in his own constituency, stuffed as it is full of students. Their position is hopeless, both unable to distance themselves from the conservatives to be distinctive and unable to claim enough credit for any success that may arrive to convince voters they are a viable force. The wilderness awaits.

The storm clouds are gathering and the winter looks as if it will last almost for ever. Spring seems a very long way away indeed.

Winter Wonderland

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:47:00 +0000

When I was eight years old, in the winter of 1978-79, I remember the snow being deep enough to wade through at near enough knee height. There was a carpet of crisp, even, white snow all around where I lived in Middlesbrough. In fact, it was so bad that I remember not being able to get to school a couple of days, mostly because all the old oil heated classrooms we were in were way too cold to sit in. It's never been like that since.

Until the last few days.

It all started for me last Thursday evening, coming home from Durham. I finally managed to get home to Whitby yesterday afternoon, after digging out the car at my parents' house in Easington. It's been a long time since I was shin dep in snow, but I was on Sunday morning. On the high ground there's probably been well over a foot; closer to eighteen inches, I'd be more likely to bet.

Worse still, I didn't get to see Katie at the weekend. The roads through from Stokesley were pretty bad, even with a Grand Vitara (my ex-father in law's). They had a try on Saturday and didn't even set off Sunday. Can't say I blame them. But at least Katie had fun sledging and playing out in the snow at home

Even though the main roads were ploughed and cleaned off, the roads up near my folks' house weren't. It meant my car was not going anywhere in a hurry. The snow was piled everywhere, almost like being in Norway or Finland. It's so weird for it to be this early.

The ride home from Whitby yesterday was, as expected, a mixed one. The main road through (the A174) wasn't that bad at all: passable with a bit of care. Thing got weird when I got home, though. I have to park at the back of my house and get up a bank to do it. I needed help from a neighbour to get the car in.

Thankfully, the snow fall overnight wasn't that bad. So I thought I'd wait a little this morning before setting off for Scarborough. However, as I got to the stretch of road on theA171 between the Ruswarp turn-off and the Flask, the snow came down again, settling on the road and being drifted by the high wind. I looked at me, and a 1.25 litre Fiesta and thought better of it, turning back.

I'm hoping that the roads will be better tomorrow. The forecast is, that's for sure. Just have to watch for that ice!

The Curse of Half Man Half Biscuit

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:02:00 +0000

So, I went to see Half Man Half Biscuit last night. Before I talk about that, though, I should probably mention what happened last time I went to see them. It is relevant, trust me.

Back in April 1991 Steve, Stu and I made the trip up to Sunderland Poly (as it was then, this is pre-1992, remember, when there were still polytechnics) to watch HMHB. They'd not long since reappeared on the scene after having split up for a while. They were supported by fellow Probe Plus act Levellers 5 (who did a couple of Peel Sessions at the time. But that's by the by: HMHB were great. Eventually, we came out into spring night and made our way back to our Durham-bound train.

Except the train station was locked up. The last train had gone.

Elvet Bridge, from the Peninsula

So, there we stood and, after turning out our pockets, we realised that, between us, we didn't have enough cash to pony up for a taxi back. There was only one option: we'd have to walk home. To Durham. Fifteen miles. And so we set off, hiking along a deserted A690; no real chance of even hitching a lift either. We even found a football in the central reservation about an hour in, so played football down the carriageway for a while. At the services on the A690 Steve had the idea of using his credit card in of the new-fangled phone that took them, to ring for a cab and then go into Durham centre and get some cash to pay him. Pity the phone didn't see it that way and wouldn't take his card. As we got to the Dragonville turn-off at Durham at around half three in the morning the fog descended and we almost got taken out by a huge Artic coming up the slip road. Anyway, at around 4am we managed to crawl into bed, stiff and tired but happy and with a 'war story' to tell our mates.

Fast forward to last night. The first time I've seen Half Man Half Biscuit since that evening in April 1991. I've been looking forward to it for months since I booked the ticket.. But of course it's been snowing. Having said that, getting up the A19 proved to be rather uneventful and I end up in Durham safe and sound. I meet up with my mate Mark and off we trundled to the Central Thai restaurant in Durham. Very nice.

Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral

Anyway, off we went to the gig in the Live Lounge. Which was stellar; even better was the fact they opened with one of my favourite songs (and song titles) ever: 99% of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd. And it just kept getting better. Great versions of songs like National Shite Day and A Country Practice, not to mention a fabulous Twenty Four Hour Garage People (complete with musings on Pickled Onion Monster Munch). They, and the audience, were clearly having a laugh in spite of a few sound problems, even down to the bit near the end where Nigel muses on how miserable he'll probably end up feeling at 2am at Scotch Corner in the bad weather. It was great to see them again.

Afterwards Mark and I ended up having a quick drink and chat in the Varsity on North Bailey, watching some of the rabble from the Peninsula colleges wandering down the street, having clearly been to a pirate-themed formal or bop of some kind.

So it was that at around 0030, I set off for home. A690, A1, A689 and A19. Plenty of snow around but generally a fairly easy drive. I followed the A174 down the coast, not fancying doing a trip over the moor road at that time with heavy snow falling. And everything was fine. Until I got to Loftus. As soon as I got past Loftus Bank the trouble started. No ploughing or gritting here, no sir. As I drove past my parents' house in Easington wondered if I should stop, but thought that the road may just hold up if it stayed as it was. Oh, foolish optimism!

Boulby, in the middle of the night

Boulby Bank was just about negotiated, giving some comfort to what I thought may be possible. Then, at Runswick Bay, the wheels fell off. Or stopped spinning, anyway. Pretty much the only I didn't have with me was a shovel, so digging out was not an option. I decided I had to turn back. But that meant going back up Boulby Bank. I didn't try too hard, it was clearly not going to work. So I pulled the car into Boulby Mine. After speaking to the security guard on the gate I left the car there, suited and booted up and began the walk back towards my parent's house. This is only about 1-2 mles, but involved walking back up the 1 in 7 Boulby Bank, in the middle of a snow storm in the middle of the night.

Every time I see Half Man Half Biscuit I am condemned to a long walk, it seems.

Spot The Difference

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:58:00 +0000

November 2010:
When students in London during last week's fees demonstration caused damage to buildings and property the Prime Minster described their actions as "unacceptable" and called for the "full force of the law" to be used against those who had been violent.

