Here's something you don't see often enough: a Blue Nile single. Indeed, it's the high-water mark of the band's UK singles chart career. Paul Buchanan, Robert Bell, and Paul Moore had formed the band while at university in 1981, and released their first full album A Walk Across the Rooftops in 1984. Though it only sold modestly, it set the scene for their second album, 1989's Hats. Songs of love, songs of honesty, songs that will turn up in twenty years on Michael Gove's MP3 player. There were three singles from this album: The downtown lights (67 in 1989), Headlights on the parade (72 in 1990), and Saturday night, new at number 50. Another five year wait followed until the group's third album, Peace at Last (1996), and High came out in 2004; from the latter album, single I would never peaked at 52. Four albums in twenty years is a frustratingly slow pace, but they are of such high quality that the wait is worth it.

(Also: Power of Dreams, London Boys, Maureen, Black Crowes, Brother Beyond, David Lee Roth, the Stranglers, The High, Pop Will Eat Itself, C&C Music Factory, and Seal.)

Up 8 to 7 went Jesus Jones, with International bright young thing. The group formed in 1988, and rather rush-released their first album the following year. By the time of the second album, Doubt, there was a tremendous buzz around the group - we recall a piece in Select magazine that said they were so new, you could still smell the cellophane around them. Two singles the previous year had easily made it into the top 40, and the album's immediate precursor would go on to be their biggest hit single. Two more singles were plucked from the album, the band had another top tenner with The devil you know from 1993's Perverse, and an attempted comeback in 1997 would only have been more flat if it had been run over by a steam-hammer. In North America, Right here right now was the group's signature hit; in the UK, they're remembered - if at all - as International Brit Young Things.

A one-place climb for Enigma took Sadeness part one to the top spot, which it had already reached in France and Germany. The group - the brainchild of Michael Crétu - was an exotic combination of Gregorian chant, new-age beat, and restrained techno thump: the closest analogy was the offspring of Enya and the KLF. By rights, this should have been a one-hit wonder, but Enigma managed to spin out three more top ten albums, and the 1994 chill anthem Return to innocence made number 2. (Is it logically possible to have chill anthems? Let's not go there...) By the late-90s, the inspiration was clearly coming from such contemporary classicists as Anne Dudley, and flowing to many cheap-and-grubby faux-spiritual groups, of which Bond was the first, and Libera the most shameless. By 2006, Enigma was restricted to their committed fans, the last two albums had only been available as new age imports. The part one designation on Sadeness comes from its position of the album MCMXC AD - it's the first four-and-a-bit minutes of a 12-minute track called Principles of lust.

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In comments, Quirks wrote,

The simple fact is that NSBH does not have enough track for such a key station. Frankly, it should be at least the largest junction station in the country (ahead of Clapham Junction's 16 platforms). Even visiting it at two rather calm times - 7am on a Monday and 8pm on a Sunday - it was evident that more space was probably needed, and this was certainly clear on the Saturday afternoon I was there. With no room to build more track at New Street, a new station altogether is surely required.

Here's where a little local knowledge is a fine thing, enabling us to consider the rail network around Birmingham as a whole. The official network map is rather large and not particularly useful. The lines can, slightly inaccurately, be conceptualised as points of a compass:

• NE (red on the linked map) - NS to Lichfield
• E (grey) - NS to Nuneaton
• SE (orange) - NS to Coventry
• S (green) - Snow Hill to Tysley (thence to Stratford or Solihull)
• SW (red) - NS to Longbridge
• W (green) - Snow Hill to Stourbridge (never mind that it actually exits to the north...)
• NW (purple) - NS to Wolverhampton
• N (blue) - NS to Walsall, diverging from the NW branch about 2½ miles out of the city.

When the network was originally built, the tram line from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton (the thin black line) was proper railway, going to Wolverhampton's old Low Level station. (Other routes have opened and closed over the years: the Rail Around Birmingham site has more detail than we need here.)

What the schematic map doesn't fully show is the range of connections. Coming out of the east end of New-St, it's possible to reach the N, NE, E, SE, S, or SW branches easily, and the NW via a long diversion. Out of the west end of New-St, there are easy routes to the SW, W, NW, and N, and fairly long diversionary routes to the others.

From the north side of Snow Hill, the only option is to go West; from the south end, the only option is to go South.

