9May

Brian Viner on the genius of Test Match Special.

Why geeks make the best lovers.

is, of course, the reason why Harry Hill wears such huge collars - .

Martin Belam on the current state of British newspaper websites. He's viewing them through a lens of web 2.0, which he defines as RSS feeds, per-story comments, web-exclusive blogs, and direct plugging on a small number of serendipity-and-advertising sites. He doesn't ignore the basics (does it work? Is it readable?) and we're reminded that it's probably time that we reviewed some of the more serious week-end papers again, as we did in the first quarter of 2005.

Speaking of newspapers, we're impressed with the idea of Project Freesheet. Volunteers will patrol London on 13 June (a Wednesday), gathering discarded copies of the various free papers thrown around. Then they'll gather them into one big pile and take some pictures. A worthy cause.

Caroline Michel goes in search of Blair's zeitgeist author. Dude, it's obvious. Joanne Rowling. Started off as the underdog that the Brits love to champion, then she started to believe her own hype and got big and bloated and dangerously dark. And then announced that she was getting off the stage many years and many times, before the final act in summer 2007.

Love and Garbage has the definitive word on which papers should have been rejected in the Scottish count. We rather hope (and, given the state of the Scotsman group lately, suspect) that the whole "invalidate one half and the entire paper is lost" ruling is an urban myth. But we can't be sure, and that's damaging to our democracy. He said, sounding like a Scot.

M. Sarkozy is fucked - he has the backing of David Plunkett.

Sand castles of knowledge on a heavily-trafficked beach - Kyle Gann, aka Postclassic, is off Wikipedia. For good.

Those interested in this week's Eurovision Song Contest will probably wish to review the On Europe Live blog. These dedicated fans have been reporting live from the rehearsals since the start of the month.

St. John's has been looking good this week: 1 2.

And finally, Kitchentable reports on when a pigeon went shopping in Belfridge's.

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misc19

2May

Brig Bother writes, I've just realised I've been using the same felt tip to label boxes for over five years now. Is this some sort of record? No, a record is a round black thing with a hole in the middle.

Some people are fated to be remembered for one ill-considered slip of the tongue, an off-the-cuff remark that attaches itself, limpet-like, to the rest of their career. For Richard Whiteley, it was a ferret. For James Calorgas, Crisis, Wot Crisis. For Paul Denchfield, it's his left eyebrow...

Paul has calls in the Clapham area, ten mobile calls for Clapham High Street and one for the Windmill Pub. Paul bets his left eyebrow that they'll be at the Windmill Pub. "Did you just bet your left eyebrow?" "If he's betting an eyebrow, I'm going there!"

So, let's have a look at that phone box by the Windmill pub. "There's no phone box there!"

No matter how many viral marketing campaigns he tries to kick off, our Pavlovian reaction is the same as Nick's. Anyway, Metafilter has been doing its usual diggery-pokery, so if you don't want to know the result, click away now.

Geraldine Smith is the completely unremarkable backbencher for, er, Morecambe and Lunesdale. Her new nickname is Fare dodger, after she not only refused to pay for her train ticket, but shouted Don't you know who I am? at the guard. She called up the management of Virgin Trains in order to avoid paying, and her bullying tactics worked. Which is more than we can say for Mrs. Smith.

(More: Hugh Grant, Longbridge, flying, Gill Sans, the French election. 676 words)

The money-grubbers of Easyjet are, to the surprise of almost no-one, after people's money again. This time, they're libelling carbon offset companies as snake-oil salesmen, and suggesting that they can be relied upon to handle their own carbon offsets. Is that the same Easyjet that walked out of talks at the Min of Ag last December? Of course, the fact is that the only sure method to reduce aviation emissions is to not fly in the first place. That would be anathema to a profit-seeking airline, which is why they're trying to fatten themselves up a little to-day, in preparation for leaner times ahead.

See also: Flightpledge

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Miscellany

25April

Oh gawds, yet another bible-basher at number 10, writes Catherine Bennett. At least you know where you are with the Rev. Blair. Illegally parked, that's where.

John Tusa blasts the government for its singularly rubbish arts policy.

Why oh why oh why is the government trying to tell companies who to employ? asks the Indytab. Because the Labour party is staffed from top to toe by a bunch of apartheid freaks, people obsessed with the colour of people's skin, with their sexual behaviour, with their imaginary friends.

Clive Stafford-Smith on his job, representing prisoners at the Guantanamo jail. See also: Naomi Wolf, on the growing facsism in the rebel North American colonies.