November 1987:
When the future Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mayor of London spend their time as members of the Bullingdon Club smashing up restaurants, causing damage to property this is, of course, just youthful high spirits.

Hypocrisy? Heaven forfend!

αρραβωνιασμένο (or Soon We Will Be Married)

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:52:00 +0000

I didn't hear about the engagement of the latest scion of the Mountbatten-Windsor dynasty until this afternoon. And, obviously, the press has gone irrationally ballistic at the thought of two people actually getting married in this day and age. The BBC carpet bombed us this evening with hagiography and, I'm guessing, there are wet knickers aplenty in the newsrooms of the Daily Mail and Express (not to mention the real comics in Wapping and Canary Wharf). Some of them might even be female.

But. But.

Before we get carried away in our jingoistic, bread and circuses fervour, perhaps we should stop to think just a second. Two people have become engaged today. That's it. That one of them may be the King of the United Kingdom one day is almost incidental; the press will not think so, of course and will make it their avowed mission to discover and pore over every single last personal scrap of information from Kate Middleton's life.

Don't misunderstand me: I am something of a monarchist. I like the idea of a constitutional monarchy that prevents other, far worse, forms of government existing here. I also like the fact that the Royal Family are actually relatively cost effective and, in most reasonable analyses, are of a high net benefit to the nation. As a result, someone has to be the Royal Family. The current incumbents are no better and no worse than we have any right to expect and, indeed, many of them show a sensible and sober attitude towards discharging their responsibilities.

So do we need an endless soap opera? No, of course we don't. Are we going to get one? Of course we are. Because the press think that's what we want. But do we? The nation is now markedly different to the way it was in the early 1980s when Prince Wiliam's parents strolled out onto the lawn to announce their engagement to a much more deferential, forelock-tugging people. Their wedding was probably the high water mark of a particular kind of royalism: the sort that seems somehow quaint and anachronistic in the modern day.

How many of us will crowd around the TV on the day of their wedding? How many street parties will there be? Fewer, most likely, than there were in the summer of 1981, which (let's not forget) acted as a brief respite in a summer of tension, discord and economic convulsion. There is something of an irony in the fact that there will be another Royal Wedding during a year that promises the continuing, fractious and deepening schism that seems to be careering headlong in our direction. All I hope is that they are left to enjoy the time before their marriage, in the same way that lots of other couples up and down the country who may have become engaged today, will.

Fat chance. I'm depressingly unconvinced that the media have learned anything at all from the experiences of another young woman who married a prince and didn't exactly end up living a fairy tale.

Danny Baker

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 22:39:00 +0000

Just saw the link on the 5 Live blog that talks about Danny Baker's statement, released today, that he's receiving treatment for cancer. It's fairly obvious from the comments on his blog, and here, that lots of us are wishing him a full and speedy recovery.

Funny thing is, when he was all over TV like a rash in the mid-90s I had a strangely ambivalent attitude to him. I never quite got on with the chirpy cockernee schtick that served him so well. It kind of reached its nadir when he did his Radio 1 weekend show. But it wasn't him, it was me. As I heard him more later on (and saw TV Heroes), he really started to grow on me. And I realised just what a gem this guy was

When Jonathan Ross announced he was off to pastures new earlier this year, I hoped that Dan would move across to Radio2 on a Saturday and repeat what he'd done when Ross was on suspension - steal his show from under his nose and make it a million times better than floppy haired twonk who couldn't say his r's properly.

Still, that just meant he could hang out on 5Live. Which made Saturday mornings, with him and Fighting Talk, an unalloyed treat. So my reaction to the news that he's going to be intermittently presenting while 'enjoying' the dubious pleasures of chemo is that he get well soon. Britain needs blokes like Danny Baker.

The Eighties Revivial aka Thatcherism Redux

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:43:00 +0000

No, this is not what you think. It won't be a nostalgic trail through puffball dresses, piano ties, wedge haircuts and misty-eyed reminiscence about Durran Duran. for those of us who were there, there was another, far more serious 1980's, and today's news seems to rather starkly highlight it.

Plastered all over the news this morning is the story that certain parts of the country will be less resilient to cuts when the spending review finally happens this autumn. Can you guess which bits of the country they might be? So much for sharing the pain. So, if you live in poor, Labour-voting Middlesbrough or Mansfield you are far more likely to feel the effects of the ConDem axe than if you live in Harrogate or St Albans. At this stage, I might say that this was always likely to be something of a 'No Shit Sherlock' moment, but the barefacedness of it all is just breathtaking. Anyone who says the North-South divide is closing is, frankly, living in a dream world. And Nick Clegg's mewlings about how, as a Sheffield MP, he understands the concern being shown, is little better. Prattling about 'difflicult choices' does nothing to acknowledge that those who are going to be asked to suffer the most are likely to be the ones who can least afford to suffer at all. All of his attempts to ameliorate the anxiety that is being felt are ham-fisted and ineffectual, all of which seem to be rapidly becoming his leit motif. To those of us who were around in the North during the Thatcher years, this is all starting to sound depressingly familiar.

And the results of all of this are fairly obvious to predict. Yet more damage will be done to those places least able to sustain it. So they will be left to rot further, and will then be berated by the government for doing so. Then, in years to come (and not a for fair while yet), the mistakes of now will be lamented over as regeneration money will be allocated to solve problems that have lain unresolved for the best part of thirty years already. Current actions are storing up huge structural problems for the next generation, but no one in the coalition seems to either want to listen or care.

Clegg must also see the writing on the wall. The support the LibDems have spent years building up has been pissed away. Already, party supporters and the wider electorate are starting to ask questions about the LibDems, and more particularly their leader. He may be convinced that the coalition will hold, but will he manage to hold his own position? It may seem fanciful to ass this question now, just four moths into the coalition; but come next May, especially if the AV referendum is lost, and the LibDems do badly in local elections, what then?

And what if we have a bad winter? If we have another severe winter, against the backdrop of swingeing government cuts and worsening public services, the distinct possiblity of civil unrest, strikes and protest rears its head again.

Of course, the background to this is painting a picture of blitzing those making a, "lifestyle choice to just sit on out-of-work benefits" (in an interview with Nick Robinson, reported by BBC News) and ramping up the rhetoric on 'benefit cheats'. This is, once again, the language of the 1980's, with its return to the notion of the deserving and undeserving poor. I notice, however, very little being said on the far more expensive problem of tax evasion and avoidance. I wonder why.