Trains coming into the region can go from any branch to any other branch without reversing, with the exception of NE to N (well, they can, but only on a route from Lichfield to Walsall, and not used for passenger traffic in many years). However, most of these routes are rarely used, and add significantly to the journey time. They also omit those rather useful stops in central Birmingham.

We're not convinced that Central Birmingham as a whole is short of platform space. There are 12 through platforms at NSBH, with two bay platforms (one used for public working only in emergencies) and two non-platform through routes also available. Snow Hill has three through platforms (four when the trams finally get to run through the city centre in about three years) and there are three unused terminal platforms at Moor-street, about which more anon. The signalling arrangements aren't brilliant, but reconstruction at the east end of NSBH in 2000 (see Proof House remodelling) has had tremendous benefits for resiliance. In practice, NSBH is almost two stations in one - trains towards Bristol and Derby using the high-numbered platforms 8-12, trains towards Wolverhampton and Coventry using low numbers, and rarely do the two routes intertwine.

What it does need is less of a claustrophobic feel. Raising the roof over the most part of the station would help. So would removing the ramps that were previously used to help mail trains, the ones that occupy half of the width of every platform at one end. From the brief glimpse we got of Leeds station last summer, that's the sort of thing they should be aiming for.

Our plan for the local network would be two-fold: some pointwork south of Moor-street, and two new spur lines.

First, bring the terminal platforms at Moor-street into use. Chiltern Railways spent millions renovating the station, rebuilding the dilapidated Victorian shell, and turning it into a perfectly decent terminus. For reasons that completely fox us, Network Rail has consistently refused - for reasons that strike us as irrational - to schedule the point-work required to connect those platforms to the main line, ensuring that Chiltern's trains have to run through to Snow Hill to terminate. Opening up those platforms frees up space at Snow Hill.

Next, build an junction where the W and N lines appear to meet near Soho. The W line actually passes directly above the N line, with no link between. This would allow heavy trains to go from Snow Hill to Walsall. It would remove two trains per hour on that stretch of line, and - as the junction with the Wolverhampton line is flat - ensure that trains going to Walsall don't need to impede the many trains coming down from Wolverhampton. An all-way junction would give an additional diversionary option for services from Wolverhampton, and (in extremis) cross-country services from the north-west; this could be achieved by routing cross-country trains via Bescot.

The final improvement: build a line from Moor-street to Grand Junction to Adderley Park, allowing trains heading south from Moor-street to get to NE, E, and SE lines, and vice versa. In particular, it allows cross-country trains from all directions to divert via Snow Hill if needed. Without expanding Snow Hill massively, this would have to be an emergency diversion, rather than something regularly run in normal service, but the flexibility would be most useful.

For electric trains to run to Walsall would require wires to be strung from Soho to Snow Hill, which shouldn't be a problem. If the route were to be used as a diversion for London trains, the wires would have to reach through the Snow Hill tunnel under Birmingham city centre, and that might present greater problems.

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In comments to the arts stratification, Gizensha wrote a couple of tables that could probably use a bit of proper tableifying. He proposes Koster's human activity matrix:

There are three user goals (constructive, experiential, and deconstructive) and three participation groups (collaborative, competitive, and solo). Take one from each category, arrange in a grid, and you have, roughly speaking:

	Collaborative	Competitive	Solo
Constructive	Community	Job	Hobby
Experiential	Performance	Sport	Audience
Deconstructive	Teaching	Criticism	Analysis

And basically any activity with any medium will fit into one of those nine categories. For music, for example:

	Collaborative	Competitive	Solo
Constructive	Co-Composers	Busking	Practicing
Experiential	Public Performance	Performance Competitions	Listening For Enjoyment
Deconstructive	Ear-Training	Music Criticism	Analysis

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Think we're all back in one piece. If someone finds something missing, leave a comment, or drop an email, or something.

For the record, this website was unavailable between about 5pm on 16 January and about 1pm on 17 January, owing to a major system failure at our web host. We are assured that everything has been restored from backups.

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Des Browne is the current Minister for War. He says, The operations in Iraq removed a despicable regime that brutally oppressed its people and threatened the security of the region. But that, as Mr. Browne fully knows, was not the reason why the UK co-operated in the invasion of the country. According to claims at the time, there were chemical, biological, and/or nuclear weapons ready to be deployed within an hour. As Mr. Browne also knows, no such weapons have ever been found.