(More: Blairist is an insult; Blairism; Mel and Sue - 539 words)

One place in the world that means an awful lot... About 100m inland at Cape Spear, there is (or was, when we were last there) a small map, showing the world in a circle around that spot. Here, we suggest, is the centre of the world, at the extreme eastern end of the North American continent. That way, seven thousand kilometres of almost uninterrupted land; the other way, three and a half thousand kilometers of ocean.

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Miscellany

18April

Starting with a couple of pieces of economics. William Rees-Mogadon on how to push up house prices. Hamish McRae, meanwhile, discusses inflation. He looks to be the first person to question the canard that Gordon Brown's instruction to the Bank of England may be questionable. Focussing on a single (and flawed) measure of inflation is simplistic. What matters are the general inflationary pressures in the economy and, beyond that, the threat to economic stability that inflationary psychology creates. Ah, but a single number is easy to sell to the innumerate public, an early indication of Labour's obsession with performance targets. It does surprise us that there's been so little criticism of the Bank's terms of operation.

Hitwise works out that politicians trawling for votes on Myspace is a waste of time - the people who frequent ballot boxes wouldn't be seen dead on a Murdoch site.

And speaking of people who might be dead because of a Murdoch shite, The First Post claims that the Iran 15 were captured while filming for Wok TV.

Behind the scenes at ITV's boxing coverage with Jim Rosenthal.

Martin Belam on The Beatles' 1987 CD reissue programme, and how it, er, failed to set the charts on fire. Indeed, it barely singed the lower reaches of the top 40.

Still in the world of nostalgia, Brig alerts us to Star Test appearing on the cable version of 4OD. Cheers, sir. Bet they won't include the 1992 spin-off series where politicians of the day sat in front of the computer, only to be interrupted by the Disembodied Voice of Feedback's Chris Dunkley, asking seriously personal questions. Ten bonus points for anyone who can recall the name of this show. Doubled for any channel cheeky enough to bring it back.

Charlie Brooker on the evilitude of spoilers. It's time to classify the divulging of spoilers as a criminal act. Not a major one - let's not overreact - but a minor offence, punishable by having half a finger lopped off. And fried in a pan in front of you. And then you have to eat it. That seems reasonable. Hmm. Makes our traditional response - having a bat stuffed up your nightshirt - seem quite reasonable.

We're confused as to why there should be such a stock-in-trade of Bits Of Last Week's The Now Show. Not because it's completely unfunny - the programme certainly has its moments, and last week's was one of the rare half-hours that were consistently good. No, the source of our confusion is the presence of The Now Show Podcast, a version of the programme made freely available for all listeners to download and enjoy at their leisure.

We were going to buy and review a copy of Popworld Pulp, the new print magazine from the people who brought you Simon Amstell and the other one. Then it folded after just two editions. So here's a condensed review:

Is it the new Smash Hits? Not yet.

Is it the new Revvolution? Quite possibly.

If it's Wednesday, it's time for another point to Bremspot, and more gushing over Kenickie.

And finally, those of you using the actual website (rather than an RSS aggregator) will have spotted the little search box over in the top left corner. Next thing you know, we'll have one of those modish pictures as our background.

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Miscellany

7April

Sneaking it out under the cover of a four-day holiday: the government's assumptions for its identity register boondoggle. These figures are not just unrealistic, they seem to come from a completely separate universe.

Amnesty International on the way everything that we stand for is being traduced by an unelected cabal.

Kil Il-Jong Ate My Rabbit (see also)

Thanks for the ride... Lauren Laverne has left the Xfm breakfast show after barely 18 months in the role. It's a shame, particularly as we only learned a week after her last show, on 28 March. Ms. Laverne is leaving the station to spend more time with her television career.

Johann Hari on the death of the electric car.

Julian Lloyd-Webber is uncompromising on Hattogate: Barrington-Coupe should be forced to face the music his wife lacked the talent to make.

We read that The [FARCE] doesn't have class. True, but not in the sense the writer intends it to be. Where the Europeans have social class, the society over the Atlantic prefers to judge on the ostentatious flaunting of wealth. For instance, the concept of tipping for a job done is positively objectionable to many Europeans. Whatever happened to, oh, paying the staff an honest wage to begin with, rather than assuming that customers will top up a pitiful pay with a handful of 80-cent notes? It all serves to re-inforce a cultural norm that the only thing that matters in life is money, and that the acquisition of money is the be-all and end-all of life.

Why Easter moves about so much - according to First Post, it's all the fault of the orthodoxy.