Meanwhile, the previously sensible Vince Cable appears to have totally lost the plot (see this BBC story from yesterday), in announcing that Science funding would face significant cuts. This was defended by Science Minister David Willetts, echoing Cable's promise to 'screen out mediocrity'. What was more worrying was the push for concentrating funding on 'impact' research, which generates immediate outputs. The president of the Royal Society, Lord Rees, was rightly deeply concerned about such moves and, in an opinion piece in the Financial Times lambasted the goevernment's approach.

We are in grave danger, by cutting in this way, of leaving vast swathes of our economy so fundamentally weakened that any potential recovery will take years, perhaps even decades to happen. And when recovery does happen (if it happens), then some regions will be left even further behind to wither and die. Coiicidentally, few of the areas suffering most are represented by LibDem MP's, fewer still by Conservatives. How very strange.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the beief that much of this is being done with an ideological zeal that borders on the insane. And that the Liberal Democrats are actually abetting this madness is nauseating. A generation in the wilderness awaits them.

God help the rest of us.

Well...

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:12:00 +0000

Looks like my gut instinct was right last year (http://mantrafilledoompah.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html), then.

Mixed Blessings and Mixed Feelings

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Fri, 07 May 2010 08:44:00 +0000

It's just before 10am on Friday morning and, as I sit here, the Conservatives have 291 seats, Labour 247 and the LibDems a mere 51. It's been a mixed night, with all the parties taking some comfort and some pain. What has happened?

Labour
have no mandate. Gordon's main source of comfort is that there has not been the anticipated meltdown. Labour are still the main party of opposition, at least in terms of voes cast. However, the warning signs are still there: the reasons for some of those votes are more worrying, if only because the party's ABC strategy seems to have (just) worked. This is one reason why Labour can claim some sort of victory: they haven't won, but the have prevented the Conservatives from gaining one. Many potential Lib Dem voters did switch, and many waverers still saw Labour as the best means of preventing a Conservative victory under the current system. And Ed Balls held his seat, but Charles Clarke didn't; this was quite amusing.

Conservatives
are the largest party, but they have no mandate either. Because over 60% of those who voted didn't want a Cameron-led Conservative government. Given the buy-in from the right-wing press and the power of the party's marketing machine this time round, that must be a worry for them. Cameron said today that the people want change. This may true, but people clearly don't seem to have much of an appetite for the kind of change that they are offering. After investing so much in David Cameron' presidential posturing that must ring some alarm bells in Conservative Central Office. If they can't deliver a knock-out punch in the current circumstance will they ever manage one?

Liberal Democrats
are, of all the parties, the most disappointed of all. One voter in 4 liked what they were offering, but they'll end with barely 10% of the seats available. It's hard to see how this is in any way equitable. They certainly suffered from the Brown pincer movement, with many potential supporters going to Labour at the last minute to prevent Conservative wins. This certainly seems to have happened in some marginals that were key targets for the Cameron team. With the system as it is now, this is a persistent danger for them. And Evan Harris didn't make it in Oxford; a real shame. Lembit Opik lost his seat too.

Others
The Greens finally have an MP (in Brighton). The BNP has trebled its share of the vote, with half a million people gifting them their mandate. These numbers are [relatively] small, but still a source of major concern to anyone further up the evloutionary chain than a tree shrew. UKIP managed to perform respectably, though not spectacularly, which suggests they have a core vote but little else.. And Esther Rantzen didn't win in Luton; thank God.

What does it all mean?
Your guess is as good as mine. After all the hype, the turnout was still only 65%. This is very worrying. Engagement with the electorate hasn't really got any better, in spite of the media's attempts to portray this election as a game changer. Weirdly, everything and nothing has changed overnight. It looks like Cameron may get his coveted keys to Downing Street, but it also looks like he's going to be seriously constrained in what he'll might be able to get through Parliament. Even with Unionist support he's still going to fall short of a majority. And his refusal to countenance electoral reform may yet come back to bite him hard. The problems with polling have also shown that something needs to change there too, and there may yet be legal challenges to results.

Another source of depression is that the media have fallen into the Presidential trap, predicating the campaign's coverage on the public personas of the party leaders. It has given them a nice, tidy narrative to package and run with but other campaigning and, more importantly, many of the issues, have been hidden in the perfect storm of the cult of personality. It's only going to get worse now the debate genie has been unleashed, when the focus isn't on what was said, only who won the debates. Then there was last night. The TV coverage was awful, with the Beeb using a hailstorm of hyperactive graphics in the style that were presaged back in the 1990's by The Day Today. It was still funny seeing Teresa May extrapolating a Tory victory fomr the swing in Sunderland South just before 11 o'clock though; this is the reason why coverage like that is rapidly become a one-note joke. Channel 4 had a brave stab at something different but I'm not convinced it really worked, more's the pity.

Meanwhile, in Whitby and Scarborough, the sitting Conservative was returned with an increased majority, though it was heartening that the Lib Dem candidate (even though finishing third) was pretty close to a deeply uninspiring Labour candidate. The BNP managed to poll 1445 votes but still lost their deposit, thankfully.

What this election has shown is the public's dissatisfaction with the current system. In spite of the much-trumpeted importance of this plebicite, a third of those eligible still didn't think it important enough to register a vote. The anger is clear to see, but the political classes seem to be either oblivious or indifferent to it. Something does have to change and this election is perhaps only the first sign that some sort of shift is coming, however slow and painful.

Eve Of Destruction

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:15:00 +0000

Well, here we are. It's the day before the election and, as yet, no one seems to have a clue how things are going to work out. The campaigning is getting pretty frantic now, with Cameron running the night shift and Brown working into the early hours too.

Reports are saying that anything upto 40% of voters are still not decided who to vote for tomorrow. The campaign hasn't helped though. The Presidential, ahem, sorry Prime Ministerial Debates have sucked the oxygen out of the campaign, with the focus being entirely on the leaders. For the Conservatives this has been interesting, with the man who wants to run the economy, George Osborne, keeping a lower profile than a convicted pædophile out on licence. For the LibDems, it means Vince Cable, a positive asset, has had a peripheral role. And for Labour has been that the focus has been on Brown, who is simply not a TV era politician, however able he might be (and I think he is very able). It also seems, unfortunately, that the debate format will be here to stay; they are easy for the media to package and analyse, concentrating not on the policy questions, but only on who won, when the 'victory' can be gained in such superficial ways.

