You're a beautiful woman probably...

Halloween

2011-10-25T20:39:00.002+01:00

A bit of a departure for me: here's a link to what is intended to be a Halloween story - something I wrote back in 2004 for an event at work. That's me reading it. The story is based on the town where I live and is a little amateurish, although it went down quite well at the event itself.

(If this is working correctly, clicking on the heading above will take you to the MP3 file...)

Boléro

2011-08-06T17:02:00.000+01:00

Great to hear Ravel's Boléro (possibly the most famous classical music crescendo) live at the Proms the other night. This is one of those pieces that needs to be played correctly. I'd be the first to admit that it can be quite boring if not performed well. First of all, it has to be done reasonably quickly: most versions are under 15 minutes - Riccardo Muti's recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra runs for 17 minutes 9 seconds, which is much too slow. Ideally, it's around 14 minutes. Ravel himself said the tempo mustn't vary at all but, in my opinion, maintaining a steady tempo throughout means the piece just doesn't work. As someone once pointed out, if the conductor does this, the performance actually seem to get slower. For the maximum excitement, the tempo needs to be edged up a little towards the end. The orchestra needs to put energy into the piece and (although it must tax the brass players in particular) sustain all the notes throughout, not allowing them to die away.

Although I haven't bought any CDs for a while, I've collected versions of Boléro since the pre-CD years and currently (at a rough count) have 20 different recordings, including a handful on cassette. Donald Runnicles gave a great performance conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - nice and fast at around 15 minutes, and edging the tempo appropriately. Unfortunately I can only rate it third amongst the recordings I've heard: I'd put Riccardo Chailly's recording with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw at the very top, mainly for the sheer energy and the way the sound seems to broaden out to a vast climax; and Jean Martinon's with the Orchestre de Paris second, for a wonderfully chaotic, slightly out-of-control rendition: this is one piece that shouldn't sound too controlled.

Science Museum needs to get its act together

2011-08-06T14:19:00.001+01:00

I mentioned some time ago paying a visit to London and being amazed at the V & A Museum. A flying visit on our recent trip confirms that it's not resting on its laurels and has an excellent new restaurant along with an air of efficiency and a feeling of abundance.

In comparison, what a disappointment the Science Museum is! Apart from the general lack of thematic cohesion (very few of its exhibits seem to have clearly marked beginnings or endings, any clear chronological sequence or a definite theme other than that they're about (say) aviation), several exhibits are woefully out of date. The "flight" display, for example, referred to Concorde as if it were still a commercial airliner when, in fact, it made its last flight in 2003. As if this weren't bad enough, we could find nothing in the display on computing later than the 1970s! For a major national museum to ignore a whole chunk of history in this way is a huge let-down. Even if there are problems with funding, surely someone could put together some text descriptions and create a display from donations on the vast changes in this area over the past thirty years?

Bryant and May

2011-04-14T20:14:00.001+01:00

No, not a box of matches but (now) the names of a pair of elderly detectives in a series of excellent and eccentric murder mysteries by Christopher Fowler. While there's an undercurrent of gruesomeness in all the novels (Mr Fowler has also written horror stories), there's definitely a great affection for, and observation of, his characters. Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about the stories is the way they evoke the atmosphere of a mysterious and hidden London - uncovering things we didn't know about the capital and its often murky history: underground passages, buried rooms and convoluted crimes.

I'm re-reading The Victoria vanishes at the moment and it's struck me again that these stories are so tailor-made for TV that it's amazing that they haven't already been done. The only potential issue I can see with a series is that elderly actors are apt to die, giving the makers recasting problems. Can I make one request to any TV producer that might happen to read this - please remember there are other elderly actors than David Jason! I can see that he might seem ideal casting to some as the cantankerous Arthur Bryant, but we see quite enough of him on TV already. A better candidate (depending on budget) might be Albert Finney or Bernard Cribbins, and perhaps Tom Courtenay or John Challis as Bryant's colleague, John May.

Desert Island Discs

2011-04-03T11:10:00.000+01:00

Just heard this on the radio. Looks like a great site to visit for anyone interested in both people and music. Maybe this is more of a Twitter-type post - will see if I can squeeze it on there as well...

Found the money down the back of the sofa

2011-04-03T09:06:00.002+01:00

This week we had the sad event of around thirty people from our (local government) service leaving simultaneously on voluntary redundancy, with more to go by June. It seemed odd without some of them, but their loss will only be felt properly in the long term. We're told that similar cuts will have to be made next year and the year after - which will undoubtedly mean compulsory (rather than voluntary) redundancies.

Those of us who work in local government know that the impact on services of the cuts is already being felt. We're told that, with good management, the impact of these on frontline services should be minimal; we're not told how we can provide services of a similar standard with (in the long term) a possible 30% reduction in our budgets.

Anyone with half an eye or half a brain can see that Britain's adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are controversial. Are either of those countries really better off now than they were before our armed forces went in? Are we succeeding in our long-term aim to foster democracy in those countries and - more to the point - is it our job to do that? As if completely blind to the lessons of the past, it now seems that our "prudent", financially careful government has decided that a "quick" and "limited" intervention in Libya could get rid of the Big Bad Gaddafi and allow democracy to take over there. Although it's vital to pay off our deficit, we could miraculously afford a new military venture that, we're told, is costing "hundreds of millions of dollars". That was a couple of weeks ago but (surprise surprise) it hasn't worked! As I write, Gaddafi is still in power and the situation is looking murky...

Good intentions are all very well, but isn't it time to recognise that the days of the British Empire are long past? If Britain is really broke to the extent that it can't afford to maintain public services, how can it possibly afford to get involved in yet another open-ended foreign war with no plans for the aftermath?

Clock change: flogging a dead horse

2011-02-21T20:52:00.001Z

It seems only a few weeks ago that a slightly different flavour of this idea was mooted on "safety grounds", forgetting that the United Kingdom consists of more than London and the south east. Now it's dragged up again on the grounds that it would favour tourism. Do people avoid going to Greece and Turkey because their clocks are an hour different from France and Spain? Of course not. I seem to recall that the original idea was to stay on summer time throughout the year. As with the move to European time, this would make it darker in the morning and lighter in the evening. In London, sunrise in the dark days around Christmas would be postponed until 9.06am. In northern England, it wouldn't be until 9.30am and, in Aberdeen, not until 9.48! Understandably, people in the north don't want even darker mornings and wish the nation could be a little less London-centric...

Hattie still an enigma

2011-01-23T21:02:00.000Z

Stephen Russell's TV play about the love life of Carry On and Sykes star Hattie Jacques was beautifully acted but, as Caitlin Moran cogently pointed out in her column in yesterday's Times, the relationships didn't really make sense.

The same issue was there in the source material, Andy Merriman's biography, also called Hattie. We hear all about what happened, and that Hattie was a warm and loving woman, but this only makes the way she treated John Le Mesurier (and, by extension, her own children) all the more baffling. Maybe in future years someone else will come along and write another biography of Ms Jacques that throws more light on what, after 45 years, is still a mystery.

A Christmas Carol

2010-12-28T09:24:00.000Z

At last - a really good Doctor Who Christmas special! While a former Doctor Who writer would have just thrown them all in at random, Steven Moffat here has the clichés of snow, Christmas presents and Victoriana all present, but now with a plot to support them - a clever reworking of Dickens. Some striking and original images include fish flying through the sky and a "Santa's sleigh" pulled by a shark! Matt Smith is as good as ever, and Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are fine in their short appearances. Michael Gambon here is so much better than in the Harry Potter films and the non-actress Katherine Jenkins is skilfully used in a story that handles its tragic elements with an impressive lightness of touch. Ten out of ten from me!

"There is no downside to a proper winter"

2010-12-05T12:20:00.001Z

At the risk of increasing my reputation as a Scrooge, I have to say that this article in the Guardian made my blood boil with the unbelievable phrase "there is no downside to a proper winter".

This journalist says that weeks of snow and ice in the UK, even as early as this, are a good thing, basically because it looks pretty and children have fun! Evidently she's forgotten the frustration of people who have to try to get around in these conditions, the number of people who will end up with broken limbs after falling on the ice, the people who will lose their lives in road accidents as a direct result of awful driving conditions, or the many who will suffer because they can't afford to heat their homes properly - particularly the elderly. Even worse, her article contains the phrase "and yes...I work from home now"! Words fail me.

Blast from the past

2010-11-14T11:47:00.001Z

A great blog that I've been reading recently is A Thriller a day covering not the 1970s UK TV series (which I also enjoyed) but the early 1960s US series hosted by Boris Karloff. There was a vast amount of "word of mouth" about this, including comments by Stephen King in his non-fiction book Danse macabre but, for many years, it wasn't available on legitimate DVD, only bootlegs. As soon as I saw the announcement that the whole series was being released, with extras, I knew I had to have it. In case I give the wrong impression, let's admit that this is an old series with highly variable standards and some boring episodes. However, the good ones make it worthwhile. So far I've probably watched about a fifth of those with good reputations, and have really enjoyed them. While I didn't quite "get" the supposedly classic The cheaters - yes, it's a clever idea, well worked out, but it's neither chilling nor emotionally involving, as it has no sympathetic characters - I've been impressed by others like The hungry glass (featuring the wonderfully histrionic William Shatner) and Pigeons from hell (creepy in a way you just wouldn't see on today's TV). I'm delighted to read that Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri, authors of A Thriller a day, are planning to cover another of my favourites, The outer limits next.

Misguided Sales Gimmick

2010-10-18T19:44:00.001+01:00

I must be one of the last handful of people in the World to watch James Cameron's Avatar. Finally saw it the other night and found it, as expected, visually spectacular, but lacking storywise and characterwise. The aliens' "philosophy" in particular seemed half-baked. Although they were supposed to revere life, they seemed to go into the battle scenes with gusto and, in the latter part of the film, wipe out humans without a twinge of regret. None of the characters was given any light and shade either, with Stephen Lang's baddie being particularly clichéd and lacking in background and motivation. Sam Worthington looks good but already seems to me an appropriate successor to Russell Crowe - and I'm not a Russell Crowe fan.

Anyway, the real point of this posting is that The People Who Know keep saying that the film is vastly better in 3D. On hearing the recent hype about the new 3D process, I've groaned on more than one occasion. I'm sure it's fine in the cinema, but it really is the last thing we need or want on UK TV.

