By-election watch

A disaster of a result for the Lib Dems in Folkestone, yielding a 23.175% (Twenty Three And Seven Fortieths Per Cent) swing to the Tories in Michael Howard's home fiefdom, and two other swings of 10% around the country. The Tories still take minor swings from Labour. Because the eight-week old seats were mostly Lab-to-Lib swings, Labour's position improves somewhat, and I'm looking at an overall majority of 20, up from 8 last week.

Is this the review of the year of the record of the year?

The highlight of this wildly hyped band's self-titled debut is an exercise in contrast between two very different kinds of party music. The first minute or so of this invitation to murder is a dead-on imitation of the Strokes; then it abruptly downshifts into pure double-bump disco-rock. Watching the audience as Franz Ferdinand perform it live is a lesson in what guitar-based pop has mostly forgotten over the last 25 years - that when people go out to hear loud music, they want to move their bodies, and not just in place. As soon as the band hits the downbeat of the disco section, everyone in the jitter-dancing crowd changes posture, and starts hustling like they've just seen the sun for the first time and it's a gigantic glitter ball.

Looming on the BBC

Westway, the World Service soap, starts on BBC7 on May 3. The WS runs twice a week, BBC7 five times a week, so the two will meet in around three years' time. Sounds like a decent enough bargain to me.
Radio Five's commentary on the Imola GP (1255 Su) will be on digital only, as the AM station broadcasts some men kicking a pig's bladder around. Following RTÉ's lead, Rachel Burden will visit the ten new EU states from Tuesday. Bet she won't have an interview where Marie N forgets her own song.

This week's numbers

1.7757 (-181) 1.4890 (-063) 0.6712 (+024) 1.1920 (-076)

U-turner in chief

Today's Daily Pornographersrag carried a seven-page tirade against the Labour party, and culminated (well, started, as it was the front page splash) by saying "We're backing the Tories now.) This came as a surprise to most media observers, who had long thought of the Express as the paramilitary wing of the Daily Hell.

"You can't believe a word Blair says any more" said the failing organ. When the Express last backed the Tories, in 1996, its circulation was 1.3 million. A brief dalliance with soft left policies culminated in a very readable paper under the editorship of Rosie Boycott between 97 and 2000. However, porn baron Richard Desmond purchased the paper that autumn, sacked Rizla, and moved to the scaremongering right. The rag has peddled more lies and untruths about our Eastern European comrades than even the worst of the Murdoch press, and its circulation has dipped by a third, falling under the crucial 1 million mark earlier this year.

Indeed, just today there are reports that Dirty Desmond went goose-stepping around his office, in an extraordinary tirade against bosses at the Torygraph. The Pornographersrag's closest sales rival.

Dirty Desmond branded the Torygraph chief executive, Jeremy Deedes, a "miserable little piece of shit" and said Germans were "all Nazis".

The 'graph executives were so outraged by the porn baron's four-letter outburst that they walked out of the meeting in disgust. As they left the meeting of the jointly owned West Ferry printing company, Mr Desmond told other Express executives to sing Deutschland uber Alles and made Nazi-style "Sieg Heil" salutes, according to witnesses.

People present at the meeting said Des - who dropped out of the race to buy the Telegraph after balking at the asking price - had at one point strutted up and down the room holding his fingers to his lips and giving stiff-armed salutes, in emulation of the famous goosestepping scene in TV sitcom Fawlty Towers.

Mr Deedes said: "It was the most grotesque outburst of a mix of slander and racism that I have ever been subjected to. If it had been in a public place he would have been arrested."

In a faux-German accent, Mr Desmond asked if the Telegraph bosses - who also included managing director Hugo Drayton and printing director Bill Ellerd-Styles - were looking forward to being run by Nazis.

"That's not very helpful," Mr Deedes said, pointing out that Axel Springer - the German newspaper group currently bidding to buy the Telegraph titles - had a commitment to the state of Israel as part of its publishing philosophy.

When Mr Desmond said: "They're all Nazis", Mr Deedes replied: "That is thoroughly offensive. Could you please sit down so we can start the meeting?"

