22January

A week or so ago, m'learned friend Jaeda asked if someone could coach the president a teensy-weensy little bitty bit on his diction. Now, I've not heard him speak recently, but I don't recall Mr. Kerry's diction being particularly bad.

Anywhoo, the word Jae's bothered about is terror, a word that ends with a functional r. It should not be swallowed, for it is wrong to swallow one's rs, the phenome should be pronounced with clarity.

Unless, of course, Candidate X is advocating a War on Terra, which would at least be consistent with his faith-based position on global warming.

Anyway, I've put together a brief sound file to illustrate the optimal pronunciation for these words. See if you can spot the deliberate error...

miscellany

23January

Suede crossed most people's radar when they were given the front cover of the Melody Maker in April 1992. Being dubbed the Great British Hopes was a remarkable cross for the band to bear, even more so when they got the honour before they'd released a single record. Still, they made a decent fist of the albatross, using the hype to push 1993's debut album Suede to the number one spot, and maintaining the momentum through the difficult second album. During the recording of Dog Man Star, guitarist and songwriter Bernard Butler left the band, leaving the media-friendly lead singer Brett Anderson to write all the group's songs. He had talent, but with Butler gone, the heart was out of the group.

Though they were never properly a part of the Britpop explosion, and released nothing during the phenomenon's peak period, Suede was seen as an outrider of the mid-90s boom. They were British, and proud of it, and that was enough to get them noticed.

Suede continued to release new records until the end of the 1990s, capturing a second number one album with 1996's Coming Up. By now, their early glamour - typically described as a mix of David Bowie and the Smiths, though I never saw the link to either - faded into more traditional indie-pop. The group's final album proper, Head Music, emerged in 1999, and a 2002 singles collection was a contract-filling note of regret about what could have been.

There is a coda to the group's tale - Butler and Anderson were re-united to form The Tears, a one-album wonder from 2005.

Your sample song is Saturday night, the third single release from Coming Up. Though most of Suede's singles had been jaunty, upbeat works, their best performances came in more introspective, observant tracks. The video for this song was filmed in Holborn underground station, on the platform previously used by the Aldwych shuttle.

And if you want a Flash video player so that you can play these videos on your machine without seeing , you'll want to go to Martijn Devisser. Free, and moderately simple to use. Or, if you're collectively feeling lazy, this may (or may not!) work.

Two Songs a Week

24January

Last Monday, the Cudlipp Lecture was delivered by Paul Dacre, whose day job is to edit the Daily Hell viewspaper. Time, I think, for a point-by-point rebuttal of his arguments. Mr. Dacre's basic position is that the BBC is distorting Britain's media market, crushing journalistic pluralism and imposing a monoculture that is inimical to healthy democratic debate.

(More: )

Media

24January

A court has ruled that May's elections to the Scottish Parliament may be illegal. The ruling, delivered on Wednesday, follows a long-running campaign to enfranchise all prisoners. A ruling at the European Court on Human Rights in 2005 had deemed the UK's ban on prisoners voting illegal, but the Westminster parliament has shown no sign of legislating to remove this illegality; a slack timetable that would not see legislation introduced before the next session of parliament has already slipped. Now, a court has ruled that the election act is incompatible with the Human Rights Convention, opening the way for a disenfranchised prisoner to challenge the result in court, or even to win an interdict preventing the elections from proceeding in the first place. (With thanks to Love and Garbage.)

Psephology

25January

Further to yesterday's article about the legal status of the Scottish elections, a closer reading of the Human Rights Act (you know, the actual law), makes it quite clear that a declaration of incompatibility does not affect the validity, continuing operation, or enforcement of the provision in respect of which it is given.

Though the Scottish court has deemed the legislation incompatible with the ECHR, this appears little more than a marker of judicial impatience at the way the Ministry of Justice has relegated the matter of votes for prisoners. It's on the back-burner in an unvisited alcove behind a locked steel door where no-one ever visits except to check that the building hasn't fallen down.