The most worried must be Cameron's Conservatives. Form such a dominant position a year ago, they are in severe danger of not even being able to form a government, if polls are to be believed. Why? Personally I think it's because there's no enthusiasm for the amorphous 'vote for change' ticket his party have adopted. There is nothing there, like pulling the curtain in Oz to find the charlatan behind it. In a traditional setup, the Conservatives should be at least 10 points up in the polls now. But they're not. From a marketing point of view it's very interesting what has happened. They have run with making Dave look all presidential, like Barrack Obama, bashed us over the head repeatedly with the 'change' theme, the rolled-up shirt sleeves sand the stage-managed plackards and posters that try to make things look like the momentum of the Obama campaign exists here. They so want him to appear like Obama it hurts.

But he doesn't. Charlie Brooker's description of him as an avatar is all too accurate.

On Radio 4's Today programme this morning, John Humphrys mused that the election has turned out to be less 'cynical' than commenttors were expecting. But I don't think that's true either, and it links to the relative coolness with which Cameron has been greeted by the voters. We, as an electorate, are deeply mistrustful of the whole political process. The slickness of the Cameron campiagn is obvious to us all and, after a decade of the tricksy Blair, we are rightly on our guard when we see such things. And then the governemnt are deeply unpopular, with a leader who doesn't do the flesh-pressing that Cameron does and looks terrible in front of thecameras but is forced to do it, looking increasingly grim and desperate. No wonder Clegg's Liberal Democrats have made people look again, which is the single good thing about the debates as far as I can see.

For all the Cameron talk of Broken Britain it's not Britain that's broken (bad as things are), it's Britain's politics. And people are rightly and righteously angry about it. Perhaps this election is the tipping point where people become tired of what has gone before. I hope that this is the case, but experience suggests that will really happen is a flurry of sound and fury before things settle into the same dead pattern as they did before, with the increasingly professionalised, careerist political class moving further away from those they seek to govern. It will be sad for us if this is the case, but, if we are not prepared to do anything about it when the chance comes, it is all we deserve.

Richard Herring - Hitler Moustache

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 22:02:00 +0000

It was nice of Richard Herring to show up to one of the last shows of his Hitler Moustache run still with the Hitler Chaplin toothbrush face fuzz. And Charlie Chaplin's suit by the looks of it. He had the appearance of a lesser cast member in Reservoir Dogs, "I don't wanna be Mr Heliotrope". I was really looking forward to it, having been a fan since Fist of Fun.

The Coliseum is a fairly small venue, only seating a couple of hundred people at most, but it was pretty much full. The average age of the audience was probably mid-30's-early 40's with a few outliers, more towards the younger end of the spectrum. Halfway through the first half two guys went out to go to the loo, prompting Herring to comment on this synchronicity to much audience merriment. The only thing missing was a 'nom nom nom' heckle when they returned, a few seconds apart. As an audience, we also seemed to be a pretty much left-leaning bunch, though I hoped that the Labour rosettes could have taken a break for a couple of hours and given us a break from the glut of campaigning going on.

The first part of the show ranged from Michael Jackson's death to the history of the moustache he (Rh, not Michael Jackson, though that could've been quite interesting) was wearing. This part included the now controversial section (mis)quoted by the Guardian's Brian Logan where Herring uses the words, "maybe the racists have a point." In fact, this is an almost forensic deconstruction of the absurdity of racial prejudice, delivered with a great deal of righteous anger and passion; just as importantly, it is very funny.

The second half of the show covers subjects Chaplin's The Great Dictator, the contents of a BNP election flyer and Carol Thatcher's infamous One Show green room faux pas.

It's all stitched together with a mix of the profound and the puerile, which is pretty much Herring's trademark and stretches back to TMWRNJ, Fist of Fun and Lionel Nimrod days. I pretty much knew what the political complexion of the show was going to be before I went, and turned up expecting some edgy, but intelligent, material. That's what I got. And how. Herring (like his erstwhile partner Stewart Lee) is a real craftsman, technically hugely adept, working the audience and building a good rapport with us, as well as the laughs, through the show.

The show is building up to a single focus, of course, but what? Well, during the discussion of the BNP's flyer Herring talks about the last European elections and the low turnout. Basically, he wants people to vote, and not to waste that which has been hard-earned by many others in our history. What could be more high-minded and laudable than that, other than to throw a few good cock jokes in there too?

After the gig I got a programme signed, as well as a copy of The Headmaster's Son. I also made a fairly weak crack to Rich about Whitby being not quite as shit as Middlesbrough (because that's where his Gran lived). But, given that he didn't know I'm from the Boro (why the hell would he?), it probably just sounded a bit mean-spirited. Still, according to his blog, he seemed to enjoy the show, even though the journey up was a pain. I also overheard the woman he mentioned (politely) complaining to him about the paedo gag. I'm not quite sure she entirely got the point.

The Lonely Death of 6music

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:39:00 +0000

So, it’s official: 6music is going to die. Mark Thompson, The BBC’s Director General swung the axe this morning, though the noises were made earlier in the week by this story in The Times.

It’s a depressing piece of news for several reasons, none of which is a really convincing argument for sending it down the river. And, of course, these are still just recommendations. The BBC Trust may not like them over much, especially given what they said about 6music earlier this year.

The first argument for closing 6 down is that its audience is simply not big enough to justify the outlay. Currently, 6music’s audience stands at around 695,000, with a reach of about 1%. This is not big, but it is also the BBC’s fastest growing station (according to recent RAJAR figures). The station attracts about 160,000 listeners a month more than 1Xtra, for example, and is roughly on a par with Planet Rock. Radio 3, for comparison, although also on the analogue band, has a reach of around 4%. However, in terms of cost per listener, 6music actually does quite well, costing a mere £9million per year for 08-09, compared to Radio 3's $51million. And no, I'm not suggesting that we should ditch Radio 3, but it would be nice to have some kind of perspective. Part of this perceived lack of reach may be due to poor marketing by the BBC of its own product. This is a point admitted tacitly in the Strategy Review itself. On page 11 of the document it says:

"The BBC Trust’s recent review of Radio 6 Music confirmed that it is popular amongst its fan base and its music offering is distinctive. However, although it has achieved good growth in recent years, it has low reach and awareness and delivers relatively few unique listeners to BBC radio. And whilst 6 Music does not have a target demographic audience, its average listener age of 37 means that it competes head-on for a commercially valuable audience. Boosting its reach so that it achieved appropriate value for money would significantly increase its market impact. Given the strength of its popular music radio offering from Radio 1 and 2 and the opportunity to increase the distinctiveness of Radio 2, the BBC has concluded that the most effective and efficient way to deliver popular music on radio is to focus investment on these core networks.