Why? Putting aside the fact that everyone has been persuaded to buy new flat panel TVs over the past couple of years and, to watch in 3D, would have to buy another new set, the main issue is bandwidth. There just isn't enough of it. The BBC has been widely criticised for dropping both the bitrate and the picture quality on its "flagship" channel, BBC HD, and any person with average vision can see that the average standard definition programme on digital TV, whether received by aerial or satellite dish, suffers badly from compression and "pixellation".

Commercial concerns mean more and more pressure to pack more channels into the same space, and the systems we have in the UK at the moment simply won't support 3D TV at anything like the required quality unless there is a major reorganisation, and more bandwidth is somehow discovered. With the economic "squeeze" only set to tighten further over the next few years, that seems highly unlikely.

Service across the Atlantic

2010-08-30T17:09:00.000+01:00

When we recently went to the USA it was interesting to compare the standards of customer service in bars, restaurants etc in Massachusetts (Boston and Provincetown) with the ones in the UK. A very sociable American staying at the same guest house as us thought that the fact that staff in the USA are low paid and rely on tips means they've developed a more definite "service culture", leading to better service.

I'm not sure about this. Certainly the service we got in the USA was in general more attentive, but I'm not sure that it was much more polite or, overall, any better. Yes, it's nice to be asked "How are you today?" when you arrive, but we never quite believed the asker was interested in the answer.

In one establishment we stood at the counter for about three minutes while the person behind it carried on making some sandwiches, looking up at us occasionally but not acknowledging our presence. Finally she came and said "Hello. How are you today?" as if we had just that second arrived! On another occasion, I was amused by the waitress who served us water from a jug pouring lots of it down the front of her own apron on every occasion and appearing not to even notice. She was very polite but, unfortunately, disappeared completely after leaving us the bill. When about twenty minutes had passed with no-one near to service us, we had to go and find another member of staff to pay. Ironically, our friend from the guest house told us a story of the amazing rudeness he had experienced in a restaurant in Provincetown, so obviously the higher service standards he talked about are not universal. Overall, it seems to me that service in this part of the USA is just as variable as it is back at home.

BFI Mediatheque

2010-06-17T19:18:00.001+01:00

On a recent visit to London we discovered the excellent BFI Mediatheque where we watched films about the less-advertised recent history of London like London in the raw. The Mediatheque is described as a "digital jukebox" and you can spend up to two hours in a session there. A much better film that we also saw is The London nobody knows. This is a melancholy trawl around some of the ruins and forgotten bits of London in the late 1960s with James Mason. Unfortunately this one isn't available on DVD and, as far as I know, the only place to see it is at one of the four mediatheques around the country. These are great free resources for anyone who is into film or television so, if you’re in London or one of the other three locations, have a look.

Filth!

2010-05-25T20:28:00.001+01:00

Watching the repeat of Filth! The Mary Whitehouse story on the BBC last night, I was again surprised that Julie Walters had agreed to appear in it. To me, Ms Walters seems a liberal-minded person, almost the opposite of Mrs Whitehouse, and she admitted in an interview when the play was first shown that she never agreed with Whitehouse's views. And yet, it seemed to me that the play was much too sympathetic to Whitehouse, portraying her as a bit misguided and sometimes comical, but basically a nice, "cuddly" sort of person. This was never my impression of her - many of her pronouncements showed her as vindictive and intolerant in the extreme. The play also seemed unfair on Sir Hugh Greene, ex Director-General of the BBC, portraying him as a boorish, closed-minded buffoon and apparently ignoring the good work he did in "opening out" TV drama in the 1960s.

Trawling around for more information on the programme and the Whitehouse legacy (she died in 2001), I found this very interesting article about Whitehouse's relationship with her family.

Time to go

2010-05-09T11:46:00.000+01:00

I voted Labour in the General Election and wanted another Labour government, in spite of its faults. However, I do feel strongly that it's now time for Gordon Brown to leave Downing Street and resign as leader of the Labour Party. It's clear that the Tories polled the most votes and for him to cling to power is just prolonging the uncertainty that is the last thing the country needs.

Perhaps our best hope (although it's a slim one) is for the Tories to form a government with the LibDems which might last a year or so. That would give the time for Labour to regroup under a new leader and, hopefully, come back to power at the next election.

Of course, anything could happen to the economy in the meantime but, if there's to be any hope of a real economic recovery, we obviously need a government that's as stable as possible soon.

Edinburgh

2010-05-03T10:40:00.000+01:00

We tend to forget that this fascinating city, with a vast store of history, beautiful streets to walk around, and quite a few free assets such as the Botanical Gardens and Arthur's Seat, is almost on our doorstep - well, an hour and a half away by train, to be precise. We're both keen to avoid the crowds of the Festival, and Easter last year was pretty busy, so this year we timed our visit a couple of weeks after Easter, at the end of April.
Something we hadn't seen before was Mary King's Close, a sobering reminder of the lives that many people had to endure a few centuries ago. More photos of the city in general on my Flickr pages.

Politics (rhetorical questions!)

2010-05-01T15:04:00.001+01:00

As it now looks as if the Tory party is in the lead in election polls, I'm alarmed by the way spending cuts are being discussed. David Cameron has said quite openly that he's going to target areas like mine (the north east of England) in his cuts. It seems he wants to start making these as soon as possible and give tax cuts to his rich friends, instead of putting the burden of extra taxes on the better off, as it should be. While I agree that the deficit needs to be tackled, this was largely a product of the banking system. Shouldn't even heftier taxes be levied on the banks, then, and the rest on areas like VAT, rather than creating unemployment deliberately and increasing the benefits bill by sacking public service workers?

As you'll have gathered, I'm not a Conservative supporter. The LibDems have, in the past, seemed to me to have some sensible policies. However, Nick Clegg has shown himself completely out of touch with a large segment of the public on the issue of immigration, by suggesting an amnesty that would give the right of residence to families of some illegal immigrants.

The perception (accurate or not) is that immigration is already out of control in this country, and that many asylum seekers choose Britain as a "soft touch". This idea may not stand up to scrutiny but, then, why do so many non-European asylum seekers end up in the UK when the rules say that they should seek asylum in the nearest "safe" country to their country of origin? This is not a question of racism or xenophobia. No-one can deny that we are a small, overcrowded island facing some severe economic problems. When many retired and working class people see immigrants every day who are not allowed to work because they are still being processed by a dysfunctional system, and those indigenous people are themselves on a low income, then resentment builds up, and this has worrying implications for social cohesion in the UK. We need to be able to discuss immigration levels without being called bigots. While I've no wish to sound like Enoch Powell, surely the minimum the new government has to do is to tackle the Daily Express' "immigrant invasion" perception, even if this doesn't lead to a reduction in immigration?

Like many of us, I've lost most of my faith in policitians. I'll put my cards on the table and say that Labour seems the least of the evils to me, and I've already cast my postal vote for them.

I'm a bit baffled by the idea that people need the recent TV debates to help them decide how to vote. Surely everyone who watches TV or reads (proper) newspapers knows the policies of the main parties? If we make the decision on which party to vote for on the basis of a TV show and how well its leader performs there, isn't it all sinking towards the level of a "beauty contest"? I'm haunted by the fact that the voters in the USA (where the "TV political debate" idea originated) first saddled the world with George "Dubya" Bush on a very narrow majority, then - incredibly - voted him in decisively for a second term.

Uncertainty

2010-04-19T08:47:00.000+01:00

Is it just me, or do things around the world (and particularly the UK) seem so much more uncertain in the past year or so?

First there was the economy, with the spectacular failure of some financial institutions. The Labour government's "prudence" with the public purse suddenly looked like a complete illusion. Despite the fact that this is meant to be a global recession, for some reason the Pound has fallen to an unprecedented low against the Euro and looks weak even against the US Dollar.

Then there was inflation, with certain items rocketing in price to an extent that doesn't tally at all with the official figures - some foods in my local supermarket have gone up by 20% or more in one jump, and margarine actually increased by 100% in a matter of months. We were assured that the leap in fuel prices was due to an increase in the cost to the suppliers but, while oil fell in price, we are still waiting for a reduction in domestic gas and electricity prices.

This was followed by the coldest winter for decades, exacerbating poor people's "fuel poverty", making it impossible to walk normally for weeks and with frosts so long and penetrating that the roads and pavements cracked up. We've got used to mild winters and, with all the talk of Global Warming in the news, for most of us this was particularly unexpected.

For months we have had dire warnings of the huge size of the National Debt, and savage cuts in spending to come. Now an election is close, and we've been told not only that a Hung Parliament is likely, but also that this will alarm "the markets" to such an extent that the value of the Pound could collapse completely.

The latest source of uncertainty is the Europe-wide flight stoppage caused by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, in its fifth day as I write. As if the state of the European economy wasn't bad enough, something else to disrupt things and shake our old "certainties". (Guess who decided to splash out on a holiday to the USA this year, and booked flights with BA?) This also revives old fears of volcanic activity and the possibility of a volcanic winter...

Incidentally, despite my comments on economic management above, I don't trust the Conservatives and, as I work in local government, will be voting Labour anyway: I'm not stupid enough to vote myself out of a job!

Up

2010-03-18T20:38:00.001Z

I think I've found the perfect film for Blu-ray - the one it was absolutely made for. A brilliant film - not really a children's film in any sense as it features death, loneliness, oppression of a senior citizen and attacks by a pack of dogs. The overriding theme is loss. However, for adults who have an open mind, this is a genuinely uplifting experience.

There are two reasons why I say this the perfect film for Blu-ray. Firstly, it's the best and most detailed transfer I've ever seen, with an astonishing amount of detail and excellent contrast range. I don't have a full surround sound system, but the soundtrack seems to make full use of the frequency range (my Rel sub-bass speaker was certainly working). Secondly, the aspect ratio is 16:9 or as near to it as makes no difference. This means that the picture fills the whole screen. I'm certainly not one of those people who would stretch a picture to fill the screen, and I'm not averse to having black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, or the sides, if that's the way the material is meant to be seen. However, I do think it's a pity that most films - even ones that don't demand huge, panoramic vistas - are shot in 2.35 or 2.39 to 1. These just don't translate so well to TV (unless you have an enormous screen) as ones that have a more modest widescreen ratio such as 1.85 to 1.

Storywise, this is way ahead of the much-hyped Wall-E (I could never understand the idea of a cute, loveable robot, particularly as this didn't even look humanoid). Several scenes in Up stand out: the early montage of Carl and Ellie's life together; the takeoff and flight above the city; Carl's realisation at the end.

