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21:25
28 May 2008
A Banana In A Cage Of Monkeys?
No, I'm not becomming a fruitarian or joining a zoo. I was, however, offered a job today (for September, when I'm fully qualified). I'm going to be joining the banking & finance department of the law firm I currently work for. To me, this is amazing. Corporate banking & finance, rocks. I'm completely over the moon - to the extent that I purchased a bottle of Moet on the way home. Sometimes you have to celebrate, on your own, with a glass of decent bubbly. Anyway, I'm pleased. I knew I was being retained but until I got the final word today it wasn't set in stone.
So, what of the title? Well, it's how my appointment has been described by a few peope. There are probably fifteen or sixteen of us in the team. There was one woman. Now there are two. You see? Banana in a cage of monkeys.
Oh yes, that would be the bank holiday weekend? Having said that, it was actually a glorious day yesterday - at least on the North Kent coast - and I do believe I actually caught the sunshine. Today on the other hand, it has simply rained. And what else of the weekend? Well, we didn't win Eurovision. There's a surprise. And the weather seemed to cause all manner of problems on the roads and rail. The government appear to be split over policies, their leader and general running of the country. Petrol prices are sky high (don't go there on the timing of buying a new car). Has anyone else noticed that everything really has become expensive of late... my no-different-to-normal Tesco shop this week was, compared to a shop two months ago, significantly higher (yes, I checked against previous bills). Stabbings appear to be rife. We've landed on a previously unexplored area of Mars. It's really not an overly cheerful time to report about.
Welcome to Northolt, population: me. And a few others.
My absence from Dayorama over the last few days has been down to the Big Move, culminating in what you see in the photo - my two sofas, and beyond them the kitchen area and my bedroom, which is pretty much the sum total of my new domain.
It's small, but does a job - and actually feels spacious since I packed so ruthlessly that shelves and units remain quite bare.
Easily the biggest joy is the double bed, it being all too rare that I get to call a decent-sized bed my own. Sadly I won't be enjoying a lie-in within its confines any time soon, but happily that's because I'm going on holiday to Scotland for a week, starting tomorrow. I'll try to post a few updates along the way but, if you don't hear from me, I'm probably being nibbled on by a basking shark, a short distance from my kayak, in open water.
Much of my time at work is being spent on things map-related with a view to the Beijing Games. This may be old news to some of you, but check out Wikimapia. It's a brilliant website where anyone can contribute information, simply by highlighting an area, then entering some details.
There are many sites which offer similar functionality, but Wikimapia does it in a very clean and easy way. I recommend starting with a nosey around Beijing, which is what I spend a lot of time doing - not least because major venues have been helpfully highlighted, something the Games' official website is far less helpful with.
See if you can find the Beijing Ikea, the animals at the zoo, and the Duck n' Goose pub. Then maybe move on to more familiar territory around wherever you live, and let me know if there are any hidden treasures...
Can I just have a moment of glory, please? Without the need for half a bottle of whisky (my father's requirement / excuse), I've managed to finally get around to completing my tax return - *drum roll, please* - now do you think I'm one step closer to recouping the money our dear Majesty's Revenue & Customs owe me? Theoretically, perhaps. In practice? No, I don't really think I am either. Be prepared to watch this space. Today could mark the beginning of a merry war.
All we need now is for Chelsea to win the footie and all will be well in the world (or, at least my boss will be happy). My best mate, currently watching the game in Moscow, has just sent me an email asking whether she can marry Frank Lampard (despite acknowledging that he is a "scally and a bit past it"). One hopes that she's consumed a considerable quantity of vodka.
This weekend sees the annual return of that ghastly institution, the Eurovision Song Contest. It's also become something of an annual report from Dayorama HQ and Ollie provided an entertaining report of last year's evening of entertainment and cringing here.
Now, depending on how avidly you follow these things, you may or not recall that earlier this year it was announced that the Irish entry would take the form of "Dustin the Turkey". I'd say it was pretty much a given from the outset that a [foul] singing glove puppet was never going to rise up the Eurovision ranks. The contest may be slightly alternative in terms of music prowess and it's clear that a "whacky" style (read as "bloody awful") often allows an artist the chance to bring the accolade home [to roost], but surely even the Eurovision judges would be suffering from a serious case of bird flu if they praised Dustin the signing Turkey? Now, if it was a Turkish entry and not an Irish one, it would almost, I say almost, be funny.
Now, apparently the UK will be represented by X-Factor finalist, Andy Abraham. I confess, I know nothing about this chap - good, bad or indifferent - but on the back of past Eurovision hopefuls, I'm not expecting much. This opinion is enhanced by the fact that it turns out the reason why the UK is in the final isn't one of pure talent. Funny that. No, instead we're one of the fourth largest cash backers of the event, thus making us an automatic finalist. And who said that money couldn't buy anything these days? Our competitors so far (another ten places will be decided on Thursday) will be Azerbaijan, Armenia, Greece, Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Finland, Russia, Israel, Poland and Norway. Stretching the definition of "Euro / Europe"-vision there, somewhat. So, it seems we plough money into Eurovision in order to suffer a humiliating defeat. Now, that's British pride for you. Churchill would be proud. Singing bulldog next year, anyone?
Well, apologies for the radio silence. It was a rather busy week last week and then I was away doing all things DofE orientated (no pun intended) at the weekend. I appreciate it was also a busy week for Mr Williams, and he still managed to post, but some people have all the dedication... (also, it gave him a chance to win our internal "five-in-a-row" competition, a glory I know he enjoys).
