A report in to-day's Grauniad suggests that bright youngsters do better at school with other bright youngsters. Academic high-fliers who went to school with other great scorers recorded better GCSE results than those who had fewer top-brass youngsters in their cohort.

Could this be down to two factors; the bright kids have someone to measure themselves against, and to spur each other on to better things; and teachers at their schools (mostly selective grammars and top-notch comps) have had more experience with young academics.

The logical conclusion of this research is to bring back the grammar school, so that all really smart kids can profit from this experience. The chances of this happening under this nominally socialist government is nil.

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posted 23 May 2005, 19.35 +0100

Any doubts that Google is Evil have gone by the wayside with their appointment of Dan Senor. He's a regular contributor to F*x Fibs (the world's leading fake news channel), and spent the first half of last year as a "senior advisor" to the illegal puppet government in Iraq.

Questions to the panel: is there a good European-owned search engine? As in, better than ilse.nl?

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posted 24 May 2005, 19.23 +0100

There's been a bit of a re-shuffle in radio-land recently. Virgin 1215's breakfast show has been a bit of a mess in recent years. Since Chris Evans was sacked in summer 2001, the key morning programme has been hosted by Steve Penk (July 2001 - January 2002). He was sacked after "creative differences" just six months after beginning, and is now working in Manchester. Daryl Denham took over the show, but he was out on his tod at the end of 2002, re-shuffled to week-ends, from where he was dumped in late 2003.

For the last couple of years, Pete and Geoff have opened up Virgin's day; the Mancunian duo had been a great hit in the evenings, and just about managed to translate that into something good for the morning. Their show isn't a patch on Mark and Lard's Radio 1 programme from 1997, but that's a whole other story. Last week, Pete and Geoff announced that they'd had enough of early mornings, and would be leaving the show at the end of the year. Their replacement was announced as X-fm's Christian O'Connell.

Mr O'Connell has been with London's rock station since 2002, and is regarded as one of the best music broadcasters around, injecting personality into his programming. He was beaten to the Radio Society's Best Daily Music Broadcaster award by Kerrang!'s Lucio, the drive-time presenter and only decent broadcaster on the struggling West Midland rock station.

Mr Lucio will join X-fm for week-end breakfasts at the start of July; his replacement has yet to be announced. Mr O'Connell will remain with X until the end of the year.

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posted 24 May 2005, 19.39 +0100

The people have spoken, and they said "You have no mandate to do anything radical. Don't even think about it." And what did the unelected politicians do? Radical stuff for which they had no mandate. Charles Clarke, you don't listen, you don't learn.

You are charged with the onerous task of upholding the rule of law. Not throwing innocent bankers to an unlawful regime just because they want some blood. It is completely unacceptable for Labour to tear up the fundamental rights and freedoms of a nation for its own political expediency.

Just resign. Now. Before it gets ugly. Before you're made to look ugly.

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posted 25 May 2005, 18.32 +0100

Amnesty International, bless their cotton socks, have slammed the UK and FARCE governments for their "dangerous new agenda" allowing torture and all that nonsense. The group criticised international inaction on the killings in Darfur, the UN's failure to deal with abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in occupied Iraq.

"The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law," she said. " Guantánamo evokes memories of Soviet repression... To say in a 21st-century democracy that torture is acceptable is to push us back to medieval ages."

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posted 25 May 2005, 18.41 +0100

The annoying television screens on trains in the west midlands have gone blank. 360 On-Bored has gone into liquidation less than a year after beginning its diet of pap, crap, and waffle aboard the region's trains. We're not aware that 360 - a subsidiary of TNX Corp - has ever sold a single commercial to anything other than government propaganda.

Central Trains has threatened to bring fresh programming to the screens, but we really, really hope that this will be the end of the line for the foolish idea. Otherwise we may have to consult out snippage advisor, Mr Hacksaw.

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posted 25 May 2005, 18.59 +0100

Het Grauniad's Newsbolg on the demise of the slam-door train. I always found them to spend less time at stations than the modern auto-closing rubbish.

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posted 26 May 2005, 17.40 +0100

Tim Shaw, host of Kerrang radio's Asylum programme, has swept the bored at the New Amsterdam Radio Awards. Mr Shaw's show won Silver in the Best Comedy category, and he himself took gold in the Best Comedian section. His show remains a completely unlistenable stodge, far inferior to anything else on any other station. With the possible exception of GWR's Late Night Lust show.