The film is far from perfect - there's a certain sterility to CGI animation that I've seen mentioned by various people; the "adventure" storyline is not as compelling as the framing story; and, for a film otherwise so technically adept, the sounds of the dogs' voices are strangely unclear and difficult to understand. For these reasons I wouldn't put it in my top 5 films ever, but it certainly goes into my top 20. If you enjoyed Monsters inc, Toy story or Wall-E and haven't seen this yet, what are you waiting for?

Vincent Price and the horror of the English blood beast

2010-03-10T20:01:00.001Z

This radio play by Matthew Broughton stemmed from an unusual idea - to look at the turbulent relationship between the (arguably declining) American horror star and Michael Reeves, the young, British "up-and-coming" director of the brutal but compelling 1968 film Witchfinder General. Intended to be lighthearted, the play was vaguely entertaining, but didn't quite come off.

The major problem in my opinion was the casting of Nickolas Grace as Vincent Price. Mr Grace seems to have played "camp" parts on a number of previous occasions and certainly brought this quality to his portrayal of Vincent Price. Unfortunately he sounded nothing like him; his American accent was unconvincing and there were few nuances in his vocalising. The other actors were much more believable, particularly Kenneth Cranham, as good as ever as producer Tony Tenser, although he wasn't asked to do much more than narrate. While it's hard to believe that Vincent Price was quite as camp in real life as the script suggests, this was an amusing play. As I post this, it's still available on the BBC iPlayer for a couple more days.

Who can do better...?

2010-02-27T16:39:00.002Z

With the announcement that the new Doctor Who is definitely to start this Easter, I thought it was time to express my hope that Steven Moffat will give us a better programme than Russell T Davies did. Don't get me wrong - I am grateful to RTD for reviving the programme after a long hiatus, and letting us see brilliant stories like The empty child/The Doctor dances, Human nature/The family of blood, Blink and Silence in the library/Forest of the dead. It's no coincidence that none of these were written by RTD - he just isn't a very good writer and, with his light entertainment propensities threatening to kill the show in the same way as the appalling 80s version, his departure in January was long overdue.

The "Christmas Specials" in particular seemed to be pandering shamelessly to the lowest common denominator. Do we really need to have it hammered home that it's Christmas with references to the season or snow every few minutes? In The runaway bride we had not only Christmas galore but a whole sequence of the Tardis flying along a motorway (did RTD forget what the Doctor's ship actually was?). As if credibility wasn't already strained enough, there was shot after shot including trees clearly visible in full leaf - a sequence obviously filmed in the summer. The 2007 episode included Kylie Minogue (obviously for no reason other than publicity) and the immortal line "It must be after midnight on Earth: Christmas Eve." Did RTD stop to consider whether his dialogue made sense? The following year we had snow, a Victorian setting, Cybermen and a giant version of a Cyberman that was wedged uncomfortably into the story to please the kids, again with no thought of its place in the plot. I know it's important to please the audiences, but does this always have to be done by lowering standards?

Time and again, RTD relies on a "deus ex machina": in The parting of the ways Rose acquires miraculous powers from the Tardis and saves the day. In Last of the Time Lords the Doctor is imbued with superpowers because the people of Earth believe in him, and literally flies out of trouble to "zap" the Master. In Midnight (otherwise an interesting story) the Doctor fails completely and another character has to sacrifice herself to save the day - similarly, in the following episode Turn left, it is Donna and not the Doctor who acts as the hero.

Time and again RTD tells us that something is an absolute and cannot be changed, only to then change it: in The parting of the ways, the Daleks have won and killed Captain Jack (Rose turns back time, kills the Daleks and brings Jack back to life); in Doomsday, Rose makes her exit trapped in a parallel universe and can never see the Doctor again (she returns several times); the Doctor cannot save the Mars colony in The waters of Mars because their deaths are a focal point in history (he saves them).

Possibly the worst of all RTD's stories was David Tennant's departure, where any possibility of emotion was killed by his chaotic plotting and oversentimentality. The whole two-parter had a plot riddled with holes in a story that was meant to be about the return of the Time Lords but gave them nothing to do. Why was June Whitfield's group of senior citizens in the story? Why (other than that it might amuse the kids) does the Master suddenly have the ability to fly? What was the point of reintroducing Catherine Tate as Donna, then to do nothing with the character? How could the Doctor survive a fall of hundreds of feet, then just get up and walk away? Since we've already seen that editing has progressed way beyond the 1970s, why do we get shots of characters pointing a gun at each other and waiting several seconds, unable to decide what to do? If the Doctor is dying of radiation sickness, how can he heal all his wounds and then carry on as if nothing has happened, with time to take a whole series of trips around time and space before regenerating? This was all particularly sad since the performances (with the exception of John Simm) and the direction ranged from good to excellent. I have just one plea to Steven Moffat at the moment - please find a new composer! Murray Gold's music may go with RTD's heavy-handed storylines, but better writing deserves a vastly more subtle accompaniment than MG has ever given us.

I realise I could do no better - I have tried in the past and failed. You might be interested in the letter shown below (a larger version is linked on my own web site). In this, the script editor who was undisputably the "old" Doctor Who's greatest writer outlines to me and a friend the important factors in constructing stories for the programme. Does anyone spring to mind who regularly breaks all these rules?

A single man

2010-02-20T19:16:00.000Z

We went to see the new film A single man at the Tyneside Cinema today. Based on a book by Christopher Isherwood and directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, it's a melancholy story set in 1962 about a middle-aged gay man about to take his own life after the death of his partner in an accident. The story follows him through the day when he has planned to kill himself.

Having heard of Isherwood in connection with the brilliant film Cabaret, I remember browsing the book in a bookshop many years ago but deciding that it was too depressing for my taste. Although the film was sometimes self-consciously "arty", it was beautifully shot, impeccably acted and emotionally quite affecting. The very well-chosen cast including Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Nicholas Hoult ironically has a Brit playing an American and an American playing a Brit, although you wouldn't know this from the accents. The novel may well have been of only marginal interest to my younger self. I seem to remember it being sexually explicit - the film isn't and (I think) benefits from this. However, the book is certain to be back in print now and, as soon as I've posted this, I'm going to order it via Amazon.

The glory that was Rome

2010-02-18T19:25:00.001Z

I've recently been re-watching the stunning TV series Rome on DVD and was sad to remember that, after two seasons, it was considered too expensive to keep going. Visually it's absolutely magnificent - there aren't many TV programmes that can transport the viewer so completely into a different time and place. The beautiful interiors of some of the villas take the visual side of the story a big step beyond earlier depictions like the otherwise excellent I, Claudius. I have both seasons of Rome, but not on HD discs. Such is the quality of the lighting and the DVD transfers that, on my Sony S-350 Blu-ray player and 40W5500 TV, it's hard to tell the difference between the upscaled DVD image and a Blu-ray. Performances are generally excellent, particularly Kenneth Cranham as Pompey, David Bamber as Cicero, Polly Walker as Atia and Lindsay Duncan as Servilia.

For me, this portrayal of Rome works much better than, say, the film Gladiator because it isn't so "po-faced". I love the colloquialisms that others criticised - to hear a character say "She gave me a look like Medusa on the rag" just makes it all the more real for me, a reminder that ancient Rome had its everyday side, easily forgotten when you go into a museum and see only great statues or buildings.

I'm not a huge fan of TV and film violence, and there are moments in the series when I have to look away, but the brutality and casual cruelty that feature largely in the programme seem to me exactly right for the time and the society that are being depicted.

Laurel and Hardy - The Collection

2010-01-30T15:07:00.001Z

I recently splashed out on a box set of 21 Laurel and Hardy DVDs. As they haven't been on TV nearly as often as they were in my childhood, I've enjoyed reminding myself why I love them so much.

In case anyone reading this has never heard of Laurel and Hardy (unlikely but possible) they were a comedy film double act who started in silent movies in the 1920s around the same time as Charlie Chaplin, had their greatest successes with their sound short films of the 1930s and ended their joint career in the 1950s with stage tours of the UK. While Chaplin's films have dated fairly badly and now come across as clever but very rarely funny, L&H's films are still hilarious for people with a certain sense of humour.

At their best (which means in the 1930s Hal Roach films, almost all of which are included here) they aren't just funny - behind the slapstick is a warmth, somehow an affection for each other and the viewer. This also comes across in Stan Laurel's replies to fan letters, being collected and shown on line in the fascinating Stan Laurel Correspondence Archive Project. The films are also fascinating as social history, painting a vivid picture of life in the early 1930s and offering some bizarre insights into Stan Laurel (the thin one and the "brains" behind the act) and his relationships with women. Almost without exception, the women in Laurel and Hardy films are suspicious battleaxes, vengeful when deceived (which they frequently are) and liable to attack the duo with axes and guns!

Laurel and Hardy - The Collection contains perhaps 80 short films (20 or 30 minutes, probably around three quarters of them with sound) and approximately 7 feature films. It's difficult to be specific about the numbers as there are foreign language versions of a few films that duplicate the content, and some of the silent films are incomplete.

There are a few niggles about this box set. The animated menus feature the same scene (from Way out West) on every disc in the set. Why? This very quickly becomes annoying. The crudely colourised versions are also a waste of disc space, and the final disc contains a shoddy documentary. This runs around an hour and a half and is very lazily produced, including large chunks of the colourised films and featuring clips of various US TV personalities praising the duo. None of the films and none of the interviewees (apart from the presenter, Dom DeLuise) are identified! Worst of all, at the end, DeLuise says "Stan Laurel was holding Hardy's hand when he died in the hospital". I can only think the filmmakers made this up - by all accounts, 'Babe' Hardy died at his mother-in-law's house in the early hours of the morning. Stan knew that the end was near but didn't hear that his partner had died until some hours later.

Despite all this, at its current very low price (I think I paid £40 from HMV) the box is a must for lovers of Laurel and Hardy.

Jack Pickard

2010-01-19T20:01:00.000Z

I was sad and shocked to hear that Jack Pickard had died suddenly at the weekend. His online postings as a whole were the most insightful and somehow fair of any I read.

My sincere condolences to his family and friends.

The "Big Freeze"

2010-01-09T15:20:00.006Z

Unfortunately the bad weather is not bringing out the best in our TV newsreaders and weather forecasters. After getting it completely wrong with their forecast of a "barbecue summer" last year and then, again, saying the current winter was likely to be mild, they don't sound nearly apologetic enough about the current freezing weather (in Gateshead, one single snow-free day since 17 December). Apart from inaccurate forecasts, it also seems they're unable to sing from the same hymn sheet. Just after Christmas the Radio 4 forecaster said "a thaw is on the way" with a temperature in Newcastle of 5 degrees celsius. Ten minutes later, the BBC TV forecaster said "No let up in the cold weather" and predicted temperatures around zero. Guess which one was right? In addition, the BBC has taken to using irritating clichés like "the big freeze" (something I may be guilty of as well) as if it was a tabloid newspaper.

