9July

Chinese troops marched onto Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. The British government offered no resistance to this illegal occupation of her territory. The UK government was accused of being slow to provide assistance to her dependency of Monserrat, where a volcano had been erupting for over a week. The Pathfinder space probe landed on Mars, and the Rover Sojourner began to roam about the planet.

There was a tremendous discrepancy between the melodic light rock popular in North America in 1997 and the more hard-edged material doing the business in the UK. How else can we explain the poor showing given to Live, whose biggest hit in the UK had been Lakini's juice in March of 1997, ahead of actually-remembered tracks such as Lightning crashes (33 in January 1996) and I alone (48 in February 1995). Their new hit from this week ten years ago was Freaks in at 60. In at 54 came Jakob Dylan and his band the Wallflowers, whose one and only UK hit One headlight could reach no higher than number 54. It deserved an awful lot better, but the group sailed completely under the radar in the UK –indeed, we picked up our copy of parent album Bringing Down the Horse for three quid in late 1999. The Flowers have recorded three albums in the years since, but have yet to trouble the top 75 singles chart.

(More: swan-song for Gun, the beginning of the end of Teenage Fanclub, and the up-to-the-decade BBC.)

Highest new entry honours went to 911, whose The journey came in at 3. A top three hit that we had to seek out to remember anything about, and a quick read of the lyrics confirms the song's utter vapidity. In these days, record companies could rely on 50,000 ten year old girls investing two quid in pieces of shiny plastic. It's a strange way of making a living, but it worked for a time. Second week at number 2 for Sash!, and third week at the top for Puff Daddy's I'll be missing you. He'll face a tremendous battle to retain the top spot next week, as the first new single from Oasis in eighteen months is out next week, and has been in the top 20 airplay charts for the past fortnight.

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9July

Channel 4 has been awarded the UK's second national DAB multiplex, and expects to broadcast from July 2008. The proposed services are:

E4 Radio - interactive music and entertainment station for 15- to 29 year-olds.
Talk Radio - speech (mostly phone-ins) from UTV
Closer - women 30+ with mix of current and classic chart music, EMAP
Sky News Radio - 24-hour rolling comedy, BSB and Chrysalis
Sunrise Radio UK - Asian music and culture, already available in some regions.
Virgin Radio Viva - aimed at women 15-30
Original - album-led music station for 40- to 59-year-olds, from CanWest
Radio Disney - replacement for Capital Disney.

Two stations will launch during the first year of operation:

Channel 4 Radio - contemporary speech-based station for 30- to 54-year-olds, offering comment, drama, comedy and documentary programming (late autumn 2008)
Pure4 - knowledgeable, accessible radio station offering music and modern culture (mid-2009).

This multiplex will be available to about 80% of the country; major gaps include K*nt and Sussex, East Anglia, West Wales, and rural parts of the West Country.

We have no idea what Norman Lebrecht makes of this, even without his spear and magic helmet.

UK Polling Report looks into the opinion poll ratings of new prime ministers. The most successful new men were the unexpected new men, Mr. Douglas-Home and Mr. Major.

The Indytab reports: Mr Barry Bradley, 47, has eaten 15 fried breakfasts in one sitting at the Premier Travel Inn, Tonbridge, after paying £7.50 for "all you can eat".

How useful is election canvassing? In the best thing we'll ever get to a scientific test, it increases turnout by 7%. Is this a significant difference? Perhaps.

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11July

In the ongoing discussion of whether Facebook has merit, we've had a communication from Mat GB. Mr. GB writes,

I pay a lot more attention to posted.php, shared links with commentary, very much like social bookmarking a la del.icio.us.

So, a weblog per the original definition, aggregated across a number of nodes. Rocket science, in the sense of "yer chuck stuff out one way and go in the other."

And to notes.php, a friends page full of journal entries and imported feeds. If one of my friends sets their blog/journal feed to import, their posts show up there. If they don't, they don't, and you have complete control over it. Some friends enable comments on the import, others don't; the latter is a very nice touch.

So, a semi-public journalling site doing what other sites have been doing for longer. Rocket science using the same definition as above.

I remain of the opinion that Facebook is now what Livejournal could and should have been about two years ago, it's taken the best elements of LJ, Twitter, MySpace (there are good bits) and combined them.