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posted 26 May 2005, 18.46 +0100

M Chirac of France has just spoken on national television. His speaking style is amazingly goggle-eyed, like being lectured at by a slightly bonkers school teacher. "Vote yes for Europe, for the Kyoto treaty, for the history, for the future. Forwards, not back. Er..."

This, one suspects, is the best publicity one could give the "No" campaign. A shed-load of drawing boards for Brussles, delivery Monday, please and thank you.

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posted 26 May 2005, 19.15 +0100

The 1955 election got a repeat airing on BBC Parliament to-night. The show had everything: "Butler" (a very young David Butler, still with dark hair) correctly calling the election as a win for the Conservatives after just one result. It's one result more than they needed this year, but a remarkably accurate suggestion...

The Scottish correspondent displaying a map with little boxes for each seat, and a huge snooker-cue to mark them up...

In Cheltenham, the victorious Conservative candidate announced how he wanted to "bring the people of Cheltenham forward with me, rather than backwards with the socialists." That'll never work as a catch-phrase...

Bad weather across much of the country depressed turnout to a mere 78%, down fully 4% from last time...

Manchester Moss Side went Conservative by more than a 2:1 majority...

Bob MacKenzie out of the studio, in Conservative Central Office. Butler could use some sort of graphic to demonstrate his swing thingies, like the bloke in Bristol had to demonstrate the changes in Southampton...

No outside camera at the Warwick and Leamington count, where the prime minister, Anthony Eden, is standing. It's just displayed as a graphic on screen...

Kenneth Wolstenhome commentating from Salford. They think it's safe Labour...

A man from the Liberal party taking encouragement from his party's move into second place, and prognosticating that they'd be the opposition within a couple of elections...

The seats in north Kent remanining Labour, even though they'd have gone Tory on the national swing...

Most of the show was Dimbleby (Richard) reading out results, with brief interjections from Butler. OB technology wasn't established. Yet...

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posted 26 May 2005, 21.14 +0100

Viagra blindness fears prompt inquiry

If that's what they're doing, why take the drugs?

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posted 28 May 2005, 15.18 +0100

As regular readers will know, we like our newspapers to be reasonably heavy, with intelligence and thought. How much of these qualities is in evidence in the free lunchtime Standard?

The front page contains a false headline - "Wembley in debts crisis". It's not news, Wembley has been a disaster area since 1923, and Friday morning's announcement of further losses at the construction company - they might not now break even on the project, goodness! - only serves to heighten the sense of "They should have picked somewhere more sensible. Like Coventry." There's also a picture of a slightly grumpy lady, who is apparently Sharon Stone, who is apparently famous.

Details of Ms Stone's lack of fame, and her run-in with failed painter Tracey Emin, are on page 3, opposite a need-to-know weather forecast. With no indication of wind speed. Also on these pages are such crucial news as a puff piece for the new Brig Bother series, and the shortage of toilet rolls in Finland.

Over on page 5, more propaganda for London's futile Crass Spectacle bid, and a fear-inducing map of "dangerous" streets in Westminster. The worst, Oxford Street, had 258 violent offences last year. That's five per week, or roughly one per million visitors. There's some nonsense lifted from other daily papers, including one story that bears a striking resemblance to one on page 3.

The Standard is published by Associated Hellpapers, and their obsession with house prices forms the backdrop to a p9 feature. "How much would you make quitting London?" About six figures, if you're selling a house. But how many people in London own their houses?

Some nonsense on what minor famous-for-being-famous people are wearing, a plug for a Daisy Donovan interview in the main paper. The world news half-page is tucked away on p19. Twelve pages on television, theatre, and other entertainments, with about six pages of classifieds. The sport section is five pages, and tells little.

Overall, this one lives up to its name. If our papers of choice could weigh down a fairy cake, the Standard Light could levitate a hot-air balloon.

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posted 28 May 2005, 16.02 +0100

To-day's Sunset Times has a piece of fluff on blogging. It's fine for people who want to become popular, but when did popular equate with quality? For instance, the most popular newspaper is said Sunset Times... you get the drift.