More than once lately I've noticed meteorologists indulging in the habit of revising a 5-day forecast downwards as the day approaches. Midweek they were telling us that the maximum temperature in Newcastle on Saturday (today) would be the magic 5 degrees celsius. Just a day later this was down to 2 and now to zero - as it happens, exactly as it is now according to my thermometer. Congratulations for being able to tell us the weather by the time it's arrived! It certainly seems that meteorology is not an exact science - but if this is the best they can do, why bother at all with "monthly outlooks" and forecasts for seasons ahead?

And do they really need to rub it in? On our local news broadcast the other evening I actually heard the forecaster say "no let up in the freezing weather - and there's plenty of time for it to get even colder!"

Public Transport Grumbles

2009-12-29T19:35:00.001Z

Another rant, I'm afraid. I think I've said here before that the Tyne and Wear Metro doesn't provide the service it should, or that it used to. I have quite a list of grumbles: fares going up well above the rate of inflation every year; distorted station announcements with the beginning cut off for months at a time; ticket machines that don't work and no published timetable for the supposed investment in new ones; dirty and overcrowded trains; services that finish just when you need them most; having to wait 20 minutes on more than one occasion with the board saying "Next train 2 minutes" for the whole time and no spoken announcement. From the dismissive replies I've had to a couple of letters about Metro's shortcomings, I get the impression that the Metro management is not really interested in customer service.

The thing that gets my goat the most - and this applies to the buses too - is that there are no trains on Christmas Day or New Year's Day. On New Year's Eve, I've just discovered that, as on Christmas Eve, we get a reduced service, with only one train an hour from 6pm. Is this because of lack of demand? Hardly. New Year's Eve is potentially one of the busiest times of the year for public transport. People want to travel to enjoy themselves, are likely to be drinking alcohol, and walking is not an attractive option because of the weather. Where are the posters about the Christmas and New Year shutdown? I've been looking for the past couple of weeks and haven't seen any. I didn't know that "the usual" was happening until today, when the words "NEW YEARS EVE HOURLY SERVICE FROM 18:00" flashed up on the board at Gateshead.

If national and local government are remotely serious about reducing car usage and drink driving, then public transport has to be regarded as an essential service like hospitals and power stations - operating 365 days a year. I've no doubt passengers would be prepared to pay a little extra if necessary to give drivers a Christmas/New Year bonus, and I'm sure drivers could be found to work on these days. To go on year after year shutting down public transport at such important times shows an astounding degree of complacency. As some European cities (such as Berlin) manage to run public transport then, it'll be interesting to see if the proposed Metro takeover by Deutsche Bahn brings a change...

Moth Bollock Orus

2009-12-08T20:05:00.000Z

There's a TV newsreader that arouses mirth or complete bafflement in me whenever I see them. The mirth is because this person's diction is so bad that the news reports often end up unintentionally hilarious. The bafflement is that anyone would employ a person who speaks so badly to read the news!

This person has a speech impediment like Jonathan Ross, but that's not all. It's coupled with a tendency to gabble incoherently for a few words at a time, so that the content is reduced to gibberish. Any news story is now impossible to follow because I'm listening for the next bit of 'Stanley Unwin'.

Anyway, this person usually pronounces "Yesterday" as "Yisterday", something I've never heard in any regional accent. I choked on my cereal a few months ago when a story about the Nissan Ka somehow came out as "the Nissan fuckaa". More recently, we had a sentence apparently about the "decisiona moth bollock orus-plant" - which turned out to be the tragic and depressing story of the Corus plant on Teesside shutting down. The person may be a perfectly good journalist but they are definitely not cut out for reading the news. If they were a member of the local amateur dramatic society I used to belong to (the Progressive Players in Gateshead) I would expect directors to say "X has got the looks, but isn't a good actor" . Unfortunately, we're talking here about a supposed professional. A newsreader with Tourettes? Quite a novelty...

I'm trying to be kind here by not identifying this person in any way. However, if anyone reading this knows who I mean, please message me privately and let me know if you agree!

The cause of "Scroogism"?

2009-12-04T20:29:00.003Z

I often find that Christmas arouses "non-traditional" feelings in me, such as gloom and irritation. Since late adolescence I've found the whole thing a huge chore, and the traditional bonhomie of the time often strikes me as fake. Commercial interests have had their way in getting us all to believe that it starts earlier every year, to the extent that even local authorities now put up street lights in November - several weeks too early in my book. It seems so unfair on the many people for whom Christmas isn't all sweetness and light - I have an aunt and two work colleagues who've all been bereaved in the last few weeks: I'm sure all the exaggerated cheer is going to seem bitterly ironic to them.

Recently it struck me that one reason for my finding Christmas such a pain is probably SAD (Seasonally Affective Disorder). I can't remember ever enjoying winter much, and the excitement of Christmas probably fades for everyone from the age of about ten, but the following certainly rang a bell with me when I read it.

The symptoms of SAD usually recur regularly each winter, starting between September and November and continuing until March or April.

A diagnosis can be made after three or more consecutive winters of symptoms, which may include a number of the following:

Depression

Low mood, worse than and different from normal sadness
Negative thoughts and feelings
Guilt and loss of self-esteem
Sometimes hopelessness and despair
Sometimes apathy and inability to feel

Sleep Problems

The need to sleep more
A tendency to oversleep
Difficulty staying awake during the day and/or disturbed sleep with
very early morning wakening

Lethargy

Fatigue, often incapacitating, making it very difficult or impossible to carry out normal routines

Cognitive Function

Difficulty with concentration and memory
The brain does not work as well, or as quickly

Social Problems

Irritability
Finding it harder to be with people

Anxiety

Tension
Stress is harder to deal with

Loss of Libido

Less interest in sex and physical contact

I've believed for some time that I suffer from this, but my slow brain (on account of the effects of SAD?) never really made the connection between this and my vague dread of the Christmas season. Once all the other spending is out of the way, my New Year's Resolution is going to have to be to investigate light boxes. Has anyone reading this found the use of a light box useful against SAD?

The Draculas

2009-11-21T16:02:00.009Z

Recently I bought a DVD set of the ABC/Thames Television series Mystery and Imagination. Although this dates from the late 1960s, I'm (just) old enough to remember it. I particularly recall being scared out of my wits as a child by a scene in which a long-dead man was discovered preserved in a locked room, with cobwebs over his eyes! I now find that this was a tale called The Tractate Middoth from an M R James story, and that this programme was sadly lost (or thrown out) from the archives years ago. The surviving episodes were released this year on DVD, and watching Dracula (the remaining one I was most keen to see) got me reminiscing on its various versions.

Probably the scariest was the original Nosferatu (1922). Full of German Expressionism, this virtually invented a lot of horror film conventions such as long shadows, stark lighting and grotesque variations on the human form. Being a silent film, it's less accessible than one with a soundtrack and doesn't hold up too well with the short attention spans of today's audiences. The version with a score by Hammer Films' great composer James Bernard seems to me the best one.

I have distinctly mixed feelings about the Bela Lugosi Dracula (1931) and wonder if everyone who cites it as their favourite version is really prepared to sit through the whole thing more than once or twice. Admittedly, the opening scenes are atmospheric, but only the first twenty minutes or so are watchable before the film becomes unbearably slow and stagey. Lugosi's performance is certainly iconic and created the image of Dracula that still persists in the public consciousness - but was it any good? Again, it's a stage performance rather than a film one, and he's so determined to sound menacing that his heavy accent and laboured delivery of dialogue often become ridiculous. The line "We will be leaving. Tomorrow! Ee-ven-ing!" is probably more likely to elicit laughter than chills in anyone under about 60 these days unless they're a horror "geek". Don't get me wrong - I don't think Lugosi was a bad actor, but he really hadn't developed his craft by this time, and actually gave better performances in silly Ed Wood films like Bride of the Monster.

Hammer Films took the world by storm in the late 1950s with their then-shocking horror films in (never before seen) colour. These were faster paced and slightly more realistic, and Hammer's unflinching treatment means they work perfectly in 2009 as "adult fairy tales". Their 1958 Dracula condensed Bram Stoker's novel very effectively to work within its low budget and, of course, it had two of the most appropriate performers ever to work in this field in Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.

By 1968 it could be argued that the story of Dracula should already be permanently in the cold ground – done to death by repetition. However, the Thames TV production was quite different from the Hammer film series (that would soon go into a rapid decline).

Talky and slightly theatrical, it is – despite this – more interesting than either the 1979 John Badham version or the more recent Coppola one. Like other low budget versions, this one "scales down" the novel, omitting its more epic scenes but concentrating effectively on the middle part of the book. Denholm Elliott is no substitute for Christopher Lee as The Count (then, who is?) but he gives a competent performance. Colin Redgrave as Harker and Susan George as Lucy are both fascinating to watch, but Bernard Archard as Van Helsing sadly continues the tradition of silly voices in Dracula adaptations with a very distracting accent more redolent of Calcutta than Amsterdam.

Some scenes (such as the meeting with Dracula’s brides) are very eerily done, while Dracula’s final defeat is a strange mixture of clumsy staging and convincing effects work. The slight twist at the end is a nice touch, too. A minor version, but worth seeing.

Blu-ray: opinions

2009-09-26T15:19:00.006+01:00

Six months after buying a Blu-ray player (and recently joining the "full HD" TV club) I thought I'd share my opinions with anyone reading this.

Plus points:

1) On a full HD TV, most films and programmes look and sound better than they do on DVD, considerably better than they do on Freeview TV, and slightly better than on BBC or ITV HD.

2) Given the right kind of connection and TV, a Blu-ray player will “upscale” your DVDs to 1080p (the highest HDTV standard available in the UK) better than most DVD players

3) Blu-ray players are now available at a similar price to DVD players (unless you think that £40 is enough to pay for a DVD player)

Minus:

1) The choice of Blu-ray discs is still small

2) There is usually more than £3 difference (i.e. what I would consider a reasonable differential) between a Blu-ray disc and the equivalent DVD

3) Blu-ray discs can be slow to load and navigation is often more awkward than on DVD. This is hard to forgive, as disc designers have had a long time to get the ergonomics right

I only paid £120 for my Sony 350 Blu-ray player at Richer Sounds and am pleased with it. However, as we had a 32-inch HD-ready TV and I then wanted a 40 inch full HD set (which we’ve just got) it ended up costing my partner and I a lot more money than I first guessed. I really want Blu-ray to take off, but I think they’ll have to reduce the price differential.

