Andy Roberts

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  Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh – Series 32, episode 5

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/21/doctor-who-the-rebel-flesh-%E2%80%93-series-32-episode-5

  This Matthew Graham episode of Doctor Who set in a grimy industrial future is classy, stylish and nicely unsettlingThis article titled “Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh – Series 32, episode 5″ was written by Dan Martin, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 21st May 2011 18.30 UTCSPOILER ALERT: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching the new series of Doctor Who. Don’t read ahead if you haven’t seen episode five – The Doctor’s WifeDan Martin’s episode four blogNeil Gaiman live Q&A “You poured in your personalities; emotions, traits, memories, secrets, everything. You gave them your lives. Human lives are amazing. Are you surprised they walked off with them?”It’s that time of year again. We’ve been to Planet America, we’ve been on a dodgy pirate ship, we’ve been through the plughole at the bottom of the universe. And now, to complete Doctor Who’s checklist of formats, it’s time for the one in the grimy industrial future. So yes, this is familiar ground in many ways, but whether it is Matthew Graham’s writing, or simply the swagger with which this series has been carrying itself, it is particularly satisfying. This is what last year’s disappointing Silurian story should have been.True, with so much buildup and exposition, it ends up feeling like not very much actually happens by the time groundwork is laid. There’s also a debate to be had as to whether, since it doesn’t feature any aliens, it qualifies as a proper Doctor Who at all. But on the parameters it sets itself, this is classy, stylish and nicely unsettling.Graham creates a believable world and workplace in that converted monastery, which you buy into from the opening credits. Raquel Cassidy’s deliciously brittle Cleaves, Marshall Lancaster’s Manc everydude Buzzer, and Sarah Smart’s mouse-that-roared Jennifer are well-drawn. And most promisingly of all, while second parts tend to look limp compared to first episodes, here’s a story where it’s the other way round. “I’ve got to get to that cockerel before all hell breaks loose! I never thought I’d have to say that again.”The episode opens with an extended clip of Supermassive Black Hole by Muse, and as Matt Bellamy and co’s sex-funk-rock-jam swaggers in, we’re straight back into Tardis housekeeping. These extended soapy sequences could have turned out, well, soapy – but seeing them play darts, listening to prog rock as the Doctor continues to surreptitiously scan Amy’s uterus just serves to lend credibility to what on paper is a ridiculous scenario. They may be having a laugh, but we also get a sense that the arc is really starting to go somewhere. Fear FactorThe Gangers are, at heart, a more psychologically disturbing creation, and The Rebel Flesh’s questions of identity and spirit and “who is the real monster?” are bound to invite comparisons with Battlestar Galactica and the Cylons. But when they do bring out the sparing CGI, it reaffirms the renewed horror quotient we’re getting this year. Mysteries and QuestionsThe obvious assumption here is that with a Ganger Doctor now running round, we have an easy and obvious get-out for the Doctor’s death. But wouldn’t that be too easy and obvious? And of course it assumes that both Doctors are going to survive next week’s episode. Elsewhere The Doctor refers to The Flesh as “primitive technology.” So what else does he know about it and what will it be turning into?Meanwhile, something intriguing has come to our attention. Deep within the bowels of the BBC website you’ll find this video of the Doctor in some distress. Its title, Analysis Lessons, is an anagram of Lonely Assassins. And Lonely Assassins was of course a name for … the Weeping Angels. Could they be this year’s real Big Bad? Time-space Debris• The Doctor chastises Amy for the suggestion they have arrived by accident. Is that a reference to last week and the Tardis taking him “where he needs to go,” or is he up to something.• Rory: “My Mum’s a huge fan of Dusty Springfield.”Doctor: “Who isn’t?”Actually, I’m not sure that I have ever met anyone who doesn’t like Dusty Springfield either.• Eyepatch Lady is back after her week off. Are we all agreed she’s the midwife?• Are we to assume that Jennifer is going to lead Rory down the path of temptation? He wouldn’t, would he?• I’m not sure how I feel about The Doctor’s “northern” jibes. Was I the only one who felt a little offended?• Matthew Graham’s only other contribution to Doctor Who is the best-forgotten Fear Her from 2006. Legend has it – although we don’t know whether it is true or not – that when Stephen Fry’s script finally proved unworkable, Russell T Davies asked Graham to come up with something in two weeks and with buttons for a budget. Next week!Something rather major happens. That’s all you’re getting. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogDoctor Who: The Rebel Flesh – Series 32, episode 5Related posts:Douglas Adams’s Doctor Who story to be novelised

  

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  May 21 2011, 4:56pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  OFT launches extended warranties investigation

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/14/oft-launches-extended-warranties-investigation

  Extended warranties are just a type of insurance, which in turn is a form of gambling with the odds always stacked against the consumer.. Except for AppleCare of course, which is usually worthwhile.

  This article titled “OFT launches extended warranties investigation” was written by Jill Insley, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 14th April 2011 10.39 UTC The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is to examine whether extended warranties for domestic electrical goods, a market worth more than £750m a year, offer consumers value for money.

  Extended warranties are insurance policies that cover the cost of repairs or replacement for a set number of years beyond the manufacturer’s own warranty. They are typically sold at the point of sale on electrical items such as televisions, washing machines and computers, with most policies running for three or five years.

  The OFT’s decision to probe this market follows its review of “aftermarkets” for domestic electrical goods launched in November 2010. This revealed concerns that competition between extended warranty providers was reduced because of retailers’ ability to promote policies when selling an electrical item. Some parties responding to the review also complained that warranties are not good value for money.

  Rules controlling the sale of extended warranties were introduced in 2005 following a Competition Commission investigation. These include the requirement for retailers to tell customers that buying an extended warranty is optional, that they have up to 30 days to buy the extra cover, and there is a 45-day cooling-off period if they change their mind after doing so. But an OFT evaluation has revealed that these measures only address consumer detriment worth about £19m a year out of an estimated total of £366m.

  Claudia Berg, director of the OFT’s consumer and goods group, said the results of the study would be published in the summer.

  “Consumers buy millions of extended warranties on domestic electrical goods each year, and we want to make sure they are getting value for money. We plan a short and focused market study to find out quickly what, if any, action is needed to make this market more competitive, to the benefit of consumers and the wider UK economy,” she said.

  However, the OFT has decided against looking into the repair of electrical goods. It said it had not received sufficient evidence to support initial concerns that manufacturers might be limiting competition in this market by restricting independent repairers’ access to technical information and spare parts.

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogOFT launches extended warranties investigation

  Related posts:EU raids ebook publishers in price fixing investigation Insurers fall after Japan quake, as FTSE suffers worst weekly drop for eight months How is wealth destroyed and where does wealth come from?

  

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  April 14 2011, 6:08am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  MasterChef: have things gone stale?

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/14/masterchef-have-things-gone-stale

  Masterchef is no longer very interesting at all and there are also far too many cooking programmed and celebrity chefs on tv at present. Jamie Oliver’s dream school wasn’t exactly a success so I expect he’ll be back in the kitchen soon as well. Then there are all of the hybrid programmed that try to combine the most audience engaging aspects from across several genres. They never work very well either. Relocation cookery, gardening talent, animal casting and so on.

