This piece of research is, I think, worthy of a greater audience than it'll find buried in the comments of SRK's journal. The question he asked, apropos of the New Orleans flood: When did the west last suffer a natural disaster of this magnitude?

Natural disaster of this magnitude? What is "this magnitude"? In terms of area flooded, the best estimate I can find is that somewhere between 400 and 500 square miles has been flooded. It's difficult to find an estimate of the area flooded in Romania and the Alps this summer, but 555km of roads in one part of Romania suggests the total area flooded must have been larger than New Orleans. The death toll, according to the Wikipedia article, was 42.

Even worse were the floods in summer 2002, causing damage worth €22.6 milliard in Germany alone.

In terms of loss of life, I'm thinking of the North Sea flood of January 1953, devastating Zeeland and the east coast of England, with almost ten times the size of New Orleans under water, and about 2,500 killed.

And that's just floods. There are forest fires (Portugal in 2003, Australia in 1983) that spread across large swathes of the country. Or earthquakes - the Izmir quake of '99, or the Alaska quake of '64.

permanent link
posted 05 Sep 2005, 18.33 +0100

News

In the strange and crazy calendar they have in North America, to-day is May Day, the holiday dedicated to the worker. For workers of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it's the beginning of Week Four of The Great Lock-Out, for which far more coverage is at CBC Unplugged.

Day 21, yesterday, featured an unexpected entry from Peter Preston. The former editor of Het Grauniad in the KU makes a whole list of errors. It's not a strike, it's a lock-out. Management has withdrawn permission for the workers to work. We don't usually have lock-outs in the UK, though you might remember the time that Bruce Gyngell fired all of TV-AM's electricians. The National Post is not Conrad Black's finest creation, that would be his own accounts. (Allegedly.) And there's a crack about New Orleans sinking into the ooze.

Well-known academic Michael Bywater leaped to his colleague's defence. "It's satire, not reality," claims the respected commentator. Er, not from where I'm sitting, it's not. Must be a London thing.

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posted 05 Sep 2005, 19.43 +0100

Culture

Well, here's a rum thing. Let's waste no time in dissecting last night's premier awards creremony. The Popjustice Twenty Quid Prize went to Girls Aloud, who have always grated to these ears, but I can see why other people like them. (And it is all about seeing.) The Twenty Quid Invoice Prize, for worst single of the year, went to the uniquely rubbish Band Aid Ill, which (as I predicted at the time) turned out to be a career-ending move for both Dizzy Rascal and Jocelyn Stone.

Some other prize for Best British Album has also been presented. Owing to a major cock-up by the organisers, it's gone to a bunch of Yanks. Like it or not, Antony and the Johnsons are 1/6 British, recorded their album in Canada, and released it on "Secretly Canadian", a Yankee label. I've not checked all the songwriting credits, but there's no way that the ensemble can pass a BritCon test constituted along the same lines as the CanCon test for Canadian content.

On that basis, I have to agree with the initial reaction of runners-up Boys Aloud. The Johnsons are not eligible for a specifically British (or British and Irish) award. The decision to give them the prize does nothing to enhance the credibility of an award that I've long suspected of making the rules up as it went along. Why is it only described as a British and Irish award when there's an Irish act nominated? Why is there a token jazz, folk, classical album nominated, yet it never wins? Why has the qualifying "year" varied between 51 weeks (1993) and 69 weeks (1998)?

If there's one beacon of hope, it's this. Acts who won the prize early in their career have never ever lived up to the hype. It's been an albatross around the neck of Talvin Singh, Ms Dynamite, Roni Size, Suede, and especially for Gomez. Winners in 98, but who even remembers them now?

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posted 07 Sep 2005, 19.35 +0100

Entertainment

Go here, and have a quick look at the sign just below the fold.

Notice anything interesting?

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posted 07 Sep 2005, 20.03 +0100

Politics

A listing of selected television and radio broadcasts, with a deliberate emphasis on culture and intellectual programmes.

Regulars
Composer of the Week (Radio 3, noon): C P E Bach.
Book of the Week (Radio 4, 9.45am and 12.30am): Persian Fire, by Tom Holland, read by William Gaminara.
Woman's Hour Play (Radio 4, 10.45am and 7.45pm): 15 Minutes that Changed the World. Five short plays about world-changing events.
Book at Bedtime (Radio 4, 10.45): Le Pere Goriot, by Honore de Balzac, read by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Saturday

9am BBC-1 Dick 'n' Dom in Da Bungalow

The lads have promised that this will be the last run of the hugely successful show, the only one to put the muck back into Saturday morning. It is the beginning of the end of the show.