"Don't you tell me to sit down, you miserable little piece of shit," Mr Desmond said, before he launched what witnesses described as "a stream of foul-mouthed abuse, both personal and general".

"After three years dealing with a bunch of crooks I'm starting to enjoy this," Mr Desmond said, adding, "You sat down with that fucking fat crook and did nothing," in an apparent reference to Lord Black. He also called the Telegraph directors "fucking cunts" and "fucking wankers" among other names in an expletive-ridden tirade.

Fscking nugger

Words similar to these got "Big" Ron Atkinson fired from his job as summariser on ITV's football coverage. That Big Ron had to be shown the door for bad language, rather than his cliched and tedious on-screen "analysis", shows just how poor ITV has become. Their smooth host, Des "TV's Mr Sex" Lynham, leaves the station this summer, leading to just a little hope that we'll have some adventurous coverage sooner rather than later.

Two quick points: Ron was interviewed for ITV by Mark Austen, still best known in these parts as the pompous host of Survivor, prompting the thought "Hasn't he suffered enough" - of Ron, not Mark. And Ron's billed as "an ex-MUN manager", when he's actually the manager before the current one - that shows just how amazing is Alex Ferguson's seventeen year run in the job.

Preferendum

In a major U-turn, Tony Blair announces that there will, after all, be a referendum on the forthcoming European Constitution. Assuming there's agreement at the forthcoming summit in Dublin (and that's by no means a foregone conclusion), Parliament would first have a nice long debate, then there would be a plebiscite amongst the general public.

Actually, that's not strictly correct. In theory, the Electoral Commission could agree the wording of the question and hold a referendum as soon as July. However, such a swift timetable is ruled out by the Government's insistence on playing a long campaign, waiting for the Commons and the Lords to have their say.

So, early next year is the first possible date for the second national vote. However, that presumes that the vote doesn't clash with the UK general election, believed to be scheduled for May or June next year. Realistically, that makes late February a possible date, but realistically rules out the first half of 2005.

The second half of 2005 is surely ruled out because the UK will hold the Presidency of the European Union. If that's enough of an excuse not to hold an election in autumn 05, it's surely enough of an excuse not to hold a referendum.

So, early 2006 is the first possible date. By then, there's every chance that one of the other 24 nations will have been unable to ratify the constitution, and the whole thing will be up for renegotiation, and the Brown government may reckon it can force through the constitution without a vote. Quite the masterplan, really.

All this delay gives me a perfect excuse not to blog about why Europe is a blimmin' good thing until a later date.

An open letter to Jane Root

Jane,

Three hours of great archive television, celebrating the very best that BBC2 has brought us over the past 40 years. It's a remarkable achievement, and an excellent nostalgia trip.

However, sadly, my enjoyment of the celebration was marred by your producer's insistence on cropping the top and bottom off of everything more than a few years old. Not only does this look foolish, but it actually works against the art and directoral skills of your predecessors.

Just the other week, I saw an excellent BBC Parliament documentary, inserting archive footage from 1979 into modern footage. That programme showed the entire original footage, by putting black bars down the side of the screen. Why could your producer not have made this compromise? It may reduce the size of the picture, but what we lose in size we gain in accuracy and honesty.

Sadly, I can only think that you've made the decision to mislead us, to pretend that BBC2 has always been in widescreen, and that the tops of people's heads weren't regularly filmed until a few years ago. We deserved better.

Your channel's history deserved better.

Yours, Weaver.

Opening up Blackhole

It's been a dingy, grimy black hole for the past thirty years, but there's a chance - just a chance - that passengers at New Street station might yet see the open air. A £330 million (€515 million) plan would knock down the Pallisades shopping centre, built over New Street in the mid 60s. It'll be replaced by a more modest retail development, one that would actually allow passengers to see the sky. Further details on the proposals should be available in June.

In not entirely unrelated news, Spaghetti Junction will be having its once-a-decade renewal work this year. Traffic from the city centre will not be able to join the M6 southbound for nine weeks in June and July, and there will be no access to the A38(M) from the motorway in either direction. Instead, a 1000 space carpark will be set up at Star City, near the old Fort Dunlop, and there will be a special bus service. If only the rail station at Dunlop hadn't closed, there could be a shuttle train on that route, or to Water Orton just down the road.