  This article titled “MasterChef: have things gone stale?” was written by Vicky Frost, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 14th April 2011 10.44 UTC Sometimes I wonder if I’m stuck in a kind of MasterChef vortex. First there was Loyd Grossman. Then there was John and Gregg bellowing and sucking their forks on BBC2. Next came the celebrities, the professionals and the juniors. Followed by the Australians, and their version of the UK show. And now? Now we’re apparently watching the UK version of the Australian version of the UK update of the Loyd Grossman original, on primetime BBC1. Who knows where it will all end? Or indeed who will still be watching? Because while previous incarnations of MasterChef might have been stuffed with ridiculous declarations, surplus rounds that appeared to have no bearing on the result, and more passion and determination than even Lord Sugar might think totally necessary, the show was rarely boring. This series, however, I’m finding it hard to summon up the energy to last a whole episode. The problems started with the auditions. John cried in one of them. Nobody cooked a playdafoo that looked like a child had made it unsupervised, wearing a blindfold, while having a tantrum. John and Gregg didn’t patrol the aisles rolling their eyes wildly and grimacing at anyone daring to experiment like they were actually going to be poisoned. Cocky competitors weren’t totally shamed in front of each other. Things haven’t really improved since. The set seems to have quadrupled in size so that the competitors could feasibly source entirely different sets of local ingredients, and the invention test box has morphed into a whole deli. Worse are the challenges. Fair dos to Gregg for trying to ramp up the tension of cooking for a circus on Peckham Rye – PECKHAM RYE! — or making a buffet for the cast of Merlin – THE CAST OF MERLIN! – or just some students – ERM STUDENTS! – but why aren’t the contestants doing more cooking in actual restaurants with actual chefs? That used to be most of the show, now it seems to be all field kitchens and mass catering. Things got a little better on last night’s show with the arrival of Michel Roux’s croque-en-bouche and a trolleyload of cakes – although it possibly wasn’t entirely wise to draw parallels between flying for the RAF and making some sodding sandwiches, Gregg – but I still feel that I’m seeing the series out to the bitter end, rather than actively enjoying it. Even old Toorude and Gregg the Egg appear to have changed their ways. I have heard not one metallic basil; merely a sprinkle of deep, velvety, iron-rich descriptions; absolutely no threats to de-robe and dive into a pudding. Only one proper, ridiculous moment has lodged in my brain: John doing some kind of uber-camp panto hiss of “Don’t bite off more than you can chew!” at Miss Swansea. Now that’s why I watch MasterChef. Instead we’ve had a few guest chefs to liven things up. But largely we’ve been meant to be caring about the contestants and their journeys and the challenges they’ve overcome. Sadly I haven’t, and I don’t. This year’s contestants are largely oddly unappealing – perhaps because they were whittled down to a final bunch astonishingly quickly. All I’m really interested in is their best two courses, which we get to see surprisingly infrequently. It seems strange, really, that MasterChef Australia, from which the new UK show borrows heavily, can combine many of the same elements and come up trumps. But then it also does everything the British show does, just 50 times bigger. So the judges are more flamboyant, more ridiculous; the contestants live in a house together and vote each other off; they have cook-offs against real chefs; they cater amazing weddings on boats. Against that background, setting the whole thing in a vast, sunlit warehouse feels vaguely reasonable. On BBC1, it doesn’t. So: how are you getting on? Are you looking forward to the final couple of weeks in a state of slight outrage after this blog? Or have you lost interest already? And can anyone explain why, when MasterChef was on seemingly every night for increasingly idiosyncratic lengths of time, we all moaned it was too much, but now we have it once a week for an hour, it seems it’s too little – even though it’s also completely boring? A quandry no?

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  April 14 2011, 6:02am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  TV review: Jamie’s Dream School

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/13/tv-review-jamies-dream-school-2

  Some sort of review of the final episode of jamies dream school which aired tonight.

  This article titled “TV review: Jamie’s Dream School” was written by Sam Wollaston, for The Guardian on Wednesday 13th April 2011 21.00 UTC Last week on Jamie’s Dream School, (Channel 4) Angelique said: “You’re a prick, mate” to Alastair Campbell. To be honest I was worried about Angelique at the start, so it’s nice to see her growing in confidence and getting the hang of things, as well as showing she’s a shrewd judge of character . . . Oh, you have got to be having a laugh – he’s only gone and banned her from the Downing Street trip. “I think calling a teacher a ‘fucking prick’ as you storm out of the class is not really an acceptable way to behave,” he says, sanctimoniously. Well, a couple of points there, Alastair. You’re not really a teacher – you’re a spin doctor. You’ve spent your life being rude to people, so maybe you should learn to take a bit too. Also, Angelique didn’t say “fucking prick”. You added the F-word, so go and wash your filthy mouth out. And one more thing: she did kind of have a point. But he’s not going to back down, because that would show weakness. It’s not all bad news, though, because Angelique’s going to get him. “Watch how I behave today in his lesson,” she says. “He thought last week was bad; he’s going to cry today.” Fight, fight, fight . . . Oh, the head intervenes, persuades Alastair to perform a spectacular U-turn and let Angelique go, but she does have to behave. So we don’t get to see her make Alastair Campbell cry. Boo! But then she is going to Downing street, so maybe she’ll make David Cameron cry. Or at least call him a prick. Yay! To be fair to Campbell (why are those words so hard?), he is one of Jamie’s better recruits. Not only are his classes good, but he also has a nice rapport with the kids, engages with them and clearly likes them too. Plus he realises that Jamie’s Dream School is much more dream than school and has little bearing on what does or can happen in a classroom. And that when it’s over it’ll be – to quote the great words of another member of the Dream School staffroom – back to life, back to reality. So off they all go to Downing Street and sit round the cabinet table. Oh, please let them run the country, just for one day – I like Henry’s idea of a skunk tax instead of the public sector cuts. He’s done the maths too – says it’ll bring in £1.6bn a year, and that’s just from him. In bounces the PM. “Hi, everyone, how you doing, hi Jourdelle, hi there,” he says. Not many people called Jourdelle at King Henry VI’s Dream School, his alma mater, I shouldn’t imagine. Jourdelle wants Cameron to guess how many GCSEs they’ve got between them. “I don’t know,” says Dave. “And I’m not going to guess, I don’t want to . . . er . . .” Oh, go on Dave, say something embarrassing, like “disrespect you”. But he saves himself just in time, gets Jourdelle to tell him. Damn. Harlem wants to ask something. “Harlem, take it away,” says Dave, relaxing into semi-youth-speak. Take it away, eurgh. But it’s just a bit cringey, rather than proper embarrassing. And they’re way too easy on him. Nothing about how can he possibly understand when he’s from where he is, or about whether he knows about skunk from back in the days with the Bullingham bredrin. Henry doesn’t even have a pop at Sam Cam (though to be fair to Henry, if she’d made an appearance he most probably would’ve done). The real disappointment is Angelique, who’s taking this good behaviour thing way too far. She doesn’t storm out, or make Dave cry, or even call him a prick. Angelique! What’s going on? You’ve let Jamie’s Dream School down, you’ve let your classmates down, you’ve definitely let yourself down, but most of all you’ve let the whole bloody country down. To be fair to Angelique (where’s all the magnanimity coming from today?) she does redeem herself outside No 10, showing that even if she’s not calling anyone a prick today, she can at least still recognise one. “Oh my God, it’s George Osborne,” she says. But then Henry goes and trumps her by getting the chancellor to unwittingly sign his legalise-skunk petition. Today – the last day – was Henry’s day; excellent work, well done.

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

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  Related posts:TV review: Jamie’s Dream School Jamie’s Dream School – a youth club with David Starkey instead of a pool table School Of Everything

  

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  April 13 2011, 4:22pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Osprey webcam thrills bird lovers as Lady of the Loch awaits mate

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/05/osprey-webcam-thrills-bird-lovers-as-lady-of-the-loch-awaits-mate

  Thousands log on worldwide to the Osprey webcam to watch the oldest breeding osprey keep vigil beside a Scottish loch.