1pm Hallmark Gilmore Girls

Right back to the start, day one in the story of Stars Hollow. It appears that Nickelodeon won't be showing anything after the first two series (which they're currently stripping at 9pm every night), so this is the only place to see the later series. Saturdays and Sundays at this time for the next year or so.

7pm ITV ITV's 50 Greatest Shows

Oh, go on then. The commercial channel marks its half-century next Thursday. Unlike the BBC's celebration in 1986, ITV isn't showing a week's worth of old programmes, but is confirming that Coronation Street is the viewing public's favourite programme, ahead of Antan Dec's Takeaway and The Muppet Show. Cat Deeley and Phillip Schofield host.

8pm Radio 4 The Archive Hour

A Monstrous Regiment Jackie Ashley on women MPs.

9pm Discovery Civilisations That'll Teach 'Em

Having just completed their GCSEs, 30 16-year-olds are put through the tough regime of taking O-levels at a 1950s state grammar boarding school. Originally shown in 2003.

Sunday

9am BBC-1 Sunday AM

Annoyed that they're going to be moving Popworld to Saturday mornings? You could try Andrew Marr's new Sunday morning programme. We're not convinced it'll be anything like as good as Broadcasting House, but we will see.

11.05 Radio Scotland Classic Scottish Albums

Davie Scott looks into six classic Scottish albums. 3: Teenage Fanclub. Band member Norman Blake reveals remarkable stories about their classic album Bandwagonesque and their early tours of America.

8pm Channel 4 Bremner, Bird and Fortune

First in a new series. The show has been more on the ball than off it for the last couple of years.

8.45 BBC-4 The Naked Truth

Simon Hoggart explores the political diary in the age of spin. Irritatingly, not repeated.

9pm Channel 4 The Death of Celebrity

Piers Moron fronts a programme that claims to expose the vacuity of some modern well-known people. Why are Jade Goody and Abigail Tittmus famous, anyway? On the other hand, the means by which Mr Moron will reveal the pointlessness is ... a public poll. Bangs head against wall.

9.15 BBC-4 Time Shift

Representing Reality? The career of film maker Paul Watson, creator of the 1974 fly-on-the-wall documentary, The Family. Repeated at 12.40am and 3.20 am.

9.30 Radio 3 Sunday Feature

Serialism's Sons and Daughters. What happened after Arnold Schoenberg revealed his technique for twelve-tone composition.

10pm BBC-3 Forty Years of F**k

Is it really forty years since Kenneth Tynan said "fuck" on national television? Don't think we've heard Siouxsie Sioux's side of the Bill Grundy / Sex Pistols event before.

10.40 BBC-4 The Family

Colin Bell and Clare Jones discuss The Family with Margaret Wilkins, whose family was the subject of Paul Watson's 1974 documentary series. Again, not repeated.

Monday

11.30 Radio Scotland Poker Faced and Probable

Greg Hamphill looks at poker and probability, examining the theory that a person's poker style is related to how they play their hand at life.

6pm BBC-2 Art School

Can anyone learn to paint in two weeks? Sorry, Miss Nic, some of us just can't.

7.30 World Service The Music Feature

Franz Ferdinand Diaries Bob Hardy - bass player with the hugely successful band Franz Ferdinand - offers listeners an exclusive insight into life at the top of the international music business through documentaries illustrated by audio diary extracts. (Concludes next week.)

8pm BBC-2 Map Man

Timothy Pont's Map of Scotland 1583, a time when wolves still roamed the Highlands and it was difficult and dangerous to travel in rival clan territory. Some of the maps include unknown mountains. Hope the arty camera-effects last week were an artefact of watching on analogue.

8pm Radio 4 Document

The Forth Bridge 57 workers died in the construction of the Forth Bridge in the 1880s, but new evidence suggests that the death toll could have been much higher.

9pm BBC-1 Spooks

First of the new series about M18. A terrorist group with a hatred for human life claims responsibility for a bomb, and threatens another ten hours later. They're not trying to be quondam import 17 at all, are they?

9pm History Channel Events That Changed Our World

Michael Buerk looks at the television age's defining moments.

9.30 Radio 3 Night Waves

Philip Dodd talks to Zadie Smith about her new novel, On Beauty.

Tuesday

9.30am Radio 4 Further Five Numbers

g. Newton's gravitational constant.

2.15 Radio 4 Afternoon Play

The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency

7pm BBC-4 Pride and Prejudice

A ten-year-later repeat of Andrew Davies' adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. The Colin Firth in a wet shirt moment isn't in the opening episode. Does anyone remember if it's in episode 2, or 3?

8pm Radio 4 Germany's Choice

Will Angela Merkel make a decent Chancellor? The country votes on Sunday the 18th.