If five dreams come true...

one would be to make My Star synonymous with Brainstorm, and not that rather pants Ian Brown song they played on 6 Music this evening.

The Beckhams

It's been a good story for me, but not that good. With the story running out of steam this weekend, and Celebdaq prices slowing their momentous rise, I finished the week becalmed at £1,959,557.84. That's a hugely irritating 2.06% adrift of my third successive double kneecapping. I finished with 138,855 shares of DBECKM at an average gain of 24.29%, and 39,659 of VPSBAA showing a 9.70% gain in two and a half days. If only... I've now looped the loop four times, showing an aggregate of 10 millions and quite a lot of change.

This week's investment: Emma Thompson.

Not this week's investment: News International, which has paid something like £800,000 to the woman making the claims, and had to cross-promote its own hypocracy across all NI organs.

Reading week?

What's to do with this year's holidays? I'm reckoning on taking the bank holiday week in May - June, in part to go and see Gretchen Peters in London, though I need to confirm what the Chiltern Trains are doing - they're the only offering direct to the capital, thanks to yet more upgrade work on the WCML. Then in September, I hear there's a debut Pride event in Reading, starring Sparky, Belinda Carlisle, and Lisa Scott-Lee. Mmm, sounds like an event. That's September 4, giving an excuse to take the August bank holiday week. A long weekend in late July, a week around my birthday, a week for Frau Holle's Festival, and that's a wrap.

Six good bloggers you're not reading (unless you are)

An article in Het Grauniad explores the phenomenon of "leading bloggers." I'm not linking to the article, partly because it's a bit rubbish, and partly on the assumption that everyone else around here will be linking to it; of course, if everyone else is making the same decisions as myself, then no one will ever find the article. But I digress already.

It did set me thinking about what makes a good blog. "Good writing about something interesting" is the main criterion; having a clear voice is an additional bonus, but sometimes the best blogs are random collections of things, without any seeming organisation. On those criteria, and using my own, personal, definition of "interesting", I nominate these people for your consideration:

* Anthologie. A Collection Of Modern Verse, says the journal name, and it's completely accurate. She offers koans to inspire, and every post makes me think. A lot of people read Anthologie.

* Between lives. MJF may only have been at this blogging lark for a few short weeks, but he naturally has the right balance between introspection and exhibitionism.

* Brad de Long. An economist looks at the world around him. Brad's journal veers between philosophy, maths, politics, economics, and what his kids had for lunch. There's no over-arching theme, and that's Brad's strength.

* Jiggery Pokery. A regular reader and correspondent to this set of witterings, Jiggers has an archive that is full of fantastic detail about his everyday life, and it's clear that he thinks, and has time to think, and the ability to express his thoughts in great detail. Very happily for him, Mr Pokery has recently taken a welcome step along his self-development road; sadly for us, it means he has less time to spend with his blog. The archive is well worth following.

* Popular. The premise is very simple: every UK number one single, ever, reviewed on its musical merits. (Or, in the case of We're Going to Ibiza, its lack of musical merits.) It's not as academic as Gambiccini / Rice / Rice's books, nor the depth of research of Bronson's US equivalents. There is a clear affinity with the music and the times in which it was created, and that spark of life is missing from the weightier tomes.

* The Gay Vote. Politics for homosexuals. It doesn't take a party line, it is prepared to give all parties enough rope to hang themselves (or the benefit of the doubt, if you're not so cynical), and I'm yet to find a better-written political weblog. That especially includes this page!

Six, I think, is enough for anyone. I'm almost tempted to suggest that readers make their own nominations in this field in their own journals, giving the other blogs and writings that they reckon would most interest a passing reader. But that would be to start one of these chain letter things, and I'm not sure I want to do that.