  This article titled “Osprey webcam thrills bird lovers as Lady of the Loch awaits mate” was written by Tracy McVeigh, for The Observer on Saturday 2nd April 2011 23.14 UTC Inside a wooden hide at the edge of a Perthshire loch, there is a flurry of excitement and a crackling of waterproof clothing. Binoculars are raised and whispered instructions exchanged. But hopes quickly fade as the alarm proves a false one. The bird that has swooped into sight is not the one they’d been waiting for. “She is taking a defensive stand; it’s not Him,” said seasonal ranger Anna Cheshier. “Look, she’s seeing him off. It’s just an interloper trying his luck.” There is a palpable feeling of disappointment in the hide, where half a dozen people sit glued to the goings-on on a platform of sticks less than 200 yards away, 60 feet up a Scots pine tree. Inside the nearby visitor centre, many more are watching the action in real time on two large HD television screens. More than 100,000 people have already viewed the webcam. The object of all the attention is Lady, the osprey, who stands in her giant nest and looks out to the blue skies. Having confounded the experts by not only living to the age of 26, against the eight years’ lifespan the bird was thought to have, but also by producing 48 fledglings, she is now waiting for Him – a 10-year-old male with whom she mated last year. He is due to land any day after a 3,000-mile migration back from west Africa. Ospreys mate for life so, if he has survived, he should be on his way. But if he doesn’t get here within the next few days, Lady is likely to presume him dead and move on to another male. In her lifetime, she has already outlived two mates. “The interest is huge,” said Cheshier, 25, from the Scottish Wildlife Trust‘s Loch of the Lowes nature reservation outside Dunkeld, an hour’s drive north of Edinburgh. “Lady is a star attraction and also very important. She has been coming back to her nest here for 19 years, but last year she was very ill and we all thought she was going to die, so no one imagined she’d be back this year.” Lady survived her near-death illness and arrived back from her African winter late last Monday night. She is not chipped or ringed, so it wasn’t until later, when the cameras got a look in her eyes, that the rangers were sure the remarkable raptor had returned. “She has a unique defect in the iris of her right eye – it looks like a lightning bolt,” said Cheshier. “It was amazing to see her come back; she is bucking every trend, rewriting the books.” Since her return, Lady has been helping herself to the loch’s supplies of perch and trout, even visiting the nearby Tay to catch herself a salmon, tidying up the nest, and waiting. Meanwhile, she is being closely watched by experts and fans. On the branches around her are positioned discreet cameras trained on the nest, one for day and one for night, and two microphones that pick up every ruffle of her feathers and her occasional piercing hawk cry. Live pictures are being eagerly watched around the world. Last year 33,000 people viewed the webcam online, but this year 120,000 have viewed the Lady of the Loch. “We will have the computer on all day in the background, just having a look every now and again,” said Jenny Hillier, up from Southampton with her husband, Pete, on a short break to see the bird. “We followed her on the webcam last year and the year before, but assumed she’d be dead. It’s amazing she’s back.” Pete Hillier has been writing about their trip on a wildlife blog to envious bird lovers around the country. “It’s quite something to see her – I think it’s the age of her, and the fact you can see her so close up here, that makes her so special,” he said. Colin and Dorothy Wilson from Dunfermline, Fife, are rooting for Lady, taking a detour from their spring break to make a pilgrimage to the nest. “We were here last June to see her and then we heard she hadn’t been so well, so we were astonished that she was back, and we had to come. It makes such a difference to be able to see wildlife like this,” said Dorothy. Two other diehard osprey fans, Alan Barraclough, 77, and Hazel Studham, 74, have come up from Cumbria to see Lady. “She’s a very special bird; we didn’t think she’d make it through the winter. I hope her beau turns up,” said Studham. Smaller than an eagle, larger than a hawk, the osprey disappeared as a species from the UK in 1916, when the last pair was killed by egg and bird hunters such as Victorian collector William Dunbar, who guiltily wrote to a friend that their obsessions “had finally done for the osprey”. Even when they returned in the 1950s to recolonise old haunts, their small numbers remained under threat, especially from postwar pesticides such as DDT. But now the osprey’s tenacity gives real encouragment to environmentalists. Roy Dennis, a conservation veteran and honorary director of the Highland Foundation for Wildlife, said Lady’s return was an astonishing feat. “It’s a real emblem, the osprey. People can see it [while they are] having a picnic on the side of a loch and you’ll see one dive in, so it’s very visible, distinct and identifiable, unlike a lot of birds. “It’s a great ambassador. But the reason osprey came back is that the habitat and the food supply are still here. It’s the persecution of the species, the shooting, that has stopped. With some of our other birds, it will be harder as their habitat is going. If Scotland isn’t becoming entirely the nature reserve of the UK, then it’s certainly its lungs – the successes with sea and white-tailed eagles, red grouse are great, but we need to do more for conservation, encouraged by these successes.” But as Dunkeld’s aged raptor enchants wildlife lovers around the world, Dennis thinks Lady may have a wait ahead of her. “I was out checking on osprey nests near me today and of 12 only two birds had returned. The weather hasn’t been so good and the closest of the tracked males is still in Spain, so it’s early days,” he said. “It could be another three or four days.”   Find the webcam at swt.org.uk/wildlife/webcams/loch-of-lowes2/

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  Related posts:Bird Flu is back Three dead swans in Dorset had Bird Flu H5N1 bird flu confirmed at Bernard Mathews

  

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  April 5 2011, 2:49pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  The weekend’s TV: The Killing

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/27/the-weekends-tv-the-killing

  No spoilers, just a pice to say that The Killing on BBC 4 has been the best thing on TV for ages.

