Category: 2006
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Reading matters
This year I’ve been blogging about the books I read. I started over on my LiveJournal, but I’ll continue here. So far, though, there have been:
- The first volume of A Dance to the Music of Time, by Anthony Powell
- Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
- Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, by Cory Doctorow
- American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
- Sputnik Sweetheart, by Haruki Murakami
No a bad wee collection, if I say so myself. I’ve also read Ian McEwan’s Saturday, which I’ll be posting about shortly, and am struggling through (while enjoying) Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital.
[tags]books, book notes 2006, reviews, this year’s reading[/tags]
TV roundup: what I've been watching recently
Turning away from politics, for a wee while, I’ve been finding things have been pretty good in the TV world, recently.
I thoroughly enjoyed Life On Mars on BBC 1, recently. I expected slightly better — or at least different — of it when it was first announced: I thought there would be more (or some) ambiguity or doubt about whether Sam Tyler was experiencing it all in his mind while in a coma, or had actually travelled in time.
Shortly after the start there was no such ambiguity about that, and we were deep in The Bridge or Marabou Stork Nightmares territory (if you can compare a TV series with a novel, then I’d say it’s better than the latter but nowhere near as good (obviously) as the former). What I was hoping for in the final episode, though, is that Sam would wake up back in 2006; and that he would then look into the history of the personnel at the station, and find that Gene Hunt and the others (and DI Sam Tyler, for that matter) really existed. Maybe he would even look up a now-aged and retired Gene, an Annie who is a grandmother.
Obvious, maybe, but it could have been a nice touch.
I had some mixed feelings about the whole thing, though. I wanted it to be resolved and completed, for dramatic satisfaction. But I so much enjoyed the interactions between the characters (especially the growing and grudging respect between Tyler and Hunt) and the quality of most of the stories that I became (and remain) keen to see more. If he had woken up, there would be no going back.
The West Wing maintained its high standard through the recent season (in fact this season, 6, was significantly better than 5 was, I would say) and I’m profoundly glad that we got a digibox and so could watch it on the excellent More4, rather than having to wait for the DVDs to be released. More4 are taking us straight into season 7, so only 22 21 more weeks and then it’s over forever.
More4 is also where we get The Daily Show With John Stewart, to give it its full-length name. This is just a fabulous show; hilarious, thought-provoking and informative. What more could you ask for?
Well, I could ask for something as good — and in a similar vein — for Britain.
The IT Crowd was disappointing enough after two or three episodes that I didn’t bother to work around its clashing with The West Wing on Friday nights). I’ve read some positive comments on it, though, and it ought to have been good, given its pedigree; so maybe I’ll watch out for the repeats. I wonder if that stupid announcer ever stopped calling it ‘The it Crowd’, though?
Hyperdrive was largely disappointing, and Invasion just petered out: that is, I petered out of watching it.
Most importantly (in comedy, at least): at last they’ve started showing the trailers I’ve been waiting for: “New Green Wing. Nearly ready.” Hooray! The funniest comedy of the last few years: right up there with Absolutely I can hardly wait.
And to top all that, my old friend from uni, Paul Cockburn inadvertently reminds me that the new Doctor Who will be starting quite soon. Fantastic!
[tags]tv, television, green wing, Doctor Who, absolutely, the west wing, the daily show[/tags]
Maybe that revolution won't be needed, after all
After my, perhaps over-excited, post about that bill, I had some discussion with ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
zotz on this post. Graham is clearly thinking more clearly and calmly than I am on this one, and I wonder if — and hope that — things might not be quite as bad as I feared.
Still, it would be better if the bill did not pass in its present form, just to be on the safe side.
[tags]politics, Legislative and Regulatory Reform bill, backtracking[/tags]
Pray the future will never need...
I had hoped to be the first to coin the inevitable term, “loangate”, over the recent Labour funding scandal. Not surprisingly, though, The Independent has beaten me to it.
