3September

This week's chart was not broadcast on Radio 1, and was replaced by ambient dub music. It struck us at the time that it was a gross over-reaction to completely censor the facts. The Independent Local Radio stations did not broadcast their chart, preferring middle-of-the-road generic tunes. We have somewhat fewer moral qualms about re-publishing a complete chart when the original was never broadcast; for many people, this is the Network Chart they've waited ten years to hear.

(Not only do we have the Network Chart and the Radio 1 Top 40 in full, but we also have some abuse for Mariaaaargh Cantsing. Really, we spoil you.)

En Vogue were still basking in the glory of Don't let go, but Too gone, too long was the wrong sort of mawkishness for this week. It's in at 20, but the group won't return to the top 30 again. Meredith Brooks came down to 19, and the Refugee Allstars and Lauryn Hill put The sweetest thing in at 18. Apparently, this wasn't an official Fugees record, it just contained all three lead members. In at 17 were Bentley Rhythm Ace with Bentley's gonna sort you out. Mike Stokes and Richard March had been making slightly silly records since 1995, doing strange things with lounge music and non-thumpy dance beats. This was the duo's only significant hit. No Mercy were also on the second follow-up to a massive hit, and Kiss you all over could only make 16. Ver Dumper swallowed the group whole, they've not returned to the top 40 since. Out of the top ten came the Notorious BIG (9-15), Backstreet Boys (8-14), Dannii Minogue (6-13), Shola Ama (3-12), and Tina Moore (7-11).

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4September

We've recently come across Matt Deegan's radio and new technology blog. Early highlights include how to sell digital radios, how people in London listen to the steam wireless, and 6 Music is not converting new listeners thus ensuring that it is failing to provide a proper public service, and is merely an exercise in box-ticking from the BBC. Replace it with something between Radios 2 and 3, purlease.

From behind The Pink Door of Frey: Damp Cats.

Teach yourself theoretical physics. The first step, according to the professor: learn English.

Listverse on ten historic radio broadcasts. Eight of them are news events, which don't quite count.

Pat Kane casts an eye over when business suits looked at the interwebs and wonders which wall to put them against when the revolution comes.

Ben Goldacre on how PR puffery makes up fake science.

Bern Leckie is a busy man, programming Core, Life, and Chill for the DAB listeners. He briefly explains what he's doing, and why there's been a creeping change in the stations' sounds over recent months.

A low-tax pressure group claims that the UK government is profiting by £10 milliard from green taxes (€15 md). The group believes that environmental levies should precisely offset the cost of carbon emissions, not a penny more. This is an amazingly naive statement, suggesting that a government should not attempt to influence action by means of taxation. The taxes also cover environmental damage that does not relate to carbon emissions, such as the despoilation of the landscape from building new airports.

That alphabet in full:

Baby CD effigy
Hijack Elmo entropy
Curious SUV
www dot xyz
Now I know my Baby Cs
Next time won't you sing with me?

Not as good as the birds from Jigsaw, but then Janet Ellis was never quite a match for the Henson Company's marketing muscle.

The frequent flyers club (Sid and Doris Duckery-on-the-Chattahoochie) may be interested in Evil, capitalist airports, a Crooked Timber discussion on why airports don't have useful things, like sleeping facilities and places to buy underwear, but do have plenty of outlets for very expensive watches, even more expensive perfumes, and designer luggage.

Better late than never: contactless cash. It's for low-value transactions (under a tenner), and those in London only, but it's a start.

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5September

Mr. GB points out Bradley Fitzpatrick's latest project. It's a curved piece of wood, with spokes linking the rim to a central shaft. He's calling it the whyle...

Once again, Mr. Fitzpatrick has spent a whole load of time on something that has some limited potential, but is designed to be abused by unscrupulous companies, and he's needlessly repeating work that's already been done. We've alluded to it before, and there's now enough of an excuse to present our initial vision of a distributed social network.