I don't wish to criticise BMW before my 1 Series even arrives, but yesterday I received two pieces of mail. The first from BMW HQ (or, well, a bulk mailing, anyway) and the second from my local dealership. The former advertised it's nationwide "EfficientDynamics Open Weekend". You may have seen the billboard and television adverts around at the moment. The BMW website states the following about the said weekend:
Whatever you drive, bring your car along to the BMW EfficientDynamics Open
Weekend and it'll be given a free BMW Efficiency Check. It won't take long,
and our suggestions could help lower your car's emissions and running costs.
And while your check's carried out, we invite you to experience the exhilaration,
and economy of BMW EfficientDynamics, featured in the new BMW range.
Now, this is all well and good. I don't suppose that BMW HQ have quite clicked yet that I've purchased a new vehicle. However, the latter communication however, from my local dealership, also included the same blurb. It also seemed oblivious to the fact I'd purchased a new vehicle, complete with EfficientDynamics. To be honest, the EfficientDynamics is rather impressive on the environmental stakes (and it was one of the selling points of the car). But don't you agree that BMW's overall environmental campaign would be somewhat increased if they didn't waste a tree sending me repetitive blurb about a product they arguably know I've already purchased? If they still want to plug the product, why not just send me an email instead? Surely that's being dynamically efficient...?
Futureheads - "Radio Heart"
Released 19 May in the UK. New album "This Is Not The World" released 26 May.
This is a beautiful song, first heard on BBC 6 Music yesterday while packing. I was a big fan of the Futureheads' first album but then my enthusiasm slowly waned, allowing their north-east friends and neighbours Maximo Park to steal in. So much so that I didn't even notice the Futureheads' second album.
Now they're back with a third and the first two singles from it - "Radio Heart" and "Beginning Of The Twist" have been top notch.
This is the moment you realise you're leaving home - the dog comes into your room while you're packing, pops his tennis ball into an open box, and waits expectantly.
Sadly, Toby's not coming with me, whatever tricks he tries - unless he's going to convince my new landlady to change the "no pets" rule. And I don't think I can afford his food bill... he's become accustomed to a certain standard of living since he moved here from Somerset.
This time tomorrow I'll have waved goodbye to the leafy Home Counties to take up residence in a small avenue near Northolt station, west London. More to follow.
"You think 2012 is pretty far off, but think about it this way: there's only 213 more Fridays until the Games."
That's how one of the top dogs from LOCOG - the group organising the 2012 Olympics - sums up the time remaining between now and the opening ceremony in London. Which is why a big group of people from the BBC, LOCOG and the ODA (Olympic Delivery Authority - "they build the theatre, LOCOG puts on the show") are in the same room at 21 Palmer St, home of the Work Foundation.
Like last week's meeting at Lord's, the plan was that we split into small groups and come up with ideas for Olympics coverage. This time the remit was a bit different in that our group's focus fell on the 2012 Games itself - what could we deliver during August 2012 that would be genuinely new, exciting, and inspiring for people coming to the Games?
Our answer to that was a handheld device, like a mobile phone, given to every ticket-holder on arrival in the country or at a venue. It acts as your ticket, your travelcard and your guide to the city and the Games, in whichever language you speak. Plus you can use it to find other people who speak your language, meet up and sync your devices using bluetooth, so you'll know when you're at the same events or in the same area.
The devices need to be basic and robust, and they'll run off the Wi-max we're hoping London will have. (Note for those who know Aaron: he's organising Wi-max conferences these days. I know! I know.) That means you can get live information like travel updates, medal alerts or reminders about where you need to be, and when, to see the events for which you have tickets.
Sounds like it'd cost a lot, but think of the saving in not having to develop an integrated ticket solution, adapt the transport ticketing system to cope with millions of visitors, or produce reams of leaflets and guides when one pocket device has the whole works. When your device runs out of battery (and it has a solar panel) just take it to your nearest charging point - all over the city - and pop it down to charge, then pick up another device and off you go. All your data is stored on the web, with your own username and password, so you don't need to keep the same device all the time. Later, someone else will come along and pick your old one up, fully charged, and sign in as themselves to activate it.
At the end of the Games you can pay a small fee to keep your (re-programmable, GPS enabled) device, or else they'll be wiped and given to charities and schools for their use.
This felt like a pretty knockout plan to me, but the gentleman from LOCOG in charge of their New Media proposition blew it out of the water when I presented it to the "panel" of four judges in front of the audience. It turns out that sponsors have far more presence in the Olympics than I'd previously realised, and he says this idea is a no-go from the off because two of the main Olympic sponsors are a big handset provider and a big telecoms company. We can't get anyone who isn't these two companies to make the devices, and he doesn't think those two companies would be interested or be able to commit the resources.
Moreover, it turns out there is a complete lockdown in 2010 as regards all Olympic technology essential to the Games. So if it isn't completely ready two years beforehand, it gets dropped. As he rightly pointed out, things like ticketing simply cannot go wrong, and now is not the time to be experimenting. Paper tickets it is.
That all makes sense, but it did beg a question which I didn't have time to ask - if each Olympic organising committee reaches the same conclusion, how will technology at the Games ever move forward? I can understand that things like ticketing have to be kept as far away as possible from any risk, but that means we could still be issuing paper tickets by the year 2100, and that's just not acceptable. I wish London 2012 could bite a few more bullets, but I can see why that's not the case.
In the picture above is the presentation which followed mine. Pete Clifton was formerly the man in charge of News Online, who wrote a weekly From The Editor's Desktop column during his tenure (which is how most people might recognise the name). He's now something like head of editorial development, and he very cleverly opened his pitch with a video of "All Together Now", by The Farm. His group's idea was to have big-screen competitions between sets of Olympic supporters around the world - for example, the Brits versus the Aussies, where crowd movements beneath the screen are matched against your opponents' across the globe. Thus, "All Together Now".