Labour sleaze: it’s real, it’s here, it’ll probably bring Blair down. Let’s just hope he takes the corrupt & cynical ID cards bill — and more importantly, now, the Abolition of Parliament bill — with him.
Labour shouldn’t be dealing in peerages at all, of course: except to abolish them. Sadly the time when Labour might possibly have abolished peerages — or even significantly democratised the upper house — seem long ago and far away, now. May 1997 feels like another time in another world. True, we knew that ‘New’ Labour wasn’t going to be the real Labour that we wanted; but it was dawn after the long Tory night, and there was a mood of optimism in the air.
I got up on the morning after the election and put Billy Bragg records on, in celebration. Though admittedly one of the tracks was ‘Ideology’, which warns about the dark side of politics.
And how dark that side has turned out to be. It strikes me as slightly ironic that the Abolition of Parliament bill should be starting to come into higher visibility at the same time as the film version of V For Vendetta has just come out.
Technorati Tags: politics, labour, loans. peers, lords, scandal, loangate
Pray the future will never need...
I had hoped to be the first to coin the inevitable term, “loangate” over the recent Labour funding scandal. Not surprisingly, though, The Independent has beaten me to it.
Labour sleaze: it’s real, it’s here, it’ll probably bring Blair down. Let’s just hope he takes the corrupt & cynical ID cards bill — and more importantly, now, the Abolition of Parliament bill — with him.
Labour shouldn’t be dealing in peerages at all, of course: except to abolish them. Sadly the time when Labour might possibly have abolished peerages — or even significantly democratised the upper house — seem long ago and far away, now. May 1997 seems like another time in another world. True, we knew that ‘New’ Labour wasn’t going to be the real Labour that we wanted; but it was dawn after the long Tory night, and there was a mood of optimism in the air.
I got up on the morning after the election and put Billy Bragg records on, in celebration. Though admittedly one of the tracks was ‘Ideology’, which warns about the dark side of politics.
And how dark that side has turned out to be. It strikes me as slightly ironic that the Abolition of Parliament bill should be starting to come into higher visibility at the same time as the film version of V For Vendetta has just come out.
Technorati Tags: politics, labour, loans. peers, lords, scandal, loangate
Abolition
There is now a deadly danger to British democracy. One that is even worse than the ID cards bill.
Not for nothing are they calling it the ‘Abolition of Parliament’ bill. Its official name is the Legislative and Regulatory Reform bill, and it is, quite simply an attempt to take control of power in this country into the hands of the executive forever,and remove the possibility of parliamentary scrutiny from the exercise of that power.
The bill grants ministers the power to create, modify or strike down laws; and to introduce offenses carrying prison terms of up to two years.
It contains some limits: for example section 3(2)(c) requires that “the provision, taken as a whole, strikes a fair balance between the public interest and the interests of any person adversely affected by it”. However, remember that the bill grants the power to modify existing legislation; that does not exclude itself. So if this bill had become an Act of Parliament, there would be nothing to stop a future government from modifying the Act itself to, for example, increase the maximum sentence, or remove the limitations it contains.
This government has, after early successes in introducing the minimum wage and the Human Rights Act, been moving in a more and more authoritarian direction. Obvious examples are ID cards; the attempt to reduce the right to trial by jury; and the increase in the period of detention without trial.
But let’s not forget their support for US ‘extreme rendition’ flights, and the illegal detentions at Guantánamo Bay (they may not have actively and openly supported those, but they failed to condemn them, or do anything to stop them, which amounts to the same thing).
From ASBOs to the ‘Respect Agenda’1, it’s clear that Blair and his spineless — or perhaps totally complicit — cronies are all about applying controls and limits.
If this bill goes through, there are, as far as I can tell, two possible escape routes. Judges — even the Law Lords — might strike it down as unlawful under the Human Rights Act, since they are required to consider all new laws in light thereof. The problem there, though, is that the bill — the Act, if it passes — does not directly infringe anyone’s human rights. Instead, it is an enabler. It is laws introduced or modified using this Act that may (that will, let’s face it) infringe our human rights.