"The BBC therefore recommends that the Trust should consider closing Radio 6 Music by the end of 2011. Accepting the critical role that it must play in driving audiences to adopt digital radio, the BBC should nonetheless maintain its overall levels of investment in original radio content aimed specifically at digital services. It should evaluate the best use of this content investment and of the digital spectrum that the closure of 6 Music would release. The BBC will also review how some of 6 Music’s most distinctive programmes can be successfully transferred to other BBC radio stations, and how its support for new and specialist music can be sustained across the BBC."

Low awareness for the station is a charge that can be clearly laid at the feet of the BBC’s own marketing function. Why is awareness so low? Perhaps being a digital-only station hasn’t helped, but it also hasn’t been helped by half-hearted support from other parts of the network. In addition, digital radio coverage and digital radio generally is struggling at the moment: the big digital explosion isn’t really happening in the way some predicted and hoped.

The second argument for closing 6music might be that it is not distinctive enough. It’s an argument which is pretty much repudiated in the quote in the report shown above: “The BBC Trust’s recent review of Radio 6 Music confirmed that it is popular amongst its fan base and its music offering is distinctive”. The best comparison here may be with 1Xtra or perhaps even 5Live. In the latter case the "distinctiveness" of the service is a major issue. 5live gives little (if anything) more than other networks in the UK, like TalkSport, provide already. What is actually so distinctive about 5Live that justifies its annual £72million spend? But 5Live is safe, of course. Too much money is tied up in its move to Salford to back out now.

Perhaps the principal problem with 6music is that its demography is perceived to be largely white, middle class and male; its average listener age is around 37. The plans for closing the Asian Network talk about distributing some of the station’s content to local networks, targeting Asian communities in particular local environments. This is feasible and, in some ways, actually quite sensible. The arguments given for finding a new home for 6music’s content are much less clear, given that there is not enough space in Radio 2’s schedule for this content and that Radio 1 would not be a suitable place to put it without alienating quite a lot of that station’s audience. Even worse, how will Radio 2 serve all of these needs in addition to the recommendations the BBC Trust made just last month.

For its audience, 6music is effectively a pop music equivalent of Radio 3. It treats its territory with a mix of seriousness and good humour and has a staff roster filled with intelligent, knowledgeable people. Unlike Radio 3, however, it has no heavy-hitting supporters. To kill Radio 3 would (rightly) be seen as an act of the crassest cultural vandalism. Doing this to 6music is exactly the same. There are no viable commercial alternatives; nowhere that plays the mix of music that 6 plays; nowhere that treats the audience with the level of respect it gives us. For those outside London the choice is even worse: places not covered by the likes of Magic, Smooth, Xfm, Absolute or Real (all of whom are inferior) are in deep, deep trouble. I’m one of those people. My options at the point 6 dies are utterly non-existent. The BBC is not serving my needs, nor those of many like me.

But of course we all know that this review is not about the BBC at all. It is a political document designed to appease political parties making menacing noises about the BBC’s scale and its funding model. The corporation’s charter is up for review in just about three years. Labour’s relationship with the BBC since Iraq has been dysfunctional at best, while the Conservatives are happily cosying up to a Rupert Murdoch who is desperate for a weakened BBC, which would allow Sky to make inroads into the UK market. It seems that many of the BBC's most innovative and distinctive services are being served up as sacrifice to a febrile and capricious political class. It's not a good death, but I hope it won't go quietly into that good night; I hope it goes kicking and screaming instead.

How We Used To Live

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:26:00 +0000

I went to Middlesbrough yesterday (Saturday). I took the train from Whitby as I had made a slight miscalculation about bus times. As it happened it was a nice journey, as always, and much more civilised than the knackered buses that shuttle people back and forth down the coast, helped by the fact that it ran pretty much on time, I could get a comfortable table seat and I wasn't surrounded by pizza-faced bellends who wanted to share their questionable taste in what is not so much music but some tit playing with ProTools, AutoTune and designing the most brain-dead oscilloscope output imaginable.

That is all by the by, as it happens. I got of the train in Middlesbrough to be greeted by bright sunshine, even though it was a touch chilly. I made up my mind to do something I had done for a while: turn left out of the station instead of right, and head of down Albert Road toward the river. and the Grand Old Lady of the Tees, the Transporter Bridge.

It's not far, actually, just a few hundred yards from the town centre. And in those few hundred yards is pretty much the story of the town. Most of the area is pretty much derelict now. There are lots of hoardings proclaiming a 'new beginning' for Middlehaven, but precious little sign of it, other than the new Middlesbrough College building a bit further downriver. Bleak ain't the word; well, it is actually. Bleak is exactly the word to describe this place. Barely thirty years ago this place was buzzing. There were docks, shipyards, industry. And a culture to go with it.

But it's not like that now of course. It was destroyed in w wanton act of socio-economic vandalism. But the bridge is a reminder of that past. A past that built things, made things, sent things across the world, stamped Made In Middlesbrough. But look at that bridge; it's beautiful. And bigger than you'd expect. It towers over the riverside and arcs gracefully over the river itself. And perhaps it's why the town is rightly proud of it, to the bemusement of others, I suspect.

As I stood there I could hear the odd, desultory clank in the distance as some of the few engineering facilities left (mostly for the offshore industry over on the Port Clarence side of the river) did their work. Mixed in with this was the soft whirring sound of the winding gear for the bridge gondola intermittently toing and froing across from time to time.

I stayed for about 45 minutes, just gazing at it, and wondering how it came to be that the industry that built this was left to die. As you walk back up into town you see beautiful old buildings, left to ruin because there's nothing to do with them. One of the roads you pass is the road entrance to the college that prepares the town's young for an ever more uncertain economic future, down a newly built boulevard. On the wall is an excerpt from the work of a local poet, Ian Horn:

Where alchemists were born below Cleveland Hills.
A giant blue dragonfly across the Tees reminds us every night.
We built the world, every metropolis came from Ironopolis.

True, but it didn't stop the furnaces being switched off the day before I stood and looked at that bridge, did it?

Hurrah!

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:14:00 +0000

New domain up and running - pages on it and new blogger template knocked together to link to those resources. Still some loose ends and kinks to iron out but almost looking like things are sorted.