  This article titled “The weekend’s TV: The Killing” was written by Sam Wollaston, for The Guardian on Saturday 26th March 2011 23.15 UTC Non-spoiler alert: there are no spoilers in what follows. If you’ve yet to see the end of The Killing, or any of it and you plan to, it’s still fine to read on. Honest.   I need to explain something about the mechanics of this column. Unless there’s some massive live TV event on Saturday I file copy for Monday’s edition, the weekend’s television, on a Friday. The early deadlines are to allow people who work on the print edition, the newspaper, to have some kind of a weekend. I don’t know whether they deserve one, but that’s another matter. The point is, I’m not going to discuss who it was whodunnit in The Killing (BBC4, Saturday), the conclusion of which was obviously the Big Thing this weekend. It wouldn’t be fair on my editors and subeditors. For those of them (loads, this is prime Guardian territory) who have been watching, it would totally spoil their weekend. For the others, it would spoil the box set which I will be urging them to get hold of as soon as it comes out. If you do want to discuss how Pernille could possibly have slaughtered her own daughter (oops . . . only kidding, hahaha), then you need to go to Vicky Frost’s excellent series blog. Which you almost certainly have done already – more than 1,200 posts after the last one. And there are half a million viewers of the show – not bad for an obscure foreign-language drama on BBC4 that requires serious commitment. And after all that hype, who’s talking about Boardwalk Empire? I will say, however, that the end of The Killing has left a frightening gaping void in my life. What is there to think about now, to lie awake worrying about at night? (I had a nice little theory about Nordic neo-Nazism, Mayor Bremer, and the bid for the 1984 Winter Olympics on the go). In my house, The Killing – or Forbrydelsen, as we’ve come to call it, pretentiously – has crept up and engulfed us like the gloom of an unlit Copenhagen cellar in November. Not only has it been pretty much the only topic of conversation for the past 10 weeks, but we’ve also begun speaking in Danish. Pass the salt, tak; shall we get a hund? We’ll call out “Troels!” in the voice of Rie Skovgaard for no reason at all, often in our sleep. And then think of excuses to say it again. Who are ugly and live under bridges? “Troels!” How does the fisherman catch mackerel behind his boat? “Troels!” What does a bobby on the beat do? He pa-”Troels!” Shut up! I’ve also asked my girlfriend to dress up in a loose-knit white Scando sweater and walk about in the dark with a torch, saying nothing, stony faced, giving nothing away . . . anyway, sorry, perhaps you don’t need to know about that. The reason for the obsession is simple: The Killing is brilliant, the best thing on television for yonks. It started with the brutal murder of a teenager, then dragged us along for 20 hours, mainly in the dark (sometimes with a torch, sometimes without), up side paths and cul-de-sacs, doubling back on itself until it eventually reached its conclusion, leaving us exhausted. And emotionally drained too, because The Killing isn’t just a thrilling whodunnit, it’s a very human story that never lets you forget there’s a tragic death at its heart. It has some of the most interesting and real characters on television, who develop and react to the drama as it unfolds. I’m talking about Pernille and Theis Birk Larsen, Hartmann (“Troels!”), Bremer, Meyer. And Sarah Lund, of course, possibly the most single-minded detective in TV history, but also seriously fallible and therefore believable, and now officially the coolest woman in the world. A mesmerising performance by Sofie Gråbøl, by all of them. The Killing is also beautifully written and directed, deeply atmospheric and fantastic to look at once you get used to the dark. Eat plenty of carrots if you’ve yet to get involved. Which you must do. I do still have a few questions – mainly about Danish police procedure, but also about some of the political stuff and who knew what when. So conversation isn’t totally dead yet. Or maybe I’ll go back and revisit earlier episodes. I really think you could, already, and get more out of it; there’s not a lot of television you can say that about. The final body count is six, or seven if you count the earlier one. My final score is clearer, and higher. Ten. Out of 10.

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  March 26 2011, 7:05pm | Comments »

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  Douglas Adams’s Doctor Who story to be novelised

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/24/douglas-adamss-doctor-who-story-to-be-novelised

  The lost Doctor Who episodes serial by Hitchhiker’s Guide author Douglas Adams will be published  sometime in  March 2012

  This article titled “Douglas Adams’s Doctor Who story to be novelised” was written by Benedicte Page, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 24th March 2011 14.58 UTC A novelisation of the “lost” Doctor Who serial Shada, scripted by Hitchhiker’s Guide author Douglas Adams in 1979, will be published next year. Adams wrote three series of Doctor Who in the late 1970s, when he was in his twenties and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was first airing as a BBC radio comedy. Shada was intended as a six-part drama to finish off the 17th season, with Tom Baker in the role of the Doctor. The story features the Time Lord coming to Earth with assistant Romana (Lalla Ward) to visit Professor Chronotis, who has absconded from Gallifrey, the Doctor’s home planet, and now lives quietly at Cambridge college St Cedd’s. (The Doctor: “When I was on the river I heard the strange babble of inhuman voices, didn’t you, Romana?” Professor Chronotis: “Oh, probably undergraduates talking to each other, I expect.”) Chronotis has brought with him the most powerful book in the universe, The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey – which, in a typical touch of Adams bathos, turns out to have been borrowed from his study by a student. Evil scientist Skagra, an escapee from prison planet Shada, is on its trail. Large parts of the story had already been filmed on location in Cambridge before industrial action at the BBC brought production to a halt. The drama was never finished, and in the summer of 1980 Shada was abandoned – although various later projects attempted to resurrect it. Douglas Adams’s Doctor Who series are among the very few which have never been novelised, reportedly because the author wanted to do them himself but was always too busy. Gareth Roberts, a prolific Doctor Who scriptwriter, has now been given the job. Publisher BBC Books declared the book “a holy grail” for Time Lord fans. Editorial director Albert De Petrillo said: “Douglas Adams’s serials for Doctor Who are considered by many to be some of the best the show has ever produced. Shada is a funny, scary, surprising and utterly terrific story, and we’re thrilled to be publishing the first fully realised version of this Doctor Who adventure as Douglas originally conceived it.” Ed Victor, the literary agent representing the Douglas Adams estate, said: “The BBC have been asking us for years [to allow a novelisation of Shada] and the estate finally said, ‘Why not?’” Having Roberts novelise the Adams script was “like having a sketch on a canvas by Rubens, and now the studio of Rubens is completing it,” he added. The book will be published in March 2012 as a £16.99 hardback. Adams died in 2001, and a posthumous collection of his work, including the unfinished novel The Salmon of Doubt, was published the following year. A Hitchhiker’s Guide followup, And Another Thing…., written by Eoin Colfer, was published in 2010, but Victor said there were “no plans at the moment” for more such sequels.

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  March 24 2011, 10:15am | Comments »

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  The Only Way Is Essex: beyond trash TV

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/21/the-only-way-is-essex-beyond-trash-tv

  It’s like watching an old Open University programme on Advanced Pointlessness.

  This article titled “The Only Way Is Essex: beyond trash TV” was written by Stuart Heritage, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 21st March 2011 12.05 UTC Some of you may have been looking forward to the return of The Only Way is Essex last night. You may have greeted the cast like old friends, cheering at the likes of Amy and Mark with joy and wild abandon. You may have even bought the official The Only Way Is Essex single and played it on a loop all weekend, bobbing up and down and intermittently chortling at the word “vajazzle”. Because, make no mistake, The Only Way Is Essex is a phenomenon. The stars have become tabloid staples. The official The Only Way Is Essex Facebook page has close to 200,000 fans – almost 50 times the number that Question Time has. Last night’s episode was so highly anticipated that ITV2 prefaced it with an hour of highlights and a shriekingly awful music video. People seem to genuinely love The Only Way Is Essex. But here’s a confession: I’m not one of those people. It’s not that I object to the trashiness of The Only Way Is Essex. I love trash. I devour it to the extent that I’ve got My Dog Ate What? – a show about dogs that eat unusual things – on series link. It’s more that I just don’t understand it. Put me in front of The Only Way Is Essex and I turn into your gran trying to programme a VCR. It’s embarrassing. Perhaps the most off-putting aspect of the show is its staginess. Not so much its much-discussed lack of fly-on-the-wall realism, but everyone’s uncomfortably stilted delivery. All the conversations on The Only Way Is Essex are full of weird little pauses, as if they’re all communicating via a faulty 1970s satellite link-up. It’s like watching an old Open University programme on Advanced Pointlessness. I’m also slightly hamstrung by the fact that I don’t understand anything that anyone says. Maybe there’s an inexplicably heavy tax on hard consonants in Essex and that’s the reason people say “arrrra?” instead of “hello” and “shaaaaaap” instead of “be quiet”. At one point last series a character said “naaaloooor” and it took me about five minutes to work out that they meant “nightclub.” Between this and the pauses, The Only Way Is Essex comes off like a nightmarish Teletubbies update starring several flourescent Bratz dolls (vajazzled, of course). Last night’s episode didn’t help matters. Narratively speaking it had a structure that was somewhere between scattershot and nonexistent. A couple got lost in the woods, an old lady went swimming, a Playboy model got a spray tan, a boy legitimately decided that he wanted to be known as Joey Essex, a woman asked where south London was and a pig urinated on the floor and then started drinking it. In fact I’ve made it sound much more exciting than it actually was. Nothing was captivating enough to make you want to tune in for a second 45 minutes, unless you harbour an inexplicable fascination with incontinent pigs. If things keep up at this rate, I’ll be no closer to understanding the show than I was during the first series. So if you watched and enjoyed The Only Way Is Essex last night, then please explain it to me. Am I supposed to be rooting for these people? Or does the pleasure come from judging them? Is it supposed to be good, or do people watch it because it’s terrible? And, if so, is it terrible by accident or design? Honestly, I’m so confused.