Even Pete's pitch was outdone. One gentleman stood up and declared his group believed more should be done to help people and countries identify with their athletes, and show their support.
"We will do this," he said, "by sending messages into space."
The dramatic pause which ensued was broken by a trickle of laughter, then a room bursting with guffaws. But the man was insistent - get people to etch messages into the surface of the earth, for example by colouring crops in a field, and it'll show up on satellite imagery in the likes of Google Earth.
Just as I was thinking the idea was mad but vaguely workable, the LOCOG New Media chap piped up: "Have you been reading my notes? We had a meeting the other week with a social network who are working on doing something in space... not quite that idea, but similar."
So watch the skies, folks. The Olympic constellation may be about to appear.
Some of the bits and pieces from Tuesday's filming in Bath are emerging on the main sport website.
Eleanor Oldroyd's written quite a nice piece for the Olympics blog off the back of a joke about multi-tasking shared with modern pentathlete Georgina Harland. I persuaded Eleanor to juggle a couple of different microphones to make sure we recorded for both web video and radio, which was the catalyst for the observation that pentathletes are by definition multi-tasking, and maybe that's why the women do it better.
The photos I took on the day are on the BBC Sport Flickr account (which grows day by day and is fast becoming a fully fledged BBC image repository, and thereby a source of personal pride - I had an email from the Bitesize GCSE revision website today, asking if they can use some of the photos we've put on Flickr). I am biased because she's the one I know best, but Katy Livingston shines whenever someone points a camera at her. That said, it's a bit scary to realise that as you're pointing a camera at her, she's pointing a gun at you. We filmed a fun little impromptu guide to shooting in modern pentathlon which ought to surface next week, or possibly early June.
And back on the Olympics blog, I've been plugging the weekly podcast with the thought that tennis may just be the sport least deserving of Olympic status. From what I can tell none of the sport's top pros care about the Games, and tennis fans would barely bat an eyelid if it were dropped. Can't we have tug-of-war back instead?
Finally, my night watching the Uefa Cup Final was immensely enjoyable and an incredible spectacle, even if the match itself was a bit of a non-event, largely owing to Rangers' refusal to entertain the notion of creative attacking football, or indeed entertain full stop. The Rangers fans around me steadily sank into angry despair as the Russian mob on the left belted out beautifully orchestrated chants, but nothing in the ground remotely approached the horrific scenes back in the town centre.
I realise it's only a minority, but have a look at this video of CCTV which is on the BBC News site. It is horrible, especially the part where a lone police officer stumbles and is set upon by a baying mob of wolf-like "fans", kicking, punching and even filming it while the policeman somehow struggles free. Those sick idiots should all be locked up for life. (When will people realise that alcohol is the source of just about everything wrong with Britain?)
Very finally, this is going to be an exciting weekend. All will be revealed!
So reads the banner off to our right (pictured). Welcome to Glasgow - well actually, welcome to Manchester for tonight's Uefa Cup Final between Rangers and Russian side Zenit, but it might as well be Scotland for the night.
At last estimate some 80,000 Rangers fans had made the trip here for this game, a once-in-a-lifetime chance for any supporter (although I imagine they'd all like to think this will happen again). In the words of the guard on the tannoy on the train up: 'Manchester is extremely heavily populated tonight. If you were thinking of having a beer or a glass of wine, stick to your back garden.'
Well, as a Manchester City fan, that patch of grass down there is as good as my back garden, so here I am. The atmosphere is naturally electric, both sets of fans are mingling well so far (indeed they're all sat with each other in what will hopefully remain harmonious co-existence) and the sun is about to go down over what we want to be a footballing treat.
Tonight's already paid off for one young Gers fan. As he waited, ticketless, outside the ground near us, a top Uefa bod came by and offered up a spare ticket for face value - £100. The 12-year-old's family and friends stumped up the cash and he's in the ground, in the best seats, for a snip compared to the four-figure sums at which other tickets are allegedly changing hands.
The Zenit line-up is being announced to much Cyrillic chanting, so I'm off to take my seat. As ever in this stadium, come on you Blues...
Twibbles in a moment. Ripples first. That there is a photo taken from a bridge over the Thames (I think) between Sutton Courtenay and Culham, old stomping ground of none other than Amy Kennedy. She - and God help you if she finds out you couldn't guess - is the one on the left.
Sutton Courtenay was home to the youngest member of the Kennedy clan, not counting the cat, for the first six or so years of her life, if memory serves me (and her). We passed a stone sculpture of a dog sat on top of a rather grand porch in the centre of the village, which she remembers from those halcyon days, otherwise it seems the sands of time have slowly ebbed away at Amy's Oxfordshire.
Still, a small victory to be had in the village churchyard. Among the trees, weeds and cats (yes, there was a moggy rolling around in the dirt beneath a headstone when we arrived) you can find the grave of a rather special individual: Eric Arthur Blair.
The intellectually aspirant and pub-quiz savvy among you will recognise that as the name originally given to one George Orwell, author of 1984 among other things. You can find his grave by searching for rose bushes, since his memorial is semi-eclipsed by one of these popping out of what can only be his mortal remains.
It is a little odd, and disarming, to find oneself standing above George Orwell. The grave is not elaborate in any sense since George did not die a rich man, so you can stand on him if you're really feeling like that. (I didn't.) There, separated from your eyesight by six-and-a-bit feet of soil, is the skeleton of one of the greatest authors in the history of the English language, almost seventy years into a rather prolonged case of writer's block. The victory being that only of us ever saw 1984 - although I'll confess, having only caught two months of it, my recollection is patchy at best.
You can see photos of the grave (and the cat, for that matter) in this week's Pictures of the Week. You didn't think I'd remember, did you? This week's collection is the second in the series after last Monday's debut.