We can certainly see Mr. GB's logic there; whether this is what Livejournal should have become is a matter of opinion.

We stand by our earlier point about the mind-boggling triviality of ωικωσ.φπ, but Mr. GB has explained the worth of some other features. We thank him for his diligence.

This brings us to a final and related note: Facebook has implemented a closed network, a walled garden apart from the rest of the world. The greater internet is unable to see much of the site, or many of its features. The only way to see anything that might pass muster as potentially interesting is to sign up for an account. That, we suspect, would explain its explosive growth in recent months. Whether that translates into customers who remain with the site remains to be seen; the forced lock-in may prove more sticky, but may create customer resistance that would be prevented by a more open model.

To other matters, and ten memories of this year's Wmbldn. People are walking around with umbrellas up. Lightning and umbrellas don't go well together - we suggest you take them down.

The Chris Lightfoot Memorial Bar Chart Analysis. (And if anyone from the MoT is reading this, your RSS feed is still broken. Entity errors, or something.)

R. Kelly has awarded the Cross-Country Trainset to Arrivat Rains, who promise a programme of toilet removals, fare rises by 3.4% above inflation, and over £1 milliard quid of guaranteed profit by 2016.

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12July

Amongst many other proposals, a Conservative party review has suggested allowing non-working people to transfer their personal tax allowance to their husband or wife. This is a bizarre proposal, as the option to transfer the tax credit (reducing the tax bill by approximately £1000 per annum) was abolished by Mr. Major in his 1990 budget. A separate tax allowance for married couples was phased out by Mr. Brown between 1997 and 2000; it would now be worth an additional £500 per annum for basic-rate taxpayers. His predecessor Mr. Clarke had removed the allowance for higher-rate taxpayers in April 1994.

In their proposal, the Conservatives are answering the wrong question. The question they are answering: is right or wrong to give a tax break to married couples. The question they should be addressing: whether there is truth in the oft-repeated canard that children whose parents are not married are disadvantaged. The evidence is not clear. Since divorce became available to the majority of people in 1969, the number of children born and/or raised outside a state-sanctioned marriage has increased. In the early years of this reform, many divorcees did not re-marry, and their children achieved lower examination grades than children from married couples. Upon maturity, these children and their peers have tended not to marry, but to form stable co-habiting relationships. It is too early to tell whether the children of these stable but unmarried relationships achieve worse examination grades, or are less successful by other definitions of success than their peers.

Other contributions on this topic: Nick Robinson, Snape's Babe.

Time to Ask the Underground a roads question. When driving, how would you get from Kensington High-street to the M1? Very roughly, head for Marylebone. Along KHS to Church-street (just to the west of HSK tube, and opposite Daily Hell Towers). Up Church-street, running parallel to the District-circle. You're forced to turn right into the Bayswater-road, follow this along the north side of Hyde Park to Lancaster-terrace, at the Lancaster Gate tube station, for this section runs on top of the Central line. Turn up Lancaster-terrace, do a shimmy around Sussex-gardens, and another one round Sale-place, into Chapel-street, and eventually to the Old Marylebone-road. This brings you out on the eastern end of the Westway, roughly at Edgware Road. Turn right into the main Marylebone-road, then left up Gloucester-place (signposted for the A41, Barnet, Hatfield and the North), and follow that road until it magically turns into the M1 somewhere around Finchley. From the turn into Church-street to the turn into Gloucester-place is just over 2.5 miles, there's then a run of about 7 miles up the A41. We reckon the trip would take about 30 minutes daytime off-peak. Also of use: TFL's list of official car parks at tube stations. Other parking facilities exist, though they are not official.

And it's a good job you didn't ask how to get to the source of the M1, for that is near a bush in Hyde Park. Or at least it was when the intrepid explorers of Instant Sunshine found it in 1979.

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12July

We do seem to be taking a most elliptical route in our series entitled The Germans Have All The Best Hits. The next entry is a bit of a cheat, as it could fall into the series of What Have They Done To My Song, Ma?

The tale begins in 1984, when spiky-haired guitar-and-synth legend Nik Kershaw (for it is he) wrote the very strange song The Riddle. It was a number 4 hit in his native UK, and performed well around the world. It was Nik's fourth big hit in slightly less than a year, and would turn out to be his last performance of any significance - he would return to the chart as a songwriter some years later, but we'll come to that when recounting 1991 nostalgia next year.