This idea from Mr. Fitzpatrick is the social graph, and it boils down to a familiar problem: how do people know who you are when your identity is different across many services? Behemoths like Yahoo solve this problem by amalgamating all identities, by force if necessary, but Mr. Fitzpatrick proposes a slightly more gentle solution. We model the data falling into two distinct sections:

1. A list of a person's publicly-claimed identities on social networking and other internet sites.

2. A list of the identities that a person knows on other services.

(More: Outlining how a completely devolved system under control of the user might work, and criticising the original.) 1600 words.

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5September

It is quite remarkable that, within minutes of finishing our essay on building a better social graph that Bradley Fitzpatrick's, we find that one of our predictions is coming true already. In the far-off land of Earlier To-day, we said:

Mr. Fitzpatrick's proposal won't work. It's certain to be broken by commercial pressures from people who don't fully understand it.

Which brings us to TrustFuse, the parent company of Rapleaf, a company that has been annoying a lot of people by sending them emails. The emails notify the recipient that they've been included in Trustfuse's database, without their consent, and without so much as a chance to opt out. Often, the data held by Trustfuse are inaccurate; where they are not, the data tend to be more revealing than people are comfortable with. It has been suggested (in comment 2) that Trustfuse is harvesting data from its Upscoop utility, and using that data to populate its Rapleaf product. We have no way of knowing whether this is accurate.

Two points arise from this. One: yet again, there is a pressing need for the damned colonials (for Trustfuse is another bunch of identity thieves based in St. Francisville, Arizona West) to adopt something that might pass muster as a data protection law without having its fingers crossed and hiding its horns under a large hat.

And two: would you please be so kind as to look at the company's official advertising blog? Go on, just this once. Humour me. This post here, where Trustfuse (blogging under its Rapleaf pseudonym, and through a fog of hyperbole and adbollok) reckons that Mr. Fitzpatrick's idea is a Very Good One. Why? Because they'll be able to make a huge-ass amount of money from it provide a useful community service out of the goodness of their communist hearts.

In not entirely unrelated news, we learn that Facebook, the biggest waste of time since the 2004 invention of sudoku, is to allow its customers' profiles to be exposed to the world. The profiles can be hidden, but this is an opt-in, not an opt-out. Again, adequate data protection regulations would prevent this. Still, according to a piece in to-day's Indytab, Facebook is for the dull.

Also annoying us to-day

Stephen Sedley, an appeal court judge, has called for everyone to be included on a DNA database. Three points: 1) DNA databases are not as powerful as Mr. Sedley, the police, and the Lord Chancellor's Office would like people to think they are, an argument developed further by Snape's Babe and her erudite commentators. 2) Mr. Sedley is a judge. 3) Judges are there to uphold and interpret the law as it is, not to campaign for the law as they would like it to be, particularly when - like Mr. Sedley - their career was delayed for political reasons. We must interpret this as his intention to resign, and trust that Mr. Sedley will be sending his formal resignation to Lord Chancellor John Straw as soon as possible. We are also confused by the intervention of the Ministry of Funk in this matter: surely the administration of justice is a matter for the Lord Chancellor's Office, under its politically-correct nomenclature, Ministry of Justice.

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6September

Jeanette Biedermann gets the spotlight this week. In the early 00s explosion of pretty young female singers, Jeanette was second favourite to Sarah Connor, but was clearly ahead of her various competitors. Think of her as the East 17 to Connor's Take That.

Jeanette won the 1999 Schlagerwettbewerb contest, sponsored by national tabloid Bild. The closest British equivalent would be The Sun finding a pop singer with large vocal talents. Though she recorded an album Enjoy!, it was a bit rubbish, and she put her pop career on the back burner, securing a place on the soap opera Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten.

A further album, Delicious, came out in late 2001, with all three singles making the top 12. The carousel kept spinning for all it was worth, and third album Rock My Life came out in autumn 2002. The lead single and title track from the album became Jeanette's biggest hit, peaking at number 3 and spending two months in the top ten. The album also contained a cover version of We've got tonight with Ronan Keating; the Irish dullard recycled his vocal track for the British market, substituting the aging Lulu for the bouncy and young Jeanette.