So, the trouble with Twibbles. An hour and a bit of fannying about with my phone, Twitter, this website called Twibble and a Google Map, and I've managed to rig this up so it broadcasts my location whenever I send an update to Twitter.
For those of you who can no more understand that last paragraph than read War and Peace in Aramaic, this is a fancy way of tracking where I am at any given moment using my mobile phone and the web.
What happens is the phone uses its built-in global positioning system to work out where it is. Then, when I want to tell people that information, I send a little message to the Twitter service via a special application called Twibble. This sends my coordinates along with the message, and the map strips out the coordinates before plotting my location.
And to think some people say we don't invent things any more.
Granted, no immediately earth-shattering uses for this application spring to mind, but far greater beings than I will come up with something. In the mean time I'm going to Twibble up the M4 and back tomorrow to test it while I film some modern pentathlon in Bath, and some hockey in Caversham.
(The BBC Sport theme in the screengrab is down to this being a test for work. But I can assure you Dayorama will be seeing more of technology this cool. Maybe if I install it on OJ's phone, we can work out where he is! AWOL since January '07...)
For anyone who has lived, visited or had the (un)fortunate experience of going to school in Maidstone (the latter applies to me) when Radio 1 announced that their so-called "Big Weekend" was to be held in the town, there will have been an element of surprise. Perhaps the biggest thing to have happened to Maidstone since the Civil war (Maidstone was a key battle point in 1648) or even the finding of an iguanodon (as in the dinosaur) in the neighborhood in the 19th century, the "Big Weekend" will no doubt grace the town's history books.
Admittedly, Maidstone does have some beautiful buildings - the Archbishop's Palace, a popular wedding venue, to name but one. However, the town's architecture tends to be lost as it is shrouded by ghastly erections from the 1970s and run-down business units. As with most towns that have a river running through them - the Medway in the case of Maidstone (admittedly it runs under the one way system) - Maidstone naturally has some distinctly pretty areas: Mote Park, the venue for the "Big Weekend", is an acceptable area of park land - it's just a shame it borders a main road; there are riverside walks, it's just a pity the only attractions along your path will be the variety of litter; and Brenchley Gardens (oh the memories) has a pretty array of flowers alongside the tramps and pigeons. Once you've battled to park in the multi-story, dodgin', like, the youths in their souped-up fiestas, the shopping side of the town is acceptable: an Ann Summers takes pride of place in the centre of the High Street. Oh and the nightlife is arguably OK, I suppose, if you like sharing the pub with a bunch of underage teenagers, weighted down by genuine plastic gold jewelry (aka something Del Boy may sell) and carrying knives. The women, of course, will be tottering along in 4" white plastic stilettos, trying not to "stack-it" (Kentish dialect for "falling over").
Do you get the picture? You have to love stereotyping. But I do say all of the above with an element of affection - "the Stone" (as it is referred to by locals) isn't a bad town all in all (come on, I live in the East End - it's home from home). At the same time I was most amused to read the Guardian's report of the "Big Weekend" (shown to me by my Mother). The "Big Weekend" as a whole scored 4/5 stars and certainly friends who attended said it was amazing. The sunshine clearly enable even Maidstone to look good. Madonna was said to be excellent. This is all well and good but it doesn't stop me chuckling at the following:
"(..) this event has lured Madonna to perform in the shadow of Maidstone Leisure Centre, a state of affairs that - with the greatest respect to the Garden of England's county town - feels not unlike running into Brad Pitt outside Dunstable Asda".
I've read, and appreciated and admired if not enjoyed, a couple of works by Doris Lessing. She is, no doubt, one of the most prolific female authors of the late twentieth / early twenty-first century. As this article notes, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, a triumph which she has recently described as a "bloody disaster".
This sort of attitude wholeheartedly irritates me. Lessing, aged 88, does not need to tell the world that since winning such an accolade her "life has changed" and now all is a "bed of roses", but surely she has some duty to inspire those who come after her? The budding young authors who aspire to lesser prizes can hardly be inspired if they are given the impression that something really isn’t worth the paper it’s written on (pardon the pun). I can understand Lessing's sentiment that a writer should “use [your talent] while you’ve got it because it’ll go, it’s sliding away like water down a plughole” – after all, life is for living – but I’m sure the sentiment could be better expressed.
I’ve been speaking with a very gifted GCSE student of late regarding her future options / choices / career paths and the such. It seems that in this life we (in general) do lack guidance and encouragement – and surely it is for people in Lessing’s position to embrace and share their knowledge rather than claiming everything is a damn nuisance? I don’t know, perhaps I just feel we should start sharing our expertise and achievements rather than dumbing them down and in the process belittling others achievements. I mean, if the Nobel Prize for Literature is a bloody disaster, then there isn’t much hope, is there?
Oxford, midday: Whenever I come back here I like to walk down Turl Street, just to refresh the memory as much as anything.
Halfway down the street I realised there was a gathering at the other end and somebody was on a loudspeaker.
In my experience Oxford gets a lot of animal rights protests - usually in opposition to the alleged goings-on in the various science buildings, but sometimes in support of them too.
When I heard the gentleman's voice on the loudspeaker mention 'PETA', People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, I knew this would be something similar.
But when I got to the junction of Turl Street with Broad Street, I discovered it was nothing of the sort. 'PETA' was 'Peter', and the speaker was almost certainly a pastor of some denomination, since above the big stage hung a banner proclaiming 'Love Oxford', welcoming 'Christians of all denominations and streams'.
They must be welcoming this gorgeous weather, too. There seems to be a very healthy turn-out, most of whom are breaking into a pitter-patter of applause now and then, with the occasional hoot and whistle. (I'm waiting for an American tourist to momentarily lose composure and yell, 'IN THE HOLE!')