There is a potential conflict of supremacy between the provisions of the Human Rights Act, which enshrined the ECHR in statute, and the Scotland Act, the rules of devolution. The Scotland Act states,

* section 29 provides that an Act of the Scottish Parliament may not include provisions which are incompatible with Convention rights, as they are defined in the Human Rights Act; and
* section 57(2) provides that a member of the Scottish Executive has no power to make any subordinate legislation, or to do any other act, which would be incompatible with Convention rights.

The rules governing elections to the Scottish Parliament come from the Representation of the People Act, a law that's come from Westminster (a Reserved Matter, in the parlance of devolution) and hence not subject to the human rights provisions of the Scotland Act. Even the new laws instating STV for local elections depends on the ROPA, and hence its results are not subject to challenge in this way.

The Human Rights Act also states, quite clearly, that no unlawful act arises if the public authority could not have acted differently as a result of primary legislation. This section would extinguish any realistic possibility of setting aside the results of elections carried out according to the relevant rules. Unless, we suppose, the prisoners concerned wished to challenge this "status quo" stipulation as itself being incompatible with their rights. It's a line of attack, and probably something to leave eminent lawyers pining for the simplicity of the Schleiswig-Holstein question, but we reckon it's unlikely to succeed.

It is far more likely is that the election will continue. And it's more likely that a commentator will gratuitously invoke the catchphrase of a 90s game show than any of the results are vacated for reasons related to votes-for-prisoners. How much more likely? Over to John Anderson. Contenders ... ready! Swingometers ... ready!

psephology

25January

A short series of the records that weren't played on the UK Top 40 show, even though they were substantial hits. First up is Iron Maiden's recent release, Different world. The group's been going since current chart show hosts Jay Kay and Or Joel were in short trousers, and have racked up more top three hits than that pair have had cogent links. Their most recent hit reached number 3 in the last week of 2006, but even that high new entry wasn't sufficient for it to receive so much as one spin on the nation's favourite countdown. Retake: the nation's favourite pop music countdown. Hmm. Still might be one letter too many there...

Two Songs a Week

26January

The theory was so simple: a website that anyone could edit, and that aimed to capture everything that everyone knows. The practice is less simple, the project has been taken over by a self-elected cabal of geeks, and reflexively prizes geek culture over high culture and low culture; and values repeated claim over actual truth.

Last week-end, the owner of the English Wikipedia project took a unilateral decision to turn on a nofollow attribute in all off-site links. We wrote about nofollow when it was introduced, a little over two years ago, and said at the time how it was a completely misguided solution. If the problem is useless results in search engines, then it is up to the search engines to improve themselves, not force the rest of the world to change so that they get an easy life. In the hundred weeks of operation, nofollow has done nothing to remove the nonsense in search engine results, and plenty to diminish the quality of those results.

Indeed, this is a clear abuse of the original nofollow proposal. That was to use the attribute exclusively on comments in blogs, and other areas that were beyond the direct control of the site author. As Michael Gray recounts, G****e fucked about with nofollow for its own advantage after declaring the standard, but (though reprehnsible) that is not particularly relevant to our discussion here. Wikipedia is quite clearly in direct control of its own site... isn't it?

Therein lies the real problem. Given that it claims to be a website that anyone can edit, one would expect Wikipedia to remove any attempts to introduce fluff links very quickly. If it's easy to add something in, then it's at least as easy to take it out again. Indeed, that process seemed to be working quite well. Until last Saturday, when the attribute was turned on without consultation, without warning, and with only the most specious of rationales.

We've always advocated great caution, treating Wikipedia as a broad-brush overview, prone to simplification and misinterpretation, and to check anything with a proper source. Now, it appears that James Wales, Wikipedia's own founder, is saying that he doesn't trust its content. If he doesn't, why should we?

Some have interpreted Wikipedia's little confession as a recognition that it prizes the interests of one unmentionably-evil search engine above the interests of all its potential users. We prefer to interpret this as a confession that Wikipedia is fundamentally, and possibly irreversibly, broken. We'll seek better and more reliable sources for our features, like Mrs Goggins on the number 25 bus, the front page of the Daily Hell, or M Khan (still bent).

Ethics

27January

Nick is asking how to say Isleworth. The correct answer, which I'm surprised he didn't include in the options, is Home of bad television.