Back to Jeanette, and two more singles - It's over now and Right now were taken from her third album, and all four released made the top 10 in Germany. Album four, Break On Through, was released in late 2003, her fourth album in three years. There was no let-up in the quality, or the success - Rockin' on heaven's floor was the traditional fast opener, while No eternity is a top-drawer power ballad.

It's fair to say that Break On Through is a microcosm of Jeanette's career as a whole, almost alternating between europop fast songs and power ballads. We suggest that she's better on the slow numbers, as the only clunkers are fast ones.

Two more releases followed: a 2003 live album with the imaginative title Jeanette In Concert, and a 2004 festive album with the even more imaginative title Merry Christmas. Jeanette's release in 2005 was Bad girls club, a lumpen mess of a single, which made number 20 on fan-base support, and then scarpered from the chart. Her album Naked Truth crept out in April 2006, and was a bit of a flop; a live release from the tour was an even floppier flop.

We're advised that Jeanette is currently working on a new album, her sixth proper release of the century. We're rather hoping for her to find a sound she can perform well, and she can call her own.

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6September

Congratulations to Muxco, who have won the license to broadcast in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. They beat off an identikit offering from GWRCapital; we're particularly interested to hear the four new services not previously seen on DAB.

Boo yah sux to OFCOM and Kerrang; the West Midlands' worst radio station will now play just 33% new music, making up the balance by playing the same old Foo Fannies and Blue Cold Chilly Pappas nonsense they played an hour ago.

Changes at Radio 1 from 12 October. Cliff Moyles gets an extra half-hour, starting at 6.30, and Greg James takes over the 4am spot, but that's the extent of the changes to daytime.

The change is at the week-ends: Nihal takes week-end breakfast, Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates host a request show from 4. Dick and Dom on da Radio at 10am Sunday. The chart show, now to be hosted by Fearne and Reggie. Kelly Osbourne gives advice on living at 10pm.

And where are Jay Kay and Or Joel? Hosting Play It Back: DJs on Champion FM 2007. Result!

In praise of Bern Leckie

It read here that Mr. Leckie found more unrubbish tunes coming from the rap 'n' bollix side of things than from the guys with guitars. There's an argument that the pool of talent promoted in the UK is far smaller than that available for airplay (why, for instance, has it taken Core two years to start playing Tokio Hotel?) However, within that limited area, he has a point: rock has been a bit rubbish lately.

Pump It or Dump It may have been a gimmick to promote an illusion of interactivity. It may have been a check on Mr. Leckie's choices. Whatever, it was a good idea, and one that fitted in with the station's stated ethos.

There is an article to be written about hits made over the interwebs, but it's very difficult to sort out the genuine hits (Marillion, Katherine Nash) from the genuine hypes (Sandi Thom) and the ones we're not sure about (Lily Allen, Amy MacDonald). One for someone else.

We have a lot of time for Mr. Leckie, he's got his head screwed on, his ears open, and a passion for radio, and that's all too rare. Oh, and this. Allegedly.

(More details on Radio 1's changes, and some context for the Leckie tribute is wanted.)

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7September

A Vote for MMP campaign has set up an office in Toronto and claims a dozen chapters in the province; its opponents have managed to raise just $500 (€350) to print a leaflet.

Grrliz has written about her opposition to a mixed-member proportional voting system. Mat GB has responded to her points. Some weeks late and a couple of euro short, we're going to stick our oar in, discussing the psephology alone. Quotes are from Grrliz unless specified otherwise.

(More: A full discussion of the ins, the outs, and the swings - 1450 words)

The key point, almost eclipsed in both Grrliz and Mat GB's comments, is the final outcome. FPTP almost guarantees that one party will have an majority of seats in parliament, even though they've only got about 40% of the votes. Under MMP, it's only possible to govern alone if a party wins 65 of the local ridings, or half the party vote. That would mean they had support of more than half the voters, and could truly be said to be the people's choice. Assuming that that doesn't happen, it will be necessary for the largest party to govern in coalition with one or more smaller parties. Voters for the NDP, voters for the Greens will, eventually, find themselves in government.