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Miscellany

4April

Peter Preston discusses the complete nonsense of the security industry. We pointed out last August that the world needed to balance the ability to travel easily with the danger of being the victim of a non-accidental 'plane crash. Has the scale tilted too far in the latter direction? Is there such a thing as an acceptable level of terrorism? Is the attitude, We're only going through these hoops to help you sir, trying to keep you safe best answered with, No, your purpose is to keep the populace scared of a prospect that is significantly less likely than winning the lottery jackpot?

Jim Griffin tries to live on plastic alone, Hilary Osbourne is cash-only. Who has the better week?

In which the Iranians write letters for their captives.

Is this the first character assassination of Gordon Brown? Slippery and intimidating is not a platform, but a scaffold - Bruce Anderson, the Indytab.

NCAA basketball completely boring? Right there with you, there's nothing more dull than walking beanstalks throw an inflated pig's bladder around. It makes watching snow fall sound positively gripping.

Uncle Travelling Choccers also speaks of The Weather Channel. For all the lazy stereotypes, the UK does not have a continuous weather channel anywhere on cable or satellite. Oh, they briefly tried it, between September 1996 and January 1998, but The Weather Channel, Der Wetterkanal, Het Weerkanaal and Il Canale Meteo all shut down on 29 January 1998. By relying on digital transmission, the network was probably two or three years ahead of its time.

Currybet looks at the ten things most likely to be on the Daily Express front page. Here's a hint: news doesn't make the top ten.

Indirectly, Mat asks, Is there any hope that the Tories will be any better than Labour or that the LibDems can win enough seats to form a government? On the latter point, no, and any significant net advance on their current number of MPs appears unlikely - the gains from Labour will probably be counterbalanced (if not outweighed) by losses to the Conservatives. Would the Blues be any better? I fear that Giles' Law (see Buffy: The Wish) applies.

From the department of Blast, this from Mark Lawson in Het Grauniad, April 1997:

The campaign has begun with a defeat for Campbell. The BBC allocates a reporter to each campaign. Dr Campbell made it clear that he did not want Jeremy Vine, a young man with a klaxon voice and windmill arms and an eye for cheeky metaphors. But Vine it is on the Blair battlebus for the BBC. His first report - limbs and diphthongs lurching off in unexpected directions - reassured viewers that there is someone ready to take over when Peter Snow has his final swing.

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Miscellany

1April

One of m'learned chums wrote,

after six hours of sitting in the airport with a severely sprained ankle, my flight was cancelled.

The moral of the story? Don't go to airports if you have a sprained ankle. Indeed, we expect a missive from John Reid's new Ministry of Headless Chickens banning anyone with a slightly gammy leg from travelling anywhere by aeroplane, as the crutches could be a potential death trap terrorist weapon (cheesy grin, whacky thumbs aloft.)

Laura wrote,

i am okay with who i am,

Huzzah! Readers may also wish to be aware of Laura's newish other blog, Momcore.

Elsewhere, we hear,

Thor is Aphrodite's type.

Dahlink, everyone is Aphrodite's type. This sort of cuteness is something that she encourages. There will be no smiting, only gentle pulling on bows to get them at just the right angle for ultimate cuteness.

Speaking of Aphrodite, there are those who will argue that marriage is a recognition of a remarkable and unusual combination, requiring nothing more than a public declaration by all concerned. Others may wish to take a less inclusive and more bigoted view.

An out-take from Het Grauniad's ovre-by-oevr commentary on England's loss to Ireland. Surely Patrick Kielty is the equivalent of fans tearing up the seats, invading the pitch and forcing an abandonment?, says David Ford. 12 points deduction, £500,000 fine and a two-year ban from European competition.

(More: Discussion of Scott Somedisco's points, the Sanctity of Pop, to-day's newspaper columnists, and the Annual April Fish Awards. 941 words)

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Miscellany

28March

(Postcodes, UIP, Conrad Black, Plunkett, the seal hunt, and riots in Paris - 894 words, including the answer to this:)

What is the force of electric interaction between a copper ball of radius R carrying net charge +Q, and a point charge +3Q located at distance 2R from the center of the ball?

Please, help me people. My girlfriend will dump me, unless I score at least B on this assignment... she's got all A's.