Andreas Whittam Smith doesn't believe a word that Peter Hain says. Three days ago he said, "I just want to make it clear that when mistakes have occurred in the past, I have never dumped on assistants or civil servants. I will not start doing so now."... Yesterday he was reported as feeling "personally betrayed" by those who had worked for him. Not-dumping-on-assistants lasted just 48 hours.

In what's probably going to be our last word on the media's favourite website, Tom Hodgkinson explores the political leanings of Fay's Manuscript's backers. They're an unsavoury, ultra-capitalist mob, politically-correct enough to get them welcomed to Russia with open arms. Well, they would, if they didn't accept money from a vulture capitalist fund linked to the CIA. The site's customers are seen as sheep, willing to copy each other without really thinking, and prepared to sell themselves for — well, for nothing more than a bit of convenience.

Those who wish to be part of this may do so. Don't expect us to do anything to help the revolution, for we shall never share its values.

Which brings us to The New Russia, which wishes to cut her cultural links with the UK on rather spurious grounds. We had a chap killed by Russian agents, we asked for someone to stand trial for this murder, the Russians refused. We threw out a handful of diplomats who appeared to be spying, the Russians respond by ordering the British Council to close. Now, the head of the British Council in Leningrad has been arrested and released on completely trumped-up charges. If the Russians want to play nasty, we'll give as good as we get. And we'll remind people still using Livejournal that you are indirectly helping to pay for this cultural barbarism.

Still with Six Apart's Bloody Stupid Ideas, we absolutely refuse to have anything to do with YADIS, or Open ID, or whatever it's called this week. It will never be a single sign-on for the web. YADIS needlessly creates a single point of failure: as soon as a YADIS server is compromosed, everyone who has created an account with that provider will find their identity compromised everywhere on the internet. Furthermore, inventors Six Apart have already demonstrated that YADIS can be abused for narrow commercial interests, completely revealing Bradley Fitzpatrick's claim that it's for the good of the web as a load of bullshit from someone who never ceases to amaze us with his naivety. (See: disable Open ID for Livejournal). We deem the system to be utterly broken, and absolutely refuse to contribute to this dangerous and ill-considered conceit.

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Musical Amy watch

In spite of having the UK's best-selling album last week, and selling more copies in total than the Pony Club's best in show Katherine Nash, Miss MacDonald has been completely overlooked for the BPI awards; in keeping with our boycott of Radio 1's top 40 show until Reggie starts feelin' it, that's the last we'll be talking about this year's ceremony.

Teletext blew its gasket over the absence of Mrs. Whingebag from the awards we're not talking about. There's a perfectly simple reason: she didn't release a new album in the qualifying year, November to October. Still, never let the facts stand in the way of a good rant.

Sometimes, the title says it all: The return of Miss Studt.

Over at the Eurovision mailing list, there are mutterings about Miss Diamond, the Swedish pop poppet, representing her country on the big stage. Before placing any bets, readers may wish to ascertain if Miss Diamond is actually old enough to perform: she's certainly got a birth certificate from the 1990s, and we have a recollection that it's 1992, possibly making her ineligible under the 16-year-old minimum.

In alarmingly similar territory, readers are cautioned that the Smurfs are coming back. Again. The fiftieth anniversary of the diminuative blue Belgians will be marked by a new television series, and probably some more very dubious records. We're still holding out hope for a release of the group's lost classic, Wondersmurf, blocked by the killjoy Noel Gallagher in 1996 when he was famous.

Another hangover from that time is the stage musical Rent, a re-tread of La Boheme that has achieved the status of legend, more through off-stage activities than any quality of the plot. Anywhoo, the show will leave Broadway at the beginning of June, presumably to tour elsewhere in Gloucestershire afterwards.

Jay Kay and Or Joel discuss why the radio industry's in such a mess. Actually, they don't, they just meander on in a mildly entertaining but instantly forgettable way.

Overgrown Path is a thorn in the side of the BBC, decrying the tedious miserablism that is Radio 3 under Roger Wright. Pliable says, New audiences are essential for the health of serious music, but so is being realistic. There is a place for shows like Classical Star, introducing higher culture to an audience that doesn't know anything about it. (See posts passim regarding cultural omnivores and paucivores, or John Wyver's cry for modern art on the television.) Pliable's attack is from the other end of the scale, pointing out that the BBC has stopped trying to broaden the horizons of the omnivores, and go for something a little more challenging.