9pm BBC 7 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice follows a waist-coated white rabbit into a tunnel and finds herself among the weird and wonderful.

9.30 BBC-4 Pride and Prejudice Revisited

So, what is it about P&P that entrances people? It can't all be the wet shirt, can it?

9.45 ITV 50 Years of World of Sport

Dickie Davies reviews fifty years of sport on ITV, ranging from the ITV Seven to Stock Car Racing from Hednesford. Oh, and a bit on the big-money modern era, but no-one watches Chelsea versus Anderlecht. In a turn-up for the books, the sport is interrupted by the news.

10pm RTE Radio 1 Under The Influence

Joe Jackson talks with Aimee Mann about the musical influences on her life.

Wednesday

11am Radio 4 Mapping the Town

Julian Richards explores Whitby.

4pm Radio 3 Orthodox Vespers

Anyone would think they'd been reading these writings, for were we not discussing this matter only a few weeks ago? Orthodox Vespers for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross from the Trinity Cathedral in the Danilov Monastery, the oldest monastery in Moscow.

9pm BBC-2 Space Race

Race for Rockets The Cold War race to put man into space suffers the docudrama treatment. Is a straight documentary beyond the ken of Roly Keating? First of four parts, this week starting with Herr von Braun's liberation from Nazi Germany.

10.30 BBC 7 Dan and Nick: The Wildebeest Years

More bad puns with Dan Freedman and Nick Romero.

Thursday

7am Radio 3 Webern Day

All of Webern's works in chronological order on the 60th anniversary of his death. Apart from the lunchtime concert. And Brian Kay's Light Programme.

3pm Radio 4 Questions, Questions

Stewart Henderson answers those niggling questions from everyday life. First in a new series.

6.30 Radio 4 Another Case of Milton Jones

Milton Jones is a feted visionary architect, in the first of a new series.

7.05 BBC-4 Great Railway Journeys

Victoria Wood makes a round trip from Crewe, taking in the sights of the north of England and Scotland.

9pm ITV 49 Up

Perhaps the only really acclaimed regular on ITV is the every seven year look at a cohort of youngsters. This is the seventh set of films, but none of the old ones have been shown on ITV3. Why do they bother?

9pm Channel 4 Dispatches

Secrets of The Shoplifters Secret filming on the alarming rise in people who will pretend to steal from shops in order to get five minutes of fame on national television. Er.

Friday

7.05 World Service Millennium Development Goals Debate

Who is responsible for ensuring we reach the millenium development goals, and is he capable of reading a simple Spot book?

9pm C5 The Curse of Noel Edmonds

Another chance to see a passable retrospective on the bearded wonder. Not enough time on Posh Paws, we reckon.

9pm Radio 4 The Friday Play

Love Me Liberace Christopher William Hill's black comedy, woven into the real events surrounding Liberace's 1959 libel trial against the Daily Mirror. East End teenager Owen Clancy is struggling with his sexuality and his relationship with his mother Esme. Emotions escalate when both Owen and Esme start to compete for the affections of Owen's piano teacher Mr Doyle.

9.30 Discovery Conspiracies on Trial

Pope John Paul I - A Mysterious Death. Well, was he assassinated by the conservatives who went on to elect Karol Wotija?

permanent link
posted 08 Sep 2005, 18.55 +0100

Culture

Last month, I asked interior minister Seymour "Charles" In Charge if he was accurately quoted in Het Grauniad.

The interior ministry has stated that this was an accurate quotation.

Time to go, I think.

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posted 08 Sep 2005, 19.29 +0100

Politics

So your 35th most populous town has been hit by a hurricane, then been flooded after water defences failed. Never mind.

You can always prevent people from leaving, or just lock them up and throw away the key.

No one will ever notice. Well, they might, but they don't spend money with the Corporatist party, so they don't count.

For some reason, I'm reminded of the predictions of John Titor, who appeared on the internet in 2000, claiming to be from 2036. He suggested than "an American civil war is brought on by increasingly intrusive police state tactics. The 'second civil war' sees those in the cities fighting those in rural areas." It's almost obvious poppycock, especially as his predictions tend to the non-falsifiable.

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posted 08 Sep 2005, 19.47 +0100

Annoyed

So, Breakfast With Frost is no more, and Sunday AM is the replacement. Two clear shots for the Sunset Times in the opening sequence, and host Andrew Marr (for it is he) strides onto set clutching a copy of Scotland on Sunday. As one does. His opening monologue includes a throw-over to Moira Stewart at the newsdesk; she says "Rioting in Belfast" and throws back. Gordon Brown nods his head, and there's a picture of another guest.