Also in 1984, Gigi D'Agostino began producing and mixing records. In the 1990s, he moved from his native Italy to the UK, and eventually turned out a few hits. Bla bla bla (1998) was his biggest international hit, but his largest success in Germany was the number 4 placing in May 2000. Here's that top-four smash, The riddle - words and music Nik Kershaw, arranged by D'Agostino.

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12July

Still playing catch-up from very old posts; this is from Facebook and Marxism published a month ago. Mr. Pokery comments primarily on the mechanisms of building a better web presence.

This all steps around the question of how sites are financed, especially when the users develop the content. Aside from policy decisions that the site should be an encyclopedia of sorts rather than a repository of knowledge, and what sort of encyclopedia it should be, does the way Wikipedia works financially offer possibilities?

Mr. Pokery is correct to observe that paying the bills is important. From what we can gather, Wikipedia appeals for donations from its users, and accepts corporate sponsorship. It is unclear what proportion of its income comes from each source, and it is not clear what – if any – advantages the corporate sponsors gain from the arrangement. Though this opacity is very poor, the broad structure would not be unreasonable.

Would a putative LJ-codebase site run as a co-operative or on some other slightly more democratic system appeal?

Honesty, transparency, and democracy are the key qualities here. The particular software is relatively unimportant; if the general view is to use the free parts of the Livejournal software, then that would be a logical step, but we would yield to those with greater technical knowledge.

A co-operative society, or a body established in the spirit of a co-operative society, would address the fundamental problem of power abstracting from the people writing the content to the people publishing the content, by making the two groups identical. Whether it would have a place on the heavily decentralised Web 3.0 postulated in the original article is unlikely, but that is a bridge to cross in a number of years.

At the end of the day, things are about community; I've been so annoyed by the developments that I've been seriously tempted to leave – and am very interested in following your move as a model, watching your ability to communicate with people who haven't left – but there are always good reasons to make "just one post more" to "all the people you'd be leaving behind".

The tools of the trade include a good RSS reader – current preference here is RSS Owl, Java-based, includes the ability to use the ?auth=digest flag for password-protected feeds, and aggregates an entire category (or even all the feeds) onto one webpage. (Or PDF file, for print-off-and-read-later goodness.) It's not perfect, it has a love-hate relationship with some feeds (particularly Atom-spec, particularly Blogspot, particularly particularly Diamond Geezer), but it's the least worst we've found so far.

Other tools – a whizzly little HTML editor with customisable macros, an enquiring mind, enough time – are things one either has or doesn't have.

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15July

After what seems like months of stasis in Germany, there's a new chart-topper. It's from Pop Idle winner Mark Medlock, and is called You can get it. Recent Popstars winners Monrose are in at 2, with Hot summer. In any other week, a new song from siren Sarah Connor would be huge news; this week, Sexual healing (with Kneeo) is the third highest new entry at 11. A new chart-topper in France, where it's congratulations to Mika. Relax (take it easy) is the new best-seller, ahead of top ten entries from Alexandra Lucci, Les Deésses, and Superbus. New in Luxembourg comes top Canadian singer Nelly Furtado and leading Spanish light Juanes, performing a track called Te busque. Christope Willem takes over at the top in Walloonia. And a new leader in Denmark – Teddy Pedersen's Brudevalsen as Trine Dyrholm drops down to number 3. And, in old Eurovision news, Yuliya Savicheva (RU04) hits the top 20 in Latvia, performing Nikak.

20 20 DJ Ötzi - Ein stern
19 17 Timberland et al - Give it to me
18 12 Gregory Lemarchal - De temps en temps
17 10 Åvril Lavignnesøn - Girlfriend
16 NE Christophe Willem - Double je
15 NE Editors - Smokers outside the hospital doors
14 11 Marquess - Vayamos campeneros
13 13 Fray - How to save a life
12 16 Michael Bublé - Everything
11 19 Reverend and the Makers
  - Heavyweight champion of the world
10 15 Mark Medlock - Now or never
 9  8 Mika - Grace Kelly
 8  7 Beyonce / Shakira - Beautiful liar
 7  9 Mutya Buena - Real girl
 6  3 Linkin Park - What I've done
 5  4 Enrique Iglesias - Do you know?
 4  3 Nelly Furtado - Say it right
 3  6 Mika - Relax (take it easy)
 2  5 Åvril Lavignnesøn - When you're gone
 1  1 Rihanna - Umbrella