The Artful Manager has a pop at the rituals of conferences, and how to make things better. No biographies. A microphone that heats up over three minutes. Finding someone to challenge fondly-held beliefs. Replacing the bag o'crap with a map, a pen, and lots of empty pages for notes.

Cable Girl gets into Joan of Arcadia, a show beset by such arcane scheduling that we didn't even know it was airing again. And something good came out of Raven: The Island. We're impressed.

Quote of the week (source).

Stop appreciating. Experience. Listen. Feel.

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New national number ones, and other notes...
Finland Lordi's back, Beast loose in paradise enters at 3.
Sweden Amanda Jenssen hits at number 2 with Do you love me.
Estonia Would we use Legend to describe Ines (EE-00) and Tanel Padar (EE-01)? Given that they had two of the best results for the country at Eurovision, quite possibly. The duet is in at 15 on the airplay chart.
France Tokio Hotel briefly had a song in the French and German top 30s, as An deiner seite soars to 2 on the left bank of the Rhine.
Germany Cascada go straight in at 9 with What hurts the most; Maroon 5's Won't go home without you is in at 11.

Falling short of the top 100 this week are Dave Gahan (Saw something), Frozen Embryos (From yesterday), and Alvin and the Chipmunks (Bad day). The last is a Daniel Powter cover, and we're told that it's surprisingly listenable. They've all done better than Jocelyn Stone, whose Baby baby baby appeared on the release schedule for this week, but fell short of the top 200.

Lightspeed Champion hit at 72 with Tell me what it's worth. Re-entries in the lower places for the Wombats and Robyn, and climbs for Duffy and Snore Patrol. Jack Johnson, the audio equivalent of For the Rest of Your Life, lands at 60 with If I had eyes. David Jordan was hyped to high heaven last autumn, but Place in your heart failed to trouble the top 100. Sun goes down does much better, entering at 56.

Rev and the Makers did some television show or other, and Heavyweight champion of the world re-enters at 48. Mary J Blige's Just fine is in at 47 on downloads. Not entirely sure why Robyn's With every heartbeat should re-enter the top 40, but we've no objections at all. Kelly Rowland still hasn't gone away, Work moves in at 31. Full release for Radiohead's Jigsaw falling into place sees it at number 30.

Madness had fifteen top 10 hits with sixteen releases between late 1979 and the end of 1983; after two more albums, the group split in 1986, only to reform for concerts in 1992 and further albums in 1999 and 2005. NW5 had a physical release this week, and is the group's first top 30 hit since drinking song Lovestruck grazed the top ten in 1999. What took you so long is new at 20 for the Courteeners (Cortinas? Please yourselves), the latest dubious group from Manchester, and it's on a full release. Leon Jackson's chart run is something Iron Maiden would be proud of, 1-5-15. The new one from the Wombats moves 37-13 on its physical release.

Physicals also help Robyn, Be mine is up 13 to 10, her third top ten hit, almost ten years after her first. Kayne West's Homecoming scrambles 14-9, and Scouting for Girls advance 10-8. Rihanna's back in the top 5, Don't stop the music moves up one to a new peak of 5. Lupe Fiasco will have hoped to have done better than 4 with Superstar, it's a three-place climb. Britney drops a place to 3, allowing Adele to enter at 2 with Chasing pavements. The first act to enter at 2 was Gabrielle, back in summer 1993, and there's a certain soul sound - and the distinct whiff of record company hype - around both acts. Adele's out on physicals next week, so Basshunter holds for a second week at number one.

On the albums chart, Scouting for Girls displaces Amy MacDonald from the top spot. Take That, Newton Faulkner, and Plant / Krauss have the top 5, with Hoosiers and Rihanna back in the top 10. British Sea Power have the only significant new entry, Do You Like Rock Music? is in at 10, just ahead of the 31-13 Wombats. Lower down, Britney and the Pigeon Detectives have a good climb, so does Neil Diamond. The Maccabees capitalise on the very moderate success of Toothpaste kisses by re-releasing their album to 55.