Good for them, taking it to the streets in an organised, happy fashion. Now a tune is striking up. Aldhelm, who sat on bridges in Anglo-Saxon times strumming a Dark Age guitar to lure the great unwashed into his church, would have approved.
Will the last member of New Labour to publish their memories turn off the printer?
Less than 24 hours after Cherie Blair spoke of Gordon Brown "rattling the keys" to No. 10 over the head of her hubby, the former chancellor is now suffering more than two jabs from John Prescott.
The former deputy prime minister said Mr Blair reneged on several promises to resign in favour of Mr Brown.
But he describes Mr Brown as "annoying, bewildering and prickly".
He says Mr Brown would sulk silently in meetings so often they had to be abandoned, while on other occasions, he could “go off like a bloody volcano”. More: BBC News - 'Blair scared of Brown' - Prescott
As we recently discovered, Mr Prescott has done a lot of spewing over the years, but I doubt the Prime Minister needed this latest regurgitation.
So who else is left to cleanse their souls with a conveniently monetarised outpouring?
Funny how quickly I forget who actually has committed their soul to paper. I thought we might be waiting for a David Blunkett retrospective but, no, he's published already. Here's how his effort, and some others, go down on Amazon:
David Blunkett: 'The Blunkett Tapes: My Life in the Bear Pit'
£17.50 (RRP £25), 1.5 out of 5
At 896 pages you'd better be a bit of a political nut or you'll be bored faster than you can say, "I resign". Twice.
Blurb: "Woven into his diary entries are Blunkett's personal reflections, as unflinchingly frank as they are incisive. Rarely does a politician so willingly admit where he went wrong, what he should have done better, and the unforeseen twists which affected his professional and private life."
Sample of audience reaction: "This book goes on through endless tedious pages of self -justification ... a gold star for anyone who finishes this boring tome ... why do disgraced and useless individuals get a publishing deal? ... too long, but nevertheless quite enjoyable ... makes your flesh crawl."
Alastair Campbell: 'The Blair Years'
£5.99 (RRP £9.99), 3.5 out of 5
Again, at 816 pages, you are unlikely to burn through this in a couple of tube journeys. This is a new paperback edition as currently sits 11th in Amazon.co.uk's biography bestsellers.
Blurb from Matthew Parris: "A brilliant, absorbing account. These diaries will be gasped at, and relied upon, for decades to come. Buy them: they will suck you in."
Sample of audience reaction: "A witless, charmless account of the ins and outs of Alistair Campbell's job ... bed-time reading only for political obsessives ... it does not need almost 800 pages to understand that Cabinet was largely a sideshow and that major decisions were taken by Blair ... my respect for this guy only grew as I worked my way through the book ... I would not believe a single word Alistair Campbell wrote on any subject."
Tony Benn: 'More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001-2007'
£14 (RRP £20), 5 out of 5
Just 352 pages, so no wonder this scores so well - people still had the strength and presence of mind to write about it afterwards.
Blurb from Paul Foot: "'There is a passion in Benn's writing and speaking that far transcends the miserable aspirations of most contemporary politicians."
Sample of audience reaction: "There are so few politicians who say what they think. Tony Benn is one of those who does ... I'm not sure I'd want to live with TB for a week ... makes you think, laugh and cry ... a rarity among politicians ... at times almost child-like ... phenomenal energy."
To think we have all the excitement of books from both Blair and Brown to look forward to in future years. Maybe the staff of the Granita restaurant, the man who threw an egg at John Prescott, and the small legion of angry elderly ladies who have confronted Tony Blair at some point or other, will all chip in too.
John Redwood - who will not remember once sharing a table with me at Ascot racecourse - has also been up bright and early of a morning to indulge in memoir-bashing:
"It is as if senior Labour figures feel they need to speed their stories to the papers whilst the two words “Gordon” and “Brown” are still high news.
Labour figures have certainly learnt from the NU Lab Bumper Book of Spin when it comes to sending out salacious stories and exciting tittle tattle to boost circulations and encourage good contracts with newspapers for extracts from their literary toils.
The Memoir threatens to rekindle the old rows, as it is difficult for the PM to leave it all unchallenged, without someone putting his point of view."
It's a Saturday morning, I'm absent-mindedly watching some canoeing on telly, I've nowhere to be and no pressing chores. The perfect calm - and ideal conditions in which to be woefully sidetracked into discovering the North Pacific Gyre.
This started in the usual, innocent fashion. I got an email from Platial, who make an online mapping application, about the latest release of their software. Thanks to that email I clicked through to their blog about it, then clicked to the last post, entitled "Garbage Island".
All bets were now off. For the last 45 minutes I've been reading all kinds of articles about the tectonic plate of rubbish gently oozing its way around and around the North Pacific.
By far the best immediately accessible article about this is a blog post written by a graduate biologist, explaining why, if this massive conglomeration of plastics and other waste exists, we can't get any pictures of it. (The answer being that the rubbish doesn't float on the surface, but bobs along underneath - so even if you sailed right over it you may not necessarily notice.)
Apparently estimates for the size of this thing range from the size of Texas (so, to translate, about 33 times the size of Wales) to the size of the entire North American continent (in this increasingly unhelpful comparison, 1,168 times the size of Wales). Blimey.
Cleaning it up would mean lots of trawling, which means for every bucketload of plastic you'd probably get a dolphin* or something, so that's not a great plan. Instead the way forward seems to be to control the rubbish country by, well, not adding any more. Ahem. While this plan is well-intentioned, and I'll not be using plastic bags where possible, one can't help but feel it may struggle.