15July

Outside the top 40, new entries for Paul Weller and Graham Coxon (This old town, 67), Cold War Kids (Hang me up to dry, 65 on a re-issue), Hamfatter (Sziget, 54), Dykeenies (Clean up your eyes, 53), and Amerie (Gotta work, 46). Good climbs for Gossip, and after a year on the chart, Snore Patrol's Chasing cars has dropped just 19 places, it's this week's number 44.

For no adequately explored reason the Foo Fighters have lots of re-entries this week; Best of you was the group's biggest hit, making number 4 in June 2005, and re-enters at 38 this week. Another climb for the Fray, back up five to 34, and another new hit for Mika, sounding almost exactly like each of his other three. Carry on at this rate and we'll start to get bored, chuck. Not entirely sure why Frankie Valli is up forty-odd places at 32 with Begging, even with a remix. Frankie was last amongst us with the theme to Grease in autumn 1978, the Four Seasons had been missing from the top 40 for a year longer, but almost made it back with December '63 in 1988.

Travis come in at 30 with the rather rubbish Selfish Jean, and Nelly Furtardo's dropped three to 29. It's her fourth week there, and only Andy Williams's A Scottish soldier (seven in total) managed more. Bloc Party enter at 22 with Hunting for witches, the third single from their current album, and (er) it's got an interesting beat. Highest new entry comes from Super Mal, with the silly-dance Bigger than this.

Groove Armarda move up 38 to 16 with Song for Mutya, featuring vocals from the quondam Sugababe. Kings of Leon scoot up 41 places to 13 with Fans, something we didn't think they had so many of. Or, indeed, any of. Lily Allen's cover of Oh my god leaps 8 to 12, and Justin Numberwang's Lovestoned climbs a place to 11. Lily is out on physicals to-morrow, and must be the least worst bet to move up to number 1.

Into the top ten for My Chemical Romance, Teenagers is up 7 to 9. Arctic Monkeys were the act most likely to threaten the dominance, but fall somewhat short. Still, an eighteen-place climb is not to be sneezed at. Rest of the top five: Timberland at 4, Katherine Nash slips to 3, and Stacey Ferguson climbs to 2. That leaves Rihanna holding on to the top spot for a ninth week. Lest we forget, only seven songs have spent longer than nine weeks (consecutive or otherwise) as the UK's best-seller. And none since the beginning of the rock 'n' roll era have done so on such pitifully low sales as Rihanna. Her aggregate sale after nine weeks at the top is still only 350,000 copies, barely in the top 100 for the decade so far, behind such classics as Madonna's cover of American pie, Mambo number 5 by Bob the Builder, and We are the cheeky girls.

On the albums front, Enemy come straight in at the top with We'll Live and Die in These Towns. Interpol enter at 2 with Our Love to Admire, and the Smashing Pumpkins are in at 4 with their Zeitgeist. Congrats to Cherry Ghost, Thirst for Romance is in at 7, and Kings of Leon rebound from 41 to 10. Arctics, Mika, Numberwang, and Timberland all climb in the top 20. Big climbs from Babs Streisand (25 and 60), Stacey Ferguson (51), Ill Divo (32), Nataaaaasha Bedingfield (34), Paolo Nutini (42), and Kasabian (56). Lower entries from New Young Pony Club (54), Victoria Hart (61), and Gogol Bordello (67).

 5 23 Arctic Monkeys - Flourescent adolescent
 6  3 Åvril Lavignnesøn - When you're gone
 8  5 Hoosiers - Worried about Ray
 9 16 My Chemical Romance - Teenagers
17 11 Jack Penate - Once and never happy hour again
20 17 Enemy - Had enough
23 15 Reverend and the Makers
  - Heavyweight champion of the world
33 69 Mika - Big girl (you are beautiful)
34 39 Fray - How to save a life
36 30 Mutya Buena - Real girl
41 28 Editors - Smokers outside the hospital doors
42 41 Holloways - Generator
43 33 Kelly Clarkson - Never again
50 42 White Stripes - Icky thump
51 43 Fray - Over my head
52 46 Cherry Ghost - People help the people
53 NE Dykeenies - Clean up your eyes
57 55 Åvril Lavignnesøn - Girlfriend
59 74 Calvin Harris - Acceptable in the eighties
60 62 Mika - Grace Kelly
61 63 Mika - Love to-day
63 re Gossip - Standing in the way of control
65 NE Cold War Kids - Hang me up to dry
73 44 Scouting for Girls - It's not about you
74 49 Lily Allen - Smile