Nick goes on to ask, Would you do Jermaine Jackson? The short answer he's after: no. Though he's right to recall an eternal truth, what's happening on Big Brother is of no consequence.

Matt asks a couple of Birmingham-related questions:

1) Just before Junction 6 on the M6 northbound there's that sign that tells drivers to stay in lane through the diamond markings. What's the point of these diamonds? I don't think I've ever seen them anywhere else.

The point is to discourage lane-swapping, and bring some pressure on people to get in lane well before the junction with the A38. Lane-swapping is bad, as it causes other lanes of traffic to slow down. The road is so crowded that a decrease in lane swapping, which causes a slight increase in the flow of traffic through the junction, in turn leads to markedly fewer traffic jams. It's tackling the symptom, not the problem, but it's doing something useful.

2) Over to the north of Birmingham somewhere (Sutton Coldfield?) there's something tall and thin sticking up into the sky. Where is it, and what is it?

That'll be the Sutton Coldfield broadcast mast at Mere Green, bringing television and radio to much of the west midlands region. You may also be seeing the Lichfield broadcast mast, which broadcasts a few services.

In the Torygraph, Sarah Crompton suggests that Jade Goody should go dancing. She extols the virtues of the Laban Centre, which is both the leading contemporary dance education centre in London, and a facility for all people in south-east London. Which is, lest we forget, the area that spawned Miss Goody. Now, while we have slight difficulty in thinking of Miss Goody in the same thought as the country's best young dancers, that's not the point. Expression through movement is the point.

Mrs. Crompton puts out a call to action, on behalf of her organisation and others around the country: Channel 4 ... should put its programmes where its mouth is and start to give some of these fantastically worthy ventures the screen time that is currently devoted to the posturings of the vain and ignorant. We back her call to the hilt. Last year, C4 gave modern dance two hours over the easter week-end, and four episodes of Three Minute Wonder. A total of two and a quarter hours, roughly. On average, there's more (Celeb) Big Brother each and every day of the year. Even on the days when it's not on.

Miscellany

28January

This is the first of thirty-three posts, one per day, marking the last month or so to my 33-and-a-third birthday. The aim of this series is to list, and briefly discuss, 33 of the LPs that were most influential in my musical education. I'm excluding multiple-artist compilation albums, I'm excluding singles collections and greatest hits, and limiting myself to one work per performer. This isn't a list of the 33 best albums I've owned, but 33 of the most influential in my life. And though this is personal, and in a sense is autobiographical, please do not interpret this as a full or complete autobiography.

The story begins in March 1990, when I would attempt to tune in to Radio Scotland's national chart show, which went out between 8 and 9.30 of a Thursday night. With the lighter evenings, reception became increasingly difficult, but I still managed to hear some good tunes. One of them was Kiss this thing goodbye by local act Del Amitri. Frustrated by the single's lack of success nationally, and by local radio's reluctance to play the song, I felt compelled to purchase the record. However, by the time I got into town, the single had gone, and all that was left was the album.

And so it came to pass that the first album I purchased with my own money was Waking Hours, for the princely sum of £4.99. These were ten songs that I'd get to know inside-out - the hand-claps on Kiss this thing goodbye, the melancholic chord progression of Nothing ever happens, the cute lyrical joke on Empty. I think the novelty of having so many songs from one performer rather blinded me to their faults; Del Amitri wasn't a bad bunch of performers, but they were terribly earnest. It turned out that I'd been hooked by the one happy song on the record.

33 and a third

28January

This week, we've been watching...

*MI-High (CBBC), featuring magical power-grabbing rocks. Not entirely sure that the show should be moving into such utterly fantastic territory.
* Panorama (BBC-1), re-tracing the travels of the Polonium-210 that killed Alexander Litvinenko.
* Dead Like Me (Sci-fi), The Bicycle Thief. Didn't get it. Does that make me Jordan Catalano?
* Fifty Pounds Says You'll Watch This (C4), a funky insight into gambling.
* Shipwrecked (C4), which we had planned to watch on Thursday, but was pulled because the channel is a bunch of lily-livered wusses.
* Gilmore Girls (Nick) When you're dating a boy and you’re together for a given amount of time and you're not Amish, then the eventual occurrence of intercourse is inevitable.
* Skins (E4), a very moderate teen drama. Like As If but without the bite.
* 12 Books that Changed the World (ITV) Melvin Bragg can't resist putting his socialist ideals anywhere, can he?