The wrong kind of safe country

Britain planned to send back Iraqi refugees this month, on the government's insistence that Iraq is a safe country. Clearly, this is for values of "safe" that include "seeing 700 people killed in armed operations by criminal gangs under foreign control." Finally, the message has hit home in the government, and those plans have been quietly abandoned. A note from the UN said, in part:

"Despite the arrest of Saddam Hussein and the timetable for the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty, a climate of insecurity continues in Iraq. Security incidents targeting both [occupying] forces and, increasingly, Iraqis continue with alarming frequency. These frequently result in the death or serious injury of the targeted individuals as well as other civilians."

In not entirely unrelated news, the government's run up the white flag over other, similarly flawed, refugee ideas. Charlie Falconer, the Lord Chancellor constitutional affairs minister, will formally announce that plans to stop failed refugees from making multiple appeals against deportation will be abandoned. Instead, they will be able to use the courts to appeal against decisions by the Immigration Appeals Tribunal. There will be strict time limits on when failed refugees can appeal in an attempt to stop them 'playing the system' and remaining in the country as lengthy appeals processes are exhausted, the same sort of deadline that causes major injustices elsewhere in the world.

Burning pants, anyone?

"The case for war was irrefutable, claims a man who does not know the meaning of the word "refute." Blair claimed that Iraq possessed all three of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. He also claimed that Iraq was in a position to use them, and therefore Iraq posed a clear and present danger to the world.

Two lines of refutation: no CBN weapons were found, nor were they found by inspectors from the UN. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Iraq ever threatened to use these (notional) weapons, as the ousted regime knew exactly what would follow. As the original premises do not hold, the conclusion is unsupportable. That, Mr Blair, is refutation of your argument. Now go back to your constituency and prepare for defeat.

On the same subject, Guy of Gisbourne - the PDRUP's figurehead puppet - was asked yesterday what he had discussed with the leader of the free world in November 2001. "Oh, I don't know, I can't remember dates," replied the goon.

Chart-a-rama

Once again, the prospect of a little scandal delights buyers, and Eamon's pisspoor Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back) moves to the number one slot. Even worse, D12 and Eminem's My Band is in at 2, and on grounds of quality, it should be. A major whay-hey for Rasmus, who hold at 3, proving that the Finns really are popular. Anastacia holds at 4 in her 4th week, and is perhaps an even bigger Real Hit than Rasmus. Usher slumps from 2 to 5, McFly from 1 to 6.

Single of the Week 1: For Lovers, by Pete Doherty and Wolfman. It's a quiet, piano-driven ballad that doesn't quite scale the same heights, but will appeal to anyone who likes Keane's record. It's new at 7.

Single of the Week 2: If I Thought I Could Ever Change Your Mind by Agnetha Faltskog. Twenty years after breaking up Abba, the blonde woman returns with a ballad to rival Fernando, and is even better than Céline Dion on a good day. She's in at 11.

Joe, JC Chavez, Janet Jackson (only at 15! That's atrocious!) and Hillary Duff enter within the 20. Janet's is her smallest first hit from an album since Rhythm Nation 1812's Miss You Much only made 22, fifteen years ago. Hillary's second single follows almost six months after her debut, and it looks like the record company have dropped the ball, especially as "Why Not?" is a surefire hit.

Bottom end: we like Snow Patrol's Chocolate, Beta Band's Assessment, and we salute the return of Bellefire. The new B*witched (or the Irish Sugababes, depending on opinion) made 18 with Perfect Bliss three years ago, 18 with All I Want Is You two years back, and 24 with Say Something Anyway today. We also note Michelle McManus's second week position. 38. Down 22.

For the albums, it's three-from-three for Anastacia, holding off Diana Krall's The Girl In The Other Room for the top slot. Katie Melua drops one to 3, Rasmus storm up from 12 to 4, and Yog slips a couple to 5. Good climbs for Snow Patrol's Final Straw (11-6) and Franz Ferdinand (16-10); less good for Nelly Furtardo (4-13) and the Delays (8-17). With very little new work - the second highest newie is from Young Heart Attack at 37 - most of the rest of the list is small movements. Perhaps the smallest goes to the Lostprophets, whose Start Something has gone 34-34-34-35 in the last month.

older writing...