.. 57 Go! Team - Grip like a vice
.. 59 Smashing Pumpkins - Tarantula
.. 71 Nelly Furtado - Maneater
.. 72 Lily Allen - LDN
.. 31 Interpol - The Heinrich manouvere
.. 35 Mess 29 - Over the barricades

15July

This week, we've been watching and hearing...

• How David Dimbleby Built Britain (BBC-1) Down a black hole into Manchester, and how to build a proper railway station the Newcastle way.
• Tour de France (ITV4) A remarkable week – the yellow jersey attacks, one of the favourites falls off, and it's still the first week of three.
• Panorama (BBC-1) Jeremy Vine salutes the people who stood up to the comedy terrorists. The usual sort of comedy terrorist, all comedy.
• Fort Boyard (TV5) Whose bright idea was it to allow someone with a gimmy hand in, eh?
• James Mays' Twentieth Century (OU / BBC-2) Floppy-haired bloke looks into cars and rockets and television and other stuff. Sadly, it's not the wit and wisdom of Neil Oliver, but the less illuminating vim-vim-vim of some English bloke.
• The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Twenty Twenty / BBC-1) Cracking little show, though a very strange production.
• Feedback (Radio 4) Including an investigation into why the Beeb gave so much time to Ali Campbell, and what that Radio 1 Test thing on DAB is all about. Pictures on the radio, apparently.
• Called to Account (Radio 4) A 90-minute production of reasons why Mr. Blair should or should not have been impeached.

15July

Four men were jailed for life after planting fake bombs on 21 July 2005; charges against two others were not determined. The devices failed to explode in anything more than a phut, no-one was injured, and the terror that had been part of London for almost two weeks was extinguished in a bundle of laughs.

Prochain ancien British prime minister Mr. Brown announced the Queen's speech, traditionally delivered by Mrs. Queenie in November. Mr Brown suggested that his government would build three million new houses by 2020, introduce a mortgage at a fixed-rate for 25 years for first-time buyers, introduce measures to force employers to contribute to pension funds, and will review the limit for detaining terrorist suspects with a view to increasing the present 28 days. In a separate announcement, Mr. Brown stated that the government would review the massive casino set to destroy the east of Manchester town centre. He has other ways of regenerating the centre of Manchester.

Conrad Black, the newspaper magnate, has been convicted of defrauding shareholders in his Hollinger newspaper group, and obstruction of justice. He was cleared of charges of racketeering.

Russia has rejected the latest resolution on Kosov@, stating that it was independence under another name. She has also withdrawn from a treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe.

A panel of eminent scientists published a paper investigating a link between solar emissions and warming on Earth. The paper suggested that the sun was most probably not the sole cause of warming, but was unable to rule out measurement errors. The debate continues.

The BBC issued an apology to Brenda Battenburg after showing journalists a clip that appeared to depict her flouncing out of a photo-shoot. Mr. Fincham, Controller, BBC-1, rode out calls from the more hysterical elements of the press for his resignation.

15July

There was snow in Buenos Aries for the first time in 89 years. Locally, it's been another week of relative cold, and regular showers. This has been the order of the day since 12 June, and shows no signs of stopping. Thursday was the joint-warmest day of the year, tying 9 June at a whopping 24°C. No fewer than 34 days last summer reached at least 25°C.

09 Mo sun and showers    9/17, 1.5
10 Tu sunny spells      10/19
11 We rain o/n, cloud   13/18, 2.0
12 Th sunny spells      13/24
13 Fr showers           14/17, 7.5
14 Sa rain o/n, sun     15/21, 5.5
15 Su rain clearing     12/18,10.0

Rainfall in July: 65mm; monthly average: 69mm

Degree cooling days: 38
2006: 151/360
2005: 124/238
2004: 59/198
2003: 130/328