Anywhoo. The article suggests one should go for content first, then form. Then it gets rather foolish in its relentless pursuit of popularity. Check up on your visitors through Technorati, or using Trackbacks... If you pander to other bloggers (describing someone else as brilliant, for example), they might post links to your site from theirs. You will develop a desperate, unshakeable, unslakeable thirst for these links. Speak for yourself, sir. If I see something good, I'll note it down. If I see something that's more full of rubbish than a Vulture dustcart, I'll report that, too.

Comments are your lifeblood. Oh look, it's a dustbin lorry. Someone is going to explain the importance of comments when it's just as easy to use some sort of private method of communication that allows people to make judgements. Some sort of electronic mail, private between sender and recipient. Anything else is performance art.

Google’s dominance means that its website ranking system is vitally important, and the system is based on links. Bloggers score high in Google searches because they link relentlessly to each other. Google is the work of the devil, and is relentlessly exploiting its technological advantage for its own profit, not the community's. Google is also a huge strain on the servers that run the interweb - on the day after excluding all googlebots, this site reduced its inbound traffic by 53%.

Oh, and at least one of the links in the article are deader than a dodo. Still, what do you expect from Lies International - accurancy?

Administrivia

This (from the Readme) is not new, but worth repeating:

This site does not participate in reciprocal link agreements.

I've also re-written the readme in reference to commercial reference of the RSS feed:

The RSS feed of this site is for personal and non-commercial use only. Commercial services may obtain a non-exclusive license to use this feed. My initial price for this license is GBP 500 per article downloaded (currently GBP 5000 each time the complete feed is downloaded); this price is subject to negotiation. By downloading the feed for commercial use, you are forming a contract with the webmaster, enforceable only in English courts.

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posted 29 May 2005, 12.51 +0100

* Jacqueline Wilson is the new children's laureate. Not sure about this one; she's prolific, and popular, and heavily adapted on the telly (Tracey Beaker is the most popular show on CBBC, much to the chagrain of us Raven fans; Girls In Love has been the main-stay of CITV's Fabby Fridays recently.) But she seems to be the Enid Blyton de nos jours, writing the same story with slightly different details each time.

* The Obs reports how the government's proposed identity racket will cost 300 quid per person. Lest we forget, Mrs Thatcher fell (in part) over bills of this amount per person. The poll tax was a charge per person, rather than per household, and caused a storm of protest. It did have one advantage over this identity database; the tax was obviously transferring money from people to their local council, rather than from people to David Plunkett's pocket unknown projects. Predictably, the Hellygraph is also objecting, saying that they'd rather receive calls from telemarketers all night.

* There's a claim that there's a milliard quid of pirated software out there. Nowhere does the article discuss how this figure is arrived at, and conspicuously fails to rule out the suggestion that the number is just plucked out of thin air.

* There's a rather large referendum in France to-day. It's the top story around the world, and BBC News is having a special programme on BBC World and its domestic arm. Euronews and TV5 are providing full coverage, and even ITV might mention the story. Yet when the polls close, CNN will have Global Challenges, a programme promoting consumer goods in the developing world. Head, wall.

Andrew Neil on that picture: "She was Barbara Walters' make-up artist, and she worked on my show. F*x had to get the best one to do me, ha ha. Our relationship broke up soon afterwards, but she's completely unaware she's the most famous face in Private Eye ."

The Sunday Hellygraph notes how anti-povery wristbands are made in unethical conditions. The white bands, sold for £1, raise six times the legal hourly wage in Red China, where they're made. Someone is going to convince us that these bits of plastic are more powerful than actually going out there and doing something.

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posted 29 May 2005, 17.44 +0100

Daniel Armdahl, thanks a bundle.

For those of you who have been out of the country for the past week (ie most of you), Mr Armdahl is the man who recorded himself making the noise of a noisy moped making noise. A graphic artist friend of his made a picture to go with the noise, of a bug-eyed anatomically-correct frog with goggles and a boiled egg on his head. There the story remained until the end of last year, when irritating Handytonen company Jamster paid Mr Armdahl a pittance for use of his noise. They turned it into a Handytone, and flogged it to death. Then they flogged it some more, taking two adverts in some breaks on prime-time ITV last Monday.