... and listening to...

* Feedback, debating why the Light Programme has axed Your Hundred Best Tunes.

And game shows: The Krypton Factor 1987, Junior Mastermind, University Challenge. But not Shipwrecked. This week's Week is the Fortune write-up postponed from last week.

Media

28January

The march of Tokio Hotel continues, as Durch den monsun, a 2005 chart-topper in their native Germany, comes straight into the top 10 in France. The lads have a new single in Germany, which will probably be huge next week. This week, it's bore band Us 5 in at 2, with casting show losers Soccx entering at 10.

All change in Sweden, where the United DJs' Don't you know comes straight in to the top spot. Linda Sunblad's Lose you comes in at 2, and the Robbie Williams - Pet Shop Boys collaberation She's Madonna creeps in at number 20. Good news for Take That's fan, as Patience begins to take off in Canada - leading the charge is Toronto's finest, CHUM-FM. This week's Finnish number one is Koneeseen kadonnut from local band Apulanta.

 20 16 Fatal Bazooka - Fous ta cagoule
 19 12 Lily Allen - Littlest things
 18 13 Monrose - Shame
 17 NE View - Same jeans
 16 re Beyonce Knowles - Irreplaceable
 15 11 Razorlight - Fall to pieces
 14 18 Red Hot Chili Peppers - Snow
 13  9 Snow Patrol - Chasing cars
 12  4 U2 - Window in the skies
 11  7 Razorlight - America
 10 15 Jojo - Too little too late
  9 10 Cascada - Everytime we touch
  8  8 Fray - How to save a life
  7  2 Take That - Patience
  6 14 Mika - Grace Kelly
  5 20 Just Jack - Stars in their eyes
  4  5 Akon - Smack that
  3  6 Eric Prydz - Proper education
  2  3 Clitring Aguilera - Hurt
  1  1 Nelly Furtado - All good things

Het Grauniad's burbled on about how the BBC is prepared to drop singles from its playlist before release. Not news: the Beeb's been doing this for years. Remember Baz Luhrmann's Everybody's free to wear sunscreen? Popped up on the Radio 2 playlist in April 1999, dropped at the end of May when the joke was wearing a bit thin, before release as a single at the start of June.

Mika retains the top spot, still ahead of Just Jack. Some dance gubbins climbs to 3 on physical release, ahead of Jojo. Fallout Bore lands at 6, one ahead of the Klaxons on physical release. Bloc Party channel the one hit of Bush on The prayer, and Little Man Tate bring in another entertaining romp. Plunge of the week for Jamie T, whose Calm down dearest has gone 40-9-22. Climb is for the Fray, whose physical release has come forward from March to to-morrow.

Keane make the top 40 winks. Larrikin Love enter with their biggest hit to date, but still don't have a top-30 hit. Gossip shout their way in after being tapped up for the soundtrack of E4's new hype show Skins. The song is poor, but better than the lack-of-drama. There's a new entry for Kelis and Ceelo with a decent enough soul number.

Outside the top 40, an awful lot of new entries. Shins (42) and Gwen Steffani (43) might have hoped for better. Space Cowboy should have had a top 10 hit in summer 2002, but didn't, and his work with Nadia Oh only enters at 45. Nas (57), Justine Numberwang (59), Bouncey Knowtalent (60) all have pre-releases, as do rappers Jibbs (63). We're far happier to see Placebo's cover of Running up that hill finally enter at 66 - it's been doing the rounds amongst fans for some years. And Sadie Ama, the younger sister of 1997 hit maker Shola, takes a bow at position 67. Ten years ago, the younger Ama was appearing in a video to a number one single, playing the younger Melanie B in the clip for Mama.

On the albums, the View's Hats Off to the Buskers holds off Good / Bad / Queen. Keane climbs 24-8, Ordinary Bores 37-18, Justine Numberwang re-enters at 26, and Madeleine Peyroux 45-31. Cooper Temple Clause enter at 33 with Make This Your Own, and there are re-entries for Gossip (59), Gwen Stiffani (61), Fallout Bore (68).