* You-had-to-be-there dolphin joke: at a meeting on Thursday somebody referred to the "dull thing of metadata" while we were discussing tagging. Someone else misheard this as "the dolphin of metadata". We are now pushing for the concept of tags to be sold to the public using The Dolphin Of Metadata. It has rapidly become clear that the dolphin of metadata joke does not transfer outside that meeting.
A nice day out, today: Lord's cricket ground for a series of sessions devoted to coming up with Big Ideas for the way we handle various aspects of our London 2012 coverage.
Lord's will be the archery venue, which some may consider spurious grounds for decamping to the cricket ground's media centre for the day, but it certainly did a job for me. It's nice to get out of the same four walls and spend a day in a different set of smoother, funkier, better-air-conditioned walls. Plus the view's a bit better if we're honest.
I managed to turn a relaxing day into a festival of nerves by somehow being volunteered not once, but twice, to present the thoughts of my little brain-storming group to the rest of the 30 or 40 attendees. It would help if I learnt two valuable lessons:
1. Stop yapping on to anybody who will listen in small group sessions, to the point where everyone is sick of your voice, and moreover nobody else could get a word in edgeways so you're the default choice to front up to the rest; and
2. Stop treating every presentation as a Battle Royale between you and the other unfortunate nominees. My little heart was pounding away with the sheer insistence that my two minutes must be the best. A healthy sense of competition is a good thing, but mine may need a leash and a quiet word.
In other news I am genuinely appalled by the ITV revelations today, particularly the revelation that they even changed the winner of a TV awards gong, over-ruling the audience vote in an apparent bid to keep Robbie Williams happy. Bizarre, disgraceful, and thoroughly deserving of a much better apology than the one it got. Luckily ITV now have to publicly recant six times during prime-time programming, while Ant and Dec are parcelling up their trophy as I write.
There's also a nice little piece from Londonist pointing out that Boris Johnson's real nemesis is not drinking on public transport, but drunkenness. In the words of Londonist's Alice:
After all, problems on the tube aren't caused by someone opening their first beer of the night, they're caused by someone drinking their twentieth. And that person was likely going to cause a problem regardless of whether or not they were holding that open beer in their hand.
We're not really opposed to the ban, as we can't see it negatively affecting anyone, but we're wondering where it's leading. What's next, Boris? A ban on public drunkenness? Because we think that will be a lot harder to control. This is London, after all.
A Chance To Win… But Only If You're A Man (Or Buying Male Clothes)
I received an email earlier from the relatively respectable tailoring company, Charles Tyrwhitt. I order their shirts, so periodically receive the usual offers etc. Today's email included the following tag-line:
Vroom Vroom... get your 4 shirts for £100 and a chance to win 2 VIP tickets to the British Grand Prix
So, out of curiosity I clicked on the link. Instead of being directed to the homepage of Charles Thywhitt, I was directed to the homepage for men's shirts. The offer apparently applies the purchase of women's shirts, but clearly Charles Thywhitt prefers to direct you to the male page. I'm no feminist, but I find this moderately sexist. Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I wouldn't like to win tickets to the British Grand Prix as much as the next man.
Over the past few days it seems I've been jogging memories left, right and centre. In fact it's the most jogging I've done since I finally escaped the torture of school cross-country - and let me tell you, I'm much better at jogging memories.
An old school friend started things off by breaking a silence going back five years or more (good old Facebook, relighting the fire) to ask if I was in Manchester these days. He reckoned he'd seen me walking down the city's Oxford Road - which I have indeed done, but not for several years.
This morning, on the way into work, the lady behind the till at Wycombe station's snack bar trumped this. She was certain she had served me in an Asda - not recently, she added, but a long time ago - and she had asked me for identity when I tried to buy some beer.
It took a search of Dayorama to remember the last time I went to Asda, let alone who served me at the till, and whether I had some beer in my basket and a youthful expression on my face. I'm fairly sure I have never been to an Asda anywhere near Wycombe. But she wore a look of absolute certainty. My doppelganger has not only been loose on the streets of Manchester, he's been snapping up cheap plonk down the supermarket.
There is no explanation at all for the third incident. I was on my way to a housewarming on Saturday night, for which I needed to get the train from Slough to Windsor.
I passed through the ticket barrier at Slough and walked past a small boy in a baseball cap, about 12 years old maybe, standing to the right of the gate. As I went by, he said something to me.
I hadn't been expecting that so I didn't catch what he said the first time, but stopped anyway, giving him time to repeat himself:
"You're off the BBC News, aren't you!"
Well, well, well. First things first, I'm not even going to pretend I'm not deeply delighted by this. My ego did a little cartwheel inside as soon as it digested the question.
But where on earth does this boy think he's seen me?
I've not been properly on telly for a good few months, and even then I've only done very occasional pieces - a report from a school last year, and a 30-second burst of ice hockey back in March.
I've been away from the radio since moving from Berkshire to London, and the only place my ugly mug has appeared in recent times is on the Olympics blog. Somehow it feels like it's asking a lot of a 12-year-old to even read the Olympics blog, let alone check out the profiles of its authors, commit their pictures to memory, then remain alert for their presence at Slough railway station.
Maybe he goes to ice hockey games and has seen me up in the gantry. Part of me felt like racing back down the platform to him and asking where he'd seen me, before it dawned on me quite how ridiculous and desperate that course of action would appear.
I contented myself with a pleasantly surprised, "Yes! Yes I am, good spot," and walked off to board my train. (I can hear the wails of people reading this already, but seriously, what would you have done? It's all I could immediately think to say. This kind of thing is not a regular occurrence!)
Maybe he's mistaken me for somebody else (Moyles? Ross? Daniel Craig?). Maybe the lady at Wycombe station served someone else, and maybe my long-lost identical twin is walking the streets of Manchester. Either that or, eyes drooping at the end of a long day, I'm about to indulge in some more spectacular sleepwalking. No wonder my mouth tastes of beer when I wake up...