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  March 21 2011, 10:11am | Comments »

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  Jamie’s Dream School – a youth club with David Starkey instead of a pool table

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/14/jamies-dream-school-%E2%80%93-a-youth-club-with-david-starkey-instead-of-a-pool-table

  Charlie Brooker calls the Jamie’s Dream School kids dumb.

  This article titled “Jamie’s Dream School – a youth club with David Starkey instead of a pool table” was written by Charlie Brooker, for The Guardian on Monday 14th March 2011 00.04 UTC Poor Jamie Oliver. A few years ago he single-handedly saved every child in the country from imminent cholesterol death with his school dinners campaign. And there was nationwide rejoicing. The Queen called a national holiday, councils held street parties in his honour and the City erected a 600ft glass-and-metal statue in the shape of one of his Flavour Shakers (known today as “the Gherkin”, after one of his favourite sandwich fillings). Now, instead of reducing the kiddywink generation’s waistlines he’s attempting to expand their minds by establishing his own Dream School. A tape recording of this selfless act of altruism somehow ended up in Channel 4′s hands, and they’ve been broadcasting extracts from it for the past few weeks. And what do we do? We watch MasterChef on the other side. The professional chef is being shunned in favour of a bunch of unknown amateurs. Because they’re actually bloody cooking. The audacity of Dream School is truly inspiring, assuming you’re impressed by mountains of bullshit. The first episode opened with Jamie recounting how he left school with no qualifications. The British educational system failed him, just as it fails millions of others like him every year. Now he wants to make a difference. Not by campaigning against education cuts – which might be boring – but by setting up his own school. Not one staffed by actual teachers – which might be boring – but by celebrities. And it won’t be open all-year round – which might be expensive – but for a few weeks. Thus our education system will be saved. Simon Callow taught them English by shouting at them. David Starkey taught them history by insulting them. And Alastair Campbell taught them politics by arranging a debate, which soon degenerated into a full-blown playground ruck. This was their first true lesson: they learned first-hand that Campbell is shit-hot at instigating conflict from thin air. Thank God Jamie merely opened a school, and didn’t decide to explore the NHS’s failings by opening his own Dream Hospital, in which famous actors who’ve portrayed doctors in popular dramas perform operations on members of the public. Watch Hugh Laurie sew up a gaping abdominal wound! See James Nesbitt conduct intricate neurosurgery! They’d make mistakes now and then – slicing the wrong bit off here, letting all the innards spill out there – but that’s where Jamie could come in. He could take that human offal, whip up a delicious intestine-and-kidney casserole, then spoon it into the dying patient’s grateful, gurgling mouth as they drew their final breaths. Anyway, back to Dream School. When the series was announced, the initial promotional material was couched in the trad Bash Street Kids visual language of British school-based capers: chalk, blackboards, board rubbers, pencil cases and so on. It looked like Jamie versus Grange Hill. But, presumably because the authorities wouldn’t allow the production team to meddle with the education of actual children, they’re reduced to teaching teenage volunteers who’ve already left school. So: no real kids, no real teachers, and no real exams. Nothing is real. No wonder they called it Dream School. It’s effectively a youth club with Starkey instead of a pool table. And what’s the worst thing about youth clubs? The youths. And they’ve got a prime selection here. Watching Jamie’s Dream School is enough to transform the wettest liberal do-gooder into a furious Nick Ferrari type by the third ad break. They gawp at iPhones, they burble witlessly amongst themselves, they slouch in their seats looking bored and surly and demanding respect for absolutely no reason whatsoever . . . Maybe our educational system has tragically failed them. Or maybe they’re fuckwits. Even the most helpless fuckwits can change, of course, but they tend to do so quietly, and of their own volition. Which doesn’t make great television. Follies of youth aside, their biggest problem seems to be a chronically stunted attention span: they’re constantly texting or yapping on their mobiles instead of applying even 1% focus on whatever’s directly in front of them. The entire programme should have been billed not as a crusading mission documentary, but as a chilling warning about how technology will inevitably destroy human civilisation by distracting it into stupidity and madness. Dumb though half the kids may be, they’re just plodding meat fodder for a shockingly arrogant TV experiment, which exists for no apparent reason other than to demoralise any genuine teachers watching, potentially to the point of suicide, which really would cause a crisis in our educational system. After two episodes I wound up hating almost everyone in it, aside from a couple of the kids and, curiously, Jamie himself – because he just looks so crushingly, dizzyingly confused by the whole thing. Why is he there? Why is this happening? What’s the ultimate aim? If he’s got any sanity left at all, come episode three he’ll tear down all the Dream School signs and turn it into a sandwich-making academy. Because that, at least, would fulfil some kind of function.

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  March 13 2011, 7:28pm | Comments »

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  The YouView revolution will not be televised just yet

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/28/the-youview-revolution-will-not-be-televised-just-yet

  None of this really matters one jot if the quality of the programmes being made continues to deteriorate.

  This article titled “The YouView revolution will not be televised just yet” was written by Steve Hewlett on YouView, for The Guardian on Monday 28th February 2011 07.00 UTC There’s a lot riding on YouView. BBC director general Mark Thompson has described it as nothing less than the “battle for the living room” – pitching YouView as an “open” platform based around the legacy free-to-air public service broadcasters, against the barbarians of the pay-TV world and their “closed” platforms. You can see what he means. YouView – and the on-demand functionality it offers (such as an EPG that allows you to go back in time as well as forwards, to deliver iPlayer-style catchup on your TV) – will “change the way you view TV for ever”, it’s claimed. If that were to happen and consumers come to expect and then demand such services, the legacy PSBs would be seriously disadvantaged without their own platform. Or so the argument goes. Actually underlying those arguments is a pretty straightforward attempt to find an upgrade path for Freeview. Freeview is already falling behind cable and satellite services because limited bandwidth means it can’t deliver anything like as much HD TV. As Virgin and Sky pour investment into next generation internet-enhanced TV, the fear is that without YouView Freeview will fall even further behind. What does that matter to the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5? Because they get substantially higher viewing shares in Freeview homes than in Sky or Virgin households. So you can see why, irrespective of whether it really does revolutionise viewing habits, they see YouView as quite so significant. For the other key shareholders – principally the internet service providers BT and TalkTalk – there is almost as much at stake. BT has spent a reported £800m on BT Vision, and it does now work and thanks to Ofcom does now have premium sport – but to say it has failed to meet expectations rather understates the case. BT desperately needs a good TV offering if it is to ward off the threat posed by Sky and Virgin, which can already offer customers so called “triple play” (TV, telephone and internet). For BT and TalkTalk, YouView – with all its high-quality BBC, Channel 4 and ITV content plus other on-demand options – is their fast track to a compelling “triple play” offer. Which makes the fact that as you read this there is not (and never has been) a working YouView box something of a worry. Originally set to launch early in 2010, then promised to be in the shops by Christmas, then first quarter 2011, then second half 2011 and as of two weeks ago “sometime” in 2012, YouView has become an embarrassment for the BBC – which has done most of the technical development work – and a real concern for all the shareholders who fear losing what could have been a Freeview-style market position in online TV. Commercial shareholders have been irked by what they perceive to be a lack of “commercial acumen” on the BBC’s part. The tendency to over-specify the potential capabilities of the system has led to huge technical problems – which ultimately explain why it doesn’t yet work. A picture emerges of a project run by BBC boffins (who, according to one insider, have no concept of the kind of consumer marketing focus that commercial operations depend on) spending huge amounts of money trying to create an all-singing, all-dancing box that would win its creators significant recognition in the digital media world outside. When all the shareholders really wanted was an enhanced TV catchup service with some extra on-demand and pay TV services thrown in.   All the talk now is of “de-specifying” the box in an effort to make it work and get it to market for the Olympics in 2012. In the meantime Richard Desmond has sent his friend Lord Sugar in to “kick the tyres” of the unfunctioning box; the “drop dead” clause in the shareholders’ agreement (allowing them to walk away from the project if it is not launched by then) is due to run out at the end of 2011 and is being hastily renegotiated; and YouView’s popular chief executive Richard Halton is surviving, but under pressure. In normal circumstances this might look like a project on the verge of collapse, but that is very unlikely to happen. Why? Because the UK’s internet infrastructure is not yet capable of delivering YouView-like services as widely as would be necessary to make real market impact – for YouView or anybody else. And because evidence so far suggests relatively limited consumer demand for internet-enabled TV. In other words, the delay to YouView’s launch probably won’t be as damaging as it might have been. More by luck than judgment.