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Miscellany

21March

(This week: G****e, the Crass Spectacle, Humph, Lauren Laverne, comment spam, math(s), calendars, McJobs, and more. 708 words)

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Miscellany

14March

Geoffrey Wheatcroft posits that Michael Levy is going to be the scapegoat because he is jewish. Balderdash. If Mr. Levy is to have his reputation run into the ground - and the police, never mind the jury, is still out on that one - it will not be because of his links with The GOD Organisation. No, it'll be because he has behaved in a criminal manner, adding Selling Peerages to his long list of criminal records. He should have stopped with the complete back catalogue of Alvin Stardust.

Data Mining reveals that G****e mail Doesn't Work. The privacy-sapping messaging system is trying to surpress text that might have been seen before, but is completely botching the job. The correct answer, of course, is to eschew G****e mail, and use a proper email system that doesn't steal other people's messages and add them to a huge information corpus.

Martin Belam, meanwhile, wonders who regulates G****e adverts? In theory, it's the Advertising Standards Authority, or OFCOM, but would these domestic authorities cut the mustard with the insular Washingtonnes?

What what what? Apparently, there are still backwards countries where it is a disciplinary offence to encourage police to tape-record interviews with suspects. Do these people have no intention of preventing abuses of power? It's an open book for coercion, torture, and generalised lying.

Marcel Berlins is unhappy about the looming casino advertising. Why can't the government be honest in this area? Because a) it's the New Labour government, congenitally incapable of telling the truth about anything; and b) it's advertisers, a group of people who make M. Kahn look straight.

Het Grauniad investigates how Lidl breaks the law and cares not a jot for its staff. We've never set foot in one of their stores, and don't expect to.

Yet again, Matt Howie caves in to legal threats from people purporting to represent Thomas "Tom" Cruise Mapother. Quite why Mr. Mapother doesn't want any discussion of genetic abnormalities he may or may not have is entirely beyond us.

The Atlantic Lottery of Canada finds its retailers are ten times luckier than expected. This is prima facie evidence that the system there is corrupt. Can other operators honestly claim that everything is above board?

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Miscellany

4March

(Banks, Iraq, and Blair, mostly) 1006 words

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Miscellany

24February

In These Times publishes a brief history (and lexicon) of political correctness.

The United Nations has likened Israel's occupation of Gaza to apartheid South Africa, and proposes bringing a case to the International Court of Justice.

Christopher Howell publishes the correspondence he had with Joyce Hatto and William Barrington-Coupe. We don't have much to add to this exhaustive account, and point interested people to The complete Hatto primer.

We've been crunching the numbers for SKY's withdrawal from the cable market; we understand that the cable providers pay roughly £6 million per month (nominally for SKY Comedy, with other channels bundled free). At a conservative estimate, the reduced reach will shave 10%-20% off the advertising card, reducing income by somewhere between £2 million and £4 million per month. Over the course of a year, that amounts to the thick end of £100 million.

We're also reminded that SKY has proposed to withdraw from the Freeview DTTV consortium, and replace its channels with a subscription offer. If this happens, factor in another £5 million loss in advertising revenue - the comedy channel's potential audience will have halved in two strokes. That's at least £150 million per year gone, and we can't see the subscription model bringing in more than £10 million. Can SKY afford to lose such huge sums of money, never mind the severe loss of goodwill that will be incurred? Transdiffusion has something of interest.

Meanwhile, Flextech suddenly gets a budget to make some entertaining programmes, cable viewers get an excuse to ask for the likes of France24 and Motors TV to replace the gone-and-soon-forgotten channels, and everyone's a winner. OK, except for the handful of people watching television from satellite, but they have all the German channels to watch...

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21February

Metafilter contributor Loquacious warns of an advert trick.

I saw a new ad-trick MLM-scam today. It was an AdSense ad in my Gmail today that read something like "Tour the Red Planet in Style! Comfortable, modern zero G cruise ships. Experience Mars in luxury!"

Naturally, I clicked it. "Tour Mars!? What the fuck?"

Naturally, it redirected to some newfanlged mega-MLM, free-paid survey clusterfuck. If I wasn't using Firefox, AdBlock, NoScript, etc. I probably would have been hit with an IE driveby exploit, a zillion popups and goodness knows what else.

The error of Loquacious's ways should be obvious to all readers. All advertising is bad.

Language Log this week: In search of the millionth word.

Simon Jenkins on the Mad Publicity Disease affecting the government. Where's he been for the past ten years?

When you're at the check-out and you hear the beep, just think of the fun you could have on Chavez's Nationalised Supermarket Sweep! I'm going to take the food storage units, corner stores, supermarkets and nationalise them. So prepare yourselves! Remind us never to let Dale Winton rule by decree...