 8 10 Scouting For Girls - Elvis ain't dead
10 23 Robyn - Be mine
13 37 Wombats - Moving to New Amsterdam
17 12 Leona Lewis - Burning love
21 16 Alicia Keys - No one
22 17 Cascada - What hurts the most
23 18 Mika - Relax take it easy
24 NE Madness - NW5
25 24 Scouting for Girls - She's so lovely
26 21 Sugababes - About you now
28 20 Hoosiers - Goodbye Mr. A
30 NE Radiohead - Jigsaw falling into place
32 22 Sugababes - Change
33 28 Amy MacDonald - This is the life
39 49 Robyn - With every heartbeat
40 32 Bloc Party - Flux
44 39 Mika - Happy ending
45 47 Freemasons - Uninvited
48 re Reverend and the Makers
  - Heavyweight champion of the world
50 44 Hoosiers - Worried about Ray
53 63 Plain White Ts - Hate
62 74 Duffy - Rockferry
63 52 Filo and Peri - Anthem
64 55 Mika - Grace Kelly
67 re Robyn - Handle me
68 re Wombats - Let's dance to Joy Division

.. 31 British Sea Power - Waving flags
.. 64 White Stripes - Conquest
.. 70 Maccabees - Toothpaste kisses
.. 73 Feist - 1234

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

• Pop on Trial (The Fourth Programme) Stuart Maconie takes the piss out of the 1950s, suggesting that it was a vast expanse of tedium peppered with a few standout highlights. So was every other decade since.
• Feedback (Radio 4) Did the Beeb give too much coverage to the primaries in New Manchestershire and Iowagh? Of course they did; the event deserved some coverage, but was not the biggest thing in the world when Kenya was exploding and Britain's railways went poof. Plus a puff-piece for the DG's new project, and an instantly-forgettable piece on the good news.
• Great Lives: Groucho Marx (Radio 4) Matthew Parris and two guests explain why Groucho was the consummate showman of his age. Hard work, re-writing scripts, and often touring with bits of his act before playing them to the camera. Speechification
• Pop Britannia (The Fourth Programme) Episode 2 covered the 60s and tagged on the glam rock era of the early 70s. It's a disappointing series, not telling us much that hasn't been hashed out a million times before.

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The National Commission on Human Rights in Kenya has determined that last month's elections were a dead heat. There were so many irreglarities - turnouts of over 100%, results changed between local and national declarations, box stuffing - that the narrow win of the incumbent president cannot be supported.

Israel blocked access to the Gazza Strip, after claiming that rockets had been fired over the border.

Russia continued to take offence at anything the UK does, by insisting that the British Council offices in Sverdlovsk and Leningrad close. The head of the cultural exchange programme was briefly detained by Russian police as a form of harrassment. Russia's problem is that the UK has refused to roll over and accept the murder of one of her subjects.

We regret to report the death of Bobby Fisher, undisputed world chess champions between 1972 and 1975.

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Another week of west-to-south-west winds brought one significant rainfall event - 15mm in eight hours on Tuesday was enough to get flood warnings out - and a near-continual bout of cloud cover. It's significantly warmer than average, with many parts of southern England recording their warmest January night since 1918 on the night of 19-20 Jan. The outlook is for more showers or longer spells of rain in the north, calmer in the south.

Features to watch for the coming week are the area of low pressure set to form off the coast of Greenland on Tuesday: it'll be very deep, perhaps as low as 930mb, enough to bring strong winds to the north by Thursday, and all parts on Friday. The other feature to watch is the Azores high: towards the end of the week, it may be centred around the Bay of Biscay, which will ease the winds for southern parts, but make them stronger in the north. Either way, it looks like being quite windy towards the end of the week, so do wrap up.

14 Mo drizzle            6/ 9, 2.5
15 Tu rain am            8/11,18.0
16 We rain o/n, sun      3/ 8, 9.5
17 Th sun and showers    2/10, 1.5
18 Fr cloud, wind        6/14, 1.5
19 Sa rain o/n, drizzle  9/11, 8.0
20 Su cloud, drizzle    12/14, 1.0

Rainfall in January: 87.5mm; monthly average: 71mm

Degree heating days: 380½
2006-7: 167/499
2005-6: 320/684
2004-5: 285½/556
2003-4: 395½/754

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