 1  1 Mika - Grace Kelly
 2  2 Just Jack - Stars in their eyes
 4  4 Jojo - Too little too late
 5  3 View - Same jeans
 8 38 My Chemical Romance - Famous last words
13 NE Bloc Party - The prayer
16 29 Fray - How to save a life
20 NE Little Man Tate - Sexy in Latin
29 22 Nelly Furtado - All good things
31 NE Larrikin Love - A day in the life
34 42 Gossip - Standing in the way of control
35 30 Razorlight - America
38 35 Razorlight - Fall to pieces
40 27 Guillemots - Annie let's not wait
41 37 My Chemical Romance
  - Welcome to the black parade
44 20 The Good The Bad And The Queen
  - Kingdom of doom
48 41 Feeling - Love it when you call
49 43 Shakira - Hips don't lie
55 39 Automatic - Raoul
64 44 Automatic - Monster
65 64 Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
66 NE Placebo - Running up that hill
67 NE Sadie Ama - Falling
68 47 Mary J Blige - MJB da mvp
69 55 High School Musical OCR - Breaking free

Charts

28January

The ultra-nationalist SRS was the largest party in Serbia's general election last Sunday, winning 28.5% of the vote; it is expected to be excluded from government. The Democrats (22.9%) and Socialists (17%) will lead the coalition talks.

Beiruit was paralysed by a general strike on Tuesday, called by the opposition party Hezbollah. The protesters, an alliance of shi'ites and christians, want the pro-western government to stand down.

In Britain, the director of public prosecutions has said that there is no war on terror, that the Labour party is over-reacting and abandoning its values, and that the implement commonly used for digging in a garden is a spade.

The British government wishes to nationalise the country's universities by stealth. That's the only conclusion we can draw from a letter sent to Oxford University objecting to the institution exercising its right to self-government. A plan for the academics to cede power to external people, including bankers, was turned down last year; the government's funding quango now wants to throw its weight about.

Plans were leaked to split the Interior ministry into two parts. The man we now have to refer to as the Justice minister, John Reid, said this week that Britain's jails are full, and that judges might help the problem by only jailing the most dangerous criminals. Some judges have made a statement by releasing some criminals who might normally be considered for jail, such as paedophiles. Others have said that they will not be dictated to by here-to-day-gone-to-morrow politicians.

Blairwatch has discovered the specification for Number 10's email system. Strict provisions for wiping all traces of email attachments, files and user credentials ... would be critical.

Clive Goodman, the former royal reporter at the News of the Screws, has been sent to jail for four months. His crime was to gain unauthorised access to the mobile telephone mailboxes of the Windsor family and other celebrities. The paper's editor, Andy Coulson, was forced to resign; the paper's proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, is still at liberty and has not commented.

Commuters between Bath and Bristol refused to purchase tickets on Monday, in a protest against the poor quality of service provided in recent weeks. A reduction in the number of trains, and in the length of those that run, has resulted in overcrowding and delays.

Two islands are vying to be Craggy Island. Inis Mor is holding a Father Ted festival next month, featuring such entertainments as a Lovely Girls contest and Hunt the Father Jack. Inis Oirr, where the show's opening titles were filmed, claims that it is the real Craggy Island.

Obituary: Colin Thurston, producer of the early Duran Duran albums and Kajagoogoo's Too shy.

Sport, and Fabrice Desvignes is the winner of this year's Bocuse d'Or, the world championship of competitive cookery. M Desvignes works at the Presidence du Sénat in Paris.

News

28January

A cold and frosty week; Tuesday morning's was the sharpest frost of the winter by three clear degrees. The weather warmed up after a front passed early on Friday, leaving a settled spell.

22 Mo cloud              5/ 9, 0.5
23 Tu sun               -4/ 2
24 We snow flurries      1/ 4, 1.0
25 Th sun               -1/ 4
26 Fr cloud              1/ 8
27 Sa cloud              6/ 9
28 Su sunny spells       5/10

Rainfall this month: 75mm; Monthly average: 74mm.
Degree heating days: 269½
2005-6: 436/808
2004-5: 347½/677½.

Weather