And still in glorified game show territory, M Sarkozy is popping up everywhere, this time in a virtual world. The customers of 2^eme Vie are mostly saying, Nous ne échappens à cette bâtarde? Il surgit ici, il surgit là, il surgit partout. Ou est la bonne Mme. Royal?

An argument for charging token school fees bears considering. The best predictor of a good education is not funding, but independence; witness the government's perpetual meddling in education since the mid-1980s. Charging a nominal fee, with the taxpayer funding the less well-off, fosters some level of professional pride. And the strangest thing of all: this argument is being made by Charles In Charge.

The London Crass Spectacle will be a disaster. It's already over budget by more than 100%, it is removing allotments for no social gain, and now it emerges that the whole transport system will grind to a halt. Honestly, the people of Atlanta couldn't organise such a cock-up.

But Mister Tony Blair could. See also: his dismissive response to 28,000 people calling out his fat-headed plans for a national identity register (1) (2) (3).

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16February

(Brig, Anthologie, Tom, Irina, Vorpal, the Beef, c 818 words)

Lucy's 100 Singles from the 90s is a quality project. I'll finish off 33 and a third (the most influential albums of my life so far) and then think about the nineties.

For those who get easily bored during the Zane Lowe show, or can't stand the unfunny comedians of a Saturday night, Audioscrobbler has now put together stations that sound a bit like daytime Radio 1, daytime Radio 2, and 6music. More interestingly, it's also possible to hear the Recommendations stations, the songs that these stations should be playing. It will be interesting to see if this will influence the stations' respective playlist committees over the coming months.

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Miscellany

12February

Pleased to see that the BBC homepage passes strict HTML validation. This is good because it's proof that complete compliance and good design aren't mutually exclusive. And it gives the rest of us something to aim at.

(In this one: 645 words of: Proclaimers, children, earth worship, toonies, Downer, Rand, Radio 3, English as a second language, Gillian McKeith, and...)

Newfoundland Power has told a woman not to pin yellow ribbon to its electricity poles. Might cut into a worker's clothing and cause an electric shock, says the utility company. Anita Wheeler, who says she's supporting Canadian troops in Afghanistan, reckons that the very real risk of killing someone is worth the very marginal benefit of sticking up pieces of cloth. Can't she just tie it tightly?

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Miscellany

10February

Et maitenent, un anecdote a rejectré par Des Chiffres et des Lettres et pas desso Connor

Un couple de parisiens décide de partir en week-end à la plage et de descendre au même hôtel qu'il y a 20 ans, lors de leur lune de miel.

Mais, au dernier moment, à cause d'un problème au travail, la femme ne peut pas prendre son jeudi.

Il est donc décidé que le mari prendrait l'avion le jeudi, et sa femme le lendemain.

L'homme arrive comme prévu et après avoir loué la chambred'hôtel, il se rend compte que dans la chambre, il y a un ordinateur avec connexion à Internet. Il décide alors d'envoyer un courrier à sa femme.

Mais il se trompe en écrivant l'adresse. C'est ainsi qu'à Perpignan, une veuve qui vient de rentrer des funérailles de son mari mort d'une crise cardiaque reçoit l'email.

La veuve consulte sa boîte aux lettres électronique pour voir s'il n'y a pas de messages de la famille ou des amis. C'est ainsi qu'à la lecture du premier d'entre eux, elle s'évanouit. Son fils entre dans la chambre et trouve sa mère allongée sur le sol,sans connaissance, au pied de l'ordinateur. Sur l'écran, on peut lire le message suivant:

A mon épouse bien-aimée,Je suis bien arrivé. Tu seras certainement surprise de recevoir de mes nouvelles maintenant et de cette manière. Ici, ils ont des ordinateurs et tu peux envoyer des messages à ceux que tu aimes. Je viens d'arriver et j'ai vérifié que tout était prêt pour ton arrivée, demain vendredi. J'ai hâte de te revoir. J'espère que ton voyage se passera aussi bien que s'est passé le mien.

Er, oui. Laurent, avez-vous un duel pour nous?

Miscellany

6February

Simon Jenkins on the hypocricy at the DCMS. How can Jowell and her colleagues patronise the alcohol and gambling lobbies and yet blindly repress other indulgences and addictions, notably street drugs. Why are they filling city centres with drunks and gamblers yet filling prisons with drug users?

Also: data, rape, 24, debt, taboo words, Economist, and binning ID cards (More: 436 words)

Miscellany

27January

Nick is asking how to say Isleworth. The correct answer, which I'm surprised he didn't include in the options, is Home of bad television.

