4April
Peter Preston discusses the complete nonsense of the security industry. We pointed out last August that the world needed to balance the ability to travel easily with the danger of being the victim of a non-accidental 'plane crash. Has the scale tilted too far in the latter direction? Is there such a thing as an acceptable level of terrorism? Is the attitude, We're only going through these hoops to help you sir, trying to keep you safe best answered with, No, your purpose is to keep the populace scared of a prospect that is significantly less likely than winning the lottery jackpot?
Jim Griffin tries to live on plastic alone, Hilary Osbourne is cash-only. Who has the better week?
In which the Iranians write letters for their captives.
Is this the first character assassination of Gordon Brown? Slippery and intimidating is not a platform, but a scaffold - Bruce Anderson, the Indytab.
NCAA basketball completely boring? Right there with you, there's nothing more dull than walking beanstalks throw an inflated pig's bladder around. It makes watching snow fall sound positively gripping.
Uncle Travelling Choccers also speaks of The Weather Channel. For all the lazy stereotypes, the UK does not have a continuous weather channel anywhere on cable or satellite. Oh, they briefly tried it, between September 1996 and January 1998, but The Weather Channel, Der Wetterkanal, Het Weerkanaal and Il Canale Meteo all shut down on 29 January 1998. By relying on digital transmission, the network was probably two or three years ahead of its time.
Currybet looks at the ten things most likely to be on the Daily Express front page. Here's a hint: news doesn't make the top ten.
Indirectly, Mat asks, Is there any hope that the Tories will be any better than Labour or that the LibDems can win enough seats to form a government? On the latter point, no, and any significant net advance on their current number of MPs appears unlikely - the gains from Labour will probably be counterbalanced (if not outweighed) by losses to the Conservatives. Would the Blues be any better? I fear that Giles' Law (see Buffy
: The Wish) applies.
From the department of Blast, this from Mark Lawson in Het Grauniad, April 1997:
The campaign has begun with a defeat for Campbell. The BBC allocates a reporter to each campaign. Dr Campbell made it clear that he did not want Jeremy Vine, a young man with a klaxon voice and windmill arms and an eye for cheeky metaphors. But Vine it is on the Blair battlebus for the BBC. His first report - limbs and diphthongs lurching off in unexpected directions - reassured viewers that there is someone ready to take over when Peter Snow has his final swing.