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  February 28 2011, 4:08am | Comments »

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  Toto recall: the Wizard of Oz hits the West End

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/28/toto-recall-the-wizard-of-oz-hits-the-west-end

  A preview for the Wizard of Oz opening soon in London’s West End starring Danielle Hope as Dorothy and Michael Crawford as the Wizard, with Hannah Waddingham as the Wicked Witch of the West.

  This article titled “Toto recall: the Wizard of Oz hits the West End” was written by Maddy Costa, for The Guardian on Sunday 27th February 2011 21.59 UTC ‘From where I’m sitting,” splutters Jeremy Sams, “I can’t think of anything less safe in the world.” The director seems flabbergasted, wounded even, by my suggestion that his new West End production of The Wizard of Oz seems a surefire hit. After all, it reproduces much of the formula that made Sams’s 2006 staging of The Sound of Music such a triumph: it’s a musical better known as a film; it’s an Andrew Lloyd Webber collaboration; choreographer Arlene Phillips and set designer Robert Jones are back on board; the lead, Danielle Hope, is an unknown who won the part in a reality TV show, Over the Rainbow. “Nothing’s safe,” continues Sams. “Nothing’s safe, and to say safe almost sounds pejorative and derogatory. There are good titles – but if you don’t respect a title, the audience throw shoes at you very quickly.” If contemplating the audience makes Sams nervous, he has no fears about his creative team. “These are all people who have done big shows, so when things get hairy and scary and look massive, they can say we’ve got through this before, we’ll get through it again.” It also helps, says Arlene Phillips, that “we can pick at each other’s work. None of us are precious about anything if, in the bigger scheme of things, it isn’t going to work.” Nor does Sams feel any trepidation about working with a young actor whose only qualifications are a drama A-level and three months of training. “We always wanted a young girl, aged 17 or 18, so whoever we cast, it would have been the same issue,” he says. As far as he is concerned, Hope’s appearance on reality TV has been nothing but advantageous – not, oh cynical reader, because of the attendant publicity, but because “someone who’s got the fearlessness to get through a TV job like that arrives with a certain amount of chutzpah. It’s an audition process and an unbelievably stressful and public one.” Hope is perfect casting, he thinks, because she embodies “the most key thing for Dorothy – not ever to be defeated or downhearted. Even when things are going against her, she has to believe it’s going to be OK.” A few minutes in Hope’s company is enough to see what Sams means: she is radiant with optimism. She is so down-to-earth, you wonder what possessed her to enter Over the Rainbow. “I’d never watched a reality TV programme,” she laughs. “I didn’t know what I was in for.” She only applied because she didn’t think she would be able to afford to go to drama school. Despite her inexperience, Hope talks like a seasoned actor. Asked if she feels burdened by the responsibility of comparing favourably with Judy Garland, she admits that she did initially, but then says firmly: “I’m not going to imitate Judy because no one could and no one should. I made a conscious decision to find out who [Dorothy] was – if you make that as real as possible, an audience should forget about what they’ve seen.” Nonetheless, it’s clear that the fame of the film is as much a curse as a blessing. “There’s no way of replicating it, because how do you put a movie on stage?” asks Sams. “Movies have different logic, different structures, different feel, different tempo.” Yet there is a sense in which it is the movie that audiences come to see – and the creative team respect that. “I’d be mad to reinvent it completely,” says Robert Jones. “Everyone’s got images in their head of what The Wizard of Oz is, and to an extent you’ve got to give them that. But it’s got to be my take.” With another Oz story, Wicked, already attracting huge West End crowds (last year it broke box-office records, earning over £1m in a single week), Sams and Jones know that, to compete, this has to be a lavish show. But it isn’t just that, says Sams: the story demands visual extravagance. “It’s a picaresque with scene after scene after scene in different places, so the show has to be perpetually delivering more things,” he says. The stage for Oz has a triple revolve, with a system of hydraulics that can raise or tilt each section. The models for the design alone took five months to make; and, with 25 scene changes, the building of the set has been “a nightmare”. It has also made the transfer from the rehearsal room – a bog-standard space with a resolutely flat, still floor – problematic. “So much of the movement becomes hit and miss,” says Phillips. “A stage section you thought was going to be smooth has a gap and you can’t ask people in high heels to tread on it. It’s a complicated process.” And then there’s the last-minute work required to tailor the show’s lighting and sound. I spend an afternoon watching rehearsals, and progress is agonisingly slow. I start watching at 2pm, as the projections team screen a just-finished animation of the haunted forest. There is a long lull, then the Wicked Witch’s wrought-iron castle revolves into position, presided over by Hannah Waddingham’s imperious witch and two terrifying monkeys. It looks glorious – but it has taken an hour and 20 minutes to run through barely two minutes of show. The danger, Sams recognises, is that this intense focus on getting the technology working, testing lighting and sound effects, tailoring the choreography to the stage, might swamp the story at the heart of the show. “The trick,” he says, “is to take what we had in the rehearsal room, which is a heartfelt, touching, small thing, and make it small but big.” But despite all his jitters, he’s clearly having the time of his life. “It’s The Wizard of Oz,” he says cheerfully, “and who wouldn’t want to work on The Wizard of Oz?”

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  February 27 2011, 6:06pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  April will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/26/april-will-indeed-be-cruel-but-we-dont-have-to-take-it

  Forthcoming cuts and pain which nobody is really prepared for. Will Wisconsin and Egypt come to Britain?