Unfortunately, most people are so uncritical that they’ll pay a lot of money for a flash TV and still watch it on “vivid” mode, often with old non wide-screen programmes stretched horizontally to fill the screen. It baffles me that people prefer to watch a programme like that – a bit like the “colour snobs” who refused to watch any black and white programmes when they got their first colour TVs. If the photographer decided to “wide screen” their wedding photos so that the happy couple turned out 33% wider and ended up as happy hippos, would they still be so ecstatic? I think not.

Anyway, my worry is that, because the majority of people don't care about video or audio quality, direct-to-TV downloading will catch on faster than Blu-ray. If it does, this could well be the death knell for HD broadcasting. We’ve seen that ISPs and even the BBC are always penny-pinching on bandwidth, using more and more compression. The Beeb has just got new encoders for the BBC HD channel but simultaneously cut the bandwidth by 40%. Hardly likely to prove that it’s committed to quality… More on this at http://www.avforums.com/forums/hd-tv-programmes/720572-bbc-hd-not-up-required-standard.html (by the way, Ozzzy189 is not me).

In my opinion, Blu-ray has to succeed, or HD programming will eventually die out because “There’s no demand.”

Windows 7 pricing: a rant

2009-09-23T17:16:00.005+01:00

By all accounts, Microsoft's Windows 7, released on 22nd October, is everything that Windows Vista should have been. Why, then, is Microsoft ripping off customers who bought Vista, and not trying to win their loyalty by offering a reasonably priced upgrade?

I forked out a lot of money two years ago for Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Several times I thought of downgrading to XP because it was so sluggish on a dual core desktop machine with 4GB of RAM. I stuck with it, installing a Service Pack that did not speed things up at all, and the frequent security updates that mainly exist to paper over design flaws. I naively expected Microsoft to be reasonable with its pricing when the upgrade to its new OS appeared.

A month before its release, the cheapest I can find an upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate Edition is £169.98 - £10 more than the full version! Just what's going on?

Films That Stick With You

2009-09-23T11:56:00.004+01:00

Here are the 15 films I find most memorable. Once again, these are in order by the (approximate) date that I saw them. I should add that I love all of them except number 10. I think this is an awful film that infuriates me in the way it threw out almost everything good in the original novel, and gets universally extravagant praise purely because Stanley Kubrick is treated as a god in the world of film.

Other films to which I've taken a strong dislike are Pulp Fiction (we don't need film-makers trying to make violence seem "cool"), The Evil Dead, The Descent and The Straight Story (the last one for completely different reasons to the others).

1. A Taste of Honey
2. The Knack and How to Get it
3. Bedazzled (1967 version)
4. The Wicker Man
5. Cabaret
6. Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
7. Carrie
8. Pardon Us (Laurel and Hardy)
9. The Terminator
10. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)
11. A Room with a View
12. Pleasantville
13. The Sixth Sense
14. AI - Artificial Intelligence
15. Star Trek (2009)

Books That Stick With You

2009-09-15T19:37:00.008+01:00

On ThePickards blog, Jack Pickard suggests we should "name fifteen books that [you] have read that will always stick with [you], and also do the same thing for films that [you've] seen. In each case, we don’t have to be talking about favourites, merely stuff that has stuck with you for some reason."

I've put the books into rough chronological order based on when I read them, rather than when they were published.

1. The Silver Chair - C S Lewis
2. A Passage to India - E M Forster
3. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A Heinlein
4. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole - Sue Townsend
5. The Shining - Stephen King
6. Caution! Inflammable! - Thomas N Scortia
7. The Front Runner - Patricia Nell Warren
8. The Death of Grass - John Christopher
9. Urn Burial - Robert Westall
10. The World According to Garp - John Irving
11. A Smile in his Lifetime - Joseph Hansen
12. The Cider House Rules - John Irving
13. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J K Rowling
14. Darkest Day - Christopher Fowler
15. The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman

I'll post again with my films.

England People Very Nice

2009-07-29T19:58:00.005+01:00

We went to the theatre (National Theatre, Olivier auditorium) during last weekend's trip to London. England People Very Nice by Richard Bean, an episodic play about waves of immigration into the Whitechapel district and their effects on the locals, was entertaining and very well staged. I particularly liked the lighting effects, the projection of different settings and animations onto the basic box set. The performances were also uniformly good. The play itself was a bit more questionable, throwing out mixed messages. In the early stages - about the Irish and the Jews - it was "the poor, abused immigrants" but then the issue was thoroughly confused by the story of the Islamic militants and the Somalis who are given accommodation (according to the play, the tabloids etc.) ahead of the indigenous population.

Of course, this is a controversial area. If the tabloid newspapers are to be believed, there is a widespread perception that Britain is a "soft touch" when it comes to immigration, and that thousands of people make their way here because they believe they can claim benefits, and because the country's record on expelling illegal immigrants is poor. Whether it's accurate or not, the Government needs to address this feeling and it seems it isn't successfully doing so.

Photos of Spain

2009-07-04T10:18:00.002+01:00

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

2009-06-30T17:43:00.005+01:00

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

2009-06-14T18:57:00.005+01:00

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”

2009-05-23T14:17:00.002+01:00

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

2009-05-23T13:41:00.002+01:00

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

2009-05-02T16:15:00.005+01:00

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

2009-04-24T19:10:00.005+01:00

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.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

2009-04-02T16:09:00.004+01:00

I really wish companies selling technology-based household appliances would adopt the above motto.

For some time I've fancied a DAB clock radio for my bedside. I've put off buying one for years because none seemed to have a design that came close to what I need: a clear display and simple alarm operation. Now I've been given one and, sadly, it's even worse than I'd expected. As a radio, it's great - good sound quality and much better reception than I've ever had on FM; as a bedside alarm clock it's almost useless.

So what are the problems? First, the display. Why does apparently no-one make a DAB clock radio with an LED display? This is fairly obviously the only kind suitable for bedside clocks. It's easy to see in the dark, even by short-sighted people like me, and it doesn't keep you awake by casting its light across the room. Every DAB clock radio I've seen (including the one I've got) seems to have an LCD display. This needs a backlight to be seen in the dark. Even on the dimmest setting, it's like having a light on in the room; regardless of the backlight setting, without glasses it's impossible to read unless I put my face right against it.

Then there's the alarm. My twenty year old FM radio with LED display has a simple slide switch to select between alarm off, buzzer and radio. I hold down a button to set the alarm and then press one button for hours and another for minutes. The new DAB clock radio has four alarms that can be set only when the radio is off; then I have to set them with a complex series of button presses (hold ALARM for 3 seconds, use up and down keys and then use ALARM again within a couple of seconds). Once an alarm is active, the display doesn't show this unless it's set to "small text" - then I can't see the time from bed. This means I can't set it with any confidence that it will go off at the right time. I need a reliable alarm clock so, reluctantly, I will have to give it back and revert to my old one.

I can think of other examples where things worked perfectly well until the powers that be decided they needed "upgrading" and, in the process, spoiled them. Microsoft is particularly prone to this. In versions of its Word software up to 95, bulleted and numbered lists worked perfectly. In Word 97, for some bizarre reason they decided to store the information for these in each PC's registry instead of the logical location, the document template: in every version since, creating a bulleted or numbered list using anything other than Microsoft's default settings has been a complete nightmare. Then there's Windows itself. XP was a rather bloated but still usable OS that was "upgraded" to Windows Vista, which offers no major improvements and slows down a dual core PC with 3 or 4GB of RAM to the extent that it runs like a dog with three legs.

What do you think? Have you any other examples of technology that has been "upgraded" and now doesn't work as well as it used to?

Splashing out

2009-03-22T18:42:00.010Z

I'm feeling a little bit guilty about splashing out on a Blu-ray player, since I'm still waiting to hear the results of my job evaluation that may mean a cut in salary. Blu-ray discs are still much more expensive than standard DVDs too. However: our two-and-a-half year old Cambridge Audio DVD89 has been playing up, showing shadows on light parts of the picture and what looks like randomly increased contrast (the dark parts of the picture suddenly look too black). I've also been trying to use it as a CD player and, despite favourable reviews of its audio quality, have found it cuts off the first couple of seconds of each track on certain CDs. Obviously that's enough to ruin the "musical experience".

I first had the idea of replacing the player when I saw that there were Blu-ray players from Sony and Panasonic that got glowing reviews - at under £200. Apart from the fact that I'm now sceptical in general of reviews in hi-fi magazines, at least they weren't telling me I had to spend a fortune. I would (in effect) get three players in one (CD, DVD and Blu-ray) for less than the price of the DVD89. The choice was between the Panasonic DMP-BD35 and the Sony BDP-S350. Both were in stock at our local Richer Sounds (for the best prices I'd seen advertised) and I plumped for the Sony - it was slightly cheaper and the remote control was more compatible with our Sony TV.

Although I only have two Blu-ray discs up to now, I'm impressed with BD image quality. The Simpsons Movie looks brilliant. The other one is The Company of Wolves and I suspect I should have plumped for a much cheaper SD disc here - it's a rather grainy film that seems to have had an indifferent transfer. With the continuing price gulf between DVD and Blu-ray, it looks as if care is needed when choosing which format to buy. Incidentally, this player seems to manage CD Audio fine, without any nasties like cutting off the start of tracks.

Cabaret

2009-01-31T16:13:00.008Z

We went to see Cabaret at the Sunderland Empire last night. This touring production (directed by Rufus Norris, featuring Wayne Sleep as the EmCee and Samantha Barks as Sally) really just served to show how brilliant the film was.

On the plus side, the stage show generally looked excellent, with appropriately tacky sets for the Kitkat Club and more subdued colours and lighting for the boarding house. Samantha Barks as Sally shows great promise and gave an impressive performance in the musical's better songs.

Unfortunately, attention to detail was sadly lacking. Anyone who knows a word or two of German can tell you that their translation of "Miss" is not pronounced "Fraw-line", and yet here, we had at least three supposedly German natives saying it that way. While that would be understandable in an amateur production, in the professional theatre it just isn't good enough.

The problems didn't end there. The whole thing didn't seem to "gel": while the female lead and the dancers were all thoroughly professional, some of the other major characters looked as if they weren't trying hard enough. Herr Schultz was given at least three songs but, sadly, Matt Zimmerman (playing him) showed no talent for singing. Jenny Logan's Fräulein Schneider sounded more like the cliché Jewish mother than a native of Berlin. Wayne Sleep seemed to forget to act at all for 50% of the time, and never came across as remotely convincing. Some of these problems are no doubt the fault of the musical itself, rather than the production: almost all of the songs omitted from the film came across as pointless and forgettable. "A pineapple for you"...what was that all about? The bottom line is entertainment value, and this one had us checking our watches more than once before the end.