The second escape route? I can’t see one short of revolution. And that means civil war. And that’s no escape at all.
If you’re reading this, please: don’t just take my word for it. Visit the Save Parliament website and look at the resources there. Do some other research. But when you are suitably terrified, write to your MP; write to the editor of your favourite paper and ask them why they are not kicking up a fuss about this. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell people in the street
If we don’t stop this, it may not mean jackboots in the streets and the knock on the door in the night; but it will mean the effective end of democracy in the UK.
On ‘respect’: I am convinced that Blair doesn’t mean that word as the rest of us mean it. Instead, what he really wants to see more of in society is deference. When I thought of this truth several months ago, my attitude was, “Stuff it mate, we’ve left that behind us a century or more ago, and we ain’t going back to it.” But now, of course, I feel the terror that deference will be made mandatory by ministerial diktat.
Meet the new blog...
… same as the old blog.
Well, not quite the same. This one is on my own site, for one thing.
A new blog, though: just what the world needs, don’t you think?
As this is the first entry here, I can’t help but feel a certain… pressure, let’s say. Because, after all, in years to come, when this blog is one of the most popular sites on the internet1, millions of people will look back through the entries, and pay special attention to the first one. Obviously its content is critically important. Unfortunately, its content is rubbish.
Well, its content was going to be rubbish: or rather, about rubbish; about the guy who was fined for dropping rubbish into a bin.
But many people have written about the stupidity of that, and in any case, the council in question have already, and predictably, gone back on their foolish decision.
Instead I thought I might write about the hat woman. But actually that’s too boring to go into. Pubs with “no-hat” rules, though: truly madness walks among us. Actually, the scary thing about that story is that there are pubs with CCTV cameras inside them. Truly we are the most watched society in the world.
Maybe that should be the theme of this blog, if it needs one: the madness of modern society.
I’d hate to come over like some old grouch, though, railing against modernity: “It wisnae like that when ah wuz a wean, by the way jimmy.”
Or not too often, at least. No, instead, like most blogs — like all the best ones — I’ll just write about whatever the hell I feel like.
Modern weirdness, though: I just heard about the recent trends for “internet suicides” in Japan; and the fact that the US Nasdaq exchange has made an offer to buy the London Stock Exchange. Apparently there are shares in the Stock Exchange: it’s a company. For some reason I find this immensely surprising. I would have thought (if I had ever thought of such a thing) that it was some kind of public body, like the Bank of England. Apparently not, though. Life’s strangenesses, I think, will be a recurring feature here.
1. this is meant to be humorous, by the way.
The Many-Angled Pub
I went out for a drink with some people from work last night. We went to a place in Covent Garden called The Porterhouse.
It’s a very curious place. It extends across three or maybe four floors. Or maybe only two, but with lots of mezzanines. It’s full of alcoves: everything, it seems, is an alcove. I have no idea, for example, how many bars it has. And in fact, I didn’t go to the bar all night. That, though, is because they have something that is remarkable in a British pub: table service.
Yes, it’s very strange. waiters come and go, collecting glasses and trays, but also, when asked, taking orders and returning — very quickly — with trays of beers.
So I spent the night drinking Caledonian 80/-. A taste of home, perhaps, but a) it was bottled; b) it was too cold to taste right; and c) it’s been such a long time since I drank it back home that it hardly counts. And I always preferred McEwan’s 80/-, anyway. Oh, and pizza. They serve food, too, and claim a woodburning oven.
It was a good night. But that pub. You know the old computer game that used to say, “You are in a maze of little twisty passages, all the same”? It was a bit like that. But mostly it reminded me of the house in HP Lovecraft’s ‘Dreams in the Witch-House.’
Oh, I suppose the angles weren’t really that wrong; that the walls were quite straight. But there were definitely too many rooms, and bits, and stuff: if not angles.