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I'm with Kevin Spacey on this one.

Nothing Better To Do

The story about Pete Tong inadvertently causing the destruction of an 18-year-old's birthday party with a Shout Out is quite sad for those involved. But how can it be that on Saturday night near or around Dartmoor there are almost 2,000 people listening to Pete Tong who can make it to a party in, really, the middle of nowhere at short notice? It’s madness.

One Louder

The BBC’s Iplayer is really good and great for catching shows you might have missed but I don’t understand why the volume goes up to eleven. I mean why not make ten louder and that be the top number?

Vegtables

So Tony Robinson 'felt as if a great burden had been lifted off his shoulders after his mystical encounter'. Probably that he didn't have to eat the asparagus as it had been on the floor and gotten dirty. Horrible stuff.

Weird City

The Vatican’s list of new ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ is really odd. Here are the new sins:

Environmental pollution
Genetic manipulation
Accumulating excessive wealth
Inflicting poverty
Drug trafficking and consumption
Morally debatable experiments
Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

So: Environmental pollution – ok, they’ve got EVERYONE here, except for some tribes somewhere in the Amazon, maybe. So it doesn't really count.

Genetic manipulation – apart from a few select doctors in top-notch research facilities, this doesn’t concern the vast majority.

Accumulating excessive wealth – clearly the Vatican hasn’t heard of Student Loans, Council Tax, Gas Bills and so on.

Inflicting Poverty – see above.

Drug trafficking and consumption – most people don't do that unless tea / coffee / alcohol count?

Morally debatable experiments – seeing how long you dare leave the washing up until the mould becomes a life form? (Which I suppose is a form of genetic manipulation).

Violation of fundamental rights of human nature – ok well now I am totally lost.

So unless you’re a gene research scientist, who trafficks cocaine for massive profit at the exploitation of others on the side, and you occasionally carry out experiments that are against the laws of nature on other human beings against their will, then I think you’re alright.

FAing Idiots

Just another, in the long, long longggggg, list of reasons why I hate the FA and believe them to be one of the most incompetent organisations on the planet, alongside their 'Big Brother' FIFA.

Smile

The school in this story may have covered the faces of all the children in the photo for security reasons but I feel it gives the school a nice, friendly image. However, there is a blatant lack of diversity at the school and feel they need to look again at their selection policies.

Some Advice

Apparently if you phone the Citizens Advice Bureau line for advice on debt issues they inform you that your call will cost more than for other CAB enquiries. Isn’t that just typical?

Free Change

Whatever your political leaning (or lack of), Christopher Hitchen’s latest ‘Fighting Talk’ entry on the emptiness of the slogans being tossed around in the pre-election elections is certainly on the money. It is true the word change has come up an awful lot.

I also read ‘How to be free’ over the last few days and while some of it was a bit far-fetched the chapter on why we should choose not to vote, not out of apathy, but out of the opposite, a conscious decision, was very interesting and thoughtful; why condone a system you don’t believe works, is fair, operates well or indeed is just any good, by taking part in the voting process (to paraphrase massively)?

I would recommend reading just that chapter, without paying for it, perhaps in a quiet section of a bookstore – that’s how to be free.

Zzzz...

A six-minute nap can boost your memory, but 'daytime dozing' can give you a stroke. What to do?!

Non-news

This is a great bit of non-news from Cornwall. The headline reads ‘Man hurt after prince leaves club’ which from a news perspective implies the man was hurt at the same time the prince left – perhaps in a connected way. But of course read literally it means ‘after the prince left the club, a man was hurt (sometime later)'. Which is actually what happened.

An hour and a half after the prince left there was a fight and someone got hit. Unless the prince said something that took an hour and a half to be understood before the men could react, I don’t think the quote of, "We can categorically say neither the prince nor his party were involved” is really that necessary.

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Since I wrote this up earlier more stories about it have been coming up form a variety of papers with more details which make it more of a 'story' - although whether or not the prince's presence in the club had anything to do with the incident is questionable. I would suggest, as an ex-resident of Cornwall, that a 1-pound party night in Newquay yields injuries on a fairly regular basis.

Anything to Declare?

The furore over MPs expenses and the incredible fact they don’t have to produce receipts for any claims under £250 and can claim £400 a month against ‘food’ expenditure (more than the highest state pension over a month) really underlines some of the archaic practices operating within our government. The argument they don’t want people to have a “peephole” into their lives, (the word(s) of Resources Boss Andrew Walker), doesn’t hold weight as what can they be doing as MPs working on ‘our’ behalf that couldn’t be made public?

No business in Britain would run a system where employees could claim expenses of up to £250 without any form of receipt, but for MPs to be able to do so, and get back, effectively, ‘our’ money is so outdated and open to corruption it defies belief.

The Scottish Government now has an online section where you can search for any expenditure in any available category claimed by minsters. If SMPs are doing their jobs and claiming legitimate expenses they incur, then what is the problem? If the Westminster MPs are so ‘honourable’ what have they got to fear?

Some Good News

Arrested Development to return? Let’s hope so. The best comedy of all time? I think so. And with a 9.7 average from over 20,000 votes on IMDB so do a lot of people.

Oh Dear

Cliff Richard's interview with Q sounds like it was an odd affair.

Like many people Cliff Richard has mistaken ‘most’ for ‘best’. Because he sold more records than The Beatles and Elvis he assumes he is ‘better’ than them. This of course ignores the fact his music is more middle of the road than white lines and his audience is that entire strata of the population who have a music bypass in their brains.

He’s even attacked George Harrison’s guitar solos as ‘out-of-tune’. Strange that it took 50 years and the incredible musical talent of Cliff Richard to point this out. You would have thought classically trained musicians, or uber-keen fans, or even fans, or even the band themselves would have noticed this in half a century of listening. But no. Everyone else is an idiot and Cliff is a bloody genius and only he can point these things out.

Why stop there Cliff? Come on, you’ve got all these outlandish opinions let’s hear them. There’s a whole 50 years worth of popular music to slate with ridiculous claims. The Rolling Stones (too loud); Bob Dylan (too wordy); Simon and Garfunkel (too many harmonies) – nothing compared to you Cliff.

I mean this is the man who set the Lord’s Prayer to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. Genius. Cliff is so sure of his own brilliance he calls himself the UPS – Ultimate Pop Star. A term he has coined because no one else has. Odd that.