Overall it was an interesting evening, but we're glad we didn't fork out for the more expensive tickets!

Desert Island Discs

2009-01-01T11:23:00.013Z

New Year's Day can be pretty grim - one way of lightening things is to go out for a walk (which I'll be doing soon); another is to listen to some good music (my plan for later on).

Catching the famous theme from Brief encounter on Classic FM one Sunday morning reminded me of how wonderful I think Rachmaninov's Piano Concertos are - and there are more reasons than that film why Number 2 is his most popular. Later on, listening to Radio 4's Desert island discs (and exercising my prejudices, thinking that some of the guests' musical choices are unbelievably poor) made me think of my own list of favourite records. Try it yourself - if you have any love of music at all, it's quite hard to get it down to eight!

Debussy's La mer (strangely enough, not all about his mother...). Debussy was a pioneer of a whole new musical sound, dubbed "impressionism", and this is probably my favourite example.
Finzi's Severn Rhapsody. An encapsulation of everything that's good in pastoral "English music" in less than seven minutes, this is an amazing piece. I only discovered this one about three years ago.
The Police's Message in a Bottle (from "Regatta de Blanc"). The eighties pop track that I think has stood the test of time better than any other.
Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto number 2. Enough said!
Ravel's Bolero. One of my eccentricities is that I collect different versions of this, and currently have more than twenty. It can be quite boring if it isn't played right, but a good performance is electrifying. However, contrary to Ravel's instructions, it sounds much more exciting if the tempo is slightly increased throughout. The best recording I've heard is a Decca recording from Riccardo Chailly conducting the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis. See my post Dark and Tempestuous for more on what I think of Vaughan Williams.
Villa-Lobos' Forest of the Amazon. I'm always going on about Villa-Lobos and how underappreciated he is, and this is one of his most colourful and uplifting orchestral/choral works.
Villa-Lobos Piano trio number 2. The wonderfully melancholy berceuse-barcarolla in this really speaks to me - its use of rhythm and conterpoint take chamber music to a level of sophistication I had never heard before, and it seems to be saying that even in a bleak and strife-torn world, there is always hope.

The presenter of the radio programme always asks which one disc the guest would choose if all the others were being swept away: this is even more difficult but, for me, I guess it would be Forest of the Amazon.

It's only NOVEMBER!

2008-11-28T18:57:00.004Z

The extent, and the increasing prematurity, of the Christmas hype really brings out my Scrooge-like tendencies. As if it wasn't enough to start selling Christmas decorations in October and putting the things up in town centres in November, Look North (our local TV news programme) had a live outside broadcast from Keswick this evening of a choir singing Christmas carols! I wanted to shout at the screen "It's 28th November!"

As a sufferer of SAD (Seasonally Affective Disorder) who always feels like going into hibernation from November until early March, I find the whole season quite claustrophobic. We know that Christmas is only four weeks away, so why do we have to be reminded constantly by almost all of the media? All the hype only makes it more impossible for Christmastime itself to live up to expectations. It's not without reason that there is an increase (or, at least, a perceived increase) in suicides around the turn of the year.

New Camera

2008-11-26T20:07:00.005Z

I've been thinking for a while that it's time to upgrade my three year old Canon EOS 350D camera. I still like Canon and have no reason to change make, particularly as my three lenses are all Canon fit. Like most people, I'm not rolling in money and, while the 50D was tempting, it's also very expensive. Did I really need 15 million pixels? There were other plus points like the higher resolution display and improved weatherproofing, but the resolution means its photos take up considerably more storage space (particularly if you go for the quality option and use RAW format) and that's a problem. So I plumped for the 40D instead - 10.1 megapixels and, according to most reviewers, with marginally better image quality than the 50D. This saved me more than £300, coming in at about £520 after the £60 cashback.

I bought it in Newcastle on Saturday - no price advantage from buying online this time - and was immediately impressed. The whole thing feels solid, the viewfinder is much brighter and clearer than on my 350D and the large display is also an improvement - although it soon becomes clear that it's not as "high res" as the ones on the latest models. As the weather and light weren't ideal for outdoor photography over the weekend, I've been exploring the "Live View" feature by taking mug shots. You can see one here.

Day Trip

2008-11-16T20:05:00.007Z

John and I went to York yesterday for a day trip (an hour from Newcastle on the train) and confirmed my impression that it's a great place to visit in the colder months, because of the number of good museums.

The morning was spent wandering the old streets, and then we had a pizza at the rather good La Piazza restaurant in Goodramgate, in what looked like an authentic Tudor building. Looking round the town again, I was surprised to see that a number of buildings there seem to have survived from the sixteenth century: as far as I'm aware, Newcastle only has one or two (not counting churches or the Castle itself) and Gateshead has none.

In the afternoon, we went to the York Castle Museum, somewhere I hadn't been for maybe 20 years, and it was excellent - lots to see. I've only posted one photo on my Flickr pages so far, but I'll try to get my finger out and put one or two more on there.

Sarah Palin

2008-11-05T19:55:00.004Z

Q: How many ears has Mr Spock?
A: Three. A left ear, a right ear and a Final Front Ear...

Q: How many ears has Davy Crockett?
A: Three. A left ear, a right ear and a Wild Front Ear...

These cheesy cracks (I won't dignify them with the title jokes) were inspired by a song that I can't get out of my head. It goes "Sa-rah - Sarah Palin. Queen of the Wild Frontier" to the tune of "Davy Crockett".

We're told we haven't seen the last of Palin, and that she'll be back. In days when the world is less and less stable, and we're all faced with annihilation in a variety of ways, this is not a comforting thought.

Surely the US electorate must be starting to realise that being religious, photogenic and a supporter of "the right to bear arms" are unbelievably feeble qualifications for people looking to run their country.

At Last!

2008-11-05T19:06:00.007Z

The fact that fireworks are going off this evening seems fitting - as if to celebrate that the US electorate has finally had the good sense to vote in a President with some intelligence and who - unlike "Dubya" - isn't promoting a foreign policy based on the world view of a 10-year old child.

Following the very dubious election result in 2000 and his record of wilful ignorance and incompetence over the subsequent four years, it was astonishing to me (and, I think, many in the UK) that Dubya was clearly voted into power for a second term. Fighting terrorists who were happy to take their own lives using bombs and missiles? Yes, that was always going to work. And by invading a country with which they had no clear connection? Good thinking. The most depressing part of the saga was the enthusiasm with which Tony Blair followed the USA into the disaster of the Iraq War - making him, in his foreign policy, the biggest let-down in UK politics of my lifetime. The number of innocent lives lost in this misconceived exploit - and the complicity of the British government - was appalling.

In the 2008 election I'd like to think that US voters finally cottoned on to the fact that Bush and his party were doing their country no good, either at home or abroad. However, it could be just that they weren't confident enough about the health of McCain, a man in his 70s who had already had cancer. If he'd won the election but couldn't continue, the world would have had President Sarah Palin. Now that was a really scary idea...

Sloppy Management

2008-09-29T20:16:00.009+01:00

I’m very disappointed by what seems to me the continuing decline of standards in Gateshead’s Tesco store. I’ve been a customer of Tesco at this store for 28 years and I can’t ever remember it being as bad as this.

I went shopping there this evening. There were no bananas (something I consider a staple) at all on the shelves. Empty goods trolleys used to stack the shelves seemed to be littered everywhere, most with no staff visible near them, making it very difficult to navigate the aisles. The fridges looked poorly kept, with lots of frost on the frozen food. I could not find any lower fat or chicken sausages more than a day or two ahead of their “sell by” date, making them no use to me, as I shop for food several days ahead.

At the till, I pointed out that I had four bags to reuse from previous visits but, when I checked my receipt, I found that the cashier hadn't given me my clubcard points. I then had to queue at the customer service desk. After bypassing the last customer of a queue who were all buying lottery tickets and cigarettes, I walked on to what used to be the Customer Service desk. After being ignored by three staff for five minutes, I was then told I was in the wrong queue. If I was meant to queue at the till for lottery tickets and cigarettes then this was not clear, and means another drop in service standards. Baffled, I told the member of staff “You’ve lost me” and left.

Tonight was not an isolated incident. In a time when some of Tesco’s goods such as margarine are 80% more expensive than last year, I increasingly doubt whether it gives value for money. I’ve written to Tesco about the “trolley clutter” problem before but, despite the suggestion on the slip that I would get a reply within a week, I had no reply at all.

If goods are out of stock, it’s difficult to get around the store, staff are not helpful and prices are higher, wouldn’t I and customers like me be better off just going to Netto?

You might be able to tell from the above that it was originally intended to go directly to Tesco themselves. Since they don't even seem to allow the public to contact them by E-mail, and evidently don't reply to the small slips you can pick up in the store, you're getting to hear this instead...

Distribution (?) of Wealth

2008-09-29T14:32:00.012+01:00

I'm on the way back from another trip to London, which included a very enjoyable visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum. John and I were impressed with its vastness, the elegance of the building and the sheer number of curios and treasures there. What makes London so fascinating to visit is the richness (in more senses than one) of the culture there.

When you consider that the V&A is just one of London's museums and that there's also the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery - to name just a few - then it starts to dawn on you how many hundreds of millions of pounds of public money have been (and continue to be) lavished on London, to the detriment of other parts of the country. I know that London has its grim Council Estates and higher property prices, but the arguably greater social problems and higher gun and knife crime than the North must, if anything, be evidence that money spent on a region doesn't automatically "trickle down" to the poorest people and bring a higher quality of life.

In these circumstances, you have to ask if the billions spent on London (again) for the 2012 Olympics wouldn't be better spent somewhere like Bristol, Manchester or even Newcastle. Never mind the utter tripe of the recent "Abandon the North" proposal by "Policy Exchange" and the complete non-sequitur that seemed to be its basis - isn't it time that taxpayers up north got a fair share of the country's wealth, in a genuine attempt by politicians to decentralise wealth and power from London?

The end of summer

2008-08-25T09:22:00.004+01:00

Traditionally, the August Bank Holiday marks the end of summer - or at least, of summer holidays. As August often seems a lethargic, almost stagnant kind of month, I'm not usually sorry to see it go. Like last year, though, the summer seems to be ending before it's even properly begun. We've had a few days recently when the temperature has approached the usual August values but overall, the last couple of months have been cold and extremely wet.