Our preferred method, Probabilistic Representation (get all the ballot papers in one place, pull one out, that person is the winner), is not under consideration here. We agree with Mr. GB that the Single Transferrable Vote, as used in Ireland, is the least bad alternative. MMP is probably the best that the rest of the English-speaking world can do, given its preference for parties rather than people. It's certainly more democratic and inclusive than FPTP and list-PR. Alternative Vote Plus seems to have died a quiet death; it adds a small top-up element to a system that vastly favours the local two parties, and we do not mourn its passing.

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8September

Someone called in to Radio 5 and suggested that Mr. Lloyd Webber should write a musical of Mr. Pavarotti's life. He'd be turning in his grave...

Last year in Jena, Louisiana, the day after two black high school students sat beneath the white tree on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a prank, more black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.

A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. When a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. hey face up to 100 years in prison without parole.

In July 2007, an all-white jury took less than two days to convict 17-year-old Mychal Bell of aggravated battery and conspiracy charges and now faces up to 22 years in prison.

via ... more

Horse power - a proposal to re-introduce working animals to farms, in at least part-replacement of tractors. It's worth considering, as Metafilter has already done, and may be worth experimenting.

Why Veronica Mars failed. We get: a one-series show that got two renewals, interference from the network, and concentrating on the title character when it's Logan and Wallace that are the heroes, at least in dramatic terms.

From an editorial in last week's Economist magazine:

One obvious strategy is to allay concerns over Google's trustworthiness by becoming more transparent and opening up more of its processes and plans to scrutiny. But it also needs a deeper change of heart. Pretending that, just because your founders are nice young men and you give away lots of services, society has no right to question your motives no longer seems sensible. Google is a capitalist tool — and a useful one. Better, surely, to face the coming storm on that foundation, than on a trite slogan that could be your undoing.

NHW follows up on how Rapscoop steals people's emails. The summary: not only are they vulture capitalists, but they lie before breakfast and would feed their grannies to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal if they thought they might get a few bucks for it.

Crooked Timber on Wikipedia at two million. There is something about the project that grates with us, and it seems to be the quality of the articles. To be exact, the poor quality of the articles. Engels at comment 70 just about nails it: Wikipedia is flat and lifeless, a good commentary says more than the mere words. The Britannica has soul.

Also with some literary soul: the great limerick craze of 1907 remembered in the Indytab.

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9September

The big battle is in Finland, where Nightwish and HIM go head-to-head with singles releases. It's Amaranth that has the victory, coming in at 1, while Ville and the lads stall at 3 with The kiss of dawn, held off the runner-up spot by Yö's Rakkautta vain?. Nick and Simon aren't entertainers from Het Goingliveshow, but singers whose Kijk omhoog is straight in at 2 in the Netherlands.

Just one big entry in Germany, James Blunt's 1973 at number 2. Nightwish hit number 16, yet more success for the group. Four records into France's top ten: Pop Idle winner Julien Dore covers Moi... Lolita, originally a 2001 hit for Alizee, and one of the very few Foreign records to hit in the UK. He takes it down an octave, and slows it to a crawl, and it actually works. Mika's Love today is 5, Victoria comes in at 6 with Le heros d'un autre, and Tokio Hotel's Spring nicht makes 9.

Two entries of note in Sweden: Gimme more from Birtney's Pears comes in at 3, and Martin Stenmarck's 100 år från nu enters at 15. In Ireland, Blunty's at 5, and the Slappers are 11.