This is one of those things which has had the potential to be a regular feature since 2003. The problem is that the relatively simple premise falls over when I have a boring week and there aren't any good pictures.
The solution, which has been five years in development, is to stop having boring weeks.
So consider this my commitment to less boredom, more pictures. Railways, graffiti, squirrels, yoghurt, and my body compared to the planet - the first Week in Pictures can be found on our Flickr account.
And for new Olympic judo and canoeing pics with GB stars, check out the BBC Sport stream.
Spot any good pictures on Flickr or elsewhere? Drop me a line.
I've spent the last couple of days with my God Mother in Suffolk. A very relaxing and enjoyable time aided in no small part by the glorious weather. Just a couple of photos to share. The first, the Norman church of St Mary's at Aldham. I don't think I'd ever seen a church with a round tower before - apparently quite "common" in Suffolk / Norfolk - and it really was quite fascinating. The view from the church is, as descibed here, "splendidly English", a fact which simply aids the peace and serenity the church offers.
The second photo is rather self-explanatory but I'm rather pleased with it:
Football supporters are a great exercise in crowd theory.
Individuals who, on their own, can barely stand or speak through alcohol intake, become en masse witty purveyors of the finest British satire.
Thus it was that the Manchester City fans at Anfield for today's game against Liverpool produced a blinder of a song as a badge of support for manager Sven-Goran Eriksson.
If you haven't been following proceedings, it's simple: Sven is almost certain to be sacked this summer by City's Thai owner, Thaksin Shinawatra, despite the club's best Premier League season for a decade or more. Thaksin doesn't think eighth or ninth place is good enough and, since he's the one waving the cash around, that's the end of Sven.
There's very little you can do to argue against that. If you're paying the club a few hundred million quid, you're probably entitled to make those decisions. But that doesn't make it any more justifiable to the thousands of fans who have seen enough rubbish from City over the years to know when things might just be on the up. They (and I) want Sven to stay, because we reckon he's got the chance to build something really good at the club, and we can't see any hope of Thaksin finding a better replacement.
So cue the City fans who, after singing the manager's name a few times, from nowhere produce a Pink Floyd pastiche:
We don't need no Phil Scolari
We don't need Mourinho
Hey! Thaksin! Leave our Sven alone!
Sven has been typically coy about his job in the post-match interview after the 1-0 defeat to Liverpool. If he does go it'll be a shame as I think he's conducted himself impeccably and struck up a strong rapport with the fans.
That said, results on the pitch have been less than impressive since 2008 began. Take away the stunning victory against Manchester United at Old Trafford in February, and this year has been something of a wash-out. It's questionable whether the second half of Sven's season has been much better than the second half of either of Stuart Pearce's campaigns.
Certainly, surrendering a 2-0 lead at home to Fulham to lose 3-2, in front of Thaksin and a gathered band of his fellow countrymen, was not the greatest result Sven could have hoped for at a time when the team could have done with impressing their chairman.
The problem is who Thaksin thinks he's going to be able to persuade to replace Sven. If he thinks he can get Mourinho, I think he's sadly mistaken - but will gladly be proved wrong.
Scolari is slightly more likely to come to City, especially if a lot of cash is dangled in front of him for squad strengthening, but does Thaksin really think this is an improvement on Sven?
And what if Scolari says no? Who then? Steve McClaren? Gerard Houllier? Worrying times. But in a sense, I'm relieved. I've grown up accepting that my club does one thing better than anyone else, and that's turning itself into a laughing stock. For the past few seasons we've been completely unspectacular at this, and it's good to see a healthy return to form...
Congratulations to Stoke on gaining promotion, by the way. Despite my dad's timely reminder that when City and Stoke were relegated on the same day at Stoke's Britannia Stadium in the 90s, the Stoke fans threw bricks at us after the game, I still quite like the club. It'll be good to have them in the top flight.
Have a look at the bottom bit of my new car insurance policy. Racing? Rallies? Speed tests? Makes sense for them to be excluded. But the fact that they bother to explicitly name and exclude the Nurburgring Nordschleife - whatever that may be - astonished me. It suggests they suspect the first thing I'll do, if they don't spell it out for me, is haul the car off to the continent and wrap it around somebody's bumper. (I don't need to go to the continent to do that.)
I now know what the Nordschleife is, having done a little research. I'm well aware of the Nurburgring as an F1 track, but I didn't realise it also forms a 20km-long one-way public highway, a toll road which then doubles as a test track for those people keen to pay the money and let their car loose on what is essentially a legal road, albeit one with few speed restrictions (none at all in places) and the look and feel of a motor racing circuit. Since it's technically a "normal" road the insurance company have felt the need to separate this potential death trap out, and make sure I know I'm not covered for a (highly unlikely) romp round the track. I wonder if this boy has checked his fine print:
Now, is the Nurburgring specifically excluded from your policy if you're over 60, or a 40-year-old woman? One can't help but feel that maybe if you're under 25 and male, it's assumed the Nurburgring might just tempt you.
No complaints about Admiral though, who are my new insurer having beaten Direct Line by a three-figure sum. I opened the renewal letter from Direct Line just as Admiral's parrot was giving it rice about multi-car on the telly, and a few minutes later they'd quoted me happy, which was more than lucky (come on, let's lob all the adverts in).
I rang Direct Line to give them one last chance to retain my custom - given both companies wanted to charge me a four-figure sum, not inconsiderable. Direct Line took all of twenty seconds to tell me "Thanks, bye!", clearly deciding to cut their losses rather than risk this boy racer on the Nordschleife, and the parrot got my business. I bet the parrot's done the Nordschleife. It has that ker-azy cat outlook on life.