Watching a TV programme that showed that plants coped less well with waterlogging in summer than in winter - the opposite of what you might expect - makes me wonder if that's why the monardas (bergamot plants) in our garden haven't made an appearance this year. For the first couple of years they were great - two to three feet high with unusual, spiky red flowers. Apparently they like boggy ground and seemed very happy in our clay soil with so-so drainage. By last year they seemed to be taking over, having divided into about eight plants (from the original three) and, at six feet tall, towering over most of our other flowering plants. They had reached the point where we knew we'd have to dig them up and plant them further back, possibly against the fence, just to stop them overwhelming other things in the garden. This year - nothing. We were really surprised and disappointed that there was no sign of them. Maybe the wet weather did for them. If any keen gardeners have any ideas, please let us know where we went wrong.

I've included a photo of these plants as they used to look. Incidentally, does anyone know how to give Blogger photos a proper caption?

Strike

2008-07-12T15:28:00.003+01:00

Being a member of UNISON (one of the major local government unions) unfortunately means I have to go on strike this week - for two days. The Prime Minister has said we have to show restraint, and while his own MPs have rightly concluded that they just wouldn't get away with awarding themselves huge pay increases at the moment, they have just voted to keep their very generous and non-transparent "allowances" package that allows them to claim thousands of pounds per year from the public purse.

While I agree that the two-and-a-bit percent pay offer is not enough with the way the cost of living is increasing - and everyone knows that government figures in no way represent "real world" inflation - I voted against striking.

This is because I don't think the strikes will achieve anything. The employers are unlikely to increase the offer in a hurry, and how long will it take us to earn back the two days of lost pay - let alone the money lost from any future strikes, if the dispute drags on?

Brighton

2008-06-29T17:37:00.006+01:00

Our holiday has moved on to the south coast now. Our initial impression of Brighton wasn't great, as it was cool, grey and windy when we arrived, and the hotel was in a rather run-down square with peeling paint, surrounded by tower blocks and a ruined, burnt-out pier. Of course, it's not all like that. It's turned out to be a very colourful town, a strange mix of elegant and tacky, often in the same street - a bit like London crowded into a much smaller space.

I have to give a black mark to Brighton Museums. Although they charge £8.50 admission to the Royal Pavilion for tourists, they say "Filming and photography within the Royal Pavilion is not permitted anywhere in the building. However, access may be agreed for professional projects." There are already unofficial restrictions on photography in many public places (because of illogical fears over terrorism and child protection) and the last thing we need is for museum administrators to take a mean attitude. Visitors are obviously going to want to take photos and this arbitrary restriction suggests to me that they're only after our money.

On the positive side, admission to - and deckchairs on - the remaining Brighton Pier are free, and there were no restrictions on taking photos there.

UK Tour

2008-06-25T16:43:00.010+01:00

I'm back in Torquay again, having last visited 32 years ago. Obviously, looking at the number of years that have passed (already) since I was last here tends to make me feel old, but it's also been an opportunity to indulge in a bit of nostalgia. When I last came here I'd only just left school. It was my first proper holiday (without the parents). My companions were two old school friends, one of whom I'm still in touch with and the other sadly not, as he now lives in a far-off country.

Amazingly enough, the place doesn't seem to have changed much since August 1976 - the year of the big drought. Although the harbour area is still looking slightly down at heel, most of the streets are very well kept and attractive, and the coastline is just as spectacular as I remembered. We had a great coastal walk today from Daddyhole Plain to Anstey's Cove, with views as fascinating as the names. We also found a good hotel and an excellent restaurant, and the weather has stayed dry, if a bit cool. I'll be rather sorry to leave when we move on to Brighton on Friday.

Nibbling at my nuts

2008-06-07T14:12:00.009+01:00

It's nice to see that some rain and (at last) some warm weather have brought out the best in parks and gardens. I'm pleased to see a healthy number of bees buzzing around our garden, and that the local tits are keen on my nuts (fnarr fnarr) - although they don't seem to be nearly as enthusiastic about the seeds put out for them. See more (perfectly respectable!) photos on my Flickr pages.

Tyneside Metro: 5 out of 10 - must do better

2008-06-05T21:21:00.010+01:00

I've just spent a weekend in London, and looking at the cost of using the Tube brought home to me the shortcomings of the Tyneside Metro - specifically the cost. Using an Oyster card, each journey on the Tube costs £1.50, compared with £1.30 for a single stop up to a maximum of £2.80 on the Metro. Unlike Travelcards on the Metro, an Oyster card requires no great investment - you can charge it up with as little as £5 per time. I know that the London Underground is a vastly bigger system, but this makes me wonder how it can afford to charge lower fares when it has such enormous overheads, including staff at every station. Metro trains are almost always crowded and stop running from Newcastle city centre at about 11.45pm - in a time when we're all encouraged to use public transport, fifteen minutes earlier than they used to.

My feeling is that we have much more to complain about than users of the London Underground: infrequent, crowded and dirty trains (my 11 minute wait today at 10.30am on a Saturday is not unusual); frequent interruptions of service (part of the system has been off, I believe, every Sunday for the past several months); ticket machines that still don't take notes and very often don't work; and vandalised, graffiti-ridden stations where the No Smoking rule is regularly ignored. As the Metro system was only built in the 1970s, it doesn't have the excuse for poor service of Victorian tunnels and stations. About the only respect in which the Metro scores over the Tube is that the stations are smaller and easier to navigate than the Tube.

So why is this?

I reckon the answer is in how the Metro is managed. In the early years a couple of short-sighted and naive decisions were made, and we're all suffering for them now. 1) Having no customer services staff at any stations. Obviously this was done on cost grounds, but it may have backfired in the extra vandalism and fare dodging that has happened ever since. 2) Removing ticket barriers. How the Management could have failed to see the consequences of this is beyond me: an epidemic of fare-dodging. From anecdotal evidence and seeing how many people have tickets when inspectors come onto trains I reckon that, despite the official figures, fare-dodging is probably running at around 40%. Hence the honest ones are made to pay for the dishonest ones and the failure of the Metro management. There was a Press Release some time ago announcing that new barriers and ticket machines are coming, but without any details. So just when will we get these? Sadly, this lack of information is symptomatic of the disregard that Metro management often seems to have for its customers.

Broadening my horizons

2008-05-16T19:31:00.003+01:00

I haven't been anywhere for fun this year except Berlin, at Easter. Unusually, I've had two trips away with work, to York and Preston, and it was nice to get a brief change of scene. I'm looking forward to a trip to London at the end of this month, though. Of course, there are lots of things to do indoors there, but it would be nice to get out and have lunch in a riverside pub, or see the wildlife at Richmond Park - that kind of thing. I can put up with cold and dull weather for another week or so, but I hope it improves by then, both there and here.

Joys of Spring

2008-05-16T19:24:00.005+01:00

It's a bit irritating to hear BBC weather people saying on two or three days this week "The temperature at the weekend will be a good ten degrees cooler" and "weather getting much colder" when it hasn't been above 14 celsius here all week. This assessment is purely because the London area has had some nice warm weather. However, it's been about par for the course here for five days, with grey skies and a chilly north east wind. Admittedly the weekend was nice and warm, but we were plunged back into cold again on Monday. Meteorologists shouldn't need to be told that the south east of England is not the same as the entire country!

Dreadful Result in London

2008-05-04T19:25:00.006+01:00

I'm seriously disappointed at the result of the London mayoral election. To me, it seemed obvious that Ken Livingstone was the best man for the job in terms of skills, experience and commitment to what was right for London. He's followed sensible economic policies, fought for social justice and improved public transport; and the congestion charge must be the way of the future for cities like London.

My opinion of Ken has nothing to do with him representing the Labour Party once again. I admit I found myself unable to vote Labour for the first time in my life during Blair's latter years, on account of his unforgivable behaviour over the Iraq War. Although he seems to be an inferior politician, I see Gordon Brown as more sincere and certainly preferable to Blair in that respect and voted Labour again in the recent local elections. I concede that Labour probably did deserve to do badly in these elections. Regardless of that - to me, the battle to be Mayor of London was (or should have been) much more about the individuals, and Boris Johnson seemed so obviously clueless that even Brian Paddick would have been preferable as the winner.

There seem to be some parallels with the USA. Sadly, it seems the electorate of London (as in the USA) were stupid – or self-interested – enough to vote in a right wing buffoon as their leader. It’s also said that, just as Dubya is the figurehead for some cleverer (but extreme) men to get their far right policies enforced, Boris might be steered behind the scenes by Tory right wing extremists. I hope that idea isn’t true.

Berlin Zoo

2008-04-21T20:05:00.001+01:00

We did get to the zoo in Berlin, by the way. If you're interested, you can see some of my photos (and some from a past visit) here.

Sunnier Skies

2008-04-21T19:41:00.009+01:00

The sun came out at last for more than five minutes today, as I was on my way back from a (rare) trip out with work. I was heading back from York to Newcastle on the train, sheltered from the chilly wind. Passing sights like Durham Cathedral, it looked, at least, a beautiful evening. I was listening to music on my little Sony MP3 walkman, a nice gadget that looks like a cigarette lighter and recently survived being washed (!) in one of my shirts. This is no doubt because it's "solid state" and has no hard disc. 2GB of music is enough for me while I'm on the move, and I don't need a fragile HD device that would no doubt break if dropped, or rattled around in a washing machine! I know Sony are a nasty multinational but I've always found Apple's claims for its equipment overblown, so I wouldn't consider buying an iPod. It's just a pity that Sony now seem to have dropped this design and only make bulkier, less elegant-looking MP3 players.

Anyway, to get off my hobby horse, the piece of music was Herbert Howells' Harp Prelude. I particularly liked the story in the CD sleeve notes of a young harpist playing the piece to Howells in old age, and of him having no memory of it. Although I'm not a Christian, I like to think of him going to Heaven when he died, hearing his own piece being played on a cloud somewhere and asking "What is that music?"...

Winter Chill

2008-04-15T17:29:00.004+01:00

I'm in grumpy old man mode today, and have to ask what on Earth is the matter with the weather? In this part of the country, we haven't had a mild day (that is, with the temperatures in double figures) for nearly a month. It's 5.30pm and, once again, my outside thermometers are showing 6 degrees celsius - yes, the sort of temperature you might expect in February, not mid-April. What's worse, the long range forecast on the BBC say's there's not much prospect of things improving in the next four weeks. In April it's not unusual for it to rain nearly every day (as it has done). But, when the temperature is stubbornly three or four degrees below the average for weeks, and you look at last year's abysmal summer, you couldn't be blamed for believing the horror stories of global warming and the prospect of the Gulf Stream failing and plunging the UK into a much colder climate...