20 19 Mark Medlock - You can get it
19 17 Azad - Prison break anthem
18 NE Kayne West - Stronger
17 NE Hard-Fi - Suburban knights
16 16 Amy MacDonald - Mr. Rock 'n' roll
15 NE Culcha Candela - Hamma
14 14 Ich + Ich - Von sielbern stern
13 NE Sean Kingston - Beautiful girls
12  6 Åvril Lavignnesøn - When you're gone
11 15 Nelly Furtado - In god's hands
10 13 K T Tunstall - Hold on
 9  7 Marquess - Vayamos campeneros
 8  8 Plain White Ts - Hey there Delilah
 7  9 Mika - Big girl (you are beautiful)
 6  5 Rihanna - Umbrella
 5  3 Robyn - With every heartbeat
 4  2 Mika - Relax (take it easy)
 3  4 Stacey Ferguson - Big girls don't cry
 2 NE James Blunt - 1973
 1  1 Timberyokel - The way oi are

9September

A rum old chart this week, the first of the year without Grace Kelly. We've new Akron to bore the pants off at 74, something from the Rumble Strips at 64, and the Chemical Brothers perform The salmon dance at 60. The one new act to chart this week is Siouxsie; with the Banshees, she had more than 30 hits between 1978 and 1995, progressing from punk to goth as the years ran on. She's not been around since Stargazer crept in at 64 in February 1995; now Into a swan moves into the chart at 59.

Another old stager, the Proclaimers, move up 16 to 58. Go Team's Doing it right enters at 55, Taio Cruz is Moving on but only to 47. Friendly rock types Rooney have their first hit since 2004, When did your heart go missing makes 45 and deserves better. Interpol put Mammoth in at 44. For the second time, Phil Collins's In the air to-night has been used in a television commercial - a number 2 hit on original release in 1981, a number 4 in summer 1988, and now a number 42 smash miss.

Jay Kay and Or Joel may not be on the Top 40 for more than a few weeks, but their favourite record ever, How to save a life, is going to haunt us to the end, back up 18 to 40 this week. Peter Björn and John's Young folks also moves back up 18 to 38, just three places behind its peak from last summer. Highest new entry honours go to Booty Luv, whose instantly-forgettable Don't mess with my man makes 31.

A fast climb - but not the fastest - for Editors, An end has a start storms up 46 to 27 on physical release. The Foo Fighters are up 5 to 23, spoiling their attempt to hold at 28 for a month.

Luciano Pavarotti died this week, and Nessun dorma re-enters at 24. It was originally a number 2 hit in 1990. Fastest climber within the top 40 is from Armand van Helden, up 19 to 19. Reverend and the Makers are up 14 to 16, but are beaten by this week's Elvis re-release, (Let me be your) teddybear, at 14. Two highest entries in the top 75 are from the deceased.

Scouting for Girls have a top ten hit, She's so loverly is up 10 to 9. 24 New Pence and Justin Numberwang have a new peak of 8; we're not sure why Jay Kay and Or Joel warn us about the content of this record in particular, unless they're warning us against egregious crap. Council Estate Slappers have the fastest climber, up 59 to 5 with Sexy no no no. James Blunt climbs from 10 to 4 with 1973, and Kayne concedes number 2 to the Plain White Ts. Sean Kingston's still the best-seller.

On the albums list, Hard-Fi's Once upon a time in the west is straight in at 1, ahead of Amy Whingebag. Plain White Ts put Every second counts in at 3, Newton Faulkner drops to 4, and Athlete put Behind the Neighbourhood in at 5. Sean Kingston's eponymous album enters at 8, and the Proclaimers' Life With You makes it in at 13. That's ahead of The Police (40-15). More new releases: Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn at 22, Jamie Scott's Park Bench Theories at 24, and Kate Rusby's Awkward Annie at 32. Of the Merc nominees, James Morrison moves 43-27, Klaxons 65-41, Bat For Lashes enters at 48.