So, can another American institution win over the hearts of the British public? Despite being available in supermarkets for some time now, Kraft, the manufacturer behind the Oreo cookie is launching a concerted effort to appeal to the hearts (and stomachs) of digestive biscuit loving Brits. See here for an article from the beeb.
As American as Coca-Cola and McDonalds, the Oreo was recently introduced into China and has now become their biggest biscuit brand. Certainly whilst in Hong Kong, packets of Oreos were freely available in the pantry at work, so naturally I developed quite an affection for them. They'll never replace the humble custard cream in my mind but the black and white so-called "sandwich cookie" certainly appealed to my taste buds. Whether I'd purchase them over here though, is another matter. There's a difference between eating and enjoying biscuits because they're freely available and deciding to add them to your weekly shop. In addition I tend to stay clear of buying biscuits for a couple of simple reasons: (a) they're not that healthy, (b) they do nothing for my hips, and (c) once a packet has been opened there is a high chance I could consume the entire contents in one sitting. Also, typically Asia doesn't have a large sweet-tooth and therefore there were days in Hong Kong when the Oreo provided a welcome buffer from healthy, savory fresh food and instead gave me a sugary, artificial hit of sweetness. Apparently in China Kraft produced a reduced sugar version of the biscuits on the basis that the locals found the original receipt too sweet. I remember these well: I always pumped for the fully sugared-up version. At the same time, the Oreo has a different kind of sweetness to that which usually appeals to the British taste bud. Hershey's chocolate may be all well and good in NY, but give me Cadbury any day.
So will the newly packaged (to bring the traditional flat-pack Oreos into line with the traditional British tubular packet of biscuits) Oreo become a winner? I'm not convinced. We're a nation of traditionalists and stick-in-the-muds. How many of us still use traditional brands, such as Imperial Leather soap, just because we remember them from our childhood. Even if there are hundreds of varieties of biscuits and chocolates available surely many simply go for the conventional rich tea or digestive. Forget the newly produced orange scented chocolate par with pieces of ginger: I'll have a kit-kat, thanks. I know this is a sweeping generalisation - we are a perfectly adventurous nation when it comes to trying products from other countries or purchasing organic and "healthy-eating" / diet foodstuffs, but try telling us to change our digestive for an American brand? Not likely. I think we're far too patriotic. So, the Oreo has it's place... but this is behind the humble custard cream.
As an aside to the above, the BBC article notes that Oreo's key targets are "mums with children aged six to 12". This is wrong - I thought we were trying to promote a nation of healthy individuals where we snack on carrot sticks, not chocolate biscuits. Look, America, we can make ourselves an Obese nation without any more of your help.
Evening all. First order of business, hello to the three (maybe four) people who have made the Herculean effort to not only read my canoeing piece on the BBC Olympics blog, but then read my profile and click the link to Dayorama. That is dedication. Or more probably boredom. But it's good to see you all the same.
It's worth me pointing out that the views on this blog are mine and mine alone. So if I depart into a mad, irrational rant, it's me doing the slagging, not the BBC. On the BBC blog it's still me doing the slagging, but I'm less likely to have to pay for the lawyers. Generally I try not to do much slagging. Works out much cheaper and hassle-free.
If you haven't come here via the Olympics blog, then why the hell not? A good place to start would be by joining the debate about my good colleague Scriv's hair, taking place in the comments beneath that post. The Keane observation in comment six is particularly special.
(Confession: I had a new photo taken just after a haircut. The photo of my hair prior to the trim was genuinely hideous, whereas its replacement is a mere 80 per cent hideous - and slightly hunchbacked. Scriv is far more man than I.)
Second order of business is a sport at which I'm easily Olympic material - earwigging. Got on the train home and the bloke behind me was on his phone, deploying the cool, frosty, detached tone of voice universally understood to be acrimonious-divorcee-talking-to-ex-about-child.
I joined the action just as things seemed to be hotting up nicely:
"You do that if you want. But you'll be wrong. (brief pause) He could leave tomorrow if he wanted to. He's sixteen, he could walk out of that door and the school couldn't stop him. (pause)
"It's his fault, you shouldn't be supporting him. If you support him, it'll look like you're supporting his behaviour, whether that's what you intended or not. (pause)
"No, I don't think it's a harsh punishment at all. They haven't punished him in the past so until now he's been getting away with it. (pause)
"You do that then. (adopts finishing-conversation-ahead-of-time-to-make-point tone of voice) Okay then, bye. (elongated pause) Yes I'm still here. (pause) Fine. Bye."
It would be nice to be one of those people with enough courage to turn round and ask, out of the blue: "So what's he done then?"
As it is, we'll have to speculate wildly. Burn down the classroom? Ram raid the canteen? Vote for Ken? (This is Chiltern Railways we're talking about, nobody's child is going to be voting for Ken.)
At 16 he ain't going to be voting (unless he's got some good fake ID by rigging up a malicious Facebook app). Same here - don't live in London (yet), no vote. Not sure who I'd have gone for. I can't say I'll be up all night waiting anxiously for results... does anyone expect any actual change following this election?
For any Londoner reading this weblog and entitled to vote in today's elections:
PLEASE VOTE!
Obviously we all know my loyalty lies with Boris. However, my penny's worth is pretty simple - whatever your views (well, unless of course you favour the BNP) - simply vote.
In other news, I was waiting for the DLR last night. It was delayed by all of a couple of minutes. The announcer apologised with the immortal lines: "we apologise for the delay; this has been cause by adverse weather conditions". Adverse weather? I ask you. It was raining. For goodness sake, it was just raining. How is rain, in April, in England, adverse?