It would be a touch uncharitable to call this programme Breakfast With Marr, it's not going to be as hard-hitting as Nosenight, but nor is it quite as soft as its predecessor. Gordon Brown was asked a few tricky questions, a fair change from Frost's style, "Is there any trumpet you would like to blow, minister?"

Highlights of the show: paper reviewer Alan Rusbridger suggesting that the favourite to become leader of the Conservative party was Seymour The Safety Elephant, and unveiling his new "Berliner" format paper - as wide as a tabloid, but 40% taller. Lowlight: cutting off John Williams' guitar performance because they'd over-run.

Maybe this show is the new Frost programme though - they've certainly not spent anything on a new set, as the book behind greenamber's mate Kevin Spacey shows.

In the final analysis: think I'll stick to Broadcasting House, thank you v much.

permanent link
posted 11 Sep 2005, 14.34 +0100

Television

Here's a novelty: no change at the top of any significant national chart. German proto-goths Tokio Hotel continue to hold off another song that borrows from Pachabel's Canon; the Annoying Thing is still unsurpassed in France and Walloonia, and James Blunt rules in Sweden, Latvia, the Netherlands, and Flanders. In Norway, Robert Post tops the standings, with Got none. Helena Paparizou's follow-up to her Eurovision winning song is The light in our soul, and rises into the top five in her native Sweden.

North Europe's Top Twenty

*20 NE David Gray - The one I love
 19 16 Dezil - San ou (la riviere)
 18 15 Juanes - La camisa negra
*17 NE Tokio Hotel - Durch den monsun
*16 re Amy Diamond - Welcome to the city
 15 14 Porcupine Tree - Lazarus
 14 10 Charlotte Church - Crazy chick
 13 13 Pinocchio - T'es pas cap Pinocchio
 12 11 Ilona Mitrecey - C'est les vacances
 11  9 Schnappi - Schnappi, das kleine Krokodil
 10  8 Raphael - Caravanne
* 9 NE Gorillas - Dare
* 8 NE Rhianna - Upon the replay
  7  7 Kelly Clarkson - Since you've been gone
  6  5 McFly - I'll be OK
  5  6 Ilona Mitrecey - Un monde parfait
  4  4 Crazy Frog - Axel f
* 3  3 Shakira - La tortura
  2  2 Daniel Powter - Bad day
* 1  1 James Blunt - You're beautiful

Four new entries this week, plus the return of a perky little diamond. David Gray is another blast of dull-as-ditchwater noodling; Tokio Hotel we've noted above; the Gorillas have been described by other commentators as fantastic - I'm not particularly impressed. Rhianna is another of those talentless freaks who thinks that showing lots of flesh is an adequate substitute for talent.

See also: the Pussycat Dolls, whose exceedingly rubbish Don't you has outsold everything. Mylo lands in third position with Doctor Pressure, which heavily samples the Miami Sound Machine's 1984 hit Dr Beat. Coldplay lands in fourth, the Goldie Looking Chain's tribute to Charlotte Church at 14. Hurrah to the Arcade Fire, Rebellion is in at 19, and Ian Brown's decent enough All ablaze is at 20, and to the Transplants, Gangsters and thugs is a bit goth at 35. Ha ha ha to the Foo Fighters, Doa is only a number 25 hit, in spite of saturation play on every faintly alternative station.

James Blunt is back to the top of the albums list, ahead of the Rolling Stones' Bigger Bang. Jack Johnson's In Between Dreams finally makes its way into the top ten. Hard-Fi enjoy a good Twenty Quid Prize bounce, from 39 to 27.

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posted 11 Sep 2005, 14.34 +0100

Entertainment

The Azores high continued to be the dominant feature until the middle of the week, with some relatively warm weather. From Thursday, lows in the Atlantic made their presence felt, with much rain on Saturday, and a cloudy day to-day.

05 Mo sun                 17/21,  2.8
06 Tu sun to cloud        12/23,  0.0
07 We sun                 14/23,  0.0
08 Th cloud               14/21,  0.0
09 Fr cloud to sun        14/21,  0.0
10 Sa drizzle, rain       16/17, 11.0
11 Su cloud               14/17,  1.0

Nine more degree cooling days this week, taking the summer's total to 223 184/184 at this stage last year, and it may be that the 9th was the last day to beat 20 C this year as well as last.

Or maybe not. A deep depression is set to sweep past north Scotland on Tuesday, quite possibly bringing some damaging winds there. Further south, the low will bring winds from the still-mild south-west. A trailing front will move south during the week, stalling over the midlands on Thursday as winds drop and pressure equalises. Next week-end could be quite nice, or could be cloudy.

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posted 11 Sep 2005, 18.53 +0100

News

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