The net result of all this promotional activity is the 1003rd best-selling single in stores by volume, Axel f, credited to "Crazy Frog versus Harold Faltermeyer". Quite simply, it's the synthesiser instrumental from the mid-80s with the annoying moped noise over the top. It's the Worst Number One Ever, even worse than anything Westlife, the Vengaboys, Mr Blobby, or Hampton the Hampster ever did. It makes Schnappi look like the greatest songwriter of the day.

To the best of our knowledge, no single - with the arguable exception of the various Pop Idle / Popstars records - has been given a £7 million marketing spend in one week. The objective, rather than flogging the single, or even the album, is to recruit new subscribers to Jamster's unethical Handytonen scam - the company sends a new Handytone to everyone each week, and bills them £3 for the dubious honour of receiving their latest tat.

Running a close second come Coldplay, whose Speed of sound becomes their biggest hit single ever. Amerie makes the top 10, as does Nancy Sinatra and indie band Magic Numbers. Gwen Stefani lands just outside the ten. There's a lot of good new stuff, Arcade Fire Power out, My Chemical Romance Helena, British Sea Power Please stand up, Nine Black Alps Not everyone, and Bravery Fearless. Eurovision failure Bryan McBoringfart lands outside the top 30, and Daniel B'dingplant misses the 40 and is almost overtaken by the latest single from Chesney "The Mole" Hawkes.

Here's the Twenty.

 20 10 50 Cent - Candy shop
 19  8 Garbage - Why do you love me?
 18 re Annie - Chewing gum
 17 14 Snoop Dogg - Signs
*16 NE Oasis - Lyla
*15 20 Chipz - Cowboy
*14 NE Black Eyed Peas - Don't funk with my heart
*13 13 Daniel Powter - Bad day
 12  6 Gregory Lemarchal - Ecris l'histoire
 11 re Phantom Planet - Outer Scunthorpe
*10 17 Jean Dujardin - Le casse du brice
  9  3 Moby - Lift me up
  8 11 Schnappi - Schnappi, das kleine Krokodil
  7 12 Goo Goo Dolls - Give a little bit
* 6  7 Coldplay - Speed of sound
  5  2 Tony Christie - Is this the way to Amarillo?
  4  1 Natalie Imbruglia - Shiver
  3  4 Ilona Mitrecey - Un monde parfait
* 2  9 Rob Thomas - Lonely no more
* 1  5 Gorillas - Feelgood inc

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posted 29 May 2005, 19.38 +0100

A mostly fresh week, thanks to a complex low pressure system bringing strong south-westerly winds most days, though when a warm front crossed on Thursday, very hot air from the Continent came up and smothered the southern half of the UK in heat. At 31 degrees, London had its hottest May day since 1953, while Edinburgh suffered with the rain ahead of the front and barely reached double figures.

Of course, if you've been watching the BBC weather forecast, all you'll know is that it's been mostly sunny, and rather hot. Two weeks ago, the Beeb decided to take out all meteorology from its forecasts, and replace them with shading (denoting sun / cloud / rain), and temperatures. Some viewers claim to have seen wind arrows, but even when the wind was the big story on Saturday, I saw nothing.

The point of the forecast, surely, is to deliver weather that's comprehensible, comprehensive, and accurate. The BBC fails on all three counts. The shading between sun and cloud is at a low contrast, and the map prefers to educate the viewer on basic geography rather than give such useful information as wind direction and speed. Worst of all, the forecast claims to be able to predict the arrival of wind and rain to the nearest hour. This is completely impossible, but it hasn't stopped the Beeb from confidently forecasting rain outside our window right now, when it's actually been sunny.

Better weather? 1) ITV news. Never thought you'd see me say this. Never thought I'd actually say it.
2) If you can interpret synoptic charts, here's some to get on with.
3) A bloke standing on the street corner with some wet string.

Here's last week.

23 Mo sun, odd showers     6/14
24 Tu rain to sun          9/16
25 We sunny spells        10/21
26 Th cloud to sun        13/21
27 Fr sun                 12/27
28 Sa wind, sunny         14/18
29 Su sun to cloud         8/17

Judging from the synoptics, looks like there's going to be a frontal passage early tomorrow, bringing rain. Tuesday looks calm, but the fronts on Wednesday will bring rain and south-westerlies. Thursday looks a little better, and Friday could turn out to be quite nice.

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posted 29 May 2005, 19.49 +0100

older writing... write to