Curate's Egg

2008-04-06T11:12:00.010+01:00

On Wednesday I went to another Northern Sinfonia Concert at the Sage Gateshead with John. The first half (Bernstein's Three Dance Episodes from On the Town, Copland's Music for the Theatre and Barber's Adagio) was great. To my surprise, the piece I enjoyed most was the Barber. I've tended to think of this as a bit worn out through overexposure (and, indeed, the Northern Sinfonia included it in a concert only a month ago). However, the playing was exemplary - the performers really sounded as if they meant it, and the result was genuinely moving.

The second half (Dvořák's Cello Concerto) exhibited all the qualities I dislike in "classical" music - to me it was stuffy, old-fashioned, stylised and full of 19th century musical clichés. The cello can be a beautiful instrument but, here, it simply wasn't. Every time it had a chance to shine, it seemed Dvořák undermined it by adding something distracting or downright tasteless (such as a saccharine flute accompaniment) in the background orchestration. This was only emphasised by Ralph Kirshbaum's encore, a Bach Partita (we think) for solo cello that really showed what the instrument can do.

The people I spoke to all seemed to enjoy either the first half or the second half, but not both.

This makes me question (not for the first time) the logic of the Sage's programming: why couple such widely diverging music together? Incidentally, I have written to Simon Clugston, the classical music programme compiler for the Sage, suggesting that the repertoires need a shake-up and that they should play more twentieth-century music like Debussy, Holst and (of course) Villa-Lobos. He didn't reply.

Easter Break

2008-03-20T21:58:00.005Z

Through the wonders of the brilliantly portable Asus Eee PC and all-inclusive wireless Internet in (German) hotels, I can post to Blogger from my temporary place in Berlin.

The two-stage flight (via Amsterdam) went smoothly and comfortably, although I have to admit that it's not very green. Easyjet used to fly here from Newcastle direct, but now it's apparently more of a money-raiser to fly direct to Krakow. I know there are a lot of Polish people in the UK these days but I still find this puzzling: I would have thought Berlin was a much more popular destination, for all sorts of reasons.

Sadly, the weather forecast for the weekend is awful both in Germany and the UK. If the weather isn't too horrible here tomorrow we're off to Berlin Zoo, so here's hoping...

Looking forward to getting away

2008-03-15T16:11:00.006Z

As it's mid-March, I'm just starting to come out of my customary winter hibernation, and looking forward to a trip to Berlin over Easter. There's a transport strike there at the moment, and the news reports today are rather confusing. Apparently the talks today have broken down, but the strike will be suspended anyway. I think this is good news, unless I've misunderstood it, or it's been misreported. My German isn't very good, but reading it in German seemed to be easier than in the mangled Google Translation. Thankfully, we're staying in Schoeneberg - a central location - so if the strike is still on, getting to most places we want to see should still be possible, if awkward.

Heitor Villa-Lobos - unsung genius

2008-03-02T20:06:00.015Z

I was listening to some Villa-Lobos today and it raised my mood so much that I had to post here about how neglected this composer still is.

Eccentric, original, clumsy, haphazard, funny, noisy, stunningly beautiful - his music is all of these things at different times. I see him as rather like an eccentric old uncle who, when you first meet him, you dismiss as just weird. Once you get into his music, it's incredibly loveable. He wrote a huge body of work including seventeen string quartets, at least three of which are masterpieces, five piano concertos and nine Bachianas brasileiras (Brazilian Bach-pieces), twelve symphonies and fourteen Chôros, including two sadly lost. Obviously, not everything he wrote is brilliant, but he's a master of musical development.

I first heard Villa-Lobos' music more than twenty years ago. This was when recordings of many of his works were only just starting to appear. Thanks to the Marco Polo and Naxos CD labels, people now at least have the chance to hear many of his works, but he really doesn't seem to get the recognition he deserves, either in concert repertoires or in public awareness. The first work I heard was the Bachianas Brasileiras No 5 for soprano and cello ensemble - one of his most popular but (as is often the way) also one of his more ordinary. It was a few years before I was really hooked, when I heard his Piano Trio No 2 (piano, cello and violin) and its sublime Berceuse-Barcarolla.

To my mind, so many 'classical' composers (including the frustratingly canonised and over-recorded Mozart) manage to make everything sound light and elegant and totally lacking in emotional depth. I can't think of any other composer but Villa-Lobos who can take a theme and at first make it sound pedestrian or perhaps vaguely pleasant, and then suddenly transform it so that it glows with joie de vivre, like the sun coming out, or grabs you with its poignancy, like a spectacular sunset. There are works that don't sound vaguely Brazilian, and yet the rhythmic element is usually vital and other pieces are quintessentially "Latin American". Elegant is not the word for many of his works, but if you think he's incapable of that quality, listen to the Piano Trio. (Unfortunately this rather purple prose doesn't do the music justice: words have failed me.)

To hear him in lyrical vein, try String Quartets 1, 12 and 17 or the Piano Trio Number 2 (all available on the Marco Polo label). For a taste of all the qualities mentioned above in his orchestral works, try Chôros No. 12 or Forest of the Amazon. For the lighter side of Villa-Lobos, listen to his 'musical adventure' Magdalena, created in collaboration with the same people who developed Kismet from Borodin's music.

Incidentally, I wonder how many classical music lovers know that, if you're a member of Gateshead Libraries, you can have full access to the Naxos Music Library and Classical Music Library just by going to http://gateshead.naxosmusiclibrary.com - or go to http://www.asaplive.com/ExploreMusic/Home.cfm and click on Our Resources. Lots of these works including the Piano Trio No 2 are on there, provided by the saviour of the classical music CD market. If reading this has piqued your curiosity, go and have a listen - the quality isn't hi-fi but you'll hopefully get an idea of how brilliant the man was. If you don't live in Gateshead, check out your own public library - it may well subscribe to one of the on-line music libraries which will let you sample the world of classical music.

For more information on Villa-Lobos and his music, there's the Villa-Lobos Museum's web site. I also spotted another blog (with which I have no connection other than as an enthusiast).

The Deathly Hallows

2008-02-26T11:36:00.011Z

I finished reading the final Harry Potter novel last week (possibly the last person with any interest in the series to read it). As I've got a Flexi Day off work today, I thought I'd share my opinions. In case anyone reading this still plans to read the book, I'll try to avoid giving any "spoilers".

I thought the book was good value, and an appropriate end to the series. I've now read them all, of course, and enjoyed every one with the possible exception of number 5 (The Order of the Phoenix). Books 1 to 4 were all great fun although - as many viewers have pointed out - the darker side got more prominent as Harry grew a little older. Phoenix may have coincided with the peak of J K's wealth, or a feeling of security, complacency or whatever - or it may have just been that her publishers got so overawed by her success that they didn't dare prune 30% off the book's length. The consensus (with which I agree) seems to be that drastic editing was what was needed. Anyway, she seemed to be back on form with number 6 (The half-blood prince), which had some interesting twists and turns and was quite effective in "killing off" a major character.

Unlike some others, I didn't find that Deathly hallows "sagged in the middle". I found the interaction between the characters genuinely moving at times, and having an occasional minor character die at various points brought it home that, as this was the final book, all the characters were dispensable. Towards the end, there are some surprises around the motivation of a couple of characters, which at times struck me as unnecessarily convoluted and made me suspect that Ms Rowling has read too many Agatha Christies!

If the climax didn't work 100% for me, this is probably because the author was hampered by having to make things very literal at times, to avoid readers (particularly children) complaining that they didn't understand what happened. So, while saying "So and so was dead" falls a little flat in terms of prose, it was probably necessary. Again, without giving away the plot, let's just say that the series is brought to a fairly definite conclusion.

Overall, I would have to recommend the Harry Potter series to anyone who loves books - not just children and young people. While the books don't have the philosophical depths of (say) Philip Pullman, they're just as readable and almost as entertaining.

Dark and tempestuous?

2008-02-15T19:43:00.000Z

On New Year's Day (a day I invariably find grim and depressing) one of my brighter interludes was on catching some of Tony Palmer's documentary about Ralph Vaughan Williams - called O thou transcendent - on TV. A bit later I decided I'd like to see the whole thing, so ordered the DVD, which arrived last week.

Being a twentieth century classical music lover (rather than any kind of music student) for the past thirty-odd years, I was surprised to hear of so many musicians who dismissed RVW's work as second-rate. I'd heard Constant Lambert's comment about "a cow looking over a gate" but hadn't realised such views were as widespread as the film would have it.

Palmer definitely had a biased agenda when making his film. He seemed determined to portray RVW as a tortured man whose anguish was shown in his music. To this end, he chose mainly dark and tempestuous extracts from a repertoire that, to me, hardly ever comes across that way. I was surprised to hear the Tallis Fantasia described in that vein: although it's an emotional and melancholy piece, I've never thought of it as dark or despairing. Surely any composer worth his salt has a full emotional range? One of the reasons I've never liked Mozart (and am branded a musical heretic for the opinion) is that his music always comes across to me as too light and frothy - lacking any depth.

One of the likeable things about Palmer's film was the almost universal praise for Vaughan Williams for his humility, his generosity of spirit and his charitable work. If he was really so saintly, I'm sure we can forgive him for having been bad-tempered.

It was nice to see and hear a lot of people who actually knew Vaughan Williams (including his widow), still alive and kicking when the film was made. As RVW died fifty years ago, several of them must have been in their nineties. I was surprised to find that even Michael Kennedy, who seemed to be in his late sixties, is over eighty! Encouraging for those of us who are well past 21...

Changes on the way

2008-02-15T12:13:00.000Z

I've been taking a few photos of the Gateshead town centre car park (often referred to as the Get Carter car park), not because I like it but because it's soon to go, and I think it's important to commemorate what I've long seen as a blot on the landscape. Even if it's replaced with something bland, it's almost bound to be an improvement.

I get quite annoyed at people who say "You must keep it", because of some misguided feeling that it's of architectural importance. These people almost invariably live in other parts of the country: I've never heard anyone who lives in Gateshead and has to look at the thing every day argue in its favour. Anyway, the argument is academic now, as the structure has deteriorated beyond repair - it has to go. We're still being told that demolition will start soon: since this has already been postponed once, it would be comforting to have a definite date. I'm expecting Gateshead residents to organise a party to celebrate!

Hopefully, a new and improved Trinity Square will start to appear soon.