A collection of stuff

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:28:00 +0000

It's a long time since I write here, for one reason or another. I have resolved to myself that I will make more effort to do it.

Last night I managed to watch two decent programmes on TV. The first was Terry Pratchett's Dimbleby Lecture, which was funny, touching and thoughtful in equal measure. Much like his books in fact. It's a point of view to which I actively subscribe; I want to decide the time and manner of my death if there is a danger that my life will end in irreversible decline and pain.

Just a little after was Aleks Krotoski's Virtual Revolution, which I found a minor disappointment. I found the analysis just a touch one-dimensional and partial. TBL was there, of course. But no Marc Andreesen? Hardly anyone from early DARPA. And a lot of talk about The Well, which gave a chance to concentrate on John Perry Barlow for while. I found some of the discussion about social mores and interations just a bit, well, glib to be honest. I'll persist, but wonder if it will improve over the weeks.

And finally: a quick note to Lord Mandelson (and David Lammy), who seem to think that rippping a huge hole in university budgets will have no effect on students. My repsonse can be summarised in but one word. Bullshit.

Kicking a Puppy

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:19:00 +0000

I haven't written anything for a long time here for various reasons, mostly because the onrushing academic year has taken up a fair chunk of my time but I thought that I'd jot down some thoughts about yesterday's events.

The build-up to Gordon Brown's last conference speech before the election claimed that this would need to be 'the speech of his life'. I'm not sure that it was, but it was encouraging in its willingness to bend. What was hilarious was hearing George Pascoe-Watson, the (Super Soaraway) Sun's political editor, whining that his paper's switch from supporting Labour to the conservatives was becasue the paper was "reflecting the views of its readership", when we all know that the single reader whose views it reflects is the 70-something US-resident one of indeterminate nationaility who actually owns it. The hypocrisy was nauseating.

Thursday's Question Time on the BBC was even more queasily and unintentionally hilarious. David Starkey really does need to remove the broom handle from his jacksie because right now he is so tight-arsed about Brown. Yeah, we get it it Dave: you don't like him. Shut up, the record's a bit dull now.

It looks like the choice next year is an invidious one: a Brown-led Labour at the helm during a recession, which is never good. Having said that, they can make captial out of any recovery that might happen. It worked for Major in 1992; the Cameron-led Conservatives with a mostly anonymous front bench, a shadow chancellor who is most likely pout of his depth (Norman Lamont, anyone?) and a leader who deals in dead-eyed, bland, moon-faced platitudes and whose only 'real' experience is as a PR man at Carlton TV; or perhaps the Liberal Democrats, led by, well...um, whatisname. Clegg's attempted repositioning of the party has been less than successful and has sent them flailing desperately out to the right, where they will struggle to steal any Tory votes that were more floating than not.

Although the press have made their minds up that Brown will be out on his ear come My 2010, I seriously think we could be heading for a hung parliament. Unlike 1997, where the party in office were also deeply unpopular, however much Cameron tries, I simply don't see any great enthusiasm for the opposition either. The other major problem is that since 1997, the media landscape has change immeasureably. Where once the Sun could have claimed to be a piotal infulence on the electorate, it (like a lot of the printed media) is playing a much more peripheral role in proceedings. It may like to think it's still puching like a heavyweight but the rather more proasic reality is somewhat different.

The Glass Ceiling II

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:47:00 +0000

Let's deconsrOne thing I didn't mention in yesterday's post was the quality of teaching in many schools. I mention this becasue of this article, published in repsonse to a new report by a right wing think tank, Politeia

The interesting part of the article comes at the end, and says:

The Department for Children, Schools and Families was critical of the report and its findings.

"This report is simply nonsense masquerading as serious comment," a spokesman said.

"Teaching is now the number one choice for graduates and the latest figures show that 95% of current primary school trainee teachers have a 2:2 degree or better.

"Every single teacher needs to have a degree for postgraduate teaching training course and at least two A-levels or equivalent to get on the well-respected three year education degree - as well as GCSEs in English, maths and science."

You'll notice that this little quote quite artfully fails to address the point made in the report. Yes, many primary teachers have GCSE maths. That neither means that they are comfortable with numeracy themselves, or with teaching it. Simply dismissing the conclusions as "nonsense masquerading as serious comment" is neither helpful or practical. In fact, it's arrogant and insulting and possibly even just wrong.

Let's take the DCSF's repsonse and analyse it:

"95% of current primary school trainee teachers have a 2:2 degree or better". Degrees in what? Given the imbalance in the number of women in science and technology subjects (including mathematics) and the also known imbalance in the ratio women to men applying for primary (and even secondary) teaching, this already makes the numbers of "numerate" graduates smaller for teaching posts.

"Every single teacher needs to have a degree for postgraduate teaching training course and at least two A-levels or equivalent to get on the well-respected three year education degree - as well as GCSEs in English, maths and science." Fine. What this really means is that a newly qualified teacher at 22 being expected to teach 11-year-olds how to do maths may have a teaching degree (or PGCHE) in a dgree with no significant numerate content, two A-Levels at grade E in non-maths or science subjects and a grade C obtained in GCSE in mathematics around six years previously. The numbers doing maths and science at both A level and degree level are currently not as high as they should be and, in some areas, are on a downward trend.

If undergraduates across the sector are in any way like the sample I am exposed to here, then the report has a serious and valid poiint. Levels of functional numeracy and mathematical proficiency are not good. And, I just wonder where the most proficient mathemically-minded graduates end up teaching.

The Glass Ceiling

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:20:00 +0000

I happened to hear Alan Milburn on Radio 4's Today programme this morning, talking about the report of the committee investigating access to high status jobs (of which more here). And never have I heard such an arse-covering, sophistic apologia as what he actually said.

The committee, of which Milburn was chair, has expressed concern that low levels of social mobility have prevented children from what used to be called working class (now just 'disadvantaged') backgrounds from gaining access to better paid and more high-skill work. It's interesting that Milburn himself is hardly from a privilged background himself , but seems unable to see the main source of the problem: the education system itself and the systems to which it is umbilically tied.

Successive governements since the 1980's have attempted, with no success at all, to widen access to the so-called 'better' jobs to those of us who, in earlier times, may have been thought of as unwashed plebs, the malodorous hoi polloi. Milburn talked about the paucity of ambition and opportunity in those schools near the bottom, but whose fault is that?