  This article titled “April will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it” was written by Polly Toynbee, for The Guardian on Saturday 26th February 2011 07.30 UTC Forget snow – every part of the Office for National Statistics report on the economy was bad news: household spending, business investment, services, finance, construction, even previously hopeful manufacturing figures – all revised downwards – plus declining house prices and anything else you can measure. The one shard of hope is that the lunatic tendency on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (Andrew Sentance) may be silenced on raising interest rates. Rising inflation is almost entirely beyond British control – oil and commodity prices. While real pay falls for all but bankers and FTSE boardrooms (up 55%), there is no home-grown wage inflation. Imagine the mayhem in raising the cost of mortgages and business borrowing just as hundreds of thousands more lose their jobs. If things are this bad before the serious austerity has begun, what lies ahead? April will indeed be cruel – and frightening as the great £81bn axe falls. This is a real-life economic experiment, one last chance to prove that Herbert Hoover was right after all and Franklin Roosevelt and Keynes wrong. Or that Churchill was right about the gold standard – except these days its equivalent is the deficit. The Treasury’s breezy “don’t care” riposte to the new figures was alarming in tone and content: “It doesn’t change the need to deal with the nation’s credit card – the country is borrowing more this year than is spent on the entire NHS.” That is cheap propaganda, not economics – a sign that Treasury civil servants have become a missionary cadre. We can only hope this bravado disguises anxiety – and a readiness to U-turn if nothing improves. But the “no plan B” chancellor shows no sign of it. Only a month to go. The shock in April will be profound. Ben Page of Ipsos Mori says: “People have no idea how their pay packets will change. Three-quarters expect to be affected, but they don’t know how.” Cameron-supporting papers sound no alarm, and television doesn’t begin to convey the coming severity. People are still foxed by a government whose every word belies its actions – Cameron still pretends the NHS, education and Sure Start are protected, and only public sector fat is cut; private companies will pick up the unemployed, banks are being seriously taxed and a “big society” will burst forth. Add “not” to everything he says and then you see how the cuts fall everywhere while charitable giving drops: 30,000 give-as-you-earn payroll donors just dropped out. A survey this week shows most large companies and 70% of small ones won’t employ public sector staff, no doubt prejudiced by the daily Eric Pickles and Francis Maude anti-public servants hate campaign. It hasn’t begun yet. Library and Sure Start doors begin closing in April. Rising NHS waiting times are hidden by not letting GPs refer. From 31 March, 300,000 public-sector staff and more from the voluntary sector start to be fired. And most families earning over £18,000 will find pay packet cuts in tax credits and national insurance, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Child benefit is frozen for three years – a cut of 10% or more at current inflation. Public employees’ pay is frozen for two years. In April the lowered threshold for the 40% tax band brings another 750,000 earners into the higher rate; anyone on £50,000 loses £500 a year, just as wages fall further behind an inflation they see emblazoned outside every petrol station inflation. By 2015 25% of earners will be on the 40% rate, the IFS reckons, up from 11% (though no doubt pre-election tax giveaways will ease that). How explosive will all this be? Ed Balls recalls the disastrous abolition of the 10p tax rate: it passed parliament with hardly a murmur – but when implemented a year later it went nuclear. Mori’s Ben Page says this is unknown territory: the cuts are so deep that public rage may become burned into the national psyche, even if the economy picks up and even with pre-election tax bribes. “They are now 10 points behind. Thatcher, hated for her cuts, was only saved by war and a disastrous opposition.” However, Cameron is still popular and the Tory vote has not dropped: so far Labour scores only at Lib Dem expense. But Page points out that, for the first time, support for cutting the deficit has dipped below 50%: he expects it to fall fast after April. What would you do? That’s the challenge for all critics of the cuts. The most important answer is: not this. If this is the cure then the medicine is more lethal than the disease, economically and socially. Take soaring 16 to 24-year-old unemployment, nearly a million not learning or working. That’s 15% before either the future jobs fund or education maintenance allowance has been axed. Here is the great social deficit, a jobless depressed generation, phenomenally expensive and almost impossible to rescue later. Take away the wiped-out youth services offering help. Take away the Sure Starts, the breakfast and homework clubs, leaving children unhelped until too late. That is the permanent human deficit, more damaging and intractable than fiscal debt, a cost uncounted by blinkered economists. What would you do? Not sit by while Bob Diamond takes a £9m bonus and corporations avoid billions in tax. Make sure everyone really is in it together: sharing pain fairly matters even more than sharing good times well. Be open about who earns what: these cuts fall hardest on many of the poorest. Ed Balls rightly posits extending the 50p tax band down to £100,000, to people like me who will pay relatively little extra. Cuts, yes some, but fewer slower, letting growth over time take the strain. Invest in the infrastructure the CBI calls for and reassure markets by having business onside. Build superfast broadband, railways, green energy, housing, whatever kickstarts recovery. Above all, give back the abolished job guarantee to every young person. What can you do? Last Saturday, I was at UK Uncut’s sit-in at Barclays: many more should join this Saturday’s RBS events – see http://www.ukuncut.org.uk. Enjoy their witty symbolism: taxpayers rescued the banks with a trillion pounds, so until banks are fairly taxed turn them into the libraries, classrooms and swimming pools they caused to be shut down. The Robin Hood campaign shows how taxing 0.05% on every transaction yields £20bn, enough to stop all NHS cuts. A ComRes poll finds 75% of Tory voters want bank bonuses clawed back. The government should expect a turn in the tide after April brings the worst of what the banks have done to everyone.

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogApril will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it

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  February 26 2011, 2:18am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Can Scandinavian crime fiction teach socialism?

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/24/can-scandinavian-crime-fiction-teach-socialism

  I don’t know if it teaches anything at all, but DI Lund and co do make compulsive viewing over 20 episodes shown in ten weeks on BBC 4. Great stuff.

