Photos of Spain

I've posted a few photos of my recent Spanish holiday up on Flickr - have done Granada and hope to add some of Seville in the next couple of days.

Holiday Happiness

I'm just back from Spain, with that extra self confidence I only get on holiday. It's hard to describe - a feeling that your life can be more than the humdrum existence at home, and that you're a brighter and more attractive person than you normally feel. It didn't work for me in last year's UK holiday, but I think Spain has a special magic. We spent ten days in Andalucia - flying to Málaga and then going to Granada (as advised, by bus) the next day, spending three nights there and then getting the train to exotic Sevilla, finally taking the train back to Málaga to fly home the next day. (Quick quiz: how many nights did we spend in Seville? ;-)) In part, of course, that feeling of well-being and optimism is down to the heat and the sun and, as this week so far has been nice and warm (if not always sunny) on Tyneside, I think that's prolonged the holiday effect.

If anyone is interested, I took more than 1,400 photos (!) while I was there, and will be posting a small (I promise) selection of these on my Flickr pages as soon as I've winkled out the best ones.

The temporary holiday "glow" has also boosted my libido no end but, as I've resolved to keep this blog clean, I'll say no more about that.

Sir Peter that never was

I was pleased to see in the Saturday papers that Christopher Lee is now Sir Christopher. I've resisted the temptation to go for a tabloid style title for this observation (Fangs for the Honour, Arise Sir (Count) Christopher)...I'm sure they were all trotted out yesterday when it was first announced, and it would only annoy Sir Christopher anyway if he were to read this. It was nice to see an underrated talent recognised. He is now 87, and probably more successful in terms of international recognition than he's ever been. While he would probably admit that he isn't the world's most versatile performer, he is a great personality with a sense of humour and ability to move an audience (Curse of Frankenstein, The Mummy etc.). He has also (it has to be said) been the only convincing actor in the role of Dracula.

Sadly, Peter Cushing was never honoured in the same way. An even greater actor, capable of projecting a completely cool and callous persona (as in his Frankenstein films) or a strangely pitiful one (Grimsdyke in Tales from the Crypt), he was also renowned as a complete gentleman. No-one in the business ever seems to have had a bad word for him - something that can't quite be said of Mr Lee (sorry, Sir Christopher) who, on occasions, has been described as egotistical and bad-tempered. After the death of his beloved wife Helen in 1971, Mr Cushing lived only for his work. He gave some of his greatest performances in the 1970s but then became increasingly frail and went into semi-retirement in the 1980s. He never complained about being typecast as a "horror star". Peter Cushing died in 1994.

MPs’ “gravy train”

Being a bit of a cynic, I wasn’t really surprised by the recent revelations about MPs’ expenses. I felt a vague sense of sympathy for Speaker Michael Martin when he was “grilled” in the House of Commons the other day, but he really did have to go: it must have been as obvious to him as to others that he had completely failed in his job. The House of Commons should feel collective guilt for their appalling attempt to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Act but, in supporting this, the Speaker was going against the principles of democracy and, for this alone, deserved to be ousted.

Some MPs seem to feel it’s their birthright to take money from the public purse. I was amazed by the tone of some of the statements from Tory MP Anthony Steen, boasting about his large house and then asking “What right does the public have to interfere with my private life” – completely failing to acknowledge that it was his (and others’) misuse of public money, and their subsequent attempts to hide this, that caused the whole row.

I’m not a Tory supporter and dread the result of a General Election this year, but I definitely have some sympathy with John Wick, the man who passed on the details of MPs’ expenses to the Daily Telegraph, when he says that the official version due for publication in July had lots of details censored, and that the public has a right to know about MPs' affairs given how much information the government is collecting about ordinary citizens.

BBC's slipping standards

Comment sent to BBC via their web site this evening:

This morning on BREAKFAST there were at least two (I think three) clips in the feature on Morrissey where 4:3 footage was "stretched" to 16:9. I am not a follower of Morrissey, but this picture distortion was immediately obvious to me. For a professional broadcaster, this is simply shoddy. I'm sure your editors and engineers have heard of zooming and cropping - or, of course, they could have used pillarboxing with vertical mattes.

The analogy that always comes to my mind is wedding photographs - no-one would consider accepting these if the bride and groom were shown 33% wider than in life, so why does the BBC (that we expect to uphold broadcast standards) do this?

This isn't the first time I've seen this on the BBC. I get slightly irritated when I see spelling mistakes in BBC captions too (which seems to get more frequent), but they've probably got more of an excuse for that. The people who put out TV "magazine" programmes are trained in broadcast techniques - I'm not, and I spotted the distortion immediately. That must mean they can also see that it's not right, but just don't care.

I know lots of people actually have their wide screen TVs set to make all 4:3 material look "fat" but surely we can expect higher standards from the BBC than from your average, uncritical viewer?

Birdsong

I've wondered what the bird is that's been waking me (in a rather soothing way) at 5am for the past few weeks. Every few seconds the musical notes go and it sings "Wicka - wicka - wicka", like a car alarm. I've read that song thrushes are very keen mimics of repetitive sounds and, if you hear a song that uses repetition, it will be a thrush. Could it be one of the same family that nested in our garden (in the fork of our drainpipe) a few years ago?

I'm more inclined to think that it's one of the blackbirds that are ubiquitous in our area. I know they're great mimics as well, and I've spotted one recently on top of one of the tall blocks of flats dotted around our housing estate.

Want to save money? Scrap the ID card

We've heard a lot lately about the desperate financial straits our country is in, and how eager the Government is to save money. All this is very worrying, and it certainly needs to try to ensure we're not deep in debt for a whole generation. There's one area where definite and large savings could be made with only a relatively minor degree of political embarrassment - i.e. by the Government admitting that its plans for a National Identity Card are misconceived and vague, and scrapping the whole project.

The aims of the project are very vague, and the Government has been publicly criticised by its own advisors for trying to do too many things. Every citizen who knows anything about information technology knows that all of our recent governments have been technically naive on databases, and have an appalling record in both getting large databases to work (at a cost anywhere near their original budget) and in securing confidential data. We are told that the scheme will protect us from terrorism, but without any convincing explanation of how it will do this.

The official projected cost of the project is currently around 5 billion pounds, with rumours that insiders believe it will rise to at least 10 billion. Unfortunately, David Cameron has said that the project should be cancelled, almost guaranteeing that it will not be dropped in the foreseeable future.