The drive to 50% participation in HE has had a poisonous effect. Yes, there are more people with degrees now, but that has simply led to requirements inflation in the workplace. When I left school it was perfectly possible to apply for Executive Officer (EO) grades in the civil Service with 2 A Levels. I knew people who did. Try doing it without a degree now. Where did the 50% target come from? An arbitrary target that seemed to appear almost from thin air when Kenneth Baker was Secretary of State for Education and has not been disavowed until now, it seems..

The 1992 reform of the university system hasn't helpd either. Everyone knows rhere is still grade and institution snobbery rife. A degree at a new university simply isn't worth the same as one from somewhere older. Anyone who thinks this isn't true is just kidding themselves. Try going to an interview and saying your degree is Wolverhampton, or Sunderland, or DeMontfort and compare that to Oxbridge, Durham, Bristol, Imperial. The branding sells. It may not even be fair, but it's still true. We now have what amounts to a comprehensive university system and no one dares to say it. The result is a system where privilege and influence becomes increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer places and the barriers to entry get higher and higher.

So, where does the problem start? Well, in leaving the poorest areas to hang when employement collapses. Where are the biggest pockets of non-particiption and dearth of ambition? The places like Middlesbrough, Corby, Consett, Merthyr and the rest who were bulldozed by the wonders of free-market economics. The conditions for 'why bother, it's hopeless' were created right there, when a generation of kids saw economic stagnation and decay, who saw their parents thrown on the scrapheap, who saw the places they lived disintegrate before their eyes, and who also saw the rapacious 80's sail right by them and leave them for dead. Is it any wonder that the drug dealers and the wide-boys, the ultimate Thatcherite go-getter entrepeneurs, sprung up?

So before these kids got to school, things were bleak. Then a sequence of bright sparks in Whitehall, far removed from quotidian realities, decided to reform schools to straiten the teachers into rote National Curriculum teaching. The older and more experienced teachers got out while they could, leaving a vacuum and a generation of inexperienced and ill-equipped replacements in their stead. Schools became a battleground and teachers became a handy political punchbag, not to mention the recipients of literally dozens of new initiatives. And then there's selection and choice: the great con trick. Parental choice is a way of pacifying the middle classes, who don't want their dear little ones mixing with scruffy oiks and ne'er-do-wells. So the system is rigged to let them spirit their children away into schools that keep them separate and reinforce the divide, in much the same way that the richest have been able to do with private education for decades. And, in the schools at the bottom, of course, the kids have their expectations managed. so most of them are not encouraged to go to university. It seems, even back when I was a teenager, my friends and I were the exception rather than the rule.

But even if they were encouraged now, what then? Well, as the latest little reorganisation of government has shown, the new attitude to universities seems aggressively functional. Universities are the engines of economic growth, there to provide the materials that industry needs. Gone is the idea of a university being a noble place in itself, gone the idea of learning being a benefit for its own sake: no, academia exists purely to satisfy the needs of industry. Employers demand soft and transferable skills and an awareness of the business world. Why aren't they bloody paying for it, then? If that's what they want, why don't they teach the graudates themselves? I think one can guess why. Evn worse, students are soaked for cash and forced into working to pay for that education. Once again, the poorest are punished. The fear of debt is stil palpable for the very poorest, no matter what is said about money being used to help the neediest.

What the Milburn Report does is whitewash over the cracks and fails to acknowledge that many of the socio-economic mantras of the past quarter century have helped to create this mess. We are the most horrendously inequitable and iniquitous nation in Europe. Until those problems are addressed (and they will not be as too many vested interests are at stake), things will not change.

BREAKING NEWS: Michael Jackson is still dead

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:55:00 +0000

First, a minor gripe: I wish BBC News wouldn't report this as Breaking News over 12 hours after it actually happened. A minor issue, but still annoying.

I watched the coverage of events unfold last night, partly online on Twitter and partly by listening to KABC Radio in LA (a local LA station). There is a faint air of surreality about the whole situation. In fact, in my misty recollections this has more than a little similarity to the time when Elvis died in August 1977, when I was a mere seven years old.

Why is it so important? Well, for a start he is a figure of Elvis-like proportions. He did for black music what Elvis did in the 1950's. Jackson was the first black musician to take black music firmly into the white pop mainstream. Other Motown acts did gain success, but didn't quite mange to break through the wall that existed between white and black music. And he was the first to do it in such an all-encompassingly global way; even more so than Elvis who didn't, let's be honest, venture outside of America all that often.

The scale of Michael Jackson's musical career is really quite breathtaking. Thriller alone sold over 60 million copies worldwide and almost single handedly defined the way the the music industry marketed albums. And though Thriller wasn't the first music video, like Queen's Bo Rhap before it, it redefined the template for the music video that persists even to this day.

Thriller's successor, Bad, has sold around 30 million copies. And this was considered a failure! There are only a few albums in the history of recorded music that have sold anything like this many copies. And these are the albums that are, to reuse an already overused phrase, iconic: Tubular Bells, Dark Side of the Moon, Rumours and a few others. It was all downhill afterwards of course, though all of this is comaprative. for anyone else, the performance of his later albums would have been more than successful. But not for Michael Jackson.

All of this was, of course, played out against the backdrop of an increasingly complicated and fractured private life. To go over all of this here would be pointless, suffice it to say that much of his life up until his death was an ever-increasing cycle of stress. We will also probably never know excatly what really went on regarding the court cases and the allegations about his behaviour around children. I don't particulary think that he was a calculated paedophile, just a very messed-up and unfortunate man. His whole life has been spent in the glare of publicity, under the intense scrutiny of the world's media. Is it any wonder that perhaps he ended up at a stage of arrested emotional development? Indeed, very few people ever have to experience the levels of adualtion he experienced. Perhaps only really Elvis, Muhammad Ali, The Beatles really understand this level of atention. And some of thos ecoped better than others. Individual members of the Beatles had varying levels of success, Elvis was not so lucky.

Perhaps the saddest thing is to reflect on a whole sequence of 'what might have beens' and to wonder if things coul have turned out any better for him, not to mention his children. An unfortunate parable of our times, it seems.

The BNP and Free Speech

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:40:00 +0000

I have to admit this article at the BBC causes me no little concern and disquiet. If it is to be believed then anyone who admits to an affiliation with the BNP be disbarred from teaching. At a fundamental level I believe this is both wrong and dangerous. Why?