Nick goes on to ask, Would you do Jermaine Jackson? The short answer he's after: no. Though he's right to recall an eternal truth, what's happening on Big Brother is of no consequence.

Matt asks a couple of Birmingham-related questions:

1) Just before Junction 6 on the M6 northbound there's that sign that tells drivers to stay in lane through the diamond markings. What's the point of these diamonds? I don't think I've ever seen them anywhere else.

The point is to discourage lane-swapping, and bring some pressure on people to get in lane well before the junction with the A38. Lane-swapping is bad, as it causes other lanes of traffic to slow down. The road is so crowded that a decrease in lane swapping, which causes a slight increase in the flow of traffic through the junction, in turn leads to markedly fewer traffic jams. It's tackling the symptom, not the problem, but it's doing something useful.

2) Over to the north of Birmingham somewhere (Sutton Coldfield?) there's something tall and thin sticking up into the sky. Where is it, and what is it?

That'll be the Sutton Coldfield broadcast mast at Mere Green, bringing television and radio to much of the west midlands region. You may also be seeing the Lichfield broadcast mast, which broadcasts a few services.

In the Torygraph, Sarah Crompton suggests that Jade Goody should go dancing. She extols the virtues of the Laban Centre, which is both the leading contemporary dance education centre in London, and a facility for all people in south-east London. Which is, lest we forget, the area that spawned Miss Goody. Now, while we have slight difficulty in thinking of Miss Goody in the same thought as the country's best young dancers, that's not the point. Expression through movement is the point.

Mrs. Crompton puts out a call to action, on behalf of her organisation and others around the country: Channel 4 ... should put its programmes where its mouth is and start to give some of these fantastically worthy ventures the screen time that is currently devoted to the posturings of the vain and ignorant. We back her call to the hilt. Last year, C4 gave modern dance two hours over the easter week-end, and four episodes of Three Minute Wonder. A total of two and a quarter hours, roughly. On average, there's more (Celeb) Big Brother each and every day of the year. Even on the days when it's not on.

Miscellany

22January

A week or so ago, m'learned friend Jaeda asked if someone could coach the president a teensy-weensy little bitty bit on his diction. Now, I've not heard him speak recently, but I don't recall Mr. Kerry's diction being particularly bad.

Anywhoo, the word Jae's bothered about is terror, a word that ends with a functional r. It should not be swallowed, for it is wrong to swallow one's rs, the phenome should be pronounced with clarity.

Unless, of course, Candidate X is advocating a War on Terra, which would at least be consistent with his faith-based position on global warming.

Anyway, I've put together a brief sound file to illustrate the optimal pronunciation for these words. See if you can spot the deliberate error...

miscellany

20January

It was once cool to dis this show. But that was back in '94 when it aired. All the cool kids who did it couldn't care less now. Or, y'know, actually did finally watch the show.

What's the difference that lies between / The colour blue, and the colour green? The Economist on colour perception

Howard Jacobson on Jade Goody's real crime. At some point the accumulation of missing information and curiosity amounts to your not being in the world at all. And it is this condition - a condition that can with far more justice be described as alienation than the ennui of the intellectual - that Big Brother and its host of satellite celebrity magazines have for years been encouraging us to embrace.

And Language Log on the phrasal construction, People of colour. We don't just throw this set of links together, you know!

Make music, not war - the Music Manifesto.

Fact-check: for Richard Ingrams, East 17 are still having top ten hits. It was almost exactly 25 years ago, in January 1972... PRI's The World doesn't know the difference between Channel 4 and the BBC, referring to BBC's Channel 4.

President Chávez says that President Castro is near death. Obituaries ... ready, and not just for the pop singer Doherty. That's Denny Doherty, of the Mamas and the Papas, and not anyone else of a similar name who readers might have expected to turn up on the obit list.

Miscellany

17January

Jan Herman at Straight Up has taken to calling the figurehead of the military junta in some rebel provinces Huha. The turn of phrase reminds me of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's third great song (and fourth single) Welcome to the pleasuredome. Yes, I can just about see the junta's figurehead camping it up in an ill-fitting leather jacket and wearing a Hitler moustache. That'll play well in Peoria.

More

Miscellany

10January

Music sales, culture, tv shows, On the Town. More

Miscellany

1January

Back at the start of last year, we made some predictions. How badly did we do, and what do we think will happen during 2007?

(More: Predicting 2007, 1366 words)

Miscellany

1January

As those of you who read this on the website will have spotted, there have been some fairly major changes to the look of this blog.

More