  This article titled “Can Scandinavian crime fiction teach socialism?” was written by Deborah Orr, for The Guardian on Thursday 24th February 2011 09.00 UTC Who killed Nanna Birk Larsen? The question grips the relatively small, but avid, band of people who are following The Killing, a Danish crime series being screened on BBC4. The Killing throws up plenty of other questions, too. One even feels a strange tug of interest in Copenhagen’s local political scene because the abduction, rape, torture and murder of a 19-year-old student seems inextricably linked to a number of people fighting a city election. Alliances between various political parties ebb and flow, as the turns of the plot hurl suspicion at different candidates. One of the many things The Killing asks is this: are political coalitions really healthy? It is no doubt coincidence that the query is so particularly pertinent in Britain right now. But there is a definite reason why a slice of Scandinavian crime fiction should be actively concerned with framing socio-political debate. It is part of what is expected of the genre in this part of the world, and has been since Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö started publishing what came to be known as the Martin Beck series, in 1965. The couple, former journalists, conceived 10 crime novels that would provide a deliberate critique of what they viewed as the degeneration of Sweden. Marxists themselves, they intended to use the crime genre to illustrate the advantages of socialistic approaches to social problems. That sounds unbearably didactic and worthy. But the tremendous thing is that the books work first and foremost as crime fiction. In fact, they are reckoned by the cognoscenti to be among the finest and most influential crime novels ever written. Essentially, the pair challenged the convention of the lone genius private detective, replacing him with a group of police officers, led by the low-key Beck, who depended on each other to solve cases – and also, as a matter of course, put up with, or worked round, colleagues who were not so gifted. Maverick individualism was out, patient and humane people management was in. Thus, the ever-shifting group ploughed through many and varied crime scenes – crime scenes that usually in some way or other questioned the permissive values espoused by the liberal left so successfully at that time. It seems to me that in the pages of these Swedish police procedurals, all those years ago, Sjöwall and Wahlöö were examining contradictions that the British left even now refuses properly to acknowledge. The socialist left and the liberal left have little in common, with Blairism a shining example of how difficult it is to “triangulate” them. Hard work and compromise is needed before social freedom and state welfare can be shackled together. Even then, perhaps, the resulting beast is an impossible chimera. Is it too much to speculate that the current huge vogue for Scandinavian crime fiction is somehow a tacit acknowledgement of the need to have this debate, and the fear of what conclusions it might draw? Henning Mankell, in his Wallander series, now televised in two versions in Britain, makes no bones about the fact that he is continuing in the Martin Beck tradition. Stieg Larsson, who meant his phenomenally successful Millennium trilogy to be a 10-part work when he first started writing it, has succeeded in igniting exactly the sort of debate, among feminists anyway, that Sjöwall and Wahlöö expected. Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo, with 5m sales worldwide and film deals in the works, similarly uses sexual crime as an expression of the extremes of discord among men and women. This “metaphor” is somewhat unanswerable, on the face of it. But the details are quite controversial. The women who are killed in his novel The Snowman, for example, stand accused of denying men their paternal roles, and messing up their children in the process. Discuss that thesis in sexually and politically mixed company, and passions can run high quite fast. Nesbo is not a reactionary, despite the “traditional family values” cast that can be placed on his bestselling novel’s storyline. Like his peers and predecessors, he deals with problems inherent in social democracy, problems that are not that usefully divided between “left” and “right”. It is often said now that the two opposing terms have become “meaningless”, since both left and right contain a range of values from libertarian to authoritarian. In truth, the political tension is between freedom and regulation, often between whether the social realm should be regulated in order to benefit the economic realm, or the other way round. Social democracy, if it is about anything, surely, is about constantly striving to get that tricky balance right. The British are used to believing that the Scandinavians, especially the Swedes, have social democracy cracked, while Britain is far from being a socially democratic country. The truth, however, is much more nuanced. Britain shares many of the values and difficulties of the Scandinavian states, and of other European states that Britain tends to view as being much more socially democratic than we are. That was emphasised in a depressing report yesterday from risk analyst Maplecroft, which ranked Britain the 10th most likely country of 163 to undergo another economic crisis. Sweden is fourth, and Japan is the only non-European country to make it into the top 10, at nine. The shared challenges are “ageing populations, substantial levels of debt and high public spending on health and pensions”. Each of these, of course, is already high on the national agenda, the subject of raucous, sometimes hysterical debate. The logical solution – if there is a solution at all – is for everyone to live very healthy and disciplined lives, expecting to look after more vulnerable members of the family whenever necessary, and seeking only specialist or temporary help from a well-ordered state as a last resort. It is a vision that unites authoritarian left and right, but scares the bejesus out of free-marketeers and social liberals. All of these groups, however, can probably find something compelling in a chunk of Scandinavian crime fiction, which possibly owes its great popularity to its ability to offer sensationalist escape, but of a kind that is grounded all too recognisably in the real world.

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

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  February 24 2011, 4:41am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  New Zealand earthquake strikes Christchurch, killing at least 65 people

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/22/new-zealand-earthquake-65-dead

  This article titled “New Zealand earthquake strikes Christchurch, killing at least 65 people” was written by Ben Quinn and Mark Tran, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd February 2011 13.18 UTC At least 65 people have died and more than 100 are missing after a powerful earthquake struck the southern New Zealand city of Christchurch, collapsing buildings, burying vehicles under debris and sending rescuers scrambling to help people trapped under rubble. The 6.3-magnitude quake struck the country’s second largest city on a busy weekday afternoon. The mayor of Christchurch, Bob Parker, has declared a state of emergency and ordered people to evacuate the city centre. “Make no mistake this is going to be a very black day for this shaken city,” he said. Power and water was cut and hundreds of dazed, screaming and crying residents wandered through the streets as sirens blared throughout Christchurch in the aftermath of the quake, which was centred three miles from the city. The US Geological Survey said the tremor occurred at a depth of 2.5 miles. After rushing to the city within hours of the quake, the prime minister of New Zealand, John Key, said the death toll was 65, and may rise. “It is just a scene of utter devastation. We may well be witnessing New Zealand’s darkest day.” The spire of the city’s well-known stone cathedral toppled into a central square, while buildings collapsed in on themselves and streets were strewn with bricks and shattered concrete. The multi-storey Pyne Gould Guinness Building, housing more than 200 workers, has collapsed with an unknown number of people trapped inside. Television pictures showed rescuers, many of them office workers, dragging severely injured people from the rubble. Elsewhere, police said debris rained down on two buses, crushing them, while emergency workers were moving to rescue survivors trapped in other partially collapsed buildings across the city. New Zealand’s TV3 said 24 people were trapped on the 17th floor of the 19-storey Forsyth Barr office building, near the cathedral. The building was intact but a stairwell had collapsed, it said. Christchurch hospital had to deal with many injured residents. “We’ve had a lot of people at the emergency department … a significant number, a lot of major injuries,” said David Meates, the chief executive of the Canterbury health board. “They are largely crushes and cuts types of injuries and chest pain as well,” he said, adding some of the more seriously injured could be evacuated to other cities, where hospitals have been put on alert and prepared to accept casualties. All army medical staff have been mobilised, while several hundred troops were helping with the rescue, officials said. A woman trapped in one of the buildings said she was terrified and waiting for rescuers to reach her six hours after the quake. “I thought the best place was under the desk but the ceiling collapsed on top. I can’t move and I’m just terrified,” office worker Anne Voss told TV3 news. Emergency shelters had been set up in schools and at a racecourse, as night approached. Helicopters dumped giant buckets of water to try to douse a fire in one tall office building. A crane helped rescue workers trapped in another office block. “I was in the square right outside the cathedral – the whole front has fallen down and there were people running from there. There were people inside as well,” said John Gurr, a camera technician who was in the city centre when the quake hit. The city’s historic cathedral was one of the buildings that took significant damage, while cars were buried under rubble and roads buckled as the tremor opened fissures in the ground. “It is huge. We just don’t know if there are people under this rubble,” a priest standing outside the rubble of the damaged cathedral told Television New Zealand. Search and rescue teams are working through the night to look for survivors, the civil defence director, John Hamilton, said. “We have to be prepared to accept that it is going to be a heavy toll,” he said, adding that it was unclear how many people were trapped in buildings. “There could well be people who are stuck in buildings overnight. I can’t confirm, but I would expect that’s in all probability the case.” All airports and airspace in the country were shut down and all flights into, out of and around the country were put on hold immediately after the earthquake. Airways NZ, New Zealand’s national air traffic control organisation, is based in Christchurch. Local TV showed bodies being pulled out of rubble strewn around the city centre, though it was unclear whether any of them were alive. It was the second time in five months that the city has been struck by a major earthquake. Last September’s 7.1-magnitude earthquake was 30 miles west of Christchurch. About 100 people were treated at hospital with earthquake-related injuries then. Christchurch has been hit by hundreds of aftershocks since that earthquake, causing extensive damage and a handful of injuries, but no deaths. New Zealand, which sits between the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates, records on average more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which about 20 would normally top magnitude 5.0. Christchurch is home to about 350,000 people and is a tourist centre and gateway to the South Island.

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  February 22 2011, 7:53am | Comments »

• I posted to hubpages.com

  Plus Size Celebrities

  http://hubpages.com/hub/Plus-Size-Celebrities

   I am concerned and a little disheartened by the fact that there aren't more big lovely women celebrities out there.  When you hear a female singer on the radio, she may sound glorious, but you can bet...

  

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  August 25 2009, 1:06pm | Comments »

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  Why I Recommend BabyFirstTV

  http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-I-Recommend-BabyFirst-TV

  My daughter loves to watch television. She loves Mickey Mouse and Sesame Street. I prefer for her to watch educational programming, and at ten months old, my daughter prefers educational programming.
  We...

  

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  August 19 2009, 4:27pm | Comments »

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