First, the BNP will be able to use any such ban to peddle the line that the political classes are scared of them 'telling the truth' and that they are victims of an establishment that are trying to silence any debate on the 'immigration' issue (though we all know it's a cypher for race). The argument that they should be denied 'the oxygen of publicity' just doesn't hold water. Rather like the whole Sinn Fein debacle in the 1980's, trying to pretend they don't exist is doomed to ignominious failure, not to mention ridicule.

The second problem is more serious: how can anyone who is a member of the BNP be banned from anything? Last time I looked the BNP were not a proscribed organisation. Memebership is not illegal. They are a legal political party, allowed to take part in elections. I am very surprised that there has not yet been a challenge (to my knowledge) to the ban on BNP members in the police, for instance. One would think that this would contravene the principles in human rights law protecting freedom of expression and political association. In other words, a ban might simply be illegal. Given the BNP's hatred of all things European I'd find it wryly ironic that they could be protected by law they hate.

There is an obvious solution. Anyone entering public employment should be forced to declare membership of any political party they belong to [this includes me, for example, who teaches in the university system]. Indeed, this is a small part of a wider problem, viz: if we want to show the BNP for the one-dimensional cover for other, less savoury groups they almost certainly are, then they need to be smoked out. If they want to be treated like a mainstream party, treat them that way. How?

Force them to open up their accounts and fund raising activity. Where is their funding coming from? What are they spending the money on?
Force them to engage in the political process. Let Jeremy Paxman loose on Nick Griffin. Let's see what happens.
Quiz them about policy. If they want to be seen as more than a one note rant, then let them prove it. If they can't then they will be exposed as a shower of bellicose racist louts.

I don't like the BNP's message. I don't like their attitude. I think that their whole political outlook is based on the lazy and mistaken premise that immigration is the single major issue facing British society now. But you know what, until membership of the BNP is illegal you can't arbitrarily ban people from jobs because they belong to a political party you don't like. On this matter, I'm with Voltaire.

Modern Irritants

noreply@blogger.com (ds) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:14:00 +0000

I was about to use some of this material to start a blog all of its own but I decided I couldn't wait. Here's a brief list of life's little (or not so little) modern irritants:

Call Centres
I just got a phone upgrade from 3. And, don't get me wrong, the phone is actually rather spiffy (Nokia 6220) it's just the customer service that's a ballache. When I had my last phone I paid for an unlimited mobile Internet tariff. This made sense as I do tend to use a fair bit of mobile Internet. Anyway, last week the phone gets an upgrade and I walk out of the shop a happy bunny with a nice new phone and start using the Internet. On Saturday morning, 3 send me a warning text message saying, "Hey, you've used £10 of internet. Maybe you should upgrade to Internet Max?" Colour me puzzled.

So, this morning, off I trot to the 3 shop in Scarborough where I bought the phone to sort this out. The guy in store was polite and tried to be helpful, but said (after trying the obvious stuff) thay I probably needed to ring Customer Services because it looked like it was something the branch couldn't set. It shouldn't be too much a problem, he said. Ha!

That's when the trouble began. I rang 3 Customer Services. Problem number 1 is that the line is crap. I can just about hear something that sounds like a human voice, only it's difficult to tell because it sounds like the person talking was sitting in a disused toilet in Bangalore. This is because they were. The first person I spoke to just didn't understand what I wanted and seemed to think I was wanting to add the service. First brick wall hit. So she put me through to the Concerns department, who didn't have much of a clue either.

At this point they tried to tell me that the AddOn for unlimited internet wouldn't get activated until September. I wasn't happy about this, seeing as I'd already had it for 15 months. Then he suggested I go to the retail outlet. I told him I'd already been there, but this didn't really seem to register. In fact, he was pretty insistent that's that what I had to do becasue that's where I'd bought the phone. At this point I asked him a couple of questions:
1. What kind of workflow stops the people in customer service seeing data that someone in a retail store has entered. Why can't they see data they need to see? And what kind of pinhead wrote that software?
2. In what sense does an upgrade consist of taking service away and crippling a handset when it was a service I already had? It's not like I was asking for anything I didn't have before, is it?
Reaction: blank incomprehension. Result: I rip yer man a new arsehole, put the phone down and resolve to ring the store before I go totally ballistic. Eventually I get through and after 2 minutes or so and a quick chat with a pleasant woman at the other end of the phone it gets sorted. How? She rings around and discovers that the problem is a workflow one. My AddOn was added, but for some reason has conflicted with the old one on my records Result, no Internet Max added. But it didn't bother to flag anything up for the store, who can't see that level of the data, apparently.

My AddOn will be active onWednesday, no thanks to the wonder of outsourced call centres..

"Can We Interest you In One of Our Offers Today?"
Picture the scene: you walk into WH Smith in Scarborough just after opening time (around 9am, say), dressed for work. You pick up a newspaper and wander over to the counter to pay. At this point, the assistant looks at you and asks,

"Would you like to try something from our selection today, sir?"

"Why, yes!", you think. "After all, seeing as I skipped breakfast this morning, what I'd really like to fill that little hole is a 600 gram bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk from the pile of tat on the counter next to you to stuff down my cakehole, thank you."

Or perhaps not.

Or, you wander into the Pumpkin Café at Scarborough railway station and ask for a small tea to go, only to be asked, "do you want any sandwiches or snacks with that?".

If I'd wanted a sandwich or snack with it, don't you think I'd have fucking asked for one?

Notice how it only happens in chains, nver in corner shops small businesses. It's the insistence on offering this blank, faceless, corporatised "customer service" that ensures that what actually happens is that the customer is thoroughly hacked off and wants to murder the poor retail drone who has been ordered to "sell" their wares to you. It is the principal, though not the only, reason why I run away from Starbucks at great speed whenever anyone ever suggests going inside. I got caught once; never again.

The "Polite" Notice
A minor plague this one, but no less of a ballache. And usually ito be found in the realm of the prissy, tight-arsed control freak. The "polite" notice is generally a thinly veiled peevish imprecation to desist from doing something or other that most normal, well-adjusted people really couldn't give a flying bollock about.

The annoying thing is not the notice itself, but the insistence on caling it "polite".
Who are they to decide if they're being polite in asking? Actually, it usually isn't. It's more often than not a shrewish little dig or a patronising sneer at any non-right thinking person that crosses their path.

Anyway, seeing as I'm the recipient, I will decide if your notice is polite, thank you. I don't need you to tell me whether your bloody notice is polite or not.