 7  4 Robyn - With every heartbeat
 9 19 Scouting for Girls - She's so lovely
16 30 Reverend and the Makers - He said he loved me
17 13 Hard-Fi - Suburban knights
22 15 Newton Faulkner - Dream catch me
24 re Luciano Pavarotti - Nessun dorma
26 27 Hoosiers - Worried about Ray
27 73 Editors - An end has a start
30 24 Mika - Big girl (you are beautiful)
32 21 KT Tunstall - Hold on
35 23 Natalie Imbruglia - Glorious
41 29 Åvril Lavignnesøn - When you're gone
44 NE Interpol - Mammmoth
45 NE Rooney - When did your heart go missing
46 37 Amy MacDonald - Mr. rock 'n' roll
49 42 My Chemical Romance - Teenagers
50 51 Reverend and the Makers
  - Heavyweight champion of the world
51 34 Twang - Two lovers
54 40 Mario - How do I breathe
55 NE Go Team - Doing it right
57 48 Arctic Monkeys - Flourescent adolescent
58 74 Proclaimers - Life with you
59 NE Siouxsie - Into a swan
71 60 Gossip - Standing in the way of control
75 47 Moby - Extreme ways

.. 69 Mika - Grace Kelly

9September

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

• Angel Face, by Mike Carey, an urban fantasy novel about a freelance exorcist in a London where the spirits of the deceased walk the earth and annoy the crap out of the living. 24-minute reading, contains some strong language; hardback book.
• Escape from Scorpion Island (RDF for BBC-1/CBBC), wrong in ways we can't quite define yet.
• Idennidy With Donny Osmond (BBC-2), wrong in ways we can define.
• Golden League Athletics (SET1), where the combination of a sensitive effects microphone and too much audio compression effectively drown out the commentator and replace him with a barely-audible mumble.
• Antan Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway (ITV). Is it wrong to switch off when they stop being entertainers and start turning into a human cash machine?

9September

British troops have ceased to occupy the palace at Basra, and claim to be preparing to cease their presence in the province after four and a half years.

A group purporting to represent Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish factions claimed a framework for peace talks was now in place. Martin Bell repeated his call for an independent inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Patience Wheatcroft resigned as editor of the Sunday Telegraph after 18 months in the job, protesting against plans to integrate the paper's newsroom with that of the daily. Her replacement, Ian MacGregor, becomes the paper's fourth editor since autumn 2005.

Canadian prime minister Stephen Harpie has porogued parliament. It will resume on 16 October, after the Thanksgiving break, and after provincial elections in the Northwest Territories (1 Oct), Newfoundland (9 Oct), Ontario (10 Oct), and Saskatchewan (by early December). Upon the return, Mr. Harpic will have to propose a speech from the throne: this is, in effect, a motion of confidence on his minority Conservative government, and sets up the possibility of a federal election before the end of November.

Ashley Mote (England SE, Xenophobia International) has been jailed for nine months after falsely claiming £65,000 (€96,000) in benefits. Though a convicted criminal, Mr. Mote will not be expelled from the European parliament: for that, he needs to be imprisoned for a year.

The European Parliament voted against restrictions on aircraft hand luggage. The restrictions, imposed last year after ancien British interior minister John oh fuck Reid mistook Hollywood for reality, bars liquids from aircraft cabins unless they've been placed in a Magic Plastic Bag that will turn them into solid gold, or something equally outlandish. The European Commission refused to accept Parliament's say, and continues to refuse to publish the rules under which Europeans fly. Constitutional experts continue to argue whether unpublished rules actually have any effect.

Ian Paisley announced that he would step down as leader of the Church of Ian Paisley.

Poland will hold a parliamentary election next month, following the resignation of the prime minister, Mr. Kaczynski.

We regret to report the death of Luciano Pavarotti, a tenor.

9September

A very settled week, with high pressure in charge. The days were mostly sunny, though light breezes ensured that the morning cloud cover was progressively more difficult to shift.

03 Mo rain o/n, sun     11/18, 3.0
04 Tu sun                6/19
05 We cloud to sun      14/22
06 Th cloud to sun      14/23
07 Fr sun               11/21
08 Sa cloud             12/17
09 Su sunny spells

Rainfall in September: 3mm; monthly average: 61mm

Degree cooling days: 85
2006: 329/360
2005: 230/238
2004: 193/198
2003: 295/328